The Black Knight (37 page)

Amy held her hands to her head as she stared at the artifact.

‘It
should
open!’ she insisted. ‘We deciphered the signal!’

‘We deciphered
something
,’ Chandler corrected her. ‘We need to get out of here before Veer’s men kill us all!’

Amy struggled to think clearly as Chandler made for the tent exit. She saw him move out of the main tent, seal it behind him, and move into the entry corridor where he could then exit the entire tent out onto the dock. Amy was about to follow him, hoping that she could return to the work before Riggs and his team sent
Die Glocke
to the bottom of the ocean, when she saw the writing on the transparent plastic before her.

DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT FIRST SEALING MAIN ENTRANCE

The words were written in reverse on the plastic in bright red letters and suddenly she realized her error.

‘Left to right,’ she gasped.

‘What?’ Chandler asked her from outside.

‘We assumed that they read from left to right,’ she said again, ‘but even here on Earth both Islamic and Japanese script run in the opposite direction. What if we played the sequence back to front?’

‘There isn’t time, Amy! We have to go!’

Amy ignored him as she whirled to her computer and tapped a few keys. The program flipped the sequence and she hit the play key without hesitation.

The melody played once more, the somber whoops and calls echoing around the chamber with eerily intelligent rhythm that seemed to resonate with some deeply buried, primal memory in her mind as she stood rooted to the spot as the sequence played out.

The sounds faded away and for a long moment Amy stood in silence and stared at
Die Glocke
, but again nothing happened.

‘It didn’t work, Amy,’ Chandler cried. ‘Get out of there!’

Amy turned to leave, but then she heard it. A hiss of escaping vapor filled the tent as she turned back and saw a thin gap appear as if by magic around the tip of
Die Glocke
, as slowly the top of the device opened.

‘It’s working!’ she yelped in delight and edged her way closer to the device.

‘Stay back,’ Chandler urged her. ‘We don’t know what’s in there!’

Amy did not hear him as she moved alongside Die Glocke and stepped up onto a tool box in order to peer inside the device. She reached out for a flashlight and switched it on, then aimed the beam down into the interior.

Her heart sank as she sighed.

‘It’s empty,’ she said.

Chandler peered in through the plastic wall of the tent. ‘It’s what?’

‘It’s empty,’ she said. ‘I can’t see anything inside it except two cylinders, and they’re hollow. How can this thing be
empty
?!’

The scientist stared at the device for a long moment and then his face fell in horror and he cried out a warning.

‘Amy, get away from it!’

Amy tried to step back, and then everything fell silent and black.

***

XLIV

Antarctica

‘What the hell happened?’

Ethan stood with Hannah beside the dock and stared at Amy as she lay unconscious inside the tent, Chandler scrambling into his bio-hazard suit and hurrying inside as he spoke.

‘She managed to open Black Knight, and that thing shot out of it and hit her in the face.’

Ethan looked down at Amy and saw what looked like a gold disc of some kind on the dock alongside her. Chandler approached it cautiously and knelt down alongside it.

‘What is it?’ Hannah asked.

Chandler whistled softly as he examined the disc.

‘It’s gold,’ he said, ‘and it’s inscribed with schematics of some kind.’

‘A gift?’ Ethan asked furtively.

‘No,’ Chandler replied, ‘gold is valuable on Earth because it is a rare metal, but that may not be the case on other planets. It’s been used because gold is extremely resistant to decay, so anything transcribed upon it and suitably protected will last for millennia. NASA did something similar with an engraved gold disc attached to the side of
Voyager 1
, the most distant man-made satellite in history – it’s already left our Solar System. This disc likely explains what Black Knight is for or who made it. It’s a communication, literally, from another species.’

Ethan clenched his fists. ‘Good, then we got what we were looking for. Now all we have to do is get it out of here.’

Chandler did not share Ethan’s enthusiasm, however, and looked up at Black Knight. ‘What bothers me is why this contraption should be used to contain such a small message,’ he said finally.

‘Let’s not worry about that,’ Hannah urged. ‘At least not right now. We need to leave.’

At that moment, Sully appeared at the dock.

‘They’re here!’ he called. ‘We’ve got contact with the submarine!’

Ethan whirled and with Hannah followed Sully at a run back up to the command center, where Riggs was manipulating the team’s radio. Ethan saw Lieutenant Riggs’ signals beacon flicker briefly.

‘Tell me you’re not mistaken,’ he gasped in relief.

Riggs checked the frequencies. The radio beeped again as it connected with the US Navy submarine lurking somewhere below them in the deep.

‘I’ll be damned,’ Saunders uttered from his position, ‘better late than never.’

‘The channel must be open right to the coast,’ Hannah said as she looked at Ethan. ‘They made it through.’

Ethan checked the magazine of his pistol as he replied above the sound of sporadic gunfire and the rumbling of the cavern around them.

‘It’s not going to be open for long if this cavern collapses and we don’t have any way of getting past Veer’s men and out to the pens.’

Riggs nodded.

‘They’re not going to surface while they’re under fire and risk damaging the submarine.’

Ethan peered around the edge of the corridor and then looked at Riggs.

‘I can hold them off here while the rest of you get aboard,’ he suggested. ‘Amy’s the priority now along with that disc, we need her out of here and contained.’

‘She’s not safe,’ Riggs insisted. ‘She’s been exposed to whatever’s inside that thing. I’d rather see her buried here than take her with us, so the disc is the only thing that’s coming along.’

‘She’s a human being,’ Hannah snapped at Riggs. ‘She could be cured. She’s the only way we can
learn
a cure!’

‘And the DIA aren’t going to be happy if you and your team falter at the last hurdle and leave behind the very thing that they’ve been hoping for,’ Ethan pointed out. ‘Burying Amy under the ice and I’ll bet the DIA or the Navy will bury every one of your careers the moment you get out of here.’

‘This wasn’t part of the mission,’ Riggs snapped.

‘Amy
is
the mission now,’ Ethan shot back. ‘She’s Black Knight as much as that disc, which has also been exposed to anything that might lurk inside Black Knight!’

Riggs scowled and glanced at Del Toro, who shrugged.

‘I don’t like it but he’s right: we take the disc, we gotta take her too ‘cause if we don’t the mission’s a bust.’

Ethan was about to argue the point when one of the SEALs dashed in.

‘They’re preparing to attack,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Two minutes and we’re done!’

Ethan looked at Riggs, and realized that he was right. He holstered his pistol and rushed toward the rear dock entrance.

‘I’ve got an idea,’ he said quickly. ‘If the submarine can get in here, then the
Seehund
can still get out!’

Riggs stared at Ethan in amazement. ‘Sure it can, but it only takes two people!’

Ethan stopped at the door and looked back at him.

‘The
Seehund
is sealed, fully contained. If we send it east through the tunnels with Amy and the disc inside, she can be picked up off the coast by the
Polar Star
under controlled conditions and from there travel back to America.’

Riggs looked like he’d been slapped. ‘And Veer’s men out there?’

‘Don’t know about the
Seehund
,’ Ethan replied. ‘They’re going to be looking for a large submarine trying to get into the pens, not a
small
one trying to get
out
.’

‘And the minor issue of how the hell anybody can go in there with her right now, if she’s contaminated in any way?’

‘The biohazard suits,’ Ethan said quickly. ‘The pilot can handle the submarine if Amy is tied down well enough. With the current beneath this glacier they’ll be out of here within an hour or two, and the
Seehund
can remain safely submerged for that long. If we put Amy inside a suit too, then they can be removed from the sub at
Polar Star
without fear of contamination.’

Del Toro shook his head. ‘That’s a huge risk for whoever does the driving, Warner.’

‘But no risk for the rest of the planet,’ Ethan said. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘No,’ Riggs snapped as he pointed at Hannah. ‘You’re too good a shot to be expendable. Ford, you’re up. Get a suit on and fast!’

Hannah’s legs almost collapsed beneath her. ‘Me?’

‘You know enough of the controls from your briefing and you can get her out of here,’ Riggs insisted. ‘It’s the smartest option, ladies first and all that.’

Ethan gripped Hannah’s arm. ‘It’s the right thing and Amy trusts you.’

Hannah baulked, but then a rattle of gunfire smacked along the wall behind them as a deafening rumble shook the base and churned the water in the pens.

‘Running out of time folks!’ Saunders chortled. ‘Time to leave!’

Hannah grit her teeth as she glared at Ethan. ‘If I get out of this alive, I’ll sue you!’

Ethan grinned and tugged her toward the rear dock. ‘Come on!’

They ran together to the dock, where the
Seehund
was moored alongside the oxygen tent containing
Die Glocke
. Ethan ran down the steps and across to where two of the SEALs were hurriedly preparing to push the device back into the water.

‘Leave it there,’ Ethan insisted.

‘We can’t,’ one of the soldiers insisted. ‘It’s a part of the mission.’

‘The only useful thing inside that artifact was that disc,’ Ethan snapped back. ‘I want Veer to think he’s won while Amy and that disc get away untouched.’

Doctor Chandler had watched the exchange in silence, but now he stepped forward.

‘I will go with Amy,’ he said.

‘You can’t control the
Seehund
,’ Ethan dismissed his offer.

‘I may be considered a conspiracy theorist and crank but I’m not an imbecile,’ Chandler replied quietly. ‘Amy took an enormous risk to retrieve Black Knight and now she’s in need of our help. So far I’ve been a passenger on this mission, but now I can see that if I go with her, it will leave you two to support the SEAL team and perhaps succeed in holding Veer’s men at bay for long enough to save yourselves.’

Ethan looked at the old man for a long moment, and then at the SEALs.

‘It’s not rocket science to pilot this thing,’ Sully replied, ‘if he can hold a straight course then he should be able to make it out.’

Ethan turned to Chandler and sighed. ‘There are leopard seals down there that might investigate the sub, just try to follow them to air pockets that must exist along the entire route if they can make it this far beneath the glacier. It’ll keep your oxygen reserves topped up. Once we’re out of here, we’ll catch you up in the other submarine and help you track out of here.’

Chandler dragged on his biohazard suit as Ethan briefed him. The two SEALs looked at each other and then at Amy inside the tent.

‘We’d do better to just drop the device and the tent into the water and send the
Seehund
back to the coast,’ Sully said in a whisper.

‘She needs to live, just like the rest of us. Do either of you want the job of piloting the sub’ out of here?’ Hannah demanded.

Both of the SEAL’s stood up straight, refusing to be cowed.

‘I’d do whatever it takes to complete the mission!’ Sully snapped back.

‘Then help get Amy into that suit,’ Ethan snapped. ‘We don’t have much time.’

As if in response the chamber shuddered again and chunks of ice plummeted from the ceiling of the chamber and crashed into the frigid black water around them. The SEALs jumped into action as they opened the
Seehund’s
viewing dome. Chandler zipped up his suit and turned to the tent entrance.

‘Amy, can you hear me?’

Ethan looked at the young scientist, who was standing perfectly erect despite the trembling cavern and dock around them, her eyes filled with fear.

‘I can hear you,’ she mumbled, almost tearfully.

‘We’re leaving,’ Chandler said, ‘and we’ll get you back to Polar Star and out of here, okay?’

Amy nodded. ‘And the disc?’

‘It’s coming with us,’ Chandler assured her.

‘Hurry,’ Ethan urged.

Chandler unsealed the tent entrance and stepped inside, carefully sealing it behind him before he moved through into the tent proper. Amy remained silent and still as Chandler gently reached for the helmet of her suit.

‘Easy now,’ Ethan said. ‘Double check that it’s secure.’

Chandler lifted the helmet and held it over Amy’s head, the scientist several inches shorter than Chandler. Then, slowly, he lowered it into place and then sealed it.

‘Good,’ Ethan said as he glanced at the SEALs. ‘Okay, here goes nothing.’

Chandler took hold of Amy’s gloved hand and led her out of the tent, careful to seal the Black Knight in behind him.

‘Okay, let’s move,’ Ethan said as he guided them both to the
Seehund
.

Ethan turned to Chandler, who was standing behind him and looking furtively at the submarine.

‘It handles just fine,’ he promised the doctor. ‘Just let the current carry you along and reserve as much of the fuel as possible for electrical power. It’s three knots at least down there, enough to pull you through the tunnels and make it out at about eight to ten knots. Two hours, tops.’

Chandler smiled unconvincingly. ‘And if the chamber comes down on me?’

‘It won’t because you’ll already be gone. The quicker you leave, the safer you’ll be, now go!’