Atlantis (34 page)

“And here,” Flaherty gestured broadly, “is where they cross over into our side and continue their fight. And Earth is just like another place to be conquered and used. And the ones who sent me don’t want the Shadow to succeed in doing that. It’s been going on a long time.”

“Why can’t the Ones Before stop it?”

“They have limited access to Earth. As do the Shadow. But the Shadow’s power is stronger here. From what I gather, the Shadow have better technology and the upper hand in the war. The Ones Before have been fighting a purely defensive battle for a long time. A very long time.

“They fought here on Earth before, in the past,” Flaherty added.

“Atlantis,” Dane said.

Flaherty nodded. “It was destroyed completely. Some people escaped.”

“These others,” Dane said. “Are they human?”

“I’ve never seen them,” Flaherty said once more, but Dane sensed a curtain coming down in his friend’s mind, blocking his mental access, an act that disturbed Dane.

Dane pointed across at the
Naga
,
which was now coiled on the far side of the moat, seven heads staring back with malevolent eyes. “And that? And the other creatures? The things that attacked us?”

“Part of life on the other side.” Flaherty shook his head. “Hell, I don’t know man. I don’t know a lot of things.”

Dane was about to ask another question when he paused. Sin Fen.

Dane closed his eyes. The plan was in progress. He had work to do.

*****

Patricia Conners listened to the plan relayed to her by Foreman.

“I can’t do that,” was her summation.

“Why not?” Foreman asked.

“I can’t see where you want to go,” she protested. “And the only way I can communicate with the KH-12 satellite is by radio and we know that the Gate will disrupt that.”

“Just do what I told you to,” Foreman said. “The rest will be taken care of.”

“But remember what happened to Thunder Dart and Bright Eye,” Conners objected.

“Just do it!” Foreman’s voice was sharp.

“All right.” Conners grabbed her cap off the top of the computer.

“Oh, man,” Jimmy muttered as she sat down at her computer. “You gonna do it?”

“We don’t seem to have any other options.”

“But how are they going to--”

Conners held up her hand as the other one hit a command on the keyboard. “Ours is not to wonder why.”

One hundred and fifty miles directly above the Angkor Gate, the maneuvering thrusters on the KH-12 satellite came to life at Patricia Conners’ relayed command. But instead of moving laterally, the satellite slowly rotated over.

*****

“There’s not much time,” Flaherty said. “I have to go back now.” He stepped away from Dane. “Can you stop it?”

Dane blinked. “Yes.”

Flaherty took another step back. “They can’t keep me here any longer. It will get dangerous for you.” He looked to his right. A ray broke off from the main beam and began coalescing into a golden sphere off to the side of the top of the Prang.

“Oh, no,” Freed was on his feet.

“How do we get out?” Carpenter yelled at Flaherty as he took another step back, a black hole forming behind him.

“You’ll know,” Flaherty said. He raised his hand. Dane could swear he saw tears running down his team leader’s cheeks. Then Flaherty was gone.

Dane turned his gaze back to the sky.

*****

The main thrusters fired and the KH-12 performed a maneuver that had never been envisioned by its creators as it headed straight down, the Earth’s gravity adding to the power from the rockets.

*****

“Something’s happening!” Commander Sills yelled, his voice echoing through the operations center. “We’re picking up something on sonar. Solid contact. Six kilometers away.”

“What is it?” Captain Rogers demanded.

“It seems to be another submarine but the reading is very strange!”

*****

Dane was no longer standing in Angkor Kol Ker. He was above, far above, looking down, seeing the planet from a high altitude. And it was coming closer. He reached, feeling control, able to shift his position as he felt a warmth on his face, the beginning of the atmosphere.

Ariana stared at Dane, his eyes totally unfocused. Then she looked up at the Prang. The golden ball was now solid, about five feet in diameter.

“Get him down from there!” she screamed as the ball streaked toward their position. With Freed and Carpenter helping, they grabbed Dane and rolled him behind several large stones. The ball hit with a loud explosion, sending shards of stone flying through the air.

There was a yelp of pain. Beasley was still standing where he had been, videocamera in one hand, the other pressed against his ample stomach, blood flowing through his fingers. Beasley slowly staggered back against the city’s wall and slid to a sitting position.

“Damn,” Freed muttered as he ran over to the professor, pulling a compress out of the aid kit on his combat vest.

“Look!” Carpenter drew Ariana’s attention away from the first aid efforts.

Another golden ball was forming, this one twice the size of the first one.

*****

“What the hell!” Conners exclaimed. She jiggled the control stick for the KH-12 but there was no response. But her computer told her that the satellite was firing thrusters and maneuvering. “I’ve got no control,” she announced.

“Then who does?” Jimmy asked, looking over her shoulder, noting the indicators.

“I have no idea.”

*****

Dane could now see the outline of southeast Asia below him. It grew larger at a tremendous pace, the shoreline expanding out of his view, only dark green below. He forced himself to slow down, not knowing how he was able to do it, but he could focus now, and he could see the faintest traces of a rectangle in the green below. And there, just off to his right, was the golden beam.

Dane adjusted, moving toward the beam, until he was going down, just parallel to it.

“Oh, man,” Freed said. The golden ball was now solid. He knew this one would take them all out. “Dane!” Freed shook the other man but there was no response.

***

Dane could now see Angkor Kol Ker below him. The golden beam just to his right. The KH-12 was inert mass now. All systems had been shut down and there was nothing to attract the attention of the power of the Shadow.

Dane gave it one last nudge.

The KH-12 weighed 18 tons, over 36,000 pounds. The solar panels had sheared off early on in the descent through the atmosphere, but their loss scarcely diminished the craft’s weight. It smashed into the top of the Prang at a speed of over 4,000 miles an hour. The mass times velocity equaled an explosion equivalent of the bomb Michelet had dropped to clear the landing zone.

Dane snapped his eyes open, He heard yelling around him, then the thunderous crack of an explosion. A fireball consumed the Prang and out of it flew large chunks of stone. Dane rolled over on his side, next to the others who were huddling behind several blocks. Dane peered up through the dust and debris. The Prang, and the golden beam, were gone.

*****

“It’s stopping!” Jimmy was staring at his screen in disbelief. “It’s stopping!”

“What about the other sources?” Conners asked.

Jimmy shook his head. “They’re stopping too. We did it!”

“What did we do?” Conners muttered to herself.

*****

Foreman was watching the data forwarded from the NSA. He understood it, but he didn’t allow himself to let go and feel the relief yet. The propagation through space had stopped but the Gates still existed. Isolated now, but that only brought them back to where they had been at the start.

*****

“We’ve got a second contact!” Sills relayed to Captain Rogers. “Right behind the first one. Big. Damn big.”

“What is it?”

“Too big to be a sub. Jesus, it’s six times bigger than a Typhoon.”

Rogers knew a Typhoon was the largest submarine in the world, the pride of the Russian ballistic missile fleet and displacing over 26,500 tons when submerged. Almost two football fields long and almost fifty feet wide, a Typhoon was twice the size of his own submarine. But the thought of something six times bigger than that staggered him.

“Arm all weapon systems,” he ordered. “Bring us in closer.”

Rogers glanced around the operations center. The boat’s chaplain was moving through, quietly talking to men, giving last rites.

*****

“Now would be a good time for that way out your friend talked about,” Ariana said, her hands still working on stemming the flow of blood from Beasley’s stomach wound. The ground under their feet buckled, staggering everyone the group, sending them searching for handholds.

“Oh, shit,” Freed muttered as the earthquake stopped for a moment. He pointed out from the wall.

The stone floor under the moat had split and cracked, the water pouring through, draining out. On the far side, the
Naga
was rising up, leaning forward, following the disappearing water with seven sets of eyes. It slithered into the moat.

Freed settled the stock of his M-16 into his shoulder and aimed.

“There!” Dane yelled, pointed to the right where Flaherty had appeared and disappeared. Another black hole was opening. Circular, about eight feet in diameter, it shivered a foot above the once more heaving ground.

Dane reached down and grabbed one of Beasley’s arms. “Let’s go!”

“In there?” Freed still had his weapon pointed at the
Naga,
which was now halfway across, less than two hundred meters away and moving quickly.

“You want to stay?” Dane asked as Carpenter grabbed the other arm and Ariana kept the pressure on the wound. They moved toward the black hole.

Freed fired an entire magazine on full automatic at the
Naga
. The only effect it seemed to have was to increase the serpent’s speed.

Freed yelled. “Move people, move.” He backed up, slamming another magazine home.

Dane reached the hole. Together, he and Carpenter lifted Beasley and thrust him through. Dane waved his hand, like a gentleman offering a lady the door, and Carpenter jumped through, Ariana following. He turned to Freed who was firing again.

The
Naga
was less than forty feet away, rising up, heads darting. “Come on!” Dane yelled as he jumped.

His body felt strange as he passed into the circle, like going into a thick, jellylike field, and being pressed through. Then with a snap he was in open air again. He landed on a metal grating, stumbling into Ariana who was just standing back up.

Freed’s face appeared, then the rest of his body.

“What the--” Freed began when the words turned into a scream as one of the snake heads came through the hole, the jaw snapping shut on Freed’s left arm. Freed’s eyes were wide open, the scream ending in a breathless gasp.

Dane grabbed Freed’s right arm as the creature began drawing Freed back through the hole.

Suddenly the black circle cycled shut, slicing through the snake head just behind the eyes, the cleanly severed head falling onto the metal grating.

“Get it off of me!”

Dane looked about. They were in a narrow compartment with metal walls and numerous pipes running along the ceiling. He saw a fire ax clipped to wall and grabbed it. Sliding the handle between the jaws, he levered them open, the fangs releasing Freed’s mangled arm, blood spurting from a severed artery. Dane whipped his belt off and wrapped it around the limb, just above the spurting red. He cinched it down and the bleeding slowed to a trickle.

Freed lay back against the metal wall, his face pale. “Where are we?”

Dane looked about, more slowly this time. He noted the name stenciled on the handle of the ax he had used. “We’re on the
Scorpion.
”

The hatch into the compartment suddenly opened and a sailor stuck his head. He blinked at the scene in front of him. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’ve got to talk to the Captain!” Dane said.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“Sonar has identified the first object, sir,” Commander Sills reported. “It’s the
USS Scorpion
.
”

Rogers stared at his executive office in disbelief. Every submariner knew the story of the
Scorpion
, lost in deep water in 1968. He shook off his shock. “And the second?”

“Not a clue, sir, but it’s chasing down the
Scorpion
.”

“Move to engage the second.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

The
Wyoming’s
crew was dying but they had enough for one last battle. The sub raced toward the
Scorpion,
which was moving very slowly, They didn’t have a clue as to what the second, large object could be, but Captain Rogers was determined to protect the
Scorpion
at all costs. He had no idea how a submarine reported crushed in the depths of the ocean over forty years ago could have suddenly appeared, but if there was the slightest chance any of the crew were alive, he felt the sacrifice his own crew had already made would be worth it.

The forward torpedo tubes were armed and Rogers fired as soon as they were within range.

*****

“The Gates are shrinking,” Foreman reported.

“I can feel it changing,” Sin Fen spoke into the satellite phone. Chelsea was at her side, snout raised in the air, also sensing the difference.

“Do you have contact with Dane?” Foreman asked.

Sin Fen reached out to the west, but there was nothing. “He’s not there. Or he’s not alive.”

“Damnit, we need him. He stopped this but I don’t think we’ve seen the end of it. We need to know what happened and we need him.”

Then Sin Fen caught the faintest of touches, like a hair against her skin. “He’s alive.”