Storm Killer (2 page)

The man leaned over and took her hand across the table, “I know you don’t agree with what I’m going to do.”

“No, I definitely don’t agree with any of this,” the woman almost shouted at the man. Then in an almost inaudible voice she said, “But I’ve got little choice, do I?”

“No, you don’t.”

They sat quietly for a minute or more sipping their coffees. Each was deep in their private thoughts about the near future.

The man absentmindedly reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a pack of gum. He removed a stick, carefully removed the paper sleeve, unfolded the foil wrap, and placed the gum in his mouth. He then very carefully refolded the gum’s foil wrapper, replaced the paper sleeve, and returned it to the pack.

He quietly chewed on the new stick as the silence continued to permeate the room.

The woman stirred and broke the silence. “Like I said before, you’ll have to be electrocuted.”

The man smiled sadly, nodded and sighed heavily as if he were very tired. “That sounds like the right approach. I’ll be electrocuted.”

The man appeared to be deep in thought for a moment and then added, “Make sure the emergency oxygen bottle is tough to get off the sled. That’ll add another thirty to forty-five seconds to the time to revive me.”

The woman nodded, “Okay, I can make sure the bottle gets tangled up with some other gear.”

She grabbed the man’s left hand and leaned over the table until her face was only inches from his. The woman implored, “Please. Rethink this! There’s still time to end this madness!”

The man shook his head and slammed his open right hand on the table. “Enough! Hold your tongue! I’ve gotta do this! It’s time for people to pay. Pay for their disregard and lack of understanding. No, that’s wrong. They do have understanding; they just don’t give a crap. But they will soon. Oh yes, they will soon.”

He glanced at his wristwatch and patted the back of the woman’s hand. “I’ve got to leave before someone gets curious about why I’m here so long. Remember to tangle up the oxygen bottle! The way things are going, I will probably have to be electrocuted within the next twenty-four hours. So be ready to act.”

They stood up, hugged, and the man left the woman’s table.

The woman remained standing, staring at the man’s back as he left the room. She sat down at the table as if the weight of the world were on her shoulders. Even in the low gravity, she seemed to be weighted down by the situation.      Her eyes glistened with tears as she whispered, “Yes, my dear brother, electrocution is the best path for you. Oh my God, what are we doing? What am I doing?” And then she dropped her head into her hands and cried.

3

Adam Sand glanced from Storm Killer to the background of Earth. From this height one could see the entire hemisphere. They were in geo-synchronous orbit permanently positioned over the east coast of the United States. He could see a hurricane approaching Florida.
It’s early for a storm like this. It’s only late August. Normally hurricanes form much later in the year.
He thought to himself as he surveyed the storm. He muttered to him self, “Normal? Things in weather haven’t been “normal” for several years now.” He pondered.
Maybe what’s happening now is going to be the new normal. How many Category Five storms have we had the last three years?  Nine, or ten? What difference does it make? One is more than enough.

His eyes returned to the immense station known as the Storm Killer project. It was the largest engineering project ever attempted by the human race. It dwarfed projects like the ancient pyramids of Giza, and the Hoover or Three Gorges dams. It was more ambitious than the Great Wall of China. In fact, it was a more complex, and far more expensive project than all of these others put together, and Adam was the project manager for its construction.

The station seemed to hang in the emptiness of space. Every time he looked at it he was awestruck by its size. One could not appreciate the sheer size without some human point of reference. Adam used the small fleet of shuttles that ferried supplies and materials between Earth and Storm Killer. Currently there were three shuttles docked at the station. Two were from NASA in the United States, and one was from JAXA, the Japanese space agency. Each was the size of a 747 aircraft. Yet, the three shuttles were very small protrusions from the top of the station’s southern sphere. These small pimples on Storm Killer’s skin gave a clear indication of the immensity of the station.    

The station looked like an antique erector set mixed with LEGO blocks gone wild. Attached at each end of its central two-kilometer-long titanium column were large spheres of the same material. The twin spheres were each over three quarters of a kilometer in diameter. The entire assembly resembled a dumbbell and most of the contractors involved in the station’s construction simply called it that.

At the top of each sphere sprouted several square blocks that contained the station’s power plants, air purification and recovery facilities as well as several ongoing scientific experiments. These units were attached to the station by one-hundred-meter-long transport tubes set at various angles from the spheres.

From each sphere of the dumbbell radiated two rows of six equal spaced arms made of spindly carbon fiber rods each about nineteen hundred meters in length. Between the rods were loosely folded gossamer-thin panels of a translucent film. The panels were almost invisible until the sunlight struck them at certain points during the station’s slow rotation.

Adam watched the work crew align the final panel to the final anchor point of the final rod. He was extremely uncomfortable in his environmental suit, but the comfort issue was the furthest thing from his thoughts. He was elated by the completion of the final panel. The slight adjustments being made to the panel now made Storm Killer operational.

As of tomorrow, Man would forever take away control of the Earth’s weather from jaded Mpther Nature’s eternal grasp.

4

The girl features ran through the alley as fast as she could. She was slowed by the backpack of books and school supplies bouncing on her back. She was threading her way through some of the back streets and alleys of the Angelino Heights section of the Echo Park district of greater Los Angeles. The rears of gracious Victorian homes sprawled on both sides of the narrow alley she now traversed. 

     She had classic Latin features and temperament. Dark, flashing brown eyes, long luxurious dark hair, smooth olive skin, and a zest for life few possessed.   

She wore the black and green uniform of Belmont High School. She was a senior there. The school, originally opened in the early 1920s, had been renovated several years earlier. Her family had used one of the rooms there for her eighteenth birthday just two weeks ago. The building was now in flames as the rioters had moved deeper into Angelino Heights. The students had run from the building as the headmaster’s voice had boomed from the PA system, “The rioters have broken through the police cordon! Run! Run for your lives! The rioters are only a block away!”

The riots had started five days before and escalated from an initial peaceful demonstration to the current civil war with the illegal immigrants and disenfranchised minorities in Southern California on one side and the local and Federal authorities on the other.

After the Federal government had promulgated the Immigration Reform Act deportations had begun. Families containing illegals and children born within the United States during the parents’ illegal stay were being ripped apart. The children were allowed to stay as birthright U.S. citizens while their parents were being deported. Underage children of these families were being fed into the various states’ child protection services and farmed out into temporary foster homes.

In California, Children and Family Services had failed miserably due to the sheer volume of children delivered into the system as the Immigration and Naturalization Service began forcefully applying the provisions of the new laws. This failure had culminated in a brother and sister of one such family, age six and five respectively, slipping through the support system and ending up dead in the Puente Hills landfill. An investigation was underway to determine what had happened to the children and how Child Services had failed so completely.

This event had led to the initial demonstration five days prior. Over twenty thousand illegal aliens and another five thousand U.S. citizens supporting them had attended that demonstration.

Local law enforcement, pushed by the Federal Government’s demand to quell any civil disturbance relating to the new laws, had reacted strongly to the unplanned and unlicensed demonstration around the City Hall complex.

Police lines had started at the intersection of 3rd Street and North Main at one end, and Aliso Street and North Main at the other end. They had marched down Main Street using their batons, tear gas, and water cannon to subdue the demonstrators. Over three hundred arrests were made. Twenty-two people were admitted to local hospitals for injuries associated with the police action.

The following day over sixty thousand had begun a demonstration protesting the prior day’s events. Two supposed demonstrators at 3rd and North Main had pulled assault rifles from a panel truck and opened fire on the police line as it was being formed. Three officers were killed and five more wounded. The police were determined to arrest the culprits and moved into the crowd closest to the point of attack. They found the now empty rifles lying on sidewalk, but no one could identify who had dropped the guns. The police became overly aggressive and began arresting anyone who was in the area of the attack. The angry police summarily beat to the ground anyone resisting arrest. The police shot two men, thought to be the shooters, as they attempted to run from the scene. It would later be determined that they were two reporters running to cover a police beating of a young pregnant woman who had spit in the face of a cop.

The situation rapidly deteriorated into open warfare between the illegals and their supporters on one side, and the police on the other.

The violence spread nationally through the entire minority community that, for years, had felt abandoned. Many of the younger disenfranchised hade made ties with overseas terrorist organizations and awaited their order to begin the systematic destruction of the country’s infrastructure.

On the third day of the violence, the terrorist leaders gave the order. Acts of terrorism boiled over across the entire country, but the worst of the situation continued to be in the Los Angeles basin.  

The city erupted into sporadic sniper fire, citywide arson, and beatings of anyone felt to be “on the other side”. That night, in two portions of the city, firefights with assault weapons had broken out with high causalities on both sides. Bombs were detonated in almost every public building in the city.

The early morning light illuminated a city in flames, with flashes of automatic weapons fire dotting the rooflines of the districts of South Los Angeles, Hyde Park, Crenshaw, and Echo Park.    

The National Guard had been called out, but was now spread thin by pitched battles in Sacramento, Fresno, and all of Southern California. Over thirty percent of the National Guard had deserted in disagreement with the laws that had started the violence. 

Rioters had now entered the mob rule phase and all civil order was breaking down. The mob entering the Echo Park district brandished weapons of all sorts. The mob was a now mindless animal seeking destruction, murder, rape, and the infliction of pain for their enemy. The enemy was anyone still sane and civilized.

The girl was running from this animal. She was sobbing between pants of breath as she ran toward the safety of her home.

As she neared the end of the alley, two men entered it from the far end and spotted her. She almost fell as she heard them yelling, “Stop my little Lolita! We have a present for you!” They then laughed as they began chasing her. She turned right at the end of the alley and entered the tree-lined boulevard where her home was located. 

She ran for her life as the men closed the distance between them and her. She turned into her driveway and ran to the front door. It stood open but the significance of this did not dawn on her as she ran inside and slammed the door. She turned, threw the door lock, and leaned her back on the door as she caught her breath.

She held her eyes closed as she gasped for air. It was only after her breathing returned to a somewhat normal state that she opened her eyes. What she saw made here stomach heave. On the threshold to stairs leading to the bedrooms above lay her grandfather. The back of his head was partially blown away. He lay in a pool of blood and pieces of brain. His eyes were open with astonishment still registered on his face.         

She retched and vomited up the school lunch she had eaten less than an hour ago. A lunch she had eaten before the world, as she knew it, came to an end.