Prometheus and the Dragon (Atlas and the Winds Book 2)

Copyright © 2016 Eric Michael Craig

All rights reserved. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author and publisher.

PUBLISHED BY

Rivenstone Press

Section One: The Best Laid Plans

Chapter One: Leather and Dust

Chapter Two: Questionable Motives

Chapter Three: Neighborhood Nuclear Superiority

Chapter Four: And So the Race Begins

Chapter Five: Making a Sparrow out of an Eagle

Chapter Six: Don’t Come Knocking Again

Chapter Seven: Prometheus Rises and the Dust Settles

Chapter Eight: The Dawn Over Megiddo

Chapter Nine: When Paths Diverge

Chapter Ten: Reactive Decisions

Chapter Eleven: The Battle of Prometheus Ridge

Chapter Twelve: The Harder Path

Chapter Thirteen: Hard Places and Rocks

Chapter Fourteen: To Weep for the Dragon

Section Two: Archangels and Demons

Chapter Fifteen: A Change in Tone

Chapter Sixteen: The Birth of the Archangels

Chapter Seventeen: Walking it Back

Chapter Eighteen: Holding Fire

Chapter Nineteen: Facing the Winter

Chapter Twenty: Terror and Promises

Chapter Twenty-One: A Deepening Sea of Red

Chapter Twenty-Two: Overtures and Undertones

Chapter Twenty-Three: To Rage and to Despair

Chapter Twenty-Four: Standing Against the Tide

Chapter Twenty-Five: Cathedrals of Dust

Chapter Twenty-Six: The Thinnest of Margins

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Ultimatum from the Chaos

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Miracles in the Mists

Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Villagers Storm the Castle

Chapter Thirty: Pulling out the Big Guns

Chapter Thirty-One: No Stillness in Which to Sleep

Section Three: Ashes and Dust

Chapter Thirty-Two: Embers in the Dark

About the Author

For Devin, and Jeff.

My best friends.

Together we have stared into the face of creation and have seen the truth staring back at us, even if nobody wanted to hear about it.

I know the truth is still out there, and we need to keep planting the seeds, so that others will someday enjoy the fruits of what we have seen.

Thanks for keeping the dreams alive.

Journal Entry: Viktoria Rosnikov:

“
About a year ago, nobody knew how this would work out. We still don’t in reality, but it’s been tough. Impossibly tough.

“
It all started when Danielle Cavanaugh and Carter Anthony discovered that damned asteroid. Colton had been using Stormhaven’s money to fund their work after the government pulled out of Spaceguard, and now it doesn't matter why he did it, he was right. Since we were the money behind their work, they managed to get us the information about the asteroid before the government buried it.

“
I don’t know if that was a good thing or not, but because we DID know about it, President Hutton turned us into Public Enemy Number One.

“
Within days of the discovery, the US had launched into a headlong rush to stop this asteroid, and they’d shanghaied the ISS to build some kind of warhead that could be used to deflect it away from the earth. The biggest problem they faced though wasn’t building the “Hammerthrow Missile” itself, it was that when they conscripted the space station, they managed to absolutely piss off the rest of the international partnership that owned it.

“
Colton was never much for believing in the authorities, or their ability to get things done, so he wasn’t about to just sit back and wait for them to save the planet. No, that wasn’t good enough for the mighty Colton Taylor. He had to make his own plans to save the day.

“
Because they expected to keep the whole situation under wraps, the idea that we wanted to build a private evacuation colony on the lunar surface didn’t sit well with the government. We nearly got our asses shot to hell while he fought that out with them. Fortunately the threat of disclosure, and the very public launch of our first spacecraft, the Dancing Star, held them off for a bit. Although when General Marquez of the Air Force Space Command took over things, it got a lot more intense.

“
We did catch a lucky break when we made some allies inside the Japanese government. They already had an axe to grind with the United States over the ISS and they helped us dodge several more bullets (almost literally). Of course, the Chinese managed to keep the US Administration off balance too, with their Zhen-Long mitigation mission.

“
When DHS Secretary Anderson got killed, the US administration went into siege mode, and everything went the rest of the way over the edge of insanity. President Hutton declared a national state of emergency and seized control of the media, and pretty much everything else.

“
So our threat of disclosing the truth about the asteroid lost its teeth.

“
We were about to have to give up, although I don’t think Colton would have ever done that. He’s probably more insane than the situation was.

“
I honestly didn’t think there was a hope in hell, but like I’ve said before, Colton Taylor is the luckiest SOB alive, especially when it comes to turning adversity into opportunity. When a Russian supply ship collided with the ISS, it left most of the crew stranded in space suits with nobody able to get up there to rescue them before they ran out of air.

“
We put together a mission to save them and ran the Air Force blockade with two of our ships. After that the US backed off.

“
The Japanese, and the other space agencies that had been part of the ISS, helped us form an Independent Space Alliance and as a result we got our licenses to fly our ships in spite of the Government’s resistance.

“
That brings me to the creation of this colony, and my being stranded here on the moon.”

Viki sat back in her dark apartment and read over the entry she had just dictated. She knew she should have been keeping a journal all along, but she wasn’t the kind who felt driven to take the time to keep up with it. She’d been here for months, and this was the first time she’d ever tried to record what she’d lived through.

When she looked the file over she realized why. So much had happened between then and now, that there was no hope she could do justice to the reality of the things that had gone on. Really, if anyone wanted to know more, the computers kept infinitely better records than she did.

Through the lens of time, probably nobody would care about her opinions anyway.

Shaking her head she leaned forward, and hesitating only a second, hit the delete key.

Fortunately, Papa knew how to keep a secret, and how to lie about it.

Section One: The Best Laid Plans

“
Sometimes there are things that God Himself puts in our path to challenge us, to force us to face our own pettiness. It is only when we can triumph over ourselves, that we will have reached the full potential He has in His heart for us.”

Warren McDermott,

NASA Astronaut, Commander of the Eagle, Flight Log Entry

Chapter One:

Leather and Dust

Control Room, Sentinel Colony, Luna:

The view out the window never changed. Although it was a damn sight different than it had been when they started building eleven months ago, for the last couple months it looked the same every morning. Gargantuan robots hauling cargo, mostly inflatable shells, out of boxes dumped by the never ending stream of ships from Earth. The boxes themselves were then pushed to the return pile, past the end of the loading docks.

They’d achieved an incredible amount since the outpost had been established. Initially only the two study habitats and two supply modules, Sentinel Colony now covered a square mile with inflated domes and vaults. Much of the process of building had become automated, and they were growing at a steady rate of three domes a week. As they inflated a new building, it was covered with polymer concrete and buried under ten feet of dull gray lunar regolith.

Viki Rosnikov stood staring out the Control Room window, surrounded by proof that Colton’s genius, or his dumb luck, had been up to the task, even if she was still unsure of the demons that had driven him down this path. She didn’t share his absolute faith in their reality, but she had to admit so far his vision had bordered on prophetic.

Viki’s ears popped from a slight change in the air as someone came through the pressure door, and she turned to see Dave climbing up the narrow stairway into the room.

“They told me I’d find you here,” he said, tossing his comset down on the console beside him.

Flinging herself into his arms, she kissed him, driving the breath out of both of them with her squeeze.

“So, you missed me?” he asked, holding her with ease in the light gravity. His arms were still
Earth strong
since he spent most of his time downhill or in transit and under acceleration. She felt it, and missed her own strength, lost forever to the lunar environment.

“I might have,” she said, pushing back against his grip and wiggling in a playful struggle to get away. They were alone in the Control Room. Most of the crews were occupied elsewhere, and even if they weren’t, no one would care. “But maybe I do this for all the cute pilots,” she teased.

Turning loose, he followed her back to the windows, watching for a few minutes in silence. “It looks like a smaller version of what we’ve got going on the other end,” he said. “Ants stocking up for the winter.”