Until about an hour before midnight when streaks of light appeared overhead. Hundreds of them.
“What is it?” Gwalcmai asked his wife.
At first, Donnchadh thought they were seeing Airlia weapons, but as the streaks crossed the sky, she realized what it was that they were witnessing. “Asteroids. Coming into the atmosphere.”
“Coincidence?” Gwalcmai asked.
“Not likely. Something happened in space.”
Most of the pieces of asteroid, deflected off their original course by the destruction of the main body, hit the outer layer of the Earth’s atmosphere and bounced off, heading back out into space. Most, but not all.
One of the larger surviving pieces of asteroid that Donnchadh and Gwalcmai were watching from the inner ring of Atlantis hit the atmosphere angled too steeply to ricochet away and plunged downward. Its plume of flame was over three hundred miles long as it descended. It left Atlantis behind, crossed the rest of the Atlantic, and went lower over North America, frightening the humans who wandered that land.
It hit in what would in ten millennia be called Arizona. The land was lush and covered with thick forest. All of which for six hundred miles around was gone in an instant as the fragment struck the Earth and produced a massive crater.
Other pieces of the asteroid hit in different spots around the planet. Those that hit in oceans caused tsunamis that devastated low-lying coasts in the vicinity. Several others struck land, killing all living things within the blast zones, including a particularly large piece that hit near Vredefort, in what would become South Africa. This strike was so severe that a large rock plain actually ended up inverting.
Hundreds of thousands of humans that had been seeded around the world by the Airlia died in the impacts and their aftermaths. Millions of square miles of land were wiped clean of all living things.
Aspasia could not have cared less what devastation had been scored by the initial battle. All spaceships were at a halt as each side considered its next move. Artad stood on the bridge of the mothership, while Aspasia remained in his control sphere, deep under Atlantis. On Mars, the survivors were digging their way out of the rubble caused by the destruction of the interstellar transmitter.
And still lurking in the shadow of the moon was the Swarm scout ship.
Artad knew he had made a mistake. Killing as many human seedlings as his abortive attack had just done set the program back many years. The empire would not be pleased. He looked up from his command chair as a red light flashed on the main screen — a message from Aspasia. The red light coalesced into his enemy’s form.
“You cannot destroy my headquarters without seriously damaging the planet,” Aspasia announced. “Admiral,” he added in a tone that indicated what he thought of his foe’s higher rank.
Artad said nothing. He was more interested in the person standing to the right and rear of Aspasia. A female. Tall and willowy with flowing red hair over her elongated ears. Her catlike red eyes seemed to be boring right into Artad’s own eyes. Harrah.
“Why do you bring her into this?” Artad demanded.
“Because she is part of it,” Aspasia responded. “Destroy me and you destroy her.”
“Is this what you choose?” Artad posed the question past Aspasia.
Harrah nodded. “I made my choice long ago.”
“So be it,” Artad said, but he took no action as he pondered the two figures on the screen in front of him. “Why did you cut yourself off from the empire?” he finally asked.
“I tried to tell you,” Aspasia said. “I am as surprised as you to find out my outpost has been out of contact as long as it has.”
“Do not lie to me,” Artad said.
“He does not lie.” Both were startled by Harrah’s interjection. “I have checked the Master Guardian’s database. Someone accessed it five hundred years ago and set up that loop.”
“Who reprogrammed the Master Guardian then?” Artad demanded.
There was no answer to that question for several seconds, until a worried look flitted across Aspasia’s face. “The only possibility I can think of is that this outpost has been infiltrated by the Swarm and one of my people or a Guide has been infected with a Swarm tentacle.”
Artad spun in his seat to his subordinate officers. “All Talons are to do a system sweep on high scan for a Swarm ship.”
Aspasia likewise immediately issued orders via the Master Guardian to his own people to search for infiltration.
Donnchadh and Gwalcmai sat in a small canoe right next to where the shield wall met the water surrounding the innermost island of Atlantis. Since the meteor shower there had been no further activity, so they had decided to try to regain the initiative or — at the very least— find out what was going on. At that range they could feel the power coming off the shield, a tingling sensation that covered their entire bodies.
“Are you certain?” Gwalcmai asked for the fourth time.
Donnchadh had a large stone clutched in both hands. She had stripped down to just a short pair of pants and a thin shirt. Two black daggers were tucked tightly into the belt around her waist.
“I can only work from the data we gained on our world,” Donnchadh patiently replied as she looked toward the lights of Atlantis. She took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “I am ready.”
“I will be waiting for you,” Gwalcmai promised.
“I know,” Donnchadh said.
She sat on the edge of the canoe, facing the shield wall, as Gwalcmai took the other side to keep the craft from capsizing. She looked over her shoulder and gave him a quick smile, then took several deep breaths, holding the last one. She then slid over the side of the canoe into the dark water, making sure she was still facing the wall.
The stone took her down quickly and she felt the pressure increase first in her ears, then on her chest. She was counting to herself, letting air out as she descended. When she reachedfifteen, she let go of the stone and kicked with all her strength, pushing herself forward as the remaining air in her lungs slowly caused her to rise. Her main focus was to go toward Atlantis, hopefully under the shield wall. On her planet they had learned that the shield only went down about twenty meters into the water and it was possible to go underneath it.
Donnchadh prayed that she had descended far enough as she used her arms and legs to propel herself forward. She knew that if she had not — or if this wall was different from the one on her world — then she would be killed any second.
It was pitch-black at that depth and she could feel the air in her lungs growing stagnant and her body beginning to ache for oxygen. She swam as hard as she could. After twenty seconds, she had to assume she’d made it and angled toward the surface, legs and arms thrashing.
On the canoe, Gwalcmai breathed a deep sigh of relief as he saw Donnchadh’s head break the surface thirty meters away, on the other side of the shield wall. She was gasping for air and waved weakly at him before heading for the island.
Donnchadh made landfall near the high priest’s ceremonial dock. She knew the area, having been there several times centuries ago. As she expected, little had changed. She crawled up onto shore, water dripping from her body. She could see Guides on the dock itself and those manning the wall ahead that surrounded the city. She followed a drainage ditch toward the wall.
A metal grate covered the ditch where it cut through the wall. Donnchadh put the edge of one of the daggers underneath the left side of the grate and levered it outward. She and Gwalcmai had opened the same grate on their last visit to the main island. As she expected, it swung open and she slid through, closing it behind her.