They had the gate bracketed, but given what had happened to the Wyoming, the Seawolf, Stokes wondered what good it did. He was still pondering this when a sharp chime sounded, then a voice came out of the speaker bolted above his door.
“Captain to command and control. Captain to command and control.”
Stokes was out of the door, through the connecting corridor and in the operations center in less than five seconds. “Report?” he called out as he went to the center of the high tech C&C, which was at the base of the sail.
“We’ve got activity on the edge of the gate,” his executive officer (XO) informed him.
“Helm back us off, two-thirds,” Stokes immediately ordered. “Weapons, prepare targeting information.” He turned to his XO. “What kind of activity?”
“Noise.”
Stokes was irritated at the vague answer. “What kind of noise?”
The XO turned to the chief sonar-man. “Tell him Chief.”
“Captain—” the petty officer held out an extra set of headphones. “You’d better listen yourself. I’ve never heard anything like it.”
Stokes put the headset on, cutting off the sound of activity in the command & control center. He heard a faint, high-pitched, echoing sound that went up and down in volume. After a couple of moments, he pulled back one of the cups. “No idea, chief?”
The petty officer shook his head. “It’s coming from the gate.”
“Almost sounds like whales,” Stokes said.
“It’s not whales.” The petty officer sounded convinced.
“Porpoises?”
The chief considered that. “Maybe, but I’ve never heard that many mixed together. And there’s something else in there. Some other source.”
“Forward it to the FLIP. They’ve got that dolphin lady there. Maybe she can make sense of it. Stand down from battle stations.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
***************
Reizer closed Davon’s lifeless eyes and placed his jacket over his head. She had been raised a Catholic, but had no idea what faith the young man had held. Her knees hurt from kneeling but she remained at his side for several minutes, saying the few prayers she could remember from her childhood. When she could think of nothing further, she got to her feet and finally considered her predicament.
She could discern no diminishing in the walls of fire, indeed, if anything, they might even be higher. Decades of walking the plain and looking at aerial imagery had imprinted every single line in her mind’s eye. She knew she was in the middle of an intricate maze with walls of death surrounding her.
Was there a way out without crossing a line? It was something she had never considered.
She considered it now.
***************
Another half dozen five hundred pound bombs dropped out of the Chernobyl gate, clattering down on those that had already been deposited. The thirteenth one was indeed unlucky as it came out nose down, detonator armed.
It hit and exploded, setting off an instantaneous reaction that detonated the other twelve bombs. Kolkov’s calculations had been for six bombs, not thirteen. The concrete containment wall buckled, bulged and then collapsed. The vast majority of the explosion was used up in that effort, thus the immediate effects of the blast were minimal to the other three reactors and the nearby town.
It was fear of the other effect of the blast, the escape of contaminated air billowing out of the destroyed shield, that had alarms blasting and every living soul scrambling to get out of the area.
**************
Dane’s reaction to Foreman’s brilliant first assault option was forestalled as a crewman stuck his head through the open hatchway with a startling announcement.
“There’s a ship coming out of the gate.”
The words had just registered with those gathered around the table when one of the computers let out a soft chime.
“Muonic activity,” Ahana said as she spun her chair about and checked the screen. “Here. And Chernobyl.”
Foreman’s SATPhone buzzed and he snatched it off his belt. He listened for a few seconds, and then hung up. “That was Kolkov. Tower Four has been breached. The bombs went off.”
“I thought you said—“ Dane began, but Foreman cut him off.
“More bombs came through just before the explosion. The other reactors are being shut down and the area evacuated.”
Dane was already to the hatch and through, the others following. He went to the railing. He didn’t need binoculars to see the ship, which was now clear of the gate and heading directly toward them. A vintage Clipper Ship, sails snapping in the light breeze, picking up speed. A ghost ship as nothing was moving on the deck. The destroyer Thorn, which was the FLIP’s escort was already moving to intercept.
“I don’t like this,” Dane said.
“Maybe someone escaped,” Foreman had binoculars to his eyes, scanning the empty decks.
Dane knew that the CIA man held some hope his brother who had disappeared inside the Devil’s Sea gate in 1945 might still be alive, somewhere inside the space-between.
“I recommend—“ Dane began, but his words were cut off as the Clipper Ship disappeared in a massive explosion that engulfed the Thorn, which had drawn up less than two hundred meters from it.
Dane reacted, grabbing Ahana and pulling her down to the deck as wood splinters streaked toward them and hit the FLIP with sharp cracks. He heard someone cry out in pain. He held tight onto the slight Japanese woman as the warm breeze generated by the blast swept over them.
The silence that followed the explosion was unsettling. Dane let go of Ahana and got to his feet. There was no sign of the Clipper ship. The Thorn was devastated, the side that had been toward the old ship gutted with several fires blazing.
“That was meant for us,” Dane said as he turned. “I think—” he stopped as he saw Ahana kneeling over Professor Nagoya, her hands trying to staunch the flow of blood around a foot long splinter of wood that protruded from his stomach. Dane immediately knelt next to her.
“Exit wound,” he said.
“What?” Ahana was in shock, her only focus trying futilely to stem the blood. Dane reached behind the old man and felt wetness—blood—then the tip of the splinter that had punched all the way through. From the amount of blood he felt pulsing through his fingers, he knew there was nothing that could be done.
Nagoya’s face was pale and he was trying to say something. Dane leaned close, but the old man was speaking in Japanese. “Listen,” he snapped, grabbing Ahana by the arm and forcing her head close to Nagoya’s lips.
“More—than—“ Ahana translated, then paused, her voice shaken—“time--place—” she waited for more, but Dane saw the spark of life leave Nagoya’s eyes and the body slumped back.
“What did he mean?” Dane asked.
Ahana was staring at her bloodied hands.
“What did he mean?” Dane repeated gently.
“I don’t know.”
Dane could tell she was too shaken to make sense of anything. He carefully guided her to her feet. Foreman was on his SATPhone, yelling into it. Dane could see that there were survivors on the Thorn, fighting the fire. He looked past the devastated ship at the gate.
Their attempt at action through the Chernobyl and Devil’s Sea gates had not only failed, but they had just received a response.
THE SPACE BETWEEN
The pencil was worn down to a nub, barely enough for Amelia Earhart to hold between two fingers. She was writing between the carefully scripted lines of her journal, using every possible white space. There was little free space left in the leather-bound book. She noted how much smaller the letters she used now were than the original entries she had made during her attempt to fly around the world in 1937. When now was, she had no idea. How much time had passed since she’d come to this strange location she also had no clue.
She had been flying on one of the last legs of her record flight when she’d encountered the Devil’s S
ea gate. A large fog had appeared in front of her Lockheed Electra, which she, and her navigator, George Noonan, had been unable to fly around. She’d made an emergency landing on the Pacific and then the fog had drifted over the plane. Noonan was killed by a strange sea creature, a kraken, while she had stayed on board the plane. A large black metal sphere had surfaced, encompassing the plane, with her in it. She’d been taken from the plane by a blue glow and when she’d awoken, she’d been here, a place she called, for lack of a better term, the ‘spacebetween’. She called it that because it appeared to be between the world she had known on the day she disappeared, 2 July 1937, and someplace else, where the Shadow came from.
The others she met here all told similar stories of a blue glow that had saved them. The small camp of which she was the leader by default, consisted of fifty-two individuals. None of them knew how long they had been in this place, and they came from a variety of times and places, including a dozen samurai warriors from 4th century Japan.
There were no mirrors in the space-between so Amelia Earhart didn’t know what she looked like now. She had never been vain about her looks, adopting almost a mannish manner, which had led to her being called Lady Lindbergh. Her hair was short and curly, while her body tall and lean. Among the many curious features of the space-between was the fact that her hair had not grown as far as she could tell in the time she had been here. Since there was only the steady glow from unseen light sources here and watches didn’t work, there was no telling exactly how long that was even in terms of days.
She glanced down at her latest entry, a summary of recent events. A man named Dane had appeared, followed shortly by a Roman legion, which had fought a brutal battle with the Valkyries. Dane had claimed to be from her future, many decades in her future. The legion had been destroyed, the men turned into stone by a weapon of the Valkyries, but not before one of Dane’s companions had shut one of the portals that ran through the space-between. Dane had promised to return, but some time had passed since he had disappeared.
Earhart and the rest of her group had escaped to go back to their miserable existence, barely eking a survival by raising food in a few patches of Earth soil they’d managed to scavenge near the portals. Occasionally they supplemented their diet with either Earth or Shadow-side creatures that wandered through an open portal.
She found it strange that these creatures could survive travel in a portal. Not long after she had arrived in the space-between, one of the band had tried going into one, trying to get back to Earth. The man had swum out to the dark cylinder while the rest of the band had lined the shoreline. He had disappeared into the blackness, only to reappear seconds later, screaming in agony, his skin red and blistered. He’d died within an hour and no one had attempted to enter a portal since.
Earhart could only assume that the creatures, much like she and the others here, had been caught in the large black sphere that transverse the portals and dumped out here in the space-between. The portals, cylinders of black, usually opened in the large circular lake in the center of the space-between, but sometimes they opened on the land. There were two forces on the Shadow side, of that Earhart had become convinced. A gold force which bode ill and was from the Shadow, and a blue force, that which had saved her. She had no idea who was behind the blue, although Dane had referred to a group called the Ones Before.
A commotion near the edge of the camp drew her attention from the journal. A pair of samurai came over a ridge made of the black, gritty sand that comprised the ground. Between them they carried a man.
Earhart hurried over as the samurai laid the man down. His clothes were singed and the skin burned and blistered, reminding her of the man who had attempted to go through the portal on his own. When she saw the man’s face she froze, her heart pounding.
“It can’t be.” She didn’t even realize she’d said the words out loud.
She knelt, cradling the man’s head in her hands. “I saw you die,” she whispered as George Noonan’s eyes flickered open and he smiled at her.
CHAPTER 4 480 BC
Xerxes’ anger knew no bounds as he surveyed the tattered remains of the bridge. He had stood in the storm for hours as the debris from the bridge was blown away and his men desperately tried to salvage as many boats as possible. His cloak and robes were thoroughly soaked, clinging to his body.
The rising sun produced steam from the rain-soaked ground and the bodies and clothing of the thousands of men at work. It also revealed the extent of the disaster. All that was left of the bridge were the main anchor pylons on the near shore.
This invasion was five years in the planning and making. Four years earlier Xerxes had dispatched a force ahead to the peninsula of Mount Athos in northern Greece off of which his father’s fleet had been destroyed in a storm. Rather than try the dangerous waters around the Mount, he had ordered his engineers to cut a canal through the isthmus that attached the Mount to the mainland. For four years conscripted laborers had dug and the canal was finally ready ahead of them so his fleet could shadow his ground movement.
But first there was the Hellesponte to be crossed by the mighty army while his fleet waited on the eastern side of the Aegean. Xerxes walked to the land’s edge, between the two large tree trunks that were set ten feet into the ground and had served as anchors for the failed effort. Behind him were the chief engineers, cowering in the arms of Immortals.
“Time is short,” was the whisper in his ear.
Xerxes looked at the woman who all in his court thought was a slave and perhaps a concubine as she slept inside his imperial tent when the army was on the march. She was indeed worthy of the Imperial bed, tall and willowy with striking black hair that had a single streak of gray in it from above her left eye flowing over her shoulder. However, Xerxes had never bedded her.
Her name, according to her, was Pandora. Xerxes had had one of his Greek scholars tell him the legend of Pandora and Prometheus and the box given to her by the gods. He thought it no coincidence that she bore the name of that character and he was always wary of her advice, taking some of it when it made sense to him, discarding others that he felt uneasy with.
Where her homeland was, Xerxes did not know. She had appeared at his court in Persopolis, unable to even speak Persian at first, except the three words that were her mantra at every meal. Her beauty—and a weapon she was carrying-- had spared her long enough for her to show one of the captains of the Immortals a box she carried. It did not contain the evils of the world. Instead there was a map, drawn on paper the likes of which the most educated scholars of his court had never seen. Shiny, resistant to tear, and waterproof, the material was enough to amaze. But even more astonishing was the detail of the land from Persia to the west, with all of Greece drawn in exquisite detail.
She’d also carried a spear, a most fascinating weapon. A staff with a blade on one end made of metal the likes of which had also never been seen by anyone in his court. The edge was so sharp it could slice through an armor breastplate as if it were water. The other end of the staff was also fascinating, metal carved into the shape of seven snakes’ heads. She’d called it a Naga Staff, but said little more about it.
The map had been useful in finding the correct spot to build this bridge, and in helping his engineers in the digging of the Mount Athos canal. It was also helpful in keeping Xerxes from having the strange woman executed until she learned enough Persian to tell him why she was here—to help him defeat the Greeks and gain revenge. Her motivation for that she did not reveal, nor anything else about herself. The Naga staff he’d had taken from her and placed in the guard of his Immortals.
“Why is time short?” Xerxes asked without turning his head, as he continued to stare at the dark waters of the Hellesponte.
“I have shown you many true things,” Pandora said. “You must trust me on this.”
“Trust you?”
“I have seen the futures.”
Xerxes was intrigued by her use of the plural. “Which futures?”<
br />
“The future if you move quickly and the future if you do not cross the Hellesponte in the next four days.”
“And?”
“The first leads to victory, the latter to defeat.”
Xerxes was a Zoroastrian, a belief begun two hundred years previously by the prophet Zoroaster. Unlike the beliefs of the Greeks and other countries, which both he and his father, Darius, had conquered, Zoroastrian was a monotheistic religion, worshipping Ahuramazda, the Lord Wisdom. The core of the faith was the battle between truth—asha—and lie. He felt that battle every time he consulted with Pandora, uncertain of her motivations, thus unclear about the veracity of what she said. It was true she had never misled him up to now, but as far as Xerxes was concerned that only meant she might be waiting for a moment when the stakes were immense. And many of those moments would be coming in the pending campaign.
“There can only be one future,” Xerxes said.
“Yes, my lord but your actions will determine which one it will be.”
His magi—wise men—had consulted the heavens before he began this campaign and told him that the timing was fortuitous. The previous year, on the 10th of April, there had been an eclipse, the sun being blocked by the moon. His magi had said the moon represented the Persians while the sun was the Greeks. Thus he would eclipse the enemy of his father and have his revenge.
Omens. Vague words and predictions. Faulty construction. Xerxes felt the anger rise once more in his chest. He raised his voice so those surrounding him could hear.
“Perhaps the Greek god of the water—” he turned to his adviser who quickly supplied the name—“Poseidon, has seen fit to try to stop us. I will show him what I think of him and his fellow Greek gods and how they hold no power over my kingdom and the followers of Ahuramazda.”
Xerxes signaled to his master-at-arms. “Throw a set of shackles in the water to bind this god. Then three hundred lashes and a branding to follow to show who rules this strait and the water that flows through it!”
There was no hesitation on the master-of-arms’ part. The shackles splashed into the water before the end of the second sentence. Then there was the crack of the whip and the snap as the leather tip hit the surface of the water. There was no laughter among the thousands assembled watching, no muttering in the ranks.
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