Zero Limit

by Jeremy K. Brown

  As fast as the world tried to process the potential impact, the game changed twice as fast. Every blast from the lightning bugs and every burst of steam from the asteroid’s craters caused a shift in trajectory, which meant that an entirely new point of impact was created and the whole process started all over again. The erratic bursts of steam coupled with the lightning bugs’ equally erratic blast patterns had now shifted the asteroid’s course so that it would potentially strike somewhere near Kiribati. But that would only be the beginning. The small island nation would be completely wiped out. However, the disaster zone would still spread far and wide, with effects being felt around the globe. In a revelation that was as surprising as it was disturbing, most of Australia would be affected by a massive electromagnetic pulse that would disrupt power in every city and village within fifteen hundred miles of the impact. Additionally, the atmospheres around all these areas would be ionized, rendering all communications, from cell phones to the Internet, completely useless. Shock waves would also be of grave concern, with ground shocks toppling bridges and buildings and tearing roadways apart and blast waves swatting airliners out of the sky and sending ships plummeting beneath the tides. Once the asteroid struck the ocean floor, it would send debris and evaporated seawater soaring up into the atmosphere. As that debris, now heated to around nine thousand degrees Fahrenheit, returned to Earth, fire would literally rain down on every area within the disaster zone. The debris that did not come back to Earth would remain in the upper atmosphere, where it would blot out the Sun in the affected areas. Over time, that debris would eventually cool, forming spherules that would pepper the surface of the planet like hailstones. Earthquakes would be felt as far away as China, and volcanoes would spontaneously erupt in Indonesia. The asteroid’s impact with the seabed would also create a massive crater, which would displace millions of tons of water as it was refilled. That displacement would create tsunamis as high as 350 feet and traveling at nearly two hundred miles an hour. Coastal cities in the path of the waves would be obliterated, with the death toll potentially creeping up to the hundreds of millions. In short, while the impact of the Thresher would not be what scientists would call an “extinction-level event,” there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that it would mean the end of life as they knew it for generations.

  “All right!” Caitlin barked, startling both Shaw and Vee from sleep. “Let’s get up and get moving. This is the final crater, so we’re all going out there. We know what we’re doing and we know how to do it. Let’s make this last one count and hopefully get ourselves home.”

  Shaw and Vee struggled awake and began suiting up. As they did, Sara’s voice popped into their ears.

  “Woo-hoo!” she said, trying to bring some levity to a tense situation. “Everybody up, in there?”

  “She’s got a nice voice,” said Shaw during the delay. “But I hope I never have to hear it again after today.”

  “What’s up, Sara?” said Caitlin. “We’re just suiting up to head out to the crater.”

  “Well then, I’m glad I caught you when I did,” she said, “because I’ve got some news for you.”

  “Good news?” said Vee.

  “When has she ever had good news?” said Shaw.

  “OK, OK,” said Caitlin, quieting them down with her hand. “What have you got for us?”

  “Here’s the thing,” said Sara. “We’re looking at everything we’ve done and everything we’ve got to do down here, and as you know, we’ve had a few hiccups along the way. Some of the bursts from the lightning bugs have been more powerful than others and some of the craters have generated more steam than others.”

  “Is she questioning our work ethic?” asked Shaw before being shushed by Caitlin.

  “So,” Sara continued, “this last shot has got to count for everything. Basically, it needs to be two times as strong on our end, and the crater has to be about two times as full on your end. Anything less and the asteroid won’t miss Earth, even if they fire the nuke.”

  Caitlin, Shaw, and Vee looked at each other, and something passed between them. For a lot of other people, what Sara had just told them would be seen as crushing news. But not for them. They’d worked too long together and been through too much. They had all suffered losses, both here and at home. They wore the scars of hard work and hard luck, but in this moment, it came down to one simple truth: they were still a crew and there was still a job to be done. They shared a nod, and Caitlin got back on the mic.

  “Sara?” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t worry,” said Caitlin. “The crew of the Space Invader has got this.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  They were almost done when the rover finally gave out.

  “Dammit!” said Caitlin after her third attempt to get the vehicle’s electric motors up and running again.

  “What did you expect?” said Vee. “This thing wasn’t meant to run as long or as hard as we ran it. I’m actually amazed it lasted up to this point.”

  Caitlin looked over at Shaw.

  “What do you think?” she asked, breathing heavy from exertion. “Is it enough?”

  “It’s going to have to be,” he said, “unless you want to start working by hand.”

  They looked out at the vast crater, now close to bursting with several tons of water ice. Caitlin shook her head.

  “We’ve done everything we can do,” she said. “No matter what happens, no one can say we didn’t. Now let’s call Sara and—”

  “Guys!” Sara suddenly screamed into their headsets. “You’ve got to get out of there now! The lightning bugs are in place, and if we don’t use them this instant, it’s going to be too late.”

  “What’s happened?” Caitlin asked.

  “We’re out of time,” she said. “We’d hoped you’d be done and back before now. But we’ve got to act now or there’s no way the asteroid can be diverted in time.”

  “Hold on, Sara,” said Caitlin. “Our rover’s given out. I don’t know if we can make it back in time for—”

  “You’re out of options, Caitlin!” Sara yelled.

  Realizing that Sara was serious, the three miners began to make their way back to the Alley Oop. Looking ahead of them at the vast landscape they had to navigate, Caitlin wondered if all their efforts had been in vain.

  Back on Earth, Patricia had steered the lightning bugs into orbit above the asteroid for what she hoped would be the final time. On the monitors, everyone could make out the blurry outline of Caitlin, Shaw, and Vee bouncing their way across the landscape back toward the lander.

  “Holy God,” said Alex. “They’re still out there?”

  “Lightning bugs are in position,” said Patricia. “It’s now or never.”

  “I concur,” said Dr. Lebedev in Moscow. “We must act this instant if we stand any chance of diverting the asteroid.”

  Sara hesitated a moment, watching the three of them running for their lives.

  “Sara?” said Alex. “We need—”

  “Fire,” she said, closing her eyes.

  Patricia complied, hitting the button on the Firelight’s control panel and activating the lightning bugs’ onboard laser system.

  On the asteroid, there was no beam of light, no sound effect that let the crew know that a massive pulse of concentrated energy was being sent down at double the force of its predecessors. The only clue they had was the monstrous funnel cloud of steam that began rocketing up from inside the crater, silently blasting its way up into space with unimaginable, nearly awe-inspiring force.

  “Damn,” Vee said, unable to help herself. “Now that’s a lot of steam.”

  “Not good,” yelled Shaw. “Not good at all!”

  “Move! Move! Move!” Caitlin screamed. She began hop-walking back as, thanks to the incredible heat generated from the laser, a second crater of ice erupted, knocking them forward. If it wasn’t for the RCS on their suits, all three miners would have been ejected off the asteroid’s surface before they ha
d a second to react.

  As the shattered bits of the asteroid floated out into space, the crew noticed glints of reflective material slowly turning over and over, catching the sunlight like tiny diamonds.

  “What the hell was that?” Caitlin screamed.

  “Something very bad,” Shaw said. “I think the bugs hit a vein of iron that must be running underneath us.”

  “Meaning?” Vee asked.

  “Iron conducts heat,” Shaw said. “This whole asteroid just became a bomb.”

  Back at the PDCO, the team was frantically trying to decipher what was happening. Between the video delay, the disruption from the lasers, and the steam blasting everywhere, it was next to impossible to see anything. Patricia found herself flying blind, unsure of what to do.

  “Keep hitting the asteroid,” said Sara. “We can’t afford not to.”

  “But what about the crew?” she asked. “I can’t see a damn thing.”

  “Caitlin Taggart has been in worse scrapes than this,” she said.

  Alex shot her a baffled look. “Really?” he asked.

  “OK, you know what I mean,” said Sara. “This isn’t the time! Hit it again, Patricia! Now!”

  Battered again and again by the bugs’ lasers, the Thresher’s final crater continued to disgorge its contents, ejecting rock, ice, and steam off the surface and slowly forcing the asteroid off its course. Meanwhile, and unbeknownst to the people back on Earth, the heat blasting the subterranean vein of iron was causing the asteroid to buck and heave from multiple eruptions. In the distance, Caitlin could see the Alley Oop as they drew closer.

  “Push it, everyone, push it!” she cried out. “Almost there!”

  “We’re going to make it!” said Shaw. “We’re going to—”

  Before he could finish his thought, Shaw was struck by an errant pulse from one of the bugs’ lasers. He didn’t have time to think or react. There was only a brief flash of heat and Shaw was cosmic dust.

  “No!” Caitlin shouted.

  Caitlin and Vee couldn’t take more than a second to process what had happened. The Thresher was still vomiting steam and rock particles violently into space, and as the heat propagated across the surface, other craters decided to join in the cacophony, forming jets of sublimated ice that popped up as the two bounced frantically across the asteroid. As the lander was just within reach, one of the rogue jets caught Vee in its wake and pushed her up and off the rock so fiercely that it forced her left leg behind her at an impossible angle. Vee didn’t even need to speak. The anguished look on Vee’s face told Caitlin all she needed to know. Before Vee could meet the same fate as Diaz, Caitlin reached out and grabbed for her, yanking her back down by using the thrust from her own suit. They crashed back down to the surface.

  “Oh no you don’t,” she said, pulling Vee close. “Not you too!”

  Vee ordinarily would have had a witty comeback, but the agony from her injured leg had rendered her unable to speak. Her face was a mask of pain, and no sound came from behind her clenched teeth, even as she tried to speak. Caitlin threw her friend’s arm over her shoulder and continued to hop-walk across the asteroid, plumes of steam punching up through the ground alongside every step. Another jolt and the two lost their footing. Were it not for the jets in their suits, they would have been lost to the void.

  “We’ve got to get out of here now,” Caitlin told Vee. “Or you and I are going to be permanent residents.”

  Her voice was weak, but Vee spoke nonetheless.

  “Leave,” she said, her voice ragged and breathless. “Just leave me here.”

  As the asteroid was coming apart around them in an explosion of heat and steam, Caitlin froze.

  “What is it?” Davidowitz asks.

  “Roarke’s been tagged,” says Caitlin, frantically racing over to the fallen soldier, who’s on the floor clawing at her bleeding neck.

  “Must’ve gotten caught in the cross fire,” says Davidowitz.

  “Looks that way,” says Caitlin as she tries to wrap the wound as best she can. “She’s not going to last long. We’ve got to get her out of here.”

  “Roger that,” Davidowitz says as Ben races in.

  “We’ve got to move,” he says. “Enders are locked on our position. They’re headed right for us.”

  He looks down at Roarke, bleeding helplessly in Caitlin’s arms.

  “Oh shit,” he says. Caitlin nods.

  “Yeah,” she says. “You’re right. We’ve got to move.”

  With bullets shredding the air around them, Caitlin and Ben carry Roarke out into the street where a Bradley Fighting Vehicle lies discarded outside the safehouse. They climb in with Ben behind the wheel. Davidowitz mounts the M242.

  “Let’s go, Ben!” Caitlin shouts. “Drive it like you stole it!”

  Ben forces the BFV into gear, and they career through the wreckage of the city.

  “Enders coming up fast!” shouts Davidowitz, pointing to the cars streaking their way up the street, undoubtedly loaded with explosives.

  “Hit ’em with the sabots!” Caitlin yells back, and Davidowitz gladly obliges. Sabot rounds, rather than exploding on contact, punch through the target using mass and velocity, more like an arrow than a bullet.

  Davidowitz stops the Enders in their tracks with round after round from the M242 as the heat generated by the piercing of armor creates a pressure wave, sending fragments of metal everywhere.

  Inside the BFV, Caitlin grabs a walkie to call in the air strike.

  “Echo Twelve to Viper Strike actual, requesting air strike on target five hundred meters from current position! Danger close!”

  “Viper Strike actual to Echo Twelve,” comes the voice over the comm. “Copy that. Splash in thirty seconds.”

  “Let’s move it, Ben,” Caitlin screams. “This place is going to be a big-ass hole in about thirty seconds.”

  They race out of the city, pulverizing insurgent vehicles as they do. Overhead, they hear the approaching missile strike, a roar of displaced air that grows louder until it bursts as the incoming rocket pulverizes the compound. Rubble and debris scatter everywhere, and the force of the shock wave nearly rocks the Bradley off its wheels. Inside, Caitlin holds Roarke’s head in her lap, trying to keep her stable. She can feel the life draining out of her.

  “Hang on, Roarke,” says Caitlin. “Stay with me, kid. You’re going to make it, OK? Roarke? Roarke!”

  Roarke tries to say something, but the sound that comes out of her damaged throat is close to inaudible. Caitlin leans in closer, cradling Roarke gently.

  “What?” she asks softly. “What is it?”

  “Emily,” Roarke says as her voice grows faint. “My name is Emily.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  In the White House Situation Room, the president and his staff continued to monitor the activity on the asteroid closely, as they had for the past six days. The tension grew with each passing hour as everyone present considered how much was at stake in the operation and what the outcome would be if it failed. As the lightning bugs went to work and the steam clouds generated by the displaced water ice began to erupt, the video transmission from the asteroid was suddenly interrupted.

  “What just happened?” asked the president.

  “We’re not sure,” said Bob Lee, the president’s science advisor. “It seems we have a loss of signal. I’m reaching out to the team at the PDCO to find out why and see if I can get a situation report.”

  As Lee left the room to assess the situation on the asteroid, Alan Kittredge leaned in to address the president, his face serious.

  “Mr. President,” he said in an ominous tone, “we need to seriously consider the nuclear option.”

  The president hesitated, trying to take in the sheer weight of what was being asked of him. For the first time since he considered running for president, he finally felt he understood the great and terrible power of the office. It was the power to move nations, to change the course of events, and to shape history. But
it was also the power to make decisions, which if wrong by even a small margin, could impact thousands if not millions of lives. It was a power he no longer wanted and perhaps was never qualified to wield in the first place. But, want it or not, for the time being, it was his to wield.

  He sighed and rubbed his temples.

  “Mr. President . . .”

  “How long until the asteroid reaches the point of no return?”

  “A couple of hours, sir,” said Kittredge. “But in this instance, with everything that needs to happen, even hours aren’t enough. We must act quickly, or we are facing a monumental catastrophe.”

  “This isn’t a decision I can just make on the spot, Alan,” the president said.

  “With all due respect, sir,” Kittredge replied, “I believe that on-the-spot decisions are what define this office.”

  “Do you know I’ll be the first president to deploy a nuclear weapon since Truman?” he argued. “I need to have all the information before I can make that choice.”

  “Truman knew the consequences of his actions,” said Kittredge. “And, again sir, I say this with respect, I believe he knew the consequences of inaction as well.”

  The president paused again, looking at the screen in front of him. He squinted at the static, as though by scrutinizing the pattern he could divine the answer to his problem. He knew already how history would judge him. The question in front of him now was could he temper that judgment even slightly by making his last act in office count for something?

  “I’m giving them more time,” he said at last.

  “Mr. President, please . . . ,” began Kittredge.

  “I know what you’re saying, Alan,” said the president. “But I’m not prepared to launch a weapon with that kind of destructive power until we’re absolutely certain that this crew has failed.”

  “You’re taking an incredible gamble,” Kittredge said. “One that may have grave consequences for the planet.”

  “I understand that,” the president said. “And I’m willing to accept those—”