But where were they?
There was no movement in the city that he could discern.
Dane headed toward the center tower. Despite the horrid atmosphere of corruption and evil that he was picking up, he had to admit that it was spectacular. He estimated it was almost a mile high and the surface glittered in the false sun that was projected onto the inner surface of the shield.
Dane passed inside near the very top, speculating that if it was occupied, someone would be near the top. After all, why build such a thing if not to be above it all?
He was in a spiral corridor that was wrapped against the outer wall of the tower and went up a slight incline. The corridor was about fifteen feet wide and Dane could only assume it went all the way to the base below and to the tip just above. On the outer wall. The view was clear — obviously the Shadow had perfected a means to make a material that was opaque on one side and clear on the other.
Dane halted, looking out over the city. It was most impressive and it was false. He thought it summarized what the Shadow had developed into quite well.
Dane followed the spiral corridor upward. As the tower narrowed, so did the corridor, and the turn tightened. The corridor ended abruptly and he floated into the base of the top of the needle. It was an open space, a hundred meters wide at the floor, narrowing to a point more than four hundred meters above his head.
Filling the chamber was a latticework of gold spheres, each about three feet in diameter, attached to each other by thin tendrils of gold. It was mesmerizing and Dane stared at it for quite a while. He estimated that there were several thousand gold spheres, all linked together.
His first guess was that perhaps this was some elaborate work of art or some sort of religious symbolism to the Shadow. Who knows how they had developed from the other timelines since the time of Atlantis?
Dane had been guarding himself against the bad feelings given off by his environment ever since coming into the Shadow portal. But now he lowered this mental barrier a little to get a feel for this strange place. It was a barrier he had perfected as a child to keep the emotions of others at arm’s distance from him. He’d learned early in his life that he was different from others, able to sense things normal humans weren’t.
He snapped the protection back in place immediately as he realized, with a power that knocked his projected essence backward, what exactly he was looking at: those golden spheres were the Shadow. Each one contained an original Atlantean, his or her mind, in a timeless existence.
And now they knew he was here.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Darkness fell but the fighting did not abate. Lee had grudgingly accepted that Longstreet’s flanking attempt had failed to the right. He had watched thick smoke from furious fighting float off of both the Round Tops throughout the afternoon, but just before dusk it was a Union flag that still flew at the very top of Big Round Top.
Still, there was some success there as Sickles’s exposed corps, badly battered, was thrown back out of the peach orchard and sent tumbling back to the main Union · line. By this time, Ewell and A. P. Hill’s corps had managed to bring themselves on line in the center and north, preparing to coordinate with the flanking maneuver of Longstreet. Despite the latter’s failure, Lee did not want to give up the initiative and allow the Union troops the chance to counterattack.
At Lee’s command, Ewell’s artillery opened fire from Seminary Ridge toward Cemetery Ridge. The response from the more numerous Northern guns was instant and furious. Within twenty minutes, Ewell was forced to silence his guns and pull them back behind the cover of the ridge to keep his men from being destroyed by the counter-battery fire.
On the Union right flank, the Union corps occupying Culp’s Hill had had the better part of the day to prepare their positions, as had the troops along the length of Cemetery Ridge. Still, lee issued orders for an attack. By the time the orders were disseminated down, night was falling across the land. The focus ‘of Lee’s thrust was the Union right, from his Own left, at the juncture of Cemetery Ridge with Culp’s Hill.
Initially, the attack did not go well as the terrain was difficult to move across in the dark. Then Union batteries began firing, inflicting heavy casualties on the advancing Confederates. Still, the Southern forces came forward and then found a reprieve as they reached the base of the ridge and hill as the Union guns on top could not depress their angle of fire to hit them anymore.
The ebullient Rebels, glad to be out of the artillery fire charged uphill, striking the Union lines. They were soon in among the artillery itself and hand-to-hand fighting broke out. Meade counterattacked immediately with his reserves, and the exhausted Confederates, having already charged forward over a mile under heavy fire and engaged in heavy combat, fell back before the fresh Federal troops.
The situation began to get confusing in the darkness as neither senior commander could tell exactly where his forces were. In some places, Union units fired on fellow Union units in the confusion.
Gradually, the men of both sides simply decided the day was done. Units pulled back to their original lines and despite the horrific casualties of the day, neither side could claim victory.
At Lee’s headquarters, Lee was grudgingly accepting the pause of night. He had launched night attacks before, but this situation was simply too confused and his units too scattered to do so now. He felt he still had the initiative though, and considered his plan for the next day.
Despite Lee’s optimistic thoughts, the reality of the situation was far different The Army of the Potomac was massed inside the fishhook, new units arriving all day, until over eighty thousand Federal troops were crowded into a defensive Position less than three miles long. Lee’s forces, numbering fewer than fifty thousand, was stretched around the fishhook in a line almost five miles long. Meade also had three hundred and fifty artillery pieces to Lee’s two hundred seventy-two. Dividing men and gun totals by mileage of front, Meade had an overwhelming force advantage.
There was another problem, one that the last attack on the left had clearly shown — his troops might be able to breach the Union lines, but to gain victory he would have to be able to sustain the assault In fact, lee’s victory over Sickles’s exposed corps on the right had shown the problem also.
Lee stared at his map in the flickering light of a lantern. The headquarters was bustling as couriers came and went, but around Lee there was a reverent circle of silence as his staff waited for him to do what he always had before — come up with a brilliant plan that would defeat the Federals.
The circle was broken as Longstreet walked up. Old Pete was the last person lee wanted to see right now. He felt his subordinate commander had not pressed the attack sufficiently during the day on the Round Tops or at the Union left. Lee sensed that Longstreet was almost sulking after having been rebuffed in his tactical suggestions repeatedly. What lee did not know was that Longstreet was indeed upset, not only from having his suggestions rebuffed but also from having spent the day doing the same — as per Lee’s strict orders — to his own subordinate’s pleas for the ability to maneuver farther to the south around the Union flank. His lead divisions had thus thrown themselves into futile frontal attacks that had been smashed with high casualty rates.
Elements of Longstreet’s corps had seen their most brutal of the war in places like Little Round Top, the peach orchard, the wheat field, and Devil’s Den. Most of his divisions had been chewed up badly, to the point where they were almost combat ineffective. Some had taken almost 50 percent casualties. Longstreet was proud of the fighting his men had done but not happy with the results as the line had little changed other than throwing Sickles back.