by Gene Stiles
“I may be able to help with that,” Lelantos said as he stepped through the wide oak doors. Even though his artistically rendered, sharply planned features were as hard as the corded muscle rippling across his broad, bronzed chest, his gold-flecked, hazel eyes glittered with something akin to joy.
All eyes turned upon him as he strode to the table and laid a long data crystal into the reader. Images of an onyx-black, needle-nosed skyship appeared on all of the monitors in the chamber. It looked like a cross between a Raven drone and a warbird with a slender body and wide, back-swept wings that nearly reached the high, sharply angled tail fin. A large, round tube was built into the tail with strange fluting on the inside.
“This is the craft that will end Cronus’ reign of the skies,” Lelantos said proudly. “Meet the Raptor.”
“My team has been working on this for nearly three years,” he said, bringing up a holo display of the wicked looking craft. He turned the image so everyone could see the underside of the vessel. “Small grav-units on the wings will allow for vertical takeoff, but are not strong enough for sustained hovering.”
Lelantos turned the display so the cylindrical part of the tail section took up most of the image. “The main power comes from a tiny proto-sun engine that ignites compressed air sucked into this tube by fans and is forced out of the rear.” He looked at the people staring at the impressive skyship and a terse smile came to his ample, tan lips. “This thing is fast,” he said proudly. “Nothing Atlantis has can touch it.”
“Fast it may be,” Zeus said, his golden eyes staring critically at the ship, “but what kind of armament does it have? It is obviously too small to carry troops or plasma cannons.”
“That has been our biggest issue and why we have not mentioned it before this,” Lelantos said, nodding his head in agreement. “The Raptor uses only one pilot. Our tests show it is too fast for a plasma cannon. It would run into its own beam the moment it fired. Pulse cannons would work, but the ship’s very speed makes them only useful on still targets like buildings. Even then, they cannot concentrate fire long enough to do sufficient damage.”
“So what good is the craft?” Hera asked harshly, even though she admired the incredible design.
“Again,” Lelantos said, his deep voice rumbling across the room, “that is what we thought. Cronus gave us the answer.”
A vicious grin played across his stern face as he showed the underbelly of the ship. “Note these doors,” he said, pointing at the split rectangular lines on the bottom. “The bombs Atlantis has been using gave us the idea. We can use the Raptor to do something similar.”
Zeus was still not convinced. Besides that, he was abhorrent to the idea of the kind of wholesale destruction such weapons caused to innocent civilians. “If we use such horrific weapons, what makes us any better than Cronus?”
“I said ‘similar’,” Lelantos replied, his smile becoming more devilish than fiendish. He brought up a new image that showed the inside of the fuselage. Four racks sat on either side of the doors each lined with twenty round, silver globes. “These are EM pulse spheres. We can drop them over Atlantis and destroy every scanner, electronic and energy weapon Cronus has. Only the Raptor is fast enough to get out of the way before they detonate. Not a single Atlantean life would be lost.”
“Holy Creator!” Zeus exclaimed, his eyes going wide. “That would level the playing field and open all of Atlantis to attack.”
“Yes,” Lelantos said after the babble simmered down, “but, remember, this will not affect his explosive cannons or missiles. We will still be taking on Cronus on his home ground. Plus,” he warned, bringing a mood-dampening caution to the excitement in the room. “We only have four Raptors. We must pick our targets carefully. Remember, though the pulse will kill his systems until everything electronic is replaced, our own warbirds and energy weapons will be rendered unreliable as well. The pulse ripple will hang in the air for days.”
“Then we must do a coordinated assault with Poseidon all along the coast,” Zeus said, his minds already formulating plans. “The city of Atlantis is too far inland to fight our way there. We would be surrounded by enemies on all sides before we could reach the outskirts.”
An idea crystalized between his narrowed eyes as Zeus studied the landscape of the Atlantean continent. He pointed to a spot in the largely uninhabited eastern desert and looked up at Lelantos. “This is Sirenum, Cronus’ largest weapons development facility. If we hit this base, we could cripple Atlantis for years.”
Carius stood next to the large wheeled platform resting on the testing range just to the east of the Sirenum complex. He studied the weather conditions carefully, often checking the display tablet in his hands. The winds were moderate today so the sands blowing across the brushy desert barely rose above the hard-packed ground. The azure sky was clear except for a few high, wispy clouds so visibility was clear for miles. A good day.
This was the eighteenth test of his newest invention and Cronus was getting impatient and irritable. If it did not work soon, Carius would have to abandon the weapon and move on. The mere thought made his dark hazel eyes blacken and become narrowed beneath his furrowed brow. He and his team had many failures lately and the Lord Father was not pleased. Not pleased at all. It would go badly for him if this device did not work.
Carius shouted out orders to the men locking down the huge trailer and tilting the long, sharp-nosed cylinder resting in a cradle on the flatbed. The four long fins at the rear of the tube aimed off the back of the vehicle about three feet off the ground. The needle prow pointed skyward toward a wooden building five miles away. If this tharkin thing worked, the structure would be turned into flaming ash in moments.
Raising their fists to signal all was ready, the crew and Carius moved a safe distance away and huddled behind a thick, granite wall. In the last attempts, the missile exploded before it rose twenty feet into the air. The new fuel pod was stronger and well-sealed. No leaks showed up on any scans this time. Checking all the readouts, Carius pressed a red spot on his display and ducked.
A roar like thunder rent the air as the beast rose on a pillar of hellish flame. It cleared the cradle and began a long arc in the bright blue sky. Once it reached the apogee of the climb, the missile dropped its explosive nose toward the building like a screaming hawk in search of prey.
The noise of the rocket was so loud that no one heard the other shriek high above them. When sonic detonation shook the ground beneath his feet, Carius thought the weapon must have malfunctioned once again. He raises his eyes over the wall just in time to see his missile twist in the sky and fall like a stone. It hit the ground far from its target and erupted in a blazing ball of fire. He ducked to avoid the blast of over-heated air that rolled over the landscape, cursing profusely at yet another failure.
Once it was safe to rise, Carius stared at the scorched earth as if answers lay in the tortured metal scattered across the blackened earth. Finding none and cursing the Creator, he mounted his sled to return to the complex and review the data. He ran a hand over his pointed chin in concertation when the sled refused to start. Glancing around him, he heard his crew mumbling in surprise. None of their crafts were functioning.
Carius looked down at his tablet, noting the blank, empty screen, his mouth open in startled wonder. What had happened? Nothing onboard the weapon could cause this. Only an EM pulse could do such damage and the missile was only packed with explosives. Something caused him to look toward Sirenum and his heart stopped beating. The city had gone dark.
The Raptor was long gone, unseen by the stunned men absently milling around the test site. The sleek, fast-moving airship turned southward toward its next target, the huge harbor at Daedalia. If all was going to plan, its sister ships were running the coast from the port all the way north to Aeolis. Within hours, the entire southwestern shoreline of the Atlantean continent would lay in complete and utter darkness.
Captain Kerjanko stood on the foredeck of the Sun Stalker watching the
controlled chaos on the main deck below him. Cranes swung between the riggings and lowered huge crates of weapons and supplies into the gaping maw of the main cargo hold. Flatbed sleds moved ponderously up the loading ramps and settled next to smaller holds while his crew quickly and efficiently stripped them of their heavy burdens. A contingent of eighty Aam soldiers moved around them and were led to their newly assigned quarters while the Quartermaster checked his manifest. When the morning tide swept in, Kerjanko and crew would be on their way to join the fleet waiting offshore.
Kerjanko was anxious to get out to sea and back into the war. After a month of dry dock to repair the damage to his ship in the last clash with Poseidon’s armada the need for vengeance in his soul had grown like a thunderstorm’s fury. He lost forty good men in that battle and he swore he would take twice that in payment from the Olympians when next they met.
A strange, high-pitched whine penetrated the noise on the ship, causing the Captain to tilt his head and glance skyward. The eerie screech built in intensity until it hurt his ears and made the hair on the back of his thick neck stand up on end. His dark brown eyes thought they caught a black streak high in the early evening sky just before a powerful clap of thunder shook the planks beneath his feet. An oddly straight line of faint, blue lightning rippled through the air, shimmering like a heatwave above the city. Had he not been looking up at precisely the right moment, Kerjanko would never have seen it.
The aftermath of the explosion was something he would never forget though. The loading sleds dropped like rocks, a couple tumbling sideways into the open doors of the holds. Screams swept across the deck as several crewmen were caught in an avalanche of heavy crates and falling equipment. The cranes stopped suddenly, their loads swinging, snapping spars and ripping through the spider web of riggings surrounding the masts.
The entire port and the city of Daedalia went deathly quiet. Every light on the docks and in the skyscrapers and warehouses blinked out all at once, the windows looking like blackened pits. For long seconds, a stunned silence fell like a thick, horrifying fog over everything and everyone for miles around. Then the panic set in.
“Take the fleet in now!” Poseidon bellowed over the coms as the sun dropped low in the western horizon.
The strong, steady winds blowing from the west snapped the sails as the Sea Dragon tacked hard northward. Poseidon fought the wheel, his stanchion-like legs firmly planted on the wooden deck. His wavy, golden red hair whipped around his face even with the wide band of leather holding it back. His chiseled features were grim and the cords of his huge arms rippled as he held his ship on a straight-line course toward the night-darkened harbor.
Behind him, the thirty ships painted midnight black were nearly invisible in the lightless ocean. They turned eastward as one as they came within range of the docks and shipyards on the western edge of the city where the warm waters of Lake Cassini drained into the cold waves of the sea. The winds now at their backs, the armada raced across the waters like a pack of hungry Dire Wolves on the hunt. Like a wall of death, their portside guns opened up, drowning the harbor in a lethal wave of explosive missiles and a screaming black hail. Every fourth round from the rail guns was cored out and packed with pressure triggers and timers. Seconds after striking their targets, the balls detonated in a blast of hot chunks and splinters of iron.
“Concentrate fire on the shoreline,” Poseidon shouted, locking his legs as the Sea Dragon rocked from the recoil of twenty guns roaring at once. The rail guns sent iron balls smashing into the hulls of berthed vessels and storehouses. Anyone caught in the path of those thirty-pound boulders were crushed to powder before a sound could pass between their bloody lips.
Captain Kerjanko struggled to rise off his knees as the Sun Stalker listed hard to starboard. The only thing that kept his ship from completely keeling over were the thick, braided ropes that tied it to the flaming dock. As fire licked along the taut lines, he knew it would not be long before they snapped like twigs. The main mast blazed like a candlestick, the burning sails flapping like tortured, broken wings in the darkness.
Kerjanko managed to pull himself up against the foredeck rails, staring at the carnage wrecked upon his once-mighty ship. Holes were ripped through his hull and fires erupted from the holds from stem to stern. Screams and wails filled the night as fiery men danced across the deck and leaped into the churning, black water. He watched in enraged helplessness as the armament in holds exploded from the heat, tearing the belly out of the Sun Stalker. Even above the horrific noises of the dying harbor, Kerjanko thought he could hear the rumbling sea rushing in and sucking his ship into the cold depths below.
The mooring lines snapped, whipping the air like a nest of angry vipers. Men and women were swept from the decks and docks like broken mannequins and plunged into the gurgling water. The Sun Stalker canted over, tossing Kerjanko high into the flaming riggings. His screams were high-pitched and pitiful as a web of fire engulfed him. When they finally ended, he hung in their grip as a blackened, twitching corpse until he was pulled beneath the turbulent, steaming waters, his ship dragging what was left of him to the sandy silt of the ocean floor.
Poseidon stood on the bridge as the last of his fleet followed him back out to sea. His ample, tan lips were pulled hard across his face and his dark jade eyes sparkled not with glee, but with harsh sorrow. At his stern, nearly half of the Atlantean fleet blazed against the skyline. The shipyard glowed like a dome of hellfire in the night, billowing black smoke lit with motes of burning embers lifted by the nightmarish conflagration. Massive storehouses of weapons and explosive ordinance erupted in hellish balls of orange, blue and blazing red. The air above the ammunition warehouses looked like a huge volcano blowing streams of deadly lava and burning rock high into the nighttime sky.
Though Poseidon understood the necessity of crushing the firepower of Atlantis, the thought of so many deaths would haunt his dreams for decades. The gargantuan man hung his head, unashamed of the tears that fell down his hard-planed cheeks. At least his attack was limited to the port. They kept their bombardment as far from the streets of Daedalia as possible, grateful the winds blew the fires away from the city center instead of toward it.
Poseidon passed orders throughout the unscathed armada and turned the Sea Dragon II eastward toward the Aseabaen continent. Even with the strong winds at his back, it took many long hours before the yellow-red demonic glow of shattered Daedalia disappeared behind his stern.
Going to Aseabea would be a bitter homecoming. He still had fevered dreams of his first Sea Dragon crushed upon that rocky shore and the loss of so many when Cronus attacked his small settlement. Living with the casualties of this war weighed heavy on his head. Poseidon knew there would be massive loss of life in these battles, but each one cut into his soul like strips of flesh peeled from his body. Only knowing they fought for the safety and freedom of all peoples allowed him to get any rest at all.
Poseidon gazed up at the blanket of stars that shimmered against the clear velvet sky. The long belts of colorful galaxies completely ignored the trials and tribulations on the speck of space dust below them. The shooting stars that cut blazing contrails across the inky blackness paid no heed to the agony in his tortured soul. The salty spray that wetted his bronzed skin and dried his pursed lips cared not about his angst.
The only solace he could find was in the knowledge that this war was not something he sought out. It was Cronus who started this. If only his ‘father’ could have left them in peace, but he refused. Poseidon and his people might have forced into this conflict, but, he thought sternly, they would continue to do their best to limit collateral damage and save as many lives as they could no matter which side those people may be on. If they did not, they were no better than Cronus and did not deserve the Creator’s blessing on their quest.
Poseidon sighed heavily, thankful for the hot tea Kiranimis brought to him. He stepped aside and let his First Mate take the helm, suddenly feeling the exhaustion of battle ov
ertaking him. Still, he stood on the bridge for another hour. Neither he nor Kiranimis spoke as the sea split around the sharp-bladed prow. Each lost in their own reveries, they simply let the mother ocean take them in her loving embrace to soothe their troubled souls.
The smaller port cities of Tholis, Albor and Tharsis up the northwestern coastline were spared from direct assault from the Olympian fleet, although the Raptors had sown their seeds of destruction in the skies above them. They were left whole, but in complete and utter darkness. Even the massive western metropolis of Aeolis on the northern tip the Atlantean continent lay black and silent in the wake of the hurricane of EM pulses.
The Raptors turned skyward and banked toward Olympus, only chaos left to mark their passing. The pilots each wore grim smiles. Their hearts were not as heavy as the sailors of the fleet for they knew their attacks left no corpses in their wake. Still, their souls were not altogether at peace. There would be retributions for their actions without a doubt and they would be costly. At least, they assured themselves as the night split around them, it would take years for that payment to come due. In the meantime, many would live who would not have survived otherwise. Their mission was a success. That was the best they could hope for. They could sleep easy this night.
Had they realized the true, horrific consequences soon to come, not a single one of them would have ever slept again.
Chapter XI
There were no words that could adequately describe the unimaginable rage rippling through Cronus. Every nerve, every corded sinew crackled with sparks of blue-red lightning. He wove his way through the oak pillars mounted floor-to-ceiling in the huge hidden chamber beneath the Great Pyramid of Atlantis like a vengeful wraith of unrestrained fury. With each strike of fist and foot, the thick, hard wood cracked and moaned. His fists bloody, torn and bristling with splinters, Cronus kept on pounding, the turbulent typhoon of his hatred blocking out any semblance of pain from his pitch-black mind. Slabs of granite crumbled beneath his ferocious onslaught, his hideous, demonic screams echoing off the silent, dispassionate stone walls.