Solar Weapon

by David Capps

  “All of these other universities were also working on this project?” Andropov asked.

  “Yes. But it wasn’t all physics. Twenty-one percent of the money went to electrical engineering, three percent to chemical engineering, and fifty percent went into materials engineering.”

  Andropov staggered and grabbed onto a cubical partition. Brett rushed into another cubical and got a chair.

  “Sit,” Brett said. “Are you okay?”

  Andropov sat down. “I was told all of the work I did was primarily theoretical, pure research. I didn’t know about the engineering. I guess I should have known, with all of the ‘what if’ scenarios they asked. And then there were times I was stumped, and they guided me in a new direction. I just thought they were working with other physicists. I never dreamed they were actually building one.”

  “Building one what?” Jake asked.

  “An anti-gravity drive spacecraft,” Andropov replied.

  “A what?”

  “In the past, all of our satellites and spacecraft have used liquid propellants to create motion or maintain position. The fuel takes up a crippling volume, not to mention the weight. Think of the solid rocket boosters and the giant main fuel tank that were needed to push your Space Shuttle up into orbit.”

  “Okay,” Jake replied.

  “Now imagine if you could use a very strong static electrical charge to manipulate the gravitational field in front of, and behind a space craft, such that if literally falls in a direction that you control,” Andropov explained.

  “You mean you could make something fall up?”

  “Faster than you can imagine,” Andropov replied.

  “How did you find out about this?” Honi asked.

  “I left the university ten years ago. That’s when General Davies recruited me. I didn’t learn until well after I started working for the General that such a thing could exist.”

  “I have what may be a strange question,” Ken said. Andropov looked up at him. “Did all of the money for equipment, materials and people go through the university account, or were there freebies?”

  “We had very expensive equipment,” Andropov said. “If it was available on the market, it went through the university funding account. But we also had some exotic custom-made instruments. Those were just dropped off in the middle of the night. No paperwork, no records. They were supposedly ‘on loan,’ but I don’t know where you would get something like that to loan to anybody. They were very specific, custom-made instruments.”

  “Did you receive any cash payments?” Ken asked.

  Andropov glanced around.

  “It’s okay,” Honi said. “We’re not the IRS. We just need to understand how the system worked.”

  “Every major advance I made was rewarded with a cash bonus,” Andropov said. “Substantial sums. I believe the university also received cash bonuses. Nobody said anything, of course, but I believe everybody knew it was off the books.”

  “And the money that went into the university funding account?” Ken asked.

  “I don’t know the details,” Andropov said. “But I was led to believe the funds were grants from various corporations. You know, tax write-offs, that sort of thing.”

  “I have the database loaded from the disc you brought, Ken,” Brett said. “Precious metals are represented by the color gold on the display.”

  “Same flow as the money,” Honi said.

  “But restricted to the financial organizations,” Jake said.

  A large red strobe light started flashing from the ceiling and an ear-piercing alarm of some kind sounded. “Full stop” came over the PA system. “Emergency backup in progress. Everything will shut down automatically in three minutes.”

  “What’s going on?” Jake asked.

  “Something serious,” Honi said. “First time this has happened since I’ve been here.”

  “What do we do?” Jake asked.

  “Full stop means stop using everything. No computers, no phones, no radios and especially no elevators,” Honi replied.

  “The whole building is going to shut down?” Jake asked incredulously.

  “Yes,” Honi replied. “Don’t try to go anywhere. Just stay right where you are!”

  “Automatic shut down in two minutes and thirty seconds.” came over the PA.

  Jake looked around. “There has to be something we can do.”

  Honi shook her head. “Emergency backup is an automated process. We have to wait until it’s complete.”

  Jake paced nervously up and down the aisle. The countdown continued and changed to individual numbers with ten seconds left. At zero, all of the computers, screens and displays went dark.

  “Now what?” Jake asked.

  Almost in response, the voice on the PA answered, “Initiate EMP Protocol.”

  Jake looked at Honi. This was the first time he had seen anything approaching panic on her face. Every employee in the room began yanking cords out and dropping them on the floor.

  “Electro-Magnetic Pulse?” Jake asked. “Like in the weapon?”

  “Yes,” Honi said. “Hurry, we don’t have much time!”

  “Doesn’t cutting the power break all of the connections to the grid?” Jake asked.

  “No,” Brett said, as he yanked cords from their receptacles. “It’s the ground wires. They remain connected.”

  “Unplug everything!” Honi shouted. Jake, Ken and Andropov jumped into activity. There were thousands of connections within the building, including several hundred in area 4 alone. “Come on,” Honi shouted. “Faster!”

  “Building power down in twenty seconds.” came over the PA.

  “Jake, next cubical over!” Honi shouted. “Ken, that one over there!”

  Andropov ran to another empty cubical and started unplugging every cable.

  “Unplug the phones!” Honi shouted. “Unplug everything—now!”

  “Are we under attack?” Jake asked.

  “Yes,” she shouted. “We have to protect as much equipment as we can!”

  Jake and other people scrambled from one cubical to another, under desks, behind file cabinets, unplugging every cord they could find.

  Then, when the voice counting down on the PA system reached zero, the room went black.

  “Everyone sit where you are,” Honi shouted. “Do not attempt to move.”

  Jake moved his hands around, locating the cubical wall. He waved a hand in front of him as he worked his way into the aisle and back to where he last heard Honi’s voice. When he got there he whispered, “Honi?”

  “What did I say?” she whispered back. “Don’t move around.”

  “Do you think the nuclear bomb caused this? I mean, if it was high up in the atmosphere, it would cause an EMP,” Jake whispered.

  “If it did,” she whispered back. “We wouldn’t have had any warning. Whatever is happening came with some warning.”

  “Why are you whispering?” Brett asked.

  No one answered.

  “Good point,” Jake finally said in his normal voice.

  That seemed to trigger conversations all over the room. People turned on the light function on their cell phones and began collecting in a group centered around Honi. A few minutes later, the stairwell door opened and a person entered the room carrying a flashlight.

  “I’ve got some flashlights and some news,” Sebastian Pettigrew said as he walked over to the group.

  “So what happened?” Honi asked.

  “Major solar storm,” Pettigrew said. “They were in the middle of shutting the grid down when it hit. By then, it was too late to save everything. Unlike a severe weather storm that knocks down trees and powerlines, this kind of storm burns out electrical generators and transformers and melts wires. We shut down when the initial warning went out, just to be safe. Turned out to be a good thing.”

  “How long is this supposed to last?” Honi asked.

  “The initial warning said 12 to 24 hours, so we’re going to be here a while
. We’ve been advised to stay inside the building–possible radiation hazard from solar particles bombarding the atmosphere. The cafeteria will be open in an hour–sandwiches and cold drinks. No electricity to warm anything up, though.”

  “What about the water supply?” Honi asked. “Isn’t that powered by electricity?”

  “Mostly,” Pettigrew replied. “But we do have water towers. Just conserve as best as you can.”

  “Okay,” Honi said. “We’ll be up in an hour.”

  Pettigrew handed out several flashlights and left.

  “Why did we have to unplug everything?” Jake asked.

  “I can help answer that,” Andropov said. “The electrical grid uses the mineralized water under the soil as a common conductor for almost every electrical circuit. It’s a lot cheaper than running extra wires. When we have a large storm on the sun, such as this one, a huge amount of charged particles, ejected from the sun, swarm the magnetic field around the earth. The magnetic flux lines of the magnetosphere separate the charged particles into positive and negative, one going to the North Magnetic Pole and the other to the South. As these charged particles flood into the earth at the poles, massive electric current flows take place in the mineralized water underground in nature’s attempt to neutralize the electrical forces between the poles.

  “That water, unfortunately, is part of the electrical grid, and every ground wire on every electrical device connects to it. That massive current flow also travels through the wires on the grid, destroying transformers and melting wires because of the gigantic surge of electrical energy. The flow continues as long as the charged particles are flowing into the North and South Magnetic Poles.”

  “So 12 to 24 hours of these huge electrical flows in the ground?” Jake asked.

  “Yes,” Andropov replied. “If an electrical device isn’t plugged in, the flow can’t affect it. That’s why we unplugged everything. When the charged particle flow stops, we can plug everything back in and resume our work.”

  “How do we know what actually happens,” Jake asked. “Has this happened before?”

  “Yes,” Andropov explained. “The Carrington event, September first and second, 1859. Fortunately, at that time the only system of extended wires was the telegraph, which experienced electrical overloads, and the occasional fire caused by electrical arcing.”

  “So how bad is the damage from this storm going to be?” Jake asked.

  Andropov shrugged. “Find out when it’s over.”

  An hour later, they went up the stairs to the cafeteria for sandwiches and cold drinks.

  It’s comforting to see daylight again, Jake thought. He walked over to the window and looked around. No one was outside: no traffic, no people, no noise. It seemed strangely peaceful. Jake glanced at his watch to see what time it was, since all the wall clocks had stopped when the power was shut off at 4:16 that afternoon. He looked at the countdown watch: 16 days, 22 hours, 33 minutes and 4 seconds to go.

  Almost seventeen days, Jake thought. Why does seventeen days sound so familiar? He looked at Honi and frowned. Dr. Spencer, he thought. What did he say about seventeen days? Honi looked over at him and started walking in his direction. The first solar storm was seventeen days before the aurora Honi saw.

  “You look worried,” Honi said. “What’s wrong?”

  “How many days ago did you see the aurora in the sky?” Jake asked.

  “About two weeks ago, why?”

  “Not about,” Jake replied. “I need to know exactly how many days ago it happened.”

  Honi thought for a moment. “Seventeen days ago, why?”

  Jake looked again at the strange watch. “The countdown watch has just short of seventeen days to go. We’re having a huge solar storm hit the planet right now. Seventeen days ago was another solar storm—weaker, but a direct hit on the planet. Seventeen days before that was another solar storm, a near miss. This isn’t random—it isn’t natural. The ‘Event’ Sylvia Cuthbert talked about happens in seventeen days. In seventeen days we all die.”

  “What are you talking about?” Honi asked.

  “The threat isn’t from the missing hydrogen bomb, it’s from the sun,” Jake said.

  CHAPTER 14

  “We have to talk to Dr. Spencer right away!” Jake said.

  “We can’t,” Honi replied. “No phone service, no electricity. We don’t even know where he would be. Even if it were safe to go outside, which it isn’t, where would we go to find him?”

  “I know where he lives,” Jake said.

  “But the storm happened during the workday. He probably wouldn’t have been home. He would have gone to a shelter somewhere. We just don’t know where. As soon as the storm dies down, the cell towers will go back up and we can call him. Until then, there’s nothing we can do.”

  * * *

  Late that evening word of the brilliant aurora in the night sky spread through the NSA building. Technicians had gone outside with radiation sensors. Because the earth was turned away from the sun at night, it was safe to go outside. Jake and Honi joined the flood of people pouring out into the parking lot to look at the sky.

  “Is this what it looked like seventeen days ago?” Jake asked.

  “No,” Honi replied. “That was a mixture of reds, blues and greens. This is so much brighter and it’s almost all white in color. This is bright enough where it’s not even dark out. Look, you can read the signs on the reserved parking spaces, and it’s…” Honi checked her watch. “Jake, it’s midnight, and it’s not dark. It’s more like twilight.”

  “This is amazing,” Jake said. “I’ve never even heard of anything like this happening before.”

  “It has,” Andropov said as he walked over. “During the Carrington event, gold miners out in the mountains of California woke up in the middle of the night and started fixing breakfast—thinking daybreak was taking place. That’s where the term comes from, you know—Aurora, the Roman Goddess of dawn. People in the cities could read the newspaper by the light of the aurora.”

  “This is so beautiful,” Jake said. “How often does something like this happen?”

  “On this level?” Andropov asked. “Every hundred to two hundred years. We get extended auroras with some maximum sunspot cycles, so that’s not so unusual.”

  “But we’re at a sunspot minimum,” Jake said. “We’re not supposed to have solar storms at all.”

  “I know,” Andropov said, his head lowered. “I just hope and pray that the research I did wasn’t a part of this, but I suspect it was.”

  “What makes you think that?” Jake asked.

  “The growth of technology has been stunning, but I’m afraid humans haven’t grown anywhere near where they need to be to use the new science responsibly.”

  “You think we’re going to blow ourselves up with nuclear weapons?” Jake asked.

  “I did believe that at one point. But in recent years I’ve discovered we are not alone. We have friends, shall we say, in high places?”

  “You mean…” Jake pointed up into the night sky with his index finger in front of him.

  “Yes. The ancients called them ‘the watchers.’ I have seen evidence of an ancient nuclear war that took place where India is now. I think our friends up there are trying to avoid a recurrence of that dreadful event, but that’s just one man’s opinion.”

  “I would like to believe that,” Jake said.

  “I would too,” Honi added.

  * * *

  At ten the following morning the power came back on and people started reconnecting all of the cables, cords and phones in the NSA building. Jake tried using Honi’s cell phone.

  “Cell towers are up,” he said. He dialed Dr. Spencer and arranged a time to meet. His bureau car in the parking lot started without a problem, but it didn’t take long to discover that the traffic lights weren’t working. What should have been a thirty minute trip turned into four hours of honking horns, screaming motorists, frazzled tempers and slowly creeping cars.
>
  “I’m so sorry we’re late,” Jake said as he and Honi finally arrived at the Space Studies Board.

  “Not to worry,” Dr. Spencer replied. “There are much bigger problems to attend to than being delayed in traffic, though I don’t know that traffic would be an appropriate term. Traffic implies vehicles in motion, does it not?”

  “Well it was, and it wasn’t,” Jake said. “The solar storm—how bad is the damage?”

  “Yes, yes,” Dr. Spencer replied. “It was bad. As you can see, we are still without electrical power. Just how bad the damage is will take several days to ascertain, I’m afraid.”

  “What about the earth’s magnetic shield?” Jake asked urgently.

  “The strength of the magnetosphere?” Dr. Spencer asked.

  “Yes. Compared to ten years ago?”

  “Magnetic flux varies from place to place, as you well know, but on average, we have dropped below thirty percent of normal strength. This is certainly a very disturbing development.”

  “Where will it be in two weeks?” Jake asked.

  “In two weeks? Oh, I don’t know. The flux field has been dropping so precipitously, it would be difficult to be precise.”

  “Ball park,” Jake demanded.

  Dr. Spencer looked at Jake, worry etched into his aging features.

  “Best guess?” Jake asked more politely.

  “Five to ten percent. Maybe a little less.”

  “And if we were hit by another solar storm like this one?”

  Dr. Spencer shook his head. “That would be bad.”

  “How bad?”

  “Well, not catastrophic,” Dr. Spencer said. “I mean many people would survive. Not all, certainly. Many would die from radiation exposure—primarily people without effective radiation shelters.”

  “What would constitute an effective radiation shelter?”

  “Anything underground—a cave.”

  Dr. Spencer wandered away from Jake and Honi a little. He seemed very distracted.

  “Something’s bothering you, Dr. Spencer. What is it?” Jake asked.

  “I’m worried. Very worried.”

  “About?”