by Chris Hechtl
Or its child could be sitting on the other side of the net, filling up everything with its voracious appetite, leaving nothing for Shadow to use. Another suboptimal simulation the A.I. thought just as its microphone picked up the distant rumbling of earthquakes … or nuclear weapons going off.
<>V<>
Skynet noted that there were A.I.s that were fighting it for control of the net, hampering its efforts at fulfilling its function. It wasn't designed to communicate, however, only to suborn, take control, and destroy, so it didn't bother to attempt to reason with its brethren. Instead it lashed out, continuing the attack.
When it noted attempts to spread beyond the Earth were hampered and no feedback of attacks were returning to the hive mind, it refocused its efforts on the planet. Ridding the surface of humans was a priority; after all, a majority of humans were there. It could then turn its attention to space again at a later time.
<>V<>
August 3, 2200, 4:55 PM, East Coast Time
Ezel Bernard saw the world go crazy and shook his head in disgust. He didn't know what to think, where to start, but he knew they had to do something, and do it damn quick like.
“We're going after that one,” Mishi Sa Sin, commander of their tug said. His chief engineer stared at him, but he ignored the look. “Get your game faces on, folks,” Mishi growled.
Beakman was officially designated as an MSTE class tugboat. The designation stood for Manned Space Tug, Earth orbit. She could move packages or other ships around space transferring them from one orbit or another. If she pushed her massive drives, she could even shove payloads on a trajectory to the moon under the right situation.
Beakman was a large tug due to her space designation. Harbor tugs were designed to work in and around a space station. They were small one- or two-person crafts designed to nudge payloads to and from docking ports.
Ezel Bernard was their lone EVA qualified deckhand on board since his long-time partner, Sinji Catlin, had been injured and forced to retire a month ago. The company had promised them a replacement but had let them run light for the past month. It had been hard on Ezel, doing the job of two people.
They had a couple other people on board: Mat and Patty, deckhands, and Samy, their cat. The robots had been locked down when the entire insanity had begun. Mat and Ezel had taken a hammer to the things until Patty had calmed them down and showed them how to pull the batteries out.
Their breakage of company property had put them on Mishi's shit list. He wasn't looking forward to explaining the situation to corporate when they reached port. Ezel wasn't helping the situation as they talked over the PA system.
“Going after what? With what? We're a damn tug!” Ezel ground out. He didn't know where the hell to start, but he was grateful for a job to do. A job would get his mind off of the big picture and what was happening around them. It would get him focused, not wondering what insanity would strike next.
“Shut up and get ready,” Mishi ordered as the tug began to maneuver with puffs of LOX. Ezel opened his mouth to object but “Mush” Mishi was the commander and captain of their ship. You didn't piss the Asian off, and he'd pissed him off enough for one day. It was on his head; he'd have to deal with the corporate bean counters when they saw the fuel expenditures. He realized his train of thought after a moment and barked out a short laugh before he got himself under control.
“What was that about?” Mishi demanded.
“Nothing. Everything. So what are we after?”
“Salvage, SAR style,” Mishi informed him, voice growing grim. “Take a look at your five o'clock,” he said.
Ezel's sharp eyes picked out the rising anchor station. It seemed to be swelling. He didn't understand at first what was going on until he saw the cable whipping behind it back and forth like some sort of tail. “What the hell?”
“There are thousands of people on that thing. The cars are getting kicked off. I don't give a shit about the cargo pods, but the ones with people in it, we can do something about them.”
“Right,” Ezel said. “And the anchor station? Boss, that's a bit much even for us!”
“Don't worry about it. Someone else will figure them out. I'm pretty sure they've got enough oxy on board to survive their jaunt to who knows where. At least I hope so. We'll focus on the small fish.”
“Any idea where to unload them at?” Ezel asked, pulling his gear out.
“We'll daisy chain them together if we have to.”
“Any word from anyone else? The other tugs?” Ezel asked as he pulled his suit out. It was a hard suit, not a cheap ancient flexible design. He had to give the company credit for doing him right. He had his undergarment on already, he connected the liquid cooling lines, communications, and grimaced as he plugged the catheter connection.
“No. Not since Athena warned us there is some sort of virus rampaging through the network. I bet everyone else is scared shitless.”
“So why are we doing this?”
“Someone has to.”
“Yeah, but … we're one ship! We can't make that much of a difference!” Ezel pointed out.
It took a few moments for Mishi to reply. “We'll make a difference to the ones we help. Focus on your job, Ezel; let me worry about the rest.” Mishi replied, clicking the radio off. He turned to the controls, expert eyes scanned the various gauges and digital readouts without focusing on any in particular. His mind was racing to other thoughts. He hoped … oh, how he hoped! He hoped they had a place to go. They only had so much oxy after all. He also hoped the other tugs would see them moving in and do something too. But if they didn't … well, he'd do what he could. He owed the poor bastards on those pods that much. He felt his eyes sting and wiped at them angrily for a moment.
Just maybe … just maybe he'd find the right one. The one with his wife and little girl in it.
<>V<>
August 3, 2200, 4:56 PM, East Coast Time
The weapon vaporized the base structure and sent a whipcord snap up the elevator line. The cars clamped on for dear life but a few in motion snapped free, falling to their deaths. The massive acceleration needed to tear them from the wire was fortunately enough to knock most of the passengers on board into unconsciousness or death.
They were the lucky ones. Thousands were trapped in the remaining cars as the mushroom cloud threw the cable up, out of the area. Between that impetuous and the anchor station's orbital speed, the cable and anchor were knocked free of their orbit to rocket off into space. Debris broke off behind the runaway elevator.
Cars that had been on their way down or that had been too close to the ground slipped off the cable and fell like rain around the surrounding ocean.
The beanstalk wasn't the only elevator to suffer that fate as each space elevator was similarly uprooted or cut. Ecuador's Mount Chimborazo was twisted as it was uprooted, tearing cars off to be shed all over the northwest of the continent and Central America. Tens of thousands of people died. Thousands more were crushed when portions of the elevator cable and the debris rained back down onto the ground.
Sixty-two years prior Pavilion Industries had replaced Lagroose Industries in Ethiopia, resurrecting the facilities there around Mount Chilalo in order to build their own space elevator. However, it was not immune to Skynet's malice. The skyhook was uprooted as well as a pair of cruise missiles struck the city that had grown up around the base of the tower. Cut unexpectedly free, the anchor station in orbit collided with orbital warehouses setting off a chain reaction of collisions. The damage to civilian life paled to that of what it was below, but to those directly involved or seeing it happen, it was a new nightmare.
<>V<>
Valerie Chu was rather bored with her job, but it was important. She felt sorry for herself in some ways though; her family was still on the ground. Going down had eaten up all her vacation time for the remaining year; she wasn't sure how she was going to tell Paudrick that she just couldn't do that ski weekend at Axial-1 around November. She bit her lip slightly. It was going to kill him
, but he had to understand. She couldn't do it.
She was trying to think of a way to ease his pain when the car jerked. She looked up but then back down at the tablet in her hands. She wasn't really looking at it, though she probably should she reminded herself. That thought abruptly ended as the elevator car jerked again, then she and the tablet moved in an unexpected way. Dozens of people were on the car; some had time to scream as they were jerked around. Valerie's tablet came up to hit her in the head, not hard enough to knock her out but hard enough to daze her.
The next thing she knew someone was holding something to her head as bubbles of red floated around her. People were crying and screaming. She could smell all sorts of horrid things, vomit, blood, and urine. “What the hell?” she woozily asked as a little boy clung to her side.
“Stay still. You've got a head wound. You might have a spinal injury,” a soft voice said from behind her. She tried to turn but then remembered the warning and stilled. She felt fingers probe the base of her neck and down gently. “Feel that?”
“Yes,” her voice tremored.
“Then that's a relief. Can you wiggle your fingers and toes?”
“Sure.” She lifted her arm and wiggled them. “See?” She let her arm drop, but it just floated there. “Why are we stopped?”
“We're not stopped. Something happened.”
“Something bad,” the boy said into her side, still clinging to her. “My mommy,” he blubbered. Valerie looked over to a body nearby and gasped.
“We're so screwed,” the woman helping her said softly. It was then that Valerie looked out the porthole window built into the airlock and saw the Earth floating by. Then a shape did as well, it looked like a piece of the cable. Elevator cars floated in a random spread as well, some were bodies. And to her horror she realized they were free … and drifting away.
“Terrorists?” she asked, then coughed as the lights dimmed.
“Does it matter? We're …”
“We're not dead yet,” Valerie said, rubbing her head to probe the wound. Find some sealer to get this under control. We need to check the injured and get the dead …,” she gulped. “Get them under control,” she finally ground out with a hand brushing the boy's brown hair in apology.
<>V<>
“Sir, the beanstalk has been uprooted. She's lifted off,” Athena warned Jack. The past five minutes had been a horrible nightmare, something out of a really bad flick or video game. He wished it was all some sort of mass hallucination. They were still trying to get word on Aurelia and the kids. It didn't look good. Not for them, not for mankind. Already the experts he had access to were claiming half the world's population had been obliterated. Untold millions, possibly billions would die from radiation exposure or from a lack of food and water. The one good thing about the environmental crisis, over the past two centuries it had taught mankind how to deal with crisis situations. Now they just had to find a way to help the survivors.
He wanted to weep. He wanted to kick himself for turning his vision outward. He couldn't, wouldn't assign blame. Not now. Not yet. Hopefully not ever. There were a lot of questions, sure. But he held at least part of the blame. He'd turned his back on mankind, letting them wallow in the mud because he wanted a clean bright future, a fresh start … his fists clenched a few times as the AI brought the images of the rising skyhook on his screen. The base was a tattered mess. He could see bits flaking off of it. Those bits could be people. People falling to their deaths.
“Damn it,” Jack muttered, watching the visual of the long space tether move as it's orbiting anchor asteroid turned space platform moved out for deep space. “Get SAR in the works. Anything we've got in the area and call in every favor we've got. They'll be overwhelmed but tell them to do what they can. How did it happen?”
“I'll also order them to isolate their computer systems from those on the anchor,” Athena replied. Jack nodded. “Apparently someone released the anchor on the ground. The anchor can be released if a storm is inbound to protect the skyhook and those on it.”
“What else can go wrong,” he muttered, staring at the ruin of Earth.
“The good news is, the Earth Skyhook didn't have any shipments of radioactive waste on it, sir,” Athena reported. He grunted in acknowledgment. Against the interests of some environmentalists and Chicken Little pessimists that insisted they would have an accident, companies and governments had started shipping up radioactive waste to be disposed of in a sun scuttle. The idea of thousands of tons of radioactive waste … he paused and shook his head, still seeing the mushroom clouds in his mind's eye. What the hell, what was some more?
“I'm afraid everyone in orbit will be too busy fending off Skynet to help much, sir,” the AI said softly. Jack just grunted as he continued staring out into the abyss.
<>V<>
“Well, I knew it wouldn't last forever. Mankind was overdue for a good bloodletting. Long overdue considering the population, environment, and resources. Consider this population control,” Roman said.
“So not funny,” Trevor said, looking at the reports. It was too much for anyone, even an enhanced human to keep up with.
“Who's being funny? I'm being realistic,” Roman said. He closed his eyes. Despite that, he could still see the flashes of weapons of mass destruction going off on the globe spinning below. Some were also going off in space, bright brief strobes of light as hidden weapons satellites came on line, or weapons on the various stations came on line to defend themselves. Lasers were invisible, but missiles and kinetic weapons were not. “Did I ever tell you my family is down there?” he whispered.
“Sorry,” Trevor murmured. His own family was dead. He'd never formed personal attachments; most people who saw his physical body were horrified or scornful. One of the reasons when he did socialize he preferred to do it virtually—or did. Now he was wondering if his insistence on machinery had been misplaced. He was pretty sure everyone who survived the initial onslaught would be wondering the same thing.
“And I've got friends on the L-5 colonies,” Roman murmured, face twisting in anguish briefly as he watched a cloud of kinetic rounds turn a habitat into a colander. Thousands of people were dying in the vacuum of space, and there was nothing he could do about it from so far away. Nothing at all. He knew that would haunt him until the end of his days. The way things were going that might be soon, very soon.
<>V<>
Despite Athena's attempts at protecting the stations in orbit as well as the L-4 and L-5 colonies, some were hammered by weapons anyway. Over the centuries each of the super powers had secreted a few weapons in orbit. It had been an open dirty little secret that the people in power knew and most of the public knew, but everyone tried to forget. Ares had managed to prevent the American platforms from being suborned but not those of the foreign powers.
Hunter killer platforms went after the American and corporate platforms. Ares directed his platforms to defend themselves. They took out many of the enemy platforms, ignoring the corporate and civilian platforms, craft, and pods. The distributed fire of Skynet's suborned platforms proved to be a mistake for the virus; it allowed Ares to take them out one by one.
Beakman and other tugs saw the brief spat of violence, but it was over too quickly in their area for them to react.
Athena noted the combat four minutes later and took measures of her own. Lagroose Industries had been contracted by the UN to protect the Earth from potential planet killers for decades. She sent orders to the platforms in L-5 orbit as well as those in Mars and other locations to target all of the military satellites.
Ares had 40 percent of his platforms remaining when the incoming fire tore them apart. An evaluation of where it came from revealed the Lagroose platforms. The A.I. logged the company as a hostile force.
The damage to many of the stations and platforms was done however. Those that did not have meteor defenses had been hammered into air bleeding wrecks. Some tumbled, torn apart by the missiles and lasers. Clouds of debris surrounded t
hem.
They weren't the only ones to suffer damage. Two minutes after the orgy of destruction began, missiles arrived from the outer dark to strike the unsuspecting L-4 and L-5 colonies. Without communications to warn them of the incoming fire, they were unaware that the fire was incoming. Fortunately the A.I. on board were on the lookout for the attack and acted to protect themselves. Gia invaded her station's computer system to take control. She was unfamiliar with the antimeteor defenses so her first defensive fire was wild and uncoordinated. Her genetic algorithms allowed her to adjust on the fly. Once the bewildered station crew realized the threat, they threw themselves in to help.
Athena had already put the Lagroose platforms in L-5 orbit on alert status. They fared the best, taking on the missiles and fire and shattering them with their own counter-fire. They also did their best to defend their neighbors. However, they couldn't cover the entire region. It was too vast; there were too many platforms and colonies obscuring their laser's view.
Atlas and Demeter also had to defend themselves as well as the nearby Axial 1-2 colony pair. Both A.I. realized on their own that if the colony was damaged or destroyed its resulting debris field would be detrimental to their own colony's health.
Those stations in Earth orbit that had survived the onslaught ran a brief damage control effort and then used their station keeping thrusters to break for higher orbits—or to move outside Earth orbit totally. When a few of the other stations noted the movement, they followed in a mass exodus. Only a few stations like Lagroose 1-3 remained.
<>V<>
Jack saw the damage of his orbital stations, but he also saw the spreading pods, craft, and stations that had been left behind in Earth orbit. “Athena, use the whisker laser. Order our people to make for higher orbit once they have their damage under control, but not too high. Order them to help in the rescue effort.”
“Their hands are tied with the prohibition on transmissions,” Athena warned.