Battle for Atlantis

CHAPTER NINETEEN

They knew he was here because he was what they were, Dane realized. The Shadow had no bodies, only their consciousness, their essence, just as that was all he had here. They could sense each other and they could sense the intrusion into their lair of one like them, even though he was not visible on the real plane.

He didn’t have much more time to ponder this.

A dozen Valkyries floated into view, coming from the ramp he had just followed here. They had their long spears in their hands and two of them also had some sort of green tablet about a foot long by six inches wide in their off-weapon hand. Dane wondered what that was and then got the answer right away as the two lifted the tablets up in front of their faces and peered through them. All twelve Valkyries immediately vectored in on his location.

The tablets allowed them to see into the psychometric plane in some manner Dane realized. And he had no doubt that if they could see into the plane he was on, they could do him damage in some way on the plane also. He descended, passing down through the tower as the Valkyries gave chase.

He almost ran straight into the ambush that had been set up. He hit a wide-open level of the tower where approximately a hundred Valkyries, every sixth one with a tablet, waited. A spear thrust cut the air, nearly hitting him. As it passed by, he saw that the blade of the spear was glowing very slightly as he felt a disturbance, as if the very fabric of space near him had been upset. He knew instinctively that if that blade had touched him, he would be destroyed.

He switched course and went out of the tower’s wall to the air outside. Where more Valkyries floated, waiting. For Dane it was a surreal chase as he dodged spears and VaIkyries. He was so caught up in it that it took him a couple of moments to realize that they were herding him in a direction — toward the tunnel that led to the external sphere docking area. He had no doubt that they bad some sort of ambush ready for him if he tried that way. So he went where they couldn’t follow or be waiting — straight down into the ground, into the planet itself.

Passing through solid rock was disorienting as the only way he could tell direction was to try to keep going the way he had gone. How long though? Dane wondered. And would he know in which direction to turn and how far to go to get out of the planet itself? He remembered how in Special Forces training, during land navigation, the instructors had demonstrated that blindfolded men tended to be unable to maintain a straight line, most going off to the right, some going off to the left. And that was in a two-dimensional plane.

Dane fought his sense of panic, surrounded by rock as he came to a halt realizing he had no idea which way to go or which direction he had come from. And even if he got back to the surface of the planet, he had no doubt that the Valkyries would be guarding the gate to the portal — and using the green tablets now.

Relaxing was difficult as all the physical techniques he’d used to do that weren’t available to him — no slowing his breathing, untensing muscles, etc. There was just his mind and the overwhelming feeling of disorientation and fear. Dane pictured Sin Fen’s face as she lay on top of the Atlantean pyramid near the Bermuda Triangle Gate. The calmness in her features as she gave her life to channel the power to stop the Shadow’s assault. He had to have that in him also. He was the warrior-priest, the latest in a long line of what had been just priestesses.

As his own negative feelings dropped away, Dane became more aware of his surroundings. While his physical surroundings were the planet itself, mostly rock, there was more to the space than that. He picked up a sense of power. Immense power flowing.

Dane moved toward the power.

It was as if he moved from darkness into a supernova as he hit the power stream flowing through the tunnel. The tunnel was over a half-mile wide and a beam of pure white light poured through it from left to right. It felt as if the power stream were bathing him, stripping him clean.

Dane realized he could channel this power, use it, but only if he had his body. Not with just his essence.

Is that what the Shadow had learned too late? Dane wondered. Is that why they needed that latticework of spheres? To be able to use the power?

He turned against the flow and moved upstream. He had to see where this was coming from, the source, even though he had a very strong suspicion based on what the Shadow had done to his timeline.

He moved swiftly through the power stream until he came out of the tunnel into a larger tunnel. In the very center of the cavern the power stream made a ninety-degree turn, going from horizontal to vertical, heading down into the planet. A gigantic crystal was the device at.turned the stream, absorbing it as it came up and turning it.

Dane went forward.

The stream came straight up out of the floor of the cavern. Dane paused before going down. He checked out the cavern. The walls were black and smoothly cut, much like the Space Between.

Rather than curving up to meet in the top center, though, the roof of the cavern was perfectly flat. Dane moved up to get closer to it. Black beams criss-crossed gray stone. It appeared that the cavern was beneath a solid slab of granite.

Dane reversed course and descended, moving into the power stream, and heading into the planet. The walls of the tunnel began to change. First solid rock, then he moved through layers of rock mixed with lava. While there was no apparent lining to the tunnel, he sensed that the power itself kept the path open.

Then Dane came out into the core of the planet. A vast open space, the far edge beyond his ability to pick it up. And in the very center of the earth was a massive crystal, Over five miles wide that emitted the power beam.

And to his right was a beam of power coming into the power crystal. Dane knew this was the Shadow’s new source, from some other timeline it was in the process of draining.

Another piece of the puzzle.