‘You remember three years back there was a massive explosion over the Persian Gulf?’ said Eddie. ‘It was an antimatter bomb – a thing called a spearhead.’
‘An Atlantean relic,’ Cheng clarified. ‘Professor Wilde found it in Turkey.’
‘There’s another one here?’ said Vorster in alarm.
‘I don’t know,’ said Nina. ‘The vault holding the spearhead was made of orichalcum and crystal, like this. But that doesn’t mean this place has the same function. The vault was built by the Atlanteans, but this is much older. The same materials, but made by a different people.’
‘What people?’ Imka asked.
‘That’s a very good question!’
Nina cast her light over the walls as she moved down the short passage. It intersected with a curving corridor. From its arc, she guessed it ran around the whole interior of the ship/fortress/whatever the hell it was. She settled on ‘fortress’ until seeing proof of anything else, still unwilling to give Eddie any points for his alien spaceship theory. The angle at which it was trapped meant the route to the right dropped steeply downwards, the floor more like a slide. It might be traversable without ropes, but she didn’t fancy trying it.
She aimed her light upwards, to the left. The other direction curved inwards around the structure’s centre, disappearing beyond a corner. Doorways lurked in the darkness. ‘That way’ll be easier,’ she said. ‘Looks like there are other rooms leading off it.’
‘Space alien bedrooms, probably. But you’re right,’ Eddie went on before Nina could make another weary protest. ‘One slip going the other way and we’ll be whizzing down to the front of the ship on our arses.’ He took off his helmet and crampons, the others following suit. ‘If we jump across the corridor, we can use those ribs in the other wall like steps to go up.’
He readied himself, then made a running jump across to the inner wall. A tense moment as one foot slipped from the protruding crystal rib, but he caught himself and began to ascend. His progress became easier as he followed the corridor around, the wall’s curve making the climb progressively less steep.
Nina vaulted after him and followed him to the first opening. ‘What do you see?’
‘There’s a room here,’ he said, aiming his light through the towering doorway. ‘Full of benches – or could be beds, actually. If they are, whoever slept on ’em was tall.’
‘Like the Veteres,’ she said quietly. She aimed her light into the next room. The beam reflected back at her, and not off crystal. ‘There’s ice in there!’ While the passages they had traversed so far had remained strangely free of frost, the room’s rear wall had a thick translucent coating.
Eddie brought his light down to the floor of the chamber. ‘Looks like it’s been ripped open.’ The metal was buckled, ragged tears disappearing into the icy wall. ‘Or crushed. A hundred thousand years of ice must weigh a fair bit.’
‘Yeah.’ Noises from behind made her turn. ‘Oh, you might want to help Cheng before he goes down the world’s scariest Slip ’n’ Slide.’
Imka had jumped after the couple, but Cheng was hesitating at the end of the entrance passage. ‘I’m okay,’ he protested. ‘I can do it.’
‘Well, let’s make sure of that, shall we?’ said Eddie, returning and extending his arms to catch him. ‘Come on, kid.’
‘I’m not a child!’ Cheng leapt across, landing with a lurch as his backpack threatened to unbalance him. Eddie caught his harness before he could fall, giving him a patronising look. ‘I’m not,’ the younger man said with a huff.
Nina had already moved on. The next room was much like the first, a spartan dormitory, though the ice had encroached further into it. The rear of the fortress must have been badly damaged during its millennia of entombment. But why hadn’t the ice kept advancing? There was no reason for it to stop . . .
The route ahead began to curve back downwards. They were at the fortress’s rear; the passage looped around to head towards its front. In the higher wall was another door, with an ornate golden surround. She shone her light through the opening—
A tall figure faced her.
She gasped, flinching back before realising it was not alive. The menacing form was a suit of armour, embedded in more invading ice.
‘Whoa!’ Imka yelped. ‘What is that?’
Nina edged up the slanted floor for a closer look. ‘It’s armour.’
‘Whose armour? Whoever wore that must have been three metres tall!’
‘It’s the Predator!’ Eddie joked as he, Cheng and Vorster hurried to see. ‘Now will you believe we’ve found a spaceship?’
Nina had to admit the armour was definitely made for someone – or something – far taller than even the lankiest human being. It was aggressively designed, a colourful mask resembling a devil’s snarling face with protruding fangs fronting the horned helmet. She glanced at Cheng. ‘It looks like a Chinese demon, don’t you think?’
He nodded. ‘It does. And there are more.’ He pointed deeper inside the ice. Other figures were dimly discernible. ‘But look at that! It must be a weapon.’
Nina spotted something within the frozen barrier. At first she thought it was a spear, as long as the armour was tall, then saw that instead of a blade, the head was an elongated metal bulb. More identical shapes were lined up beyond. ‘Maybe it’s an armoury.’
Eddie regarded the glowering metal figure with distaste. ‘Whoever they were, I wouldn’t want to fight ’em up close. It’s got blades and spikes all over it.’
‘Hopefully we won’t run into the owner,’ said Nina uncomfortably. The armour inescapably brought to mind Wim Stapper’s demon. ‘Let’s keep going.’ She set off again.
‘What do you think of my theory now, Professor Wilde?’ asked Cheng. ‘A non-human precursor race – do you think that’s what we’ve found?’
‘I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve seen more,’ she replied. Something about his attitude felt . . . off. He seemed almost nonchalant about the discovery, regarding the giant armour with detached curiosity rather than astonishment. Her unease from her lecture returned; did he know more about the Veteres than he was letting on?
She put the thought aside – for now – as she continued around the curving corridor. There were more signs of damage, ice forming on the walls where the floor had buckled. She examined a rent between two frozen panels. One of the crystal ribs had been snapped by the ice’s relentless pressure. The material wasn’t indestructible, then. Had the intact crystals somehow held back the frost?
The passage ahead angled downwards towards the front of the fortress. ‘It’s getting steep again.’
‘Think we’ll need ropes?’ Eddie asked. He shone his torch down the corridor. Metal and crystal glinted in the cold darkness – together with something else. Warning entered his voice. ‘Everyone hold back.’
Standing out on the golden sheen of orichalcum was a darker splash, as if paint had been splattered over the walls and floor. At first glance it looked black, but as Nina’s flashlight beam joined his, they saw with dawning horror that it was actually a deep red.
Blood.
‘What is it?’ Imka asked, trying to peer around the couple.
‘Wait here,’ Eddie said firmly. ‘I’ll have a look. Cheng, Janco, hold onto my rope.’
He handed the coil to the two men, who braced themselves behind him. Nina knew what her husband was doing – blocking Imka’s view of what they both suspected he was about to find. He gripped the rope, then moved carefully down the steep slope.
Eddie soon reached the marks and played his torch over them. Bone fragments and shreds of flesh amongst the frozen blood confirmed his fears. Someone had been caught in an explosion, almost liquefied by the blast.
But what had caused it? To obliterate a human body so completely would need far more explosive than found in a hand grenade – which would also have rip
ped the passage apart. But there was no visible damage to the walls . . .
‘What have you found?’ Imka called.
‘Someone was killed here,’ he reported grimly. ‘Looks like there was an explosion.’ He aimed his light further downwards. ‘Shit,’ he whispered, seeing another dark burst twenty feet away. Gruesome confirmation that the remains were human came in the form of a booted foot wedged against a crystal rib, shards of bloodied bone jutting from it. ‘There’s another body – or what’s left of one.’
‘Oh . . . oh my God,’ said Imka. ‘Is it . . . is it Arnold?’
‘I don’t know.’ She had shown them pictures of her fiancé during the voyage, but Eddie saw nothing here that could be used for purposes of identification short of a DNA test. He shone the beam past the grisly remains. Ice encroached into the corridor beyond a section of mangled wall. ‘I don’t think we can get down that way. We’ll have to go back around past the entrance.’
‘But we need to find out who they are!’ the South African cried.
‘We will,’ Nina assured her. ‘But we have to check the rest of the fortress first. There might still be survivors.’ She didn’t believe her own words, but Imka was desperate enough to cling to the tiny chance that she nodded.
The group helped Eddie back up, and they returned to the entrance. The demonic armour watched from its icy prison as they passed. ‘Same drill,’ said the Yorkshireman. ‘Hold the rope, help me down, and I’ll see what’s there.’
‘Be careful,’ said Nina as he started his descent.
‘Oh, I bloody will be, don’t worry!
He held up his light as he moved down the slope, wishing he could exchange it for a gun. Stapper’s story was looking less like the result of his madness and more like the cause. Something had killed two people in a truly horrific manner, enough to unsettle even a man who had seen every form of death imaginable.
And whatever had done it was still here, somewhere in the frozen darkness.
No sign of more bodies – or their splattered remnants – but before long his descent brought him to something else. ‘There’s some stairs here!’ he shouted. They led to the higher deck. ‘I’m going up.’
‘What can you see?’ Nina called after him as he ascended.
The low blue light of the ice cave surrounded him, coming through two elongated windows; the ‘dragon eyes’ they had seen from outside. One was broken, cold air wafting in. ‘It’s a big room,’ he said. ‘High ceiling, like a dome.’
He stopped at the top of the stairs, sweeping the light around. The room was oval, a large metal dais towards the rear. The underside of the egg-shaped object inset into the top of the ship rested upon it; it was a separate entity. Its nature and purpose remained a mystery, though.
Before it sat something he could identify – an ornate golden throne. Like the armour, it was on a considerably larger scale than human. ‘It’s a throne room!’ he shouted. ‘Nobody here, not that I can see. I’m going to look around.’
He moved cautiously into the steeply sloping chamber to continue his search for bodies, soles squeaking faintly on the floor. At its centre stood a large rectangular plinth. An altar? He headed towards it. His light picked out a recess set into its top.
He recognised the shape. The space was a perfect match for the key Krämer had stolen.
The realisation put him back on full alert. He turned to scan the whole room, shining the powerful beam into the shadows of the crystal pillars. Nothing there, no movement. Not reassured, he reached the altar. The upper surface was orichalcum and the same dark, oily metal as the hull, inset with numerous concentric circles of crystal and purple stone.
Noises drew his attention to the stairwell. ‘Eddie?’ Nina asked, clambering into view. Vorster’s voice echoed behind her as he shouted a situation update to Naider outside.
‘Yeah, I’m here. Haven’t seen any more bodies. Pretty impressive room, though.’
She brought up her own light. ‘Oh wow! I see what you mean.’ Her beam found the giant throne. ‘And that’s a hell of a big chair.’
He lowered his voice. ‘So it’s definitely the Veteres?’
‘I can’t think of anything else. The size matches, certainly. The bodies we found in Eden were at least seven feet tall.’
‘That armour was getting on for ten feet, though.’
‘Humans are different heights, so maybe the Veteres were too. Although yeah, three feet is kind of a big variance.’
‘Maybe this lot played basketball.’
She smiled, then saw what he was examining. ‘I recognise that shape.’
‘Yeah,’ he said as she came to stand beside him. ‘The key’s actually the ignition for the spaceship. Put it in, turn it on, and whoosh! Warp factor nine.’
A sardonic grin. ‘It’d make getting back home to Macy a lot easier. But it’s obviously where it’s supposed to go. Stapper and his friend put it in there. Then . . .’
‘Then all hell broke loose,’ Eddie rumbled. ‘Maybe literally.’
Nina surveyed the rest of the room. Another flight of stairs descended at the front of the oval chamber. Before she could investigate further, Cheng entered, Imka and Vorster behind him. ‘Is there anyone else here?’ Imka asked.
‘Not that we’ve seen,’ said Eddie, edging down the sloping floor towards the new set of stairs. ‘Although we haven’t checked the back of the room yet.’
Nina brought her light back to the huge throne, then the elongated golden sphere behind it. ‘It looks a lot like the vault from Turkey,’ she said, her flashlight beam sliding over a seemingly unbroken orichalcum surface. She started towards it. ‘Maybe there’s a door on the far side. Cheng, what do you make of it?’
She had assumed he was following her. But when she glanced around, he was standing at the altar with his back to her, his open backpack beside him. ‘Cheng? What are you doing?’
‘The key,’ he replied. ‘It fits here.’
‘I know, it’s—’ His tone set off mental alarms at deafening volume. ‘You’ve put it in? No, take it out!’
Cheng turned, revealing that he had indeed placed the golden artefact into the recess. ‘I was just checking—’
‘Take it out! Now!’ She hurried back to him.
He didn’t move, giving her a bewildered look. She reached past him and snatched up the relic – flinching at a sudden electric snap as she touched it. ‘Ow! Dammit!’
‘What?’ Eddie asked urgently. ‘You okay?’
‘It gave me a frickin’ shock!’ She froze, listening intently . . . but the chamber remained silent.
‘Nothing happened,’ said Cheng, sounding almost disappointed.
She glared at him. ‘Stapper said nothing happened until after they put the key in there!’
‘What could happen?’ said Vorster. ‘You said this thing is over a hundred thousand years old. Even if they called it a key, it can’t be like a car ignition key. They didn’t have engines back then.’
‘Not as we know them, no,’ Nina said. ‘But the Atlanteans used something called earth energy – or ley lines, feng shui, song lines, probably a dozen other names – as a power source, and crystals and a type of purple stone to channel it. And gee, look what we have here!’ She pointed at the circles of said materials set into the altar.
‘But this is older than Atlantis, isn’t it?’ asked Imka.
‘Yeah, but it’s the same kind of technology, if you can call it that. In the Turkish vault, the Atlanteans said it came from “those who came before”; I think this was built by the same people. They discovered the power, and the Atlanteans later used it as well. Which ultimately caused them to end up at the bottom of the ocean, because they couldn’t stop fiddling with things they didn’t fully understand.’ She directed that last at Cheng, who averted his eyes.
‘Nina,’ said Eddie from the front of the cha
mber. ‘There’s something else down here.’
‘What is it?’
‘Buggered if I know. You’re the archaeologist!’
‘Put this away,’ she ordered Cheng, thrusting the key at him before joining her husband. He was partway down the treacherously steep new stairs, shining his light downwards. ‘It’s another room,’ he went on, ‘but . . . well, see for yourself.’
Nina added her torch beam to his. What she saw below made her gasp.
The new room extended further forward into the fortress’s nose, another oval chamber, forty feet on its long axis. Unlike the other rooms they had seen, this was built – grown? – entirely from crystal, the twin lights reflecting from facets beyond facets.
That was not what had stunned Nina, though. It was what was inside the room.
Coffins.
Towering cylinders of metal and crystal stood near-perpendicular to the floor, arranged in concentric rings. The one at the centre was the largest and most elaborate, all the others facing it. The sarcophagi were occupied, huge shadowy forms visible through the translucent covers.
The bodies had not been protected from the ravages of time, however. There were gaps in the rings, missing teeth leaving broken roots where they had stood. She redirected her flashlight. Several sarcophagi were piled amongst debris at the room’s bottom end, cracked and broken. They had torn free and smashed into their companions when the iceberg rolled over.
But the majority of the ancient coffins were intact. The builders of the fortress were still here, preserved.
Eddie flicked his light at the nearest. ‘This one’s open.’
‘More than that,’ she said with sudden trepidation. The cylinder had split apart, hinging upwards to expose its interior. On its outer base was another recess matching the shape of the key – but she was more concerned with what was within.
Or rather, what was not. ‘It’s empty.’ She gave Eddie an alarmed look. ‘Whatever was inside . . . it got out!’
9
Captain Tate watched the ice cave’s shadowy mouth with concern. Professor Wilde had forewarned him about the loss of radio contact, and Marc had checked in a few minutes earlier to let him know Janco had said everything was okay . . . but the inability to talk to the group directly was a growing worry.
The Resurrection Key Page 11