Zero Limit

by Jeremy K. Brown

  “Why are you sorry?” Caitlin asked her. “You didn’t do this.”

  “I know,” said Sara. “And I want you to know that we’re not out of ideas down here. We’re going to keep working on this until we come up with a solution. I just can’t help feeling like I failed you.”

  “You didn’t fail us,” said Caitlin. “You’ve given us an opportunity.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  Despite the circumstances, Caitlin had a feeling of optimism.

  “Because now I know it’s up to us to save ourselves.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Sara disconnected from Caitlin and put her head in her hands. She felt like she had not only let the three miners down but herself as well. She had told Caitlin that she was working on the problem, but what did that mean? Every solution they had come up with was shot down because of time and money.

  Alex came up and sat down next to her, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  “No one can say that we aren’t doing everything we can,” Alex said.

  Sara looked at him through eyes growing blurry with tears.

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “Would it matter if I did?” said Alex. “The odds were against us from the beginning. This thing was coming at us too fast from too close. We barely stood a chance.”

  Sara gave a rueful laugh. “Tell that to that little girl.”

  “I know,” Alex said. “But I’ll tell you something. I read about Caitlin Taggart. The things she did over there in the campaign. And if I were going to put my money on anyone who could find a way out of this, it’s her. In fact, she kind of reminds me of you.”

  Now Sara’s laughter was more genuine. “Nice try, Sutter.”

  “I’m serious!” he said. “Look, remember back in college, you were struggling in your first year, and that professor told you you’d never make it as an astronomy major. And what happened? You doubled down on all your courses and graduated with honors. You’ve never known how to quit, and something tells me she doesn’t either.”

  Sara and Alex looked at each other for a moment and something passed between them. The moment wasn’t unpleasant, and, shockingly, Sara found herself wanting to stay in it a little longer.

  “We’ve got something!” Patricia Delgado said, running into the room and raising her arms in triumph.

  Sara looked up, both irritated at the interruption and relieved. Plus, the idea that her team may have come up with a solution produced another emotion: elation.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Ned dropped a stack of printed pages on the table.

  “Firelight,” he said.

  Sara flipped through the pages, looking them over.

  “OK,” she asked. “What’s Firelight?”

  “It was an old Russian orbital defense platform,” Patricia said. “Built sometime in the middle of the century during the Second Cold War. By the time of the Last Campaign and the formation of the New Coalition, it was deemed to be no longer necessary and never brought online. But, nevertheless . . . it’s still up there.”

  Sara also looked over the pages showing old schematics and blueprints of the design and layout of the Firelight platform. Most of the lettering was Cyrillic, making it hard for Sara to decipher how it was supposed to work. Still, she thought, there was something familiar to her about the design.

  “All this time we didn’t think that a laser ablation was a possibility because we didn’t have a powerful enough laser,” said Ned. “Now we do.”

  Alex looked thoughtfully at the image of the weapons platform in his hand.

  “It’s been up there for decades,” he said. “Its orbit hasn’t decayed?”

  “Doesn’t seem like it was ever fully decommissioned,” said Patricia. “Maybe the Russians were keeping one hand on the switch. Just to be on the safe side.”

  “If it hasn’t been decommissioned,” Sara said, “then there’s a chance the Russians could get it up and running again.”

  “Yeah,” said Alex. “But would they?”

  “Hell yes, they would,” said Sara. “Remember, the president’s nuclear diversion plan could end up planting the asteroid somewhere in Siberia. Plus, I think the Russian president would activate Firelight just for the chance to stick it to our own commander in chief.”

  “All right then,” said Alex. “Let’s first reach out to the Russian science team in Moscow. They’ll be able to tell us whether they think this is a viable option. Maybe they’ve already thought of this themselves and are working on it as we speak.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” said Sara. “And then?”

  “Then I think it’s time we set up a conference call between the White House and the Kremlin.”

  As Sara, Alex, and their team were busy putting their new plan into action, the world was busy coming apart at the seams. If the revelation of the asteroid’s approach to Earth had caused panic, once the president addressed the nation informing of his intention to use nuclear weaponry against it, the entire mindset of the planet shifted into full-blown madness. During his speech, he had elected at the last minute to leave out any mention of Caitlin Taggart and her crew. And, given the way the public reacted to his speech as it was, he felt relieved that he’d stayed mum. The streets were swarming with people, all hysterical for one reason or another. Hysterical that the world was quite possibly about to end, hysterical that they were only just finding this out. Citizens wanted answers, whether it be from God, the government, or someone in between. If Terrans had knowledge that three lunar residents were also caught up in the crisis, political tensions could have boiled over into an even less manageable mess.

  On TV and online, the president was both hailed as a man who took decisive action in a time of crisis and derided as a buffoon whose shortsightedness and bigotry had led the nation directly to this point. Religious zealots came out in droves, calling the asteroid a punishment for the world’s wickedness, the cleansing fire God had promised in the Bible.

  “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night,” shouted a preacher on a street corner in New York as homeless vagrants and suit-clad office workers stood side-by-side in attention. “In which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.”

  Crime rose in incremental waves as the realization dawned on people that, in a relatively short amount of time, the consequences of their actions, if there were any, would be meaningless. Within a day of the president’s address, the looting began. Store windows were smashed across the country, with inventory both large and small plucked, snatched, and hauled off shelves and outdoors. Cars were overturned and lit aflame. Those who didn’t want to loot or celebrate or bemoan the approaching end of the world simply hunkered down and stayed indoors, too afraid of what awaited them outside or in the skies above.

  In the White House, the president was, as expected, apoplectic. Although he was in a red-faced, blotchy rage most of the time, his staffers now noticed something different. In his eyes, there was a hint of fear. There was the palpable sense that he had been treating the presidency like the world’s greatest game and now someone had just sat him down and told him that it was all real. He threw a tablet down onto the desk, pointing at the headline on CNN.

  NUCLEAR BOOR: President’s Missile Plan Spells Doom for Entire Planet!

  The article went on to list all the reasons why, at this late stage, a nuclear missile fired at the asteroid would do more harm than good and then presented a detailed analysis of precisely why the president was too stupid to know any of this.

  “Goddammit!” he screamed. “Who the hell reads this crap?”

  “Fifteen million people daily, Mr. President,” said Karen, “according to our latest numbers.”

  “We need to formulate a response,” the president said. “Draft a message for social media. It should say . . .”

  “What w
e need to do is keep our eye on the ball,” said Dawn. “Now, with everything that is happening, and with what might be coming in the next several days, I think it’s time we considered Operation Ark.”

  The president’s face drained of color. He, like all his predecessors, had been briefed on Operation Ark, but, just like all his predecessors, he had never believed that he would ever consider using it.

  “Are you serious, Dawn?” he asked.

  “I have never been more serious, sir,” she replied. “We should have been talking about this from day one, from the minute Sutter and Kent gave their presentation in the Situation Room. It’s time to start notifying the ticket holders and initiating the lottery.”

  The president, in a rather uncharacteristic move, slumped into his seat. To those present, it looked as though the weight of what Dawn was proposing was too much to carry. How right they were. Operation Ark was a plan for both the continuation of government and, if the worst should happen, the preservation of life on our planet. It was first enacted during the frenzied, paranoid days of the First Cold War, and the plans were laid out in secret. A massive underground city, all connected by a subterranean network of tunnels large enough to drive a fleet of tractor trailers through it had been built with funding from some of the largest corporations and defense contractors in the world.

  Beginning somewhere underneath the Allegheny Mountains and extending all the way to Mount Shasta in California, Ark City was the stuff of urban legends and conspiracy theories. People had claimed aliens were living down there, using the tunnels as a base of operations from which to abduct unsuspecting humans. Others claimed that the city would be where the secret power brokers and puppet masters known as the Illuminati would flee once their plan to exterminate the population had been put into effect. This last theory was somewhat closer to the truth. Although there were no nefarious banking families pulling the strings, Ark City was to be populated primarily by the elite of humanity who either had the public profile or economic means to gain entry. But a significant portion of the general population would also be allowed in except for those over sixty-five, and truthfully, even that was pushing it. (There were those in government who believed that no one over fifty should make the cut.) If the president put the plan into effect, one million random Americans would receive a text message with a phone number and a verification code. Calling that number and entering the code would grant that person and their family—provided that family was no larger than four people—access to Ark City should the worst happen. Once the city was at capacity, the doors would be sealed until such time as the surface was habitable again. It was an extreme plan, one no president wanted to consider, least of all this one, who was only just grappling with the awesome responsibilities of his job.

  “We’re not there yet, Dawn,” he said dismissively. “Now about the CNN situation—”

  “Mr. President, please—”

  “I said we’re not there yet, Dawn, goddammit!” he shouted.

  “Well, when will we be there? Do you mind my asking?” she asked, slamming her fist down on the desk. “Jesus Christ, Mr. President! The country is falling apart around you. And in a few days’ time we could be facing a global crisis on our hands the likes of which no administration has ever seen before. And what do you care about? Your public image. My God! You’re worried about what they’re saying about you in the press? Trust me, they’re saying a whole lot worse about you in their homes. Since Truman first dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, every president who has ever sat in this office has wondered how he or she would face the end of the world. Would they stand tall, or tuck tail and run? What would they do when the final hour came? Well, Mr. President, that final hour is here. How will you face it? Burying your head in the news, or turning to look the problem in the eye?”

  The president stared Dawn down as everyone froze in place. The tension in the room felt like the electricity in the air just before a summer thunderstorm. But before he could properly explode, the door to the Oval Office burst open and his assistant came in.

  “Mr. President?” he said, suddenly becoming aware that he was interrupting something. He cast his eyes around the room nervously before plunging ahead. “I’m . . . sorry to interrupt, but you should turn on the TV. Channel 415.”

  “Oh Christ,” muttered the president. He threw up his hands and leaned back against the desk as Dawn clicked the remote, turning on the screen at the far end of the office. On the TV, a reporter was silently speaking.

  “Turn off the mute, dammit!” barked the president.

  Dawn punched the proper button on the remote, and the reporter’s voice filled the room.

  “. . . repeat what we have just been told. It seems that a group of miners are stranded on the Thresher asteroid currently making its way toward Earth. It would appear that they had been contracted to mine the asteroid by Lyman Ross, the son of Texas senator Hamer Ross . . .”

  “Dawn . . . Karen,” said the president slowly, “we need to make some phone calls.”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” said Dawn. “Who would you like us to call?”

  “Everyone.”

  Once the news revealed that there were three people stranded on the asteroid and that the president had most likely known about them before ordering a nuclear strike, everything exploded. Human rights groups were up in arms. Supporters of Moonborn families began making speeches wherever their voices could be heard, from protest marches in front of embassies around the world to speeches before Congress on national television. Nightside began making threats anew, promising that, before the asteroid wreaked havoc upon Earth, they would prepare the world for its arrival with a fire that would engulf the planet.

  On the other side of the debate were those who sided with the president and felt he was a national hero for making the decision to use the missile, and that by choosing to nuke the asteroid—and, by extension, the people who were on it illegally—he was sending a brave message of zero tolerance to anyone who dared violate the embargo.

  “The president is a man of great conscience,” said Dallas Hudder, the spokesman for the People of a Free Earth, an anti-Moon society that had rumored ties to the presidency. “And his decision to inflict a righteous punishment upon the three criminals whose wanton ignorance and disregard for the laws of our country and planet have jeopardized our way of life stands as evidence of his greatness.”

  The day after that interview aired, the fires began.

  Nothing was safe from the wrath of the public. Churches, temples, mosques, and homes around the country went up in flames overnight. At first it seemed as though there was a pattern to the burnings, that people who were perceived as being either in support of or, worse, in collusion with the president were the first targeted. But after a while, the carnage became hopelessly random. No one seemed to care what they burned down, only that it did burn down. In a very real way, the fires became the physical manifestation of the nation’s hatred, hot, constant.

  Standing on the Truman Balcony at the White House, the president looked out over his smoldering country. Fires raged in the dark, and sirens screamed into the night. Overhead, churning through the orange-and-black sky, helicopters thumped, their searchlights scanning the blackened landscape. The president looked at the turmoil, absently swirling the scotch in his glass, and slipped a hand into the pocket of his robe. He sighed, unable to figure out how it had come to this. He had been elected the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth and had promised to turn it into a paradise. He knew that the public and the press had branded him as a bully and a rabble-rouser—and he regularly acted the part—but he had wanted to make the country a better place. And yet, on his watch, it had become a war zone. He looked down at the lawn, unable to gaze upon the conflagration on the horizon any longer.

  “Are you coming to bed?”

  The president turned to see his wife standing in the doorway. Age, excess, and the ravages of his time in office had altered his appearance to a near unrecognizable s
tate, but she was just as feisty and spry as ever. Her hair was no longer the chestnut brown it had been when she was still a student at Alabama, back when it would reflect the Sun’s rays and make her look as though she was crowned in gold. But its silver color conveyed a different elegance. Wise and confident. She never colored it or tried to hide it, whereas he had fought the onset of the years tooth and claw. Coloring his skin, dyeing his hair, combing whatever strands he had left into an assortment of shapes to give the illusion of thickness. Standing here now, with the ruined city behind him and his elegant wife seeing right through him, the president suddenly felt small, like a child who’d been caught playing a foolish prank.

  “Martha,” he said, and the word came out sounding like a prayer, the desperate calling out of a man on his knees. “Oh, Martha. Did I cause all of this to happen?”

  “You want the answer that will help you sleep or the answer you need to hear?” said Martha. The delicate twang in her voice was completely devoid of pretense.

  “I want the truth,” said the president. “The kind of truth that can only come from you.”

  “Well, then, I’ll tell it to you straight,” Martha said. “Looks to me like you screwed the pooch and you didn’t even have the courtesy to give him a Milk-Bone afterward.”

  The president’s eyes widened slightly. Martha walked over to him, reaching for the bottle of scotch. She poured herself two fingers and downed them quick, as though to give her strength, then poured two more and sat down, gesturing for him to join her. They sat together a moment, and she looked him in the eye.

  “What the hell did you think was going to happen?” Martha said. “You filled their heads with fear and hatred. Told them that the boogeyman was waiting in every closet. You turned this country into a pressure cooker with your anger and your rhetoric. It was only a matter of time before the damn thing blew. Chances are this would have happened even if that damn rock hadn’t tumbled out of the sky.”