Atlantis Gate

CHAPTER 3

Since the dramatic events of 26 April, 1986, the Russians had monitored the remains of Reactor Four of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Although encased in a thick layer of concrete and stone, the interior of Reactor Four had remained clear since the disaster, protected by a shield generated by the gate that had opened inside it and caused the tragic accident that evening.

The core of the reactor, the rods that provided the power, had been tapped by the Shadow. Above the core, a black triangle fifteen feet on each side and ten feet in height had appeared and remained through all the years, drawing energy from the decaying rods. It was a gate, not as large as the others, but a gate nonetheless. A probe, carried by a dying volunteer, had been sent through the gate just two days ago and helped provide information about the make-up of the gates and the connections among the portals that existed inside the gates. It had been discovered that the gates were like foyers established on Earth by the Shadow, and inside the gates were the actual doorways — portals — that led to other places.

The rods were down to less than two percent strength and still the black triangle drew the remaining power. There was quite a bit of speculation among Russian scientists about what would happen when the rods were completely spent, but it was all conjecture, as most everything thought about the gates was.

It was just before midnight when the spetsnatz—Russian special forces- soldiers manning the monitoring station built into the concrete wall surrounding the core jumped to their feet as alarms sounded. Looking at the video screens that were linked to cameras inside the core, they saw a black, cylindrical object with four tail fins fall out of the black triangle onto the floor of the core container. There was no doubt what the object was — a bomb, but one of old design. As they watched, a half-dozen similar objects hit the floor and came to a rest.

The major in charge ordered a withdrawal before the last bomb appeared. The men unbolted the shield door leading to the outside world and dashed up the tunnel, the major taking the time to shut the door and slap one of the bolts in place, before dashing after his men.

They exited the encasement and paused, bodies tensed, waiting for the explosion. But nothing happened.

The strap from Reizer’s leather bag cut so deep into the skin on Davon’s upper thigh that she couldn’t see most of it. Her hand was on the handle of the umbrella, which was attached to a knot on the strap. She had cranked the handle around several times to tighten the tourniquet, but Davon had lost a lot of blood.

She looked up at the wall of flame in front of her, feeling the heat coming off it but not as much as she expected being this close. It was as if the fire was contained between two invisible planes of glass extending up ten feet. For the first time she noted that the ground was trembling slightly.

Reizer was startled as Davon grabbed her arm. She leaned over the young man and ran a comforting hand across his sweat-soaked, pale forehead. His lips moved as he tried to speak. She leaned closer.

“What is it?” he finally managed to get out. His eyes shifted over to the wall of fire to let her know what he was talking about.

“Power into the planet,” Reizer said. “Channeled somehow.”

“The Shadow?”

Reizer shrugged, and then realized he couldn’t see the movement. “I don’t know.”

“Lines of power,” Davon said. He smiled, his lips almost drained of color. “I knew I was right.”

“You need to rest,” Reizer said, although she knew that he had scant seconds, if even a minute of life left.

A surprised look passed over Davon’s face. “I’ve seen—” he paused and the next couple of words weren’t audible—“before. The other—” his head slumped back and the eyes went vacant.

“We have to destroy the portal that’s drawing the power through Nazca,” Foreman said. He and Dane were standing on the deck of the FLIP

Dane shook his head. “We don’t have a priestess to go into the gate and then the portal and stop it, like Kaia did in the Devil’s Sea. We don’t even know exactly what’s going on there,” he tapped the photo of the fiery images that he had carried out of the control center. “We’re not sure there’s a gate there and even if there was, we might have trouble finding the portal. We only managed to find the one here because of the Chernobyl probe.”

“We know more than we did,” Foreman said. “Nagoya has analyzed the data you picked up from the last trip into the gate,” Foreman nodded his head, indicating the dark wall two miles away. “He thinks there are numerous portals inside this space between our worlds. Some lead to other gates on our planet, but at least one has got to lead to the other side. To the Shadow’s world. Maybe we can stop this at the source.”

“And does he know which is which?” Dane asked.

“Not quite.”

“So what are we going to do?” Dane asked. “Try each one?”

“Nagoya has mapped the one that leads to Chernobyl by tracking the emissions from the probe the Russians sent through that Gate. He thinks we can map others doing the same thing. Send probes in, then see where the emissions come out in the space between.”

“That could take a while,” Dane said. “And we don’t have much time according to Ahana’s numbers.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Not yet.” Dane rubbed the stubble on his chin. “What about the Ones Before? Flaherty said they were on our side.”

“If we could contact them, it would help,” Foreman acknowledged. “But getting a hold of them seems as hard as fighting the Shadow.”

“They sent Flaherty into the Angkor Gate,” Dane noted.

Foreman’s SATPhone buzzed and he flipped it open. He listened for a half minute then shut it. “There’s another problem.”

“Great.”

Foreman turned for the control center, Dane following, waiting for the further bad news.

“A half-dozen World War II era five hundred pound bombs were sent out of the Chernobyl gate into the remains of the reactor core,” Foreman said over his shoulder.

“Did they explode?”

“No. The monitoring personnel evacuated, but when nothing happened, they went back in. The bombs are just sitting there.”

They entered and Ahana spoke before Foreman could. “The super-kamiokande in Japan tracked a burst of muonic activity at Chernobyl.”

Foreman told her and Nagoya about the bombs.

Dane had been considering this new development. “Do you think the Shadow could have backtracked the probe we sent through Chernobyl?”

“Possibly,” Foreman allowed.

“Chekov once wrote that a playwright shouldn’t introduce a gun in act one unless it was fired by act three,” Dane noted.

Foreman frowned at the arcane reference. “And?”

“The Shadow sent those bombs through for a reason,” Dane said. “They will be detonated.”

“We assume that also,” Foreman said. “The Russians are rigging a remote controlled robot to go in and remove the fuses.”

“I’ve been in contact with Professor Kolkov,” Nagoya said. “He has done some rough calculations and he believes that the Tower Four containment wall will hold even if all six bombs are detonated.”

Dane turned to the old Japanese scientist. “And what about the gates?”

“We have learned much,” Nagoya said. “We have a good idea now how the gates work on our planet. The gate that we see on the surface—” he nodded toward the bulkhead beyond which lay the Devil’s Sea gate- “is like a foothold established on our planet. It appears that all the gates lead to one place via portals inside of them. That place is where the two of you were,” he said, looking at Foreman, then Ahana. “For lack of a better term, we will use what you say Amelia Earhart called it- the space-between.

“Time here,” Nagoya pointed down, indicating Earth, “is linear and relatively fixed. But as you know, there are people in the space-between who are from many different time periods— Viking warriors, Romans legionnaires, people from varying times who appear to not have aged from the time they disappeared, such as you claim Ms. Amelia Earhart appeared.”

Dane bristled at the word choice but said nothing, knowing Nagoya meant no insult but was simply speaking as a scientist who had not seen the famed aviatrix with his own eyes.

“Inside the space-between,” Nagoya continued, “time appears to be a variable. Indeed, it must be, because the space-between is connected via portals to various times in our planet’s history as recent events have shown. Such as when the Roman legion came to your aid inside the space-between and gave you time to escape.”

Although he knew what Nagoya was saying was true, Dane found it confusing. As if sensing this, Ahana spoke. She was a young Japanese woman, a brilliant scientist who was Nagoya’s primary assistant. She had accompanied Dane through the Devil’s Sea gate and met Amelia Earhart — along with thirteenth century samurai warriors who had accompanied the aviatrix.

“I think the best way to envision this,” Ahana said, “is to view time like you view locations. You can travel five miles and you are in a different place. Via the portals, you can travel to a different time.”

“Can we go forward in time?” Dane asked.

Nagoya frowned. “I have not thought about that.”

“The crew of the Scorpion went forward from their time to our time,” Dane noted. He was trying to think this through the current situation. “Maybe we could go forward and see what we should do, then come back and do it?”

“That makes no sense,” Foreman said.

“None of this makes sense,” Dane said. “Or maybe we could go back in time and do something different?” He felt a spark of excitement. “Perhaps we could save Ariana, and others?”

Nagoya shook his head. “I think we are stuck with our present. If we go back and change something in our past, it would already be changed and we would not have our present. There are the traditional paradoxes associated with time travel. I do not think the space-between is time travel, but rather a timeless place.”

Dane found it all quite confusing and he had a feeling that Nagoya was overwhelmed also by the implications, but not willing to admit his lack of knowledge.

“Can we get to the Shadow’s world and stop the power drain from our planet?” Foreman asked, bringing the conversation back to the beginning.

“At least one of the portals inside the space-between must lead to the Shadow’s world,” Nagoya said. “That is the portal we must find if we are to be successful in taking the war to the other side. The power drain must also go through that portal.”

“Why do you say that?” Dane asked.

“I think the major purpose of what is going on is to get power, like the Shadow did from Chernobyl all those year,” Ahana said. “The destruction of our world is just a by-product of that.”

“And if we find it?” Dane asked. “What then?” When there was no immediate answer, he shifted in his seat so that he was facing Foreman. “I know you have a plan. Why not let me in on it beforehand this time?”

Foreman evaded a direct answer as was his wont. “We’re working on several things.”

“I assume you want me to go back in the Devil’s Sea gate with Rachel to search for this portal,” Dane didn’t make it a question. “I’m not going unless you tell me what options you’ve worked up and what their implementation priority is.”

Foreman steepled his fingers just below his chin. “I briefed the President via secure SATCOM link. The plan is simple. We find the Shadow portal. We send through a muonic transmitter. If we can lock in the portal to the other side — the Shadow’s world- then our first option for attack is the first one readily available. We send through cruise missiles armed with nuclear weapons. Twenty four missiles and warheads are being modified as we speak to survive the trip through the gate.”

Dane saw a big problem with that plan. “So you’re hoping the missiles will function once they go to the other side even though nothing else electromagnetic has worked inside a gate?”

“We are hoping that electromagnetic devices can be shut down while traversing the gate and portals and then function on the other side. The Shadow has to have electromagnetic capability on their world.”

“That could be a fatal assumption,” Dane said. “And how will you get the cruise missiles through the portal when their rockets won’t work in the gates?”

Foreman’s answer was succinct. “By hand.”

It was the answer Dane had known was coming.

The voice echoed in the small cabin, bouncing off the steel walls. “The mission of the United States Naval Academy is to develop midshipmen morally, mentally and physically and to imbue them with the highest ideals of duty, honor and loyalty in order to provide graduates who are dedicated to a career of naval service and have potential for future development in mind and character to assume the highest responsibilities of command, citizenship and government."

Captain Tom Stokes hit the mute button on the remote control and the TV went silent. The video was a recruiting pitch from the Naval Academy. On the screen, a panoramic view of the Naval Academy at Annapolis was displayed. Seeing the granite buildings, Stokes felt the familiar ache in the pit of his stomach. Part ingrained fear, part pride, part amazement even after all these years.

Stokes had been assigned as an instructor to the Academy up until six months ago when he’d received his new orders bringing him to this small room, the Captain’s quarters on board the Navy’s most modern submarine, the USS Connecticut. It wasn’t because of that recent assignment, though, that had caused him to pull the video out of his desk, but rather the report that lay open on his desk — the findings of a board that had been commissioned to examined the loss of the USS Seawolf, the Connecticut’s sister ship, and the first Seawolf class submarine commissioned.

The Seawolf class was the Navy’s most expensive and deadly submarine, the end result of over a billion dollars in research and development before the keel of the first boat was laid down. As an attack submarine, a Seawolf class ship had one primary mission: kill other submarines.

The Seawolf had indeed destroyed another submarine, but been destroyed in the process. It had been lost in the Bermuda Triangle gate stopping the captured USS Wyoming from launching the remainder of its missiles. The Wyoming’s first MIRV missile had destroyed Iceland and the Seawolf had barely stopped a second launching, which would have split the meeting of the tectonic plates in the center of the Atlantic and devastated America’s eastern seaboard and Europe’s western coast.

It appeared from the report, that the captain of the Seawolf had accomplished this mission in a most drastic way — by detonating one of his sub’s own nuclear weapons while it was less than three miles from the Wyoming, destroying both subs in the process.

The report noted that it had been a rather extreme command decision by the Seawolf’s captain, Joe McCallum, but surmised it had been his only choice given the lack of time and the strange effects of the gates on electro-magnetic systems, which had most likely negated using most of the Seawolf’s weapons in their normal mode against the Wyoming.

Costing over two billion dollars to build, a Seawolf attack submarine incorporated every advance in underwater warfare ever developed. It had Mark-48 torpedoes, along with Tomahawk cruise missiles. And it packed that punch in a surprisingly small size, bucking the recent trend of making submarines larger. At 353 feet long, the Seawolf was not much longer than the first US Navy sub given that name during World War II. However, its forty-foot beam was almost twice the diameter of those earlier vessels.

The rear two-thirds of the submarine were taken up with the nuclear power plant, engine room and environmental control systems. Stokes’ cabin and the rest of the living and working areas were in the forward third. Stokes commanded thirteen other officers and one hundred and twenty enlisted men.

At the present moment, the Connecticut was five miles due east of the Devil’s Sea gate, so the report on the Seawolf encounter near the Bermuda Triangle gate held great interest for Stokes. More importantly, on a personal note, though, was the fact that the commander of the Seawolf, Captain McCallum, had been a classmate of Stokes at the Academy. His eyes went back up to the view of the Academy. The camera was panning by the chapel and he could visualize McCallum’s wedding, two days after they had graduated twenty-one years ago. Stokes had been best man and McCallum had returned the favor on the next day.

Over the years that followed the two had crossed paths in their careers often, making their way up the ranks. McCallum getting command of the Seawolf had been considered a plum assignment and Stokes had to admit he’d been jealous until the board had chosen him to take command of the second Seawolf class to be commissioned.

And now McCallum — and his crew — were gone. Stokes looked down, noting that the fingers of his right hand were twisting the large gold ring on his left. The setting was black hematite, the exact same that McCallum had gotten. On one side was their class crest and year of graduation and on the other the Academy Crest, a shield, with a trident running behind it, two fasces on the side and the motto: Ex Scientia Tridens. Out of knowledge sea power. But the report on the death of his friend gave Stokes little knowledge and raised more questions than it answered.

What the Shadow was, how the gates were formed, most importantly why this strange force seemed bent on destroying the world, all were unknowns. Stokes orders were to monitor this side of the gate. He knew that the destroyer USS Thorn was with the FLIP on the south side. On the west side, a Los Angeles class attack submarine held post, while on the north, the destroyer USS Fife.

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 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 Sea 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.