EPILOGUE
The Earth was still.
In eastern Africa, the central United States along the devastated Mississippi region, around Lake Tahoe, the survivors struggled to stay alive.
In capitals around the world, scientists met with world leaders, but there were many more questions than answers.
On board the FLIP. Ahana studied the data her computers were spitting out while Foreman hovered over her shoulder.
“Well?” the CIA agent asked.
“Good news. And bad news.”
“The good?”
“The core is stable; the Nazca portal is closed.”
“The bad?”
“The Shadow sphere took so much ozone out of the atmosphere, the surface of the planet will become unfit for human life.”
“How long?”
“Two years.”
Foreman slumped down in a chair, rubbing Chelsea’s head. He seemed relieved. “Two years is a long time.”
“And there is also the radioactivity from Chernobyl,” Ahana added. “It will reach Moscow in less than a week.”
A sailor stuck his head in the door of the control center ‘The Connecticut has emerged from the gate.”
Foreman ran onto the bridge wing. He could see the conning tower of the submarine coming toward them. His hands ripped the railing, waiting for torpedoes and missiles to strike out as he remembered the Wyoming’s assault when it came out of the Bermuda Triangle gate. His body sagged with relief as an American flag unfurled from the periscope.
The Connecticut slowly came alongside the FLIP, and lines were thrown, connecting the two. A gangplank was next and Foreman was the first to greet Dane as he came across.
“Welcome back!”
“Nazca’s shut down,” Dane said.
“We know,” Foreman said. “All muonic activity is stable and low.”
‘But?” Dane asked. Earhart had decided to stay in THE SPACE BETWEEN, and Dane hadn’t bothered to try to dissuade her. This wasn’t her time. And her people, the refugees, needed her.
Foreman’s summary was succinct. “The Shadow has avenged a high amount of ozone with a black sphere, and the radiation from Chernobyl is spreading.”
Dane nodded as if this was expected. “There is more work to be done. I think I know a way we can fix both those problems.”
“How do you know?”
Dane smiled. “I’ve seen it in a vision.”
Cyra held up the portal map and placed it in the leather sling held by one of the rower/warriors on the Theran Oracle’s ship. She was standing waist deep in water, and the Oracle was just barely visible as a hooded figure in her cave in the rear of the ship. After the map was secure, she passed up the Naga Staff to a second man.
The men carried the portal map and Naga Staff to the Oracle, and Cyra briefly saw her face in the golden glow as she lifted the cloth Cyra had wrapped it in, then once more she faded into darkness.
“Why do you need it?” Cyra called out.
The Oracle’s voice was low but carried easily over the water. “I don’t. Others do. Other places. Other times.”
“Where did it come from?” Cyra asked, unwilling to let the Oracle fade away so quickly.
Surprisingly, the Oracle laughed. “I don’t know. And not just where; when is important. In fact, I think … well, it is beyond me.” The Oracle waved in farewell and stepped back into the shadows of her cave.
The ship was moving, and Cyra waited until it disappeared into the darkness. Then she waded back to shore. There was a track from the Gulf of Corinth that led south, and she wearily walked along it, into the high country.
King Xerxes, son of Darius, grandson of Cyrus, king of Medea and Persia, ruler of Libya, Arabia, Egypt, Palestine, Ethiopia. Elam. Syria. Assyria. Cyprus. Babylonia. Chaldea. Cilicia, Thrace, and Cappadocia, and most blessed of god Ahura Mazda, held a perfumed kerchief over his nose as he stood atop the ruins of the Middle Gate and looked out over the ground strewn with bodies. It was almost impossible to walk without stepping on a corpse.
“Where is the Spartan King?” he asked Pandora. The priestess was splattered with blood, the Naga Staff held tightly in her hands.
She pointed at a mound of bodies-most of them Immortals-just south of the Middle Gate. “The Spartans made their last stand there. I killed him myself.” She didn’t add that she had accomplished this only after he’d been severely wounded several times by Immortals.
“Did you succeed in your quest?” Xerxes asked.
Pandora wearily leaned on the Naga Staff. “No.”
“Then whoever sent you will be displeased,” Xerxes said.
Pandora stiffened as a blade entered her back. She saw a figure slip away-Xerxes’s Dagger-even as she knew he had delivered a fatal blow. “You are nothing,” she said to the Persian King. “You will fail in this. The Greeks will defeat you.”
“Is that a prophecy or a wish?” Xerxes asked.
Pandora collapsed on the Middle Gate, adding her body to the multitude.
The women of Sparta mourned their dead men in much the same manner in which they had sent them off to war. The sound of the mournful hymn they sang rose above the city-state and echoed into the surrounding forests and mountains.
Cyra heard the song as she sat in the shade of a tree near the parade field where Spartan boys sparred, preparing for the next battle. She got to her feet as Thetis approached. The King’s wife wore a thin strip of black cloth around her forehead to mark her “loss. To her right was Briseis.
Thetis bowed her head slightly. “Greetings, Priestess.”
“Your husband asked me to come here,” Cyra said.
“For what reason?” Thetis asked.
Cyra looked at the young girl. “To teach your daughter.”
Thetis smiled through her grief. “He asked that? A Spartan King concerned about his daughter’s future? Perhaps things can change.” She reached out and took Cyra’s hand and placed it in Briseis’s small hand. “Teach her well.”
Alluvial waters have widened the pass at Thermopylae over the centuries since the battle between Spartans and Persians. It is now over a mile wide, as represented on Pandora’s map. It was indeed an epic battle, as Xerxes turned back to Persia the following year, never completing his conquest, and the forces he left behind were routed by the Greeks. The entire history of the western world was changed as a result.
Near the mountain, where the pass was tight in days of old, etched on a monument are two lines in memory of the battle:
Go tell the Spartans, thou who passest by,
That here, obedient to their laws we lie.