Fractured Earth Saga 1: Apocalypse Orphan (6 page)

“They’re up to one hundred thirty-five degrees right now. They’re not compensating for the decrease in temperature.”

“We’re trying, my friend. I’ve called Doctor Mason. Maybe she can think of something that will help.”

“Hurry up, Charlie. I don’t know how much longer I can last,” Wolf said with urgency, his teeth chattering uncontrollably.

“Doctor Mason is on the line,” Charlie announced.

A beautiful feminine voice transmitted through his earpiece, “Mister Wolf?”

“Charlie, the computer just called me Mister Wolf. Where’s this Doctor Mason, I don’t have time to talk with a computer.”

“This is Doctor Mason. It's
my
computer, I designed it and it uses my voice…but we haven’t the time for that. Listen to me, Mister Wolf. Get into the Deep Space Chamber. I’m on my way to the moon base’s underground storage area where an experimental DSC is kept. I’ll walk you through the start sequence. Go to the computer’s main control board—it’s marked SYNTHEA on the console.”

Wolf moved quickly to a console and said, “I’m there…now what?”

“Get down on your hands and knees. Reach under it…there’s a power rod that needs to be inserted. Push it in.”

Kneeling, Wolf reached under the control panel. He groped around until he found the power rod and pushed it in. The ship shuddered briefly as the computer activated.

“I’m pretty sure the flaws are fixed, and I have added features that will improve its chances of working correctly,” Dr. Mason said.

“The damn thing doesn’t work? Why the hell is it up here?” Wolf demanded.

Dr. Mason’s voice broke up into static so Charlie relayed for her. “Doctor Mason is far underground on MBR, Wolf, and her transmission is weak, but I’m reading her clearly. She says her prototype in the moon base lab is functioning as expected and shows promise. Don’t give up, Wolf. We’ll figure this out in a few minutes…sorry, a few seconds. We have everyone working on this. You may have to go into the DSC. You’ve activated Synthea. It may be the only thing that can save you.”

The Deep Space Chamber was an experimental cryonics chamber. Scientists believed they had finally solved the problem of cryonic hibernation for storage of humans in liquid nitrogen. Atlantis had been equipped to take animals into space with scientists on board to experiment on them. The Atlantis was equipped with six DSC units, but they were never completed because Nomad took precedence. Wolf looked at the large, titanium, egg-shaped chamber. It was approximately five feet long and three feet wide. The lid was raised, making it look like a giant clamshell. What made him shiver were the three large needles that would be inserted in his temple, ear, and spine when the machine activated. The needles would penetrate the cerebellum from the back, one going to the frontal lobe, another offset towards the rear and inserting into the ear, self-guiding into the parietal lobe. In theory, this would regulate the temperature of the brain, keeping it active at ninety-eight degrees Fahrenheit and delivering high-quality oxygen to the organ to keep the tissue alive. A tiny electrical shock injected into the spine would trick the brain into thinking it had food, although the body would be slowed so much that it would require no nutrition at all. An auditory sensor inserted into the left ear would continually play music, read books, and subliminally educate the subject for the duration of his suspended animation, theoretically stimulating the subject’s will to live.

It didn’t help matters that all of the animals used for testing the DSC had died. Some woke up and immediately went into cardiac arrest; others suffered a cerebral hemorrhage within a few seconds. The DSC was so finely insulated that it could maintain its interior temperature for many years, even if the system malfunctioned and shut down. The computer on board the Atlantis was built upon an artificial intelligence system years ahead of its time. It was designed to mimic human life and preserve the ship and its crew at all costs. It was the greatest of man’s modern achievements.

“Damn!” Wolf cursed, “I just lost my sensors. I am showing minus four hundred fifty-eight degrees outside. It is minus ninety in here and still dropping. Charlie, I’m freezing.” Wolf again looked at the DSC and said in a somber tone, “This Deep Space Chamber has never been tested on a human. It's a death trap. Shit! My suit is starting to malfunction. Charlie…”

“Yes, Wolf?”

“Bye.”

“Wolf, get your ass in the DSC! It’s your only chance. Wolf? Wolf? Answer me! Are you there? Savior Two to Atlantis, copy.”

There was no answer…only static. Charlie sighed and picked up his phone to update his superiors. He looked at the glum faces around him and shook his head as he wiped a tear from his eye.

* * *

The shuttle Atlantis was in trouble. It was being dragged behind the comet. The nuclear engines had managed to equalize the magnetic attraction of the comet and kept the ship off the nucleus. Its supercomputer compensated for mass and drag. In theory at least, the I29 Plutonium Interior Fusion Linear Exhaust (IFLEX) engine would run for the half-life of the plutonium-244 that powered it. It had a half-life of eighty million years. It had taken the entire world’s supply of plutonium-244 to make the engines on Atlantis. With no moving parts, it used the radiation it emitted to propel the ship. The computers ran state-of-the-art Pentium15 software with a human interface named Synthea.

Wolf managed to open the port retro rockets at full throttle and turn on automatic flight commands. Then he climbed into the DSC. He was losing consciousness as the needles drilled into his head. Before he blacked out, he thought he saw a woman close the lid of the DSC.

The fully activated Synthea sealed the lid and then engaged the DSC, taking the only available avenue to save Wolf’s life. Whether he would survive remained to be seen. He was frozen solid in milliseconds.

The shuttle Atlantis was twenty-five thousand miles from the comet’s nucleus as Synthea initiated simultaneous downloads from the libraries of MBR, ISS, Earth, and the Saviors, storing massive amounts of data in her vast memory banks.

Charlie stared at the console that tracked the position of the comet. He did not see the blinking lights or other telltale signs of Synthea’s downloads. He had always laughed at Wolf and his ignorance of space. Now, a man he called a friend had been ripped out of his life. Wolf knew he was going to die. Charlie had heard it in his final word: “Bye.” Then his life support readings flatlined at ISS Medical.

Someone was crying. A woman’s voice kept sobbing, “It’s my fault he died.” It took a few seconds for Charlie to realize it was Dr. Mason. She was still on the line. But why was she crying? She barely knew Wolf.

“Savior Two, this is ISS. What’s happening? Wolf’s life support readings flatlined on our screen. Over,” Ron announced.

“Ron, this is Charlie. The shuttle was caught in Nomad’s gravity well. Wolf might have entered a DSC, or he may have frozen to death. Either way, we’ve lost him. I’m sorry.”

“Wolf was a good man…and my friend,” Ron said with sadness in his voice.

“That’s not all. We fed the partial data from the shuttle’s computers into the simulation. Wolf wasn’t able to scan for deployment of the OMPs, but we’ve discovered Earth’s gravity has influenced Nomad’s angle of impact. We have less than ten days before the comet hits. It has picked up speed. The gravitational effects are causing havoc on Earth even as we speak. And we’ve discovered Nomad has a solid hydrogen core. My god, we are in trouble! Do you know what happens when solid hydrogen ignites?” Charlie asked in a panicked voice.

“There’s no such animal, Charlie. In 1935, a couple of physicists predicted that under the immense pressure of two or three million psi, hydrogen atoms would display metallic properties. The hold over their electrons would weaken, allowing them to escape. Since then, metallic hydrogen has been the holy grail of high-pressure physics. Hell, Charlie, we think that is what Jupiter is made of. How can we know what will happen if it’s ignited?”

“We will know soon enough. Doctor Mason was right—if we had tried using the OMPs on the comet, it wouldn’t have worked,” Charlie said.

“Probably not. I have to tell the crew about Wolf. I’ll check in with you later…if we’re still around. ISS out.”

* * *

Ten days later, nearly all of the earth’s remaining inhabitants were staring up at the sky in terror. Nomad was conspicuously visible now, even in broad daylight. It was like having another sun in the sky, but an intense, bright blue. Its tail seemed to wrap around the sky like an ancient dragon. The comet’s proximity to Earth was causing freak electrical storms, and the weather around the world was in chaos. Tsunamis and hurricanes hammered coastal cities, and several extinct volcanoes erupted. Doomsday had arrived.

Less than a billion people were still alive on Earth, and a mere four million were packed into the military shelters that had been constructed to ride out the impact. No one seriously believed the shelters would hold up, but some remained hopeful. Several auditorium screens on the MBR showed the global destruction, and satellites provided a real-time feed of the incoming comet. The Saviors, MBR, and the underground bases on Earth watched the impact. All held their collective breath as death rained down on humanity’s once-proud accomplishments.

All of the top scientists on the moon were watching the horrific scenes play out on earth, except Dr. Cynthia Mason, who had opted not to watch. She had spent the last week and a half in the underground storage area working on the DSC units. She had been obsessed with work and barely slept since the failed shuttle attempt in which Commander Wolf had been lost. An exact replica of the shuttle was stored in the massive underground area, and she had been working around the clock in a frantic attempt to rescue Wolf. She refused to believe he was dead.

Dr. Mason had installed the DSCs and her newest AI computer technology into the replica ship. She attempted to establish a communication link with Wolf’s shuttle using her AI’s newer, state-of-the art capabilities. She believed that if Wolf had managed to activate SYNTHEA’s matrix, her newer and more powerful AI should be able to pinpoint and hijack his older, less sophisticated system. She would then be able to ascertain whether he had made it into the DSC...or died. A chill ran down her spine at the thought.

Dr. Mason had just run a successful simulation on whether Wolf could have survived the cryogenic freezing. It was promising. Her newer AI also informed her it had finished scanning the comet and reported Wolf’s shuttle was intact and functional. Suddenly, a terrific impact shook the MBR. The force of the impact sent Dr. Mason staggering to the ground. She crawled to a command module and flipped a switch, gasping at what the cameras revealed. Another terrific concussion forced her to close up the shuttle. She waited impatiently while the payload bay doors closed. Several massive explosions rocked the underground chamber with the force of a dozen nuclear bombs. She shouted an order to the ship’s computer as an entire section of the room fell in and the lights went out.

The noise from the impending collision was astounding. Howling winds tore down what remained of buildings and uprooted trees all over the planet. Major earthquakes shook the planet, loosening the lithospheres of the tectonic plates; somehow, the underlying asthenospheres remained intact. The comet lit up the sky as it approached within a few thousand miles of the earth, and then it hit in Antarctica.

The explosion was immense. As Nomad hit the Antarctic plate, it impacted at such a shallow angle that it plowed through the planet like a bullet through an apple. Molten rock was thrown into space as Nomad burst through the earth’s crust. After losing some of its mass, the comet continued on its journey through the stars, slightly smaller and just a little slower. Still, volcanoes around the planet erupted and lava flowed in copious amounts, covering cities as pyroclastic clouds annihilated what remained of the land.

When the comet hit, large chunks of the planet as well as the comet ricocheted into space. A small chunk of the southern hemisphere had been vaporized, and the earth had shifted ninety degrees, reversing latitude and longitude. It was now tipped like Uranus, and what was left of its southern pole pointed towards the sun. Its far northern region was in shambles but remained intact. The planet’s rotation also had changed. It spun, not like a top, but like a barrel rolling down a hill—a shaky, rattling roll caused by the missing chunk ripped from its southern pole.

The Saviors, MBR and the ISS had watched the impact from the satellites positioned around the planet. As the devastation unfolded, the massive amounts of data Synthea was downloading went unnoticed. Planetary debris and meteors that followed destroyed the ISS and several of the domes on MBR. Of the one million people inhabiting the moon base, less than five thousand survived. Meteoric debris had smashed into the population domes, and thousands were killed instantly, blown into space, or suffocated as the atmosphere was sucked from the domes’ interiors. The science dome was buried under tons of rock, and several of the world's top minds were presumed dead. Among the missing was Dr. Cynthia Mason, who had gone to the underground storage area to try to help Wolf. Only the farming domes were spared.

The three Savior ships had been manned as a fail-safe measure. One ship was exclusively military; another was designed for scientific research; and the third was a state-of-the-art farm ship equipped with areas for livestock and food processing. Fifty large farms occupied ten floors of the vessel. Each farm was the size of three football fields, or roughly four acres. The soil had been scooped from the rich, black earth in Illinois and Iowa. Artificial light was installed to photosynthesize plant life. A nitrogen freezer held several thousand species of eggs and sperm from man and animals. Only the crew and food animals were allowed on the ship. An enormous seed repository stored all the current plant life in stasis. If humans were ever going to reclaim the earth, at least they would have the means and the building blocks to do so.