Immediately the dragon world was put on alert, at the same time as the council was called into session to see if they could make something, anything, of the senseless devastation and wanton destruction. But it didn't stop there.
Six minutes later, thousands of miles away in an ordinary paddy field just outside the small village of Wong Chan in Thailand, a similar device detonated. A remote place by any standards, the carnage should have been only a fraction of that from the Montreal explosion, but for one difference. Less than half a mile away from the epicentre of the blast, a newly completed industrial complex lay pretty much unattended, the staff off for the weekend, most at a specially designed estate some five or so miles away, built at great expense by the company. That company was... Cropptech. And deep inside a small, sterilised room at the heart of the facility, a small amount of laminium (small by dragon standards, but quite significant compared with the amount in the bomb) had been carefully contained inside a state of the art lab, having been recently extracted from a vein quite close by. As easily as tearing tissue paper, the terrific blast wave ripped apart the development, with the power still pretty much at its height when it hit the tucked away laminium. Doing what came naturally to it when extortionate amounts of heat, light, and energy assaulted it, the laminium multiplied everything, many times over.
While in Montreal, everything in a two mile radius had been obliterated, here it was much more. A crater nearly four miles wide and over a mile deep sat firmly where the paddy field once had. The village, industrial complex, even the housing estate were all no more, along with every last bit of the surrounding area. Plants, animals, humans... all gone! Everything within a twenty mile radius had been wiped out, incinerated if you like, with a massive ground quake rattling its way along the length of the country in protest.
Much more intense was the psychic wave from this event. Dragons over a hundred miles away were reported to have died instantly. Luckily the spot was a long way from any part of the dragon domain, much further than either the conventional or psychic blast could reach.
Again, the local dragon authorities responded. Again they were stunned at what had happened on reaching ground zero. It was all fed back to the king and his councillors.
Since then, three more bombs had gone off. One in Melbourne, Australia, one in the Turkish city of Ankara, and one in Macclesfield, England. Blasts in both Melbourne and Ankara had caused carnage and loss of life on the same scale as the Montreal blast, while in Macclesfield something had gone awry, the explosion turning out much smaller than intended, but still causing a lot of damage. Planted in St Michael's church, of which there was nothing left, dozens of houses had been destroyed, along with a few shops, a couple of pubs and part of the famous Macclesfield canal. Again, the loss of life was staggering, but not on the scale of the other sites, with the blast radius of this one measuring only a hundred yards or so. But still, the market town was in disarray, confusion and mourning. Emergency services attended the scene, both dragon and human alike, some even attending in both capacities. It was chaos and mayhem combined. But it could have been worse.
* * *
All the bombs were linked to the same timing device, their countdowns all showing the same numerals, all set to blow up together. Well, not quite. Manson, you see, had been the one building the bombs. For a being of his intellectual capacity and motivation it had been easy. But alone in one of the sterile labs at the Cropptech site in Salisbridge, late one night, a thought had occurred to him, just as he'd started working on timer circuit board number eight out of fifteen. The plan had originally been to sow the seeds of chaos and destruction on a global scale... all at the same time, throwing both human and dragon governments into anarchy. But as he sat at the pristine, white desk, his soldering iron smoking like a television character from the 70's, he thought about some of the books he'd read and films he'd watched in the relatively short time he'd been free from the cold. A common theme had always been the dashing hero arriving exactly at the last second as the bomb ticked down, cutting through the right wire just in the nick of time. A smile crossed his malevolent face, his dark, dead eyes twinkling for a moment as the dastardly thought flickered through his mind. It was a thought he liked, a thought that appealed to him. He would add something to the circuit boards he hadn't built yet... a random algorithm, one that could potentially detonate the bombs before the countdown finished, setting it up so that they could indiscriminately go off at any time during the last half hour of the countdown. That way, any hero who managed to stumble across one would think they had long enough to do something about it, when in actual fact... BOOM! They wouldn't. Chuckling slightly to himself (something he rarely did) as he pulled some solder off the reel, watching it melt on the tip of his soldering iron, he imagined some poor sucker with time running out, getting the biggest, and most final, surprise of their life.
* * *
It was an odd sensation... reaching out with your mind for something a great distance away. It was the ultimate out of body experience. But that's exactly what the two friends were doing, right at this very moment, without much luck it had to be said. All around them chaos ensued, as the blaring wail of the fire alarm accompanied the rush of people exiting the building below them.
Finally, they gave up, after having tried for nearly two whole minutes, not very long I know, unless of course you're in a building that's about to explode.
"Why can't we reach anyone?" ventured Peter, starting to panic.
"I'm not sure," replied Tank, thinking. "But whatever the reason, I think we're on our own."
Peter nodded.
"Do you think everyone will be safe at the far edge of the car park?
Tank swallowed nervously, having already done the figures in his head, and if the laminium inside the black casing was one of the missing fifteen small, ring sized chunks taken from the Salisbridge Cropptech site, then everyone was in big trouble.
"It's only possible to see a speck of the metal through the window of the box. If that's all the laminium in there, then maybe they will be safe. But if there's more, and I'm thinking of the chunks that went missing when Manson had control over Cropptech, then... no, none of us will be safe."
Now it was Peter's turn to swallow at the thought of all the people outside, his friends, the hockey players... JANICE!
"How not safe are they exactly?" he asked, not quite sure he was ready to hear the answer.
"If we work on the theory that it is in fact one of the missing pieces of laminium in there, then I'm guessing the blast wave will cover at least a two mile radius."
"WHAT!" Peter screamed at his friend.
"I've run the calculations three times. I'm not wrong," stated Tank.
Sure that his friend wasn't, Peter wondered how on earth they were going to get everyone far enough away? Not to mention all the other houses, shops, businesses... Cropptech!
"Oh my God Tank," he cried. "If you're right, the blast wave will hit Cropptech. There's enough laminium there to not only level the city, but all the surrounding villages as well."
Although both friends had reined in their emotions up until now, Peter's valid point about the Cropptech laminium really changed things, giving the bomb the potential to cause destruction on an unprecedented scale. If it went off, many tens of thousands of people would lose their lives, not to mention the damage to the city, its infrastructure and the surrounding countryside. There had to be something they could do.