Battle For Atlantis Read online

  Dane descended. He paused just above the turgid water. One more terrible thing to endure among all the other things he’d had to so far.

  Dane got angry. Who were these people who made up the Shadow to do these things they had done? To destroy entire timelines to keep this worthless existence alive? Living in a world that has bereft of beauty? Of purpose other than to exist?

  Dane plunged down into the oily, thick water.

  What light there had been quickly disappeared but Dane continued downward. He had no sensation of swimming now, just movement. He had no idea how long he descended, but soon a light appeared ahead, growing brighter as be got closer.

  Dane came to a halt.

  There was a city below, enclosed in a huge clear shield. A magnificent city with a golden palace in the very center, with a main tower that had to reach almost a mile upward, ending just short of the very center top of the shield. From Dane’s perspective above, he could see that there were numerous other golden buildings surrounding the palace, then a ring of water--fresh water he assumed. Then a ring of land on which there were white, smaller buildings, apparently homes. Another ring of water enclosing that. To the right was something that appeared out of place, an add on-- a large black building, like a warehouse, and a tube that extended out of the clear shield to a gigantic latticework of black, in which nested at least a dozen of the large black spheres that the Shadow used to traverse the portals.

  Dane continued down, passing through the clear shield, which was not clear when seen from the other direction. He paused, slowly taking in the panoramic view of bright · blue sky with a few lofty clouds visible and the sun shining. On the edge, where the shield met the ground, there was a surrounding ocean. Not the dirty diseased one that surrounded the city completely, but a clean one with waves running across its surface.

  This was how Atlantis must have looked in its heyday Dane realized. It might have been swallowed by the ocean because of their mistakes, but the Atlanteans of Timeline I had used their technology to at least visually re-create what they had once known.

  But where were they?

  There was no movement in the city that he could discern.

  Dane headed toward the center tower. Despite the horrid atmosphere of corruption and evil that he was picking up, he had to admit that it was spectacular. He estimated it was almost a mile high and the surface glittered in the false sun that was projected onto the inner surface of the shield.

  Dane passed inside near the very top, speculating that if it was occupied, someone would be near the top. After all, why build such a thing if not to be above it all?

  He was in a spiral corridor that was wrapped against the outer wall of the tower and went up a slight incline. The corridor was about fifteen feet wide and Dane could only assume it went all the way to the base below and to the tip just above. On the outer wall. The view was clear--obviously the Shadow had perfected a means to make a material that was opaque on one side and clear on the other.

  Dane halted, looking out over the city. It was most impressive and it was false. He thought it summarized what the Shadow had developed into quite well.

  Dane followed the spiral corridor upward. As the tower narrowed, so did the corridor, and the turn tightened. The corridor ended abruptly and he floated into the base of the top of the needle. It was an open space, a hundred meters wide at the floor, narrowing to a point more than four hundred meters above his head.

  Filling the chamber was a latticework of gold spheres, each about three feet in diameter, attached to each other by thin tendrils of gold. It was mesmerizing and Dane stared at it for quite a while. He estimated that there were several thousand gold spheres, all linked together.

  His first guess was that perhaps this was some elaborate work of art or some sort of religious symbolism to the Shadow. Who knows how they had developed from the other timelines since the time of Atlantis?

  Dane had been guarding himself against the bad feelings given off by his environment ever since coming into the Shadow portal. But now he lowered this mental barrier a little to get a feel for this strange place. It was a barrier he had perfected as a child to keep the emotions of others at arm’s distance from him. He’d learned early in his life that he was different from others, able to sense things normal humans weren’t.

  He snapped the protection back in place immediately as he realized, with a power that knocked his projected essence backward, what exactly he was looking at: those golden spheres were the Shadow. Each one contained an original Atlantean, his or her mind, in a timeless existence.

  And now they knew he was here.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  EARTH TIME LINE--VIII

  Pennsylvania, 2 July 1863

  Darkness fell but the fighting did not abate. Lee had grudgingly accepted that Longstreet’s flanking attempt had failed to the right. He had watched thick smoke from furious fighting float off of both the Round Tops throughout the afternoon, but just before dusk it was a Union flag that still flew at the very top of Big Round Top.

  Still, there was some success there as Sickles’s exposed corps, badly battered, was thrown back out of the peach orchard and sent tumbling back to the main Union · line. By this time, Ewell and A. P. Hill’s corps had managed to bring themselves on line in the center and north, preparing to coordinate with the flanking maneuver of Longstreet. Despite the latter’s failure, Lee did not want to give up the initiative and allow the Union troops the chance to counterattack.

  At Lee’s command, Ewell’s artillery opened fire from Seminary Ridge toward Cemetery Ridge. The response from the more numerous Northern guns was instant and furious. Within twenty minutes, Ewell was forced to silence his guns and pull them back behind the cover of the ridge to keep his men from being destroyed by the counter-battery fire.

  On the Union right flank, the Union corps occupying Culp’s Hill had had the better part of the day to prepare their positions, as had the troops along the length of Cemetery Ridge. Still, lee issued orders for an attack. By the time the orders were disseminated down, night was falling across the land. The focus ‘of Lee’s thrust was the Union right, from his Own left, at the juncture of Cemetery Ridge with Culp’s Hill.

  Initially, the attack did not go well as the terrain was difficult to move across in the dark. Then Union batteries began firing, inflicting heavy casualties on the advancing Confederates. Still, the Southern forces came forward and then found a reprieve as they reached the base of the ridge and hill as the Union guns on top could not depress their angle of fire to hit them anymore.

  The ebullient Rebels, glad to be out of the artillery fire charged uphill, striking the Union lines. They were soon in among the artillery itself and hand-to-hand fighting broke out. Meade counterattacked immediately with his reserves, and the exhausted Confederates, having already charged forward over a mile under heavy fire and engaged in heavy combat, fell back before the fresh Federal troops.

  The situation began to get confusing in the darkness as neither senior commander could tell exactly where his forces were. In some places, Union units fired on fellow Union units in the confusion.

  Gradually, the men of both sides simply decided the day was done. Units pulled back to their original lines and despite the horrific casualties of the day, neither side could claim victory.

  At Lee’s headquarters, Lee was grudgingly accepting the pause of night. He had launched night attacks before, but this situation was simply too confused and his units too scattered to do so now. He felt he still had the initiative though, and considered his plan for the next day.

  Despite Lee’s optimistic thoughts, the reality of the situation was far different The Army of the Potomac was massed inside the fishhook, new units arriving all day, until over eighty thousand Federal troops were crowded into a defensive Position less than three miles long. Lee’s forces, numbering fewer than fifty thousand, was stretched around the fishhook in a line almost five miles long. Meade also had three hundred and fifty artillery
pieces to Lee’s two hundred seventy-two. Dividing men and gun totals by mileage of front, Meade had an overwhelming force advantage.

  There was another problem, one that the last attack on the left had clearly shown--his troops might be able to breach the Union lines, but to gain victory he would have to be able to sustain the assault In fact, lee’s victory over Sickles’s exposed corps on the right had shown the problem also.

  Lee stared at his map in the flickering light of a lantern. The headquarters was bustling as couriers came and went, but around Lee there was a reverent circle of silence as his staff waited for him to do what he always had before--come up with a brilliant plan that would defeat the Federals.

  The circle was broken as Longstreet walked up. Old Pete was the last person lee wanted to see right now. He felt his subordinate commander had not pressed the attack sufficiently during the day on the Round Tops or at the Union left. Lee sensed that Longstreet was almost sulking after having been rebuffed in his tactical suggestions repeatedly. What lee did not know was that Longstreet was indeed upset, not only from having his suggestions rebuffed but also from having spent the day doing the same--as per Lee’s strict orders--to his own subordinate’s pleas for the ability to maneuver farther to the south around the Union flank. His lead divisions had thus thrown themselves into futile frontal attacks that had been smashed with high casualty rates.

  Elements of Longstreet’s corps had seen their most brutal of the war in places like Little Round Top, the peach orchard, the wheat field, and Devil’s Den. Most of his divisions had been chewed up badly, to the point where they were almost combat ineffective. Some had taken almost 50 percent casualties. Longstreet was proud of the fighting his men had done but not happy with the results as the line had little changed other than throwing Sickles back.

  As exhausted soldiers on both sides collapsed to the ground to catch much needed sleep, the two-army staffs waited for orders from their commanders. Longstreet came · to Lee’s headquarters to see what devilment the next day would bring and, for one more time, to make his own case.

  “How is your corps?” Lee finally looked up from the map and acknowledged Longstreet’s presence.

  “They fought well,” Longstreet said. “My adjutant has the initial casualty figures and gave them to your adjutant.” He paused, but Lee did not ask, so he continued. “We lost many good men today.”

  “So did the Federals,” Lee said.

  Longstreet felt What little energy he had left drain out of his body. He sat down heavily on a campstool, not even interested in looking at the map. He knew the terrain now by memory.

  “You have an intact division,” Lee said. “One that has not yet entered the fray.”

  Longstreet nodded. “Pickett came up just before dark. I held him back as it was too late for him to join the fight.”

  “Good,” lee said.

  “Do you remember what we did last year at Gaines’ Mill?”

  Longstreet blinked, not quite believing what he was ,hearing. “Right up the center?”

  “The Union lines are solid,” Lee acknowledged. ‘They’re packed along that damn ridge tight. But”--Lee emphasized the word--“last year they had the same type of position at Gaines’ Mill on Turkey Hill. Hood smashed right into them and once he broke the line, their collapse was complete.”

  “Hood’s wounded,” Longstreet said. “The surgeon thinks he’ll live, but he’s out of the fight.”

  Lee looked to the east, as if he could see Cemetery Ridge in the dark. “We break them there, we can run over their entire army. They’re packed in there so tight, they won’t be able to retreat.

  Longstreet found Lee’s logic strange, looking only at a possibility instead of the initial reality of what it meant for the Union forces to be so tightly formed.

  “1 also have two divisions from Ewell that saw little action today,” Lee said. ‘’Pickett will make the initial assault and breakthrough. Then Ewell’s men will finish the Union men.”

  Lee smiled. “And Stuart’s cavalry is on the way. Two of his brigades will be here tomorrow. We’ll be able to chase the Federals all the way to Washington in disarray.”

  “Sir,” Longstreet finally said, ‘’the only advantage to the position we hold now is that we can abandon it with relative ease in the morning.”

  Lee’s head snapped around toward Longstreet as if he had been struck a blow. “Retreat?”

  “Disengage, and then flank Meade,” Longstreet argued with little conviction, knowing the decision had already been made.

  “Pickett will do it,” Lee said. He stood. “I am going to get some sleep.”

  Longstreet watched his old friend walk to his tent and disappear inside. It was only then that Longstreet realized Lee had issued him no orders nor sent any out.

  **********

  Across the way, Meade was meeting with his corps commander, contemplating doing exactly what Longstreet was suggesting-pulling back. He’d even had his chief of staff draw up orders for a withdrawal earlier in the evening. All that was needed was to hand them out.

  The day had been bloody and long. While Meade had initially felt very confident about his position and army, having repulsed the Southern attacks all across his front, as darkness grew, so did his doubts. Lee was over there and · who knew what the Virginian planned for the morning?

  They met in the small parlor of a house the army had commandeered. Twelve generals crowded into a room less than ten feet by twelve to discuss the future of the Army of the Potomac. There was a card table in the center on which a map was placed, lit by two sputtering candles.

  Meade began the meeting in a way Lee would have never considered saying he would follow the course of action the majority of those in the room agreed on. He posed three questions to his generals, which they would vote on:

  1. Should the army remain in position or retire to a position closer to their lines of supplies?

  2. 2. If they remained in place, mould they attack or await lee’s attack?

  3. 3. If they decided to stay on the defensive in the current position, how long should they wait?

  It Was a strange meeting, one that West Point had certainly not taught as the proper way for an army commander to operate. But Meade was shaken by the casualty lists that were coming in to his headquarters and he felt it best to give some responsibility for the decision on the army’s course of action to the men who had seen the combat firsthand that day and whose men were the names on those lists.

  The vote went quickly. On question 1 it was unanimous that the army stay in place and not withdraw, indicating the confidence all of the generals felt in their positions. The vote on question 1 was also unanimous, that they should remain on the defensive and await lee’s attack rather than leave their positions and attack lee. Only on question 3 was there some disagreement, and Meade realized those who favored staying longer had seen less combat whereas those who wanted a shorter wait had seen more that day.

  Meade ended the meeting by telling his generals that they would remain in place. He dismissed them all but General Gibbon, who held the center of Cemetery Ridge.

  “If Lee attacks tomorrow, it will be on your front,” Meade told Gibbon.

  Gibbon was surprised. “Why do you think that?”

  “Because he has made attacks on both our flanks and failed,” Meade explained. “If he decides to attack again, it will be in the center, which he has not seriously tested.”

  Gibbon smiled grimly. “I hope he does come. Because if he does, we will defeat him.”

  **********

  Amelia Earhart waited until long after darkness fell to leave her tree, The Union lines had moved forward, leaving her in the company of the dead from the battle earlier in the day. Occasionally distant shots rang out, but other than that there was an eerie silence, given that so many men were gathered within a half dozen miles of her location.

  She reached the ground, pulling her Valkyrie suit with her on its tether, and moved toward where she had
hidden the crystal skull case. She stumbled over a corpse, the · man’s arms extended upward in some last plea, and locked in place like that. She found the boulders and dug through the leaves, pulling out the case. With trembling hands she lifted the lid.

  There was a faint blue glow deep inside each of the nine skulls. Very faint.

  If today had not been enough, what more was needed?

  Earhart immediately knew the answer to that because she knew what the next day would bring and she knew where she had to be with the skulls. She closed the lid on the case and began carefully making her way down the hill to the north, pulling the Valkyrie suit behind her. She considered putting it on, but thought she was better off presenting herself as human rather than a strange white creature if she ran into anyone. When she passed a cluster of bodies, she forced herself to go over them. Strapped to one of the corpse’s back was a spade. She removed it and took it with her.

  As she cleared Little Round Top, she walked onto a long field with knee- to waist-high grass. To her left were the Confederate lines, hidden in a tree line. To her right, on the high ground, were the Union forces. Campfires clearly delineated both lines but there was little sound.

  Earhart made her way about a mile and a half north, then stopped. She put the plastic case on the ground. She looked right, toward the stonewall of the Union lines, then left to the tree line. She was about equidistant between the two.

  There was a small farmhouse, its roof ripped off by artillery fire and the walls smashed and mostly knocked down. On the eastern side she found a small storm cellar for storing goods, accessible through an opening covered with a thick wooden plank. As quietly as possible, she pulled the plank up and peered in. She slid the shovel inside, then followed it. It was not large enough for her to fit with the case and suit.

  Earhart began to dig.

  **********

  “They are fighting in earnest,” Lincoln said as he shifted through the mound of telegrams on his desk. As the day had changed into night, the situation had become a little · clearer. “All around Gettysburg is as you said it would be,” he added, glancing up at his wife.