Assault on Atlantis

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Dane looked down as the F-14 banked and began descending. He could see a lake below so long that the north and south ends extended over the horizon. Lake Baikal, where the Shadow was still drawing fresh water. As they got lower, Dane could see that the water level had dropped significantly, at least two hundred feet.

A small city was to the left, and the pilot headed them toward a runway at an airfield on the edge of it. As the wheels touched down. Dane could see a Land Rover racing down the runway. When the plane came to a halt. The pilot opened the canopy. The Land Rover pulled up and a door opened. An old man with a long white beard climbed out and waited as Dane climbed out of the plane.

“Mister Dane, welcome to Russia. I am Professor Kolkov.”

“Foreman sends his greetings,” Dane said as he shook the professor’s hand.

Kolkov laughed. “Foreman. Quite a character. We’ve chatted many times but never met face to face. We averted many a disaster for our countries working together.”

“Now we have another one,” Dane said.

“The latest reports from our people monitoring the radioactivity from Chernobyl are not encouraging,” Kolkov said. “Moscow will be covered within four days.”

“Is the equipment ready?” Dane asked.

Kolkov turned to the east, in the direction of the lake. “It Was brought from the salvage people who worked on the Kursk.” He paused. “You do know that sinking was not an accident.”

“A gate?”

Kolkov nodded. “Over the years we’ve lost five nuclear submarines to the Shadow. The reactor is taken, the ship sinks, and many brave sailors die.”

They got in the Land Rover and Kolkov began driving. Dane asked the question that had bothered him on the flight while reviewing Ahana’s data. “Why does the Shadow need our nuclear reactors? According to Nagoya, the Shadow can manipulate forces we can only theorize about.”

In response, Kolkov pointed toward the front of the Land Rover. “One day we will run out of petroleum. We will still have the technology, but without the fuel, it will be worthless. I suspect the Shadow exhausted its natural resources and is using its technology to come to our world to replenish them.”

“Who do you think the Ones Before are?” Dane asked.

Kolkov shrugged. “Perhaps rebels among the Shadow?”

“Why don’t they help us more directly? This vision-and-voices thing is not the best mode.”

“Perhaps they don’t have access to the same technology as the Shadow. There is much we don’t know.”

Too much. Dane thought. “Do you think the Shadow is alien or human? We did find humans inside the Valkyrie suits.”

Kolkov brought the Land Rover to a halt at a pier extending out over dry lakebed. The water was almost a quarter-mile away. He looked at Dane. “I hope it is not human. That would mean one time line is destroying many others just to keep itself going. But I also saw the Nazis invade my country many years ago, so I do not doubt the evil man is capable of.

“On the more positive side, if it is human, that means it is as vulnerable as we are so perhaps we can eventually defeat it. First, however,” he opened his door, “we must save ourselves.”

Amelia Earhart knelt at the edge of the Inner Sea. She saw Rachel’s dorsal fm cutting the black water not far off shore. Behind her was Asper, who had been the ship’s assistant surgeon onboard the Cyclops, a naval coal freighter that had disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle in 1918. Although he had been saved by the Ones Before, the rest of his crew had gone into the Valkyrie cave-an example of the strange apparent fickleness of their unseen benefactors. Earhart. Asper, and the samurai had conducted a raid once into the cave, killing as many of the hapless victims as possible, and Asper had recognized several of his crewmates. They had stopped doing such things because the scope of the task was overwhelming, with thousands of humans strapped to tables being worked on. Also, they were afraid if they were too active, the Valkyries would mount an expedition against their camp and wipe them out. Asper currently had the two Valkyrie suits in tow, a line tied to each, each suit bobbing behind in the air like an oversize white balloon.

Earhart closed her eyes as Rachel came to a halt, lifting her gray body a third of the way out of the water. Earhart felt the connection with the dolphin, a soothing presence flowing into her mind.

“Taki is gone,” she whispered.

“He knew he had a duty,” Asper said.

“Duty.” Earhart slowly got to her feet.

“When are they coming?” Asper was looking out over the Inner Sea at the dozen portals that were visible.

“Soon. Very soon.”

There were dozens of boats grounded on the dry lakebed. A zodiac had picked up Dane and Kolkov from a hastily rigged wooden dock and brought them to a large fishing boat that held a submersible steady with one of its booms. They transferred directly from the zodiac to the submersible.

A man in a wet suit and sporting a thick gray beard was seated on top of the submersible, directly behind the hatch. He had a small cup in his hand, and while Dane climbed onboard, he tossed it into the water muttering something in Russian.

“This is Captain Gregor Kalansky,” Kolkov said.

Kalansky grunted an acknowledgment.

Kolkov indicated for Dane to precede him into the craft. He slapped the metal hatch as Dane slid by him. “Mir I, just like the space station. Not very imaginative. It is the same submersible that went down to the Titanic for the filming of that movie by the same name.”

Kalansky came in next, pushing past Dane and taking his place at the controls and ignoring his two passengers.

“How deep is the gate?” Dane asked as Kolkov pulled down the hatch with a resounding thud.

“At the very bottom,” Kolkov said. He nudged Dane to · take one of the small jump seats directly behind the pilot.

Kolkov handed Dane a piece of paper. “A map of the lake bottom. Baikal is the deepest lake in the world. The oldest, too. It holds-held-one fifth of the world’s fresh water. More than all your Great Lakes in America combined.” He pointed back and forth. “Seven hundred kilometers long.” Then he pointed down. ‘’Three tectonic plates join right below us. Plates that are spreading away from each other and have been doing so for about thirty millions years. That is why the fault below us is so deep.”

“How deep is the fissure?” Dane asked.

“Forty kilometers. It’s the deepest depression on the face of the planet.”

“We’re going down forty kilometers?” Dane had never heard of a submersible capable of going that deep.

“No,” Kolkov said. “The water only goes down a kilometer and a half. The rest of it has filled with sediment over the years. There are more than three hundred rivers and streams feeding the lake.” He indicated the imagery. “The gate is just above the sediment layer-after all, they want water, not dirt.”

The submersible rocked as the captain released it from the crane that had been holding it. The engines whined as they moved out into the lake.

“This gate has been active a long time,” Kolkov said. “We think the Shadow has been draining it for a long time, although not at the rate we see now. Just enough to keep the water level steady. Years ago scientists knew there was something strange here because although there are more than three hundred fillers to Baikal, there is only one visible outlet, the Angara River.”

Dane was looking at the muonic imagery. The circle indicating the gate was large, very large, but he had no idea of the scale. “How big is this portal?”

“Just under a kilometer and a half in width.”

Dane wondered if they could bring the sphere back through this gate-it was large enough. He knew his plan, as outlined to Foreman, was weak:, but he had to trust that if he had been “given” one piece of it, others had parts also, and everyone was working to make it happen. His experiences so far in fighting the Shadow had brought him many strange allies, from a Roman gladiator, to a Viking warrior, to a Greek Oracle.

“Another reason I think this gate has been open a long time,” Kolkov continued, “is that there are life forms here that have never been found anywhere.”

“Kraken?” Dane asked, remembering the strange squid like creatures with jaws at the end of their tentacles.

“There are legends of such.” Kolkov said. “although no one has seen any recently. The people who live around the lake, the Buryat, believe that gods dwell in the lake. They have ones they call the Doshkin-novon who steal ships and men during times of storm and fog.”

Kalansky spoke for the first time. “I made a toast to the water gods. I asked some of the locals, and they said it is what they do before venturing out onto the lake. Very good vodka.”

Dane didn’t think the Shadow cared much about the quality of vodka tossed its way. “How long until we’re at the gate?”

“Forty minutes,” Kalansky said. “We pass the point of no return in twenty minutes.”

“’Point of no return’?” Dane repeated.

“Where the flow of water into this hole will be stronger than my engines,” Kalansky said. “Once we reach that, we’re going in no matter what we do. So you have-” he glanced at a chronometer-“slightly over nineteen minutes to make sure you want to do this.”

“We’re going in,” Dane said.

“That is what I was afraid of,” Kalansky said. “You really do not need me. The current will be piloting this ship soon.” “You don’t want to go?” Dane asked.

“Oh, I’m going,” Kalansky said. “I have heard there is a place through here where there are many lost ships. Old ships. Ones of legend. I would very much like to see that.”

Dane remembered the graveyards he’d seen-one through the Bermuda Triangle gate and one through the Devil’s Sea gate-the former holding many craft lost in the Atlantic, the latter those lost in the Pacific. It was an eerie sight, seeing hundreds of craft ranging from ancient rafts to modem jet fighters drawn up on the circular shoreline surrounding the Inner Sea. Many of the craft had been scavenged, parts and material taken by the Shadow. All the people had most definitely been taken.

“1 don’t know if we’ll see one of those places,” he told Kalansky.

“But you do not know for sure where we will end up, according to the professor,” Kalansky pointed out.

“That’s true.”

“Then we shall see what we shall see,” Kalansky said, expressing the Russian sense of fatalism that had guided them through czars, Stalin, and communism.

“I have a question for you:’ Kolkov said to Dane.

“Yes?”

Kolkov tapped the side of his head. “You have the sight? You hear the words of the Ones Before?”

Dane nodded.

“And you’ve met others like you?”

“Yes. Some here, some when I pass through the portals.”

“What do you think: it is? Why do you think you, and only a few others, can do this?”

“Fifteen minutes,” Kalansky interjected.

When Dane had been recruited by Foreman to go into Cambodia to back into the Angkor Gate, he had been accompanied by a woman named Sin Fen who had explained as much as she could about the voices and visions. Ever since he was able to remember, he’d been different from those around him. He’d always be able to sense things others weren’t aware of. At first it had surprised him that he was different, then he’d learned to hide it.

“There was a woman who worked for Foreman,” Dane finally said. “Her name was Sin Fen. She was the first person I met who was like me. Foreman recruited her out of Cambodia. She was the descendant of the priestesses of Kol Ker.”

“Twelve minutes,” Kalansky announced, but both Dane and Kolkov ignored him.

“I could speak to her with my mind. She told me what she knew of our ability. She said it was a genetic aberration.” Dane shook his head as he remembered. “No, not an aberration, but a throwback to early man. Do you know of the bicameral mind, that our brain is separated into two hemispheres?”

Kolkov nodded.

Dane held up his left hand. ‘’This is my dominant hand, which means I’m right-brain dominant, as all our nerves switch sides just before — the brain stem. They say the right side of the brain is the creative part while the left is the logical. The majority of the population is left-side dominant. Only three percent of the population is right dominant.

“But Sin Fen said-” Dane paused as the submersible rocked.

“We’re close to the current,” Kalansky announced. He had his hands on the controls. “I’m just trying to keep us steady.”

“Sin Fen said,” Dane continued, “that she and 1 weren’t right dominant, but both-side dominant. Both hemispheres of our brains worked together much more efficiently than most people’s. And she said that was the way the minds of man’s ancestors worked.”

Kolkov frowned, not following. He was a physicist, definitely left-brain dominant, and this was outside his field. “Our ancestors? What do you mean?”

“When did we part ways from the other animals?” Dane asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Most people say it’s our ability to think, but that’s an abstract. As a scientist you study what you can measure, what you can see. The manifest examples of thinking are present in many creatures-the ability to learn, to conceptualize. Dogs can learn,” Dane said, thinking of Chelsea and the rescue missions he’d been on with her.

“But can they conceptualize?” Kolkov argued.

“When hunting in packs, lions can conceptualize what the prey will do. Some might say that’s a genetic trait, but each hunting situation is somewhat different, so there is some degree of conceptualizing going on. It’s an arbitrary line so we don’t know where to draw it.”

“Language then? The ability to communicate? That is what makes us different, is it not?”

Dane thought of Rachel. “Dolphins can communicate. Monkeys can respond to signals. Those are forms of communicating. What no other species can apparently do, though, is communicate as extensively as we can with a verbal language. Many scientists believe that is when we parted ways with the rest of the species on this planet, when we began to act as individuals, rather than as part of a group. And that was not necessarily a good thing,” Dane added.

“Why?”

“We’re the only species that wars amongst itself at the level we do. We’ve lost a lot of our intra-species empathy. In the beginning, humans didn’t have a verbal language. Sin Fen thought that early man communicated telepathically. Not-” Dane held up his hand to keep Kolkov from interrupting-”in the way that we could read each other’s thoughts, but rather we could sense each other’s emotions. If one member of the tribe saw a lion, the fear that person felt was transmitted to the others in the tribe.

“This made for effective tribal interaction but retarded overall progress because the tribe had to stay together. Developing a verbal language allowed man to explore more, to act as individuals and have more initiative. This change occurred inside our brains and was a major trade-off.

“We have two hemispheres that, to a large extent, are redundant. There are people who have had an entire hemisphere removed and can still function relatively normally in the world. But there’s one part of the brain that is similar but not redundant. We have speech centers on both sides, yet in the vast majority of people, it is only active in the left hemisphere.”

“What does their right speech center do?” Kolkov asked. The ride was getting bumpier, and Kalansky was muttering to himself in Russian.

“It’s there, but it doesn’t seem to do anything in most people.”:Except you,” Kolkov said.

Dane nodded. “Mine is active. Sin Fen said that is where our primal telepathic ability, or more appropriately, you might call it our empathetic ability, resides. There are three parts in the brain that produce speech: the supplementary motor area, which is the least important; Broca’s area, in the rear of the frontal lobe; and Wernicke’s area, in the posterior part of the temporal lobe, which if you remove it, produces a permanent loss of meaningful speech.

“All three work in the left hemisphere to produce speech, but they are also present on the opposite side, but apparently nonfunctioning in most people. Initially, man’s brain was more connected between the two sides and the speech centers worked in harmony so all humans could ‘talk’ to each other in a telepathic way. In fact, the strange thing is that early man might have been able to ‘read’ each other’s minds, except they didn’t have a language to read.”

Seeing Kolkov’s frown, Dane tried to explain. “Do you think in words, or do you think in pictures?”

“I’ve never really considered it,” Kolkov said. “I suppose in words.”

Dane nodded. “Most people do, although some think in images. But if you had no words. No language. You would have to think in pictures. Also, what do you think is stronger-thoughts or emotions?”

“Are they necessarily different” Kolkov asked.

Dane found it strange to be having this conversation as they were being sucked into a portal that would take them from the planet they knew. Despite their fronts, Dane could sense both men’s fear. He was the only one of the three who had been into a portal before. He’d been to the Space Between and beyond. He knew that Kolkov wanted the discussion to keep going as” much to keep his mind off where they were going as to learn.

“Maybe not so different,” Dane admitted, “but isn’t emotion more powerful? Doesn’t all art revolve around emotion rather than intellect? Sometimes I think artists are trying to bring us back to our roots. The development of a verbal language allowed us to advance as a species, but when we lost our telepathic abilities we also lost something important.

“Sin Fen believed that people like her and me have come full circle. We have both-the verbal language and the telepathic ability. I could speak to her and hear her without saying a word.” Dane tapped his head. “My speech centers are equally developed, functional, and more developed than a normal person’s. Sin Fen had MRIs done of her brain and they verified this.

“Physiological psychologists have” long theorized that Wernicke’s area on the nonspeech side of the brain-the right side-is the center for man’s imagination. It is also where I get my visions from and where I hear what Sin Fen called the voices of the gods, which I think is some sort of transmission by the Ones Before. Psychologists have long theorized there is indeed a God center in the brain.”

“Five minutes until we cannot go back,” Kalansky said.

“In ancient days, Greeks and Romans called people like me Oracles. They were the seers of their tribes.”

“And what do you see for us?” Kolkov asked as the” submersible rocked in the strong current. “If the Shadow is draining this water because it needs it, won’t we go through this portal directly to the Shadow’s world?”

Dane shook his head. “I don’t think any portals to our world lead directly to the Shadow’s world. The Space Between is a buffer between parallel worlds. There are portals that go to other places on the same world, but not to other worlds.” At least, Dane thought to himself. That’s my best guess based on my experiences.

‘’There is something ahead,” Kalansky said.

The ride was getting rougher as the submersible was being tossed about in the torrent of water being sucked into the portal.

“We cannot go back now,” Kalansky announced.

Dane leaned forward and looked at the radar display. It indicated what appeared to be a solid wall directly ahead. “That’s the portal. Radar can’t penetrate it.”

“Are you sure we can?” Kalansky asked.

“Yes.”

“And then’?” Kalansky pressed.

“We should be in the Inner Sea of the Space Between,” Dane said.

“And then?” Kalansky looked over his shoulder. “If you have a plan it might be good to share it with me, as we will reach this portal in less than two minutes.”

“We land on the shore and link up with Amelia Earhart.” Dane said.

“And where is all this water going?” Kalansky asked.

‘’Most likely to another portal and then on to the Shadow’s world.”

Kalansky’s hands were fighting the controls, trying to keep the craft relatively stable. “If this volume goes from one place to another in this Inner Sea, the current in this Inner Sea will be tremendous. How do you suggest we get out of the current to the shore?”

Dane hadn’t thought of that. He had simply known they had to go through a portal and the Devil’s Sea one was too dangerous.

Kalansky looked over his shoulder. “You don’t have a plan, do you?”

“Not yet.”

“‘Not yet’? Kalansky turned his attention back to the Controls. “You’ve got one minute before we’re into this thing to come up with a plan.”

Dane leaned back in the crash seat and closed his eyes. He felt the dread that close proximity to a portal always produced. But beyond that there was nothing. No voice. No vision, just darkness and-he was slammed against the shoulder straps and everything inside the submersible went dark.

He heard Kalansky yelling something in Russian. Then Dane’s head slammed back against the seat as the front of the submersible rapidly dipped down. Within seconds it was upside down.

“English,” Kolkov yelled at the pilot, who was still speaking rapidly in his native tongue.

A dull red glow lit the interior as a battery-powered emergency light went on. “We’ve lost main power,” Kalansky said, his hands flying over the controls, flipping switches. “I’ve got no thrust, no steering, and if you haven’t noticed, we are inverted.”

“Get us to the surface,” Dane said. He closed his eyes once more, reaching outward with his mind.

“Surface of what?” Kalansky yelled back. “1 don’t even know where we are.”

Dane pointed down, which was actually up. “That way. Drop ballast.”

“If I drop ballast-” Kalansky began, but Dane cut him off.

“Do it now. We’re still moving. We’re in the Inner Sea being drawn to the Shadow portal.”

Cursing in Russian, Kalansky hit a lever. There was a ding sound and the submersible rotated halfway, so that they were now hanging on their left sides.

“Some of the ballast won’t empty,” Kalansky said as he hit another lever. “It wasn’t designed to work upside down.”

Dane looked to the portal to his right. There was the faintest sign of light. “We’re not too far from the surface.”

“Got it,” Kalansky yelled as there was another grinding sound and the submersible rotated once more, this time to the upright position. ‘’We should be going up.”

Dane unbuckled from the seat and moved to the ladder, clambering up. He began undoing the hatch. He flung it open, letting in a rush of foul black water-the Inner Sea. It slid over his exposed skin with a greasy feeling. He pushed up through it onto the top of the submersible. The first thing he noted was that they were moving-quickly-away from a massive portal behind them. Turning, Dane could see another portal about a quarter-mile ahead, equally large. The water from Baikal was forming a mile-wide stream in the middle of the Inner Sea, pouring from one to the other and taking the submersible with it. And hovering directly above the stream, about a hundred yards away, were two Valkyries.

“Come on,” Dane yelled down into the submersible.

In the time it took Kolkov to join him, the distance to the Valkyries had been cut in half.

“Kalansky,” Dane called. He looked down and saw the Russian pilot looking up at him.

“I cannot leave my ship,” Kalansky shouted.

“How will we get back?” Kolkov argued.

Dane had no time to argue with either of them. The Valkyies were moving apart, stretching something between them a rope. Dane dove down into the submersible, one hand on the ladder, the other gripping the collar of Kalansky’s wetsuit. He literally dragged the old man up the ladder.

“Grab the rope,” Dane yelled at Kolkov.

The Russian scientist looked doubtful, but there was no ne to question the order. Dane reached up with his free hand and grabbed hold of the rope. He was tom from the top of the submersible as it was pulled by underneath him. His other arm jerked hard as Kalansky dangled from it. The submersible continued its inexorable movement toward the portal.

The two Valkyries began moving, heading toward shore, when Dane’s arm was jerked sideways. He looked down to see a red tentacle wrapped around Kalansky, holding the Russian even with Dane’s own altitude. The tip of the tentacle reared back, and opened, revealing razor-sharp teeth, then punched into the Russian’s back, exploding out of his chest in a gush of viscera and blood.

Still Dane didn’t let go. The strain on his arms, particularly his hands, was unbearable. One of the Valkyries circled, coming close, and swept a free hand down, claws extended, slicing through Kalansky’s forearm, severing the hand Dane held from his body.

Dane swung back to the vertical as the tentacle disappeared under the water with Kalansky in tow. The Valkyries gained altitude as several more tentacles popped out of the water, mouths agape, searching for targets. Dane felt one brush the bottom of his boot.

As the Valkyries reached the shore, they descended until Dane’s feet touched the ground. He stumbled and then fell to his knees. Kolkov seemed to be in a state of shock. The front halves of the two suits split open and Earhart and Asper stepped out.

“You can let go of that,” Earhart said to Dane, indicating the severed hand, which he still had a firm grip on.

“Damn it.” Dane got to his feet, letting Kalansky’s hand fall to the ground. He looked back at the Inner Sea, half expecting to see the arms of a kraken reaching toward them, but the surface was flat black, belying the danger underneath.

“I’m sorry;’ Earhart said. “ We haven’t seen a kraken in the Inner Sea in a while.”

Dane blinked, reorienting himself from the loss of the Russian pilot. He briefly wondered if the man had family, then forced himself to face the reality of how many had already died in this war and how many were going to die if he didn’t succeed. “1 think the Shadow is guarding the portals more vigilantly. Rachel indicated there was an ambush at the Devil’s Sea portal.”

“I know,” Earhart said. “She was here not long ago. The kraken must have just come through, because I picked up nothing from her about it.”

“This is Professor Kolkov,” Dane said, indicating the Russian. “Professor, Amelia Earhart.”

Kolkov was trying to get over the shock of Kalansky’s brutal death and taking in the vastness of the Space Between, and it was with great difficulty that he turned to Earhart and took her offered hand. “This is unbelievable. I read the reports from Mister Dane, but seeing it is so different.”

Earhart glanced at the Inner Sea, then nodded toward the wall in the distance. “I say we put some space between us and the water.”

Asper used the rope to take both suits in tow and they moved out, heading toward the small encampment of those stranded in the Space Between. As they crossed a low, black dune, Dane paused and looked back. He couldn’t see the Shadow sphere that had crashed here. But portals blocked much of the view of the Inner Sea. The black columns pulsed with power. He felt a moment of despair-was the vision he had a true one? And even if it was, could he accomplish it?

And given that the only active portals in his time line were Baikal and the Devil’s Sea, where did all these other portals go to? And how many worlds were suffering under the assault of the Shadow?