Venus

Venus

John Dunn

Published by John Dunn at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 John Dunn

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Chapter 1 - Planet Killer

At first glance, Eros looked like an innocuous grey crescent-shaped rock which appeared to be hanging motionless in the inky-black darkness of outer space. Its apparent immobility was an illusion which is common out there due to the absence of any nearby background reference points which are needed to be able assess an object's speed or size. Casually observed, it was hard to determine that it was moving at all but the apparently stationary rock was actually travelling through space at just over sixty thousand miles per hour and the forward motion of this asteroid was unusual in that it was not tumbling randomly end over end in its travel, as was common amongst its brethren, but was streaking unnaturally straight as a bullet towards its target.

At twenty miles long, eight miles wide and eight miles deep, the asteroid Eros was roughly seven times the size of New York’s Manhattan Island. It was also a natural missile, and it was one that was packed with more potential punch than the total megaton power of the combined American and Russian nuclear arsenals.

Travelling at its current speed it had taken the massive rock one hundred and twenty six days to cover the distance from its starting point within the asteroid belt, located between the planet of Mars and Jupiter, to its new destination.

On closer inspection and looking back towards Eros as it approached, it would have been possible for an imaginary observer to see that its shape was that of a large but irregularly outlined shape which unusually was silver in colour and which in turn was positioned in the middle of a larger perfect circle of six equally spaced and comparatively very small white diamond-shaped objects.

The six small white diamond-shaped objects forming the outline of the larger circle within which the asteroid was travelling were, in reality, the head-on profile of six Leviathan Class Ion-plasma rockets, each over two hundred metres long, forty metres in diameter.

The realisation would then dawn on our imaginary observer that the asteroid was not travelling under its own volition but was in fact being guided and towed towards Venus by the surrounding fleet of rockets.

As large as these rockets were, they were totally dwarfed in a stark comparison of size between them and that of the asteroid.

A couple of miles away on the port side of the fleet, the only Super Leviathan class Starship in existence, the Starship Avalon, was travelling invisibly abreast of it.

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The planet Venus now loomed large in front of Eros and the uniform light yellow-white marbled colour cloud blanket engulfing the planet made it look look cool, harmless and almost inviting.

That was a deadly illusion.

The reality was that the Venusian atmosphere made the planet a hellishly hot and lethally toxic twin sister to that of its benign and nearest neighbour, Earth.

The atmosphere of Venus was fatal to any living organism but that was of no consequence for the asteroid which had no living organisms on, or in it.

Eros reached the outer edge of the planet's atmosphere and then plunged into the dense, forty-five mile thick cloud cover that engulfed it.

The titanium foil heat shield covering the leading face of the asteroid began to glow a dull red as it encountered the first signs of resistance from the outer fringe of the thick sulphuric acid and carbon dioxide mix atmosphere. The thick heat deflection blanket had been positioned there to ensure the intense heat did not break the asteroid up into smaller pieces on the approach run.

It needed to be in one piece when it struck the planet.

Within a few further short moments the leading edge of the heat shield turned from dull to brilliant red and then to white-hot as Eros began carving its way through the thick and fiery Venusian atmosphere.

The blistering heat that had built up on the shield began vaporizing the sulphuric acid droplets ahead of it, burning a clear path ahead of it down which the asteroid travelled.

Plunging ever deeper into the thick clouds that shrouded the planet, it was engulfed by the dense clouds and disappeared.

Though now invisible to human eyes, its white hot tip was still clearly visible to the thermal imaging cameras on the Starship Avalon, along with the long line of hot droplets which traced a white wake behind it.

The asteroid seared through the upper atmospheric mix of sulphuric acid and carbon dioxide clouds and increased its speed to close to seventy thousand miles per hour as it was accelerated by the planet’s ever-stronger gravitational pull.

It pierced through the nine-hundred-miles per-hour Venusian cross-winds completely unhindered due to its sheer size and immense velocity and reached the lowest layer of clouds just above the surface of the planet within four seconds of its entrance into the upper cloud cover.

When it burst through that low-level cloud cover, it was moving at a speed far greater than that of the asteroid reputed to have wiped out most of the life on Earth sixty-five million years previously and it was many times larger.

Streaking through the gap between the clouds and the planet surface, with its trailing plume making it appear to look like a bolt of lightning, it smashed into the ground with a force approximating hundreds of nuclear warheads detonating simultaneously.

It impacted exactly on target at Ground Zero, a point a thousand miles east of the edge of the central continent of Venus known as Ishtar Terra. At that speed, the asteroid did not hesitate when it struck the ground level layer of Venus and its white-hot leading tip sliced its way into the surface mantle of the planet with the same ease that a hot bullet would scorch through soft flesh.

Tunnelling through the surface layer for thousands of feet, it continued downwards, finally exiting through the relatively thin crust and diving into the boiling ocean-wide liquid filled magma chamber below the crust. It carried on its meteoric journey through the magma, heading towards the very heart of the planet, ploughing onwards and downwards for many more miles before it started slowing and eventually came to a juddering, planet-shaking halt when it struck a two-hundred mile thick layer of solid granite beneath the molten liquid as a bullet punching through flesh, blood and soft organs eventually stops when it hits a bone.

And, just as a human torso would react if struck by a bullet, the whole planet lurched backwards perceptibly.

As is often the case when something is struck by a bullet, something died.

What died, in this case, was the slow clockwise rotation of the planet.

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The whole journey time from when the asteroid entered the upper atmosphere to where it had now come to rest had taken just seven seconds. For a further few, seemingly eternal, long moments, which were in reality only a few seconds, after the initial impact an almost unimaginable total stillness and quietness engulfed the whole planet. The stillness was finally gently interrupted with the commencement of the silent slow motion falling of debris that had been blasted miles high in the instant of impact and was now beginning to drift lazily back down towards the surface.

It was as if the whole planet was stunned momentarily and was unable to react to the magnitude of the savage blow it had just been dealt.

Then it did start to react, and it did so in a way that would culminate in a display of unimaginable force and apocalyptic fury.

The silence was gradually replaced by the feint, almost inaudible, sound of distant rumbling that became a distant roar as it slowly and ominously increased in volume.

The sound was that of the magma ocean deep underground which was now rushing into the newly created entry wound tunnel. Millions upon millions of tons of the glowing magma flooded into the tunnel and headed out towards the surface mantle, driven by the intense heat generated high pressure that had built up over aeons.

Shooting upwards at supersonic speed, the incandescent red and gold magma stream blasted out of the upper exit and into the lower atmosphere. Free from the restraints of the tunnel walls, the dazzling magma flame stream expanded outwards as it sped skywards, forming into the shape of a giant ice-cream cone.

The jet-stream hurtled higher and higher in an unstoppable mushroom cloud mix of cooling lava rock droplets and molten magma, pushing a huge area of the toxic planet atmosphere ahead of it and ejecting it out into space like a cork being ejected out of a champagne bottle.

Within a few short minutes it had moved up past the planets atmospheric and gravitational boundaries and blasted into the darkness of outer space, continuing onwards unabated and burning like a giant blowtorch flame, a flame which cut hundreds of miles deep into the black void of space, glowing unbearably brightly against the darkness and sucking thousands of tons more of the toxic atmosphere out behind it in the vacuum created by its wake.

The ground area of the planet for thousands of miles around the strike point began shuddering and vibrating from the effect of the violent strike, reacting as if it were in some sort of colossal spasm.

The vibrations were accompanied by massive earthquakes and aftershocks, one after the other, some of which were significantly greater than others and, as occasional vibration frequencies matched in resonance, the earthquakes and tremors exponentially increased in ferocity to a point where they threatened to tear the whole planet apart with their rage.

But Venus was tougher than that and she held together.

The asteroid strike was a total planet-killer as far as any living organisms were concerned, but that particular fact was irrelevant, as due to the highly toxic nature of the Venusian atmosphere and its totally inhospitable environment, there were no living organisms to wipe out. Venus was every bit as sterile as the asteroid striking it.

Exactly three hours after the first impact, and with the first strike site projectile spewing magma even more fiercely than when it had started, the second asteroid slammed into the planet five hundred miles south of Ground Zero, once again cutting through the mantle crust and down into the magma ocean, creating a second enormous jet stream of magma. A further three hours later the third asteroid struck, this time directly north of the existing two strike points, penetrating the surface and as the other two had previously done and creating a third magma jet stream.

These molten streams relentlessly continued to suck in vast amounts of the surrounding heavy sulphuric acid clouds along with billions of tons of carbon dioxide and transported them upwards at supersonic speeds before hurling them deep into space.

The new holes punched through the clouds also provided enormous vents for the immense heat that had built up over aeons under the greenhouse gas covering of the planet. The temperature on the planet's surface, which had held at four hundred and sixty degrees Centigrade for millions of years, now started to drop. Slowly at first but with a rate that increased pace after each strike.

Floating thousands of feet above the surface of the planet, the lighter, high level, life sustaining, precious air clouds consisting of nitrogen and oxygen now began to sink downwards towards the surface as the denser clouds that use to be below them cooled, thinned and moved out of their way.

Chapter 2 - Laura

The figure crouched between two burnt out limousines on the edge of the graveyard of dumped cars that stretched for many miles along the edge of the wasteland settlement perimeter fencing and extended a mile deep into it. Her dark, dirty clothing and unwashed face and hair helped her blend into the surrounding background of dirt and grime. She was further concealed under a discarded car hood that she had pulled at an angle over herself as cover.

Her camouflage was greatly assisted by the fact that, even though the cooler evening was now approaching, the preceding hot summer day had heated up the metal car bodies so much that the stored heat that emanated from them and the metal hood resting on her back still masked her own body heat signature which made it much more difficult for her human form to be identified by the thermal detection cameras that the helicopter patrols used at night. Ensuring she stayed concealed from the 'Essentials' law enforcement fleet, she kept close watch down the deserted nearside oncoming carriageway, listening intently for the sound of approaching vehicles.

The woman's name was Laura and she was nineteen years old. Her closely cropped hair was caked in a thick layer of mud and dirt that hid its blonde colour effectively while her over-sized baggy clothing hid the shape of her figure, the whole effect making it virtually impossible to detect that she was a female. This disguise was an essential survival necessity, needed to avoid unwanted male attention in the wastelands, for if any of the many marauding gangs of males saw a female alone and unprotected, the chances were that they would rape her there and then, in broad daylight and in public. In the wastelands, no-one interfered in such events.

Though she relied heavily on her convincing disguise and her ability to blend into the background as her first line of defence, the seven-inch slim knife she concealed inside her left sleeve was her ultimate backup if the first line was breached.

Living in the Wastelands among the other Insolvents was a dangerous existence and so Laura had developed a truly lethal skill with that blade as a means to try and increase her odds of survival.

A recent attempt to attack her when her disguise had been uncovered by a member of one of the many local gangs that roamed the wastelands had ended in bloodshed...theirs. As one of the gang members had reached out to grab her, he hardly had a moment to comprehend that, in a lightning instant, her blade had been drawn and swept in an arc and that he was now instinctively clutching his throat in a desperate attempt to stem the blood gushing from the wound she had inflicted. The distraction caused by the resulting fountain of blood had been severe and spectacular enough to allow her to sprint away. She had been chased by two other incensed gang members, but when they were getting too close for her and she realised that she would not be able to outrun them, she had stopped abruptly, wheeled around and, in a flash, gutted her closest pursuer. That had been deterrent enough to halt any further pursuit attempts.

Although they had identified her, the gangs had decided that it was best to leave her alone, maybe because they were afraid, which they were, but equally it was as if they respected her courage and decided that she had earned herself the right to be left alone.

She became known locally as the Blade Lady.

Now though, the gangs were no longer the focus of her attentions.

Her target was the motor cavalcade that had seen passing by on the highway at the same time every day at about Five o'clock for over three weeks now.

She clutched the neck of the Molotov cocktail bottle tightly in her right hand. Even though the rag hanging out of it was tightly stuffed down the neck, the smell of gasoline that emanated from it was still strong.

Gasoline was a very precious commodity in the wastelands and to obtain enough to fill this one bottle she had to trade with the only payment she had, herself, which she had given, this time by choice to the dealer, to obtain the precious liquid. The gasoline dealer and his sidekick used her body for their pleasure. Like many men, they fantasized that they could last for many hours, but in the end they were spent after just twenty minutes or so.

She endured their attentions without comment and with the knowledge that her blade was nearby and she could have dispatched them within a few moments if they reneged on the deal or if they made the fatal mistake of trying to turn violent. They in turn were well enough aware of her reputation to do no such thing.

The gasoline was planned to be used in an act of revenge against the 'Essentials', the elite group of civilians that lived outside the wastelands, for what they had done to her sister Bethany.

Bethany was younger and not as mentally tough as Laura. She could not totally control her girlish vanity and occasionally allowed her blonde hair to trail behind her in a pony tail outside her baseball cap. It was a small, occasional vanity but it was eventually enough to identify her as a young female even though she had hidden her female form under baggy and dirty clothing. Laura had also warned Bethany about the danger many times, but Bethany had just taken to hiding her hair under her cap when Laura was around and dropping it out when she was not. She lived with their parents, who were aware of this habit and repeatedly pleaded with her, warning of the risk that it posed. But it is a rare teenager that listens to a parents advice.

She was a headstrong young woman who needed to show to herself and her world that she would not be totally subjugated by the extreme circumstances in which they existed. Her way of dealing with that was to choose to occasionally ignore those restrictions.

She paid a heavy price for that misjudgement and, after the eventual, predictable if not inevitable, gang rape she went into a state of shock, engulfed in a catatonic trauma from which she had never recovered.

Laura had looked after her as best as she could since then and the gangs had even taken to leaving Bethany alone once word had spread and they had became fully aware that she was now under the direct protection of the Blade Lady.

A local gang, somewhat overly dramatically calling themselves the Kobras and led by a powerfully built young man known as Straker, had even taken to keeping a discreet eye on Bethany when she wandered mindlessly through their turf, making sure she came to no harm and guiding her gently back home at the end of the day if she was still on their patch.

So it was not the gangs that triggered the need for retribution.

Their danger was well known and Bethany's rebellious vanity had blown her cover and attracted their attention.

What followed that was immeasurably worse.

Five days previously, Bethany had disappeared. A frantic search by Laura and the questioning of local Insolvents had revealed that Bethany had been picked by one of the many Essential law enforcement patrols. One