Stormhaven Rising (Atlas and the Winds Book 1) (75 page)

“Welcome to the bridge, Commander Rosnikov,” he said, smiling broadly and winking. She wasn’t amused by his light-hearted tone. “We’re loaded and ready for you to give the word. If you have something you want to say, this’d be your chance.”

She shook her head. “Let’s get this over with,” she said, walking to the front windows and looking out across the field. The other ships stood around them, five of them.

“Take her up,” Dave said, raising his voice to be heard by the pilot.

The
Pegasus
and the
Draco
lifted together, rising above the other ships, leaving them behind. The small crowd of people stood between them, ants trapped between mountains. She stood by the windows until they’d diminished into nothing, lost in the distance below her. And somehow, she knew, forever behind her.

“Good-bye,” she whispered, closing her eyes to hold back the tears.

***

Washington:

Sylvia Hutton stood with her Administration, but alone in front of the camera. Without exception, they’d disagreed with her decision, some of them vocally, while others simply disapproved and remained silent. But she’d stood her ground, her commitment to truth giving her strength.

“Sylvia, please think about this,” John said. “You’re committing political suicide.”

“Maybe so,” she said, “but I have to do this.”

“They’re going to hammer us,” the Vice-President said. “I’ve already told the Senate what’s coming, but they’re still going to have a lot of pressure for our heads.”

“We’ll see,” she said. “Maybe the Chinese are right and the public’s a lot smarter than we’ve given them credit for being."

“I want to believe that,” Dick said. “I really do.” He shook his head, a glimmer of his old optimism showing behind the concern in his eyes.

“Madam President?” A makeup artist stood waiting for the President to sit behind her desk. The lights were bright, and the room was warm. “We just need to make sure you don’t look, uhm …”

“Nervous,” she finished for the young woman, smiling and sitting down to let her fluff powder on her face.

An audio technician approached and handed her a small microphone. “Can you please clip this to your lapel, Ma’am?” he said, nodding when she took the mic and placed it for him. He pulled a small remote from his pocket and pointed it at her, turning the mic on. He disappeared behind the glare.

She looked into the camera lens, a dark circle of shadow protruding from the blinding lights, and slipped the stack of notes onto the desk blotter in front of her. She hadn’t written a speech, preferring to sketch an outline of the high points she needed to cover. She glanced down at them as the Floor Manager stuck his hand forward where she could see his fingers and waved it to attract her attention. “Madam President, we’ve got sixty seconds."

She nodded, taking several deep breaths in an effort to calm her nerves. She felt like her hands were vibrating. She stared through the glare to where she assumed Dick’s face was, and winked. Her entire cabinet sat on folding chairs beside him.

“Thirty seconds,” he said. She closed her eyes and could actually hear her heart pounding in her ears. Another deep breath. Her voice felt heavy, and she cleared her throat. A small coughing grunt.

“Five seconds, four, three, two ...” His fingers counted each second. At zero he pointed at her and pulled his hand back into the shadows.

And her voice failed. For a second. Almost two.

“My fellow Americans,” she started with the cliché opening line of almost every Presidential Address of the last thirty years, and then she stopped again, considering her words, letting the gravity of the moment hang heavily. “My friends, citizens of this nation, and of the entire world. Tonight I’m here not as simply the American President, but as a member of the human race. I speak not just to our people, but to everyone, everywhere on Earth.” She looked down at the notes in front of her and made a decision. She slid them aside.

“What I’m about to say to you, and how each and every one of you react to my words, will set the foundations of our destiny. Our future will be decided in this moment, and our lives forever changed by our actions. Will we live up to our greatest potential, or fall beneath the weight of our own fears?

“Tonight, America and the world is at war. But this is not a war against an opponent that civilization has ever before faced. It is a war against the cosmos itself, and the inevitability of the motions of the universe.

“For almost two months we’ve been tracking an asteroid that we now believe is on a collision course with the Earth. I need to emphasize that this asteroid, called Antu, is not an immediate threat to us. We still have more than twenty-one months before it arrives.

“We have ample time to react to this potential collision, and as many of you may now realize, Antu has been the cause of all the recent space activity by both the People’s Republic of China and the United States. Both our nations are engaged in separate missions to stop Antu.

“While I cannot speak on the nature or the progress of the Chinese program, I can address the progress of our efforts. And I have to honestly say that not all of our efforts have been successful so far. Although, in spite of our setbacks, we will persevere.” She stopped and took a small sip of water from the clear glass that sat just out of camera range.

“For the last seven weeks, the United States has been conducting training operations at the International Space Station. Unfortunately, the cataclysmic collision of a Progress supply capsule with the station has forced us to curtail the orbital portion of our mission. It is important to know that the only segment of our effort that has been affected is the small portion that was to be conducted at Alpha.”

A cell phone chirped in the relative darkness beyond the lights, and she saw William Worthington’s silhouette ducking out through the door.

Years in the political world had given her the ability to put her mouth on automatic, while her mind worked in another direction, so she continued, trying to ignore whatever it was that might have been important enough to interrupt her address. The words came without effort, and this time it was almost a cathartic purging.

She explained her own responsibility, and accepted whatever judgment history may lay upon her for the failure at the ISS. Ultimately, she offered herself up for the mercy of the Court of Public Opinion, willing to shoulder the brunt of their anger.

The door opened again and the Secretary returned, his body language telling her that he had bad news.

She knew it was time to bring the address to a close. She paused again, resuming control from her mental autopilot.

“Throughout our history, whenever humanity has faced a test of our faith and understanding, we have always been the instrument of our own salvation. Noah had to build the Ark. It wasn’t handed to him stocked and ready for the flood. It was his faith that moved him, and his resolve that built the Ark.

“It is my hope the human spirit that we all share, will deliver us in our time, as Noah was delivered in his. That this moment will be seen through the lens of history as our absolute finest hour. Our noblest cause. And our greatest achievement.

“Thank you, and God bless."

She sat still until the Floor Manager nodded. “We’re clear,” he said. His voice sounding hesitant, and she realized he was reacting to the content of her speech. They’d not given out any preliminary copies, so he was as shocked as the rest of the country.

“Madam President,” William Worthington stepped up to the desk, lowering his voice while she was unclipping the mic. “Riots have broken out in Atlanta and Chicago, and the California National guard is reporting fires in downtown Sacramento and at several locations in Los Angeles and San Diego. Fortunately, the Guard was already on alert or it would be worse.”

Sylvia Hutton felt the room spinning, and shook her head as the bright lights shut off and her eyes adjusted. Chaos exploded in her mind, a thousand fires. She’d done the right thing, and she hoped time would prove her right. Yet at this moment, that distant day when she might be vindicated seemed impossibly far away.

***

Fire, Dust and Hope

North Polar Region, Luna:

The
Draco
hung 10,000 feet over the torn and rocky landscape near the Lunar North Pole. Not orbiting, just hanging. The
Pegasus
flew about five miles to starboard at the same altitude. They’d been looking for a landing site for almost an hour, and Dave was beginning to wonder if they’d find one large enough to build the colony. The terrain in both polar regions of the moon was some of the most hammered real estate in the Solar System, and they needed to find three square miles of reasonably unbroken regolith to meet the needs of Cole’s plan.

Colton had been determined that they set themselves as close to the North Pole as possible, for some very solid reasons. Not the least of which was, if the worst case happened and Antu actually did hit, it was possible some of the ejecta could reach orbital velocity. If that happened, it was likely over the course of several years, some of it would come raining down across the lunar equatorial region.

It was also common knowledge that ice was trapped under the regolith in the bottom of some of the craters at the poles, even if most of it was in the south. But the Chinese were there, and weren’t likely to be great neighbors.

Viki had kept watch on the Bridge until their heading had put the Earth behind them and out of site from the windows. Then she’d disappeared into her quarters in the Habitat Module, still lost in her funk. Dave told her they’d arrived and had expected her to come and look at her new home, but she was still MIA.

“
Draco
, I think we’ve got something,” Sophia Warner called from the other ship. “There’s a flat ridge over here where the ejecta blanket from two craters has created a reasonably smooth surface.”

“Send me an image,” Dave said, watching as his screen lit up and he looked through the other ship’s cameras. The area looked a little rugged, but it had potential. He called up a map on another screen and identified the larger of the two craters as Plaskett. It was just to the farside of the North Pole.

“This is what we’re getting on spectroscopy and imaging radars,” Sophie added, sending another file that overlaid the original image with the mineralogical and subsurface information for the region.

“Do we still have line-of-sight on earth?” he asked.

“It’s close,” she said. “I think from the rim of the smaller crater we’ve got a peak that would make a good communications location. Might be a bit rocky to build, but we could drop a repeater there and we’d be set.”

“Cole knew that was a possibility,” he said. “Stay there, we’re on our way. I’ll get Viki up here to make the call.”

“I think we’ve got our site,” Dave said, looking at Viki over the comlink.

“That’s good,” she said, completely without emotion.

“You want to come up and take a look at it?” he asked.

“Yeah, I probably should,” she said. “I’ll be there in a minute.” The screen went dark.

When Viki strode onto the bridge, it hit Dave that in the four hours since they’d left Earth she’d changed. Emotionally and almost physically. She’d pulled her hair up in a tight bun at the back of her head and her eyes were dark and sullen. She stepped up behind him on the command riser and looked at the pictures he had on his screen. More layers of scientific data had been added as they brought the second ship over the site.

“It’s almost ideal,” he said. “The surface is flat for about ten miles from the rim of the craters. There’s about 150 feet of drop in the first three miles, and then it’s level from there. We’ve got some good mineral deposits within a few hundred feet of the surface, and there’s ice on the floor of both craters.”

She listened in silence, nodding as he spoke, her arms folded in front of her. When he’d finished, she shuffled over to the window to look down on the grey landscape below. The Earth hung, distant and blue-white, above the horizon. “Will we be able to see home, I mean the Earth, from there?”

“Not from the landing site, but from the ridge just above there,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “Get us on the ground.” She walked past him, refusing to make eye contact as she left the bridge.

***

Atlanta, Georgia:

“The time is at hand!” Nathaniel Sommerset bellowed. “Trust in the Lord thy God, and ye shall be delivered! Trust not in the ways of man, for he is a flawed and sinning creature. Lowly and weak are we. It is only through the divine power of our beloved Savior that we shall be delivered.”

The congregation was on fire. The screaming roar of their voices drowned out his words, so he paused. “Outside in the physical world, the non-believers make plans. Plans to wage a war against the very instrument that the Lord has sent to divide the wicked from the faithful. But we know they will fail! Because they are not of the Body of Christ!”

Roaring again filled the sanctuary, and he raised his hands to the heavens and waited for them to quiet.