Theologian…
Lot of use that would be.
Casey delivered the order.
“Lieutenant, by order of the President of the United States.”
Casey handed the lieutenant the orders on White House stationery, with the recognizable hand of the President.
Perhaps the document wasn’t even really needed, not with Casey’s say-so.
Still “Sir, the Ark passengers-they are to be-”
Casey snapped.
“You can read the damn order, Lieutenant! The situation has changed. The security needs are different. I have alerted the team who will be going in their place.”
That team-all handpicked, all military, all knowledgeable about what was happening…
All loyal to the core to Cross.
The lieutenant’s eyes told of his unasked question.
Any chance. Perhaps. I could But Casey needed to keep a squad down below to keep the esteemed guests in order while the Ark and its new passengers got planted.
“C’mon,” Cross said. He barely could restrain himself. “Do your goddamn duty, Lieutenant. Same as in war.”
Then in a gesture so false that he barely could believe he did it, Cross raised a hand to the young soldier’s shoulder.
“None of us wanted this, Lieutenant. This is about the future, about humanity’s survival.”
The lieutenant nodded. Then, a crisp salute.
“Yes, sir.”
The soldier turned and headed down to give the bad news to the once hopeful Ark survivors, now all turned prisoners until the end came.
They walked hurriedly to the Ark.
Casey pressed on his earbud, hearing something.
“Then, yes, yes. We’ll be right there.” Cross looked at the colonel, questioning. Casey said, “General, something’s interfering with communication. Hope we didn’t wait too long.”
“Less time, less chance of a fuck-up, Colonel.”
“The others are getting in place. Cryo procedures begun.”
Cross nodded.
Their Ark would enter its shaft right at the Ark station site, close to a massive cache of weapons and supplies.
“Good,” Cross said.
He had the thought: this day of global disaster could be the greatest day of his military career. • • •
Cross watched Casey lay down on the cryo bed.
The Ark door had already been shut. The computer soothingly told them how long until insertion began.
Cross had been hands-on in all the preparations. No bit of tech would screw up his plans. He made one last check to confirm that the date change for emergence had been fully locked into the system.
A tap of the button brought the confirmation of the soothing voice.
“Ark emergence… set for 2105.”
Cross watched as Casey received the nanotrites injection. The colonel’s eyes closed, the deep sleep beginning.
Outside… had all discipline begun melting away? Would the guards sworn to protect them hold steady, ready to shoot and kill as needed?
No matter.
In seconds the Ark would lower. In minutes it would be buried.
As Cross lay back, he thought of the one thing that worried him:
Their Ark would emerge first. Years before any of the others.
But would that date be too soon?
Was there any way to know, to even guess?
He felt the needle at his neck puncture his skin, the burning sensation intense as the nanotrites were injected into him.
He felt the heat and then the tingling that the scientists-all watching outside on a monitor-unquestioning, dutiful-had told him about.
Eyes started to close.
He heard rumbling, the Ark beginning its journey down below the substrata of the ground.
He never saw the pod cover close over him.
He never heard the sound of the Ark’s drill system taking it ever deeper into the ground at the same time as the excavated rubble buried it, a seal of rock and dirt.
The plan was done. The die cast.
The future, now altered, now something imagined, to be created by the vision of one man.
But for now that man slept like thousands of others around the planet…
EIGHT
How many cameras around the world were kept running, trying to capture every moment when Apophis hit?
Well before it even got within fifty miles of the surface, advance shock waves had flattened whole forests, created mountain-sized wave surges, triggered violent shifts in geological plates worldwide as tsunamis erupted in all the world’s oceans, water and land rising madly to greet the asteroid as it came close.
And still… it had not yet hit.
Some people burrowed, some went to high ground. Some got drunk, some made love amidst tears. Others took their own lives before anything happened.
Many did nothing.
And those waiting cameras? Most stopped working well before impact. But a few-specially built and placed in fortified steel bunkers with the same portholes found on the deep submersibles-kept recording and transmitting up to the very last moments.
Apophis had become three asteroids, yet its power had been diminished.
A direct hit could trigger shifts in the undersea mountain ranges, the mid-Atlantic ridge rising as plates violently moved and new volcanic fissures sprouted everywhere.
A direct hit could destroy cities, even entire countries, instantly killing all life for hundreds, even thousands, of miles while changing the very terrain of the planet.
A direct hit could trigger mammoth fissures and cracks in the volatile plates of the Pacific Ring of Fire. Nearly a third of the earth’s crust would swell and crash together in just a few violent moments, matched in violence only by the original fiery formation of the planet itself.
Still-a few cameras resisted the first shock waves, the massive blasts of winds that dwarfed hurricane speeds.
They continued to record right up until the moment of impact.
Sending their images out via satellite until that communication link ended, all the satellites rendered useless.
And then at last the cameras would be turned into powder, dust.
Like the billions of people.
Like the millions of buildings.
Like the continent-size swaths of land that, in an instant, turned much of Planet Earth into a landscape that resembled the moon.
Desolation, devastation.
Those last cameras finally vanishing along with it all.
It seemed like the end of the world.
And for most living things, it was.
TWO
NINE
The first thing Raine felt was a stabbing pain at the back of his neck.
Instinctively, he reached up with his right hand to rub that spot as if it might ease the way-beyond migraine level of agony.
But his hand didn’t even respond.
Then, confused by what seemed to be a clear command to rise, his hand finally did pop up, as if released from invisible netting.
It rose only inches. Then it hit something.
He realized then that his eyes were shut. It hadn’t even occurred to him to open them. If he could make the pain simply stop, maybe he could go back to sleep. Sleep seemed like a good thing, something he wanted, needed. And he couldn’t help thinking it would be easier to slip back to sleep if he kept his eyes closed.
But he heard someone talking.
The voice was muffled at first. A woman. Talking to him? A dream? He wondered.
“Emergency extraction of Ark 1138. Revival procedures begun on remaining vital pods.”
The voice sounded familiar. He had heard this voice before. Someone he knew. But her words made no sense to him.
None at all.
“Evaluation of pods complete. Pods one through eleven have had essential systems destroyed. Revival impossible. Pod twelve undamaged. Revival progressing normally.”