Blue Bloods

Walker stared in awe at the passing celestial visitor. Most of the world couldn’t see what he saw just now. Most of the world wouldn’t believe it if they could. He wished he had a video camera, but all the work he had done so far was related to patching a section of the space station’s hull until it was reasonably airtight. Scrounging for electronics would come later. If there was a later.

He checked his suit again. Power had gotten low, but power wasn’t a problem. The space station’s solar panels had come through functional, if badly holed. With most of the electronics shut down, they had plenty of power to provide for the few survivors’ suits. Fuel was better than he thought it would be. He’d gotten more efficient at moving about EVA. Then again, he now had hours of continuous suit experience to draw on. Finally, he checked his oxygen. Of that they had a limited supply available. Only one scrubber survived the bombardment. The micrometeorites had holed the green room, and the plants wound up vacuum frozen. Some might still survive, but in the meanwhile they could only start producing oxygen for the survivors if he patched up an airtight section.

That was what he’d come out to do, but it wasn’t what he was doing. He couldn’t take his eyes off the interstellar visitor that even now bombarded the Earth with millions of tiny streaks of light. He had no doubt about the deliberation behind the attacks. The tiny fragments hadn’t fallen from any other part of the thing. Even taking into account that only the heated portion had dropped rocks, ships didn’t drop rocks unless their crew wanted them to drop rocks.

Asteroids didn’t have huge metallic superstructures leaning out from gaping holes in their rocky hulls. Asteroids didn’t keep their obvious artificial parts facing away from the only inhabited planet in the system. Asteroids didn’t accelerate the moment they began their attack run.

And asteroids didn’t drop parasite craft at the beginning and end of their attack run.

***

Safe, if not comfortable, in the back of the water taxi, Grace took in one of the few good sky views in Hong Kong. Every other part of the city had lights nearby obscuring the stars. Here on the bay, there was still quite a lot of light pollution, but she could still see the stars.

Something flickered on the eastern horizon. It tickled her memory. She leaned over to the taxi driver, who stared at the same thing she’d seen. “What’s that, in the sky?”

He looked back at her and laughed, like she was joking with him. When he recognized the honest incomprehension on her face, he shook his head faintly in disbelief. “The asteroid.”

Given a reference, her memory faithfully played back the newscast about the meteor. It was something she’d tell her children about if she ever had any. Brilliant light tracked across the sky at a slow but measurable pace. Given the distances and the size of the thing, it must be moving at an incredible rate. She pulled out her cell phone and began recording.

“What’s that?”

Her cabbie’s voice broke her out of her contemplation of the celestial visitor. Her gaze followed his pointing finger, and she saw something in the sky over the city. Ice clutched at her heart. A rain of fire descended on Hong Kong. When it struck, smoke and fire engulfed the city instantly. The cabbie's deadpan voice shocked her out of her fugue once more.

“Not good.”

Her driver’s understatement pulled a hysterical laugh from her. “You could say that. Hong Kong is burning!”

“Not that. I planned on going to high ground before the wave hit. Now the high ground’s on fire.”

***

Angela ground her teeth in frustration while she waited for Steve to get changed. The building wasn’t on fire, they were certain of that. The sprinklers hadn’t gone off. Half a dozen rooms on the top floor showed high particulate levels, but the only fire alarm that had gone off was the one Angela set off going out the emergency door.

Thinking about the entire episode in the stairwell made her jaw ache. She grit her teeth, grinding them together like the discomfort could somehow erase the sheer stupidity she’d felt. The moment she got a mouthful of that dust, her ability to rationally process information evaporated. Her judgment had become childlike. Her skills, her hard-won medical and scientific knowledge, disappeared, veiled behind a fog of dust as blue and unyielding as steel.

Some part of her had been awake, aware, and angry, but that part had been completely incapable of controlling her actions. The childlike confidence and simplicity of emotion had left with the physical high, but the anger at her loss of control stayed with her. Irrational anger, she knew. Being angry at an asteroid was irrational and stupid.

She had to see what was going on. She sat down at the PC that displayed and controlled the fire prevention system in the hospital. It was connected to the internet, but there the PC had a stunning array of software to prevent her from getting to anything worthwhile. She could get to the site for updating the PC, a couple antivirus sites, and a few reference sites. She pulled up an online encyclopedia, but it had no news. Frustrated, she began power surfing, bringing up article after article on how to identify blocking devices and how to defeat them.

“What’s up?”

Steve’s question startled her. She had just managed to tap into an uncensored news feed. She looked up, her annoyance leaking into her voice.

“Took you long enough.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot. Who died and left you princess of Cranky Land?”

She spun the chair to face him, coming face to abs with a well filled muscle shirt.

“Jeez, Steve. Personal space.”

He stepped back just far enough to stare down at her.

“I was reading over your shoulder, Angie. I’m serious, Angela, you need to turn the rag meter down from eleven. I was, what, five minutes getting changed? Most of that was ‘cause I was looking for something a little less girly than this.”

He took another pace back, so she could see his outfit. Despite herself, she broke into a snorting chuckle. The muscle shirt was obviously one of Jessie’s that she’d cut to half-length to wear over another shirt. It was about three sizes too small and didn’t cover his abs. The bike shorts fit tight, but not too tight for him to move. Fortunately, Steve went to the gym more often than Angie pulled shifts at the hospital. Unfortunately, he would need her walking with him in order to keep people from thinking he was some random Guido who had wandered in from down the shore.

Still, Drew wouldn’t have to take him in for indecent exposure. Maybe.

The news feed finished buffering and started playing. A woman’s voice, familiar yet not quite recognizable, sounded from the computer’s speakers, as the visual displayed a scene like something from a war zone.

“This is Katrina Wells, reporting live from the scene of the multiplex collapse here in Newark, New Jersey. As you can see, the meteorite which hit the building did such a large amount of damage that the building itself collapsed. While some of that damage was caused by the fire which started shortly after the collapse of one theater, witnesses say the falling object ricocheted through the building and destroyed several structural members before the fire even started.”

The camera pulled back to show Katrina, the local human-interest reporter. She wore a battered dress, covered in dust, and imperfectly cleaned. It didn’t matter. Something had changed; in the middle of the disaster, she had come into her own.

“The tragedy of the injured victims is shocking. The source of the damage is frightening. However, what is more amazing than any of that tonight is the reason those victims are injured, not dead. In the middle of the crisis, a young area man stepped into the wreckage just minutes ahead of the fire, pulling trapped victims from the building and carrying them to safety.”

Now the camera revolved around the reporter, bringing a man in a nice but battered shirt and slacks into frame. Over his head he wore a ski mask, but nothing furtive marked his posture.

“The young man wishes to hide his identity, but witnesses report he lifted concrete blocks larger than cars in order to rescue trapped victims of the collapse. Young man, have you always been able to do this?”

The man stepped into the microphone, almost like he’d been on camera before. Whoever he was, Angela realized he was no stranger to looking good on camera. He had a deep voice, perhaps artificially so, and a faint accent that wasn’t from the New York area.

“No, Katrina. I was in the middle of the collapse, thinking I was about to die when a big chunk of rubble fell on me. Next thing I know, I’m holding this big chunk of rubble and there’s a bright blue glow around everything.”

Katrina didn’t miss a beat; Angela almost thought the interview was scripted. That wasn’t impossible, but to come up with a script and coach a novice through it on such short notice was an impressive feat in and of itself.

“What made you start digging through the rubble?”

Even through the ski mask, the disapproving frown in response to her question was clear.

“What else could I do? I knew people were trapped in there, some of them kids. I couldn’t put the fire out, but I could get the people clear of the building.”

“Weren’t you scared of something collapsing on you, or of being trapped by the fire yourself?”

Whoever this guy was, he communicated well using nothing but body language. His emotions came through as well as if his face were uncovered.

“Yeah, yeah, I was, Katrina. But… Sometimes you’ve just got to do what you’ve got to do.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“What do you mean, Katrina?”

“Well, was this an isolated incident? Can you still lift cars? If you can, what do you intend to do with this newfound talent?”

In answer to her question, the masked figure took a few steps to the side. The camera pivoted around Katrina, tracking him smoothly. In the distance, light pollution lit the night sky, but the news van blocked the source of the light. The man crouched down, grabbed the rear bumper of the van, and stood. A blue glow surrounded him, made up of thousands of tiny tendrils of light stretching out to encompass the van. He lifted it smoothly off the ground and held it there, unsupported by anything but his hands.

“I guess I’m going to do what I can to help people out.”

“And we’ll need that help desperately. As you can see,” the camera pivoted again, this time bringing the source of the sky glow into frame. The ruddy glow of a thousand fires wreathed one of the world’s most famous skylines, “after the intense meteorite shower that hit it tonight, New York City is burning.”