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.