David Golemon - Ancients

The heat inside the sewage system was getting unbearable, but Jack could not afford to call for a halt to the march. The hundred marines had managed to make the best time possible under the circumstances. Giant walls of ancient magma had cracked and poured through in a thousand different areas. In many areas it looked as if the tunnel itself had been lifted up and dropped, to become a twisted and jumbled mess. All the while, they could feel the Wave building somewhere through the dense rock strata of the underground maze.

Sarah caught up with Jack and took long strides to keep up with him.

"Jack, it seems we're too deep," she said breathlessly.

"What? What do you mean?"

"I've been keeping track of our progress. We may be as far as a mile too deep. Have you noticed that the symptoms of the audio tones have lessened? Look around; men are making better time because they aren't feeling the effects in their inner ear. No nausea."

Jack stopped and raised his radio.

"Backdoor One to Two Actual," he called on the radio.

"This is Two, go ahead," Everett answered from somewhere up ahead.

"Two, our lieutenant here says she believes we've gone too deep."

"She may be right. We're starting to get magma vents here and the heat's up by thirty-five degrees in the last quarter mile."

Collins lowered the radio and watched as several of the marines walked doggedly past him.

"Wait a second, One. The SEALs are saying we have a large cavern ahead.... Jesus, Jack, you have to see this!"

Collins clipped the radio to his belt and then trotted forward after ordering the marines to take five minutes' rest. Sarah, Ryan, and Mendenhall followed Jack.

They climbed over a sloping mound of solid lava and finally spied Everett, who was talking with the SEAL lieutenant. They were standing in a natural alcove overlooking their new discovery. Twenty phosphorus flares glowed brightly from below and afforded a shadowy view of hell, highlighted by terrible orange and yellows of Satan's waters.

"Oh, my God!" Sarah said as she leaned over, placed her hands on her knees, and looked out over the vast chamber below.

The flowing river of lava was just that--a large ribbon, twenty feet wide, that stretched the entire length of the ancient excavation. The manmade structures inside were torn and broken; pillars of immense size had tumbled to the stone flooring. Littered among these ruins were hundreds and hundreds of skeletal remains that had melted into the stone to become one with floor they lay upon.

Collins looked around the upper reaches of the chamber and saw giant beams of scaffolding. There was a rail system capable of holding thousands upon thousands of tons. In addition, lying on its side at the bottom was what that system had once held--a gigantic wheel. The spikes arrayed around this object were as big a mystery as the wheel itself. It lay half buried in the debris that had shaken loose from the cavern's ceiling.

"What in the hell went on here?" Everett asked as he spied the arms and other skeletal parts protruding from the lava that had flowed over them.

Sarah was looking at the arrangement at the top of the giant cave. The ancient copper wires hung limp and grime-covered, and the copper plating attached to them was green with mold and corruption.

"This is the Wave chamber, a giant power-generating system. Jesus, Jack, this place was responsible for the death of Atlantis," she said as she straightened. "This diagram was in one of the engineering scrolls you recovered and the plate-map hologram, we just didn't know what it was. The whole of Atlantis must have come down on this place, and the weight of the island must have pushed this place miles under the sea."

Jack was watching the SEALs as they reached the bottom of the cavern, then he turned to Sarah. "Did the diagrams show any way out of here?"

"I don't know. We were in such a rush, Jack, I'm sorry. But listen, if this is truly the Wave chamber, Atlantis has to be on top. We have to find a way up; there has to be a connection."

"Well, we're not going to find it just standing here. Will, bring the troops in."

As Collins started down the sloping trail to the bottom, Sarah and the others became aware of the death that surrounded them in this ghastly place. Thousands of people had been killed in this tunnel while trying to escape the final decisions of their gods. The marines tried to step carefully, but many bones, petrified, snapped beneath their boots.

As Jack gained the floor of the chamber, he saw a particular set of bones that made him stop to examine them. The bronze armor was like others he had seen above, mostly melted into the stone. The skeleton was larger than most he had seen, and remnants of blue cloth could be seen cloaked around its shoulders. The helmeted head was still intact and lay staring up at him. The blue horsehair plume was as viable as it had been the day this man had fallen. It was covered in grime, but it was enough to tell Jack that this was a fellow soldier from a time ten thousand years before Moses.

As he gathered his thoughts and stepped over the remains, his boot came down on a smaller skeleton. There was no way to know that he had just given the final insult to the very necromancer who had invented the Wave, the great Lord Pythos, whose broken and twisted arm was still in the grasp of the last of the Titans.

As they followed Collins in a straight line, Sarah doubled over in pain at the same moment as half of the marine force did the same, some vomiting, others dropping their gear and grabbing for their temples in agony. Even Collins had to lean against a stone wall hard enough to send his helmet rolling.

"Jack, the Wave is building fast! They're going to attack!" Sarah yelled as she finally gave up and vomited.

Tomlinson watched the technicians as they monitored their boards. High up in the control platform, he, Caretaker, and several other Coalition members, including Dame Lilith, were amazed at the power being created by the generators, which seemed to have doubled in strength as soon as the blue diamond was connected. The time it had taken to recut the blank ends of hardened diamond to fit the new cradle designed by Professor Engvall had delayed the attack by more than an hour.

Tomlinson's eyes went from the generating station to that of the Atlantis defense. Five hundred crack troops were spread out in positions from which it would take a week for any attacking force to remove them, and at a cost that would be devastating. They were spread in the lava dome below the crystal structure that had protected the capital. Ruins of the great city were now teaming with machine-gun emplacements and mortar pits.

"We're ready," Engvall said as he removed his headphones.

Tomlinson saw the titanium enclosure where the diamond was spinning at twice the speed of sound; the air passing over it would be the only stylus needed to create the ancient tones. The amplification lines led outward from Atlantis to the amplification domes sitting off the coasts of the target cities. He smiled, knowing that New York would be the first to feel the Wave as the Coalition vied to end the old world quickly.

"Dame Lilith, since you are the one lamenting the drastic changes that have come about in your life, please do us the honor of beginning the new life we have chosen. Start the Wave, please."

Lilith really did not care to touch anything on the platform. Her nerves at this last moment had tuned to jelly and her blood ran cold. Still, as she looked into the eyes of Tomlinson, she knew that she would do as he'd asked. Even Caretaker was standing by, as if he were one of the many stone statues lying in ruins in the city below them.

"Why ... yes, of course," she replied.