The Reticuli Deception
The Reticuli Deception
The Reticuli Deception is Alastair Mayer's second full-length novel, sequel to The Chara Talisman
- Publisher's page: The Reticuli Deception
- Available on Amazon
Plot
Elevator Pitch
Ancient astronauts, modern spies, old UFO abductions, spacefarers pretending to be gods, and a sneaky heist from an underground facility. Who's fooling who?
Brief Synopsis
With the discovery of multiple talismans similar to that found in The Chara Talisman, the team realizes that the star maps on each may help narrow down the homeworld of the spacefaring aliens who created them some 15,000 years ago. This might be one of the Zeta Reticuli stars, or near there. This spurs a two-pronged search, one towards Zeta Reticuli, the other to Earth.
Back circa 1960, claimed UFO abductee Betty Hill described, under hypnosis, a star map she saw aboard the alien ship. This was later determined to describe trade routes centered on Zeta Reticuli, hence the team's interest. The Earth team aims to retrieve the original USAF Project Blue Book files investigating the incident (online copies of the original map, scanned from microfilm images, are unreadable).
Interleaved with this are several deep backstory scenes of two aliens (the Kesh) who crash landed in Central America about 1000 years ago. These are not the same as the original talisman makers, but came later. What they find on Earth contradicts the central dogma of the politico-religious Kesh ruling class.
Carson, Roberts and Marten ultimately arrive at Zeta Reticuli to find the ruins of a technological civilization, although there are signs that something is still active in the system. Meanwhile, the bad guys from the first book (the Velkaryans) have caught up with them, but so has a pyramidal ship, bigger than anything which should be warp-capable, and crewed by modern-day Kesh. The latter are only to eager to get the humans (and timoan) out of the system as soon as possible, before they stir up an old enemy.
Locations
- Earth circa 1000 CE, Central America
- Sawyers World - Alpha Centauri A II
- Earth (and Luna) - Sol III
- Taprobane - Epsilon Indi II
- Verdigris - Delta Pavonis III
- Hallelujah - Alpha Mensae II
- Zeta 1 Reticuli III (and surrounding space)