That wasn’t possible; it must be some kind of echo caused by their position in the trench. Either that or Hurst and Kennedy were suffering from the same debilitating headaches.
Still, Kennedy rushed to her screens, punching buttons to illuminate built-in eyes on the Tartarus’s hull. She almost knocked skulls with Masterton as they searched the screens for their rescuers.
Something was definitely out there. Just nothing Kennedy had ever seen before.
Above them, near the escape hatch, hovered a lozenge-shaped object which looked to be about half the length of the Tartarus. Running along either side of the creature were a pair of frilled appendages that rippled in unison.
Kennedy squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again.
“What is that? A kraken?” Masterton breathed.
So, it wasn’t just the effects of sleep deprivation and hypoxia; Masterton could see the floating centipede, too.
“That’s mechanical, not organic,” Scotty said excitedly. He poked the screen with a finger. “See the Greek lettering on the side? That says Phaedra.”
Kennedy squinted for a better look. At this eleventh hour, the news seemed too good to be true—like a mirage, or a hallucination. A submersible like no other, and from such an unlikely source. “Last I heard, all the Greek Navy still operates is a couple of archaic diesel electrics,” Kennedy said. “How do they have something this advanced? And what is the Greek Navy doing in the Atlantic?”
“Rescuing us, I hope,” Masterton said. “Maybe they intercepted some intelligence about us and came to see for themselves. Who cares so long as they’re here?”
He had a point. Kennedy glanced at the battery readout: 11.8 percent.
“Look!” Masterton said.
Outside, in the gloomy depths of the ocean, a hatch opened on the hovering craft, and two shadowy figures emerged.
“What? They have suits to withstand pressures this deep? That’s not… that’s not…” Masterton trailed off.
He was right. It simply wasn’t possible. At these depths, the tremendous pressure of the ocean would crush a diver in seconds.
“What are they? Gods?”
“Fairy godmothers more like,” Scotty said. “Let’s get to the escape hatch.”
“Hurst. You’d better come,” Kennedy told her communications officer. “And bring your translator. My Greek is a little rusty.”
They hurried to the base of the ladder. “Let them in, Scotty.”
After three days of waiting, the three minutes it took for the hatch to drain seemed an eternity. Kennedy smoothed her hair, tugged at her grimy uniform. Finally, the hatch opened and two men wearing slick body suits descended. The first, a huge swarthy-faced man, was forced to bend his body in half to fit the submarine’s headspace.
“Hello!” Their other guest flipped back his head gear. Slim, with a seaman’s short-back-and-sides, he held out his hand.
Kennedy stepped forward and clasped it.
“Gordon DeWees of the USS Cyclops at your service, ma’am, and this is my colleague, Knoso of Mycenae.”
Kennedy snatched her hand back. “What? That’s not… you can’t…”
“Wait. Did you say the Cyclops?” Masterston said, stepping closer to Kennedy. “The cargo ship? But… that vessel disappeared in—”
“Nineteen eighteen. Yes.” DeWees’s eyes twinkled.
Kennedy’s knees weakened and she grasped a rung of the ladder. She must be dreaming—the deluded wishes of a mind addled by hypoxia. DeWees had to be over a century old, yet he looked barely out of his twenties.
Scotty must be bamboozled too because he spluttered, “This is crazy. Are we already dead?”
“Only God and the sea know what happened to the great ship,” Masterton murmured, echoing President Wilson’s comment about the Cyclops.
Except they were all seeing the same thing. And Kennedy had shaken DeWees’s hand; he was as solid as she was.
The giant spoke, his voice deep and gravelly, although Kennedy couldn’t comprehend a word.
“My friend reminds me that we haven’t got much time,” DeWees said. “We’ve come to invite you to join us. We don’t have the power to pull your ship free, but we can save your people.”
Kennedy turned to Hurst to check the translation, the woman nodding.
“Join you where exactly?” Scotty demanded.
“On Knoso’s island of Mycenae,” DeWees said. “You might call it Atlantis.”
Scotty grunted. He shook his head as if a bubble of water had collected in his eardrum.
“Atlantis is a myth,” said Hurst. “A utopian dream.”
And DeWees should be dead.
DeWees chuckled. “Actually, Atlantis does exist; I live there. Plato was correct, at least his dates were, but he was a bit off with the location. The island resides beneath the seafloor, its upper flank close to the Bermuda Triangle.” DeWees dropped his eyes. “As for it being a utopia, Atlantis is a sanctuary, that’s true. The island is beautiful, and its people are welcoming. But there is no utopia without the people you love. If you decide to join us, you can never go back. Your families will never know what happened to you.”
“I—” Kennedy paused. The Tartarus still had 10 percent power. Would that be enough to break free of the rock pinning them to the ledge? If they got to the surface under their own steam, the commodore would surely move heaven and earth to rescue the submarine. They might bob on the ocean for a few days, but the crew would get to go home. Kennedy could hold her girls in her arms again.
Or, she could use the remaining 10 percent to power the Tartarus’s life support systems while the crew evacuated to an alien submersible that would carry off them to an imaginary destination.
Kennedy almost laughed. She was literally stuck between a rock and a hard place.
“Captain,” DeWees said softly. “If we’re here, it’s because no one is coming to rescue you.”
Hurst touched Kennedy on the arm. “Ma’am? For what it’s worth, if Atlantis exists, I’d like to see it.”
Kennedy hesitated, her heart physically aching for her girls. For Cole’s breath on her cheek. For home. Kennedy straightened her back. Cole would look after their girls, but the men and women of the Tartarus were her responsibility.
She swallowed hard. “Assemble the crew, please, John. Tell them to leave everything behind.”
“And the dead? Cohen and McNaught? Rafferty?”
“Leave them.”
There was a clunk as the centipede submersible locked onto the hull of the submarine. While the crew evacuated the Tartarus in groups of four, Kennedy deleted the ship’s logs and powered down the screens. She glanced at her letters to Cole and the girls and considered adding a postscript—a private note to let them know she’d be okay—but what might her superiors do if they knew? They’d already sacrificed fifty-one lives to safeguard the technology on the Tartarus. How many more would they forfeit to uncover the fabled utopia? And what of the citizens already there?
No. Let the US Navy wonder where the crew had gone—if they ever bothered looking. She smiled bitterly and turned away.
Just 0.4 percent battery life remained when she entered the escape trunk, the last to leave the Tartarus. Scotty gave her a hand up, pulling her up the final rungs into the Mycenaean submersible.
“It’s modelled on the ancient triremes,” he said. “Those legs are flexible oars!” His eyes were bright, the blue tinge of hypoxia already fading.
Kennedy glanced back at the wreckage.