Fractured Earth Saga 1: Apocalypse Orphan (7 page)

A badly shaken Charlie broke the silence. “Oh, my God! Everything is destroyed! It will be thousands of years before we can resettle there.” He stared at the faces of his command crew and then radioed, “MBR from Savior Two. Do you copy?” Static answered his call. “Rotate satellite three-two-one to view the moon base. Move people! We have to know what’s going on.”

“MBR from Savior Two. Do you copy?” More static. “ISS from Savior. Do you read me?” Static.

“Is the Hubble still operational?” Charlie asked, and someone answered that it was not. He tersely ordered, “Move satellite two-fifteen to high moon orbit, and get me General Mitchel on Savior One. Prepare this ship to move to the MBR landing zones.”

“Savior Two, this is Savior One, I have General Mitchel on Com. Go ahead,” said a distraught female voice on the radio.

“General Mitchel, are you able to raise anyone on MBR or Earth?” Charlie asked.

“No, we lost contact with the bunkers a few minutes before impact. We were preparing to land on the MBR landing zones,” a gruff voice answered on the radio.

“Yes, General Mitchel, we were of the same mind. Once we know what is going on, we need to meet face to face. Most of the world’s leaders were on MBR, and as of now, General, you are driving this train if no one else is alive.”

“I know. Let us hope it is only temporary. Savior Three, stay put. Savior One and Two move to position to check out MBR,” General Mitchel ordered.

The giant spacecraft moved silently, like sharks gliding through surf. There was so much debris surrounding Earth that it was impossible to determine the extent of the devastation, though the outline of the planet could be seen through the rubble. Looking beyond the earth, one could see Nomad speeding away, barely affected by its glancing blow with the planet. As the ships entered geosynchronous orbit, the damage became evident. MBR had been destroyed. Scattered life signs appeared on the screens, a few deep underground, but most in the agricultural dome. The central glass domes had shattered. Bodies floated in space like dust in the air after a bag of flour has been dropped. The agricultural domes were intact, so food would be available, but the other domes might be beyond repair. Thousands had died on MBR and tens of millions on Earth.

“Savior Two from Savior One. Copy?”

“Savior Two copies…go ahead.”

“Charlie, this is worse than we thought. We need to land and send rescue parties to search for survivors. I want to take a ship close to Earth and see what we have left to work with. Get your team together and give me a timetable of when you think it might be safe to land. MBR’s farming dome will be our permanent base for now.”

“Yes, General Mitchel, we’ll get to work on it immediately.”

The three Saviors were repositioned to land on the moon in an attempt to save what was left of humanity. The ships carried sixty thousand people. Would humanity rise from this catastrophe? Could it bounce back? Fighting men and women, scientists, doctors, and farmers had survived. The mission would be a Herculean undertaking, and it would severely test the resilience of the human species to build from absolute destruction and the ultimate depths of despair. But this story is not about humanity’s resurrection from Nomad’s destruction; it is about a man who returns to Earth far in the future. This is the story of Commander Orlando Iron Wolf.

Part 2

The New World

Chapter 4

N
omad had hit planet Earth and knocked it off its axis, tearing away the southern pole. It would be fifty thousand years before the comet’s orbit brought it back to Earth. As the centuries passed, a small spacecraft remained trapped in coma of the comet, its compact but powerful engine playing a tug of war that kept the ship from being consumed in the comet’s nucleus. The ship’s lone occupant remained frozen solid in an experimental cryonics chamber. The comet sped through the galaxy, passing binary suns and skirting black holes, quasars, and blue giants. It streaked past alien planets where inhabitants marveled as it appeared in their night skies and eventually disappeared. Some worshiped it as a god or an ill omen; others were scientifically advanced enough to study it. None suspected the lone hitchhiker slept frozen in its coma.

As Nomad traversed the galaxy, it lost about half its size after violent impacts with asteroids, meteors, and several moons. The tiny ship in its coma had been pulled in deeper after one collision with an asteroid many centuries ago. The ship was now frozen to the comet’s surface. Its diamond-hard shell protected it from damage; its nuclear engine remained operational and pointed inline to the comet’s trajectory. It was actually propelling the comet to some small extent, causing the comet to spin awkwardly, propelled by the thrust of the wide-open engine. The ship’s computer kept the engine operational, firing it at intervals, repeatedly trying to break it free from Nomad’s surface.

Eventually, Nomad completed its vast orbit through the Milky Way and returned to the small solar system it had visited so long ago. If Nomad were sentient, it would say it wasn’t a terrible comet or a doomsday harbinger; merely that it was a traveler. It would recognize the solar system it was now entering and remember it had collided with a small blue planet. It would recall that there were eight planets in the solar system, some with multiple moons; a ringed planet; a hulking orange one with a red spot; and the small blue one, now with two moons. One of the moons orbiting this watery blue world was dead and cold; the other was blue like the planet it orbited. Nomad would remember the larger of the two blue marbles; a diversity of life had thrived there when it streaked through this remote part of the galaxy fifty thousand years ago. It had damaged the planet when it collided, and the planet had inflicted its own damage on the comet; yet both had survived. Now, Nomad was back to drop off something it had taken on its previous visit.

Nomad lost more of its mass as it came within the gravitational pull of the huge orange planet. Large pieces of the comet were torn loose and crashed upon the moons in orbit around the gas giant. It continued on its course, ejecting a mixture of carbon dioxide and hydrogen gas from the intense heat of the yellow star at the center of this small solar system. Nomad passed Mars, and as the heat of the yellow sun intensified, more and more of its ice melted. A large piece of ice shattered, and a small metal object ejected from the comet’s surface, its computer firing the ship’s engines with precision timing to avoid the vast debris field of ice and rock strewn across its path. The craft was battered and beaten, yet it remained operational. It headed towards the earth, and at its maximum speed, it would take months to get there.

The small vessel pulled away from Nomad, and the nuclear-powered heaters inside the cabin began to compensate for the extreme cold. Ever so slowly, the temperature rose and life support within the cabin was gradually reactivated. The onboard computer assessed the body frozen solid in the DSC unit and ran countless simulations on how to thaw it safely, settling on a plan to defrost the body gradually over a six-month period. The computer also slowed the engines and entered orbit around Mars. Nomad continued its lonely trek back into deep space. Perhaps, if the comet survived, its orbit would bring it back to this sector of the Milky Way in another fifty thousand years.

* * *

Six months after the shuttle broke loose from Nomad and entered an orbit around Mars, a weak magnetic storm shook the craft. Inside, a man slept in suspended animation on a metal cot in a clamshell-shaped cryonic chamber. The vibrations from the storm continued, and the man stirred. Suddenly, his eyes blinked open. The light in the module was intensely bright. He had no idea where he was, and it took several minutes before he figured out who he was. He was lying on his back in the closed shell of the DSC. He heard a hum and felt excruciating pain as the needles embedded in his skull retracted. Lights on a nearby panel blinked rapidly. The man tried to roll over but was too weak to complete the action. His muscles were sore and numb; it felt like he hadn’t used them in weeks. Little did he realize that he had not stood and flexed his muscles for thousands of years. As a wave of vertigo hit him, he began sweating profusely.

After about an hour, the man’s memory drifted back. With tremendous effort, he rolled onto his side. The clamshell opened, and he inhaled stale air. Touching his face and head, he discovered he had a full beard and two feet of tangled black hair extending down his back. He still wasn’t thinking clearly, so it didn’t register in his mind that something was amiss.

When Synthea sensed Wolf had awakened, she activated the artificial gravity and opened the DSC. Thirty minutes later, he made it up into a sitting position. He lurched to his feet and stumbled to the captain’s chair, falling into it. Dizzy and out of breath, he pressed the communicator button and tried to talk but only managed a choked squawk. He swallowed hard, trying to make saliva in his mouth to alleviate the dryness. Finally, he uttered a few sounds. “At…Atl…Atlantis to ISS, do you copy?” The words rattled out as if he had been a smoker for years. He tried again. “Atlantis to ISS, do you read me?”

Wolf reached out and initiated a channel scan, listening for sounds of civilization, but he heard only the crackling emptiness of static. He spooled up the positioning computers and attempted to power on the long-range cameras, but they didn’t respond. The positioning computer confirmed that he was orbiting Mars. He would need to wait several hours before he could use the ship’s telescope to view Earth. Turning on the radio, he looped his original transmission to MBR, ISS, and Earth every two minutes. Then he eased back in the chair and closed his eyes for a few seconds.

Two hours later, Wolf awoke to intense pain and cramping in his legs. He forced himself out of the chair and walked unsteadily to the commissary to find something to eat. Dehydrated food stored in a small cabinet offered a choice of soups, casseroles, vegetables, cereals, and other items. Wolf consumed some nuts and a granola bar. He brewed a packet of coffee and prepared some chicken soup. It tasted awful, but he’d eaten worse. The warm broth soothed his stomach.

Wolf was drinking the coffee when the ship’s telescope broadcast an image of Earth on a small video screen. Astonished, he spit out the coffee, spewing it around the cockpit area. The moon was where he expected it to be, but the earth was different. It was smaller. But what made Wolf spit out his coffee was the other moon, a smaller version of Earth, orbiting the planet like a blue marble. It was about the size of the earth’s original moon and blue with water. The telescope revealed visible landmasses and mountain ranges. The original moon refracted a thin, bluish halo around its craggy shape. The halo looked odd, as if a rudimentary atmosphere was trying to form. Wolf sat there, staring at the twin planets, and a half-delirious laugh escaped his lips. He kept laughing, as if he’d gone insane. He was brought back to himself when a glitch in the artificial gravity caused the coffee in his cup to float out into the surrounding air. A moment later, the glitch auto-corrected, and the coffee splattered in his face. Wolf cursed as he gazed in silent shock at what remained of the earth.

Finally, he asked, “Synthea, are you active?”

The computer made a weird sound as it attempted to answer but gargled as if it had water in the speakers. Wolf made several adjustments on the console and asked again, “Synthea, are you online?”

“Yes, Commander, thank you. My adjustments were out of sync. I have not been fully operational for a very long time,” a beautiful female voice responded.

“A long time? How long?” Wolf asked in a shaky voice, fearing the answer.

“Stand by.” Moments later, Synthea answered, “Based on current astrophysical data and the onboard time system, I estimate fifty thousand years have passed.”

“What!” Wolf shouted in dismay.

“The date is June 23, 52026. We have been away for a very long time.”

“My God, how is this possible?”

“We were caught in the coma of the comet Nomad. You entered the DSC. I activated it, and you were cryogenically frozen. Obviously, it worked, although I cannot explain how or why. It is theoretically possible, but DSC science has never been successful. You are the first human to be revived from cryogenic freezing in the DSC.”

“You have been online for thousands of years?”

“Yes.”

“How is that possible? The power should have run out. How do I have life support? This ship should be dust by now.”

“The internal power level remains constant. The life support was designed for low output requirements. The I29 Plutonium IFLEX engines went into semi-permanent meltdown, and that simulated random fire orders. Core implosion was minimized to enact the exact…”