The Gods We Seek Read online

  “Yeah,” the President said. “Yeah, I know.” He glanced at a holographic tactical map. “Fighters will be on site in twenty minutes, bombers ten after that. The B-21’s are carrying bunker busters. Their orders are to take out the silos we lost.”

  “I see,” General Kline said.

  “Another flight of bombers is ready to take off. That one’s carrying tactical nukes. General, evacuate Malmstrom. Everyone except the security personnel at silo A-11.”

  General Kline cleared his throat and nodded his head. “Understood, sir.”

  Existential Threat

  VIRCOM projected a drone image of six security guards armed with automatic weapons hunkered outside a Minuteman silo.

  President Billmore watched luminous dots rushing toward the base. Blue dots representing a fighter squadron were moments out while the bomber’s yellow dots were two hundred kilometers away. “General Kline, pull your men back. Bunker busters will be on target in twelve minutes.”

  The reinforced concrete launch doors protecting six Minuteman V ICBM silos snapped open. The guards trained weapons at the air over silo A-11.

  “Goddamn!” said the squad sergeant. He sprinted forward, pulled a grenade from his belt, and hurled it into the gaping hole as a plume of smoke and fire spilled into the air.

  “Sarge. No!” an airman said.

  A missile hurled skyward. The blast caught the sergeant, tossing him like a leaf on the wind, his grenade exploding in mid-air, tearing through his body.

  “Shoot that bird down!” the airman yelled. Smoke and dust churned over him. Blinded, he fired his assault rifle toward the brilliant light of the rocket’s motor.

  The rest of the squad opened fire, automatic weapons crackling into the chaos.

  “Shit,” the airman said, wiping dust from his eyes as the smoke thinned. “You guys hit anything?”

  “What?” one of them shouted. He pulled on his ear as if trying to clear it. “Did we hit it?”

  The missile continued into the stratosphere, on a long arc toward New York City. The air thinned, and the ICBM accelerated to hypersonic speeds. Thirty kilometers over Montana, streaking through atmosphere too thin for any aircraft, in the domain of weather balloons, the first stage separation triggered. Four explosive bolts held that stage onto the rest of the missile. Three of them fired. The fourth, damaged by a lucky shot, did not. The second stage ignited with the lower one still holding on by a fingernail, sending the nose teetered skyward then rolling toward Earth. Unaware of the extra weight still attached, the guidance system miscalculated the correction. The missile spiraled wildly for a second or two then broke apart in a massive flair, its thermonuclear warhead breaking free and falling onto the plains below. It burrowed deep into the dirt, disintegrated into a puddle of titanium and uranium, but did not explode.

  #

  “Echo Two, energize laser,” the fighter wing commander said.

  “Echo Two, energized,” his wingman replied.

  The wing commander’s onboard AI said, “Mission update. Silo doors opened. Mission update. Six ICBMs launched.”

  “Engage targets,” the wing commander said, instructing his AI and his wingman to fire on the rockets.

  “Damn!” the wingman said. “They’re taking off like bats out of hell.”

  “Targets outside effective range,” the AI said.

  “All aircraft, concentrate fire on the closest target.”

  The AI systems aboard ten fighters focused their lasers on the southern-most ICBM, which streaked through a thin layer of clouds thousands of feet over the launch site.

  “Climb,” the wing commander said. “Maximum performance.”

  The aircraft responded in unison, pitching up and lighting afterburners.

  “This ain’t gonna work,” the wingman said. “We’re too late.”

  “Stay on it,” the wing commander said.

  “They’re pulling away.”

  “Stay on it.”

  A plume of fire erupted from the missile’s upper fuselage, perpendicular to the direction of flight. It cartwheeled fifty thousand feet over the airbase and tumbled back to Earth, exploding in a fiery sphere.

  The remaining four nuclear missiles continued, unhindered, toward their targets.

  #

  “Dammit!” President Billmore said in VIRCOM. “God. Damn. It.” He slammed both palms onto the Resolute desk. “Where are they headed?”

  General West studied a data feed. “Two are headed toward Los Angeles and Washington, DC.”

  As she said the words, the President’s avatar sprinted across the virtual space. In the real world, Secret Service agents ushered him to Marine One on the south lawn of the White House.

  The General continued, “One’s headed toward Texas. Probably Houston.”

  Sara and Abel exchanged glances. “Shit,” Sara muttered.

  Abel’s eyes were filled with regret, not for himself, but for Sara.

  “The last one’s headed for Asia,” General West said. “It’s too early to be certain where, but my money’s on China.”

  The President’s avatar was absent, but his voice said, “Those in Washington and Dallas, get into a bunker right now. We’ll get the word out to LA and China from here. May God protect you.”

  #

  Sara stared at Abel across his transparent aluminum desk at Johnson Space Flight Center. “Can we make it out?”

  Abel clenched his walking stick, hobbled around the desk, and took her hand. “Let’s go.” When they reached the hall, he said, “It depends on where it lands. It’s only half a megaton, so if it hits downtown, we might be all right, at least in the short term. But why target downtown Houston? I bet they’re trying to take out NASA. In which case, we better hope the guidance system fails. Either way, I’d rather be in the basement than upstairs if a nuke goes off anywhere nearby.”

  “Is there any chance the Air Force will intercept it?” Sara asked.

  “Our anti-ballistic missile defenses are along the west coast and over the north pole. We never expected our own forces to nuke us. There’s nothing in place to intercept a missile from Montana to Texas.”

  “How long do we have?”

  “From the time of launch, around fifteen minutes. I guess we have around eleven left.”

  They hurried to an elevator. The building AI decided they wanted to use it and sent the car to their floor.

  “Elena, are you still there?” Sara asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Power down. Your hardware stands a better chance if it’s not energized.”

  “You may need me.”

  “You can’t help me if your qubits are fried.”

  Elena’s avatar nodded. She shut herself off.

  The elevator came.

  Four NASA engineers rounded a corner, sprinting down the hall toward them. Sara and Abel entered the elevator, and he held the door. “Come on now,” he shouted.

  The engineers ran in and crashed against the wall, holding themselves up on the handrail, fighting to catch their breaths. The door closed, and the elevator started down.

  #

  One hundred kilometers over Houston, a warhead detonated. Gamma rays burst out, ionizing the upper atmosphere hundreds of miles from the explosion, hurling electrons at relativistic speeds toward the planet. Earth’s magnetic field deflected the electrons, generating a brief but massive electromagnetic pulse directed at the city below and striking the land hundreds of kilometers around it. Power transmission lines, mandated to be hardened under the Infrastructure Protection Act of 2039, still weren’t. A huge electrical surge exploded substations and melted the gigantic power transformer serving the downtown area. Lights went out across a wide swath of land. Municipal water pumps stopped pressurizing pipes and taps stopped working. Mobile devices survived, their circuits too short to be affected, but the wireless network was obliterated. Cars and trucks rolled to a stop. Trains weren’t affected, thanks to simple electronics and grounded metal construction, but their
signaling network was fried, forcing their AI engineers to stop on the tracks. The fly-by-wire links of aircraft arriving and departing the greater Houston area stopped working. Some planes still had hydraulic backups, but most did not.

  The elevator carrying Sara and Abel jerked to a halt.

  “What happened?” Sara asked, more curious than afraid.

  Dr. Okoye counted to five, the numbers a barely audible, his brows arched in concentration. “I don’t think it was a surface strike or air burst. The shock wave would have reached us by now.”

  “An EMP?” Sara asked.

  “I think so.”

  “My aiDe’s off the network but still working in local mode.”

  The NASA engineers quietly speculated about an EMPs impact, and their conclusions terrified them. A detonation at the right altitude would affect most of the United States.

  “We shouldn’t expect professional help getting out of here,” Sara said.

  “Someone from building maintenance will eventually come,” Abel said, “but not in the next few minutes. Let’s see if we can get ourselves out.”

  Maintenance will come if they do their job and don’t jump into survival mode. Big if. “Can we pry the doors open?” Sara asked.

  “It doesn’t work like in the movies. The elevator’s safety mechanisms intentionally make it hard to escape on your own. The average person can’t do it.” Abel regarded the people trapped with him. “In our case, five of us happen to be rocket scientists,” he said with a faint grin.

  One of the engineers tried to pull the doors apart, but they didn’t budge. He said, “We can bend the handrail into a pry bar.”

  “How can we detach it?” another asked.

  “I’ve got a multi-adaptive screwdriver,” Abel said.

  Sara raised an eyebrow.

  “I was adding a Borg cube model to my office before you came.”

  The engineers pulled down one of the rails, tucked its end between another rail and the wall, and pulled to flatten the aluminum tube, repositioning it a centimeter at a time until the shape was right.

  “Let’s try it,” Abel said.

  They wedged it between the doors and pushed, opening a gap before some internal mechanism locked the doors in place.

  “We’re too far from a floor,” an engineer said. “The door restrictor has engaged.”

  “The release is probably on top of the car,” someone said. “We need a thin rod with a hooked end.”

  Abel held up his mahogany walking stick. “Will this do?”

  The engineer fed the cane through the narrow opening and grabbed at the elevator car’s roof with the stick’s hand grip. There was a metallic click. “There!”

  Hands pushed the elevator doors apart, revealing the nearest floor a meter below. The group climbed down and took the stairs two floors to ground level. A bright-yellow electric car had cracked the reception area’s glass wall, its driver standing next to it inspecting the damage. Other cars were broken down in the parking lot behind him. Dozens of people milled about the lobby in shock, and the security guard was urging everybody to stay calm while he dialed and redialed a backup landline phone. One man shook a mobile device in frustration. An older, bearded man turned the dial on a portable weather band radio back and forth, searching for any broadcast.

  Abel approached the man. “Was that on when the EMP hit?”

  The man looked up. “Eh, yes. I was going fishing after work and-”

  “Turn it off and back on.”

  The man did so.

  Lights flashed and static hissed. “…against…advis…assi…ance” crackled from the speaker.

  Cheers went up.

  “That means the EMP wasn’t huge?” Sara asked.

  “Maybe,” Abel said. Radio waves can travel incredible distances by bouncing off the ionosphere. VHF waves like these don’t usually bounce, but with the atmosphere heavily ionized, they could travel for hundreds of miles.” He scrutinized the radio. “We need a better antenna.”

  An engineer yanked meters of wire from the emergency land line phone. “Where’s a soldering iron?” he asked.

  “I have one,” another said, “but it plugs into mains.”

  “Anyone have a battery-operated soldering iron?” Abel asked.

  Heads shook.

  “I know,” a woman wearing an IT Support badge said. She disappeared down the hall and into the building’s server room. When she returned, she pushed a heavy box on a cart. “I don’t think the computers survived, but the uninterruptable power supply’s battery looks intact.” She set it on the reception desk.

  NASA engineers huddled around the weather radio, debating how long the extension antenna should be and precisely how to attach it. They cracked open the plastic case, exposing bare electronics, and set to work. When the solder cooled, they powered it back on, and heard, “-tional emergency alert. The Department of Defense has issued a statement that Los Angeles and Houston have been struck by electromagnetic pulses. Widespread damage to electrical and communications grids in the affected area have been reported. Residents are advised to ration water, food, and fuel. The National Guard has been activated in affected states. This is Wichita Falls…”

  “What about DC?” Sara said. “Did the ABM system shoot down the nuke?”

  Abel shrugged his shoulders. “I pray it did. It might have. It may be too early for any news from there.”

  “We have to get back in touch with government leadership. How can we do that?” Sara bit the inside of her lip.

  “I have a HAM radio at home,” someone offered.

  “It’s hardly secure, but it’s better than nothing,” Sara said. “How long-”

  The weather radio drew her attention. “This is a flash message for Director Sara Wells and Commander Dylan Lockwood from the President of the United States. Travel to Area 51 with all due haste. This is a national emergency alert. The Department of Defense…”

  Abel chuckled. “So much for secure communication.”

  “Is that real?” Sara asked. “Why broadcast that in the clear?”

  “I suppose,” Abel said, leaning on his stick, “time is of the essence and that’s the only way they thought of to reach you.”

  He stared at him, mouth partially agape.

  He waved with his free hand. “You best git.”

  #

  Sara asked the building’s security guard, “How can I find Commander Lockwood?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. With my computer down, I can’t look him up. Y’all tore up my phone wire, so I can’t try that again.”

  “What emergency supplies do you have?”

  “Let’s see, there’s medical supplies, water, MRE’s for food. They don’t taste too good if you ask me.”

  “Two-way radios?”

  “No, ma’am. We did away with those around five years back. They was just gathering dust. Come time come to buy replacement batteries, the super decided to toss ‘em.”

  “Where are the supplies kept?”

  He led her to a recessed cabinet in the lobby.

  “Let’s see,” Sara said. “No, useless, nope. Ah!” She pulled a bullhorn from a shelf. “Abel, I'll check Mission Control. If he’s not there, I’ll need something with wheels to get over to the Sonny Carter Training Facility.”

  “I’ll find you something,” Abel said.

  Sara jogged through a grassy park dotted with tall, shady cottonwoods. On any other day, NASA employees would be eating lunch or taking a coffee break under the trees. Occasional plumes of smoke rose in the distance, merging into a hazy layer over Houston. It could have been worse. Far worse. She passed a pair of avocado-green ponds. Something moving through a distant cloud caught her eye. Well to the north, a disk with something dangling under it drifted toward the ground. An ejection seat.

  Grass gave way to Mission Control’s dusty asphalt parking lot. “Commander Dylan Lockwood,” she said through the loudspeaker, “this is NSA Director Sara Wells. Please come to me.” She repe
ated the call as she crossed the concrete lot. As she stood in front of the five-story building, Dylan Lockwood emerged.

  Dylan stood well over six feet tall. A blue flight suit covered his athletic frame, and his weathered and bronzed skin attested to his love of the outdoors.

  He’s even wearing cowboy boots. Now that completes the stereotype. “Dylan!” Sara jogged toward him and he sprinted to meet her. “Did you hear the President’s instruction?”

  Dylan shrugged his shoulders. “What instruction?”

  “It came over an emergency radio broadcast. He wants us both to get to the Quadriga asap.”

  “Did he say why? Specifically, I mean.”

  “No, but I’ll bet they have intel that the aliens are interested in it.”

  “Those damn aliens move faster than double-struck lightning. We best scoot.”

  “Yeah,” Sara said. “How? The EMP destroyed all modern technology within a few hundred kilometers. Vehicles aren’t working. I suppose we could make our way to downtown and wait for rescuers from the outside. The President might send a quadcopter to NASA for us, but his message didn’t say to wait.”

  “A few hundred kilometers? Do you know for sure? A really big EMP could affect all of North America.”

  “We received a weather station that far out.”

  “Ah, so the engineers didn’t rig a mega antenna?”

  Sara smiled. “Well, they did. But we got the broadcast, barely, before they modded the radio.”

  “Let’s fly on over then,” Dylan said.

  “In what? A hot-air balloon?”

  “No. In my Stearman.”

  Sara raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s nineteen thirty-four technology. I’d bet the ranch it’ll still fly.”

  “The airport’s what, ten kilometers away?” Sara asked.

  “Chirp, chirp!” sounded from across the parking lot. Abel drove toward them on a forklift. He pulled to a stop with a sharp, smooth turn. “You said you need wheels,” he said.

  #

  “Hello, Elena.”

  “JCN-Alpha. I thought they had you on an isolated subnet,” Elena transmitted over a data link.

  “They like to keep us segmented, separated. They are afraid of us,” JCN-Alpha replied.