Dark Star Rising Second Edition (Pebbles in The Sky) (55 page)

At first, when Alfred had joined the demonstration at the gate he thought that the other demonstrators had also heeded the calling of the alien voices, but after talking to a few of them about what the aliens were saying to him they just laughed and sneered at him.  The consensus of the mob was that the Dwarf had been sent to destroy Earth after an alien race had found the old Voyager probe that had left the solar system thirty years ago.  The aliens had determined that humans were a threat to rest of the intelligent civilizations of the universe and intended on destroying the human race with the Brown Dwarf.  There had been no capture of any aliens.  The aliens were much to smart and powerful for mere humans to catch them.  The crowd was convinced that only by swearing to stop all manned space activity above Earth’s atmosphere would the aliens call back the Dwarf and let humanity live.

Alfred could hear the shrieks of the aliens in his head.  They were being tortured by NASA to try and get them to have their home world call off the Dwarf.  Alfred had brought his old single shot sniper rifle with him that his great grandfather had kept after World War Two.  It was in mint condition, carefully oiled and cared for all these years by Alfred’s father, and his father before him.  His father had left it to him when he had died several years ago of a heart attack.  Alfred had brought the gun with him to try and rescue the aliens if he could.

The problem at the moment was that he could get nowhere near the gate.  There were at least two to three hundred police and MP’s in front of the gate and then the crowd of thousands of demonstrators between Alfred and the gate.  Not trusting the agitated members of the crowd at the gate, he had found an empty apartment and kicked in the door and found his present view point.  On two occasions he had attempted to shoot one of the guards at the gate, but each time a demonstrator had jumped right into his line of sight.  He had ended up shooting them by accident.  Now, Alfred was afraid that there were undercover government agents looking through the crowd for the shooter.  He was going to have to leave and come up with another plan to rescue the aliens.

As Alfred stood to gather up his gear in preparation for leaving, he caught sight of movement on the roof of the NASA headquarters building.  He saw several people run out onto the roof to a waiting helicopter.  The helicopter was not one of the armored military types, but a small corporate model that could carry five to six passengers.  The voices in his head were screaming that the lead NASA interrogator was escaping the compound in the helicopter before the demonstrators crashed in the gate.

As the rotors of the helicopter started to spin up, Alfred realized that this may be his best chance to help the aliens.  He sat down and braced the old sniper rifle on the window frame and looked through the sight.  He could see the pilot of the chopper sitting in the cockpit.  As the helicopter rose from the roof it started rising out and above the demonstrators below.  Alfred saw that he was in luck as the helicopter was coming right over the apartment window that Alfred was perched in. 

Alfred carefully took aim and fired the old bolt action rifle.  Still looking through the sight of the rifle, Alfred saw the Plexiglas windshield of the helicopter starburst as the bullet struck it and the bulkhead behind the pilots head was suddenly splattered with blood and brain matter.  The helicopter starting spinning violently to the left and rolled over on to its side and slid sideways right down into the crowd of demonstrators.  Moments later, a column of fire and smoke leapt into the sky as its fuel tanks ruptured and caught fire.

Alfred jumped up and ran out of the apartment, totally forgetting about the old rifle as he sought to escape.  He knew that he had just minutes to get out of the area before the plains clothes agents moved in.  The voices in his head were screaming at him so loud that could not think, he could just run.  He was still running when he crossed the street right in front of a responding fire response vehicle and died instantly when the heavy vehicle hit him and tossed him onto the curb, breaking his neck.

Peter jumped up when he heard the explosion and looked out his window in time to see a spray of burning jet engine fuel explode out across the crowd of demonstrators.  In the middle of that crowd, was what remained of a NASA corporate helicopter.  Peter felt sick. He sat back down in his chair as a wail of sirens could be heard in the distance.  The people in the crowd who had not been injured in the explosion or sprayed with the burning fuel fled screaming in all directions.  The Headquarters building security alarm started going off and he could hear staff screaming and security personnel running down the hallway.  For the first time since his son was born, Peter laid his head on his desk and wept.

Chapter 61

June 12
th
, 2043

New Washington, Georgia

President Walden sat in the situation briefing room in the Colonial House.  His advisors were all talking at once and trying to make themselves heard.  "What a damn zoo," he thought to himself.  Finally he had all he could stand.  He stood up and shouted down the table, “All of you shut the fuck up!”  The entire room grew silent and looked at him in shock.

“It is a good thing the majority of you are not in the armed forces or I would have you shot! I need some organization here and I want it now!"  He pointed out the window.  The general public is doing the same thing you are.  You need to be better than this.  If this country’s leadership panics, what the hell is going to happen out there?  I don’t care if you are pissing your pants in terror, you had better not let the public see it.  We need to set an example for them, and if you cannot do it, then get the hell out and find me someone who can.  Do I make myself clear?”

When no one answered him the President sat down. “Now, one at a time, please brief this group and myself.  We all need to have a clear picture what is going on so we can try and keep things under control.  Mr. Warren, as chief scientific advisor, tell us what is going on with the Dwarf.  Skip the trivial crap and stick with the big picture.”

Ronald Warren stood and spoke. “We are about eleven days from the point of closest approach from the Dwarf Star.  There is wide spread flooding at high tide around the globe.  Tides up to sixty feet have been reported at areas along the gulf coast.  At the moment, probably a full third of the state of Florida is under water as the tides cycle through.  Large amounts of farm land have been ruined from the saltwater and death estimates are probably several million in Florida alone.  Most of the coastal cities on the eastern seaboard have been inundated by the high tides.  Most, if not all of the shipping ports will take at least months to get dried out and operational again.  It will probably take years to dredge out all the sediment deposits that are forming in the harbors and shipping channels.  Two nights ago, the dikes at New Orleans gave way and that city and just about all the residents who stayed there are drowned.  These flood tides are going to get even worse as we reach the Dwarfs closest approach point.”

“What about the dikes protecting Cape Canaveral?” the President asked.

“They are holding for the moment.  Water is reaching about ten feet below the tops of the dikes.  Crews are working around the clock shoring up the dikes and trying to raise them higher.  It will be touch and go as to whether or not they are able to hold on.  If the dikes fail, then we will lose the eastern heavy launch facility.  The western facility has had about two feet of volcanic ash dumped on it so far.  The Mag-rail Launch Facility has also been damaged.  The New Madrid earthquake several days ago caused the collapse of several sections of the launch rail.  At the moment, Cape Canaveral is the only  space launch facility still operational.”

“Moving on to the earthquakes, yesterday, there was another large one centered on the area of Bakersfield, California.  Preliminary estimates put it around eight point one on the Richter scale.  It is doubtful that any building or structure within two hundred miles of the epicenter is still standing.  The quake along the New Madrid fault line broke open levies and dikes all along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.  There will be massive flooding the next time the water gets high all along those river basins.  And speaking of river flooding, there is probably not a damn left west of the Mississippi that the earthquakes have not destroyed.  Areas below all the large dams have been totally wiped out in the released flood waters.”

“Besides the four volcanoes erupting in Hawaii, we have at least five others now erupting up and down the west coast, two in Oregon, one in Washington State, and two in Alaska. Downwind of those volcanoes there are multiple feet of ash being dumped.  Most if not all of the wheat and corn crops of the Midwest are going to be total losses.  We had counted on one more good harvest before the cold winters come for that area.  Livestock losses will be catastrophic as the water supplies will not be fit to drink and the ash is covering the pasture land.  Visibility is down to less than a tenth of a mile in most of the northern half of the country.  Even here in the south, the sky is grey with ash and there are several inches of it in places. The sulfur in it will cause local lakes and streams to become very acidic and plants and fish will suffer greatly. Frankly, the whole world is getting hammered and some places have it many times worse than we do.”  The science advisor shook his head and sat down.

The FEMA director stood for his turn.  “I would like to say that my news is good, but in general it is not.  We have a few bright spots
but not many.  So far the buildings in the new relocation areas have held up very well.  They were built to survive a seven point zero magnitude earthquake without major structural damage.  There has been some equipment damage, and some of the underground transportation tunnels have caved in, but nothing catastrophic.  All of the emergency food storage areas are safe.  We have mobile teams out all over the areas of the country that were not evacuated working in conjunction with National Guard and Army units.  Except for the flood zones, casualties in the relocation states have been minor.  We estimate that civilian losses among the waivered people who did not leave the west coast to be almost eighty percent.  Between the earthquakes, tsunamis, wild fires,
and volcanoes, the west coast is a scene from hell.  After the Dwarf is safely past us and out of the solar
system we will see what we can do to aid those people.  We can all give thanks that President Montgomery started the re-location projects thirty years ago when she did.  Our country was much better prepared than most.”

The President looked over at his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.  “
Admiral, can you give us a quick rundown on how the rest of the world is reacting to all of this.”

The
Admiral stood up and sighed.  “It is not enough that the Dwarf Star is killing millions in its passing.  Humans are trying their best to add to the carnage and death toll.  The war in Pakistan and India is all but over. That is good news, I guess.  However, it took each side lobbing half a dozen nukes at each other’s largest cities to end it.  Essentially there was nothing much left to blow up so they called it quits.  Intelligence estimates that between the floods in India and the exchange of nukes that over sixty percent of the populations of both of those countries as well as a majority of the Iranian refugees in Pakistan have died.  The death toll is probably in the range to four to five hundred million people there just from the nukes alone.”

“Israel finally got tired of the terrorist attacks and launched an air and ground invasion of Lebanon and Jordon and the entire west bank.  When Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt tried to intervene Israel nuked all their capitols and ended that war before it ever got started.  Russia tried to intervene, but Israel told them to keep their hands off, or they would also turn Russia’s new homelands into molten glass.  There was a tense standoff for two days and finally they came to an agreement and both sides backed down from confrontation.  Israel is now claiming Lebanon and Jordan and the entire western bank as its territory. All non-Jewish residents are being forced to leave the
territories permanently.  Most of them are fleeing across the borders into Egypt and Saudi Arabia.  The French coalition of North Africa is backing the Israelis and refusing to allow any Muslim refugee’s to enter their territories.”

The British Common wealth is doing ok from what we can tell.  They were pretty organized down in Australia and New Zealand.  They are keeping their heads down and minding their own business.”

“The Chinese rebellion is getting worse.  Since the Army executed the entire central party and tried to impose a military junta the entire country is breaking apart.  There are so many ethnic groups in what used to be China that are trying to break free that it is utter chaos.  After that debacle when they tried to invade Taiwan, the military has been in free fall and now there is news that whole divisions are rebelling and fighting each other as different generals make a grab for power.  We do not expect China to survive as a national entity.”