Nina noticed a sudden tension in her husband at the sight. ‘Hugo?’ she asked quietly. Eddie gave her a silent nod; one of his closest friends had died here. Matt also became uncharacteristically sombre for a moment. Eddie had not been the only one to suffer a loss at Atlantis.
The submersible drew closer. ‘That’s the tunnel,’ said Eddie, pointing at a small hole in the wall. The shaft had been constructed by the Atlanteans as a secret passage leading directly to the altar room.
‘You don’t need to crawl through a little hole to get inside now,’ said Matt as he guided the Sharkdozer towards the roof. The wreck of the Evenor came into sight, a long white axe that had sliced the four-hundred-foot-long temple in two. Something bright flickered in the gloom atop the rubble. ‘There’s the altar room.’
He brought the sub into a hover near the object, a marker pole covered in reflective material that caught the spotlights. Not far from it was a twisted mass of metal – part of the Evenor’s superstructure. The excavated sections of the altar room were visible before it, orichalcum sheets glinting on the walls.
Gypsy moved ahead of them and came to a stop above the dig site. ‘Sharkdozer in position, confirm,’ said Matt over the radio.
‘Read you, Sharkdozer,’ Hayter’s crackly voice replied. ‘Gypsy also in position.’
‘Roger that.’ Matt turned to Nina and Eddie. ‘This is the boring part, I’m afraid.’
‘That’s okay,’ said Nina. ‘I want to watch the whole thing. You never know what might turn up.’
‘I’ll give it a miss,’ Eddie said. He took a creased paperback thriller from inside his leather jacket and thumbed it open. ‘Been meaning to finish this for ages. I got interrupted by the whole wanted-for-murder business. I’ll just read it while you’re telling Matt how to dig.’
‘I’m not going to do that,’ she assured Matt.
‘Too bloody right you’re not!’ the Australian replied with mock offence as he took the manipulator controls. ‘Okay, Gypsy, I’m ready to start.’
The other submersible moved closer, spotlights and cameras panning for a clearer view as Matt began the long and involved task of removing the debris covering the altar room. The first priority was the wreckage from the Evenor; even though most of it had already been cut away, it was still a hefty chunk of steel heavier than the Sharkdozer could lift using its thrusters alone. It wasn’t until the sub touched down on top of the temple and used its skids to brace itself that the arms could apply enough leverage to start raising the broken section of superstructure.
It took the better part of an hour to get it safely clear. Once it had been dumped in the silt away from the building, work began in earnest. None of the fallen slabs were as heavy as the ship debris, but they were still fairly massive in their own right.
Time passed. Matt took a break to recharge with an energy drink and a sandwich, while Nina forced herself not to tap her fingers impatiently. Eddie smirked at her over the top of his novel, knowing how she was feeling. Then the work continued, the obstructing blocks gradually becoming fewer in number. Until—
‘There!’ said Nina, as Matt hauled one of the remaining slabs out of the way. ‘There it is!’
A golden light reflected back at them from the sheet of precious metal covering the newly revealed wall. It had been damaged in several places, a great jagged rip through one entire section obliterating the text . . . but the crucial part was still more or less intact.
The last inscription. The final written words of the great empire of Atlantis.
‘There, there there there!’ Nina jabbed a finger excitedly. ‘Get the camera on it, quick!’
Eddie snapped his book shut. ‘Calm down, love! It’s not going anywhere.’
‘I know, I know. But, well . . . I want to see it!’
‘She was like this the first night I was back home,’ he told Matt. ‘Couldn’t keep her hands off my pants.’
‘Eddie!’
‘What you do in private isn’t my business,’ Matt said, amused. ‘But give me a sec here, Nina – I still need to put this stone somewhere.’ He worked the controls, Nina fidgeting beside him. Finally, the block was released. ‘All right, let’s have a dekko. Gypsy, you got your cameras switched on?’
‘We never turned them off,’ said Hayter over the radio, sounding almost as enthusiastic as Nina. ‘Nina, we’ve got our translator hooked up to our high-definition camera. It’s got better resolution than the ones on your sub, so we should get our pictures first—’
‘Sorry, Lewis,’ Nina cut in as she opened the laptop containing her own copy of the translation software, ‘but I’m going to be selfish on this one. My primary interest here is the very last piece of text, so I want to work on that straight away. Once we’ve got the pictures, you can record the rest of the inscriptions. Okay?’
‘If you insist,’ came the sour reply.
Matt delicately brought the hulking submersible closer to the wall with careful blips of its thrusters. He stopped when the viewing bubble was about six feet away, the magnifying effect of the thick hemisphere almost making the text readable with the naked eye. But instead, he extended one of the secondary arms until its camera was less than a foot from the metal sheet. ‘You ready, Nina?’
‘Recording,’ she answered. ‘Go ahead.’
Matt slowly panned the arm back and forth over the final section of text. A window on the laptop’s screen displayed the live feed; another, larger window showed the whole inscription building up section by section as the computer automatically matched them together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. It wasn’t long before the image was complete, at which point another program began the more complex task of translating the ancient language into English.
‘Okay, Lewis,’ Nina said into a headset, ‘I’ve got what I need. You can move in now.’
The snideness behind Hayter’s simple ‘Thank you’ was clear even through the distortion. Matt backed the Sharkdozer away, and Gypsy took its place, cameras peering intently at the rest of the ancient record.
‘So, what does it say?’ Eddie asked, leaning across the confined cabin to examine the screen.
‘Give it a chance,’ said Nina. ‘It’s a lot faster than translating by hand, but it’s not Star Trek.’ Words were already starting to appear, though: the image-recognition software was picking out familiar patterns. ‘Nantalas gets mentioned several times . . . and so does the sky stone.’
More minutes passed, the gaps in the translation gradually filling in. Some parts remained blank; either the condition of the orichalcum sheet was too poor for the computer to pick out the letters, or the words were simply unknown, having never been found in any previously translated Atlantean texts. But even with gaps, Nina saw a clear narrative taking form.
‘It’s what I thought,’ she said softly. ‘This really is an account of the last days of Atlantis – the last hours, even. Someone was still keeping records right up until it fell into the ocean.’
‘What caused it?’ asked Eddie.
‘From the look of this . . . Nantalas herself. And the sky stone. Listen.’ She began to read the translation, attempting to smooth out the computer’s awkward and over-literal phrasing. ‘“The king and the royal court came to the Temple of the Gods to witness Nantalas bring together all three keys of power and touch them to the sky stone. There was much . . .” This is a bit jumbled – ah, something like “awe and terror as the great stone rose from the ground, shining with a holy light”.’
‘So it’s definitely earth energy, then,’ Eddie mused. ‘I don’t get it. It would have been like having nuclear power back in the Stone Age. How could it be forgotten about for eleven thousand years, apart from when Merlin and King Arthur fluked into using it with Excalibur?’
Nina was reading ahead. ‘I think I know. “Nantalas commanded the stone to rise and fall, using no words but those in her thoughts. She then told the court that she would . . .” I guess in context it would have to be “demonstrate”, “she would demo
nstrate the power that would crush the enemies of Atlantis. But . . .”’
‘But?’ said Matt after a moment. ‘Come on, Nina, don’t leave us hanging!’
‘It didn’t exactly go as planned,’ she told the two men. ‘The computer couldn’t translate some of the words, but there’s enough to get the gist. Basically, the demonstration blew up in her face.’
‘Literally?’ said Eddie.
‘Pretty much. It says there was lightning, “a storm unmatched in history as Zeus unleashed his fury upon those who had dared to claim the power of the gods as their own”. Huge earthquakes, buildings collapsing – and great waves. Where we are now, the Temple of Poseidon, was right at the heart of the Atlantean capital – and it was directly connected to the Atlantic by canals, so it was essentially at sea level. The text describes huge waves sweeping inshore.’
‘Atlantis sinks beneath the waves,’ said Matt ruefully. ‘Just like the legends always said.’
‘There’s something else, though.’ Nina read on. ‘“The sky stone itself was snatched into the heavens on a thunderbolt, flying to the southeast faster than an arrow.” The southeast . . .’ She tailed off.
‘What are you thinking?’ Eddie asked.
‘When I was in Tokyo, the feeling that I somehow knew the direction something was in . . . it was off to the west. Two hundred and sixty degrees, Takashi said. I wonder . . .’ She opened another application, bringing up a map of the world. ‘Here’s Atlantis,’ she said, pointing at a spot between the coasts of Portugal and Morocco. ‘And here –’ her finger moved across to Japan – ‘is Tokyo. Two hundred and sixty degrees west from there would intersect a line going southeast from Atlantis somewhere around . . . here.’
‘Eastern Africa,’ said Matt, looking at the map.
‘That doesn’t narrow things down much,’ Eddie commented. ‘You think the stone ended up there? How?’
‘Some sort of earth energy reaction, perhaps. We already know it could levitate against the planet’s own magnetic fields, so maybe whatever Nantalas did overcharged it, actually repelled it and sent it flying off across half a continent.’ She scrolled down through the translation. ‘Nantalas tried to find it.’
‘How?’
‘She still had the three statues. They gave her a . . . I don’t really want to call it a vision, because of the supernatural overtones, but since I had one myself I don’t really know how else to describe it. She told the king it had ended up in . . .’ She read the translated words several times before coming up with a way to express them properly. ‘I think it’s “the Forge of Hephaestus”. Hephaestus was the god of blacksmiths and craftsmen,’ she continued, anticipating the question, ‘and also fire and volcanoes.’
‘So you think the stone ended up in a volcano?’
‘Considering what else happened in Atlantis, I’d say it was a possibility. Listen to this: “The mountains north of the city are spewing fire and ash. The island shakes as the gods of the land and the sky and the sea all turn their anger upon Atlantis.” Interesting – the text’s now in the present tense. It’s not a record for posterity any more, more like a last journal entry . . . “The witch Nantalas has begged the king for her life. She says she can find the sky stone. The king asks her why, when it has brought only destruction and the wrath of the gods upon the empire. She says a new Temple of the Gods must be built and the sky stone sealed in it for eternity, so that nobody may ever again repeat her blasphemy.” She managed to convince him to let her lead the search.’
‘Crikey, she must have been one hell of a good talker,’ said Matt. ‘I’m amazed he didn’t give her the chop on the spot.’
‘I think she knew that even if she found it, she would still be killed for what she’d done. But I guess the king thought it was worth trying – if they could pacify the gods, maybe they could save Atlantis.’
Eddie shook his head. ‘Well, we know how that turned out. But did she find it?’
‘I don’t even know if she managed to escape Atlantis before it sank. We’re almost at the end of the text.’ Nina became more solemn as she read the last few lines. ‘“The people are fleeing, but there are not enough ships. One of the mountains has collapsed into the earth, leaving only a pillar of fire. Even the great temples are falling. Only the Temple of Poseidon is strong enough to hold, and I do not know for how long.” And then . . .’ She brought the composite image back up on the laptop’s screen, pointing out the final words. ‘The inscriptions are much cruder now – they were written in a hurry. “The king and queen have fled. The dead lie in the streets. The ground does not stop shaking. The gods have cursed us. The sea . . .”’
‘What?’
She gave Eddie a grim look. ‘It says, “The sea is rising. Atlantis falls.” And that’s where it ends.’
‘Christ. That’s pretty bloody biblical.’
‘The end of an entire civilisation,’ she said, almost sadly. ‘We know there was a disapora that survived for a few centuries, but eventually the last Atlanteans were conquered, died, or absorbed by other cultures. But it all ended right here – when Nantalas thought she could control earth energy.’
‘But she blew it. Literally.’
‘Right. It seems that she channelled so much energy through the meteorite that it caused an earthquake, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis . . .’ She gestured at the main viewport, outside which the second submersible was still photographing the rest of the inscriptions. ‘She sank the entire island. I remember when we first found Atlantis, someone had the theory that the collapse of a subterranean volcanic caldera could account for how it ended up eight hundred feet below the surface. If that’s right, then it was an uncontrolled release of earth energy that actually caused it.’
‘One person could do all that?’ Matt asked in disbelief.
‘One person can kill a million – if they happen to have their finger on the trigger of an atomic bomb. That’s essentially what happened. They didn’t know what they were dealing with . . . and their arrogance, their hubris, destroyed them. It’s like you said, Eddie – it’s as if they had nuclear power eleven thousand years ago. Only they didn’t have the knowledge or the wisdom to use it properly.’
‘Do we now?’ he replied, not entirely rhetorically.
The silence that followed was unexpectedly broken by a chirp from the LIDAR system. ‘What was that?’ Nina asked.
‘I dunno,’ said Matt, turning back to the instruments. ‘That’s the rangefinder – it means something new’s just come into scanning distance. But there shouldn’t—’
The sharp boom of an explosion shook the submersible – followed by an even louder crump of crushed metal as Gypsy imploded in front of them.
23
The Sharkdozer was knocked backwards by the shockwave. ‘Jesus!’ Eddie shouted. ‘What the fuck was that?’
Nina looked ahead. The view was obscured by a swirling mass of bubbles . . . then they cleared enough to reveal that the other submersible was a crumpled wreck. Something had exploded against its side, tearing a ragged hole – and the crew compartment had instantly collapsed, crushed like a soda can under the wheel of a truck. The inside of its viewing bubble was smeared with a pale red film.
The remains of Hayter and his crew.
Matt grabbed the controls, pulling his sub up and back from the wreckage. The LIDAR trilled again. ‘There’s someone else down here!’ he cried.
Now clear of the temple walls that had blocked its view, the sensor showed three new signals nearby – one large, two small. The larger intruder was ahead and off to the left, higher up, the others moving in from behind.
Eddie squeezed forward to look at the screen – and immediately saw a new threat. ‘Matt, watch out!’
Another blip had detached from the signal ahead, heading straight for them. Very quickly. ‘Torpedo!’ the Australian yelled. He turned the Sharkdozer away, but the big, heavy submersible was sluggish—
Another explosion, much closer. The sub rang like a gong as it lurc
hed sideways, smashing against the ruins. Nina screamed as the impact threw her across the cabin. The lights flickered before coming back on – noticeably dimmed.
Alarms shrilled, numerous indicators on the instrument panels flashing a warning red. ‘Is the hull breached?’ Nina asked, frightened.
‘If it was, we’d be dead,’ Matt replied. ‘We’ve lost main power, though – we’re on the reserves. And there’s a lot of other damage.’
‘We need to surface,’ said Eddie urgently.
‘Too bloody right we do! Hold on, I’ll dump the emergency ballast.’ He reached up to a large, red-painted lever on the ceiling and pulled it.
There was a deep thump from beneath them, the sub shuddering . . . but nothing else happened. Matt pulled the lever again. Still no result. ‘Aw, shit . . .’
‘What?’ Nina demanded. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘The ballast’s not dropping, that’s what’s bloody wrong! We should be flying up like a helium balloon right now!’
‘Is it broken?’
‘There’s nothing to break! It’s a bloody big slab of pig iron held on by an electromagnet – cut the power, it falls, we float!’
‘Forget floating,’ Eddie warned, watching the LIDAR display, ‘just get us moving!’ All three enemy blips were closing on the centre of the screen.
Matt opened the throttles, steering the Sharkdozer clear of the temple. ‘She’s slow,’ he warned. ‘Feels like a damaged thruster.’
Eddie reached past him to take one of the manipulator controls. ‘What are you doing?’ said Nina.
‘Seeing what’s wrong.’ A monitor screen showed the view from the starboard arm’s camera as it moved out from the sub’s side. He brought it round to look back along the hull.
Matt made a sound of dismay at the sight of one of the thruster pods, the casing of which had been torn away to expose the propeller blades within. ‘Eddie, move it down and look under us,’ he ordered.