by Kris Powers
“For what?”
“I interpret the symbols when we see across time.”
“Which is why we have all been interpreting them for the last few months. We are your replacements.”
“Fine, I will resign effective immediately,” Alexander said. “You’ve won, Catherine.”
“I can’t allow you to resign. You may have limited uses but you still have one thing that we need.”
“Oh?”
“Your death.”
“What? I don’t understand,” Alexander stuttered.
“You never had the ability to plan for the long term, Alexander. We must ensure that no one ever makes the connection between the detonation of the particle warhead and our complicity in that act.”
“You gave me those orders! All of you voted for it,” Alexander said.
“And the roads from Peter and the warhead lead to you. You should have seen this coming.”
“Anyone who uncovers this will still make a connection from me to you!”
“Dead men tell no tales, Alexander. We have credible deniability. If that happens, the story will be that a rogue element within the Council did this secretly behind our backs and you will not argue with that assessment.”
“You can’t!”
“Our hands must have at least the appearance of cleanliness, not for our sake, but for the public’s confidence in us. I’m sure you understand.”
Alexander was unable to reply as he felt a sudden wrenching pain spread across his chest. The eleven collectively seemed to stare past the surface of his chest and into his body as they crushed his left ventricle. Alexander tried to fight their attack but was unable to stand up against their combined effort.
Spasms of pain contorted his body before he felt his heart give out and then he collapsed onto the floor. Alexander’s face became still and looked at peace as he breathed his last breath. Catherine glanced at the body for a moment before stepping over it to gain access to a panel mounted on the wall.
“Please send a medical team in here immediately. Councilmember Alexander has collapsed,” she said.
Four medics dressed in sterile white bounded into the room immediately. One grasped Alexander’s wrist for a moment and shook his head to the questioning stares of the rest of the medical team. The Council feigned concern as the body was settled onto a stretcher and taken from the room.
“We’ll inform you as soon as we know anything Prime Counsel,” the medic said.
Catherine nodded and sniffed. “I feel everything happening on Earth was too much for him. Please take care of him, poor soul.”
The medic retreated from the room and Catherine turned on a gnarled heel to address her council.
“Now,” Catherine said cheerfully, “I need a new apprentice and we need a new Council member. I nominate Tabitha.”
“She was Alexander’s apprentice,” Victoria said. “From what I understand she is ever bit as manipulative and conniving as Alexander ever was.”
“Yes, but she’s better at it. I miss having a formidable opponent, and she seems capable of giving me the kind of arguments Aristotle once did.”
“I’ll second the nomination,” Napoleon said.
“Motion carried,” Catherine said. “We have a great deal of work ahead of us gentlepersons. We have an empire to consolidate. Now that the Alliance members here and on the colonies have been apparently betrayed by their own government, they’ll be looking for a viable alternative.”
“There is the problem of the new Alliance fleet, Prime Counsel. New reports say that they will escape,” Cleopatra said.
“Then they have escaped to a distant and soon to be conquered star. I doubt they will survive the rest of the year. Even if they do, there is nothing they can do here. It would have been nice to have gained their technology, but that goal was never an essential one.”
“We will need to take precautions anyway,” Louis said.
“Agreed. I have someone among them who will ensure that they fail,” Catherine said.
“And this is?” Napoleon asked.
“None of your concern. Rest assured that the Alliance will fail one way or another.”
“There is also the matter of your daughter. She did escape from MERA,” Henry said.
“She escaped to Phoenix, and I doubt she left alive,” Catherine said. She motioned her head towards the particle wave that was beginning to broach the shores of the American Sea.
“But what if she has and what of her child? What if it survived as well?” Henry asked and stopped as his eyes became unfocused. “I’m troubled by a vision I had of the future last night.”
“Yes?”
“I saw a boy with Nadine’s face and steel eyes. Twelve stars burn behind him.”
“Then we will make sure to discover Nadine’s fate,” Catherine said. “If she is alive she won’t be for long.”
“We have arrived at the end of the Sun’s gravity influence,” Maria’s helmsman reported.
“Lathiel, are your engines ready now?” Maria asked once she had turned her earpiece on.
“Yes Admiral. Just give the order,” she heard his voice say through the intercom.
“Then do it before the rest of the Coalition fleet catches up with us.”
The threesome watched the screen in interest. The emitters on each wing of every ship in the one thousand strong fleet began to glow with an unearthly radiance. Maria began to hear a great hum which was felt throughout their ship as well as every vessel in the fleet. The deck itself began to vibrate as the modified engines accumulated phenomenal amounts of power. The engines glowed with a current of energy until they became almost too bright to look at. Lathiel and Ranik split their attention between the engines and the panels in front of them as they monitored the accumulation of energy within the towering wonders of technology.
“Signal the rest of the fleet to activate the graviton emitters,” Ranik said to Lathiel while he monitored a diagram of the building power supply. “Now!”
Lathiel depressed a button on his station the moment he heard the order from his cousin and Ranik pressed a switch on his console.
The emitters on the ships flashed an intense white light. The entire fleet turned into a thousand tiny stars and disappeared.
It took over half a day for the energy wave to encompass the Earth before meeting itself on the opposite side of the planet. During that time the wave blasted across North America. Entire cities fell in seconds. Many forests were blown down and lakes were displaced from their beds. People hidden in bunkers felt the ground shake and some were horrified to see their places of refuge come down around them. But the wave did not stop there.
It went on across South America, hitting its thick rain forests with the force of a massive hurricane and shredded ancient Incan ruins. The cities there found the wave had lessened its devastating force by only a marginal amount. But the wave did not stop there.
It crossed the Pacific and Atlantic oceans creating massive tidal waves across both bodies of water. When it reached Europe, Africa, and the Eastern Asian coasts it smashed the population centers without mercy. What was worse for those populations near the ocean was that once the energy wave had left, an even deadlier one of water followed it just hours later. People coming out of their shelters to begin the overwhelming task of rebuilding were caught in a tidal wave one hundred feet high. Many drowned in the deluge before being able to return to their shelters. But the wave did not stop there.
The blast descended on MERA headquarters as an avenging angel for releasing it in the first place. The old gothic building that had housed the Council for centuries fractured and then exploded as the wave pounded the stone walls with incredible force. The Council Chamber’s windows shattered and the old high backed chairs were blown over while the walls disintegrated.
The wave dissipated across the lands of Asia and Asia Minor having finally expended much of its power. The shockwave became a shrinking circle as it came upon the opposite point on the pl
anet from where it had begun. It shrunk to one hundred miles in diameter and then fifty. Finally, somewhere in southern Russia, the wave collapsed back onto itself and vanished.
Epilogue
Fires burned in space around Pluto as its Alliance outpost fell to Coalition forces. The major base at Saturn continued to voice its discord with heavy plasma beams despite its shields giving out under enemy fire. Two Alliance frigates near the asteroid belt past Mars fired a few last torpedoes at a Coalition destroyer before jumping to FTL and some level of freedom beyond civilized space. Stations and ships were no more than wreckage around Mars as Coalition warships began to land troops around the few Alliance colonies there. They were gratified to find the populations surrender unconditionally with the knowledge of what the Alliance government had supposedly done.
Battles across the solar system and across the rest of the Colonized Sphere began to fade out as Alliance ships were either destroyed or surrounded by enemy ships.
Long plumes of smoke could be seen across much of Asia as fires burned out of control and coastal areas were beginning to see daylight again now that the waters began to recede. Africa and Europe were dotted with cities that had crumbled under the wave and began to show the first signs of life once people began to dig themselves out of the wreckage.
South Americans found little that had survived the blast, and what few survivors remained began to look for others. Many hoped to find family members and friends that had become separated in the chaos. Many would be disappointed.
North America was more fortunate than one would have expected. Cities had been reduced to piles of rubble, but there were towns and villages that had survived the danger. While some forests had been flattened there were others that stood with relatively little damage.
At the epicenter of the blast wave, the dome that had housed the particle warhead was nothing more than a large blackened hole. The structures connecting it to the other two domes had much of their structure flayed away. Long metal supports climbed into the sky standing as the reminders of the complexes that had once existed between the domes. The habitat dome had collapsed and was scarcely a shadow of itself, while only the first few floors of the Command dome had survived the destruction.
The bridge that connected Black Hills Island to the adjacent one a mile away was the first in a series that eventually reached the mainland. It was partially collapsed with the right hand lane having fallen into the ocean, but one side had weathered the storm acting as a tenuous connection to the remains of civilization.
Beyond the bridge of the small island a large clump of evergreen trees stood in the cool morning as a cloud of fog rolled in off the American Sea. At the foot of the bridge, dew accumulated on the pink petals of a wild rose that had lived despite the terrible blast that had swept across the wet beach.
A single footprint was in the soft mud below it.
Key to Acronyms
CGRO –Cooperative Group of Religious Organizations or Cooperative (popular reference). Founded in 2087 between several non—organized religions in response to mounting opposition against what were perceived as pagan cults.
C—TORPEDO — A chemical warhead in use until the early twenty—fourth century. Warheads were generally given a five to nine designation (i.e. C—7) to indicate yield. C—Torpedoes were abandoned in favor of the vastly superior plasma warheads.
FTL — Faster Than Light. The most widely used term for travel at such speeds on Alliance and Coalition vessels.
MERA — Modern Enterprise Religious Aggregate. Founded in 2057 in response to many governments taxing organized religious institutions. The organization became the religious figurehead of the Coalition. In the year 2152, Prime Counsel Alexis led a successful coup against the Coalition Presidents and MERA became the governing body.
PBC — Particle Beam Cannon. Usually given a class number starting at one and with no currently defined limit.
PBD — Particle Beam Derringer. Small hand held weapon the size of a small revolver.
PBP — Particle Beam Pistol. Hand held weapon the size of a standard gun.
PBR — Particle Beam Rifle. Large firearm supported by both arms.
Terminology
Alliance — General term used for the Alliance of Nations founded in 2098 as the successor to the North American Treaty Organization.
Alliance Senate — Main branch of the Alliance Government. As of 2299 there are nine hundred and eighty—seven elected Senators.
Alliance Prime Ministers — The heads of the Alliance Government. The office has five elected representatives sharing equal power.
Battle Group — A standard formation of ships in the Twenty—third century. Alliance battle groups are comprised of forty warships and are composed of one carrier and three cruisers, in addition to several destroyers and frigates
Coalition — General term used for the Coalition of Provinces founded in 2087 as the successor to the short lived Nation’s Council.
Council of Twelve — Governing body of the Coalition comprised of Twelve members appointed by the Prime Counsel who is elected to the position by MERA members.