Prometheus and the Dragon (Atlas and the Winds Book 2) (11 page)

“It’s just mind boggling to think they kicked up so much gas,” she said. “But I read once that the Apollo landers made a measurable change in the lunar environment, and that it took something like four weeks for the gas density to return to normal.” He nodded, but said nothing.

“So what would happen if we had a pocket drift across the beam?” she asked, turning to face him.

“Like the ones we’ve got here? Probably not much... we’d see a bright flash maybe.” He shrugged. “But if you were to throw a handful of sand in front of it, that could be a disaster. We’d have a small nuclear reaction to deal with.”

“That’s why you put them up on towers,” she said.

“Nah, I thought we did it because they look so much cooler up there,” he said, smiling for the first time in days. She giggled, realizing she hadn’t smiled too much of late herself.

“Operations to Prometheus Control,” Tony said. “We’re reporting all personnel are bunkered in, and you’ve got Camp Mars and the Ivory Tower logged in to watch over your shoulder.”

“Thank you for the heads-up, we’ll watch our language from here on,” Carter said, returning to his station and opening the screens to the President and Danielson.

“Good morning,” he said, smiling. He glanced at his targeting radar and orbital plot. “We’re about three minutes from LoS on the target drone, and about five from our first attempt.” He gave the report for the benefit of the President. Danielson had his own readouts on their status.

“Congratulations, Dr. Anthony,” the President said. “I’ve heard about the heroic efforts you’ve made up there, and I want you to know that I personally appreciate what you’ve done.”

He felt a flash of frustration on Danielson’s behalf and also for everyone else. “It’s been entirely a group effort, Madam President. None of which could have been possible in the first place without Dr. Danielson’s initial work.” Carter was savvy enough to spread the credit around. If this worked, they were all going to be heroes, and keeping peace was worth sharing the glory. Danielson’s face showed his appreciation.

“What are we expecting to see when you fire this off?” she asked.

“Theoretically nothing,” Danielson said. “In a vacuum the particle beams will be invisible, much like a laser. Of course, we know space isn’t an absolute vacuum, so it’s possible we might catch some diffuse energy dissipation close to the lunar surface.”

“Diffuse energy?” she asked.

“Photons and neutrons released as any molecules that cross the beam are stimulated,” he said.

“It shouldn’t be a problem,” Carter said, “as long as it’s light gasses. But with the Chinese kicking up so much other matter into the lunar environment, we’ve got other things in the mix to deal with. Vaporized minerals and a substantial concentration of helium.”

“We’ve got line-of-sight on the drone,” Susan said from where she was standing behind Carter. She’d been watching his console displays because he had the best seat in the house. He nodded.

“If you will excuse me, I’ve got work to do,” he said, watching the checklist scrolling across his screen.

“Prometheus Control to Operations, we are confirming we are go to power up test. Do you show the field of fire is clear of traffic?” he said, reading from the list.

“Affirm, Prometheus,” Tony said from the New Hope Command Center. “The sky is clear and we are commencing the automated alert broadcast.” They weren’t going to make the same mistake the Chinese did and not announce their test. Plus, detonating a six hundred ton cargo carrier that happened to wander into the beam could have a detrimental effect on their health as well.

“Reactor control?”

“Go.”

“Targeting?”

“Go.”

“Power transfer?”

“Go.”

The Control Room hummed slightly as they threw the relays and fed the full reactor output directly to the guns for the first time.

“Downrange Tracking?”

“Go.”

A dozen screens lit up around the room, showing the guns from a variety of locations.

The list went on, step by step, with Carter marching them through the procedure like a quarterback running a two minute drill. Finally every sub-system had been pronounced operational. “We’re ready on this end. Madam President, would you like to make the call?”

“Fire at will,” she said, smiling and nodding.

“Poor William,” Carter said as he pushed the button.

***

On the Rim of Plato:

The two men stood beside a boulder the size of a house, around them a dozen pieces of equipment on tripods were scattered across the ground. “If the Americans are going to announce their intent to test their weapons, they must not mind that we will be watching,” General Wan had said as he sent these officers out to set up an observation post.

So they’d taken their time, to make sure they had an adequate array of sensors and a secure place to set them. They’d recovered Lieutenant Teng’s skimmer but never found his equipment. Apparently he had chosen his position badly, as a landslide had erased his tracks and had probably been what had cost him his life. They would never know for sure, but they’d learned it was wise to make sure you never sent someone out alone.

Their radios carried the repeated warning from the US that the test was about to commence, and they focused on their gear, wanting to make sure they recorded every detail.

The guns began to rotate upward toward a target much too small and distant to see. They knew it was up there in high orbit.

Suddenly the center gun flashed brightly, like lightning, blue-white and painfully bright. A single flash, then several seconds of nothing before the other guns came on. Both astronauts’ helmets polarized against the glare, or they would have been blinded. As it was, they both blinked several times trying to clear the stark white afterimage from their eyes.

Through their now almost opaque visors they could see what was happening. The six beams had run for several seconds, and then they too shut down. The glow that faded was enough to show the entire crater floor. It looked like a thin ball of multicolored plasma dissipating as it expanded away from the ends of the guns. A ridge of dust blew outward in a circle looking very much like an earthly windstorm.

And then they heard it: a growling thunder traveled up through the soles of their feet until it rattled their teeth together. Eerie and disconcerting in its hollow screaming rage.

They both sat down on small rocks and shook.

***

Mount Weather, Virginia:

“What the hell happened?” President Hutton bellowed across the intercom.

“We’ve lost the signal from New Hope,” the technician said. “We’re attempting to get it back.”

She looked over at the other screen that showed Dr. Danielson’s face. He sat there unmoving, his mouth hanging open in shock. “What happened?” she asked him.

“I don’t know any more than you do at this moment,” he said. “We’ve lost contact with the colony, and all but one of the remote camera positions.”

“Please tell me it didn’t blow up,” she said, an icy hand crushing her heart.

“I don’t see how it could have,” he said, but she could tell he was more than a little concerned.

“Is it possible it’s just electromagnetic interference?” Donna Jacoby said from her chair beside the President.

“The guns themselves were shielded against RF emission,” Danielson said, scratching his ear and trying to consider what else it could have been. “I hope that’s all it is.”

“If there was sufficient gas around the beam, wouldn’t it generate a plasma that could have RF properties?” Dr. Jacoby asked.

“Maybe,” he said, still not looking overly hopeful.

***

Chang Er Prefecture, Tycho:

“All sensing equipment just went offline,” Lin-Tzu said. “We’ve got no data coming in at this point.”

“Are they jamming the signal?” General Wan asked.

“We can’t be sure,” she said, “but if they were intending to block our signal, I would assume they would have started before the test and not at the moment it started.”

“Then is it possible they’ve had some sort of catastrophic explosion?” he asked.

“We will be able to detect that on our seismographs in the next few minutes,” she said, opening a link to the geology lab. “This is Major Yao in Operations. Are you detecting any seismic activity?”

“Yes Major,” the tech said. “Just now.”

“Does it look like an explosion?” she asked.

“Not really,” she said. “There is no primary shock. I don’t know what could cause this type of activity.”

***

New Hope Colony, Plato:

“What the hell happened?” Susan said, looking at Carter, who just shrugged.

“I’m not sure, but I think we just found out what it feels like to be sitting inside a nuclear explosion,” he said.

“Holy shit,” she said. “If that’s going to happen every time we try to use this, then I think we built the colony too close.” Her hands were shaking, and she grabbed the windowsill to steady them.

“I certainly hope not,” Carter said. His radar screen was coming back, and he studied it intently. “Well, at least it looks like we hit the target. It’s gone.”

“I thought you weren’t trying to destroy it,” she said.

“We weren’t,” he admitted. “The first pulse was supposed to graze the side, and then the second pulse from the main guns was supposed to detonate the plasma and kick it sideways.”

“But you blew it up instead?” she said. “I guess that’s better than missing it entirely.”

“Operations to Prometheus Control, are you guys all right out there?” Tony Baker said, worry obvious in his voice.

“Yeah, we’re ok Tony,” Susan said. “Carter’s trying to figure out exactly what happened, but at least it looks like nothing melted in here.”

“That was the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Scared the hell out of us, but as far as we can tell we’ve got no damage. Other than maybe some soiled underwear.”

“Hey Tony, can you get a bearing on any debris from the drone with your approach control radar?” Carter interrupted. “Our targeting radar is up, but it’s a tight beam. I can’t tell if there’s anything left.”

“Stand by,” Tony said. After several seconds he came back. “Yeah, we’ve got it, and it’s moving out fast. It’s 25,000 miles from where you hit it, and heading for Mars at almost 150,000 miles an hour.”

Carter flopped down in his seat and covered his face with his hands, exhaustion and relief tearing tears from his ragged soul. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the console in front of him.

“We’ve just reestablished communications with Earth,” Tony said. “The President wants to get a report.”

“Yeah, give us a second,” Susan said. “Carter’s a little ... well, just tell her we’re all ok and we’ll get back to her.”

***

Mount Weather, Virginia:

“Apparently it was a plasma discharge, as Dr. Jacoby suggested,” Danielson said while they waited for Carter Anthony to come online. “There was a much higher gas density around the guns than we’d anticipated when we designed them, and some of the gasses were heavier molecules. If something like that crossed the particle stream, the nuclear reaction would have had sufficient energy to ionize the surrounding area.”

“Will it happen every time they use them?” The President asked.

“I doubt it,” he said. “Do you remember when we discussed that if we were to build the guns on Earth, it would have blown away a large portion of the atmosphere?”

She nodded.

“Chances are the same thing happened there,” he said. “The force of the reaction probably blew a hole in the pseudo atmosphere that’s developed since the
Zhen-Long
detonations.”

Carter Anthony appeared on the screen beside Danielson, his face split by a huge smile even though his eyes were red.

“Are you ok, Doctor?” the President asked.

“Yes ma’am,” he said. “It’s just been a long time since I had ...” he stopped, swallowing hard, “any real hope.” His smile wrinkled but clung to his face. She could see how hard he’d been pushing himself in that instant, knowing that although she felt the weight of the world on her shoulders, he felt the weight of eternity.

She didn’t know what to say. Her words felt flat in her mouth even before she said them. “So I take it the test was a success?” she asked, not knowing what else she could say.

“Unqualified,” he said, sniffling and wiping his nose with the back of a finger. “The drone survived the pulse exactly as we’d wanted, and the secondary beams detonated the plasma. By now it’s 50,000 miles away.”

“And the guns themselves were undamaged?” she asked.

“We’re checking,” he said. “But the discharge doesn’t appear to have had enough energy density to have done much. The electronics survived, and the hardware out there is much more resilient. We’ll go through everything to make sure, but at this point I think we’re ready to start pushing Antu as soon as it comes back into our sky.”