Chapter 9 (excerpt)

     
(…)


       An alarm signal suddenly blared to life in the hangar bay, followed 
almost instantly by the howl of Atlantis 2’s city-wide alarm.  
       Instantly understanding what was going on, the young man whirled back 
toward the main hangar bay and ran as fast as he could toward the nearest hangar 
doors.  Although he had a very good idea of what he was going to see in the sky 
of his home, he fervently prayed that he was wrong.
       He had reached the landing area and was already past his ship when he 
finally caught sight of both the sky and the reason for the alarm.  
       Shocked and stunned upon seeing his worst fears come true, Mykel could 
only stare as he stood at the entrance of the hangar, motionless.  Even though 
he had known that it would happen eventually - inevitably - he hadn’t thought 
that it would happen ‘that’ fast. 
       All of a sudden, he was almost paralyzed with fright at the speed with 
which his worst nightmare had come true, and all his coherent thoughts suddenly 
fled his mind, horrified by the facts that they now had to process.
       Up in the sky, no less than fifty pyramidal fighters, glinting silver 
under the sun, were bearing down on Atlantis 2.  
       It couldn’t be true, he tried to convince himself as he blinked 
repeatedly in disbelief. He had to be imagining things.  
       He rubbed his eyes with his fingers to try and wake up from this 
nightmare.
       The terrifying sight remained even as his morbid curiosity recklessly 
drew him to the sight of the alien invasion, which was real… 
       It was not a nightmare… and he kept watching and gaping in frightful awe.
       Karl, who had once again come out of the monitoring room to see with his 
own eyes what his displays were showing him, bumped into his back before both 
men walked further outside, reflexively trying to get a better view of the 
situation.  Eventually, they stood in the middle of the landing field, both 
flabbergasted by the ominous sight.
       ‘The aliens aren’t attacking,’ Mykel reflected, grasping at this thought 
as if it were a safety buoy. ‘They aren’t attacking, so perhaps they have not 
come to fight. Perhaps they have come to help us..!’
       He desperately prayed that ‘this’ was their true motivation because for 
all his mental bluster of the past hours, as well as his resolve to fight the 
aliens to the death, it only now dawned on him that war was no game and that he 
was no hero.
       Instead, he was downright terrified at the thought of standing at the 
threshold of a war and he simply didn’t want to fight, didn’t want to be hurt… 
He didn’t want to hurt others--- ‘Please,’ he begged with all his heart, ‘let 
them be allies…’
       "What in?.." the Chief whispered from beside him.  "What do they think 
they're---"
       The closest fighter answered them by opening fire.  
       Frozen to the core by that almost surreal sight of violence, both Atlanti 
men stood helplessly as their peace-limited brains tried to process what they 
were witnessing. The attacker, for its part, dismissed their upcoming fate from 
its mind and turned away and toward the city, already opening fire on other 
targets. Meanwhile, its first shot continued on its path toward the landing 
field---- and hit one of their rare ground vehicles.  
       The car vanished in a fiery explosion that instantly deafened the nearby 
humans. Neither Mykel nor his friend had expected this side-effect, let alone 
the shock wave that bowled them over immediately after the loud noise and bright 
fireworks had painfully assaulted their senses. The horrified humans reflexively 
ducked for safety, but a trifle later than their ancestors would have.
       They were forcefully shoved to the ground by an incredibly strong and 
unexpected wind.  
       Unprepared for that kind of rough impact, the humans hit their heads upon 
landing on the hard surface and they lost their senses for a second or two. 
Meanwhile, debris fell all around their inert forms, miraculously missing them 
while up in the sky, other ships also opened fire. The concentrated assault sent 
the other watching Atlanti into a frenzy of panic. 
       The attack had begun.
       Slowly at first, then with more efficiency, Mykel recovered his awareness 
as well as his fledgling courage.  With that first attack, his doubts had 
disappeared, leaving behind only a pure resolve not to let the aliens destroy 
his people. 
       They had dared open fire on them? Now they would regret it. 
       Groggily, he pushed himself to his elbows and, his eyes still closed, 
shook his head to rid it of the last remnants of his daze. He winced for a 
moment as pain throbbed behind his temples. Then, he slowly opened his eyes to 
look at the sky – and was just in time to discover that another ship had 
selected them as targets.   
       This time, he understood the threatening non-verbal language right away 
and jumped to his feet, ignoring his body's complaints at the sudden movement. 
"Run!” he yelled at his stricken comrades who still stood by the hangar walls.  
“Don't stay out in the open!" He then grabbed Karl’s arm, slung it over his 
shoulders and pulled him up to his feet. 
       He dragged him as fast as he could toward the building, aware that it was 
the only place nearby that would offer some measure of protection.  
       But first, he reminded himself, they had to reach it and that was more 
easily said than done.
       As if to agree with his defeatist thoughts, laser bolts rained down upon 
their surroundings, a new shock wave forming from the resulting explosion of a 
generator.  
       Mykel, who was struggling against the weight of his still half-conscious 
friend, poured in his muscles all the strength and speed that he could muster so 
as to reach the doors that were still more than ten meters away.
       The shock wave then caught up with him and yet again shoved him and his 
burden to the ground.  
       Overhead, the alien ship turned, preparing for another run.
       As he strained to get back to his feet, Mykel noticed that the hangar 
doors were suddenly less than three meters away, the shock wave having somehow 
propelled them toward their destination. Still, the doors could have been on the 
other side of the galaxy that he would not be closer to reaching them.  
       He shook his head at this defeatist thought and consciously battled down 
his despair.
       He was still breathing, therefore could still run.  
       He gathered his strength yet again and pulled Karl’s slumped body back to 
his feet.
       “Come on, Mykel,” a new voice suddenly encouraged him even as Karl’s 
weight was partly taken off his shoulders.  “We’ll make it,” a technician called 
Ling urged as he slung the Chief’s other arm around his shoulders.  
       Feeling his determination return, the dark-skinned youth recovered the 
remnant of his extra strength and together, the two of them ran as fast as they 
could toward the baying doors.  
       “Close the doors!” Mykel yelled to his waiting friends who stood in the 
doorframe of the hangar bay.  
       Behind them, the alien attacker was in position to finish ‘them’ this 
time.  
       Again, laser bolts tracked the fleeing humans, leaving smoking holes on 
the landing field.  Mykel and Ling ran faster than they ever had in their life, 
desperate to spare themselves the new shock wave while ahead of them, the steel 
doors were slowly closing.
       Then, just as the young pilot feared that they might not reach safety 
before the hangar was sealed, they were through. Behind them, both the shock 
wave and laser bolts hit the reinforced doors, piercing holes in them and 
shaking them hard, yet the doors held, offering an efficient shield against the 
alien’s attack.  
       Mykel and the others still hit the ground, covering their heads with 
their hands like they had just learnt to do in regards to explosions and shock 
waves.
       "Are they crazy?" someone screeched in panic. 
       Mykel remained silent as he turned on his back and took a moment to catch 
his breath.  
       That, he decided, had been a very close call.  
       Behind him and his recovering companions, the doors finally shut, saving 
them from more direct attacks. The hangar, however, shook as more explosions 
rocked its sturdy walls, laser fire punching through both the weaker walls and 
overhead windows, the latest shattering into hundreds of pieces that showered 
down onto those who had sought refuge against the walls.
       While the unfortunate men and women shrieked in horror as they scrambled 
away from the lethal rain of glass shards, others began to run about aimlessly, 
trying to find a way out of the terrifying predicament.  
       Mykel also noted that in the distance, the loud wail of the warning 
sirens was quickly smothered by the unfamiliar sounds of battle and death; much 
to his horror, chaos and destruction was suddenly reigning over the normally 
peaceful city of Atlantis 2.
       He threw a quick gaze at Ling, who also lay on the cool deck.  “Thanks 
for the help out there," he said earnestly, then groaned as he pushed himself to 
a sitting position and looked out the broken windows. “Looks like we’re in for 
it this time,” he winced, his head still throbbing with pain.
       “What’s going on?” Ling asked him, having heard his comment.
       For a moment, Mykel wondered if now was not the time to share the whole 
truth with his friend, then, when he heard yet another explosion in the 
background, made his decision. “They never liked us,” he grimly stated. “They're 
just being straightforward with us this time.” 
       He quickly took stock of the situation, searching for a way to defend the 
people who were with him; he became aware that the terrified technicians had 
gathered around him, Ling, and Karl. Then, upon second inspection of the 
surrounding group, he noticed that some of them had been injured by the glass 
shards, but that nobody seemed fatally wounded.
       Karl, who had finally recovered his senses, suddenly gasped as he looked 
at what they could see of the sky. "Oh my...” He pointed with his right index. 
“How many are there??” 
       Turning their heads in the indicated direction, all the present Atlanti 
gazed up through the broken windows - and caught their breath as they discovered 
that more fighters had joined the first wave.  
       There were now more than a hundred Gorgon fighters in the sky of Atlantis 
2, or at least in what they could see of it.  
       Mykel also saw this, but instead of being chilled by the sight, he 
finally understood what they had to do if they wanted to survive. He stood up 
and squared his shoulders. "Karl, everybody, snap out of it! We need to organize 
a defense, and fast!"
       As if to underline his statement, one of their fighters, which had flown 
closer to try and help, suddenly exploded.  
       The newest blast rocked the building hard yet again.
       "We just lost Laura," the chief commented sadly, having recognized the 
crest on the fighter’s tail just before it had been destroyed; he turned his 
worried gaze toward his companions.  
       For a brief moment, the weight of the information slammed into Mykel’s 
guts for mere minutes ago, their friend had still been alive, and he himself had 
almost killed her by accident --- He caught himself and forced himself to 
recover his focus.  
       He could not think about this now, he rebuked himself. More lives 
depended on his next actions and thoughts and ‘he’ had to protect them if he 
wanted to avoid more useless losses. 
       He also had an idea as to how to achieve that.
       As if to prompt him into action, a new wave of attackers assailed the 
walls of the hangar bay, their laser blasts digging holes in the structure yet 
they still did not make it within the walls proper; their human steel apparently 
dispersed the energy before it managed to penetrate its structure.
       Grateful for that characteristic, Mykel turned toward his nearest 
companion.  "Leen,” he pointed at an older woman, “go to the communication room 
and order our fighters to try and ram the others any way they can think of. Tell 
them to boost the shields to full power."
       "But,” the woman objected instantly, “but it means that I'm going to tell 
them to kill! I can't---"
       Mykel, who had finally stood up from the deck, stepped closer to her and 
took hold of her arms before he locked his eyes with hers.  "It's them or us, 
Leen. Now go and transmit the order. Our lives depend on you."
       The woman swallowed hard in obvious fright before she reluctantly nodded 
and tore away from him at top speed. Trusting her to do her part, he turned back 
toward the other men and women who had gathered around him- as if they were 
looking to him as some sort of leader, he dimly reflected.  
       He then conceded that while the others knew much about maintaining 
fighters and ships, they knew very little about fighting. 
       Still, he paused as more ideas occurred to him, they could use their 
technical skills for this battle.  
       "The shields of our ships will hold for a while,” he began, and then 
paused as a new explosion rolled over the hangar.  “But the city is in danger," 
he continued the moment that the rumble began to fade. He made sure everyone had 
heard him before he went on. "I'm going back up with the others. You,” he 
instructed the youngest technician, “get the pilots of Explorer here on the 
double and do everything you can to equip the ship with weapons.  It must be 
ready to fly within ten minutes at the most."
       “Ten minutes?” the more experienced technicians gaped in disbelief.
       "Weapons?" Karl simultaneously gaped in worry, throwing another glance at 
the sky before he locked his gaze with Mykel’s. 
       The youth returned his grim gaze and nodded confidently.  "The only way 
to survive a fight if you’re outnumbered is to have weapons. The designs of some 
older weapons are in the computers of the hangar, and Explorer is equipped with 
the necessary mechanism to host them, only detail is that the actual weapons are 
missing.  Use whatever you can think of,” he urged, “but we need to have 
something to shoot back at them."
       "What about you?"
       "I'm going back up," he repeated.  He then turned and ran as fast as he 
could toward his still warm fighter, which he had fortunately landed inside. 
"Get ready to open one door for me to slip through!" 
       On the way to his craft, he snatched a free communication device from a 
technical station and plugged it into his right ear.
       "Mykel, wait!" Karl called as he ran after him. "What… what if we can't 
do what you want us to do?" he asked in despair once he had caught up with him. 
       While the older man panted from exertion, the youth swiftly gained the 
cockpit of his Child fighter. 
       Then, once seated in his ship, Mykel spared but a moment to answer his 
friend. "Then we will meet Atlantis’ fate." After that, he closed his cockpit 
and revved the engines to life.  
       Understanding the implicit warning to scurry for safety, Karl and the 
others hurried to steer away from the departing ship while the young man 
promptly lifted off before he focused his attention on the gap that was already 
opening between the main doors of the hangar bay.
       Pushing the throttle to maximum speed, he tilted his craft sideways until 
he could fit through the meter-long opening; he easily zipped past it before he 
righted his ship once again and swiftly climbed for altitude.  
       Behind him, his colleagues were already closing off the hangar bay
       In the fighter, Mykel focused his whole attention on the fast approaching 
enemy ships. 
       Coming at them at top speed, he selected a first target, and then began 
to try and ram it. 
       He made use of all his skills and talent as a pilot, doing whatever he 
could think of to force the alien down.  
       As he continued his fight, he heard over his communication unit that 
Atlantide was also under attack while both cities were assaulted by ground 
troops.  
       His first thought went to Nya, his second to their mother and 
grandparents.




(Atlantis 2, its characters and situations, are protected by copyright under the 
Canadian copyrights law, international conventions and other copyright laws. All 
rights to any Atlantis 2 material belong to Meryl Heavens 
(atlantis_2_2002@hotmail.com) ISBN: 141208992-1