The Prometheus Objective

Prologue

The man stumbled out of the doorway-cave, gasping for breath. Doubled over, he scrambled across the ice, slipped, fell, righted himself and found his feet. A trail of crimson on the glacier behind him, he coughed up more blood, spraying his sweater and the fresh snow.

His eyes were filmed over like they’d been blind to the world for months, as if he’d been imprisoned deep underground. The feeble sun that straddled the horizon and would do so for another several months welcomed him with something less than enthusiasm.

He followed it, staring at its dim radiance without any pain, without wincing, without even sensing the motion below.

— The men in white parkas coming up toward him on motorized sleds. He also did not see the distant ice-crested shore, or the aircraft carrier, the six helicopters, the two seaplanes in the skies, or the fleet of thirteen support vessels, some on fire closer in the harbor.

Nor did he see the two Nazi submarines that had surfaced at the bay.

He didn’t hear the whistling of bombs, the cacophony of explosions: missiles pummeling the shore, returning fire raining down on the boats and exploding into the ice shelf. Grenades and bullets tore up flesh, bone, metal and glacier alike.

He likewise never saw the force of several thousand men as they took to the ice and swept across the battlefield, meeting and tearing through the resistance, closing out the hard-fought assault. Smoke rose from scorched vehicles and burning bodies.

Moments later, ice-riggers and sleds roared up the incline, converging on the blind man as he staggered to his feet and continued stumbling toward the sun.

A man on the prow of the first sled motioned with his arm to cut the engines and slow. He wore a gray parka, a navy hat, red scarf and tinted goggles. The tag on his jacket, above the emblems, read: Admiral R. E. Byrd.

He leapt off before the vehicle, stopped, and quickly rushed to the blind man.

“Lt. Avery Wilson!” He grabbed the man’s shoulders, turned his face to meet him, and searched the empty, incoherent eyes for a reaction. “We feared you lost!”

Not seeing any flicker of recognition, he turned to the other men. “Six months! Since his mission.”

He turned back to the man. “The others? Did anyone survive?”

Without a response, Byrd gazed up past the man to the misty, windswept plateau, where he could just make out the hint of an entrance, and an alluring, shadowy interior.

“You succeeded?”

The man shivered. His cracked lips, dry and chipped like weathered old paint, parted, and he cocked his head.

“Admiral…” The voice sounded hollow, like it came from a weak radio signal across the world, delivered with a man’s dying breaths. “You will close the portal, restrict this land to all but a select force to guard against intruders. And it will remain so… for seventy years.”

Byrd stepped back, removing his goggles. He stared wide-eyed at Wilson. “Are you asking me or… seeing this?”

The blind, opaque lenses stared back at him, and crimson spittle bubbled from his lips. “They will come for its fruit.”

“Who will?”

“The ones who know. The unforgetting. And then… I could not see more.” He shuddered again, coughing blood onto Admiral Byrd’s coat, and collapsing into his arms. “But every outcome… ends in… annihilation.”

Byrd lowered the man to the ice, turned him over and crossed his arms over his still chest. He looked out over his men, then back down to the battlefield where the last remnants of the Nazi force ended its reign.

What did they find? He wondered. And had they solved the riddle at the doorway above?

Wilson had infiltrated the Nazi base here, following reports of U-Boats that had left Germany with top commanders, scientists and personnel — along with some who were rumored to have psychic talents. They had come in search of the mystical realm called Thule. Whether or not Hitler had any valid basis for the belief in an ancient, hidden society here (or the remnants of one), the Nazis certainly hoped to acquire secret technology or lost wisdom from an ancient civilization, something that could turn the tide of war back in their favor. Wilson’s team consisted of specialists in not just warfare, but in history, mythology and archaeology; cryptologists, math and physics experts; others with knowledge of subjects too esoteric and occult for Byrd to even attempt to grasp.

He gazed up at the sloping mountain that was anything but a natural formation of ice and rock. Felt his attention drawn higher, past the beckoning door above.

“Care for this man,” Byrd ordered, then donned his goggles, and with the ringing of explosions and screams of the dying still in his ears, he ascended…

…and he entered the doorway.

And the winds howled. and the sky clouded, and the hours passed. The soldiers mopped up their operation, removed their dead and cared for their wounded, ferrying and flying their ranks back to the carrier.

The hours passed.

And passed.

And then Byrd returned, stepping out into the sun. Dropping to his knees and digging his bare fingers into the snow and ice, he gathered handfuls to rub into his eyes and clear sights he would never again speak of to anyone except once — for the coming debrief at the highest levels.

Behind him, a grinding sound as the door slid down, then slammed into its base. Faint, chiseled lines revealed three tiles depicting strange astronomical symbols.

Byrd rose, dusted himself off, and lumbered down the mountainside to join his team. And on the seaplane back to the carrier, he gazed at the ice, and tried and tried to have the lancing sunlight scatter the visions that tormented his memory from inside that cavern.

All that equipment. The computers, the drills, the explosives and the lab equipment. The shredded flesh, pulverized bone and mangled corpses of so many…

And behind that flaming, dazzling barrier…

How far did they get?

The Tree…

He scanned ahead, looking out past the carrier, into the world.

He shuddered again, and kept hearing Wilson’s voice…

Seventy years…