The Atlanteans' Return - Part IV

I wrote this to lilfluff's third prompt, "What changes in the world will the Atlanteans notice the most?"

 “I suppose,” ventured Archduke Josef in Atlantean, “you and your companions have not yet had time to assess all the changes that have taken place in the past two thousand years.”

“Atlantis is no more, fallen beneath the waves,” replied Hzoreda!.  “All other changes flow from that, surely?”  She was leading them to the Navigator through corridors that were considerably tighter than they would have been on an airship of the same size.

Archduke Josef reminded himself that they had to fit all those colonists in somehow and the suitability of the cross corridors and niches for ambushes was a side effect of the design, not a driver of that design.  “My Imperial master thought you should know the value of your time,” he handed her a folder, the papers inside written in Atlantean, “because every scholar on the planet who’s built a career and reputation on the study of Atlantis is going to want to confirm their theories by talking to actual Atlanteans.  You need modern resources and there is no need for even your lowest, common pool labourers to give their time to these people.  We have also taken the liberty of providing the names and contact details of several legal firms specialising in patent law in each of the major jurisdictions – your guildsmen may be able to obtain protection for some of their processes.”

“Why are you helping us this way?”  She was slightly puzzled.  “It cannot be in your interest to see us come to power again.  We would displace you.”

“Neither is it in our interests to see you starve or be cheated,” replied the Terrencian Archduke.  “I am under instructions to demonstrate the Emperor’s intentions to deal fairly with you.”

Naturally that was when the ambush hit them.

Five minutes later the attacking Atlanteans were groaning on the ground.  One of them had a broken arm, another was probably concussed and there was a scattered serving of fractured ribs among them.

“How?”  The one who’d led the Atlanteans down the ramp when it had first opened really looked as if he couldn’t understand what had happened.  “We are Atlanteans, you are barbarians.  You don’t have our advantages…”

“We’re at least as well fed as you,” Archduke Josef told him while his body guards loomed over the downed Atlanteans and the Kongoese Flight Lieutenant collected their weapons, “and we have been all our lives.  Plus while you were sleeping your way to the stars and back we had two thousand years to get better at unarmed combat.  Besides did you really think that no-one would ever duplicate what you did to your bodies?”  The Archduke smiled and the Atlanteans cringed.

Morning Shake-Up Call

I wrote this to aldersprig's fourth prompt, " I drove into town for work, but town had been lost in a bank of fog."

The morning had turned to fog.  It had been clear when Merrion had left home, then there had been a few tendrils of mist over the paddocks as she drove past.  Nothing odd about that but it had kept getting thicker.  By the time she had passed the sports oval at Peters Farm the mist had been continuous but thin enough to see through and there had still been other traffic on the road.  The last car she’d seen had been at the roundabout that led off to the high school in one direction and the hospital in the other.  It had flashed its lights at her, honked its horn and the passengers had waved frantically at her.  She’d ignored them because with the heavy fog she was in by then she’d had to concentrate to keep on the road and the fog kept getting thicker.

It was when she reached where her office stood, should have stood, that Merrion realised that something was wrong.  The shaped dip in the curb was there for the car park driveway but there was no car park beyond that.  The three storey office building beside the driveway, the building where she worked, wasn’t there.  Just fog, white where her headlights hit it and grey where they didn’t.  It was quiet.  No other cars in the distance, no birds in the landscaping bushes, no people.

Obligation, habit and the concerned seed of fear warred in her and just as she was rationalising that if there wasn’t any building she couldn’t go to work anyway, she heard the sound of running feet.  Three figures pounded out of the mist towards her, all of them carrying something and the front one with a rifle too.

Merrion would have driven off but she realised that the lead figure was carrying a child under the arm that didn’t have the rifle.

“Thank god!”  That lead figure was a soldier in body armour plus helmet and he spoke as he reached through her open window to press the central locking button.  “You have to get us out of here.”  He opened the back door and slung in the five or six year old boy he’d been carrying, adding, “Move over, kid, so everyone else can fit.”  He went around the front of the car to get in the passenger seat, while the other two adults piled into the back seat.  The young man with long, black hair held a toddler and the blonde haired girl was carrying a baby.

“Come on, lady,” that was the soldier, sitting beside her now.  “Drive back the way you came.  We have to get out of here before the fog gets us too.”