Atlantis: Gate (11 page)

“Hey, big girl,” Dane leaned over and scratched behind her ears. He felt the comfort that the Golden Retriever always projected but the tape was heavy in his hands.

A small TV with a built-in VCR was bolted above the desk. Dane slid the video into the machine and pushed play.

The screen went blue, then Sin Fen’s exotic Eurasian face appeared. Dane took a step back, remembering the last time he had seen her, her head changing into crystal, focusing the power of the pyramid in the Bermuda Triangle and shutting the gate there.

“Eric,” she said. “I never called you by your first name and I imagine I haven’t since I made this. I am sorry I lied to you about some things, but it was necessary.” She held up a hand in front of the camera as if forestalling a response. “Yes, that is the excuse Foreman uses isn’t it?” The smile was gone. “If you are watching this then I am no longer with you. But do not think I am gone. If you are watching this, it means I succeeded. And you—and the world—are safe for the moment. But my role—the role of the Oracles and priestesses—is defensive. And that can only work so long.”

Dane realized he had stopped breathing and that there were tears flowing down his cheeks. Chelsea whined, her tail smacking against his legs. “Easy,” Dane whispered. “Easy, girl.”

Sin Fen continued. “You are the one who has to change things. From Atlantis forward, the Oracles and priestesses—the Defenders, of which I was one—have always been women. We have used warriors to help us in the fight and to keep the line alive.”

“But from the first, the very beginning, there was a prophecy. That there would be a man who would be a warrior and an Oracle. A Defender who will be more than that. I believe you are that man.”

Dane took another step back, hitting the bunk with his legs and dropping to a sitting position.

Sin Fen tapped her head. “I told you some of how your mind is different. Left brain, right brain.” She smiled once more. “Redundant. Except for the areas of speech. Broca’s Area, which in ninety-seven percent of all humans is controlled by the left side of the brain. And Broca’s area on the right side? Dormant. Un-used. And smaller. Except in a small percentage of the population again. So combine the two exceptions and you have less than one-one thousandth of one percent of the human population. People like you and me.”

“Why are we different?” Dane whispered.

“I was only told so much,” Sin Fen said. “That is wrong. I know that now.” Her face shifted, a perplexed look crossing it, something Dane had never seen in the short time he knew her. “Or maybe I am wrong. Maybe there is a valid reason why I was not told things. But I have told you all I know. I believe you are the one who is to take the fight to the Shadow. I don’t know how. I don’t know what you are to do. But you do.”

She closed her eyes. “I wish I was with you to help. I truly do. Trust the voice. It is from the gods.” Her eyes opened. “I think there are other Oracles like me in the world. You might find help where you least expect it.”

The tape froze with the image of Sin Fen on it.

Dane stood and reached forward, touching the screen. “Who are we?” He was startled by the sound of a light knock on his cabin door. “Who is it?”

“Ahana.”

Dane opened the door, his mind still on Sin Fen. The Japanese woman entered the cabin, glancing at the image on the screen. “A friend?”

“Yes.”

Ahana clasped her hands in front of her. “I do not wish to disturb you.” She edged toward the door.

“It’s OK,” Dane said. He indicated the chair in front of the desk. “Please. Sit.”

“I do not wish to disturb—” Ahana stopped herself and gave an embarrassed laugh.

Dane reached over and turned off the TV. “What is it?”

“Mister Foreman,” Ahana began, then seemed to search for words. “He is a—” she said something in Japanese, then tried to clarify. “A man who works in an office for the government.”

“A bureaucrat?”

She nodded. “Yes, that is the word. You, on the other hand, are a soldier.”

“I was a soldier.”

“Once you have served it is always part of you. My father was a bureaucrat. My grandfather a soldier. I know.”

Dane waited.

“The Shadow,” she finally said, her head lowered.

“Yes?”

“It is our enemy.”

Dane wasn’t sure whether it was a question or statement. “Yes.”

“I told you my grandfather was a soldier. In the Second World War.” She lifted her head and her dark eyes met his. “He followed orders. He fought the Chinese. The Australians. And the Americans. He was at Nanking and followed orders.”

Dane remained still. He knew of the Rape of Nanking. The winter of 1937-1938 when the Japanese sacked the Chinese city. Almost 400,000 Chinese were slaughtered after the city surrendered. Women and children raped and murdered. And the Japanese government to this day had never acknowledged that it occurred.

“He never spoke of what happened in China. I never knew until I found his journal. What he wrote about what he saw there in China. How he knew he—and Japan—was doomed from then forward. How they would never win the war. Yet he still fought. It was his duty and his honor bound him. But his heart was never in it. His spirit was wounded, crippled, in China and never recovered.

“I have never spoken of this to anyone, not even Professor Nagoya—” she paused, tears welling in her eyes.

Dane took her hands in his. He wasn’t sure what to say.

“Reading my grandfather’s words, I came to know him. More than I ever knew my father who was so ashamed of his own father.”

Dane, who had never known his parents and grown up in orphanages, squeezed her hands, feeling the smallness of them inside his own.

“My grandfather never turned on his duty as a soldier. On the oaths he swore. But—” again she seemed to search for the correct English. “He realized the choice of enemies, the war, was wrong. The Chinese, the Australians, the Americans, posed no real threat to his home, to his country, that he had sworn to defend.”

Dane nodded. “I fought in Vietnam.”

Ahana squeezed his hands in return. “So you understand what he felt?”

“Yes.”

“What I am trying to say is that the Shadow is different. It is a threat to mankind. To all nations. I sometimes see the way you respond to Foreman and I can tell your heart is not in this, in the things we do. But it must be. This is a good war, if there ever was a good war.”

There was a rap on the cabin door and Foreman stuck his head. “Chopper’s here to take you to the carrier. From there you’ll go by F-16 to Bogota where you’ll be transferred to a Combat Talon.” The CIA man’s eyes were shifting between Dane and Ahana as if he were trying to interpret what had been talked about.

Dane stood. He put a hand on the slight Japanese woman’s shoulder. “Take care of Chelsea for me, would you?”

Ahana nodded.

A good war
, Dane mused as he threw his rucksack over his shoulder and left the cabin, following Foreman. For the first time since he had been contacted by Foreman’s agent to go into the Angkor gate, there was a slight bounce in Dane’s stride as he headed toward the waiting helicopter.

THE SPACE BETWEEN

Amelia Earhart held the water bottle to Fred Noonan’s parched lips and impatiently waited while he drank. He’d regained consciousness just a few moments ago and tried to speak, but only managed an unintelligible rasp. Water poured down the sides of his face over blistered skin unnoticed as he drained the bottle. While she waited, Earhart thought back to the forced landing she’d made in the Pacific. There was no doubt that she had seen him killed, a tentacle from a kraken punching through his body from front to rear, lifting him off the wing of the Electra and down into the water. Without thinking, her hand strayed to his chest, feeling for some sort of wound but the skin was smooth and unmarked. Perhaps by some miracle he had survived the attack—she halted that thinking. She had seen what she had seen.

She pulled the bottle from his lips. “Fred.”

Noonan nodded. “I was hoping to find you here.”

“I don’t understand—where did you come from? How did you survive. I saw you—“

He weakly held up a hand stopping the onslaught of questions. “I don’t have much time. I’m dying. I came unprotected through a hot portal.”

“Why did—“

He waved the hand slightly. “Listen. There is something you must do. A task.” He stopped speaking as he began a terrible, deep coughing.

Earhart glanced up at Taki, the leader of the samurai. She had been here long enough to learn enough of their language to communicate.
“Where did you find him?”

Taki pointed back over his shoulder
. “The shore.”

Earhart had expected that. It was where they found most of the castaways.
“Any debris?”
It was how they got their scant supplies and even though she knew that Taki and his men would have brought anything they found back, she found she couldn’t help asking. There might even have been something from the plane.

“Nothing. The black--”
He gestured with his hands, indicating a cylinder and Earhart knew he was talking about a portal—
“is still there. Close to shore. A new one that was not there last time we looked.”

Noonan stopped coughing. Earhart tenderly wiped a trickle of blood from his chin and was surprised when he smiled. “You’ve changed,” he said.

“What is this task?” Earhart was surprised by his comment.

“You must capture a Valkyrie. And remove its suit.”

“And?”

“And someone will come for it. Someone—“ Noonan began coughing, his body wracked with pain. Earhart could feel the strength of the coughs, as if he were trying to expel something from his body.

She leaned close. “Fred. Where did you come from?”

“A place like this,” he said. “The space-between. That’s what we call it. I volunteered to come. When they told me.” His eyelids slid down and he appeared to be unconscious.

Earhart shook him slightly. “Fred. Who? Who told you? What did they tell you?”

His eyes flickered open. “The Ones Before. They’re trying to save your world.” He coughed several times. “Get the suit. And wait.”

“How do we kill a Valkyrie?” Earhart asked. “We don’t have a Naga staff.”

“The eyes are weak.”

Earhart knew that. “Even disabling the eyes doesn’t stop them. They just retreat.”

“A Naga staff will come. Watch for it. Then use it.”

“How do you know this?”

Noonan’s voice had dropped to a whisper. “The Ones Before. They will try. Have tried.” His eyes closed. His lips moved and his voice was so low, Earhart had to put her ear next to his mouth to hear his next words. “They have been trying for a long, long time to save the world.”

Noonan was so still that for a moment Earhart thought him dead. But she felt a slight exhale on her cheek as she held her head close to his. She straightened and slid a blanket over Noonan’s chest.

“What now?”
Taki asked.
“The Valkyries are still in their lab?”
Earhart asked. Taki shrugged.
“The last time we looked they were.”
She pointed down at her navigator.
“He said we must get the armor suit from one of

them.”
Taki nodded as if that made perfect sense.
“We can go look.”

CHAPTER 6 480 BC

The Phoenician ships and barges were beached just south of the bridging point. Soldiers and slaves worked together to off-load the lengths of intricately woven plant material. The first length was tied off the near anchor point and the first ship position. A second length of flax reinforced the first. A second anchor point had been dug during the night while they waited for the barges and two large trees already put in place.

As a second boat was moved into position and planks laid from the first, Xerxes raised his hand, halting work. He signaled to his master-at-arms and the six Egyptian engineers whose bridge had been destroyed. The master-at-arms and several Immortals hustled the confused engineers onto the planks. The confusion changed to terror as each man was tied in place between the first two lengths of flax roping, one across their back, one across their chests.

Xerxes then signaled for work to continue, savoring the desperate cries of the trapped men. More ropes were tied in to the anchor point until only the Egyptians’ feet and heads were visible, the rest of their body cocooned with strands of flax extending outward from the shore pylons. As more boats were added, and additional lengths tied in to the end, the pressure increased.

The screams of the trapped men became muted as the ropes across their chests restricted their breathing to the point where they couldn’t cry out. Every man working on the bridge had to walk past the trapped engineers, which was exactly what Xerxes had in mind. It certainly gave them a focus on their tasks.

With a crackling noise clearly heard even above the chants of the slaves hauling on ropes, the first engineer’s chest gave way and blood poured out of his mouth, covering the ropes across his front. One by one, the rest died, dying the flax red and leaving their heads dangling over the top of the cable.

Boat by boat, the two bridges began extending across the strait. And on the eastern shoreline Xerxes sat on his throne and watched. And behind him, just to the right, stood Pandora.

***************

“I do not approve,” Leonidas said.

“Of?” Cyra asked.

Dusk was falling and Leonidas was still pressing the pace, wanting to get some more miles behind them before halting for the night. He had sent Eusibius ahead as a scout. He had not seen Idas or the Persian Jamsheed since his last conversation with both. He assumed the Athenian was headed for the coast to take a ship back to his city. As far as the Persian, Leonidas figured he would be heading north to link up with his king’s army.

“Having a child without a husband.”

Cyra laughed, causing a flush of blood to the King’s face. “What is so funny?”

“That I would care about your approval.”

They rode in silence for several minutes. “I suppose things are different in Delphi,” the king finally allowed.