Earth Keepers

by Jorge Alejandro Lavera

  A slight tremor shook the area. The reactor’s core was generating a micro black hole and gravity was already distorting.

  Lonia didn’t understand why she couldn’t stop the sabotage, but evaluated the situation and concluded there was no escape. While she made sure that she was dealing with all the data synchronized from all of the headquarters, she activated all the ships by remote control, closed all of the accesses, activated all the channels of communication and started to repeat the urgent message for all systems and people.

  Citizens, you must evacuate the island immediately. Imminent collapse of the reactor. Get to the nearest ship and get out. Time and time again.

  Lonia One was under the mountain. It was the most secure place in case of an external attack, and could resist even a meteorite strike, but it was just under the reactor. It was the first one to be destroyed and she felt its absence. She decided to give the order to take off and get away to the other units. Each one was an enormous ship in itself, oval in shape, with its own reactor and capable of mobilizing, but they were massive, and their function was capacity for cargo, not speed. They started to take off, slowly. She ran over the whole continent with her sensors. The collapse was expanding, people were already dying and there were transport ships that hadn’t even started to fill up. They had so little time. Streams of hurricane force air were heading towards the center of the mountain, while explosions and fragments of material were expelled like projectiles towards outside. The magnitude of the disaster was shocking. Lonia Three was absorbed into the collapse and destroyed. Lonia determined that they were not going to be able to escape and changed her strategy. Two, Four, and Five rushed to the sea and she ordered them to sink as much as possible. They lost Lonia Five when she hadn’t even gone down yet. On the east side, where Two dropped, the magma got to the top and, combined with the gravitational pull, tore and melted the surface of the ship, undermining its isolation and leading to its collapse.

  Lonia Four was the only that was able to survive the disaster, buried at the bottom of the sea. She turned off all her systems and went into minimum energy consumption mode, ready to wait for new orders.

  EVACUATION

  Atlantis, Year 3550 of the Reign of Gea, Day 128

  The sun’s heat made the group of males sweat. They’d stopped in the shade of some trees at the edge of the road. They were chatting idly when the saw the Amazon coming closer, uniformed and armed.

  “Have a good trip, beautiful. Do you want company?” asked one of the men, a blond with a winning smile and a bow as the black-haired woman passed.

  Nephele looked at him a second with her huge black eyes the way someone looks at a piece of excrement on the bottom of their shoe and kept going, without saying a word.

  The man was about to say something else when one of his friends stopped him to shut him up.

  “What?” he asked impatiently.

  “Are you an idiot? You can’t see that’s an Amazon warrior? Do you want her to cut you into slices?”

  The blond looked at her, surprised.

  “Amazon, with that height? Impossible!”

  Nephele heard the comments and felt her blood boil. She bit her lips. She stopped cold and putting her hand on her sword, she turned around.

  The blond sat up, stumbling backwards.

  “I’m sorry, miss, that is, lieutenant, I didn’t mean any offense,” he said quickly, looking at her helmet and a little pale from the fright. The others didn’t laugh at him. They watched seriously to see how the situation would unfold. They knew this wasn’t a joke.

  She let out a sigh, without saying a word, left her sword in its place and turned back to her path. She couldn’t delay or she’d be late to defend her honor.

  “Alesia Calinea and Nephele Anastas are both here and ready to fight for their honor, as the law prescribes,” announced the referee, raising a golden rod and showing it to the people.

  Both women were dressed in complete armor like they’d used at the training camp and had their combat weapons drawn. The day was beautiful, sunny and warm, so they were in the open air amphitheater. They were separated by about fifteen feet in the center of the ring. A small group of people were sitting in the stands watching them and murmuring.

  “Both combatants have the right to say a few words before we start,” the referee said, looking at them expectantly.

  “There’s still time to offer a formal apology, and in that case, I’m willing to forget the matter,” Nephele told her in a firm voice, knowing that wasn’t going to happen.

  “An apology? Ha! I said you’re a social climber and I meant it. You got your promotion in bed! Come on, look at her! She’s just a stumpy little thing,” Alesia said provocatively, causing more than one laugh from the audience.

  Nephele knew that the mockery from her teammates had been on the rise for a long time, and questioned her skills as a warrior. If she let them continue, she’d never earn their respect. And without their respect, she was doomed to fail.

  “Now you’ll show us then if I’m a good warrior or not,” Nephele said angrily.

  The referee shook his head, disappointed.

  “In that case, prepare for combat,” the man said. After bowing to them, he walked to the edge of the amphitheater and then turned back to them. He took the golden rod by both ends and abruptly broke it. It was the symbol of irreplaceable rivalry and the beginning of ritual combat.

  They evaluated the situation for a few seconds and Alesia opted for a frontal attack. With a yell, she jumped forward, aiming a sword strike directly at her chest. Nephele was watching her carefully and almost smiled. She knew that Alesia wasn’t a match for her and that the combat would be over quickly. She moved just enough to the right, while she deflected the strike towards the left with her shield. Taking advantage of her nearness, she struck her on the side of her head. Alesia was also wearing a helmet, but the blow with the metallic gauntlet that covered knuckles was so heavy that it dented it, and made it ring like a bell.

  Alesia stumbled back, stunned. Nephele was able to strike the base of her opponent’s sword, which went flying through the air. She started forward to finish the fight but suddenly she tripped, too, and almost fell. Surprised, she noticed that everyone else was having trouble staying on their feet. The earth was shaking. An earthquake? But they didn’t have earthquakes on Atlantis! She crouched to regain her center of gravity, while Alesia fell spectacularly. A siren started to sound in the distance, followed by others. Suddenly, she heard a message that came directly into her mind.

  “Citizens, you must evacuate the island immediately. Imminent collapse of the reactor. Imminent collapse of the reactor. Get to the nearest ship and get out.”

  The message repeated over and over and the voice transmitted a sensation of urgency if not panic. The nearest airport was only a third of a mile away. She looked around and could see that vehicles couldn’t move with the increasingly violent shaking. At that moment, the few fliers that were in the vicinity were inert and falling to the ground. No power. She had to find autonomous transport. The center wasn’t producing any more energy. She didn’t waste any more time, starting to run as fast as she could towards the port. The earthquakes made it hard to run and she tripped several times, but desperation made her get there before anyone else. She passed several vehicles on the way that had been knocked off of the road and their occupants stumbled out, stunned. Animals ran and flew in all directions. When she got to the port, she saw that the closest ship had already activated itself automatically with the evacuation order and was waiting with the doors open, and the reactor lit, just like most of the other parked ships. A quetzal bird crawled inside as she watched. She followed it and seeing that, except for the small animal, it was empty, she ran to the pilot’s seat. She had experience with these types of ships. She placed her palm on the console in front of her so that the computer would give her access, threw her helmet to the floor, dried the sweat from her forehead and quickly adjusted the interface that
she attached to her head. The white element that extended from the center of her head to her neck and reached her temples with the figure of a trident was called a navigation helmet. With just a thought, Nephele turned on all the lights around the ship, the six engines and the navigation system. The screens showed maps and the views around them. She checked the ship, which had full energy. With an inhalation of fright, she noticed that the aerial view showed that the center of Atlantis was at that moment sinking.

  A flash blocked the screen for a second and she could see how the place where there had once been a mountain, was literally sucked into a vortex.

  “By Gea!” she exclaimed without thinking, while she looked at the other screens and accelerated the engines unconsciously but without connecting them. She listened as other Atlanteans came into the ship, holding on as best they could in the transport seats. They saw that someone was navigating but no one took the co-pilot’s seat, so she’d have to do it herself. The weight indicator rose quickly. Fifty percent, seventy, ninety. The second that the capacity reached a hundred percent, she ordered the computer to close the doors and connected the engines, pushing them to the maximum, annulling all security protocols. A few more people managed to get in, keeping the doors from closing, when the ship gave a jump up and forward, like a missile, and so hard that everyone was slammed into their seats. She heard the scream of some poor guy who hadn’t secured himself into a seat and his legs were broken by his own weight when they accelerated. The doors closed when those who were trying to enter fell into the ship or were dragged into the abyss by the force of the wind. She felt the quetzal rolling around in terror under her leg.

  The ship was in a western port and pointing in that direction, so she went straight ahead at full speed. A third of a mile, two-thirds of a mile. They saw other ships leaving after them. A mile. Suddenly it felt like the ship fell into a well, as if something had been holding it up and suddenly let it go. The motors were still running at maximum speed, but the air itself was being absorbed by the collapse behind them. A mile and a quarter. A blinding light covered everything for a moment. She could see other ships randomly destroyed by shrapnel caused by explosions on land and then absorbed into the collapse of the center of the island. She felt an arc when the ship seemed to fall into a well worse than the last one. One mile. She tried to navigate the ship, but only managed to shake it from one side to the other. Less than a mile. She could see the ocean rising and with a swell of hundreds of feet, rushed to cover the land. The ship vibrated and creaked. She heard the screams from the other passengers. Several indicators on the ship were red, it was overheating. She wondered if they’d make it. The helmet that had been on the ground flew up and almost hit her in the head. She dodged it just in time and it hit the wall behind her, turning it into a ball.

  The tug they felt seemed to loosen little by little. At first she wasn’t sure, but a little later she could see it on the distance indicator. Three quarters of a mile, seven-eighths of a mile. They were moving again.

  Behind them, the ocean was roiling furiously. She watched with horror as the entire continent was dragged into the void and buried under the sea. Her home, her career, her whole life was under salt water.

  The ship tilted gently and she refocused on the steering to straighten it out. Now they were stable, so she stopped pushing the engines, so as not to ruin them. The indicator now showed almost two miles and increasing again both in altitude and distance.

  She relaxed for a minute. Where was Gea? And Mirina? Millions of people must have died today. They only had a couple of minutes to evacuate. Whoever wasn’t in the immediate area of a ship, like she was, drowned with the island. What the hell had happened? Who would know? She tried to contact other ships. She tried every frequency for several minutes, but the electromagnetic disturbances caused by the collapse interrupted all communications. The atmosphere was ionized. A few times she thought she’d connected, but only heard noise. There didn’t seem to be a single ship near her. She was in the middle of the ocean and her fuel was limited. She got to a speed and altitude for minimum consumption, instructed the ship to advise if land were detected and put it on automatic pilot.

  She took off the navigation helmet and stood up to see the others who had boarded the ship. The ship had the capacity for fifty people and she counted carefully. There were fifty-four, all adults, counting her.

  Mirina wasn’t there. Alesia was. She was the only other warrior on the ship.

  “Alesia,” she greeted her, inclining her head.

  “Nephele, I...” the warrior was pale and looked embarrassed.

  Nephele stopped her with a gesture of her hand, with which she then fixed her hair instead. She knew that all Amazons had flight training. Could she trust Alesia?

  “Come on, I need a copilot.”

  Alesia hesitated a second and then followed her to the flight cabin. Both situated themselves and put on the flight helmets. The co-pilot’s console lit up and they reviewed the data.

  “We’re going west...the continent is very far to that side,” Alesia said.

  “We were on the west coast. If we’d gone towards the east, we’d have passed through the center of the vortex and we’d all be dead.”

  “You’re right,” Alesia conceded, pressing her lips together as she looked at the records of what had happened and the footage, stunned. “Nothing...there’s nothing left. What will we do? Will there be enough fuel? Should we turn around and go east?”

  “We’re more than halfway through the trip. If we continue on, maybe we’ll arrive or we’ll miss by only a little, but if we turn around, we’ll fall into the sea long before arriving. We’re flying at minimum consumption, but we’re overloaded.”

  “Did you make contact with any other ship?”

  “None, all communication is blocked. I can’t contact Atlantis or anyone else. And I don’t detect any other ships in this direction. If anyone else escaped, they didn’t go west. We’re alone,” Nephele said, frowning.

  Alesia’s eyes moved erratically from one side to the other, and she grunted. She took off the navigation helmet. Realizing the enormity of the problem that faced them, she sank down in the seat.

  A little later, they went through the ship talking to the others. There were no members of the royalty among them. Almost all of them were workers from the Ninth Kingdom, who greeted them, and recognizing them as warriors no one offered to replace them or doubted their leadership. They attended to the wounded, and when the computer advised them, they went to take their places in the control cabin.

  The ship’s reactor was reaching the limits of its capacity. They could try to keep flying and suffer an abrupt fall when the engines stopped, or they could try to land now keeping a certain amount of control, but they were still far from the continent.

  “Look, a group of islands to the south,” Alesia pointed out and they diverted the ship, starting the maneuver for an emergency landing.

  “The coast is huge,” Nephele observed.

  “The level of the sea has gone down...look ahead, the islands are joined to the continent by some sand bars.”

  “Even so, we’ll be short, by a mile or so,” Nephele calculated. “Do you think a wave is coming?”

  “Luckily not, according to the sensors.”

  “Everybody get ready to swim,” she advised via the internal speakers, worried. There were no flotation devices or anything else to help them. The ship itself would not float and it would sink like a rock when the energy went out. They weren’t all going to be able to get out at the same time.

  “Alesia, we have to give people an opportunity to get out,” she said, as she interrupted the course of the landing and changed the trajectory to descend vertically, still almost two miles from the coast.

  Alesia didn’t argue and got up to advise the passengers. She made sure they were all free from their seats and ready, and manually opened the access gate.

  “When we’re close to the water, jump and swim for your lives.
Just swim straight ahead,” she told them as she helped them line up. The passengers murmured and there was an occasional exclamation, but no one argued.

  “Nephele, orient the exit towards the island,” Alesia suggested, at which the ship turned in the opposite direction to the one it was, to do just that. The yellow lights on the console lit up as the reactor reached critical values. They were almost at sea level when Nephele stopped the ship and kept it a few inches above the water, the waves getting it wet.

  “Go!” ordered Nephele. They started to get out, in two lines as Alesia had organized them. No more people would fit at the same time through the hatch. They jumped out, two, four, six, eight. The ones in front started to swim so they wouldn’t obstruct the exit of those who waited.

  The sound of the engines changed.

  “Alesia, jump now!” shouted Nephele, both knowing that meant that the engine was shutting down because the reactor had no energy left.

  The belly of the ship was on the water and started to move with the waves. People were jumping out as fast as possible. Forty-four, forty-six...Nephele was sweating from the tension. She’d turned off all the secondary systems and the two middle engines. Only the four motors on the outer edges remained, but even so they almost weren’t holding up the ship. Forty-eight, fifty...the front port engine turned off and the vehicle tilted with a creak. The starboard front engine disconnected and the ship began to sink forward. The hatch was still above water but was slowly sinking. Water started to come in the exit. The last two passengers regained their balance and jumped as the reactor went out. The sea was pouring through the hatch, and it was impossible to get out. Nephele took off the navigation helmet and tried to reach the hatch, but the water pushed her back inside. A swirl of water shook her and threw her back into the cabin, which was flooded as everything sank.