Battle for Atlantis

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Over twelve thousand men on a front slightly more than one mile wide.

It was an artilleryman’s dream target. The officers who commanded the Union batteries were well schooled in their deadly science. Since the Confederates had over a mile of open ground to cover, it worked out that it would take them, if they kept a steady advance, approximately sixteen point nine minutes to reach the Union lines. In that time, a typical gun battery of six twelve-pound Napoleon guns could fire two hundred and twenty-eight rounds.

There was also a science to the order in which different types of ammunition were fired. As the Confederate lines first appeared, the Union guns were loaded with solid shot. This was a solid ball of cast iron, designed for long distance firing. The round would fly to maximum range, and then hit the ground, bouncing several times, often cutting swathes through packed formations.

Stacked near the guns were other types of ammunition, readied for use as the enemy closed. Once the incoming troops came within a thousand yards, shrapnel rounds would be used. And then, at the very end, inside of four hundred yards, there was canister.

The Union guns fired round after round of solid shot at the massed lines coming toward them. This made the maneuvering of the Confederate lines to get in position even more amazing as it took valuable minutes and got them no closer to their enemy.

Even more devastating, Union batteries that had been moved up by General Warren onto Little Round Top now opened fire, parallel to the Confederate lines. Some of the solid shot from these batteries would hit the end of a line en and plow through them, taking out dozens at a time.

The Union infantry, their guns primed, waited and watched. Veterans of Union assaults such as those at Fredericksburg and Antietam were happy to be behind their stonewall and not out in that field, having experienced what their enemy was now facing. They were tom between empathy for fellow human beings and a base desire for revenge.

General Pickett was having difficulty keeping the various units in order and trying to gain contact with Trimble’s division on his left. It took almost fifteen minutes of maneuvering for his left to meet Trimble’s right. At this point their front ranks were about eight hundred yards from the Union lines.

Pickett’s heart soared as he saw the solid line of gray troops moving forward. He grabbed a courier and sent him dashing back to Longstreet with a request for reinforcements to support what he considered the inevitable breakthrough of the Union lines, which he believed, would happen very quickly. Nothing could defeat such a display of Southern manhood.

“On men!” Pickett cried as he stood up in his stirrups, waving his sword. “On for Virginia.”

For the men in the front ranks, things weren’t looking so positive. As the two divisions connected, the troops crowded into each other. Even under these terrible conditions, Southern politeness held sway as a young officer from Virginia cried out to the regiment of Tennesseans his unit was mingling with: “Move on, cousins. You are drawing the fire our way.”

A solid shot hit the pine board over her hole and ripped it away. Earhart decided enough was enough. She managed to unseal the Valkyrie suit and crawl inside. Then she shut it. She scrunched down as tight as possible in the bottom of the hole, wishing she could become an earthworm and rawl even deeper into the dark soil.

The sound of battle, the screams of wounded and dying filled the air. She could hear Confederate officers exhorting their men forward. Then there was another sound, which at first she couldn’t make out. Something being shouted from the Union lines, a chant. It took her a few moments before she realized what it was:

“Fredericksburg. Fredericksburg. Fredericksburg.”

The colonel in charge of the Eighth Ohio regiment didn’t wait for the Confederates to come to him. In fact, his best estimate watching the oncoming wave of gray convinced him that the attack was directed to his right and that his unit would be spared any frontal assault. His men had been deployed on a wide front as skirmishers, about five hundred yards in front of the Union line but it appeared the attack would pass them by.

So he attacked. He formed his men into a line a hundred yards wide and charged forward into the right flank of Pickett’s division. It was an audacious move, even more unorthodox than Chamberlain’s charge the day before as there was no desperate need for it.

But like Chamberlain’s it worked because the Confederate troops they charged into were already dispirited from being under constant artillery barrage for over half an hour and having taken considerable casualties without even having fired a single shot in retaliation.

Pickett’s right flank began to crumble as men threw down their weapons and headed for the rear.

The lead elements of the attack now reached the critical four-hundred-yards range from Union lines.

Shot was replaced by canister in the Union guns. These were basically large-bore shotgun shells, each canister containing scores of oversize musket balls. Four hundred yards was also rifle range.

The first volley of rifle fire from the massed Union lines hidden behind their protective walls brought the Confederate advance to a momentary halt, as if every man had absorbed the incoming rounds, not just those hit. Canister tore- gaping holes, scattering the ground with men screaming in pain from grievous wounds.

It got worse the closer they got. At two hundred and fifty yards, the Union cannons were filled with double loads of canister. Every Union soldier with a rifle was firing now.

Many among the Rebel ranks knew it was now or never.

A Confederate lieutenant waved his sword, rallying his men. “Home, boy’s home. Remember, home is over beyond those hills!”

A colonel exhorted his cowering men to advance. “Go on, it will not last five minutes longer.” It didn’t for him as he immediately fell, shot through the thigh.

The Confederate advance began to break apart.

One Confederate brigade commander, still on his horse, disappeared in a cloud of red as a round of canister hit both man and horse directly. Given that the Confederates were now taking fire from three sides — the center of the Union line, which they were approaching, and flanking fire from artillery on Little Round Top and from Culp’s Hill-the ranks that weren’t running began to cluster toward the center.

Directly opposite the center was the Angle — a place in the Union line where there was a ninety-degree angle formed by a bend in the stonewall behind which the Union troops had positioned themselves. General Armistead, one of Pickett’s brigade commanders, led the final assault toward the Angle.

The bloodied line of gray finally reached the stonewall. Armistead put his hat on a sword and stood on top of the stonewall, urging the rest of the Confederate survivors forward. He fell mortally wounded-and with this, the high water mark of the attack had been reached as Union reinforcements raced up and pushed the Confederates back, capturing many of them.

Earhart heard a strange sound, something she couldn’t recognize at first. It took several moments for her to realize what it was: men sobbing. She carefully lifted her head and saw small clusters of Confederate soldiers falling back by her position, most carrying wounded comrades, and many crying, tears staining their dirty faces.

It was the most heart-rending thing she’d ever seen.

She could not believe that less than an hour earlier these dirty, bloodied, dispirted men had been part of the magnificent display of shoulder-to-shoulder soldiers with flags flapping.

She’d almost forgotten about the skulls in the horror that had surrounded her. Almost, but the pull of duty came through. Even through the armor of the Valkyrie suit she · could feel the heat coming off the case. She unlatched the lid and lifted it. She was almost blinded by the glow coming out of the crystal skulls.

She shut the lid. It was slightly after four in the afternoon. Darkness would not come for a while. When it came, she hoped her way out of here would come. She had what she came for.

The second and third assaults were also beaten back. The piles of Zulu dead were deeper in between the outer and the inner walls. Dabulamanzi was not fazed. He had passed through the line of sanity, and in a way Shakan could understand how it happened.

The roar of the British rifles, the war cries of the Zulu, the screams of the wounded, the dead all around, everything eerily lit by the burning building, all combined to make the normal World seem very far away. Dabulamanzi was berating his subordinate commanders, urging them into another assault. Shakan could tell even these hardened warriors were growing weary of battle.

Ahana was seated on the dirt, her head bowed, her hands covering her face, her Valkyrie suit floating in the air behind her. They were where they needed to be, but neither woman had an idea what was to come next. The muonic levels were still rising, but with Dabulamanzi unwilling to listen, they were growing short of hope.

Then Cetewayo arrived with his personal guards. The Zulu leader had passed through the stage Dabulamanzi was in and come out the other side. Shakan knew that as soon as he walked up, his shoulders slumped with weariness.

Dabulamanzi greeted his brother by going to one knee. “We are preparing to attack once more.”

Cetewayo looked at the carpet of bodies between where they were and the wall of bags beyond which the strange white helmets of British troops could be seen. Cetewayo waved for Dabulamanzi to stand.

“How many?” he asked.

Dabulamanzi was uncertain what his brother was asking. ‘’There are but a few of the enemy left and — ”

“How many warriors have you lost?” Cetewayo cut him off.

Dabulamanzi blinked. “We — there have been — ”

Cetewayo put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “We have won the day, but I fear we have lost more than we have won.”

They all staggered as the ground shook.

“What was that?” Cetewayo demanded.

“The evil spirit bas gore into the land,” Shakan said. “It grows stronger as it eats into the soil.”

The land was all-important, every Zulu knew that. He turned to Shakan. “What do we do now?”

Captain Eddings grabbed Chamberlain’s arm and pointed. “Look.”

In the water below the MH-90 were a dozen dark figures, slicing through the water. Killer whales.

“What are they doing here? Chamberlain asked, remembering the Hi~ Priestess’ prediction that they were on their way.

“They are part of this too,” Eddings said.

“How deep can they dive?” Chamberlain was thinking of the tunnel that plunged into the planet. That had to be the reason they were here.

“Not as deep as you need,” Eddings said, knowing why he had asked.

“Nothing can go as deep as we might have to,” Chamberlain said, “if the data on that tunnel are correct.”

Eddings looked at him. “Don’t you have faith?”

“’Faith’? I’m a soldier.”

“You’re the commander of the First Earth Battalion,” Eddings said. “You volunteered for this unit many years ago. If you don’t have faith, why did you do that?”

“It has nothing to do with faith,” Chamberlain said. “It’s about vengeance.”

Eddings shook her head. “That won’t work. This is not about defeating the Shadow or paying them back for what they did to us. It’s for the future.” She looked down at the orca. “Even they know that and they were born to kill.”