Devil's Sea a-3

by Robert Doherty

  “There’s the portal,” Nagoya tapped the screen. “I’m boosting power.

  * * *

  “Rachel has the portal located,” Dane said. “She’s on the muonic trace Nagoya is projecting.” The dolphin was in front of them, swimming slowly, allowing them to keep pace.

  “How far ahead?” Loomis asked.

  “I can’t tell distance,” Dane said. “All I know is that we’re closing on it.”

  “We need to stop just short of it,” Loomis said.

  From what Dane was picking up from Rachel, the portal was a sphere space in the center of the gate. The dolphin was getting echoes back from it and other objects in the water, none close so far.

  “There are other things out there,” Dane said.

  “What things?” Ahana asked.

  “Living things.” Dane remembered the krakens that had attacked the Glomar. Rachel was swimming faster, sensing the other objects. “Pick up speed,” Dane told Loomis.

  Something was closing on them from the right, swimming fast. Dane could sense Rachel’s fear, but still the dolphin led them toward the portal.

  Dane had been watching Loomis pilot the Crab. The controls were simple: a wheel that when rotated turned them left and right, when pressed in, they dove, and when pulled back, they went up. A throttle, much like an airplane’s, controlled their speed.

  “Move,” Dane said, tapping Loomis on the shoulder.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” the colonel demanded.

  “You’re flying blind,” Dane said. “I’ll get us there.”

  Loomis reluctantly gave up his seat, and Dane took his place. He closed his eyes and saw what Rachel saw: the image of the portal directly ahead, a creature coming from the right. Rachel turned, putting herself between them and the creature, which appeared in the dark water: a kraken a hundred meters away and closing fast, tentacles trailing as it sucked in water through vents on the side of its head and expelled it.

  “No,” Dane whispered as he turned the wheel. “Behind us.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Loomis demanded.

  Dane didn’t even hear him. Rachel did as he asked, putting the Crab between her and the kraken.

  “Brace for impact,” Dane announced.

  “Impact with what?” Loomis asked with alarm.

  Dane reached down and shoved the throttle to maximum speed. The blunt nose of the Crab hit the kraken in the head, the collision sending a shudder through the craft. Dane spun the wheel, putting them back on course for the portal as the creature drifted, stunned by the impact. Rachel raced out in front again.

  “What was that?”

  Dane was getting tired of listening to Loomis. “The portal is about two hundred meters ahead,” he announced as he throttled back. There were other kraken about, several coming closer to investigate. Dane estimated they had about a minute.

  “I’m launching the plug,” Ahana said.

  “We don’t’ have much time,” Dane said. The Crab was slowing. “The portal is a hundred fifty meters ahead.”

  “The plug is on its way,” Ahana said.

  Dane could see the torpedo moving through the water as Rachel moved out of its way. He could also see the portal now, a black circle directly ahead of them. The torpedo hit the black and stopped, prevented from going in.

  “It’s there.” Dane said.

  Ahana reached forward and threw a switch. “Let’s hope this works.”

  The nose of the torpedo opened, and a two-inch-diameter probe appeared. The core of the probe was radioactive, emitting a weak nuclear force. It extended forward and passed into the portal.

  * * *

  “We’ve got power!” Nagoya slapped his palm on the side of his chair. “The plug is working. We’re drawing power from the portal.” He hit the Enter key on his computer. “Redirecting power back to the portal and opening it.”

  * * *

  “Twenty seconds,” Dane said. A half-dozen kraken were racing toward them. Rachel was close by the nose of the Crab, her fear soaking into Dane.

  “If it worked, we should be able to go in,” Ahana said.

  “If it worked,” Dane repeated, but he was already accelerating. Through Rachel, he could see the probe against the portal, but there was no apparent change.

  “Brace for impact,” Dane announced once more.

  He throttled back just before they hit the portal, but there was no impact as the crab, Rachel alongside, went into the portal. The Crab was suddenly jarred as one of the kraken grabbed the turret, but then the portal they had opened shut behind them, slicing the arm off.

  They were in.

  * * *

  Ariana blocked her eyes to protect them from the debris blown up by the helicopter as it came in for a landing in Central Park. She was off as soon as they were on the ground, Miles right behind her. A man waited next to a car, and he whisked them to the Rose Center where the master programmer for the Hayden Planetarium, Professor Mike O’Shaughnessy, waited for them, just inside the large glass block that contained the projection sphere.

  As soon as introductions were made, he took them inside the sphere. The interior was dimly lit by thousands of projected stars on the half dome above their head.

  “Your request was most unusual,” O’Shaughnessy told Ariana as he led them into the exact center where a control panel was located. “We’ve always projected something from the sky. No one has ever thought of projecting from inside the Earth to the surface.”

  “Were you able to do it? And use the data I sent you?” Ariana was too excited to sit down. Since leaving Berlin, she had pored through the data forwarded by Nagoya and set it onward to O’Shaughnessy to be programmed.

  “Oh, yes,” O’Shaughnessy said. “I had to contract quite a few experts over the last several hours, particularly those who know about plate tectonics. It’s really most fascinating — and frightening, given the data on the Shadow’s manic probing that you forwarded to me. I took into account what happened off the coast of Chile and the eruption of Anak Krakatoa.” He reached down and typed on the keyboard. The enclosure went dark for a second, then lit up with a projection of the Pacific Rim.

  “We’re looking from the center of the Earth outward, to the surface of the planet,” O’Shaughnessy said. “Here are the landmasses.” The outline of the continents bordering the Pacific appeared in green. “Here’s the Ring of Fire.” That appeared in purple, roughly following the landmass edges.

  “The Antarctica plate is more interesting,” O’Shaughnessy said, pointing to one edge of the projection. “It is now relatively stable but is connected with numerous plates to the north all around. Watch.”

  He used the computer mouse to rotate the entire image above their heads, and the world turned. Ariana could see what he meant, as the southernmost plate touched numerous others.

  “Einstein had a theory called the crustal displacement, where he thought there was a good possibility that Antarctica was actually Atlantis,” O’Shaughnessy said.

  Ariana had heard this before, but she kept quiet and listened, knowing there was a good chance she would hear something new.

  “The entire plate that now makes up Antarctica might have been located — according to Einstein — here in the middle of the North Atlantic. A traumatic event, perhaps the Shadow manipulating the plates themselves, might have broken it free from this tenuous connection to the planet below, and it literally drifted over the course of thousands of years to its current location.

  “It’s interesting to note that it is only very recently,” O’Shaughnessy continued, “that we have an idea of the actual outline of the continent that is hidden below the ice. It is estimated that if the ice was removed from Antarctica, the removal of all that weight would allow the land below to rise over two miles. The rift around Antarctica extends for over nineteen hundred miles, comparable to the Great Rift Valley in Africa.”

  O’Shaughnessy moved the mouse again, and they went back to the view of the half of th
e planet centered on the Pacific. “In red is the current status of the muonic probing as you forwarded it to me.”

  The red covered the entire Ring of Fire with larger, more concentrated splotches near Mounts Wrangell and Erebus.

  “When I do the stars,” O’Shaughnessy continues, “there’s a technique I used called progression. What I can do is show how the sky looked in the past, rotating the star fields, or even how it will look in the future. In this case, I’ve progressed the muonic probing into the future, adding power to it.”

  The read began to change to crimson as O’Shaughnessy had the computer work forward. Ariana could see it now, what had only been numbers on paper or flat, two-dimensional pictures. Erebus was the key, she realized not Wrangell. It would be the start point when the Shadow began whatever it had planned for the Ring of Fire. It could also be the junction point for the Shadow to extend the destruction to other plates in other parts of the world.

  “Can you project what would happen if activity at Erebus is stopped?” she asked.

  O’Shaughnessy nodded and sat at the keyboard, typing furiously for almost a minute. “All right. I’m going back to present levels. And projecting…” he hit the Enter key.

  It fell apart. Ariana could see it. Wrangell still was affected, but the red lines all along the Ring of Fire gradually faded. She jumped to her feet.

  “What are you doing?” Miles asked.

  “Thank you, Professor,” she said as she headed for the door, pulling her SATPhone out of her pocket.

  “Where are we going?” Miles persisted as they left the planetarium.

  “Antarctica. McMurdo Station.” From a previous trip, she knew the research base stood in the shadow of Erebus.

  “The Learjet can’t land there,” Miles said. “The landing strip is ice and snow.”

  “I’ll get us a plane.” She dialed Foreman’s number.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE PAST

  79 A.D.

  Falco wiped sweat from his brow as Cassius signaled a halt. They were on top of a ridgeline on the west side of the Dnieper River, the XXV Legion stretched out behind them, except for a screen of scouts a half mile ahead.

  They were beyond the empire’s boundaries, well into the territory of the barbarians, but that wasn’t the reason for the halt. They’d been outside the empire for four days now on a forced march north along the river. The XXV had done well, keeping to the normal legion pace of twenty-five miles a day.

  Directly ahead, beyond several miles of swampy ground, was a dark stationary wall. It was very high, taller than any wall Falco had ever seen, over half a mile and about four miles wide. Whatever it was constructed of, he had never seen. The black was featureless and seemed to absorb the sunlight completely.

  There was no need to ask Kaia if that was what they sought. The priestess had taken several steps forward and was staring as intently as any of them at the blackness. Falco had sensed the darkness for two days as they marched, the sense of evil growing closer. He knew Kaia had sensed it also.

  “Senior Centurion Falco,” Cassius called.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Make castra here. And I don’t want any slack in the perimeter.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Cassius looked at sky. Clear, no clouds. “No tents.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As the men swung into the practiced movements of preparing to stop for the night, fortifying their position, making it into the traditional castra, Falco kept one eye on the blackness, the other on the work. Every legion castra was to be built the exact same way. A square wall and moat surrounded the camp. Two roads bisected the camp, one called the via principia and the other the via praetorian. The names, like the camp, were always the same. The legionnaire in a camp anyplace in the world could find his way in the pitch dark.

  The sun was just above the western horizon when Falco reported all was ready for inspection. Cassius walked the entire perimeter, stopping here and there to chat with the men. Not quite X Legion standard, but the troops were getting better.

  “Very good, Falco,” Cassius said as they arrived back at the starting point, facing the black wall, now invisible in the dusk. Kaia was where they had left her, standing still as a rock.

  “What now?’ Cassius asked her.

  “I’m not sure,” Kaia said. “We have the staff and the skull, but it is not enough.”

  “What more do you need?” Falco asked.

  “I don’t know. I had a vision last night of a pyramid like the one we saw at Thera. But I see no pyramid here. I think I must go into the darkness.”

  “A reconnaissance would be a smart move,” Cassius agreed. “But we will wait until morning.”

  “I recommend only Kaia and I enter the gate,” Falco said. “I sense great danger in there.”

  “One does not need your special gifts to feel the danger,” Cassius said. “I agree. The two of you go, but I think it best to take a third with you. I will wait nearby with a cohort.”

  A legionnaire approached, holding a mess tin of the same food the troops were eating. Another way Cassius was different from other officers Falco had known. On campaign, Cassius always ate the same as his troops. And he always ate next to last, Falco holding on to the right to eat last, insuring all the men had eaten; it was the way a true leader operated. Cassius accepted the tin. Another soldier approached with Falco and Kaia’s food. It was one of the many ways Cassius had begun to earn the respect of the troops. Another was his refusal to ride a horse. He had walked, just as his soldiers had, moving up and down the column all day long, getting to know his men.

  Just after dark, there was a commotion on the southern side of the camp, and Falco hurried there, arriving as one of the patrols they had sent out was allowed to pass. The young tribune in charge was obviously agitated.

  Falco searched his memory for the man’s name. “Falvius. What news do you have?”

  Falvius jumped off his horse. “Barbarians. Massing to the south of us.”

  “Come,” Falco indicated he should follow, and they went to the center, where Cassius was resting on a thin blanket. The general was up by the time they arrived. A small fire blazed nearby, and he warmed his hands over it.

  Falvius snapped a salute, which Cassius calmly returned. “Report, Tribune.”

  “General, there is a force of barbarians to the south of us.”

  “The proper format for such a report,” Cassius said, calm as a rock in response to the tribune’s excitement, “is to be specific. How many, how far, and what are they doing?”

  “At least five thousand. And we saw more heading toward the camp. It’s a day’s march south of here. They were camping for the night, but they were astride our trail. They’re following us.”

  “Any cavalry?” Falco asked. He could sense Kaia’s presence nearby and spotted her just outside the circle of light thrown by the fire.

  “Some horses,” Falvius said, “but most were on foot.”

  Did you leave men to watch?”

  “Yes, General. One contubernium with our swiftest horses.”

  Falco watched the general consider the situation. They had faced it before, especially in Germany. Every time a legion crossed the Rhine, it was usually unopposed for several days until the locals could gather their forces. Then the enemy was usually behind the legion, between it and the empire, meaning the Romans would have to cut their way out to return home.

  Cassius nodded at Falvius. “Good job. Go get some food.”

  When he was gone, Kaia stepped forward into the light.

  “We have company,” Cassius said to her.

  “I’ve sensed them gathering all day behind us,” she said.

  “And you didn’t think to inform me?” Cassius asked.

  “Would it have made a difference?” she asked in turn. “They are halted for the night. And they are not anxious to engage you immediately. They want to outnumber you at least two to one, and it will take a day or so for that strengt
h to gather from the villages farther away. They think you are the vanguard for a larger Roman force to bring this land into the empire.”

  “You’re reading their minds at a distance?” Cassius asked.

  “No. It is common sense.”

  “I agree,” Falco said. “We have at least a day.”

  “They’ll fight us, but not that.” Falco nodded his head in the direction of the gate. “It would seem they do not know their real enemy.”

  “They fear the darkness,” Kaia said. “They think it comes from the gods. Maybe they think by killing us they will appease the gods who they believe started the darkness.”

  “I fear it also,” Cassius said. “And we don’t know what kind of enemy it is, nor do the local people, I suspect. It is easier to fight what you know than the unknown.”

  “Can we fight it?” Falco had turned to Kaia.

  “I do not know,” she replied.

  “We best get some rest,” Cassius said. “We’ll need it in the morning.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE PRESENT

  Ariana woke to a gentle tap on her shoulder. In the darkened cabin of the Air Force C-130 cargo plane, Miles was leaning over her. “We’re approaching McMurdo Station,” he said.

  It had been a long flight to New Zealand in the Learjet with several refueling stops along the way. They’d even been forced to switch out the crew to get fresh pilots halfway to their goal. Once in New Zealand, they had switched over to the Air Force cargo plane that Foreman had arranged to transport them south.

  Miles was sliding up the covers on the small portals, letting bright sunlight in. Ariana pulled her seat upright and peered out. White-capped ocean was below as far as she could see. She spotted a large iceberg, at least three miles long and half that in width. She knew that recently there had been several major bergs spawned off the Ross Ice Shelf, along the edge of which lay McMurdo Station, the largest settlement in Antarctica.

  Ariana went forward, opening the door to the cockpit. Directly ahead loomed Mount Erebus, towering over both the Ross Ice Shelf and McMurdo Station. A steam plume came off the summit into the cold, clear Antarctic sky. She knew the mountain was named after one of the ships in James Ross’s expedition that discovered the volcano in 1841.