The man’s gaze was fixed on the blue and green expanse below.

  “Dr. Huber, the space plane is ready for departure,” a voice announced over the intercom.

  John glanced at Huber, noting the man’s anticipation. The polymath turned from the observation window, his data pads clutched tightly in one hand.

  The security detail flanked Huber as he started for the hangar bay. John was on point, the most dangerous location. He was the youngest and lowest-ranked member of the detail.

  Likely, the trip would be as routine as could be. These days, Dubai was one of the safer locations on Earth. What could go wrong, really?

  John shrugged inwardly, his gaze darting here and there. If nothing else, he could practice what he had been learning. The key to this post was observation. He needed to notice things, and then notice the unusual. They had drilled that into him.

  Soon, they entered the hangar bay and headed for a sleek, silver craft. The space plane gleamed under the artificial lights. This one was designed for high-speed atmospheric entry and landing.

  John led Huber and the rest of the team to the craft as he continued to scan for any potential threats.

  Inside, consoles hummed before cushioned seats. John strapped himself into a seat across from Huber, the polished metal buckle of his harness clicking into place.

  “Engines online. Commencing flight in T-minus ten seconds,” an automated voice intoned.

  John felt a slight vibration as the engines powered up. There were others in the space plane, making the passenger area half-full.

  As the countdown reached zero, the space plane lifted from the hangar-bay deck and drifted through the huge door into space. John glanced out a window, soon seeing the long cylinder and wheel of Aphrodite. This was already farther out than he’d gone in the spacesuit and thruster pack a week ago.

  Outer shutters closed over the windows. Soon, there was a gentle increase in movement. The plane must be entering the upper atmosphere. Soon, the heat shields would glow faintly outside.

  John glanced at Huber. The little man had his eyes tightly screwed shut.

  “We’ll be on the ground in no time, sir,” John said.

  Huber opened his eyes for just a moment, staring at John.

  Suddenly, a warning klaxon blared through the cabin.

  The automated voice came on again. “Warning: primary navigation failure. Switching to manual override.”

  There was a click over the intercom system. “This is Pilot Markov speaking. Hold on, everyone. We’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

  The space plane jolted.

  Huber cried out.

  The space plane dipped and swerved. Others shouted in fear.

  Abruptly, the flight steadied.

  “Good news,” Markov said over the intercom. “The backup nav is online. We’re coming in hot because of all this, but it should be much better now.”

  The ride remained steady for quite some time. There was a jolt, another jolt, and the speed decreased considerably. Finally, the outer shutters rose, letting them see out of the windows again.

  They had entered the lower atmosphere and were traveling much slower than earlier. It was possible that huge chutes had done some of that.

  John saw water below, lots of water and then a dot. That must be the island. The island grew considerably.

  “We are approaching Dubai International Spaceport,” the automated voice said. “Please prepare for landing.”

  Soon, the special runway at Dubai International Spaceport stretched out ahead. It was a gleaming strip of silver. The space plane lowered until at last the landing gear engaged with a soft thud. In time, the space plane taxied to a halt.

  John let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. They had made it.

  John unstrapped and moved to Huber’s side, guiding the little man along the aisle, through the exit, and down the ramp. The scorching heat of Dubai hit them immediately. This was so different from the climate-controlled environment of Aphrodite. A convoy of sleek, black electric-powered SUVs waited, drivers standing at attention.

  “Welcome to Dubai, Dr. Huber,” said a tall woman in a crisp uniform, the liaison officer, no doubt. “Please, this way.” She gestured toward the waiting vehicles.

  John felt the weight of the desert heat as they crossed the tarmac. The air shimmered with the intensity of the Sun. He scanned the perimeter, noting the positions of security personnel and the potential choke points for an ambush.

  Soon, the convoy left the spaceport and sped through the bustling city, skyscrapers glinting in the sunlight. John kept watching, his eyes scanning the surroundings for any signs of danger.

  The convoy wove through traffic without a hitch until they arrived at the docks.

  There were all kinds of vessels, from huge ocean transports to pleasure yachts. Soon, John spotted the Abyss Explorer moored nearby. The submarine’s titanium-aluminum hull gleamed under the bright Sun. John noticed the armed guards stationed around the perimeter of the submarine’s dock.

  Once the SUVs stopped, Huber and the team were quickly ushered aboard the submarine. John studied everything as they moved through the vessel’s narrow corridors.

  A grizzled man named Captain Harding greeted them at the entrance to the control room.

  “Welcome aboard, Dr. Huber. We’ve been preparing for your arrival. Our journey to the site will take approximately nine hours.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Huber replied, shaking Harding’s hand. “I’m eager to see what awaits us. This should be exciting.”

  John stood a few steps behind Huber. What could go wrong now? They had made it down to Dubai and through the city. According to the briefing, that had been the dangerous part. While Director Livia Drusus ruled Earth and hated Petty, one of Petty’s allies controlled Dubai. That ally also owned the Abyss Explorer.

  John grinned with anticipation. He had spacewalked and used a thruster pack without a harness or line, but he had never submerged. This ought to be a blast. He hoped Huber would let him study the ancient underwater site.

  “Would you like to go to the observation chamber?” the captain asked.

  “A little later,” Huber said. “First, I want to see my quarters and freshen up.”

  Harding pointed at a slender blonde with green eyes. “Show Huber and his people their quarters.”

  “If you’ll follow me, sir,” the ensign said.

  John noticed her beauty and accent. He tried to place it—English, he believed. As she led the way, he followed directly behind her. This was protocol even inside the sub, as he led Huber and the others.

  It was good practice if nothing else. The ensign also had a great… walk and attributes. John wondered what her name was.

  All the while, the submarine moved away as it left the Dubai docks behind.

  -7-

  The slender ensign who had shown Huber and his security detail to their quarters turned around once the hatch shut. She had only been with the crew for several weeks. She had an alias, but her real name was Jondelle Dawnstar. Everything about her plan had gone like clockwork, except for one thing.

  Dawnstar hadn’t been able to get anyone on her team aboard the Abyss Explorer. In the end, she called in a favor from an old acquaintance. He pulled a string, used a favor of his own, and helped with her cover story. The former ensign became violently ill after Dawnstar’s prettiest operative met him in a Dubai bar and spiked his drink. Dawnstar soon replaced him, uncertain how long her cover story would hold. Hopefully, just long enough to complete the mission.

  Unlike John Steele, whom she did not know yet by name, Dawnstar had experienced an extremely troubled youth in the greater London slums. Her childhood had been harrowing and abusive. She had grown up learning many hard and bitter lessons. Those experiences had taught her how to blend in and smile under pressure. Her experiences had also given her nerves of steel, glacial nerves that never cracked despite facing more extreme pressure than anyone else aboard the submarine had ever faced.

  As the Abyss Explorer started to submerge, Dawnstar hurried to the communications center. She did not have the needed security clearance for this region of the sub, but she had made “friends” with the communications operator.

  She knocked their private code on the secured hatch, and he let her in. Dawnstar melted into his arms. She had taken a pill a second ago, popping it into her mouth. While holding her breath, she used her molars and cracked the pill. A noxious toxin seeped out of the pill into her mouth.

  Meanwhile, the communications operator kissed her. After he did, she blew the toxin into his face.

  He looked at her startled. “What did you do?” As he finished the sentence, he collapsed onto the deck.

  Dawnstar exhaled further as she spat the broken pill onto the deck, sipped from a flask of bitter liquid, rinsing her mouth and spitting that to the side. Then she dragged his feet in and closed the hatch, leaving him on the deck.

  She stepped across to a side hatch into a different chamber. There were pumps and filtering systems churning away in here. Stacked in a corner were three ordinary-looking canisters. They were anything but. Stowing them in here, well, getting them aboard first, had been Dawnstar’s great achievement.

  She donned a breathing mask and picked up the first canister, proceeding to screw each into the air filters. When everything was ready, she pressed a switch and waited.

  An odorless, colorless gas was being pumped into every nook and cranny of the Abyss Explorer.

  If there were any spots in the sub where the gas did not reach—Dawnstar pulled out a stiletto. She was an expert at its use. She did not like to kill if she didn’t need to, but if she had to—

  Her harsh upbringing included exacting vengeance against those who had abused her when she had been too weak and scared to fight back. Those horrid incidents, the acts against her and the vengeance years later, had driven worry and fear from Dawnstar. There was a dead-like calm in the center of her being, which could have something to do with bitter indifference—at times.

  However, despite all this, there was a spark in her. Could one call it a spark of humanity, a desire for closeness, a wanting to trust at least one human in the world? There was a memory of a mother and a father who had watched over her once. Certainly, she could not remember that, for she had been far too young before her parents were murdered for the few lousy credits they had on their persons. Dawnstar had gone to a terrible orphanage afterward. Many of her memories of that time were gone because she dared not remember them if she wished to remain sane. But there had been a moment before all that when a man had tenderly touched her cheek. She had been an infant, and it had been her father, but her father hadn’t been able to protect her. Was that a tragedy? Certainly, it had been for Jondelle Dawnstar.

  She slid the stiletto back into its sheath and checked her chronometer. Time must surely be up. She kept the breathing mask on, even checking the rubber seals along her face. A whiff of the gas—it was likely many were dead. Not Huber, though, or that young security agent with him. Their chambers hadn’t gotten the gas as bad.

  Something had struck Dawnstar about the young security agent. She didn’t know what it could be. It almost seemed as if he was familiar.

  Dawnstar moved through the submarine, checking the fallen: dead, dead, out, out—

  One man opened his eyes.

  Dawnstar held a hypogun with a knockout drug in it. She pressed the nozzle against the man’s neck. A jet of air forced the drug into his bloodstream. He slumped back onto the deck, out for good now.

  She went through the entire submarine, even as it continued its silent journey through the depths. Not the great depths, though. The Persian Gulf was a shallow sea, and the place where they intended to go was at most 80 feet down.

  Dawnstar went to Huber’s cabin, opening the hatch. All the bodyguards lay on the deck. The small man was slumped over a table.

  She inspected the young one, removing his sunglasses to stare at his face. She cocked her head to the left and then to the right.

  “Steele,” she said. “You look like Colonel Mike Steele in this area.” She meant the eyes and around the mouth.

  She remembered something she had heard before. James Petty had taken Steele’s only son to live up on O.S. Aphrodite. Might young Steele be friends with Huber? It appeared so. Would Livia Drusus want the son of Colonel Steele? It seemed more than possible.

  Dawnstar did not try to drag or carry Huber or the youth who might be John Steele. She remembered his name. Instead of dragging anyone yet, she hurried to the control room, pushed the pilot from his helm seat, and sat at his spot. Dawnstar had trained for 15 hours at maneuvering a submarine for just this moment.

  Taking a calming breath, she pressed several switches and took the controls, slowing the Abyss Explorer. It would all be easier if the submarine were traveling slowly.

  Afterward, she hurried back and put a breathing mask over the unconscious Huber. Then she dragged him through the corridors to an escape pod. He was small, but she was not a large girl under any circumstances, the furthest thing from Livia Drusus’s brutes.

  Should she try to drag John Steele to the pod as well? Dawnstar contemplated the idea, and for some weird reason, she remembered the soft touch of her father. She couldn’t have such a thing, that early memory. It was impossible, but the memory was there nonetheless. Something in Steele’s face…

  “This is a bad idea,” Dawnstar said.

  Nevertheless, she hurried back to Huber’s cabin. She took John’s shoulder-rig .32 and tossed it aside so it clunked against the deck. Then she grabbed him under the armpits and started dragging him. If he had weighed an ounce more, Dawnstar would surely have left him behind.

  She had to heave his limp body over the hatch lips and finally, panting and sweating, with the breather over her face, she heaved him onto one of the emergency pod seats.

  She closed the hatch, studied the controls, and finally pressed a switch. She half expected the damn computer to say she needed override codes for this too.

  No, the emergency pod ejected from the submarine with a hiss of air and a jerk. Then she felt the upward motion as the pod shot toward the surface.

  This wasn’t how she wanted to meet the extraction team. She knew one of Livia’s bodyguards would be waiting. Well, that wasn’t important. The important thing was that she had Manfred A.S. Huber as promised.

  As the pod continued to shoot upward, Dawnstar looked once again at the likely John Steele. She wondered what kind of man he was and why she had gone to all this trouble for him.

  -8-

  In the distance, three sleek helicopters flew low over the water toward the floating escape pod. Dawnstar uncovered the top and looked around at the expanse of the Persian Gulf. She smashed the automatic signaler. Had she done that before an automatic alert went out?

  She wasn’t sure.

  She had used her own communication device, which she had first needed to assemble from the various parts on her person. The clicks were signals for the extraction team. They would arrive in three helicopters, probably those headed here.

  It was likely Dubai personnel were on their way here as well. They would come from the opposite direction.

  The extraction team was small, a mandated requirement by the Director.

  That seemed strange to Dawnstar, as Livia Drusus controlled Earth. Yet there were pockets here and there of those closely allied to Petty. There were also growing pockets of chaos, rebellion, and lawlessness because the supply systems of Earth had broken down under the alien bombardment. While law and order were being restored through army and police units, those units were presently taxed to the limit.

  Dawnstar did not have much formal education and did not know many of the historical facts any student would know. This period now was much as the world had been after the self-inflicted nuclear bombardments of 2050. The disorder then had been worse. Still, the world had recovered to a large degree.

  The three helicopters were much closer. Dawnstar could hear their whomp sounds. She also heard the young man begin to stir in the pod.

  Dawnstar turned him over and secured his wrists with zip-ties. She thought about securing his ankles as well but decided against it.

  She left Huber as was. The little man was out cold. The knockout gas would have hit his smaller frame harder. If he died now…

  “Don’t die on me, little man.”

  Earlier, Dawnstar had given him a hypogun injection to help but didn’t want to overstimulate him with another. That might cause cardiac arrest.

  She peered in the opposite direction. Far out there were dots… she counted five. By their movement—those were also helicopters.

  Dawnstar did not curse at the added problem. She disliked cursing because such foul talk had filled her childhood. She wanted to be different.

  She had many differences. Her nerves of steel were one. That she did not curse under duress, or curse period, was another. The third was her extreme competence. She had learned the hard way that she could only trust herself in the end.

  “Is that you bobbing around?” a voice said from her comm unit.

  Dawnstar raised the comm unit to her mouth. “Yes, it’s me, Zog.”

  Zog was the mission name for the bodyguard. She was a little addition to the team that Livia Drusus had insisted upon. The brute had thought up the goofy name herself and loved it. The brute wasn’t the bodyguard captain, but one just as big, brutal, and zealous in the service of Livia Drusus.

  The three helicopters started to slow down. One in particular lowered. The rotors caused droplets of salt water to fly against Dawnstar’s face.

  Droplets must have struck the young man as well. He woke up, opened his eyes, and stared up at her.

  “What happened?” he slurred, his lips not quite moving fully.

  “There was an emergency,” Dawnstar said. She still wore her ensign uniform.

  He struggled to a sitting position. “Why are my hands tied?”

  “That’s for your safety,” Dawnstar said. “I don’t know what will happen.”