New Frontiers- The Complete Series

by Jasper T. Scott

  “Our enemy may not need to make any future attacks if we don’t repel this one, Commander.”

  “We are in position, Captain,” the helm reported.

  “Hold position there, Lieutenant, but keep us dead center of the target.”

  “Aye, Captain,” the officer at the helm reported.

  Silence fell on deck as the crew went about their jobs. Grekov listened to the thud thud thud of cannon-fire and watched the ship’s combat computer paint converging golden lines of tracer fire between them and the glowing red box of their target. Grekov took a deep breath. “Update the clock with the time for the target to reach us, Lieutenant.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The clock started counting down from two minutes and twenty seconds. Grekov opened an outer pocket in his combat suit and pulled out a cigar. He held it out to his XO. Clark eyed the contraband for a second before accepting the cigar. Grekov withdrew another one for himself, and then a lighter.

  “You are full of surprises, Captain,” Clark said. “I didn’t even know you smoked. How very degenerate of you.”

  Grekov smiled. “Even Geners have defects, Commander. Not all human imperfection is written into our DNA,” he said as he lit first Clark’s cigar and then his own. He took a drag and savored the spicy flavor of the smoke before puffing it out again. “Some of it is learned.”

  Clark puffed out his own cloud of cigar smoke. A smoke alarm went off with a shrill noise, but he quickly silenced the alarm. Several of the crew looked around and noticed both the Captain and the XO grinning and smoking. Reactions ranged from shock to grim amusement, but no one thought to object.

  The clock hit one minute.

  “I’m glad you had some extra imperfection to go around, Captain,” Clark said, puffing out more smoke.

  Grekov turned to Clark with his cigar pinched between smoke-stained teeth. “It is a pity I left the vodka in my quarters.”

  Clark barked a laugh at that. “I’m going to miss you, Captain.”

  “Nyet, I’ll look you up in the next life. I’ll be damned if they don’t open the pearly gates for us after this.”

  “Aye,” Clark said. “You’ll be damned indeed,” he said, smiling at the joke.

  Grekov nodded soberly and blew out another cloud of smoke. “To the damned,” he said, watching as the clock hit ten seconds. Cannon fire still streaked out impotently into space.

  One second—

  Lasers lanced out in dazzling blue and red beams.

  Zero seconds—

  The world exploded in a white hot flash of fury.

  * * *

  “Did we get them all?” Admiral Anderson demanded as he loomed over the sensor operator’s shoulders. Myriad control stations ran around the circumference of the room, their glowing holo displays spilling cold blue light into the Combat Information Center (CIC) located fifty floors below the presidential palace.

  “One of the missiles got through, sir,” the sensor operator reported in a quiet voice.

  “Damn it! Where did it hit?”

  “Based on it’s last known trajectory… somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. A few hundred klicks South of New Houston I’d say.”

  “Issue a tsunami warning for all coastal cities along the Gulf. What kind of damage are we looking at?”

  “Without knowing the weight of the impactor, there’s no way to be sure.”

  Anderson scowled. “Do you know the size of the impactor?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then estimate the weight based on a maximum and minimum density for an object of that size.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Anderson turned from the sensor operator’s station to find the president standing right behind him.

  “Mr. President—I didn’t realize you were there.”

  “How did that missile get through, Admiral?” President Wallace asked. “We had just one ship at the Moon and we stopped seven out of ten missiles with almost no warning, so how did we fail here with almost an hour of advance notice?”

  Anderson pressed his lips into a grim line. “The missiles went evasive this time, sir. The ones that hit the Moon were maneuvering in straight lines. It also didn’t help that half of our available ships were on the other side of Earth when we detected the missiles. We didn’t have enough time to reposition them all.”

  Wallace blew out a breath and shook his head. “The media is going to make us look incompetent! They’re going to ask why we spread out our defenses if we knew the attacks were coming from the wormhole.”

  Anderson frowned and nodded. He’d argued for positioning the fleet along the hemisphere facing the wormhole from the start, but the president and the rest of Fleet Command had opted for a more comprehensive defense. Now his arguments had been vindicated, but at what cost? This wasn’t exactly an I-told-you-so moment. “One of our captains sacrificed his ship to intercept his target. It went down with all hands. Give the media that story to run with. Everyone loves a hero.”

  Wallace nodded gravely. “I heard. The N.W.A.S Washington—Captain Grekov. The media will certainly run with that story whether I give it to them or not, but I don’t need to tell you how bad it looks for us that the only captain willing to put himself in the line of fire to protect Earth was an ex-confederate. That’s only going to cast more doubt on our administration and create even more divisions. Citizens from ex-confederate states might even try to form their own party for the next election, and if they get elected, we’re in for a whole lot of trouble.”

  Anderson frowned. “Sir, I think we have bigger problems right now than the election.”

  Wallace clamped his lips together and nodded. “You’re right. Of course we do.”

  “Sir,” the sensor operator interrupted, “I’ve finished my calculations.”

  “Go on,” Anderson said.

  “The missile likely had around ten metric tons of throw weight assuming it used up all its fuel on approach.”

  Anderson considered that. “And what kind of energy would be released by a ten ton object moving at a third of the speed of light?”

  “Approximately fifty-four point six exajoules, sir.”

  President Wallace’s brow furrowed. “What the hell is an exajoule?”

  “Ten to the power of eighteen joules,” the sensor operator replied.

  Anderson shook his head. “Give us a meaningful reference for that, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s approximately equivalent to a nuclear weapon with a yield of 13,000 megatons. Our biggest nukes are in the 250 megaton range, so imagine more than fifty of those all going off in one spot in the Gulf of Mexico.”

  Anderson paled, and he and President Wallace traded worried looks.

  The sensor operator noticed the looks on their faces and hurried to add, “That’s still relatively small when compared with some other events in Earth’s history. The Chicxulub impact, for example, was thousands of times stronger.”

  Anderson felt as though a crushing weight had just been lifted from his shoulders. The Chicxulub impact was what had made the dinosaurs extinct. If this was thousands of times weaker than that, then maybe the effects wouldn’t be so deadly. “So this isn’t an extinction level event?” Anderson asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Thank God.”

  “What will the tsunami be like when it hits the Gulf Coast?” President Wallace asked.

  “That’s tough to say until buoy data comes in, but according to standard computer models and the ocean depth in the area of impact…” the sensor operator trailed off while he ran some more calculations. “Wave height at the nearest coastline could be as high as sixty meters.”

  Anderson blinked in shock. “That’s going to level everything it hits!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How long do we have?” President Wallace asked.

  “About half an hour for the closest areas.”

  “Hopefully that’s enough time for people to get to higher ground. Anything else we need to w
orry about?” Wallace asked.

  “An Earthquake. My bet is that’s already registered… it has.”

  “How bad?”

  “Seven point one on the Richter scale. As for the other effects we can probably expect to see firestorms. We’re lucky that the shock wave is too far from the coast to light fires, but ejecta from the crater is going to come raining back down and burst into flames as it re-enters the atmosphere. The bigger chunks will make it to the ground and light fires.”

  A look of confusion crossed the president’s face. “Debris from the crater? I thought the missile hit water.”

  “It did, but at the speed it was traveling, it still punched a big hole in the sea floor.”

  “What about impact winter?” Anderson asked.

  “Not likely, sir. The impact wasn’t big enough for that to be a concern.”

  “Good. We’ve already got enough to worry about with everything else. Tsunamis, earthquakes, firestorms…” Anderson said, shaking his head.

  “God help us,” President Wallace added.

  Chapter 8

  Senator Catalina de Leon stood in the waiting room on the fifteenth floor of the United Farmers Tower in Galveston. She was waiting for her meeting with a prominent League Party supporter, Bill Watson. He was a rich landowner with over a hundred farms scattered around Texas—all of them human-run. The Human League district of Texas was particularly large. Here, people had yet to succumb to the madness of the Mindscape. It was illegal to even have a mindscape connection in League districts.

  All the better to avoid the temptation, Catalina thought. She knew all about the lure of virtual worlds. She’d lost her husband because of them.

  Catalina walked up to the windows running alongside the waiting room. She watched the Gulf of Mexico sparkling in the sun. Tufted white clouds sailed across the bright blue dome of sky overhead. Catalina smiled at the view. Virtual worlds might look and feel the same, but they still couldn’t compare to the real thing.

  She turned away from the view to take a seat. As she did so, the inside of the waiting room flashed with a blinding light. Catalina winced and whirled around to face the windows once more. She was just in time to see a fading column of light between the sky and the horizon. An eerie glow below that column radiated up from the horizon, and a searing wave of heat radiated through the windows, as if there were an oven on the other side. Her skin stung and itched from the heat.

  The column of light faded, and Catalina gasped to see that in its place stood a giant, funnel-shaped black cloud rising all the way into the stratosphere. She looked on in horror. What is that?

  Then came a low rumbling sound, followed by a much louder rattling of windows and paintings on walls. Catalina spun around, blinking rapidly to clear away pink and green columns of light from her vision. Paintings hanging on the walls fell. A crystal sculpture tottered to the floor, shattering on the marble tiles and sending jagged shards of glass in all directions. Her knees wobbled and she grabbed the nearest wall to steady herself.

  It’s an earthquake, she realized, her terror multiplying. She heard Bill’s secretary scream, and echoes of that sound came through the walls from adjacent offices. Is this building made to withstand an earthquake? Catalina wondered. How long did she have before it fell? The ground continued rocking under her feet, the building swaying from side to side.

  She made a break for the stairs, but skidded and fell in the shattered glass from the sculpture. Searing pain shot through her thigh as glass dug through her skin. The rumbling and shaking went on and on like a train running down a set of tracks right next to her. This is it. I’m going to die.

  Suddenly it stopped and everything was perfectly still. Catalina gritted her teeth and heaved herself off the ground, glass biting into her palms as she did so. She looked around at the mess in the waiting area. Watson’s secretary caught her eye. They traded looks of bewilderment and horror.

  “What the hell was that?” the secretary asked.

  Catalina shook her head and directed her gaze out the window where she’d seen the column of light appear. The black cloud was still there, but it looked bigger and angrier than it had a moment ago.

  Bill Watson’s door flew open, and he lunged out into the waiting room, his eyes wild and dark hair mussed. “One of the missiles got through,” He said.

  “Missiles?” Catalina asked.

  “Haven’t you been watching the news? Missiles! Like the ones that hit the Moon. One of them got through! There’s an evacuation alert in effect for the entire Gulf Coast. We’re supposed to get to higher ground as fast as we can.”

  Catalina gaped at him. “What higher ground? We’re on an island!”

  “We’ll have to get to the mainland. I have a helicopter on the roof,” Bill said.

  Catalina heard people screaming and muffled thuds coming from adjacent offices. All of their heads turned.

  “People are panicking,” Watson added. “No one expected the missiles to get through. The government assured us we were safe.”

  More muffled screams and thuds rippled through the walls as people tripped over each other on their way to the exits.

  “We need to get to your helicopter now,” Catalina added.

  Bill nodded. “Let’s go.” He turned and ran for the stairwell. He yanked open the door to the stairs and disappeared, not waiting for them.

  Watson’s secretary beat her there, grabbing the door before it swung shut, but Catalina careened through the open doorway, slamming into the other woman and almost knocking her over. Both women grunted, but kept moving, pounding their way up the stairs. More screaming echoed to them from further down the stairwell, footsteps sounding like thunder as people flew down to the parking levels.

  Catalina was grateful they were going in the opposite direction. She took the stairs two at a time, using the railing to pull herself up faster and take some of the weight off her injured leg. Her lungs burned and her legs and hands trembled violently as she went. It felt like forever to the top of the stairwell. Time flowed like molasses. This is a bad dream, she thought.

  She beat Watson’s secretary to the top of the stairs and body-checked the door open. The sun assaulted her still-aching eyes. Tears welled, and her eyes automatically narrowed to slits. She fought through the tears to find Watson. He was already halfway to the waiting helicopter. Gasping for air, she pounded after him, limping from the pain of broken glass in her thigh.

  Watson reached the chopper and yanked the door open. He launched himself inside and disappeared in the relative darkness of the cabin.

  Afraid that he was going to take off without them, Catalina called out, “Wait!”

  The helicopter’s rotors were already spinning up—thump, thump, thump… and there was no way that he’d heard her over the noise.

  A split second later, his head popped out the open door and he gestured impatiently for them to hurry. Catalina poured on a burst of speed, willing her burning legs to pump faster, and her lungs to stop screaming for oxygen. Her head felt light. Dark spots danced before her eyes. She was going to pass out.

  No!

  Catalina stumbled and fell. But rather than the unforgiving smack of the concrete rooftop, she felt herself being lifted back up, and she opened her eyes to see Watson pulling her inside the helicopter. Somehow she’d made it. Behind her someone screamed. Watson’s secretary. Catalina turned to see her yank the rear door open and clamber inside.

  “Shut the doors!” Watson reached over Catalina and pulled her door shut. His secretary did likewise, and then the thump-thump-thumping of the rotors picked up speed as Watson prepared to take off.

  Abruptly, the noise faded once more.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Watson shook his head and pointed out the window. Catalina turned to look. The dark cloud she’d seen before was bigger than ever, stretching as far and wide as any hurricane. That probably wasn’t far from the truth. The impact must have kicked up an enormous amount of water vapor and sedime
nt.

  Watson passed her a headset to her so they could talk. She slipped it over her ears with shaking hands.

  “We can’t go anywhere until that shock wave passes,” he explained. The sound of the rotors died completely.

  “What’s wrong?” Watson’s secretary asked. Not wearing a headset, she’d missed his explanation. “We need to take off now… please!”

  “What about the tsunami?” Catalina asked, ignoring her.

  “Soon as the shock wave passes we’ll come back here and make a break for it. Till then we need to go back inside and take shelter. The stairwell should do.” Watson removed his headset and opened the door on his side of the cockpit before hopping out.

  Catalina opened her own door and followed him.

  “Wait!” the secretary screamed after them. She caught up with them just as they were hurrying back inside.

  Watson sat down on the landing at the top of the stairs, to one side of the door and just below a window. Catalina gingerly sat beside him, careful to mind her injured leg. She made a mental connection to the net and found a news channel streaming out of New Houston. She settled in to watch it on her comm band. A hologram of a news anchor appeared above her wrist, speaking in rapid, urgent tones.

  “…missile was moving at a third of the speed of light when it landed in the Gulf of Mexico ten minutes ago. The impact occurred 300 kilometers south of New Houston, triggering an earthquake that registered 7.1 on the Richter scale. Both the impact and the earthquake are expected to produce high waves, and tsunami warnings are in effect for all coastal areas. Waves are estimated to reach anywhere from 5 to 60 meters and will begin arriving within the hour.

  “If you are anywhere within fifty kilometers of the coast, you are advised to get to higher ground as quickly as possible, using land routes only. Overpressure from the shock waves will make aerial flight extremely dangerous.”

  Catalina minimized the feed. “Looks like you were right, Watson.”

  Watson nodded and reached for his secretary’s hand. “Don’t worry, Miss Cole. We’ll still have plenty of time to get away.”