CHAPTER FOUR

 

EARTH TIMELINE—VIII

Antietam, MD, 16 September 1862

 

“We will make our stand on these hills,” General Robert E. Lee told his three senior officers as they looked out over the Maryland countryside in the waning light. He was flanked by the three corps commanders of the Army of Northern Virginia: Generals Longstreet, Jackson, and A. P. Hill.

Lee was an imposing figure who commanded respect wherever he went. His father had been Light Horse Harry Lee of Revolutionary War fame and the military had been Lee’s focus since he was a young boy in Virginia. He attended the relatively new Military Academy at West Point and graduated in 1829, second in his class. He fought, and was wounded, in the war with Mexico. He eventually returned to West Point and was superintendent, thus becoming responsible for training many of the men who would be commanders on both sides in the Civil War.

When war broke out he was serving in the Department of Texas. He’d been offered command of the Union forces by President Lincoln on the advice of his generals, but Lee had turned him down. Three days after Virginia seceded, he resigned from the Union Army and became the military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, before eventually taking command of the Army of Northern Virginia.

He had been leading the Southern army in Virginia for a while and his string of successes was becoming almost myth like. He had an uncanny ability to anticipate the actions of his opponents and for understanding their weaknesses. He stayed true to the tactics he’d learned and taught at West Point-particularly using interior lines of communication and presenting his enemy with a convex front so that his supplies, messages, and reinforcements had a much shorter distance to travel than his enemy’s. His greatest tactic though was the use of entrenchments. Heretofore battle had been considered simply maneuvering one’s force against the enemy, and then both sides stood in the field blasting away at each other until one or the other gave way.

Lee believed, and put into practice, that a smaller body of men, which he invariably had when he was up against Union forces, could hold against a much larger force if it were properly entrenched. While this was in his front, he would send another element of his army in a flanking maneuver to hit the fixed enemy from the side or rear. This was a radical military concept, one that would not be fully appreciated until the bloody reality of World War I.

Now he was in the North with his army. Stonewall Jackson had led the way for the Southern forces into Maryland, arriving in the nearby town of Sharpsburg earlier in the afternoon. With Harpers Ferry having surrendered to his rear, Lee felt he was in a strong position to weather a Union assault, especially as he found this ground favorable. He deployed his army, taking up defensive positions along a low ridge stretching from the Potomac on his left to Antietam Creek on his right. As usual, his front curved back on the flanks, giving him interior lines and forcing the Northern forces to curve concavely.

Lee placed cannon on Nicodemus Heights to his left, the high ground in front of Dunkard Church, the ridge just east of Sharpsburg, and on the heights overlooking the Lower Bridge. He directed infantry to fill in the lines between these points, including a sunken lane less than a half mile long with worm fencing along both sides. A handful of Georgia sharpshooters guarded the Lower Bridge over Antietam Creek on one flank. This attention to detail and deployment was a trademark of the leadership that Lee had displayed in nonstop victories. Despite all those victories, though, the war was dragging on.

Across the creek, his spies told Lee that the Union Commander, General George McClellan, had about sixty thousand troops ready to attack--double the number available to Lee. Still, the Confederate commander felt confident. They had yet to lose to the Yankees, and these positions were strong. At West Point, he had been taught that the attacker should outnumber the defender three to one at the point of attack and he doubted George would be able to focus his large forces for a concentrated assault.

This was General Lee’s first invasion of the Union. He’d gone north for several reasons. First, he wanted to earn recognition from the European powers that thus far had stayed on the sidelines. Britain and France were both potential allies, and Lee felt a strong military showing by the Confederacy could swing one or the other to his side and perhaps force the North to sue for peace. Lee knew that the longer the war lasted, the shorter the odds of a Southern victory grew.

Lee also went north to take the battles out of his beloved Virginia, which had seen most of the fighting so far. The Second Battle of Bull Run had just ended with another Southern routing of Union forces, and he’d felt the time was right to march north. He was beginning to feel that the North could keep sending army after army into the South and take defeat after defeat with little effect. As he went to sleep in his tent on the evening of the 16^th, Lee felt secure in his positions and content that the battle the next day would take place on Northern soil. Even though he had seen much war, Lee had no frame of reference for what the next day would bring.

The fact that he was fighting against the country he had taken an oath to defend when getting sworn in as a cadet at West Point disturbed Lee at times, but it was a feeling he fought hard to keep at arm’s distance. For him, the war was not about slavery, but about freedom. The freedom of states from a strong central government. The same type of freedom his father had fought for in the Revolutionary War against England. For him, Virginia would always take precedent over the United States.

He was a realist who knew the longer this war lasted, the smaller became the odds of the South winning. The North was simply too big, too populated, too industrialized for the rural South to expect to outlast. He needed a victory, a bloody one, to make the North howl and cause the European powers to take interest. He planned to have it tomorrow.

 

**********

 

The battle opened on a damp, murky dawn when Union artillery on the bluffs beyond Antietam Creek began a murderous fire on Stonewall Jackson’s lines. In an attempt to roll up Lee’s left flank, McClellan sent troops toward The Cornfield north of town. Confederate troops hidden among the stalks rose up and delivered a murderous fire into the Union lines as they tried to deploy for the assault, driving them back. The Federals responded by withdrawing the infantry and training their artillery on the field, unleashing a brutal barrage. The fire was so intense that every stalk of corn was cut down as neatly as if by a massive scythe. The effect on the Confederates who had been in the field was less neat, tearing bodies apart and soaking the ground with blood.

The Union forces assaulted and drove the Confederates from the field, only to have a reinforced Jackson drive them once more out of it. The Union counterattacked again, and the two lines stood less than two hundred yards apart among the blood-spattered corn and mutilated bodies and fired into each other for over half an hour. Loading and firing, creating a man-made that hung close to the ground. All day long, the battle for this field went on, the terrain changing hands over fifteen times and the harvest of bodies growing deeper and deeper. The ground became so soaked with blood and bodily fluids that it turned into a nasty mud.

Pushing his Union forces farther to the north, still desiring to turn the flank and recognizing the bloody stalemate in The Cornfield, McClellan sent a division of troops into the West Woods. But they in turn were hit on their flank by Confederates who decimated the Federals with point-blank fire, killing and wounding over half the two-thousand-man division in less than fifteen minutes. It wasn’t warfare, it was slaughter.

An attempt to bolster the attack on the flank went awry when Union forces were misled and actually hit the Confederate center. As Lee had predicted, McClellan was having trouble coordinating the movements of his massive army. The Rebels were hunkered down in an eight-hundred-yard-long sunken road that had been made by years of heavy wagons taking grain to a nearby mill.

Four times over the course of three hours, the Union forces charged across open fields toward the road and four times they were thrown back. By one in the afternoon, over fifty-six hundred men lay dead or dying in the vicinity of the road, which had now earned the name Bloody Lane.

Finally, two New York regiments managed to penetrate the Confederate lines and lay down a withering fire along the length of the sunken road, turning the defensive position into a trap and sending the Rebels into headlong retreat. The center of Lee’s line was now open for the assault and disaster loomed for the South.

Unfortunately for the North and for those who would die in the next three years, McClellan decided not to throw his reserves into the attack. Perhaps the carnage of The Cornfield and Bloody Lane caused him to pause. Regardless, that decision did not end the day’s fighting or the battle as it had taken on a life of its own, out of the control of the generals who had only a vague idea of what was playing out across the fields and woods of Maryland.

On the south end of the battlefield, Union General Burnside had been trying to cross a twelve-foot-wide bridge since the morning, getting thrown back time and again by the Georgia sharpshooters on a bluff overlooking the bridge. The fact that the creek the bridge spanned could be waded was something Burnside never seemed to take into account as wave after wave of Union soldiers charged across the stone bridge, finally getting a foothold on the far side in the early afternoon only to be pinned down at the base of the bluff, now unable to retreat without facing the same withering fire they had charged into.

Between the bitter success on the left and the opening in the center, General Lee appeared on the verge of defeat as Union forces closed on Sharpsburg, whose streets were crowded with retreating Confederate forces.

Then, as so often happens in war, luck intervened. General A. P. Hill’s division, which had been left behind at Harpers Ferry to salvage captured Federal property, arrived at the battlefield after an amazing forced march of seventeen miles in eight hours. They unexpectedly struck the Union’s left flank, catching the Federals by surprise and driving them back across the bridge they had crossed earlier that day at such great cost.

As the day came to a close, both sides were exhausted and bloodied beyond anything they had experienced in the war to that date. The battle was over and neither side had won.

It was the bloodiest one-day battle of the Civil War. Federal losses were approximately 12,410, while Confederate losses were around 10,700. One in four men engaged in battle that day had fallen. This was a level of loss greater than even Napoleon and other European generals had ever experienced in their campaigns.

The sun was setting on the bloodiest day in American history, a record that would stand far into the future, outstripping even the casualties of June 6, 1944, in Normandy. For this timeline, the numbers--twenty-three thousand casualties in one day--would not be topped until the final assault of the Shadow over two hundred years in the future, at which time life on the planet, in this timeline, would come to an end and there would be no one around to count the billions of dead.

On the following day, Lee began to withdraw his forces back to Virginia, and McClellan failed to press the battle against his retreating foe, resting his bloodied and weary army. Lee’s wagon train carrying his wounded stretched for over fourteen miles.

 

**********

 

It was not a victory. Abraham Lincoln knew that as he sat at his desk in the Oval Office and read the tersely worded dispatches from Sharpsburg. There had been no victories since the Rebels fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor in 1861. A few minor skirmishes here and there won, of course, but every major battle had been a Union defeat.

And the Europeans were waiting on the sidelines like vultures, staring across the Atlantic, waiting for the opportunity to wade in. It was about economics and cotton for them and a chance to get their feet back on the continent. Lincoln knew he had to change the playing field. Take it to a higher level to keep the Europeans at bay.

And the dead and wounded laid out in the cold numbers in the telegrams--the numbers were staggering. And if his experience with such dispatches was to be trusted, they were understated. The truth would not be revealed for weeks, but already the newsmen were saying it was the bloodiest day of the war so far.

It was also not a defeat, though. Lee was retreating. And, truth be told the North could accept high casualties more than the South could.

Lincoln put down the telegraphs and leaned back in his chair, stretching his long legs out so that the tips of his worn boots appeared on the other side of the desk bottom. He heard a door open to his left and he twisted his head. He got to his feet as he recognized his wife’s diminutive form. Just two inches above five feet, Mary had clear blue eyes and light brown hair that was now beginning to show hints of gray. They’d met when she was twenty-one, living with her sister in Springfield. She was beautiful, but it had been her sharp wit that had captivated Lincoln on their first meeting.

She was from high society and he, as he liked to tell friends when recounting the tale of their courtship, was a poor nobody. Their courtship lasted three years. There were aspects to it that Lincoln never related when speaking of the past. The first time she’d come to him after hearing the voices. The time he broke off the engagement in dismay. Only to be drawn back to her by a force greater than his fear. In a way, they were the perfect match, as she had an unshakeable belief in his abilities and his gentle demeanor allowed him to tolerate what others politely called her excitability.

Their early years of marriage had been difficult because his circumstances brought her down quite a few notches in the social circles. The war had not made things easier. Southerners claimed she was a traitor, since her family came from Kentucky; Union papers assailed her attempts to bring the White House up to what she considered an acceptable level for the leader of a great country.

“Mary.” Lincoln strode across the room. “Are you all right?” He wrapped her in his large arms and led her over to a couch.

“I hear them,” Mary Todd Lincoln whispered. “I hear them.”

Lincoln placed a hand on the back her neck, massaging. “The voices?”

“Yes.”

Lincoln closed his eyes and counted to ten before speaking, a habit he had begun early in their courtship and maintained ever since. “And what are they telling you?”

Mary turned her clear blue eyes toward her husband. It had been those eyes that he’d first noticed so many years ago in Illinois, looking at her across a room full of people. They were a magnet that had kept him at her side all these hard years. This past one had not been easy, especially with the death of their son Willie earlier in the year. Mary had always heard voices, but the strange thing was that Lincoln had learned to separate out the different types she heard, because some of them were very accurate about the future. Some he knew came from a part of her brain that she could not be accountable for. She’d told him the first time they spoke that she knew he was bound for greatness. Then she had been told he would be president, at a time when he had never even considered running for any office and was just trying to eke out a living as a lawyer in Springfield. Such a bold, and apparently outrageous, prediction coming true had certainly made him take her much more seriously.

“You should sign the Proclamation,” Mary said. “That’s what they tell me.”

Lincoln frowned. He had penned the preliminary proclamation in the spring but kept quiet about it, showing it only to Mary. In July, he had finally read it to Secretary of War Seward and Secretary Wells. Both men had been shocked speechless for over a minute, and then Seward had voiced his protest, while Wells seemed too confused to say anything.

Slavery was an issue that had to be handled delicately. In the early days of the war, large numbers of slaves had fled to Union lines. Technically, according to the law of the time, even though the two sides were at war, those slaves should have been returned under the Fugitive Slave Law on the books in the federal government. Lincoln had managed to dodge that issue by getting the Fugitive Slave Law annulled. Then he’d gotten a law passed allowing the federal government to compensate owners who freed their slaves--this allowed all the slaves in the District of Columbia to be freed in April of this year.

Then he managed to pressure Congress into passing a law forbidding slavery in U.S. territories, which flew in the face of the infamous Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court. Despite all this, the core issue of slavery was still being skirted by the Union, thus Lincoln had sat down and written the proclamation.

The curious thing about the proclamation was that it freed slaves only in specifically named states-all in the Confederacy. Those border states that the Union was trying to keep in the fold were not affected.

“It’s a dangerous thing, Mary,” Lincoln said.

“Everything’s dangerous. But the time is now. Call this battle a victory”--she raised a hand to stifle his protest--“Lee is retreating, is he not? So many men died. I’ve seen the papers. Don’t let them die in vain. Sign the proclamation.” She put her hand on his arm. “And it will keep the Europeans at bay. It will raise the war to an entirely new level. A moral level at which they cannot get involved on the side of the Southerners. It will identify any who side with the South as siding with slavery.”

Lincoln stared at his wife, surprised that he was surprised. She had had so many great ideas over the years, but it still amazed him at times the way her mind worked. He had just been thinking along the same lines but she had cut right to the core of the matter. He walked over to his desk and pulled out the document that had so disconcerted his two cabinet members. He set it on top of the desk.

“And change the name,” Mary added.

‘’To what?”

“Call it the Emancipation Proclamation.”

 

 

EARTH TIME LINE--XIV

 

Zulu Territories, 22 September 1823

A million dead in the Zulu nation. And that was just the estimate. No one knew the real number. A rough estimate could be made of those killed in battle, but the hundreds of thousands who died after the battles of starvation and disease could only be guessed. There were so many dead that one could not travel without feeling the presence of ghosts all about. The mfecane, the warfare and forced migrations that was being enforced by the king on his people, was destroying both the land and the people.

Had it been only twelve years since his half-brother Shaka had been crowned king of the Zulus? Dingane wondered. For him it had been an eternity. He sat in the darkness away from the fires that marked the king’s kraal (encampment), his iKlwa across his knees. It was a wide, heavy-bladed thrusting spear, an invention of Shaka’s. Most warriors carried it now, instead of the traditional assegais, the long, thin throwing javelin that had been the weapon of choice of the Zulu before Shaka. The iKlwa, in combination with the heavier cowhide shields Shaka had also developed, allowed mass formations of Zulus to smash their lighter armed enemies into submission. That, along with the ironclad discipline and innovative tactics with which Shaka had molded his army, made them the most potent military force in Africa.

Before Shaka, battle had been mostly a ceremonial event, with both sides posturing. Some blood was drawn, true, but few deaths occurred. Shaka had changed all that. Now battles were fought to annihilation. Dingane knew of entire tribes that now ceased to exist, that had been wiped out to the last man, woman, and child. While he had little sympathy for those the Zulu had vanquished, he was dismayed to see Shaka turning that same deadly focus against his own people.

Dingane was discontent, as were many. For years, they had tried to get Shaka back on the path of light. Away from the dark path of the mfecane. But to no avail. The last straw though, was the white men. They’d arrived four years ago and at first had been treated with suspicion by Shaka and all around him. But then the king had been wounded in battle and the Europeans nursed him back to health--and things had never been the same. Shaka had signed over vast amounts of Zulu territory to the whites, something Dingane saw as only bringing great trouble to the land. Yes, the whites were few in number now, but like the dung beetle, he had a feeling they would multiply. And they had different, powerful weapons that could kill at great ranges, beyond even the range of an assegais thrown by the strongest warrior.

Also, the way of the whites was different. Dingane and others saw them as a corrupting force with their religion, which they did not hesitate to press on others. He did not see the path the whites called Christian and the path of the Zulu warrior heading in the same direction. And if the Zulu warrior lost his edge in battle, there were many all around their territory who could not wait to wreak revenge on the Zulu.

Shaka was--had been--a great leader, of that Dingane was one of the first to admit. But the last several years, particularly since the death of Shaka’s mother, had seen the great man deteriorate. Shaka had had seven thousand people put to death when he’d heard his mother was gravely ill, in the hopes such a sacrifice would bring her back to health. And then, after her death, had ordered a nationwide fast that had lasted three months and almost destroyed the tribe with starvation. It had only been when Dingane and the other war chiefs had begged Shaka for several days, that the king had lifted the fast. But then he kept the army on the move, attacking, always attacking, even when there was no need. Even when the next opponent threw open their kraals and begged for mercy, still Shaka attacked and killed as if blood were a salve for his grief.

Dingane heard movement in the bush and sprang to his feet, the iKlwa at the ready. His nostrils flared as he sniffed the air and his eyes darted about, trying to see in the dark. A slight figure ran by, less than two feet away and Dingane stuck out his leg, tripping the intruder. He had a knee on the person’s chest and the tip of the iKlwa against the throat in a second.

In the moonlight, a young woman’s scared face looked up at him, eyes wide. “Please, great warrior, spare me.”

She was holding something tight to her chest, a bundle wrapped in a blanket. Dingane poked at it with the tip of the iKlwa and was rewarded with a baby’s yelp of pain.

“I know you,” Dingane said as he saw her features more clearly in the moonlight. “You belong to Shaka’s seraglio.” He knew he should return her to the kraal, but he truly could not blame her for trying to get away. Just two days earlier, Shaka had had twenty-five members of his seraglio (cluster of wives) executed because he’d found a locust in his sleeping mat.

“Please,” she repeated once more, getting to her knees, the baby held tight against her chest.

“Whose child is that?” Dingane demanded.

She lowered her head. “It is Shaka’s daughter.”

“You lie.” Dingane put the sharp tip of the iKlwa against her throat. “Shaka does not have intercourse, only the ukuHlobonga.” The latter, external intercourse, was the only sexual contact allowed among unwed couples, and Shaka had always been adamant that he would not father a child, given his own horrible childhood. Dingane also knew that Shaka feared bringing a son into the world, because such would automatically be a threat to his own rule. As long as there was only Shaka, with no clear heir, he felt his position to be safe.

The woman met his gaze, not flinching at the added pressure of the blade at her throat. “I do not lie.” She held out the baby. “This is Shakan, daughter of Shaka. And I am Takir, princess of Butelezi and possessor of the Sight.”

Dingane pulled the blade back. The Sight was a rare thing, and those that possessed it very dangerous. Some said Shaka had it, and Dingane thought it might be true. Certainly, the king had made many wise decisions, particularly in combat, when the way to be taken had been anything but clear.

“This is not about Shaka,” Takir continued, “or about me. This child, my daughter, Shakan, will one day, many years from now, do something very important. Something more important than Shaka or even the Zulu people.”

Dingane felt the power of her words. He pulled back the iKlwa as he remembered what he had been contemplating alone here in the dark before Takir and the child stumbled by. “Apparently the Sight does not help to see in the dark,” he muttered.

To his surprise, Takir laughed. “No, it does not. It is not very useful at times.”

“Tell me something,” Dingane began, but then he halted.

“You want me to tell you of Shaka and what the future holds,” Takir said as she got to her feet, holding the bundle tight.

“Your Sight told you this?”

Once more Takir quietly laughed. “No. I just speculated what Shaka’s half-brother would be doing sitting alone in the dark with a weapon in his hands. Even one without the Sight knows there is much trouble about.”

“Does your Sight see Shaka’s future?”

Takir looked down at the iKlwa. “Shaka’s future is in your hands.”

“What do you--” Dingane halted as he realized he was gripping the iKlwa so tightly his fingers were screaming with pain.

“You are doing the right thing for the people,” Takir said. She turned and was gone into the darkness.

Dingane waited a few moments, and then turned toward the kraal. He hefted the iKlwa and headed to meet Shaka for the last time. He paused as he heard the rumble of thunder to the south and west, then continued to his half-brother’s tent.

 

**********

 

Isandlwana. The rocky outcrop near the border of Zulu territory was so named because its outline resembled a wrist and clenched fist. It was a place of little interest to the Zulu except that it lay along the main route from the center of their nation to neighboring Transvaal.

It was, however, of interest to others.

Three miles below the rocky outcrop was one of the world’s largest concentrations of pure diamonds. They were suspended in rock in a curious latticework formation, present nowhere else on the planet except on a large scale at the very center.

While Dingane was going to visit his brother for the last time, a storm was raging over the Isandlwana area. Dark clouds covered the moon and stars. And bolts of lightning streaked across the sky. At the highest point of Isandlwana, a small dark circle appeared. The circle grew wider until it elongated to eight feet high by three in width.

A figure shielded in a pure white suit of some kind of armor appeared, stepping out of the gate. Two more followed it, taking up flanking positions with strange spears at the ready.

The center Valkyrie, as they had been named so long ago by the first Vikings to see the creatures, was not armed with a spear, but with a gold, glowing tube five feet long and six inches in diameter. It placed one end of the tube against the stony ground. On the other end was a small display, and the creature watched the display as it sent a pulse of subatomic particles called muons into the planet. The muons reached the diamond field and confirmed its presence and arrangement--as expected.

Satisfied, the creature made an adjustment on the buttons along the top side of the tube. Then it fired another pulse, a stronger one into the rock, penetrating the planet to the lattice field. The tube went dead, all its energy having been sent out in that pulse.

The thousands of diamonds that made up the lattice field began to glow ever so slightly.

The Valkyries turned and disappeared back into the gate, which snapped out of existence.

In the lattice field not only were the center diamonds now charged but ever so slightly the charge was extending from one to another. The process was so slow, it would take decades, but the Shadow was patient. It could wait decades to reap the crop it had just sown here.

 

EARTH TIMELINE---III

Antarctica, July 2078

Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain IV knelt next to the fledgling plant, marveling at it, not daring to touch it with his armor-gloved hand. He had not seen green outside of the hydro farms for over twenty years. He was, of course, in full battle kit. One could not be on the surface without it. That was a standing order that had been drilled into Chamberlain since he was seven and taken from his parents to live in the agoge, the barracks where he had lived ever since.

The suit he wore was painted flat black, the external material a ceramic polymer that provided protection against both weapons and weather. Beneath the armor, the suit was cutting edge technology, the result of decades of work. Battery-powered strips of ionic polymer metal composites added power, magnifying the wearer’s own strength when activated by movement.

The inner layer was airtight, fitting against the skin. The suit was designed to be used in all terrain, even under water. A backpack contained both the computer that operated the various systems and a sophisticated rebreather that could sustain oxygen for over twelve hours when operating on total seal. If operating in a safe environment, a valve in the back of the helmet could be opened to allow outside air in.

The helmet was the most advanced part of the outfit. It had a visor to the outside world, but when the visor was shut to block either light or for protection, flat screens on the inner front portrayed whatever direction the wearer ordered. Numerous minicams were on the external armor, from the two on the side of the helmet pointing forward to give a normal front view with depth, to ones pointing straight up, down, and back. They were necessary because the helmet fit onto the body of the suit tightly, allowing no movement. The display not only relayed the view from the cameras but also could have an overlay display with various tactical and technical information.

The suit was moved by the person inside moving. The suit’s special qualities were voice activated by the wearer, who gave commands out loud, which were picked up by the computer.

The only time Chamberlain had been on the surface without full battle kit was for two weeks when he had been sent out of the city naked for survival training. Hiding during the day from the fierce rays of a sun unblocked by ozone, freezing at night here at the bottom of the world; despite the ice cap having melted, the temperature still dipped below zero at times.

One out of three sent on survival training never returned. Only one of twenty who entered the agoge graduated it with the tiny flaming sword tattoo on each temple, a sign of being one of the First Earth Battalion.

Chamberlain had come back from his two weeks of surface survival training covered in dried blood from a seal carcass he stole from underneath the less than observant nose of a mutated polar bear, one of the few creatures that still walked the surface of the planet. Its white fur reflected the rays of the sun, but its eyes were blinded by the solar radiation and thus it relied on the sense of smell to hunt.

Chamberlain stood, the articulated micro motors of the full-body suit fighting the effort. He had the suit set to train, which meant instead of amplifying his movements, the suit’s inner gears worked against him, forcing his muscles to fight their action and develop. He put the suit in combat mode only during full-force training maneuvers and then only because he knew he had to keep his nerves attuned to the suit’s capabilities for the day he, and his men, would actually be in combat.

A day that many said would never come.

He leaned, looking down through the clear blast-glass face shield built into the helmet that covered his head. It was indeed a plant. Could the seed have been brought by a bird? No one had seen a bird in over ten years, but it was possible, wasn’t it? Could life be coming back to a planet the scientists, and every observable piece of evidence, insisted was dying?

But here was life where there should be none.

A glow on the horizon warned him that the sun was coming. Reflexively he dropped the outer face shield over the blast-glass, sealing him from the outside world. Projected on the reflective layer on the inside of the shield, his external cameras relayed the external world.

“Thermal,” Chamberlain whispered and the display changed to a spectrum of colors. The plant was cold and Chamberlain frowned. He reached down with armor-plated fingers and dug, pulling out the plastic facsimile of a plant. He felt no disappointment as he had lived almost his entire life on a dying planet and hope was a concept neither taught nor encouraged.

How long had it lain here? Fallen from some resupply to a research station years ago, perhaps. Decoration for an underground base most likely.

There was no life coming back on the surface of the planet.

“Day mode,” Chamberlain ordered. The thermal imaging stopped and the screen displayed the outside view with the dangerous rays of the sun filtered out. The terrain around Chamberlain was desolate, black sand with numerous rocks tumbled about as if a giant had let loose a barrage onto the surface. Over two miles of ice had covered this land as recently as fifty years ago. The melting of both ice caps had been swift and dramatic after the Shadow sphere had stripped the planet of its ozone layer. The sea level rose over three hundred feet in less than a year, inundating coastal areas around the world.

Between that and the radiation, over two billion people died in the first ten years after the final Shadow assault. The survivors struggled to live as crops failed and livestock died. The human race burrowed into the planet to escape the unshielded rays of the sun. Hydro farms--massive greenhouses with the most dangerous rays of the sun filtered out--were built. Deep wells to tap the fresh water the Shadow hadn’t siphoned off were dug. Still the human race dwindled, another billion dying in the second decade after the last assault from the Shadow as society spasmed with violence and despair to adjust to a raped planet.

In the face of such devastation and the battle for survival, the barriers between countries, between religions, between races, were eventually dropped. The elite of what was left of each countries’ military forces was sent to Antarctica to form the First Earth Battalion. Along with the remainder of the top scientists not involved in survival technology.

Their goal was simple. To develop weapons to fight the Shadow.

It seemed a strange task, given that they had already lost the war with the Shadow and their planet was dying. Plus, there were no more known gates. The Shadow had apparently shut them all down here, isolating this timeline, having no further use for it.

Chamberlain turned to the south and ran across the terrain, fighting the suit that tried to slow him, his muscles straining with the effort. He crested a ridge and came to a halt on top. A valley covered with jumbled rocks lay ahead with no sign of life. Chamberlain scanned it on protected vision, then on low-level thermal, then on infrared. Nothing. Excellent.

Chamberlain activated the secure, frequency-jumping radio in his suit. “Alpha, Six, Five. Return to base. Over.”

The valley exploded with over two hundred black, human-shaped forms, bursting upward from their hide positions in the sand. Weapons at the ready, the soldiers of the First Earth Battalion made huge hundred-meter bounds using their suits on combat power as they headed back to their home base. They moved tactically, squads leap-frogging and providing cover for each other. Heavy weapons set up over-watch spots, ranging their weapons out until the forward scouts passed their limits, then moving forward. Flankers raced along the high ground on either side, protecting the main axis of advance.

Chamberlain watched his men and women with pride. Their world was dying, but they were prepared for one last battle with the Shadow. And according to the Oracles, they would be given the opportunity for it. How, when, and where, the Oracles couldn’t say, but one thing they all agreed on: there was to be one final assault.

One thing the Oracles didn’t say, and no one talked about, was whether the assault would be in the form of the Shadow coming back to this timeline or whether they would take the battle to the Shadow’s timeline or some other timeline.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, Chamberlain would lay awake on his bunk and wonder if the prophecy was real or had just been a way to unite people and give some hope to their doomed existence. Always he ended up back at the same conclusion-it didn’t matter. Only time would tell if the prophecy was true.

 

 

EARTH TIMELINE--THE PRESENT

 

 

The Devil’s Sea Gate

The sphere map rested on the column in the center of the room, the surface dull and void of power. There were faint markings etched in the gold, the outlines of the strands that marked portals between worlds and times.

“Can you activate it?” Amelia Earhart asked Dane as he approached the sphere.

In response, Dane placed his hands on the sphere. The material was cold to the touch at first. He closed his eyes and focused his mind. The events of the past several months had left no doubt that he was different from other humans and that the core of that difference rested in his brain.

Sin Fen, Foreman’s agent who had worked with him during the mission into Cambodia, had explained as much as she knew to him. She herself was descended from a long line of priestesses who traced their lineage back to Atlantis. A civilization had thrived there ten thousand years ago, one that was far advanced in technology because the humans there were different from those in the rest of the world.

Sin Fen had told Dane he too was descended from the Atlanteans and his brain bore the same differences. The normal human brain is bicameral, consisting of two distinct hemispheres that are largely redundant. For most people, the speech center is present in both hemispheres but active only in the left side and dormant in the right. Dane’s right side speech center was active but not tied to normal speech. It was the place where he received his visions and heard voices. Some of those came from the Ones Before, the mysterious group that was trying to aid them in the war against the Shadow. Some came from sources he couldn’t identify. He also had had a telepathic link to Sin Fen who’d told him she suspected the original Atlanteans had an even more pure connection between the hemispheres of the brain, allowing them to be fully telepathic and also to develop a written and verbal language. The Atlanteans could use their telepathy to get concepts across without the limitation of the spoken or written word, but then they could use the latter to work on the details of what they were doing, the specifics.

As Dane stared at the sphere map, he considered what Sin Fen had learned about the Atlantis civilization and its development thanks to an ancient computer they discovered on an Atlantean boat trapped in one of the graveyards of vessels caught by the gates. Unlike our civilization, the Atlanteans had focused inward, rather than outward. They had harnessed the basic powers of the brain and its connection to the outside world.

That is until they came into contact with the Shadow, which first appeared out of the Bermuda Triangle Gate. To battle the Shadow, they developed a shield that tapped into both the power of the mind and the planet itself. Unfortunately, the best the shield could do was stop the Shadow’s encroachments, not attack and defeat it. In the war, the continent of Atlantis was destroyed, and the few survivors were scattered around the world.

Although the legends of the gates--the Bermuda Triangle, the Devil’s Sea, and others--had been with humankind for millennia, Dane didn’t know why the Shadow had decided recently to step up its assault against our Earth timeline. He had helped the planet avert disaster several times, but he knew they were about out of time and chances. The most recent assault, which had stripped the ozone layer and destroyed Chernobyl, had come very close to fatally crippling the planet.

Dane opened his eyes and glanced at Earhart. She was watching him, waiting. He reached out toward her with his mind and saw the surprise in her eyes as his mental probe touched her.

“What are you doing?”

“Give me your strength,” Dane said.

“What strength?”

Dane looked back down at the sphere. “The feeling you had when you were flying, free of the Earth, at the controls of your plane. The power.”

It had been a long time since Earhart had flown, having been captured by the Shadow during her attempt to fly around the world and then freed by the Ones Before to survive in the Space Between. She had no idea how long she’d existed in the Space Between as there had been no way to tell time there. She searched her memory, bringing back images of being in her Electra, taking off, climbing into the sky at full throttle.

Dane felt the mental connection with Earhart grow more vivid, and a slight surge of power came from her to him. The sphere under his hands began to grow warm. The strands began to become distinct from each other. His fingers slipped between them, delving into the map, as if he had pressed his hands into a ball of warm, writhing snakes.

Visions flashed into Dane’s mind as he touched different strands. An image of a desolate Washington, DC, the buildings smashed and deserted. The Eiffel Tower with two flags flying from it--a Nazi swastika and the rising sun of Japan, but with several modern skyscrapers in the background. The ill feeling from that vision caused him to let go of that particular strand immediately. He saw a planet, he had to assume it was Earth, that was endless ocean, with no sign of land.

Dane knew he was seeing parallel Earths, where history had taken different forms. Ahana had speculated that there might be an infinite number of such timelines, but Dane didn’t agree with her. After all, there were a finite number of strands in the sphere. Perhaps there were an infinite number of parallel worlds but only a certain number were connected by portals.

There were gates on either end of each portal line. Most gates went from a world and time to the Space Between, which seemed to be a transit area. Some went from one time and world directly to another, but there were not many of these.

Dane frowned, never having really thought about what exactly the portals were--did all the parallel timelines exist in the same space, with only some slight variable that current physics didn’t yet understand separating them?

He tried to focus on the Ones Before, on the messages they had sent him. His fingers flitted over strands as he searched. Energy was still coming in from Earhart, standing close by his side. His left hand brushed a strand and he heard a faint clicking noise, something that was familiar in some way, but be couldn’t place it. He wrapped his fingers around the strand.

The clicking noise grew louder. One end of the strand was a portal, here on this planet and now in this time, Dane realized. He tried to pinpoint the location. There was something very strange about the portal for the Ones Before, though. Its space on one end was somehow different from all the other portals in some manner that Dane could not understand. The clicking increased, then abruptly surged, sending a spike of pain through Dane’s brain and causing him to release the strand. He staggered back, the connections with both the map and Earhart broken.

“What’s wrong?” Earhart asked as she placed a hand on his shoulder to steady him.

“It’s been there right in front of us the whole time,” Dane said.

“What has?”

“The way the Ones Before send messages. The relay on our planet.” He headed for the exit. He said nothing to her about the strangeness of the other end of the portal, the one whose space felt different, because he wanted to have time to think about it. “Let’s get back to the FLIP.”

 

**********

 

Thirty minutes later they were on board the research vessel. Dane had Foreman call Dr. Martsen, Rachel’s handler, from her cabin. She came into the control room with her laptop computer, as Dane had requested.

“What’s going on?” Martsen asked.

Dane indicated the computer. “Can you play the clicking, the echo noise that Rachel makes?”

Martsen accessed her database, then pushed enter. Dane had to listen for only a few seconds to realize this was the same noise he’d heard when he grabbed the last strand.

“They’re using the dolphins to send the visions and the voices.”

“Who?”

“The Ones Before,” Dane said as he pointed to the laptop. “I touched the portal they channel through and that’s what I heard.”

Martsen frowned. “That noise is Rachel’s sonar. She uses that ability to echo-locate, to navigate, and to find prey, not to communicate. The language I’ve been working on is her squeals and whistles, which are different. She makes the clicks with her blowhole and emits them through her forehead. She then gets the bounce-back in her jawbone. Her brain analyzes the information and forms a picture of her surroundings, much like a submarine uses sonar to get an idea of what’s around it in the water. We’ve even run studies where dolphins have used the emitter to send high-frequency bursts to stun prey.”

Dane turned to Foreman. “When you sent my team into Cambodia so many years ago to recover that black box, you were running an experiment using high-frequency transmissions through the gates, weren’t you?”

Foreman nodded. “I had a U-2 spy plane fly into the Angkor Kol Ker Gate at the same time the submarine Scorpion went into the Bermuda Triangle Gate on the other side of the world. Then I had them transmit on HF. They were able to communicate with each other, even though there was no way the signal could travel around the planet, so I had to assume the signal was being relayed through the gates.”

Ahana had been listening from her workstation. “High frequency bursts would be an efficient way to send a piggy-backed message through a portal. I can scan the gates to see if any of them are emitting high frequency.”

“Do it,” Foreman ordered.

“You need to scan high up,” Martsen said. “Rachel can emit and hear up to one hundred and fifty kilohertz, beyond even what a bat can pick up.”

Earhart was by the hatchway, looking out at the dark wall of the Devil’s Sea Gate, which lay two miles away. She caught a glimpse of Rachel about fifty yards off the bow, swimming smoothly through the water. “How smart is Rachel?”

Martsen ran a hand across her chin. “That’s a hard question to answer because Rachel’s environment is so different from ours. First, she lives in water, while we live on land. Second, she doesn’t have hands so she really can’t manipulate her environment. Dolphins live in harmony with their world, unlike humans.”

Something about what Martsen had just said struck Dane as significant but before he could analyze it, Martsen continued.

“The strange thing I’ve always wondered about dolphins is that they went in the opposite direction evolution-wise than we did. We came out of the water and stayed on land. Dolphins are mammals also, but sometime during their evolution they went back into the water.”

Martsen had mentioned that before, Dane remembered. “Maybe, as you said, they did it to get away from us.”

“It’s possible,” Martsen said.

“Who is ‘we’?” Dane asked Martsen.

“Excuse me?”

“You said ‘we’ earlier,” Dane said. “I assume you don’t work alone.”

“I work at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center outside San Diego,” Martsen said.

Dane sat down in one of the hard plastic chairs. “Why is it called that?”

Martsen shrugged. “It’s had a lot of names over the years. The program with dolphins actually started in 1960 and was called the Marine Mammal Program. They started with one Pacific white-sided dolphin. At first, the primary goal was to test the animal under the auspices of hydrodynamic studies. Scientists at the time had heard accounts of incredible efficiency exhibited by dolphins; and since the navy had the task of developing better and faster torpedoes, it made sense to check out whatever special characteristics dolphins had that they might apply to their underwater missiles.”

Dane could sense that Foreman considered this a waste of time, but Earhart and Ahana were focused on what Martsen was saying. He knew there was a thread here that needed to be pulled and followed and at the end he had a strong suspicion, there would be the Ones Before.

“Unfortunately,” Martsen continued, “the first dolphin, named Notty, exhibited no unusual physiological or hydrodynamic capabilities. One of the scientists believed that was because of the restrictions of the long testing tank in which she was being held and tested in. The decision was made to move the testing to the ocean, the dolphin’s natural habitat. The facility moved to Point Mugu, California, where the Pacific Missile Range and Naval Missile Center was located.”

“That’s odd,” Dane said. “Why move it to a missile test facility?”

“It was on the water, and space was available.” Martsen said. “And a group of scientists in the Life Sciences Department of the Naval Missile Center was also in the process of studying underwater life. Including porpoises.”

Dane wanted to ask why, but he decided to hold back.

“Starting in 1963, the two groups of scientists began investigating and testing dolphins. In the beginning, their research was two pronged--to study how dolphin’s inherent systems and capabilities, such as sonar and deep diving, worked, and to see if dolphins could be used for various underwater tasks, especially ones that were dangerous for humans, such as detecting mines and planting explosives.

“Their first major success came in 1965 when a bottle-nosed dolphin named Tuffy operated untethered near Sea Lab II, carrying tools and messages. That was when they began to try to figure out how the dolphin brain functioned, with the startling realization that as a mammal, its brain was not that much different from a human’s.”

That caught everyone’s attention.

“Neurophysiologic studies, using behavioral and noninvasive techniques were the first steps in this process. Brain-wave activity was charted, along with hearing tests and investigation into how dolphins made noise”--she tapped the computer. “That was when we first began to realize how they used sonar. A project originally called Quick Find, and later renamed under top-secret classification the Mark 5 Marine Mammal System, used dolphins to locate and attach hardware to inert ordnance.

“They also continued research on dolphin hydrodynamics with the same goal: to determine if the dolphin possesses drag-reducing characteristics that can be applied to underwater hardware. The capabilities for undertaking this work are now greatly improved and include instrumentation for measurements that previously were impossible. Among the possible drag-reducing mechanisms being studied are skin compliance, biopolymer secretions, and boundary layer heating, which may work synergistically and in combination with other drag-reducing processes.”

“Other research used sophisticated psychophysical experiments to determine how dolphins process target echoes to make difficult detections and fine discriminations. This information was modeled to aid human sonar operators in identifying targets from clutter. When I came on board, my focus was on trying to understand their language, which most scientists in the field said they didn’t have. I’ve proven they do communicate.”

“And what classified work is being done there?” Dane asked.

Martsen paused. “I have a Q clearance, but--”

“No ‘buts,’’’ Foreman stepped forward. He looked at Dane. “What are you looking for?”

“If the Ones Before are using dolphin high-frequency sonar to send the visions,” Dane said, “then we need to know what else dolphins can be used for.” He looked at Martsen. “What are the space guys using dolphins for? You said the facility was called the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center. I don’t see the connection.”

Martsen pressed the tip of her fingers together. “Dolphins are capable of diving to depths of over six hundred meters for over fifteen minutes. Think of the pressure they can withstand and how long they can go without breathing.”

“And they can do tasks,” Dane added.

“Right,” Martsen affirmed.

“And they can communicate,” Dane continued.

Martsen simply nodded.

“What are you getting at?” Foreman demanded.

“They’re evaluating dolphins for space travel.” Dane made it a statement, not a question.

“They’re beyond that,” Martsen said, drawing everyone’s eyes to her. “Last year a dolphin went up on one of the shuttles in the cargo bay, inside a specially built water tank. It was a highly classified experiment.”

“So they can function in space?” Dane asked.

“It--the dolphin’s name is Proteus. And he’s still up there. In the International Space Station.”

“Doing what?” Dane asked.

“Being evaluated.”

“For?”

“Further missions.”

Dane was getting irritated with Martsen’s brevity. “What’s planned?”

“I’m not privy to that,” Martsen said.

Dane stood. “We’re going to California.”

“Why?” Foreman demanded.

“To find out what the future holds,” Dane said.

 

EARTH TIMELINE--VIII

 

Washington, DC, Spring 1863

Lincoln stared at the map spread over the desk in the Oval Office with mounting frustration while Secretary of War Stanton stood in front of the desk, shifting his feet nervously and with some degree of anger. The secretary of war did not like answering to a civilian, but even worse, he did not like having to accept that his generals had been failing quite miserably for quite a while now.

The North and South had been at war for over two years, with no end to the horrible conflict in sight. Initially, the South had won several victories, including the two battles at Bull Run. Lincoln has claimed the bloody battle at Antietam as a victory, when in reality it had been a stalemate. However, Lincoln had been forced to seize on even a whiff of good news to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which served the purpose of elevating the conflict to a higher moral level and kept the European powers, which had been leaning toward helping the South, on the sidelines, hamstrung by the moral issue of helping the side in favor of slavery.

Despite this ethical and political victory, the Union defeat at Fredericksburg followed shortly afterward. A battle report on top of the map revealed the most recent disaster, at Chancellorsville, just west of Fredericksburg, where newly appointed General Hooker had tried to take the fight to Lee.

“Fighting Joe,” Lincoln said.

“Excuse me?” Secretary of War Stanton asked.

“‘Fighting Joe’ Hooker. That’s what you called him.” Lincoln slammed a fist on the desktop. “Where’s the fight? Where’s the attack? This”--he picked up the telegram--“says he’s retreating.”

“He’s reconstituting--” Stanton began, but Lincoln cut him off.

“I don’t care what word you use, General Lee of Virginia holds the field, does he not?” Lincoln read further and raised an eyebrow. “Stonewall Jackson’s dead?”

Stanton nodded. “Yes, sir. By his own men. An accident.”

“If only Lee would do us the same favor and get himself killed,” Lincoln mused. He leaned back in his high-backed chair. He’d offered Lee command of all Federal forces at the beginning of the war. Lee had politely declined, feeling his call of duty was stronger to Virginia than the United States. It made Lincoln question the effectiveness of the Military Academy at West Point given that so many of its graduates had chosen to side with the Rebels. So much for duty, honor, and country.

Secretly, Lincoln also often wondered if the war was dragging on because the vast majority of senior officers on both sides were graduates of the academy. Not only did they know each other but they had been taught the same things. Sometimes Lincoln thought of the war as a man fighting his own image in a mirror.

He was the sixteenth president of the United States and many thought he would be the last. He was also an example of the uniqueness of America. There was no country in Europe where a man born in a log cabin could rise to such a high position. Sometimes Lincoln himself was amazed at the path he had taken to arrive in the White House.

Lincoln’s childhood had been hard as he’d spent most of his time working. He had less than a year of formal education. He’d seen his father lose his farm in Kentucky due to confusion over land titles, and the family had been forced to move to Indiana with only what they could carry with them. They’d spent the winter of 1816 in a crude, three-sided shelter with a fire at the open end, giving meager warmth as they waited for spring when they could build another cabin. Two years later his mother died. The casualty lists from the battlefields appalled Lincoln but not as much as it did many from the East. He’d seen much death and suffering on the frontier, losing several siblings in childhood to various diseases that swept the frontier.

As a young man he’d moved to Illinois and helped his father build another log cabin. Shortly after that he hired on a flatboat on the Mississippi taking a load of cargo to New Orleans. That was where he saw his first slave auction, something that affected him deeply. The following year, he ran for a seat in the Illinois House of Representatives. It did not seem a fortuitous decision at the time because a month after the announcement the store he was clerking at went out of business and Lincoln lost the election.

Out of work, and just defeated, Lincoln eagerly signed up when the Illinois governor called for volunteers to put down a rebellion of Native Americans--the Fox--led by Chief Black Hawk. Lincoln enlisted as a private but was so well liked that he was elected captain of his company, a pretty common practice that continued to the present day in the current conflict at lower unit levels. Men preferred to serve under someone they respected and liked rather than some stranger thrust over their heads.

Although Lincoln saw no action, he had always been proud of his time in uniform. From private to captain it was still a big jump to the White House. Lincoln became a postmaster next, a job that gave him a lot of time to read. It also allowed him to meet most of the people of his county and when he next ran for the Illinois legislature, he won. While serving he also began to study law on his own and eventually started his own practice.

In 1840 he met and married Mary Todd, who foretold his future with uncanny accuracy. The previous night she had told him more of what she heard, and he knew she was right.

It was raining outside and the atmosphere inside the Oval Office was dark and gloomy, befitting the report. Lincoln closed his eyes. “It’s coming, Stanton. Can’t you feel it?”

“What’s coming, sir?”

“The great battle.” Lincoln opened his eyes. “What does Fighting Joe Hooker plan on doing next?”

Stanton waved a hand, indicating the report. “He doesn’t say. He’s on the north side of the Rappahannock.”

“The more important question, I must reluctantly add,” Lincoln said, “is what does Lee plan?”

“Hooker has him fixed--” Stanton cut short what he was going to say at Lincoln’s snort of derision.

“Hooker has nothing fixed. Lee is a ghost. Who knows where he’ll pop up next?” Lincoln leaned forward and looked at the map. Washington and Richmond were not far apart. At least in miles. But in blood spilt over the last two years they might as well be a continent away. There were many in Washington who believed that Lee would one day show up outside the city with his army behind him. This despite the fact that there were thirty thousand troops with heavy artillery dug in deep, guarding the approaches into Washington, the most heavily fortified city in the world.

Lincoln’s eyes went vacant. As if he were peering off in the distance at something only he could see. Stanton had seen the president do this before and knew a decision was coming.

“He’s coming North,” Lincoln concluded, agreeing with what Mary had told him the previous evening. The logic of Lee’s situation complemented with the voices she had heard.

“Sir?”

“Lee. He’ll be coming North again.”

Stanton shook his head. “Mister President, that would leave Richmond exposed.”

“Richmond isn’t the key,” Lincoln said. “The Army of Northern Virginia is. And Lee has no fear of Hooker attacking. Why should he?” He glared at Stanton. “Try to find me a general who understands that Lee and his army is the key to winning this war, not Richmond.”

“Yes, sir.”

As soon as Stanton was gone, Mary came in from the room on the left. She didn’t say a word, walking over to her husband and taking a position behind him. Lincoln leaned forward, placing his head on the desktop, too weary even to keep his body upright. A tic at his left temple jumped uncontrollably. He pressed his hands to either side of his skull, as if by doing so he could block something from entering his head. Mary put her hands on top of his.

He saw the vision that invaded his mind from hers. Wave upon wave of men in gray charging forward into withering fire. Being mowed down with cannon and musket fire by the thousands.

It appeared to be the start--or finish--of a Union victory, but Lincoln could feel from Mary that it was much more than that. For in the midst of the Confederates’ line was a case, and inside it were crystal skulls that began to glow blue and grew stronger as the carnage grew more deadly and the gray line forged forward into the hail of deadly fire.

Lincoln moaned in agony. “If only this burden could be taken from us,” he whispered. But he knew from Mary’s continued touch it was not to be. He felt another presence. He lifted his head and turning his chair looked at the windows. Across the garden and lawn there was a solitary, tall figure standing near the street, staring back at him. All Lincoln could make out was shiny black skin underneath a black, broad-brimmed hat and deep penetrating eyes. He realized with a start that the figure was an old woman.

Lincoln blinked, and when he opened his eye once more, the woman was gone.

“Did you see her?” Lincoln asked his wife.

Mary nodded. “Yes. It was a vision. She wasn’t really there. She is another like me. One who can see. And she will be part of it when the time comes. In her time and her world.”

Lincoln looked up at his wife. “I don’t understand this, Mary. Different worlds. Different times. This dark force you speak of, the Shadow, and its threat. The visions and voices. I’ve trusted you, but . . .” his voice trailed off.

“I know it’s hard for you,” Mary said. “But this war was inevitable. You knew that when you were running for office. The battles are inevitable. You saw the numbers from Antietam. We used that battle for the Emancipation Proclamation. There will be more battles that we must use. Especially one. A great battle that is coming soon. I sent the vision to you just now. It’s a true one. Those men will die. But you can give it a greater reason also.”

It still made no sense to Lincoln. It never did, no matter how much they talked about it. But he knew what she said was true as strongly as he knew his love for her was true. He would do what he could to make things happen in the way they must be. Whether the other players involved would do their part was something he could not control.

 

Virginia, Spring 1863

General Lee was ill. His stomach rumbled and beads of sweat dotted his high forehead just below the magnificent mane of white hair. His hand shook slightly as he ran it over the map, the gesture carefully watched by his three corps commanders.

To his right was Longstreet, his war horse. ‘Old Pete’, Lee sometimes called him when they were alone. Solid, dependable. And steady in action. But unimaginative. And sometimes slow to the assault, preferring to dig in and hold the defensive if given the opportunity. But he had held the stonewall at the base of Marye’s Heights at Fredericksburg and taken the best the Union had to throw at him. He’d been a rock there, and without him, the day and battle would have been lost.

And then next to Longstreet was the second corps commander, General A. P. Hill. A pragmatist who had been feuding with Stonewall Jackson for over a year. Two more opposite, yet capable men, one could not find. And now Jackson was dead. Along with approximately thirteen thousand of Lee’s men at Chancellorsville. While the North had suffered almost half again as many casualties, the Union could more easily afford losses. Another battle that led nowhere. A. P. Hill was steady but impetuous. Hill had begun the Seven Days’ offensive by attacking Union forces because he had grown bored sitting in his defensive positions. He had saved the day at Antietam with his forced march from Harpers Ferry and fortuitous arrival on the battlefield at the critical juncture.

In Jackson’s place as the third corps commander was General Ewell. With his wooden leg replacing the one of flesh that he’d lost at the Battle of Second Bull Run. His men called him Old Bald Head and would follow him anywhere. An excellent division commander, but now he had a corps, and Lee knew some men had their levels where they excelled and when moved from their comfort zone, they floundered. Ewell worried Lee, who missed Stonewall Jackson more than he would ever let on, particularly to the man who had replaced him.

Jackson had been the one of his three corps commanders willing to take calculated chances, and Lee knew how important that was in the ebb and flow of battle. Following orders was fine, but once the first shots were fired, orders had a tendency to be outdated. Hill would act and take chances, but he did so blindly with little calculation, which was as dangerous as doing nothing.

Lee stopped his hand from shaking by placing a blunt finger on their current position on the south side of the Rappahannock in Virginia. Without saying a word he slid the finger to the west and then north, up the Shenandoah Valley, through Harpers Ferry, into Pennsylvania and then eastward toward Philadelphia and southward to Baltimore and then Washington.

“Gentlemen, I propose we bring the war to the Union.”

Lee saw Ewell and Hill glance at Longstreet, a subtle acknowledgement that the senior corps commander should be the first to comment on the proposal.

“And Richmond?” Longstreet asked. They all knew that Jefferson Davis and the pack of politicians who ran the Southern government would complain if Lee moved the army too far away from the capital and left the Army of the Potomac sitting in Virginia.

“Hooker is beaten for now,” Lee said. He’d known Hooker at the Military Academy and he did not fear decisive action from the man. “It would take something very great to get him to move. Leaving a proper feinting force in place along the river, I believe we could be in Pennsylvania before he even knows we’re gone. And then he would not advance on Richmond, but rather turn to the North after us. He has no daring, and the newspapers of the North and their politicians would not allow him that daring even if he had it.”

Longstreet nodded while stroking his grey beard. “True. But Philadelphia is fortified. As are Baltimore and Washington.”

“Philadelphia might or might not be our objective,” Lee said with a shrug. “My main goal is to draw the Union Army out into the open. Destroy it. And then our options are open. Perhaps the Union will sue for peace.” Unsaid was the acknowledgment that European support was no longer a possibility. Not since Lincoln had issued that blasphemous proclamation.

“The Union might want to sue for peace,” Longstreet said, “but not Lincoln. That’s a hard man.”

Lee had met Lincoln and he would never admit out loud that he admired the Union president. The man had an air about him that Lee, who had the same air, understood. Lincoln was a leader. A man who would do whatever it took to achieve his goals. Fortunately for Lee, Lincoln had yet to find a general in the same mold.

“They have a Congress in the North,” Lee said. “Lincoln may be president but he is not all powerful. They’ve had draft riots in New York City. There are many in the North who grow weary of the war and the casualty rolls.”

Lee felt a spasm of discomfort and pain ripple from his stomach to his lower intestines. He had been ill now for several days and it was not getting any better. The soldier’s curse. “Gentlemen, we don’t have much time. Prepare your corps for movement.”

The abrupt order startled all three commanders. “Sir”--Longstreet protested--“this is a bold and--”

He was cut off as Lee headed for the door. “Gentlemen, please do as I requested.” And then Lee was gone.

Within six hours, the Army of Virginia began to move North.

 

EARTH TIMELINE--XIV

 

Southern Africa, December 1878

“I am Shakan, daughter of Shaka Zulu.”

King Cetewayo, ruler of the Zulu people and their allies, stared at the tall old woman who stood in front of his throne, so proudly proclaiming to be direct kin to the founder of their nation. It had been fifty years since Shaka was assassinated by his half-brother Dingane with no apparent successor.

Cetewayo was the latest king in a line of ruthless men who had seized the throne of the most powerful nation in Africa. He pondered whether to have this upstart who had managed to find an audience with him immediately executed or tortured. She wore a black robe that went from her neck to the dirt floor. Her dark curly hair was sprinkled with gray and was cut close, with just barely a quarter inch left. Her skin gleamed in the torchlight with high cheekbones and dark eyes that bore into the King. She was a woman to be reckoned with, of that he had no doubt. Few looked him in the eye so steadily.

They were in his lodge, set in the center of his kraal. He had over a thousand warriors close at hand. His principal war chiefs sat on lesser benches to either side of his throne. They had been discussing the latest problems with the British when the old lady who called herself Shaka’s daughter had made her appearance, slipping her way to the middle of the lodge before anyone even knew she was there.

“Great King of the Zulu,” Shakan continued, “I know you think me foolish to be in front of you claiming the bloodline of Shaka, but I do not come here to claim a throne or power. I come to warn you of the British.”

Cetewayo’s laughter was echoed by those of his council of warriors. “I know of the British. I do not need an old hag to come here and tell me anything. And a woman can never claim the throne or gain power.”

The British in neighboring Natal were indeed a problem. The previous year, two wives of one his senior warlords, Sirayo, ran away with their lovers to Natal and were pursued by Sirayo’s sons demanding justice, because adultery was a capital crime in Cetewayo’s kingdom. The wives were captured, returned and executed as decreed by Zulu law. However, this precipitous pursuit had violated the boundary of British claimed land. The British governor had demanded that the culprits, along with five hundred cattle, be handed over as a fine; instead Cetewayo apologized and offered the British five hundred pounds as restitution, a price he felt most fair but had not appeased the British.

Following that incident, events along the border escalated. What Cetewayo found particularly galling were the missionaries who entered his territory without permission, seeking converts. He saw the white man’s religion as very dangerous because it subverted the iron-clad discipline of the army, which was the backbone of the Zulu nation. There were missionary stations all around the border, and even over the border, of his lands. He had ordered his warriors to refrain from attacking these representatives of the white man’s god because he suspected they might be a deliberate ploy by the British to draw him into war. Still, there was only so much he would tolerate, and the British were pushing him harder and harder. Then there were the Boers, who fought with the British. The blood feud between Zulu and Boer went back at least a generation.

Cetewayo began to raise his hand, to indicate for his guards to take the woman away and slit her throat, when Shakan took a step forward and knelt, hands upraised in supplication. “I have the Sight as my father had the Sight.”

All the men present went silent, eyes shifting from Shakan to Cetewayo, The Sight was a powerful thing and it had been years since any of the Zulu had been able to show they had it. Some believed it was not real and that Shaka had simply been a master warrior who had a string of luck in battle until he was assassinated by Dingane. Then there were the whispers that Shaka had had the Sight, but lost it in the insanity of his later years. Still, there was no record of Shaka ever having a child by any of his wives.

“Who was your mother?” Cetewayo demanded.

“Takir.”

Cetewayo’ s senior adviser leaned forward and whispered in his ear, informing that Takir had indeed been a wife of Shaka, but she had disappeared just before the Zulu King’s assassination.

“What does your Sight show you?” Cetewayo asked, waving for his guards to stand back for the moment.

She pulled open the neck of her robe, revealing a glittering crystal on a leather thong tied around her neck. “I have been to a strange place where I received this,” she said, indicating the crystal. “And I have seen in my visions strange things. I have seen three columns of men dressed in red along with Boer and native levies invading during the next cycle of the moon. One column along the coast to the Nyezane River. One to the south. And one in the center headed straight for this place. The other two columns will also turn and head here with the plan to bring three spear thrusts directly at you.”

The dispute with the British was serious, but not at that level yet, Cetewayo knew. Or so his spies told him. But before he could say anything, she continued.

“The center column is the key. It will encamp at Isandlwana Mountain.” Shakan raised her eyes to Cetewayo’s and her voice took on a deeper tone. “There you will meet the British in battle. A great victory will be yours.”

Cetewayo smiled. Predicting a victory in battle was always a smart move. But still--

“However,” Shakan continued, “while you will win that battle, you will eventually lose the war with the British.”

Several of his senior warriors leapt to their feet, brandishing their iKlwas. Predicting defeat in war was not a smart move for a seer, but Cetewayo waved the warrior’s back to their places, intrigued by both her bravery and her prediction. “Why do you tell me this?”

“Because great glory will unfold,” Shakan said, “and in our defeat we will sow the seeds of a greater victory.” She stood. “So I have seen.”

 

**********

 

At the very top of Isandlwana the black bole opened once and three VaIkyries appeared. The two guards took up their flanking position while the center one placed the green tube on the ground, watching the display on the other end.

All had developed as planned deep underneath Isandlwana, over 98 percent of the diamond lattice-field was now connected with a low level of power.

It was just about ready to be harvested.

 

EARTH TIMELINE--III

 

Antarctica, July 2078

Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain IV was the latest in a long line of warriors. Over three hundred years earlier his ancestors had fought in the American Revolution, then the War of 1812, then the little known Aroostoock War of 1839 with Canada and most famously, his great-great-great grandfather, Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain I had made his mark in the American Civil War.

Chamberlain IV had been a second lieutenant, fresh out of West Point, when the Shadow made its last assault, stripping his timeline of its ozone, most of the fresh water, and causing great devastation around the Pacific Rim as it drew power from the core of the planet, destabilizing the Ring of Fire. In desperation, military forces from various countries made forays into the black gates through which the Shadow attacked, but no one ever returned from any of those attacks. Still they continued to assault as the situation grew more dire. Chamberlain was with the Eighty-Second Airborne Division onboard an aircraft carrier that was preparing to go into the Bermuda Triangle Gate when all the gates abruptly closed, leaving behind a dying planet.

Chamberlain then participated in the evacuation of Washington, DC, as it flooded when the ice caps melted. Then he fought in the brutal food riots of 2062 and 2063 and helped restore law and order to what remained of the United States. When the call came for volunteers for the First Earth Battalion he didn’t hesitate, even though the unit’s mission was classified and no one really knew what it was.

He’d been here fourteen years, rising through the ranks until he took command the previous year. They trained constantly, always ready, for exactly what, though, no one was quite sure. There had been encounters during the Shadow War with Valkyries and some of the suits had been captured. They were the basis for the combat suits Chamberlain and his soldiers now wore. Their weapons were designed to penetrate the Valkyrie armor, something scientists had been able to develop only after the war was over and the gates shut.

Chamberlain was currently on board an MH-90 Nighthawk heading toward the coast of Antarctica. The First Earth Battalion was not the only group of people who were waiting, and he was on his way to visit the other critical component in their readiness.

During the rise in ocean levels with the melting of both ice caps, Antarctica had actually had the most interesting transition of all, as the mile-thick layer of ice that had covered it had melted. The land beneath, freed of the massive weight, had actually risen as the ocean levels around the world also rose.

Chamberlain looked over the pilot’s shoulder and saw the remains of Mount Erebus directly ahead. As part of its assault along the Pacific Rim, the Shadow had made numerous volcanoes active, Erebus one of them. Half the mountain was gone, blown away during its initial eruption. Long strands of dark, cold lava stretched from the volcanic cone to the sea.

As they got closer, Chamberlain could make out a cluster of pod buildings on one of the strands that poked out into the ocean, just above the pounding surf. A wharf extended onto the ocean with a tower at the end. New Delphi was the name of the station and it had been established just before the First Earth Battalion was formed. Indeed. It was the place where the concept for the First Earth Battalion had been launched.

The craft flared to a landing on the edge of the small center, and Chamberlain exited. He wasn’t in battle gear, wearing a one-piece pale blue jumpsuit and full headgear to protect his skin and eyes.

A woman waited for him, dressed in a similar outfit. Although he could not see a single square inch of her skin, he knew exactly what she looked like underneath the protective clothes. Chamberlain acknowledged her salute with a touch of his right hand to his protective visor.

“Anything, Captain Eddings?” He knew it was a stupid question, because if there was any news, he would have heard about it already. Thus he was momentarily stunned at her answer.

“Yes. We’ve had activity.”

“What? What happened?” After all these years of nothing.

Eddings put a hand on his shoulder. “Easy. Colonel.” She turned toward the pier. “Come with me and see for yourself.”

They walked along the steel decking out to the tower, Eddings punched in her access code to the door, and it slid open revealing an elevator. They entered and then descended over fifty feet to the underwater headquarters of the Oracles.

The doors opened and they entered a circular chamber, completely enclosed in blast-glass, the ocean pressing against it in all directions. A dozen high-backed chairs were evenly spaced around the chamber, facing outward. Eleven of the chairs were occupied. Chamberlain knew the twelfth was Eddings’. She was the liaison between the Oracles and the First Earth Battalion. She’d also been his lover for the past year. In the very center of the chamber, less than five feet from the elevator entrance, on a black throne, sat the High Priestess Oracle.

Eddings went to one knee in front of her superior. “Colonel Chamberlain is here.”

The Oracles had a very different system than the military and Chamberlain had long ago learned the truism of when in Rome do as the Romans. He also went to one knee in front of the old lady occupying the throne. “High Priestess,” he said, bowing his head.

“Colonel. Captain. Please stand. Are your warriors ready?”

Chamberlain pulled off his helmet, tucking it under one arm as Eddings did the same. “Yes, ma’am. Always.”

The old lady fingered a crystal charm that hung around her neck. “The time we have waited for is coming.”

So they had said years ago, Chamberlain thought. He glanced around the chamber. “What has happened?”

The old woman raised a hand and pointed a bony finger past him, just over his shoulder. “Look. Sentinels.”

Chamberlain turned. Two orcas--killer whales--swam into view and came to a stop just inches from the glass, their black eyes peering in. When the Shadow had conducted its final assault, the Valkyries had not been the only force coming through the gates. Strange, mythical creatures had come through the gates on land. And kraken had poured into the oceans from the sea gates, killing all they encountered. Similar to giant squids, but possessing mouths on the end of each tentacle, they were horrible creatures, who had homed in on killing dolphins for some strange reason that none of the scientists had been able to figure out.

The sentinels had been the answer. Orcas, trained by the U.S. Navy to do recovery work, had been unleashed to fight the kraken. The most amazing thing was that only a half-dozen orcas had been in the Navy program, but those six had spread out and immediately swam to their fellow whales and gathered them. In the dark depths of the world’s ocean, terrible battles were fought. Kraken versus dolphin and orca. The carcasses of the dead washed up on shores all over the planet, most of the bodies being dolphin.

The orcas were the vicious cousin of the dolphins. The largest member of the dolphin family, they were more widespread in the world’s oceans than dolphins. Males could grow to over thirty feet in length. They ate pretty much anything they ran into and could catch including blue whales and squid. And kraken.

Like dolphins, they also used echo-location to check out their surroundings and locate prey. They also could communicate among themselves with high-speed clicks that sounded like rasps and screams. However, when they needed to be quiet to draw in prey, they could remain silent for days on end.

The strange thing about orcas though, was that once mated, male and females stayed together for life. A remarkable display of fidelity for a species with the moniker ‘killer’. Mothers bore their young for over sixteen months and then nursed them for another year and a half. They were a strange combination of lethality and love.

By the time the Shadow closed the gates, all of the world’s dolphins were dead, but the orcas finished off the last of the kraken left behind. And then the Oracles found something most fascinating. Even though all gates were closed, the orcas were picking something up, something from beyond this timeline.

It was the Sentinels, through the Oracles, who delivered the message to form the First Earth Battalion from the Ones Before. And to be ready. That they would be needed and have one last chance to avenge the slow death of their planet.

“What are the Sentinels sending?” Chamberlain asked.

It was Eddings who answered. “Nothing specific. Just a sense of”- she searched for the word-“anticipation.”

Chamberlain found that an odd choice of words. “What do you mean?”

The High Priestess Oracle answered. “For years we have sat here and listened. And all we have heard are whispers. Of a great battle to come. To be ready for a final assault. But now, it’s not a specific message from the Sentinels as Captain Eddings noted. It’s a feeling.”

“Captain Eddings said ‘anticipation,’” Chamberlain noted. “ Is that what it is?”

The old woman turned her eyes to him and smiled, the first time he had seen her smile in all the years he’d known her. “No. Not anticipation. Not exactly.”

“What then?”

“Hope.”