An Atlantean Triumvirate

by C. Craig R. McNeil

A siren sounded the battle stations and the well clothed sentries were already ratcheting their heavy machine guns into place, pointing downwards to the battle below. The air around the Morrigan was suddenly ablaze with light as spotlights flickered on and sliced through the night sky reflecting off the whirling snow.

  “And order the dreadnaught Eagle to provide covering fire to the camp,” he added before he staggered down into the relative warmth of the skybase and then into the depths of the command centre.

  Riley’s suit creaked furiously, the joints freezing as he strode forward at the fore of a V shaped combat formation of power armoured Nightshade soldiers. The cold was brutal and lethal even through the thick thermal clothing he wore. He hated the Core all the more for dragging him out of the igloo that Nightshade had built. His fingers were numb beyond belief already. An expanse of snow and ice flattened by multiple caterpillar tracks stretched out before him. Night was as day as the powerful searchlights of the Morrigan lit up the sky and ground. The oblong hulk of the dreadnaught Eagle was outlined against a beautiful tableau of stars before it obliterated the starlight when an array of arc lights lined down the port and starboard sides shuddered into being, reflecting blindingly off the snow. Stark against the whiteness loomed an artificial mountain of slag and debris and the enormous scar of the mine leading down to the Core. And streaming across the landscape, howling in concerto with the wind, were long snake like lines of Khadrae. Riley silently cursed himself for not expecting such a pre-emptive strike. The fact that the Core wasn’t human seemed to have blighted his judgement. He expected it to act in a different way and it hadn’t. Once again the Empire was being made a fool of. First the Americans and now the Core. It just wouldn’t do!

  Overhead the secondary batteries of the Eagle crackled into action, the entire port side of the massive ship flaring as the huge gamut of multiple cannon and machine guns opened up. The Khadrae were fast moving targets and despite the amount of lead and explosive that was thrown at them many survived. Far too many.

  Riley flicked the safety catch off his automatic shotgun. The close combat weapon was not the best to have on such an open battlefield but the plan had been to engage at close quarters. Yet another damn cock up.

  The Morrigan cast a violet shadow over the Khadrae as it descended, a deathly greenish glow around the bottom of the structure being the only sign of the power crystal technology that kept the castle like structure in the air. The Morrigan added its firepower to the defence of the mining site to similar ineffectual effect. The Khadrae had spread out into small fast moving well spaced groups. Current military theory called for the Eagle to engage large scale installations and ships while the Morrigan was for defence duty only. Current military theory was obviously something the Core didn’t know about, Riley growled to himself grinding his teeth. Many men would die tonight. He could see himself at his desk struggling to write the letters of condolence to wives and mothers. Again.

  Machine gun fire from a hastily set up emplacement on the ground cut down several Khadrae at the forefront of the attack before being overwhelmed by the deadly tide. Despair welled up inside Riley, despair that he quickly extinguished beneath the weight of duty and loyalty to King and country. Duty to the regiment to do one’s best. Victory or death. Adrenaline coursed through his veins as Riley raised his arm and signalled the charge.

  The observation deck was silent as the men watched the flood of demons wash across the landscape and crash against the rock that was Nightshade, swirling around the small group of men before hurtling onwards. The Khadrae were after something, after the diggers, the draglines, the trucks. Already the civilian miners were being cut down in their tracks as they fled, no mercy given.

  There was nothing Murdoch could do. No further assistance he could give. All weapons that could be brought to bear had been brought to bear. Multiple lines of tracer fire lanced down from both the Morrigan and the Eagle, cutting down Khadrae by the score, but it wasn’t enough. The Eagle had several small calibre cannon on board but every single one of them had frozen hard under the current weather conditions, rendering them useless.

  The Morrigan rocked as the Eagle fired two of its main battery cannons at the rear of the Khadrae flood, the resulting explosions devastating vast swathes of the rear echelons sending up huge sprays of snow, ice and bodies. But the Core was making a mockery of them. A total utter mockery. And to cap it all, he was in charge.

  “God damn and blast it all!” cursed Murdoch vehemently. “How the blasted hell is this happening? Where were the defences? Why is Nightshade the only military down there?”

  An unhappy lieutenant coughed unhappily and Murdoch turned his blazing ire on the unfortunate man. “Well?” he barked.

  “Sir, the change of guard is under way but the relief are having problems with their transporter and can’t make it down to the ground.

  “And where’s the guards they’re relieving?”

  Another unhappy cough. “In the docking bay. They had no problems with their transport.”

  “Idiots. I’m surrounding by blithering stupid thick incompetent idiots. The fool that let that happen is responsible for the deaths below.”

  Murdoch banged his fist in frustration off a convenient desk causing mugs of tea to jump and spill onto the floor. All the effort that had been put in to tracking down the Core, all the effort in digging it out. Wasted.

  “Get all our soldiers down there now,” Murdoch practically screamed at no one in general. “All hands to the battlements. I want every man on this base armed with rifles, machine guns, tin pans, whatever. And I want them shooting at those Khadrae filth.”

  Officers scuttled around to belay the orders, shouting orders into tubes linked to the barracks.

  “The Merlin has engaged an enemy force with a degree of success. Captain Parks says the enemy force consists of flying creatures of a type he has never seen before,” said an officer almost to himself as he read from a chattering teleprinter.

  Thank God for small mercies. The reinforcements would be badly needed.

  “Order the Minotaur and Merlin to disengage and progress at full speed back here,” Murdoch said hoarsely, wishing he hadn’t screamed so much.

  The outlook was bleak. A small circle of flame on the ground below signalled where Nightshade were, a candle of hope flickering in the black wind of despair. Mushrooms of flame flowered briefly casting Khadrae bodies left and right as the Morrigan’s small cannon found their range.

  Then, above all the noise and chaos of the battle, above the shouting of orders around him, cutting through the muted rumble of cannon fire, the repeated crackle of small arms, Murdoch heard something. Right on the very edge of his hearing, way down at the very bottom of the bass harmonics, a low drawn out growl, a sound of impending doom. The ground below seemed to shiver and dance as men and Khadrae lost their footing and fell onto the compacted snow.

  “What the hell…” Murdoch started to say before he was interrupted.

  “The Khadrae are retreating! They’re disappearing!” one of the more excitable members of the staff said.

  Sure enough the Khadrae were streaming away in various directions leaving behind cranes and mining hardware in various states of wreckage, metal plates, scaffolding and girders protruding at awkward angles.

  “Stay alert,” Murdoch said calmly. “That noise we heard must have been a signal.”

  “Mr Murdoch, sir. A Miss Jane Archer is demanding to speak to you. She’s on the HMS Comet, somewhere…”

  “Over the Mid Atlantic ridge,” finished Murdoch, “Yes, I know.” Jane was visiting the Nucleus along with Professor Miller Hayre. They desperately needed more intelligence on the Core. The last Murdoch had heard, the Nucleus was being reticent to the point where Jane had voiced a theory that the Nucleus didn’t want the Core to be destroyed and was not willing to aid Britain.

  “Keep an eye out for anything untoward,” Murdoch said as he placed headphones over his ears cutting out all the sound. It took
Murdoch a few moments to realise that the hiss and crackle of white noise was actually the roar of the sea those hundreds of miles away at the other end of the radio signal. The very sound made his stomach heave with sea sickness.

  “John, can you hear me?” Jane’s voice was quite faint, the signal being very poor according to the meters on front of the radio.

  “Yes, Jane I can hear you. Signal’s a bit iffy though. Have you got anything for me?”

  The signal crackled heavily before Murdoch heard Jane say, “… is going to try and escape. The Core is playing with…” more crackles and hisses “…analysing your tactics…. not interested in defeating you.” Jane then said something that had Murdoch tapping his headset attempting to clear an imaginary defect.

  “Please repeat that last bit, Jane. That last bit ending in ‘moon.’”

  “… base on the Moon… Nazis assisting Core.”

  The signal descended into a buzz of static and crackling and the radio meters locked themselves into the red showing a constant lack of signal.

  Murdoch removed the headphones, totally bemused. The Moon? As in Earth’s moon? And the Nazis assisting the Core? Had he heard Jane correctly? How on earth could the Nazis be on the Moon when they were so far behind the Empire technology wise… Good God! During the aborted attack on the Reich, the dreadnaughts of the Empire had come under attack from rocket powered planes, a technology still under development at the Bletchley Park research laboratories and the Scottish universities. One that had been investigated with limited success as far as he knew. And if the Nazis had rocket powered planes then rockets capable of going to the moon were well within the capabilities of the goal orientated Nazi scientists. Goal orientated to the extreme if the reports were to be believed.

  Damn, damn, damn. What the hell was he going to do now?

  A breezily happy voice cut through Murdoch’s bleak thoughts. “Murdoch, ol’ chap, are you there?” said Doyle, his voice relaying through the radio speakers.

  Murdoch smiled despite himself. God knows how Doyle remained so bright. Murdoch suspected he was on drugs of some sort, perhaps cocaine, but Jane had firmly denied this with a scowl that persuaded Murdoch to quickly move on to another topic.

  “Hello there Doyle. Got any cheering news?” replied Murdoch.

  “Most definitely. I’ve seen where the Khadrae disappeared to. There are cracks in the ice that must lead down to the Core’s base ‘cause that’s the way the Khadrae went.”

  “Got news for you as well. Jane says that the Core is preparing to make a getaway.”

  “Is that a fact? Think those vibrations a wee while ago could’ve had something to do with that?”

  “At this moment Doyle, I don’t have the foggiest,” said Murdoch. His head hurt.

  “Should’ve been catching up on your sleep, boy, instead of filling in forms and bits of paper all night. I told you that a few things ‘accidentally’ falling on the fire wouldn’t be missed,” Doyle said reproachfully. “Still, too late now. Want me and ol’ Buchanan to get these cracks investigated?”

  “That’d be a good idea. What’s the damage down there anyway?”

  “You don’t want to know. Let me and Buchanan worry about that.”

  “Let’s be as quick as possible Doyle.”

  “No problem, no problem,” said Doyle eagerly.

  Murdoch sighed before adding, “Doyle?”

  “Aye?”

  “Don’t go overboard with the dynamite, please.”

  “Sorry, can you please repeat? You’re breaking up.” The signal meters on the radio were both well in the black but Murdoch just ignored them and signed off. Let Doyle get on with it.

  20 Return of the Tuatha de Danaan

  The Khadrae streamed down the elaborate maze of gantries, eerily lit by a dull crimson light that seemed to glow from within the crudely cut walls of the chamber, descending down past the giant rocket that stood in the middle of the chamber, down through the clouds of steam and smoke that rose up from the bottom of the machine, down onto the chamber floor, past the human engineers and further down into their warm humid nesting chambers.

  Herr Werner von Braun stood precariously on a metal gantry gazing up proudly at the monolithic structure rising hundreds of feet into the air.

  Beside him stood a swaying skeletal creature that had once been human but was now a mere container for the Core to communicate its thoughts to its minions. Von Braun tried to ignore the ghastly sweet rotting smell that came from the decaying corpse, succeeding only partially.

  “You have done well, Herr von Braun,” said the Core through the avatar, slurring as disintegrating vocal cords fought with a putrid tongue to form words. Von Braun shivered as the buzz of a multitude of inhuman voices in discordant harmony washed over him.

  “No. We have done well,” replied von Braun, emphasising the ‘we’. “Without your expertise the Third Reich could not have possibly created such a fantastic vehicle.”

  “That is true. We are pleased to observe the glory of Atlantis rising once again. Our base on what you call the moon has been completed far ahead of schedule. This pleases us also. We will soon depart from this prison that has chained us here for so long.”

  Von Braun looked sideways at the avatar and beyond to the bewildering and horrific array of fantastic creatures that were dwarfed by the rocket they were being led onto. Mammoths and Khadrae were the only recognisable animals and even they sported modifications that the Core had applied to them. Steel skulls, crystal tusks, laser eyes and stone skeletons were only some of the things that had been inflicted on the animals. Von Braun doubted if any were still alive in the normal sense of the word. Dr Josef Mengele had paid several secret visits to this hideaway taking great interest in the biological experiments and techniques applied by the Core. The mammoths pulled sledges piled high with exotic equipment, closely observed by the enslaved Eskimos that the Core had captured and bred over the past millennia. The evacuation was well under way. The Core was already on the rocket, its essence transferred over a period of many days into a vast conglomeration of crystals, cables, vacuum tubes and gleaming metal boxes with glowing lights.

  “Are you able to launch before the Britishers break into the complex?” asked von Braun.

  “The British and their so called empire are weak and toothless against the might of the Tuatha de Danaan. Their pitiful efforts will not succeed in delaying us in any way,” buzzed the walking cadaver. “You have seen the results of our regeneration programme?”

  Von Braun shivered again. The regeneration programme was another interest of Dr Mengele. Indeed, he had taken part in it and had offered the Core much in the way of material to experiment on. The results were… disturbing to say the very least. The Core had succeeded in merging the minds of the experimental subjects with those of Tuatha de Danaan warriors. ‘Merging’ was a kind way to put it as it was more like destroying the subjects minds and then transferring the essence of a Tuatha de Danaan into the soulless body. The Core’s minions had then surgically grafted in metal bones and strengthened the weak flesh of the subjects with plates of metal. The resulting things, for want of a better word, were truly horrific to look at but their skill in combat was beyond reproach. Incredibly so. The cast iron block that masqueraded as a human being, SS Sturmbannführer Stern, had expressed a sincere admiration at the sheer speed at which the warriors moved, cutting down the test defence of twenty Jews and Gypsies in mere seconds slicing through bronze shields as if they were paper, slicing through bodies as if they were rotten fruit. The unfortunates were all dead well before the last limb had fallen to the ground.

  “Ja, I have seen the warriors in action. Very impressive,” he found himself agreeing despite his grave reservations and personal revulsion.

  “The Tuatha de Danaan are the best warriors in the history of this world. It is hard to believe that you things are descended from the noble race of Atlantis,” lisped the avatar, the Core’s contempt making itself felt. Herr Himmler, the Re
ichführer had been delighted with the Core’s contempt which he felt emphasised the need to breed a pure Aryan master race. “God is dead! Long live the superman,” had said the small bespectacled man, quoting his favourite philosopher, Nietzsche. Von Braun worried about the future of Germany under mad men such as Himmler.

  The hideous avatar fell silent for a moment as if lost in thought. “The British have broken through into the outlying galleries,” it intoned. “This is unexpected but not unplanned for neither unwanted. The Tuatha de Danaan thirst for war once again. Our Khadrae are no match for the machines the British have. Our warriors ache to cover themselves in glory once again. We will be pleased to say that they shall have that chance.”

  “If the Britishers have broken through then I must make my escape to the Fatherland now before I am discovered,” said von Braun.

  “That is correct. You and your compatriots must go now. We may meet again Herr von Braun. Pass our regards to Herr Hitler and Herr Himmler. They have been most useful.”

  And with that the avatar’s eyes rolled up into its head, a small sigh escaped from it and it then collapsed in to a rotting heap as the Core withdrew from its body.

  That night Von Braun and his small team of engineers made good their escape in a high altitude aeroplane that flew north east out of the ice covered chambers and over the polar ice cap before following the coastline of Russia, breaching Finnish airspace and then landing at a secret air base in the north of Prussia.

  “Murdoch, we’ve exposed a tunnel,” reported Riley who winced as Doyle kicked the powered armour very hard, scowling just as hard. “Sorry, Doyle and Buchanan exposed the tunnel.” With a great deal of noise and enthusiasm, Riley didn’t add. No chance of any form of surprise here. Still it was done. The powerful arc lights on the Eagle lit up the area in startling brilliance reflecting off the snow with eye watering glares. The contrast of the dark tunnel mouth and the surrounding white snow gave Riley a sense of foreboding.