Assault on Atlantis

CHAPER TWENTY-EIGHT

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.