Struggle for a Small Blue Planet

by Warwick Gibson

  Theo was up to bat, and it felt like his first day at high school. He rose awkwardly from his seat, though no-one else had risen to speak.

  "Drs Ted Arms and Charlie Kettle were the people most familiar with this phenomenon," he said, "and they were the best placed to work out what it might mean. They would have asked why the sightings appeared along fault lines, and involved large, self-navigating objects burying themselves in lakes or swamps.

  "These two researchers believed, though it is not stated in their academic papers, that any speculated 'visitors' would eventually use those fault lines against us."

  He looked around the room. He was being given a good hearing, because the President had ordered it, but they weren't convinced. The Science Advisor, Argyll Rawling, appeared openly hostile.

  "We could trigger one or two massive earthquakes ourselves," continued Theo, "if we knew which of the tectonic plates were about to slide past each other, and we could burrow deep enough, and set off some nuclear warheads. But it seems a haphazard means of attack. All of Earth's industrial areas and military bases would need to be taken out at once to remove our ability to fight back.

  "That's why using gravity waves tuned to the Earth's harmonic frequency makes sense. Think of it as energy that can be focused in the most earthquake-prone areas. Ed and Charlie wrote about using harmonics in their notes. The maths was beyond me, but that was where they were heading."

  He paused, and took a deep breath. "If they were on the right track, I think the energy supplied by the gravity waves is causing the minor tremors we're experiencing now, but its ultimate use is as a trigger. It could be used to fire all the impending earthquakes around the world at once, in an attempt to paralyse our ability to strike back."

  He sat down, but not before the President's Science Advisor was already on his feet.

  "This is preposterous!" said Argyll, outraged. "While we're wasting our time on alien rumours, we could be working on the real reason for these tremors."

  "And that would be?" said the President, who appeared to enjoy the interruption about as little as Theo.

  "A change in the Earth's molten core!" exclaimed Argyll. "The magnetic poles shift every few hundred thousand years, and this must be the start of another realignment."

  The President looked across at Cleet, who shook his head minutely. The electromagnetic fields around the Earth hadn't so much as flickered, and none of the other facts they had fitted that theory.

  That was why the President wanted Cleet on board. Marshall was surrounded by people who would bend the truth to support their side of an argument. Cleet was a man who stuck to the facts.

  Theo wondered for a moment if it could really be true that Earth was facing an alien invasion, but then he rallied. He had to be blind to ignore the machine-like increases in the ground tremors. It was so . . . organised.

  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff spoke over the Science Advisor's objection. He was determined to talk about the possible invasion as the President had outlined it.

  "I have to say these are the most unusual circumstances I have ever given a SitRep on!" he began. "But if there is any truth in Dr Kettle's assertions, there are some things we can deduce.

  "I don't think these theoretical 'visitors' are that much more advanced than we are. Why not just turn up above the White House and demand our surrender?"

  "And if the meteorites were spacecraft in Dr Kettle's 1950s reports," chipped in Cleet, "they have had ample time to make friendly overtures. I think we have to assume they are hostile."

  The President nodded thoughtfully.

  "Our scientists will have workable nuclear fusion in fifty years," continued Cleet, "so we can assume the invaders already have it. I don't see any other cheap, plentiful sources of energy on the horizon, and our theoretical work is getting pretty good these days. So I don't think they've progressed past fusion."

  Then he made a telling point.

  "But even with fusion reactors, where would these creatures get enough power to trigger a massive, planet-wide, earthquake strike?"

  Theo started scribbling on a piece of paper. Cleet looked over with interest, but the conversation moved on. The Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff continued his SitRep assessment.

  "Continuing along the same lines, we have to remember these creatures are a long way from home. Supply and communication will be the same problem for them as it would be for us in their place.

  "Don't misunderstand me, Gentlemen. I'm sure they could knock out our military and electronic capabilities in days, and not lose any of their assets in the process. They would knock us back to whatever level of technology they chose. But I don't see any sign of super-beings."

  When the chairman had finished his assessment the discussion stalled for a moment, and Cleet pointed to a nervous young woman who was on his team. He introduced her as a mathematician who had gone over the harmonics paper in Dr Arms' notes.

  She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. "I can't fully decipher it," she said. "There are too many symbols that aren't explained. It's brilliant work, I can see that, but it never made its way into mainstream theory. It's like Ted Arms found a genius to work on the problem for him, and that person made up the maths as they went along."

  "Can you make some guesses?" said the President.

  "Not really," she said, "but there is one thing that stands out. The maths is talking about a discontinuity."

  "A what?" said the President.

  "Plain English, Jou, if you please," said Cleet, and her round, Asian face coloured.

  "At a certain stage," she said, more carefully, "the energy levels in the system increase over a thousand fold. It could be when the gravity wave is collapsed."

  "Even assuming a lot of energy is available at one time," said Cleet, taking over from her, "it can't be enough to fire all the earthquakes around the world. I don't see how anyone, even a lot more advanced than we are, could deliver the extravagant amount of energy needed at the one time."

  He lifted his hands in a universal gesture of impossibility.

  "They wouldn't have to," said Theo suddenly. "The energy is already there."

  A silence settled around the table.

  "There's hundreds of times the power tied up in the world's nuclear arsenal already in the fault lines," continued Theo, "and once it started to unravel, it would just keep on rolling.

  "That's why I wouldn't release the earthquakes at exactly the same time," he said. "If it were me, I would release them in sequence, waiting until the shock wave from the first site had reached the second site before releasing that one, and so on. Doing it that way would greatly increase the effect.

  "You would probably get a uniform eight-plus on the Richter scale rolling right around the planet."

  There was a much longer silence. Most of them could recall scenes of devastation from 'quakes that didn't make anything like eight on the scale.

  "Where would you start the cascade from?" said Cleet, prodding Theo to keep thinking. The NEIC man was now the earthquake expert on his team, and they would have to trust his instincts.

  "Well, ah, assuming all of the above," said Theo, placing a map of the world's fault lines on the table, and scrutinising it closely, "I would say . . ."

  There was a moment's hesitation, and then a stab with his finger at Iceland.

  "Somewhere with a simple fault structure between two major plates, so the wave is initially funnelled in two directions only. Somewhere above sea level, because the crust is thicker and more energy would be released. The best places would be . . . Iceland and New Zealand.

  "These two are nearly opposite each other, and the cascade of earthquakes generated would eventually meet along a 45 degree slice through the planet, creating a final ring of devastation. It would be like two giant sea waves meeting."

  The small group around the table looked at one another helplessly. It sounded like an extinction level event, the way he described it.

  "How long would this cascade t
ake, in total?" said the President, pressing for more details.

  "Well, this would be happening fairly deep in the Earth's crust," muttered Theo, "so propagation speeds would be around five or six kilometres a second.

  "Allowing for the natural irregularity of the fault lines, and two starting points on opposite sides of the Earth, it should all be over in . . ," and he made some calculations on a cell phone app, "3.6 hours."

  President Marshall looked at the chairman of the Chiefs of Staff.

  "Let's hope it doesn't come to that," he said quietly.

  11

  Wairarapa plains

  North Island, New Zealand

  It was the middle of the night, and Doug Heathlie was sound asleep. He was dreaming of a smoke-filled back room at a bar, and a game of poker. Judging by the lurid furnishings, it was a place he had seen in a very old film.

  He was winning hand after hand, almost supernaturally beating the odds. The other players, strangely, were cheering him on. His counsellor, if he ever had one, would have pointed out what a perfect metaphor it was for his job as Civil Defence coordinator for the Wellington area.

  The next instant Doug was fully awake, trying to understand what was happening. It took him several moments to realise the queen-sized bed under him was on a roller-coaster ride to the other side of the room. He'd built the house for the worst earthquake he could imagine hitting the Wairarapa, and still the building was heaving under him like a mad thing.

  Then Jeannie was awake too, and screaming her head off. Doug twisted over and grabbed her by the shoulders. He stopped himself from shaking her – that wasn't going to help – but his grip on her shoulders was fierce. She stopped screaming and looked at him, ghostlike in a half moon visible through the large second story window. He raised his eyebrows, and she nodded. She'd figured it out. She was good to go.

  He helped her off the bed, and they staggered toward the nearest wall switch, but the power was out. Doug took a torch out of a small bedside unit, while it slammed again and again into the wall beside him, and gave it to Jeannie.

  "Get the kids and wait in the garage," he said firmly. "Grab the emergency packs. You know the drill!"

  She nodded. Then a particularly bad wave rolled through the plains, and they both went down, hard. She was up first, and scrambled over to a chair in the corner, one that was already sideways on the floor. She hauled on some jeans, and dressed the rest of herself equally quickly. She stumbled against the bed once, and bounced off the wall on her way back. Doug almost smiled. She was light on her feet, one of the many things he found attractive in her. Then she was gone down the stairs.

  Doug headed for his study. He had some warm outdoor clothing there, and a satellite phone that went with his civil defence job. The stairs twisted under his feet as he descended. It would be a bad time to wrench an ankle, and he slowed down.

  A battery-operated LED camping lamp lit up his study the instant he turned it on. He couldn't hear the kids making a fuss, and that was a good sign. He hoped his earthquake and fire drills had paid off. Maybe Jeannie would find them waiting in the garage, loaded up with their packs and ready to go. He hoped so. They were 14 and 16 now.

  He was reaching for the satphone when it began to ring.

  "Just about to phone in," he said, as he steadied himself against the desk.

  "Yeah, well you're gonna wish you hadn't," said a dead-flat voice at the other end. "Wellington's a mess."

  It was Jimmy, as he knew it would be. The man who was his number two. Jimmy was good in situations like this, always calm. An ideal guy in an emergency, he didn't know how to get flustered. He just processed the data and worked out what the options were.

  The other members of the Wellington civil defence team would soon be rolling in to HQ. They'd all be there inside 23 minutes, the same as in the practice runs. Doug thanked God once again for Jimmy Rumbal, his right-hand man.

  "What's up, Jimmy?" he snapped back. If Jimmy thought the situation was bad, it was going to be really bad. He clamped his hand over his other ear, trying to shut out the ever present rumble of the earthquake as it hammered at his house.

  "Cathy's got a Statsat feed up already," said Jimmy, "but the resolution's not the best, and its a dark night. We've requisitioned cover from a Gofast, using the national emergency regs, and that'll come on line in a few minutes."

  Cathy had made good time getting eyes in the sky. The stationary satellite was for commercial use, and only helpful in optimum conditions. Images degraded quickly for anything less than a clear and sunny day. The 'Gofast' military satellite would have infra-red and night capabilities, and they'd get maybe twenty minutes of data from it while it passed over. His tech officer would pull all sorts of information from that.

  Doug smiled for a moment. Cathy Sargeson was his other number two. She was fire and brimstone to Jimmy's steel and ice, and she filled out his leadership team perfectly.

  "Good," he said sharply. He was already gearing up mentally for what was to come. The next 24 to 48 hours would be critical. Minimize damage, evac casualties, and above all get reports out to the media. People became his worst nightmare when they worried about relatives because they didn't have the facts.

  "It's still going here in the Wairarapa," he said, a little worried. "I thought the first wave would have passed through by now."

  Jimmy cut off a conversation with someone at the command centre and got back to the phone. He spoke bluntly to his boss. "You don't get it, Dougie. This thing started somewhere under Cook Straight . . . six minutes ago."

  Doug figured Jimmy must have checked the 'doomsday clock' on the end wall of CD central. It was started when an emergency arose in the Wellington area, and reminded them all how long some poor bastards had already been trapped in cars or under buildings.

  "It's acting really weird," continued Jimmy. "It's hit seven on the scale and it's still increasing, and the epicentre has split in two. One is going north up the Wairarapa Fault, and the other south down the Hope and Clarence faults in the Marlborough system."

  "How's the building holding up?" said Doug, and Jimmy fired his reply straight back.

  "Like it was supposed to. We're getting movement inside, but everything's properly fastened down and we can still do our work. If it gets any stronger we might have problems."

  There was a pause, and Doug thought for a moment he'd lost the connection.

  "We can't raise anyone in Kaikoura," said Jimmy abruptly.

  Doug didn't need him to paint a picture. The small town, perched on the edge of a jagged mountain range and next to massive underwater canyons, had almost certainly slid into the sea. Two thousand people, gone, just like that. Maybe another thousand in the surrounding area.

  Jimmy cleared his throat.

  "It's coming your way, Dougie. We think the Wairarapa basin is going to sink as the disturbance progresses. East side down, west side up, remember?"

  Doug found himself nodding. It was a reminder how tectonics worked in this part of the world.

  "Hang on!" said Jimmy suddenly. "Cathy's got the Gofast pictures up."

  Jimmy must have put his hand over the receiver after that. Doug could hear a frantic conversation taking place at the other end, but not hear the words.

  "Hey, Doug. It's Cathy," said a fresh voice. She paused for a moment, unsure what to say.

  "There's a big scar ripping along your side of the Tararuas. It started out in Cook Strait, and it's already well past your place. It shouldn't push too much further north though. We've always assumed the Wairarapa fault peters out before it gets to Hawkes Bay."

  There was a sudden burst of conversation behind her. She snapped a question and returned with an answer.

  "Geez, Doug, we've got a water bore on the Wairarapa plains. The sea is rolling in from Cook Strait. It's most advanced right alongside the Tararuas, but I think Castlecliff and the eastern hills will be going under too."

  He heard Cathy scream something to the people behind her. It sounded l
ike 'guess, you idiots' but it may have been a lot worse. She wasn't known for toning it down when people's lives were at stake.

  "The bore just swallowed Greytown," she said, returning to the phone, "and the front is moving at 120 kays, we think. That's our best guess. I figure it gives you twenty-three minutes, more or less."

  She paused.

  "Good luck," she said, and the line went dead.

  Doug stood for a moment, stunned, before he realised he couldn't afford that luxury. Every second counted now. He grabbed the LED lamp and careened through the door of the study. He bounced off the corridor wall, then had to steady himself as another quake rolled through.

  Another quake or, as he was beginning to realise, an intensification of the neverending background roar. But that didn't stop him. A plan was already taking shape in the back of his mind.

  12

  Forest Hill Park in central Richmond

  Virginia, USA

  "You did what?" said Don, trying to keep an authoritative tone in his voice, though a smile crept through.

  "Took down the six of them, hogtied them, took all their money and drugs, and called the cops. Then we disappeared. The drugs got flushed in a public lavatory, and the money went to a shelter for the homeless on the other side of the city."

  "What part of 'like we were never there', and 'blend in with the surroundings,' don't you understand?" said Don, in exasperation.

  "Oh, come on," said Mosha, his second in command. "They were waving guns in our faces, and we were walking along a public sidewalk in the middle of the day!"

  Don knew what he meant. Even if it was a really tough neighbourhood, those guys must have had issues. Who would pick on some poor, homeless bastards just for sport? Part of him saw a balance in what had happened to them.