December 4th
Tuesday started much like every other day, with embarrassing headlines continuing to dish the dirt on those in power, the psi-race revealing the depths that some regimes and their agencies had been prepared to stoop to in order to stay one step ahead.
Readers appeared to have an endlessly voracious appetite for what the Guardians had discovered, and the tabloids were eager to please. It didn’t take long for newsstands to become emptied of any publication containing the slightest detail of the raids.
TV schedules were also shuffled to accommodate the wholesale public crucifixion, and conspiracy theorists basked in the limelight of a “we were right all along” crusade.
Such was the intensity of people’s focus upon the events of December 1st that other regular media staples were unanimously ignored. In particular, one of society’s favorite topics for conversation: the weather – which everyone knew was becoming ever more severe with each passing year.
It was now accepted that things had been getting warmer, wetter and much more unsettled for a long time, and that meteorological extremes were a part of everyday life. Monsoons, hurricanes, and even earthquakes had become commonplace in lands where they had never been encountered before. Areas blessed with clement seasonal variance were now blighted by summer droughts and wintery excesses. Penetrating freezes were bringing Canada, Northern United states, and Northern Europe to a standstill one moment, while isolated downpours swamped them the next. Folks were keenly aware that when it came to the weather, forecasters couldn’t really predict ahead as accurately as they used to.
The inhabitants of Australia were experiencing their sixth year of flooding on a scale previously unheard of. Their plight didn’t elicit sympathy for long, though, as Bangladesh, Spain, France, and many of the Greek islands also had to contend with similar misfortune. Widespread electrical storms and ferocious gales ravaged the Mediterranean shorelines of southern Europe and northern Africa so severely, that public services were ill prepared to deal with the widespread devastation caused.
Even the United States – with its well-equipped infrastructure – didn’t escape, especially along Tornado Alley where ebullient storms continued to wreak havoc. And for those living in Texas and Oklahoma who had been distracted by the events of December 1st, the weather was about to remind them of how erratic it could be, and how quickly headlines could change.
The day began with a whisper, an exhalation of warmth from the southwest which flowed steadily northward until it was forced to contest with colder currents from just about every other direction. Agitated pressure fronts spawned a number of brisk showers, fleeting visitors that soon gave way to blue skies and soaring temperatures.
Desert roads and heavy traffic baked in unexpected heat, generating thicker clouds and heavier rain. A succession of brief intense squalls followed, only to be pursued equally as quickly by a cavalcade of sunshine and rainbows. The atmosphere thickened, sweaty and cloying like a malevolent broth that made it difficult to breathe.
All the warning signs were there. If only people had looked while there was still time.
An oppressive weight coalesced in the ether, bringing gusts of over sixty miles per hour that seemed more determined to test the fortitude of fences, sheds and garden ornaments than freshen the air.
By midday, when the fifth increasingly violent thunderstorm had passed through the area bordering Oklahoma and Texas, and townsfolk were surveying the damage caused by the blustery outbreaks and marble-sized hail stones, residents were beginning to get worried. The horizon between Fort Worth and Abilene to the south – and as far as Wichita Falls to the north – disappeared into a featureless iron-gray canopy, a shroud that got progressively darker and darker with each passing minute.
Slowly, surely, a gargantuan granite fist materialized from the gloom. Piling higher and higher, it fanned out into an anvil shape heralding the hammer blow it was eager to deliver. The interior of the mass glared brightly, again and again, thermodynamics charging its internal capacitors to full potential.
So concerned did local authorities in northern Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma become, that they initiated an evacuation plan.
However, the advent of the Guardians had caused people to become complacent, and when emergency services arrived to offer guidance, they found that many occupants didn’t feel the need to leave their homes or businesses vacant.
Winds suddenly leapt to over seventy-five miles an hour and those who had remained with their properties rushed to prepare for the inevitable.
*
A former inhabitant of São Joaquim, Brazil, and a graduate of the academy three years previously, Guardian Naomi Cruz had already made a name for herself as someone who could keep her head in a crisis.
Blessed with an uncanny knack to pigeonhole various aspects of her consciousness, Naomi could complete multiple mental and physical exercises simultaneously, a skill that had not only earned her the respect of her tutors and peers, but one that would prove a godsend as the day wore on.
At this moment, Naomi was the primary farscanner – otherwise known as a Panorama Operator – aboard Guardian Observation Station Two, parked in geostationary orbit four hundred miles above the country of her birth, Brazil. The equipment at her disposal, far superior to anything currently in the possession of NASA or the military, served as a backup to her superlative faculties, senses that had been scrutinizing the disquieting conditions spreading like a blight across the southern states of America for the past three hours.
A wide swathe of the undulating blanket beneath her lit up.
“Good God! That strike was over thirty-two thousand degrees Celsius, measuring…” her eyes flicked left and right across her instrument panel, “measuring more than three hundred kilovolts with an energy coefficient in excess of five thousand mega joules.”
The sky fractured again and white-hot branches fried the atmosphere in a strident twenty-one gun salute. “I’d better alert the American Sector Overseer.” she muttered.
Maintaining a careful watch on events, Naomi prepared a concise report of her analysis so far and issued a dual standby warning, one to High Grand Master Samuel Thaleton, the other to Guardian Headquarters.
No sooner had she done so than Naomi wished she’d waited a few more seconds. Several zones along the western edge of the super cell had started to condense rather disquietingly.
Jeez, the gusts are stretching out at well over one hundred knots now and…hell? I’ve got two – no, wait, three – yes, three funnel clouds forming within fifty miles of each other. Naomi used her astral vision to verify her discovery on the auxiliary backup screens located on the far side of the duty deck. Those beasts are really winding in on themselves. If they maintain that rate of convergence, they’ll hit category five statuses without breaking a sweat.
Not one to give in to panic, Naomi downloaded the data from her sensors and took the liberty of crosschecking her findings once more.
Satisfied, she exerted her farseeing talent and examined the western edge of the storm, adjusting several of the long-range monitoring cameras as she went, to ensure they were recording properly.
The periphery now stretched from the edge of Fort Worth, west toward Abilene – nearly a hundred and fifty miles distant – and a similar span northeastward past Wichita Falls. While it was not the custom for the Guardians to provide weather warnings, she felt it prudent to do so on this occasion.
Hailstones measuring more than two inches in diameter had added their sting to the tempest’s tail, battering agricultural properties and sturdy residences into submission, and creating havoc on the roads as pedestrians and drivers alike lost control under a relentless onslaught.
Activating the standby alert, Naomi sent a compressed telepathic burp of information to the Reserve Crews throughout the USA, as well as to the Alpha Response Teams on the station. Then she refocused on the area of concern, as the vortices had now touched down and showed no signs of subsiding.
At the sounding of the klaxon, a mental query arrowed into her mind from the Station Chief, Grand Master Anatt Yasin.
Why weren’t we notified earlier, Naomi?
Up until two minutes ago, there was nothing to tell. Yet another day, yet another set of tantrums thrown by Mother Nature…the usual stuff and nothing their resources can’t handle. Then, in less time it takes to toast up a pop-tart, the winds converged into three EF5 twisters which seem to have nothing to do except get stronger and stronger the more they’re allowed to run.
Three Class Fives, so quickly?
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Yeah, and it doesn’t look like they’re finished yet…hang on.
Naomi augmented her boosted farsight, supplementing station sensors so they were able to zero in even closer. She watched in amazement as the tornadic trio began to dance around each other, writhing and fusing into one vast maw of incredible power. When the behemoth had finished forming; ground zero was a two mile pit of howling fury midway between Burkburnett and Frederick, northwest of Wichita Falls.
As she inspected the raging monster, Naomi simultaneously broadcast her observations to the commander: Ma’am, I’ve linked through to several meteorological stations groundside. Anemometers are confirming sustained wind speeds averaging two hundred and ten knots…? The bilious clouds boiled with a strange lavender and citrine hue. What the…? Anatt, those lightning bolts were powerful enough to create bursts of gamma radiation.
You’re on watch, Naomi, the Grand Master replied, calmly: What are your recommendations?
This is getting freaky; too many people are being hurt. We need to get busy. Naomi triggered the Immediate Response Alarms.
Severing the psychic link, she listened as Commander Yasin commenced issuing orders to the Alpha Team—A-2—who would be first on scene, leaving Naomi herself free to notify the civilian emergency service centers at Wichita Falls, Lawton, and Oklahoma City. As she did so, Naomi employed a separate portion of her mind to advise Guardian High Command, who confirmed they would now take control and oversee the incident, and deploy further resources as appropriate.
Free to make her final assessment before returning to Passive Scan Mode, Naomi was greeted to the sight of a giant swirling central mass more than half a league in circumference at its base. Churning about a torrid epicenter and screaming in excess of three hundred knots, the maelstrom leveled everything in its path, and left nothing but ruin – and a disturbing four-foot deep, two-mile wide trench – in its wake.
Following the line of the trough, Naomi’s heart went cold.
“It’s heading straight for Lawton,” she gasped aloud, “there are over a hundred thousand people living there.
*
Like an obsidian finger of granite positioned to challenge the might of a river in flood, High Grand Master Samuel Thaleton stood before the ranked screens of the North American Operations Center, drinking in the rush of information pouring his way. There was a lot to consider, as the tributaries feeding him were sourced within the multitude of military and civilian organizations tasked to handle the growing emergency, along with those Guardian responders already on the ground working under the oversight of their Silver Commander, Anatt Yasin.
Though his hands rested on the main console, Samuel remained perfectly still. Every so often, dials twisted and switches clicked, operated telekinetically so that Samuel wouldn’t be distracted as he fed data back into the hive-linked, AI central processing unit.
A marvel of innovation, the Avenger Module’s core was capable of completing two hundred and fifty duodecillion computations each second, and consumed the incoming torrent with ease. Calculating manifold probabilities in an instant, it then provided suggestions as to the best course of action to follow – dependent upon the desired outcome – in this case, the preservation of life.
Gazing in morbid fascination at a holographic representation of the bulk of the vaporous charybdis veiling the earth from sight, Samuel was very grateful for its advice.
That bore is over three miles across at its base. Winds now exceed three-hundred and fifty knots. It’s cooked up a bitch of a pressure ridge too, incorporating lethal downbursts and opposing jets at low altitudes, with multiple pulse squalls forming a halo around them. He glanced across to an adjacent readout. Hailstones bigger than golf balls and lightning four times hotter than the surface of the Sun, generating over seven hundred mega joules of power. No wonder we’re seeing gamma flashes. And the acoustic roar produced by so much thunder in proximal succession exceeds…? “Ah crap!” he hissed, “That’s sufficient to cause permanent disability.”
Samuel didn’t like what the projected statistics hinted at, and sent an appeal to polar Observation Stations One and Three, requesting extra manpower for all those rated as Protector and above to assist in speeding up the massed evacuation.
The storm front itself was advancing at over ninety-five miles per hour. Since the multivortex had metamorphosed into a single entity, everything had been driven onto a singular course, and the entire mass was now heading directly toward Lawton. Irrespective of all the townships in-between, Samuel knew he couldn’t afford to let it reach that city, as the Guardians would never relocate everybody in time. As such, he’d determined to hold the beast at bay and neutralize it, in an isolated area between Geronimo and Lawton.
A fresh casualty list illuminated a nearby monitor, demanding his attention. We’ve been lucky. Only a couple of dozen victims with broken bones, fourteen with concussion – all from hailstones, a handful of ruptured eardrums and just two suffering burns from flashover strikes.
The accompanying damage report and incident log from earlier in the day made perplexing reading, as every single property encountered by the tornado had been shredded, and the debris scattered far and wide. Despite the obvious peril, Guardians had been forced to remove an obstinate group of citizens in Denton against their will. For some reason, they had been insistent on staying with – of all things – a barn full of sports equipment and clothing that they were desperately trying to load into five huge trucks before the blender from hell arrived. Several attempted to contact lawyers on their scroll phones and m-pads, threatening all sorts of legal action if their would-be rescuers didn’t accede to their wishes.
Needless to say, prevailing conditions made it impossible for the troublemakers to get a clear signal…as did the Guardian Master leading the contingent.
Judging the situation as far too dangerous to procrastinate further, he rendered the protesters unconscious and simply transported them away en masse. Samuel was glad the officer in charge of that particular phase of the operation had the spine to do what was right, for had he not acted when he did, there was little doubt all of those people would have died.
Now, as Samuel stood ready to face the most devastating storm ever witnessed, there was no doubt in his mind the Guardians would be further hampered in their efforts by the small number of news crews speeding their way to the scene, wrongly assuming that the mere presence of the world’s saviors would automatically guarantee their safety.
“Strange the way some people think!” He mused, fighting down a sudden urge to strangle anyone carrying a microphone.
*
Paris—France
Luigi couldn’t believe his luck.
For a man permanently battling with a short temper, he’d done well, patiently waiting for all the pieces of his initial idea to fall into place and gel together. But at last, the day of the missile tests had arrived, and he – Luigi Alfonso Espasito – would stamp his mark on the world of crime, proving to the Council once and for all that, actions were so much more satisfactory than words.
And how emblazoned those actions would be, for Luigi had chosen the rockets themselves to provide the pyritic catalyst that would expose the Guardian Angels as the interfering frauds they were.
The guidance chips for five of the B91-11s had been doctored and replaced only three days previously, giving Luigi the luxury of choosing his targets wisely. Having followed the developments of December 1st – and the further exploits of the Guardians since then – he had determined that today would be the perfect time to remind a still fawning global audience of a bitter truth: your newfound friends aren’t as omnipotent as everybody thinks they are.
After all, he reasoned, they can’t be everywhere at once.
Luigi realized he’d only get one chance to make a statement without getting caught, and as such, had laid firm foundations to his strategy by arranging for the ultimate distraction at the U.S Military Waste Isolation Plant, in Carlsbad, New Mexico.
Six hours ago, two employees – eager to pay off longstanding debts to Luigi’s family – had caused a straightforward power outage to crash the complex’s main grid. They also added a short-term computer virus to the mix that not only triggered a catastrophic memory failure, but a corresponding energy drain that took all the backups and subroutines with it.
During the ensuing panic, a few buttons were pressed elsewhere which allowed one of the dupes to download a self-effacing Trojan into the master CPU’s core. This particular piece of malware was rather malicious in that it subverted the sensors monitoring the cooling and ventilation system.
The attack was a stroke of genius in that it only lasted thirty seconds before allowing everything to reboot. Feeling safe from a false sense of security, technicians were dispatched throughout the facility under armed guard to begin a series of diagnostic checks.
Little did they suspect that their instruments couldn’t be trusted.
Despite evidence to the contrary, Luigi knew that the radioactive materials kept in storage were now dissociating within unvented containers. Things would be getting hot – very hot, and it wouldn’t be long until the point of no return was broached and certain redundant fail-safe’s kicked in. Then automatic alarms would sound, lockdowns would be initiated, and the flower of “trouble brewing” would blossom, luring his unsuspecting bees to the pot of ruination.
But the lid wouldn’t slam shut immediately. Oh no, for the moment any Guardians arrived at Carlsbad, the second phase of Luigi’s plan would be instituted, thirteen hundred miles away in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
There, a non-lethal gas would render those scientists and military top brass who had come to watch the Land Busters in action, unconscious for over thirty minutes, thereby preventing them from interfering in any way with what was about to happen. For once incapacitated, certain signals would be sent to commandeer the missiles midflight and redirect them on toward new coordinates. One way or another, Luigi would ensure the old year went out with a bang – or, if you were being pernickety, five of them.
For Luigi, the most satisfying aspect to this part of his plot was the fact that the U.S. Military – always paranoid about secrecy – had not released details of either the routes over which the missiles would be flown, or their range. Nor had they hinted at the estimated flight times.
Delightful!
Pre-occupied as he was with the imminent execution of his designs, Luigi had been unaware of the extent of the superstorm tearing its way through Texas and Oklahoma.
Not ten minutes had passed since the call from one of his cousins in the USA – informing him of the loss of over five million dollars worth of counterfeit sports goods and branded clothing from a barn just outside Denton – a call that had resulted in him tuning in via several of the many satellite channels he had in his office to see for himself.
Evidently, the goods had been en route to the USA from Mexico and placed in storage for a few days until onward transportation could be arranged. Then the squall had hit, resulting in the forced evacuation of his operatives by the Guardians who had simply scooped them up with some kind of beam, before the merchandise could be recovered.
The subsequent arrival of the monster tornado had resulted in the loss of all items with no hope of recovery, and once again Luigi was faced with the prospect of having to fall through on his promises...though this dark cloud did have a silver lining, for Luigi’s frustration quickly passed when the TV screens in his office started flicking from the atrocious weather in Texas, to the emerging situation in Carlsbad, New Mexico.
It must be going critical? He thought, a golden opportunity not to be missed.
As more and more news teams rushed to bag a scoop, Luigi spent a few minutes analyzing how many Guardians appeared to be on scene in Texas and its neighboring state. They’re heavily committed, and with good reason. I won’t get a chance like this again. Today must my lucky day after all!
Removing an untraceable and modified scroll phone from his desk, he began entering the encrypted codes that would ensure December 4th would eclipse the wonderful events that had so united the world only a few days before.