Fire From The Sky
Thousands of miles from the Earth a ship floated in space. If someone from the planet below happened to see it they wouldn't think it looked like much of ship. They would have expected something like the Millennium Falcon or USS Enterprise. But on this ship there were no engines, no viewports, not even any lights. It was little more than a large black tube with a few hatches and two large docking ports on each side. Someone from the surface might think someone had painted a blimp with black paint and sent it into space. That was not very far from the truth.
The inside of the black ship would have confused most anyone who saw it. The decks and many of the walls of the ship were made of wood and held in place with heavy bolts and screws. Pipes and cables of all sizes ran endlessly through the cabins and corridors of the ship while consoles with dozens of dials and levers clicked and clanked. Copper tubes, brass fittings and riveted support beams completed a picture of an ocean going ship from decades before. Certainly not what people would expect to see on a spaceship.
Deep inside the black ship smelters and foundries labored to convert ice, iron ore and other metals extracted from small asteroids and the occasional comet to usable forms. These asteroids were brought to the black ship by a fleet of small automated transport ships. Material extracted from the asteroids were sent to the ships manufacturing section for further processing to become some of the ship's "products" or were used to repair and improve the black ship itself.
The ship lacked decoration and only on what passed for the bridge of the black ship was the symbol of those who had built the black ship. It was a white star on a blue shield over red and white stripes.
The symbol of the Floating City, Columbia.
Despite the archaic appearance of the black ship, it was equipped with advanced technology that shouldn't exist for many decades, even centuries. This technology had been stolen from a multitude of different alternate realities and then replicated by Fink Manufacturing.
No human being walked the decks of the black ship. Instead the crew consisted of brass and steel automatons built as parodies of men call "servitors". Theses automatons followed the orders of a powerful computer at the heart of the ship. The computer in turn took its commands from its masters in Columbia through quantum communication. The black ship had not been given the dignity of a name, only a few letters and a number to identify it. CSSX-03. CSSX-03 had seven sisters, all arranged about the Earth in a giant circle. Someone who saw the black ships might think they were forming a protective ring about the planet.
They could not have been more wrong.
The black ships were a little over half a mile long and despite the docks, manufacturing facilities, power plants and control systems they was mostly storage space. If someone were to look into the massive holds of the ships all they would see would be hundreds of ominous black spheres ranging in size from 50 to 150 feet and cylinders about 70 feet long and 40 feet wide. Closer examination of these cylinders and spheres would reveal primitive looking, but highly effective rockets attached to them. For years, decades, the black ships labored unceasingly at their tasks of building more and more of these black spheres and cylinders.
Then came the day when the holds of all the black ships were filled to capacity and the foundries grew quiet. Days and then weeks passed as the black ships waited for new commands from their masters.
The men and women of Columbia had not been idle while the black ships had labored in space. All in the city had been working to fulfill the Prophecy given to them decades before by Zachary Hale Comstock. "The seed of the prophet shall sit at the throne, and drown in flame the mountains of man."
The first part of the Prophecy had come true and Elizabeth Comstock had ruled Columbia since the dark day when The Prophet had left the New Eden for the Kingdom of God. Since then, the people of Columbia had labored to repair the damage done by the heretical Vox Populi and to prepare for the coming of the Lord. But the work would take many decades and the Sodom Below could move to frustrate God's Plan.
After the Great War on the surface, aircraft slowly became more common. At first Columbia altered its flight path to avoid the few areas with airfields and the flight paths of airplanes. As the 1920's started, so did the airplane craze in the United States and around the world. Flights by planes became longer and more frequent. Airmail flights became more and more common and soon regular passenger airlines started. Several barnstormers actually stumbled upon Columbia and one crashed into the city itself after flying into the clouds which hid the city. None of those who discovered the city lived to tell of finding it. But the danger to the city grew with each airplane that took to the sky. Another threat to Columbia was the growing interest in astronomy and meteorology. The more that people looked to the sky, the greater chances that someone would see the floating city and reported to the traitorous United States government.
So the decision was made to move the Columbia to a safer location over the Pacific Ocean. Agents for the city and the Fink Manufacturing front companies from the Sodom Below continued to funnel resources to the city and worked towards fulfilling the Prophecy. Very few of these agents knew they worked for Columbia, or what those in the flying city had planned for the world.
As the world entered in the mid 1930's Columbia had been rebuilt and the economic power of its front companies had grown. The Great Depression had devastated the economies of the Sodom Below, but with the warnings given by the Prophet and the Lady, Fink Industries had been able to turn the situation in their favor and the hidden city had influence and even subtle control of many large and important companies all over the world, not just in the United States. As the 1930's progressed, dictators and militarists gained power in Europe and in the Far East. It did not take someone with the powers of the Prophet to see another world war would break out.
Again Columbia moved. This time it was to the southern Pacific Ocean, far from the brewing war. This move had been long planned and preparations had been made. Whole islands had been taken over by Columbia front companies had built harbors for large ships, warehouses and docking platforms for barges from the sky city to take on cargo.
Acquisition of the islands had not been difficult despite some of them being inhabited. Few tramp steamers plied the waters and it was easy to convince them to avoid certain islands and "forget" about those who lived there. The one ship's master, Captain Harold Winston of the SS Southern Star, refused the offer and died when his ship caught fire and sank with all hands. Cut off from outside contact, the island's native populations were taken by force aboard the flying city to work in the bowels of Fink Manufacturing.
The last survivor, a twenty two years old man named Ruru, died just three days short of his tenth "anniversary" of arriving in Columbia.
A few in Columbia suggested opening a dialog with the Third Reich, but the Founders forbade any contact. Columbia would be the one to bring God's Wrath down upon the traitors of the United States and the rest of the world. They had no need of the pagan Germans and their delusional "Fuhrer". The Prophet had already been given a vision of the war in the Sodom Below and Germany and their Oriental allies would not be the victors.
So as the Second World War raged, Columbia floated safely above it all. But even it felt the effects of it. The flow of materials such as steel, copper and tin became a trickle as the world powers gobbled huge quantities to fuel the unceasing demands of wartime industries. This brought Columbia's own armament program to near standstill. While food was still available and rationing was not needed as it was in the Sodom Below, it still became noticeably more expensive and fresh meat became relatively rare.
While Columbia was far from the Pacific warzones, scout planes and ships would sometimes travel close enough to be a threat and were eliminated. Columbia also started capturing ships with materials they wanted and made sure their loss was blamed on one of the warring powers. Before the end of the war thirty eight ships and their crews were taken by the floating city.
The end of the Second World again allowed Columbia access to resources from the surface again and reduced the chances that someone would accidently find the city. But new threats were growing. Radar systems could find Columbia even shrouded in clouds and the atomic weapons used to destroy Berlin and Hiroshima could destroy the city if it was ever discovered. The Prophet had foreseen these threats and had Fink Industries had spent decades working on solutions to counter these them and others yet to arise.
The first of these solutions was a device that projected a field that disrupted the signals used by the radar systems of the Sodom Below. The first of these devices went online July 28th 1948 securing the cities' safety for years to come. More wonders of technology followed. Rockets that could guide themselves to their target, invisible rays that melted metal, the first servitors, light bulbs that would last decades, and many others. Improvements were made in the technology that was already known. Voxophones recording became crystal clear and hundreds of messages could be recorded, Handymen become smaller and suffered less pain while still maintaining their great strength. The Lutece Particle System became smaller and new, more powerful generators replaced older ones.
For all the advances Columbia made in technology, the city itself changed little in appearance. Buildings were still constructed with wood, stone and brick, people wore much the same style of clothes as they had decades before, did the same jobs, sat on the same furniture and became even more hatful towards those of the Sodom Below. In time servitors took over the menial labor in the city and by 1961 the last of the slaves were eliminated as the servitors took over their jobs. Most of the citizens of Columbia never even noticed their passing and the few that did payed no more attention to it than if a rabid dog had been put down.
So years, and then decades past. Columbia built more and more weapons of destruction. War Zeppelins as large as battleship, hundreds of thousands of Motorized Patriots, attack barges, and guns of all shapes and sizes. Finally all the preparation were finished and on the 90th anniversary of the birth of The Seed of the Prophet, the orders went out. Columbia would soon fulfill the prophecy. The protests of an old, regret filled woman fell on deaf ears.
Deep in space, the black ships followed their orders and the massive holds full of black spheres and cylinders were slowly emptied. Agents of the Founders all over the world performed the tasks given to them. The routes of cargo ships were changed, orders to military units lost or "accidentally" altered, the exact location of ships and submarines was handed over, airport personnel and the police ignored reports of UFO's and more.
In the sky over the South Pacific Ocean the city of Columbia started its long trek north and east. Columbia did not make landfall over the United States west coast, but on the west coast of Costa Rica. Quickly leaving the small Central American nation behind, the city headed into to the Caribbean and from there to the Atlantic Ocean. Then it was north towards allocation off the East Coast of the United States. The lands and ships the floating city passed over never knew what was hidden in the clouds above them and the spy satellites in orbit always seemed to be looking at someplace other than where the city was. A larger danger was that an aircraft would find the city and send a radio message, but the Prophet's divine visions proved correct and the five aircraft that stumbled upon Columbia died before they could alert the Sodom Below.
As Columbia reached the chosen location off the coast of United States, the order was sent to the black ships in space. From them the order was relayed to the black spheres and cylinders and the powerful rockets attached to each of them flared to life, pushing them towards the Earth.
With the igniting of the rockets, a few people in the Sodom Below realized something was going on. Astronomers looking at the stars saw faint pinpoints of light in the stars above that had not been there before. Some made telephone calls to colleagues or supervisors while other checked their equipment for some kind of fault. One or two calls were made to government officials, but were met with indifference and even scorn. Not that raising alarm would have made much difference. The rockets accelerated their payloads to over 30,000 miles per hour and the first ones would start hitting the planet's atmosphere less than a half hour after being launched.
Several hundred miles from their destination, the 70 foot long cylinders broke apart revealing their contents, 33 tungsten and metal rods about a foot wide and over 50 feet long. Once released, the rods spread out, each one guided to a specific target by a small automaton built into the core of each rod. As the rods approached the Earth's outer atmosphere they were detected by the long range radar stations of the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union and a few other nations.
On the radar screens first a few objects appeared seemingly from nowhere, a moment later there were hundreds, then thousands. The men and women manning the radar screens were confused and stunned. But it lasted only a split second and then training took over and people started to react. Operators yelled to each other to confirm if what they saw was being seen by others. Officers grabbed phones to inform superiors or contact other stations for more information. Technicians scrambled to check and double check their systems to make sure there wasn't some kind of error.
But it was far too late to do anything.
The first of the objects from space to arrive were the rods, though slowed some by the Earth's atmosphere, they still moved at a speed of over five miles per second. The energy released when they hit a target was greater than the explosive force of 20 tons of TNT.
At Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana a crew of Air Force personnel performed standard maintenance on a Minuteman II ICBM in its silo as the combat crew in the launch control center wait for an order to fire that they hope never comes. At the top of the silo was a massive door made of steel reinforced concrete and designed to protect the missile if a nuclear weapon exploded nearby. Air Force Technicians Bob Linster and Alex Johnson had been telling jokes to each other when a rod hits the silo's armored doors above them and through them. Bob, Alex and the missile they were working on are ripped into very small flaming pieces in an instant.
Inside the control room of the Balkhash Radar Station, Major Kirsanov Yevgenievich saw all the confusion and chaos around him and drew breath to bring order to the situation about him. Before he could speak, the control room was hit by one of the telephone sized rods and he, along with the building, were no more.
Captain William Anders, British Royal Navy glanced back at his command, the HMS Repulse, a ballistic missile submarine as it sits at the dock. They had just returned from a long patrol and he was happy to be back ashore. A light in the sky catches his eye and he starts to look up as a spear of fire lances down to cut the submarine in half.
All over the world the scene is repeated. Spears of fire from the sky hit command and control centers, nuclear missile silos, warships at sea and in harbor, air force bases and storage site for nuclear weapons. If the first attacked missed, a small follow up wave came just a few minutes later to finish the job.
Deep in the ocean the Soviet Union's K-211 Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy ballistic missile submarine continues its patrol totally ignorant of the happenings on the surface. But the rulers of Columbia are not ignorant of the K-211. A small autonomous craft, an outgrowth of the vessels developed to recover ADAM slugs needed for the production of Vigors, soundlessly pulled up beside the Soviet submarine and plants a device on its hull before withdrawing.
Inside the K-211 Seaman Anton Timurovich was in his bunk when an explosion jolted him awake. He jumped from the bunk to the floor as the lights died and red emergency lights flickered on. He was closest to the watertight door and it was his duty to make sure it was sealed. If the compartment flooded, he would save his comrades. As he started dogging the hatch shut, the cold ocean water hit the back of his legs and in moments it was over his head. The K-211 is far from the only submarine or ship to meet a watery grave as Columbia destroyed anything beneath the waves that carries nuclear weapons or is nuclear powered.
Within a space of less than ten minutes most of the nuclear weapons of the Sodom Below had been destroyed and worse was to come. Following the rods were thousands black spheres.
As the spheres entered the upper atmosphere, the black radar absorbent material covering them burned away to reveal a ceramic heatshield. The heatshields protected the spheres from the heat of re-entry so that they would not burn up before reaching the surface.
The smallest spheres, the ones 50 foot in size arrive first. These spheres were set to strike major military bases like Andrews Airforce base, Fort Drum, Ostrov Air Base, Brest Arsenal and nearly a thousand others. Also targeted were sites hardened against nuclear attack such as Cheyenne Mountain and the U.S.S.R.'s hidden Balaklava submarine base. The strikes at these bases were not intended to destroy them as they are designed to resist such attacks. Rather the damaged caused by the sphere's impacts would cut these locations off from the outside world and prevent any remaining nuclear weapons that may be inside from being used against Columbia.
When these spheres hit the ground the result is similar to the detonation of an atomic bomb as an incredible amount of kinetic energy is transferred to the ground or becomes heat. Everything with a hundred yards is instantly vaporized. Buildings, tree, cars, people. All are gone as if they never were and a massive crater over a hundred yards across is gouged out of the ground. A little farther away from the impart anything and everything that even has the remote chance of burning is turned to ash. What little survives the intense heat is ripped apart by the overpressure generated by the impact.
At a greater distance anything that can catch fire, does. Wood on buildings, paint on cars, leaves on trees, the clothing and hair on people. They do not burn long as the overpressure generated by the impact extinguish all the fires and rips apart all but the strongest buildings. Cars are thrown around like toys, trees are flattened or ripped from the ground, the walls and roofs of buildings fly around like leaves on a windy autumn day. The further away from the impact site, the less damage there is. But even a mile away buildings are damaged or collapse, unstoppable fires are started. People die by the millions.
As the smallest spheres are striking the Sodom Below, the larger 100 and 150 foot spheres enter the upper atmosphere. Unlike the smaller spheres these larger ones are not aimed at military bases, instead they were destined for cities. Part way through the spheres journey from space to the ground the heatshields break off. Once the hard rock and iron core of the sphere were exposed, stress from uneven heating and atmospheric resistance started to build.
Marie Calder was playing with her three year old sister outside their home in Ottawa, Canada. She looked up and saw something moving in the sky, leaving a bright trail of fire behind it. It reminded her of one of those comet things she had seen on TV. Maybe mother would know.
"Mère!" she called. It was the last thing she ever said. As she watched the comet thing exploded and filled her world with blinding light and terrible heat.
Like in the Tunguska Event of 1908, the heat and stress of re-entry cause the spheres to detonate like atomic bombs. The force of these explosions is 10, 20 and even 30 times greater than the than then weapons used on Hiroshima and Berlin. The spheres detonating high in the air spreads the damage over a much larger area than if the spheres hit the ground. A single sphere explosion ravages over 100 square miles in an instant. The overpressure shatters concrete, tears homes apart and knocked over skyscrapers. The heat of the explosion ignited fires that engulf the ruined cities in seas of flame.
London, Berlin, Paris, Hong Kong, Delhi, Tokyo, Moscow, Jerusalem, Perth, Karachi, Singapore, Johannesburg, Bagdad, Ottawa, Rio de Janeiro, Abuja, Mexico City, Dublin, Peking, Soul, Istanbul, Cairo, Toronto, Sau Paulo, Jakarta, Manila, Osaka, Rome, Tehran, Barcelona and many, many more have sphere's detonate over them.
In the space of just under 20 minutes over one billion people are killed by the Rain of Fire unleashed by Columbia.
Surviving the Rain of Fire would only the start for most of the world. Transportation and electrical networks had been destroyed meaning most people were without power and had only limited food. Diseases such as cholera and typhus would break out of as sewer systems and other infrastructure broke down. A billion and more will people die from starvation, disease and exposure in the coming months.
Those that survived would be hunted by forces from Columbia. Hundreds of thousands of Motorized Patriots backed by zeppelins would scour the lands killing all they found. The shattered ruminants of the world's armies would try to fight of course, but they would have no chance. Columbian airships ruled the skies and would rain death upon those who defied God's Will. After the Sodom Below had been cleansed, Columbia would begin work on the next great struggle. While their own world had felt God's Wrath, there were a million, million other Earths and it was Columbia's duty to God to make sure Prophet's Visions came true for those worlds as well.
That was the future that the men and women of Columbia was sure to come to pass.
As the sphere rained down on the Sodom Below, Columbia turned off the devices that had kept it hidden for from the Sodom Below. No longer would the floating city hide. As the crew of a cargo ships gaped at the city that had suddenly appeared above them, Columbia launched fleets of airships. The first fleet set course for Washington DC and the other for Philadelphia. Columbia would take back the holy cities of the Founders and cleanse them of all the heretics, traitors and filth. All the other cities of the Traitor States of America were to be personally destroyed by the men and woman of Columbia and the first of these would be the most hated one of all, New York City.
On a balcony overlooking the city an old woman dressed in a blue and white dress looked down at all activity. She knew what would happen, her father had told her and she had seen it herself through Tears. Columbia and its fleets would begin a path of destruction across the United States. Cities would be burned to the ground, towns torn apart, villages wiped from the Earth. Few would survive and they would be those who had proven their belief in Prophet.
She had one last hope left to stop this destruction, to stop the Prophet, to stop it all. And today was the only chance she would have to try. The people of Columbia were distracted, the rulers of the city were busy and some had even left the city to personally direct the assaults on the world below. She had all but forgotten by them. It was her chance to remove the Leash that had been on her neck for so long.
Elizabeth closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Soon, she would be seeing her father for the first time in 70 years.