Sedulity 2: Aftershock (Sedulity Saga)

by David Forsyth

  Sedulity 2: Aftershock

  By David P. Forsyth

  Edited by Felicia A. Sullivan

  Cover Art by William O. Rosenthal

  Copyright 2014 ©

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events are the invention of the author and do not refer to real persons living or dead. Many locations described do exist, but the author makes no claim as to the accuracy of those descriptions or anything associated with them. It is unlawful to copy or distribute this work, in whole or in part, without the express written permission of the author. All rights reserved by David P. Forsyth.

  Acknowledgements:

  As always, there are many to whom I owe debts of gratitude. The most important driving force behind this book has been the response from readers of “Sedulity 1: Impact.” Your insistent requests for a sequel were both encouraging and daunting. I hope that this book lives up to your expectations. As always, I can’t thank Pamela Rosenthal enough for her love and encouragement. Her creative suggestions were vital to overcoming several bouts of writer’s block and indecision over the past few months. Many authors have also offered help and encouragement for this series. Thanks to Felicia A. Sullivan who is an awesome editor and turned this manuscript around on a very tight schedule. And thanks to Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven for writing “Lucifer’s Hammer” four decades ago. That classic work of apocalyptic fiction has inspired me and several generations of writers in the genre. Finally, I am pleased that this 1st Kindle edition will be released on what would have been my mother’s 91st birthday. She was my inspiration as a writer and human being. R.I.P. Gloria Brooks Forsyth (December 23, 1923 – January 10, 2013).

  NOTE: This is a sequel to “Sedulity (Book One) Impact” and should be read in the order it was written to get the most out of the series. A third book, “Sedulity 3: Consequence,” is scheduled for release in 2015. As a bonus, the prequel novelette “Lukan” has been added to the end of this edition for those who have not read my first works of fiction in the “Sovereign Spirit Saga.”

  Aftershock: Chapter 1

  The asteroid had struck the Central Pacific Ocean without warning and with devastating impact. A flaming blast wave preceded mountainous tsunamis aimed at the entire Pacific Rim, followed by churning storm clouds formed by dozens of cubic miles of vaporized seawater that had occupied the space above the 19 mile wide impact crater in the deep seabed. The closest witnesses to survive this event were aboard the cruise ship Sedulity. Hundreds of her passengers and crew were killed by the heat and flames of the blast wave. Many others drowned or were swept overboard by the impact generated tsunamis that partially flooded and nearly sank the cruise ship. Somehow the Sedulity herself made it through these initial assaults in one piece.

  Surviving passengers and crew had little time to celebrate their good fortune. When satellite television was restored the news dashed all hopes that this had been a local event. Unprecedented tsunami waves over a thousand feet high sped across the Pacific Ocean, sweeping away island nations and smashing into larger landmasses with catastrophic results. Those aboard the Sedulity looked on in horror as the coastlines of Australia and then Hawaii were wiped away. They listened to reports, and then the lack thereof, from Indonesia, the Philippines and other nations of the Pacific Rim as the monstrous waves struck each of them in turn. The tsunami warnings and mandatory coastal evacuations covered the entire West Coast of the USA and Canada, as well as Japan and nations along the China Sea. There might have been time for an orderly evacuation in some of those places, if tsunamis had been the only disasters to contend with.

  The asteroid impact didn’t seriously wound the planet, no more so than a bee sting would injure a man. The Earth absorbed the blow, as it had countless such assaults in the past, but the planet did flinch in a reflex response. Seismic shockwaves from the asteroid strike awoke dormant volcanoes and fault lines, releasing immeasurable amounts of stored energy in shifting tectonic plates, and triggering massive earthquakes around the entire Pacific Ring of Fire. Population centers in California and Japan were paralyzed by massive earthquakes, spoiling evacuation plans and stranding millions in earthquake devastated coastal cities while massive tsunamis relentlessly bore down on them.

  The shocked survivors aboard the Sedulity licked their wounds while the cataclysm unfolded on television. The captain, select members of the crew, and a few passengers who had become VIPs by virtue of their scientific backgrounds, followed the progress of the disaster for hours. Then, by mutual consent, they agreed to take a break and start fresh at dawn. It is afternoon on the western coast of the Americas. Earthquakes have already ravaged much of those shorelines. Tsunamis are closing in at hundreds of miles per hour. This is the world in which those aboard the Sedulity find themselves.

  *****

  Kevin Summers awoke in a cold sweat with a choking sensation. For a moment he almost convinced himself that he had simply experienced a bad dream, a nightmare that would fade from memory shortly. No such luck. Instead of fading, his memory crystalized in horrific detail. Kevin could picture the massive asteroid streaking across the suddenly bright night sky, nearly blinding him through the slatted fingers covering his eyes. A flaming trail hundreds of miles long had followed it below the western horizon where the impact blossomed into a truly blinding release of light and energy. Kevin feared that he would see that sight over and over in his dreams and whenever he woke up for the rest of his life.

  He felt a shiver when he recalled gazing at the supersonic blast wave sweeping towards the ship, then feeling the heat through the closed door to the ship’s bridge. The subsequent recollection of a monstrous tsunami hurtling towards the Sedulity was something he would never forget and still couldn’t quite grasp. His memory of the ship riding up and over that massive wave was flavored by mixed emotions of terror and amazement. To realize that all of those things, and many more, had transpired a few hours ago caused his shiver to evolve into momentary shaking when he reached up to wipe the cold sweat from his face. He hoped it wasn’t the first sign of PTSD, but realized it probably was.

  Kevin sat up in bed. He was in the darkened suite of the deceased Staff Captain Stevens. Kevin’s wife and daughter were sleeping soundly next to him. It felt like the ship was moving slowly through an angry sea. He was not at all surprised to hear rain pouring down on the stateroom balcony. He expected constant rain for an extended period of time as a result of all the vaporized water spewed into the atmosphere by the asteroid strike. As a meteorologist and TV weatherman, Kevin feared long-term global climate change from the impact, though he was more concerned at the moment with the immediate destruction spreading around the globe.

  A quick glance at his watch showed he had slept about four hours. Kevin estimated that his friends and neighbors back in Los Angeles had several more hours in which to reach safety, or be swept away by the titanic tsunamis rushing towards them – assuming they had not already fallen victim to the massive earthquakes that struck California within hours of the asteroid impact. Much of the rest of the Pacific Rim would have already been wiped out by tsunamis and Kevin shuddered again with the realization that millions of lives had been snuffed out while he was asleep. He felt guilty for taking a nap while the world as he knew it was washed away, but justified it with the belief that he needed to be sharp of mind to face whatever this new day held in store.

  He slipped out of bed quietly and pulled on the damp clothes he had been wearing the previous evening. The rest of his and his family’s wardrobe and luggage for this vacation were either burned or waterlogged down in their original stateroom, casualties of the blast wave and flooding that assailed the ship in the minutes following the aste
roid impact. It was a small thing to worry about, but Kevin did wonder what he would do when this outfit became too soiled to wear. No time to dwell on that now. He left the suite quietly through the door to the adjoining bridge.

  The mood on the bridge was subdued, yet tense. The ship’s Executive Officer, Mr. Crawford, sat in the raised chair behind the helm. Pounding rain splattered against the windows overlooking the bow, adding a deeper darkness to a night that should have been giving way to dawn. The extended night deepened the feeling of dread among those who looked to the dawn with any glimmer of hope. The door to the captain’s dayroom was open and Kevin could hear what sounded like a news broadcast on the television there. He walked across the bridge, nodding to Mr. Crawford and several members of the crew, all of whom seemed consumed by their own dark thoughts and worries.

  Pausing before leaving the bridge to catch up on the news, Kevin realized that without the radar, which had been knocked out by the blast wave, the ship was sailing blind. He knew there shouldn’t be anything to hit out here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, doubted any other ship could have survived the blast and tsunami waves this close to the point of impact, but it must be unnerving for modern sailors not to know what lay ahead of their ship. The GPS and inertial navigation system continued to provide the ship’s exact location, and they knew that nothing else should be standing in their way. However, after the earthshaking events of the previous night and the blinding deluge of rain pouring down on them, who knew exactly what to expect next?

  Kevin looked into the dayroom and saw Professor Farnsworth and Captain Krystos in front of the television. The captain was stretched out on the couch and appeared to be napping. The elderly professor was wide awake in the easy chair, his sharp gaze shifting from the television to Kevin when the meteorologist quietly entered the room.

  “Good morning,” the professor said softly. “I see you’re up early.”

  “I couldn’t do more than nap,” Kevin replied in an equally subdued voice, trying not to disturb the captain’s sleep. “And you?”

  “The older I get, the less sleep I want or need. There will be plenty of time for resting after I leave this old body behind. Besides, I couldn’t pass up the chance to see the end of the world on television. You’ve already missed a lot of it.”

  “Believe me, I wish I could have slept through all of it,” Kevin said. “Have the tsunamis hit the Americas yet?”

  “Indeed they have,” Farnsworth said in a strange tone of voice. He lifted a glass to his lips and Kevin noticed the half-empty bottle of Scotch on the table next to his seat. Kevin didn’t blame him. In fact, it seemed like a good idea to pour himself a glass, if only to keep the old man from drinking the whole bottle by himself. He went to the captain’s sidebar and got himself a tumbler full of ice, then proceeded to pour himself some Johnny Walker Gold, marveling that such luxuries would soon become priceless.

  “Peru and Ecuador were the first to get hit,” the professor continued with slight slur. “Now the waves are sweeping down what’s left of Chile to the south and are moving up Central America to hit Mexico. You just missed the fall of Panama, though I’m sure they will replay it on TV. Very dramatic. The Gulf of Panama focused the force of the tsunamis. They were thousands of feet high when they broke over Panama City. A news helicopter with a satellite feed to Colon on the Caribbean coast showed the whole thing until the waves crossed the isthmus and wiped out Colon too. Damnedest thing I ever saw. The local geography concentrated the wave on the mouth of the Panama Canal and a wall of whitewater tore up the length of the passage, straight through Lake Gatun, and out into the Caribbean Sea. Dozens of ships in the Canal were swept up or smashed to pieces by the waves. They showed a cruise ship, similar to this one, tossed around like a toy and tumbling over and over as it was carried along by the wave.” He paused to shake his head and take another sip of Scotch, then pointed at the muted television.

  Kevin looked up and, sure enough, GNN was replaying the horrific scenes of monstrous tsunamis hitting Panama. As Kevin had feared, the waves were magnified by the gulf, rising much higher than when they had hit Hawaii. A true mountain of water rose and then crashed down upon Panama City. Kevin couldn’t imagine anyone surviving that. It was obvious that the helicopter taking that video had to climb sharply to stay above the wave, struggling to stay ahead of the mountain of whitewater that regrouped and surged along the length of the Panama Canal. The television picture was jerky and unsteady as the helicopter pilot and cameraman fought their own horror and shock to keep broadcasting the catastrophe. The helicopter dipped its nose and accelerated to stay ahead of the unimaginable wave. It succeeded, although the wave must have been traveling at over a hundred miles per hour. The televised video showed trees, parts of buildings and entire ships churning in the moving mountain of whitewater that quickly turned into a brown sludge as it picked up everything in its path. Where the canal passed through canyons the wall of water grew even higher, spilling over the surrounding hills and flattening the rainforest. The wave spread out and decreased in height as it spilled into Lake Gatun, only to refocus on the eastern shore and overrun the remainder of the canal locks as it rushed downslope to smash into the city of Colon on the Caribbean coast. That was when the satellite feed cut out.

  Kevin had downed his glass of Scotch and was barely breathing by the time the TV image shifted to the GNN studios in Washington, DC, and an equally stunned anchorman. This replay had obviously been edited down to highlights of the disaster in Panama, but Kevin realized that the entire tragedy had played out live on global television. For a moment he was thankful that most of his friends in California had lost power and cable after the earthquakes. There was no advantage to be gained by showing them how devastating the approaching tsunamis could be.

  “It’s as bad as you warned it would be, isn’t it?” Captain Krystos said from the couch. Apparently he had not been asleep, or had roused himself while Kevin stared slack-jawed at the news footage.

  “Yes, Captain,” Kevin answered. “A south facing gulf like the one in front of the Panama Canal makes these waves even larger by channeling their energy into a confined space. The water has no place to go but up and over anything in front of it.” He trailed off, his thoughts shifting from science to emotion as his mind tried to fathom the magnitude of human suffering, terror, and loss of life encompassed by the video he had just seen. The worst feelings came from knowing that this catastrophe was far from over.

  *****

  Lieutenant Reiner had experienced the worst night of his life. It began well enough with what was supposed to be a party as the Sedulity crossed the equator. Then an asteroid streaked over the ship and struck the ocean beyond the horizon. Tasked with taking the weatherman’s wife to extract their daughter from danger in their stateroom, Reiner had ended up at the lifeboat stations when the blast wave struck the cruise ship. He had seen people burn alive while he struggled to suppress the flames. He would never forget finding his boss, Staff Captain Stevens, gasping his last breaths after being burned to a crisp. It was only moments later when the ship was struck by impossibly large tsunami waves and Reiner was tossed about and nearly drowned when water rushed into the public areas. He had been carried through the casino by the flood and swept forward into the ship’s theater where nearly a thousand passengers had taken refuge.

  The theater had proven to be the ideal safe haven for many of the survivors and Reiner learned that the captain’s wife, Lydia, had been responsible for bringing them here to take shelter. This knowledge only increased his sense of loss at seeing her get sucked down a whirlpool by the same flooding that carried him into the theater. After that he had assumed command of the situation in the theater and done his best to keep the passengers calm and safe. Eventually Reiner had turned on the video projector to share the news with everyone. He had hoped that news from the outside world would bring calm and peace of mind to those gathered in the theater, but the news had not been good. He and the rest of those with him
spent the rest of the night watching a global disaster unfold.

  The President of the United States announced the destruction of Hawaii and described terrible damage from earthquakes in California. The GNN satellite news channel had shown brief and deeply depressing reports from Australia, as well as the Philippines and other island nations of the Pacific. In several cases the images of towering waves rushing towards a camera marked the final communication from whole cities, even nations. In other places survivors were able to make sporadic contact with the outside world by using portable satellite phones or short wave radios to beg for help and share their tragic stories of destruction and loss. Throughout the night the news got worse and worse, as did the mood of the people gathered in the theater to watch it.

  Most of the crew did their best to calm and comfort the passengers. Soup, sandwiches and beverages were brought to the theater. Blankets, towels, and pillows were passed out. Yet Lieutenant Reiner could feel a growing shift in the attitude and demeanor expressed by many of the crew. They were suffering the same level of shock and trauma as the passengers, and it was becoming clear that some of the crew were in no mood to wait on the guests. Their own homes and families were first and foremost in their thoughts. The complaints and demands from the passengers were more than some of the crew could handle. Reiner had already relieved several waiters and stewards who had reached the breaking point. He sent them to find somewhere dry to get some rest, with orders to report back for the next shift.

  As dawn approached it became clear that he couldn’t keep the passengers cooped up in the theater for much longer. There were constant complaints and requests to return to their staterooms. He didn’t have the heart to tell them that most of those staterooms had been gutted by fire and flooding, destroying their personal belongings and making most of these passengers virtually homeless aboard the ship. If he had told them that harsh truth it probably would have started a riot. So he tried to console them by explaining that the crew were still conducting damage control and making the rest of the ship safe for the passengers to occupy again. He didn’t know how much longer that story would work and needed to come up with a better solution soon.