by Bob Mayer
“The Pentagon finally appreciates the threat,” Ariana said.
The B-1 was just fifty feet above the ice, two miles away, and the landing gear had not been lowered. It crept downward toward the surface, and when it was a half-mile away, the bottom of the engines touched down, sending up spume of ice and snow. The plane bounced, was airborne, then was down again.
The sound of metal tearing echoes across the frozen space as the engine intakes scooped into the ice. The plane slowed, then the right engine gave way, and the nose of the bomber turned. Fortunately, the left engine ripped off a scant second later, and the belly of the plane grounded.
The bomber slowed and finally came to a halt a half-mile from their location. Jordan already had the tractor in gear, and they headed toward the aircraft. By the time they arrived, the crew was already outside, standing on the ice looking at their stricken plane.
Ariana jumped out of the tractor, yelling orders. “We need the bombs off-loaded immediately! Put them on the sled.”
The pilot of the B-1 turned toward her. “We had orders to do this, but I don’t understand why. Why couldn’t we have just dropped the damn things wherever you wanted?”
Ariana pointed over the inert metal of the bomber. “Because that’s going to blow any minute now, and where we need to put those bombs you can’t get to from the air. Now move!”
*****
Falco ran behind Kaia, trusting that she could get them back where they came from. He could sense the cold presence of Valkyries all about, but Kaia was weaving a path through gullies that avoided the creatures.
*****
Amelia Earhart signaled for Dane, Ahana and Shashenka to halt as two samurai slowly crept up a ridge to peer ahead. When they turned back and gave her a sign, she indicated for Dane and his companions to follow.
They crept forward, heading toward the inner sea.
*****
“Muonic forces are peaking at Erebus.” Nagoya was looking at the feed being sent to him via satellite from the superkamiokande in Japan. “It’s almost at the level we registered when Iceland was destroyed.”
“The Shadow needed our nukes to destroy Iceland,” Foreman noted.
Nagoya shook his head. “The Shadow needed nuclear weapons to initiate the destruction. Here they’ll use the pent-up power already in Erebus.”
“Let’s hope Ariana is right,” Foreman said.
“Even if she stops Erebus, the Shadow can shift the power elsewhere,” Nagoya said.
“One thing at a time,” Foreman said. “How long before Erebus goes?”
“Any minute now.”
*****
Ariana staggered as the ground shook and cracks appeared in the ice, accompanied by sharp sounds like cannons going off.
“Here!” Jordan shoved a black box in her hand that had a small video screen and several toggles. They were parked on the Ross Ice Shelf, right next to the base of Mount Erebus. There was a square hole cut in the ice, extending downward over forty feet. The TROV was attached to a crane, two of the B-1 crewmembers working quickly to attach one of the two nuclear bombs they had flown down to the craft.
“This is the remote for TROV,” Jordan said. “You’ll get video feedback, and the controls are easy. The map of the tube and surrounding area is already in the hard drive. I hope you’re correct about placement.”
“Eight years of graduate school should have taught me something,” Ariana tried to joke, but Jordan didn’t crack a smile as he looked up at the slope of Erebus.
The second bomb rested on a small ice sled behind a powerful snowmobile Jordan had appropriated, which had been off-loaded from the tractor’s sled.
“Will you have enough time?” Ariana asked,
“We’ll know soon enough,” Jordan said as he sat on the snowmobile and revved the engine.
“Good luck!” Ariana yelled above the sound.
“You, too,” And then Jordan was off, racing up the slope of the mountain, the bomb right behind.
*****
General Cassius was disgusted with himself. The black wall had moved forward half the distance between its former position and the beginning of the swamp. His flank fortifications had been overrun by the wall, and his men were running out of room.
The barbarians could see what was happening and were waiting on the ridge. The swamp, which was to have been the Romans’ killing ground, would soon be their dying ground.
There were shouts of alarm, and Cassius turned his attention from the barbarians to the wall. Falco and Kaia had appeared and were running toward him.
“It’s been two days!” Cassius exclaimed as they came to a halt right in front of him.
“Two days?” Falco seemed dazed and shook his head as if to clear it. “Sir, we must go into the gate.”
“Liberalius is dead from going into the gate,” Cassius said.
“We aren’t,” Kaia said. “I can protect you and the men. Long enough to do what must be done.”
“What must be done?” Cassius demanded. “What is in there?”
“The enemy,” Falco said. “And allies who need time to help us.” He swept his arm, taking in the legion. “We must give them time against the Valkyries.”
Cassius stood silent for several seconds. Kaia began to say something, but Falco raised a hand, indicating for her to wait. Finally, the general nodded. “Centurion,” he said to Falco, “get the men into marching order.”
*****
“Damn it,” Dane cursed. His eyes confirmed what he had sensed. There was a line of white forms stretched across the shoreline and the black surface of the lake was empty. Loomis must have seen them coming and submerged by manually opening one of the tanks.
“What now?” Ahana asked. “We must get through.”
”I can provide a diversion,” Shashenka offered.
“One man?” Dane shook his head.
“We can go back and wait,” Earhart suggested.
“There’s no time,” Dane said. He could pick up Rachel’s projections. The dolphin was swimming around the power portal, sensing the growing level. The Shadow was making its push.
”I do not have the forces to fight that many Valkyries,” Earhart said. Her people were lined up in the gully behind them, their weapons in hand. “We would be overwhelmed quickly.”
“We have to—” Dane began but paused as the line of Valkyries began moving forward, approaching their position at a steady rate. “Time’s up,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE PRESENT AND THE PAST
The TROV slipped under the surface of the still, black water, descending into the icy depths after being lowered on the crane. Ariana stared at the small video screen on which was superimposed the model of Erebus’s interior. Her hands were already freezing as she alternated between directing the TROV and slipping them inside her jacket to warm them.
“How long until you have it on target?” Miles asked, stamping his feet, also trying to stave off the cold.
“I don’t know.”
The ground shook, and a large crevice opened less than fifty feet away.
“I’d suggest sooner rather than later,” Miles said, “if at all possible.”
Ariana rubbed the screen, clearing off a thin layer of snow. The TROV's camera showed nothing but dark water, with the submersible’s searchlight cutting through only about twenty feet. According to the computer projection, she was on course for the underwater base of Erebus where the main lava tube was.
*****
Jordan desperately turned the handlebars of the snowmobile as the sled threatened to pull him to one side, sending him tumbling down the slope. The front-runners made the correction and dug into the ice, straightening him out. Looking up, he could see the thick plume of smoke from the summit, now less than a half-mile away.
He gunned the engine.
*****
“Got a sword I can borrow?” Dane asked as the Valkyries closed on their position. His mind was being pounded on all sides
by input: Rachel, circling the power portal; the approaching cold wave of Valkyries; the almost overwhelming feeling of failure that pervaded it all.
“We should pull back,” Earhart said.
“And then?” Dane asked. “Get pinned in your caverns like animals being hunted down?”
“We were doing all right until you showed up,” she snapped.
“What the hell is all right?” Dane shot back. “You’re the one who said you were rats in the wall.”
“At least we were live rats,” Earhart said. She said something to one of the samurai, and he pulled a short sword out of its sheath and handed it to her. She passed it on to Dane. “I’m sorry. You’re right. At least we’ll make a stand here.”
Dane remembered how he had compared this place to Little Big Horn when he had first entered. The allusion was becoming more and more appropriate. He noted another of the samurai with the Viking, strapping an ax to the man’s arm. Ragnarok looked up at Dane and smiled, ready to go to Valhalla fighting.
*****
“Damn it,” Ariana muttered as the TROV missed the tunnel opening and banged into the side of the volcano.
“Easy,” Miles said. “Better to be exact than fast.”
“Better to be both,” Ariana said as she realigned the submersible and gunned it into the dark opening.
*****
When Jordan turned off the snowmobile, the trembling didn’t stop. He realized that the entire mountain was shaking. No one had ever been this near a volcano about to explode and survived to tell about it.
Dante III stood on the rim, ten feet away, like a large metal spider, frozen in place. The control mechanism was next to it, set on a small platform, waist high. Scrambling off the snowmobile, he ran over to the robot and looked down into the crater.
“Oh, my God,” he muttered. The lava bed had risen almost three hundred feet from the last time he’d been up here. It was bulging in the center, the twenty feet of hardened lava barely containing the forces below. He knew from what he was seeing that there was no time to hook the sled to Dante and walk the robot down. He keyed the FM radio connecting him with Ariana.
“Are you in place?”
*****
Ariana heard the voice through the small earplug, but she didn’t reply right away. She had hardly any feeling left in her hands as she made an adjustment on the joystick, maneuvering TROV around a bend in the old lava tube.
“Give me a minute,” she finally said.
“We don’t have a minute.”
Ariana abruptly halted the submersible as a red glow appeared on the screen directly ahead. “I’m there. Do you have Dante in place?” she asked.”
“Detonate,” Jordan said. “Now!
Ariana nodded at one of the Air Force men, who pressed a red button on a transmitter.
For a second, nothing happened; then the ground shook worse than it had yet, and Ariana fell to her knees. Looking out, she saw the ice shelf buckle along the side of the volcano.
Four miles away and eight hundred feet down, the nuclear bomb ripped into the main lava tube, splitting it wide open. Red-hot lava met freezing seawater and initially won the battle, pouring out into the water underneath the Ross Ice Shelf.
*****
Jordan was seated on the snowmobile, the front skids on the very edge of the crater’s rim. The ground trembled fiercely, and he knew Ariana had detonated her nuke along the main tube.
He twisted the throttle, and the snowmobile edged over, into the crater, pulling the sled with it. He screamed at the top of his lungs as he plummeted down the side.
The nose of the snowmobile hit a boulder and it, and Jordan, went airborne, the sled right with him. Looking down, he could see the lava plug. In that brief glimpse, he knew it was subsiding, although there was still a lot of pressure under it that needed to be dissipated.
Jordan slammed his fist against the transmitter taped to his other arm.
The nuke went off with a flash halfway down to the lava plug.
*****
Ariana was still on her knees when she heard the explosion. Looking up, she could see the top of the volcano blast outward, relieving the pressure there. She knew there was no way Jordan had gotten clear in time.
She staggered to her feet.
“Oh, no,” She murmured as the buckling of the ice continued like a slow, forty-foot-high wave toward her position.
Miles stepped between her and the approaching wall of ice and wrapped his arms around her. Then the ice below them rose up, and they fell between the blocks.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE PAST AND THE PRESENT
Ragnarok charged past, screaming like a berserker. The line of Valkyries were less than forty feet away, and he made the distance in a few seconds. He swung the ax tied to his arm, and it smashed into the face of the closest Valkyrie, shattering both eyes. As that one screamed, the ones closest veered toward the Viking warrior, who spun about, ax extended.
Dane stood. “Let’s go.”
Amelia Earhart was at his side, her sword ready. “It is time.”
They both began to run forward, the others behind, when they suddenly noticed a bright light to the left. They stopped abruptly as a roar from thousands of throats—human throats—rushed over them. Out of the fog, a line of armored men with red cloaks appeared, spears at the ready. They clashed into the Valkyries with a thunderous cacophony of metal on alien armor.
*****
“Erebus hasn’t erupted,” Nagoya announced. “Ground monitoring station and satellite tracking picked up two nuclear explosions. Ariana was successful.”
There was an explosion of applause in the FLIP control room. Foreman said nothing as the small plug in his ear had relayed reports from the National Security Agency satellite monitoring Antarctica. He also knew that Ariana was not responding to SATPhone hails.
The cheering was quickly silenced by Nagoya’s next announcement. “The Shadow is shifting power north.”
“How long do we have?” Foreman asked.
“We’ve gained an hour, maybe more. Maybe less.”
An hour, Foreman thought. A very expensive hour, but it could turn out to be very critical if Dane was successful. “Is there any word from the Crab?”
“No, sir.”
*****
“Go for the eyes with your pilum!” Falco’s yell echoed in the fog.
He was next to Kaia, who held the Thera skull in her hands above her head. The light it was projecting pierced the fog, pushing it back. It also seemed to have a negative effect on the Valkyries as the creatures gave way before the onslaught of the XXV Legion. As importantly, it had allowed the men of the XXV to enter the gate and then the portal without suffering the devastating mental effect that had crippled Liberalius. General Cassius was next to Falco, issuing orders and deploying his men.
*****
Dane and Earhart met Falco and Kaia in the midst of the battlefield as legionnaires pushed past them, rushing the heavily outnumbered Valkyries.
“The skull,” Dane said to Earhart, seeing what Kaia was carrying.
“What about it?”
“It’s what I need to stop the portal.” Dane was looking out over the smooth, black surface of the inner lake. He saw a dorsal fin rapidly approaching. Ahana and Felix Shashenka were behind him.
The Roman said something to Earhart and then she translated. “Without the skull, the legion will be unprotected.
“Without it,” Dane replied, “this is all worthless. Tell him the Shadow’s power we’re trying to stop is going into his time also.”
*****
Falco knew what the strange woman would translate from the man even before she spoke. He turned to Kaia. “None of the legion will return, either, will they?” He looked at the fight that was being waged. General Cassius was in the middle of the line, yelling orders. He felt the pull of the battle.
“No,” the priestess said, “they won’t.”
“And you?” he asked.
&n
bsp; “He is correct about the role the skull must play but wrong about who must accomplish the task,” Kaia said. “It is my destiny to be part of the last role it will play.” She ran a hand over the smooth crystal. “This is my ancestor.”
Falco understood what she meant and hefted the Naga staff. He was needed in the fight “Go with them. And then fulfill your destiny as I do mine.”
With that, he sprinted toward the front lines of the battle between man and creature.
*****
Rachel rose half out of the water, then flipped over on her back, making a splash. Earhart was listening to Kaia and put out a hand as Dane reached to take the skull from her.
“It is her destiny to finish this,” Earhart said. “You must go back to your time.”
“And you?” Dane asked.
“These are my people here,” Earhart said. “Some may survive this battle. I imagine almost everyone I know is dead in your time.”
Dane knew there was no more time for debate. “All right.”
Shashenka stepped forward. “Where are those the Valkyries torture?” he asked Earhart.
She pointed. “That way.”
Without another word, the Russian was sprinting over the coarse black ground.
Dane felt like it had all unraveled, everyone going in different directions, but a part of him felt comforted, as if far-flung pieces of a puzzle had suddenly come together to produce something sane in this mad place.