EPISODE 33: ASHES TO ASHES
First came the ground-shaking initial impacts, which resulted in the destabilization of multiple networks of fault lines resulting in massive earthquakes and activating over a dozen volcanic vents, throwing tens of millions of tons of soot and ash into the skies above Earth.
The colony cylinders were targeted to fall not only on the continental plates, but also into the coastal waters…one within twenty kilometers of the California coast near Los Angeles, another within thirty kilometers of the Yokohama waterfront in Japan, a third within view of Boston Harbor on the Eastern Seaboard, and a fourth into English Channel between the ports of Dover and Calais.
And thus, even as the skies darkened with smoke and ash, the waters of the ocean rose and crashed upon the land, flooding thousands of square kilometers of populated and fertile land with the cold, salty touch of hundreds of billions of liters of sea water.
And after the ash and the water, the fire…the fire of hundreds of forests, tens of thousands of trees set aflame, further choking the air and blackening the sky.
It is humanity’s darkest day…the day that the prophets have warned of since before the beginning of history.
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August, U.C. 0100 - Catastrophe on Earth
In the hours after the initial impact, frightened, desperate masses of the faithful gather in their houses of worship, begging their Creator for deliverance from the catastrophe long warned of, now finally come to pass.
In one church, a pastor opens his Bible to the Book of Revelation and reads to his frightened parishioners even as they cower between peers, sobbing with horror and despair, “And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth…”
On the other side of the soot-choked, burning, inundated globe now gripped by terror and death, another priest, of another faith, reads from another holy scripture in an ancient tongue words made famous in the modern age by the man who gave his fellow man the power rend the atom. The ancient Hindu text of the Bhagavad Gita would read, translated, would approximate, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
Above the fray, suspended in space over the darkening hangs the Black Raven, an ebony angel of death, heralding the death of the world.
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From his command chair aboard the Cassius, Archduke Alexander Miguel watches the beginning of humanity’s extinction on Earth with fire in his eyes and a smile on his lips, “And now, the Earth will be cleansed…cleansed of the degenerates that have ruled it for too long, and a new age will dawn at long last.”
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Captain Jonah Michaels and 1Lt. Jolie Minh struggle to regain control of their interlocked mobile suits as they descend into the stratosphere. The multiple impacts of the colonies on the surface of the Earth have created a massive disruption of air currents in the lower atmosphere, and Jonah and Jolie find themselves struggling to maintain any sort of course or heading as powerful winds buffet their mecha, overwhelming even the migthy engines and stabilizers of the Psi-Gundam’s Super Wavediver.
“Jonah!” Jolie calls out over her helmet’s internal comset, “Can you get any kind of reading on our coordinates…or even how close the ground is?!”
“Negative,” Jonah’s voice crackles through the static, “There’s too much interference from all this dust and the wind, to say nothing of the Minovsky particles. We were falling back towards Whampoa Base when we began our descent, but we’re at least a thousand kilometers off course now.”
“Damn it!” Jolie snarls as another eddy of superheated air buffets the Psi-Gundam with bone-breaking force.
After recovering from the shock, Jonah manages to gasp out, “Near as I can tell, we’re somewhere over the Gobi Desert…Inner Mongolia.”
“Mongolia?” Jolie responds, “Does the Federation have any bases in Mongolia?”
“One remote perimeter station,” Jonah replies, “established to combat the Zeon in the Taklamakan Desert during the One Year War. This region is sparsely populated, as it’s been for centuries. Mostly nomadic herdsmen, probably fewer than a quarter million in the area.”
“I guess that passes for good news,” Jolie says grimly,”Look up ahead!”
Jonah sees it on the horizon…perhaps a good 100 kilometers dead northeast of them, but still looming massively over the land, dwarfing mountains…the burning, smoldering wreck of California Colony.
“Oh…my…God….” is all Jonah can manage as a wave of terror washes over him.
The five million or so souls within the colony are undoubtedly alerady dead. Their suffering is over. On the ground, in the immediate area, at least, there are relatively few casualties (if several tens of thousands can really be thought of as “few” in the context of human lives lost). Jonah knows, however, that as spectacular as this horror is, the true suffering will be measured in weeks, months, years...perhaps even the rest of time for as long as there are people to reckon it.
Maybe that time won’t be as long as feared, Jonah reflects bitterly.
And all because of one man…one man with whom Jonah shares a surname…his own brother, Archduke Alexander Miguel.
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“Get as many civilians into the Garuda-class air transports and Pegasus-IV class MS carriers as possible!” General Bright Noah bellows from the command seat of the Amuro Ray, rapidly pressed back into service from where the ship was being refurbished at the Harbin Dockyards.
Captain Beecher Olech, back in command of the ship after a two-month furlough following the end of the war against the Zeon Confederation Forces, responded immediately to the distress call from Whampoa Base after the Federal Forces detected the movement of the colonies. Initial orders came down from the High Command for all available space warships ready for service and stationed in the Far East sector to attempt to intercept California Colony and attempt to blast the descending mass off course, but that need having been met by the Psi-Gundam, General Noah ordered all ships to the Shanghai area and other metropolitan zones to assist in evacuation procedures.
“We have to move quickly!” Bright continues, his voice full of urgency, “We expect the tsunami to reach Shanghai in a little over an hour! We must evacuate all personnel from the area before that!”
Shanghai in the year U.C. 0100 remains the most populous city on planet Earth, home to over 20 million people and the seat of the Earth Federation Government since U.C. 0093. Whampoa Base, located in the wilderness outside the immediate urban zone, has supplanted the former Jaburo Base as the Federation’s main military hub on Earth.
Captain Jonah Michaels and 1Lt. Jolie Minh succeeded in averting disaster for the Earth Federation by diverting the falling Colony California from a direct hit on Shanghai to a relatively “safe” crash landing in the Gobi Desert of Outer Mongolia some 2,500 kilometers to the northwest. Even at that great distance, however, the citizens of Shanghai could feel the ground vibrate beneath their feet from the impact of the colony with the sand and rock of the Gobi, and the towering cloud of dark ash from that impact has already begun to darken the skies above midday Shanghai.
The more immediate peril to the citizens of the city, however, comes from the tsunami resulting from the crash of Colony Oahu near the islands ofJapan. That ocean landing of a space colony has generated a tsunami that has already inundated the Japanese coastal cities, generating tens of millions of casualties, and is now bearing down on Shanghai.
Bright switches channels to the frequency of the Centurion Team, raising the interim Centurion Team Leader, his own daughter, 2Lt. Chieming Noah, “2Lt. Noah, do you copy?”
“Yes, sir, Da…General,” Chieming replies, “Go ahead, sir.”
“Lieutenant,” Bright says tersely, “Have you had any success in contacting or locating Captain Michaels and 1Lt. Minh?”
“Negative, sir,” Chieming replies, “We lost communications with them while they were diverting Colony California, and we haven’t been able to locate them again since. We’re getting very worried here, sir.”
“Same here, Chieming,” Bright replies grimly, dropping protocol momentarily, “There are no words to describe the magnitude of the catastrophe we’re facing here. This could be the end…of everything.”
“Daddy,” Chieming says, choking back tears.
“Your mother is safe,” Bright says reassuringly, “She’s on a Garuda-class aircraft headed south, along with other officials of the government. Can you handle interim command of the remaining Special Forces?”
“Yes, sir,” Chieming says.
“All right, Lieutenant,” Bright replies back on protocol, “Your orders are to provide security for the departing air- and spacecraft. There are over twenty million people leaving Shanghai…the largest single exodus in human history. We won’t be able to transport even a fraction of a single percent of that in our ships and planes. We couldn’t do it if we had a month, but all we have are hours.”
“What can we do, General?” Chieming asks her father.
“We’ll save as many as we possibly can,” Bright answers, “as best we can. As for the rest…may God help them.”
Chieming understand the import of her father’s words; for most of Shanghai’s teeming population, there is no hope at all.
To be continued!