Finding Atlantis - Ch4
#3 of Finding atlantis
at last, another chapter! Things are starting to get serious. Booyah! spring break is here! what's that mean? more time for writing! hopfully I will be able to get a couple chapters out next week, but no promises. I got a lot on my plate in the days to come. as always thanks for reading and enjoy!
I woke up to the smell of Ariana's fur. She was curled up in my arms, and I had my muzzle stuffed into the back of her neck. For a while I just laid there, thinking back over what had happened. Just days ago I had been living a normal life. I had friends, a dream job, and a bright future, now all that was gone forever. Now I was who knows where, my body had been totally changed, and I was never going to be able to go back. The funny thing was that I couldn't ever remember ever being this happy. I missed my old friends, but not my old life. It was gone, and I was fine with that. I had never felt so alive.
After a few minutes I decided to get up. I was sticky all over, and it was driving me nuts. So I carefully untangled myself from the exhausted vixen and stretched. Oh, man, was I stiff! I looked up at the sky, I couldn't see the sun anymore, it was behind the trees, but from the shadows it looked like late afternoon, we had slept for the better part of the day! It didn't bother me though, time seemed to matter very little as I walked out to the edge of the cliff and sat down. I started to lick myself off. I had cum everywhere; it was sticky now and kind of a pain to get off. I just took my time and watched the black waves roll in below me. The cliff wasn't as tall as it looked. But it was still a long ways down, maybe seventy-five, eighty feet.
"Oooommaahh," I turned around to see Ariana yawn and stretch behind me.
"Good morning sleepy head." I sang over my shoulder.
"Mmhhmm." she replied as she rolled up onto her hands and feet and stretched like a cat.
She walked over to me on all fours and flopped down beside me "That was... unbelievable." she said, a content smile on her face.
After we had cleaned up sufficiently, we started our walk back.
"Alright." Ariana began, "it's time you learned about bio-electrolysis."
"What?" I asked.
"How to make electricity." she explained. "My mom compared it with earth's yoga. Except you are controlling electricity instead of karma. The best way to start is to think of something that sends shivers up your spine." my mind flew to my old trigonometry teacher who always held the chalk so that it screeched every time he drew a circle.
"Easy." I shivered.
"good." she continued, "that tingle is a pulse of electricity; try to divert it into one of your hands."
"Simple enough" I thought out loud. It took a couple of tries, but eventually I succeeded, the tingle flew down my right arm and into my hand, where it buzzed like an angry fly.
"Okay, now what,"
"Push it all into one finger." she said.
That was a bit more difficult; I really had to concentrate to compress it at all. After a few minutes I had most of it stuffed into my index finger.
"Good, there is quite a bit of potential in that finger now. I can feel it form here. Now, reach out and touch a plant." she commanded.
I went for a nearby fern. At about half an inch away a bright blue spark jumped between me and the plant.
"Great!" Ariana applauded. "That was your first electric discharge."
"Sweet." I said.
"In time, you will learn to maintain forward current, work with negative voltage, and even control volts versus amps." she said. Then as if to prove her point she held her index fingers about an inch apart and I watched in awe as a sustained spark sizzled between them. "You will be able to all kinds of things." she said. with that sneaky smile that took my breath away.
By then we were back at the tree I had found Ariana in this morning. Wow, could it really have been just this morning? It felt like a lifetime ago. "Ariana, Adam!" It was Corinth. "We have been looking everywhere for you! There are Taki coming. They will be here in about fifteen minutes." he was running up the path form the camp. "Shit!" Ariana cursed form behind me "And we were just settling in. How many" she asked she cat.
"A small detachment. Three walkers and a transport." he shot back.
"Recon?"
"We think so."
"Alright," Ariana was looking around her like she was searching for something, "Adam." she sighed.
"I do not think we can leave him here." Corinth put in. Ariana glared at him. "Look. You have to do exactly as I say." she told me sternly. "There is no time to explain, but if you do what I tell you to you will be fine."
"But..." I started.
"Come with me." she grabbed my hand drug me back down the path to the camp at a sprint, she continued right into the first cabin on the row, never breaking stride, she plowed through the door and came to a halt in the middle of the room. I could tell at once that it was some kind of armory. There were weapons everywhere, and Ariana looked right past all of them. She grabbed a piece of cloth off a hanger on the wall, and pulled it over her head. It was like some kind of sports bra, only she was wearing it backwards. Then she grabbed two wooden swords from hangers and slid them through the back of the cloth. It was a holster; it held the blades crisscrossed behind her back with a handle just above either shoulder. But why wooden swords!? I opened my mouth to ask her, but then thought better of it. She seemed to be thinking about something, and with her recent mood swing, I wasn't sure what to expect. Suddenly she sprang forward and grabbed a longbow. "Can you shoot?" she asked me.
"I used to target practice with a compound, but..."
"Good enough." she pushed the bow at me. "Take these." she tossed a quiver of arrows at me. I slung the quiver over my shoulders, it fit perfectly. Then I threw the bow over the other. "Keep an arrow on the string, but do not shoot unless you are attacked."
I followed her out of the hut, where everybody else was already waiting. "Is everybody ready?" Turk called. "Ready!" Ariana shouted. "Move out!" Turk commanded. Everyone started toward the trees at a fast jog.
"Adam," Ariana called. "Stay right beside me. We are switching to Broadcast only, which means no talking. We are still communicating, but you won't be able to hear us. Alright?"
I nodded back. This was getting heavy real fast. We continued running for about seven minutes. Then everyone suddenly came to a stop at the edge of the clearing. Ariana motioned for me to follow her. She led me back into the forest a couple feet then whispered in my ear. "We will ambush them here; stay hidden, be ready but do not move, and do not shoot, unless you are attacked. Understand?"
I swallowed hard and nodded.
"Do you trust me?"
The question caught me off guard but I nodded again.
"Good, you will be fine."The vixen managed a quick smile, kiss, and was gone.
I didn't have to wait long. About two minutes after Ariana left me, the first walker stomped into the clearing, and started slowly across toward me.
I was pretty sure this was one of the walkers that Corinth had mentioned. It was a biped walking vehicle, with two big looking guns of some kind mounted on either side. It was flanked by two more identical walkers, and a big six-wheeled vehicle that must have been the transport. I watched as the twins, Corinth and Athena dashed out of the woods and jumped up onto each of the outside walkers. I stared in amazement as their wooden swords carved their way through the armored hulls of the big war machines as if they were made of tissue paper! Then at almost the same instant, I saw Turk come out of the woods and get down on one knee about five feet behind the transport and then Ariana and Janis came sprinting out of the woods and used his knee as a spring board to launch themselves up onto the transport. Janis landed lightly on the roof of the transport while Ariana, double clutched and launched of the roof and out over the first robot. She landed sword first right on the top of the walker. Sinking it to the hilt right where the pilot seat must have been.
I looked back just in time to see the sides of the transport fold down and about twenty short, stocky soldiers came pouring out. They were all shiny, chrome like, and each one held an AK-47 sized energy rifle. However only a couple were quick enough to use them. As soon as they stepped off the transport Janis and Turk jumped down off the roof behind them and sliced through their ranks before they even had a chance to turn around. It was all over in about two minutes.
Suddenly as if on cue, everybody turned toward me and started running for the edge of the clearing. Everyone that is, except for Ariana. My heart stopped. Had she been shot? Then I saw a silver body come flying out of a hole in the roof of the one walker that was still standing, it came to life, and taking two steps forward it turned around and opened fire on the battlefield. In seconds it had reduced everything to ashes. Then I heard a high pitch whine, like a camera flash charging up, and Ariana came flying out of the cock pit of the walker, she dropped the fifteen feet to the ground like stepping off a curb and took off at a sprint straight for the rest of us. She dove headlong into the underbrush just seconds before an enormous explosion ripped through the late afternoon air. After the dust settled, I leaned over to Turk and asked, "Is it over?" he smiled and nodded. "It is over."
A laugh split through the still air. It was Athena. She jumped out of the brush and shouted. "Now that is how you take down a recon!" one by one every one stood up and walked out onto the battlefield. "Sound off." Called Turk, "Is anyone hurt?"
"Here!" answered Corinth. He was holding his arm, and I could see the blood, a bright red stripe down his pale arm. "I caught a stray laser. It is just a cut."
"Athena, patch up your brother" Turk ordered. "Janis and I will check for remaining evidence and Ariana." he added. "I am sure that your apprentice has a few questions."
"Maybe one or two." I admitted.
Ariana snuck up behind me and threw her arms around my neck. "Yes, what does my favorite student want to know first?"
"First of all," I said. "I've got to know what those swords are made of. I'm guessing it's not ordinary wood."
"Actually, it is." the fox pulled out one of her swords out. "Acacia Wood. It's light and stiff, but the secret is this." she ran her finger along the edge. I could just see the small trace of yellow metal that ran around the edge of the blade. "A gold trace that runs all the way around the blade, there is an electric field generator inside the hilt. She showed me the gold plates on the grip. "When I supply electricity to the generator it creates a powerful electric field shaped to the form of the gold trace. She gripped the sword and I noticed a faint bluish glow in the air around the sword. "The field induces currents in the metal causing it to melt and tear itself apart." she explained. "The blade never even touches the metal."
"That's incredible!" I marveled.
"Thank you, It was my invention." she was practically glowing with pride.
"You came up with this?" I asked.
"I intended the technology for industrial work but it makes a very effective weapon." she admitted.
"Look at this." She held up a shiny chunk of metal, it took me a second to realize what it was. It was a piece of skin from one of the soldiers, the metal wasn't armor, it was skin! "The Taki are an iron based life form. They are literally made of metal." She let the dismembered forearm fall to the ground. "When they first attacked, there was no warning. We saw their ships coming, but we thought they were friendly, we held our attack, waiting for them to pull into orbit. They never did. They landed on the South Pole with a full invasion force.
At first, we tried to fight them directly. We had the best military force in the known universe. We all expected it to over quickly." she chuckled darkly. "It was, but we didn't win. They marched right through our cities, taking over most of the southern hemisphere in just six months."
She took a deep breath. "By popular vote, the Atlantians put together a group of inventors and scientists to study the Taki, to find a way to beat them. I was the youngest member chosen. They picked all the foxes, and about a dozen other people besides. We foxes were known for our inventiveness. There were over one hundred of us, all trying to find a way around the Takian defenses."
She paused to take a ragged breath. "They must have found out where we were meeting, they sent a special detachment after us, I was the only one who survived." there were tears running down her cheeks as she spoke. "They killed everyone, destroyed all our research. I got away, but not before I killed one of them. I took a sample of tissue with me and ran." I hugged her close to my chest. This was obviously a hard story to tell.
"Eventually Corinth found me roaming around the streets of Cains, and Turk and Janis took me in. I was the last fox in existence, and I threw myself into finding a way to beat these monsters. The result was a line of indirect energy weapons. Made from non metallic materials, they are untraceable. Now we are virtually invisible to them. You see, they rely heavily on inductance to 'see'. We carry as little metal as possible and blend into the background noise. They cannot detect us until we are very close."
Then why destroy everything?" I asked. Motioning at the charred remains of the enemy soldiers.
"To get rid evidence, "they must never find out our numbers or strategy."
"Why are they attacking?"I wanted to know.
"Prejudice. It is like a crusade, their goal is to wipe out all other life forms. They attacked us first because we were the biggest threat." Ariana said. "That and they want Atlantis as a base for operations in the aria."
I looked around; we were alone in the clearing. "Supper is waiting." Ariana announced. "We should get back."