Catalyst

  Tom felt a great relief in his heart, knowing this was the end of the nanomachines. Obsidian Corp.’s crumbling reputation meant the other companies had stopped trusting Joseph Vengerov with control over billions of people. He was glad of it.

  But he felt horrible for his plebes.

  “Listen,” Tom said, sidling up to Zane, ignoring the irritated soldier escorting the kid. “Don’t think this is about you, okay? You’re gonna do great wherever you go from here. I know it.”

  Zane blinked at him. “Who are you?”

  “What?”

  “I’m not sure who you are. Do I know you?”

  “You don’t know who I am?”

  “Are you a Combatant?”

  “I’m the . . .” Tom stopped. He sighed, realizing it would be useless explaining to him he’d been the one helping his training. Zane obviously had lost every memory of the Spire. Tom shook his head. “Nobody.”

  And then he withdrew, and watched his last plebe leave the Pentagonal Spire.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  UNDER GENERAL MARSH, Uppers trained in simulations for Applied Battles and only rarely hooked into actual ships in space. General Mezilo was intent on creating better soldiers than General Marsh, and took it personally that he hadn’t managed to single-handedly change the course of the war yet. Uppers began training with real ships.

  Tom loved controlling drones in space. Sometimes, he forgot that he was merely interfacing with electronic systems from millions of miles away and felt like he was actually there in the spaceship whose sensors were pinging his brain. They’d practiced cascade formations and circled the glorious blue orb of Neptune, and then they tried their hand at using the sun’s gravity in the Infernal Zone to accelerate, dodging the worst of the solar flares. Then they used fine maneuvering, navigating through a field of Promethean arrays—those solar panels in close orbit around the sun that shot solar energy to the ships in the Reaches, far from Earth.

  One day, through the blinding gale of bright sunlight that always seemed to envelop them when their ships were in the zone between Mercury and the sun, they happened upon Promethean arrays that didn’t belong to their side. They were genuine pieces of enemy equipment, waiting in stasis for activation.

  Wyatt tried her hand at hacking some of the panels and reprogramming them remotely to respond to commands only from the Indo-American side, but soon a command came to them directly from the Pentagon: forget reprogramming them, just destroy them all.

  The cadets had a great time blasting them to pieces. It was rare that their practice flights gave them the opportunity to inflict real battle damage to the enemy.

  Simulations couldn’t compare to a reality of a ship at one’s command. Tom loved dodging asteroids during dexterity maneuvers. There were a good number of Trojan asteroids in the same orbit as Earth, caught by its gravity, and they were easy to reach. The Uppers played capture the asteroid sometimes, where they broke into teams and used their missiles to propel a very small rock back and forth. The losing team was the one that let the rock slip past them.

  They were only allowed to fire three missiles each, sometimes fewer depending upon their funding for that training day. Tom came up with a method of moving the asteroid without missiles by maneuvering in very close, and then using his engine exhaust to nudge it. A few other people tried it, too, but the practice was banned as soon as Lyla Martin accidentally destroyed her ship that way. The ships were simply too expensive to risk.

  One day in November, the Uppers practiced cascade formations again, lining up to accelerate together toward a fixed target—in this case, 3753 Cruithne, an asteroid called “Earth’s second moon.” It was at the edge of the Neutral Zone, the common launch point for payloads through the intensive free-fire range just beyond Earth called the Gauntlet. America had claimed it early in the war, when it became clear the Chinese weren’t going to surrender the vast tactical advantage that was the actual moon.

  They followed the usual cascade formation, lining up, using each other’s energy to exponentially increase the momentum of the ship in front. Yet today, something strange happened. They reached the coordinates for the base, but Cruithne wasn’t there.

  Tom checked his sensors several times. He did what he always did when something mathematical or scientific confused him: he used his thought interface to ask Wyatt for help. Did we get the wrong coordinates?

  No.

  She’d run the calculations for the group, since they’d all learned to trust her judgment.

  More thoughts rushed into Tom’s head, net-sent by other cadets for the group IRC channel they were all hooked into during their training exercises.

  Enslow messed up her calculations, Clint thought.

  Evil Wench messed up? Vik thought.

  I did not mess up! Wyatt thought angrily.

  Do you see Cruithne anywhere? Clint thought.

  No, I don’t see it, but I DID NOT MESS UP.

  Okay, calm down, calm down, Walton Covner thought to her. Maybe our instruments are faulty.

  This isn’t right, Wyatt thought to everyone. Something’s wrong here. We passed the instrument checks and these are the right coordinates. Five-kilometer-wide asteroids with stable orbits don’t simply vanish. They don’t.

  Tom found the whole situation kind of bizarre. He looped his ship in wide circles, trying to conserve momentum, searching idly for the massive asteroid that was supposed to be in their location. The other cadets adopted the same maneuver, flying about in wide loops.

  Cruithne saw Lyla Martin coming and fled in terror, thought Shipley Kamanski, an Upper in Genghis Division with her.

  I am going to beat you up later, Kamanski, Lyla thought.

  Kamanski, I am going to beat you up later, too, Vik thought to him.

  Aw, I actually like you right now, Vik, Lyla thought.

  Ooh, does this mean you’ll finally—

  DON’T THINK ABOUT THIS OVER A THOUGHT INTERFACE.

  Right. Sorry.

  And, Lyla thought, no.

  Blast, Vik thought. Foiled again!

  And the whole time, in the background of the IRC, Wyatt’s thoughts beat over and over again, This isn’t right. Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong. Something is very wrong. . . . I’m disconnecting. I need to tell someone.

  Her name disappeared from the group IRC. Her disappearance had a strange effect on Tom. Suddenly he sobered. Suddenly he began to feel a creeping sense of fear, scanning the empty space about him. The other thoughts in the IRC died down, the other cadets feeling it, too.

  They were awfully close to Earth for a five-kilometer-wide asteroid to disappear.

  They lingered too long, unmoving, with no commands one way or another from Earth. Usually they were in constant motion to avoid being picked up by sensors or satellites. Today, they were not.

  And consequences soon followed.

  Tom’s sensors picked it up, and his heart leaped.

  Incoming! Tom thought over the IRC, just as several other Uppers did as well.

  The Russo-Chinese ships descended upon them in a hail of fury, lasers splicing through the void of space at the speed of light, mobile artillery cannons already blasting. The Uppers were still in training for full-on combat; they weren’t prepared for an attack by actual Combatants. Ship after ship was destroyed instantly.

  Tom avoided the worst of the fire, scanning the ships for the familiar flying he’d recognize anywhere. He spotted Medusa’s ship, which at first gleefully blasted three ships with three shots. . . .

  And then her weapons fire began to trail off, her ship began to list, because Tom knew she was paying attention to the absence of the five-kilometer asteroid that should be there, too. One by one, the Russo-Chinese guns fell silent, and only a few dim-witted cadets tried to take advantage and got destroyed for it. Tom knew they w
ere probably waiting for instructions from their side, too.

  Even though Tom wasn’t in the same room as the enemy cadets, and they were physically across the world from one another, mentally even farther apart—there was a slow, cold realization that seemed to come over everyone of something very ominous happening right here. They were all human beings in the end, living on one planet together—and right now a massive asteroid was missing perilously close to their common doorstep.

  Abruptly, Wyatt’s thought burst back into the IRC.

  They’ve spotted the asteroid. Terminating the connection.

  Tom yanked out his neural wire and sat up in his cot outside the Helix. Everyone roused quickly, and Tom felt his heart pounding in his chest as he hunted for Wyatt among the cadets around them. He spotted her, standing by her cot now, her face ashen.

  “Where’d they spot it?” Vik demanded, but they only needed to look at Wyatt’s face to know.

  “It’s in the Neutral Zone. Our satellites finally detected it. It’s closing fast. Something must’ve knocked it out of orbit. It’s heading right for us.”

  The words sank like a stone into the stale silence of the chamber.

  A five-kilometer-wide asteroid.

  And it was on course to hit Earth.

  Tom tried to wrap his head around the idea. An asteroid that large would cause an extinction-level event. None of their antiasteroid tech was designed to stop an inbound meteor so close to Earth. They were supposed to spot these things ten, twenty years in advance, more than enough time to gradually deflect their course. Promethean Arrays were used to do it, and in severe cases, the CamCos were mobilized to detonate nukes against the surface to redirect the course—but always, always far from Earth, way before it came close.

  “What does that mean?” Clint said. “What do we do?”

  “We die, Clint,” Lyla said bluntly. “We won’t survive the impact.”

  “What can we do?” Tom asked Wyatt. “What are our orders?”

  “We don’t have any.” She shook her head. “They sent the CamCos to man the orbiting ships but we don’t have much equipment in the vicinity. The Russo-Chinese are trying to mobilize a defense. The Russian aerial defense force is gearing up to attack, and the Chinese are powering up their Promethean Arrays on the moon. They’re planning to bombard it as soon as the moon’s cleared the planet. That’s all I know.”

  “How long do we have?” Vik asked hollowly.

  Wyatt grimaced. “It’s due to hit the Pacific in thirty-seven minutes.”

  Thirty-seven minutes! The words bounced through Tom’s mind. He tried to wrap his mind around this. In less than an hour, a five-kilometer-wide asteroid was going to hit.

  It would kill everyone.

  “So we wait?” Vik said.

  Wyatt was breathing very hard now. Tom could only sit there in stunned silence. He watched her rip back her sleeve to access her forearm keyboard.

  “What are you doing?” Tom asked her, thinking this was Wyatt, she might have an idea, some miraculous save.

  “I’m telling Yuri. Yuri needs to know, too,” she said. Tears misted her eyes. “I want Yuri to come up here. He has to know.”

  Tom felt very strange. He swallowed convulsively, trying to rid his throat of the feeling like a fist was clenched inside it. He couldn’t believe something like this was actually going to happen, that an ordinary day could be transformed so quickly.

  He looked around the room, still very quiet, a strange calm on the air. It was surreal.

  No.

  The thought broke through his numbness.

  No, Wyatt had to be wrong. She had to be. This couldn’t be it. The world couldn’t end like this, with no warning, no fanfare—humanity’s final thirty-seven minutes after millions of years of evolution and thousands of years of technological progress. There were bad guys like Vengerov to destroy and good people with their own struggles, and Tom couldn’t grasp the idea that all the conflicts and worries of humanity were simply going to be eradicated in a few short minutes. Life had to mean more than that. The world had to mean more than that. What had been the point of everything, if they were just going to be wiped out?

  No. He lay back down on his cot, and plugged in his neural wire.

  No one asked him what he was doing. Vik and Lyla were hugging each other, Wyatt was huddled on her cot, arms folded across her shaking body, waiting for Yuri. The others were discussing it in a stunned manner.

  Tom interfaced with the Spire’s system and shot out of himself.

  EVERY SECURITY CAMERA he interfaced with showed a strange dichotomy—the people who’d heard the situation, either buzzing about, frantic with activity to try fixing it, or those with no power to change the outcome, swarming to the conferencing phones.

  He saw generals discussing the likelihood of a nuclear strike on the asteroid.

  “The president needs to understand,” General Mezilo snapped into a conferencing phone, “nukes don’t have the same power in a vacuum. You need atmosphere. And once Cruithne hits our atmosphere, it’s too late. Do you know how many safety controls we have on our nuclear arsenals? And that’s assuming they’re even in range once Cruithne hits.”

  Inside the system, a swarm of buzzing 0’s and 1’s, Tom listened to Mezilo explain to the others that the timing simply wouldn’t work: by the time enough firepower was unleashed, they’d all be dead a good half hour.

  But it didn’t become real, truly real, until he snapped into a surveillance camera in the Pentagon and felt a shock, seeing General Marsh for the first time in a year.

  And then Blackburn moved through the door.

  “James,” Marsh said, abandoning formalities, sounding as tired and old as he looked. He smiled wryly. “It seems we were worried about the wrong apocalypse.”

  Blackburn ignored formalities, too. He planted his palms on the desk. “All the equipment we have on that asteroid and there was no forewarning it had been knocked out of orbit? You know that’s not an accident. That doesn’t happen.”

  Marsh rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “He’s probably cozied up in a bunker somewhere and—”

  Marsh surged out of his chair. “We have minutes. That’s all. Minutes. I’m going to get on that phone and try to call my daughter, and tell my grandson I love him.”

  “But he—”

  “Enough! I know what you’ve been doing, Lieutenant.”

  That stopped Blackburn short. “You do?”

  “I’ve had a good idea, and now you’ve confirmed it for me. I could have shared my theories, but I let you do it. But that’s all done now. You’re out of time. We all are. These are the last moments of your life. Make peace with God. Look at some pictures of your kids. Call your mother. Do something other than fixate on the white whale of yours.”

  Blackburn didn’t seem to know how to answer that for a long moment. He touched the scar on his cheek unconsciously. “There is nothing else, General.”

  “Then I’m sorry for you, James. I really am. That was no way to live, and it’s certainly no way to die.”

  Something about the calm resignation drawn over Marsh’s face knocked Tom out of his numbed stupor. He was profoundly disturbed to see both Marsh and Blackburn treating this like the end, because, no, this was not the end. He’d show them! He shot out of the surveillance cameras, through the electronic pipelines, determination surging through him.

  He wasn’t going to let this happen. There had to be something he could do. He had the closest thing there was to a real superpower. He’d use it.

  Nothing was over.

  CRUITHNE WAS A large, irregular rock. Every so often, light flashed over its surface where old, inactive equipment was stored, left over from numerous uses of the asteroid as a way station.

  Tom gazed at it through the electronic eyes of a satellite it was passing, realizing in a strange, detached way he might be looking at the instrument of his death—of the death of all humanity.

/>   He fired a thruster to twist the satellite around as the asteroid moved beyond it, and then he saw Earth.

  The sight was like an explosion in his brain.

  Earth, so stark and bright and full of life against the darkness beyond it, and that asteroid sailing straight toward it. He’d never appreciated before how fragile that thin layer of atmosphere surrounded the planet was. As soon as the asteroid hit, all those oceans would vaporize, the atmosphere would burn, and everyone he loved . . .

  Everyone he loved . . .

  Tom began to frantically leap from one machine in orbit to another, searching for something, anything. Cruithne had been knocked out of orbit once. He had a few minutes. He’d throw everything in orbit at it.

  He activated thrusters of satellites and propelled them into the side. They were too small, but they were all he had. They exploded against the asteroid’s surface, harmless. The Russo-Chinese military obviously had the same idea, because as soon as the moon emerged from around the curvature of Earth, every single Promethean Array on its surface lit at once, bright beams streaking toward Cruithne. Tom gazed through the eyes of another satellite, watching with frantic hope as the asteroid was nudged, just a bit. And then nuclear missiles hit. They couldn’t create a blast wave in space, but detonated against the surface of the asteroid, they could nudge it. The explosions were brilliant enough to cripple all the satellites in the vicinity. It took Tom some time to find another, but his heart sank when he did, and saw the asteroid still on course to hit.

  Nuclear weapons would be more effective once the asteroid was in the atmosphere.

  His blood raced with anxiety at the thought, because by then, they might be doomed anyway.

  Soon, he saw ships, Indo-American and Russo-Chinese both, whip around the curve of Earth, rocketing to a swift momentum, firing even more at the asteroid. The sustained assault was wreaking damage, tearing chunks out of the asteroid, hurtling them off into space, but not enough, not enough.