Armageddon?? (69 page)

"Ah…
roger . Sierra Yankee. Bloody hell."

The
Explorer was circling slowly over central Sheffield, a position which afforded
a fine view of the magma fountain, blurry but visible within the base of the
rapidly forming mushroom cloud, as well as the rivers of lava consuming the
town centre. Every few seconds another building would collapse, adding further
haze to the scene below. "Oliver, we have to evacuate. The fires are
getting close and the lava isn't far behind. Pogo one seven seven, stay up as
long as you can then abort to the airport, acknowledge."

"Acknowledged.
Switching to channel one seven seven. Sierra Yankee Nine Nine out."

Taranaski's
voice came over he intercom and he did not sound happy. "We've got a
seriously bent bird here, controls are wonky, port turbine is running very hot
and I think we're leaking fuel. We should get her down Ay-Sap."

"Negative
Peter. Unless you're sure she's going to drop out of the sky, we stay until
we're relieved. Command have to know what's happening."

"But
Sergeant, the corporal needs a medic, hell we all need…"

"Pilot.
As long as we can fly, we stay until we're relieved." Webster's hard tone
softened slightly. "It shouldn't be long. Now bring us around, command
will need an idea of how fast the fires are spreading."

Owlerthorpe,
South East Sheffield

The
convoy of big Bedford trucks rolled onto the field and came to a halt one by
one. As soon as each vehicle had stopped moving soldiers poured out of the
rear, already in full combat gear. Overhead, the grim red column of the magma
stream shone through the vast pall of smoke that surrounded it, lighting up the
area in a confused, scarlet glow. Just like the descriptions of Hell that had
been coming back from the troops that had entered that region. The smoke pall
was spreading fast, the most obvious sign of the inferno that was devouring the
city. Not the only sign of course, the constant vibrations that were running
through the ground were another. They could be felt through the soles of the
soldier’s boots and were enough to make hands that held binoculars shake enough
to blur the image. Then again, there were other causes for hands to shake as
well.

Sergeant
Pottington had his orders and he knew how to execute them. He’d been a British
soldier one, then he’d retired and set up a gardening business. There were plenty
of houses around Sheffield where both husband and wife were working all day and
didn’t have a chance to tend to the garden. There were also plenty of
pensioners who were fit, healthy and bored stiff. Putting the two together had
been an easy exercise for a man who’d effectively run a company of infantry.
Grimly, Pottington wondered how many of his client list or workers were left.
Looking at the vast pall of smoke that was covering Sheffield, not many.

“Right,
you men, get the barricades across the roads. I want three volunteers, you, you
and you, to get a GPMG set up to cover the blocks. Anybody who tries to run the
roadblock, spray them.” Pottington looked at the stream of traffic that was
building up as the population of Sheffield made a run for it. Understandable
but not something that could be allowed. Men were needed to build firebreaks,
construct barriers and dig ditches, try and divert the lava streams away from
the industrial area to where they could do least damage. Women were needed to
help the wounded and look after children. In a disaster like this there were no
useless hands. He walked into the road and held up a hand in the traditional
‘stop’ sign. Traditional in the UK anyway, he’d seen films of American police
giving stop signs by waving their hands around like demented organ-grinders
monkeys. Hysterical load of spams Pottington thought.

A
car was ignoring the ‘stop’ signal, instead it had picked up speed and was
going to either intimidate him into getting out of the way or go around him. Pottington
produced his pride and joy, an old Webley Mark V with a six-inch barrel. It had
been his grandfather’s in the First World War and Pottington had kept it
carefully hidden away during the long years of the handgun ban. Now, he had it
out again and he even had the Mark III “manstopper” bullets to go with it,
hollow-point rounds with a steel ball molded inside the lead to add to the
effect. One round dealt with the windscreen of the approaching car very
satisfactorily, shattering it and sending fragments spraying around. The car
came to an abrupt halt.

“Hey
what you done to me ride?” The young man driving was aggressive and aggrieved
but both emotions faded when he heard the clicking of rifle bolts being drawn
back.

“Commandeered
it sir. Any other occupants? No? Then, Sir, we’ll have to ask you to wait here.
The civil authorities will be forming work teams shortly and you’ll have the
honor of being a founder member. Simmonite? Move this vehicle off the road,
it’s a four-wheel drive so the Home Guard will be wanting it. Clegg, Dewhurst,
move two-wheel drives off to that field over there. Park them neatly now, we
don’t want to be slovenly soldiers. ”

Behind
them, the traffic was backing up quickly. The soldiers quickly checked each
vehicle, sending the ones likely to be useful off to one side, the rest into a
field to be parked. With gasoline rationing in force, it was amazing how many
vehicles were using this road, but Pottington guessed that fleeing lava meant
more than conserving gasoline rations.

“Sergeant?”
A new voice had spoken from behind him. “Lieutenant Batty, Home Guard. We’ve
come to take over the road block when you’re ready. Midlands Command want your
unit to join the rest of the regulars in case of the Baldricks trying to follow
up this attack. Nobody knows what they’ll try next.

“Very
good Sir. Quiet word sir, don’t hesitate to shoot if the situation demands it.
It won’t take much for a panic to start here, we’ve got to keep this situation
under control.”

“Understood
Sergeant.” The ‘thank you’ was unspoken but there. “There’s coaches coming up
to take the women and kids to a refugee center. Trucks will be coming for the
men, take them back to the city. Every pair of hands needed there.”

Pottington
looked at the red cloud surrounding the stream of fire and the pall that hung
over the doomed city. “Did they save Park Hill Sir?”

Batty
shook his head. “It’s gone. The firebreaks hung on long enough for the people
to get out but the blocks have gone.”

“Ah
well, suppose that’ll end the talk about what to do with them. Good luck Sir.”

“Thank
you Sergeant, and the same to your men here.”

Chapter
Forty Nine

Celestial
Mechanics laboratory, DIMO(N), Yale, Connecticut

“…but
that would still allow higher dimensional rotation of nanoscale structures, so
clearly your topology cannot be correct.”

“Why
is that a problem? The molecules are still confined to…”

“Chirality.”
Dr Kuroneko regarded his colleague with a vaguely disappointed look. “Look it
up. I am hardly a biologist, but I do know that if you flipped a significant
fraction of the molecules in a human body the individual would be dead or dying
within hours. Too many critical enzymes operate on only on a specific
stereoisomer.”

“Oh.
Well… how about…”

The
conversation was interrupted by the double doors flying open and admitting a
very purposeful looking army officer. “Doctors, we have an emergency. Follow me
please.”

The
two bemused scientists were quickly escorted to the conference room, which
despite the late hour was filling up rapidly. Dr Kuroneko’s gaze was drawn
straight to the main screen, which was showing a lake of fire with a great
glowing fountain shooting out of it. No, not fire… lava. A waterfall of magma
was pouring onto an expanse of burning rubble.

“What
on earth…”

“That’s
Sheffield. It’s a city of half a million or so in northern England. Or was, I’d
guess its quite a bit below half a million now.”

That
flat, disinterested voice again. Kuroneko looked over his shoulder, and sure
enough, it was the mysterious man who had gotten the whole Star Glider project
rolling. The man was either an undercover demon with powers of personal
teleportation or had an uncanny knack for turning up just as the excrement was
about to hit the rotary impeller.

“The
Baldricks found a way to dump magma on it… at something like a million tons a
minute. As yet we don’t know why that target was chosen or when they might
repeat the trick. Your team is our best bet for finding a countermeasure before
we lose another city.”

“You
were expecting this? And just let it happen?”

“We
were expecting something Doctor. It is not the mark of an intelligent person to
assume that he can administer what amounts to a historic ass-kicking and not
get some form of come-back. The question was never whether something would
happen but what and when. We knew that we had to be able to close a portal or
one day, one of them would bite us in the ass. Put the two together and we have
Project Starglider. Dumping magma through a portal is an interesting concept
though, it has several advantages over the way we would normally address the
problem of a city we didn’t like very much.”

Kuroneko
got the unpleasant feeling that he’d just seen the birth of a new part of
America’s strategic arsenal. “You take this attack very lightly Sir.”

“Not
in the least. I find the concept of opening a volcano directly over one of our
cities to be quite disturbing. Not least because if they can do it once, they
can do it again. So we can expect to see another attack like this. That raises
a lot of questions for my colleagues and I to address, one of which is why they
chose Sheffield and what that might tell us about future targets. But that is
for us to think about, your job Doctor is to make sure there are as few of
these attacks as possible.”

Dr
Kuroneko realized that everyone was staring at him. He gulped, then stared at
the table for a second. When he brought his head up, his eyes were hardened
with determination.

“First
we must understand what happened. What data have the Brits sent so far?”

Incident
Command Centre, Sheffield Airport, United Kingdom

After
many years of being virtually empty, Sheffield City Airport had been scheduled
for closure in early 2008. The defense build-up allowed the runway to be kept
open and the ILS operational for contingency use, but there was still no
scheduled traffic. Now the tiny apron was packed with transport aircraft,
offloading fire-trucks and earthmoving equipment before departing full of
casualties on stretchers. The lava flows had crept ominously close, buffeting
the approaching aircraft with thermals, but for now the wind was blowing the
smoke and toxic fumes away from the site. Less than a mile off the M1 motorway
and possessing a largely vacant business park, the airport was an obvious
choice for the forward command centre, and control staff from all the emergency
services had been streaming in all day. Not all the traffic had been civilian;
the airport now featured two Rapier FSC launchers and several hastily dug
machine gun emplacements.

Chief
Fire Officer Howard Spurrier had been on duty for thirty hours now, but between
the adrenaline and numerous cups of black coffee he hadn’t noticed his fatigue.
In fact he had no choice but to stay focused on the details of the operation
least the horror of it overwhelm him. He’d lost over a hundred of his own
people so far, with more killed by collapsing buildings and falling rocks every
hour. The other services were taking similar casualties as they risked their
lives to pull civilians from the rubble. As for the city itself… well, his
original calm detachment had vanished as soon as he stepped out of his doomed
former command centre. The sight of whole crowds being pursued by the lava,
screaming, blistering, bursting into flames before falling and being consumed
by the rushing inferno… they’d all be haunted by it for the rest of their
lives.

“CFO
Spurrier I presume?”

He
jerked his gaze from the electronic map projection and stared at the newcomer.
She was tall, dark haired, casually dressed and wearing what struck him as an
indecently placid expression.

“Who
the hell are you?” Howard snapped.

“Keavy
McManus. I’m the vulcanologist… you should’ve been told I was coming.”

Assistant
CFO Colin Lloyd had spent most of the last twelve hours talking into a headset
and updating the tactical picture. He cupped the microphone inside his hand for
a moment and announced in a hoarse voice. “Sorry sir… slipped my mind… she’s
the best available, the home secretary approved her personally.” Colin
immediately went back to assigning tasks to the newly arriving units.

“You’re
an academic?” Howard’s expression left no doubt that he had little time for
academics telling him how to manage a disaster. “Find a desk, stay out of my
way, let me know if discover anything relevant.” He turned back to the map.

Keavy
strode over and stood in front of him, forcing the man to look at her. “Yes, I
write papers and I teach. I’ve also helped plan relief and containment
operations in Hawaii, Iceland and Italy. I probably have more practical experience
with lava flows than anyone in Britain – and you have none, so you’d better
start listening to me.”