“Here!” Jordan shoved a black box in her hand that had a small video screen and several toggles. They were parked on the Ross Ice Shelf, right next to the base of Mount Erebus. There was a square hole cut in the ice, extending downward over forty feet. The TROC was attached to a crane, two of the B-1 crewmembers working quickly to attach one of the two nuclear bombs they had flown down to the craft.
“This is the remote for TROV. You’ll get video feedback, and the controls are easy. The map of the tube and surrounding area is already in the hard drive. I hope you’re correct about placement.
“Eight years of graduate school should have taught me something,” Ariana tried to joke, but Jordan didn’t crack a smile as he looked up at the slope of Erebus.
The second bomb rested on a small ice sled behind a powerful snowmobile Jordan had appropriated, which had been off-loaded from the tractor’s sled.
“Will you have enough time?” Ariana asked,
“We’ll know soon enough,” Jordan said as he sat on the snowmobile and revved the engine.
“Good luck!” Ariana yelled above the sound.
“You, too,” And then Jordan was off, racing up the slope of the mountain, the bomb right behind.
General Cassius was disgusted with himself. The black wall had moved forward half the distance between its former position and the beginning of the swamp. His flank fortifications had been overrun by the wall, and his men were running out of room.
The barbarians could see what was happening and were waiting on the ridge. The swamp, which was to have been the Romans’ killing ground, would soon be their dying ground.
There were shouts of alarm, and Cassius turned his attention from the barbarians to the wall. Falco and Kaia had appeared and were running toward him.
“It’s been two days!” Cassius exclaimed as they came to a halt right in front of him.
“Two days?” Falco seemed dazed and shook his head as if to clear it. “Sir, we must go into the gate.”
“Liberalius is dead from going into the gate,” Cassius said.
“We aren’t,” Kaia said. “I can protect you and the men. Long enough to do what must be done.”
“What must be done?” Cassius demanded. “What is in there?”
“The enemy” Falco said. “And allies who need time to help us.” He swept his arm, taking in the legion. “We must give them time against the Valkyries.”
Cassius stood silent for several seconds. Kaia began to say something, but Falco raised a hand, indicating for her to wait. Finally, the general nodded. “Centurion,” he said to Falco, “get the men into marching order.”
“Damn it,” Dane cursed. His eyes confirmed what he had sensed. There was a line of white forms stretched across the shoreline, and the black surface of the lake was empty. Loomis must have seen them coming and submerged by manually opening one of the tanks.
“What now?” Ahana asked. “We must get through.”
”I can provide a diversion,” Shashenka offered.
“One man?” Dane shook his head.
“We can go back and wait,” Earhart suggested.
“There’s no time,” Dane said. He could pick up Rachel’s projections. The dolphin was swimming around the power portal, sensing the growing level. The Shadow was making its push.
”I do not have the forces to fight that many Valkyries,” Earhart said. Her people were lined up in the gully behind them, their weapons in hand. “We would be overwhelmed quickly.”
“We have to—” Dane began but paused as the line of Valkyries began moving forward, approaching their position at a steady rate. “Time’s up,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The TROV slipped under the surface of the still, black water, descending into the icy depths after being lowered on the crane. Ariana stared at the small video screen on which was superimposed the model of Erebus’s interior. Her hands were already freezing as she alternated between directing the TROV and slipping them inside her jacket to warm them.
“How long until you have it on target?” Miles asked, stamping his feet, also trying to stave off the cold.
“I don’t know.”
The ground shook, and a large crevice opened less than fifty feet away.
“I’d suggest sooner rather than later,” Miles said, “if at all possible.”
Ariana rubbed the screen, clearing off a thin layer of snow. The TROV's camera showed nothing but dark water, with the submersible’s searchlight cutting through only about twenty feet. According to the computer projection, she was on course for the underwater base of Erebus where the main lava tube was.
Jordan desperately turned the handlebars of the snowmobile as the sled threatened to pull him to one side, sending him tumbling down the slope. The front-runners made the correction and dug into the ice, straightening him out. Looking up, he could see the thick plume of smoke from the summit, now less than a half-mile away.
He gunned the engine.
”Got a sword I can borrow?” Dane asked as the Valkyries closed on their position. His mind was being pounded on all sides by input: Rachel, circling the power portal; the approaching cold wave of Valkyries; the almost overwhelming feeling of failure that pervaded it all.
“We should pull back,” Earhart said.
“And then?” Dane asked. “Get pinned in your caverns like animals being hunted down?”
“We were doing all right until you showed up,” she snapped.
“What the hell is all right?” Dane shot back. “You’re the one who said you were rats in the wall.”
“At least we were live rats,” Earhart said. She said something to one of the samurai, and he pulled a short sword out of its sheath and handed it to her. She passed it on to Dane. “I’m sorry. You’re right. At least we’ll make a stand here.”
Dane remembered how he had compared this place to Little Big Horn when he had first entered. The allusion was becoming more and more appropriate. He noted another of the samurai with the Viking, strapping an ax to the man’s arm. Ragnarok looked up at Dane and smiled, ready to go to Valhalla fighting.
“Damn it,” Ariana muttered as the TROV missed the tunnel opening and banged into the side of the volcano.
“Easy,” Miles said. “Better to be exact than fast.”
“Better to be both,” Ariana said as she realigned the submersible and gunned it into the dark opening.
When Jordan turned off the snowmobile, the trembling didn’t stop. He realized that the entire mountain was shaking. No one had ever been this near a volcano about to explode and survived to tell about it, so he had no idea how close what he was feeling was to detonation.
Dante III stood on the rim, ten feet away, like a large metal spider, frozen in place. The control mechanism was next to it, set on a small platform, waist high. Scrambling off the snowmobile, he ran over to the robot and looked down into the crater.
“Oh, my God,” he muttered. The lava bed had risen almost three hundred feet from the last time he’d been up here. It was bulging in the center, the twenty feet of hardened lava barely containing the forces below. He knew from what he was seeing that there was no time to hook the sled to Dante and walk the robot down. He keyed the FM radio connecting him with Ariana.
“Are you in place?”
Ariana heard the voice through the small earplug, but she didn’t reply right away. She had hardly any feeling left in her hands as she made an adjustment on the joystick, maneuvering TROV around a bend in the old lava tube.
“Give me a minute,” she finally said.