‘It is ready’
Alex was sharp to snap back,
‘What is?’
‘The message is ready to broadcast quarter-wide. The remote message mechanism on your device works through what you call Bluetooth messaging. I have formatted the message into something similar and it is ready for broadcast now.’
Alex looked back at William and William nodded at him,
‘Do it now!’
The Grey very gingerly put its finger on a pattern on the table in front of it and looked up on the screen, to bring the quarter-ship back into view, zooming in to get a closer look.
Nothing happened for a minute and then another half and then the ship rocked a little and then there was a bigger jolt and then it nosedived, tilting in space almost a hundred and eighty degrees.
Alex barked another order at the Grey,
‘Show me the deck. What is happening there?’
The Grey fiddled around with a few more patterns and then the image from the control deck of the quarter-ship appeared on the screen. The Daits were already on the ground, sprawled awkwardly with pinkish fluid spluttered about their oral ends. The Greys there had slumped over the control desks and one of them was still moving, gasping for breath. He slowly placed his fingers on the control panel and with great effort, punched in a few patterns on the panel in front of him. The picture in front of Alex dissolved into blackness.
‘What happened?’
The Grey fiddled with the controls a bit and then replied,
‘He caught on to us and cut us off’
The ship tilted some more and then there was a huge explosion on the rear end, a rapidly extinguished smoke and fireball flashing for a few seconds. The Grey looked up at Alex,
‘He is destroying the quarter-ship’
Alex looked in horror as a series of explosions rocked the quarter-ship from aft wards. The ship shook violently once again and then slowly started descending, falling away from the mother ship.
‘Where is it going?’
The Grey looked at Alex, horror in its eyes,
‘It isn’t going anywhere. It is falling out of orbit.’
Alex was alarmed and William understood the implications too
‘Where is it falling?’
The Grey replied hesitatingly,
‘It will collide with Earth’
That was confirmation of what Alex and William had realized moments ago. Alex overcame his shock and pressed on,
‘What can we do to stop it?’
The Grey pushed a few patterns repeatedly and then shook his head,
‘They have locked us out. We cannot do anything’
‘Where is it going to hit?’
The Grey pulled up another panel on the screen and proceeded to do a few calculations,
‘It is difficult to predict exactly where. But, if it holds its current trajectory, it will hit somewhere near western coast of Canada.’
‘What would be the measure of the impact?’
The Grey thought for a while, relying on his mind to do the sum this time,
‘The impact would equal six hundred thousand of your nuclear bombs going off at a time. Worldwide earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes. Dust, smoke, vaporized rocks and water-vapor clouds will cover the entire Earth within days and will last more than a hundred years, blocking off sunlight to the Earth. It would kill more than ninety-nine percent of life on Earth.’
‘That will finish the Earth off.’
The Grey shook his head,
‘No. Earth will survive. Life in some form will survive, microscopic life reanimating themselves around hundred thousand years after the impact and larger life-forms on Earth in another fifty to hundred million years’
Alex nodded his head,
‘This will finish Earth as we know it’
Chapter 37
The Aftermath
July 24th
Daiityon Mothership
It was the day after doomsday.
The quarter ship had survived atmospheric entry with barely a scratch and had slammed into the North Pacific two hundred miles west of Vancouver island. USA, Canada and Mexico were beyond salvage. The impact had punctured a hole through the Earth’s crust and massive earthquakes and volcanoes had rocked the US mainland. The Pacific ring of fire had erupted snaking its trail around the globe down to the Indonesian archipelago and up until the Japanese islands.
Alex had scrambled all the harvesters, sending them back to Earth to scoop up survivors. Alex and his team had established communications from the mother-ship to the Command Centers on Earth and had asked them to immediately move inland. It was a race against the impact and the impending tsunami wave and Alex had barely managed to reach the Mumbai survivors. Susan, Nilofer, Aslam and Anita were together and Alex had them scooped up in the first of the harvesters pressed into duty. Soldiers and civilians from across the Indian, Chinese, Korean, Russian and Chinese theatres were picked up in the aftermath. They tried to reach the port cities first but lost many more than the few which they managed to salvage.
The rescue and salvage operations went on for close to forty days.
‘Three hundred and fifty thousand people. That is all we have to show for our efforts.’
Anita stood by Alex, both of them looking through a space window in their room. The Earth looked grey, its blue obscured by the smoke that spewed from the numerous fires that burnt within.
‘That looks dead. Does not look even like the Earth anymore. You did the best you could.’
‘Did I? I am beginning to think otherwise. Our invaders promised that they would leave ten percent life on Earth. That would be eight hundred million humans. I have managed only three hundred and fifty thousand. My actions have led to a far worse outcome. I have saved less than one percent of what may have lived, I have killed all the other life on Earth and I even managed to kill the planet.’
There was horror writ on Alex’s face and Anita kept a hand on his shoulder.
‘You did far better than that. You stopped the Daits. You killed them. You saved hundreds of other worlds out there. You earned their lives and their gratitude by sacrificing your own, that is noble and that is good and great. It is perhaps a dear bargain but that is perhaps what it would have taken anyone to stop as evil a force as these marauders and stop you did them, for good.’
Alex looked at her and shook his head,
‘That does not take away from the fact that I have lost us everything. We have lost everything.’
The com buzzed and Alex went and answered that. It was Park on the other side,
‘Sir, William and Aslam are locked in combat in Sector hundred and seventeen. We were flushing, sweeping and securing sectors one by one and had divided ourselves in twos. They were together. It looks like they have been ambushed. They are locked within a heavily vaulted door in what looks like a medical facility.’
Sector hundred and seventeen was two hours from Alex’s quarters. Alex and Anita set out for the Sector immediately.
***
The Sector was definitely a medical facility. There were beds, glass bunkers, elaborate pipelines and banks storing abundant pink fluid in gelatinous bags. Park and others were at the door trying to hack inside. A spattering of tools including, saws, giant hammers, crowbars, drill machines were all spread about near the door.
Anita saw Nilofer crouched on her knees in a corner, praying, and Anita went to her.
Park approached Alex and saluted him,
‘Sir, there was a lot of gunfire within for the first fifteen minutes. Now, it has been quiet for almost two hours.’
‘Any progress getting inside?’
‘No Sir. We tried all the switches, panels. Tried cutting the power to this sector too but to no avail. Now, we are trying brute force to get inside.’
Before Alex could think of anything, the door creaked and then slowly slid open.
Alex cautioned everyone and the soldiers took their positions outside the door, weapons dra
wn. Alex led the way inside, his gun drawn and hand on the trigger. Park and others followed and took up positions inside the door. The room was dark, save for the light streaming in from outside and the faint light from the instrument clusters which were working, running even after the external power had been cut, probably on some sort of back-up.
There was a glass bunker below the instrument cluster and William was lying on the floor just beneath the bunker. Alex rushed to him. He was barely breathing, badly bruised in what looked like the result of hand to hand combat. Alex kneeled beside him, checking his vitals.
Park circled around them going to the other side of the bunker, finding a bullet ridden body of an adult male Dait. Park looked around looking for Aslam and found him in a corner, sprawled on his belly. Park called out to Alex and rushed to Aslam and checked his vitals. Alex stood by his side and looked at Park.
Park shook his head. Aslam was dead.
Alex knelt by Aslam and checked his vitals again. He was indeed gone. He looked up at Park and looked at William. Park understood and got up, got Anita in and arranged to shift William to the medical camp set up on the ship.
Anita looked around, and walked up to Alex’s kneeling form and kept a hand on his shoulder. Alex kept his hand on hers and got up, a broken look on his face. Nilofer walked in behind Anita and walked up to Aslam’s body and looked up at Alex.
Alex shook his head and Nilofer knelt by Aslam, closing his dead eyes and holding his head in her hands, muttering a silent prayer for him. Alex stood by her till she finished.
Nilofer looked up at Alex and then took off her head scarf, covering Aslam’s face and body with it.
Alex knew what that meant and he sighed, pulling Nilofer up to hug her.
Chapter 38
Domus
August 31st
Daiityon Mothership
William had suffered a bad concussion and was out unconscious for thirteen days. Alex paid him an occasional visit being too busy attending to the business of rescuing those stuck on Earth and tending after and organizing everything on the ship. A group of scientists from the Indian Space Research Organization, the ISRO and a few from the Chinese National Space Administration, the CNSA, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, the JAXA and the Russian Space Agency, the Roscosmos, had banded themselves into a team and under the tutelage of the surviving Greys, were trying hard for the past one month to understand the navigational intricacies of the Alien mothership. Alex knew that William would have been an indispensable addition to the team, having spent thousands of hours in his ‘library’.
After thirteen days, William came to but refused to identify anyone, including Alex. He slowly recovered and still was a pale shadow of his former self. Alex tried to cheer him up but neither William nor Alex had either the gumption or the conviction to be merry, given the circumstances. William had attached himself to the navigation team and he things began looking up from there. With William’s input and with his effectiveness in understanding the Greys and conveying Grey to the others, the team started figuring out the vital pieces of the ship’s construct and worked hard to get the ship ready to sail.
On one evening, Alex and William sat on the flight deck, alone looking at the navigation charts to find some direction for their journey.
‘How many we rescued from Earth?’
‘A little less than five hundred thousand’
‘Any more to be rescued?’
‘We are looking but I don’t think we will find many more. We are already doing a second or a third sweep over most of the salvageable areas. Everyone who can heed to our call and has sought our help has been brought here. We are looking for those trapped under the debris. The smoke, the darkness and the acid rain are not making things any easier for the rescue and I doubt if anyone left down there will survive for much longer.’
‘The decision to move will be yours.’
Alex kept quiet. How was he to decide when to give up on the search? Yet another decision that will perhaps condemn hundreds if not the last thousands to their death.
Numbers seemed meaningless now. Hundreds, thousands, millions, billions – all reduced to dust and anonymity. He had unleashed a six hundred thousand Hiroshimas on them and had managed to kill a planet.
‘What about the other quarter?’ Alex blurted out, sub-consciously trying to get off a depressing trail of thought.
William looked at Alex and then at the console, very deftly punching patterns on it to bring up on screen the picture that made Alex slump on the seat behind him.
‘What is that?’
On the screen were the scars of a battle, hard fought and lost badly. The alien quarter-ship was wrecked beyond recognition, the metal shell of its inner construct bare and in pieces. Silhouetting it all was the visage of a white ice-covered planet, pockmarked with strategically placed equidistant holes with what looked like giant mile high guns.
William looked at Alex and replied,
‘Europa, the satellite with a hundred thousand guns under that ice-sheet. We never stood a chance.’
Alex nodded and then looked at William,
‘What do you mean by ‘we’?’
William hesitated for a fraction of a second and then replied,
‘The Daits. They never stood a chance. They went to devour Europa and Europa destroyed them in an hour. There was no battle there. It was over almost as soon as it began. Not even a single harvester left hangar on that quarter.’
Alex listened, awestruck.
‘Are they all dead there?’
‘As dead as Dodos and Dinosaurs are. Dodos, Dinosaurs, Daits all done and all gone.’
William looked back and before Alex could respond, continued,
‘I had been enslaved by a great race Alex. They had the vision and the industry to accomplish all this and now they are all gone’
Alex raised his hand, interrupting William,
‘They had been a successful race William, not a great one. A great race does not do this to other people.’
‘Are you sure about that Alex? I am sure all your great civilizations have been the paragon of virtues, fighting sparse wars and treating conquered people of your own species with utmost respect and humanity. Daits never did that to their own.’
Alex shook his head, not understanding where this was coming from. Was it the concussion or some sort of slavish ‘Stockholm Syndrome’. Anyway, best to leave him be for some time and check on him a little later.
Alex raised his hands and shook his head at William, turning to take leave. He thought of something at the door and turned,
‘Where do we go from here?’
‘The closest to Earth we can find’
‘Have you found something?’
William nodded his head.
‘Where?’
‘The Mouse-tail galaxy. A Star with ten planets, inner five rocky with the sixth a Jupiter equivalent. Number four from the Star. Rocky world with two satellites of its own.’
‘The planet sounds very much like ours. What is it called?’
William shrugged,
‘That is the idea. To find another Earth. Only lower life forms there. Haven’t yet gotten around to naming planets. What do you want to call it? I have thought of a name.’
Alex took a couple of steps inside,
‘What name?’
‘DOMUS – Latin for Home’
‘DOMUS. Yes, that is good. I like it. That would do.’
***
Exodus (The Domus Series Book 2) Page 21
