The Black Gate

by Michael R. Hicks

  “No,” Peter said. He began to lean backward, and would have fallen to the floor had Mina not grabbed his belt and guided him into the chair beside the desk. “He’s saving that for after the test. I imagine Baumann will be a tad upset. Just think how angry he’d be if he really knew what I was!” He laughed again.

  “This isn’t funny, Peter!” He stopped laughing when she slapped him hard across the face. “This command is everything to Baumann. Everything. He’s likely to kill you out of spite. But never mind him for now. You have a bigger problem.”

  “And what, pray tell, is that?”

  “My controller told me that the Allies are going to mount an attack against the facility.”

  Peter blinked. “Oh? When?”

  “Today.” She paused. “You need to leave.”

  He snorted. “There’s nothing the Allies have that can touch this place. Our bombers have dropped thousands of tons of bombs on the viaduct and have barely scratched it, let alone done any damage to the gate chamber beneath the river. The only thing the Allies might be able to do is make an airborne assault, but they’d never get in. Even a squad of men at each entrance could hold off an entire infantry battalion.” His expression sobering, he added, “The only way they’ll destroy it is from the inside. And I promise you I’ll do just that as soon as I have what I need.” He paused, looking at her closely. “Wait. You said that I should leave. What about you?”

  “I would never leave without him,” she whispered. “And he will never leave.”

  Peter stared at her for a long moment, and she began to feel uncomfortable under his gaze. “He doesn’t deserve you,” he finally said.

  “That is not for you to decide.” She nodded toward the bathroom. “Get yourself cleaned up. Neither Baumann nor the Herr Professor would tolerate anyone in such condition. You have duties to perform, Hauptsturmführer Müller.”

  After she’d left, Peter sat at his desk, staring at the wall and wondering if his soon to be former wife had ever loved him as much as Mina loved von Falkenstein.

  ***

  The bombardier of the lead Lancaster bomber cursed under his breath as he stared through the bomb sight. The pre-mission weather report that morning had predicted partial cloud cover, which as often as not meant that you might get a glimpse of the ground if you looked hard enough. The initial point east of Arnsberg had been clear, but as the formation flew over the loops of the Ruhr River toward the target, visibility was deteriorating rapidly.

  “Bombardier to pilot,” he reported, “the soup’s getting awfully thick down there.”

  “How bad?”

  “I’m calling it marginal at best, sir.”

  The pilot, who was also the strike commander, chewed his lip. He had discretion in whether to carry out the drop or call it off, but his orders made clear that this was a top priority mission. His aircraft was one of two on the raid from 617 Squadron, both of them carrying enormous twenty-two thousand pound Grand Slam bombs. Fourteen more Lancasters from 9 Squadron accompanied them, each armed with a twelve thousand pound Tallboy bomb.

  “What’s the word, sir?” The bombardier asked, his voice tense.

  “Make the drop if you can see the target,” the pilot finally told him. Switching to the strike radio frequency, he ordered the other planes to do the same. “If you can see the target, take the shot. Otherwise we’ll be lugging these big firecrackers home.” The Tallboys and Grand Slams were too precious to waste.

  As the crosshairs moved steadily across the ground below, the bombardier made hair-fine adjustments to the bomb sight, which automatically sent steering signals to the pilot. The plane eased just a bit to the left.

  “Almost there…” The bombardier breathed. The viaduct was visible at the top of the sight, moving toward the center, just as the clouds began to thicken. He stared through the eyepiece, willing himself to see the target. They were so close. So close. There.

  He pressed the bomb release button. “Bomb away!” He cried as the Lancaster leapt upward, suddenly a full ten tons lighter.

  ***

  “Turn off that infernal noisemaker!” Von Falkenstein’s angry shout was barely audible above the howling of the air raid warning that had just gone off. He had been in a foul mood that morning after being told that one of the nearby hydroelectric dams had suffered a failure in one of its generators. Hours later, full capacity had finally been restored, and von Falkenstein had immediately ordered the gate opened to the trajectory taken by Subject 98-7.

  One of Hoth’s controllers reached over and flipped a switch, killing the klaxon.

  Hoth, who hadn’t so much as glanced up when the air raid warning sounded, called out, “The gate is holding steady!”

  Everyone removed their goggles at his report. Once again the doorway to Hell had been opened, this time for the final test before Peter and a company of stormtroopers were to be sent through. He stared into the featureless darkness of the gate, a mixture of fascination and dread making his stomach churn. Baumann stared into the depths, as well, an expression of rapt fascination on his face. He turned to Peter and winked.

  “Sir,” Peter asked von Falkenstein, “shouldn’t you shut down the gate?”

  The older man looked at him, a puzzled expression on his face. “What on Earth for?” Then realization struck. “For the air raid? No, no, we don’t interrupt operations for our Anglo-American friends. We are quite safe down here. The only thing that might threaten us is another raid against the dams, but the British have demonstrated good sense in not trying to repeat their costly attacks of last year. Besides, nearly all of the warnings are for raids bound for targets deeper in the Reich that are simply passing nearby.” He snorted. “There is little here in Arnsberg to draw their attention other than the viaduct, and that is far too stout a structure to be taken down by their puny aerial bombs.”

  Peter couldn’t help but look up at the rocky ceiling overhead, wondering if he had made the right decision by staying.

  Von Falkenstein nodded, and Hoth picked up a telephone handset and spoke a few words. Seconds later, four men emerged from a metal cab at the top of a set of stairs from the command platform that opened onto the upper catwalk. Two of the men were guards, dragging a man toward the cage from which the guide cable was suspended. The hapless victim, stark naked except for the harness that would be attached to the cable, was writhing and screaming.

  The fourth figure was Kleist. Wearing a long white lab coat, he marched at a leisurely pace behind the other three, making notes on a clipboard.

  With a desperate lunge, the unwilling traveler nearly propelled himself and one of the guards over the safety rail before the guards beat him senseless with rubber truncheons.

  Von Falkenstein leaned over to Peter and said, “Herding these Organization Todt swine onto the departure platform is always such a desultory affair. It will be so much more compelling to watch when everyone marches toward their destiny with dignity and courage.” His eyes strayed to Baumann, then back to Peter before turning his attention back to the drama playing out on the catwalk.

  Above them, the guards were now dragging the unwilling traveler into the departure cage. Peter saw himself in that poor soul’s place, and he wanted nothing more than to vomit.

  The guards attached the harness to the cable while Kleist squatted down and made a final brief survey of the man’s body. Standing up, he stepped out of the cage, followed by the guards, one of whom locked the door. He picked up a telephone handset that was located just outside the cage, and Hoth answered.

  “We are ready, Herr Professor,” Hoth said as he hung up the phone. Kleist and the guards stood on the catwalk, observing.

  “Then let us not waste time, Herr Hoth,” von Falkenstein said. “Send him through!”

  “Yes, sir.” Hoth nodded to one of the controllers, who checked some instruments on his console, then flipped up a red cover that protected a recessed button and pressed it with his forefinger.

  The bottom of the platform dro
pped open like the trap door of a gallows, and the hapless victim fell shrieking toward the gate.

  Peter still had a grip on the hand rail, and his knuckles blanched as his hands clenched the cold, bare metal. He bit his tongue to smother the cry of sympathy, of horror, he felt building in his throat as the man plummeted to his doom. Peter tensed at the last instant before the man hit the infinite black of the gate’s surface, expecting another violent light show like that which always preceded the opening of the horrific celestial aperture.

  Instead, the man simply vanished, his scream instantly cut off. Not the slightest ripple in the gate’s surface resulted from his transit. He was just gone.

  The large timer on Hoth’s console began its countdown from one-hundred twenty-three point seven eight seconds, with the last two numbers to the right of the decimal flashing by as time crept on.

  Mina shot Peter a quick look before turning back to the gate. She stiffened as Baumann moved up on her other side.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Peter saw a pair of SS men step out of the elevator and take up a position near the wall behind the command platform.

  As the clock wound down through the last ten seconds, the cavern echoed with a deep boom and the platform shuddered under their feet. Everyone looked up as a rain of fine dust fell from the ceiling. In rapid succession, the reports of nearly a dozen smaller explosions rippled through the great cavern.

  “The RAF must be laying eggs again,” Baumann scoffed.

  “Status!” Von Falkenstein barked.

  “The gate is holding steady,” Hoth told him.

  “It seems our Allied friends must have heard my boasting,” von Falkenstein said to Peter with a smile. “But they will have to do considerably better if they…”

  He broke off at the sound of a loud pop off to the right, from the direction of the capacitor bank. A moment later, the capacitors were haloed by a tremendous arc of electricity that shot out to one of the many grounding rods sunk deep into the rock.

  “We’re losing power!” Hoth shouted. “The gate is destabilizing!”

  Blinking away the afterimages burned onto his retinas from the arcing capacitors, Peter turned his attention back to the gate. Cascades of cyan bolts erupted around the inner circumference of the ring, turning ragged the edge of the black disk as the Einstein-Rosen bridge began to lose coherence. Light seeped out as the Schwarzchild radius began to contract toward the center, but it wasn’t light that had been created by anything in this chamber, or perhaps even anything in this universe. For a moment Peter gazed upon the alien, otherworldly light of stars never seen in his own night sky, skewed and twisted by the gravitational anomalies of the bridge. He saw no eternal fires or Satan’s leering face, but there was nonetheless a chilling quality to the scene that sent a sliver of ice through his very soul.

  “The transit is nearly complete!” Hoth shouted above the crackling electrical fury from the capacitors. The devices were smoking now, and the command platform was swept with smoke reeking of ozone and burning rubber. “Three seconds…two…one!”

  The dark emptiness swirled, then vanished with a thunderous boom that resolved into a howl of agony as a shape fell from the now empty ring onto the receiving platform below, the severed lower half of the guide cable trailing behind in an unruly coil.

  “Mein Gott,” Peter gasped. Even from this distance, he could see that their traveler’s body had been sheared in two. Had the man been standing upright with feet shoulder width apart, a precise line drawn from his right shoulder through his left knee would have described where he had been cut. The remains of the right side of his body slammed into the platform in a bloody heap. The remains of his left side, including his head, were nowhere to be seen.

  “The gate closed prematurely,” von Falkenstein said, disgusted, “cutting him in half.” He slammed his fist against the railing as the technicians and a squad of soldiers put out the fire that had started among the capacitors. Hoth was among them, already trying to assess the damage. “How could this have happened?” Von Falkenstein said to no one in particular. “The Allied bombs could not have caused this, could they?”

  “I’ll tell you how it happened,” Baumann said in an icy voice. He was staring at Mina. “Or perhaps it is Fräulein Hass who should tell us.”

  “What are you talking about?” Von Falkenstein asked angrily.

  “It was sabotage,” Baumann growled as he took hold of Mina’s arm. “Wasn’t it, you whore?”

  Von Falkenstein pushed past Peter. “Get your hands off her, Baumann! I warn you!”

  Ignoring him, Baumann whipped Mina around to face him as the two SS men who had been standing near the elevator stepped forward. One of them produced something from one of his uniform pockets, and Peter’s stomach dropped away as he recognized it as a small hand-held radio set. “One of my men heard you early this morning up on the surface, talking to someone named Doghouse on this radio, I believe?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about! Let me go!” She tried to twist herself free from Baumann’s grip. When that failed, she slammed her free hand, palm open, into his nose in a strike that caught him completely off guard. His head snapped back, blood spurting from his nose, but his hand still remained clamped on her other arm.

  Not giving him any time to recover, she stepped closer and rammed a knee into his crotch. With a gasping grunt, Baumann released her and sank to the floor, one hand trying to stem the flow of blood from his broken nose while the other cupped his groin. The soldiers aimed their weapons at her.

  “Now we know the reason for your periodic jaunts to the surface to get some fresh air while the Herr Professor sleeps,” he gasped as he struggled back to his feet. “You are not only a saboteur, but an Allied spy, as well.”

  Von Falkenstein, his face a mask of shock, asked Mina, “Is this true?”

  Peter’s heart sank as Mina opened her mouth to say something, but then clamped it shut as Hoth stomped toward them. His normally pristine white lab coat was dusted with ash, as were his face and hands. He held up the spool of solder Peter had put in one of the capacitors. The wooden spool was scorched but intact, and some of the solder still remained, melted in a glob around the hub. “Someone placed this where the solder would melt from the heat of the capacitors and drip over a pair of terminals to create a short circuit.”

  “There is no possibility it was an accident?” Von Falkenstein asked in an icy voice.

  “None. This would have been easily found during any of our inspections.”

  “Why, Mina?” Von Falkenstein asked, his shock turning to fury. In a blur of motion, he cocked his right fist back and slammed it into her jaw, sending her sprawling to the floor. “Why?”

  She lay there for a moment, dazed, blood dripping from her split lower lip. Struggling to sit up, she looked at von Falkenstein, her eyes filled with pain that had nothing to do with that suffered by her body. “Why? Because you are losing your soul to this abomination.” She nodded toward the gate. “You won’t stop because it is the right thing to do. I have tried so many times to convince you. I…I had to do something else, anything, to stop you. To save you.”

  “Were you alone in your sabotage?” Baumann asked, having regained his feet.

  Peter felt like a bolt of electricity shot through his spine. He eased his hand to his holster. If Mina revealed him as a spy, he had no intention of joining Kleist’s collection.

  Mina simply stared at Baumann, then spat at his feet. “I was alone. I needed no one else. And I told the Allies to blow this place to Hell. You won’t need the gate to get there. None of you will.”

  Baumann’s lips curled up in a tight grin just before he kicked her in the chest, knocking her back to the floor. “Enjoy your defiance while you can, Fräulein,” he said as she gasped for breath. “We will see how much spirit you have left after you’ve spent some time with Herr Kleist. I’m sure he would love to practice his vivisection techniques on a fresh female specimen.”

  “
No,” Mina gasped, shaking her head. Looking to von Falkenstein, she said, “Do what you would with me, but not that! Please, if you ever loved me, you…”

  “Silence!” Von Falkenstein’s voice boomed through the cavern. “Whatever you have done in the past is worth nothing, you treasonous, disloyal whore.” He waved to the men Baumann had brought with him. “Take her away!”

  Mina stared at him open-mouthed, her eyes wide with shock, before the guards snatched her up and dragged her to the elevators.

  “My apologies, Herr Professor,” Baumann said. “I have warned you that we have had a traitor in our midst for some time. I clearly erred in disposing of the creator of the computing machine, but…”

  “But in the end you were justified,” von Falkenstein snapped. “Yes, yes, Standartenführer, you need not dwell on the fact that you were right.” In a softer tone he continued, “I should have listened to you. You have my apologies for that. I just never realized that someone so close to me would ever do such a thing. She has been with me for over five years. She may not have my intellect, but she knows everything. I never kept secrets from her.” His mouth compressed to a thin line. “If she told only a fraction of what she knows to the Allies…”

  “They will do nothing.” Peter forced out the words as he turned to the other two men. “They would never believe the truth of what we are doing here.”

  “And what of the bombing today?” Von Falkenstein’s eyes turned upward, surveying the ceiling of the chamber. “That seems too much of a coincidence.”

  “They’re going after the viaduct,” Peter told him. “We know they’ve wanted to sever that rail line for quite some time to further hinder our armaments production, and they were just taking another futile crack at it. Let them waste their bombs.”

  “We will know the truth of it soon enough,” Baumann said. “She will tell her secrets under Kleist’s knife.”

  Peter stared at the golden ring. An idea was forming in his mind. It was ugly, horrible, but might grant Mina and himself the one thing of which they both had precious little remaining. Time. “If I may, sir, letting Kleist cut her apart for what we can already deduce is a waste of material.”