The hardest part of building this bomb was the meticulous care put into the core’s shape. It had to be perfect in thickness, width, curves and consistency. It looked like a cross section of a small hollowed out donut. A hollow donut cut across so you were left with the lower half, hole still in the middle. You could put chips in it, set a bowl in the center hole for dip. This was the shape—already denser than lead—that was hit by the implosion, and the one million atmospheres of pressure it brought to bear.
First, the outer wall was slammed against the inner wall. Forget your chips. Then the two fused walls were driven inward toward the core—forget your dip.
At this instant in time, the 18 crew members within the room had no clue that anything out of the ordinary was afoot. The bomb was still intact and functioning, the device’s last act, still to come.
A mini particle accelerator fired deuterium atoms at a beryllium plate. This generated an immense number of neutrons and sent a storm of them traveling at relativistic speeds into the imploding core at the same instant the plutonium arrived at a precise density.
This resulted in fission.
In the core, at millions of separate places, the unbelievably small plutonium atom, which by quantum standards was an unbelievably massive fuzzy ball of electrons, was invaded by an infinitesimally small neutron, which headed for the atom’s nucleus, which was 10,000 times smaller than the atom. Once there, it was captured by the strong atomic force and combined with the nucleus, making it unstable. It began wildly gyrating until it broke apart. This process caused the quarks that make up one or more neutrons or protons to break apart and…E=MC2. More importantly, however, was that the process released two or more neutrons that flew off and repeated the process…chain reaction.
At this point, the 18 crew members in the room still didn’t notice anything because they were vaporized before their nervous systems could register anything.
A ‘jiffy’ later (in physics, about 3 × 10−24 seconds) the same thing that happened to the 18 crew members happened to Abby, her son and daughter, Captain Zimmer, and across all three of the huge ships, over 300,000 other souls.
---
Whitehall didn’t know if the initial flash from the devices would hurt a person’s eyes or not, so to be careful, he looked down at the black box and his hands after pushing the button. With gratification, he watched his hands light up. After the initial flash, he looked up. He expected to see three explosions, but realized when he saw the single expanding fireball that the ships had been too close together.
From behind, he heard feet hit the ground and walk toward him. Johnny was saying, “What the hell was that? Was…was that one of the arks?”
Whitehall calmly set the black box down. “Not just one…all three.”
As Johnny walked up beside Whitehall, he slowly rose and drew his revolver in a single smooth action. As he turned toward Johnny, the boy was looking at Whitehall’s face saying, “Did you…did you do…”
The gunshot rolled into the emptiness of the barren landscape and a round hole appeared in Johnny’s forehead, a stream of red and white gore exploded from the back of his head. He hit the ground before the stream of blood and brains did. He never saw the gun.
Whitehall holstered the weapon and retrieved the black box. Walking around the body and the spattered mess, he got into the jeep, started it and drove off. He knew that time was running out.
---
The shadows were growing longer; the sun was getting lower, headed toward the horizon. Fortunately, clouds covered the eastern half of the sky completely hiding the grossly swollen moon, the Blackship and the energy arc it had created.
Grace, Isabella and Puddles hurried down the empty road toward Trinity City, where all the workers had lived. As far as she knew, it was deserted now. They had about three-quarters of a mile to go. She looked around at the desert stretching out around her as far as she could see.
“Mommy…will they come back for us?”
“No, honey, but it’s okay,” she reached down and patted Isabella’s hand. “We’ll be okay. Don’t worry.” Grace had gone into fearless mode a while back. Having Isabella to take care of simply required this. Had she been alone, she would have been terrified, but not with her daughter depending on her. She had turned into a ‘Mama Bear’; she would fight anything to protect her little Isabella, and that was that.
She reached down and scooped up Isabella who was holding Puddles. Grace would carry both of them for a spell.
That’s when the ground got brighter all around her. For a brief instant, she was confused and thought the change was an illusion of some kind from pulling Isabella from the ground too quickly. Then she looked upward and had to turn to find the cause. On the western horizon, a new, larger and whiter sun was shrinking. She quickly looked away and covered her daughter’s eyes.
After a second, she looked again. It dawned on her what it might be, but she could make no sense of that. Whatever it was, it was deeply disturbing.
They continued down the road.
---
Jumper One had had the three arks on radar as she entered the atmosphere. When they exploded, Adamarus, Dials and Van were utterly astounded and devastated. Over 300,000 people, the ones supposed to save their race, gone in a flash. What could have happened?
Adamarus had some very mixed feelings. The horrible and unbelievable news that Grace and Isabella had been left behind had illogically caused Adamarus a tiny hope that it was a mistake. Now, watching the fireball fade, he prayed feverishly that it had not been a mistake.
---
“Sir.”
Wicker turned and looked up at a Commander he did not know and his eyes widened as he took in the pale face and shocked eyes. “Yes?” he asked, shaken without knowing why.
The officer handed him a slip of paper. He unfolded it and read. Then read it again. His eyes darted to the left-most screen—the one tracking the three arks. Slowly his head bent down and he crumbled the paper in his hands.
General Burnwall had been watching and he stepped forward.
Dr. Donnelly had been looking at the main screen showing the arc of energy that had stretched over the planet, but now he turned toward the President and Burnwall.
Burnwall asked, “Mr. President?” He stepped quickly to his side. “James, what is it?”
When Wicker looked up, tears ran down his face. Many around the group were looking and they were stunned by the agony in the President’s face. Wicker stared off unseeing, crying openly. He finally handed the crumpled paper to Burnwall.
Burnwall read it and he seemed to deflate. Unable to speak, he handed the paper to Donnelly.
Donnelly read it and gasped, “Oh my God! All three ark ships have exploded. All three are gone! Gone! Oh God!”
The Dark Mountain Central Command and Control Room fell apart for most of the people in that room had had loved ones on the arks.
---
The Trinity compound and Trinity City were still in sunlight, but Amular’s terminus was approaching and with it the moon and the Blackship and the unbelievable white energy that arced across the sky.
As Jumper One approached, her altitude allowing her to see above the cloud cover, the horrible apparition was in plain view—the Larger Moon, now so much closer and looking grossly swollen, and attached to it, a black sphere.
“Oh, mother,” Van exclaimed upon seeing it.
“Hey…what is that?” Dials asked.
“What?” Adamarus asked, more focused on bringing the ship down.
She zoomed on a line of descending dots and the dots turned into smooth black staple-shaped objects. They were all baffled and filled with dread.
“It’s the alien ships Burnwall mentioned,” Adamarus said.
---
Burnwall spoke to an aide and minutes later, on the main screen, smooth black staple-shaped objects appeared, descending through Amular’s atmosphere.
The aide said, “They are about a mile up now. We don’t
have an accurate count because we can’t see some areas, and the rise and fall of the terrain makes an estimate impossible.”
Wicker was a wreck. He asked, “How long before they’re positioned?”
“Well, Mr. President, we can’t be sure at what altitude they’ll stop, but at current speeds, they’ll hit the ground in about thirty minutes so…before then.”
The president watched the staple-shaped ships through swollen eyes. “It almost seems…I don’t know…mechanical or something…”
Donnelly finished Wicker’s thought, “You mean, it seems like the way a machine would approach a problem.”
“Exactly, and I don’t know why, but somehow seeing something like this terrifies me even more.”
---
Grace, Isabella and Puddles reached the edge of the city as the sun neared the Western horizon. The clouds had a strange glow to them.
They spotted a swing on the porch of a deserted house. Grace considered stopping and sitting down—she was exhausted.
It was almost certain that Trinity City was completely deserted and Grace was not sure what worried her more—never seeing another living soul or discovering someone else or…something else was still here.
“Where do we go now, Mommy?”
Grace smiled and said, while moving a stray locket of hair from Isabella’s face, “Well, we’ll just have to figure that out.”
“We’re lost, huh?”
Grace held her daughter closer and said, “Your father once told your brother Nero—long ago when he was your age—that a person was never really lost. It just seemed that way if you didn’t look at things the right way.”
“What did Daddy mean?”
Grace set Isabella and Puddles down and continued, “Well, one time long ago, when we went camping up at Shawn Lake, Nero and Adamarus left our tent and wandered into the woods, and they were just talking and not really paying attention to where they were going. They walked, talked, looked up at the treetops, and spun around for fun. Then they decided they needed to get back to camp, but that’s when they realized that the forest looked the same in every direction and they didn’t know which way to go. If they went the wrong way, they would wander deeper into the forest and get far more lost than they were now.
“Nero told your father, ‘Lost is lost—it can’t get worse than it is now.’”
Adamarus said, “Well, how about this: We haven’t been walking that long and our camp is in the middle of other camps. Right now, if we were to somehow luck out and walk in the right direction for three or four minutes, we would come to some landmark or part of the campgrounds that would lead us back to our tent—either the road, an outhouse or another campsite. Does that sound right?”
“Yes…but which way is the right direction?”
“I’m getting there. If, however, we walk the wrong direction, we would walk further away from our camp and probably any landmarks that might help us. Therefore, we’d be even more lost than we are now. And here’s the main thing: We wouldn’t know how to get back to here in order to be less lost again. We’d be stuck in the state of ‘more lost’. Add to this that there are probably only two or three right directions and all the rest are wrong directions and we have some serious problems.”
“What can we do?” Nero had asked, now an edge of panic in his voice.
“I’m going to tell you and I want you to really listen and remember all this so you will never get lost in the forest again.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, Nero. Anytime you’re lost in the forest, pick a tree—one that’s different looking for some reason—one you can notice from a distance and find your way back to. Be sure that you will not get the one you pick mixed up with another one.” They looked around but all the trees looked exactly alike.
Nero said, “Oh no! What now?”
Adamarus started taking off his coat and said, “Actually, this usually happens. Therefore, we just pick any tree and you place something, usually an article of clothing, preferably one that has a color that will stand out from the forest. Since my coat is red, we’ll use that. Now we hang my coat on a branch high enough so we can still see it from a distance. Now that tree is different and we can get back to it. Then we turn completely around so we are facing away from the coat. Now look straight out in front of you. Do you see anything special out there?”
Nero stared hard, taking in every detail. “Well, there’s a mound of rocks off to the left.” Nero pointed.
“Okay, that will do. So, we are going to walk toward an imaginary point about five feet to the right of the rock mound. Do you know why we’re doing that?”
“Because we wanted something right in front, but there was nothing so we invented one based on the rock pile.”
“Absolutely right—hey, you’re a smart kid for your age. Okay, let’s head out.”
They walked about five feet and Adamarus stopped and made himself and Nero look behind them making sure that they could still see Adamarus’ red coat, then turned back, refocused on their imaginary spot and started walking toward it, turning around and looking for the coat every ten steps. Adamarus and Nero proceeded until when they turned and checked, the red coat could barely be seen.
“Okay,” Adamarus said. “Let’s look carefully around for anything that can lead us back to our campground.” They could see only forest so they returned to the tree with Adamarus’ red coat. This time they placed the coat on the opposite side of the tree, picked a huge tree to walk to and repeated the process. Then Adamarus placed his red coat halfway between the sides they already tried and the process was repeated…this time they came to a road they knew ran alongside their camp. Adamarus retrieved his coat and they walked back to their camp.
“Wow,” Isabella said when Grace had finished the story. “That was smart. I’ll have to remember that trick.”
“Yes, you should—it could save your life.”
“But Mommy…”
“Yes, dear?”
“…we’re not in a forest and I can only see that one short tree over there.”
Grace laughed. “Well, honey, I think you know what Daddy always says you should do if you get separated from us.”
Isabella smiled her biggest smile and shouted, “Look for the tallest thing close enough to walk to and go there.” She looked around and in the distance saw a building that was clearly larger than the rest. “There,” she pointed.
“Wow. I think you’re right. It looks pretty far.”
“Yeah.”
“We’d better get going.”
“Okay,” she said.
Grace picked up Isabella and the kitten and started walking.
Looking back over Grace’s shoulder, Isabella said, “Mommy?”
“Yes, sweetie.”
“What are those?”
Grace turned and looked where Isabella was pointing. It took her a minute to see what Isabella meant—they were barely visible in the eastern sky below the strange clouds which seemed to glow.
“Wow, baby, you have good eyes,” Grace said in a distracted voice. “Yes, Mommy sees them.” After watching for several seconds, she could see that the line of objects, whatever they were, was slowly descending. They looked like small upside down ‘U’s or like staples. It was impossible to gauge their distance or their size. They were spaced evenly apart. Because the land was flat, she could see that the line of things went north and south for as far as she could see.
“I don’t know what they are, honey, but I think we need to hurry.”
---
Adamarus leveled out at 1,000 feet. The Eastern Desert flew by below. It was late afternoon, the sun making its way toward the horizon.
Adamarus said, “Dials, what’s our ETA?”
“About ten minutes, sir.”
They flew on. Finally, Adamarus brought Jumper One in over the Trinity Compound and circled. They could see the three empty docks that had housed the arks, but there was no sign of Grace and Isabella.
Ad
amarus nodded, “She would have made for Trinity City to find better shelter.” Trinity City was only a mile away via the main road.
They circled once more to be sure, then flew down the main road until they reached the outskirts of the city.
Chapter Seventeen – The Battle of Amular
“Witnessing violence and death is balanced by the need to experience love and procreation.”
Admiral Adamarus Maximus
Personal Log Supplemental
After assassination attempt in Axis
Source: The Archive
T-Minus 0 Years
Trinity City…
Adamarus had flown low, following each of the three roads that led downtown, and then slowly circled the tallest building but saw nothing.
“Are you sure about this, Adamarus?” Dials asked.
“Yes, pretty sure—we had this agreement about what to do should one of us get separated.”
“But she can’t know that you are here looking for her,” Dials replied.
Adamarus didn’t have an answer to that.
“We need to go down there,” Van said. “Everything’s blocked by the close quartered buildings. She could be anywhere and we wouldn’t see her. Plus, she does not know that anyone’s coming for her…although…she should certainly hear us roaring around up here.”
“Even if we saw them—how do we get them? There’s nowhere to set down,” Dials said.
“The park,” Van said.
“Too far away.” Adamarus turned the craft, “There was a field…” he searched the horizon for several seconds then pointed, “there.”
“Can we fit?” Dials asked with a dubious look.
The blinding energy arc that stretched from the north to the south horizon was almost directly overhead now. The arc had grown brighter…thicker. It now cast a yellowish light on everything. The wind had picked up and lines of clouds were forming to the east and west of the alien energy arc. It was affecting the atmosphere, heating it. It was creating weather.
Countdown Amageddon (The Spiral Slayers Book 2) Page 38