"(novel) (ebook) - Perry Rhodan 0070 - (62) The Last Days of Atlantis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)

As the long, cylindrical ships of the enemy opened their pincers formation in order to get to a safe distance from us, we were temporarily in the lee of their fire. The aliens had stern-mounted propulsion engines whose thrust impulses apparently interfered with the automatic target tracking. At least we suddenly found ourselves free of their fire barrage. I used the opportunity to drop the Tosoma toward the 3rd planet's nearby air envelope. As we made entry, a whistling and howling arose outside. Our usually dependable collision shields had by this time become very weak so that they could hardly ionize the air molecules. And without electrostatic charging, no electromagnetic repulsion could be effected.
Thus it developed that my flagship soon raced through the thin upper strata looking like a red-glowing sunball. In spite of this I maintained a respectable rate of descent. Our Arkonide armourplate hull could withstand 50,000░ and the air-conditioning system was still operating.
It was clear to me that we were out of the fighting, without a chance. So I did what any responsible commander-in-chief would have done in such a situation. I was not of the maudlin, romantic school who fancied plunging heroically to a flaming death. What everything depended on now was the possibility of saving the crew survivors so that later we could put in a call for help from the home planet.
"The course is set," announced the First Officer. "Atlantis is ahead in the daylight zone."
I was planning to land the battered Tosoma near Atlopolis and set up a temporary ground defence, to provide fire cover so that the men could escape into the undersea dome.
We were flying at about a 60-mile altitude over the eastern continent which was heavily covered with jungles and populated by extremely primitive dark-skinned savages. Shortly thereafter the broad expanse of the ocean came into view and finally the coastal mountains of Atlantis.

* * * *

I heard a muttered curse from Tarth. Above the approaching land rose flaming mushroom clouds. The enemy seemed to have known exactly where the only defence installations were to be found on this world. Moments later we heard from the tracking and detection centre. 5 spaceships had landed near the coast. Apparently troops were disembarking.
"We aren't picking up any cellular vibrations," announced Capt. Masal from the still-undamaged Com Central. "They are robots."
My orders went out to the weapons officers. The mighty Tosoma prepared to show its claws for the last time.
Tarth spoke with deadly calm over the helmet radio com. "Do you think their noses would be up in the air very long if my ship were crippled?"
Further communication was drowned out by the terrible thunder of a broadside volley. The 5 enemy ships on the land went up in a tornado of explosions and glowing flames.
I groaned aloud when the capital city and the harbour appeared on the viewscreens. The entire terrain was a single crater. All that was left of the buildings of Atlopolis were a few smoking ruins. Mile-wide thermal impact patterns had seared the countryside. There where we had installed our stationary impulse weapons, dark mushroom clouds towered over the landscape. Capt. Feltif did not answer. Our calls were not even met with an answering echo. I realized then that my ground commandos did not exist anymore. What had happened to the settlers I could well imagine.
In deep space another overlap front was forming again. We noticed it because of a strange discolouration of the stars and a shimmering in the atmosphere. And now the enemy added his renewed attacks to the forces of nature.
The Tosoma was barely capable of flight by now and Tarth flew it totally on manual controls. The autopilot facilities had ceased to function and all command links to engine and power room control centres had gone out of commission. The temperature rose in the Command Central, indicating that terrible fires must be raging around us.
I carried out what I had planned to do. It was imperative at all costs to keep the battleship airborne as long as possible so that it could provide a protective cover until the robot-controlled entrance locks of the undersea dome had been opened.
For security reasons a control had been set up that was based on a few individual vibratory identities. There were only 3 Arkonides that the gates would open for. Any visitors not thus recognized by the dome's robot brain would not only be left swimming helplessly before the great steel portals; they would be shot by the powerful weapons of the fortress.
The men who were authorized to enter were Capt. Feltif, chief of ground forces and the person responsible for evacuation measures-now missing; the new chief mathematician, Kosol, who was located on board my flagship; and I was the 3rd person whose individual vibrations would be recognized by the robot crew.
I had to see to it as quickly as possible now that Kosol got underway. He had to use one of the pressure-screened undersea vehicles to get down below and open the gates so that the entry would be clear for us. While he was busy with that, I was to run a defence with the Tosoma against any possible interference attacks and prepare to make a blitz landing when I could get the men to safety. We assumed that the enemy had not detected the presence of the undersea dome, since the surface gun positions had offered much more obvious targets.
I brought our coasting speed to a stop and brought the still usable antigrav fields into play. The battleship hovered in the air above the razed harbour area. The helmet radio of my combat spacesuit worked flawlessly in response to a hand button control.
"Atlan to chief mathematician Kosol. Project Salvage now in effect. Leave your station, land in your flying spacesuit and proceed to open the locks of the pressure dome. Kosol, calling Kosol, please answer!"
Within a second or so the answer returned. The face of a young officer appeared on the mini-screen inside my helmet, on a level just above my eyes.
"Lt. Einkal, Eminence, fire-fighting post 18. Chief mathematician Kosol is dead; the computer section is burning-all bulkhead hatches sealed off. The adjacent compartments are also on fire. Fresh air keeps coming in through large rents in the hull. Over and out!"
I heard my own involuntary outcry over this news. Close beside me, Tarth swung around in his commander seat. He had understood more swiftly than I.
"Out of here, Admiral!" he shouted at me. "Out! Get out as fast as you can! I'll handle the coverage of the retreat. Go down there, open the dome and then give me the landing instructions over the helmet radio com. Get going-what are you waiting for?"
"I-I will not leave my flagship prior to my crew!" I said harshly.
Tarth laughed humourlessly. He was incredibly cool and collected. "I'll have to throw you out. You're obligated by duty to save your men, above all. I don't need you to skipper the ship since no more tactical decisions are involved. Open the dome, Atlan! Kosol is dead and Feltif is missing. In 1/2 hour the time-front will be here and all life will disappear into the other plane. Don't worry about the enemy ships-I can take care of those space-going sewer pipes. You know I'm no greenhorn when it comes to atmospheric in-fighting. Now you get going!"
He fairly bellowed these last words. 2 heavy fighter robots trudged over toward me under remote command of Lt. Cunor. I was torn from my seat and carried bodily to the Command Central's escape tube. Tarth responded to my transport of rage with ringing laughter.
"We'll be waiting for your radio signal-'Atlan' 3 times, by word or code, and I'll risk the landing. Until that time I have a few things still left to do. Go, my friend, and bear in mind that I honour you and your family."
Before me the round lid of the emergency exit opened-a 3-foot tube that ran a straight 1,200 feet to end in a fully automated air chamber. Using this piece of equipment the crew of the Command Central could exit swiftly from the midship area.
As they closed the lid on me I was still yelling in a frenzy of rage. The stream of compressed air converted my body into a projectile. These crash exit tubes were not especially comfortable but were commensurately practical. I landed in a bed of compressed air inside the reception chamber, hard put to land on my feet. Instantly I dodged aside as another body came shooting through. It was Lt. Cunor whose robots had made short work of dumping me into the tube.
"I'll bring you before a ship's court martial!" I shouted, beside myself, and grasped him by the shoulders.
Naturally I wasn't able to carry out my threat any further because the heavy armourplate hatches glided upward and we were swirled outward into the open by a second jolt of compressed air.
I pressed a button switch that activated my flying equipment. In the spacesuit's backpack the combined micro-reactor and mini-powerpak were already humming away. The antigrav auto-control stabilized my flight so that all I had left to do was make sure that my small pulse-engine started. Behind me was Lt. Cunor, one of the most audacious and daring officers of the flagship. And of course he had been ordered by Tarth to accompany me on my difficult way.
"Lots of luck!" Tarth's voice rattled in my ears as saw his face on the tiny screen inside my helmet. "Can I blast out now? We're picking up new images on the trackers."
"You're not off the book yet," I told him, although by this time my anger had subsided somewhat. "That was a blatant violation of orders involving physical constraint as well. So you'd better prepare yourself, Old Man!"
He only laughed and in the end it was all we could do to get out of the suction of the giant ship as it, started off again. At a safe distance, Tarth picked up speed. Spewing flames, the Tosoma hurtled into a sky darkened by nuclear clouds. When it disappeared and the deep rumbling of air masses crashing into the vacuum of its wake subsided, I heard Cunor speaking warily.
"There's a high gamma fallout, Eminence. Our friends must be using old-fashioned bombs."
He had no sooner spoken than a new rumbling was heard. A gleaming phantom shot past far overhead but simultaneously opened up with its guns. I was hurled from my course by a hard shockwave and then a storm of fire raged over the tortured land. My palatial government seat had been annihilated. All I could see of it were the still-smoking remains. Far and wide there was not a sign of any living creature. It became clear to me that the transit of the relative time zone that Feltif had reported had resulted in sucking up everything that even remotely resembled an organism. Only vegetation had remained but that had been destroyed by the unleashed storm of atomic forces.
We drifted along close above the fire-scarred ground, circumnavigated the ruins of Atlopolis and turned our flight toward the open sea.
It was then I noticed that the ocean seemed to be stirred up by a typhoon-that is, such was my impression for about a second! After the shockwave from the attacking ship subsided, the air itself was fairly calm. In spite of this the raging waters towered into foaming breakers. The peninsula that had protected the harbour was nowhere to be seen. Farther to the East the ocean inundated the shorelines and swallowed up great stretches of land.
To the West of our location the ground had cracked open. The old volcanoes, which we had considered long extinct, had opened their craters to spill forth death and destruction. The thundering and rumbling was not being caused by a battle but by the forces of Nature.
"Atlantis is sinking!" shouted Cunor, horrified.
It was then that I perceived clearly that the ground was swaying. It was the most tremendous earthquake I had ever witnessed. In the distance a typhoon was brewing, the first gusts already howling across the sinking island.
The inner harbour basin was already flooded over. The breakers came onward as though intending to swallow all of Atlantis in a matter of minutes.
We landed close beside the boat bunkers that had been carved out of the high rocky headlands with disintegrators but the land was still sinking. Even as I opened the bunker doors the water was washing about my feet. Normally we would have had to take the pressure-screened vehicles 100 feet below to reach sea level.
Cunor prepared one of the special machines for operation. It was a craft built for the Fleet, which was intended for use in land operations on impassable water planets or swamp-covered worlds.
Meanwhile I attempted to get in touch with the Tosoma. I succeeded on the first try. The highly sensitive special equipment on the flagship could still receive the weak signals from my helmet transmitter and amplify them in their receiver a million times.