Лю Цысинь - Supernova Era

“Mr. President, I have to be responsible for the safety of John C. Stennis. ”

Davey smacked the captain across the head, knocking off his hat. “And you’re not responsible for the lives of the kids on the ice? You’re a criminal!”

“I’m sorry, Mr. President. As captain I cannot execute your order.”

“I am the commander in chief of the United States of America, for the time being at least. If I so desired, I could have you thrown into the sea this instant, just like your hat. Dare me to try?”

The captain hesitated, and then said to a marine captain, “Tell your people to withdraw. Let anyone who wants to come aboard.”

An unending stream of children from different countries surged up the gangway and onto the deck. The wind was fiercer here, and the leeward side of fighter jets was the only respite from it. Lots of children had fallen into the ocean while boarding the landing craft, and their soaked clothing had now frozen into sparkling coats of ice.

“Let them into the cabins. These kids won’t last long out here before they freeze to death,” Davey said to the captain.

“Can’t do that, Mr. President. The cabins are full to bursting with the American kids who came aboard first.”

“And the hangars? There’s tons of space in there, enough for a few thousand people. Are those full too?”

“They’re full up with planes!”

“Then bring the planes up onto the flight deck.”

“Impossible. The flight deck already has too many other fighters that the horrible weather forced to make an emergency landing here. See, the elevator to the hangars is completely blocked!”

“Then push them into the sea!”

And so, one after another, the ten-million-dollar fighter planes were pushed over the side of John C. Stennis and into the ocean, and the broad flight deck quickly filled with more planes brought up from the hangars on the enormous elevator. The international group of children left the deck for the warm refuge of the cavernous hangars, which soon held thousands of occupants. Once the children had warmed up a bit, they gasped in wonder at the sheer size of the carrier. But on the flight deck out in the snowstorm, over a hundred drenched children had frozen to death.

The final evacuation took three days, and then the huge fleet of more than fifteen hundred ships carrying the last three hundred thousand children off of the continent split into two groups bound for Argentina and New Zealand. More than thirty thousand children succumbed to the cold during the evacuation, the last group of casualties in the Supernova War to die in Antarctica.

The Amundsen Sea returned to its empty state free of its covering of ships. The snow had stopped, but the wind was as fierce as ever, scouring the cold air over the water. As the sky cleared up and a crack appeared in the clouds over the horizon, the newly risen sun shed golden light over Antarctica, onto the deep blanket of snow that now covered the once-exposed rocks and dirt. Perhaps, in some distant future, crowds of people would again set foot on this frigid land in search of the snow-covered bodies of five hundred thousand children, the wreckage of countless tanks, and the two ten-kilometer craters the nuclear blasts left behind. During the continent’s brief springtime, three million children from all over the world had fought each other amid flames and explosions, unleashing their lust for life. But now the epic tragedy of the Supernova War seemed little more than a bad dream in the long night, a mirage beneath the brilliant southern lights. In daylight, the land was a lonely expanse of white. It was as if nothing had ever happened.

Davey burst into the Oval Office in a panic, and then let out a long sigh. He picked at the frostbite patches on his face, the mark carried by most children who returned from Antarctica. The girl Benes was sitting in the high-backed presidential chair leisurely clipping her nails. When she saw Davey enter, she rolled her eyes and said, “Mr. Herman Davey, you’ve been impeached and have no authority to return to this office. And in fact, you don’t have any authority to be in the White House at all.”

Davey rubbed his temples and said, “I want to leave, but that pack of thugs out there want to kill me!”

“You deserve it. You screwed everything up. You’ve done a worse job than any president in US history.”

“You… you have no right to say that to me! Why are you sitting in the presidential chair? You think you can just ignore etiquette when I’m away?”

Benes looked up at the ceiling. “You’re the one who needs to pay attention to etiquette.”

Davey was about to explode when Vaughn came in and said, “What you probably don’t know is that Frances Benes was elected the second president of the United States of the Supernova Era.”

“What?” Davey exclaimed, staring at the blond-haired girl clipping her nails in that hallowed seat. He looked back at Vaughn, and then burst out laughing. “Don’t joke around. That idiot doesn’t even know how to count!” He chuckled.

Benes furiously smacked the table, but then held her hand to her mouth to soothe the pain. Then she pointed a finger at Davey and said sharply, “Shut your mouth or you’ll be charged with defaming the president!”

“You’ve got to be responsible to the republic!” Davey said, pointing at Vaughn.

“She’s the choice of all American children. The new president was selected in a fair election.”

Davey spat in Benes’s direction. “When we were off facing death in Antarctica, you were back here flirting with the media!”

“Slandering the president!” Benes shouted at Davey, opening her eyes wide, but then her face dissolved into a pleased smile. “Do you know why they voted for me? I look like Shirley Temple. That’s where I’ve got you beat. You may be handsome, but you don’t look like any movie star.”

“If those old black-and-white movies hadn’t been playing on TV all day, who would even remember Shirley Temple?”

“That was our campaign strategy!” Benes said with another sweet smile.

“The Democrats are blind.”

Vaughn said, “It’s actually fairly easy to understand. After the war games, the people needed someone more moderate to represent their will.”

Davey frowned in distaste. “And this Barbie doll can represent the will of America? Right now the whole country is consumed by the Antarctic failure. The country is going to slide back into violent games. The crisis facing the republic right now is far more frightening than the Antarctic war, since we could collapse at any moment. At this critical juncture, to put the American children in the hands of this—”

“Mr. Vaughn will find a solution for us,” Benes said with a nod in his direction.

Davey was stunned for a moment, but then nodded thoughtfully. “I get it. Mr. Vaughn is using us as tools to realize his ideas. The country and the world are his stage, and any individual is a puppet whose strings he can pull at will. Yes, that’s what he thinks….” Then he jumped to his feet in exasperation and pulled an object from his pocket: a full-lug snub-nosed revolver, which he leveled at Vaughn. He said, “You’re far too sinister and frightening. I should blast your brains open. I’ve been fed up with that head of yours for a long time.”

Benes yelped and reached for the alarm, but Vaughn stopped her with a gentle wave. “You’re not going to pull the trigger. If you do, you’re not walking out of this old house alive. You’re an exemplary American. In whatever you do, you act according to one iron law: Outputs always need to exceed inputs. That’s your fundamental weakness!”