The project managers were momentarily caught off-guard when they were informed to immediately devote all resources to successfully completing the project.
Several days later, the project lead called his corresponding number in the DoD, and arrangements were made to transmit the images securely to the White House bunker. The time of transmission was agreed upon, and the necessary security protocols enacted.
At the appointed time, the President had excused himself from the interview he was having with Piers Morgan, and, after thanking him and the CNN video crew, left to be escorted into the Bunker. He went through the required biometric scans and challenge-response questions, and without delay was ushered into the room, where he immediately sought out his Chief of Staff and requested a cigarette. It was lit, and the President had settled into the routine of prominent men discussing important things.
Now, the men in the room watched as The Wave began its assault on Jupiter.
*****
“It’s not actually like we are seeing whatever that is,” began the Chief Scientist. “Please, can you explain that a bit?” asked the President. “I thought you eggheads told me you had made it visible to the naked eye?” “Not, exactly, Mr. President,” the man responded. He pointed out a large wall-mounted flat panel monitor. “What we are seeing is like the wake of a boat or a contrail. We are seeing enhancements of the artifacts of the Phenomena’s movement through space. We actually have no real idea of what the appearance is.” “What can you tell me about it?” asked the President. He blew another smoke ring, but it almost instantly dissipated, hit by the blast from a vent. The scientist said, “We have no analogous entity. We have no record of anything even approximating this.”
“Sir, telemetry reports that contact has been made,” reported another man. “We expect a total elapsed time for the event to pass entirely through the planet Jupiter of thirty-three minutes. “
The men watched the monitors. “Get the ISS online, please,” asked the President.
He puffed on the cigarette and reflected that his wife would probably be very displeased by his behavior at this very moment. Then, he chuckled and thought “Fuck it.” “ISS on Channel 42, Sir,” said a tech. “Commander Armstrong? This is the President,” he began and thought it made him sound like an officious prick. “Ben,” he began again, “what’s the scoop, my friend?” The President and Commander Benjamin Franklin Armstrong had been fraternity brothers and had shared both women and booze, participating in the usual hijinks that college roommates do.
They had also weathered a fair number of scandals such that their political enemies nicknamed them “The Teflon Twosome”, or the “Dynamic Duo”. Their adventures had brought fame, fortune and power to both men. It was rumored that they had entered a pact of some kind when attending University and that each knew secrets about the other that would prove lethal to their respective political or professional careers.
However, nothing had ever been proven conclusively, and the two men had enough respective clout and power to bull through the inevitable political assertions.
“Mister President,” began Commander Armstrong, emphatically using the title. “It’s looking pretty much the same up here as it is to you. We are detecting large spectral shifts in the organic gas diagnostic instruments, and you can probably notice how the planet appears to be undergoing a slight shift in the albedo.”
The President stamped out his cigarette in an ornamental ashtray, which had originally belonged to Theodore Roosevelt. It crushed neatly under his manicured fingernails and left a small brown stain on his index finger. A little rivulet of gray smoke wafted upwards, then the smoke was gone as well.
“What do you make of it, Ben?” asked the President. “It looks like the atmosphere is changing a bit, but we can’t really be sure of what is occurring until we get a better analysis from Kepler. Since light is traveling faster than the phenomenon, we are able to get some data that we can extrapolate. We know that chemical makeup of Jupiter’s atmosphere is ammonia crystals and possibly ammonium hydrosulfide. The visible high altitude clouds are located in the tropopause and are arranged into bands of different latitudes, known as tropical regions. The planet’s rotation and tidal effects from its moons cause circulation patterns that lead to the infamous storms. Wind speeds over 360 kilometers per hour, or about 200 miles per hour, are standard.”
The astronaut continued. “The cloud layer is over thirty miles thick and consists of at least two decks of clouds: a thick lower deck and a thinner area above. There has been occasional lightning activity recorded, which posits the existence of water. Some of these lightning bolts are larger than the state of Rhode Island.”
The President wished he had another cigarette. He thought of his wife, and her disapproval. He mentally shrugged, and then looked around the room at the others, and listened.
“The orange and brown clouds of Jupiter are caused by upwelling compounds that change color when they are exposed to ultraviolet light from the Sun. We are not sure, but most spectral analysis reveals phosphorus, sulfur and possible hydrocarbons, primarily methane.”
Commander Armstrong paused for a moment, checking some instruments and fiddled with a number of controls at his console. He frowned and thought carefully for several minutes before his next comment. The room of men waited.
The President decided one more cigarette was in order and extracted one from his aide.
He lit it himself this time, with a cigarette lighter that his friend had given him upon Armstrong’s return from Afghanistan. It was a handsome thing, and the ivory inlays, although highly illegal and restricted from import into the United States, added a vicarious thrill to its casual use.
“Mr. President,” said the Commander, “It looks as though a large portion of the atmosphere of the planet Jupiter has undergone some chemical change. The gas mixture reflects the reduction of methane, and other organic chemical compounds, by a minuscule percentage. It’s practically nothing, but it is a real effect of the impact. We can map it.”
The primary monitor image changed to a color enhanced version of Jupiter, and everyone stared as the globe turned slowly from a yellowish tint to a slightly redder hue.
“That’s an artificial overlay, Mr. President so that we can actually see something. Here is the real-color version,” said the Chief Scientist.
He pushed some buttons, and the image was now of two planets. The one on the left-hand side of the screen was in real color and the right-hand one was the yellow-red tinted image. The progression of changing color repeated over and over again sped up by the computer. It grew and swallowed the planet, the sphere changing from yellow to red. The real-color image hardly changed at all. It seemed a bit duller, but nothing dramatic.
“How much time has elapsed since this began?” asked the President. “Forty-five minutes, sir,” came the answer.
The images now showed Jupiter after The Wave had impacted. The real-color image contrasted with the false-color red tint, looking like the baleful eyes of some immense dragon.
Nobody in the room could know of the great changes happening on Jupiter. For its size, the visible effects were subtle. Had a probe been able to survive the crushing gravity, hurricane winds, and poisonous atmosphere, it would have reported a startling thing – vast quantities of the organic compounds near the upper atmosphere of Jupiter were gone. The entire planet’s supply of organic molecules had undergone a cataclysmic change. These effects were directly attributable to The Wave, but there was no instrumentation known to mankind that could have deciphered the readings to make clear the danger facing the Earth.
“How long until it impacts Mars?” asked the President.
Commander Armstrong answered. “It’s roughly 330 million miles from Jupiter to Mars. At the current velocity, we estimate sixty-six hours.”
“And, how long after that until it hits us?” the President asked.
The Chief Scientist answered. “Sir, at this point in their respective orbits, Mars
is about 55 million miles away from us. The phenomenon will impact Earth eleven hours after the Mars impact.”
“We have just about seventy-seven hours left to prepare,” he said.
The President puffed, and then looked at his cigarette with a slight frown of disgust. It had gone out.
*****
BUCKSPORT, MAINE
The General was dreaming. It was not pleasant. He was reliving one of the times in his life that differentiated him from the lesser men he commanded.
He had been in charge of a squadron of Special Forces that had a classified name. Their use was a breach of all international protocols of law and rules of war. They only went in on missions of assassination that were sanctioned by nameless people holding unknown positions. Deep in the Pentagon, this secret cadre of military leaders ran an efficient campaign of reducing enemy forces by attrition. And, they were winning.
But, this time, The General – he hadn’t been The General then, he remembered as he tossed fitfully in his troubled slumber – had been trapped with his men in a dank, stinking cave deep in the mountains of Afghanistan.
They had been under relentless fire for several days, having been detected by pure accident. There had been no way to prevent the discovery, by a small caravan of heroin traders, of their illegal presence.
The incursion force had no choice but to eliminate all witnesses and traces of their passage. The toll was fifteen adult men and twelve women, and sixteen children. This included five infants. All of them and the camels, horses and goats of this nomadic tribe were killed, dismembered into very small pieces and buried in caves. Identifying characteristics, such as jawbones, eyes, fingers, toes, and hair were removed and burned completely with phosphorus grenades, in a deep pit, which was then buried under sand and rocks. All traces of this activity were camouflaged, and when his men had finished their grisly work, no one would ever detect anything had been amiss.
An added bonus was the salvage of a fair quantity of diamonds that were to be traded with another caravan for the heroin. The men of the squad were not strangers to booty, and all of them were pleased that the mission had yielded a small amount of personal financial gain. Each man was allotted a share of the spoils of war, regardless of the danger or complications of any given mission. This one would prove to be memorable. The General and his men, modern-day privateers, smiled at their good fortune.
Unfortunately, the tribe with whom these people were meant to rendezvous also showed up, and this force was far larger. They had come to trade heroin for diamonds.
The leader of this tribe was expecting a caravan that would pay him for his heroin packages, and then take them to an abandoned Russian air base some sixteen kilometers to the North. There, the heroin would be airlifted to various cities, where the organized crime syndicates would distribute them onto the streets. It was a lucrative arrangement for everyone involved and served the dual purpose of poisoning the infidels who would partake of these drugs. The leader had no love for those not of his faith and thought nothing of the transaction other than in ordinary business terms.
Expecting the caravan’s leader to meet him at the appointed time, he was surprised at first that the agreed-upon signals were not forthcoming. His man had made the necessary vocalizations and followed that with a single gunshot. After two minutes, he repeated the action. Again, there was no response.
The leader then took his horse and four men towards the transfer location. He thought he might find them encamped, or at least within sight.
Instead, he came upon the rendezvous point and noted that there was no one there. He knew this area well and also knew his counterpart was not a man who made a habit of being tardy. In fact, the running joke amongst the other tribes was that old Absala’am had a clock in his rectum, to which he referred many times each day by placing his head far up his ass. Regardless of his standing within the tribal hierarchy, no one ever arrived before him, and he was never late during decades of business.
An old hand at warfare, the leader immediately sent out scouts and reconnoitered the surrounding terrain. He set up defensive perimeters and ordered his men into concealed positions. His heaviest arms were several mortars, three heavy machine guns, and about a dozen RPG rocket launchers.
One of the scouts eventually came back with news of The General’s squad. They were hiding in an area about one click from the where the meeting was supposed to happen. Under normal circumstances, the team would have never been discovered, but the diamonds they had appropriated had made them just a tiny bit less wary. Their self-congratulatory attitude and carelessness were about to cost them dearly.
The Afghan tribe surrounded The General and his men in the evening and silently moved into their camp.
Two men were killed instantly, never making the slightest sound. The General suddenly found himself looking down the barrel of an AK-47. His sergeant and one of the other men were also being held at gunpoint.
It had not ended well. The General and two others managed to escape into the caves and spent almost four months there. They lived by eating spiders, and other unseen bugs, and drinking the moisture off of the cave walls by licking them. The caves were endless, and no light was able to be had. The alternative was unthinkable. He had seen what the Afghans had done to his men. That these three had managed to run and evade capture seemed miraculous to him.
Less miraculous was that, to survive, he had had to kill and eat the others.
The first one was easy. The man had suffered a grievous wound during the escape and succumbed within a week. His tenacity was remarkable, but one morning he had just not moved again. The General and the other man, starved at this point, took advantage of this source of protein.
The second time had not been easy, and The General had been lucky to win. He had been clubbed in the dark, by the other man, and because it was so dark, he had missed his target. The rock glanced off The General’s arm, and he immediately found the other man’s throat and crushed it mercilessly until he stopped struggling. Then, he sucked out the man’s eyeballs.
No one ever found these men, and since their very existence was denied, no one ever cared to discover what had happened.
The General, resurfacing months later, caused some embarrassment to the men who had deployed his squad. Having learned his lesson, he systematically killed them.
He made it known that it was their failure for not having provided his team with the necessary intelligence that could have prevented the unfortunate event in the first place that angered him.
When he had finished, the cabal had new members. The General was now the most feared implement of death they had at their disposal. He had their attention, he had their backing, and he had their respect.
It was then that they began calling him “The General.” Officially, the promotion in rank was still far off, but no one doubted or crossed him again.
Unconsciously, The General stirred again, his arms batting at invisible spider webs, and roots.
In his deathbed, this motion caused the tubes and wires on his body to sway and tangle.
The monitors beeped on somberly, recording his life as it ebbed from him.
*****
SOMALIA, AFRICA –
The woman had walked into his room, and barked an order at the young thug, sparing his life. She looked very familiar, and for a moment Amadu Mfala had a brief feeling of déjà vu.
He blinked and waved a hand across his forehead. His eyes were apparently deceiving him. Maybe it was just his being old, and his brain was tricking him. The woman looked a lot like his long-dead wife.
She was dressed well and showed presence of command. She did not look as though she fit in with the boy-soldiers, but they all deferred to her. They backed out of the room, with sidelong glances at Mfala.
There was a low murmuring, and he realized that the soldiers were in awe of the woman, but also afraid of her. And now, they were scared of him as well.
Mfala did not understand what had happened. He
looked carefully at the woman’s face and saw hardness in her cold eyes. She glared down her aquiline nose at him, and he felt as though she were looking at something she would usually wipe from her shoe. He began to stand and walk toward her, but she motioned for him to stand his ground. She proudly drew herself to her full height and smirked.
“Father,” she spat. “Who are you to call me that?” he asked.
“Once I was Sophia Anderson. You may call me N’yala.”
Amadu Mfala sat down hard. His youngest daughter was still alive.
*****
NEAR THE 6950TH GUARDS AIR BASE (FORMERLY 22ND GUARDS HEAVY-BOMBER DIVISION) IN ENGELS (SARATOV OBLAST)
New orders had come to Major Anton Golovanov since the successful test of the kH-101. They were ‘eyes-only’, and he was careful to isolate himself prior to opening them.
Having determined that his precautions were adequate, he allowed himself a small guilty pleasure and retrieved a bottle of vodka from the freezer in his room.
He poured a shot glass full to the brim, thought briefly of fallen comrades, said “Vechnaya pamyat” out loud, and downed the entire amount. He slammed the glass upside down, then retrieved a second large tumbler.
This he filled with ice, and a bit of lime juice. He then topped it off with a large measure of the vodka.
Major Golovanov moved to a large teak desk he had obtained in Scandinavia and had shipped to the base. He sat in an ergonomic chair that balanced on tensioned cables and cantilevered dangerously over a pivot. He set his glass down on a coaster that was made from the armor of a tank that he’d destroyed in Afghanistan, during the official declaration of hostilities there. He had a small chuckle mentally at remembering that this was not the only souvenir he had won there. On cold days, a matching shard of the armor reminded him of its presence near his lower ribs. He grimaced a bit at that, but then shrugged it off and began to decode the orders in earnest.
Terminal Reset Omnibus: The Coming of The Wave Page 4