“What about the profile we were given from the Scorpion?” Stanton asked. The thought of something six times the size of a Soviet Typhoon class sub staggered even the captain of a ship the size of the Glomar.
“It could be, sir. Matches up in size. It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen before.”
“Where did it come from? How come you didn’t pick up something that big earlier?”
“I don’t know, sir. It just appeared.”
“What’s it doing?” Stanton asked as he went over to the communications array.
“Ascending, sir. Toward Deeplab.”
Stanton picked up the phone that linked the Glomar to Deeplab through the cable attached to the pipe. “How quickly?”
“Very fast, sir! Depth twenty thousand feet and rising!”
Stanton picked up the phone. “Deeplab, this is Glomar.”
The phone crackled with static. Stanton thought he heard something, a voice, but he couldn’t be sure. “Deeplab, this is Glomar,” he repeated.
“Eighteen thousand feet and rising!”
Stanton’s hand tightened on the phone. “Deeplab, this is Glomar.” He pointed a finger at his communication’s officer. “Get me Foreman.”
“Seventeen thousand feet. Holding.”
“Deeplab, this is Glomar.” The only sound in the receiver of the handset was static.
“I’ve got Foreman on SATCOM,” the com officer held out another phone.
Stanton paused as he grabbed the phone- the entire ship shook and there was a loud screeching sound from the derrick.
* * *
“We’re deeper now than the Titanic,” DeAngelo said.
“Is that supposed to cheer me up?” Dane asked. He shook his head, trying to ease a pounding in his left temple. “Sin Fen?” he said into the boom mike.
“Yes?”
Dane looked up at the screen displaying Ariana and Sin Fen. “How are you feeling?”
“My head hurts.”
“Mine too,” Dane said. “Something’s not right.”
DeAngelo scanned his gauges. “Everything’s reading correctly.”
“Not here,” Dane said.
“Deeplab,” Sin Fen said.
Dane nodded. “Something’s wrong.”
“Should I turn back?” DeAngelo asked.
Dane closed his eyes and was silent for a few seconds. “No. We keep going.”
* * *
“Get me Nagoya!” Foreman ordered. He turned back to the microphone that linked the War Room with the Glomar Explorer. “Status?”
“The contact is descending,” Captain Stanton’s voice echoed out of the speakers that lined the roof of the cavern. “Twenty thousand feet and going down as quickly as it came up.”
“Deeplab?” Foreman asked.
“Read-outs from the umbilical say everything is functioning fine but no one is answering the phone. It’s stable now.”
“Deepflight?”
“We have it on radar,” Stanton said. “Passing through fifteen thousand and still descending on the planned glide path.”
“There’s no way to communicate with it?” Foreman asked.
“No, sir,” Stanton replied.
An air force officer thrust a SATPhone at Foreman. “We have commo with Doctor Nagoya.”
Foreman took the phone. “Nagoya, what readings do you have in the Bermuda Triangle gate?”
“We’re not currently oriented toward the Bermuda Triangle,” Nagoya replied.
“Damn it!” Foreman slapped his hand against the top of the conference table. “I’ve got people down there. Reorient now!” He hit the off button for the phone as Captain Stanton’s voice echoed out of the speakers.
“Object is gone. It just blinked out at twenty-seven thousand feet.”
“What about Deeplab?” Foreman asked.
“Still there. Still no communication.”
“Nagoya,” Foreman yelled into the radio, “get me some readings!”
* * *
Deeplab reminded Dane of a hornet’s nest, hanging from a thin branch. The sub’s lights highlighted the lab against the surrounding dark ocean. A single lamp glowed where the pipe was bolted into the top of the lab.
“Shouldn’t there be more lights?” Dane asked.
“Why?” DeAngelo had brought them out of the spiral and was slowly approaching the habitat dead on. “They have no windows. They do have cameras and infrared imagers but there’s usually no need to have them on- what are they going to see at this depth any way?”
Dane glanced up at the screen showing the interior of the rear sphere. Sin Fen had her hands against the side of her head, eyes closed in concentration. Dane closed himself off to the space around him and opened his mind as Sin Fen had taught him.
The habitat was less than forty feet in front of them, DeAngelo going into a slight dive to come up under the central access.
“Something happened,” Dane said.
“What?” DeAngelo was concentrating on piloting, eyes shifting between the forward display and his radar which was counting down the feet between them and the habitat.
Dane opened his eyes. Sin Fen was staring at him in the screen. “Do you know?” Dane asked her.
“No.”
“What’s going on?” Ariana asked.
“I feel something very strange,” Dane said.
“Hold on,” DeAngelo warned as shifted the imager view to the top camera. They were directly below the habitat, the bottom hatch less than five feet away from the top of the forward sphere and closing. With a slight thud, they made contact and came to a halt.
“We’ll go in first,” DeAngelo said, “make sure it’s secure, then I’ll come back in, move forward, let you out, go back and anchor us in. I’m pressurizing the lock,” he added.
The difficulty of even the slightest maneuver or operation at deep pressure reminded Dane of the missions he had conducted in Special Forces in extreme cold weather environments. There every little task had to be thought out thoroughly before being attempted, and then it would take two to three time as long to conduct than it would in a more temperate zone. A mistake that would normally cause no more than a minor inconvenience could be fatal in such an environment.
“I’ve got a seal,” DeAngelo was reading his gauges.
For the first time since they were lowered into the water, he let go of the controls and turned onto his back, then sat up. He reached up and slid open a control panel on the side of the hatch.
“I confirm a seal,” DeAngelo said as a green light came on in the panel. He looked at Dane over his shoulder and smiled. “If we open this thing without a seal- well, we wouldn’t even know what killed us.”
Dane heard him, but he was concentrating, trying to get a feel for what lay above. When he had searched for people, Dane had always been able to pick up people’s auras, the projections from their conscious- and even at times, subconscious- minds. Now he was reading nothing other than a vague sense of shock and fear.
“Releasing secondary lock,” DeAngelo threw a switch.
Dane reached out to Sin Fen with his mind. He felt her presence and she reacted to his probe, confirming she was picking up the same disturbing impression from the habitat.
“Do we have a weapon on board?” Dane asked.
“A weapon?” DeAngelo was momentarily confused. “Why would we carry a weapon? You shoot a gun down here, it’s the opposite of shooting one in an airplane with a hundred times worse results. You puncture or even weaken the hull around us, we don’t depressurize, we pressurize, which means we implode. Besides, what do we need a weapon for?”
Dane shook his head. “Forget it.”
DeAngelo went back to his checklist. “Secondary lock disengaged. Equalizing pressure.” He hit a button.
Dane felt his ears pop.
“Primary lock disengaging.” DeAngelo hit a red button.
There was a solid thud sound as the locks in the hatch cycled back. DeAngelo unbuckled his harness and Dane did the same.
“Give me a hand,” DeAngelo was now on his knees, hands on the hatch handle. “Push.”
Dane did as instructed and with a slight hesitation, the hatch swung up into the lock. A splash of water came in, hitting both DeAngelo and Dane.
DeAngelo now used the handle as a step to get into the lock. Five feet above their heads was the bottom hatch for DeepLab IV.
“We’re here guys!” he yelled. He looked down. “They’ll open as soon as they’re sure we’re open and secure.”
Dane looked up. “No, they won’t.”
DeAngelo frowned. “Why not?”
“Because there’s no one alive in there.”
Chapter 10
THE PAST
999 AD
As far as Ragnarok was concerned the only good thing that had happened since setting foot on dry land was that he had gotten a new ax-head made by a Saxon blacksmith. Other than that, the trip had been misery. Traveling only at night to avoid raising an alarm, Ragnarok plodded after Tam Nok as they went north. The only weather that England seemed to have was cloudy and rainy. They slept during the day, or tried to sleep, Ragnarok too concerned with security to get more than a few minutes of slumber here and there. He wasn’t used to walking so much and his leather boots had chafed the skin raw at several places on his feet.
They had beached the longship along the coast to the west of the Isle of Man. As soon as Ragnarok and Tam Nok were ashore, Hrolf had the crew push the craft back into the water. Ragnarok had stood on the beach, watching his ship disappear into the night. They would meet back at the same place in six days.
Two of those days had already passed, filled with nothing but walking, through forests and over hills and fields. Ragnarok could tell by the stars they were going northward, but he had no idea how Tam Nok was choosing their path or what their destination was. When he questioned her she told him the Gods were leading her and she would know where they were going when they got there; neither a very satisfactory answer.
He had managed to persuade her to halt long enough for him to enter a village early one morning and find a blacksmith. The man had been half-frightened out of his wits to see a hulking Viking appear in the low doorway to his smithy, but a few gold pieces had induced him to bring out a large ax-head, such as the Saxons used to kill cattle, and spend all that day on the forge and anvil fashioning it in the shape Ragnarok wished.
“I will call it Bone Cutter,” Ragnarok said, taking a slash with the ax through the air in front of him. It was dark and the land was growing flatter. Tam Nok was at his side, walking with a steady stride that never seemed to grow weary. She carried a pack with an equal share of the food and water without the slightest complaint. Ragnarok had to fight hard to keep from limping.
“What?” Tam Nok didn’t pause, nor did she even look at him.
Ragnarok waved the war-ax. “I said I will call it Bone Cutter. It has a good feel and that Saxon oaf did a good job with the edge. It is much sharper than my last one. It will slice through flesh and bone.”
“Is a name for your weapon important?”
Ragnarok was mystified that she would even ask such a question. “Of course. In battle a good weapon is a man’s closest friend.”
“I have been in battle and I have killed,” Tam Nok said, “but I do not view my weapons as my friends.”
Ragnarok shrugged, the gesture lost in the dark. “That is because you do not see battle for what it really is.”
He waited for her to ask the inevitable question but the next couple of miles passed in silence. Tam Nok was the strangest woman he’d ever met. Not only because of her dark skin and strange eyes, but even more so because of her actions. Viking women were strong and well-respected, but even they did not travel by themselves or wield weapons except when absolutely necessary. A Viking woman was most concerned with family and children, yet there was no sense about Tam Nok of that.
The moon was full, making the traveling at night easier, but also making them more vulnerable to being spotted. Ragnarok was not overly concerned at being found at night. Most men did not seek out trouble in the dark and unless they had the misfortune to encounter a large armed force he felt they would be left alone.
They crested a small hill and Ragnarok scanned the terrain ahead. A large plain extended to the horizon, but sparks of light in the distance caught his eye.
“Torches,” he said, pointing. They were too far away to tell how many lights there were, or what the holders of the lights were doing.
“I see them,” Tam Nok didn’t break stride.
Ragnarok noticed something else unusual. “I do not like this,” he said tapping Tam Nok on the arm and pointing. Large, unnatural mounds dotted the plain in front of them, most around a hundred feet long, by seventy in width by ten in height.
“What don’t you like?” Tam Nok asked.
“Those are burial mounds. This entire plain is a graveyard. It brings bad fortune to walk through such a place.”
Tam Nok spared him a glance. “We cannot go around. They are between us and where we wish to go.”
“The place with the torches?” Ragnarok asked.
“Yes,” Tam Nok’s voice held an edge of irritation. “The person I must talk to is there. We do not have much time.”
“How can you know we don’t have much time?” Ragnarok asked, not at all impressed with her pronouncements after strolling across England for over two days. “How can you know that is the place we are to go and the person you want to meet is there?”
Tam Nok paused. “The people we are to meet are like me. They are priests and priestesses. Not of the new religions- Christian or Muslim- but of the old religions. Ones who worship the old Gods- the Ones Before whom the ancient ones worshipped. Your legends, your Gods, they came out of the legends of the Ones Before. You must let me deal with these people. I understand them. You will have nothing to fear if you do what I say.”
“Since you answer none of my questions,” Ragnarok said, “I have little choice but to follow your lead. But there is nothing I fear,” he added.
“There are things you have not seen yet,” Tam Nok said, “so it is not good to boast.”
“I am not boasting,” Ragnarok said.
“We shall see.”
“I fought the Valkyries and their creatures,” Ragnarok noted.
Without a reply, Tam Nok strode off into the dark and Ragnarok followed, frustrated at her lack of acknowledgment.
They passed several of the large burial mounds. They were somewhat different than the burial mounds Ragnarok was used to. Vikings also interned their dead in mounds, usually shaped in the form of a ship, with rocks to delineate the edges. A Viking leader would be buried with his favorite ship inside of a mound, a truly extravagant arrangement that indicated the honor owed that leader by his people. A slave girl might also be slain and put in the ship with him to make his journey to Valhalla more pleasant. Certainly more pleasant than this journey he was on, Ragnarok reflected. These English mounds were larger and the tops were not decorated with stones. He also sensed they were old, very old.
Death was but a new beginning for a Viking who had led a life of honor and glory. It was the journey to Valhalla, where more battles, even more glorious than those on Earth awaited the warrior. That was why it was essential that a warrior be buried with his weapons. Ragnarok knew the strange woman, even though she claimed to be a Disir, would not understand. It was the reason his ax had a name and why regaining the weapon had been the most important thing for him to do as soon as they landed.
The lights were growing closer, numerous torches glittering in the crystal clear night under the bright moon. There was a noise now, something Ragnarok couldn’t quite make out. Almost like the cry of the Valkyries he had heard just before meeting Tam Nok, but different, of the earth, although how he knew that he could not say.
The silhouette of two objects began to take form on the horizon, about a mile away. One was a towering tree, as large as any pine Ragn
arok had ever seen, but this one stood alone on the plain and had leaves and many, many branches. The torch bearers were gathered all around the base of the tree in a wide circle.
The other, a quarter mile to the right, was not a tree- that was all Ragnarok could tell- although it was as tall as the tree. The sound seemed to be coming from the direction. Peer as much as he could, Ragnarok could not make it out, although it might have been some sort of guard or siege tower, rising sixty feet into the sky.
“There is someone just ahead,” Tam Nok said. “Do not attack.”
“What do you-” Ragnarok began but then a figure- sword raised- suddenly loomed out of the dark, as if spit out of the earth itself, ten feet in front of them. The man barked out something in a strange tongue Ragnarok had never heard, obviously a challenge.
Ragnarok hefted his ax and prepared to strike but Tam Nok stepped between. She spoke rapidly in the same tongue. It occurred to him that it was strange she spoke his tongue, coming from so far away. He wondered how many languages she knew and how she had learned them.
Those thoughts were brushed away as the stranger lowered his sword and replied to Tam Nok in the same tongue, then turned and pointed them toward the tree. The man disappeared into a fold in the ground, pulling a cloak over his body to help conceal his location. Ragnarok was not impressed- hiding in a hole in the ground to ambush strangers did not seem very honorable.
The strange noise grew louder and Ragnarok could now discern that there were two noises intermingled. One was coming from the tree ahead, a chanting of human voices, lower pitched than the other sound, which was a terrible keening, worse than the cries of Viking women upon learning the ship their mates sailed out on would never be coming back.
“What is going on?” Ragnarok hissed at Tam Nok, but she waved a hand, hushing him.
He could see now that the torches were carried by white-robed men and women standing in a circle around the tree. There were about sixty of these. Inside of that outer circle, was a second group of twenty, also holding torches, these robed in green.
Near the massive trunk of the tree the light from the outer torches illuminated a group of ten people, eight robed in blue, and two others, one in black and one in red. They were all facing toward the tree and chanting. The red robed figure turned toward Ragnarok and Tam Nok, as if waiting for them.
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