The Atlantis Legacy - A01-A02

by Greanias, Thomas

  Conrad spoke into the radio. “Tell Zawas I’m coming down.”

  32

  DAWN MINUS TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES

  CONRAD HEADED DOWN through the vast ship to the rotunda base. Along the way, it all made sense—the crypts were some sort of cryogenic chambers for the long interstellar flight, the towers of light some sort of propulsion system.

  Conrad emerged from the Solar Bark to find the entire silo imbued with the first rays of dawn. Then he looked up and noted that the dome had split open. He shaded his eyes and felt a sharp poke at his back.

  “Move it,” said a voice from behind with an Arab accent.

  Conrad, still blinking in the brightness, craned his neck to take a look. His curiosity was rewarded by a knock on the side of his head with the butt of an AK-47.

  “Idiot!”

  His head throbbing, Conrad stumbled forward beyond the rotunda.

  Serena and Zawas were waiting for him. As Zawas took the scepter from his hands, Conrad looked over at Serena and swallowed hard. There was sadness in her eyes, but everything else about her was cool as ice.

  “Tell me what these bastards did to you,” Conrad said.

  Serena said, “Not much compared to what the world is going to suffer, thanks to you.”

  “Doctor Yeats.” Zawas studied him carefully. “Your reputation is well deserved. You’ve led us to the Shrine of the First Sun.”

  “A lot of good it will do you.”

  “I will be the judge of that.” Zawas then held up the Scepter of Osiris before his men like some idol. There were no oohs and aahhs. These were professional soldiers Zawas had brought along for backup, Conrad thought, not mere fanatics. To them the obelisk might as well have been the head of an assassinated enemy, or a torched American flag, or a nuclear warhead. Their possession of such a symbol only confirmed their power in their own eyes.

  Zawas then looked at him and said, “Now you will tell me the Secret of First Time, Doctor Yeats.”

  “I don’t know. It’s not there. And it may be impossible for us to discover.”

  Zawas narrowed his eyes. “Why is that?”

  “The shrine, as you call it, is really a starship, intended to take the seeker to the place of First Time—the actual First Sun, as far as the Atlanteans are concerned.”

  “A starship?” Zawas repeated.

  “Which is why we’ll probably never know the Secret of First Time.” He stole a glance at Serena, whose sad eyes told him she had concluded as much. “The existence of the Solar Bark implies the secret is not of this earth but at its intended destination, which from what I’ve gathered is somewhere beyond the constellation of Orion.”

  Serena’s voice was scarcely stronger than a whisper. “So there’s no way to stop the earth-crust displacement.”

  Conrad shook his head but fixed his eyes on hers. “Nothing I can come up with.”

  Zawas stepped up to Conrad and put his face within an inch of his. “You say this shrine is a starship, Doctor Yeats. You say there is no hope for the world. Then why didn’t you take off?”

  Conrad looked over Zawas’s shoulder at Serena.

  Serena could only shake her head in disbelief. “You’re such a fool, Conrad.”

  A voice said, “Well, we finally agree on something, Sister.”

  Conrad turned around as Yeats emerged from behind a pillar in the rotunda, as grim as Conrad had ever seen him.

  “Give me the obelisk, and the girl, Zawas,” Yeats demanded. “And we’ll be on our way.”

  Conrad, dumbfounded, stared at Yeats. “On our way where? You’re just going to hop on a spaceship and go?”

  “Damn straight I am.”

  Conrad realized that Yeats didn’t necessarily care where he was going so long as he went somewhere. He was hell-bent on completing the space mission he had been denied in his youth.

  “Look, if we don’t go, son, then we’ll just perish with the rest of them,” Yeats said.

  “You can rationalize it all you want, but I’m not biting.”

  Zawas tightened his grip on the scepter and gave a cool nod to his men, who circled Yeats with their AK-47s.

  “You destroyed much of my base and cost me many good men,” Zawas said. “Now you insult my intelligence.”

  Conrad shifted his gaze back and forth between Yeats and Zawas, their eyes locked on each other.

  “You were never interested in finding a weapon or disabling some alien booby trap, Yeats, were you?” Conrad said, incensed at Yeats’s desertion. “And you weren’t interested in helping me find my destiny. You pulled that Captain Ahab routine all these years because you knew this thing was down here.”

  “I suspected it, son,” Yeats said. “Now we know. This is the happy ending we’ve been working for ever since I found you. You’re going home.”

  Home? Conrad thought. It was the first time in years he had ever even considered that he had a real home anywhere, much less not of this Earth.

  Zawas cut in, “Surely you don’t expect me to let you take off with the Solar Bark, do you?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” Yeats said.

  Yeats’s left arm swung up, holding a small remote control. He looked at Zawas with the coldest pair of pale blue eyes Conrad had ever seen. “I go or we all go,” Yeats said. “I’ve got enough C-4 in here to blow us all to First Time without any starship.”

  Zawas’s eyes darkened. “You’re bluffing.”

  “Oh?” Yeats flicked one of the buttons, and a stereophonic beeping filled the silo as a circle of red lights in the shadows began to blink. “Go ahead, take a closer look.”

  Conrad watched as Zawas walked over to the nearest blinking box, bent over, and froze. Slowly he straightened and returned to his men. “Let Doctor Serghetti go.”

  “And the scepter, Colonel. Give it to her.”

  Conrad watched Zawas hand her the Scepter of Osiris and nudge her toward Yeats. “I’m sorry, my flower,” Zawas said.

  Yeats immediately grabbed her and pulled her toward the rotunda at the base of the Solar Bark. “Come on, Conrad.”

  But Conrad didn’t move. He looked at Yeats and Serena and said, “I think I’ve just figured out the way to stop the earth-crust displacement. But the answer is back at the star chamber. Not there.” He was pointing at the Solar Bark.

  A bewildered look crossed Yeats’s face. “It’s too late. Let’s go.”

  “No. I’m staying.” He looked at Serena. “But I need the scepter and Serena.”

  Yeats shook his head. “I’m sorry, son. We need the scepter to take off.”

  Conrad could feel the fury building inside. “And what the hell do you want Serena for?”

  “An incentive for you to reconsider,” Yeats said, dragging her away toward the Solar Bark. “You want her, then come get her.”

  Conrad, desperate to run after her, looked on as she shot a quick glance back at him, her eyes filled with uncertainty. Then she disappeared inside the giant starship.

  A moment later the ground started to rumble as the launch sequence began. Zawas could only watch in furious admiration at his former teacher before shouting to his soldiers to evacuate the silo.

  “What about you?” Conrad shouted to Zawas. “Where are you going?”

  “For cover,” Zawas said. “If this alleged disaster should strike the planet, we are in the safest place of all. We can find survivors and rule a new world. If nothing happens, we have captured an unlimited energy source and will rule the world anyway.”

  “What about me?” Conrad asked.

  “You can go to hell, Doctor Yeats,” Zawas told him as two Egyptians tied Conrad to a pillar near the Solar Bark base. “Either the prospect of your death will force your father to abort his plans, or you’ll depart this life in a blaze of glory when this Solar Bark of yours lifts off and its fires consume you.”

  Conrad watched as Zawas led his men out of the silo, leaving him alone. He strained at the ties that bound his hands. And he burned with desperation
as he watched the Solar Bark rumble to life and prepare to lift off with Serena and the obelisk.

  Inside the Solar Bark, Serena found herself with Yeats on a circular platform surrounded by four magnificent golden columns of light. Each column throbbed with energy. Yeats, still holding the remote to the C-4 in one hand, set the scepter down with the other. Suddenly the platform began to take them up.

  “Yeats, if we don’t reset the star chamber the whole earth will shift,” she said, her voice spiked with anger and desperation. “Billions will die. You can’t just take off.”

  “It’s futile to go back,” he said dismissively. His gaze was locked on the chamber above them. “You heard Conrad. Whatever the Secret of First Time is, it sure as hell ain’t on earth. The survival of the human race dictates that we launch.”

  She looked at him. He wore the expression of a cocky warrior, pleased with himself and sure that nobody could stop him. His jaw was set and his eyes glinted in the dim glow of four light-filled columns. It made her furious—his complete unconcern for people who were about to lose their lives.

  She said, “How do you know we’ll even get off the ground?”

  “What you see all around you is some kind of heliogyro system,” Yeats said. “Those massive columns are an array of four unbelievably long heliogyro blades, like a helicopter’s but on a massive scale. As soon as we leave Earth’s orbit on an escape trajectory into space, they’ll fan out and unfurl the solar sail.”

  Clearly she was in Yeats’s world now, and however crazy the former astronaut was, he was the native in this terrain and she was the alien.

  “Once deployed,” Yeats went on, “the sail will function like a highly reflective mirror. When photons hit the surface, they impart pressure on it, creating a force to push the sail. The bigger the sail, the greater the force. And by tilting the mirror in different directions, we can direct the force wherever we choose.”

  “Don’t tell me you actually think you can fly this thing.”

  “Like Columbus sailed the Pinta,” he said. “I’m sure all measurements, orbit determinations, equations of motion, and velocity corrections have been factored into the ship’s navigation system.”

  She said nothing as the platform locked. Yeats shoved her with the tip of the obelisk down a long corridor that ended in a metallic door with strange carvings.

  “Why would they build the ship like this?” she heard herself asking. She had to keep him talking, had to buy time so she could figure out a way to stop him.

  “You’ll have to ask them when we get there,” Yeats said. “But I’m assuming this ship was built as a lifeboat and designed to travel long distances with minimal power. That’s the beauty of this baby: it may be low thrust, but it has infinite exhaust velocity, since it uses no propellant. The solar sail is the perfect vehicle for interstellar travel.”

  “Except that it requires sunlight,” Serena observed, “which we’ll run out of as soon as we leave the solar system. Just like a sailboat on a windless ocean.”

  Yeats stopped at the door and said, “Gravity assist.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s how we’ll coast without light,” he explained. He spoke so calmly and rationally it both frightened and infuriated her. “We’ll fly around Jupiter close enough to use its gravity to boost ourselves into a faster trajectory toward the sun. Then we’ll slingshot around the sun and pick up even more speed as we exit the solar system. At any rate, I’m sure this thing is packing an array of masers and lasers whose microwaves can generate huge accelerations and speeds in the sails.”

  “You seem to have convinced yourself, Yeats,” she said. “How long will it take?”

  Yeats paused. “At conventional speed, probably a year.”

  A year? Serena thought. “At that speed we wouldn’t reach the next star for…”

  “Anywhere between two hundred fifty to six thousand six hundred years.”

  Serena didn’t even want to think how long it would be until they reached the target star. Or who would be there to greet them. “Any plans on staying alive in the meantime?”

  “Yes.”

  Yeats stabbed the scepter into the wall and the door split open to reveal a chamber filled with cool mist. Serena stared inside and could make out what looked like an open coffin in the rear. The mold was of a shapely woman about Serena’s size.

  “Seems the builders thought of everything,” Yeats said. “Welcome to your cryocrypt.”

  An alarm went off inside Serena’s head as it dawned on her that Yeats expected her to lie inside that machine. She stiffened at the door and refused to go in. Then she felt a clammy hand on her neck. There was no way in hell she was stepping into that chamber.

  “You first,” she said, stomping the heel of her boot onto Yeats’s toe and jabbing him in the stomach with her elbow.

  He groaned and she spun around and kneed him in the groin and clasped her hands together to deliver a crashing blow to his hunched-over back. She rose to catch her breath, but then Yeats whipped his head up, nabbing her in the jaw and splitting her lip. She staggered back into the chamber as he straightened up. He lifted his head to reveal cold, dead eyes in the dim light. His arm came up pointing his gun at her.

  “Say your bedtime prayers, Sister.”

  Yeats raised his boot and slammed it full force into her chest, driving her back into the crypt, which molded around her like clay. She felt a cold tingling inside her. It began in the small of her back, raced up her spine, and exploded throughout her entire body.

  Suddenly everything began to go numb. She became very still, almost lifeless in the dark, but she could feel her heart pounding. Soon that started to fade. Then the crypt door shut and she felt nothing at all.

  33

  DAWN MINUS TWENTY MINUTES

  CONRAD, STILL LASHED TO THE COLUMN, could feel the walls of the silo throb as the powerful thrusters of the Solar Bark began to hum. The greasy air from inside the ship now seeped out and smothered Conrad. He could also feel it heating up. The sunken shrine’s open roof revealed the sky had turned overcast. Then the silo doors parted wider and loose rocks and debris began to fall.

  Conrad closed his eyes as the dust came down. Blinking them open, he gazed out over the cavernous launch bay. For a moment, with all the smoke and confusion, Conrad couldn’t see the starship and feared she was gone. Then a curtain of smoke parted and he glimpsed the unreal image of the Solar Bark shimmering behind the smoke. He could also see an AK-47 lying on the ground, apparently dropped by one of Zawas’s soldiers in the panic of their retreat. But the machine gun was more than ten yards away, useless to him in his present predicament.

  The air started to taste smoky. His eyes began to burn, his nose tingled in the grimy air. He struggled against the column, coughing on the smoke. With or without the Secret of First Time, he realized, the Scepter of Osiris was his only shot to reset the star chamber in P4 and stop the earth-crust displacement. And it was on board the starship. Somehow he had to break free and retrieve the scepter before the Solar Bark took off and fried him alive.

  The thought of fire reminded him of the Zippo lighter Yeats had given him. He still had it in his breast pocket. If only he could figure out a way to get it into his hand, he could burn off the ropes. Conrad dropped his chin to his chest and pulled out his sunglasses with his teeth. He then slowly dug into his breast pocket with the glasses and attempted to lift the lighter. After a couple of minutes he gave up, his neck aching, but another jolt from the Solar Bark’s engines drove him to give it one more try.

  This time it worked. He was able to scoop the lighter into one of the glasses’ lenses. Now with the glasses hanging from his mouth, the lighter balanced precariously, he decided to turn his head to the left and slip the extended goggle under the collar of his jacket and over his shoulder. If he could just reach the armpit of his sleeve…

  The lighter slipped down his sleeve and with a few shakes landed in the palm of his hand. With some dexterity he flicke
d it on. The flame burned his hand and he cursed, almost dropping the lighter on the spot.

  For a moment he froze, trying to figure out some way of burning the ropes off without inflicting third-degree burns on his wrists and hands. Finally, he concluded there was no way around it. He took a deep breath, clenched his teeth, and flicked the lighter. The flame stabbed his wrist as he worked on the ropes. Everything inside him wanted to drop the lighter but he forced himself to grip it tighter. Soon tears were streaming from his eyes. But he focused on the Solar Bark and the goal at hand.

  The smell of his own charred flesh on the back of his hand—like burnt rubber—made him reel with nausea. Unable to bear it any longer, he felt the lighter slip from his fingers and heard it clank on the stone floor. The understanding sank in that he had lost his best chance for escape. Worse, he realized the smell of rubber had been the band of his wristwatch, which he had burned off.

  Conrad groaned. With nothing left to lose, he attempted to pull his wrists apart. He felt the charred rope give a little before the sensation of it sliding across his wrists reached his brain and he shouted in agony.

  One last time he pulled his hands apart, giving it all he had. His scorched, tender wrists strained at the ends of the rough ropes until finally the toasted strands began to shred, and suddenly his hands broke free.

  Conrad lurched forward and stared at the rings around his trembling hands. He then tore two strips of cloth from his uniform and tied them around his wrists. He grabbed the AK-47 off the ground and ran wildly through the dust toward the Solar Bark.

  He entered the rotunda and reached the outer door to the ship that he had found with Yeats earlier. It was closed tight, throbbing with energy that encompassed the entire giant obelisk. He placed his hand on the square pad.

  The platform carrying Conrad emerged into the cool cryogenics level a minute later. Directly overhead he could see the hatch that led into the ship’s command module. The circle of lights told him that Yeats was up there with the obelisk.