Fortress Atlantis Page 4

  We flew over the continents at a low altitude and quickly crossed the oceans, looking for a land which was imbedded between the two equatorial areas. The land in question was large enough for our purpose. It contained some mountains and woods and the climatic conditions seemed to be ideal for the people of Zakreb.

  It didn't take us long to find the land. It was almost big enough to be considered a continent. Narrow bridges of earth connected it with the regions east and west offering good opportunities for a later trade with the natives after we had a chance to teach them. Our experience had proven that gifted beings could learn very quickly to tend fields, build ships and construct houses.

  We stopped the Tosoma at a height of 80 kilometers from where we could survey the oval, almost 2000-kilometer-long island. A small mountain chain studded with great lakes stretched toward a desert in the east. We discovered a plateau high above the ocean whose prairie-like surface offered a good place for landing.

  The First Officer of the battleship showed me the maps he had made with the automatic cartographing machine. Capt. Tarth joined me and we discussed various details till I decided in favor of the plateau.

  "We can create a good access to the ocean," Tarth suggested. "If necessary we'll burn a wide road winding down the side of the mountain. Over there I see a large wind-protected bay which would make a good harbor. The surface of this world consists mostly of water. Our colonists and especially the natives will have to learn something about navigation. We've got the necessary equipment on Larsa. I'd even propose to select this planet as a base for our Spacefleet although it is now at the edge of the Great Empire in an unimportant spiral arm of the Galaxy. Yet it might become very useful as a repair base. You'll have to decide this, Atlan."

  I marked the area on the map in red although I shuddered at the sight of the huge icecaps at both poles. The terrain farther north and south seemed to be covered by melting glaciers.

  "We'll stay here," I declared. "Now I want to check up on the civilization of the inhabitants. Will you please assemble these people?"

  Tarth gave the necessary instructions. The gleaming muzzle of a heavy psycho-beamer moved out below the propulsion jets ringing the Tosoma. What followed was a simple matter of routine. If there was any degree of intelligent life within reach on the ground it was compelled to respond blindly to our suggestive commands which the psycho-officer voiced at the mike. They were transformed into para-vibrations and fanned out by the psycho-beamer.

  We waited two hours till it was time to land. The battleship floated down till the white surf at the coast was visible beneath the shimmering antigrav field. Our 800-meter sphere touched down close to the coastal mountain range. The soft ground of the prairie yielded under the landing pads of the telescopic supports till they reached firm rock. I had landed for the first time on the third planet of Larsa's star.

  The analysis of the water and soil was very satisfactory. When we opened the airlocks and let the fresh, fragrant air stream in, the first of the indigenous intelligent beings approached.

  Tarth's bellowed commands annoyed me. He could never refrain from disembarking heavily armed forces after a landing. In spite of his tolerant attitude he always put the safety of his ship first.

  Borne by their antigrav fields the heavy fighter robots under the command of Lt. Ketlar floated down from the small hatches in the bulge around the Tosoma. Ketlar glanced at the scurrying natives who promptly followed the orders given by the psycho-beamer.

  I abstained from performing the customary ceremony which brought a grimace of dismay to Tarth's face. He had never failed to plant the emblem of the Great Empire in the ground of a new planet and to intonate solemnly the time-honored words of the ritual.

  "We don't know yet if we're allowed to remain here," I pointed out, teasing him. "What's the rush, teacher? As far as I can see these people don't have stone weapons. They carry well-constructed battle-axes made of bronze, leather shields and apparently very efficient bows with long arrows. This attests at least to intelligence class A-5."

  "But what you see here are the highest developed creatures on this planet," the colonial official from Larsa, whom we had invited to accompany us, interjected anxiously.

  I looked at him dubiously.

  "It's true," Tarth muttered reluctantly. "I've seen the reports to that effect. The people in the north have not yet learned to work with metal and they still wear animal skins because they can't weave clothes. There are great differences between the various tribes."

  I had heard enough. It was a familiar story since we had encountered similar conditions frequently after landing on strange worlds.

  I left the Tosoma through a small exit at the bottom and went in a small aerocar over to the group of natives who looked at us with dull eyes. Our medical and biological specialists selected a few people of both sexes and took them back aboard our ship.

  They had tall muscular figures with a reddish-brown skin. Their foreheads were high and covered by pitch-black hair. These ignorant barbarians bore an astonishing resemblance to Arkonides.

  I had the spell of suggestion slowly lifted. As soon as they were in possession of their mental faculties again and realized their situation they wanted to bolt in fear. I waited till our psychologists took the necessary measures to calm their fears. It took patience and understanding to convince them that there was no reason to be afraid of us and that we had no intention of harming them.

  Tarth kept pestering me until I donned my lavishly embroidered mantle with the symbols of the ruling dynasty and recited the prescribed greetings while the natives prostrated themselves before us and covered their faces with their hands.

  At this moment I heard Inkar, the young enthusiastic Commander of the battleship Paito, whisper: "The sun symbol of your family will become a holy sign for these primitive people."

  His remark upset me although our psychologists claimed that a certain adoration was beneficial to their morals.

  It took four hours for the auxiliary ships I had sent to investigate the northern zones to return with their reports. They confirmed that the population living there was considerably more backward than the people we had met on the island. In addition they also mentioned that they had observed a variety of skin colors that had been produced in segregated regions.

  Inkar, whose ship had remained on Larsa, was already busy working on our communications with the strangers. The first translations were coming in from the linguistic robot. They showed that these brown people used a simple, easily understood language.

  I finished the ceremony and Tarth, my old friend and teacher, insisted on naming the newly acquired land Atlantis in my honor. I reluctantly deferred to his wishes and returned after the act to my flagship in order to prepare the necessary instructions.

  Inkar flew back to the second planet in one of the Tosoma's auxiliary ships to organize the transfer of the 50,000 Zakrebians.

  I transmitted a hyperradio message to the Great Council advising its members of the measures I had taken in the interest of our endangered colonists and I received the confirmation a few hours later. My venerable uncle personally authorized me to proceed with the transport of the pioneers to the third planet and to provide temporary housing for them until he dispatched a fleet of ships with the complete equipment required for quick establishment of a colony.

  I lowered my head in front of the picture screen and put my right hand on my chest. The speaker at the other end smiled. Due to the great distance the picture was rather poor. "You must stay put in this planetary system a little longer, Atlan. Amonar's confessions lead us to believe that the conspiracy of the former Administrator was not confined to the second planet of Larsa's star. We need a man of your stature in that constellation. I hereby grant you full powers."

  His edict was irrevocable. When his picture faded away I heard Tarth laugh loudly and angrily. The men in the radio center looked as if they wanted to bite my head off.

  "He can't do that to us!" the old Commande
r exclaimed. "Why did you have to call him? I'm afraid we'll be stuck in this miserable corner for years. We'll be waiting for an attack which will never come. I happen to know that not even the Galactic Traders know anything about the existence of these ten planets."

  I was exasperated myself. If I had left immediately the Great Council would have had to send in another commander. There were more important things for me to do with the insurrections that constantly occurred somewhere in the Galaxy than to waste my time in a world whose denizens threw themselves in the dust to beg for our benevolence.

  We started the following day. I assigned a contingent to Capt. Feltif and left him some mobile energy-cannons and graders.

  When I returned a week later with a flotilla and disembarked the first pioneers from Zakreb, they had already constructed a temporary spaceport with a meter-thick solid base.

  Our construction planner Capt. Feltif had simply melted a part of the plateau with the impulse-cannons and let the liquefied rocks spread out and cool off to form a smooth surface.

  Two weeks later the transport fleet promised by the Imperator arrived and an administrator was appointed for the third world of Larsa's star.

  The special robots that had been shipped in for laying out small settlements with a communal center in accordance with proven plans went to work at once.

  While they were busy with their work I received orders to station an armed taskforce on the planet and to take off into space again to join Space Admiral Sakal who was engaged in a bitter fight with the insurgent forces of methane-breathers that had attacked him with a large fleet of ships and novel weapons.

  This gave me a welcome opportunity to depart from Atlantis. I put the taskforce under the command of Capt. Feltif and investigated again each planet of the little system for the presence of intelligent beings before I prepared for the start. Only the third world had developed higher life and I was satisfied that my job had been taken care of for the time being so that I could notify the Great Council to this effect.

  I lifted off in the battleship Tosoma together with the battle cruisers Paito and Askohr and waited near the orbit of the fourth planet for my other heavy and light cruisers to join us so that we could perform our transitions.

  The war against the methane-breathers had broken out again during the first days when the settlers on Atlantis began to build their new home and I was happy to be thrust again in the multitude of stars in the center of the Galaxy although I knew that we were on the eve of a hard and bitter fight.

  At the spacefleet base Alslaton 6, I took on provisions, water and nuclear fuel for my squadron. We received worrisome reports from the so-called nebula sector. It looked as if the intelligent beings of the whole non-Arkonide world had conspired against us.

  When I finally arrived at the advanced planetary base Jangtu and reported to Admiral Sakal I no longer thought about the little yellow sun which had been named Larsa's star after its discoverer. Neither did I ponder the fate of the small continent which had been given the name of Atlantis by the commander of my flagship. It had become rather unimportant now that the Great Empire under Arkon's hegemony struggled for its very existence.

  The so-called Methane War taxed our resources to the limit. At that time we did not yet know how much it would bleed our people and that it would lead the Empire to the brink of disaster.

  Had it been otherwise, I would doubtlessly have found ways and means to circumvent the full effects of a terrible event two years later.

  6/ ALIEN ATTACK

  The focal point of the 35th battle to contain our enemies was only about three light-years away. This time the Koal System was at stake and all its inhabitants had been hastily evacuated.

  Four weeks before beginning the new major attack I had landed on the spacefleet base Alaget 3 to obtain the long overdue overhaul of my machines and to replenish my exhausted weapons.

  Alaget was in a state of indescribable chaos and I had to use all my influence to get the units of my squadron into the maintenance yards. The place was littered with badly damaged vessels of the Imperial Fleet and their commanders and squadron chiefs were desperately scrambling for replacement of killed or horribly maimed crews.

  I was lucky to receive preference, as it was known that I was Atlan of the ruling dynasty and I had no scruples about taking advantage of my name to obtain reinforcements that were unavailable to other commanders. The importance of my special task force outweighed name and rank.

  Capt. Inkar was given a brand new battle cruiser of the Fusuf class to replace his unfit wreck and he promptly christened it Paito again like his old ship. I was fortunate enough to be able to wangle ten light cruisers as well and now I was equipped to go into battle once more.

  • • •

  Capt. Tarth knocked at the door of my cabin and I wondered why he didn't use the telecom. After entering he put a note with a decoded message on the table before me. His wrinkled face looked deeply worried. I had prescribed a biochemical rejuvenation for him a few weeks ago but so far we didn't have an opportunity to visit a government medical center. Such institutes didn't exist at the borders of the Empire.

  "More setbacks, old friend?" I inquired with dismay, picking up the note.

  He laughed grimly. He had been on many daring missions. "From your august uncle himself," he said weakly; his red eyes looked inflamed. "Atlan, I've put you through a hard school but this I don't like. Someone is stabbing us in the back. We're ordered away from the battle and instantly re-deployed. Do you know where?"

  I perused the radio message. It bore the personal code signal of the Imperator. "Larsa's star?" I wondered out loud. "Sounds familiar, Larsa's star...?"

  "It's the tiny solar system we left two years ago. The colonists there have once again sent an emergency call to the Great Council. But this time they're not concerned with the transgression of a megalomaniac official. They seem to be disturbed by a more serious matter. We've been instructed to move into that space sector and to be girded for a fight."

  I glanced at the observation screens on the Admiral's cabin. Outside on the vast grounds of the maintenance yard agitated Arkonides from all parts of the stellar empire hurried to and fro. There were many men among them whose ancestors had emigrated thousands of years ago. All their petty rivalries about sovereignty and competition for trade were forgotten. The only thing that mattered now was to repulse the non-humanoid, methane-breathing intelligent creatures.

  "And I'm supposed to leave at a critical moment like this and to go to such an insignificant little star," I growled, highly irritated. "My venerable uncle seems to have forgotten that we're 32,000 light-years away from there."

  "The Commander of the local depot has been ordered to show us special considerations," Tarth responded in a calming tone. He was a loyal admirer of my family. "We're slated to receive a few more new cruisers."

  I jumped to my feet and picked up my telecom-helmet as I walked to the door. What could have happened in the region of Larsa?

  Only 12 hours later I took off with my fleet which now consisted of the battleship Tosoma, the battle cruisers Paito and Askohr as well as 42 heavy and light cruisers. I had held a short briefing on the telecom and my commanders were informed about our objective.

  Shortly before reaching the velocity of light we became embroiled in a fight with several light warships of the enemy who had broken through our lines without being noticed. We demolished the five cruisers with a single terrific blast from our impulse-cannons, raced on leaving the glowing debris behind and informed the commanding admiral of the incident.

  In conformance with the radio message I had to wait for further information in the vicinity of the Estaf system. When we got there, a messenger ship was already waiting for us, bringing further instructions from the Great Council.

  The fleet resumed its course and I left the calculations for the transitions to Tarth while I pored over the new details I had received according to which it seemed that the second planet of Larsa was subje
ct to baffling attacks from outer space. More than 100,000 settlers had fallen victim to these attacks or-as it was expressed in their words-had vanished in a mysterious manner.

  I called Tarth in and asked the commanders of all ships to participate in the conference.

  "Squadron chief to all Commanders!" it sounded from the amplifiers.

  "Squadron chief to all Commanders! Secret briefing. Switch to code 2020-34-176. Ready for scrambler. Condenser-impulse code 2534-B. Acknowledge when ready to proceed!"

  I listened to the crisp commands. In the course of the war, which had already lasted two years, my men had become first-class specialists. The commanders quickly gave their all-clear signals. My entire squadron was on the verge of the transition. The centralized network of my flagship channeled all data to each structure warp converter.

  The faces of my officers appeared one after another on the grid sectors of the main monitoring screen. Tarth and I took our seats in front of the camera.

  "Ready, Your Highness!" the communication officer of the Tosoma announced.

  I began with some brief preliminary information: "We'll proceed to Larsa's star in four transitions. The older commanders are already familiar with the conditions there. It's a new planetary system. The second and the third planet are settled by our people. I don't know what happened exactly. The information transmitted by the Great Council didn't go into details. Apparently they're also in the dark. We're going to enter the system at our fourth transition and if we detect any foreign object in the solar system we'll open fire without warning. Caution: there's a broad ring of planetoids between the fourth and fifth planets. As far as we know they're remnants of an exploded planet. Don't mistake these cosmic rocks for hostile ships. Set your range finders for metal."

  I looked at my notes, and Tarth as the oldest captain, gave some specific instructions as to our imminent manoeuvres and battle preparations immediately after coming out of the transition shock.