The Centre Cannot Hold: An Atlantean Triumvirate, #3

By C. Craig R. McNeil

The last in the Atlantean Triumvirate trilogy, The Centre Cannot Hold launches the intrepid adventurers of Riley, Archer and Murdoch off in wildly differing directions. 

Archer and Murdoch follow the Core, determined to discover its final destination, while on Earth, Riley faces the greatest battle he has ever fought as the British Empire reels from an unexpected attack.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Craig McNeil
• Release date: Sep 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386109396

Book preview

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned.

The Second Coming, W B Yeats

A WEB OF GOLD SPUN around the marbled globe

All alone in the velvet night

Whisper threads shine; shiver with glory

Till Darkness taints the barley strings

The centre cannot hold

The light dims

Dies

Obscure prophecy, Nucleus' databanks

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago...

The sky was so delightful , arcing as it did from heavy rusty red hues on the strongly curved horizon to a faint tint of dark blue overhead by way of many gradual shades of pink and purple. J'Ban a Shere wondered how long he would be able to see this brief blue reminder of home, far distant Terra, now only a faintly blue twinkle in the darkening sky.

For unknown reasons, the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere of Tron was rapidly falling along with the temperatures planet-wide. The composition of the atmosphere was changing as well. Once J'Ban had been able to walk out into the thin air and enjoy the strange, different red scenery without the encumbrance of a life support suit. Once, and not long ago at that, the planet was blessed with an atmosphere similar to Terra's – not as dense but an atmosphere nonetheless and a breathable one at that.

But ever since the hundred and sixty nine colonists had arrived on Tron, in fact, J'Ban corrected himself, ever since they had approached the red planet, changes could be seen wracking the rose tinted globe. Great whirlwinds and tornadoes ripped through the atmosphere and opened the delicate surface landscape to the deathly cold ravages of space so high did the funnels climb, and threw up dust storms that raged across entire highland continents, obscuring the surface from sight. Somehow, a mystery even now, the atmosphere's density and oxygen content fell to barely hospitable limits. The planet was, to all intents and purposes, dead when the colonists had descended from their mothership, the Insefur a Glor, Wonderful Glory. Many had viewed this with disappointment and much more than a twinge of uneasiness. Tron did not want them, they said. It had made itself inhospitable to life – the planet lived and did not want their parasitical forms infesting it as they did on sister Terra. Others viewed the events as exciting challenges to test the terraforming equipment and looked forward to exploring this wonderful new world complete with previously unobserved freak weather.

After the quick establishment of a permanent base, the explorers set out to gather as much data as possible, eager to make their names worthy of report on Atlantis even as their homeland teetered on the brink of civil war.

It was J'Ban himself who had made the most sensational discovery. He had been surveying a site near the root of one of the huge whirlwinds they had seen from the safety of the Insefur a Glor. The winds had scoured the land clear, leaving behind barren red plains strewn with sharp pebbles, stones and boulders, and a few rounded hills. Which made the tall, brilliantly white obelisk all the more glaring, a signal, a siren call to anything with an ounce of curiosity.

Riding towards the obelisk in his multi wheeled exploration vehicle, drawn like a moth towards a candle flame, J'Ban barely noticed the sudden profusion of steep sided mounds and hillocks that surrounded the sparse plain in which the obelisk stood. As he neared the spellbinding object, he had to crane his neck to see its peak such was its height. The bright light emanating from it hurt his eyes even though it was filtered through the polarised glass of his exploration vehicle but he persevered in his examination as he was particularly intrigued to see dark spindly symbols carved on to the glowing surface. He squinted and shaded his eyes against the glare, unable to make out the precise alignment of the symbols.

That much he could remember as his next memory was waking up on a bed in the hospice at home base, the world silent save for the hum of air filters and occasional bips and beeps from computational and medical equipment. His mind was like a cloud of slippery splinters, short term memories sliding away from him while at the same time obfuscating distant events.

His tenuous grasp on his sanity was only maintained by fact that the bases logs had been kept up to date till the very end. J'Ban had been shocked to discover he had been unconscious for three Tron years, roughly six Terran years.

He had been found lying next to the obelisk, still alive in his life support suit despite his air tank being empty and having been empty for several days. A blue hoar frost covered him, which may have saved his life by encouraging his body to fall into a state of hibernation and lowering his heart rate to barely recordable levels. The rescue of J'Ban was followed by strange occurrences. The logs were full of tales of strange ethereal lights in the skies, strangers appearing and walking amongst the colonists before dissipating into dust, spiral columns of fire rising from newly discovered pyramids, and in the final few months people started to disappear.

J'Ban found it strange that there was no sense of panic in the logs. Several people who had entered the logs had been chosen for their scientific ability rather than their ability to cope under pressure yet their entries also registered everyday tasks as if the strange phenomena were only of mild interest. It was as if the colonists had accepted whatever Fate had in store for them.

The logs were engrossing despite the growing fear he felt shivering his spine and it was some time before he noticed the message addressed to him. It was a handwritten note (Handwritten! Almost unheard of!) and lay carefully folded into a triangle with his name written in spidery lettering on the front. It could only be from Brask Yin the social analyst and cartographer, an old man who delighted in writing with pen and ink. J'Ban unfolded the thick sheet of paper and started reading.

"J'Ban a Shere, I imagine that by now you will be feeling most uncomfortable as no doubt you will have read the logs and realised that you are now alone on Tron. You may well be a lone Atlantean too as our compatriots on Terra appear to have destroyed themselves utterly, our homeland now submerged beneath the resurgent sea. I will not for a moment consider being condescending and telling you to fear not although you do have little to fear. And I will get to the point of this letter to you, warning you in advance that no matter how fantastic my writings will appear, they are the truth.

The colonists of Tron have been taken beyond the confines of this universe by the race we know as the Ancients. I have been unable to determine their reasons as there is no return from the road upon which we rise. I can feel the time for my ascension drawing upon me and as I am the only remaining colonist, I have been instructed to set you a task. You, J'Ban, who first discovered the Ancient's obelisk, will be the last to leave Tron. You will live a long life, you will discover and contemplate many things, and you will help save the universe from a dark curse. How, I do not know for the Ancients have not divulged this information to me. As time goes by the fog in your memory will lift and your final task will be revealed. I cannot begin to imagine what you will go through but I encourage you to be strong and to bear your burden with the knowledge that you were specifically chosen by the Ancients. You and only you were considered strong enough.

Now I must take my leave. I look forward to meeting you on the other side.

Slainte, Brask Yin"

J'Ban breathed deep of the warm recycled air. He was alone. But as if initiated by his reading of the letter, part of the fog in his mind lifted and J'Ban remembered...

Once upon a time, not so long ago...

Stern was such a fool . Such a typically blinkered and unimaginative foot soldier – mere cannon fodder. The Cauldron was indeed a great prize but not one that would further the glory of the Reich to any great extent. The SS were useful puppets to be directed and disposed of as and when necessarily, not like the Ahnenerbe. Frau Smit gloated as she shot another two Khadrae, the two reptilian bodies skidding to an abrupt halt as they cannoned in to the pile of corpses already at her feet.

It had been mainly due to her studies that the Ahnenerbe had uncovered the clues pointing to the location of the lost city of Shambala hidden within the depths of the Himalayas. It was she who had decrypted the archaic codes revealing it to be the final resting place of the Cauldron, the final key needed by the Core for whatever its purposes were. And it had also been her who had found the vague references to the Book that had been written and then hidden away lest its dark knowledge be abused, the book that the legendary Necronomican had drawn upon, the Ret d'El. Frau Smit's star was rising fast in the Nazi hierarchy.

The Khadrae and the robotica were not there to protect the Cauldron – they were there to keep intruders away from the real treasure. And they were failing. The Ahnenerbe were quite simply blowing the Khadrae aside as if they were confetti caught in a gale. No doubt the Atlanteans had never imagined that humankind would ever grow to become more powerful than them.

Acolyte Thoc was at the forefront as usual, with his armour dripping in luminous blue ichor as he carved a path through the Khadrae, his sword glittering as it rose and fell in a spell binding blur of movement. Occasionally the acolyte unleashed a coruscating emerald blast which opened up huge gaps in the Khadrae ranks. Each time Thoc fired, Frau Smit felt a thrill run through her, collecting in a compact knot within her breast. She could see the power Thoc was drawing into himself, the strands of dark fog laced with green lightning rushing into his body as he called upon the powers that only those of the inner circle of the Thule Cult were able to call upon. Chosen ones such as herself. She had never used her powers in anger before and in her haste to attack the robotica she had drawn in so much that her senses had completely overloaded as if she had inhaled too deeply and too long from a strong and rich cigar. And now she felt her fingers tingle with the aftershocks that shivered through her body. Her head buzzed as she fought the urge to spray her constrained energy around indiscriminately.

A Khadrae detached itself from where it had been lurking within the shadows of a pillar and launched itself with terrifying speed towards Frau Smit. Barely pausing to think, the woman projected a scything blade of a beam which cut the leaping Khadrae into two steaming cauterised slices.

Frau Smit smiled and gasped as a jolt of sheer pleasure wracked through her body. She liked killing and now she could enjoy it even more! She wiggled her fingers over an imaginary piano and laughed at the sparkles dancing around her hands leaving behind fading motes of glitter.

She felt a tug for her attention and she frowned. It was disconcerting; as if she was caught in a snare or been hooked like a fish. The pull increased its pressure on her and she smiled as she recognised a fellow dark power calling to her having felt a kinship. A deep voiced chant rose and fell within her head, consonant laden words crashing with the weight of tombstones, echoed around her skull, each word firing further spasms of ecstasy through her body. At the bottom of the long and wide corridor the Ahnenerbe found themselves in, there was an expulsion of green and red light which flared high almost touching the ceiling. The chanting in her head strengthened and an icy coldness slipped through her veins and arteries.

Frau Smit was only vaguely aware of the heated battle that still raged around her as the Khadrae ripped supersoldiers apart who in turn shot and hammered the animals in to deathly submission. She walked towards the source of the chanting as if sleepwalking, the supersoldiers reflexively forming a protective wedge in front of her as Thoc screamed at her to fall back.

What was Frau Smit doing now? That frigid bitch and her damnable politics got in the way of fighting in Thule's name. Thoc snarled behind his similarly snarling helmet as he yelled at her to get back to safety. And out of the way, he didn't add. Damnable witch woman... Where was she pulling that power from? Countless streams of energy swirled around her, invisible to all save Thule's chosen. He doubted he had seen even High Priest Dai Thules handle so much at once and with such intricacy.

Thoc sliced his sword around in a wide arc, pushing back the attacking Khadrae while trying not to slip on the gore washed flagstones. He blinked and in that instant all the Khadrae, hundreds of them, were all impaled by glimmering spears of serpentine green that sprang from Frau Smit's outstretched hands. The death cries of the Khadrae would have been pitiful to those of a softer nature than Thoc.

Thoc shielded his eyes as the invisible psychic energy surrounding Frau Smit flared into the visible spectrum. A dread chanting filled his head and drove him to his knees such was the deadly power of those long disused words. The acolyte managed to remove his helmet just in time before he retched miserably, bile mixing with the blood dripping from his nose and ears. Through the acid tears that stung his eyes, Thoc saw a large tome of a book bound in ancient blackened and blistered wood and silver bands float past him towards the outstretched hands of the witch.

Damn her to hell! The Ret d'El was his! His to learn from and control, not hers!

Thoc struggled to his feet, the leaden words in his head trying to batter him back to his knees. Then, as quickly as it had started, the chanting disappeared and Thoc almost leapt to his feet as the sudden weight was lifted. Around him the supersoldiers grunted in pain, snorting like animals as they shook their misshapen heads to clear away the last vestiges of the throbbing aches.

Mine! Thoc snarled, pointing a gauntlet with cruel hooked fingers at the book that Frau Smit held in outstretched arms in front of her despite its obvious weight.

Thoc strode towards the woman who appeared to be in a daze, swaying slightly on her feet with her eyes closed. The deadly energy she had channelled so effectively had gone, replaced by a strong smell of ozone. Quite obviously the woman was not able to handle the power the Ret d'El contained, he sneered.

As the acolyte reached out for his prize, the witch's eyes snapped open revealing shining verdant orbs that leaked tendrils of liquid jet.

No, she said in a deep and thunderous voice that sounded as if it came from a great distance. Mine!

She hugged the book towards her chest and at the same time two beams lanced from her eyes and hit Thoc square on the chest, throwing him back high into the air to land with a clatter and squelch on the slaughtered Khadrae.

Frau Smit, you have my congratulations on being the chosen recipient of the Ret d'El, the thin voice of Falkenstaff cut through the thick air. I can assure you that Acolyte Thoc will not make any more foolish claims.

The acolyte could be heard grumbling and cursing as he struggled to his feet.

Are you with us meine frau? Falkenstaff said, looking into the woman's blank face.

For a second there was no response from the cold marblesque visage until suddenly she blinked and her mis-coloured eyes were replaced with her normal glacier blue. An expression of fatigue melted her features as she staggered forward under the weight of the tome she held, her stiletto heeled boots skittering as she sought purchase on the bloody floors. Falkenstaff caught her as she keeled into him and heard her whisper in his ear, I know how we can bring back the gods. I know how to create Valhalla on Earth.

Falkenstaff pondered his colleague's words as he passed the prone form over to a supersoldier who hoisted the woman over its shoulder. Her grip on the grimoire never slackened.

Thoc! Falkenstaff called to the still floundering acolyte. We are leaving. Der Fuhrer will want to hear of our achievement immediately!

Falkenstaff of the Ahnenerbe led the way out of Shambala. Nothing stopped them.

The Beginning of the End?

The Second Grand Fleet of the Royal Navy could be seen quite clearly from the promenade at Southend on Sea although the sleek grey outlines of the patrolling destroyers and cruisers were almost lost against the huge bulks of the battleships and the even larger dreadnaughts. The early morning sun glinted off the brass decorations of the dreadnaughts much to the wonder of the gaggle of schoolboys straggling along the waterfront, wasting time before the school bell went. Tom had borrowed his father's field glasses and was looking through the heavy lenses out towards the distant ships.

Come on! Give us a go before the bell! Brian was pleading.

Get lost Bri, admonished another boy, his cap crooked on top of a mop of unruly hair. I asked first.

What can you see? asked Edward of his friend who was ignoring the jostling of the other two and trying to focus on the dreadnaught.

Loads, lied Tom who was currently looking at a blur that was getting blurrier as he turned the dial further the wrong way.

The boys had grown up in an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity in the protection of the Empire. The only wars they had heard of were in the distant lands of Afghanistan, Siberia and darkest Africa. The sight of the mighty ships of the Royal Navy was not one to be concerned about but an event to be enjoyed, written about, and analysed repeatedly in the playground between games of Germans and Dreadnaughts, a game in which the Germans had the nasty habit of repeatedly losing.

Look! The engineers are working on the beach again! exclaimed Brian, elbowing William, the boy with the crooked cap. Tom ignored the receding clatter of running footsteps as he was left alone, his friends questing for more accessible sights. The engineers had already built impressive fortifications and would only be repairing or adding to the lines of barbed wire, mines and tank traps that stretched across the beaches of Southend on Sea and beyond. He would see later but meanwhile he really, really wanted these field glasses to work so he could view the dreadnaught. It was The Pride of London which had been partly funded by the people and businesses of London and was a particular favourite of his. He twiddled the focus in exasperation and suddenly the dreadnaught swam into focus, the bottom half of the hull partly hidden by a receding morning mist. Tom gawked excitedly as he saw the famous twin towers of the superstructure based on London's Tower Bridge rising into the air with a seemingly small Union Jack flapping over one and the Red Ensign over the other. He couldn't see the huge cannon as they faced away from the shore in the direction of the dirty, cheating Germans. He heard running feet again.

Give us a go now Tom, said Edward a shade breathlessly. The bell's about going to go any minute now and I want to see the ships before the storm messes up the view.

Reluctantly Tom handed the field glasses carefully to his friend on seeing the ominous clouds forming where the sea met the sky. He wasn't bothered about the storm as he would be in school before it broke.

Wow! breathed Edward.

The school bell rang, its distant peal loud and clear.

Oh no! We're going to be late again! More lines, moaned Tom as he glanced at the clock on the town hall. I say! It's five minutes early! he added with surprise and a touch of annoyance.

The bell continued to ring and was joined by the deeper dong of the church bell.

Tom! Edward! yelled Brian from where he and William stood watching the engineers. It's an air raid! The engineers say we've to get to school now!

Tom and Edward both jumped as deep booms rolled across the open sea and fountains of water cascaded into the air near the distant ships. Grabbing the field glasses from Edward's nerveless grip, Tom saw an explosion rack The Pride of London followed by two more sharp blazes of flame.

A distant drone tickled his eardrums sounding like a hive of enraged bees. More explosions cast up mountainous geysers in sequence. The Pride of London had been hit once again, by what Tom didn't know. Must be bombs, a small lucid voice inside him said.

Suddenly the entire fleet rippled with staccato fire as, with the sound of hundreds of distant firecrackers going off at once, the British ships opened fire with their anti aircraft guns. The distant sky was filled with puffballs of smoke interspersed by occasional blooms of orange.

Tom half turned to leave the exciting yet scary sight when out of the corner of his eye he saw The Pride of London throw up yet another guttering of flame, one which blossomed higher and higher as it was fed by internal explosions that wracked through the enormous ship.

Time stopped. All sound was silenced. And then The Pride of London blew up with a titanic roar that blasted a nearby battleship and two cruisers into blazing cinders, detonating their magazines with spectacular results. They faded into obscurity as The Pride of London disappeared, engulfed by a green tinged fireball that mushroomed into the sky and out across the water. The two