Chamberlain hit the plane’s slipstream and tumbled about for several seconds. They were dropping at four thousand feet, but he immediately realized something was wrong. The plane’s evasive actions had taken them too far to the left and they were partly over the ridgeline.
“Unlock.” Chamberlain ordered his suit as he glanced at his above ground level—AGL--display. Fifteen hundred feet, not four thousand. And he was free-falling. The numbers were winding down swiftly.
Chamberlain spread his arms and legs, trying to get stable. The tumbling slowed as he passed through eight hundred feet. Too low.
“Deploy,” Chamberlain shouted.
A drogue chute popped out of the pack on the top of his back, immediately pulling out the main chute. Chamberlain was jerked backward, even as the AGL indicator went below four hundred feet. The ground was rushing up. Chamberlain’s training took over as he brought his legs together, bending his knees, just as he had in the fields of Fort Benning so many years ago. He rotated his armored arms in front of his helmet.
He hit hard, harder than he ever had. The suit’s micro-motors took most of the impact, but he was on the side of the ridge and instead of coming to a halt, he tumbled downslope.
“Disconnect,” Chamberlain ordered, but it was too late, as he was getting wrapped up in the lines leading to his canopy. His cameras were covered by nylon and he was effectively blinded as he still slid down the side of the ridge. He came to a halt when he crashed into something that sent a jarring splice of pain into his left rib cage.
“Blade,” Chamberlain ordered through gritted teeth. A knife snapped out from its case on top of his left wrist and he sliced through lines and chute, freeing himself. The chute fell away as he got to his feet, automatically scanning the immediate area.
He could see other Nighthawks coming in, dropping their complement of soldiers.
He accessed his tactical display and he knew right away the drop was a disaster. The pilots had reacted to the incoming fire and their evasive maneuvers had spread the battalion across not only the valley but both ridgelines on either side. The battalion frequency was full of calls for medics from soldiers injured on the drop. There were also seven small flashing red dots on tactical.
Seven dead. Seven who had hit the ground too fast. And at least three times that many injured.
Chamberlain watched as platoon and company commanders organized their units and the casualties were tended to. Chamberlain moved into place in the formation, his three-member battalion staff falling into place surrounding him.
“Seven dead,” his adjutant reported. ‘’Twenty six injured, five serious. Med Evacs are in-bound.”
He could hear the reproach in her voice. A high price for a training jump. He went up to her and touched his helmet to hers so that only she would hear what he had to say. “Lieutenant, I ordered that simulated fire on the planes. I wanted to see how we--and the pilots--reacted to the unexpected. And we did not do well. So we will do this again and again until we do react well. Because I can assure you one thing. When we hit the Shadow, whatever is waiting for us is going to be something we can never expect.”
He pulled his head away and went to the Battalion Command Net “Reform.” Then he ordered the Nighthawks to come in and pick them up. “We’re jumping again.”
CHAPTER 9
EARTH TIME LINE--THE PRESENT
Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, San Diego, CA
Dane could see that Commander Talbot was looking at Earhart strangely-- wasn’t every day you met someone you’d read about in history books. Talbot spread his hands wide in invitation. “I’ve been ordered to extend you every courtesy and answer any question you have.”
The question everyone had was what was going on with the dolphin in the tank, but instead of asking it, Dane walked over to the closest free dolphin. Its head was slightly turned and one dark eye returned his gaze. As Talbot was about to say something else, Dane held up a hand, indicating quiet. He stood still for several minutes. Gradually, all work in the lab died down and everyone was watching him but he was unaware. His entire focus was on the creature in the water, which was as still as he was. Earhart was at Dane’s side. Ahana stood in the background, waiting.
“Do you track your dolphins?” Dane finally asked.
Talbot nodded. “They’re all tagged with transponders that are picked up by satellite, and the computer keeps a record of their movements.”
“Can you show me the tracks of all your dolphins in the last twenty-four hours?” Dane asked.
“Don’t you want a briefing first on what we’re doing here?” Talbot seemed a bit put out. Dane imagined that he had briefed others on his project, and it was a great source of pride to him.
“In due time,” Dane said. “There’s something else I need to know first.”
Talbot led them over to a large screen and gave instructions to one of his technicians. A flurry of lines appeared on the screen.
Dane walked up the screen and tapped a spot where all the lines intersected. “Where is this?”
“Coordinates,” Talbot said to the tech.
The man rattled off some numbers that made no sense to Dane, but obviously did to Talbot.
“About three miles from here. There’s a small fault line off the coast. That spot is right on top of the fault line.”
“Take us there,” Dane ordered.
Talbot looked surprised at such a blunt order, but he obliged, and within short order they were back on the surface and onboard a boat heading out to sea.
“It’s getting stronger,” Earhart said.
Dane nodded. “I know. What did you pick up back there?”
“Just a feeling.”
Dane leaned closer to her. “And that feeling was?”
“Hope.”
Dane nodded. “I felt the same thing.”
Ahana looked like she was going to say something, but didn’t. She was opening up a large plastic case that contained some of her monitoring equipment.
The boat slowed and then came to a halt, the helmsman using his engines and rudder to keep them in place against the current. Dane could feel it now--a low-level flow of power through his body, pulsing hypnotically, in a rhythm that Dane found familiar but could not place.
“There’s a gate near here,” he announced even though there was no black wall that normally indicated a gate.
Ahana was looking at her instruments. “I’m not picking up anything.”
“You won’t,” Dane said. ‘The signal is piggy-backed, and the gate is more of a window than a door.”
“What is the signal piggy-backed on?” Ahana asked.
“Give me a second.” Dane sat down on the deck in the lotus position and closed his eyes. He shut down his external senses one by one until there was only the inner world of his brain. He could feel the stream, more a trickle, of power passing through his body.
Dane’s eyes flashed open.
“What is it?” Earhart asked.
Dane pointed up. “It’s coming from there. Not from the ocean. From up there coming down to the ocean.” He kept his hand up, finger extended, and closed his eyes once more. He moved his hand ever so slightly, trying to make his body an antenna for the power. The variances were so slight that it was very difficult. Several times he thought he had the power line locked in, but then be would lose it.
The Sun was going down and a slight chill came with the evening breeze, but Dane didn’t notice.
The power line was getting stronger, of that he was certain. After slightly over thirty minutes, he realized that one of the problems was that the power line was shifting. Moving ever so slightly.
Dane froze his hand and opened his eyes once more. He looked up. along the line of his arm toward where his finger was pointing, just above the horizon to the east.
“There.”
Everyone turned and looked. A full moon was rising over the mountains beyond San Diego.
“It’s being broadcast from there,
” Dane said.
“The moon?” Ahana was skeptical.
Dane understood part of it now. “There’s a gate here and the other end of the portal is there. The transmission is coming from the Ones Before to a gate on the moon and then being broadcast to this spot where the dolphins pick it up. Then they retransmit in the form of the visions and voices those of us with the Sight can pick up. I knew I felt something strange about the other end of the Ones Before portal when I touched it in the sphere map.”
Dane felt a sharp spike of pain through the left side of his head and he staggered. Earhart grabbed his arm, steadying him. “Are you all right?”
Dane looked over the side of the boat. A dolphin floated there, gazing up at him. Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. ‘’That’s my--” he whispered, searching for the right word. The pain was a little less intense now and he tried to focus his thoughts.
“What?” Earhart asked.
“That dolphin.” Dane pointed. “She’s”--he shook his head, frustrated that he couldn’t conjure up the word he needed. He tapped the side of his head where the pain was receding--“She’s the conduit through which I get my visions. Through which the voices reach me. We each have one. Each of us with the Sight. That’s why you haven’t had any visions in this timeline,” he said to Earhart. “You don’t have a dolphin counterpart here.”
“I don’t--” Ahana began but Dane shushed her as he leaned over the boat, close to the dolphin, which used its tail to lift its body a third of the way out of the water. For several seconds the tableau was frozen--the dolphin partly out of the water, Dane leaning over. Then Dane reached out and touched the dolphin’s forehead.
It was like touching a live wire. But he maintained the contact for several seconds, until, with a flip of its powerful tail, the dolphin splashed back into the ocean and disappeared into the dark water.
Dane sank to his knees, leaning against the side of the boat. Earhart, Ahana, and Talbot knelt next to him in concern.
“Should I get a Med Evac?” Talbot asked.
Dane slowly shook his head. ‘’No. I’m all right. I see most of it now. Not all. But I know what I have to do next.”
“And that is?” Earhart asked.
“Go to the Ones Before.” Dane got to his feet.
“Can you make it through this?” Earhart asked doubtfully.
“I’m not going there physically,” Dane said. ‘’They’ve barricaded their end of the portal to prevent anything physical from coming through. Commander,” Dane said to Talbot. “Please take us to shore.”
“So how will you get there?” Earhart pressed.
“How else?” Dane didn’t wait for an answer. “With my mind.” He looked at Talbot. “When we get back, you can brief us on your project.”
The rest of the ride was made in silence.
Talbot led them down into the complex. The same dolphin was in the tank and in the exact same position. Talbot led them past the tank, down a short corridor and into a room with rows of chairs. He stood at the front, next to a screen.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this briefing is classified top secret, special compartmentalization.”
Dane felt a surge of anger. After all that had happened !n the war against the Shadow, more secrets. From whom he wondered? He knew Foreman had gotten them access to this, but he also resented the CIA man for all he represented. All the deceptions and lies had played into the Shadow’s hand over the years and now the Earth was reaping the results.
“Just get to it,” Dane snapped, earning him surprised looks from Ahana and Earhart.
Talbot glared at Dane for several seconds.
“Gentlemen.” Amelia Earhart stood up. “If we could do without the pissing contest, maybe we could get to the facts?”
Dane leaned back in the chair and stretched his legs out. He put his hands on the arms of the chair and nodded. “Go ahead, Commander.”
“Have you ever heard of Operation Grill Flame?” Talbot asked.
Dane realized that Talbot was one of those people who could not adapt, who could not change to the situation. He was going to give this briefing the way he had in the past no matter what.
“No,” Dane said.
“Grill Flame was the code name for a Defense Intelligence Agency operation using remote viewers,” Talbot said.
“Remote viewers?” Earhart asked.
“Psychics,” Talbot explained. “People who could see things at a distance just by using their minds. Grill Flame was what it was first called in the sixties. It was renamed Bright Gate in the eighties. They used it to search for the hostages in Beirut. With no success. Something was lacking.”
“Then you got involved,” Dane said. surprising Talbot.
The Commander nodded. ‘’Yes. To be honest, it was just damn luck. We were running a search and recover training mission with one of our dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico, near an oil rig. Bright Gate was running a remote viewing exercise, trying to get one of their operators to see the oil rig and describe it.”
“They connected,” Dane said.
“Yes,” Talbot stared at Dane, re-evaluating. “We found the dolphin was the one doing the transmitting. The remote viewer was just a receiver. So Dream Land came into being.”
Dane wondered if things would have been different if he had known about Dream Land. He had only just realized he received his visions and heard the voices via a dolphin. Here, they’d known for years that dolphins transmitted. Connecting the two might have made a difference.
“We worked on both transmitters and receivers,” Talbot continued. “Trying to increase both capabilities. We also tried to channel the process into remote viewing.”
Talbot picked up a remote and clicked a button. A slide appeared, showing a single tube with a man inside. The man floated freely, his arms and legs akimbo, a breathing tube leading into a black helmet covering his head along with numerous leads.
“We started with men because we knew more about the human brain. Plus”--here he glanced at Dr. Martsen--“there was the problem that dolphin couldn’t exactly tell Us what they were seeing. We eventually realized that it was better to ramp up the dolphin’s transmitting power along with a human’s receiving power, so we began working on dolphins in the isolation tubes. The results have been interesting to say the least.”
Talbot paused, and Dane knew they were crossing the me now, moving from what Talbot and his scientists knew to what they could only guess about. He had picked up the same thing from Ahana and Nagoya when they started discussing the theoretical physics they thought night apply to the Shadow. He had a moment of doubt, Wondering if they were so far behind the Shadow’s knowledge base that his vague plan of assaulting the Shadow’s timeline was an extremely naïve one.
Talbot began. “The science we are dealing with here is on the psychometric or virtual plane. While we have little actual understanding of how this works, our philosophy here has been to focus on what works, rather than how it works. What we’ve managed to do is not only remote view but to project an avatar onto the psychometric plane.”
“The what plane?” Earhart asked. “Project what? You’ll have to excuse me, Commander, but my science is several decades old compared to yours.”
Talbot tapped the side of his head. “The psychometric plane is the one that exists in our heads. What is reality?” He didn’t wait for an answer to the question he posed and Dane knew he had had to answer this question before. “What we perceive it to be. Even though we are all in this room, we are experiencing everything in a slightly different manner as our brain processes the input from our senses.
“An avatar is a form that represents the original in the virtual plane,” Talbot continued answered. “If you play a computer game, whatever form you take in the game is your avatar. We’ve found avatars to be important because it allows the remote viewer to orient oneself in the psychometric plane.”
Earhart shook her head. “I don’t understand. How can reality be different? There
is one reality in this timeline.”
Talbot considered her for several seconds, and Dane could almost sense him counting back the years to when she had disappeared into history. “We--scientists--in the last hundred years or so have been digging deeper into the physics of what makes up reality. If you’d asked a scientist a hundred years ago what he thought reality was, he would have said pretty much the same thing you just said.
“For centuries, the most learned men of their age believed that matter and reality consisted of four basic substances: fire, earth, water, and air. We’ve come a long way since then, but it is foolish to believe we have reached the end of that path of knowledge. In some ways, people two hundred years from now may look at us as we look at those who believed in the four base elements composing all matter.”
“That’s if there is anyone around two hundred years from now,” Dane interjected.
That gave Talbot a brief pause before he got back on track with his briefing. “Early in this century, we believed that the atomic level was the basic building block of matter, and thus of reality. But with the subsequent discovery of quarks and further research into quantum physics, the realm of reality has been extended further into levels that couldn’t even be conceptualized by the early atomic scientists.”
Dane glanced over at Ahana. He half expected her to Jump in the fray, but she was quiet, her dark eyes on Talbot, her mind probably somewhere very far away.
“We at Dream Land,” Talbot continued, “believe that the psychometric plane is beyond the plane of quantum physics, which scientists are still groping to understand, although there are some proven laws of physics we can connect to it.”
“Such as?” Dane pressed.
“Think of the psychometric field like a magnetic field,” Talbot suggested. ‘The Earth’s magnetic field is all around us, yet we don’t feel it. We need something special, like a compass, to indicate its existence. In a somewhat different manner gravity is all around us, but we can’t see it, only its effects.
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