The Mammoth Book of Kaiju
Page 27
“I need to go to the toilet,” said Mat.
“We will wait for you downstairs,” said Kones. “Don’t worry. We won’t leave without you.”
Pain.
Red hot, searing pain. My body has been ripped asunder.
Magma. The glowing, lifeblood of my body, splashes cooling into space, spilled from the fractured tubes of my diamond chambers. One of my segments has been obliterated, the eyes shattered.
But I am more than the sum of my parts. Each tiny cell of my outer body speaks with its own tiny song; and is a seed of rebirth. Enough of me remains to rebuild; to reform.
Enough of my mind remains to know from where those pestilential bringers of fire arose. I, at one with orbits and bodies of mass, traced their approaching vector back to their source. The dumb little comets, they were easy to escape. It is the smarter comets whose mother I need to punish.
It seems gravity-bound life can bite.
Have no fear, my lover.
I am strong.
The tall glass windows of the atrium seemed to magnify the harsh sunlight as they pushed through the doors under guard.
Outside a swelling crowd was screaming for news, behind a cordon of soldiers five deep, each holding a submachine gun leveled at the demonstrators.
At a command from Kones, the ranks parted.
A line of six black humvees with darkened windows awaited them.
Suddenly there was an explosion behind them.
The crowd screamed and ran as five of the big glass windows shattered with the impact, big fragments of glass crashing nosily to the tiles.
The soldiers swiveled, and a group of press suddenly pushed toward them, surrounding Kones and the rest of Mat’s group of bewildered scientists.
There was confusion and shouting, and without warning the crowd surged back, breaking the ranks of the waiting soldiers.
People screamed.
Mat saw others fall, to be trampled by the mob.
A man waving a microphone seized Mat and pulled him away from the group. Mat started to struggle until the journalist leaned in toward him and whispered in his ear, “Athy sends her regards.”
Mat took another look at the man. At six-four, with a livid scar down his left cheek, he did not look like your regular TV prop.
He took Mat by the arm and started pushing roughly through the crowd. Five other large men joined them, forcing a path.
Mat could hear Kones yelling orders at his men.
Within seconds they were inside a nondescript Ford and screaming through the back lots of JPL.
“You’re going the wrong way. This won’t get you out,” said Mat.
The man who had rescued him just smiled.
Three turns later he saw a civilian helicopter sitting in a deserted rear carpark, the rotors turning with angry determination.
They abandoned the car and ran.
Mat was bundled inside, and almost fell across the lap of Athy when his long, awkward legs tangled with the cramped seating. A slight smile played on her lips, which she quickly banished. Her eyes were coolly assessing.
He sat beside her, trying to collect his thoughts, unsure about the ethics of abandoning his team, and yet convinced that Kones was leading them down a useless path. Erebus would hit them, of that he had no doubt; either the asteroid itself or the fragments left by the strike—either way the total incoming mass was the same. If they survived the plasma wave of the impact, what then? He did not want to spend years locked in some secure underground haven along with the president and a thousand hard-case military types like Kones.
“Take it up, Mr. Kalls.”
“Yes, ma’am,” replied Kalls from the cockpit.
“Athy, I’m sorry for my hasty words this morning,” said Mat, laying a hand on her shoulder. He felt awkward talking like this in front of a cramped helicopter full of Athy’s men, but time was running out for all of them.
“That is quite all right,” said Athy coolly, pointedly brushing his hand away. “This is strictly business, Mr. Keterson. We need your expertize.” Mat felt his heart go cold. It seemed adolescent, even infantile, to care so much about a casual affair, but the loss of intimacy between them disturbed him more than he could say. For just a few brief hours it had seemed as though the world was his. After years of awkward and ill-fated relationships, years of dedication to the Erebus project, it seemed that at last the world—and Cupid—had smiled on him.
Seconds later they were racing through the sky.
LA was burning.
Whole districts were ablaze, the streets filled with people running, fighting, dying. Below him Mat could see the highways were choked to a standstill. Kones would never get out in time.
Mat swallowed and turned to Athy. “Where are we heading?”
“I have a rocket-plane at the airport, fueled and ready to go.”
“Where?”
“Gansu province. Northwest China.”
“Jiuquan Space Center,” whispered Mat. “We can’t be in the air when the plasma wave hits.”
“We don’t plan to be,” chimed in Kalls from the cockpit.
Mat’s eyes adjusted slowly to the cavernous situation room at Jiuquan.
“This was where we centered the NTR project,” said Athy beside him. “And, as you know, most of the launches were from here.”
Mat nodded impatiently. “But most of the technology was American.”
Athy smiled. “This is China, Mat. Do you think a few patents are going to stop them?”
Mat’s head jerked around at her.
“That’s right. Our syndicate has been manufacturing the NTR drives as fast as we can for five years. We already have hundreds of them up in L1.”
“So the asteroid project—”
“A whole colony, Mat. That’s what we were planning. A whole self-supporting community that lives off the raw materials available out there. A true space colony.” Her eyes were glowing with the fire of her vision, and just for the moment, the awkwardness between them was forgotten.
“That’s why we wanted you. No one alive knows the asteroids like you do, or the best way to survey and approach them. Plus you were already a leader in the application of the NTR technology.”
There was a babble of excited voices, all in Chinese.
Athy walked quickly over to the terminals and interrogated a technician. Mat was shocked to hear her speak fluently in Cantonese, and was reminded yet again how little he knew about her. The seemingly innocent Southern Belle who took him to her bed was long vanished.
She turned toward him.
“Erebus is entering the atmosphere. It’s still intact. There are a score of minor fragments, but they will not survive re-entry.”
“But that’s impossible. It was hit with ground-penetrating nukes. With its composition it should have broken up.”
The technician spoke rapidly then pointed at the big screens above the room.
“This is historical footage. A fast-forward of images collected after impact from long-range spy satellites,” said Athy.
Mat could hardly believe his eyes.
The massive body—smashed to pieces and leaking hot fluids into the darkness of space—slowly reformed itself, once more taking the long, streamlined form it had before the nukes hit it.
The images flickered and changed. Now there was a shaking video feed, a real-time view of Erebus itself as it plummeted through the atmosphere, superheating the air, surrounded by massive turbulence. It had flattened even further, and was coming in like an antique shuttle, heating up along the leading edges of the huge flattened underside.
“How are we getting that feed?” asked Mat.
“Tein has fighter craft tracking it.”
Mat shook his head. It was suicide. Even so he could not tear his eyes away from that image.
“It’s trying for atmospheric entry. I was right. It is a spaceship.”
Athy’s eyes were flickering from screen to screen as the image grew. She was shaking, and M
at knew it was not from the cold.
He reached down and placed an arm around her shoulders, and she did not protest, letting him draw her into an embrace.
All around the room, a deathly quiet had settled.
It must have been only a matter of minutes, but it seemed like they watched that massive, alien thing plummet down toward them for an eternity.
A single voice barked a command, and suddenly the room was in motion again.
Mat looked across to see Tein on the floor of the room. He nodded gravely to Mat, before continuing to work.
One of the big screens flickered again, and they could see the trajectory of re-entry. An elegant curve, that would put Erebus down in the North Atlantic, less than three hundred kilometers from mainland USA.
“Oh my God . . . ” said Mat.
He felt Athy tremble in his arms, and looked down at her, but her features were composed, her eyes focused with intelligence.
“The East Coast. It cannot possibly survive. Not even with the aerobraking that Erebus is applying,” said Mat.
He felt a guilty relief, a hidden, exultant joy, that he was safe. That he would survive the initial impact of this massive body.
Tein marched up to them, and Athy disengaged herself from Mat, looking up at him with a mixture of longing and anger on her face.
He was more confused than ever.
“Good evening, Mr. Keterson. I trust your flight over was pleasant?” said Tein in English. His British accent was strong, a relic of his Hong Kong education.
Mat gritted his teeth. Tein always treated him with excessive good manners that were aggravating at the best of times. Now with billions of tonnes of rock, ice and God-knows-what hurtling down toward them it was downright infuriating.
“Very pleasant.”
“Good to hear it.” Tein smiled at Athy, who turned back to the screens.
“I would like to give you a tour of our facilities—a full briefing on our proposed projects. Then I would like you to go back to the US.”
“Back?” said Mat.
“Yes. If this is as serious as I fear, we will need to bring to bear all the resources of the developed world. Our government is already making diplomatic moves with the Russians and others, but we need you to convince President Yerry of the absolute need to assist us.”
“Assist? With what?”
“The evacuation of Earth, Mr. Keterson.”
The babble of excited voices rose on the floor below.
Erebus was glowing red hot, the streamlined edges below it shining with the fires of Hell itself.
Below the huge, red-hot form they could see the ocean—a peaceful flat expanse, shimmering in the sun. It looked impossibly tiny beneath the bulk of Erebus, as though the vast Atlantic had shrunk.
Impact.
For a brief moment they could see a vast spout of water rising to the sky, then a white-hot, rushing wall of superheated gas, vapor and sediment.
The screen went blank.
Silence.
Tein gave a quick command and the feed switched to another aircraft, now heading out of the area as fast as it could fly. Its rear-mounted camera showed a wall of fire expanding from the crash site like the ring of a huge atomic bomb. A column of material rose into the sky, and yet below this the Atlantic seemed still and calm. The blast wave, and the oceanic surge that would follow, were still on their way.
Tein looked silently at the screen and chanted something in Chinese.
Athy looked at him sharply, a single tear glistening on her cheek. Her eyes flicked to Mat and she wiped it away.
“Come with me, please. We have another communications center set up inside,” said Tein. “The main control room must return to space operations now. We all have our work cut out for us.”
Mat and Athy followed Tein into a small room set up with banks of monitors, each showing a different video feed.
“God, that’s New York,” said Mat.
The streets were filled with people, climbing over cars and trucks jammed-packed in the streets. Buildings were on fire. Bodies lay on the sidewalk amid scattered suitcases and boxes of possessions, as unnoticed as alleyway rubbish.
Mat looked from screen to screen. It was the same all across the Eastern seaboard of America, yet every city in the world seemed to have been gripped by the same panic. Everyone trying to flee, yet trapped by the sheer mass of humanity.
Mat and Athy followed Tein’s lead and took a seat at the bare conference table, while an assistant brought coffee in white, chipped ceramic cups. Tein gratefully accepted a steaming cup of green tea.
Mat tried to bring the cup to his lips, but his hand was shaking so badly he spilled the hot fluid on his hand. He hardly reacted, overwhelmed by a crushing sense of guilt. If only he had insisted on more detailed surveys . . . perhaps if they had used more NTRs . . .
Athy watched him with cool assessment.
“You know there is nothing you could have done to stop it,” she said.
Mat’s reason slowly asserted itself. It was true, given the behavior of Erebus, and the lack of effectiveness of the nuclear strike . . . what could he have done?
Perhaps if Earth had a fleet of space-going destroyers armed with powerful energy weapons—maybe they could have outmaneuvered and dismembered Erebus. Perhaps. Who knew what other resources that . . . alien artifact . . . could bring to bear?
Mat gave up trying to drink his coffee and used both hands to place the cup carefully on the table.
“How many hours till the blast wave hits us?”
Tein took a measured sip of his tea.
“It will hit China in seven hours, the east coast of America in less than one. The wave will have completely circumnavigated the globe in sixteen hours. But our calculations show the power is greatly diminished already. Erebus slowed its descent quite markedly prior to impact.”
Tein lowered his teacup to the saucer with a soft clatter.
“So what exactly are you proposing?” said Mat.
Tein pushed his cup away from him slightly and straightened in his chair.
“The consequences for the planet will be extreme. We are facing a disaster unique in recorded history. The climate disruption will make the Greenhouse Effect look like a mild summer’s day. Crop failures, agricultural impacts, storms of incredible intensity . . . how many years of this can our delicately balanced global society survive?”
Mat looked across to Athy, who was calmly sipping her coffee, a quiet determination on her soft features. She looked back at him like a stranger.
“We were already preparing for the most ambitious space project in history,” said Tein. “With the impact of Erebus, the stakes are even higher.
“What we want to create is a true outpost of global civilization. Self-supporting. Big enough to survive. With a wide enough gene pool to carry on the torch of civilization if the worse should come to pass.”
“But what about food? Surely you will need to be supported from Earth? How can a project like this possibly be sustained now? It might be decades before the climate begins to stabilize again.”
“The asteroid colony was already designed to be self-supporting. We have identified the natural resources we will need out in space. We have stockpiled seed-stock, agricultural supplies—” said Tein.
“You mean grow your own food? To construct a rotating colony with simulated Earth-gravity?” said Mat, incredulous. Every cost model ever run had shown how prohibitively expensive this was.
“Work has already begun on stockpiling the materials in orbit. But we will need to accelerate plans. Time is short,” said Tein.
Mat sat as Tein and Athy sketched out the details of the massive undertaking. Athy became animated, her eyes aglow with the dream of space colonization. He tried to focus as the time crawled forward. Finally, while Mat drank his now stone-cold coffee, one of Tein’s assistants approached them and whispered something in Chinese.
The smile on Athy’s face fled instantly.
Mat did not need a translation. The blast wave was about to hit the East Coast.
The views of New York, Boston and the other cities still showed the same chaos, as though people were trapped by those high walls of concrete.
First came the wall of superheated air, shattering windows and igniting anything that was exposed: wood, paper, plastic. Flesh.
The TV images were silenced instantly.
Tein switched to satellite feeds, and Mat watched, stunned as a massive wave engulfed New York. The buildings were buried under the huge swell, and the wave continued sweeping on into the interior—unstoppable.
Tein’s aide reappeared.
“We have your plane ready, Mr. Keterson.”
Mat turned to Athy, hopeful that she would come back with him, but this time it was all business. Tein and she had needed him to bring in the US support, he could see that now. The feeling between them had been nothing more than a fanciful delusion, like a mist killed in the cold light of day.
He turned away and gritted his teeth.
“Okay, Tein. I will talk to Yerry.”
“Are you sure this is safe?” yelled Mat over the roar of the helicopter blades. He looked out through the window, struggling to see anything in the darkness. He had been seconded to Hari Wottard’s Erebus team, and the former NASA director had insisted on this “familiarization run.”
“Our people have modeled its growth. It has been predictable. We have been to the edge of Erebus more than ten times a day since it landed,” said Hari. “I may need to you to supervise some of the investigations—up close.”
Mat loosened his collar.
“We will be at the edge any minute, Mr. Wottard,” said Captain Stephenson, their pilot.
Mat looked over at Hari, but he was looking out, his gaze riveted on the view below. He was now coordinator of the President’s Erebus Emergency Panel.
“Switch on the lights, Stephenson,” ordered Hari.
Mat looked down.
Miles and miles of naked seabed, once beneath the vast North Atlantic, now devoid of life—dried to dust and exposed to the bleakness above.
For so long Erebus had been just a series of images to Mat. In his mind, a massive, mindless asteroid; a challenge for him to divert from its collision with Earth, yet still nothing more than a stream of data—a transmission of zeros and ones rendered to photographs and short video images. Just a concept. Even when it came alive, shaking off his nuclear thermal rockets and its layer of dust and ice, transforming into its monolithic, segmented form, it was still nothing more than a phantom on a screen, an impossible, intelligent artifact, determined on its course for Earth, undeterred by even a massive nuclear strike.