Atlantis Gate a-4 Page 8

  Leonidas was already in the saddle. He leaned over close to the Persian as he passed. “The next time we meet, I won’t be so friendly. Tell your King that he will not conquer Greece unless he does so over the body of every single Spartan.”

  “So be it,” Jamsheed said.

  Leonidas rode off. He heard a horse behind him and glanced over his shoulder. Cyra was there. And he noted Eusibius and Idas hurrying to catch up. There was no sign of the Persian. Leonidas was surprised that the Athenian had left the emissary and he slowed his horse.

  “My lord,” Idas was breathing hard.

  “Yes?”

  “It is more than just losing Ionia and Thessalia,” Idas said.

  Leonidas rode in silence, waiting.

  “There is a threat from the rear,” Idas said.

  “Antirhon,” Leonidas said. It was a city on the western end of the Gulf of Corinth, commanding the narrow entrance to the inner sea.

  Idas was surprised. “Yes, my Lord.”

  Leonidas gave a short laugh. “They have been looking for an opportunity to cross the Gulf and take Rhion.” The latter was a city across the Gulf from Antirhon and an ally of Sparta. The two cities had been enemies as long as anyone could remember, engaged in a stand-off across the narrow strait. As long as Sparta was allied with Rhion, there was little that Antirhon could do.

  “If Rhion falls to the Antirhonians,” Idas continued, “then the Gulf will be open to the Persian fleet.”

  Leonidas resented the Athenian telling him something even a twelve-year old Spartan knew. Holding Thermopylae to the north would be worthless if Xerxes could swing around and attack from the west.

  “Will your city send its fleet to stop the Antirhonians?” Leonidas asked, although he knew what answer to expect.

  “If we do that, we would be open to the sea from the East,” Idas said.

  “So once more Sparta must take the lead,” Leonidas said.

  “Unless we negotiate with the Persians,” Idas said.

  “You have had my answer on that.” Leonidas spurred his horse and galloped away, leaving the Athenian in a cloud of dust as Cyra and Eusibius hurried to keep up with him.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE PRESENT

  “We’re not ready to go into the space-between via the Devil’s Sea gate,” Dane said. “We’d be stumbling around without a clue where to go or what to do if we do figure out where to go.”

  “We don’t have much time,” Foreman argued. The two were sitting at the conference table in the control center. The navy had wanted to pull the FLIP back away from the gate given the recent attack but Foreman had overridden them.

  “We’re ignoring too many things,” Dane said.

  “Like what?” Foreman demanded. He was looking at new pictures just down-linked from a KH-14 spy satellite of the Nazca plain.

  “The crystal skulls that Ariana collected. They’re still in Antarctica with her gear. And there’s Sin Fen’s skull in the Bermuda Triangle gate on top of the pyramid, along with the Naga staff. The skulls channel power and the staff is the most effective weapon we have against the Valkyries given that our modern weapons won’t work in the space-between.”

  Dane pointed at the imagery of the power being drawn to the Nazca Plain. “And I think we need to figure out what that’s about before we go forward. We can’t tell from the imagery if there is a gate there — Nagoya thinks there is and that it’s underground. But if I were on the ground, I could feel a gate.”

  “The Shadow is taking action and we need to cover our rear before we try going forward. We have a couple of days before the situation goes critical. I think a day or two of preparation is better than going into the Devil’s Sea gate half-ass.” He had a thermal image and was impressed with the sharply defined lines, as if the heat were contained. Then his eyes noted something. He passed the image to Foreman, tapping a small red dot with his finger. “There’s someone on the plain. Right in the middle of all the activity.”

  * * *

  Just thirty feet away in her cabin, Doctor Martsen was unaware of Ahana’s dire pronouncement and calculations for the end of the known world.

  Doctor Renee Martsen had worked with dolphins for over twenty years, ever since her time as a grad student at the University of Hawaii. She found in them the acceptance she had never realized among humans. The fact that her research into dolphin linguistics for the past fifteen years had been funded by the US Navy she viewed as a necessary evil.

  She sat in her cabin playing the recording that had been forwarded from the Connecticut over and over. Foreman had given it to her with the vague instruction of ‘make something of this’ and then hurried back to his control center and his muonic monitors. Since arriving at the Devil’s Sea, Martsen had noted how there was much more focus on machines than mammals.

  Martsen had loaded the sound into her laptop, then played it. She had no doubt that they were dolphin voices, but there were other noises in the backdrop. She had sophisticated software loaded into her hard drive as her primary focus of research was trying to decipher how dolphins communicated. There were many who said there was no logic or sense to the sounds that dolphins made, but Martsen was convinced otherwise.

  Her primary argument had been simple — she could send, and receive, messages to and from Rachel, a bottle-nosed dolphin she had been working with for over seven years. However, recent events had caused her some doubt. Dane had claimed to have a telepathic connection with Rachel, which meant that perhaps the sounds did indeed mean nothing and Rachel was simply picking up and sending messages in a form that couldn’t be recorded, but could be felt.

  The computer beeped, the latest program having finished running. It had separated the different tracks, which took quite a while since she had determined there were over sixty different sound emitters on the tape. She hit the enter key and the first one began playing— definitely a dolphin.

  She shifted that track to her ‘translator’, no longer certain that her miniscule dolphin vocabulary was actually that. She moved on to the second track and continued the process until she hit the ninth track. At first she had no idea what the noise was, then her blood froze as she realized what she was listening to.

  A human throat producing a scream of unimaginable agony.

  She was so shocked by the scream that she simply sat there for several minutes. Then she regrouped and checked the computer. The first dolphin track had played through. The result was disappointing. Just a few potential words among hundreds.

  Then it occurred to her — whether she was right or wrong about there being a dolphin language, there was no doubt that Rachel could communicate. She grabbed the recording and her translator. She left her cabin, heading for the deck.

  She climbed down a ladder to the small docking bay on the side of the FLIP and dropped the waterproof mike and speaker into the water. She hit the button on her controller to send the message that summoned Rachel. In less than thirty seconds she saw the dolphin’s dorsal fin cutting through the water, heading toward the ship.

  “Good girl,” Martsen whispered as Rachel’s bottlenose poked above the surface of the water, the dark eyes regarding her.

  Martsen hit the start button and the dolphin tracks began playing. Within seconds, Rachel began to show agitation, her powerful tail propelling her up, out of the water. She arched back, slamming into the surface, showering Martsen with water.

  Martsen had to pull the headphones off as Rachel shot a powerful series of clicks from her blowhole, radiated through her forehead into the water. Martsen’s fingers shook as she accessed the database and a series of words scrolled across the screen:

  END-- THIS-- WORLD-- NOW-ONLY-- CHANCE-CHANGE-- PATH-- POWER-GET--MAP

  Then Rachel dove out of sight.

  * * *

  Foreman finally tore his gaze from the picture of the Nazca Plain. “What do you suggest?”

  Dane felt as if he were playing a game of chess, but much of the board was blocked off from his sight.
He could only see a move or two ahead at best and he had no idea what reaction would come from those moves. He also knew that — despite what Foreman believed — that there were other pieces on the board on his side and that he just hadn’t met them yet. “I think at the very least we need to recover Sin Fen’s skull and the Naga staff and get the skulls that Ariana collected.”

  Foreman seemed relieved to be able to order something within his capabilities. “All right. I can arrange that.” He pulled out his phone, then paused. “There’s something I should have given you.”

  Dane waited, but Foreman didn’t continue. Dane sensed confusion and embarrassment from the CIA man, something that he had never picked up from him before.

  “Sin Fen,” Foreman finally said.

  There was sorrow coming off Foreman, a thin layer covering a deep pool of a lifetime of pain.

  “Yes?” Dane asked quietly.

  “She left you something. A tape.” Foreman opened a drawer and pulled out a bulky, sealed manila envelope and handed it to Dane. He ripped it open and a videocassette fell out into his hands.

  “You didn’t watch it?” Dane asked.

  A flash of anger crossed Foreman’s face. “I know what you think of me. Yes, I thought about it. I’ve been thinking about it ever since we lost her and I found it in her gear. It’s been there—” he slapped the desk hard, drawing unwanted attention from others in the control room—“all this time.”

  “Why didn’t you give it to me before?” Dane asked. “It could hold important information.”

  “Sin Fen wouldn’t have held back information that could have helped us,” Foreman said.

  “Than why not—” Dane paused as he realized why the old man hadn’t handed it over— jealousy, something Foreman would never admit to. Sin Fen had been like a daughter to him and she had left a tape for Dane, a newcomer in her life, rather than Foreman who had rescued her from the streets of Phnom Penh.

  Dane nodded. “It took you a while to come clean.”

  Foreman’s reply was interrupted by Doctor Martsen’s excited entry into the control center. She bounded over to the table and slapped down a single piece of paper with eleven words written on it in front of Dane. “That’s the translation of part of the dolphin message that the Connecticut picked up.”

  Dane read it, then passed it to Foreman. “We know we have to stop the power drain, but what is this map?” he asked.

  Ahana came over and read over the CIA man’s shoulder.

  “I don’t know,” Marsten said. “There’s more to the tape, but that’s the first thing Rachel translated.”

  “Nazca’s the key,” Dane said. “Maybe those designs on the plain are a map of something. We need to get this person,” he tapped the small dot.

  “That person,” Ahana said, “is probably Doctor Leni Reizer. A German woman who is considered the expert on the Nazca Plain. I did an Internet search and her name was constantly mentioned. And she lives right next to it.”

  “I need to go there,” Dane said.

  Foreman nodded. “All right. I’ll arrange transportation.”

  He turned on his SATPhone. Dane handed the translation back to Marsten. “You get any more done, please forward it to me.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Dane left the control room and went to his bunkroom. Chelsea was waiting inside. Her tail thumped against the wall as she greeted him.

  “Hey, big girl,” Dane leaned over and scratched behind her ears. He felt the comfort that the Golden Retriever always projected but the tape was heavy in his hands.

  A small TV with a built-in VCR was bolted above the desk. Dane slid the video into the machine and pushed play.

  The screen went blue, then Sin Fen’s exotic Eurasian face appeared. Dane took a step back, remembering the last time he had seen her, her head changing into crystal, focusing the power of the pyramid in the Bermuda Triangle and shutting the gate there.

  “Eric,” she said. “I never called you by your first name and I imagine I haven’t since I made this. I am sorry I lied to you about some things, but it was necessary.” She held up a hand in front of the camera as if forestalling a response. “Yes, that is the excuse Foreman uses isn’t it?” The smile was gone. “If you are watching this then I am no longer with you. But do not think I am gone. If you are watching this, it means I succeeded. And you — and the world — are safe for the moment. But my role — the role of the Oracles and priestesses — is defensive. And that can only work so long.”

  Dane realized he had stopped breathing and that there were tears flowing down his cheeks. Chelsea whined, her tail smacking against his legs. “Easy,” Dane whispered. “Easy, girl.”

  Sin Fen continued. “You are the one who has to change things. From Atlantis forward, the Oracles and priestesses — the Defenders, of which I was one — have always been women. We have used warriors to help us in the fight and to keep the line alive.”

  “But from the first, the very beginning, there was a prophecy. That there would be a man who would be a warrior and an Oracle. A Defender who will be more than that. I believe you are that man.”

  Dane took another step back, hitting the bunk with his legs and dropping to a sitting position.

  Sin Fen tapped her head. “I told you some of how your mind is different. Left brain, right brain.” She smiled once more. “Redundant. Except for the areas of speech. Broca’s Area, which in ninety-seven percent of all humans is controlled by the left side of the brain. And Broca’s area on the right side? Dormant. Un-used. And smaller. Except in a small percentage of the population again. So combine the two exceptions and you have less than one-one thousandth of one percent of the human population. People like you and me.”

  “Why are we different?” Dane whispered.

  “I was only told so much,” Sin Fen said. “That is wrong. I know that now.” Her face shifted, a perplexed look crossing it, something Dane had never seen in the short time he knew her. “Or maybe I am wrong. Maybe there is a valid reason why I was not told things. But I have told you all I know. I believe you are the one who is to take the fight to the Shadow. I don’t know how. I don’t know what you are to do. But you do.”

  She closed her eyes. “I wish I was with you to help. I truly do. Trust the voice. It is from the gods.” Her eyes opened. “I think there are other Oracles like me in the world. You might find help where you least expect it.”

  The tape froze with the image of Sin Fen on it.

  Dane stood and reached forward, touching the screen. “Who are we?” He was startled by the sound of a light knock on his cabin door. “Who is it?”

  “Ahana.”

  Dane opened the door, his mind still on Sin Fen. The Japanese woman entered the cabin, glancing at the image on the screen. “A friend?”

  “Yes.”

  Ahana clasped her hands in front of her. “I do not wish to disturb you.” She edged toward the door.

  “It’s OK,” Dane said. He indicated the chair in front of the desk. “Please. Sit.”

  “I do not wish to disturb—” Ahana stopped herself and gave an embarrassed laugh.

  Dane reached over and turned off the TV. “What is it?”

  “Mister Foreman,” Ahana began, then seemed to search for words. “He is a—” she said something in Japanese, then tried to clarify. “A man who works in an office for the government.”

  “A bureaucrat?”

  She nodded. “Yes, that is the word. You, on the other hand, are a soldier.”

  “I was a soldier.”

  “Once you have served it is always part of you. My father was a bureaucrat. My grandfather a soldier. I know.”

  Dane waited.

  “The Shadow,” she finally said, her head lowered.

  “Yes?”

  “It is our enemy.”

  Dane wasn’t sure whether it was a question or statement. “Yes.”

  “I told you my grandfather was a soldier. In the Second World War.” She lifted her head and her
dark eyes met his. “He followed orders. He fought the Chinese. The Australians. And the Americans. He was at Nanking and followed orders.”

  Dane remained still. He knew of the Rape of Nanking. The winter of 1937–1938 when the Japanese sacked the Chinese city. Almost 400,00 °Chinese were slaughtered after the city surrendered. Women and children raped and murdered. And the Japanese government to this day had never acknowledged that it occurred.

  “He never spoke of what happened in China. I never knew until I found his journal. What he wrote about what he saw there in China. How he knew he — and Japan — was doomed from then forward. How they would never win the war. Yet he still fought. It was his duty and his honor bound him. But his heart was never in it. His spirit was wounded, crippled, in China and never recovered.

  “I have never spoken of this to anyone, not even Professor Nagoya—” she paused, tears welling in her eyes.

  Dane took her hands in his. He wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Reading my grandfather’s words, I came to know him. More than I ever knew my father who was so ashamed of his own father.”

  Dane, who had never known his parents and grown up in orphanages, squeezed her hands, feeling the smallness of them inside his own.

  “My grandfather never turned on his duty as a soldier. On the oaths he swore. But—” again she seemed to search for the correct English. “He realized the choice of enemies, the war, was wrong. The Chinese, the Australians, the Americans, posed no real threat to his home, to his country, that he had sworn to defend.”

  Dane nodded. “I fought in Vietnam.”

  Ahana squeezed his hands in return. “So you understand what he felt?”

  “Yes.”

  “What I am trying to say is that the Shadow is different. It is a threat to mankind. To all nations. I sometimes see the way you respond to Foreman and I can tell your heart is not in this, in the things we do. But it must be. This is a good war, if there ever was a good war.”

  There was a rap on the cabin door and Foreman stuck his head. “Chopper’s here to take you to the carrier. From there you’ll go by F-16 to Bogota where you’ll be transferred to a Combat Talon.” The CIA man’s eyes were shifting between Dane and Ahana as if he were trying to interpret what had been talked about.