by FX Holden
On the balcony of her hotel in Shanghai, Grahkovsky was shivering. But it wasn’t cold. It was excitement. Palpable. Almost sexual.
She couldn’t see what was happening in the skies over Florida right now, but she could imagine, with a clarity and precision that the people huddled in their buildings across Kennedy and Canaveral, even those looking up into the sky in wonder, would not possess.
From the angle the missiles were launched at, they would appear like classic asteroids, streaking through the sky trailing huge white contrails. Growing larger as they closed at incredible speeds. Just one asteroid at first, but that was just an illusion; error of parallax. As they dropped toward the earth, they would split into segments, then split again, like a firework bursting, causing the single huge contrail to dissolve into hundreds. The eye would barely have time to register this, though, before the superheated tungsten missiles were slamming into metal, glass, concrete and flesh below.
Now. It would be happening now! She tightened her hands on the railing of the balcony, wishing she could hear it. The crash and rumble of the strike, followed quickly by the sonic booms caused by the missiles splitting the air at Mach 10.
She tilted her ear to the sound of the TV in the room behind her, waiting for the first news reports to start coming in, heart in her mouth.
Missiles running, Angus said. Five seconds to impact.
Meany watched in horror as another warhead launched from the Groza. Number four.
Two hundred and fifty-six missiles, hurtling toward the ground. Toward Bunny O’Hare.
Target is firing close-in weapons, Angus reported. Missile down. Missile down. Impact … There was a moment’s pause. Target destroyed, debris field continuing over the Atlantic.
Meany breathed a sigh of relief, but felt no elation. The virtual cockpit forward view from his Skylon showed the Florida panhandle below, and above it, a network of contrails still arrowing toward the earth.
The heart in Yevgeny Bondarev’s chest had stopped beating.
He was watching the attack on Cape Canaveral play out on the huge wall screen inside the Baikonur Groza Control Center with the same feeling of horror that had gripped Maqsud Khan, and many of the same thoughts.
Impossible! But it was happening.
Grahkovsky. It had to be. No terrorist organization had the capability; no foreign State actor would dare. He had called her as soon as the incident had started to unfold, only to be told by her staff that she had not been seen for two days. Her sudden unexplained absence made chilling sense now.
As one of very few people in the world with a clear line of sight to the unfolding calamity that he knew was about to take the world to the brink of war, perhaps beyond, Bondarev could draw a blood-red thread from event to event and it led to only one conclusion.
The attacks on Abqaiq and Korla by his desperate political masters.
The retaliation against his satellite network by the US and UK, causing losses on both sides. China’s intervention, perhaps more than once.
And now the bombardment of Cape Canaveral. If anyone was left alive in a few months to investigate it, he knew they would be asking themselves why. Why had she chosen that target, of all targets? Bondarev had a good idea, but it was one he hoped one day to put to her himself, as she sat on death row.
“Pan that image out,” Bondarev said. His people had patched through the feed from a Russian surveillance satellite that was in geosynchronous orbit over Kennedy-Canaveral. Its job was usually to monitor signals and provide imagery of US space launches. Today it was showing an entirely different scene. He watched as the first missiles struck Cape Canaveral Space Station, setting buildings alight in multiple places, thick angry smoke boiling into the air immediately, indicating fuel storage facilities had been hit. He could see cars and emergency vehicles moving, hundreds of people running away from the strike zone. And some who were not.
The Kennedy Space Center did not appear to have been hit yet, though he knew that Grahkovsky would not have left it alone of her own accord.
Bondarev raised his voice. “Put all remaining Groza units into stealth mode. No radio communication up or down. Combat AI self-defense protocols only.” He pulled Solenko aside. “Once you have shut the Groza network down, prepare your men here to expect a GRU lockdown. Tell them they will be interrogated. They should just tell their interrogators what they have seen and heard. They have done nothing but their duty,” Bondarev said, gathering his things, not waiting for the full outcome of the strike on Kennedy-Canaveral to play out. “I will call General Popovkin and get guidance. But it is a call from which I do not expect to return, Solenko. These events happened on my watch, literally.”
Inside the Morrell Operations Center, the personnel of Space Force dived under desks, tumbled down stairs or crouched against walls as the ceilings shook, windows shattered, and the world outside thundered with sonic booms.
Inside the windowless X-37 control center, O’Hare, Albers, and Severin were all hunkered down, arms over their heads as ceiling tiles dropped to the floor around them.
The bombardment lasted half a minute, but felt like an hour.
When it subsided, they looked at each other with expressions ranging from grim fury (O’Hare) to surprise at still being alive (Albers).
The sudden silence didn’t last long. As they listened, there was a secondary explosion as a fuel tank somewhere cooked off, and new sirens added their noise to the ‘critical incident’ alarms that were still wailing. Fire!
“I’ve never been under a meteor strike before,” Albers was saying. “But I don’t think we were right under that one.”
O’Hare was thinking exactly the same. The Morrell Operations Center was at the southern end of the Cape Canaveral Complex, four and a half miles from the Industrial Area up by Industrial Road. If she’d been laying a hurt on the Cape, she would have targeted both, but she most definitely would have prioritized the Industrial Area above all else.
O’Hare turned to Severin. “Major, I can set Bertha-2 to AI control or even hand it off to Vandenberg. I know they have a crew in a trailer over there who’ve been sweating my every move. Skylon can look after itself now.” There was another huge explosion in the distance; another tile fell from the ceiling, and the screens in their consoles flickered again as the building shook for a second time. She shrugged. “If, you know, you think maybe it’s a good idea we get out of here?”
Severin raised his eyebrows. “You want to run for cover, O’Hare? That’s not like you.”
“Hell no, sir!” she said. “But I suspect we’d be able to do more good out there on the ground than following a pile of space junk through the sky in here.”
Maqsud sat in horror and misery, staring at the small screen on his console. He realized now what Grahkovsky had tricked him into doing, but too late. Too late.
Or, perhaps not? Something had happened to disrupt the strike. Whether it was his abort order or something else he could not see – only five warheads, or 320 missiles, had dropped before he lost communications with the Groza. Only 320? That had been nearly the full payload allocated to Cape Canaveral. The rest had been allocated to Kennedy, which did not appear to have been struck at all.
The rain of projectiles had struck Cape Canaveral Station in a three-mile by four-mile fan-shaped strike that took in the Industrial Area and nine launch complexes including LC 40 and LC 37, the two heavy-lift launch pads. Maqsud’s compromise had been to deprioritize lower-value targets like the Space Force headquarters at Morrell Operations Center, and purely civilian structures like the Space and Missile Museum. But he’d had to accept the horrible casualty count that had gone along with targeting the Industrial Area because, as Grahkovsky had known when she assigned him the duty, the whole point of the strike was to cause massive loss of life.
But it had been a simulation. Just a simulation! A very clever, very convincing simulation.
Even as he screamed it inside his mind, he knew in the depths of his soul it wasn�
��t true. As he watched, horrified, Cape Canaveral burned. Maqsud turned off the screen.
The AI was telling him something, but the words were lost to him. They flowed around him like the accusing air and flickering, mocking light. He was in the basement. Outside, he needed to be outside.
He walked to the door, found a stairwell and went up. He saw an exit to the ground floor but ignored it. Up. He kept going up, five floors. The stairs took him to the roof of the Titov Main Test and Space Systems computing wing. He emerged onto a tarred black roof, lined with pipes, satellite dishes and thick black electrical wires. Trees, he could see trees. He needed to see trees. He walked to that side of the building and looked at the forest, marching off into the east, deep into Mother Russia.
No boiling clouds of smoke there. No contrails. No fire.
Not yet.
Without a pause, he put his hands on the small safety railing that ran around the top of the five-story building, and vaulted over.
Ambre Duchamp was suffocating. There was no air. She couldn’t breathe. Something was pushing down on her head, holding it to the ground. She tried again to draw a breath and couldn’t. She began to panic, pushing up against whatever was over her head, trying to get her arms under herself, but there was no room.
Stop, Ambre! A voice yelled at her. Think. Her voice. Breathe.
She tried again, managed a small gasp. Not enough, but something. Another one. There was air. Not much. Filthy, dusty air. She coughed, and lost what little air she’d got into her lungs. Easy, girl. Pulling her head into the crook of her arm, she took in another sip of air, then another. That’s it, one more.
She held the air in her lungs and pulled her face out of her elbow, trying to see something. See anything. But the world she’d woken in was dusk dark, and choked with dust. She lay her head on the ground and felt with her fingers above her head. Metal. Slippery. Greasy? Where the hell…
Under the patrol car. She was under the patrol car. The last thing she remembered was watching the garage door slice through Grahkovsky and then the loudest explosion she’d heard in her life … listen, Ambre. She strained her hearing, could hear nothing except a metallic buzzing in her ears. No clues there.
Soshane. She frantically scrabbled her legs, feeling something between them, something soft. Just the jacket? Or the girl, still there? She couldn’t turn to look, had to feel with her thighs, her calves. Be still, Ambre, feel her. She clamped her thighs together around the lump between them, and lay as still as she could. Was that movement? The slow rise and fall of a child’s chest, breathing? A cough. That was definitely a cough. She couldn’t hear it, but she could feel it. Soshane was alive. But hurt? She couldn’t see!
She took another sip of dusty air and coughed, then took another. Got to get out. Think. It’s like a coding problem. There’s a logic, a sequence, think it through. There was a bomb or something. Maybe more than one. Not nuclear or you’d be dead. You’re in the garage. Under the patrol car. The roof fell down, probably crushed the car, pushed it down, so you’re pinned. You’re alive, you can’t hear, but your arms work, your legs work, your head isn’t crushed, you can cough without screaming so your ribs aren’t broken. You could stay here, save your energy, and wait to be rescued. Help will come.
Except no one knows you are here.
Except maybe Soshane is hurt.
Soshane wasn’t awake or she’d be panicking too. She could be lying back there between Ambre’s legs unconscious, bleeding to death.
You have to get out.
She couldn’t see a yard in front of her face, but sensed something there and held her arms out in front of her as far as they would reach. Her fingertips brushed metal. She tried shoving herself forward, using her toes to push, but even with her head on the side, something was pressing down in her shoulders and she couldn’t move an inch forward.
Sideways?
No dice. The underside of the patrol car had her pinned.
Backwards.
She lifted her butt and found she had a couple of inches there before it hit the chassis. OK. She lifted her hands and grabbed the metal of the chassis each side of her head. And shoved.
She slid backwards a few inches. Her feet still not hitting anything. Yes. She pushed again. A few inches more. Adjusted her grip, grabbing the chassis further back. Shove. She slid backwards, taking Soshane with her, gripped between her thighs.
One more shove.
Her feet hit something. She felt it with her toes, tried pushing it, but it wouldn’t budge. Realized she’d lost her shoes. What? How? It didn’t matter. She shoved hard and tried to use the chassis to push it with her feet but no dice, whatever it was, it was going nowhere. Her head was where her butt had been so she found she had a couple of inches above her head now and she craned around to look, but all she saw was gray sunlight and dust or smoke-filled air. It was like the sight of it suddenly made her body realize how foul the air was and she was racked with a fit of coughing, which only stirred up more dust. She buried her mouth in the crook of her arm again and pulled in a painful breath.
Get it together, woman.
She felt with her feet. There was space left and right of the obstruction. OK, you can get out from under the patrol car, Ambre. Solve that problem first. Then solve the next one. Get out so you can check Soshane.
She splayed her legs. She was no ballerina, but she spread them out on the floor until her ligaments screamed, and she pushed back. Feet against the obstruction, twisted her hips, legs splayed. Push. Lifted her backside. Her butt was out from under the patrol car now, which meant Soshane was out. OK, twist. Twist and … there was no space to twist and roll out. She tried to picture the scene from above. There was something about two feet away from the side of the patrol car, stopping her moving out. But she could move her legs left and right. The chassis was stopping her twisting around and sliding out. It was like one of those stupid puzzles someone gave you when they ran out of ideas in a games shop. She lay there and looked down at herself in her mind’s eye.
You’re lying on your stomach. Bend your legs at the knees, feet in the air. Push back until your knees hit the obstruction. And then what? Just do it.
She lifted her feet in the air, bent them as far as she could toward her butt, and pushed again, sliding back until her knees hit the wall or beam or whatever it was, Soshane wedged up against it. Please don’t wake, baby, not now.
Yes. Her shoulders were out, just her head under the car. With a desperate shove she pushed sideways and wrenched herself out from under the patrol car, Soshane sliding along the ground beside her. Feeling gingerly above her head, she tried to sit up and grab at Soshane at the same time, but slammed her head into a sharp edge above her with such force she nearly blacked out.
Dammit, don’t you pass out. Don’t you cry, bitch!
She felt like she was going to throw up, and she had blood running down her face now, but she scrabbled for the bundle between her legs and felt an arm, a shoulder, then Soshane’s hair, and pulled her by one armpit and an arm, cradling the girl’s head into her neck.
She was warm. She was alive.
Quickly but carefully, Ambre felt the girl’s body from head to feet. Nothing wet. No bleeding. Nothing broken she could feel or see, not that she could see more than a foot in front of herself.
They’d made it.
And now what?
Ambre looked around her, trying to make sense of what she saw. The patrol car was down on its wheel hubs. Tires at the front and back were flat. Roof flattened so that the windows had exploded, but it hadn’t been completely crushed. They might have made it if they’d been inside the vehicle when the roof came down, if they’d ducked quickly enough. But then what? They’d have been trapped in there like sardines in a can.
Like this situation is better? It looked like the side wall of the garage had been pushed in against the car and toppled so that it lay across the car forming the small triangular gap in which she had emerged. Bricks and rubble and metal
meant there was no way out, either at the front or back of the car. She ducked down and looked under the car again. It was hard to see, but it seemed like the whole car had been buried except for the small tent shaped space she and Soshane had crawled out into. You can see. You can breathe. Light and air are coming from somewhere, Ambre. There wasn’t space to even pull herself up into a crouch, but she lifted her butt and raised herself up on one arm and managed to get her eyes above the level of the car window and look back to where the light seemed to come from. There was rubble and steel there, but also a small gap about the size of a baseball in the fallen masonry – and blessed, dusty light.
Soshane stirred. Not awake, but waking.
You got to get out, Ambre. She can’t wake in here. Last she probably remembers is that lunatic leaning into the car, and now she wakes up here, in this post-apocalyptic shit? Not happening.
She looked back at the baseball-sized hole again. Definitely daylight. Then raised herself up and looked inside the patrol car through the shattered glass of the passenger side window, not really sure why, maybe just for inspiration. For ideas.
Her handbag. The glove compartment had exploded, the contents strewn across the seat and floor. A flashlight. A taser. Handcuffs.
She got an idea.
Executing it wasn’t easy. She had to lie on her back again with her head jammed into the base of the fallen wall, and then walk her legs up the side of the car until they reached the crushed window and slipped inside. Now she was almost hanging by her legs down the side of the car with her shoulders on the ground and her head at an awkward angle. Now, turn. She half rolled, half spun, scraping her abdomen across the busted cubes of broken glass still sitting in the passenger window frame, biting her lip so she didn’t scream. Pushed herself up as far as she could with her arms, trembling with the effort, sure she would collapse, until one of her knees fell off the seat inside the patrol car and the momentum pulled her across the window frame and up.