On the day the armada of the dark God arrived its’ members numbered in the thousands ranging in size from boulders to small mountains. The valiant, but belated, efforts of the governments of Earth hadn’t been entirely in vain. Many of the kilometer size fragments had been further reduced in size by the defenders and, in the end, perhaps their efforts had indeed saved the Earth from total annihilation.
Finally the only thing that stood between Earth and its doom was the vaunted NEOPDS that corporations had touted as the shield of humanity for decades. Even if it had worked as well as the claims made by the corporations it couldn’t have averted the immense misery that descended on Earth. But it might have been lessened, and that hasn’t been forgotten over the years.
The icy remnants of Death and Chaos overtook Earth in its orbit in such a way as to lessen the effect of the overwhelming barrage. Many of the shattered remnants deflected off of the Earth’s atmosphere harmlessly, and those that didn’t, lacked the shattering hyperbolic force that accompanies a direct collision. But because the invaders approached from such a slow, relative speed trajectory, the barrage would be a long and protracted one. And so the first wave of the Calamity swept out of the cold depths of space at a world fully aware but unprepared for the onslaught.
On the first day of the Calamity the NEOPDS fired eighty-eight missiles at fifty-two targets. Of the eighty-eight, thirty misfired and their launchers had to be cleared, a two hour process. Of the fifty-eighty missiles that actually left the rails, six failed to detonate and eight lost guidance and came nowhere near their targets. Forty-four of the missiles found their targets and twenty-four of the inbound were deflected or fragmented enough so that their remains flamed out harmlessly as they entered the atmosphere. Twenty-eight inbound harbingers of doom escaped the defensive action relatively unscathed. Of those, six crashed harmlessly into the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean south of the Philippines, sending minor tsunamis onto the shores of the Antarctic.
A three hundred meter icy harbinger of death plunged into the roiling atmosphere of Earth, past the ineffectual attempts of the NEOPDS, at an angle of twenty seven degrees; inbound for the ancient city of Athens, the cradle of democracy. At an altitude of eighty four kilometers the object began to crack and shatter, the remnants staying on the same trajectory as the parent. The main body and its residual pieces all struck within a one kilometer area just five kilometers south of the heart of the city producing numerous craters, the largest fully nine hundred meters across and two hundred meters deep. Within milliseconds a 5.8 seismic event was felt by everyone within ten kilometers of the strike. A mere fourteen seconds later, ejecta measuring as large three meters, was descending on the terrified citizens of Athens, raining death and destruction within five kilometers of ground zero. Ancient structures that had survived the ages fell and crumbled before an onslaught far more powerful than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. Just thirty seconds after the initial strike the ancient city of Athens was wiped from existence when the shockwave from the event passed through. Traveling an incredible eleven thousand kilometers an hour, it swept through the hills of the birthplace of democracy toppling skyscrapers, twisting bridges and sweeping all away before it as if the wrath of God were upon the ancient city.
Ten thousand kilometers away a six hundred meter iceberg descended off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, at an angle of thirty two degrees and struck the surface of the ocean twenty kilometers from the five century old city. A five kilometer fireball appeared instantly, brighter than sixty suns, and in less than a second the thermal radiation had swept into the world’s sixth most populous city where twenty five million residents were preparing for their day. The wealthy had abandoned Rio and were floating ten kilometers off shore calculating that their chances of survival would be better than remaining on land. Their calculations were incorrect and the thermal radiation from the impact instantly set the floating cities afire, burning their occupants to death within a second.
On shore the ghettos of Rio, built of plywood and destitution were instantly ignited, as the burning maelstrom swept through the city. It being the dry season in Rio, the trees within the city became billowing fireballs, spreading the flames rapidly through the doomed city. All of this occurred within the first second of impact. Four seconds after impact, a seismic event with a magnitude of 4.7 brought the hapless people indoors running out in panic and directly into the firestorm pummeling the city. Many died thinking an earthquake had set their beloved city aflame. At one minute after the impact, as the city lay still burning and rumbling, the shockwave arrived. With sound waves traveling eighteen hundred kilometers an hour the wave leveled anything still standing. Just six seconds later the dust and ejecta from the seafloor arrived, with much of the rocky shrapnel being twenty centimeters in width. It shredded any safe haven that the people of Rio may have found. Rio, for all intents and purposes, was dead when the tsunami, towering one hundred and ninety meters high, came barreling in from the sea. The instrument of the dark god rolled across the jewel of South America until it met the resistance of the surrounding mountains. The towering wall of water piled up against the barrier. The subsequent waves pushed against it forcing it higher and higher still, sweeping religious icons from the tops of the surrounding peaks of Old Rio. Finally, being repelled by the barrier, the massive wall of water reversed its course and swept back out to sea, taking any evidence of Rio’s existence with it.
An eight hundred meter ice ball slammed directly into Mexico City leaving a five kilometer crater and burning everything and everyone within twenty kilometers in a horrendous fireball. What the fire did not destroy the 7.3 magnitude quake toppled just four seconds later and what the quake did not topple was swept away by the twenty six hundred kilometer an hour shockwave a minute later. It hardly mattered a few seconds later when ejecta over a meter thick rained down within a twenty five kilometer area. Thirty six million people were gone in less than two minutes.
In the Texas panhandle another eight hundred meter iceberg slammed into a natural gas refining facility and every town and city within fifty kilometers was burned or destroyed in the blaze and shock wave that followed.
By far the most devastating strike on the first day of Armageddon was on Cheyenne Mountain. The impact was observed from two hundred kilometers away. The president and all of his cabinet died in a fiery explosion as the invader from the outer realms leveled the mountain and all around it.
The vice president had died earlier in the day when the plane he was on suffered a mechanical failure and went down. His was one of the few non-Calamity related deaths in the hierarchy of the U. S. government that day.
The defensive actions of the United States might’ve very well fallen apart at that point if not for the actions of the newly appointed Speaker of the House, Samuel T. Lansing, next in the line of succession.
History records that Lansing rode a popular wave of anti-corporate public feeling into office ten years prior and that his popularity was such that when his party gained majority control he was selected as their voice. Only five months into his job as Speaker, he was a forty-five year old former farmer from the Midwest. He was confident and devout in his estimation of the worth of humanity, a rugged, raw boned man with an inner strength that had never faltered. His vocal outcry against the excesses of the corporations had endeared him to the populace but had made him a prime target for corporate political concerns.
But Lansing stepped into the breach on the first day of the Calamity and steeled the remaining vestiges of the American government and military. He immediately established contact with Chinese Premier Lao and coordinated the defense of Earth through the NEOPDS.
On the second day of the Calamity the electronic display of the world indicated thirty two detonations on planet Earth. The majority of those were of no consequence but Paris disappeared from the “active” list as did Shanghai.
On the third day of the Calamity, Samuel Lansing was dealt a grievous blow when word reached him that his wif
e and daughter had been killed at an underground base in the Appalachians.
President Lansing had walked away from the monitors without a word, a distant and forlorn look on his face, and into his private quarters. Those in the control room regarded each other with wary glances, pregnant with a grim certainty; the framework of Earth’s defense would surely collapse and all would be chaos. Premier Lao had called for President Lansing when he’d heard of the tragedy and spoke with Lansing privately. What was said in that most private of conversations between those two men no one can say. But thirty minutes later President Lansing returned to the command center and directed the deployment of further assets in his defense plan. There was never another word spoken of the matter, by him or those closest to him.
Lansing ordered all anti-ballistic missile platforms, air, surface, ground and subsurface, brought online throughout the world. Those overseas were not ordered to return home but to report their readiness to whatever authority remained in existence in their place of deployment, and if there was no authority, then they were to act as a defensive shield to protect humanity in their area of concern. He personally transferred six Mekong class battle cruisers and four squadrons of Hurricane ABM aircraft in the Asian theater to Premier Lao for Chinese homeland defense.
Washington and most of the eastern seaboard were lost that day, washed away in the most massive tsunamis in history. By mutual assent Lansing and Lao committed their assets only to targets inbound to major cities. Four orbiting NEOPDS emplacements were destroyed by debris on the third day, further reducing the capabilities of the struggling planetary defense system.
On the fourth day of the Calamity the NEOPDS fell apart. Six units went offline for unknown reasons, never to return, and four more were destroyed by space debris. President Lansing and Premier Lao then directed the remaining units to reorient to meet the overtaking threat. Only eight were fully operational on the worst day in the history of humanity. Eighty-two objects larger than two hundred meters in diameter evaded the NEOPDS. Antiballistic Missile batteries were up and fully functional, by order of the two leaders, but not all areas could be protected by them. The only hope of the ABM sites was to fragment the incoming objects above ten miles and avoid catastrophic ground impacts.
A half kilometer wide fragment was reported inbound to England and five minutes later London dropped out of communications with the command centers in China and America. At 2:00 p.m. EST Frankfurt and Lisbon disappeared as well, the result of multiple hundred meter strikes all within a kilometer of the cities. Throughout the day Lansing and Lao stayed in constant communication from their underground bunkers. At 5:00 p.m. CST Chicago was inundated by multiple tsunamis from Lake Superior, as were other cities along the Great Lakes of America. During the long night seven more major cities disappeared from the ever shrinking grid. By midnight Central America was the recipient of three Tunguska like events spread over a two thousand kilometer area, leveling entire countries in their destructive wake.
And so the long days of the Calamity crawled on. Throughout the ordeal Lansing and Lao were never more than ten meters from their command posts and in constant communication with each other. As their munitions and assets diminished they shifted priorities to rescue and prevention operations. To the people under their command they seemed more than human, taking each loss in stride and never ceasing to alter operations and priorities when the need arose to reflect their existing capabilities. It is doubtful either man slept more than four hours on any day during the agony of the Calamity.
On day forty-five of the Calamity the west coast of the old United States was lost to tsunamis caused by multiple impacts. Communications could not be established with Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco or Seattle. And still the pounding continued. The arsenal of Earth was now spent but the two leaders refused to submit. Ordinary tracking systems and missiles and even artillery were employed in last ditch efforts to fragment the celestial objects as they approached population centers. Fortunately, the objects descending on Earth were diminishing in size and even with the diminished capabilities the two leaders were able to establish a protective umbrella over the remaining population centers.
By the sixty-second day only two countries were still communicating on the disaster net. China and America remained as the only shields for the Earth. On day sixty-seven a five hundred meter object descended on Beijing, pummeled throughout its transit by the remaining facilities guarding the ancient city. Communications went black and frantic calls by the American command center received no response. Later that day Premier Lao reestablished communications from a mobile center on board the American Battle Cruiser Defiance in the Yangtze River, which, as an odd quirk of fate would have it, had been stationed in Asia as a demonstration to China of America’s strength and resolve by Lansing’s predecessor. His American counterpart wept openly in relief at the news of his survival.
On the seventy-second day of the Calamity the last Earth communications satellite was destroyed by the debris now floating around the Earth. Six hours later the feeble remains of Death’s magnetized core exploded into magnetized dust and encircled the planet. Earth was now isolated from its colonies, even those on the Moon, for the foreseeable future. Once again Lansing and Lao had foreseen the eventuality and low frequency and relayed HF and UHF communications were reestablished quickly.
The deeds of Lansing and Lao inspired awe in their fellow countrymen and the citizens of the Earth, giving hope to a battered world in the last days of the Calamity. They stood firm in their respective command centers, inspiring their people to even greater deeds by the sheer force of their presence. Like fabled generals from the annals of history they always retreated to a predetermined position from which humanity could once again spring forward. Their presence in their respective command centers produced a hushed awe such as must’ve accompanied the passing of Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee or George Washington through the ranks. It was often joked among the military personnel of that time that if the Calamity had continued beyond the summer Lao and Lansing would’ve erected huge slingshots to continue the fight for Earth’s survival.
But mercifully it did not continue. On the eighty-eighth day no object struck the surface of the Earth and the survivors prayed fervently to whatever god they worshipped for an end to the bombardment. The eighty-ninth and ninetieth days also passed uneventfully and humanity dared to hope for an end to the death raining down from above. But while the people were spared the rain of death, the skies were alight with the remnants of the deadly armada. Streaks and explosions still occurred frequently and a shattered humanity flinched with each air burst.
As the month of October loomed, Lansing and Lao both moved their command posts into the open to take stock of all that was lost. Lao wept bitterly as he surveyed the devastation of his country and of the world in general. It is said in the general legends of the time that he made one statement, “With these tears I christen a new beginning”. President Lansing, with typical Midwest aplomb, merely scanned the devastation and muttered “Now our real work begins”.
Both men were right, each in their own way, as they would be many times over the years to come as they struggled to rebuild a shattered world. The Earth, through the heroism of the many, had survived the most scathing devastation ever visited on it without suffering the ultimate death blow many had feared. But those who thought the worst was in the past were merely caught up in the exultation of the moment. Survivors all over the planet were now faced with the very real business of survival.
THE TIME OF THE DYING
Humanity emerged from the onslaught of the Calamity into a shattered and pitiless world. Conservative estimates put the death toll from the initial impacts and the following tsunamis at six billion. Cities were laid waste across the world. Governments had disintegrated overnight. Chaos and death had accompanied every strike from above. The basic infrastructure of civilization had been ravaged in the blink of an eye and humanity reverted in many places to its most basic
tenets of survival.
Weather patterns around the world were disrupted and the icy impacts of the Calamity had deposited the equivalent of all the Earth’s fresh water into the ravaged ecosystems. Sea levels rose dramatically on every shore across the globe. Coastlines that had suffered tsunamis were now inundated by the sea and the basic geography of the world was changed. South America was once again an island and the Netherlands had vanished back into the sea. California became a series of islands and bays. The gulf coast of America was nothing more than an expansive salt marsh and Europe was fragmented. Even in the twenty-second century most of humanity had lived within a hundred kilometers of the seas of Earth. And the seas had reclaimed much of what they had lost over the eons forcing humanity inland. Into this hellish landscape of chaos and despair were thrown the remaining twelve billion members of humanity.
Four hundred and fifty million years ago the Earth suffered a mass extinction of epic proportions. During the Permian Extinction nearly ninety-seven percent of the species of the world disappeared. Archeologists commonly referred to this period as the Great Dying. After June 4, 2119 no human ever spoke those words again except to refer to the two decades after the Calamity. Mostly it was simply referred to as the Time of the Dying.
For the overwhelming majority of mankind the basic tenements of society and safety had vanished. In the twenty-second century very few people worked in the agricultural and food processing industries. The advent of the corporate farm had mechanized the harvesting and distribution of food throughout the population. Only in the American Midwest had the individual farmer stubbornly survived to fight another day. Upon the advent of the Calamity the corporate structure had foundered and collapsed as the executives and CEOs had fled their institutions leaving the overwhelming majority of mankind without any way of feeding themselves.
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