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 civilization,” she said, almost sadly. “We know there was a diaspora that survived for a few centuries, but eventually the last Atlanteans were conquered, died, or were 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 channeled 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.
TWENTY-THREE
The Sharkdozer was knocked backward by the shock wave. “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 lurched 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