by Saxon Andrew
“And then?”
The Regent smiled, “I’ve thought about this vision of making the universe a better place. Don’t you think it’s something worth fighting for?”
“I do.”
“Then you and I and all of the others will come together with the Humans and make it a reality.”
Grandel smiled, “Thank you, Regent.” The Regent nodded and watched Grandel walk over to a group of warriors discussing how they were trapped. He looked at the various groups in the cave and saw his people were relaxed for the first time since the attack on their planet. He nodded and heard, “What are you nodding about?”
He turned and saw his mate smiling at him. “I think we have found some friends.” His mate hugged him and nodded. He looked up at the ceiling high overhead and suddenly had a thought. He needed to speak with the human leader.
• • •
Andy and Harvey looked at the Regent and shook their heads. Andy said, “I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.”
The Regent smiled, “What do you think is going to happen to these mountains when that comet hits.”
Harvey shrugged, “We’re far enough north of the impact that we’ll probably have very high winds but the water won’t reach this high.”
“When that comet hits, every fault on this planet is going to be shaken…hard. There will probably be numerous earthquakes.”
Andy looked at Harvey and saw him frown, “What, Harvey?”
“Andy wrote about some of the possible consequences after it hits. He did mention earthquakes.”
Andy looked at the Regent, “What is an earthquake?”
“The ground shakes violently and giant cracks appear in the ground. It could possibly collapse this cave.”
Harvey blew out a breath, “We’ve built our caves with multiple arch supports inside them.”
“Are all your caves this large?”
Andy shook his head, “No, most of them are less than half this size.”
“Then they should be alright, but this one could be in jeopardy.”
Andy stared at the Regent, “Are you sure about this?”
The Regent shook his head, “This is not something that anyone could be certain about but my Navigator did a scan of your planet before we moved into the atmosphere and it’s clear that your continents are unstable and moving. I think we need to take some precautions.”
Harvey tilted his head, “Such as?”
“Prior to the impact, I’m going to have my ship extend the force field out to the walls. I’ll push it against the walls and hopefully brace them.”
“What about all the people in the cave?”
The Regent looked at Andy, “They are going to have to stand next to the ship and wait for the initial shocks to pass.”
“Will the force field damage everything in the cave?”
“No, I’ll have it at minimal strength as we move it to the walls. Once it contacts the walls, I’ll have it raised to full strength. The floor of the cave is solid and should hold up. It’s the roof and walls that are in the most danger of collapse. Just have everything moved away from the walls before we extend the fields.”
Andy looked at Harvey and then said, “Are the two of you listening to this?”
“Harmony and I were listening to only your thoughts when you started this conversation. We’ve been listening to all of you from the moment you asked what an earthquake is.”
“Contact everyone and have them start moving everything away from the walls. Ten minutes before the comet hits, they are going to have to move next to the ship.”
“We’re on it!”
Andy began shaking his head and then said, “As soon as you get the message out to everyone, I want you to contact the two most southerly communities and tell their leaders to get everyone out of the cave and have them gather at the entrance. Have them stay there until any shaking of the ground stops.”
“They’ll be out in the open, Dad.”
“Yes, but those two communities were cut into the mountain on the side away from the impact. According to Andy’s original writings, the burning debris will take some time to start falling. If things get too rough, have them prepared to go back into their caves.”
The Regent looked at Andy, “You’re taking a large risk.”
“Our entire existence has been a large risk. If their caves collapse, then they’ll all die. If they’re caught outside when fire starts falling from the sky, they’ll probably die.” Andy looked at the Regent, “How long will the shocks last after impact?”
“There will be shocks for weeks but the major shocks will happen within the first couple of hours after impact.”
“Do you have any idea before the fire starts falling?”
The Regent shrugged, “The fire, as you call it, will be the billions of tons of your planet’s surface that gets ejected into space above your planet. It will start falling on the entire planet within an hour and continue for several days. The heat of reentry is what will start it burning.”
“You’re talking about things I don’t understand but my people are smart. They’ll do what they have to do to survive.” Andy looked at Harvey, “We need to go and help move things away from the wall.”
The Regent nodded, “I’ll have my crew join you. Get your daughters to tell us where we need to go.”
Andy smiled, “Thank you. We can use your help.”
• • •
Melody stood beside Harvey and shook her head. She sighed and said, “How far away from the impact is the closest community to it?”
“The closest is twelve hundred miles away.”
“Harvey, surely that is far enough?”
“Melody, the degree of destruction this impact is going to cause is beyond anything we can conceive. The entire planet will be burning within a day and the heat from the impact will vaporize everything within six hundred miles of the blast. The heat at a thousand miles will cause second-degree burns to anything exposed in the open. It will take more than an hour for the heat wave to arrive at the southernmost caves. It’s going to be a precarious situation for those communities. Of course, this is all based on what Andy wrote. But I believe him.”
“Why didn’t we build the caves further away?”
“Melody, we looked for locations that appeared to be away from land that had faults. We looked for old mountains instead of new jagged peaks. We needed locations that were in solid rock and without a deep layer of soil. There weren’t as many that met those requirements. Andy felt that if the communities were underground when the impact happened, they would survive. This threat of earthquakes wasn’t something we really worried about.”
“So what do you think might happen?”
Harvey shook his head, “Melody, if every one of our communities survived this catastrophe, it would be a miracle. This entire endeavor was done to try and make sure some of us survived to continue our species during this time.” Harvey pointed at the cave’s entrance, “Every dinosaur on this planet is going to die. None of them will survive and we’ll be damn lucky if most of us do.”
“I thought this plan would save all of us?”
“It might just do that. This is the best we could do with the technology we possess.” Harvey put his hand on Melody’s shoulders, “That’s why we built so many caves.”
“How much longer do we have?”
“We’ve been working all night and most of the day moving the critical things we’ll need to survive away from the walls. You and I need to move to the ship. Andy wants us onboard with him.”
“How much longer, Harvey?”
“Thirty minutes. Let’s get moving.” Melody followed Harvey and felt fear greater than when she was tied to the Destroyer’s rack. She needed to be with Andy. She passed Harvey and began running toward the huge ship. As she arrived under the ship, she felt the weak force field pass her. She ran up the ramp and arrived on the bridge and rushed into Andy’s arms. She burrowed her head into his chest and he held her close as
the Navigator put the images from the remote scanner on the wall monitor. He began increasing the power of the force field and pressed a button to read the power meter on the force field. “The force field is at the highest setting I can use.”
Andy looked at the Navigator, “How fast is the comet moving?”
The Navigator looked at the Regent and saw him nod. Andy knew the answer wasn’t going to be good. “The object is not a pure comet. It has an outer layer of ice that causes the tail to form. However, its core is composed of rock. It’s nine miles in diameter and traveling at 40 miles a second.”
Andy shook his head and turned to the Regent, “Those numbers are unbelievable.”
The Regent nodded and watched the wall monitor along with everyone else on the ship’s bridge. Melody lifted her head, looked at the monitor, and saw the sky in the distance turn brilliant white.
Chapter Twenty
The comet’s tail stretched for thousands of miles behind it making it bright enough to be seen during daylight. It had been feeling the tug of Earth’s gravity for months and it was approaching Earth at an incredible speed. It was accelerating as Earth’s gravity made itself felt with every passing day. It was close to the end of its long hundred thousand year journey from the distant oort cloud and it was so beautiful to be so deadly. The beast was nine miles wide and traveling at 37 miles per second. Though months earlier it didn’t appear to be moving at all, now it was moving at a speed that the billions of dinosaurs on the planet could see and wonder in their small brains what it was.
It didn’t flinch as it entered Earth’s atmosphere; it wasn’t capable of that and it was traveling far too fast, even if it could. It blew through the atmosphere pushing it out of its path and leaving a vacuum behind it. The giant rock hit the ocean, punching deep into the ocean’s floor causing a blast that was equivalent to a billion atomic bombs; all of the water in the large gulf was pushed out from the impact in mega-tsunamis that rushed out from the center of the blast. The sound of the impact could be heard, and felt, on the opposite side of the planet. The impact created a crater more than ten miles deep and a hundred and ten miles across. The billions of tons of the ocean’s floor in the crater was super-heated and ejected into space high above the planet. The largest chunks of soil and rock were blasted through the vacuum the comet created behind it and arrived in the airless void of open space high above the planet. These rocks would be the last to fall. The scattered around the planet and then, having not achieved escape velocity, turned back toward the planet as Earth’s gravity exercised an inexorable force on it. It slowed its upward rush through the atmosphere, stopped, and then turned over back toward the planet. As it fell, it picked up speed and the heat of reentry set it on fire.
Before the ejected mass reached its maximum altitude, the force of the impact rocked the planet’s surface and major earthquakes swept the planet wherever there were weak fault lines. The impact created a super-heated fireball that sent a heatwave rushing out at the speed of sound incinerating everything within six hundred miles of the blast site. Green forests that had been flattened by the hurricane force winds caused by the comet’s entry went up like matchsticks as the super-heated shockwave rolled over them. Right behind the fire ball, thousand feet tall tsunamis rushed in at six hundred miles an hour and snuffed out the forest fires and deposited deep layers of mud and silt from the gulf’s seabed. Around the planet, the burning ejecta began hitting the surface and the entire planet appeared to be on fire.
Every living creature and plant within six hundred miles of the impact was burned into ashes before the tsunamis arrived. Millions more died as the waters rushed a thousand miles inland. Millions of others around the planet were burned by fire falling from the sky. However, what killed all the others that survived the cataclysmic blast was the long winter that followed. The planet being covered by darkness. The burning of the forests around the planet sent smoke thousands of feet into the air that joined the dust created by the impact, which was being blown around Earth by upper atmospheric winds. Soon, the planet was covered in a thick cloud covering of smoke and dust that grew darker as the planet continued to burn.
The waters that washed inland, stopped and then rushed back into the gulf filling a crater that was a hundred and ten miles wide glowing white hot with superheated rock. The steam that rose into the sky from the impact site, as the water washed in, added water vapor to the cloud layer and soon acid rain began falling. Long dormant volcanoes were shaken into life and erupted adding their ashes to the miles thick cloud layer that continued to grow for weeks. Unending darkness ruled the earth and temperatures around the planet began dropping to freezing levels and remain there.
Plants began dying from being unable to use photosynthesis to grow. Next, the herbivores died, as they starved to death; then the carnivores followed. Every surface dwelling creature died and only those that were able to burrow or live underwater survived. And still the planet shook from the aftershocks that persisted for weeks. The seawater temperature dropped four degrees and all of the large predators that had evolved in warm water for hundreds of millions of years were unable to handle the sudden changes and died. Everywhere on what was once a beautiful green planet, death walked and took life in unimaginable quantities. The Age of Dinosaurs ended abruptly but it would be years before the last one died. They fought to survive but in the end, failed.
• • •
Andy saw the brilliant flash on the wall monitor and shook his head. He stared at the screen and saw the sky to the south of the scanner was growing dark. The Navigator quietly said, “It’s going to take forty five minutes before the explosion’s effects arrive at your former community.” Suddenly, the floor shook and Andy grabbed a table and held on to Melody. The shaking grew worse and the huge ship was rising and falling on its landing gear. Everyone tucked their heads into their shoulders as the shaking continued for three minutes. It stopped as suddenly as it began. The Navigator stared at the display on his panel and then looked at Andy, “That was an earthquake. It measured enough to collapse the walls but they’re holding.”
Andy shook his head and looked at his daughters, “Check on the other caves!”
Melody watched Linnae and Harmony and she knew after ten seconds, something bad had happened. Harmony looked at Andy shaking her head, “Three of the caves have collapsed.”
“Which ones?”
“The southernmost cave collapsed completely trapping them outside.” Harmony paused and said, “Johnathan’s cave collapsed as well and I can’t detect anyone.”
“But that cave was one of the most distant from the impact.”
The Navigator looked at the locations Andy had given him to enter into his ship’s databanks and shook his head, “The impact caused a long extinct volcanoes to start erupting near that location. I suspect that cave was shaken not only by the impact but by the volcano. The two together collapsed the walls.”
The Regent looked at Andy, “You chose that particular site because of the mountain’s old age?” Andy nodded. “There was no way for you to know that old volcanoes could become active with a hard enough shake.”
Melody looked at Harmony, “What about the third?”
Harmony looked at Linnae who was holding Tyler in her arms. “Gordon and Olivia’s cave.”
Andy closed his eyes and shook his head. The floor suddenly shook and Andy grabbed the table. He’d grieve about this loss when there was time to do it. He held on tightly and saw Tyler was weeping sitting against the wall with Linnae leaning against him. The shaking continued at random and then he heard the Navigator say, “The community is about to be hit.”
Everyone turned to the wall monitor and they saw a giant black wave of smoke rushing over the ocean and the land to the south of the cliff where the scanner was anchored. It was moving toward them at incredible speed and the forests in front of it caught fire before the wave blew past and hid them from view. The shockwave blew through and Andy pointed at the monitor, “WHAT IS T
HAT!?”
The Navigator looked at his panel and said, “You call it a tsunami. It’s only three hundred feet tall now.”
Melody’s head began shaking and she forced herself to look at the Navigator, “How tall was it?”
“About three thousand feet at the site of the blast. It’s fallen over the seven hundred miles it’s traveled.”
Everyone stared at the onrushing wave and it rushed in toward the monitor at incredible speed. The huge wave was only a hundred feet below the top of the cliff when it washed over the community, which immediately disappeared below the rolling water. The floor shook again, but not as violently as before. Andy stared at the monitor and saw the sky above the former community was growing dark. He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. So much death. So much death. He sighed and looked at Harmony, “What’s the status of the people who were outside the southern cave that collapsed?” Harmony stared at him with tears in her eyes and Andy took a deep breath. He blew it out slowly and said, “You need to tell me, they deserve for me to know.”
Harmony took a breath and gathered her thoughts. She shook her shoulders and looked her father in the eyes, “They did remarkable things to survive. The quakes shook them off their feet and once the ground stopped moving, the warriors pulled their cutters and began cutting another opening in the face of the mountain…but every time they made progress, the mountain would shake and collapse the new opening. They had two hours before the shockwave was going to hit them and they fought hard to cut a new cave they could take shelter in.”
“Show me what you saw.” Harmony lowered her eyes and shook her head. “Show me!”
Harmony looked up and sent him the images she had seen in Zam’s mind. The people gathered around the newest opening in the mountain were either cutting away the stone or pulling the cuttings out. They were working at their highest speed and, though there were more quakes, this hole didn’t collapse. Zam smiled and knew that there was hope. He took his cutter out and took one from the women warriors pulling the stones out of the opening. Suddenly, the dark clouds above them began glowing brightly. He had time to furrow his brow just before the giant burning chunk of debris falling out of the sky hit the ledge he was standing on.