Assault on Atlantis a-5

by Robert Doherty

  “Powerful magic!” Sitting Bull cried out in Lakota.

  “Yes,” Bouyer agreed.

  Sitting Bull turned to the left. Just over the next rise lay the battlefield. They could hear the firing falling off from the crescendo it bad been. Bouyer knew the end was close.

  “We go?” Sitting Bull inclined his head toward the rise.

  Bouyer nodded and put the stirrups to his horse. Skulls in hand, the two rode toward the rise.

  * * *

  An arrow slammed into Custer’s left thigh. Piercing through flesh and muscle into the ground beneath. He didn’t feel any pain. He didn’t feel the burning heat from the satchel Autie had placed in his lap. All he felt was in his mind, disbelief and shock about what was going on all around him.

  * * *

  Gall saw Sitting Bull and the strange half-breed from the sun dance appear to the south. Both holding up glowing skulls. He signaled, indicating for the warriors not to attack the half-breed. Then he reached into his satchel and grabbed hold of the hot skull. He almost laughed at the pain. The sun dance bad prepared him for this. He held the glowing skull aloft and moved forward.

  * * *

  Buffalo Calf Woman slammed an awl through a dead soldier’s left ear, pulled it out, then jammed it into the right, piercing the eardrum. He should not hear in the afterworld. Because he had not heard clearly in this world. He had not heard the Great Spirit warning the whites to leave the people in peace.

  She looked up and saw mighty Gall striding forward. A glowing blue object in his hand. She opened the satchel she’d taken from the blue coat. She blinked in the bright blue glow and then reached in. She grabbed hold with both hands and held it aloft. Then she headed in the direction Gall was going.

  * * *

  Walks Alone saw Gall and Buffalo Calf Woman. Where was Crazy Horse? He wondered as he pulled out the skull the great warrior had given him. He stood up, ignoring the warnings from the braves around to stay down. There were still soldiers alive on the hill, firing.

  None would hit him. Walks Alone knew. He beaded up the hill.

  * * *

  Two Moons notched an arrow and fired it high into the sky, firing a second before the first impacted. He paused as he noted the people moving forward with the skulls. He put down his bow and opened the satchel he’d taken from Bloody Knife. He removed the skull, gasping as it burned his flesh, and moved forward.

  * * *

  Crazy Horse turned to the south toward the firing. His warriors spread out on either side. He could hold them back no longer. Their vengeance against those who had invaded their lands, killed their families, and brought disease and death was unstoppable now.

  Crazy Horse reached into the satchel tied off to his pony and pulled out the talisman given by his “brother.” He kicked his pony in the side and raced forward.

  * * *

  Sitting Bull halted, fifty yards short of the last stand being mounted by the whites. He could see the Son of the Morning Star, still alive but wounded in several places, leaning back against the saddle of a dead horse.

  Bouyer saw Custer also. He stopped next to Sitting Bull as Buffalo Calf Woman and Walks Alone joined them. The skulls seemed to sense each other’s presence, their glow becoming brighter, making them unbearable to gaze upon directly.

  And then Crazy Horse and three hundred warriors crested the hill behind the last stand and swept down.

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  THE SPACE BETWEEN

  Rachel leapt out of the water and landed with a splash directly in front of Dane and Earhart.

  “Let’s go,” Dane said. He didn’t wait for a reply as he moved forward in the Valkyrie suit, floating ten feet above the water, following Rachel’s dorsal fin. The dolphin, paused, arched her back so she could see that they were following, then continued ahead.

  Dane saw their destination: a narrow portal column, streaked with red, flickering to solid black. Then gray with red, then black. Still filled with the red lines.

  “That’s not a locked in portal,” Earhart said.

  Dane didn’t respond. He moved forward, hit the portal and disappeared.

  Earhart followed.

  CHAPTER THRITY FIVE

  CUSTER

  “Angels,” Custer whispered. “Come to rescue me.” He dropped the pistol he couldn’t fire and reached up with both hands toward the white figures that had just appeared in front of him.

  * * *

  Dane saw the massacre all around as a wave of several hundred warriors washed over the remnants of Custer’s command. But all veered away from the strange vision of he and Earhart in the Valkyrie suits and Custer nearby with a glowing skull in his lap.

  Dane slowly turned and saw a handful of people approaching, glowing blue skulls held in their hands. He raised his white arms wide, welcoming them, spreading out the metal net he had taken from the sphere.

  The screams of the last dying soldiers echoed in his ears. He didn’t want to believe he’d become jaded to death. He wanted to believe that this battle had been inevitable anyway and he was here to cull something good out of a futile massacre.

  Sitting Bull walked up and dropped the glowing skull into the net. Then Buffalo Calf Road Woman. Walks Alone. Crazy Horse. Gall. Two Moons. And then Mitch Bouyer with two skulls.

  Eight.

  “Eric.”

  Dane had almost forgotten Earhart was with him. He turned.

  George Armstrong Custer was looking at him. His face was pale, his body wounded in several places.

  “The ninth,” Earhart said. He was the only one of his command left alive. On his lap was the ninth skull.

  Dane felt Custer’s shock and confusion. “Take it,” he ordered Earhart.

  With a clawed hand she reached down and lifted the skull, from Custer’s lap. Dane wanted to say something to those around, but he knew the portal might not last. He turned to it, hit the blackness and disappeared.

  Behind him Earhart hesitated. Her thoughts and feelings ere jumbled. She saw her lines in Bouyer’s face. Her son, but not her Son. Standing on a hillside littered with bodies. He was half of one people, half of another. What would happen to him, she wondered? He didn’t even know who she was.

  The portal flickered and she entered it.

  * * *

  Dane went directly to the power room carrying the skulls.

  Earhart took her place in the control room, entering the command pod. There was no need for them to talk, to discuss what came next.

  Staying in the Valkyrie suit, Dane removed the nine skulls · and placed them in the alcoves that were on the same level as the portal map. When he was done, he went to the center and · exited the suit. The power flowing in from the skulls was intense, much stronger than what he had just experienced from e crew of the Nautilus. He let his hands flow among the portal strands, letting his own time line attract them with its draw.

  His hands wrapped around a strand that felt familiar in a way he couldn’t explain. Then he realized he’d touched this one before, when he’d cut off the portal the Shadow had been using to drain power from his world and that this sphere had come through.

  “I’ve got power,” Earhart said. “I see the portal. It’s big enough. You’re sure it’s the one back to your time line?”

  “I’m not sure of anything,” Dane said. “But, yes, this is the one.”

  The sphere hit the portal, rocked, bounced, then Dane almost fell off the pedestal as the craft canted hard right.

  “Whoa!’’ Earhart called out. “I’ve got it.” The floor leveled. “Deploying panels and releasing the ozone.”

  * * *

  Onboard the Flip, Foreman was one of the first to get the reports of the sphere reappearing. A dozen military and research aircraft from various countries were within range of the craft. And they immediately vectored in.

  * * *

  “What are we going to do about the radiation?” Dane asked.

  “We’re heading north now,” Earhart reported.
“You just keep the power coming. I’ll take care of it. We’ve discharged all the ozone we picked up. And keep that gate open.”

  * * *

  At McMurdo Station the Surviving scientists couldn’t believe the data their instruments were recording. It wasn’t just a reprieve for them; it was a reversal of the damage to the ozone layer that had been done for decades previously.

  * * *

  Moscow was a ghost town, millions having fled by the inevitable wave of radiation being borne by the winds. The front edge had passed through the suburbs and now threatened the city itself. A handful of dedicated soldiers stayed at their stations, manning the nuclear launch control center, the air defense monitoring station, and the other key facilities that had NBC (nuclear, biological and chemical protection capability. They would stay there as long as they could stay buttoned up and alive.

  The air defense monitoring station was the first to pick up the image of the sphere as it approached from the south. The size of the image was so overwhelming the general in charge had no idea what to do.

  * * *

  Earhart brought the sphere and its miles of deployed panels down to a level where they wouldn’t hit the highest object. “How’s the power?”

  Dane looked at the nine skulls. Five had already gone blank, while four still glowed. “We’re under fifty percent.”

  “Damn.” Earhart “knew” the controls of this ship. It was something she hadn’t wanted to discuss with Dane because she didn’t know how she knew. Whether the Ones Before had planted the knowledge in her somehow, or more daddy, she had piloted this craft sometime in the past and didn’t remember, she had no idea.

  She pushed a button to her extreme left.

  The panels crackled with energy, drawing the radiation in the air toward them. The sphere and panels swept through the sky above Russia in long, fast S-turns. Cleaning the air of death, heading toward Chernobyl.

  “We’re getting hot inside the cargo bay,” Earhart informed Dane.

  “We don’t have much power left,” Dane replied. “How much longer?”

  “I think we got it,” Earhart said, checking the displays. “Most of it at least. I’m heading back toward the portal and bringing in the panels so we can go faster.”

  As the sphere accelerated, the panels began folding on themselves.

  Eight of the skulls had been drained of the energy put into them at such cost. Only one still glowed. Dane was staring at it as if he could keep the power flowing from it with simply his will. Perhaps he could, he suddenly realized. He was one of the chosen. He realized he had the power if he was willing to make the sacrifice.

  He had asked others to make sacrifices.

  “Eric.”

  He lifted one hand out of the portal map and extended it toward the line of blue power that flowed from the skull to the map.

  “Damn it, Dane. We’re almost there. What are you doing?”

  He put his hand into the flow. His head snapped back as if he’d been shot in the forehead. He was only kept from falling by his one hand still gripping the portal end of his Earth time line.

  The sphere hit the portal with a jar that knocked Dane to the other side, pulling his hand out of the power flow. Unconscious, he let go of the portal map and collapsed to the floor.

  “We made it,” Earhart’s voice echoed inside the Valkyrie suit. “Dane? Eric, are you there?”

  CHAPTER THRITY SIX

  SITTING BULL

  There was firing to the south, where Reno and Benteen’s troops were dug in on top of a knoll. They didn’t have access to water, and Sitting Bull knew it would only be a matter of a couple days before they became dehydrated and desperate.

  They were not his immediate concern. He looked over the battlefield strewn with the dead blue coats and crowded with his people. All had gathered round. Staring up at him. The two ghosts had just disappeared into the black with the glowing skulls. Such a thing none here had ever seen, and all knew they had witnessed powerful medicine.

  For the first time in his life, Sitting Bull was at a loss for words. He could see Crazy Horse and the strange half-breed who had brought the skulls whispering together.

  “My people” Sitting Bull began, but he still could not summon the words that had always flowed so easily. Thus, he gave way when Crazy Horse, the one who never spoke in front of groups, who let his actions speak, surprisingly came forward.

  Crazy Horse stood next to Sitting Bull. Looking around at the thousand faces looking back. Warriors, squaws, children. Many covered in white man’s blood. He, too, heard the shooting to the south where warriors kept the other blue coats trapped. This was a great victory indeed, but yes, even Crazy Horse could finally accept that they had only destroyed half of the Seventh Cavalry, and there was another column of blue coats coming from the north with even more men than Custer had, an ocean of soldiers to the east ready to sweep west.

  “What happened today,” Crazy Horse said, his powerful voice easily carrying over the crowd, “the magic you have witnessed, must never be spoken of. Even among us. And you would be wise not to speak of this battle at all to the whites. For they will come thirsting for vengeance for the Son of the Morning Star and the others who lie here.” He swallowed, looked at his “brother,” who met his gaze steadily, then continued. ·’We must leave. Separate and go our own ways. And make peace with the whites when they offer it” There were no cries of dissent. The magic all had witnessed had been too powerful, too full of portent. “If we continue to fight we will all die. We will become as extinct as the great buffalo. We used to see the plaids covered with them as far as the eye could reach. They would pass by our encampments for days on end. Now we must search long and hard for a small group. If we continue to fight we, too, will come to an end.”

  He waved toward the west. “Go. Separate. Hide from the whites. And when they offer peace, take it. It is not a good thing. It is not what I or you would want. But it is what will happen.”

  Crazy Horse walked down, past the horse against which Custer lay dead, up to his “brother.” “Go in peace. Talk to the white chiefs. Tell them it is over.”

  THE SPACE BETWEEN

  Earhart floated into the power chamber, which was lit only by · a dim gold glow from the portal map. She saw Dane lying at me base of the portal pedestal.

  “Eric?”

  Dane slowly opened his eyes.

  “Are you all right?”

  Dane nodded, grimacing with pain. “We must take the fight to the Shadow.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “First, we find the Ones Before.” Before Earhart could ask the same question, Dane continued. “I sensed something in the portal. I think I can get us to them.”

  “And then?”

  “We find out the truth about this war. And we end it.”

  THE END

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