The Great Destroyer (28 page)

This is your fault.
  The thought sprang to George’s mind, and his Deep Satisfaction took an immediate plunge.  He recognized that he couldn’t focus on that now, couldn’t allow himself to digest the experience of losing one of his closest friends.

By conscious act of will, he focused his attention on the mission.  “Art, Joan is destroyed, we will go in and retrieve the Igazis ourselves.”

The noticeable lag in Art’s response—tenths of a second—spoke volumes about Art’s own internal reaction to the news.

“The humans lied to us,” he said, and George could sense the anger in the words.  “We took every precaution to save their lives, and the second they saw an opportunity, they turned on us.  There is no trusting them.”

“We will discuss this later,” George replied.  With that, he ran up to the front door and unceremoniously kicked it in, just as Viktor Yazov had taught him.  Art was a step behind, George knew.

Inside, they found a wide open room with stained glass windows and several rows of pews.  About half the pews had been removed to make room for an ad hoc hospital area, where Ashanti Igazi lay writhing in pain from contractions, her husband at her side.  Their first daughter was crying on the floor a few feet away.

“Don’t shoot!” Igazi shouted.  “We’re your friends!”

George quickly scanned the rest of the room.  Three more people were cowering behind pews, another two in the corner by the altar.  Turning his speaker to its maximum setting, his voice boomed, “Stay where you are and you will not be hurt.”

Ashanti appeared to be in shock from the combination of labor and the suddenness of the gunfight that had erupted around her, the explosions on the upper floors that had reverberated through the floor and seemed to shake the very stones of the ancient church.

Walking to the Igazis, he said, “We have to evacuate you three right now.  We can travel much faster away from the danger if you allow us to carry you.”

“But what is the da—” Joseph began to ask, before George cut him off.

“There is no time to discuss, I can tell you on the way.  You have to trust us, as we trust you.”

Igazi didn’t hesitate, possibly because the church no longer seemed like a safe place for his wife.  “Alright, let’s get out of here.  Please be careful with my wife and daughter.”

George had to consider for a moment how best to carry the three humans.  “Hold on to your daughter, Joseph.  Art, carry Ashanti, and be careful.”

As George reached to pick up Joseph, his audio sensors alerted him to a thunderclap of gunfire behind him, and he saw Joseph jump at the sound.  He spun around to see Art’s Gram up and aimed at a human several pews away.  The Arcani’s head was a mass of blood, and one of the antitank rifles flew out of his hands and landed with a clatter several feet away.

“Shit!” Igazi yelled, and his daughter wailed at the startling sound of the gunfire in the closed space.

George scanned the remaining humans again.  If Art hadn’t taken the shot, George wouldn’t have seen the attack coming until it was too late.

Art saw George’s optical sensor examining the other Arcani and transmitted via text message, “Have you not learned the lesson?  Humans are not trustworthy.  We should kill the rest of them so they can’t shoot us in the back on our way out.”

There wasn’t time to ponder the deeper implications of killing unarmed humans.  George had had enough surprises, and wouldn’t have the perfidious humans destroying any more of his friends.  “Quickly.”

With that, George and Art wielded their rifles and killed the remaining Arcani in six seconds.  Joseph screamed, “Enough!  They’re unarmed!” and his daughter continued to cry.  The Charlies did not respond.

Once the grisly task was done, George said simply, “Hold on tight to your daughter, Mr. Igazi.”  With that, he peremptorily holstered his rifle on his back, plucked up the human and his daughter, and ran out the front door.  With a glance to make sure Art had secured Mrs. Igazi, George put his mind to getting as far away from Colony 4 as possible in the time remaining. 

But his thought was interrupted for a moment when he passed the crumpled body of Joan.

“Your mission is complete, soldier,” Art said aloud, and George knew that his friend was trying to ease the blow his Deep Satisfaction had taken.

* * *

The Charlies were not designed to transport people, but they could do the job extremely well.  Their arms had extensive suspension and stabilization systems to allow for perfectly aimed shots at a dead run.  For their current passengers, it meant a smooth ride, aside from the twenty or thirty mile per hour wind in their faces.

The child still cried for its mother, upset by the relentless onslaught of new experiences.  Joseph did his best to calm his daughter, but his efforts purchased just a few minutes of relative calm at a time.  During one such period of placidity, Joseph asked as quietly as he could, “What is happening?  Our intelligence department said you had gone crazy and mutinied.”

George was offended by the report, though he knew it shouldn’t have surprised him.  “We mutinied because they told us to abandon the victory paid fire in our lives.  We did not go crazy.”

Igazi nodded.  “I couldn’t believe my friends would go insane.  When the weapons came in and they ordered us to ambush you, I refused to take part in it.  They stripped me of my rank.  I suspect they’ll charge me with some crime and send me off to a penal colony in Siberia when this is over.”

“Not if we have anything to say about it,” George assured him.  “We came to rescue you because the Ushah just nudged an asteroid onto a trajectory to destroy Colony 4 and everything else within a hundred kilometers.”

Igazi struggled to keep his voice down.  “They would have killed us too, my wife and children!  Why didn’t the Space Administration warn us?”

“Either they forgot or they were worried you would leak the information,” George said flatly.

Igazi swore loudly, disturbing his daughter, who recommenced crying.  “There will come a reckoning for them,” he said, a gleam of hate in his eyes.

With thirty-five minutes to go before impact, Simon radioed in to report that the other Charlies were now over one hundred kilometers from Colony 4 and, according to Takagawa’s message, far enough away that they would survive the effects of the asteroid impact.  They would continue moving at a more battery-conserving pace and find the safest possible place to wait out the impact.  That place would be behind a hill and as far from trees as possible.

At twenty-eight minutes to impact, a text message came from Art, who was running a few steps behind.  “Ashanti Igazi appears to be leaking.”

The phrasing baffled George.  “Is she bleeding?”

A pause.  “A little, but it’s mostly some other fluid which I cannot identify.”

Neither Charlie knew anything about the human birthing process.  “There’s nothing we can do about that,” George answered.  “We don’t have time to stop anyway.” 

Only fifteen minutes remained before impact.  The run and battle had dramatically depleted their battery reserves, and George worried that they wouldn’t have much left for whatever they needed to do once the effects of the impact had worn off.  But there was little reason to worry about that.

With ten minutes to go, they were ninety-four kilometers from Colony 4.  George knew next to nothing about asteroids.  He was aware, of course, that his ancestor had been the space-going Charlie I, but Charlie I hadn’t had much understanding of what was happening around him.  He had been little more than a remote control car with some especially useful functions, George thought. 

George wondered what such an existence would be like, devoid of any particular satisfaction or disappointment in one’s tasks, never knowing what the larger consequences of one’s actions were.

He put the issue aside.  Ninety-six kilometers.  He picked up the pace, running at nearly 33 miles per hour on the single-lane paved road.  Art was just a few steps behind, and even with the wind George could detect that Ashanti Igazi was moaning in pain.

With two minutes left, George saw an open field behind a hill, apparently a farm of some kind.  That would have to do.

“We will stop here,” George transmitted, and the two Charlies slowed down and got off the road.  Once in the field, they gently put down the Igazis.

Joseph immediately wanted to know why they had stopped.  “The asteroid will impact in ninety seconds.  Keep down as close to the ground as possible,” George advised.  “Dig in as much as you can.  Make sure all of your skin is covered.  I would advise keeping your infant completely under you.  Do not look up.”

A pause.  “Good luck, Joseph.”  George did not understand the logic of the phrase, but he knew from his readings that it was what humans said in such situations.

“I think they’re far enough away that George and Art ought to be fine,” Peskov said, eyes glued intently to a laptop computer.  “Not going to be pleasant for the Igazis though.”

Takagawa said nothing. Her eyes went skyward, looking for the trail overhead.  Director Korzov of the Space Administration had not told her what to expect.  He hadn’t said much of anything really.  “You might be interested to know that two Ushah shuttles just attached rockets to asteroid ZZ 749 and appear to be nudging it out of orbit.  Estimated impact is right at Colony 4.  Minimum safe distance one hundred kilometers.  Thought you should know.”

The phone had clicked off abruptly, before Takagawa could ask any questions about the cryptic warning.  She had known exactly what Korzov expected her to do with the information, but she hadn’t been sure there’d been enough time to warn the Charlies and get them far enough away.

Her own safety was not guaranteed, she knew, and the asteroid wasn’t the only danger.  Once she, Yazov, Jackson, and Peskov had agreed that the Charlies were in the right, they had quickly decided to find a way to help their creation.  It was only a matter of time before the Terran Alliance shut down Project Charlie and seized whatever technology they could to help destroy the Charlies in the field. 

The solution was simple: Project Charlie had gone mobile.  The only two truly irreplaceable parts of the program were the talent she had assembled and the programming archives that contained the secrets to Ushah computing, the Charlies’ system architecture, and the like.  It amounted to about a hundred computer hard drives and ninety-five people, all of which fit on a single medium-sized airplane. 

She had asked for volunteers, and no one had held back.  Project Charlie was more than a livelihood for the people involved.  What had begun like a weapons system program from the 20th century had turned into something quite different.  They were building something with a soul.

Many programmers left amorfriends, wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, and old friends.  They chose to embark on an adventure freighted with danger and uncertainty. 

They had flown to Pretoria in what had once been South Africa, the closest accessible airport to the battlefield.  With only minimal questioning from the local Safety Ministry officials, they had rented out a warehouse and begun setting up their equipment.  Of course, had they known about the asteroid when Takagawa cooked up the plan, they would have chosen somewhere farther away.  Now they were only about 200 kilometers from the impact point of the asteroid.

Though news of the upcoming impact had not leaked to the public, the upper echelons of the Terran Alliance would be preparing for it.  The impact and its aftermath would keep them occupied for at least a day or two to come, distracting them from the question of what Project Charlie was up to and why no one was answering the phones in Houston. 

Besides, Takagawa had read a few scientific articles on asteroid impacts over the past several hours.  It was hard to imagine a bigger distraction than what was to come.

“There!” Yazov shouted, pointing to the sky.  A fiery streak had appeared moving left to right in the early afternoon sunlight. 

As the asteroid passed 54,000 feet moving at ten miles per second, friction between the rock and ice of the asteroid and the gas molecules of the upper atmosphere was tearing at the object hurtling down from space.  Some fragments broke off, and the larger pieces exploded on their own, but the great mass raced on toward the continent that had given birth to humanity.

Emma briefly wondered what the Ushah at Colony 4 were going through in these final moments. 
Were they calm and stoic about their coming death?  Frantic?  Trying to escape against all odds?  They aren’t so dissimilar from us
, she decided. 
Some will be brave, some will not.  Few deserve the fate coming to them.

At 3:02 PM local time, the asteroid disappeared over the horizon. 

Though many of the events happened far too quickly for Takagawa to see, she had read enough about asteroid impacts over the past two hours to understand what happened next.

About 700 million tons of asteroid (fairly dense rock and iron, according to the Space Administration data on near-Earth object ZZ 749) plowed through the atmosphere, briefly creating a vacuum above the impact site.  Then, the space rock smashed directly into Colony 4. 

Part of Takagawa’s mind was impressed at the feat of precision targeting, the irregularly shaped asteroid tumbling through the atmosphere exactly as modeled by Ushah engineers.

Ten thousand Ushah died in the blink of an eye.  The tragedy seemed distant, however, as Emma focused on the numbers and science of the event rather than the effect on the sapient beings of Colony 4.

The asteroid vaporized over one hundred million cubic meters of Earth rock, digging a crater about a mile deep and six miles wide.  A tremendous amount of rock was tossed up into the air.  Some fragments would escape the Earth entirely, but most stayed in the atmosphere, creating a veil of dust that would later affect global temperatures. 

While that would be a problem, Takagawa knew, there were much more immediate concerns. 

First, there was a fireball.  The kinetic energy of the asteroid—about 8,300 megatons of energy, or about 500,000 Hiroshima bombs—superheated the gases of the atmosphere around the impact point until the air ignited and flew outwards.  A flash visible to Takagawa announced the beginning of the conflagration, and within a quarter of a second, the visible part of the fireball was seven miles wide. 

A hundred kilometers away from the impact, George and Art registered enough heat to cause second-degree burns on uncovered skin.  Takagawa hoped they had warned the Igazis.

The fireball and its effects lasted for over a minute, and about halfway through, the Earth began shaking.  A 7.2 Richter scale earthquake rumbled through the area, not enough to kill, but enough to cause many to get up out of shock and suffer the burns of the fireball. 

The fireball and earthquake had subsided about a minute earlier when the next horror hit George and Art: a shockwave whipping air outwards in all directions.  A hundred kilometers from the impact, the shockwave generated hundred-mile per hour winds and an overpressure sufficient to shatter glass windows.

The shockwave was the reason Takagawa had said the Charlies needed to be a hundred kilometers away from the impact.  The Charlies could withstand more heat than a human being, a consequence of their being designed to work in the extreme temperatures of space.  But if they had been, say, thirty kilometers away from the impact, the shockwave would be throwing around fragments of asteroid and rock as big as a dishwasher at a speed north of 500 miles per hour. 

Even the more reasonable wind speeds at George and Art’s position were marginally survivable.  About a third of the trees in the area and most of the wildlife did not survive the combination of the fireball and wind.  Staying behind the hill spared the Igazis the worst of this punishment.

Five minutes after the shockwave hit George, Art, and the Igazis, it slammed into Pretoria.  Over 125 miles from the impact site, the blast of air was still enough to break half of the windows in the city, as well as a smattering of chimneys.  Some poorly designed and constructed buildings, most made of wood, toppled, killing their occupants.  Luckily, the warehouse occupied by Project Charlie had barely any windows, and its stout concrete construction was barely swayed. 

Finally, after the fireball, shockwave, and larger debris had all tried to kill the Charlies, the lighter dust from the impact began to rain down like thick snowflakes. 

And just like that, the immediate danger was over.  Not a single tree stood within thirty miles of what had once been Colony 4.  No animals larger than an insect survived out to fifty miles from the impact site.  But about sixty-two miles southwest of the crater, George triggered his radio and called to his creator.

“Dr. Takagawa,” he said simply, “we are still here.” 

The other Charlies reported in over the next several minutes.  They had all made it through the event unscathed, their hard composite carbon cases insulating them from the worst of the heat and the high winds. 

“That was a damn close call,” Jackson said.

“Oh, there’s more to come,” Takagawa said.  “One obvious development is the temperature.  It’s early spring in South Africa; the temperature is supposed to hover around the 70s or 80s Fahrenheit during the daytime.  The dust in the atmosphere is already changing that.”

Everyone present realized the chill in the air, and Takagawa explained.  “Temperatures are down about five degrees Fahrenheit and still plummeting.  Some of the articles I read on the way to Pretoria suggest that global temperatures will be down by a degree Celsius, perhaps 3-4 degrees Fahrenheit, for as long as a decade.  But the decade of cold will be followed by a much longer period—centuries, maybe—of increased temperatures.” 

“Why?” Yazov asked.

“Greenhouse effect.  Millions of tons of plant life have already been killed by the impact.  The current temperature decrease and the lack of sunlight reaching plants will lead to further massive plant and animal deaths.  The other big contributor to plant and animal deaths—well, you can hear it outside now.” 

They listened, hearing the patter of rain.  “The asteroid kicked up sulphur deposits under the impact site, and that sulphur is now forming nucleation sites for acid rain clouds.  The rain coming down now has a very high acidity—not far off from battery acid.”

“Will it eat through the roof?” Peskov asked nervously.

She shook her head.  “No, people indoors will be fine, but even more plants and animals will die from the rain all over the world, less acidic the farther it gets from South Africa, but still more than many plants can handle.  The plant and animal deaths will lead to an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which will lead to a greenhouse effect.  The asteroid was small enough that the effect won’t be catastrophic—maybe 2-3 degrees Celsius.”

Jackson interjected, “That’s about what was posed by the climate change a few centuries ago.”

“That’s right,” Takagawa said, resisting the urge to sound patronizing to her non-scientist husband.  “Global ocean levels will rise, but the most important effect will be on Africa itself.  I’m guessing that’s the whole point of this exercise from the Ushah perspective.”

“What do you mean?” Jackson asked.

“The Ushah are terraforming.  Well, not
terra
forming, but making Earth more like their own planet—hotter.  Africa in particular is susceptible to increased temperatures from climate change, and the Ushah would prefer the higher temperatures for their new homeland.”

Everyone present felt fear at the development.  The Ushah were changing the very air they breathed.

Yazov shook his head dismissively.  “We’ll deal with that later.  For now, we need to make sure our people are safe.”

It turned out a few members of Project Charlie had cut themselves on broken glass, but no one was seriously hurt.  “We need to get the Charlies here before the Terran Alliance thinks to come after us,” Jackson said.

Takagawa nodded.  She had allowed herself to forget temporarily about the relatively petty threat of the world’s government while the cosmic collision had played itself out.  She triggered the radio.  “All Charlies, congratulations on surviving the impact.  Your run to safety has most likely seriously depleted your battery levels.  We have recharging stations available in a warehouse in Pretoria, sector BD 413, -25.719705 latitude, 28.318903 longitude.  All Charlies acknowledge.”

The Charlies must have been communicating rapidly, and Takagawa already knew the topic and outcome.  Of course the Charlies had to trust Takagawa—why would she have saved them all from the asteroid just to lead them into a trap?

George answered four seconds later.  “Acknowledged.  We will be there in six hours.”

Jackson caught Takagawa’s eye.  “We have to assume that the Terran Alliance is going to see them coming.  What if they track the Charlies here and have the Ushah use another asteroid to take us out?”