CROSSFIRE - Atlantis DSV - New Cape Quest

IV
A P P A R I T I O N S
UEO Commonwealth CVBN-110, the Marianas Sea. April 10 th , 2043…
Ainsley sat in the officer‟s wardroom alone, a pot of tea brewing beside him, sending
wafts of steam drifting through the holo display on the desk in front of him. It was twenty-two
hundred hours, the night watch having settled in to the wrong side of the clock. At shallow
depth, no light came through the wardroom‟s windows at this time of night, and in the dim
light every one of his other senses were firing, the gentle hum of the engines – normally an
unrecognisable din that had become a part of him over the years – was now a noticeable
throbbing, with rhythm and beat that a trained sonar operator could have learnt any number
of details from. In such silence, the entry of someone in to the wardroom became something
as noticeable as a torpedo detonation, and Ainsley turned. “Thanks for coming,” he said.
“Missed you in the mess hall,” Banick replied simply. “Something came up?”
“You could say that,” Ainsley suggested, pouring a cup of tea from the steaming pot.
“Tea?”
“Will this take long?”
“...I don‟t know.”
Banick finally nodded. “Yeah, alright. Thanks.”
Ainsley smiled as he produced a second cup from the sideboard and filled it, sliding it
over the great oak desk along with a tray of milk and sugar.
“There‟s been something bothering me. Truth be told, I haven‟t been thinking about it
that long, but then I suspect I wasn‟t supposed to.”
Banick sat down next to the Admiral and picked up the mug. “Well that‟s about the
most confusing thing you‟ve said all day.”
“Yes, well, I‟ve spent all day staring at it.”
“What is it?”
Ainsley flicked the display around with his hand, the motion sensors in the newlyissued
holographic interface tracking his fingers and responding to it as if he‟d flicked a
switch. The numbers flickered up in front of Banick and he frowned.
“Admiral von Schrader gave this to me before I left London. NSIS picked up four
transmissions that were sent to my office, encrypted with UEO Signals codes. When they
finally managed to decode them, they got these four number sequences.”
“I don‟t follow.”
“Neither did I until about two hours ago. They‟re dates.”
Banick raised an eyebrow and scratched the back of his head. “Ok... They‟re dates.
What are the dates for?”
Ainsley raised a finger. “That‟s would took me two hours to work out. As soon as I
knew they were dates, I worked out this second one fairly quickly.”
Banick read it. “090941... Ninth of September, ‟41...”
“Sound familiar?”
Banick sighed and closed his eyes. “It should...”
Admiral Ainsley stood up and started pacing. “Yeah, so whatever the rest of those
dates refer to, I have to assume they have something to do with the day we lost the Atlantis.”
“Admiral, can we slow down here? Something I still don‟t is why this is even
important. Why is NSIS looking into this? Why did they get you to look into this?”
“I can‟t answer that,” he confessed.
“...Alright, fine. Forget I asked. But why are the dates important? Why not simply put
them in the right order?”
“I did,” Ainsley admitted. “21, 39, 40 and 41. There‟s no logical progression there.”
The Captain shrugged. “I didn‟t expect there would be. You asked the computer to
cross reference them with the date of Atlantis‟s sinking?”
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