Atlantis: Devil's Sea (15 page)

“How?” Titus asked.

“That is not clear yet. The gods will show me when it is time.”

“The gods.” Titus tapped his staff on the arm of this throne for several moments. “What do you need from me?”

She turned and pointed at Falco. “Him. And soldiers to help me on my journey to the Shadow.”

Titus stood once more. He looked down at the woman. “Let me discuss with my advisor.”

They were escorted out of the room.

“Who are you?” Falco asked the woman once they were in the antechamber.

“My name is Kaia.”

“You helped me in the arena.”

“I helped you help yourself,” she said. “You have the same power I do.”

“And what is that power?” Falco asked.

“To see into the hearts and minds of others. And to hear the voices of the gods.”

“There are no gods.”

“Not as worshipped here in Rome, there aren’t,” she agreed. “But you have heard their voices, haven’t you?”

“If there are gods,” Falco argued, instead of answering, “why do we suffer so?”

Kaia didn’t respond right away. When she did, her voice was very low, so that only he could hear. “You wish to die. We all will die, gladiator. Your time is not now. To die like an animal led to slaughter in the arena is no fitting death of a soldier.”

“Death is death,” Falco said. “You cheated me of mine.

“Then I owe you your death,” Kaia said. “Trust me, I will repay you.”

*****

Titus grabbed a goblet and downed the wine in one long swallow. Then he faced Thyestes as his senior advisor came in.

“An imperial galley landed at Ostia, and a messenger just arrived from there,” Thyestes said. “They report seeing smoke and flame on Vesuvius.”

“So it’s true?”

“I would say so, Emperor.”

“Recommendations on how to deal with this problem?”

“Every problem is an opportunity if looked at correctly,” Thyestes said.

“Speak clearly,” Titus snapped, tired of the Greek’s way with words.

“She wants Falco. Let her have him. This will placate Domidicus. She wants troops. Give her the XXV Legion.”

Titus smiled. The XXV was a legion formed by the rebel Vitellius, who had briefly held the emperorship before Vespasian established the Flavian line. Vespasian had sent the legion to the Regnum Dacae, at the very northeast part of the empire, to face the barbarians out of Asia and to keep it as far away from Rome as possible. Despite Vitellius’s assassination, the XXV Legion was a potential source of trouble.

“And,” Thyestes continued, “give command of the legion to one of your best officers: Lucius Cassius.”

“Very good,” Titus acknowledged. Killing three birds with one stone: the XXV, Cassius, and Falco. “Order them to come in.”

He took another drink of wine as Falco, Cassius, and Kaia were brought in and lined up in front of his throne.

“General Lucius Cassius, your emperor has need of your services.”

Cassius nodded. “Whatever my emperor commands is my duty.”

Titus shifted his gaze to Falco. “Gladiator, you are ordered returned to the army at your former rank of Centurion. You will accompany General Cassius.”

There was no response from Falco, but Titus didn’t care as he turned back to Cassius.

“General, you are hereby directed to use imperial transport to travel to Regnum Dacae and take command of the XXV Legion. You will lead the legion northeast, into Regnum Bospous in search of this Shadow. You will then destroy the Shadow.”

“And then, Emperor?” Cassius asked.

“You are to depart immediately via imperial dispatch to Brundisium. I will give you orders to be opened once you complete your journey.”

CHAPTER TEN

T
HE
P
RESENT

“This is Colonel Felix Shashenka, of the Russian Army,” Foreman introduced one of the men waiting for them outside the elevator entrance. “And Colonel Loomis from our Special Operations Command.”

Dane shook each man’s hand as the elevator’s doors slid open, revealing a short Japanese man and a taller woman. “Professor Nagoya and his senior assistant, Professor Ahana,” Foreman continued the introductions.

When that was done, they got on the elevator and began descending. Chelsea pressed herself against Dane’s leg, nervous about the strange feeling of going into the Earth. Dane had worked search and rescue with Chelsea before being recruited by Paul Michelet to rescue his daughter, Ariana, from the Angkor gate in Cambodia, and neither liked being underground.

“Any updates on the Devil’s Sea gate?” Foreman asked.

“Both probes are still on-line, and we are still receiving and analyzing data,” Nagoya said.

“How will these probes allow us access into the gate?” Dane asked the question that Foreman had been unable to answer.

‘Well, it is only a theory,” Nagoya said, “but we –”

Dane cut him off. “We’re going to be living this theory, Professor. How good a theory is it?”

It was Ahana who answered. “I will be living it also, as I will be accompanying you on this reconnaissance. The theory is as good as we can make it with the information we have. Somewhere inside those gates is the true gate, the access point to the other side, which we are calling the portal.”

“The black hole that Flaherty came through,” Dane said. The elevator was still going down, rock walls sliding by. “That was a portal.”

“As was the black hole you went through, traveling from Cambodia to the
Scorpion
,” Ahana said. “That along with Foreman’s high-frequency experiments years ago, indicated the gates are connected in some way. The connection between the Chernobyl and Devil’s Sea’s probes again proves that; we’ve been able to gather considerable data.”

“How come the Shadow hasn’t shut down the probes?” Dane asked.

Nagoya shrugged. “We don’t know. But I suspect that they haven’t even really noticed them. Think about it. The Shadow has been attacking our world for millennia. We’ve barely been able to defeat it with help from the Ones Before. I would imagine there is a degree of arrogance on the part of the Shadow that may blind it to the possibility of us crossing to its side.”

“You’re giving it human qualities,” Dane noted.

“You’re correct,” Nagoya noted. “And that may be denigrating the intelligence that is over there. Bringing it down to our level.”

“You sound like you admire it,” Dane said.

“I can admire its capabilities, not its goals,” Nagoya said.

“Back to gates,” Foreman cut off the discussion. “The connections between them?” he prompted Ahana.

“You might consider these connections wormholes,” she said. “Whether the other side is a separate dimension or another planet, we don’t know, but what the probes allowed us to do is have a direction and a destination. We tracked the path the Devil’s Sea probe took as it went into the gate, and once you go into the gate, you should be able to pick up the path between portals, which will give a destination or at least an idea where one of these wormholes are. More importantly, the probes gave us the data we need to make a device that we believe can open a portal if we can tap into sufficient power. An interesting aspect is that there is time variance on the data.”

“Which means?” Dane asked.

“That time is a variable on the other side,” Ahana said. “We’ve even had some of our data time-reversed, as if time was going backward at certain points.”

“That would explain Flaherty and the
Scorpion
,” Dane noted.

The American officer, Loomis spoke up. “We’ll be using a specially modified prototype attack craft designed for the SEALS for the reconnaissance. Waterproof, airtight. Able to go on land or water. Heavily armed. It’s called the Crab for Combat Reconnaissance Assault Boat.”

Dane remembered some of the creatures that had attacked his team in the Angkor gate over thirty years ago. He wondered how well this Crab would stand up against them. Before anyone could say anything else, the elevator came to a halt.

“This way,” Nagoya pointed. “We have to transfer to another elevator.”

“How deep is this place?” Colonel Shashenka asked.

“Three miles down,” Nagoya said as they followed him.

“We’re also going to use biotechnology,” Loomis continued.

“What does that mean?” Dane asked.

“Project Rachel,” Loomis said.

Dane waited, letting the military man feel superior by giving out information in pieces.

“Rachel is something the Navy has been working on for a long time. She’s a Pacific dolphin, specially trained to follow commands and make a modicum of contact with humans. She will expand our reconnaissance abilities. Since there seems to be a problem using electromagnetic equipment around the gates, Rachel will give you an organic capability that shouldn’t draw unwanted attention.”

Dane remembered the beach and the dolphins. He glanced at Foreman, but the CIA man didn’t seem to make any connection.

“And once we complete the recon?” Dane asked. “Let’s say we find the portal. You said you had the means to open it if you could tap into enough power.”

Nagoya nodded. “Yes, We mean to draw power out of the gate to allow us to turn it around to open the portal.”

“And how do you plan to draw that power our?” Dane asked.

“With an extension cord,” Ahana said.

“What’s the plug?” Dane asked.

“We are,” she answered.

“This is getting smarter and smarter,” Dane said. “Then what happens?”

“Then we go through,” Loomis said. “We have forces assembling; as do the Russians,” he acknowledged his Russian comrade in arms.

“What kind of forces?” Dane asked.

“Whatever we can get through,” Loomis said. “That’s another reason why we’re running a recon first.”

Dane could sense the confidence of the military men. They believed in the power of their weapons, but he wasn’t as sure they would be successful. Their weapons were designed for human enemies. The second elevator came to a halt, and they followed Nagoya to his lab.

He pointed to a monitor that showed a solid black triangle. “This is Devil’s Sea gate. It has assumed this size, approximately four miles on each side, and visual reports indicate the perimeter is delineated by solid black.”

He nodded to Ahana, who sat down in front of the keyboard and typed in some commands. A small red dot appeared near the bottom of the triangle. “That is the pod,” he said. “It is transmitting muons, but a slightly different pattern than the gates are transmitting. It is the first time we have successfully sent anything into a gate and been able to receive a report.”
“Other than the few people who’ve come back out,” Dane said.

“Ah…” Nagoya was obviously embarrassed. “Yes, that is true. My apologies. What is curious is that Chernobyl seems to be providing the power that is coming out of the Devil’s Sea gate.”

“So the Shadow is once more using something we invented against us,” Dane said.

“It appears so.”

“How soon will your recon craft be ready by the gate?” Foreman asked Loomis.

“Six hours.”

Ahana changed the display, and he could see another black triangle with another red dot inside, not far from the Dnieper River.

“How did you get your probe in?” Dane asked the Russian.

“A brave volunteer,” Shashenka said.

“Right.” Dane glared at Foreman who ignored him. “Did the gate there cause the problems at Chernobyl?”

“Yes,” Shashenka said. “We have kept it tightly classified, but the gate tapped into the core of Reactor Four. When we tried to shut it down, it was too late, and the reactor went critical. And the volunteer was my brother,” he added giving Dane a hard look.

“I’m sorry,” Dane said.

“He was dying of cancer,” Shashenka said. “Our brother was an engineer at the reactor and was killed when it went critical. My brother felt it was his duty to give his life in a meaningful way to avenge Andrej’s death rather than dying by wasting away.”
“Then he was indeed a brave volunteer,” Dane said. “My apologies.”

“Your apologies are accepted,” Shashenka said.

“Why is the gate at Chernobyl different?” Dane asked.

“A good question,” Shashenka said. “Our Professor Kolkov believes one of the major purposes, perhaps
the
major purpose, is to gather energy from our world. The Chernobyl gate might be smaller because the small size sitting over the core of Reactor Four is sufficient to get the power needed. The other gates might have to be larger in order to accomplish the same thing.

“Kolkov analyzed data taken during the construction of the Chernobyl Reactor, and found some anomalies. He believes that the gate was there but not active during construction. The data were quite strange. There were signs of radioactivity at the site prior to the first tree being cut down.”

Ahana spoke up. “Since we are considering time to be a variable inside the gates, it is possible that radiation that comes from the gate is moving backward and forward in time from the point of the tap into the core.”

“What are you talking about?” Dane demanded.

Ahana pointed to her right. ‘Our time is going this way. But what if the Shadow’s time inside the Chernobyl gate is going that way also,” she pointed in the opposite direction.

“So the energy tap could be for energy the Shadow has already used?” Dane asked, trying to understand.

“We know some of the energy is being sent to the Devil’s Sea gate in our present,” Ahana said. “But there is also the possibility that the energy is being spread through not only space but time.”

Dane considered that. “That means Chernobyl could be a very critical node to the Shadow.”

Ahana nodded. “If we could get a better understanding of the entire gate and portal system, it would help.”

Dane thought they were focusing too much on the scientific aspects of all of this. “What purposes do you think the gates have other than gathering energy?” he asked.

“Besides trying to destroy our world?” Foreman asked. “Obviously they gather humans and our vessels as the graveyard in the Bermuda Triangle showed.”

“We saw the vessels, and some of them had been cannibalized. But what do they do with the people they take?” Dane wondered.