“The Earth will survive,” Mason replied, still feeling stunned by what was happening on the viewscreens, “But humanity will not.”
Drake looked in horror at Mason as he realized the enormity of what was occurring. He was glad that most of his family lived in Smithfield and not on the Earth.
-
In Washington, President Barnes and his staff were in the process of being evacuated. Under advice from Winters, they were going to fly farther inland to an area that should be relatively free of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Just as they were about to board the plane, Barnes thought he could hear a loud roaring sound that seemed to be growing nearer. “What’s that noise?” he asked, glancing back at Winters coming up the steps behind him.
Before Winters could reply a massive wall of water slammed into Air Force One, tossing it about like a child’s toy. The president and his staff never knew what struck them as the giant tidal wave from the Atlantic swept across the East Coast.
-
In orbit, Darren looked at the numerous viewscreens depicting the growing disaster going on beneath them. He felt helpless, knowing there was nothing he could do. He was just thankful that Susan and her two kids were safe back on Vesta and Michael was out at one of his prospecting claims. At least the people that were important to him were safe.
Shirley Melvin stood next to him, not speaking. Her husband was currently at Luna City helping to install new computer equipment, but her and Mel’s parents were down on Earth. She felt numb inside as she watched the disaster below continue to unfold.
Darren let out a deep breath. The Earth was finished; only the orbiting stations, Luna City, Mars Central, and Vesta would survive. The aliens had come, taken what they wanted, and then destroyed the Earth as if it meant nothing to them. Billions of lives snuffed out for an unknown reason. But the aliens had made a serious mistake; they should have made sure that not a single Human survived. People had long memories, and someday humanity would rise up out of the ashes and take revenge on those that had inflicted this calamity. Darren knew they would travel to the stars someday and search for the perpetrators of this act of planetary destruction. Someday in the future, historians would mark this day as the beginning of a new war. Darren just wondered how it all would end?
Chapter Three
“Mason, what do we do?” asked Darren, sounding stunned at what was happening on the Earth. “We’re detecting increasing seismic and volcanic activity across the globe. We’re getting numerous news reports of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.”
“Contact the Earth launch stations and tell them to launch all the shuttles they have with as many people as possible,” Mason replied as he tried to think quickly about what they needed to do. “We need to save as many of those shuttles as possible. We may need them later to conduct rescue operations.”
“Rescue operations?” Pamela asked with a strange look upon her face as she looked over at Mason, her eyes widening. “What do you mean rescue operations?”
“If those earthquakes and volcanoes continue, the Earth will soon become uninhabitable,” Mason explained as he thought about the ramifications of what was happening. “The only places people will be able to survive are going to be in the orbiting stations, Luna City, Mars Central, and here.”
Pamela became quiet as her gaze returned to the viewscreen and she looked at the disaster that was occurring on Earth. She knew Mason was right. They now had a massive rescue operation to conduct if humanity was to survive. It was just hard to believe this was happening.
“How many can we save?” asked Drake, feeling as if a heavy weight had settled upon his shoulders. There were billions of people on Earth. “Where are we going to put them?”
Mason looked over at Drake, seeing a look of shock still on his friend’s face about what was happening. The talking in the Control Center had come to a complete stop as everyone waited to hear his answer.
“Where ever we can,” Mason replied evenly, not sure himself what they could do. “We will do everything we can to save as many as possible.”
-
On Holbrook Station, Darren looked over at Shirley Melvin. “You heard him,” spoke Darren, trying to sound calm. “Contact all of the launch sites that currently have shuttles and instruct them to launch as soon as possible. Tell them to fill the shuttles up with as many people as they can.”
“Then what?” Shirley asked, not sure what was expected of her. “We can’t put too many more on the station; our life support won’t be able to handle them.”
“Put me in touch with Mayor Silas in Luna City,” Darren responded after a moment as he weighed his options. “We need to find out how many additional people they can handle. At the very least, we need him to launch the Fantasy and the Princess to take some of the refugees.”
Shirley nodded and moved over to the communications console. The Fantasy and the Princess were the two small passenger liners that made routine trips between Holbrook Station and Luna City. After a moment, she had the mayor on the line and transferred him over to Darren. Then she and the communications operator Kristen Carlyle began attempting to contact the Earth launch stations. It was going to be a long and frantic day.
“Darren, this is Stan,” Mayor Silas spoke over the com channel. “We’ve been monitoring what has happened to Earth, and we’re at a loss as to what to do. This has been one hell of a day!”
“I’ve been speaking to Mason out at Vesta, and we’re in the process of requesting that all the Earth launch stations send up their available shuttles immediately. We have also requested that they put as many people on them as possible.”
Stan was quiet for a moment as he thought about what Darren was saying. “I agree that we need to get as many people off of Earth as we can,” he finally replied. “But I’m not sure what we can do with them. We can take several thousand more here at Luna City, but that will max us out as far as our life support systems go.”
“I understand,” Darren replied. Living space was going to be a problem. The only place they could put a large number of survivors was Vesta, and there was no easy way to move large numbers of people to the asteroid. “Once we get all the shuttles launched we can get a count on people and then decide what to do with them.”
“Agreed,” answered Stan, knowing time was of the essence. “We have our two small space liners setting on the launch pads here at Luna City. I will order them fueled and sent your way immediately.”
“Thanks, Stan,” replied Darren, feeling relieved. Tourists went to Luna City to experience the Moon’s low gravity environment, and several small space liners had been built to handle the lucrative tourist trade. Darren knew that each one could only hold about two hundred passengers comfortably.
“I will schedule a meeting with my engineers and life support people; we will see what we can do about taking more people,” Stan added before signing off.
“I have Jornada on the line,” Kristen Carlyle reported as she looked over at Darren from her communications console.
“What about the other launch sites?” Darren demanded. While Jornada in New Mexico next to White Sands was the largest and most important, there were half a dozen others scattered across the country as well as one in the U.K.
“Nothing,” replied Kristen, shaking her head. “I will continue to try to contact them, but so far they haven’t responded.”
“We have a report of a massive tidal wave striking the East Florida coast,” Shirley spoke with fear in her voice. “We’ve lost all contact with the cape.”
“Damn!” uttered Darren, shaking his head in frustration. He knew there were six shuttles at the cape. It was going to hurt if they had just lost all of them as well as the valuable personnel at the launch center.
“Henderson, this is Holbrook Station,” Darren spoke into the com system on his command console. “I guess you’re aware of the current situation?”
“Yes, Darren,” Henderson replied in a troubled voice. “We haven’t been affected here
yet other than a few minor earth tremors. Can you give me any information on how bad it is?”
Darren was silent as he mulled over how you told someone the world was coming to an end. “It’s bad, Lawrence,” replied Darren, using Henderson’s first name. “We have volcanoes and earthquakes going off everywhere. The alien ship exploded some type of missile deep in the Earth’s core, and it’s going to do the planet in. We also haven’t been able to contact any of the other launch centers, and we have a report of a possible tidal wave taking the cape out.”
“How much time do we have?” Lawrence asked with a slight tremble in his voice.
“We don’t know,” Darren replied. “But Mason wants to start evacuating people as soon as we can. We can take a few hundred here on Holbrook Station, and Mayor Silas has said they can handle a few thousand more at Luna City.”
“That’s not a lot,” replied Lawrence, thinking about all the people that lived in the small town just south of the spaceport.
The spaceport had a workforce of nearly 2,500 people and most of their families lived in the town of Jornada. There were also several military bases close by, and Lawrence knew there were thousands of soldiers and their families at them.
Darren was quiet, as he thought about the resources available at the large spaceport. “Lawrence, can you take several of your larger hangars and rig them up with some type of air filtration systems and facilities to house large numbers of people?”
“We could,” Lawrence replied after a moment. “It would take some work.”
“We need to do everything we can to protect people,” Darren said. “You’re going to be experiencing ash falls from the volcanoes probably within the next two or three days at the most.” He knew the ash being hurled up into the Earth’s atmosphere was going to quickly become a problem.
“We have a couple of military bases close by, and I know one of the commanders fairly well. Let me speak to him and see if he has any ideas. I think he will readily cooperate since we are the only way off the planet. He also has a number of large transport helicopters available to him. If we need to start collecting people, he has the equipment with which to do it.”
“All right, start working up the details. However, you may want to start sending some of your people’s families up. Mayor Silas is sending his two passenger liners, the Fantasy and Princess, to Holbrook Station to pick up survivors. We can make one trip per day, so that’s four hundred people you can send up daily.”
“Then what?” Lawrence asked in an even voice. “We will fill up Luna City in a week; what do we do with all the rest? It’s a four day trip out to Vesta.”
“I wish I knew,” Darren replied with a sigh. “Mason is trying to figure something out. For the time being just build some facilities where we can protect the survivors from the effects of the volcanoes. The air will be getting bad soon from all the ash and other crap that’s being put into the planet’s atmosphere.”
“Will do,” Lawrence said with worry still in his voice. “This is a bad situation, Darren. Keep us informed.”
-
Mason was back in Smithfield at his office meeting with a group of people. He looked around the large conference table at the group he had called in. There was Keith Davis, a structural engineer who was responsible for maintaining the habitat that housed Smithfield. Seated next to him was Sean Miller, who was responsible for the spacedock and flight operations. There was Ethan Hall, a ship repair specialist and construction engineer, and Craig Carter, who was a brilliant systems analyst for Smithfield. There were two women present also. Lori Wright, who was an ecologist and life support specialist responsible for maintaining the plants, food production, and life support systems that kept Smithfield a pleasant place to live, and of course Cheryl Robinson, who was the personnel recruitment specialist for the company.
“All of you have heard about the current situation on Earth,” Mason began as he looked somberly around the group. “The question is what are we going to do about it?”
“Do?” Keith said with a surprised look upon his face. “What can we do? We can’t stop the earthquakes or the volcanoes. The Earth is finished!”
“I didn’t mean that,” Mason responded with a frown. “I want to rescue as many people as we can, and our window to do that is rapidly closing. How many more people can we put in the habitat?”
Keith looked over at Lori Wright as he mulled over the question. “What do you think, Lori; can we add another ten thousand without overtaxing the life support systems?”
“I think it would be closer to eight thousand,” Lori responded after a moment of thought. “More than that would throw everything out of balance.”
“Where are we on the new habitat? I want to save a lot more than eight thousand,” Mason replied, his eyes focusing on Lori and Keith. He had hoped the number would have been a lot larger, but he trusted Lori’s judgment in this. He knew that the environment in the Smithfield habitat was carefully controlled.
Keith leaned back in his chair and let out a deep breath. “We have been working on it for several years as the money and resources became available, but it will take another six to eight years to complete.”
“Is there anything else we could do on a temporary basis while we finish the larger habitat?” Mason asked his eyes narrowing as he desperately searched for a way to save more people. “It doesn’t have to be comfortable; it just needs to allow people to survive.”
“Maybe,” replied Keith hesitantly, as he thought about possible solutions. “Lori and I would have to study the environmental impact, but it might be possible to build some long tunnels extending from the current habitat and construct living quarters within them. The biggest problem with a large ecological habitat like Smithfield is its huge size. If we keep the roof low, say twenty-five feet, and build the tunnels about fifty feet wide, we could add two rows of small apartment complexes. We keep them simple and build one row on each side of the tunnels. They wouldn’t be as roomy as what’s in Smithfield, but they would probably suffice until we can get the new habitat done.”
“We would also have to bring in a lot of supplies,” Lori added as she thought about the difficulties. “In Smithfield, because of all the plants we have growing, it’s relatively easy to keep the atmosphere breathable. We also do a good job of recycling our water. We’ll need some massive new environmental systems to handle the number of people you’re talking about.”
“Okay,” Mason replied with a nod. “Get to work on it as soon as this meeting is over. I want to know how soon you can begin and what materials you need. You will have all the people and resources we can spare. I want to know how many people we can accommodate, and work on both the new habitat as well as the emergency tunnel concept. We can use some of the people we’re bringing up to help, so labor shouldn’t be a problem. I want work on the new habitat going twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week!”
“How do we get these people here?” asked Ethan Hall, arching his eyebrows. “Our cargo ships have only a few staterooms on them. We can handle about twenty passengers at the most. You’re talking about moving thousands!”
“We’re not going to need too many cargo ships anymore with Earth gone,” replied Mason, gravely “What would it take for you to convert some of our cargo ships to passenger ships?”
“Passenger ships?” Ethan repeated, his eyes widening at the idea. “Our ships aren’t designed to haul passengers. The cargo holds are for hauling metals. You’re talking about some major modifications.”
“We don’t need anything luxurious or comfortable,” Mason explained as he looked at his ship building engineer. “Just some cots anchored to the decks would do.”
“The life support systems would have to be upgraded,” Ethan added as he thought about what would have to be done. “All the cargo holds are airtight with their own airlocks. We would have to add additional restroom facilities and some way to feed these people. Cots won’t do; we would need something more substantial to be able to h
andle maneuvering and acceleration.”
“They can eat on their beds,” replied Mason, calmly. “As I said, they don’t have to be comfortable; we are trying to save their lives.”
“What would they be allowed to bring with them?” asked Cheryl Robinson, taking a deep breath and looking over at Mason. “We don’t really have spare clothing and other necessary products for that many people.”
Mason looked over at Ethan. “We have twenty-seven cargo ships. The trip to Holbrook station and back will take approximately nine to ten days, add a couple of days to check over the ship, and then we do it all over again. Can we change ten of our cargo ships to passenger ships? That would leave us the other seventeen to haul supplies back from Earth.”
“How are we going to get those supplies?” asked Lori, looking confused. “Holbrook Station and Luna City won’t have them to spare.”
“We go down to Earth and get them,” Mason responded in a grim voice. “Very soon the atmosphere on the planet will become too bad to breathe; all life will die out shortly after that. There will still be large quantities of supplies in some areas we could probably reach. We can search malls, department stores, factories, and any other place that may have what we need.”
“How?” asked Craig Carter, confused. “Our cargo ships can’t land on Earth; they don’t have the power to take back off again. Without refueling facilities, we can’t land the shuttles either.”
“No, but our prospecting ships do,” replied Mason, looking around the group. “We can refuel them at Holbrook Station, land on Earth, find what we need and bring it back to the station to be loaded onto a cargo ship.”
“Holy crap,” mumbled Sean Miller, shaking his head at the thought. “You’re talking about changing our prospectors into scavengers.”
“Yes,” Mason replied as his eyes swept across the group. “I don’t think we have any other choice. It will be years before we’re capable of making everything we need. Until we can, Earth will have to be the source for our supplies. This is a question of survival, people; if we can’t rescue enough people off the planet to give us a viable population then humanity in this system will die out.”
Galactic Empire Wars: Destruction (The Galactic Empire Wars) Page 5