COMPETE: The Atlantis Grail (Book Two) - Preview

CHAPTER FOUR (draft)

CHAPTER FOUR

In less than five seconds we burst out of the shuttle bay tunnel, past some kind of shimmering curtain of plasma energy, into the black vacuum of space.

The g-forces dissipate, and suddenly we are floating, smooth and deceptively motionless. Outside the observation window we see the universe and distant specks of stars . . . and all around us, an incredible perfect array of grand ark-ships lined up in a long pattern that resembles a star trail.

The Atlantean ships appear to be fixed in perfect stillness relative to each other. But as we look closer we realize that they are all moving—we are moving—at such incredible speeds, that the rest of the space around us is gently blurring. Again, that strange optical illusion of tails or extended oval distortions can be seen in all the dots of brightness that are distant stars, galaxies, and other cosmic objects emitting light.

"Ah! Gospodi pomilui. . . ." A gasp comes from one of the teens in the shuttle, Alla Vetrova—an exhalation of pure wonder, followed by something in Russian. The others are just staring. My own jaw falls slack in amazement at the sight.

Our shuttle "hangs" in the same strange suspended illusion of no-motion. And then it turns, rotating so that we see the great disk shape of the ark-ship we just exited begin to fill the left half of the window.

From this vantage point of being outside looking in, the shuttle bay gate directly behind us is a maw of shimmering plasma—an oval spot along the outermost narrow "brim" edge of the saucer shape. All around it the silvery orichalcum surface of the ship disk extends into a gradual sloping rise above and below—defining the shallow saucer "bowl" portion—while the saucer "brim" stretches seemingly for miles horizontally. . . . And the entirety of it is bathed in the same violet plasma glow, radiating a few feet outward from the hull. I am guessing it's some kind of energy field or shield.

My God, the ship is huge, a true metallic colossus. . . . So immense that nothing comes even close to it on Earth, not the biggest cruise ship or military aircraft carrier. And as we only begin to comprehend the monster thing we just exited, the shuttle makes another small lurch to the right. It moves smoothly and fast, like an orbiting satellite following the curvature of the ship, so that the ark-ship now fills only the distant left edge of the view in the window.

And now we can see another colossal ark-ship about five miles away, and then another one beyond it, receding in size and distance, until it becomes apparent there's a long line of ark-ships stretching out into seeming infinity. And to the right of us, there's a second similar line of ships, stretching parallel to the first. Basically our shuttle is in the five-mile narrow corridor between these two immense streaming lines.

"What kind of flight formation is this?" Lars Hansen asks suddenly.

"You may think of it as a diamond—three parallel lines of ships, flying with a one-ship offset. We happen to be in the channel between two of the three lines. Those of you who are Cadets will learn it very soon, in your Pilot Training classes," Keruvat replies. "For now, simply observe how we fly within the Quantum Stream."

And then he does something, and the shuttle shoots forward along the corridor between the two lines of ships. The shuttle is going so impossibly fast, relative to the rest of the Fleet locked in formation, that the ships appear to be stationary road markers, standing still, while we hurtle forward, passing a ship on alternate sides of us, every two seconds.

This goes on for about five minutes, maybe less. The shuttle slows down just as suddenly as it had accelerated before. Now it begins to fall in line and float alongside another huge ark-ship, visually indistinguishable from the rest.