Battle For Atlantis Page 3

  “We’re getting too far ahead,” Earhart interjected.

  “Where should we be?” Dane asked, grateful for the reprieve from focusing on a problem for which there was no immediate solution.

  Earhart lifted a single finger. “We know that what are inside the Valkyrie suits are people, humans, right?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Maimed people, damaged people, but humans nonetheless. Much as we don’t want to admit it, I think we have to assume that the Shadow is an Earth timeline; a timeline raping and destroying other timelines to keep itself going. Most likely an Earth timeline from what would be the future, even for you people, and most definitely for me.”

  Ahana broke in. “Not necessarily the future. Perhaps a timeline that simply developed more quickly than we did.”

  Dane rubbed a hand across his forehead. He didn’t want to hear what Earhart was saying but he knew, could sense, that it was the truth. It had all been more palatable when he had considered the Shadow to be some alien force bent on destroying Earth. We have met the enemy and they are us, he thought.

  “I’ve heard what happened after I was kidnapped by the Shadow on my around-the-world flight in 1937,” Earhart continued. “World War II. I’ve heard what the Germans did in their camps. The Japanese in the places they conquered. Even what we Americans did in the name of ending the war at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I think we cannot underestimate the power of mankind’s inhumanity to itself. I have no doubt that an advanced timeline of humans--and we know that not only do the portals lead to parallel Earths but that they can also move one forward or back in time--would not hesitate to destroy other Earth timelines to sustain itself. We live on the same planet and we do it to each other. It would be even easier to do it to another planet.

  “They take the basics. Power. Air. Water. And people. I think they use people from other timelines for spare parts.” Earhart looked at Dane. “We know what they do in the Space Between in their Valkyrie cavern. Removing hearts, lungs, skin--whatever they need from those the Valkyrie suits, the people who make up the Shadow are damaged. They’re willing to do whatever it takes to get what they need. That means they’re ruthless,” Earhart summarized. She held up a second finger. “The thing that intrigues me, though, is the group we’re not talking about.”

  “The Ones Before,” Dane said.

  Earhart nodded. “Yes. They’ve tried to help us. And we definitely need more help now. Who are they? Why can’t they do more?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Before we go after the Shadow, I think we need to find the Ones Before. We need to learn exactly what we’re up against. Also, and this is just my feeling, I think there might be a larger plan that we are part of. After all, there are more timelines than ours being affected, or will be affected, by the Shadow. It would be helpful if we knew what our part is and What the overall plan is.”

  Dane tapped the side of his head. “The Ones Before send the messages I hear and the visions I see. But I don’t control when I receive them. And I’ve gotten nothing to show me the path we should take now or, if there is a plan, what it is. All I know is that I think I can find the portal to the Shadow’s timeline using the sphere map.”

  “It’s doubtful,” Foreman said, “that the gate in the Shadow’s timeline will be unguarded.”

  Dane didn’t respond, knowing what Foreman had said was true.

  Earhart turned to Dane. “Do you think the Ones Before have a plan or are just reacting as we are?”

  Dane didn’t stop to think. He felt the answer, and it , surprised him that he had not felt this so strongly before. “I think we’re part of something larger. There are others--have been others as we just saw at the Battle of Little Bighorn--who have roles to play.”

  Ahana spoke up. “You’ve acted as if there were some · mystical power behind these visions and the voices you near--and that others like you, such as Robert Frost, also heard. But I think we need to look at it in tens of science. If these visions and voices are real then we should be able to do something just as we use this boat to track the activity of the Shadow.”

  “What do you mean?” Dane asked.

  “What happens in your head, what you get from the Ones Before, is real, isn’t it?” Ahana asked.

  Dane nodded. There was no doubting the visions and voices now.

  “Then it’s something we should be able to track down,” Ahana said. “Like we did with the muonic emissions from the gates and the Shadow’s lines of power.”

  “Do you have any theories about how we can do that?” Dane asked.

  “It took us years to track down the correct frequency for the Shadow’s muonic emissions that come through the gates,” Ahana said. “We learned quite a bit doing that. I suspect that the Ones Before are sending on a very similar frequency and in a similar manner.”

  “Why haven’t you uncovered it then?” Dane asked.

  “Because we haven’t looked,” Ahana replied. “We’ve been so focused on the threat posed by the Shadow and the gates, we never put any effort into looking at the Ones Before.”

  “Then do it,” Foreman ordered.

  Dane held up a hand. “Wait. We--you--” he amended looking at Ahana--“zeroed in on the muonic frequencies by focusing on the gates the Shadow was using. Wouldn’t it be easier to figure out how the Ones Before are transmitting if you found what gate they use to send their messages through?”

  “Certainly,” Ahana agreed.

  Dane stood. “I think I might be able to find the portal line they use.”

  “The sphere map?” Earhart asked as she also stood.

  Dane’s response was to head for the door, then along the deck to the launch that could take him over to the Shadow’s massive sphere floating nearby. As the launch took them over, they failed to notice the sleek gray form swimming off the port bow, slicing through the water with ease and watching them with one dark eye rotated in their direction.

  New York City

  Manhattan Island was part of a massive slab of granite that encompassed parts of nearby Connecticut and New Jersey. Its top surface had been scoured by water, particularly cut through by the Hudson River flowing to the ocean, but the slab was many miles thick and very stable.

  Deep underneath the southern tip of Manhattan, though, was something very strange. Approximately six miles down, just below the slab, was a large cavern, cut out of the planet. Over three miles Wide, the walls of the cavern were perfectly smooth, and the slab had been used as the roof, given some support from long black metal buttresses and beams.

  In the exact center of the cavern there was a tall derrick with drilling equipment. A start had been made on the floor, with a hole excavated about fifty meters down, but it appeared as if the work had been interrupted and never resumed.

  There was one opening in the wall of the cavern--a tunnel one hundred meters in diameter that went off to the east straight as an arrow. If a light were shone in that tunnel, it would show no immediate end as it ran for over a thousand miles to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where it ended at a metal door. On the other side of that door there was another large chamber, but that one was full of debris and had been flooded by the ocean long ago.

  The tunnel and chamber were all that remained in our Earth timeline of the civilization of Atlantis other than the myth that had been passed down through the ages. And · the few people who had survived its destruction by the Shadow.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  EARTH TIMELINE—VIII

  Antietam, MD, 16 September 1862

  “We will make our stand on these hills,” General Robert E. Lee told his three senior officers as they looked out over the Maryland countryside in the waning light. He was flanked by the three corps commanders of the Army of Northern Virginia: Generals Longstreet, Jackson, and A. P. Hill.

  Lee was an imposing figure, a man who commanded respect wherever he went. His father had been Light Horse Harry Lee of Revolutionary War fame and the military had been Lee’s focus since he was a young boy in Virginia. He went
to the relatively new Military Academy at West Point and graduated in 1829, second in his class. He fought, and was wounded, in the war with Mexico. He eventually returned to West Point and was superintendent, thus becoming responsible for training many of the men who would be commanders on both sides in the Civil War.

  When war broke out he was in command of the Department of Texas. He’d been offered command of the Union forces by President Lincoln on the advice of his generals, but Lee had turned him down. Three days after Virginia seceded, he resigned from the Union Army and became the military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, before taking command of the Army of Northern Virginia.

  He had been leading the Southern army in Virginia for two years and his string of successes was becoming almost myth like. He had an uncanny ability to anticipate the actions of his opponents and for understanding their weaknesses. He stayed true to the tactics he’d learned and taught at West Point-particularly using interior lines of communication and presenting his enemy with a convex front so that his supplies, messages, and reinforcements had a much shorter distance to travel than his enemy’s. His greatest tactic though was the use of entrenchments. Heretofore battle had been considered simply maneuvering one’s force against the enemy, and then both sides stood in the field blasting away at each other until one or the other gave way.

  Lee believed, and put into practice, that a smaller body of men, which he invariably had when up against Union forces, could hold against a much larger force if it were properly entrenched. While this happened, he would send another element of his army in a flanking maneuver to hit the fixed enemy from the side or rear. This was a radical military concept, one that would not be fully appreciated until the bloody reality of the World War I.

  Now he was in the North, with his army. Stonewall Jackson had led the way for the Southern forces into Maryland, arriving in the nearby town of Sharpsburg earlier in the afternoon. With Harpers Ferry having surrendered to his rear, Lee felt he was in a strong position to weather a Union assault, especially as he found this ground favorable. He deployed his army, taking up defensive positions along a low ridge stretching from the Potomac on his left to Antietam Creek on his right. As usual, his front curved back on the flanks, giving him interior lines and forcing the Northern forces to curve concavely.

  Lee placed cannon on Nicodemus Heights to his left, the high ground in front of Dunkard Church, the ridge just east of Sharpsburg, and on the heights overlooking the · Lower Bridge. He directed infantry to fill in the lines between these points, including a sunken lane less than a half mile long with worm fencing along both sides. A handful of Georgia sharpshooters guarded the Lower Bridge over Antietam Creek on one flank. This attention to detail and deployment was a trademark of the leadership that Lee had displayed in two years of nonstop victories. Despite all those victories, though, the war was dragging on.

  Across the creek, his spies told Lee that the Union Commander, General George McClellan had about sixty thousand troops ready to attack--double the number available to Lee. Still, the Confederate commander felt confident. They had yet to lose to the Yankees, and these positions were strong. At West Point, he had been taught that the attacker should outnumber the defender three to one at the point of attack and he doubted George would be able to focus his large forces for a concentrated assault. McClellan had been a cadet at the academy while Lee had been superintendent.

  This was General Lee’s first invasion of the Union. He’d gone North for several reasons. First, he wanted to earn recognition from the European powers that thus far · had stayed on the sidelines of the Civil War being fought on the North American continent. Britain and France were both potential allies, and lee felt a strong military showing by the Confederacy could swing one or the other to his side and perhaps force the North to sue for peace. Lee was the only cadet ever to graduate the Military Academy without a single demerit, and he knew that the longer the war lasted, the shorter the odds of a Southern victory grew.

  Lee also went North to take the battles out of his beloved Virginia, which had seen most of the fighting so far. The Second Battle of Bull Run had just ended with another Southern routing of Union forces, and he’d felt the time was right to march North. He was beginning to feel that the North could keep sending army after army into the South and take defeat after defeat with little effect. As he went to sleep in his tent on the evening of the 16th, Lee felt secure in his positions and happy that the battle the next day would take place on Northern soil. Even though next day would take place on Northern soil. Even though he had seen much war, lee had no frame of reference for what the next day would bring.

  The fact that he was fighting against the country he had taken an oath to defend when getting sworn in as a cadet at West Point disturbed Lee at times, but it was a thought and feeling he fought hard to keep at arm’s distance. For him, the war was not about slavery, but about freedom. The freedom of states from a strong central government. The same type of freedom his father had fought for in the Revolutionary War against England. For him, Virginia would always take precedent over the United States.

  He was a realist who knew the longer this war lasted, the smaller became the odds of the South winning. The North was simply too big, too populated, too industrialized for the rural South to expect to outlast. He needed a victory, a bloody one, to make the North howl and cause the European powers to take interest. He planned to have it tomorrow.

  **********

  The battle opened on a damp, murky dawn when Union artillery on the bluffs beyond Antietam Creek began a murderous fire on Stonewall Jackson’s lines. In an attempt to roll up Lee’s left flank, McClellan sent troops toward The Cornfield north of town. Confederate troops hidden among the stalks rose up and delivered a murderous fire into the Union lines as they tried to deploy for the assault, driving them back. The Federals responded by withdrawing the infantry and training their artillery on the field, unleashing a brutal barrage. The fire was so intense that every stalk of corn was cut down as neatly as if by a massive scythe. The effect on the Confederates who had been in the field was less neat, tearing bodies apart and soaking · the ground with blood.

  The Union forces assaulted and drove the Confederates from the field, only to have a reinforced Jackson drive them once more out of it. The Union counterattacked again, and the two lines stood less than two hundred yards apart among the blood-spattered corn and mutilated bodies and fired into each other for over half an hour. Loading and firing, creating a man-made cloud from powder that hung close to the ground. All day long, the battle for this piece of field went on, the terrain changing hands over fifteen times and the harvest of bodies growing deeper and deeper. The ground became so soaked with blood and bodily fluids that it turned into a nasty mud.

  Pushing his Union forces farther to the north, still desiring to turn the flank and recognizing the bloody stalemate in The Cornfield, McClellan sent a division of troops into the West Woods. But they in turn were hit on their flank by Confederates who decimated the Federals with point-blank fire, killing and wounding over half the two-thousand-man division in less than fifteen minutes. It wasn’t warfare, it was slaughter.

  An attempt to bolster the attack on the flank went awry when Union forces were misled and actually hit the Confederate center. As lee had predicted, McClellan was having trouble coordinating the movements of his massive army. The Rebels were hunkered down in an eight-hundred-yard-long sunken road that had been made by years of heavy wagons taking grain to a nearby mill.

  Four times over the course of three hours, the Union forces charged across open fields toward the road and four times they were thrown back. By one in the afternoon, over fifty-six hundred men lay dead or dying in the vicinity of the road, which had now earned the name Bloody Lane.

  Finally, two New York regiments managed to penetrate the Confederate lines and lay down a withering fire along the length of the sunken road, turning the defensive position into a trap and sending the Rebels into headlon
g retreat. The center of Lee’s line was now open for the · assault and disaster loomed for the South.

  Unfortunately for the North and for those who would die in the next three years, McClellan decided not to throw his reserves into the attack. Perhaps the carnage of The Cornfield and Bloody Lane caused him to pause. Regardless, that decision did not end the day’s fighting or the battle as it had taken on a life of its own, out of the control of the generals who had only a vague idea of what was playing out across the fields and woods of Maryland.

  On the south end of the battlefield, Union General Burnside had been trying to cross a twelve-foot-wide bridge since the morning, getting thrown back time and again by the Georgia sharpshooters on a bluff overlooking the bridge. The fact that the creek the bridge spanned could be waded was something Burnside never seemed to take into account as wave after wave of Union soldiers charged across the stone bridge, finally getting a foothold on the far side in the early afternoon only to be pinned down at the base of the bluff, now unable to retreat without facing the same withering fire they had charged into.

  Between this bitter success on the left and the opening in the center, General lee appeared on the verge of defeat as Union forces closed on Sharpsburg, whose streets were crowded with retreating Confederate forces.

  Then, as so often happens in war, luck intervened. General A. P. Hill’s division, which had been left behind at Harpers Ferry to salvage captured Federal property, arrived at the battlefield after an amazing forced march of seventeen miles in eight hours. They unexpectedly struck · the Union’s left flank, catching the Federals by surprise and driving them back across the bridge they had crossed earlier that day at such great cost.