CHAPTER 185

SPARTA

PASS OF THERMOPYLAE

(Background music: Now we are Free, Gladiator ST)

Endith brought the SPAT down slowly over the open field below. Hundreds of years of sedimentation had pushed back the coast of the sea several kilometers, and now there was no fourteen meter wide pass as when the battle had occurred. The moon cast an eerie glow upon the land below, the pitted and shattered concrete of the highway that had once passed through here. Martin stood on the lowered ramp, his dark eyes gazing out into the night at the monument that stood only a few hundred meters away.

A monument to the father he never knew.