Greg Bear - The Forge of God

He rolled his chair back from the table and greeted Mrs. Jenkins — Abigail — as she came through the front door, carrying two plastic bags full of groceries. Abigail was not possessed. All she knew was that her husband and Trevor were involved in something important, and secret. They had been working straight through the day and night, with very little sleep, and she brought in supplies to keep them reasonably comfortable and well fed.

She was not a bad cook.

They ate dinner at seven — steaks, salad, and a fine bottle of chianti. At seven-thirty, Jenkins and Hicks were back at work.

Being at peace, Hicks thought, worried him somewhat…He did not trust such flat, smooth emotions. He preferred a little undercurrent of turbulence; it kept him sharp.

The alarm went through Trevor Hicks’s brain like a hot steel lance. He glanced at his watch — the battery had run down without his noticing, but it was late — and dropped the disk he had been examining. He pushed the chair back and stood before the living room window. Behind him, Jenkins looked up from a stack of requisition forms for medical supplies, surprised at Hicks’s behavior. “What’s up?”

“You don’t feel it?” Hicks asked, pulling on a rope to open the curtains.

“Feel what?”

“There’s something wrong. I’m hearing from…”He tried to place the source of the alarm, but it was no longer on the network. “I think it was Shanghai.”

Jenkins stood up from the couch and called for his wife. “Is it starting?” he asked Hicks.

“Oh, Lord, I don’t know,” Hicks shouted, feeling another lance. The network was being damaged , links were being severed — that was all he could tell.

The window afforded a fine nighttime view of the myriad lights of downtown Seattle from Queen Anne Hill. The sky was overcast, but there had been no reports of thunderstorms. Still…The cloud deck was illuminated by brilliant flashes from above. One, two … a long pause, and by the time Mrs. Jenkins was in the living room, a third milky pulse of light.

Mrs. Jenkins looked on Hicks with some alarm. “It’s just lightning, isn’t it, Jenks?” she asked her husband.

“It’s not lightning,” Hicks said. The network was sending contradictory pulses of information. If a Boss was on-line, Hicks could not pick its voice out through the welter.

Then, clear and compelling, the messages came through to Hicks and Jenkins simultaneously.

Your site and the vessel in the sound are under attack.

“Attack?” Jenkins asked out loud. “Are they starting it now?”

“Shanghai Harbor was an ark site,” Hicks said, his voice full of wonder. “It’s been cut from the network. Nobody can reach Shanghai.”

“What…What…” Jenkins was not used to thinking about these things, whatever his value to the network as a local organizer and procurer.

“I believe—”

His own inner thoughts, not the Boss’s, said before the words could come out, They’re defending us but they can’t stop everything from getting through. They’ve never told us this before, but they must have put ships or platforms or something in orbits to watch over the Earth—

“—we’re being bombarded—”

Light fell through the clouds and expanded.

this is a war after all but we haven’t quite thought of it that way didn’t suspect they would do this to us

“Jenks…”

Jenkins hugged his wife. Hicks saw the flash of red and white, the lifting of a wall of water and rock, and the rush of a darkening shock wave across the lights of the city and houses on the hill. The window exploded and he closed his eyes, experienced a brief instant of pain and blindness—

On the last leg of the marathon drive into San Francisco, speeding down an almost-deserted 101 at well over the speed limit, Arthur felt a severe pain in the back of his head. He gripped the wheel tightly and pulled to a halt at the side of the highway, his body rigid.

“What’s wrong?” Francine asked.

He twisted around, threw his arms up on the back of the seat, and looked through the rear window of the station wagon. A hellish blue and purple glow was spreading to the north, above and beyond Santa Rosa and the wine country.

“What’s wrong?” Francine repeated.

He twisted around to face forward again, and leaned over the wheel to peer up at the skies above San Francisco and the Bay Area.

“More asteroids, Dad!” Marty cried out. “More explosions!”

These were a lot closer and a lot brighter, however, as sharp as blowtorches, leaving red spots in his vision. The Bay Area was still over twenty miles away, and these flashes were high in the night sky. Some kind of action, another battle, was taking place perhaps no more than a hundred miles above San Francisco.

Francine started to get out of the car but he stopped her. She stared at him, face twisted with fear and anger, but said nothing.

Four more high flares, and then the night returned.

Arthur was almost surprised to find himself weeping. His anger was a frightening thing. “Those bastards,” he said, pounding the wheel. “Those goddamn bloody fucking bastards.”

“Daddy,” Marty whimpered.

“Shut up, goddammit,” Arthur shrieked, and then he grabbed his wife’s arm with his left hand and reached for Marty in the rear seat with his right. He shook them firmly, repeating over and over again, “Don’t ever forget this. If we survive, don’t you ever, ever forget this.”

“What happened, Art?” Francine asked, trying to keep calm. Marty was screaming now, and Arthur closed his eyes in grief and sorrow, the anger turned inward because he had lost control. He listened to a few of the voices on the network, trying to piece things together.

“Seattle’s gone,” he said. Trevor Hicks, all the others.

“Where’s Gauge, Dad?” Marty asked through his tears. “Is Gauge alive?”

“I think so,” Arthur said, shaking violently. The enormity. “They’re trying to destroy our escape ships, the arks. They want to make sure there are no humans left.”

“What? Why?” Francine asked.

“Remember,” he repeated. “Just remember this, if we make it.”

It took him almost twenty minutes to become calm enough to pull back into the slow lane. San Francisco and the Bay Area had been adequately protected. Suddenly, and without reservation — without any persuasion whatsoever — he loved the Bosses and the network and all the forces arrayed to protect and save them. His love was fierce and primal. This is what a partisan feels like, watching his countryside get pillaged.

“They bombed Seattle?” she asked. “The…aliens, or the Russians?”

“Not the Russians. The planet-eaters. They tried to bomb San Francisco, too.” And Cleveland, which had survived, and Shanghai, which had not, and who knows how many other ark sites? A fresh shiver worked down from his shoulders to his sacrum. “Christ. What will the Russians do? What will we do?”

The car’s steering wheel vibrated. Above the engine noise, they heard and felt a shuddering groan. The rock-borne vibrations of Seattle’s death passed under them.

At two in the morning, Washington, D.C., time, Irwin Schwartz reached out for the urgently beeping phone from his office cot and punched the speaker button. “Yes?” Only then did he hear the powerful whuff-whuff of helicopter blades and the screaming roar of jet turbines.

It was the late night White House military staff duty officer. “Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Crockerman is being evacuated. He wishes you to join him on the helicopter.”

Schwartz had duly noted the officer’s reluctance to call Crockerman “President.” He was now strictly “Mr. Crockerman.” If you don’t act the office, you don’t get the title. “What sort of emergency?”