The situation on Earth was complex. Only the remnants of ordered society were able to take pictures relayed from the Moon. For them, the feeling of helplessness predominated. Other scattered groups who had stayed with their faith in the Circle of Light were primed to begin looking out for a bright object in the sky, and follow its trajectory. If it struck Phobos, they knew they would probably perish. The anarchists, in the main, preached the gospel of a hoax. They wanted to hang on to what they had if the collision with Phobos was prevented. They claimed various versions of disinformation having been peddled by government for their own benefit, and would be able to parade ‘proof’ that they had ingeniously saved the planet. They thumped out the message that there never was such a potential threat.
The Moon and Mars were basically in the same predicament and reflected that, by having paused all but essential programmes to take in every pulsating minute of the drama.
Pierze and Zara had miraculously made it to a remote inland hideout of one of the disciples in Southern Africana. When asked by Pierze why he had chosen this place, Zara replied, “To be with those who have chosen to remain here and keep their faith in the Truth. If they perish, I choose to stand with them. There’s nothing left for me either way. I knew we would be safe here from the tribes, and I can get my people to get you to another safe location much further to the north, which will provide a cave sanctuary. So it really is goodbye Ricardo, you must depart soon as there is only primitive safe travel overland, and it’s a long way.” Zara broke down when he realised Pierze’s shake of the head meant he was staying.
“Belonging is preferable to surviving in the age of chaos.”
The first tranche of good news was that the incoming trajectory of comet 2005NB5C was perfectly in accordance with the calculations of the unknown species. That it hadn’t encountered any mischievous obstacles in over a hundred years lifted the spirits. Enrico Calzado was on his way and benefitted from the action having started. The waiting had been agonising. With stability achieved inside the silo he approached the blinking control panel. Having rehearsed this manoeuvre many times, he forced himself to think three times and act once. He had the sequence emblazoned on his suit sleeve as well as having it ingrained in a prominent cerebral location. He was also in audio contact with the vessel matching the path of Phobos. It had been agreed that he would gesture pushing each command and give the back-up in the vessel time to confirm or dispute the selection. His intake of oxygen-rich air seemed as if it could actually be pure, as it made him feel light-headed when he came to the final symbol to push. Apart from getting it wrong, nobody knew exactly what he could expect if it was indeed correct. He had known it could produce a ‘suicide’ situation if the drive fired immediately. He hadn’t shared this with his wife, but she now knew from the Mars commentary. She was distraught. When he completed the push, the plan was to get out of there as quickly as possible, but avoid headlong panic for the exit because that could result in severance of his umbilical. He tried to blot everything else out of his mind as the pressure of his finger ignited a fresh sequence of lights. There was cheering at the various locations watching the video feed. Enrico was incredibly disciplined in not looking back. If the sequence had been wrong he would have failed but be clear of danger. He couldn’t afford to underestimate the calmness required to get back to the awaiting vessel at the first attempt. The sequence initiated by his actions had begun to cycle through internal checks of readiness of each system in the drive fire-up. Enrico was well clear when the first evidence of movement was detected and he was back on-board when the naked eye could confirm the telemetry. The relief in every location was evidenced as dissipation of physical tension. The vessel headed back to Mars with a historic sense of pride. The next correction thrust was not for another two days.
The brave individuals who had elected to carry on as normal, received the news as it filtered by word of mouth, to those who couldn’t bear to watch the live performance, and impromptu celebrations began to spread. The gloom had begun to lift as the human race collectively felt they hadn’t only been spared, but given another chance. Zara was ecstatic, feeling his life ambition had been achieved. Pierze was more circumspect, wondering what career path would now beckon. The Duarte’s were delighted that their son, who was able to take his first short walk unaided, would be able to enjoy a near-normal life. Manuel and Elle Butragueno now had the urge to think about starting a family. It would be interesting to see who would fill the role of main breadwinner.
It was too early to see how the repair to society would be shaped, but the feel-good factor was gradually being twinned with introspection of the narrow escape, and the lessons which could be learned about the darker side of human civilisation. The rubble of the former society, which for so long flattered to deceive in this respect, had to be seen for the imposter it was. That was at least a starting point.
The lights on Phobos were flashing a new message. The code breakers gazed incredulously at the display. It was reporting a failure of thrust at stage two of the orbital alteration programme. The tracking of the orbit confirmed that it was no longer changing. Urgent calculations were made to see what the initial shift would do to the predicted collision with the comet. Their best estimate was that it would no longer avoid impact, and the resultant strike zone would move closer to the coast of Africana.
With the nuclear deterrent stood down and no chance of restoration, it was also recognised that there was no longer sufficient cohesion or chain of command to commission new missiles in time. Coming so soon after the joy of the first burn, this failure focussed attention on the anarchy which caused the species to stand in the dock, accused of self-indulgent genocide.
Pierze and Zara were devastated but steadfastly remained with like-minded people in Africana. Manuel and Butragueno shelved their newly made plans and set off to console the Duarte’s who could simply not believe what they had been told. They chose not to tell Emile until the comet was visible with the naked eye. Thousands of pilgrimage sites were set up around the planet and droves of people elected to spend their last days there.
There was really only one remaining move to avoid checkmate. It was a long shot and devoid of a plan. Although they understood that there would be only one shot at activation of the Phobos drive, it had to be worth testing this out. Perhaps a second input would clear the problem, if it could be done in time. The vessel set off, it was a unilateral decision by the Mars colonists.
As the comet made its way toward Jupiter space, the vessel approached Phobos. Time was becoming critical now; even reactivation may not avoid a glancing brief courtship between the two celestial bodies. Accessing the silo was achieved within half of the time of that recorded for Enrico Calzado. It was to no avail. The lights stubbornly blinked the same infuriating message. The EVA was terminated and they returned to Mars.
The evening sky vigil had become a community testament to the mistakes made over modern times, none more so than for Ricardo Pierze, who had killed the only viable back-up to the Phobos project by standing down the nuclear option. With the commanders of the system scattered to the four corners of what was left of society, he couldn’t undo his final contribution to the potential demise of Homo-Sapiens. He disgorged his profound regret to Zara, who reminded him of his good intent.
“This is what we must try to remember, although more immature at the time of Sidonia, my intent was honourable in my distorted vision. The price of a few individuals at that time seemed eminently more reasonable than millions of victims of a world conflict. I don’t think your burden is as onerous as my own Ricardo. It may be a blessing that we won’t grow old regretting our misdirected efforts.”
Each night the light grew brighter. The air was thick with the sentiment that all hope was now in divine hands. The shoots of cohesion were fashioned only from common fate, and as such could at least allow the eternal imposter to embark on a further tour of deception.
The light could now be seen clearly in daylight, givi
ng the sense of extra warmth. It became a hypnotic ritual which unerringly issued the challenge of how such a beautiful sight could be so cruelly blind. Last preparations were made and significant numbers of suicides, assisted and conventional littered the landscape.
The bright light began to display a halo as it entered the Earth’s atmosphere. With its tail visible at the same time, it conjured up a likeness to the devil, losing its former beauty. The real increase in temperature was now evident. The clash with Phobos had created a fault line and the abrasive upper atmosphere completed the fracture. The two components of what had been Comet 2005NB5C fanned apart and struck out for different destinations. One impacted the west coast of Africana, the other veered off toward China. All over the world, just as there had been in Tunguska, people viewed different consequences of the intruders. Pierze and Zara witnessed the ground shaking, a dark red glow and then the searing heat of oblivion. The tremors were felt in Madrid fractionally before the second hit between China and India. It was not too long before the consequent tsunamis and tectonic jolts made their effect known. The choking gas clouds began to spread and the world started to sink into darkness.
From a Copernicus vantage point the Moon and Mars colonies grasped their own isolation. The Moon had a panoramic view of a mini-Jupiter with two dark red eyes. The Martians could only imagine what the brightness meant in terms of human suffering.
The huddled families of Nordsen and Mamani were grateful that their respective caves had withstood the initial holocaust. That night they both, in their own way, contemplated the way in which mammals had derived supremacy from the ashes of the dinosaurs. They wondered how many other humans they would ever encounter if they survived the aftermath of this extinction event.
Part Three: The Ice Wars of Dominia
Prologue
It was just over one hundred years and approximately four generations since Comet 2005 NB5C was deflected by the larger moon of Mars, into a collision course with Earth in 2045. Phobos played a critical part in all respects. During the comet’s previous altercation with the planet in 1908, witnessed as an air-burst, a large fragment caused devastation over Tunguska.
Unknown to mankind at that time, an intelligent alien species travelling through the solar system predicted this impact, and had engineered a dual strategy to protect the Earth, and as much of its flora and fauna as possible. The first part of the plan was to steer the comet to a safe trajectory in 1908. It was only partially successful because the incident energy which the alien species released splintered off a fragment, which was responsible for the hell unleashed on Russia. They knew the comet would return in 2045, and devised the second ingenious solution. They had correctly identified Phobos as having a decaying orbit around Mars, which was destined to eventually impact the planet. They embedded a colossal propulsion device into Phobos to gradually nudge the little moon out of the comet’s trajectory, and the consequent deflected head-on encounter with Earth. They had in 1908, also sent an object to the Tunguska region to be discovered by investigators of the affected area. They knew that Earth science at that time was not advanced enough to visit Mars, but estimated that this would occur before 2045. What they couldn’t know was that the soft landing of their object would be in very boggy terrain, which would allow the device to be swallowed quickly. In fact it wasn’t discovered until some eighteen years prior to the return of the comet. When the object was recovered and analysed, it outlined the need for a landing on Phobos to activate the propulsion device at a precise point in time. This critical point was when the comet was nearing the Kuiper belt. Everything went well and the first gentle stage of shifting the orbit of Phobos was achieved smoothly. The additional benefit of this elegant plan was that Phobos would no longer be lost to Mars; it would inherit a stable dance around the red planet. The second stage propulsion burst failed, and as human experts had decided to stand down nuclear strike capability, due to the danger it posed in fragmentation of the comet, the monster reclaimed its pinball route to Earth’s atmosphere. It then split, resulting in two extinction impacts over Southern Africana and the Chino-Indian area.
The resulting cataclysm dispensed instant death, radiation sickness, incredible climatic change, viral explosion and famine. This sequenced march to extinction affected the vast majority of species, including most of humanity. In the immediate aftermath, the slender grip on life held by the surviving humanoids virtually wiped the prior alien intervention from their minds. It was just as well they had forgotten that automatic messages had been triggered to inform these entities of the failure of their plan. Although the messages were apparently sent to the 61 Virginis system, in the constellation of Virgo, the humans weren’t to know that this was not their home. In fact they didn’t have a ‘home’ as such; they considered themselves to be ‘Travellers’. Another false judgement by those extracting data from the Tunguska object was that these aliens were benevolent beings. The simple, but disappointing truth they would eventually discover would reveal that they were merely engaged in cosmic horticulture. They had wanted to preserve the garden of the solar system and the fauna which thrived with Earth’s flora. They had no particular allegiance to Homo-Sapiens or any other individual species. As they were busy tidying up other marvels of the Milky Way galaxy, they had despatched a small contingent to assess what, if anything, could be restored on one of their favourite herbaceous outposts.
At the time of the 2045 impacts, certain hopeful preparations had been made to assist survival of humans. These plans hadn’t delivered the results expected. Some underground bunkers and synthetic food supply had been orchestrated, but this was woefully flawed and only delayed the inevitable. Other individuals who were used to living alongside nature at altitude found caves, most of which were known to only a few, and their ingenuity in sequestering uncontaminated food and water gifted them a chance. The cities suffered worst in trying to negotiate virtually every hurdle which had to be overcome. If they were lucky enough to escape the searing fallout, then radiation sickness, they were facing infection. Having the more robust genetic code to sidestep these viruses only presented them with the challenge of obtaining and then decontaminating adequate sustenance. City life hadn’t prepared them for such hardship. When lawlessness was introduced into the equation their world became a battleground in which only the fittest would survive.
The already advancing ice age which had been predicted in 2045 had received a boost from the disaster, thus forcing all life closer to a tropical climate. As the years passed, this trend accelerated and the habitable zone was condensed into a band of latitude, 15-30 degrees north of the equator, which was in places, less than two hundred miles wide. This progressive herding of humans into an ever-decreasing domain would ultimately have far-reaching consequences. Failure to survive accounted for billions. Those who did, and managed to procreate, did not avail of the luxury to plan the revival of basic technology and communication facilities. In fact the demographic makeup of these chosen ones didn’t have a significant proportion of such specialists to galvanise the required resurrection. The lack of appetite of the majority, for anything other than simply clinging on to life, ensured that the rapidly advancing ice sheets imprisoned these derelict centres of opportunity under several metres of impenetrable whiteness. Even if they could have been restored to function they would have fallen victim to this encroaching death. These people had to continually relocate ahead of the glaciers, and that was the major factor which differentiated those survivors from the ones who had prevailed by already being within the band of the temperate zone. Temperate had to be viewed as a relative term; however, with the band continually thinning, it became clear that these individuals had a head start on the ‘nomadic variety’ in both technology and structural society recovery. As time moved on through generations this life-supporting strip narrowed to under eighty miles. The indigenous population of this zone had descended into a pseudo-mediaeval regime, and the rulers were determined to cleanse their newly
named habitat Dominia, of all incoming savages. These intruders, or Loci, as they had been named by the Dominians, had no alternative to surfing the front of the approaching glaciers, yet they recognised the distinct probability of ultimately being exterminated. What neither of them could possibly realise was that the Travellers’ delegation had settled between the Sun and Earth to observe. They had concluded swiftly that the difference between this ‘mediaeval’ society and the original one, from over five hundred years ago, was that the technology records already existed. The previous period had to develop toward such efficiency. The Travellers knew that as they wanted to avoid a repeat of human pollution of their ‘garden’, and they had to harvest energy for their own needs, it would be beneficial to filter solar energy bound for Earth. This they thought had the merit of greatly accelerating the ice age, and supplying reserves of energy before they surfaced on to the planet. It was a prime requirement for polymorphs to reside close to their fuel, as shifting shape had a voracious appetite for consuming energy.
Chapter 1
The narrow, habitable band had stimulated cartography. Charting this in detail would be strategically advantageous to Dominia. The only available land that they thought was left, running from west to east, almost produced panic within their ranks. Mexico and part of Nicaragua, Algeria and Western Sahara, Libya and Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, Thailand and Southern China were the only territories they assumed were not yet gripped by the white death. Dominians therefore had good cause for concern. They did not realise that Mexico, Nicaragua, India, Thailand and China had already succumbed.