The skulls were still glowing as brightly as they had on the battlefield. She took them, one by one, in the claws that extended from the Valkyrie suit hands to the niches at the same level as the central power globe. As she placed the ninth in place, the glow from the skulls increased, filling the chamber. Lines of power shot from one skull to the other, then all nine linked with the power globe.
The sphere was ready.
Earhart headed for the command center.
As she enclosed herself in the pilot pod, she felt a strong presence close by.
“Dane?”
I’m here.
The voice was inside her head but Earhart automatically scanned the controls and panel on the inside of the pilot pod. There was no one else on board the sphere. “Where are you?”
I’m here. I’m still on the psychometric plane. I opened the gate for you.
“What now?” Earhart asked. She felt slightly foolish to be speaking to empty air but given all that had happened it was pretty much par for the course.
We have the power. Now we get the force.
EARTH TIMELINE — III
New York City, July 2078
Chamberlain was almost thrown across the cargo bay of the MH-90 as it banked hard right. He heard the excited voices of the pilots, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Stabilizing himself, he made his way to the cockpit.
It wasn’t hard to miss what had caused both the maneuver and the excitement as a large black column, over a mile wide, had appeared over what had once been the southern tip of Manhattan.
“Arm weapons,” Chamberlain ordered the pilots and then the order was relayed to all the other planes. The forty-millimeter cannon underneath the nose of the plane was · aimed at the gate and missiles under each wings were armed.
Something was coming out of the portal. It took a few seconds and then Chamberlain recognized it — a Shadow sphere. He had seen imagery of them taken during the Shadow War. It was his worst fears coming true — the Final Assault was the Shadow coming to this timeline, not them going to the Shadow.
“All elements. We will attack in echelon,” Chamberlain ordered. “I want Alpha and Bravo companies to hold in case the sphere opens, and then try to get inside and deploy. Charlie company will attack at — ”
Easy.
Chamberlain checked his command status. No one should be talking on the command frequency while he was giving orders.
“Charlie company will — ”
Easy, Colonel.
“Who is that?” Chamberlain demanded.
“Who is what?” Eddings was next to him.
“Didn’t you hear that?” The voice had to be coming Over the command net, Chamberlain knew, because he was sealed from the outside world inside his suit.
We’re here to transport you. We’re in the sphere. We’re not the Shadow. We’re from another time line the Shadow has attacked. Bring your craft on board.
“Who are you?”
Eddings turned toward Chamberlain but he signaled for her to be quiet.
My name isn’t important.
Looking through the cockpit window, Chamberlain could see that the entire sphere had emerged from the gate and was floating motionless. The gate snapped out of existence. Then the top of the sphere began to open, splitting like a bulb opening to become a flower.
Ask your Oracles.
* * *
Dane could understand the colonel’s reticence about trusting a voice that just appeared in his head, especially in connection with the arrival of a Shadow sphere. Then he sensed something below. Dane shifted his attention to the water below. He saw a half dozen large black fins sticking out of the water.
* * *
“The High Priestess says do as the voice says,” Eddings told Chamberlain.
As Chamberlain prepared to change his orders, the sphere began to move-downward. The top was still open and now he could see the large open floor bisecting the interior. An excellent landing field. He directed his craft to enter the sphere and land.
The MH-90s flitted forward, settling down on the black metal one by one, a dangerous maneuver as the sphere itself was now moving. As a commander should, Chamberlain took the last position in the line of Nighthawks heading into the top of the sphere.
As he watched his unit enter the sphere, Chamberlain realized that it was going to be a close call for his craft to land before the sphere was submerged as the bottom of the arge ball had now touched the water and it wasn’t slowing.
* * *
Inside the pilot pod, Amelia Earhart was also aware of the two rates of progress — her descent of the sphere and the landing of the military craft inside. She was following Dane’s orders, but it seemed as if he were thinking many different things at once.
The sphere was in the water and she kept it going down. Only three more of the strange planes had to land. She had to trust Dane knew what he was doing, because those planes were going to get wet very soon.
As the last one landed on the cargo deck above her, water began to pour in the opening in the top of the sphere.
* * *
‘’Everyone sealed?” Chamberlain asked as his Nighthawk was buffeted by a stream of water cascading down.
All answered in the affirmative.
Chamberlain put his helmet against Eddings. “What the hell is going on?”
“Look,” Eddings said, pointing up, through the window in the top of the cockpit.
It appeared that the sphere was no longer moving as the water level had stopped halfway up the large circular cargo bay. Just at the point where the bottom of the splits were.
A killer whale appeared, swimming in through the gap of one of the splits. Then another and another. Soon a dozen of the creatures were inside, swimming just above the parked Nighthawks. The top of the sphere began to close, each petal sealing against the one next to it until it was completely closed.
Chamberlain staggered as his mind was filled with a vision that came unbidden. A beautiful city inside a clear shield. A golden tower extending upward. In the top of the golden tower a large room filled with small golden globes all connected together.
He didn’t know where the vision came from; he’d never had one before.
“That’s the target,” Eddings said.
Chamberlain looked at her in surprise.
“I saw it too,” Eddings said. “Those globes. That’s the Shadow. That’s what we have to destroy.”
* * *
“Where now?” Earhart asked.
Straight down.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
EARTH TIMELINE — XIV
Southern Africa, 21 January 1879
Ahana got as close as possible to the Isandlwana Gate without entering it. She shrugged off the pack of gear she’d brought and tossed it on the ground. The sound of the Zulu chant and the British singing echoed this far, even though she knew the sound should not carry the distance.
She knew there was something stronger at work than the physics she understood. Just as this gate was beyond her, so was whatever was now occurring at Isandlwana. And she knew with certainty that just as this gate had been formed and exploited by the Shadow through the power of the massacre, formed into something evil; she knew that what was happening at Rorke’s Drift was the opposite.
Ahana stared at the devices and instruments trying to decide what to do, feeling a tremble sense of urgency.
* * *
At Rorke’s Drift the outer stonewall was now lined with warriors, chanting and slamming the haft of their spears against their shields. Unlike earlier though, this chant was not martial. There was a slow and mournful cadence to it.
Inside the Inner wall, the British survivors stood to, looking out at the Zulu warriors, the butts of their rifles on the ground, red-stained bayonets glinting in the remaining firelight, singing hymns under the direction of the sergeant major.
Eyes grew wide on both sides, but none stopped singing, as a bluish glow appeared in the air above Rorke�
��s Drift. A tendril of the strange glowing blue cloud began to move against the wind toward Isandlwana.
* * *
“Stop.” Ahana said the word out loud. She moved back lightly from the machines. She’d had many theories about the Shadow, about the edge of science, about physics, but she realized that throughout it all, Dane had been more right about everything than she and Professor Nagoya.
Forget the machines. The thought came unbidden, but she trusted it. She had graduated number one in her class at every level of schooling. She had always used her mind but she knew she had never really trusted it unless machines and formulas agreed with it.
Now it was time to move past that.
Ahana unsealed the Valkyrie suit and stood on the stony ground just short of the top of Isandlwana. She really felt the true evil of the gate drawing power up from the planet and sending it on. She recoiled from it, stepping back several spaces, almost falling down the side of the mountain.
The hair on the back of her head rose as if a warm hand were brushing along her skin. She halted her retreat. She began to feel stronger, more powerful. And she was beginning to see what she had to do.
A single tear flowed down her smooth skin. Then she thought of Professor Nagoya, her mentor who had been killed outside the Devil’s Sea Gate. Of the millions, billions, killed by the Shadow and not another tear flowed.
EARTH TIMELINE-III
Vicinity New York, July 2078
In the control pod Earhart could see what was around the sphere she was piloting reflected on the interior walls around her. She had the sphere going down very quickly, the walls of the tunnel flashing by.
Like a driver going someplace she’d never been before she wanted to ask Dane where they were going but she had to trust that he would tell her when necessary.
There was a glow below. A blue glow.
The sphere jerked and bumped, and Earhart suddenly realized they were heading toward a gate.
They hit and were through. Into a portal with pulsing blue walls, moving quickly. It took all of Earhart’s skills as a pilot to keep them from hitting the walls of the portal. It was a close fit as the sphere raced through the portal. She hesitated as she rounded a curve and saw a flickering black wall ahead. A feeling of dread almost in capacitated her.
Go.
Earhart knew they could not go through the wall ahead. The Shadow had blocked their end of the portal.
She moved the sphere forward.
* * *
Ahana spread her arms wide, her body actually lifting off the ground from the power coming into her from Rorke’s Drift. The gate the Shadow had opened at Isandlwana was so close. She felt as if she were being propelled toward it, almost against her will.
It actually was against her will at a certain level. Every human wanted to live. To give one’s life willingly was the highest sacrifice.
Ahana gave it as the power coming into her peaked. Her head pulsed, the cells crystallizing, absorbing and focusing the power.
Bolts of blue hit the Shadow Gate, even as Ahana was pushed forward, into it.
The collision was more than either could take.
* * *
At Rorke’s Drift the chanting and singing stopped abruptly because there was a brilliant explosion to the northeast.
Then silence.
* * *
Earhart would never admit it to anyone, but she shut her eyes as the sphere closed on the black ending of the portal. Ever so briefly.
But there was no impact.
Earhart’s eyes flashed open. They were in water, moving.
Entering a huge chamber with a five-mile-wide crystal in the center. That was weakly pulsing with gold.
To the right. The tunnel. It leads to Atlantis.
“Where are you going?”
I’m staying right here.
“I will miss you, my friend.” Earhart kept up speed and banked hard right into the tunnel.
* * *
Cetewayo did not have to give an order. He simply began walking. Heading home. His warriors filed into place behind him. He noted that Shakan was next to him. “It was a good way to honor the dead and the brave.”
She nodded, her eyes toward the top of Isandlwana. As they marched back, a column of British troops appeared, coming in the opposite direction, Chelmsford’s column finally heading to Rorke’s Drift, much too late. The two columns passed each other on either side of the track, less than five feet apart. Warriors looked at soldiers and the look was returned. But not one of the thousands passing each other made a hostile move.
Shakan broke off from the column and climbed up Isandlwana.
There was nothing except a single crystal skull, from which the blue was fading.
Tenderly Shakan picked it up. Cradling it in her hands she left Isandlwana, chanting a song of passing in a low voice.
* * *
Dane hovered over the crystal core.
There was an invisible wall, a shield, all around it. A shield he could not penetrate. A shield he knew as being projected by the collective consciousness of the Shadow.
Dane probed, and the shield held. He probed again, not with any hope of punching through. But rather to keep the Shadow occupied and focused here. Instead of where they were.
Soon. Very soon.
* * *
Earhart pulled the sphere up. They burst out of the earth into the ocean next to Atlantis. The water was filled with Valkyries and kraken.
Earhart hit the command to unseal the sphere. Water poured in, filling the cargo bay. As soon as they were able, killer whales and MH·90s slipped through the cracks and the battle was joined.
* * *
Colonel Chamberlain had has his first real glimpse of Atlantis as his MH-90 exited the sphere. He recognized the city and the tower. His first issue was how to get in. Even as he was taking in the environment he heard his troops over the command net as they made contact with the Valkyries.
An MH-90 exploded as one of the gun platforms manned by Valkyries zeroed in on it and sent a bolt of gold into the craft. Nose guns on the MH-90s returned the fire, rounds smashing into Valkyries and tearing into their suits, killing the maimed humans inside.
Kraken met killer whale. Teeth versus tentacles as the two species ripped into each other.
Chamberlain saw the network for the Shadow spheres attached to the shield. He began issuing orders, directing his forces toward that.
* * *
Earhart saw the network also. And she saw one of the spheres begin to detach from its moorings. She directed her sphere toward it, accelerating. This time she did not close her eyes just before the collision, accepting the fate that should have been hers many years ago.
The two spheres smashed into each other. Equal in construction, both outer skins gave way, imploding. Water rushed in, not only into the top cargo area but into the control and power sections.
Water hit the control pod, ripping it from its place. Earhart’s last thought was of her navigator, Noonan.
In the power section, water poured in, hitting skulls that had been drained of most of the power, turning to steam as it hit their heat. There was more water than power left, and within seconds all the skulls went dark, the power from Pickett’s charge gone.
* * *
Chamberlain saw the two spheres, their outer hulls ripped open, slowly sinking down to the ocean floor. The one that had just detached — there was a pressure hatch where it had been.
“Right in there,” Chamberlain ordered the pilots. “Put our nose right through it.”
The MH-90 raced toward the hatch. When they were within a hundred meters the nose gun fired, tearing through the outer door.
Chamberlain hit the control that sealed off the pilot’s compartment from the rear.
“Flooding,” he announced.
The back ramp cracked open and water poured in.
As Chamberlain led the way out of the cargo bay, a tentacle shot by him, snatching the soldier next in line. Chamberlai
n dove forward, firing rounds at the creature. Designed to work on the Valkyrie armor, the specially adapted ammunition tore through the soft body of the kraken with little damage, the charge inside exploding harmlessly well after it had passed through.
A killer whale darted up and with one snap of its teeth severed the tentacle. The kraken turned its attention to the whale, and Chamberlain led his soldiers to the gap in the outer hatch. He paused there and did a quick check of the battle behind him.
Half the MH-90s were destroyed, floating derelicts. He saw numerous Valkyrie and Earth Battalion combat suits floating lifelessly in the water. He had a dozen soldiers with him as they placed a waterproof charge on the inner door. The charge exploded and Chamberlain was the first one in, swept in with the water that surged through. He kept his weapon at the ready as the corridor went up and pressure equalized.
He surfaced in the corridor, the pressure from the Atlantis dome keeping the water at bay. He moved forward, checking his rear view, seeing what was left of his battalion following. He focused back on the front.
The walls of the wide corridor were made of black metal, and the corridor went straight ahead, toward a golden glow. A figure was silhouetted against that glow for a moment, about twenty meters ahead, and Chamberlain’s training kicked in. He fired automatically, his rounds hitting dead on target.
The Valkyrie was knocked back, tumbling in a heap.
Chamberlain came out of the corridor inside the dome · and was momentarily stunned by the display that was projected on the interior surface. This pause allowed the rest of his group to catch up with him. Chamberlain ordered them to deploy tactically, and they moved forward toward the center tower, their suits allowing them to make large leaps and bounds over the terrain between.
They were engaged several times by Valkyries, and four of his surviving soldiers were killed, but there was no solid defense. Chamberlain realized that the Shadow had deployed most of the Valkyries outside of the dome, perhaps being warned by sensors or some other means as to what direction the attack was coming from.
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