“No!” The strength of the old woman’s yell surprised Leonidas. He turned. The oarsmen were having some success keeping the kraken arms at bay; the deck was littered with severed arms. The Oracle was coming forward, Cyra helping her. The old woman held something glittery in her hands, out of which a bright light was emanating. Leonidas blinked when he realized it was a skull, but one made of a clear material, not bone.
“No, you don’t,” the Oracle hissed as she reached the middle of the boat. She held the skull up in her wrinkled hands.
A flash caused Leonidas to spin to his right. A golden ball was heading directly toward the Oracle. He watched as it struck her, enveloping her in the glow. The Oracle was highlighted in gold for several seconds, standing rigid, her mouth open in a silent scream. Then the gold was pulled into the skull, absorbed completely. Cyra caught the Oracle as she collapsed. Leonidas turned back to the sea but the Valkyries were gone, along with the krakens, the fog dissipating.
Xerxes sat on his throne, looking down at the canal that cut through the isthmus that led to Mount Athos. His fleet was passing through, one by one, a long line. Each side of the ditch was lined by soldiers holding torches, spaced five feet apart.
As if to mock the effort of years of digging, the weather was perfect, not a cloud in the sky, the stars sparkling overhead. The fleet could have gone around the Mount, but Xerxes would not hear of it. The canal had been dug and therefore the ships would use it.
Pandora had started to say something when Xerxes issued the order to his fleet commander, but he had chopped his hand to let her know he didn’t want to hear anything she said. She stood silently to the rear of his chair, her eyes on the back of the seat.
“Is she all right?” Leonidas asked.
Cyra had her hand on the Oracle’s forehead. “She’s alive.”
“What happened?”
“You saw as much as I did,” Cyra said.
Leonidas had noted that the boat — and the oarsman — who had brought them out to the ship were gone, most likely victims of the kraken. “Did she tell you this secret path?”
“Yes.”
Leonidas stood, waiting.
Cyra finally looked up. “So now you are in a rush?”
“It does us no good to remain here.”
One of the oarsmen came over and easily picked up the Oracle. He carried her back to the reed cave and laid her down on a mat, covering her with a blanket. Leonidas pointed at his own chest, and then toward the shore, or at least where he thought the shore was in the darkness. His army was marching for war — there were no fires to delineate where the Spartan camp was.
The warrior nodded and yelled orders in his language. The surviving men bent to the task and the ship began moving. The man who had carried the Oracle went back and retrieved the skull. He placed it under a blanket next to her body.
When the ship was close to shore, the rowers pulled their oars up and the ship glided to a halt, the keel lightly hitting. Leonidas carefully climbed over the side with one hand, the other clutching the Naga staff. His feet entered the water and he paused, then he lowered himself very slowly until he touched bottom. He stepped away and held up his free hand to help Cyra, but she ignored the assistance.
By the time they had walked up on shore, the ship was already pulling away from shore. Leonidas headed for camp, Cyra hurrying after him. When he was challenged by a sentry he called out the proper password then began issuing orders for all to be awakened and the march to be resumed, even though dawn was several hours away.
CHAPTER 13
Every human being on the planet, except for those on board aircraft in flight, felt it. It started almost five thousand kilometers inside the Earth, along the transition zone between the solid crystalline core and the molten inner core. The core turned, adjusting to the power coming down from the Nazca fault and in doing so sent P compression waves rippling through the inner core. The solid lower mantle dampened the effect somewhat, as did the upper mantle, but every person in contact with the surface of the planet felt the ground tremble under their feet.
The readings all over the planet were exactly the same, which told shocked scientists the source and foretold of much worse to come. Those same scientists were brought before heads of states and solutions were demanded.
The replies, to say the least, were unsatisfactory, especially given recent events over the Nazca Plain and Chernobyl.
“Do you still have the portal pinpointed?” Dane asked Ahana. He was bone-tired, having flown from the carrier, across Central America and a large part of the Pacific, back to the Devil’s Sea gate. He’d not felt the planet move, but he’d received the reports while in transit. The grim looks on Ahana’s, Marsten’s and Foreman’s faces confirmed what the numbers had reported.
Ahana nodded. “Yes. The probes we sent through are still transmitting.”
“I’m going in.”
“What are you going to do?” Foreman asked.
The Naga staff was leaning against the conference table and a large metal case holding the crystal skulls was on the floor. “I’m going to find Amelia Earhart first,” Dane said. “Then I’ll figure out the next step.”
“Not much of a plan,” Foreman complained.
“When you have a better one, let me know,” Dane said. He turned to Doctor Marsten, who had yet to speak. “Is Rachel ready?”
“Yes.”
“Have you translated any more of the dolphin cries that the Connecticut picked up?”
“As near as I can tell, it’s the same message, repeated over and over again. That’s all Rachel’s given back to me.”
Dane had been thinking about that. “What kind of map are they referring to?” he asked the room.
“It must be a map that shows the connections of the various portals,” Ahana said.
“But even if we get such a map,” Dane said, “how will that help us change the path of the power?”
There was no answer to that question, nor had Dane really expected one. He stood and picked up the Naga staff. “Give me a hand with that,” he asked Foreman, indicating the case with the skulls.
They walked onto the deck of the FLIP. A Deepflight submersible was waiting.
“You sure you want to go alone?” Foreman asked.
“I’m not going alone,” Dane said. He indicated a gray dorsal fin cutting through the water next to the submersible. He climbed down, onto the deck of the craft and stored the staff and skulls inside.
Deepflight was a radical departure from previous submersibles. It was designed more like an airplane than a submarine. It was forty feet long with a wingspan of fifteen feet. The compartment Dane would ride in was a titanium sphere in the very center. Wings with controllable flaps extended out from each side giving the craft excellent maneuverability. Forward of the sphere was a specially designed ‘beak’ that reduced drag when the submersible was moving forward. In the rear were two vertical fins right behind the dual propeller system that complemented the wings for three dimensional flight.
The crew sphere was solid with just two holes in it- one the hatch that screwed out and a second, smaller one that accessed control and command cables. To ‘see’ outside, Dane would use various cameras and radar. Powerful spotlights were bolted all around the craft. Dane paused in the hatch when Ahana spoke.