"Harry, this not funny!" Faith Stamper heard her sister, Grace, yell. Whatever was going on, it was not good. Letting out a breath, Faith hopped over the railing in search of her little sister and their dad.
Living and working on an oil rig meant that everyone lived in close quarters for a month at a time. Most of the time, they all got along like one big, dysfunctional family but, sometimes, people clashed. Usually, it wasn't a big deal, however, her father marching through the rig with a shotgun meant someone was in a hell of a lot of trouble.
"So, is this a serious thing?" Chick, her dad's best friend, asked as Faith jumped onto the deck behind them.
Harry looked at the man next to him without so much as slowing down. "Pretty serious."
"Oh, for fuck's sake, Harry," she said as soon as she realized just who he was chasing. "She's nineteen. She knows what she's doing."
Her dad stopped to look at her. "What is with you two not calling me dad like normal people?"
"Normal? Since when the hell are we normal?" Faith asked, putting her hands on her hips. "Girls Grace's age are usually in college, not managing operations for an oil company. I hate to break it to you but we aren't kids anymore. And you're like six months late on the whole A.J. thing."
Faith knew something like this was coming the second she found out about her sister's relationship with the rig's resident hothead. She promised not to tell on the pair but warned Grace that Harry was gonna flip his shit if they didn't let him know. A.J. was more like Harry than either man cared to acknowledge, which was both good and bad depending on which side of the argument you were on. Though, to be honest, that was probably why Grace connected with A.J. in the first place.
"You knew?" her father asked, his sky-blue eyes locking with her hazel. "You knew about this?"
"Of course, I knew. She's my baby sister and, unlike you, I actually pay attention to what happens around here. It's my company too, you know." She pulled the shotgun from his grasp and heard Chick let out the breath he was holding. "You can't go shooting up the rig, I put too much work into keeping everything functional and I'd have to hurt you if you did some damage. Now, if you want to know what's going on go talk to them. They love each other, it's annoying cute."
Her dad huffed but before he could say anything, Grace pushed past them to A.J.. Faith didn't say anything as her sister wrapped her arms around A.J.'s middle, Harry glaring at them the whole time. The engineer rolled her eyes and looked at the man next to her.
"How the hell did I end up being the adult around here?"
"Well, you are smarter than him." Chick shrugged. She gave him a nudge and shook her head, he did have a point.
"I can hear you," Harry said without looking at them.
"And your point?" she asked with a smile. "You put as much focus on them as you do me and Chick, you'd be golden."
"He's just being a dad, monkey."
"He's a few years too late," Faith told her adoptive uncle. "We grew up right under his nose."
Chick wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "Yea, but at least he's trying. We should all be so lucky."
Between their work schedules and crazy hours when they weren't on the rig, most of their personal lives were messy. Faith was perpetually single. She doesn't remember the last time Harry had a conversation with someone that wasn't related to the company in some way. Chick hasn't seen his son in almost a year.
"You and Denise will sort it out. Hopefully, before Tommy turns forty?"
He chuckled. "Yeah, here's hoping."
"Hey, we got incoming!" Rockhound yelled, alerting them to the helicopter that was preparing to touch down on the pad.
"Chick, go welcome the clients. Gracie and Frost, go get dressed. Dad, office and don't hurt anyone. We have a lot of work to do." They all looked at her. "Move." Faith watched as they all scurried off in different directions. "I'm too old for this shit."
When she was twelve and Grace was five, their mother split. Harry, short on options and way past overprotective, took the girls to work with him. That meant that Faith ended up with the task of taking care of her sister. Most of the time, she felt like the girl's mother, their seven-year age difference notwithstanding. Somehow, she ended up being the voice of reason for Harry and most of the crew too.
It was silly, thinking about it now, how she traded her 'wisdom' for information about the rig's different systems. The more she helped, the more she learned and the more she learned, the more she wanted to do the job herself. Harry was proud -and surprised- when she decided to get a degree in engineering.
Between working through spring and summer breaks and applying to take stacked courses, she got her Masters of Science in Mechanical Engineering in four and a half years from Texas A&M. The hard part was actually getting Harry to let her come back to the rig. He wanted her to go off and do 'something great' but she wanted to do what she loved. She had to threaten to work for another oil company before he relented and gave her a job on the crew.
"Was Harry really shooting at A.J.?" Freddy asked as soon as she rounded the corner outside her office.
"Yep," she said with a nod, placing the weapon on her desk. "He found out about Grace and A.J."
"And that's why you two lovely ladies are strictly 'look but don't touch' in my book," he said with a chuckle. "You're my friend, you're hot as sin and I love you to death but getting my balls shot off by your dad is not on my to-do list."
"Too bad nobody dropped that bit of advice on A.J.," Faith said.
Some of the guys on the rig were too dumb for their own good. Both Stamper girls learned a long time ago not to get too close to the guys like that. Faith can honestly say that she's never been with anyone on the crew but that didn't stop some from trying. As Freddy likes to remind her, they are both attractive. Grace had beautiful pale skin, a slender build, long black hair and their father's blue eyes. Faith had a slight tan from being in the sun, her body was toned from working on the rig, like her sister she had long black hair but she got their mother's hazel eyes.
"He's stubborn. Even if I did say something, he wouldn't have listened. You know A.J." Her best friend had a very valid point. AJ has worked for Stamper Oil for five years and his dad worked for Harry for a decade and a half before that. She knew he'd ignore it if they warned him.
"What I know is that none of this is gonna end well." No sooner had she said the words did she feel a tremor under her feet. She looked out the window and saw some of the guys sprinting towards the number two drill. "Shit."
"Harry, get up here. We're taking a hit." She heard Alex call to her father just as Faith and Freddy flew up the ladder to help.
"GET AJ UP HERE!" Harry yelled.
Harry was pissed. If she had to guess, someone -probably A.J.- turned on the number two pump after her dad turned it off last night. Faith started reading the instruments in front of her. The gauge was losing it.
"DAD! ITS A GAS POCKET," she yelled. He nodded.
"I told you! I told you! Am I a genius or what?" A.J. seemed pleased with himself, too bad he royally fucked up.
"I shut it down for a reason, jackass. The relief valve is fried open," she heard her father say.
"SHUT DOWN NUMBER TWO!" Bear yelled up to them.
Faith looked over to where her sister was, a group of investors with her. "GRACIE, GET THE CLIENTS CLEAR!"
Faith was helping Bear and some of the guys clamp down the pipe when Harry told them all to bail out. Faith didn't need to be told twice. She pushed whoever was in front of her towards safety.
"GO! GO!" she ordered. Glancing back, Faith watched saw her dad and A.J. as they manually shut the system off. Looking around, everyone seemed to be okay. Covered in oil but okay.
"We stuck oil BABY!" She laughed at Bear's antics but she was worried. From the look on his face, AJ's bad day just got a whole lot worse.
"You fired him?" she asked her dad.
Harry nodded as he walked past her, "I had to."
She could admit it hurt; she's known A.J. forever and he was one of the best guys on the crew. Sure, he didn't listen but he had more potential than anyone on the rig except for her. Honestly, the only reason she had a better chance than him is because she didn't make a habit of pissing her dad off.
"Harry Stamper?" someone called. How they missed the military helicopter landing on the pad, she'll never know. A man, who was clearly in charge, and some pilot-looking guys stepped up to the group of oil-covered roughnecks.
"I'm Harry Stamper." She watched her dad talk to the Air Force officers.
"What do you think that's about?" Benny asked over her shoulder. She honestly had no idea. Whatever they were talking about, Harry was leaving with them. One of the officers approached her and another walked over to Grace.
"Ma'am." She looked over the guy's shoulder and Harry gave her a nod. Faith tossed her hardhat to Freddy and let the officer lead her to the chopper.
"What's going on?" Grace asked before Faith could.
Harry shrugged at the question. "I don't actually know, girls."
After being asked to turn over their phones –which were covered in oil- they were strapped in and the helicopter took off. The engineer didn't like this.
"If you don't mind my asking, where are we going?" The General gave Grace a look but didn't answer her question.
Faith doesn't know how long they were in the air before the helicopter landed on a US Navy ship, a carrier from the size of it. They were given clean clothes and a place to shower before they were loaded onto a plane and flown to Hawaii. From the Air Force base, they took another plane to Texas.
"What the hell are we doing here?" Harry asked to no one in particular. It's not like they ever answered them. Once they landed, they were put in SUVs with FBI agents and driven to the Johnson Space Center.
"Nothing good ever comes out of being called to NASA," Faith whispered to her dad.
"Mister Stamper, Miss Stamper and Miss Stamper," a man standing on the front step confirmed.
Her father nodded and shook hands with the man. "Yea, I'm Harry Stamper. My daughters; Faith and Grace."
The man shook her hand and then Grace's. "I'm Executive Director Dan Truman and on behalf of the President, I would like to…"
"Apologize. I don't know if we can take much more of that. We've spent the last eighteen and a half hours being apologized to. If it's alright with you, just tell us why we're here."
"Maybe we should talk alone." Truman glanced at her and Grace before looking at Harry.
Harry shook his head, "I don't keep things from my girls. You can tell 'em now or I'll tell 'em later but they'll find out either way. Let's get on with it."
Truman and another Air Force General named Kimsey led them through the building and into a briefing room. Everyone except Truman stood by the wall as he told the Stamper family to take a seat. He hit some commands on the screen and a big blob appeared.
"This is Dottie. It's an asteroid that's heading this way."
Faith sat up straight a looked at the pictures; the thing was massive. Harry sucked in a breath as Truman began to explain.
"When the rogue comet went through the asteroid belt, it sent shrapnel right for us. For the next fifteen days, the Earth is in a shooting gallery. Even if the asteroid itself hits the water, it's still hitting land. It will slam into the ocean bedrock. Now if it's a Pacific Ocean impact, which we think it will be, it will create a tidal wave about three miles high, flash boil millions of gallons of sea water. It will hit the West Coast and wash up in Denver. Japan is gone, Australia is wiped out. Half of the Earth's population will be incinerated by the heat blast, the rest will freeze to death in a nuclear winter."
"That's unbelievable," she heard her sister whisper.
"Actually, this is as real as it gets," Truman said to the youngest person in the room. "It's coming, right now. Right for us at twenty-two thousand miles an hour and none of us can hide from it."
"I'm goin' out on a limb that you aren't telling everyone like this." Harry looked at Truman.
The executive director nodded. "Nobody knows and that's how we'll keep it."
"What about the meteor shower a few days ago?" Faith asked him. She heard the news while they were on the ship.
"Right now it's an isolated incident," Truman told them.
Faith understood that. "Anything more would cause a panic."
"There are only nine telescopes that can see it, eight of them are ours," Truman said. "The president has classified this information as Top Secret."
Truman explained the kind of worldwide break down they would have if everyone knew that the world was gonna end in a little over seventeen days.
"There are six billion people on this planet, why did you call me?" her father asked.
"Because, you're the best." Truman looked at Harry, then her and Grace. "Come on, there's something I wanna show you."
Grace grabbed her hand as they all filed out of the room and walked through the building. Looking around, Faith took a millisecond to geek out because, despite the circumstances, she is a mechanical engineer who was walking through NASA. It was like being a little kid in a candy store.
"We need you to prep the team we're sending up."
Harry looked at Truman, "Up?"
"They'll go up, drill, drop the nukes, leave, then detonate," Truman said, motioning to a group on the far side of the room.
"Is that…?" Grace asked, tugging on Faith's hand. She nodded at her sister's question as she too in the sight before her. It was her rig. Faith and Harry designed it a few years ago. It started as project when they weren't working and grew from there.
"This is the prototype we've been working on for Mars, you might recognize the design," Doctor Quincy said.
"We should, it's ours. What did you do, steal a key to the patent's office?" Harry asked the scientist.
"Basically," Truman told them.
Faith couldn't hold her tongue. "Are you shittin' me?" Everyone looked at her. "We got pulled off our rig and dragged halfway around the world because you stole our design and fucked it up?"
"Patents don't apply to outer space…" Quincy started."
"Shut up, doc. It's not going to Mars anymore, it's gonna try to save this planet and we need to know what's wrong with it pretty quick," Truman said, "You said we did a bad job of putting it together…"
Harry cut the man off, "No, she said you 'fucked it up.' For starters, you guys have the flow system all reversed."
Faith looked at Quincy. "Been tearing up rotors and you have no idea why?"
"Yeah, actually," the man said with a nod.
"Cams are all wrong, doc." There were actually a few things wrong. Fixable but still wrong.
"Who's been operating this thing?" her father asked Truman. "Them?" Harry looked at the group that Truman motioned to when they first walked into the room. Faith rolled her eyes at the Boy Scouts.
"They've been training for eight months," Quincy told them.
Faith let out a laugh. "On a drill that doesn't work. That they couldn't fix. I hate to be the devil's advocate but they just wasted eight months."
Harry nodded before he and Truman walked away from the group of NASA and Air Force personnel. Faith watched the two men and she just knew.
"What do you think?" Grace asked as they watched the two men.
"He's gonna do it," Faith muttered. "He's gonna do it."
Quincy looked at them. "How do you know?"
"We know our dad."
After a few minutes of talking, and some yelling on Harry's side, he and Truman came back. The look in both of their eyes told a story. Harry's were full of determination and Truman's were full of relief.
"So," Faith said, "when do we start?"
Harry chuckled. "About an hour ago."