Jena of Atlantis, the Finger of Power

It was dawn now.

One of those craggy gray affairs dripping with mist so favored by deer hunters of our own times. Everything seemed wet and heavy. The famous multicolored skies of old Atlantis were all the shades of the Confederate army without a trace of blue. Ship rigging made those endless clanging sounds which were loved by mariners and irritated everyone else.

You can’t believe how noisey the docks and harbor was. Even at this early hour. It wasn’t even the pets wandering around for their early morning constitutionals. Squeaking crates, groaning wood hulls rubbing up into the barriers, bells and all the various sounding devices banging away from their hangars. There were some people out, loading and unloading some of the ships. But these late night partyers had worse things to think about than noise. At least they were vertical.

Mostly.

And every door that opened or closed had its own identifying sound. It must have been the coastal effect, but every one of them made some kind of very loud announcement to the world that it was going open or closed. These noises were sometimes eclipsed by the sirens of the seagulls. Now there was a noise to put into your ear!

Some of these varieties of gulls were much larger than we have today. Some of them were like albatrosses, just monsters. They didn’t bother people much, but they sure could get messy. Every decade or so, the port authority would get the bright idea that they should somehow eliminate these pests, and if there weren’t some worse calamity going on at the moment, they would contract to have the birds killed.

It was just like clockwork. So every ten years or so, out comes a group of dedicated scientists or target masters  from the army, or maybe the advanced science classes at the university trying out some new death tool to finish the birds off. The strangest part of this was that no matter how many gulls they killed, within a few weeks they were back again.

The same number of them that started out.

No more, no less. The same amount. These were estimates, of course. There were millions of these birds, but the authorities could reliably come up with numbers and calculations that showed this strange result.

And the endless gulls kept their distance from the unusual pair of humans standing at the end of dock 120.

It was Jena and Iana.

They had been up throughout the night. No sleep at all, but this didn’t explain their glum outlook. They did look good though. My goodness, what a sharp pair. Literally.

Jena had on the armored uniform of a captain of foreign affairs, ivy cluster. She had some choices in the matter. She could have gone with a ceremonial outfit like she did originally with the army rank. Or she could have gone with a more ornamental costume. But she was tired and edgy about the sailing situation, so she selected the most beligerent military fashion that was allowed.

This suit was supposed to be used by ambassadors and their assistants when observing military actions in other provinces. It wasn’t a battle outfit exactly, but it was built like one. It included the difficult dorsal piece, something none of us has ever read or seen in any history book. This unusual piece of armor was a pointy thing that extended from the back, like fish spines.

Jena had used these before, and liked it. It was fitted to lock in with the rest of the armor, and provided protection for the back. It could also be used to pivot around against a wall or on the ground. Lacking a weapon, a trained warrior could make quite a comeback with one of these. Some of them were shaped like a curved ax blade, some might have twisted wire coming out of them. It was the Atlantean concept of utilizing every possible part of the body for the action. Even the back.

The rest of the ceramic armor pieces also had spines coming out of them. The bracers fit over the forearms, and the spines could be used as very lethal weapons, they weren’t even allowed to be worn in the city. Her high top boots had ceramic plates cleverly sewn in, and these also had the furniture ripping spines. This particular set of boots had spines that were really impossibly long, but that was Jena!

She also had a pair of shoulder pieces called paldrons in our own times that also had the freakish spines. These were called “knockers” back then, not paldrons. That was because in a military action in a tight place or at a last defence, you might be shoulder to shoulder and these armor pieces would knock together. They were constructed of a ceramic material made from clay, wood ash, and some other ingredients that actually gave off a musical noise when they hit each other. Knockers. The ceramic stuff was more brittle, and much heavier than metal. But far stronger.