Countdown Amageddon (The Spiral Slayers Book 2)
Page 46
He folded his arms and straightened as he addressed the primary concern everyone had. “The Loud, as well as our scientists, have and are continuing to study the damage done to our sun and have concluded that,” he held up his hands, “it is too early to tell exactly how much damage the alien did. That said…neither believe that the Blackship was able to complete its attack and they do not believe that it will explode…or go nova, as the Loud sun did, three weeks from now.”
Sounds of relief came from everyone. There was a tangible relaxation in the room as if everyone had been holding their breath.
The president looked at Adamarus, “Thank you, Admiral, and God bless you.”
Everyone in the room looked at Adamarus and slowly they all began politely applauding. Adamarus’ face reddened slightly and he nodded his head once.
Wicker also nodded and said, “Well done.” He waited for the clapping to subside. He took a deep breath and picked up the reports in front of him. “As for our population…well, again, too soon to know the full extent, but as you might guess, it’s not good—not good at all. Rescue ships are finding less and less survivors. Given the manner in which we were attacked by the Slayers, which was quite efficient, and along with the impact of the…fragment of the Larger Moon…computer projections are dire. Out of the eight billion people that we believe were on Amular…” Wicker visibly struggled, his voice breaking, “we think perhaps less than half a billion might have survived the Slayer attack itself. We have counted three hundred and twenty-one volcanic eruptions—two of them classified as super eruptions.”
Wicker placed his hands on the table, steadying himself. “However, the impact of the moon fragment—and this is just the initial impact…”
Adamarus remembered the arm breaking away…the alien beam shooting off…hitting the moon…the chunks breaking off…because he had found a way to fire the kinetic asteroids weapon. For the first time, he remembered speaking to General Burnwall in the hospital room. The blood drained from Adamarus’ face and the room seemed to tilt.
That’s a direct order.
Wicker looked down and consulted the report, “…just the impact killed everything on…twenty percent of Amular’s landmass.”
Adamarus’ face looked like pale stone. His heart hammered in his chest. He could feel sweat breaking out on his forehead.
That’s a direct order.
Wicker continued, “Meteors thrown up by the impact set fire to forty-five percent of the planet’s landmass. Five hundred foot tidal waves devastated and killed everything on fifteen percent of the landmass…”
Adamarus bowed his head…ran his fingers through his hair…no, this was different, he thought desperately.
“Admiral Maximus…”
He had figured out the aliens’ weakness…figured out how to exploit it…he had saved…hadn’t he…
“Maximus,” Wicker repeated.
That’s a direct order.
“Adamarus! Are you all right?” Wicker said with a concerned look.
Adamarus snapped back to the present. He looked around. Everyone was looking at him. The look on Evelyn’s face…he realized he was soaked in sweat. “I’m fine,” he heard himself say. It sounded lame.
Wicker continued looking at him. The president opened his mouth to say something more, but then just closed it again. He cleared his throat then continued, “Finally, debris thrown up by the impact, volcanos, fires and the alien’s energy beams has rendered ninety-five percent of the planet’s landmass’ atmosphere poisonous, and I’m told that will climb to one hundred percent within the month.”
Wicker stacked his papers and cleared his throat again, “To date, we have only rescued about three hundred eighty million.” He cleared his throat yet again…took a drink of water…his hands were shaking. Many at the table were crying quietly. “The state of our planet is…it can no longer support life. They’re saying maybe in a hundred years…”
There was silence for almost a minute. Then Wicker turned to a different subject. “As for the Spiral Slayers…” everyone looked up, “we’ve been following the Blackship closely. It has cleared the inner system and is approaching the ice cloud.” Wicker stood and took a remote control from his pocket. He pointed it at the large display on the wall behind him and fumbled a bit, finding the right buttons. The lights dimmed and an image appeared. “This is just an hour old.” He walked toward the display. It showed the black sphere. “It’s hard to see, but…” he got the control to change to another image, which zoomed in on the ship, “here’s the broken arm. See the glowing area at the end. It’s repairing itself. The arm has already grown back to three-quarters of its original size. Our scientists and the Loud believe that it will fully repair itself within days and that once it does, it will bring back its black hole and we’ll see the event horizon again. It will pick up speed very quickly and continue its journey to the galactic center.”
Harrington spoke up, “And it will do what it has always done, it will cause the center to explode and then we will die.” She said it calmly and with detachment.
Wicker turned and looked at her, “Yes…exactly…but, it will be hundreds of thousands of years before we will feel the effects.”
---
Adamarus broke through the black clouds and flew the shuttle over the city of Hillcrest. The city was buried in several feet of ash—an empty, desolated wasteland.
Adamarus had done a lot of thinking on the flight down. Yes, he had disobeyed a direct order again—an order to do nothing…to stay at the hospital. But he had gone on to realize that Howard Dawn had solved the mystery of why the Blackship destroyed the civilization before it caused its sun to explode. Like the Honey Sucker they had seen at the zoo that had to kill all the bees before it could expose its insides to eat the honey, when the Blackship used its huge beam to damage the sun, it made their ship vulnerable. It had been Howard’s last words. He had literally forced himself back to life to try to convey this information to Adamarus.
Moreover, Adamarus had remembered the proto-type asteroid control he had tested, and ergo, a way to exploit the Slayers’ vulnerability. He had to act.
Yes, Adamarus’ actions had resulted in the deaths of a quarter billion people, but everyone would have died if he hadn’t disobeyed the order. The only horror that sat in his gut was an unreasonable one. It was if the Blackship had fired its weapon for the full span of time without his intervention and, weeks later, Iceis hadn’t exploded. Then his actions would have killed a quarter billion people for no reason.
Adamarus knew that comparing this with the Dark Mountain incident all those years ago was not viable. He had not killed millions…he had saved millions. Still he felt hollow inside and was not completely sure of anything anymore.
And…who or what was Paladin, the other thing Howard had said? This continued to haunt him.
After flying over the colorless ruins for a couple of minutes, he spotted the giant form of the crashed Umbrella ship. Then they saw the listening chamber and next to it, the Loud lander.
Bugs, again using the Umbrella ship in orbit to relay the connection, had contacted Adamarus right after the meeting. It said it needed to meet with him as well as everyone else who could come to the listening chamber about an urgent matter. The downed ship had been able to launch the lander to transport Bugs to the chamber so that they could talk face to face. Bugs had told Adamarus that it had incredible news.
Adamarus was able to land the smaller craft in front of the dome. President Wicker, Admiral Leewood, Dr. Harrington and Dr. Donnelly had come with Maximus. They all suited up and exited the shuttle.
It was extremely hard walking through the three feet of ash. It coated their suits and was easily disturbed. As they walked to the listening chamber’s entrance, the ash kept getting kicked up into the air, reducing visibility to zero.
Adamarus’ mind wandered and, as they walked, he thought of Nero. The grief and horror retched through him. Eelllllll Eeeeeeeee….Eelllllll Eeeeeeeee. Ada
marus had known immediately what his son was trying to say…kill me, kill me.
Ash had piled up against the entryway doors to the dome making them difficult to open, but they managed it. They rode the moving walkway up and then walked down the long tube leading to the soundproof door. Most of the ash had been left behind by the time they reached the huge door and the small light next to it was glowing green.
Adamarus pressed the button and the motor started up. After a moment, the thick door came out of the dome wall, then rose above them. They entered, closed the door behind them, and then took off their helmets.
The room was just as Adamarus remembered it. At the far end was the large window that ran from the ceiling to the floor, then out across the floor for half the room’s width. Mists drifted up from the glass surface—everything glowing an eerie green from the cold radioactive environment beyond.
They all walked forward toward the green glow. Upon arrival, they immediately saw Bugs’ hill-like form on the other side of the glass 100 feet down on the dome’s floor. They sat in the seats across from the window and waited.
Adamarus knew immediately that something was wrong. He had expected Bugs to explode upwards, expanding 100 feet, sucking in air, and then compressing downward, blowing the air out through the chambers in its bony head, issuing its glass-shattering screech—its normal mode of speaking. However, this wasn’t happening. Instead, Bugs was shaking all over and violently jerking downwards about twice a second. Its 20-foot wide, 20-foot tall, 30-foot long form had a white creamy spot on the left side that extended from the three-foot layer of black flesh that it rippled to motivate its body, upwards past its 30-foot tentacles and up the thorn-covered fleshy lung and almost to its bony head. He had never seen this before.
Adamarus started to ask Bugs if it was all right when he noticed spittle being blown from the small holes in the sides of its head each time it jerked downward. At the same time, he noticed that the translator above the window was active and processing. He remembered Bugs telling him that this jerking was another slower way that it could speak.
Wicker whispered to him, “What’s going on?”
Adamarus held up his hand as he saw the translator’s progress bar light up and start moving from left to right.
The mechanical voice that issued from the translator made everyone jump. “Hello, Adamarus and friends and Mr. President. You will have to forgive me. I am injured and cannot speak normally. Thank you for coming.”
It was doing that jerking thing again—the translator progress bar went from left to right again.
Again, the mechanical voice came, “Adamarus…I have wonderful news.”
They all looked at each other confused.
It said, “Look…” and one of its tentacles moved. It held a small device. Bugs pointed it to the right and did something. A giant transparent holograph appeared next to Bugs. It was immediately recognizable as a giant representation of the dual spiral DNA molecule. It extended from the dome’s ceiling 300 feet down to the floor. It shimmered in many colors as it slowly rotated.
Bugs’ eyes looked over at it and all six of its tentacles extended to their full lengths and pointed as if presenting it. It said, “We were able to extract this from the Blackship’s arm fragment.” The mechanical voice managed to convey a breathless awed tone.
The four men and one woman looked at holograph in wonder, its colors reflecting in their eyes as it rotated. It was beautiful…both in its simplicity and in its complexity.
Wicker asked, “What is it?”
A moment later, they heard a loud screech echo in the dome on the other side of the thick glass—President Wicker’s translated question.
Bugs did the jerking thing and answered, “Why, it is the Blackship’s DNA. The Blackship is a living machine as all truly advanced machines are. This means…you haven’t figured it out? This means we can clone it.”
“Clone what?” Wicker asked.
Bugs looked blankly at them for a moment, then answered, “We can grow a Blackship…except we will make a slight change to the molecule—we will make the ship white…a Whiteship. White…for the good guys, right?”
They were speechless. Finally, though he knew the answer, Adamarus asked, “For what purpose, Bugs? To what end?”
Again, Bugs paused for a long moment. The mushroom-like light receptors in its huge elongated eyes folded in on themselves, meaning that it had closed its eyes. Finally, it reopened its eyes and said, “Your people, like ours, no longer have a purpose and are adrift. We will grow/build a Whiteship in order to chase down the Blackship that destroyed both of our species, and then we will destroy it. Retribution for destroying our species and star system and trying to do the same to you. It will give both our races a purpose…a cause…a reason to continue on.”
After thinking about it, the humans had to agree. And, they knew Bugs was right, their species desperately needed a purpose right now—a goal and something worthwhile to do. A reason to continue on and paying back the Spiral Slayers for what they had done was, from a human perspective, very desirable right now.
Theoretically, it would also get them out of their doomed galaxy, so it played well to the most basic human drive, survival.
Harrington spoke up, “Bugs, if we do that, what will be the basic driving force that keeps both our species going?”
Bugs jerked downward once, causing one small burst of air through its small head openings. After a moment, the translator spoke a single word.
“Revenge.”
End of Book Two
To be continued…
Look for…
The Spiral Slayers
Book Three
Odyssey
Rusty Williamson
2017
and…
The Spiral Slayers
Book Four
The War Lords
Rusty Williamson
tba
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About the Author
Ronald (Rusty) Williamson lives in San Diego, CA with his wife Denise and their dog. The two just celebrated their forty-third wedding anniversary. Both have been retired since 2002. They have two children.
Besides writing science fiction, Williamson owns and operates a 3D animation studio and, at a layman's level, has been interested in quantum physics (Superstrings and LQG) and cosmology since 1980. His other hobbies are hiking, biking, playing guitar and song writing. Almost every weekend, you can find him and his wife dancing to a live rock and roll band at some San Diego club.
Before retiring in 2002, he worked as a computer programmer for 20 years plus he and his wife flipped houses in their spare time. In the mid-eighties, he published technical articles for Computerworld. Between 1983 and 1992, he explored the Anza Borrego desert and acted as a tour guide for 4x4 caravans through the region. He served in the US Army in Vietnam in 1970.
The author would love to hear from you. You can email him at rusty@rustywilliamson.com.
The author’s site: http://www.RustyWilliamson.com/
Blog: http://www.RustyWilliamson.com/category/rustys-sci-fi-blog/
The Spiral Slayers Series Site: http://www.TheSpiralSlayers.com/
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Be sure to watch the author’s revolutionary book trailer:
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