Dane knew this hatred sprang from the subconscious, that the Shadow on a very deep level understood that the Ones Before were better than they were. More human.
The kraken were altered deep ocean giant squids. A species that had eluded scientists and oceanographers in Dane’s timeline, and remained a myth, just like Atlantis. In the Shadow’s timeline, they had captured the creatures who inhabited the dark depths of the ocean. Over seventy feet long to start with and natural carnivores. They were the perfect creature to adjust to fight dolphins. Their only natural enemy were sperm whales. And vice versa.
Kraken had a massive head, but Dane didn’t sense much intelligence, just malevolence. Stretching back from the head were eight sucker-bearing arms and two contractile tentacles with spatulate tips. The latter had rows of suckers encircled by rows of hard, horn hooks. The Shadow had transformed those into mouths with razor sharp teeth, that could not eat, only kill.
They were waiting.
Let them wait, Dane thought.
He focused his self, his core.
He did something that only the Shadow from this timeline had ever done. He made his own gate.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Longstreet had been watching the assault through his field glass while perched atop a split rail fence. As the gray line closed on the Union lines, a British officer, Colonel Freemantle, sent to America to observe this new type of warfare, came riding up, almost out of breath.
“General Longstreet, General Lee sent me here and · said you would place me in a position to see this magnificent charge.”
Longstreet lowered his binoculars and stared at Freemantle at a loss for words at both the timing and the comment. The British colonel looked to the east and was astonished at what he saw. “I wouldn’t have missed this for anything!”
Longstreet laughed, a most strange sound amid what was happening. “The devil you wouldn’t. I would like to have missed it very much. We’ve attacked and been repulsed. Look there.”
Freemantle lifted his own field glasses, but all he could see among the smoke drifting over the field were men fighting desperately. Longstreet however, seemed resigned to defeat. “The charge is over.” He turned to a courier. “Ride to General Pickett and tell him what you heard me say to Colonel Freemantle.” It was a most curious way to issue a retreat order, but the entire day had been most strange for Longstreet.
The senior corps commander was interested in only two things now, which is why he kept his binoculars trained on the field. How many men would be coming back, and when would Meade counterattack?
The feelings of shame and disgrace the surviving Confederate soldiers felt as they fell back from the Union lines turned to shock and dismay as they saw the field they had charged across and the number of bodies that littered it. They’d made the charge and known it had been bad, but only by re-traversing it did the full spectrum of how terrible it had been hit home. Men saw friends, brothers, fathers, sons, with their bodies torn to pieces, staring blank-eyed up at the sky. Many of those retreating walked backward, preferring not to be shot in the back, sometimes stumbling over bodies they couldn’t see.
Less than half the men who had gone east returned west across the battlefield. More than seventy-five hundred men had been killed, wounded or captured. They had gained nothing but glory and lost the cream of the Army of Virginia in less than one hour.
So many prisoners had been taken, that as Meade belatedly galloped to the vicinity of the Angle, he saw a mass of gray coming down off Cemetery Ridge and thought for several anxious seconds that the Rebels had broken through his lines, Only when he saw that the Confederates had no arms and were under guard did his heart rate go back to something close to normal. The men of the Anny of the Potomac had never seen Confederates look so utterly beaten and tired. The jubilation of just minutes earlier, when the vengeful Fredericksburg chant had echoed across the field gave way to empathy, some Union soldiers even doffing their caps to their defeated foes.
Meade galloped up to the ridge and inquired how things were going. When informed the attack had been repulsed, he could scarce believe his ears. His eyes, however, looking out over the bloody field and the fleeing men in gray, confirmed this report.
On the other side, Longstreet was riding along Seminary Ridge, trying to prepare the defense. If he were Meade, he knew what he would do — attack.
Lee, on the other hand, had watched Pickett’s charge from the ridge and now rode down among the men flowing back. He spoke words of encouragement, knowing these men needed to hold on to Seminary Ridge in case the Federals attacked. Such was his presence that the majority of the men who even just saw him halted, and began to reform.
In the midst of this, General Pickett came riding back, · a dazed look on his face, his customary swagger gone. Lee moved up to him and ordered him to move his division to the rear of the hill to be a reserve.
“General Lee, I have no division now,” Pickett replied with tears streaming down his face. He began to run down the losses, starting with all three of his brigade commanders.
“Come, General Pickett,” Lee broke in. “This has been my fight, and upon my shoulders rests the blame. The men and officers of your command have written the name of Virginia as high today as it has ever been written before. Your men have done all that men can do. The fault is entirely my own.”
Earhart realized that the field was finally clear of men other than the dead and the wounded who had been left behind. She could hear men crying out in pain, many calling for their mothers or other loved ones. She dared to rise up higher in her hole and she could see the field of dead and dying all around in the waning daylight. She looked up to the Union lines where there had been much cheering and laughter, but now it was quiet and there was no sign of any counterattack.
Earhart grabbed the plastic case. It felt heavier.
It was time. She knew it, as if Dane were at her side and had whispered it in her ear.
She stood up tall, not caring if any on either side saw her in the little light that was left to this most bloody day. A small black dot appeared in front of her, elongating, until it was eight feet high and three wide. Carefully holding the case, Earhart stepped through the gate.
Longstreet could not believe what he had just seen. It appeared as if an angel had come out of the ground itself in the middle of the field near a burned-down farmhouse. The vision had floated in the air, then a black hole had appeared in front of it, which it had gone into and then disappeared.
Longstreet was not the only one who had seen the white figure. On top of Cemetery Ridge, Meade had been scanning the terrain between his lines and the Confederates as staff officers urged him to the attack.
“Did you see that?” he asked in surprise.
None of the others had been looking in the direction he had been and all replied negatively.
For Meade it was a clear sign. The battle was done. There’d been enough killing. It was time to turn to man’s better nature, if just for part of a day. He gave orders for his troops to stand down.
“It is done,” Mary Todd Lincoln told her husband.
The president was standing behind his desk, his back to the room, peering out the window. It was dark outside and all he could see were the lights of Washington. He slowly turned around. His desk was covered with telegrams, forwarded from the War Department. The last one, several hours old, indicated that Meade expected Lee to make an assault today.