An Atlantean Triumvirate

by C. Craig R. McNeil

  “Erm…. Yes sir. That goes without saying.”

  Johnston knew it did not go without saying. The intelligence people demanded information first and damn it if a person they were questioning was on the verge of death.

  Johnston threw the bundle he carried at the major who staggered under the weight.

  “Here, take this. MI7 will want to look at it. It’s the remains of one of those creatures Captain Riley and I came across on Atlantis. Deal with it. And watch those claws because they’re sharp!”

  And with that, Johnston left the major in his wake as he strode across the courtyard and up the gangway into the Thorn.

  There was nothing he could for Philips. He left the body with the ship’s surgeon in the hold and walked into the purpose built quarters reserved for Nightshade Division.

  Hood was already out of his armour which lay in the various containers to be taken away for repair.

  “How’s the Captain?” asked Johnston.

  Hood smiled a smile that didn’t look right on his weather beaten face.

  “He’s fine. He lost a lot of blood and was almost away from us,” he said, his face clouding into a scowl, “Not that that stopped MI trying to inject him with a stimulant to waken him. I had to threaten those idiots before they backed off.” Hood’s fists were clenched.

  Johnston laughed mirthlessly. “I knew they’d try something like that. Here, help me get out of my armour.”

  Hood detached the hidden clips holding Johnston’s breastplate onto the backplate. The suit's small power crystal generator plant was located on the backplate making the armour plate doubly heavy and cumbersome especially as all the tubes and wires fed out from the power plant to the arm and leg armour. After unhitching the various forms of tubing while Johnston stood patiently, Hood grunted as he heaved the heavy backplate onto the floor. It took two men or one power armoured soldier to lift up the Nightshade back and chest plates into place. The inch thick material had originally been tank armour until the Bletchley boys had got their hands on it. Johnston groaned as he fought to stay upright, the breastplate pulling him forward without the counterbalance of the backplate. He strained as he lifted and unhooked the front plate before setting it down with a hefty and barely controlled thud on the floor.

  Sweat lined Johnston's face. “I get more exercise getting in and out of this armour than I do actually using it,” he said, pulling at the straps and buckles holding on the thick curved shoulder plating, letting the scarred metalware fall down to the ground revealing an array of deceptively delicate and very intricate motors attached to each shoulder. These motors provided the magnified strength for the armour's wearer, and were replicated in the hips, knees and elbow joints, all linked by a framework of rods slotted under the armour plate. The end result was, to all intents and purposes, an external skeleton powered by the engines with the skin of heavy armour on top. Johnson had no idea how engines so small could provide so much power but he wasn't about to complain. Hood helped Johnston remove the breastplate and Johnston quickly shucked off the cuisses and greaves covering protecting his upper and lower legs, and the rerebrace and vambraces covering his arms.

  “God! It’s good to get out of that stuff,” exclaimed Johnston as he stretched his tired muscles.

  “You think? I prefer it when I’m in the armour. It makes me feel invincible.”

  “Huh,” disagreed Johnston. “Tell that to Philips.”

  Hood shrugged and then looked up as he heard footsteps coming down the corridor to the quarters.

  A MI stooge in the standard camouflage fatigues and black beret saluted as he came into the room.

  “Mr Gosling requests your attend a debriefing at 1400 hours in the War Room,” said the stooge, wilting under the hostile stares of the two heavily built Nightshade soldiers.

  “We’ll be there,” said Johnston finally returning the salute.

  “Very good sir,” said the man, saluting again as he turned and hastened away.

  “Great. We’ve got the bloody Goose on us,” moaned Hood.

  Johnston joined in the complaining with numerous curses.

  Hood checked his wristwatch.

  “Did he say 1400 hours?”

  “Yes. Why? What time is it?”

  “Five past two.”

  “Damn! That bloody bastard set us up! The Goose will do his nut! Bloody move!”

  Hood and Johnston crashed out of the quarters up to the War Room dodging round the multitude of MI personnel who only existed to get in the way of soldiers late for debriefings.

  The War Room was large with a projector screen and a blackboard at one end opposite the double doored entrance. Today a map of Central and North America was taped across most of the blackboard. Usually the room held a multitude of seats but, as it was just Nightshade, there were only five seats laid out in front of the blackboard. Echleston was already there, waiting patiently while avoiding conversation with the small bespectacled Mr Gosling, a man known within MI as the Goose. He was also known for his punctuality and his insistence that other people be punctual as well. He glared at Hood and Johnston as they burst into the room through the open doors.

  “Good afternoon gentleman. Thank you for taking the time to attend this extremely important debriefing session,” said Gosling in his particular high pitched squeak.

  “Very sorry, Mr Goose…” Gosling stared malevolently at Johnston who swiftly corrected himself, “…Mr Gosling, we were just informed of the debriefing a few minutes ago.”

  “Very well, you’re here now. Please sit down. Our note taker is also late,” Gosling said pointing with a thin cane at a vacant stenography machine, “So we are unable to start anyway.”

  As Johnston and Hood sat down next to Echleston on the hard chairs, they heard the click of heels on the floor and the doors shutting. An elegant young woman with her hair in a bun nodded to Gosling ignoring his impatient tutting and sat at the machine.

  “As we are all finally here, we can now start,” said Gosling to the world at large.

  Johnston, Echleston and Hood braced themselves for a particularly long and dry debriefing.

  8 A Cold Day in Hell

  The small four seater aeroplane buzzed in from over the foaming sea and low over the flat topped iceberg. Murdoch looked down gloomily at the frozen expanse. After his last adventure he had hoped his next mission would be far away from ice and snow and cold but luck was against him. His wounds still troubled him, preventing him from being posted to active duty and he was the only senior officer MI6 could spare to collate the intelligence available to them on what they now knew to be the USS Ice Base Snowstorm. Affectionately known as the Iceberg, Murdoch preferred to call it 'that bloody freezing cesspit'.

  Murdoch could just about see the squads of white clad Royal Marines prowling around the vast surface area of the Ice Base. He had heard that despite the apparent victory many American soldiers had refused to surrender and were hiding in the rabbit warren of tunnels that had been drilled down into the core of the iceberg. Only one tenth of the iceberg showed above the surface of the sea. A frighteningly large amount lay hidden by that slate grey, ice ridden sea.

  Smoke poured in to the sky from various points on the surface, rising thickly before being pulled into ribbons by the bitter wind. Dwarfed by the iceberg, the broken hulk of the airship Murdoch had escaped from a scant two weeks ago lay in the middle of a huge puddle of melted ice, heat still radiating from its shattered power core, fuzzing the outlines of the cracked and bent ribs of the bare metal framework. The Ark Royal’s guns had zeroed in within minutes of starting their barrage, turning the huge superstructure into charred scrap that had half sunk into the melting ice before the tremendous cold had frozen it into place. Murdoch noticed that even the small lake surrounding it was finally beginning to ice over. It was so cold that not even an inferno from a power crystal could warm the air for long, Murdoch thought gloomily.

  Murdoch's recovery had taken longer than everyone except the doctors had
expected. His ribs were healing nicely bar the odd needling twinge and the bruising wasn't quite so obvious. He sighed. The job ahead of him was boring enough without it being in such a desolate place. He wondered what sort of intelligence he would turn up. The Americans appeared to have been using this Ice Base as the headquarters for their operations on Greenland. He might be able to turn up records of what went through the base in transit and where to. How many power crystals had they recovered was the big question. Was the future of the Empire in doubt?

  It was a question that troubled Murdoch. The Empire had never been so powerful in all its history controlling nearly a quarter of the world’s land mass. This power alone had kept the world at peace for many decades as no country dared risk the wrath of the Empire’s armed forces. America had always been a thorn in the side of Britain ever since the colonies had been lost a hundred and fifty years ago. The United States resented the fact that Britain wielded vast power despite being a small island nation. Big is better seemed to be the US mantra. If that resentment had buried down deep into the soul of the nation and become bitter, twisted and turned into hate then the Empire could be facing a serious threat. Antagonising Hitler’s Third Reich had been a big mistake too. Friends and allies were hard to come by especially amongst the old and still powerful colonial powers.

  The plane landed with a bump and bounced to a halt near a six storey tower that rose out of the ice. Exiting the plane into a wind laden with snow, Murdoch was greeted by a Major Rice of the Royal Marines who quickly ushered him inside the building out of the cold.

  “Afternoon, Mr Murdoch, sir,” the Major saluted smartly despite being heavily wrapped up against the cold.

  “Afternoon, Major Rice. Now….” Murdoch issued a quick prayer before continuing, “Please tell me you have something interesting that requires my attention. Something that I can look into and then depart immediately from this hellish place.”

  Major Rice laughed heartily at the apparent joke before sobering up under Murdoch’s unamused stare.

  “Sir, as a matter of fact one of our squads has come across something I think you will need to look at very urgently. I was going to let you know as soon as you arrived. We don’t quite know what to make of it.”

  There was something in Rice’s voice that gave Murdoch a chill that reached deeper than the earthly cold that seeped through the air.

  “Well? What’ve you found?” asked Murdoch

  “We’re not quite sure sir. Animals of some sort. The Americans seem to have been experimenting on them.”

  “What? Like monkeys?”

  “Some of them are. But the others are like nothing I’ve ever seen before. They’re almost reptilian. If you follow me I’ll take you straight to the labs.”

  Rice led Murdoch down into the base through tunnels and rooms cut out of the ice and lined with concrete. It became warmer the further down the two men went and by the time they reached the labs Murdoch had discarded his jacket and thick woollen jumper. Rice explained that the further they went down the nearer they were to the insulated boilers that powered this part of the complex. So cold was it that even boilers didn't melt through the surrounding icey walls.

  Murdoch was instantly distracted by the size of the laboratory. It was the size of a warehouse and split into cages and operating theatres. Murdoch was able to see all this at a glance because everything was literally at his feet. He could walk over all the different rooms that were all ceilinged with thick glass and see what was inside them. Most were individual cells or pens holding animals as diverse as monkeys, mountain lions, a few birds and various reptiles. One held a pair of massive lizards which Rice noted were Komodo Dragons far from their homeland in the distant Pacific.

  “Mr Murdoch – can I draw your attention to this pen?” asked Major Rice as the pair of them ambled slowly over the conglomeration of rooms. Murdoch looked in the direction that Rice was pointing and saw a pen less brightly lit than the rest, a large dark square amongst well lit surroundings. As Murdoch wandered over he realised that the pen was just as well illuminated but was far, far larger than those he had just seen. The pen was at least a hundred and fifty yards square and fifty yards deep and full of vegetation and even a few trees whose canopies opened up spectacularly beneath the men's feet obscuring the view of the ground below.

  “What's in there?” asked Murdoch squinting down through the thick glass and trying to shade out the reflections obscuring his view. He saw a bush quiver and shake as if something had brushed against it.

  “Not quite sure,” said Rice. “We've not seen much but it's quite large whatever it is judging by the way it can make the trees shake. None of the boys fancy going in for a looksee and I don't blame them! I mean... Good lord! Look at that!”

  Murdoch saw it. Standing next to a bush, calmly cropping the leaves, was a long necked, long tailed green and grey coloured animal. The bulky body of the thing was propped on four thick legs. The animal's relatively small head was covered by a sheet of dull silvery plate. Murdoch had never seen anything like it before and wondered what on Earth the Americans were up to and where they had captured all these animals. If he hadn't known better, Murdoch would have said the animal was a dinosaur. He shook his head in disbelief.

  The two men watched in silence as the animal silently ate its fill of leaves before disappearing into the undergrowth.

  “Quite, quite incredible,” said Murdoch. “One really wonders what's going on here. Thank you for showing me this Captain.”

  “Oh, that's not it all. There's one more thing I think you should look at,” said Rice gesturing to a room a few yards away.

  Murdoch walked over and paused over the room, obviously a surgery. Tightly bound to an operating table was yet another animal that he had never seen before. Its black scaled skin shone with a blue sheen where it caught the light from the overhead lamps. The animal was sleek and long, almost lizard like. Great claws of white and yellow bone sprang out from relatively small hands and feet. A lizard like maw hung open revealing long serrated fangs. Murdoch was startled to notice that the animal had no eyes, blank patches of skin covering the openings where eyes were expected to be. The animal was obviously dead having been cut open in neat line from the jaw to the stomach. Organs had been carefully removed and lay in delicate heaps on labelled stainless steel trays.

  “Now, that’s what I wanted you to see, sir,” said Rice as Murdoch examined the scene before him. “It looks similar to the creatures that the marines from the Renown encountered on Atlantis.”

  Murdoch shot Rice a glance. “How’d you know about that?”

  “I was there sir.”

  “Ah, yes. Major Rice. I thought the name was familiar. Couldn’t quite place it!” Murdoch smiled at the Major’s discomfort.

  “You did a good job Major. Not many soldiers can claim to have helped rescue the Nightshade Division!”

  Not waiting for a reply Murdoch continued walking over the labs. Most rooms were filled with chemistry apparatus. Murdoch saw a few glowing Atlantean power crystals that had obviously been the subject of experiments, being covered in cables attached by vices, nails, screws and glue. There were a few fully equipped surgical theatres which had been used to dissect monkeys and chimps. Murdoch wondered about the purpose behind the dissections. He saw caged chimps with metal plates covering their heads reminding him of the animal he had glimpsed a few minutes previously. The apes were equipped with metal prosthetics and he was surprised to see how well the prosthetics worked as the chimps used the replacement limbs without any apparent discomfort or awareness that they were false.

  He found it difficult to concentrate, his mind wondering back to the black skinned creature.

  “Rice, have you come across any further information on that lizard creature we saw in the surgery?”

  “We’re still looking sir. Some of your people are already out here interrogating the scientists we captured but they won’t tell me anything, of course.”

  “Of course,”
Murdoch said quietly. “Well, Major, thank you for showing me this. Is there anything else you think I will be interested in?”

  “No sir. The size of this base is quite astonishing, but it seems to have been used mainly as a research lab and staging post for transferring materials to and from America.”

  “As I was thinking myself,” replied Murdoch. What he didn’t say was that the Americans must have been on Greenland for quite a while if they had decided it was necessary to build a base as permanent as this. And why had they been so taken by surprise if they had just started a war with the Empire? Why hadn’t they been more alert?

  The days passed quickly. Murdoch had little time for sleep as he pushed himself to absorb as much information as possible in the week since he had arrived on the base. The British attack had been such a surprise that the Americans had no time to destroy much, if any, of their research data. The sheer number of journals, papers, diaries, scribbled notes, docking manifests, plans, charts and other paperwork was enormous. The MI6 team was swamped to such a degree that Murdoch had requested further officers from London.

  Murdoch’s eyes ached and his head pounded as line after line of text swam across his vision. Most of it was unimportant detail, day to day routine that would be useful to specialist branches of MI6. Now and again some nuggets of information sparkled in the dross but they were few and far between. Murdoch and his small team had discovered the number of power crystals that had been shipped through the base. It wasn’t good news. The numbers were in the hundreds ranging from small shards to those few giants capable of powering a dreadnaught.

  They’d discovered the level of US military build up over the past year. It wasn’t good news. While it was common knowledge that the US had been upgrading its armed forces there had been little to indicate that expansion noted within the plundered documents. Tank regiments had doubled in size, recruitment had gone into overdrive, ocean capable transport ships and airships stood at the ready. America was more than capable of fighting a war beyond its own shores.