Walks Alone sighted in on another blue coat and pulled the trigger.
CHAPER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE SPACE BETWEEN
Dane tried hard not to look at the hundred men strapped into the alcoves all around him. He stood next to the golden sphere, while Earhart had taken her place in the pilot’s pod. They’d run a wire from the two chambers so he could communicate with her. He wore a headset with a boom mike in front of his lips.
“Are you ready?” Dane asked.
“Yes.”
Dane placed his hands on the golden globe. It was cold, dead. He began closing off the outside world. Focusing only on the object between his hands. He’d had a “map” of the portals in his hands once before, and he remembered what it felt like. He projected that feeling through his hands, into the globe. He felt a tingle, then growing warmth. He kept his eyes closed, his focus tight.
“I’m getting something,” Earhart reported.
The surface was beginning to pulse under Dane’s hands. The portal map he’d used before had been like a ball of snakes, the various tubes between portals writhing with energy.
“The inner surface of this pod is flickering,” Earhart said.” I’m getting glimpses of the immediate area around the sphere.”
Dane felt the drain as the globe drew power from him. A sharp pain lanced through his brain, from frontal lobe to rear and down into his spine. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could continue putting in power.
“Oh.” Earhart’s voice was odd.
“What is it?” Dane asked, trying to maintain his focus.
“I see how to draw power from the” —she hesitated—“fuel.”
“Do it.” Dane didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t want to see · the men whose fate he had just sealed. Immediate fate, he reminded himself as they were already dying from radiation — as would millions on his planet if they didn’t succeed. It was brutal math, but realistic.
Sounds intruded on his focus. Moans. Hisses and gasps of pain. In concert with the cacophony of pain, Dane felt power flowing in from all around. The pain in his head receded. The surface of the globe was now dissolving into the portal tube · lines. Dane felt his hands becoming enmeshed. He saw flashes, visions, flickering images of what lay on either end of the portals as he ran his hands over one, then another of the strands.
Earth. The surface blasted and blistered from nuclear weapons. A wasteland. Gone. Not a viable choice, Dane realized, shifting to another strand.
Earth, where a hammer and sickle flew over the House. Not a viable choice as the environment appeared sound and people were alive, regardless of who ruled America.
Earth, a large city, which Dane couldn’t quite place, the streets deserted. Dane gripped harder, trying to hold on to what he was seeing. A blue sky. No apparent damage. Just no people. He slid his hands both ways on the strand. He reached a knob at the end of the strand with his left hand and focused hard. A column, but clear, shimmering, not black.
“I’ve got it,” Dane yelled. Too loud, hurting Earhart’s ears. But he was being overwhelmed with the screams of the men surrounding him. He didn’t want to know what the sphere was doing to them to produce the anguished mental power he felt washing over him.
“I’ve got the location in the Inner Sea,” Earhart confirmed. “But it’s not active.”
“It will be,” Dane whispered. He focused on the knob in his hand, drawing in the emotional power from the Nautilus sailors. He felt the sphere moving, and he knew Earhart was doing as she had promised-flying the massive object through the Space Between.
“It’s getting black,” Earhart said. “What the hell are you doing?”
Dane didn’t answer. His hand tightened on the knob on the end of the strand, feeling the warmth grow to blinding pain, but still he didn’t let go.
The sphere accelerated and Dane staggered, almost losing his grip inside the portal map.
“I seen it. I got it.” Earhart’s voice was rising in pitch. “We’re going in.”
The sphere lurched and pain spiked through Dane’s left hand, so severe he let go. He staggered back from the portal map.
“We’re through!” Earhart yelled.
Dane looked around. One hundred men had taken their place in the alcoves. He estimated more than half were dead, their heads solidified. The rest didn’t look very healthy.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
LONESOME CHARLIE REYNOLDS
“The general’s hit! The general’s hit!”
Lonesome Charlie Reynolds didn’t need the high-pitched screaming of Custer’s standard bearer to tell him what he had just witnessed with his own eyes. He rode forward along with several troopers to the general’s side. Custer’s eyes were open, and he seemed more surprised than anything.
“They shot me!” Custer exclaimed, lifting up a blood-soaked glove from his side. ‘’1 can’t feel my legs.”
“Easy, George, easy.” Boston Custer was at his brother’s side. The command was halted. Firing from the other side of the river was continuing, but it wasn’t particularly strong. Reynolds slid off his horse and knelt, one hand still holding his reins and at the same time steadying his rifle while he aimed across the river. He fired.
Reynolds, like Bouyer, was a half-breed, and he’d seen all the signs. The two had talked and Bouyer had given him a very strange thing, a clear skull wrapped in a leather satchel, with the admonition to keep it near Custer all the time. What Reynolds would have really preferred was to ride away with the Crow scouts, but he knew this was his place.
He’d recognized the sun dance circle when they’d passed through it the previous day, and he knew from that and what Bouyer bad given him that he was in the midst of great events. Reynolds had done the sun dance when he was fifteen while still living with his mother’s people. He knew there were things in the world beyond the knowledge of man and much more powerful. The Great Spirit chose a man’s fate when he was born, and all any man could do was live his fate as best as possible.
As he reloaded, Reynolds looked around. The front half of Captain Yates’s F Troop was in the grassy bowl now. E Troop was bottlenecked in Medicine Tail Coulee behind it, the column of twos halted by the sudden stop of F Troop. Another ravine just downstream looked like it went up to the northeast. The Indian fire was not heavy, other than Custer, only two other troopers had been hit, both wounded. A charge could take the crossing. Reynolds could see the lodges on the other side, the village was there for the taking with a determined charge.
But Yates was with the general and his brother. They were arguing about whether to take Custer off his horse. At that moment, one of the troopers in F Troop took an arrow through the throat.
Reynolds remounted. Several troopers were firing, but the rest were milling about, no orders being given, the entire command stopped with the strike of one bullet. Without the general, Reynolds knew there was no one who could lead the regiment, not even Benteen if he were here, and the fire from across the river was growing heavier by the minute.
GALL
The edge of his hatchet dripped red as he walked among the bodies. Gall could hear firing from the other side of the river. Warriors had chased the soldiers over there and into the bluffs. The camp was safe, and a victory had been won, testified to by the number of bodies in blue lying about the valley floor and the fact that the white men were running away in a panic.
He spun about as he heard a shout. A large man with black skin was running, rifle in hand. He had no horse and must have been cut off when the whites retreated. Gall had seen this man before and knew of him. He was named Isiah Dorman, and he scouted for Custer. He had a red wife, but he had betrayed the people and now served with the whites.
Dorman fired a quick shot over his shoulder at a group of Sioux who were chasing him. He missed. Gall began running to join the fight when one of the Sioux pulled up a shotgun and fired, hitting Dorman in the legs with pellets and tumbling him to the ground. As the black man fumbled to reload, one of the Sioux use
d a spear to knock the gun out of his hands.
A warrior fired an arrow at close range, and the steel blade sliced through the man’s chest and imbedded itself in a prairie dog mound behind him. Gall came to a halt and watched. Squaws came running up to the pinned man. They had stone mallets that they used to pound grain and com with. They used those to smash Dorman’s flesh, breaking his arms as he flailed about trying to keep them away.
Gall felt nothing as the man screamed. A warrior took a knife and gashed open a wound on Dorman’s side. The warrior grabbed a tin cup that was hooked to the black man’s cartridge belt and held it below the wound, filling it with blood.
One of the squaws had just lost her husband and she had a metal pin in her hand, a picket pin she must have taken from one of the dead horses farther back in the valley. With both hands, she drove it down between Dorman’s legs, slamming through his testicles and pinning him to the ground in that direction. An undulating scream ripped from his throat.
With that, the squaws moved on to other bodies. But Gall could see that Dorman was still alive, blood pouring from his wounds. A small group of boys came running by, bows in hand, and Gall stopped them with a yell. He pointed at the dying black man and gave an order. The boys notched arrows and fired, peppering his body. The black man was finally dead.
The firing in the bluffs to the east was much more sporadic now. The white men had lost many horses in the valley. They would not be going anywhere soon, and there would be time to deal with them later.
Gall looked back over the field of battle and frowned. Why had the soldiers begun to charge and then stopped so quickly? And again, this did not fulfill Sitting Bull’s vision. The soldiers had not fallen into camp; they had attacked on a level field. And where was Long Hair, Custer? Gall had seen the flag one of the soldiers was carrying. These were Custer’s men, but there had not been that many of them. Even the blue coats were not stupid enough to attack the entire Sioux nation with just this handful of soldiers. Were they? Where were the others?
Gall heard shots downstream, to the north. He looked in that direction but could see nothing through the trees that lined the banks. His warrior’s sense told him the fight was begun anew, though. He grabbed a pony and threw his powerful leg over it. Hatchet in hand, he rode north. Through the village, yelling for all the warriors around to follow him.
BOUYER
Bouyer scooped up a dismounted soldier, swinging him on the horse right behind him as he crossed the little Big Horn. He reached the far hank as arrows rained down around and bullets whizzed by. The horse struggled, fighting its way up the steep bluff carrying the two men. Halfway up, it collapsed, spilling Bouyer and the soldier to the ground. Bouyer began to tumble back down slope but arrested his fall by grabbing onto a bush. The soldier continued down and Bouyer saw three arrows sticking out of the man’s back, arrows that would have been in his own back if he hadn’t tried to help the soldier.
The Little Big Horn below him flowed red. A dozen blue coats lay still in the shallow water as more tried to escape. Bouyer saw Reno to his left, scrambling on all fours up the slope toward the top of the bluff. There was no coordinated withdrawal, just a mad desperate rush to escape. Cursing, Bouyer got to his feet and dashed up the bluff until he reached the top, about a hundred fifty steep feet above the Little Big horn. There were about two dozen soldiers already there, most dazed and just lying about. The bluff was covered with knee-high grass and had great views in all directions.
Bouyer looked to the north. He could hear gunfire although it was hard to determine exactly in what direction or how far it was, as there was still considerable firing from below. He couldn’t see anything, no sign of Custer or the other half of the Seventh Cavalry.
This was not coming together the way Bouyer had expected. He’d thought there would be one magnificent battle with the entire Seventh pitched against the united Indian tribes. He blinked sweat out of his eyes, sensing failure. The skulls were dispersed, he knew that. He needed to bring them together. He’d given them to the names listed on the paper he’d received, but he had little idea where all those people were now.
He saw Reno now on the top of the bluff, collapsing to the ground. Bouyer went over to the major. “Sir!”
Reno’s eyes had the distant stare of one who had seen things they wished they never had. Bouyer slapped him across the face hard. “Sir. You need to rally the men. The Sioux ain’t gonna stop. They’re gonna come right up that hill you came up unless you put some hot lead into them.”
Reno blinked, as if Bouyer were speaking a foreign language. Hell, Bouyer thought. Reno not only needed to organize a defense, he needed to gather a strike force to ride out and find Custer. There were at least fifty men here now, with more straggling in every minute. Bouyer grabbed Reno by the shirt and spoke slowly, but forcefully. ‘’Major, you need to take command. Now!”
CHAPTER THIRTY
EARTH XVI
Earhart had never experienced flight like this. The pod around was displaying the three-hundred-sixty-degree view from the outside of the sphere. She could look in any direction, and she could also direct the sphere to go in that direction simply by pressing one of four lit buttons on the waist-high console that wrapped around her. Up. down. Left. And right or any combination thereof. Simplicity in the utmost.
There was a city below, with several beaches east and south, and a steep hill with a large statue on top of it. Rio de Janeiro. Earhart had flown there once before. They were over South America.
“Can you deploy the panels?” Dane’s voice interrupted her flying reverie.
Earhart looked down at the console. It had come alive when Dane powered up the ship, and at first she had concentrated simply on searching for the controls to maneuver the sphere. Those for the panels weren’t hard, either. A small accordion like symbol was to her right. She pushed it. A loud rumbling noise reverberated through the sphere. Directly in front of her, on the inside of the pod’s surface, a small window appeared, showing the large cargo bay above, and the top of the sphere began opening. The gap grew wider until the entire top was open. Then the panels began folding outward, extending in both directions.
* * *
Dane had his hands off the portal map, but power was still flowing through him into the pedestal on which the map was placed. The draw wasn’t as intense as it was while moving through a portal, but it was still appreciable. He kept his eyes closed. But there wasn’t anything he could do about the sounds of multiplied pain that echoed through the chamber. He prayed that the Shadow wasn’t an Earth time line, because any civilization that would develop and use such a mode of power was as evil as Nazi Germany.
That gave Dane pause for a moment as he remembered his Vision of the flag with the hammer and sickle flying over the White House. Could…
He was jerked out of this train of thought by Earhart’s voice. “We’re moving through the atmosphere. The panels seem to be working. We’re drawing in something.”
“Where’s it going?” Dane asked.
There was a pause, then Earhart replied. “Into the panels and storage area. I’ve got some sort of reading. Seventy percent I’m assuming that’s against the capacity the sphere can store.”
“Is it enough for what we need?”
“I have no idea. But we can’t take back more than this thing can store. We have to hope it’s enough.”
Dane opened his eyes. Most of the sailors in the alcoves were dead. One of the still living met his gaze with an anguished look. The leads Dane had noticed were in the man’s body, most likely activated when Dane had accessed the portal map.
“How much longer’?” Dane asked, unable to break the man’s accusing gaze.
“Not too much longer.” There was a pause. “We’re over the South Atlantic now, moving west to east. We came in over Rio. There was nobody there. The city was deserted, I saw no signs of human life.”
“We knew that,” Dane said. “Any idea what happened to help people?”
> “Not a clue. Ninety percent, I’m turning back toward the portal.”
Dane tore his eyes away from the man. He took a quick count. Fewer than fifteen were still alive. The heads of the rest were just like those who had previously occupied the alcoves, solidified into dull gray skulls. He looked down. The portal map looked like a mass of pulsing golden snakes. He forced his hands into it, feeling the heat.
Visions, glimpses of other Earth time lines shot through his mind, but he focused on finding this one. He caught a glimpse of the abandoned city, recognizing Rio now, and he hold.
“We’re at one hundred percent capacity,” Earhart reported. “I see the portal.”
Dane flinched as a spasm of red hot pain shot into his palm.
“Keep it open. Eric!”
He could hear the panic in Earhart’s voice. He gritted his and tightened his grip. Ignoring the pain. It felt as if his bands were on fire, burning. He could even feel the flesh peeling back. The pain went deeper and deeper, into the marrow of his bones.
“Steady.” Earhart’s voice was almost a whisper, as if she were afraid anything louder would distract him. “Steady. Eric. Steady.”
The sphere lurched.
“We’re in. Now to your Earth time line.”
Dane pulled his bands away from the portal map, surprised to see them intact. He looked about. “We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“They’re all dead.”
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
LONSOME CHARLIE REYNOLDS
“We have to cross now!” Reynolds yelled at Captain Yates. The entire unit was stalled, some of Yates’s men laying down a covering fire across the river, but the rest were bottled up in the coulee, able to neither advance nor go back due to the press of the column coming downhill behind them. The firing from the Indian side was getting stronger.
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