Atlantis: Gate (10 page)

“It was true,” Cyra said. “But do not fear, Pandora has already helped your king with a new plan to bridge the strait.” She turned to Leonidas. “Xerxes’ army will be across the Hellesponte in four days.”

Leonidas knew the distances involved. The Persians still had a long way to march even when they were across the strait. And an army as large as his would move slower than a smaller, more disciplined force. “What do you want to say to me?” he asked Jamsheed, tired of the politics, his mind already on the coming battles.

As if sensing his disinterest, Jamsheed was to the point. “I am here—and he—” he added, indicating Idas, “because my king does not wish to wait while your two cities play local games. The great and generous King Xerxes will spare both your cities if you agree not to raise arms against him. Both Athens and Sparta must agree and they will be spared destruction.”

“And the other cities?” Leonidas already knew the answer but he asked anyway.

“They are my King’s to do as he will.”

“And if one of us agrees, but the other doesn’t?” Leonidas asked.

“Unacceptable. With all due respect, my King does not wish to be deceived or double-crossed. Both cities will be neutral or both will be destroyed.”

Leonidas didn’t believe the Persian. He saw no reason why Xerxes would be willing to let Sparta—the leading ground power in Greece, and Athens, the leading naval power—remain intact. He saw this as a ploy to get both cities to remain neutral while he dispatched the rest of Greece with ease, then turn his full might against Athens and Sparta when they could gather no allies.

“Then I determine the fate not only of Sparta, but Athens also?” Leonidas mused. Then he saw the real reason for this ploy—to drive a wedge between the two cities. Idas would not be here with the Persian if the elders of Athens were not seriously considering agreeing to Xerxes’ truce. And knowing that Sparta would never agree to such a thing, Xerxes was making enemies of the two leading powers in Greece. It was a shrewd maneuver that cost the Persian nothing and could destroy any hope of a consolidated Greek front against him.

Leonidas turned to Idas. “You know Xerxes lies, don’t you?”

“Perhaps we should talk privately,” the Athenian suggested.

“No. I will soon have Persian blood on my sword so I do not care what he hears or thinks. Sparta will never accept this proposal. So this meeting is over.”

Idas’s face grew red and he began to say something but he was interrupted by Cyra. “The east versus the west.” She looked from Leonidas to Jamsheed as she spoke. “The entire future of the world lies in balance. In more ways than any of you can imagine.” She walked up to the Persian and put her hands on his shoulders, peering deep into his dark eyes. “Go back to your King. Tell him to weigh carefully the words of Pandora. Very carefully. Tell him she does not speak for Persia, or for Greece. He must try to find out where her true allegiance lies.”

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.