Atlantis: Devil's Sea (17 page)

“Who are you?” Falco asked, a question that had bothered him since the arena and her assistance in his fight.

“You know my name.”

Falco waited.

Finally she turned to him. “Why don’t you tell me who
you
are first?”

Falco shrugged. “I was a slave. A gladiator. Then a soldier. Then a gladiator again. And now it appears I am a soldier once more.”

“Where did you come from?”

Falco nodded toward the center of the boat and down. “You might as well go there and ask those chained to the oars where they come from. Most don’t know. My earliest memories are of chains and the fields and the darkness of the mines. I even rowed on a ship like this for six months, chained to my seat, fearing and yet praying at the same time that we would go down in a storm or pirates would take the ship, Sicily was the first clear place I remember, but I don’t think I was born there.”

“And you’ve always been different from those around you?”

“Yes.”

“But you loved someone,” she noted.

“How do you know that?”

“I felt your pain when your children died, and I saw a woman through that pain. An even greater pain.”

“Drusilla.”

“A pretty name,” Kaia said.

“She was the only nice person I’ve ever met,” Falco said simply. “I could always feel what others felt. Slaves.” – he indicated the inside of the ship once more—“are either dulled into nothingness or seething with rage. The latter don’t last long. Drusilla, even though she was a slave also, was different. She saw beauty in the smallest things. I don’t know why. But I could sense that in her.”

“And because you appreciated the best part of her, she loved you,” Kaia said.

Falco had never examined the why of his love for Drusilla or hers from him, so he didn’t reply. This was not something he felt comfortable talking about.

“You were lucky,” Kaia said.

Falco was surprised. “Lucky? She’s dead. My children are dead.”

“But you had her for the time you had her,” Kaia said simply. “It is more than most have. To experience joy you have to risk pain.”

“Easily said.”

“No so easily,” she said without elaborating. “Why did you choose killing?” Kaia asked.

“It is what I am good at.”

“No, it’s something you became good at,” she said. “You used your gift to kill.”

“My gift?”

“Your sense of others.”

“And what did you use it for?”

“Nothing yet,” she said with a slight smile. “I was isolated throughout my childhood, meeting only with those the oracle sent to me. Various teachers and instructors. I am beginning to see why she kept me so alone. I might have ended up like you.”

Falco shifted, and she hurriedly continued.

“I do not mean to be disrespectful. Just realistic.”

Falco felt uncomfortable both with the conversation and wearing the armor of a centurion. The deference paid to him by the crew of the ship and the slaves was also disconcerting. He had become so used to the arena and the strange life one led there, he had forgotten about this world he had once been a part of. In the arena, the blade and sharp point ruled. Outside the arena, there was the
lanista
, the nobles, the servants, and the other gladiators. In the arena, all were equal, at least for the moment. Even outside the arena, a gladiator was judged by what he had done inside it. But here, one was treated differently by rank, whether earned or not. In the arena, rank was earned.

“Why have you chosen me?” Falco demanded, tired of her questions. He noted that she had never answered his question that started the conversation.

“I saw you in a vision.”

“You believe your visions?”

“Yes. Some have come true. Others will come true.”

Falco reluctantly nodded. “Some things I have seen in dreams, they came true.”

“What about things you have dreamed that haven’t happened yet?” she asked.

Falco spat over the railing at the water going by. “Many I can’t remember. Some are very strange.”

“I recommend that for the rest of this journey, you focus on your dreams,” Kaia said. “And tell me what you see. I need you for more than your sword arm.”

*****

The Oracle of Delphi was standing in the entrance to the Corycian Cave, peering into the darkness, her hands pulling her heaviest cloak tight around her bony shoulders. Still she shivered. She had sent all the priestesses away to the town. They had protested, but in the end, their discipline had held. A fog was seeping through the sacred grove, swirling about the trunks and branches of the trees.

They
were out there in the darkness. Searching. Coming closer with each passing moment. She could sense their coldness, but no thoughts, no emotions. The closest thing she had ever sensed like this was when a group of travelers from the east had passed through, bringing with them a large black cat they called a panther to present to the emperor in Rome for the games. The creature had given off the same coldness. But the panther had been driven by hunger and rage. She had no clue of the driving force behind what was coming.

Her eyes shifted back and forth, but her sight had been failing for years, and she saw nothing. She knew they were very close. Looking over her shoulder, she could see the omphalos was glowing, giving off a blue light that illuminated the walls of the cave.

Since being moved here to Delphi, the stone had never glowed. Hours earlier, the faint glow had been the first sign to alert her that danger was coming. Where the omphalos came from, she didn’t know. What it warned of, she wasn’t exactly sure, but from what she was sensing, she knew her time was coming to a close.

Something flitted in the dark. She peered. A white figure moved through the trees. Then another. Valkyries. They were coming toward her. As they got closer, she could see the smooth white skin, the lack of nose or mouth, just red eyes glaring at her. They floated, not touching the ground, a half foot of darkness separating them from the grass below.

The oracle stepped forward, raising her wooden staff. “You can not come here!” She cried out, her voice sounding old and weak even to her, she who had advised kings and emperors and had thousands wait upon her slightest utterance.

The strange beings took no notice. One came right up to her, halting four feet in front. The other headed past her into the cave. She stuck her staff out, but it didn’t’ even notice the obstruction, pushing through. After searching the cave, it was back with its partner. The two Valkyries hovered in front of her.

The oracle stood tall, staring at the red eyes.

Something flickered out from under the cloak of the creature on the left, a very thin spear moving faster than the oracle could follow. It hit her right above and between her eyes, piercing through skin, bone, and into her brain. She staggered backward from the impact.

She would have fallen, but one of the Valkyries was behind her, claws on her shoulders, holding her up. There was a line from the spear to a small box held by the first Valkyrie.

The oracle, through the pain, could feel the invasion of her mind, the search, and she knew what they were looking for. And she knew they would find the knowledge soon.

She surprised the Valkyries by jerking forward, slamming her head toward the hard chest of the one in front, shoving the probe through her skull and out the back. She slumped dead in the second Valkyrie’s claws. The first reeled in the probe, pulling it back through her head, blood and brain matter spilling out as it popped loose.

It turned and floated away. The second leaned over and swiped at the body with a long, razor-thin claw at the end of a finger. It sliced through the oracle’s neck, severing her head from her body. It reached down and picked up the head, cradling it in both clawed hands. Exerting tremendous pressure, it crushed the skull, brains and blood bursting out between fingers.

It followed the other Valkyrie and disappeared into the dark.

CHAPTER TWELVE

T
HE
P
RESENT

Dane looked through the binoculars, ignoring Chelsea’s uneasy whine. The Devil’s Sea gate was a black wall to the north, extending ten miles across and a mile into the air. Radar also indicated it went a mile deep into the ocean. He was on board the USS
Salvor,
classified by the Navy as an auxiliary rescue and salvage class vessel. Two hundred twenty-five feet long and fifty-one feet wide, it was smaller than the destroyer that lurked on the horizon, providing them with a modicum of security.

Towed behind the
Salvor
was the FLIP, lying low in the water. All except the most essential electromagnetic equipment was turned off on both vessels, reducing their EM signature to a minimum. Dane echoed Chelsea’s unease at being this close to a gate. He could sense the presence of the Shadow, an alien evilness, biding its time, waiting to strike again. He was on the starboard side of the
Salvor
’s bridge, feeling the cool ocean breeze on his skin.

Dane had always been different from others, and Sin Fen had been the first person he’d met like himself, with the unique ability to sense things others couldn’t and to hear voices and have visions of things. She had explained it to him as best she could, and as best she knew, but given the fact that she had held back her own secrets, he wasn’t sure how much of what she had imparted to him could be counted on.

She had told him that they were different because their brains were abnormal. That the speech center on the right side of their brains, which was underdeveloped and not used by most humans, was the source of most of their difference from the rest of the humans race. Sin Fen had told him that early humans had had a basic telepathic ability before they were able to communicate with language, and it was centered on the right side of the brain in the speech center. Once a spoken language developed, that ability became dormant and eventually disappeared from most of the population with the exception of throwbacks like Dane and Sin Fen.

Dane had never known his parents, growing up in orphanages and foster homes until he was seventeen and joined the army. Sin Fen had also claimed to be an orphan. As he stared at the darkness of the gate, Dane had to wonder where she – and he – truly came from.

He sensed someone coming and turned as Colonel Loomis came out of the bridge. “A
Deepflight
submersible is on site above the Challenger Deep.”
“What happened to Shashenka’s brother?” Dane asked. “The one who went into the Chernobyl gate?”
“We don’t know. He disappeared. He took a fatal dose of radiation the minute he went into the reactor, so we assume he’s dead.”

“Did he go through the portal there?”
“The video cameras blanked out when he went in,” Loomis said. “When they got power back, there was no sign of his body.”

Dane could see the patches on Loomis’ camouflage fatigue shirt, and he noted the combat infantry badge on his chest and the Special Forces patch on his right shoulder indicating combat service with the unit. He figured the CIB most likely came from the Gulf War or perhaps one of the many peacekeeping operations in the years subsequent to that. Either way, it was a much different type of experience than what he had gone through in Vietnam as a member of the MACV-SOG – the Military Assistance Command Vietnam—Studies and Observation Group, a rather innocuous name for commando teams that conducted cross-border missions into Cambodia, North Vietnam, and Laos.

Dane had been a member of Recon Team Kansas and had accompanied the other three members along with a CIA operative from Foreman on a cross-border mission deep into Cambodia in 1968, which was his first encounter with a gate. During that mission, three of the four men were killed, and the team leader, Sergeant Ed Flaherty, was snatched away. Dane had been the only one to come out alive, and he’d sworn never again to be in such a situation.

But he’d gone back into the Angkor gate on a rescue mission for Ariana Michelet, again being manipulated by Foreman. Actually, the real reason he had gone was the copy of a radio broadcast from Flaherty. At Angkor Kol Ker, the ancient and abandoned capital of the Khmer Empire, he had met Flaherty once more, a Flaherty who had not apparently aged a day since disappearing over thirty years previously.

Flaherty had warned him of the Shadow and told him of the Ones Before. He’d also said he could never come back. But the
Scorpion
had come back, although they now knew that had been a trap sent by the Shadow. It appeared that only the Shadow had control of the gates, and the Ones Before could do little inside them. Too many unknowns. For Dane, who had always been able to anticipate what others would do, this was a very unnerving situation.

“Are you ready to leave?” Loomis indicated the helicopter, which was warming up on the back deck. The colonel was uncomfortable with silence, a trait Dane didn’t understand or respect. He’d always believed that as much could be learned by what wasn’t said as by what was. “The
Salvor
will stay here and await the arrival of the
Grayback.
”
“What about Chelsea?” Dane asked.

“I’ll have someone in the crew take care of her until we get back.”

Reluctantly, Dane rubbed Chelsea’s head and said good-bye, then followed Loomis to the helicopter.

*****

Rain was falling, something Ariana recollected to be standard for England. A helicopter from one of her father’s subsidiary companies was waiting for her as the Learjet rolled to a stop. Her dash across the Atlantic in the middle of the night after leaving New York had brought her to London early in the morning, just after sunrise.

She hurried across the Tarmac, not bothering to open the umbrella that had been thrust in her hand. The skulls she had gathered remained on board the Learjet, and she had ordered the pilots to refuel and await her return. When they’d complained about mandatory crew rest, she”d gotten on the phone and ordered up two new pilots. There was to be no rest on this mission, as the incoming date from Mounts Wrangell and Erebus indicated.

The chopper was in the air within a minute of her having gotten off the Learjet, and it headed from Heathrow on the very western edge of the city toward downtown London. It was only about a dozen miles to the London Natural History Museum, and the helicopter landed in Hyde Park, three blocks from the museum, startling some early-morning walkers and joggers. A car waited on Kensington Gore. Ariana ran past the man who was waiting with an umbrella and jumped in the open door. The man climbed in after her and offered his somewhat damp hand.