Prometheus and the Dragon (Atlas and the Winds Book 2) (6 page)

“What the hell you doin’ Fuka,” Grady barked. “Back off a bit, you heavy-handed oaf. You damn near clubbed us off.”

Ben looked at his controls. He was precisely stationary. He could see the cable holding the piece below him showed no motion. But it did look like the team was swinging back and forth slowly. “It’s not me,” he said. “Look at the other teams. They’re all dancing out there.” He was watching several men, further around the latticework, arms flailing as they tried to keep their balance. One of them dropped off the side of his perch, catching himself on his MMU and swooping away from the structure and out into the open space in the center.

It only took Fukazawa a second to realize what was happening. He’d been a kid when the Tokyo Quake had leveled a hundred high-rises. He’d seen video showing how the buildings had swayed visibly before they started crumbling in on themselves. “Get off the grid,” he hollered onto the open channel. “It’s a quake!”

Several dozen men shot up into the sky in the same instant that the eighteenth tier started collapsing. It twisted inward in slow motion, tearing pieces and chunks out of the seventeenth tier as it went. Parts of the sixteenth followed it downward.

Glancing around, he watched the sections zippering toward the crater floor. The teams, all equipped with MMU’s, hung at various altitudes above the collapsing structure. He watched the pieces tumbling downward, not realizing for several seconds that the material crib was located below them. There were more than a hundred workers down there waiting to hook up the next loads.

“Oh shit!” he roared, snapping his skycrane over and chasing the falling debris. He felt the sickening realization that there was nothing he could do before the beams hit bottom, but at least he’d be on the ground to rescue anyone fortunate enough to still be alive.

***

Sentinel Colony:

The sandstorm lasted for several minutes, ending with what sounded like rocks pounding against the roof of the Command Center. About a minute into it, Dave had grabbed Viki’s arm and dragged her out of the building. She was about to swear at him when he gave her that look that said
shut up and do what I say.
She didn’t fight him until he stopped at the pressure door. Then she pulled her arm away and gave him a look of her own. They left it open, but stood by just in case.

“We were standing by a window in the only building in the colony that’s above ground,” he said. “What’s wrong with that picture?”

“It’s only a sandstorm,” she said. “Ok, so there’s no air out there.”

“Where do you think it came from?” he said.

“I thought you said it was the Chinese, testing another warhead,” she said, listening to a loud bang echoing upstairs.

“And that would make this stuff the ejecta kicked up from the test. It might be carrying some big rocks along with it. Most of them would probably be toward the end of the cloud, but they could be pretty substantial.” He leaned against the hatch and swung it partially closed as another one pounded into the roof. He was ready to throw his weight against the door if he felt the pressure drop.

“The last test didn’t do anywhere near this much,” she said. “I wonder if they were closer this time?” Anger flashed in her eyes, like she felt it was personal attack.

“I don’t know, but we should be able to get some data from the other colonies and triangulate on where it was,” he said. The banging stopped, so he opened the door and stepped back inside, listening. “Sounds like it’s over.”

***

New Hope Colony, Plato:

“Hey Susan, are you still anywhere near the ridge?” Carter Anthony called her on the radio. She’d just left the Prometheus Control Building, so he knew she couldn’t be far.

“Yeah Carter, I’m only about a half-mile from the door, what’s up?” She was riding her electroquad toward the Colony. She’d been working for several hours, and was waiting for some instructions from downhill as to what they wanted to do with Beijing Bennie’s corpse. She eased off on the throttle in case he needed her to come back.

“I’m having a problem with the laser range finder. I don’t know what’s up, but if you could take a look see at the number three turret and let me know if there something wrong with it, you’d be my hero,” he said.

“Too lazy to suit up?” she teased, slamming the brakes and sliding around in a nice bootleg turn. She gunned the quad and shot across the field toward the number three tower. About halfway there she felt her front wheels shimmy. She slid to a stop before whatever had caused it tossed her off.

“Did you feel that?” she said.

“Yeah, what the hell was it?” he asked. “If I didn’t know better I’d say we just had an earthquake.”

“Me too,” she said. She looked up at the towers. They were swaying as she watched. “That might be your problem. Wait until they quit shaking and then try to do the alignment.”

She twisted around, and clicking her chin switch, dropped the binoculars over her eyes. She looked back toward the colony proper. She could see a wave rolling toward the nearest buildings. She watched the otherwise lifeless regolith leap up and then drop back into place as the ground shock rolled past.

“Control to Commander Winslow,” Tony Baker called over the general channel. “We’re recording a quake on our perimeter seismos. Dr. Olson is requesting that you meet him in the Geology Lab.”

“Roger, I’m on my way,” she said, gunning her quad and spinning back around again.

“We’re also getting a report that Unity has suffered major damage to their main dome structure. They’ve got casualties, and are asking if we can render assistance,” he said.

“Shit,” she said. “Make sure we haven’t got any injuries of our own, and then if we’ve got a lander on the pad, send the Doc and some supplies.”

“Copy,” he said. “Sentinel’s also sending a triage team and some heavy lifting equipment. They just confirmed that they’ll be on site in ten minutes.”

“Damn show offs,” she said. She’d be lucky to reach the Geology Lab by then.

***

Unity Colony, Eastern Mare Frigoris:

The crater floor looked like someone had tossed tons of oversized matchsticks all over the ground. Most of the dark gray composite carbon beams shattered on impact, splintering and fraying. Many of them had stuck into the regolith and protruded out like a stand of saplings after a fire. Eerie shadows of harsh black turned the forest into a nightmare where eighty-seven men were trapped, dead or dying.

Benjamin Fukazawa and his team were among the first to start pulling people out of the wreckage. He’d dropped the beam still hanging from the bottom of his skycrane and using the grappler, began moving debris carefully away. Grady and the others darted around trying to make sure that when he hooked up to something it didn’t send another beam crashing down. The suit radios were useless, the screaming and groaning of the trapped crew all came through simultaneously. Fortunately his team lead had worked high steel back on Earth, and had taught him the standard hand signals that all steel workers knew.

It was slow going, and he knew that meant they were losing men out here, not just to their injuries but to the loss of air from their spacesuits. It was going to be bad, and he tried to ignore the idea that more were dying and just focus on his job. He concentrated so intensely that his world became nothing more than watching Grady’s hand signals. Down. Forward. Left. Grab. Lift. And back again for another piece.

At one point he looked over and saw a small fleet of ships drop over the rim of the crater. Sentinel. They’d sent help. Four cranes, the multipurpose ones they called minies, and a big carrier ship. The carrier headed down to the center of the crater and landed, dropping two cargo boxes. One of them had a red cross on the end, the other one had a big door that was opening even before it had fully settled to the ground.

Ben didn’t have time to watch what they were doing. He turned and headed back to the scrap heap to get another beam. Lights came on above him, and the landscape below lit up so that they could see for the first time what they were doing. The harsh shadows were still there, but there was enough light that they could see into them. Shuddering, he realized just exactly what was lying in the bottom of those dark cracks, and he almost wished he couldn’t. There were bodies. Lots of them.

A hissing sound blanketed the radio interference and a voice came over the frequency, the first coherent one since they’d started. “This is Stormhaven Rescue. We’ve set up a Triage center with full emergency facilities. We’ve also got ten heavy lifters to move the larger components out of the way. We need someone down there who can tell us where we’re needed.”

The radio went back to its cross talking cacophony.

“Rescue teams, we need you all to change to 120.2 MHz so that we can establish clear com. It’s not doing anybody any good to stay on the open frequency,” the voice said, again cutting through the interference.

Ben tuned manually to the side band that they’d established, thankful that someone had decided to take charge.

“This is the US lander
Pogo
, we’ve got a surgeon and supplies onboard,” another voice said. “We’re about two minutes out and requesting landing instructions on-site. Do we have a clear approach?”

Sighing in relief, Ben turned back to his controls. Forward. Down. Forward. Grab. Lift.

***

New Hope Colony, Plato:

Susan stood staring at the computer plots of the seismos. Sentinel colony had been the first hit, followed by Unity, then by their own quake. The three facilities had enough diversity in location and terrain to give a pretty clear idea of what had happened, and where it had been. Of course, the Chinese weren’t sharing their data, but this time it wasn’t needed.

“So, we were the only one with the sandstorm,” Torri Capone said across the video link.

“And the fact that you had it at all is pretty amazing, considering how far you are from Tsiolkovskiy,” Greg Olson said.

“Amundsen is a lot closer than we are,” she said. “I wonder how they came through?”

“You can count on the fact that they were braced for it,” Susan said. “It would have been nice of them to give us some warning.”

“No kidding,” Greg said. “I’m sure Unity’s going to be out for blood.”

“I’m sure,” Torri said. “Papa, our main computer, is estimating that the explosive yield was at least 1.28 teratons, depending on placement.”

“Teratons,” Susan gasped. “You mean it was 1,280 gigatons?”

“Yeah, or 1.28 million megatons,” she said.

“I don’t even think I can imagine that,” Greg said. “It’s got to be twenty thousand times bigger than the largest bomb ever tested on Earth.”

“Yeah, that’s something to think about, isn’t it,” Susan said. “Talk about Neighborhood Nuclear Superiority.”

***

Chapter Four:

And So the Race Begins

Mount Weather, Virginia:

“The Chinese National Space Agency announced the completion of the third and final development phase of its
Zhen-Long
Earth Defense Program today,” the official news anchorwoman read from her teleprompter. “Director General Jiang Xintian said the test of the Forced Helium Cycle Warhead was a complete and total success, and the explosive force generated was sufficient to guarantee the vaporization of the Antu asteroid.”

The President sat in her cave of an office watching the video with Donna Jacoby. Dr. Jacoby had inherited Al Stanley’s job, in part because she was competent, but also because the only other candidate for the job was now a quarter million miles away, working on the other end of the Prometheus pipeline. Donna had not known she was Sylvia’s second choice, but it didn’t matter because she was skilled at keeping the President apprised and educated. Though in truth, she still missed Al.

“The detonation of the warhead exceeded the one thousand gigaton goal set forth in the
Zhen-Long
mission guidelines,” the reporter said. “Director General Jiang went on to explain that the next phase of development will include the construction of the booster and guidance control systems that will carry the fourth and final warhead in the program to its rendezvous with Antu on September 20th of this year.”

“It exceeded their goal by more than twenty-five percent,” Dr. Jacoby said. “It was quite an accomplishment.”

“Hmmph,” the President grunted, unimpressed. “After the last one, it wasn’t that big a leap was it?”

“Probably not,” the scientist said, “but it’s still an astounding demonstration of their engineering capability. It’s 25,600 times bigger than the biggest man made blast ever. It’d easily be a planet killer in itself.”

Sylvia leaned back in her chair, listening to it squeak and drumming her fingers on her desk while the woman on the screen finished her report. “In an unrelated side note, the CNSA also announced the death of Dr. Chun Li Chang, the director of
Zhen-Long
warhead development at the Amundsen Development Complex. Dr. Chun had a coronary incident and was pronounced dead by the medical staff at Chang Er. Director General Jiang expressed his condolences to Dr. Chun’s family, and assured the world the Doctor’s portion of
Zhen-Long
was completed and would not be affected by his untimely death.” Throughout the statement the commentator's face never changed from its casual smile. The President wondered if the woman was even real. It was getting hard to tell a person from a computer-generated avatar, but it didn’t matter.