Atlantis: Devil's Sea (8 page)

“
Deepflight
, this is Angel Six. Over.”

Gann picked up the mike. “This is
Deepflight.
Over.”

“Do exactly what I tell you to,” Foreman said. “Go to the center of the circle. Look for a smaller black circle there. Go into it. Jettison the attached pod before you go in.”

“What is this?” Gann demanded.

“You don’t have time to argue or ask questions,” Foreman said. “You’ve got an enemy bogey heading your way.”

“Enemy bogey?” Gann repeated glancing at Murphy.

A new voice cut in. “This is
Reveille.
Roger that,
Deepflight
! Roger that! Something very big is coming this way. Range ten kilometers and closing at eighty knots. It’s freaking huge, and it is not responding to hails!”
Gann shoved the controls, turning the nose of
Deepflight
toward the ocean bottom. He increased the throttle, and they headed down.

“
Reveille
, this is Angel Six. Recommend you head away at Flank speed.”

“Roger that.”

*****

Dane watched the sphere closing on the Challenger Deep as relayed from Nagoya’s computers and integrated with the Department of Defense positioning information on both
Deepflight
and the
Reveille
. It was going to be very close. He felt impotent, unable to influence what was about to happen.

*****

“Geez, look at that,” Murphy whispered. “Whatever’s coming in is filling the entire screen in the north.”

Gann didn’t have time to look at the radar. He was navigating by visual, staying oriented on the gray wall just above the top of
Deepflight
.

“There,” Gann said as the gray changed to black. He had the submersible do a roll, and then the nose was pointing at a small black circle.

“Looks solid to me,” Murphy said.

Gann finally spared a glance at the radar. He saw what had shocked Murphy. A curved edge had filled the entire top half of the screen, and it was coming closer. The only thing he’d ever seen that big moving was an iceberg, but this thing was coming under its own power.

“I’m going in,” Gann said as he edged forward on the controls.

“Don’t forget we need to jettison the pod,” Gann said. “Do it.”

*****

On board the
Reveille
, the engines were maxed out as the ship made to the south. On the bridge, the captain was watching the approaching sphere on radar also. Unfortunately, the ship was built for research, not speed or combat, so even at full throttle they could only make eighteen knots. And they had no weapons on board, although the captain doubted that any weapons they might have would be effective against whatever was coming.

*****

Deepflight
blinked out of existence on the status board, the image of the sphere completely filling the canyon deep inside the Challenger Deep, the video feed from the submersible going blank.

Dane sat down at the conference table and shook his head. “How many on board?”

“Two,” Foreman said. His attention still on the board. “Damn,” Foreman muttered.

Dane looked up. The sphere was moving, ascending. “It’s going after the
Reveille
.”

Foreman picked up the microphone. “
Reveille,
this is Angel Six. Over.”

“We’ve got it on radar, range five thousand meters horizontal, nine thousand meters vertical and closing. Any suggestion would be helpful. Over.”

Foreman looked at Dane, who simply shook his head.

“Five us a video feed,” Foreman ordered.

A screen on the wall flickered, and then they could see the Pacific Ocean from the bridge of the
Reveille
. The water was perfectly calm, the sun shining. The only thing marring the tranquility of the scene were the increasingly anxious reports from the
Reveill
e’s radar man coming out of the speakers.

“Range four thousand meters horizontal, seven thousand meters vertical, and closing at high speed.”

“We’re still waiting on any suggestions,” the captain of the
Reveille
said. “Over.”

“It might be bluffing,” Foreman suggested.

“What the hell is it, anyway?” the captain demanded.

“We don’t know,” Foreman admitted.

“Great.”

‘Range three thousand meters horizontal, five thousand meters vertical, and closing at high speed.”

*****

Gann felt the air around him changing, the pressure increasing. His head pounded, and the video screen was dark.

“What the hell is going on?” Murphy demanded.

The nose of the submersible had hit the dark circle just moments ago, and then slowly they’d gone into it, as if being absorbed. Alarms began going off. Gann ran through emergency procedures but could find nothing seriously wrong until he glanced at the outside pressure-reading gauge.

“That can’t be,” he murmured.

“What?”

“Outside pressure is one atmosphere.”

“The gauge is broken,” was Murphy’s immediate assessment.

Both men blinked as the light inside increased dramatically as the three screens showing the outside view suddenly brightened far beyond what the searchlights could do.

“Where the hell are we?” Murphy whispered. His training took hold, and he checked his instruments. He didn’t believe what he was seeing, but he reported it anyway. “I’ve got a reading of the surface ten meters above us.”

“That would explain the atmospheric reading,” Gann observed. He checked the radio, trying to reach the
Reveille
and Angel Six, but only static came back. “Let’s see where we are,” he finally said.

*****

The sphere was solid black and perfectly round. There was no external sign of a form of propulsion; nevertheless, it was pushing through the water at high speed, closing on the
Reveille
.

It was also picking up anything in its path via a hole that had irises open on the very front, about fifty meters wide. It had swallowed the transmitting pod before halting in front of the large door, then reversing direction and heading for the surface.

*****

“Range zero meters horizontal, one thousand meters vertical, and rising at high speed. Closing on us, sir,” the radar man added, a quaver in his voice.

The captain of the
Reveille
nodded. He opened the door that led to the bridge wing on the right side and stepped out onto it, a crewman following him with a video camera that was connected by satellite to the War Room. The captain leaned over and looked down at the smooth ocean, waiting.

*****

On the top portion of the sphere, the opening grew as the metal irises moved back. As the sphere got closer to the surface and the
Reveille
, the opening grew larger until it encompassed a quarter of the surface.

*****

“Oh God,” those in the War Room heard the captain of the
Reveille
exclaim. Then they saw what had caused the reaction as the video camera was pointed downward.

Rising out of the water all around the
Reveille
was the edge of the opening in the sphere, water pouring down the side of the massive object until the edge was a hundred meters above the mast of the ship. Then the opening began to iris shut, daylight disappearing rapidly as it closed.

The screen went blank.

*****

Captain Gann threw the hatch open and blinked in the bright light, trying to get his bearings. The air was stale, with a texture to it that Gann couldn’t identify. He was in a huge, semicircular space. The submersible was floating in the center of a body of water that extended a mile and half in all directions. Above, a bright, glowing orb illuminated everything. Beyond the water, a black beach two miles in width ran up to the wall that curved around overhead to the light.

What caught Gann’s attention, though, were the planes and boats that littered the black beach. Thousands of them. He saw an ancient Polynesian raft beached next to a modern oil tanker; a jet fighter with Russian markings next to a biplane. It was overwhelming, a veritable mechanical graveyard of the ages.

*****

“It’s moving again,” Dane noted. He watched the progress of the sphere on the screen for several seconds, then realized what he was seeing. “It’s heading back to the Deep.”

There was no sign of the
Reveille
in the live spy satellite feed they had of the area. The ship had disappeared, swallowed up by the sphere.

*****

“Look at that!” Murphy exclaimed, pointing.

Gann shifted the binoculars in that direction. A silver-skinned plane with two engines, one on each wing, was on the black beach. Among all the other craft here, he found nothing particularly spectacular about that particular plane.

“A Lockheed Electra,” Murphy said. He twisted the knob on his binoculars. “A Lockheed Electra 10E!”

“And?” Gann was trying to absorb the variety of ships and planes he was seeing. Some he didn’t’ recognize at all.

“Do you know what the
E
in the 10E stands for?” Murphy didn’t wait for an answer. “Earhart. That’s Amelia Earhart’s plane!”

Both men staggered as a large bubble of air broke the surface just in front of the submersible, rocking the craft. Gann felt a spike of pain in both ears and realized there had been a sudden change of pressure. He leaned over and looked down, just in time to see the top edge of the opening in the sphere break the surface all around the submersible.

*****

“The sphere is heading back for the gate,” Ahana reported, even though Nagoya could clearly see that on the screen.

“What about the probe?” he asked.

Ahana flipped a switch, and a red dot appeared inside the sphere. “Working.”
“Excellent.”

They watched as the dot entered the black triangle marking the boundaries of the Devil’s Sea gate.”

“Do you have a lock on that position?” Nagoya asked anxiously.

“Locked and all data recorded,” Ahana confirmed.

*****

In the War Room, Dane saw the red dot appear. “What’s that?”

“The sphere must have sucked in the pod,” Foreman said.

“What about
Deepflight
?” Ariana asked.

“No sign,” Foreman said.

“How does this probe open the gate?” Dane asked.

“You’ll have to ask Nagoya that,” Foreman said. “We aren’t even certain it will work. But it’s a good sign that we can track it. Pack your gear; we’re heading to Japan. By the time we get there Nagoya should have been able to analyze the data the probe is sending.”

Ariana had been on her laptop while all this was occurring. “I’ve located someone who claims to be an expert on crystal skulls in New York City. Also, the Museum of Natural History has one in its collection. I’ve arranged to meet with a museum representative and the expert this evening.

Dane stood. “Keep in touch.”

“I will.” She spun the globe once more. “We’re missing something.”

Dane paused. “What do you mean?” Foreman was already out of the room, heading for the elevator.

“Nagoya is coming up with theories, Foreman has been studying these gates almost all of his life, and yet we still know almost nothing about them or the Shadow, or the Ones Before.” She spread her long fingers, covering several of the gates marked on the globe. “I don’t’ know what it is, but we’re missing something very important.”

“I know we are,” Dane agreed. He smiled. “If you find out what it is, let me know, OK?”

“Be careful,” Ariana warned.

“I will.”

“Don’t trust Foreman.”

“That’s a given.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

T
HE
P
AST

79 A.D.

Emperor Vespasian had been dead for one day short of two months. There had been the obligatory month of mourning. Then the month-long games celebrating the new emperor, Titus, had begun. They would end on the next day. The games had been such a success that Titus had already begun plans for a bigger arena, to be called the Coliseum, which would be built so that larger and more elaborate games could be held with more spectators than the current arena could hold. It had long been said that as long as the emperor provided bread and games, he would stay in power.

In the Imperial Palace on the Palatine hill, Titus walked through empty rooms that had been cleared of his father Vespasian’s things and awaited his. He had watched his father’s ascent to power from the son of a tax collector to emperor, and he had learned much in the process. One key lesson was to look for plots everywhere and stop them before they had a chance to gain momentum. It is with this in mind that Titus went down a long corridor toward where two Praetorian Guards waited. As he approached, they saluted and opened the tall doors.

Titus entered his audience chamber and went directly to the chair set on a dais. His senior advisers were all in place, waiting. Titus leaned back, head against the high back of the chair. Only two months and already he felt the weight of the empire on his shoulders. He raised a finger to Thyestes, the Greek who had also been Vespasian’s adviser. Thyestes had the pulse of Rome, it was said, and thus knew the health of the empire and, more importantly, the health of the emperor.

Thyestes bowed, then stepped onto the dais, leaning close so only Titus could hear. “Yes, Emperor.”
“Tell me about General Cassius.”

Thyestes was a tall, thin man. He had thick, white hair and the long, bushy beard that so many of the Greeks favored. His face was pinched, and he always looked like he was experiencing a bad bowel movement. He had a long staff in his right hand, a symbol of power as the emperor’s voice. His old fingers curled over the end of the staff as he composed his answer.

“Cassius retired to his country estate with his Jewess. She died last year of the fever, and he did not take it well. Since then, he has been occupying himself taking long walks and planting a garden.”
“ Cassius a gardener?” Titus was surprised. He couldn’t envision the old warrior as such. “and his loyalty?”
“Is to Rome.”

Titus knew what that short answer meant. Cassius, despite his retirement, held great sway with the legions. And the legions were the seat of power.