by Lark Brennan
“Come below.” He descended down the hatchway and headed for control central. He typed in his password and the electronics came alive, flashing colorful maps on the three wall monitors.
“Here are the coordinates,” she said and slapped a piece of paper on the work surface next to the keyboard.
Even before he input them, he was pretty sure he knew where they’d take him. Sure enough, the image on the center screen zoomed in on a scarlet patch of energy. The same spot in open water over the Anegada Ridge that his hand sensor had picked up last night. “And they started broadcasting again where?” he asked.
“A kilometer apart.” She recited the second set of coordinates.
His fingers danced across the keys and a target appeared on a yellow energy spot just east of Virgin Gorda. “Are you sure these are right?” he asked.
“Yep. I checked them myself.”
He used his finger on the monitor to drag the view and zoom out. “How fast do these guys swim?”
“Tops, twenty-five miles per hour. In a group like this, twenty is booking it.”
He swore and ran his hand over his head. “You picked up the signal forty-four miles from where you lost it.”
“So I noticed. And I did the math. They’d have to travel forty miles an hour to cover the distance.” She stared at the map. “What’s going on, Bodie?”
The scientific education which trained him to look for the simplest explanation for any event kicked in. “What about a strong current?” he asked. “Is it possible they could have gotten caught up and carried at a high rate of speed? That would also account for both groups experiencing the same phenomenon.”
She shrugged. “It’s possible. We looked at our data and existing charts and found nothing conclusive one way or the other. The team is leaning toward the current theory. I’m not.”
“Because of the lost signal?”
“Yes. That and the red orphic in the exact spot their transmitters quit working. I don’t believe in coincidences.”
He didn’t either, but he also didn’t have a reasonable explanation. “The orphic could have affected the signal,” he offered without conviction. “And we can’t rule out a strong current without investigation. I’ll sail out this morning and let you know what I find.”
She shook her head. “No, we’ll take Silverbelle. We can check out the yellow and red orphic areas and test the current, then track the dolphins.”
His gut instinct insisted he put as much water as possible between himself and this woman, but the faster they got to the red spot, the more likely they were to discover something useful. “Okay, we investigate the energy and the current then you can drop me off here and go check on your critters.”
Her eyes narrowed and her lips tightened. “Critters? Really, Bodie? Are you that dense or being intentionally insulting?”
“Neither, but I’m not flying around chasing a herd of dolphins when I could be analyzing data here.”
“Tell me, did you believe anything I told you about what happened last night?” she asked.
He studied her, not sure what exactly she was asking him. “Yeah…”
“The part where I explained I’m an animal telepath?”
Understanding dawned on him. “You’re going to debrief the dolphins?” he asked, unable to hide the incredulity in his voice.
“Forget it,” she snapped. “I don’t need your attitude. You sail away and do whatever it is you do, and I’ll take one of the crew to help me.”
“Wait a second,” he said. “You’re telling me you can ask the dolphins what happened and they’ll answer you?”
“Bingo, Dr. Flynn. These bottlenoses have surprisingly sophisticated reasoning skills and minds that accept telepathy as a form of communication. I expect to get a clear, detailed account of what happened to them.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m willing to suspend my skepticism and go with your plan.”
“How generous.”
“After my sensor picked up the orphic activity last night, I ran an analysis on it. You might be interested in what I learned.”
“What?”
“I’ll tell you on the way.”
She hesitated then turned for a long look at the map on the monitor. “Pack to be gone overnight. Bring a wet suit if you have one.”
He resisted the urge to argue with her. He’d negotiate his return later, after she gave him the intel he needed. “When do we leave?”
Her attention remained riveted on the monitor. “In forty-five minutes from the end of the cruise ship pier.” And still she made no move to leave. Finally she spoke. “What will happen to you when we get to the red orphic? Since you can feel it, will it hurt you?”
Her question startled him. “I haven’t a clue. I’ve never encountered it. Yellow gives me a headache and turns my stomach.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “We’ll circle in slowly, then, so I can veer off if you need me to.”
He had no idea what to say. “Thanks.”
“Better get a move on, Flynn. Daylight’s wasting.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
• • •
“I don’t understand why you’re taking him and not one of the team,” David said.
Lex shoved a large canvas duffle containing an inflatable boat into the rear section of Silverbelle. The seaplane bobbed off the end of the commercial dock next to the Ariel, waiting for Bodie to show. “He is one of the team.”
“Someone who knows dolphins.” His words were infused with impatience, the kind parents suffered with stubborn adolescents.
The tone grated on her. “I know dolphins. Better than anyone. He’s got the size and muscle to help me switch out the GPS transmitters so we can check them.”
David’s mouth thinned to a hard line. “A high priced assistant, don’t you think?”
“Nope. We’re not paying him.” From the land end of the pier a hundred yards away, she felt Bodie’s eyes on her back. Her pulse quickened. Don’t look. Pretend you don’t know he’s there.
David frowned. “What do you mean, we’re not paying him? Why not? What’s going on, Lex? I’m still head of the team which means I have some say in what goes on around here.”
None of his blah-blah-blah broke through her awareness of Bodie’s approach. “Don’t tell me that’s Flynn,” David said, staring over her shoulder. “He looks more like a hit man on holiday than a physicist.”
She turned around and smiled. “That’s him.”
David shifted his feet on the rough concrete. “He may be a friend of Mark’s, but I’d rather you take Mac.”
“Mark and Bodie aren’t friends. I’m pretty sure Bodie hates his guts.”
David grimaced and grumbled something about common sense and safety under his breath.
She ignored him and called out to Bodie. “Hey, man, haul it, will you?”
As expected, Bodie didn’t pick up his pace. When he reached them his hard-ass expression cracked into a crooked smile.
“Bodie Flynn,” he said extending his hand to David.
Holding her breath, she watched David shake Bodie’s hand and tentatively return his smile. “David Latham. Welcome to the team.” Awkward pause. “Lex says you know Mark Durand.”
“We’re acquainted.”
Great. They’re sizing each other up. “Enough chatter. Let’s get this show in the air,” she said.
“More orders.” Bodie swung the leather bag into the space behind the pilot’s seat. It landed with the dull thump of metal, heavy and solid.
“Anything in that bag explosive?” she asked.
“Only metaphorically.”
His sensing equipment. “Bullshit,” she whispered, loud enough for him to hear but not David. “You blow us up and I’ll let your ass drown.”
“Threat noted.”
Five minutes later, Silverbelle’s pontoons skimmed across the bay, gaining speed until the seaplane left the water in a steep climb. Lex banked sharply to the east. When she switched f
rom fuel to electrical power the noise level in the cockpit dropped to a whisper allowing her to replace her headphones with an earbud and attached microphone.
“Well, well. Impressive little plane you have here,” Bodie said.
“It’s a Durand Tech prototype. Aviation fuel isn’t readily available most places so I only use it for take-off and landing. Silverbelle flies on quiet, efficient electricity. The K-3 batteries are light, durable, and have solar and wind recharge options.”
“And when money’s no object, anything’s possible.”
“Only if you have the brainpower to make it happen. You’ve proved that, haven’t you?”
He made a grunting sound of dismissal. “Where’s Earl?”
“On the Ariel. Probably curled up on somebody’s bunk sleeping.”
“Lucky little dude.”
“Yeah, but you get a plane ride and an adventure.”
He shifted in his seat and studied her. “Latham wasn’t happy about me coming, was he?”
“Not my problem.”
“Is he your boyfriend?” Nothing in his voice betrayed more than casual interest.
“No.”
“Does he know that?”
Lex wasn’t sure of the answer. “Of course. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Nope, it’s not.” He reached behind her seat, unzipped his bag and rummaged around until he found what he wanted—a hand sensor about the size of an iPad. “When the red orphic concentration appeared this morning, I ran a comparison of the orphic activity on nearby islands between midnight and two in the morning to see if anything unusual showed up.”
“And?”
“Nothing.” The sensor booted up as he continued. “The concentration showed up on the one-forty-five scan. The area was solid dark blue at one-thirty.”
“So it scans every fifteen minutes, not continuously?”
He turned to peer at her over his Oakleys. “Do you have any idea how complicated that would be, not to mention the amount of memory it would take to record and store the information?”
“Apparently very and a lot,” she replied, glancing down at the sailboats gliding the calm turquoise strait then at the rocky Fallen Jerusalem Island ahead. “Guess we’re lucky to have the exact time from the GPS.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t tell us where or how the energy transmuted. Last night I started work on reprogramming the sensor on the Talos to scan every twenty seconds and send the data to Durand Tech for storage.”
“You can access that data with your ComDev, right?”
He shifted in his seat. “I didn’t get that far before I had to get some sleep.”
“So the answer is no?”
“Look princess,” he grumbled. “I sailed for two days without sleep to get here. Then you showed up this morning and coerced me into coming with you.”
“Persuaded you.”
He snorted. “Coerced. I wanted to sail the Talos.” His fingertips tapped and dragged on the screen which responded with shifting shapes and colors. Lex glanced at the device every couple of minutes, curious about what he was doing.
Finally he fitted his ComDev into a port on one end of the sensor. “That should work until I get back to the Talos.”
“What did you do?”
“I set this hand sensor to scan the Caribbean and transmit the data through the ComDev to secure storage at Durand Tech. The encrypt and transfer takes about six seconds so we can get scans at ten second intervals to start.”
Lex’s own ComDev chirped, and she grabbed it and hit the answer icon. “What’s up.”
“Where are you?” David asked.
She was too conscious of Bodie’s attention focused on her. “On course headed toward the coordinates where we lost the GPS signals to drop the dye and check the current.”
“We have a situation. You need to turn around and go to Jost Van Dyke.”
“How about I put you on speaker so we can both hear?” Without waiting for him to agree, she tapped the speaker icon and set the ComDev on the console. “Go ahead.”
“We had a call from some locals on Jost Van Dyke that the dolphin pods are causing trouble in Little Harbour. A dinghy was bumped and the passengers are pretty shaken up. When a local fisherman took his skiff to help them, the dolphins rammed it.”
She frowned. “That makes no sense. Dolphins don’t ram unless they’re attacked first, and then only sharks.”
“We located their GPS trackers. All three males were in Little Harbour when the attacks took place. You need to get over there before someone gets hurt.”
She glanced at Bodie who was shaking his head and pointing to the red orphic spot on his sensor. “The red spot first,” he mouthed.
“I’m going to drop the dye first,” she said. “We’re only ten minutes out.”
“That’s not important now. You need to get to Jost Van Dyke,” David said, his tone carrying the weight of command.
The temptation to point out he had no authority over her made her clench her teeth. As much as she wanted to help the dolphins, her gut told her their behavior was linked to the orphic energy ahead. “I can’t, David. We’ll be there as soon as we can.” She ended the call.
“We’re turning back?” Bodie asked.
“No.”
“Good.” He studied her. “Want to fill me in on the chain of command?”
She fixed her gaze on the open water ahead. “I’m head of the Foundation. David’s Captain of the Ariel and technically commands its crew including the research teams.” The structure sounded simple. She wished the dynamics were. “I function independently most of the time.”
“Your money, your rules?”
A protest rose to her lips and died. “Pretty much.”
His chuckle startled her.
“Poor Latham. He doesn’t have a chance, does he?”
“No.” On so many levels. And yet she felt disloyal admitting it to Bodie. “He’s a good captain and an excellent marine biologist. And a good friend. But he’s also ordinaire.”
“Ordinaire?”
“Non-psychic. Surely you’ve heard the term before.”
“No. Why would I?”
She glanced at him to see if he was kidding. “Because you’re psychic and…” She started to say a revenant and caught herself. “And apparently know my brother fairly well.”
“What makes you think I’m psychic?”
She peered at him over her glasses and again determined he was dead serious. “You sense orphic and delphic energy.” Then, testing bits of revenant myth she added, “And you see ghosts and spirits.”
“How do you know that?”
“A guess. You do, don’t you?”
Ignoring her question, he looked down at his sensor. “We’re about a mile away.”
Sensing his trepidation, she let the subject drop. “Are you feeling anything?”
“Not yet.”
She consciously reinforced the psychic shield that was second nature to her. If Bodie was affected, it was one thing. If the orphic disoriented her, they could crash and die. The thought sobered her and yet her need to know why the dolphins’ tracker quit transmitting outweighed her fear.
She glanced at Bodie. “What do you feel when you sense the energy?”
“A tingling in my gut that has both a smell and a taste. Delphic is neutral and pleasant, orphic can be delicious or noxious depending on its nature.”
“Are you sure you want to do this? I’d rather bank on the periphery and test your reaction before ramming it.”
Sweat beaded on his forehead. “Then you need to turn now.”
She banked Silverbelle to the north but the plane was sluggish to respond. Within seconds the air in the cabin throbbed, heavy and nauseating. Bodie grabbed his stomach, groaning in pain. She veered more sharply, barely able to fight the overwhelming sense of doom that compelled her to crash the plane into the water and end their misery. It was like the world’s worst case of seasickness capped with unbearable
dread.
She fought to fly the seaplane away from the toxic area. Beside her Bodie clutched the door handle. The blood had drained from his face and sweat poured down his forehead into his eyes, off his chin. With eyes clenched tight, he grimaced in pain.
“Hold on,” she urged. “We’ll be free soon.” Another half minute and the air cleared and the sense of doom drained away. She felt the pressure ease from her head and body and gulped in her first full breath.
“Jesus,” Bodie gasped. “That about took me out.”
“I don’t have your abilities and I still wanted to kill us both.”
“Would have been fine with me. Can you fly okay or do you need to put down and recover?”
“I think I’m okay now.”
A bead of sweat ran down the side of his face and he wiped it away with the shoulder of his shirt. “What did you feel?”
She described the physical and emotional sensations, leaving out the disturbing detail that the energy had breached her psychic shield. “What about you?”
“That wasn’t close to anything else I’ve experienced,” he said thoughtfully. “The malice of the energy almost seemed alive. It was like a scaled monster kicked and scratched in my gut, trying to rip me to shreds from the inside.”
Was the fiend real, was he hemorrhaging and dying right there beside her? “We need to get you to a hospital,” she said.
He shook his head. “The monster wasn’t physical.”
“Are you sure?”
“No. But I’m feeling better. From past experience I expected the aura of the energy to have a despairing effect and the nausea was bad, but the clawing of my innards was what surprised me.”
“I don’t like this,” she said.
“Thrills me.”
She ignored the sarcasm. After what she and Bodie had experienced, the thought of what the dolphins might have been through chilled her to the bone. “We need to get to Jost Van Dyke.”
“First let’s dump the dye and prove what we already know—no current carried those dolphins in record time.” He tapped the screen of his sensor. “I’ll calculate a direct route between where they disappeared and reappeared. Come around and head directly west so I can eject the dye when we cross that line.”