David Golemon - Ancients

"You failed me in not ... not--"

"What the furher is trying to say is, if you had delivered upon your promise of the Atlantean Key and the bulk of the tectonic sciences, the reich would still be intact," Boorman said as he stood angrily.

Smythe ignored the man behind him.

"Herr Hitler, you failed the Coalition five years ago when you disobeyed your orders and attacked Poland, bringing about war with the western powers, thus ending the subtleties of the Coalition plan. Did you think this deed would deserve the reward of the Atlantean sciences? We will just wait for another opportunity; maybe one will arise a little west of Germany next time." Smythe lightly slid the box toward Hitler. "After all, we have all the time in the world. Now, it's either this," he tapped the box, "or you will take the risk of being placed on display in Red Square like the animal you are. It's your choice."

With those final words, the four men turned and left.

As the door closed behind the representatives of the Juliai Coalition, little did Adolph Hitler know that planning was already under way for another attempt to consolidate Juliai power and race policies throughout the world. Only this time the Coalition would eliminate the need for a host country altogether to achieve their aims, and soon an all-out attempt would be made to secure the final piece of their plans by having the weapon of the Ancients at its disposal.

The darkness Germany experienced in 1945 was nothing compared to the utter blackness that was about to set in almost seventy years later.

The red banner with the golden eagle minus the swastika would be unfurled in a new world.

As Thor raised his hammer with a mighty bellow for Germanic sake, he brought it down with a curse and roar and the world did but shake.

--GERMANIC TOME FROM THE EARLY DAYS OF THE THIRD REICH

"Tensions between the United States and the Russian Republic grew today when the U.S. State Department said that the withholding of grain shipments was directly linked to the Russian aggression in the former Republic of Georgia. This policy is a dramatic shift for the outgoing president of the United States as he strives to rein in the Russian aggression toward its breakaway former republic."

The scene shifted to a stock shot of the empty and barren wheat fields of the Ukraine.

"Since Russian crop failures of the past four years struck the former communist nation, tensions over the slowing of grain and other essential shipments from the United States have become a major roadblock in East-West relations. The inflammatory declaration from the Russian president stating that his counterpart in the U.S. was using food as a weapon against his nation was deplorable."

As the newly elected president of the United States was sworn in, his dramatic statement that he would remove all barriers to shipments of grain to the Russian republic was seen as a conciliatory move to jump-start negotiations for the removal of Russian troops from the former Russian Republic of Georgia. Although the Russian president hailed the announcement as "promising," he was still adamant about his statement that "the damage has already been done."

In a related story, the three-year drought in the People's Republic of China has again wiped out over 50 percent of that nation's exportable rice harvest, affecting unstable North Korea. With food shortages in the United States curtailing any extra shipments to Korea, the leader of that nation, Kim Jong Il, has been quoted as saying, "This is just another example of how the United States and Japan view the relations between Korea and the West. The rhetoric could not come at a worse time for the new president as he seeks to quell a growing concern over recent allegations by Russia and China over the unfriendly way they have been treated by the U.S."

The military parade was for the sake of the visiting diplomats. They had come to Pyongyang to negotiate the food shipments that had been curtailed by North Korea's neighbor to the south. The real hope was that they could convince the northerners that the shipments had been stopped because of bad harvests. The proof they offered was that not only the two Koreas were suffering but Japan and most other Asian nations as well. Clearly, this parade was Kim Jong Il's way of announcing that he was continuing on a warlike path. Begun three years before with a series of nuclear tests, Kim Jong Il's animus toward South Korea and the rest of the Western world seemed as strong as ever. The German, Japanese, and American delegations had left, refusing to play North Korea's game.

As the remaining diplomatic teams sat in the viewing stand, bored beyond measure, they felt the first light tremor through the soles of their feet. They assumed that it was the brigade of T-80 tanks rumbling by in the square below.

"This is the most blatant display of brutishness I have ever seen," the delegate from Great Britain declared.

He and several others was about to stand up and leave, but another light tremor coursed up through the stone balcony and made him hesitate. He looked out over the parade and saw that the T-80 tanks had passed by and there was nothing but spit-and-polish troops marching below, surely not enough to shake the very earth.

"Did you feel that?" he asked the Chinese delegate.

"Yes, I--"

The first real tremor struck. The British negotiator was thrown from his feet as the crowd below screamed in fear. The marching soldiers stopped and braced themselves against the heavy shaking. Suddenly a large building facade across the square broke free and fell into the mass of onlookers, crushing at least a hundred people. The Chinese delegate managed to get the Englishman to his feet, but as he did so the stone railing that surrounded the large balcony broke away and fell to the street. The men recoiled as screams of those crushed below rose from the street. As quickly as it had started the quake ended. The diplomats were shaken but unhurt as guards rushed forward to assist those who had fallen.

The earth suddenly rolled and shook again. The balcony, with more than a hundred of the world's representatives, cracked and broke away, sending them all a hundred feet to the street below. Several buildings swayed and then collapsed. Panic started first from the lingering crowd and then from the soldiers marching in the parade. As one, they broke ranks and ran for cover. As they did, the cobbled roadway split open beneath their feet and the gaping wound spewed high-pressure water from a hundred broken mains. Fifty or sixty of the smartly dressed soldiers fell into the widening crevasse and disappeared.

Across the city, buildings toppled and roadways collapsed. The very air around the city wavered as wave after wave pummeled the dilapidated and poorly constructed buildings. As the world cracked beneath them, the brigade of tanks vanished in a millisecond. Soldiers followed quickly afterward. At the airport, several of the MIG 29s that had taken part in the parade's flyover crashed as they attempted to land, the runway splitting and sliding thirty feet from its original position.

Three miles offshore, the seabed flew up like a bedspread being depressed and then quickly released, and the resulting tidal wave took two warships--a British and a United States destroyer--with it. Then the tidal surge wiped out thirty small towns and villages along the coast, the ocean washing up ten miles inland. It would be discovered in the days and weeks ahead that eighty thousand people had died. The earthquake continued for an unprecedented ten full minutes, sending a half a million North Koreans to horrible deaths from being crushed, burned alive, or drowned.