Earth Shine

by Jerry Ahern

  Tabl of Contents

  Table of Contents

  THE SURVIVALIST SAGA CONTINUES by Sharon Ahern

  The Survivalist Series by Jerry Ahern

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Epilogue

  Author's Note: Bob Anderson

  THE SURVIVALIST SAGA CONTINUES by Sharon Ahern

  Once again the Rourkes must face the trials and tribulations associated with being the First Family of the Entire World. Imagine the scrutiny today’s press puts on one of our music or media icons and then multiply that intense examination extended to the entire Rourke clan. Sarah is married to Wolfgang Mann, who is none other than the President of New Germany. She shares the limelight with her husband and the danger associated with the office such as disapproving factions and terrorists. Remember the old days, around six hundred and fifty years ago, when all Sarah wanted was a peaceful existence with her family and the time to write and illustrate children’s books?

  Michael Rourke, so much like his father, wants to lead his fellow Americans away from the current liberal agenda prevalent in the United States and restore a more responsible government that is accountable to its people. After an ugly political campaign, he rises up out of the muck as the new President. Michael will be dealing with the usual pressures of the office; people who think he is a psychological killer maniac, those who think his former Russian KGB agent wife is an unsuitable First Lady and, illegal aliens from outer space who want to take over the planet.

  No matter how far into the future you travel, some things never change; there will always be just some news twists to age old situations, but, as John Thomas Rourke is wont to say, “It always pays to plan ahead.”

  Sharon

  The Survivalist Series by Jerry Ahern

  #1: Total War

  #2: The Nightmare Begins

  #3: The Quest

  #4: The Doomsayer

  #5: The Web

  #6: The Savage Horde

  #7: The Prophet

  #8: The End is Coming

  #9: Earth Fire

  #10: The Awakening

  #11: The Reprisal

  #12: The Rebellion

  #13: Pursuit

  #14: The Terror

  #15: Overlord

  Mid-Wake

  #16: The Arsenal

  #17: The Ordeal

  #18: The Struggle

  #19: Final Rain

  #20: Firestorm

  #21: To End All War

  The Legend

  #22: Brutal Conquest

  #23: Call To Battle

  #24: Blood Assassins

  #25: War Mountain

  #26: Countdown

  #27: Death Watch

  The Survivalist Series by Jerry Ahern,

  Sharon Ahern and Bob Anderson

  #30: The Inheritors of the Earth

  #31: Earth Shine

  The Shades of Love (Short Story)

  Books by Bob Anderson

  Sarge, What Now?

  Anderson’s Rules

  Grandfather Speaks

  TAC Leader Series

  #1 What Honor Requires

  #2 Night Hawks

  #3 Retribution

  THE SURVIVALIST

  #31

  EARTH SHINE

  SPEAKING VOLUMES, LLC

  NAPLES, FLORIDA

  2013

  THE SURVIVALIST

  #31 EARTH SHINE

  Copyright © 2013 by Jerry Ahern Sharon Ahern and Bob Anderson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.

  ISBN 978-1-62815-084-1

  Editorial contributions and editorial assistance by Pamela Anderson, and Allan Cole.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  THE SURVIVALIST

  #31

  Earth Shine

  Jerry Ahern

  Sharon Ahern

  Bob Anderson

  Prologue

  The three heavy armored black SUVs negotiated Honolulu noontime traffic before heading east out of town. President of the United States (POTUS), Michael Rourke, was in the second vehicle receiving a briefing from the head of his security detail. The energy blast vaporized the right front quarter panel of the lead vehicle, and it slammed the vehicle a dozen feet to the left causing it to careen through the guard rail and down the steep incline. More through luck than any actual skill, it did not roll over.

  The passenger in the right front passenger seat had died as a result of the greenish energy bolt’s impact. The driver and the folks in the back seat were slammed violently to the left with the air bags deploying. Those in the back seat were knocked unconscious.

  The driver was stunned and operating more on reflexes as he tried to keep the vehicle upright when a tree suddenly appeared in the driver’s vision; the vehicle’s front end caught it dead center, crumpling the remainder of the front end beyond recognition. While the puncture proof gas tanks held, gas line connections to the vehicle’s motor were ripped lose, and the smell of gasoline permeated the vehicle. Smoke and flames began to creep visibly from under the crumpled hood.

  Chapter One

  John Thomas Rourke was both angry and bothered. A coordinated attack by ground and air forces had hit the Capital Building in Honolulu during his son Michael’s inauguration as President. Yet, as bad as that attack had been, and it had been bad, it could have been far worse. Even with the horrendous death on the ground, the fact several entire sections of Honolulu had been destroyed, it could and should have been far worse; that was the part that bothered Rourke most. Why wasn’t it?

  Emma had stabilized after almost going into labor; their unborn child was safe and expected to be able to be carried to full term. Michael and Natalia had survived. Rourke’s own injuries were comparatively minor. The burns on his left hand and arm were healing; nerve damage to that limb was not a threat. Luckily, the energy blast had not affected his right hand, and he had been able to neutralize the enemy sniper with three shots from his Detonics .45.

  Smoke rose over the city from the crashes of four American fighters, an airliner, two American news choppers, and three of the
enemy aircraft. The initial reports of enemy ground forces were later determined to be false and the result of “friendly fire” incidents between military and police units mistaking each other for the enemy; there were several casualties on both sides.

  The resulting crashes were responsible for over 1,200 deaths on the ground, either from falling debris, shrapnel from explosions, or fire. The fires devastated a large section of the downtown area and a suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of town. The major fires had burned longer than originally expected. It took three days for them to be extinguished rather than the anticipated couple of hours. Flaming debris had been scattered from one end of the Capital to the other.

  The airliner crash killed all 228 onboard and sprayed hundreds of gallons of flaming jet fuel across one subdivision. Twenty-seven homes and one school had been incinerated. Within the homes, 17 parents and 21 children below school age perished.

  In the school, 1,018 students and teachers suffocated when the fire sucked the oxygen out of the school. The only survivors were the football team, their coaches, band members, and sponsors who were at a neighboring school preparing for a championship game.

  Of the four attacking enemy aircraft, which at this stage remained identified as unidentified flying objects, three had been shot down and one was missing. Those crash sites were declared National Security Areas, and investigators were still pouring over them. Strangely, it had been determined the pilots for those crafts appeared to be human.

  Stranger still was the fact that all three possessed the same face, that of Captain Dodd, one of the original Eden Project astronauts. This was the second time in just a few months one of Dodd’s reincarnations had been encountered.

  Following his inauguration, Michael’s first act as the new American President had been to break the jaw of his former opponent Phillip Greene on national TV. President Rourke had then declared the state of Hawaii a National Disaster. In the affected areas, teams had evacuated building occupants along evacuation routes to primary assembly points and redirected building occupants to stairs and exits away from the fire. Contingency plans for hazardous material spills or releases, nuclear power plant incidents, transportation accidents, and everything else one could imagine had been activated.

  One of his next acts was to change a policy for the presidential security detail. Before his election, Michael and Natalia had been summoned for a meeting with President Arthur Hooks and Vice-President Benjamin Richardson. The presidential security detail apologized, but their personal weapons had to be temporarily surrendered. Natalia had asked him, “If you win the Presidency, will you change that policy?” He had just made that change; it would be one of many to come.

  The first 48 hours were the worst. Reports had been spotty and inaccurate. Initial responders were met with devastation and death. Those who had died quickly from the flames of incineration and suffocation resulting from the fire storms had been lucky. Those trapped under tons of collapsed buildings had taken days to die in slow agony without water, without food and totally alone.

  Even before the Night of the War, Honolulu, located on the southeastern shore of the island of O’ahu, was the southernmost major U.S. city. King Kamehameha the First conquered his enemies and moved his court in 1809 to what is now downtown Honolulu. In the old Hawaiian language, Honolulu meant “sheltered bay” or “place of shelter.” Three weeks ago, on the day of Michael’s inauguration and as on December 7, 1941, Honolulu had proved to be neither.

  Chapter Two

  Captain Dodd’s clone had escaped the aerial dog fight undetected, all according to plan. In the midst of the “fog of war,” he had dropped to tree level after zipping through a cover of heavy smoke, thus escaping the radar tracking of the American forces. His Creator, commonly referred to as a member of an alien race or more accurately an Extraterrestrial Biological Entity or EBE, had monitored the battle and the loss of the other three UFO crafts. The attack had never been planned to be a successful kill shot against the government; it had simply been a distraction—a very successful distraction.

  Dodd had landed in part of what remained of the Waiāhole Forest Reserve area, north of the capital city of Honolulu. Dodd’s landing site had been prepared ahead of time. His egg-shaped craft was now housed in a tunnel complex that had formed the abandoned Waiāhole Ditch and Tunnel System. The craft was about 15 feet long, not quite as wide, and about 6 feet high. It had no windows, portholes, or wings.

  This tunnel system was also the location of Dodd’s forces, 100 of his companion cloned members of the original Eden Project’s Shuttle Mission. The northern leg of the complex, slightly over two miles long, connects with side tunnels that come in from different directions and specifically the Kahana, Waikane, Waianu, and Waiāhole valleys.

  Several historical and newspaper reports that survived the Night of the War identified that “within this system, the original railroad track remained and was used to facilitate movement of personnel and equipment. During construction, a steam engine used the track to haul debris from the main tunnel area down to the bay, a distance of 10 miles, where an ocean pier was constructed.” The opening to each tunnel was now hidden by something called counter-illuminated camouflage that created an invisibility cloak or a force field, assuming the colors and textures of its surroundings.

  In early twentieth century, over 6,004 exotic trees of molave, mahogany, and tulipwood had been planted. Only the mahogany and tulipwood had survived the Night of the War; they now proliferated in the area. It was no longer a commonly visited area; this meant no one else was aware that Dodd’s encampment existed in the Waiāhole.

  This version of Captain Dodd had been given the designation of Alpha-5 by his Coalition Creator, the same that had created the last Captain Dodd. The Creator had determined some degree of “military” organization was necessary for this operation to function properly. Alpha-5 and the rest of the clones had the original DNA of their original counterparts, but at the same time, there had been “modifications.” The Creator had determined the failures of the other Dodd’s had been primarily due to the suppression of their individual psyches.

  Those experimentations had proven that, by sublimating areas of their human brains, it had limited their abilities to function. The Creator determined the mental functions of this species were intertwined with its senses and physicality. The suppression of those elements had greatly reduced the efficiency of each of the clones.

  *****

  Paul Rubenstein and Annie had been tangled up outside of the capital building parameter having arrived late for the ceremonies due to a flat tire Paul had been forced to change. Had that flat not occurred, they would have been at ground zero of the attack; he still didn’t know whether to curse the flat or offer thanks that it had occurred.

  Throughout his early exploits with John Thomas Rourke, Paul had endeavored to maintain a written history of their adventures. However, by the very nature of those battles, he kept losing his notebooks. Long after the Night of the War, he thought about trying to record the adventures on audio tape; it had been a start but not a great one. He tried to maintain that practice following the first cryogenic sleep. After John and Sarah were nearly killed by Dietrich Zimmer and before the entire Rourke family had entered the second sleep, he had again begun to chronicle those exploits but had never compiled everything together.

  These days, Paul Rubenstein, the former junior editor for a trade magazine publisher, was accepted as a serious writer. He had been 28 years old and dying of boredom when Rourke had accepted him as a friend and partner. On their second day together so long ago, he had told John, “Two days ago, I needed help. Today—now I’m helping.”

  It was John Michael’s idea, Paul and Annie’s 14-year-old son, to finish the diary project. One report had falsely claimed that Col Karamatsov had been killed by John Rourke as the conflagration of the atmosphere approached the Retreat. The individual killed had in fact been a Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy; over the years, a lot of the “fa
cts” had been changed or forgotten and some of the real stories simply lost. By the time Rourke and the “family” had awakened, their history had been effectively supplemented and occasionally even reinvented.

  John Michael had realized the “history of the Rourke family” he was learning in school was very different from the history he was learning at home. During the second sleep, the world had thought the Rourke family, including Paul and Annie, had died. Their story remained fresh in the minds of those who had known them prior to the attack in Eden City, and many unintentional liberties were taken by well-meaning “historians.” They had been romanticized to the roles of near gods, which they weren’t. Awakening from the second sleep, they found themselves lauded as heroes and “national treasures” thought lost to history.

  After the second awakening, there were countless battles and intrigues, not to mention family drama. When things had finally settled, the family structure had changed even more, but over the next nearly two decades, the “reality” of stories of John Thomas, Emma, Sarah, Wolfgang Mann, Michael, Natalia, Paul, and Annie continued to miss the mark. After one high school history lesson, John Michael had talked to his dad about the inaccuracies.

  “Dad, no one knows the truth about the Rourkes. The teachers, and even the kids, think of us as ‘special,’ and it bugs me. I’m just a kid like my classmates, but our history books make the whole family into people we’re not. Tell me the truth about what you, Mom, my grandparents, Uncle Michael, and Natalia really did.”

  That was the moment Paul Rubenstein knew the diary project was back on the front burner. He located his old tape recordings and had them transferred to a computer disc, beginning the process of cleaning up and catching up the story of the Rourke family. In recent days, Paul had come to think it would always be a “work in progress;” the story of the Rourke’s was changing, yet again.

  Part of that process was to obtain pictures and biographies on some of the key characters in that story, including the 115 members of the Eden Project. He now realized the story he and his family and friends had lived would take several volumes to make it complete. To adequately focus his activities on his “diary,” he had a “secret weapon”—Amanda Welch, PhD candidate at the University of Mid-Wake, the oldest surviving academic institution on Earth located at Mid-Wake beneath the Pacific Ocean.