Shackleton's Folly (The Lost Wonder Book 1)

by Yunker, Todd

  Alec took the Quest back as close to Atlantis as he dared with the ship in the condition it was in. If he pancaked the ship, he wasn’t going to take out any civilians if he could help it. There was no way to tell how she was going to perform in the atmosphere. Alec and Electra fought for control of the ship as it reduced its speed so as not to burn up on reentry. The Quest fell through the cloud layer over the representation of the Atlantic Ocean before the ship had slowed enough for Alec to try to turn the Quest toward the Atlantean coast. The ship fought him at first but then seemed to understand what was being asked of it.

  The Quest begrudgingly turned toward the coast. The red energy above gave the garden an otherworldly look as the Quest hurtled along the channel from the coast toward Atlantis. Their screens showed that the local inhabitants were out, witnessing the world in red. The Quest’s controls were sketchy at best. The park was filled with a great multitude of citizens, trying to get a better look at the sky as they had never seen it before.

  They headed back to the landing pad near the crest of the Hill of Cleito. The Quest landed hard as the engines finally gave out. The airlock burst open, and Electra ran out onto the landing pad to look up at the sky. The red energy gave everything a hellish appearance. Poseidon, above his temple, was particularly evil-looking in the red energy.

  The city’s inhabitants pushed up the hill toward the temple. Alec, Electra, and Dancer made their way to the steps of the Temple. There was a force in the air, and all eyes looked to the heavens.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  The city’s inhabitants surrounded Poseidon’s temple and flowed down the hillsides to the first water ring. They were transfixed on the sky above and the light show at world’s end. The voices of the people drifted up to the top of the hill. They were filled with fear and a little excitement.

  King Coeus and Queen Athena were given way by the crowds that milled about the hilltop that had served their people as the location for their central government for millennia. The symbolic leadership came from the palace to join their people. The twins followed their parents, and Hermes and Hera brought up the rear.

  Alec and Electra stood together at the foot of the stairs to the temple. Alec brought her close with an arm around her shoulder, their attention on the maintenance screen Dancer was still carrying. The display replayed the destruction of the battleship Illia. They all turned to look up to see if they could still see the residual fireball from the battleship’s final moments.

  Electra broke away from Alec and rushed to her parents. “I knew you would come here.” She hugged and kissed both of her parents.

  King Coeus said to Alec, “You should have taken her away and saved her.”

  Alec looked intently at him. “My ship is badly damaged your majesty. A long journey was not an option. She wanted to be with her family.”

  An understanding had passed between the two men in that instant, the older gaining respect for the younger. “I see,” King Coeus said as he looked up at the night sky. “Did you succeed with your plan?”

  “We were able to replace the missing pieces of the dedication plaque. Was it enough? I honestly do not know, your majesty,” replied Alec.

  Dancer held the maintenance screen before him and pulled the corners out, enlarging the display. Then he keyed in a command, and the data was projected above the screen in a 3D format. “I have been getting some training on the screen’s usage and capabilities.”

  “Nice,” said Alec. “Did you think about asking if we were successful or not?”

  “Of course, I did, I was not given an answer.”

  Electra and the rest of her family gathered around Dancer to watch. Alec moved in beside Electra; she felt his presence and reached down for his hand. A representation of the Emperor’s Garden appeared, showing the real-time positioning of all the garden pieces and the huge bands of interlacing red energy. The heavens above them lit up again as the energy sparked across the top of the garden. A hush washed over the people in the darkness. The seriousness of their situation was punctuated by the energy sparking across the heavens.

  Electra slipped her arms around him, putting her head on his chest. Alec held her close. At this moment, he was at peace with everything. The world could come to an end with her here with him, and it would be alright. He had found the one he had been searching for, and she was his. He hoped she felt the same for him. Electra took her head from his chest and looked into his eyes, searching for something. “You will die because of me,” she said with a mix of emotions. Her eyes teared up as a flash of energy filled the sky again with red.

  “From the moment I saw you at the coffee house, I would have given you the stars. Electra. You are so beautiful to me — I cannot think of anywhere I would rather be than here with you, this moment. If this works, then I want to be here with you to rejoice in our future life together, and, if this goes the other way, I will have given my life for the one I love,” said Alec.

  Electra tensed and then relaxed and ran her hand through the hair on the back of his head. It was soft and clean, not like their first night of passionate release, but neat. He was that and much more to her. Alec was an unknown whom she had felt from the beginning to be her savior, but it all had happened so fast. One minute he was acquiring her as a slave girl; in the next, they were running headlong into a series of trials that would have made most men give up. He was here for her, and she knew it in her heart. Alec was the man she wanted — filled with hope, courage, honor, and justice. She kissed him softly on the lips and pulled back to see his face. “I am in love with you, Alec.”

  Dancer came up and cleared his throat to get the couple’s attention. “This is what you had in mind, right?” Dancer carried the maintenance screen before him.

  Electra had her arms around Alec’s neck. Alec turned his head to see what Dancer was talking about, “Well, not really. Everything pointed to the replacement of the inscription pieces as the solution. I imagine that, for ceremonial reasons, the dedication plaque was used in the maintenance circuit. ‘The-Emperor-sets-in-place-the-plaque-and-the-gardens-are-officially-open’ kind of thing.”

  “What about rebooting the maintenance system?” asked Dancer.

  “You tell me. Has it showed you any more of what it wanted us to do?”

  “No it has not — right about then, things went from bad to worse.”

  Electra broke into the conversation. “I thought you were sure of what needed to be done. As a matter of fact, you said you had a plan.”

  Alec kept eye contact. “Who said I was wrong?”

  The garden shifted, and the world rocked beneath their feet causing many in the crowd of people who had come up the hillside to find reassurance to lose their balance and fall to the ground. The skyscrapers surrounding the park swayed back and forth but stopped quickly as the garden settled. Those closest to Alec and Electra noticed that the couple had not let each other go and had not fallen during the last shift of the gardens. The heavens above were filled with bright lines of red light outlining the other gardens throughout the sphere.

  The people were happy to see the Royal family but were disappointed that they, too, were victims of these events. The King and Queen walked amid the people to check if they were alright and called for any medical assistance when they came upon an injured party. Electra’s father found a young girl crying for her mother. The King picked up the little girl, who could not have been older than four, and tossed her up in the air until she started to giggle. Then he put her on his shoulder, and, together, they went to look for her parents.

  “It is out of our hands,” said Alec.

  Electra reached up and pulled him close. “Kiss me again — and mean it this time.”

  Alec encircled her with his arms and kissed her lips softly, tenderly. Electra’s passionate response filled him with great happiness.

  *

  One of the many dwarf planets the Empire had employed in sweeping away debris had its cameras focused on the exterior of the gar
dens. It had been documenting events from the start of the garden alignment. It watched as the gardens slowly split up and witnessed individual gardens move about, flip, and reposition themselves. The red energy, the force, pushed apart the individual gardens. The hexagons drifted further apart, with the red arcing between each garden wall and its partner across the gap.

  The cameras zoomed in on one of the visible gaps that had been a pentagon port. The energy shot out from the hexagons’ sides that made up what was the pentagon, crossing the empty space to create a great lattice of energy.

  The camera spotted the change first in a single strand of energy in the lattice. A single arc changed from red to an intense blue beam from the first hexagon corner cross-gap to the next hexagon. It was extremely focused and became visually almost a solid, rod-like. All along that garden wall, additional beams of blue energy appeared to align the garden walls down to a fraction of a millimeter. From a distance, with the number of blue rods crossing the gap, it looked as if a solid bar of blue was holding the two gardens together.

  A second blue beam crossed the gap between the first hexagon and its neighbor, going the other direction around the soon-to-be-formed port. The blue beams along these two gardens created a ribbon, binding them together.

  The three gardens had become an anchor point for the rest of the gardens. The last two gardens composing the five needed to make a port closed their distance to a group of three. The three gardens, anchored to each other, reached out to the last two hexagons and went through the same process. The group of five gardens had two walls aligned, with the same blue beam locking onto their neighbors.

  The five hexagons now brought their garden walls together. The blue beams of force drew the titanic pieces of the puzzle together in such a way as to enable them to come together within 30 meters of each other. The gap represented by this last distance was taking an extra minute to close, lessening the chance of causing any damage. They met with a perfectly flat joint. The five hexagons reached out to the next set of hexagons, bringing them close, aligning the garden walls, and locking them into place. The process started replicating itself around the other 11 ports and 3240 garden walls.

  *

  Alec held Electra against his chest; his arms pressed her closely to him. She looked up into his face again. He brushed the hair back from her face. 20 meters away, the King and his young charge stood tall in the crowds, looking for her parents. The Queen had joined her husband in the search for the young girl’s parents. They called out over the voices in the dim light. A cry of panic turned to one of joy from out in front of them, and a woman fought her way through the milling crowd. The little girl reached out and cried for her mother. The woman cried as she thanked the King and Queen for their help in returning her daughter. “I know what it means to lose a daughter and to have her returned without harm. It is my honor to do the same for you,” said King Coeus.

  He and his wife looked on as the woman showered the little girl with kisses and a slight, token admonishment for walking away from her in the dark.

  Athena put her arm around her husband’s waist. “Is this the end for us, my love?”

  Coeus turned to her and wrapped his arms around her, drawing her close and kissing her fully. She responded but then drew back some. “Will the people put up with such behavior from their King?”

  “If this is to be our last moments, I want you, my love, to know that you will be my love for eternity.”

  “You are my husband and my love, Coeus,” replied Athena. They embraced.

  Dancer watched the camera views as the first blue energy rods locked the first group of five gardens together. “Alec, something new is happening,” Dancer said excitedly. Alec and Electra turned to Dancer and the projection of the garden.

  The alignment process continued from the anchor point group to the gardens on either side creating the pentagon port. Realignment continued from the port to the next in the series of hexagons surrounding the port, the blue energy rods reaching from those already reorganized and locked into place to the floating gardens. This same process started at the other 11 pentagon ports.

  A garden became the anchor and reached out to the gardens on either side. Once in place, the three gardens reached out to gardens four and five in the first ring of hexagons around the port. Then came the second, building vast sections of the sphere.

  Alec watched as the next series of hexagons were aligned, pulled into position, and locked into place. “We saw the systems starting to work, but this must mean…” He looked back to Electra. “This must mean that we were successful in restarting the garden’s maintenance system.”

  “Are you sure?” said Electra.

  “I won’t be sure of anything until the gardens are back together,” replied Alec.

  Over and over, the process was recreated. “I will train the view on this garden,” said Dancer.

  A view of the exterior rotated and focused on the underside of where they were standing. The number of hexagons in the sphere dictated that they would have to wait their turn for the reorientation. The Atlantis garden was out in the last ring of what would be connected to the anchor point of the nearest port. Their garden was the sixth hexagon out from the nearest port. They stood in awe as the fourth ring was getting aligned and reconnected.

  The King and Queen walked through the people to reassure them that all that could be done had been done and that it was up to the Groundskeeper to set things right. They arrived near Alec and saw the maintenance screen and how the Atlantean garden was in the next ring of hexagons to be aligned and reattached. King Coeus waved over an Atlantean Security Force member providing crowd support. “Your communicator, please,” said the King.

  King Coeus flipped on the device, “This is King Coeus. Please cut me into all broadcasts and outdoor emergency communication systems. Thank you.” He nodded as he listened. A siren blared three pulses and then one long one. “This is your King Coeus. The maintenance system has been reinstated, and the Groundskeeper is working to reset the gardens. Repeat: The maintenance system has been reinstated.” The blue energy reached their garden. “At any moment, the sky may light up with blue light or plasma. This is part of the maintenance process and has to be completed for us to rejoin the rest of the gardens.” The blue energy passed over the entire garden and lit everyone up with a deep blue lighting and afterglow. The ground shifted underfoot again.

  Alec and Electra fell together. Alec rolled as they fell and made sure he was the one she landed on. He held on to her, not letting her go. It was much the same everywhere in the garden. The citizens were knocked down by the bump. Dancer, the rest of the Royal family, and the Atlanteans, as far as they could see, were down on the ground. The skies were filled with an intense blue light to the North — the closest garden wall to the city of Atlantis.

  Electra rolled off Alec onto her back beside him. They watched the beautiful display of energy in the sky. It was like an aurora borealis sweeping out to them from the garden’s wall to the North.

  “What is happening?” asked Electra.

  The energy in the high altitudes was writhing back and forth, giving the observers the impression of a living being, coiling outward and retracting to the North.

  Alec sat up and checked the maintenance screen, still in Dancer’s hands. The display showed a schematic of the garden, with armies of Custodian maintenance robots working on repairs on virtually every garden wall.

  Alec stated simply, “The Custodians are in charge.”

  Councilman Atlas came from the temple with a contingent of Atlantean Security Force. “Your majesties, please let us escort you from here.”

  “Councilman, where would you have us go? Here with our people is where we belong,” replied King Coeus. “We are all in this together.” King Coeus put his arm around his Queen as they watched the maintenance screen with everyone else. Their garden was now aligned and was being drawn close to the other gardens. The Atlantean garden, on the outermost ring of hexagons, wa
s connected now only on the three sides closest to the port. The screen showed now how the 11 other groups had finished building their sections. Each of the sections, now complete in their realignment, moved closer and closer to one another, adjusting their speed and distances. The giant 3D puzzle pieces were coming together.

  Alec and Electra got to their feet and came over to get a better look at the next and most dangerous phases in the sphere’s reset. The maintenance screen indicated that two of the sections on the far side of the sphere had been selected to integrate with each other. They were highlighted in the 3D projection. Electra pointed up at the sections in the sky. The two sections included the 89 gardens tightly connected and in place. The blue energy was visible to the observer only as an outline around each section. Alec made observations as to the process on the 3D projection and turned to the sky to witness the results. The sections moved slowly and were aided by the Custodians in positioning for the perfect fit. Blue energy brightened as the sections closed in on each other. The linear momentum had to be accounted for in the maneuver to bring the sections together. The brightness of the light increased as the distance between the sections closed. The intensity of the blue energy suddenly increased to the point that it outshone their star — and then just as quickly went out.

  Alec turned quickly back to the 3D projection. The screen showed the sections aligned and locked into position.

  Two more sections were highlighted on the projection. They were moved slowly into place, as had the first two. They, too, were outlined in the blue energy, and, as the distances closed in on the edges they were to connect with, the intensity of the light given off by the blue energy again outshone their star. The results were that a little more than a third of the sphere was back together.