Then he stepped out of the moving plane, closed the hatch and flew away, back toward the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.

Interdiction complete.

An hour later, the aerosub touched down under autopilot on the tranquil central lagoon at Diego Garcia.

Some powerful men were waiting for it.

But when they opened the unusual-looking plane, all they found inside it were eight groggy SEALs and no moon lander or camera.

Back at the underground basement at the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, watched by General Eric Abrahamson and Wally, Jack plugged a cable into the digital camera and tried to download its photos.

It was a difficult task. The Chinese encryption was next level. With the computers they had on the island, Abrahamson was able to decrypt some of the photos, but even then all they got to see were flashing glimpses of some of the photos.

They all seemed to be of the same thing.

An object on the surface of the Moon.

Through slashes of encryption static, Jack stared in amazement at a pedestal of some kind.

It was grey and smooth-sided, oblong in shape. A layer of silver thermal Kapton foil covered its upper surface. It just stood there on the barren grey surface of the Moon. You could glimpse the Earth in the background, a gorgeous aqua-blue marble hanging in space.

From the laser measurements the lander had taken, the pedestal was about three feet high.

‘That is not natural,’ Abrahamson said.

‘It looks like an altar,’ Jack said.

One partially decrypted photo of one of the pedestal’s sides—obscured by static-lines—revealed an image carved into it:

‘What…is that?’ General Abrahamson said slowly.

‘And why is it on the Moon?’ Jack added.

Jack’s eyes narrowed. ‘Eric. Take all this stuff back to Pine Gap. It’s got much better decryption programs that might be able to remove all this static and get us a better look at these photos. It’s also the most secure base we have. I’ll take Wally back to his home and swing by my farm. I’ll come join you in a few days and hopefully we can see these photos a bit better, analyse them more closely and figure out what’s going on here.’

‘Copy that,’ Abrahamson said.

‘Hey!’ Wally protested. ‘Don’t I get to see them more closely? I found them.’

‘Wally,’ Jack said. ‘You’re lucky to be alive and even luckier that we’re letting you see anything now. I’m going to drop you home and I suggest you immediately move to a new place that no-one knows about. For our part, Eric and I will forget you were a part of this and have our meeting alone.’

That meeting never happened.

A week later, Jack would visit Abrahamson at Pine Gap…

…to find the high-security base in ruins and the general shot dead.

Then Jack collapsed—drugged by an aerosol—and was himself kidnapped. He would awake inside a cell in the Underworld where he would be forced to compete in the Great Games for the benefit of the Four Legendary Kingdoms.