CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN
COLORADO SPRINGS, CO
11 NOV 2011, 04:16:06 MST
“Impact in three. Two. One. FUCK!”
The satellite displays on the big screen and all the little ones went dark as one.
“What the fuck did he do? It wasn’t supposed to be that big.”
After a heartbeat, the teletype fired up once more.
NDS DETONATION REPORT
LAT ??.???? LONG ??.???? AGL ?? MI [??]
YIELD 99999 kT MATCH RAGNAROK
“The hell?”
“Must have gotten a partial report from satellites below the horizon.”
The General looked to the soldier who had spoken. “Why below the horizon?”
“Because nothing that was within line of sight is responding. Even our data relay sats got fried.”
“What about the weather satellites?”
“Gone.”
“Jesus. What do we have?”
“We’ve got a few birds that’ll orbit into line of sight, but no way to get data from them until they pass over a ground station.”
“Okay, tell me when you’ll have something. Brown, what about the person you were talking to?”
Agent Brown tapped on his phone, then shook his head. “Some kind of interference, all I can get is screechy static.”
“The seismic stations should be able to give us a yield estimate when the P-waves hit.”
The General nodded to the soldier who’d made the suggestion. After a few moments a list of the nearest stations populated one of the darkened screens, sorted by proximity. Yellowknife was the first on the list, about 150 miles from the detonation. As they watched, it went offline. Two stations in Alaska followed, and shortly after that the Edmonton station went offline as well.
“I think we should head outside. Whatever happens next is out of our hands.”
“I’ll stay here,” said the General. “Someone’s got to keep an eye on things.”
Agent Brown nodded, then headed out the long passage to the great door. When they got out into the open, there was a glow in the sky. It looked as if the sun was trying to rise in the north, creating chiaroscuro shadows of the mountains. Slanting overhead was a glowing white band that pointed toward that glow.
“What on earth is that?” asked one of the men.
Agent Brown shook his head. “No idea. Hopefully it’s a good sign.”
*** *** ***
CBC RADIO ONE
11 NOV 2011, 06:58 EST
“We’re going to wrap up our program early and go to the news. Cindy?”
“Thanks, Tom. Our lines have been jammed with people asking, what the heck is going on out there. And to be honest, we don’t know a lot more than you. The videos we’ve all seen of death and destruction around the globe were not some hoax. We can only begin to guess at the death toll, but we’ve been told by a highly placed official that the crisis is over. An enormous detonation in the Northwest Territories marked the end of it, and produced the odd northern lights everyone has been reporting. Preliminary estimates of the blast are on the order of one hundred gigatons, considerably larger than the largest nuclear device ever detonated. While I am sure we would all like to know just what the heck it was, the government is being close-lipped about the details.
“There is an earthquake warning posted for all regions of Canada. It has already hit Edmonton and Calgary, causing modest damage. Damage is expected to be light beyond Alberta and the Northwest Territories.
“I am told that the interim US President is about to give a speech on this very subject, so we’ll cut to that now.”
*** *** ***
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, DC
11 NOV 2011, 07:00 EST
Acting President Margaret Dupuis tore her gaze away from the papers in front of her as the camera light went on. “Good Morning. It is my sorrowful duty to tell you that most of the executive branch was killed in a nuclear attack last night. The responsibility to protect you all has fallen on my shoulders, and I swear I will do whatever I can.”
She wiped a tear from her eyes. “Sorry. This is... What happened last night was monstrous. I have the death toll estimates in front of me and... I can barely bear to read them. Africa, the Middle East and South America are gone. Every city of any size is devoid of life. China lost its six largest cities, and many other cities in Asia were overrun. Half of India is gone, and a third of Europe, mostly in the southeast. We will have maps ready for circulation soon. Please do not try to contact us about missing family and friends. The scope of this disaster is beyond any comprehension. Our best estimate is that half of the humans on Earth perished last night.”
She stares at the papers for a time, then pushes them aside. “We did not escape unscathed, but our losses pale in comparison. There are only a handful of functional countries left in the world. Us, Canada, Japan, France, much of Spain, much of Britain, the western half of Germany, and Israel. Everywhere else is chaos... but chaos with half the world’s remaining population. I haven’t the slightest clue where to start.”
After a moment’s thought she gazes intently into the camera. “You are Americans. When push comes to shove, you are the most generous, ambitious and diligent people in the world. You all know what you can do, far better than I. To that end... I ask all of you in the coming chaotic days to do what you know is right. We will get through this, and you are the folks that will get us there. Thank you, and God bless.”
When the camera light went out, Margaret slumped in her chair. “God, what a mess. Think that’ll do?”
Standing off to the side, out of the view of the camera was Congressman Gerstenfeld, the most senior of the couple dozen surviving members. “It’s a start. Were you serious about the ‘do what you know is right’ bit?”
“We need to get government out of the way, Bob,” replied Margaret. “The upper ranks of the regulatory state got shredded last night in their little contretemps. Between that and the losses at the gala, it’s going to take years to put some of the agencies back together.”
“And you think we shouldn’t put them back at all?”
“Exactly. Come on, hopefully Mike has managed to round up some of the agency heads. Let’s go give them the good news.”
Bob chuckled. “I’m looking forward to it.”
Before long, Acting President Dupuis’ head of security escorted them into a large conference room. About a dozen people were milling about, and turned to look at them in some confusion.
“What’s going on?” “What is the meaning of this?”
“As Mike has hopefully told you, everything’s a mess. The chain of command has devolved to me, and there’s nobody left in the cabinet. So this is going to be very informal. Mike, who have we got?”
“State, Transportation, still chasing down your second in command in Agriculture, he should be here later today. We’ve got a fairly junior member from Justice, nobody from the FBI. Agent Cooper is in charge, but he’s in California, we’ll have a conference call later. Energy, Treasury, various others including the deputy director of the EPA.”
“Nobody from Defence?”
“They got the worst of it last night, and the senior surviving general is currently under arrest for taking over the chain of command unlawfully.”
“That would be General Shepard, who was responsible for launching the one nuke that did something useful last night?”
“Yes Ma’am.”
“Get him in here as soon as you can. I can issue presidential pardons, right?”
“I don’t honestly know.”
“Find out.” Margaret turned to the gathered crowd. “Which of you represents the EPA?”
A weaselly looking man with an angry scowl etched on his face stepped forward. “That’d be me. What are you going to do about the fallout in Glendale?”
“Let the locals handle it for now. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
“But the environmental damage...”
“No,” interrupted Margaret firmly. “Right now we’re in triage mode. There are millions of lives at stake, and you will NOT get in our way.”
“There are regulations that have to be followed!”
Margaret nodded at Mike, who moved toward the EPA rep. “No. Go home. Tell all your people to go home. They’re suspended with pay until the end of the year. After that... we’ll see. Disbanding the EPA is sounding pretty good right now.”
“You don’t have the balls,” grated the rep as Mike took his arm, and started to guide him out of the room.
Margaret’s eyes narrowed. “Try me.”
Once he’d been handed off to security, she turned to the others in the room. “Your job is to save lives. Go to your people. Figure out what you can do to keep food moving to our people, and then to the rest of the world. Everything else is secondary.”
“Energy isn’t,” piped up one of the others. “We’ll be out of oil in less than a month if OPEC is gone.”
“Good point. You are?”
“Edward Foss, Department of Energy. We’re working on some ideas, is it true that infrastructure damage is minimal?”
“I believe so, but many things won’t have been tended or shut down properly...”
“We can deal with that. If we can get a team to Saudi Arabia, we should be able to restart the more productive parts fairly quickly. The other thing we can do in the short term is relax the restrictions on drilling in the US.”
“Done. Get back to me about the team you want to send. We’ll figure out how to get them there.” She looked around to the other attendees. “Same for you guys. Get stuff done. I don’t know enough to guide you. Figure it out among yourselves, and come to me with anything you need me to prune.”
*** *** ***
SILVER CROSS REMEMBRANCE PARK
CORNWALL, ON
11 NOV 2011, 10:58 EST
“Thank you for those inspiring words, Pastor. And now we come to a bit of a change in our program. Margaret Dupuis was scheduled to speak here today, in her hometown. She was called away last night due to the crisis and is now, as you all probably know, the acting president of the United States.
“So it falls instead to me, your mayor, to say a few words. Last night, a titanic struggle happened while most of us were sleeping, and the world teetered on the edge of utter ruin. Today, as we have our minute of silence, I ask you to remember the names of those that fought bravely for us. Duncan Faulkner and Gwen Haywood were at the epicenter of whatever happened up north. Neither has been heard from since.”