Prometheus and the Dragon (Atlas and the Winds Book 2) (52 page)

Chang Er Prefecture, Tycho:

“It has happened, General,” the Watch Officer said, her voice betraying her reaction. She switched the telescope to the main screen. Nothing looked unusual, but the impact site was facing away from them, almost eight hours of rotation before they got their first view of the crater. And by that time it might well be invisible beneath the cloud and dust cover.

As Lin-Tzu watched the image, she saw a subtle change along the edge of the Earth. It started as a faint glowing thickness that spread over the limb, like a giant blue-white fire. As they watched in silence, the glow spread and she realized what they were seeing. It was light from the explosion refracting through the atmosphere. The flash was so bright and the atmosphere was being compressed so hard, that light was bending around the curve of the Earth.

“Amazing,” she whispered, feeling awe and terror mingle inside her. The glow got brighter, and as she watched, a faint brown haziness appeared above it.

“The ejecta,” one of the scientists standing along the back of the room explained. She looked at him like he had intruded on her own personal showing of the event. She’d forgotten they’d been invited to the command center to watch.

“Are we transmitting these images to Beijing?” she asked, trying to pull her mind back to her responsibility to her country.

“Yes General,” she said. “They are reporting no unusual events yet, but it has only been a minute and a half since the impact.”

“I will inform the Prefect,” she said, turning away from the screen toward her office. He’d released her from further participation at the Unity Conference. Once she’d signed the Treaty, she wanted nothing more to do with the process. She had no disposition for such bureaucratic frivolity. Let others attend the ceremonial reception.

***

Northern Sierra Nevada Mountains, California:

Joe Carsons was a survivalist. Not the running around in camo, carrying an assault rifle, fanatic kind of survivalist, more like the
walk softly and be smart
kind. He’d laughed at all his friends who’d stockpiled guns and ammunition, knowing instead that his mind and the knowledge he carried with him would protect him far better than any of their superior firepower, bulletproof armor, and crazy machine guns would.

He’d taken his family high up into the mountains, well away from the trails and the places where the insane would be likely to gather. He knew where he needed to be. Where the ground would shake, but they could ride it out. His wife had trusted him, and they’d taken care in planning what they’d do when Antu hit. How they’d live light and mobile, doing only as much as they needed to protect themselves, and to gather food to last until the dust settled.

There were caves in these mountains that might survive, but he knew better than to be in one when the quakes started. And he knew they were coming soon. They’d pitched tents in the middle of a clearing, pushing back the thin snow and anchoring themselves firmly into the ground beneath with drilled-in stakes he’d made himself. Deadman toggles that would stand up to a hurricane. They’d also tied their horses to a cable they’d secured around a boulder pile.

He’d seen the flash, listening as the EBS radio announcer had counted down the seconds to impact. It had looked like a sheet of impossibly bright lightning that had stretched almost from horizon to horizon across the northwest. They were more than six hundred miles from the impact, and seeing the sky light up he’d had his first moment of doubt. Maybe they hadn’t gotten far enough away after all?

“Here we go,” he said, grabbing his wife’s hand and trying to look reassuring. They’d done everything they could, taken every precaution. Now, zipping themselves into their space age cocoon of Kevlar canvas, they huddled around their children, holding them tight while Mary whispered a prayer. Joe wasn’t religious, but he respected his wife for her belief. If it gave her comfort at a time like this, then maybe it did some good after all.

Suddenly the Earth lurched. Hard. He’d felt force like that once before, when he’d been tossed off the back of a bull in his young and foolish days. But this time it wasn’t him hitting the ground, it was the ground slamming upward. His wife fell forward on her face, nearly pinning their daughter beneath her. To her credit she didn’t scream. Both kids did instead.

Then it felt like the tent rotated, and took off sideways. Another bull-riding flashback came to him.

This wasn’t an earthquake like he’d ever felt, and he’d been through more than his share growing up next to the writhing snake of the San Andreas Fault. They weren’t shaking, they were moving. Like a huge tidal wave. The ground itself roared with a deep rumbling sound. After several minutes of insane rollercoaster ride, the ground settled down to a steady vibration, and he unzipped the tent to look around.

The sky in the distance was growing dark and ominous, splitting open with blinding flashes of lightning. What terrified him most was the mountains that had been in front of them, were gone, and the level clearing now had a decided slope. He reached back inside, pulling open his pack and grabbing the GPS. He clicked on the display and blinked in surprise. When he’d set up camp yesterday he’d checked their position very carefully, saving the data in its memory. They’d been sitting 6,200 feet above sea level. Now they were close to 11,100 feet in elevation. Almost a mile straight up.

***

Washington:

Sylvia Hutton stood in front of the media screen in the Oval Office, watching the video feed from the North Pacific weather satellite. It was probably the best view of the impact, high enough up to be safe, and fixed to one spot so the perspective didn’t change.

She’d seen Antu explode, at first so bright that it blinded the camera, but as it expanded it dimmed enough that the satellite came back online. Sitting beside her, Janice gasped. The huge fireball grew until it covered the coast from north of Vancouver Island all the way down to the California/Oregon border. Then the top of it split open and spread fire above the atmosphere, turning itself inside out like a glowing popcorn kernel five hundred miles in diameter. Clouds disappeared in a rapidly growing ring as the shockwave rushed outward.

“Oh my God, it’s all the way across the Cascades already,” she whispered, reaching out to hold onto Janice. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the magnitude of what she was seeing, and the room seemed to disappear from her consciousness.

“President Hutton,” a man’s voice intruded on her thoughts. She couldn’t respond.

“President Hutton?” he said. “Are you alright, ma’am?”

She shook her head, still staring at the screen.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I have orders to take you into custody,” he said.

She blinked, turning to face him. “What did you say?”

Janice, who’d regrouped more quickly, stood up and stepped around Sylvia. “Arrest the President?” she challenged. “On whose authority?”

“As of the moment of impact, Presidential Authority has passed to President Herman. He personally signed the orders,” he said, holding out a piece of paper. It was a warrant signed by President Herman.

“He’s given us the option not to restrain you unless you give us problems,” he said. “You too, Ms. Ehrenberg.”

“This is a joke, right?” Janice said, looking back and forth between the President and the agent. Several more men, and what looked like a whole squad of Marines, stood in her outer office.

“I’m afraid not ma’am,” he said, not a trace of humor on his face. “Please, if you will come quickly, we need to proceed before the effects of the impact reach us.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said.

“I’m afraid President Herman anticipated this,” he said, turning and holding out his hand for the handcuffs the other agent held.

“What right does he have to arrest me?” she said.

“He needs your assistance as a special advisor in this time of national crisis,” the second agent said, producing another pair of cuffs and stepping toward Janice. “As an American citizen he does not need to wait for you to volunteer, he has the right to insist.”

“That bastard,” she snarled. “Fine, we’ll go.”

“Thank you ma’am,” he said, a slight flash of relief playing over his features.
“Marine One
is waiting.”

***

Stormhaven:

“Everybody’s accounted for,” Jenna Atkins reported, relief showing on her face as she stood on the edge of the stage. They’d ridden out the first of the effects to reach them relatively unscathed, in the amphitheater. Standing in the open was better when the ground was moving. In fact, other than a few trees that had toppled and several balconies that had collapsed, the Biome was fundamentally intact. They’d been working to patch the roof that had been damaged in the attack by the Army of the Holy Right, and they’d gotten the Kevlar outer skin across the holes when the ground had started shaking.

“What about the back wall?” Andre Duquesne asked, looking up to where several floors of balconies had pancaked together. He’d been acting as the de facto leader of the group since they’d started organizing themselves, and no one had challenged his position. Right now there wasn’t time for debate. They knew the worst was yet to come.

“We’ll need to assess the structural damage,” John Wallace said. Since he’d certified the buildings, he looked a little distressed that they’d had any damage at all. “But it was only the top few tiers.”

“How about Mica?” he asked. The avalanche of concrete had stopped two floors above her new home.

“I am still functional,” Mica said, through the speakers on the stage. They’d fallen over in the shaking, but were still connected. “I have lost all external sensors and am only capable of communicating through the Public Address system. I have no connections to my satellite antennas.”

“That’s good news,” Andre said. “So what do we face next?”

“Assuming no severe aftershock—“ Mica started, but her voice was drowned out by a hissing sound from the roof of the Biome.

“What’s that?” Jenna asked.

“Ejecta!” Bobby Blythe yelled. He was the geophysicist, so that made him the closest thing they had to an expert on the impact itself. “Probably tektites first, and then some bigger chunks. Odds are we won’t have to worry about too many big ones. They’re going to be pretty rare.”

“Will the roof hold?” Andre asked.

“Depends on how much there is,” John said. “A foot or two probably, but we don’t know how much we’re going to get.”

“The Chixulub impact that took out the dinosaurs kicked up a debris layer that was three feet thick in the middle of North America,” Toni said. “But it was a bigger impact.”

There was a loud bang and the windows exploded out of one of the upper level rooms. “Probably a small boulder,” Bobby shrugged.

“Let’s hope there aren’t too many of them,” Andre said. “I feel kind of naked standing out here.”

***

Outside Stormhaven:

The sky had turned black. Not like clouds were rolling in, but like a swarm of locusts were descending on them in a wave. And there was nowhere to hide.

The first few pieces of black glass hit the ground, shattering into shards of molten cinder. Falling black and exploding orange.

“Get into the buses!” someone screamed. They’d parked them in rows almost a mile from the Camp. Close enough, until the distance between had filled with the fiery hailstones. Now it was too far to run, but they tried anyway. The promise of salvation retreated somewhere behind the immediate need to avoid as much suffering as possible.

Five minutes, running through the battlefield of hell, before even the fastest of them got to what little shelter there was in the buses. Skin blistered, hair smoldered, and clothes had blackened holes scorched through them. Even the soles of their shoes had softened and begun to melt. Those who fell behind fell, screaming as they lay writhing on the blistering ground.

The Earth turned black and the sky faded to night. The air itself seemed to swallow up the light, and even the bus headlights could not penetrate the gloom. The air choked with the smell of sulfur and brimstone, burning like acid with each breath.

A shrill whistle rose over the hissing crackle of the stone hail. Wind, a screaming banshee, tore at the crisped skin of the few who still struggled to make it to the buses. Picking up sharp-edged slivers of shattered tektite like a billion razor blades, flaying them alive.

And then in an instant, without warning, a single rock the size of a boxcar falling from near orbit, smashed into the center of the parked buses, ending their suffering with merciful finality.

***

Stormhaven:

The hissing continued, gradually replaced by a screaming shrill howling. “What’s that?” someone shouted.

“The wind,” Bobby said. The Biome sat submerged into the ground, less than ten percent sticking up, so hearing the air screaming past was an alien sound. They’d weathered violent storms before, but never anything where the wind was audible as more than a faint and distant murmur.