Ragnarok had never believed in giving away the initiative. Without another thought, he dashed forward, ax upraised toward the Valkyrie on the right, Skogul.
He swung a mighty blow and Skogul swept a long arm out and took the blade straight on. Ragnarok’s arms almost went numb from the recoil of the ax bouncing off the Valkyrie’s arm without leaving a dent. With the other arm, Skogul hit the Viking a back-handed blow on the side and threw him ten feet in a tumble.
Ragnarok got to his knees, then his feet, shaking his head. The other two Valkyries were circling around Tam Nok and Penarddun. Skogul was flowing forward toward Ragnarok, claws now extended on both hands, the bottom of her cloak a few inches clear of the ground with nothing apparently supporting her.
A thundering sound came from behind. A horse and rider flashed by Ragnarok on his right, the rider screaming a war cry, tip of the spear leading.
Skogul slid left, the spear just missing. The creature’s left hand, claws first, slammed into the rider’s chest, piercing the linked-iron armor shirt. The warrior screamed and writhed like a spitted fish as Skogul lifted him off the horse which bolted away in terror.
Ragnarok growled and ran forward, swinging his ax at the arm that held the man. Skogul threw the dying warrior directly at the Viking, knocking him to the ground once more and covering him with the last spurts of blood out of the Saxon’s chest.
The rest of the mounted warriors were thundering down on the Valkyries screaming their war cries. A golden beam shot out from Goll toward Tam Nok, who reflected it with her small shield. Another beam from Hlokk flashed and was bounced away.
Then the seven remaining soldiers of the king were among the Valkyries in a flurry of swords, spears and claws. Tam Nok grabbed Ragnarok as he started to charge toward Skogul once more.
“No! You cannot defeat them here and now!”
Ragnarok heard the screams of the men being killed by the demon creatures. Penarddun was already fifty feet away and running furiously to the north, toward the river. Ragnarok felt caught- between fighting the Valkyries, the King’s men, and doing what his charge said.
Tam Nok pulled him once more and Ragnarok followed. She moved surprisingly quickly and he had to lengthen his stride to keep up. He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw that only two warriors still stood, unhorsed, fighting back to back as the three Valkyries closed in. And then they were down in a flurry of claws.
The first ray of the sun sliced across the plain and hit the memory stone, casting a long shadow toward the center Mega-Sarsen stones.
Ragnarok paused as the Valkyries screamed in unison, the sound echoing across the plane. He stopped and spun, ax at the ready. But the three were leaving the corpses, bloody claws reluctantly letting go of mangled bodies. They floated up almost a hundred feet and then as if blown by a strong wind, rapidly disappeared to the west, chasing the darkness.
Chapter 13
THE PRESENT
1999 AD
Foreman slapped his palm on the conference table top in frustration. Glomar had just reported that someone had picked up the phone in Deeplab, but no message had been sent. And that the ship’s radar indicated Deepflight II was at the habitat. Foreman wouldn’t put it beyond Dane to not report in.
Foreman studied the data as it came up on the computer screen. Nagoya had oriented the Can too late to pick up anything other than faint traces of muons in the area deep below the habitat; right around the eight mile wide circle of lesser activity.
“Could our bogey be in there?” Foreman asked into the small boom mike in front of his lips that connected him with the Japanese scientist
““Yes, it is possible.” Nagoya’s voice came through the earpiece in Foreman’s left ear.
A light had been flashing on the console since he’d gotten hold of Nagoya and Foreman finally gave in. “Hold on a minute,” Foreman said as he switched to access the direct line from the NSA. “Yes?”
Conners jumped right into it. “We’ve got activity in the Atlantic SOSUS system. Electromagnetic feedback. Very faint, but it’s there. Just like the way it started out of Angkor in our MILSTARS satellite network.”
“Was it caused by the large bogey?”
“No. This is separate from that.”
“An attack?” Foreman demanded.
“It’s not even strong enough right now to be called much of anything,” Conners said. “I’d say it’s a recon. A probe using our own system.”
The earpiece in Foreman’s right ear suddenly came alive with Nagoya’s excited voice. “We have more muonic activity!”
Foreman looked down at the computer screen. A line of muons was coming out of the triangle representing the Bermuda Triangle gate and heading directly toward the Milwaukee Depth.
“Give me a size,” Foreman ordered.
“Width over a mile and a half wide and it’s moving fast,” Nagoya reported. “I’ve never seen anything like it, not that large and that strong.”
Foreman picked up a phone. “Captain Stanton, try the habitat again.”
He clicked on his boom mike. “Conners, do you have a bogey?”
“Negative. We’re not picking anything solid on SOSUS, just water disturbance as if someone was drilling a tunnel through the water. And it’s very strong!”
* * *
DeAngelo was hooking up cables from the submersible to connectors in Red 2 to recharge the batteries and oxygen. Dane, Sin Fen and Ariana were currently in Blue 3, the communications pod.
The phone to the surface buzzed, cutting short their discussion on what might have happened to the crew. Dane picked the phone up, turning on the speaker box.
“Yes?”
“Where the hell have you been?” Foreman’s voice echoed in the sphere. “What’s going on?”
“Has the Glomar picked them up yet?” Dane asked.
“Picked who up?”
“Sautran and his crew- the escape pod is gone.”
“The pod never came up,” Foreman said.
Dane wasn’t quite sure he heard right. “But it’s gone.”
“It’s gone but it didn’t come up,” Foreman said. “The pod has a transponder on it and the Glomar would have picked it up. They’ve got nothing.”
“How about telling me what’s going on?” Dane demanded.
“Something came up to the habitat from below,” Foreman said. “That’s all we know.”
“Whatever it was,” Dane said, “it got the pod then. I checked the log and they lost all systems just prior to the bogey arriving.”
“There’s something else headed your way,” Foreman said.
“From below?” Dane asked.
“No. From the Bermuda Triangle gate. Turn on your computer data link.”
Ariana flipped on the large computer in the bank of equipment. The screen glowed, then an image appeared.
“This is a link from an imager in Japan tracking muons,” Foreman informed them.
Dane could see the thick line growing longer, coming toward their location. “What is it?”
“We don’t know. Some sort of disturbance in the water.”
“How long do we have?”
“Two minutes,” Foreman said.
Dane looked at Sin Fen. He could feel a pounding his left temple, a heavy thump with each heartbeat.
“How do you shut this thing down?” he asked Ariana.
“Why do-” Ariana paused, then nodded. “Shut down the master computer and the backup. That turns everything off, but I’m not sure about rebooting. I didn’t read that far in the manual.”
“Shut the computers down,” Dane ordered.
Ariana pulled the keyboard to her.
“What are you doing?” Foreman’s voice bounced off the curved walls.
“We’ll be back in touch,” Dane said, then he cut the commo link.
Ariana was typing into the keyboard for the computer.
Dane checked his watch. “One minute and thirty seconds.”
* * *
A mile and a half wide cone of black rammed through the ocean propagating a shock wave outward in all directions. It reached the edge of the Puerto Rican Trench at the same depth as Deeplab.
There it split in two branches. One, a mile and quarter in circumference dove down into the depths, the other, smaller one, continued straight ahead.
* * *
“Thirty seconds,” Dane said.
Ariana didn’t bother responding. Sin Fen was seated to the side, hands pressed to the side of her head. “It’s from the gate,” she said.
“I know,” Dane agreed.
“From the Shadow,” Sin Fen amplified.
“I know that too,” Dane said. “Fifteen seconds.”
“I think I’ve got it,” Ariana said.
“You think?” Dane repeated.
Ariana hit the enter key.
The lights went out, leaving the three sitting in absolute darkness.
A second later, Dane felt a spike of pain rip through his brain, bisecting it from front to rear. He collapsed to his knees, bumping against Ariana in the process.
The pain rose until he couldn’t stand it anymore, curling into a ball on the metal grating, mouth wide open, muscles tight.
Then the pain was gone.
A beam of light cut through the darkness, a flashlight in Ariana’s hand. “Are you two all right?”
Dane got to his knees and looked at Sin Fen. “That was close.”
The Cambodian woman just nodded.
Dane cocked his head. “Did you hear something?”
In the next second, the habitat shook violently and all three were knocked to the floor, the flashlight smashing to the grating and darkness engulfing them once more.
* * *
Captain Stanton was on the gantry, watching the inertial dampener move up through the thirty foot safety mark and continue.
“What the hell is going on?” he demanded.
Thirty-five feet and finally slowing. The dampener stopped at forty-two feet, a new record, and one that had to have come from below as the sea around the Glomar was almost completely flat.
“Something hit the habitat,” the senior engineer in charge of the rig reported.
“Is it still there?”
The engineer looked down at his telemetry and blinked. “I’ve got nothing coming back! It’s either not there or completely shut down.”
* * *
Foreman had watched the line from the Triangle bifurcate. The top one ran right through the location of the habitat, continued for about a quarter mile, then slowly receded back.
The other one went deep, straight down, to the very bottom, intersected with the large area of muonic activity at the bottom of the Milwaukee Depth, then also receded.
A voice crackled in his ear. “We’re picking up something solid inside the line of propagation,” Conners reported. “The large sphere is going back to the Triangle.”
“Nagoya,” Foreman spoke into the phone. “What do you have?”
“Both lines of muonic activity are pulling back,” Nagoya reported. “But the Bermuda Triangle gate is now twice the size it had been. It extends further to the south, within twenty miles of the Glomar Explorer.”
“Is the target still in the Depth?” Foreman asked.
“Yes. We’re still reading it at the same size.”
“Oh, shit,” Conners cursed. “We’ve got a problem! There’s a wave moving southeast- a solid line being picked up by SOSUS.”
“So?” Foreman was concerned about the gate, not waves.
“Low height, long wavelength, a lot of power” Conners said. “The computer says when it hits the shallow water near Puerto Rico, the wavelength will shorten, and the wave will become fifty feet high. A major tsunami is going to hit northwest Puerto Rico in fifteen minutes.”
Chapter 14
THE PAST
999 AD
Ragnarok groaned as he sat up. His chest rippled with pain. He opened his tunic and looked. A tattoo of black and blue in the shape of the Valkyrie’s arm was imprinted on his chest. Almost lost in it was the red mark where he had been burned the previous week by the same creatures. So far they had dealt all the injuries.
“Ah,” Ragnarok leaned over and spit. It hurt to breath so he took a dozen very deep breaths, feeling the fire in his chest until the burning was a steady blaze, then he ignored it.
He looked about and blinked. Tam Nok was in the river, water flowing up to her waist. She was naked, her upper body brown and slender. Ragnarok realized he was staring and looked away. Penarddun was a huddle under a red cloak a few feet away, still asleep.
“You should clean yourself,” Tam Nok said.
Ragnarok picked up Bone-Slicer and pointedly examined the edge, trying to see if it had been damaged when he hit the Valkyrie named Skogul. “Water is for drinking and sailing on,” he replied. There was a dullness to the edge along the part that had hit the demoness. Ragnarok pulled out his sharpening stone and got to work.
He heard Tam Nok coming out of the water and he kept his eyes on the ax. There was a rustle of cloth and Ragnarok gave it a few seconds before looking up. Tam Nok had her cloak on and she was seated on the bank of the river. Her short white hair was plastered against her skull and for the moment she looked very young and vulnerable. Ragnarok realized that she was barely past her twentieth year if that. Young for someone who knew so much and was on such a difficult mission.
This morning they had reached the river and turned to the west, running for a half hour before collapsing in this spot. The River Avon wasn’t very wide or deep but it was below the level of the Salisbury Plain and afforded them some protection from observation. Ragnarok knew that the King’s men who were killed by the Valkyries during the dark hours would be missed sooner or later. Ragnarok looked up at the sun. It was after mid-day.
Tam Nok saw him staring at her and reached up to her head, feeling her hair. “It used to be black,” she said.
“What happened to it?”
“One day I looked down in a stream I was crossing and I saw that it had changed color.”
Ragnarok had known a man whose hair had changed like that. Who had gone out on the sea to fish for the day and not returned for three weeks. And when he came back his hair was white, his eyes haunted and he was mute. He never spoke again, dying less than six months later.
“What occurred just before your hair changed?” he asked.
“It happened when I started my journey. I had to go into the dark area near my home.” Tam Nok shook her head. “There are some things it is best not to speak of.”
“If we are to travel together, I think-” Ragnarok began, but he noted that Tam Nok wasn’t looking at him, but beyond with a strange expression. Ragnarok sprang to his feet and turned, ax in hand.
An old man was standing on the edge of the plain where it began descending to the river bank. He wore tattered rags and his face was obscured by a large, bushy gray beard. The man was holding a staff of what appeared to be black wood, perfectly smooth and over six feet long. Something on the tip of the staff was reflecting light, almost blinding Ragnarok. He squinted. An intricately carved ornament- a seven headed snake. The other end of the staff ended in a spear head, which also shone in the sunlight.
Ragnarok had never seen such a weapon. But it must have meant something to Tam Nok, because she pushed past the Viking rattling off something in her native language.
“Now slow down woman,” the man said in Ragnarok’s tongue but with an accent the Viking had heard before- far to the north on this God-forsaken island in the land where there were hills and bogs and deep lochs and the people dressed in clothes with patterns that told what family they belonged to. A strange people who the Vikings respected in battle because they were capable of being as insane as the Norsemen when it came to the blood lust.
The man walked down to their small camp. Penarddun, woken by the voices, opened her bleary eyes. She blearily stared at the man for a few seconds, then her eyes widene
d. “Lailoken!”
The old man went to the river and knelt, dipping his face into the water and drinking deeply. His head came up, the beard dripping water. “Some have called me that,” he acknowledged. His gray eyes softened and grew distant. “It has been a long time, though, since any one did so.” The eyes sharpened and he looked at Penarddun. “You are one of those that worship the stones and trees and stars.”
Penarddun dipped her head. The man laughed, then twirled, holding the staff out from him, the spear end cutting the air. It was as if he had suddenly disconnected from reality for a few seconds, then just as quickly he stopped and became serious.
His gaze shifted to Ragnarok. “A ravager from the sea. I have seen your people fight along the shores to the north and east of here. I learned your language from one your fellows stranded in my country. You are a long way from the ocean sailor of the north.” He stepped closer. “Tell me do you enjoy the killing? Or is it the dying? If I remember correctly your people seem to relish both.”
He didn’t wait for an answer as he turned his attention to Tam Nok. “I have not seen you’re like before. Nor do I know the tongue you spoke to me in. I assume since you travel with this large barbarian you know his tongue.” He reached out with a hand encrusted with dirt. Tam Nok didn’t flinch as he ran a finger along the sides of her eyes. “Most strange. Most strange. Do you see differently?” He laughed, an insane edge to the sound. “Oh, I think you do. I think you do!”
“My name is Tam Nok. I am from the kingdom of the Khmer.” She pointed at his staff. “The Naga on your-”
“The what?” Lailoken interrupted. “The what?”
“The seven-headed snake. We call it the Naga in our land. It is sacred.”
Lailoken looked at his staff as if seeing it for the first time. “A sacred snake with seven heads? People are so strange aren’t they?” He laughed. “I thought it pretty so I took it.” He shook his head. “It is so hard to remember everything.” He held the staff at arm’s length and looked at it as if seeing it for the first time. “Yes, it is sacred. That I remember.”
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