She walked over to the dead man’s horse, noting the satchel tied off to the dead animal’s saddle. She took it off, ignoring the warriors who were tearing the man’s body apart. She immediately felt the warmth in her hands. She peeked inside and gasped. Powerful medicine.
Buffalo Calf Road Woman took the crystal skull, hidden inside the satchel, and moved forward into the battle.
GAIL
Gall was walking back from visiting relatives in the middle of the great encampment when he heard the first shots. He paused, hoping it was simply hunters returning. But as the shots continued, he realized that today there would be a battle.
From the sound, the fighting was in the valley to the south, which caused him some concern. As his people were camped the farthest in that direction. He wondered why there had not been an alarm of soldiers approaching, but he supposed it was due to everyone relaxing after dawn had passed and no blue coats had shown up. No one could believe that the soldiers would attack this camp in the light of day when the full force of the mighty Sioux nation and the other tribes here could be seen by any foe approaching.
So much for beliefs, Gall thought as he tried to make his way through the sudden bedlam in the camp. Women were screaming, trying to track down children. Dogs were barking and warriors were grabbing weapons and running to the sound of the gunfire.
As he got closer to his lodge, Gall’s concern grew. Bullets Hew by, mostly high, but it told him the enemy was not far away. One of his wives ran past, shepherding some young ones. She did not meet his eye or halt at his yelled questions, and Gall felt a heavy weight press down on his chest.
The bodies lay outside of his lodge. His eldest wife, his youngest daughter who just this morning had filled him with such joy, and one of his sons. Dead, struck down by the bullets of the blue coats. Gall dropped to his knees and picked up the body of his daughter. He peered into her lifeless eyes, closed the lids, then slowly put her back down.
He could hear more firing now. The sound of horses in agony. Men yelling, in their tongue. Some of them white men. Warriors ran or galloped past, heading to the south. Gall stood and pulled open the entrance to his lodge. His hatchet, steel blade gleaming, lay just inside. He picked it up, feeling the heft of the handle. He also picked up the satchel with the skull and it looped over his shoulder. Then he turned and moved to the south.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
MOSCOW: THE PRESENT
The cloud of radiation reached the southeast suburbs of Moscow and crept inward, the most successful invader of Moscow since the Golden Horde of the Khan many centuries previously. Between Moscow and Chernobyl, the land was more scorched and dead than even the Mongol invaders had accomplished.
To the east, panic was beginning to ripple through Europe. People stared at wind reports with intensity, noting every little change and hoping against the realistic words of the scientists that something would happen to forestall the curtain of death that was coming toward them.
THE SPACE BETWEEN
Dane hovered just above the top of the Shadow Sphere, slowly turning and looking in all directions over the Inner Sea. Earhart was by his side.
“Nothing,” Dane reported.
Instead of replying, Earhart opened her suit and stepped down onto the surface of the sphere. She carefully walked down to where the black water met the craft and knelt.
“Be careful,” Dane warned.
“Something’s coming,” Earhart said.
“What?”
“We’ll see it when it gets here.”
EARTH IV
Out of a crew of one hundred and eighteen, ninety-six had volunteered. From that number, Anderson had picked two of his reactor specialists, given the nature of the task. The two men had suited up in the bulky radiation suits and now were ready, standing in the holding area in front of the large hatch that was in the first shield wall between the front of the sub · and the rear. One of them carried the wired skull, the other a large hatch wrench. The hatch was unbolted and they stepped through; the hatch shut behind them. They moved down a short passageway and opened a second hatch, moved through, and shut it behind them. They were now in the emergency operations room for the reactor. They’d both been here before on maintenance checks. Inside a suit, a man could safely work in the room for thirty minutes.
They moved to one side where there was another hatch plastered with red warning signs. The man with the wrench opened it, and the one carrying the skull stepped through. He waited as the other man slipped inside, closing one hatch be· hind them and then opening the next one, again covered with warning signs.
The sailor with the wrench paused before the final turn and looked back at his partner. Peering through the clear plastic visors of the headgear they stared at each other for a few moments, knowing what the next action would bring. Neither d a word. The sailor turned back to the door and twisted the wrench. The hatch opened. Although there was no apparent difference, both men cringed, as if hunching down inside their suits would make a difference. They knew they were being bathed in radiation from the reactor core, but it was an instinctual reaction. They moved to the core and the one with the skull put it in position as Frost had directed.
Both jumped back as they were bathed in a bright blue light The skull was the source of it, the intensity so strong, they couldn’t look at it for more than a second before turning their eyes away.
The captain s voice came over the intercom. “Are you men all right? We’ve just picked up a fifty percent power drop in reactor strength.”
They stared at the skull, which was now pulsing with blue power, realizing that somehow it had tapped the reactor core of that much energy in an instant. They also knew that if it was holding that much power, it had to be giving out radiation far beyond the ability of their suits to block. One of them checked the small card clipped to the outside of his suit. It was bright red, meaning they’d just received a fatal dose in an instant.
“We’ve got a problem, captain,” one of them called out.
“What is it?” Anderson’s voice echoed through the core.
“This thing is hot now. Very, very hot. If we remove it from the core and bring it forward of the shields, it will contaminate the rest of the ship. At fatal levels.”
* * *
In the control room Anderson turned to Frost. And waited.
Frost was seated in a battered metal chair, his white hair unkempt. “The skull has the power to open the gate large enough for the submarine to pass through.”
“To where?”
“To where we must go.”
“And then?”
“I can’t see that far.”
“That’s pretty slim.”
“It’s all been pretty slim, but if you had not listened to me, you all would be dead by now along with everyone else.”
“Not much of a life here.”
Frost waited, letting the emotion run out of Anderson. Finally the captain sighed. “All right.” He keyed the intercom and gave the orders. Every man on the ship heard them and knew what they meant.
* * *
When the intercom went silent, the sailor who’d carried the skull. In went over to the wall and grabbed a set of metal tongs. He went back to the core and picked up the skull, holding it between the metal jaws. “Clear the way,” he called out; the message was picked up by the live speaker and transmitted through the ship. Forward of the reactor, a pathway was cleared of all personnel, not that the steel bulkheads were any safety against the deadly rays being emitted by the skull.
The two men quickly retraced their steps, exiting the reactor and sealing all hatches behind them. After the months of being crowded, they found it strange to move through the ship with no one else in sight. They reached the base of the sail and found the hatch to the ice cap open. They moved outside without hesitation, a snowstorm beating against their radiation suits. They didn’t look over their shoulders as the hatch was slammed shut.
They moved forward of the Nautilus
about a hundred yards to the point where they couldn’t see their ship anymore through the swirling snow. Both halted. The one holding the skull hesitated, then put it down on the ice, expecting it to melt through and disappear.
It didn’t
Instead, as soon as it was released. The skull rose up and came to a hover four feet above the ice, unaffected by the strong wind that blew by.
The skull shot out bolts of blue into the descending snow. Directly in front of the two sailors, the air crackled and snapped. Both men took an involuntary step backward as a,lack oval three feet wide by six feet long, opened. It began to grow larger.
A crashing noise from behind diverted their attention for a moment. The large bow of the Nautilus appeared, smashing through the ice. Someone was on top of the deck, waving at them. They walked closer. A slab of ice being broken lifted both of them higher. They staggered to remain upright.
A sailor on the front deck held out a loop of cut hose. The first man lifted his arm, hooked and caught hold of it. He was swung onto the deck. The second did the same, just as the nose of the Nautilus hit the black circle. The three men were silhouetted by blue against the black.
As if pulled through, the Nautilus increased speed and snapped out of sight, and the man who had rescued the two suited sailors screamed in agony.
THE SPACE BETWEEN
Earhart jumped to her feet as a wall of black water surged up and toward the sphere. She slipped as the water crashed over her legs. Dane grabbed her arm and held on, half expecting kraken tentacles to attack. He blinked as the blunt gray nose of a submarine of a type he had never seen appeared fewer than fifty feet away. It was coming straight toward the sphere, and Dane helped Earhart farther up to the very top.
The bow of the sub hit the sphere with a solid thud, bringing the craft to a dead stop. There were three figures on the front deck. Two standing, dressed in bulky yellow suits streaked with black as if they’d been hit with a blowtorch. The third was prone, unmoving, his uniform and skin fried. Another casualty in the war. Dane found he felt little for whoever the man was-no, that wasn’t quite right he realized, it was more he couldn’t afford to focus on it, to allow himself to feel. He realized it was a sad state of affairs, and death was just a small speed bump in events.
Dane now saw the writing on the side of the sail: Nautilus.
“I think we’re about to meet Mister Frost,” he said to Earhart.
A hatch on the side of the sail clanged open and several men came out of the submarine and made their way forward. Foremost among them was an old man with white hair. Dane and Earhart walked down the sphere until they were next to the high bow of the Nautilus.
“Mister Frost?” Dane asked.
Frost nodded. “How did you know?”
“I’ve seen you-and this submarine-in a vision.”
“Then do you know what happens next?” Frost asked.
‘1 haven’t seen it,” Dane said, “but we need to get this”—he pointed down at the sphere—“to an Earth time line where we can gather something from the air, then return with it back to my time line.”
Frost stared at him, obviously understanding little of what Dane had just said. He could see the crewmen gathered around their dead comrade.
“We still don’t have power,” Earhart said.
Dane turned to her. He felt old and tired. “Actually, I think we might have enough power to take the first step.”
“Where?”
Dane nodded toward the Nautilus. “There.”
“The reactor?”
“The crew.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
RENO
“I thought I saw the gray troop up therein Girard yelled, pointing to the bluffs on the east of the river.
Reno looked in the indicated direction, but he saw nothing · moving. And if Custer was up there, Reno knew he was in a very bad place. His firepower was down by one-fourth simply by the fact that a dismounted skirmish line required every fourth man to hold the other three men’s horses. The other three men were part of the skirmish line that stretched from the river on the right to the scouts far to the left on the low bluff.
Mitchell!” Reno called out His cook came forward, half bent over, as many of the men were, making their target space smaller for the bullets that were whizzing past.
“Go tell Custer we are engaged against hundreds-no make that thousands of hostiles. We need support immediately!”
Mitchell looked about, fear in his eyes. “Where do I go, sir?”
Reno pointed to the high bluffs. “He’s behind those. Find him! Tell him I can’t hold much longer.”
“Yes, sir.” Mitchell ran, hopped on his horse and was gone.
Reno felt a moment of doubt. Had he halted his charge too soon? Could he have carried it into the village? Then he looked to the front and all doubt was gone. He would be lucky to hold this line, never mind attack farther.
The men were steady, Reno saw. They were holding their own so far. He watched as a trooper staggered back as if punched, holding his gut, blood pouring over his fingers, a surprised look on his face.
But still there was no concerted assault by the Sioux. There had to be thousands, Reno calculated, looking at the long lines of lodges as far as he could see above the smoke that was drifting across the battlefield.
The firing was picking up. God, Reno thought, we’re going to run out of ammunition. His pistol was in his hand, and he fired as he spotted two warriors ride out of the powder fog toward the line.
The warriors turned and rode back, disappearing. Reno blinked. There was something flickering in the air and then he realized what it was-arrows falling out of the sky on a high trajectory. Most missed but occasionally one found its mark and tore through flesh. Reno’s shoulders involuntarily hunched up, waiting for the impact of a dart from the sky. He saw one of the horse handlers lose control and the four horses rushed back the way they came.
Someone came galloping down the line and Reno leveled · his pistol at the figure, pausing as he recognized the man. lieutenant Varnum’s horse was foaming at the mouth. “They’re infiltrating along the trees by the river!” he yelled.
Reno looked past Varnum toward the river. If they were cut off there, it was all over. The battalion would be surrounded. Reno looked back down the valley, watching the four horses gallop away into the dust that had been raised during the charge.
“The left flank’s in the air!” Varnum continued. ‘’The scouts have nothing they can anchor on. They could get rolled!”
“Where’s Custer?” Reno demanded.
“I don’t know, sir, but the hostiles are getting behind us along the river!”
“Hold here!” Reno ordered. He mounted and rode to the rear, through the dust until he could see clearly. Nothing. Reno closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then turned his horse around and rode back into the dust cloud toward the firing.
“Steady men,” he called as he rode along the line. ‘’Pick your targets. Don’t waste bullets if they’re out of range.”
“Sir!” It was Captain Moylan of A Troop. “The line’s too bin. If they rush us, we’ll break!”
“What?” Reno flinched as a horrible scream exploded from a wounded trooper’s mouth. The man had both hands on an arrow shaft that was sticking up out of his chest.
“The lines too thin, sir!” Moylan repeated. “I don’t know why they haven’t rushed us yet. They’ve got the numbers.”
“The left,” Varnum said, pointing. There was a great dust cloud there. ‘’They’re rolling it. That’s why they haven’t hit us in the center yet with any force.”
“What should I do?” Reno asked.
Varnum’s lip curled in disgust, but Moylan had no time for that. “Pull into the trees, sir. Get the horses under cover. We’ll lose them out here, and if we lose them we’re dead.”
“Yes,” Reno nodded. “Yes. Do it.” The plan made sense. Move to the trees near the river for cover. Then he could anchor his flank on t
he river.
Moylan was already gone, issuing the commands to his troops. Reno began giving orders, trying to keep some order as the battalion slipped to the right, into the cover of the trees.
Reno gratefully rode his horse down into a cut, where the river had once flowed, before taking its current course. He had a moment’s hope. This could be a good defensive position. But as he dismounted he saw that all was confusion and getting worse. Visibility was worse among the trees than it had been in the open. Indians were infiltrating behind them along the river and through the trees. Gunpowder smoke was growing even thicker. The troops were mixed up, and command and control were difficult.
And then there was more smoke, black smoke. Reno coughed. The savages were setting the woods on fire. He spun about. He could see the sparkling water of the little Big Horn dancing over stones. On the far side of the river were high bluffs, a steep cut going up.
Reno turned back. He saw Captain Moylan. Bloody Knife · came up and signed. Yes, yes, Reno signed back. Hostiles behind them, all around. Bloody Knife was gone, back into the line, fighting. It was all hectic, confusing.
“We have to pull back!” Reno yelled at Moylan.
Moylan looked at him in astonishment. “To where?”
Reno pointed at the cut.
“We’ll never make it,” Moylan protested. “They’ll cut us down crossing the river.
“They’ll roast us here!” Reno yelled back. “If we get up to the high ground, we can reunite the regiment!”
“We don’t know where Custer is,” argued Moylan. “He could be coming up the valley. Maybe we can fight back south,” Moylan suggested.
Keno moved around the perimeter, trying to get an idea of how his force was faring. He could be coming up the valley. Maybe we can fight back south,” Moylan suggested.
Reno moved around the perimeter. Trying to get an idea of how his force was faring. He came across Bouyer loading his rifle and firing calmly. Isaiah Dome, the black scout, was near Bouyer, also firing away. Bloody Knife was also there, carefully firing his rifle.
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