Devil's Sea

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Dane held up his hand, halting the other two. When he had served in Vietnam, his teammates had valued his ability to sense an ambush before they walked into the kill zone. The rolling terrain and haze combined to limit visibility considerably. Dane had once gone to Little Big Horn and walked the battlefield where Custer met his demise. He’d understood what had happened to the 7^th Cavalry after seeing the land; hundreds of hostiles could have hidden in the folds of the Montana land and not been seen until the troopers literally stumbled upon them. He felt the same about this strange nether region as he stood still, trying to focus on whatever it was that had alerted him.

Dane pointed to the right, where the black terrain dropped off. Shashenka had the butt of the AK-74 tucked tightly into this shoulder, muzzle aimed in that direction. Dane held up his right hand, fist clenched, the military signal to stop. Shashenka paused, then Ahana after a moment’s confusion. Dane walked forward.

Just before he reached the fold, he stopped and held his empty hands up as half a dozen men jumped up from their hiding place, as if appearing out of the ground itself. They held swords and wore black lacquered armor and ornate helmets. Their eyes were slanted, and they spread out, encircling Dane.

“Back off!” Shashenka yelled, but they ignored him.

“Don’t shoot,” Dane said to Shashenka. He picked up no threat from the men. One of them rattled off something to Dane in what he assumed was Japanese.

“We mean no harm,” Dane said.

One of the men stepped closer. He looked up and down, as if assessing Dane, then he turned to Dane’s companions. His eyes lit up when he saw Ahana. He walked up to her.

“Who are they?” Dane asked.

“Samurai,” Ahana said briefly. Then she spoke with the man in her native tongue. “They want us to go with them,” she translated.

“What are they doing here?” Shashenka demanded, his weapon still at the ready.

Three of the samurai circled behind, adding emphasis to the request to accompany them.

“His dialect is strange,” Ahana said. “Very old. From the armor and weapons, I’d say these men are from the thirteenth century.”

“That can’t—” Shashenka began, but fell silent as he realized the foolishness of what he had been about to say.

“They say it is dangerous for us to stay here,” Ahana said.

“Where is here?” Shashenka asked.

“No time for that,” Ahana said. “They say they will take us to someone who can answer our questions.”

“Let’s go with them,” Dane urged, feeling exposed and understanding their desire to get out of this area.

The leader of the samurai hurried off, going down into the fold in the ground where he had been hidden. Dane followed, Shashenka and Ahana right behind him, the rest of the samurai flanking them.

Dane noted that the samurai kept to low ground, keeping ridges of the black material on either side as much as possible and traveling in the draws between the ridges. It was the way soldiers in hostile territory moved.

After about five minutes, Dane noticed a change in the land. The black gave way to patches of brown soil in places, each small pocket carved out of the side of the gully. Plants struggle to grow in these spots. As they passed between the junction of two gullies, a thin trickle of water cut a path through the very bottom, in the direction they were heading.

He glanced over his shoulder at Ahana and Shashenka. They were following quietly, absorbing all they saw. When Dane returned his gaze forward, he momentarily stopped when he saw the wall directly ahead in the haze, stretching up and to either side as far as visibility would allow. Dane hurried to follow the samurai. They turned the corner of the gully, and a wall was two hundred meters in front of them, disappearing upward into the haze. Etched into the black wall were shallow caves, and in those were people. Dozens and dozens of people.

Before Dane could take in the variety of men and women who were before him, a woman came striding forward. She was tall, with curly brown hair and striking features. Dane felt as if he had met her or at least seen her before. She held up a hand, indicating for the people who were pressing forward to see the newcomers to back off.

“Do you speak English?” she asked.

Dane nodded. “Yes.”

“You’re American?” the woman asked.

“Yes.” Dane turned as his partners came up. “I’m Eric Dane. This is Ahana, a scientist from Japan, and Colonel Felix Shashenka from the Russian Army.”

The woman extended her hand. “Pleased to make your acquaintance Mr. Dane. I’m Amelia Earhart.”

Ariana looked at the large monitor that displayed the computer simulation Jordan’s people had developed to show Mount Erebus. It not only mapped out the exterior of the mountain but the crater and as much as they had been able to tell about the interior from their various monitors, sensors, and probes. They were inside one of the buildings that made up McMurdo Station. People were hustling about, grabbing essential material for the evacuation while Ariana, Miles, and Jordan were in the eye of the storm.

“The main force vector is here,” Jordan tapped the screen with a pencil. “There’s a lava tube that extends down at least four miles and is almost a quarter mile wide. It extends laterally also, underneath the sea below the Ross Ice Cap. According to the data you sent, the muonic activity from the Devil’s Sea gate is also centered in that tube.”

“How do you know about the tube?” Ariana asked.

“We’ve got two aces up our sleeves,” Jordan said. He flipped a photo on the desk. “That’s Dante III.” The image was that of a mechanical spider with eight metal legs. In the picture, Jordan was standing next to the robot, giving an idea of its size, about three meters high, two and a half meters wide, and three and a half long. The body was a metal frame with various electronic sensing devices loaded on board. A metal arch made up the majority of the height, with an antenna bolted on top.

“We use Dante to go down into the crater itself. We’ve made three trips in, the latest just two days ago to update our data. That’s what’s prompted the evacuation. Dante analyzes the high-temperature gases on the crater floor. We also can get video images, which are helpful?”

“Where’s Dante now?” Ariana asked.

“On the rim. It requires someone on site to operate it as it’s a tethered device.” He slid another photo onto the desktop. “This is our other ace and the one that found the main tube.”

It looked like a remotely operated submersible to Ariana, something she had used before.

“That’s called TROV — telepresence remotely operated vehicle. It was designed by NASA, and they let us use it to test it out. We sent it under the ice cap at the base of the volcano. It located a vent line off the tube, and we fired a probe in that relayed data back to us.”

“Is there any way to stop Erebus from erupting?” Arian asked. She had her own ideas that she’d been contemplating and researching on the flight down, but she wanted to get feedback from the on-site expert first.

“Stop a volcano from erupting?” Jordan shook his head. “No one’s really attempted that. Everything has always been in reaction after the volcano erupted and mostly to stop the lava flow. There are three major methods for that. One is detonating explosives to divert the flow, another is constructing barriers to also divert the flow, and lastly there has been some success using water to cool the lava at the leading edge, in effect using cooled lava as a barrier against the flow behind it.”

“Stopping the lava is the least of our concerns,” Ariana said. “We have to stop the detonation. It’s the initiator to everything the Shadow is doing on the Pacific Rim.”

“When I had Dante in the crater, it confirmed what we had long suspected,” Jordan said, “The lava lake in the crater has been acting like a large plug since the last eruption, containing the power. If that plug blows, it’ll take out most of the top of the mountain, which in turn will devastate everything within a five-hundred-mile radius. Most importantly, and dangerous, is the effect on the Ross Ice Shelf. My calculations estimate that eighty percent of the shelf will either be melted or broken off.

“Given the data you sent me, Erebus will start a chain reaction up the Ring of Fire,” Jordan continued. “It’ll make the destruction of Iceland seem minor by the time the Ring has been activated.”

“You haven’t answered my question,” Ariana said. “I know it has never been done, but do you have any theories on how we can stop it from erupting?”

Jordan sighed. He tapped the screen. “If we can stop or divert this main channel from being forced up against the lava lake plug in the crater, we might be able to minimize the effect.” He shrugged. “But I don’t see how we can do that.”

“I have an idea,” Ariana said.