End of Days
By
Angelina
Wayne Manor: December 18, 2012
It was not to the sound of his alarm that he awoke. Rather, it was to the sound of a beeping communicator stashed away in a hidden drawer in his nightstand.
Bruce sat up in bed, rubbing a hand across his eyes and glancing at the clock on the night stand to realize that he had only been asleep for two hours.
With a heavy sigh, he got out of bed. The communicator, still beeping shrilly, was yanked from its hiding place and scanned by now-alert eyes.
Reading its message quickly Bruce tossed it back on his bed for Alfred to take care of later, he was off towards the Batcave without another thought. There had better be a good reason for this.
Alfred wandered into the room not five minutes after Bruce left to find his communicator lying on the bed, a message flashing across its screen: Watchtower, now.
The butler sighed, he hoped the world didn't need saving again.
Watchtower: December 18, 2012
Batman arrived at the Watchtower, in a foul mood from having been woken up early. Almost immediately a blur of speed assaulted him, pestering him with questions, and giving him a very uneeded headache.
"Hey-Bats,-it's-early-isn't-it? Do-you-know-what's-going-on? Dinah-and-Ollie-won't-tell-me. Do-you-think-they'll-have-coffee? I-could-use-some,-not-supposed-to-be-up-at-this-hour. Maybe-donuts-too? I'm-hungry," Flash shot rapid fire at the Dark Knight.
Batman growled with annoyance, "not today, Allen."
"Eesh, someone's cranky."
Flash visible shook when Batman turned on him with a fierce glare. Had it not been for the arrival of Superman, the speedster would have fainted from fear.
"Bruce, why are we here?" Superman addressed the Bat.
"Your guess is as good as mine; I only got the message fifteen minutes ago."
Superman nodded and led Flash away from a very cranky Batman.
One by one, the other primary members of the Justice League arrived and the spacious living room of the Watchtower was soon filled with curious chatter.
Finally, Black Canary and Green Arrow emerged, signaling the gathered heroes to follow them.
Once the assembly had been seated at their large, oval meeting table Black Canary rose from her seat to address them. She pulled up several data streams, flow charts, and satellite images on one of the many presentation screens.
"Early this morning, our monitors picked up a comet rounding the sun on its orbit," she began.
"So?" interrupted Flash.
He was glared into silence by Black Canary, "It's on a collision course for earth."
"Oh," Flash look sufficiently chastened.
Once the realization of the implications of Black Canary's statement sunk in, the meeting room broke out into a cacophony of shouts, questions, exclamations and general disbelief.
Black Canary rubbed her temples as the noise level grew and any of her civil attempts to restore order went unheeded.
Finally, she snapped. Turning her shout to the ceiling, it rose to such a volume that even the specially engineered construct of the ceiling was broken and dust rained down on several heroes. Deathly silence followed, many of the heroes clutching at their ringing ears. "Silence! We do not have time to argue! We have to figure out what we're going to do."
Batman nodded appreciatively at her, his gravelly voice speaking out for the first time since the meeting started, "any suggestions?"
Superman shook his head, but opened his mouth to ask a question nontheless, "How far out is it?"
"Approximately three days until impact," answered Green Arrow with a blanch.
"Why haven't our systems notified us of this before?" asked Batman.
"I looked into that and this comet was flagged by our system months ago, but then it was on a different orbit. It was supposed to miss us by a couple hundred-thousand miles. Sometime in the last few days, it changed orbit."
"That's impossible," said Flash.
"I would generally agree with you, but given our current circumstance I am going to have to disagree," Black Canary's face set into a grim expression.
The shocked heroes sat in silence for several minutes.
"Did the computers make a mistake?" asked Superman after a while.
Batman shook his head, "No, I just triple-checked the math and it's 100% correct."
A sense of fear pervaded the atmosphere in the meeting room. Everyone had trained for this type of end-game scenario, but they had never thought something like this would happen. Silence continued as each hero considered what would happen, what they would do, and who they could save. Finally the silence was broken by a question that weighed heavily on everyone's minds.
"What's our course of action?" asked Hal Jordan his face set into a grim expression.
Black Canary gathered several papers before her before turning to answer Hal. "Right now our best course of action is to launch an offensive strike to try and destroy it before it reaches us."
"We should send out the anti-SSSB missiles. I don't see the necessity of a counterstrike," replied Superman.
Black Canary rubbed her temples as she pointed to data already displayed on one of the many monitors, "We already ran a simulation with the anti-Small Solar System body missiles. It won't work with this type of comet. The core is made of an unknown compound that contains chlorine, helium, and several unidentified radioactive metals and metalloids. Our missiles are hydrogen based, which would cause a catastrophic reaction with the chlorine, multiplied by the radiation within the core. Our best course of action is an offensive strike."
"Offensive strikes take days to put together and execute and that's if everything goes properly. We have three days until this thing hits, if we don't take it out, they'll be nothing we can do to stop it," countered Superman.
More arguing broke out as each member present put forth their ideas. Voices overlapped, idea clashed and contradicted, heroes got into heated arguments with each other when they thought the others plan lacking.
Batman was ultimately the one who ended it, "Silence!"
Everyone in the room stopped talking in an instant, Flash beginning to slump in his seat as he tried to slide underneath the table without Batman noticing him. The vigilante stopped him with a murderous glare. "Arguing amongst ourselves won't solve this problem. We have to agree on a course of action today."
Slowly, the heroes around the table started nodding in agreement, the fight leaving their eyes.
"Good," continued Batman, "now, how sure are we about the timeframe?"
"We used your algorithms for calculating the speed of space objects, we're certain," Black Canary replied, hands on her hips.
"Ok, if we can get a team together for the strike today we can get them in position by tomorrow."
Several heads nodded.
"What if that fails?" asked Superman.
"It won't," Batman replied.
"But what if it does?" Wonder Woman sounded skeptical.
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."
Superman was not convinced, "can't we throw a few nukes at it? Blow the sucker to pieces and let it bounce harmlessly off our atmosphere."
Flash cleared his throat, "I can't tell for certain what would happen, but it's a reasonable probability that sending any type of atomic or hydrogen bomb would result in a catastrophic overload of the core, most likely resulting in an explosion giving off a chlorine byproduct, which would likely destroy the ozone molecules in our atmosphere."
Several astounded looks were thrown Flash's way as he finished his explanation. Most, however, looked at him with blank expressions.
"Say what now?" Green Arrow's voice boomed out in the silence.
Flash sighed, "Nukes make comet go boom and rip a hole in the ozone layer."
Recognition dawned in Green Arrow's eyes.
"To put it crudely," sighed Batman. "Obviously, we can't risk sending out our weapons against it."
"Well then what?"
"We enact protocol Omega 253 and send out a team," replied Batman.
All of the heroes gasped, and started talking at once. Their voices overlapped as they strove to be heard above the noise of each other.
"Omega 253!" Flash's eyes widened.
"We've never used that protocol before!" yelled Hal Jordan.
"Isn't that a bit drastic?" asked Hawkman.
"What if it's a false alarm? There's no reason to alarm the world!" Superman pointed out.
"Silence!" Batman once again commanded complete attention. "If this comet hits, it will be a mass level extinction event. There's no denying that. Even if we do launch an offensive strike, we will not know if we've succeeded for at least two days. By then, it will be too late to enact Omega 253. If we wait to see whether or not we've succeeded, we'll have put the survival of the human race in jeopardy."
"What if we do succeed? We'll have scared the entire world for nothing," Hawkgirl pointed out.
"If we do succeed, then we will get to see how Omega 253 played out," Batman paused, looking each hero into their eyes, "I've been at this a lot longer than any of you and I have learned that you always, always plan for failure. Plan for the worst."
"And hope for the best," Black Canary finished to old idiom.
Batman shook his head, "No, don't hope for the best. Don't set yourself up for failure. If you plan for the worst, then you're ready for it. If you hope for the best, you'll lull yourself into false security and will not be prepared when the worst comes."
"Geez Bats, you're a gloomy one."
Batman glared at the speedster, who immediately shut his mouth.
"So we know what we're doing?" Black Canary asked after several minutes of debate.
"Yes," Batman nodded, "I'll put a team together for the strike. You, Green Arrow, Flash, Martian Manhunter and Aquaman can oversee Omega 253."
"Who shall we inform of this matter?" Aquaman spoke for the first time.
"Tell the heads of countries currently under our alignment, they can decide if they want to tell their people."
Batman nodded, "good, get going then. We have three days."
With that, he stood and swept out of the meeting room, leaving behind a flurry of activity.
Angelina: So how many of you saw that coming?
Arthur: That was cheesy and stereotypical. I mean really, a comet on a collision course for Earth? That is quite absurd and overused.
Angelina: Shut up, Arthur!
I know very little in the way of chemistry or astronomy and half of the stuff I mentioned in this chapter is based off of conjecture, imagination, and brief research. If anyone notices any discrepancies in the science that I used, please PM me and I can change it. Thanks.
And hopefully I haven't turned any of you away from the story; I promise it shall be interesting!
Arthur: Yeah, you promise me that every day, and yet all I get to put up with is your oddities.
Angelina: Exactly! I'm an interesting person.
Arthur: No you are an odd person whose greatest adventure in life is pranking her brothers and climbing mountains.
Angelina: Hey I'm adventurous; I fell out of a tree this week!
Arthur: And you're proud of that?
Angelina: As usual, ignore Arthur. He has a firm grasp on my insecurities.
Next chapter should include some fluff and the chapter after that should have some Robin!torture to look forward to.