Planet Wrecker

-100-

Supreme Commander James Hawthorne stood with his hands clasped behind his back. Deep underground in the Joho Mountain Bunker, he watched the screens. Around him, officers and operators murmured among themselves. It had been calculated that the planet wreckers would likely smash into South America. They had to stop that. The many screens showed many different things.

In Bavaria Sector, giant ferroconcrete bays opened. Slowly, giant merculite missiles appeared. Seconds ticked by. The image shook as one after another, the merculite missiles began to lift off. Yellow flames burned behind them as they moved slowly and then quickly accelerated to escape-velocity and faster.

Another screen showed the outskirts of Kiev, the flowing wheat fields with their critical food growth. A giant tube poked out of the main proton generating station. The tube aimed into the heavens. Below it underground and out of sight, the city’s deep-core mine supplied power. Then a milky-colored beam lanced into the sky.

Other proton beams flashed. More merculite missiles flew. On other screens, cannons began to spew defensive shells. Highborn orbitals flew up from North and South America. Everything Earth possessed in way of space-defense exploded, beamed or kinetic-force smashed against the incoming asteroids and the masses of meteor-debris.

The rocky chunks of matter launched long-ago in the Saturn System now approached near-Earth orbit. The long journey was almost over. They had passed through vast reaches of empty space and survived ultra-lasers, Highborn-fashioned nukes, ricocheting habitats and magnetic-induced shoves. The cyborg trajectory calculations had proved flawless. Now these objects headed straight for South America at immense velocity.

Sirens wailed in the Joho Bunker. Warning bells rang. Men and women stood up as they watched the possible end of life on Earth.

The proton beams were devastating, consuming the smaller objects one after another. The merculite missiles held upgraded warheads. They nudged the big asteroids, and finally caused them to crack, splinter and burst apart. All the while, however, the objects came closer, closer.

A big chunk of the former fifteen-kilometer rock stubbornly shrugged off a nuclear missile. It had a solid nickel-iron core. A proton beam washed it and burned away mass, but the nickel-iron took time to destroy. The object obliterated a cylindrical habitat maneuvered into its path, sending a spray of metal toward Earth.

“Sir!” a woman shouted.

“I see it,” said Hawthorne. “What’s its mass?”

“It’s just under four kilometers in diameter,” a man said. “If it keeps on this course, it will hit in upper South America.”

“That ought to keep Colonel Naga happy,” Hawthorne whispered.

“Sir?” the man asked.

Hawthorne shoulders slumped. “Never mind,” he said.

On the screen, more objects kept coming. Some smashed through other habitats, a few of the smaller meteors deflected from the atmosphere.

“Milan has gone offline!” a woman moaned.

“There’s a deep-core burst in Cape Town. They pushed too hard.”

“Help us!” Hawthorne shouted, as he threw up his hands and implored the Unknown One.

“Here it comes,” a woman said. “Nothing can stop it now.”