Moon Mask

by James Richardson

  Then he saw it.

  Such a hideous creature. Terrifying and all consuming.

  It charged at him-

  “I know how to get in!” He twisted free of Raine’s grip and was almost dragged away by the current. “Gibbs, I need some explosives.”

  “They knew the end was coming,” King’s voice explained through Nadia’s radio as she came to a neutral hover about half the way up the two megalithic pillars.

  Rising from the sea floor almost to the surface sixty feet above, the two enormous columns of rock each weighed almost 200 tonnes and, to the eye, looked almost perfectly straight, with only four inches between them.

  They weren’t, however, just rock, as geologists believed from cursory examinations. Rather, just like the main structure itself, they gave of strong magnetic readings. At their core, she knew, lay the same meteoric metal.

  Intrigued by King’s description of a columned hall within the temple, while the rest of the team had rendezvoused on the top of the structure and begun carefully setting explosives in one of the three ‘wells’, Nadia had led her buddy, Garcia, to the pillars.

  Now she watched as Garcia got to work on the right hand pillar with an air-powered underwater pneumatic hand drill. With a muted pounding, the drill head tore through layers of crusted coral, algae and sponges, creating a cloud of dead micro-organisms which diminished visibility. Then, with a sense of finality, it crunched into the stone proper, adding a mixture of sodden dust to the underwater soup.

  “They tried to protect the temple against the flood,” King continued. “They blocked the original entrance and then sealed these holes in the ceiling. But it didn’t work.”

  The pounding of the drill head suddenly changed again as it bit with a tell-tale, if muted, screech into metal. Garcia stopped the drill and drifted out of the way.

  “It’s all yours,” he said as Nadia finned past him through the swirling debris. There, in a small section which Garcia had laid bare, was the smooth, dull red colour of the meteoric metal which they had unofficially dubbed ‘Xibalbanite’. It was the same metal that the primitive tribes of Venezuela had, thousands of years ago, fashioned into the shape of a human face and venerated until the Progenitors, for reasons unknown, had delivered to them a broken fragment of an almost identical mask which had ultimately changed their culture forever. But why?

  Plucking a powerful underwater torch from her vest, she pulled herself closer to the pillar, toggled the switch and watched as the intense beam of light struck the exposed metal.

  She gasped!

  Erupting from behind the pillars, a pair of razor-sharp jaws gnashed through the water, moving at lightning speed. Come to investigate the sound of the drilling, the hammerhead had been startled by the sudden eruption of light from her torch and acted on deadly, defensive instinct.

  Nadia screamed as she thrashed her fins but was too late. The shark’s jaws clamped down onto her hand. Pain lanced through her body. Garcia swore and brought his underwater rifle to bare, firing twice into the shark’s head. An eruption of blood, brains and gore swirled and Nadia felt the pressure in her hand diminish.

  “Nadia,” Raine’s voice called urgently through her radio. He’d pushed away from the monument and finned like mad, descending to her level and arriving only instants after the shark’s brutal death. He grasped her by the shoulders and spun her around. Her face was deathly pale, her eyes wide with shock. He grasped her hand and studied it. She still held the crushed remains of the large torch which had prevented the shark’s jaws from closing completely. It had saved her hand. Possibly her life. Nevertheless, the hammerhead’s teeth had pierced her glove and her flesh and blood flowed freely.

  “You’re okay,” he promised her and, trying to rain in her panic, she realised all she wanted was to feel his arms around her, holding her tight, protecting her. “It’s just a flesh wound.”

  “Shit!” Gibbs cursed upon arriving at the scene. They had all abandoned the site of the explosives to gather around the injured woman.

  “I’m getting her out the water,” Raine said urgently. Nadia knew that, regardless of the shock, a far greater danger lurked. Hammerheads could smell a single drop of blood from over a mile away and, while generally placid, the scent would whip them into a feeding frenzy that you didn’t want to be on the wrong side of.

  “Garcia, get her topside, now,” Gibbs ordered. “Get Siddiqa out of here as well.”

  “No, I’m taking her,” Raine argued.

  “Like hell you are,” the SOG commander shot back. “Thanks to your girlfriend’s carelessness and Garcia’s stupidity, this whole place is gonna be swarming with a shit-load of pissed off sharks any second now. We’re gonna blow that damn hole, you and King are gonna find the mask then we’re high tailing it out of here. Garcia, what are you waiting for!? Get them out, then get back down here with a reloaded gun. We might need it.”

  Swallowed up in the frenzy of the moment, Nadia broke free of Garcia’s grip and wrapped her arms around Raine in a shockingly public display of emotion. It was clumsy in their gear and fighting against the current, but Raine returned the embrace. “It’ll be okay,” he promised.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll look after her,” Sid vowed, reaching out and taking Nadia’s arm. She allowed her friend and Garcia to float her up to the surface, too much in a state of shock to even think about kicking.

  As they broke the surface and swam urgently for the waiting boat, she felt a sense of relief wash over her.

  Minutes later, a geyser of water fountained into the air as the explosives detonated.

  52:

  Blood on the Water

  Off the Coast of Yonaguni Island,

  Japan

  The explosion sent a plume of water six feet into the air and blasted a shockwave which rippled out from the epicentre at an astonishing speed.

  Despite taking shelter at the base of the Yonaguni Monument sixty feet below, the boom still hurt Nathan Raine’s ears and he felt the sudden movement of water press against him.

  As soon as the explosion had died down, Gibbs ordered the entire team out of the shelter and they ascended quickly but carefully to a depth of about fifteen feet, level with the top of the structure.

  A cloud of blasted debris swirled in the current as they finned towards the ‘hole’ in the ceiling. The middle, circular hole had been chosen in hopes that the explosion there would cause the least significant structural damage. The underwater charges had been strategically positioned to direct the blast downwards. The plan was to blast the ‘plug’ which had been used to block the hole down into the expanse below. The danger, however, was that if King was wrong and there was no expanse and that the structure was one solid lump of rock, then the explosion would shatter it.

  As it was, King was right. Raine, King and Gibbs all peered cautiously into the depths of what had moments ago been an inexplicable well but which now provided the only access into a temple which hadn’t seen the light of day in over nine thousand years.

  “Boss,” O’Rourke reported over the radio. “Dosimeter readings just spiked. There’s tachyon radiation down there.”

  Raine could see the triumphant smile spread across King’s face. The ultimate ‘I told you so.’

  If Gibbs picked up on it, he ignored it. “Raine and King, you have a go,” he commanded.

  “Uh, Sir,” Tank’s voice suddenly cut in, unaccustomed to the lack of identifying ranks in the SOG. Gathered around the hole, the entire team turned to look in the direction the marine was pointing. To the east, dozens of silhouettes were highlighted against the lighter blue gloom of the sea. The ultimate artistic expression of Mother Nature’s unique design meant that what they saw was one of the most recognisable creatures on the face of the earth.

  Hammerheads.

  Lots of them.

  Unusual for most shark species, hammerheads tended to swim in large schools, often around twenty to thirty individuals. But, in some pa
rts of the world, schools of over a hundred prowled the depths. The waters surrounding Yonaguni Island was just such a place.

  “They’re going for the carcass of the one Garcia killed,” Tank explained.

  “Great,” O’Rourke replied unenthusiastically. “What about when they’re ready for dessert?”

  “Hammerheads rarely attack humans unless they mistake us for prey or are attracted to our blood. So long as no one is bleeding, we should be fine.”

  “Nevertheless,” O’Rourke turned in his suit towards Raine and King. “You wanna hurry this up?”

  Raine clasped King’s shoulder then switched on the powerful halogen lamp he carried. “Let’s go,” he said and then, holding the lamp out before him, he descended into the darkness below.

  “So, what’s the deal with you and Nate?”

  The question took Nadia off guard. Her mind had been drifting as she allowed the painkillers Sid had given her to take effect. Her wound was relatively superficial, a single tooth she reckoned having pierced the fleshy bit between her thumb and forefinger. But she knew that shock was a danger and so had allowed Sid to take her below decks once back aboard the boat and wrap a blanket around her shoulders. It wasn’t every day, after all, that you lived through a shark attack, superficial wound or not.

  “What do you mean?” she asked cautiously.

  “Well, it’s kind of obvious that something’s going on,” Sid replied with her usual warm smile. “You’ve both been trying to hide your loved-up little smiles ever since we left Germany.”

  Nadia stared at her coldly for a moment and Sid thought that she’d overstepped her bounds. Nadia was an incredibly private woman.

  “I need to get you some antiseptic cream to clean this,” she said quickly, changing the subject. “Murray said there is some in the team’s med-kit.”

  But then the Russian’s face broke into a genuine smile. Sid could see the happiness radiate in her eyes. After everything they had been through, the barrier was at last coming down.

  “I don’t know what is going on,” Nadia admitted, laughing to herself. “I mean, he’s not exactly marrying material, is he? But, I don’t know, I just can’t stop smiling. I’m constantly thinking about him! And, when we . . .” she hesitated, a coy grin on her lips. She knew she sounded like a swooning school girl. “When we made love, it was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.”

  Sid giggled, happy for her friend, and took her hand. “I’m so happy for you.”

  Nadia sighed. “I’m trying not to get too excited. I can’t exactly see a man like Nate wanting to settle down anytime soon.”

  “I don’t know. He might surprise you. After all this adventure, I think we’re all about ready for the quiet life again.” There was something melancholy about the way Sid said the words. Nadia knew that a distance had developed between her and King ever since his reckless actions back in Germany. Had it affected their relationship more than she’d estimated?

  A touch of sadness entered Nadia’s expression then also. “Not Nathan Raine,” she said definitely.

  Sid thought for a second. “Then what’s stopping you from going and living the highlife with him?” she asked. Nadia hadn’t considered that. “I mean, he’s obviously lonely. You can see it in his eyes. He might portray that hard-ass bravado stuff, but you can see that he just wants to be loved like the rest of us.”

  The smile returned to Nadia’s face at that prospect. “Maybe,” she said and then they both laughed. Nadia felt a burst of the freedom of youth, giggling about boys with her girlfriend, which she had not experienced since that terrible night all those years ago. She felt, for the first time in her adult life, genuine happiness.

  Sid squeezed her good hand. “I’ll go get that cream. Back in a second.”

  Still with a giant smile spread across her full lips, Nadia sat back against the headboard of the bed.

  She did not see the distant shape of an attack helicopter powering towards the boat.

  King followed Raine down into the temple, the twin beams of their torches sweeping through the submerged cavern, adding to the weak light filtering down through the hole to illuminate an entire forest of intricately carved pillars. He felt the strongest sense of déjà vu overwhelm him, and it wasn’t just because of the columns’ striking similarity to Egyptian, Greek and Mayan designs. He had been here before. Or, at least, he had seen it before.

  Through the eyes of the Moon Mask.

  “This is it,” he told Raine. “This is what I saw in my vision. Exactly this!”

  They descended lower, their tiny bodies dwarfed by the sixty foot tall pillars, fashioned to resemble the long stem of a flower, its bloom sprawling above to hold the ceiling in place, its roots trailing the floor to support the colossal weight.

  Sweeping his torch beam back and forth through the almost complete blackness, Raine pointed out. “I can’t see Nadia’s giant meteorite.”

  “Sure you can,” King replied, surprising even himself. “We’re inside it.”

  “What?”

  “Turn off your light,” he ordered.

  “I’m not turning off my light, Benny. We don’t know what’s down here.”

  “You don’t believe in sea monsters do you, Nate?” He joked. Then, in a calming voice, as though it was the most reasonable demand in the world, he repeated his request. “Turn it off.”

  He switched his own torch off and the darkness encroached closer to them. Raine hesitated a moment longer and then complied, plunging them and the temple once more into black oblivion, broken only by the tepid shaft of light focussed down through almost ninety feet of inky water and through a hole only three wide.

  The darkness, however, wasn’t all consuming.

  Instead, a subtle red glow, so faint as to be almost imperceptible, radiated mutely out from each and every pillar.

  “What is that?” Raine asked with a sense of awe in his voice.

  King finned over to the nearest column. Protected from the current by the enormous temple walls, swimming was easier down here. As well as the unnatural red hue, the temple also radiated a sense of calm. Peace. Serenity.

  Gaining neutral buoyancy, King hovered in front of the column. The dimensions were similar to the two giant pillars outside only these looked as though they had been finished whereas the ones Nadia had investigated he guessed were still under construction at the time catastrophe struck.

  On closer inspection he realised that it wasn’t the entire pillar that was glowing. Instead, only small symbols radiated with that dull red hue. He gasped when he saw those symbols.

  “What is it?” Raine asked, gently finning into a hover beside him. Then he noticed the symbols too. “Is that writing?”

  King ran a gloved fingertip over one of the symbols. “Yes,” he replied. “Not just any writing. The same writing as what we found at Xibalba.” At least it was very similar, he allowed silently. He hadn’t had a proper chance to study the Xibalban text- which, like here, had been etched into a forest of columns at the summit of that city’s enormous pyramid- in any real detail, but it certainly bore strong similarities to this. Pictographs incorporated into a series of swirls, lines, dots and seemingly random squiggles.

  “They carved out the core of the meteorite,” he realised, pushing back and switching on his torch again. The beam sliced through the darkness, spearing through the forest of columns. “They cut through the metal ore and built this temple inside it, leaving these huge columns of metal supporting the roof.”

  “The columns look like stone to me,” Raine admitted, “with metal etched into it.”

  “No,” King replied and finned back next to him. “Here, feel.”

  Raine touched one of the red symbols and sure enough he realised it was a depression, as though the stone had been carved to reveal the metal beneath. But that wasn’t possible. Even with modern technology, to find such identical veins of metal running through rock, then to carve them out so
perfectly would be almost impossible.

  “The entire core was solid metal,” King explained. “The ancient builders carved it out, leaving behind these metal columns. Then they cemented over the metal-”

  “Whoa, cement?” Raine asked incredulously.

  “Nothing strange about that,” King said. “Cement has been used for thousands of years, right back to the building of the Giza Pyramids, and to a much higher standard than today’s equivalent. In fact, the Pantheon in Rome was built from a mixture of crushed rock, burnt lime and water and still, today, holds the title of the world’s largest un-reinforced concrete dome.”

  “So these ancient builders smothered metal columns in cement-”

  “And then, while it was still wet, I’d guess, they drew these symbols, their language, into it.” His heart leapt into his throat. “Just like Xibalba, it’s a record of their entire civilisation.”

  “But why’s it glowing? Xibalba didn’t glow.”

  That stumped King too. He pivoted in a full three hundred and sixty degree circle, casting his torch beam throughout the entire chamber. Not that he had truly expected to, he found no power source, no battery or generator.

  Sunlight pieced the temple, blazing down through holes in the ceiling!

  The shafts of light grew narrower, refining to a single laser-like beam until that too was gone.

  Darkness.

  Such utter darkness.

  The flash of memory caused King to look up to the shaft through which they had entered. The beam of weak light, diluted by ninety feet of sea water, was nevertheless evident through the darkness of the temple. It hit the ground directly below the hole, creating a pool of bluish light upon the temple floor- the floor which had been fashioned out of the same metallic, meteoric core as the columns.

  “Back at the U.N., when we were examining the fake mask for clues, Nadia commented on how highly conductive the metal was,” he told Raine. “And there was an image back in Xibalba of the High Priest wearing the fake mask, which of course they venerated as the real one, showing some sort of beams or rays emanating out from it. Is it possible that this metal conducts light just like other metals conduct electricity or heat?”