Chapter 5: World Shaking Events

When we sat down for dinner, Meili was at her usual place under the table with my cock in her mouth. I swear, ever since she turned fourteen she was utterly insatiable. Every meal, she sucked off either Steve or me, claiming it made her food taste better. We had long ago given up saying no to her, as it was pretty much impossible to change her mind. Truth to tell, she was so good at it, neither of us really wanted to say no. Steve had long ago lifted the prohibition against sexual activity in the children's presence, but still expected us to be discreet.

Meredith's youngest two, Naomi and Jason, were squabbling as usual, but Xifeng was able to handle them even though she only had one hand free. The other hand held her newborn infant to her breast. I had to admit, I was a little jealous. Steve had arbitrarily decided we would have his children in the same order he chose us, making me last. Since I was both genders, the AI exempted me from the requirement to be pregnant within six months of being chosen, especially since it wanted to make sure of the changes to my plumbing and the balancing of my hormones. It had finally cleared me, but not until after Steve had left for the bi-monthly training exercise. Even though several of the Confederacy races had multi-gender individuals, multi-gender humans -- or me at least -- seemed to throw the AI's off, and I got the feeling they were making up policies for me on the fly.

To minimize overlapping morning sickness and to spread out the infant's ages a bit, combined with the difficulties of setting up a brand new colony on a marginally habitable world, he spread out the pregnancies as much as allowed. In the first month, he got Xifeng pregnant, two months later Meredith and Chital got pregnant and finally six months after we got picked, Moira and Tina got knocked up. Nine long months have passed since we were chosen, eight months since we arrived at our new home and it's finally my turn! As soon as I was pregnant, Steve would work on getting Meili pregnant, since she had turned 14 a few months ago. She scored a 5.8 on her first CAP test and Steve gladly chose to keep her in his harem.

'I can't wait until Steve gets back from the live-fire anti-Sa'arm exercises next week, ' I thought with mounting arousal, 'he will be all mine, or I will be all his. Either way, I will finally get pregnant! Yay!' It was not so much me looking forward to being a mother, more like I would finally be able to give Steve the same gift all the others had. Of course, the fact that I also had the next cycles of impregnations while I was pregnant would make things very interesting.

My musings about having male-to-female sex while working around my baby bump were abruptly interrupted by the pod's sudden heaving. Plates and cups were crashing to the floor, spraying our dinner all over the place. The furniture was dancing around and the chairs toppled over. The children were getting hysterical as the intense earthquake continued. I quickly knelt down and gathered a double-armful of children to protect and comfort them. It was instinctive, I didn't even think about it. I could barely keep my balance kneeling down as the shaking got steadily more intense. The AI activated emergency force fields around us to protect us from flying furniture and from any possible rockslides or ground faulting that might drop the pod into a crevasse. I think it also activated some kind of dampeners since the shaking stopped getting any worse and actually decreased slightly, although it was still intense. The severe shaking went on for more than a few minutes and the ground made the most terrifying grinding booming sounds.

When it finally ended, I asked, "Is everyone ok? Was anyone hurt?"

"Moddy Char, what happened, why did everything fall down?" Naomi asked, crying and looking terrified.

"That was an earthquake honey, they were pretty common in some areas back on Earth, but this is the first I know of on this planet. It's ok, I think the worst is over," I reassured her, giving her and Jason a quick hug, hoping there would not be any major aftershocks.

Thankfully, other than some minor bumps and bruises, no one was seriously harmed. Luckily, Xifeng had been able to keep hold of, and shield, her baby so he was unharmed. The place was a total mess and would take forever to clean it up.

After looking at the mess and sighing, I asked the AI, "What was that? How bad is the damage to the colony? I thought this area was safe."

After a long pause, the AI responded, "This colony was established in the center of a tectonic plate with no detected faults. The earthquake we just experienced was not related to plate tectonics."

"Well it happened, what the hell caused it?" Meredith asked. Steve always put her in charge while he was gone, but she chafed at the role a little. Privately, I think she was tired of having responsibilities and just wanted to relax and let someone else lead. To the best of my knowledge though, she had never mentioned that to Steve.

We were so used to the AI's having so much more information than us that we simply expected them to answer any question we asked. This time, the AI's answer chilled me to the core. Its simple response was, "Origin unknown."

After a stunned pause, Meredith said, "Ok, please contact Steve for me, I need to let him know what happened."

Several seconds ticked by while we waited before the AI responded, "Satellite communication relay unavailable."

"Oh my God," I whispered, terror pulling my skin tight, unable to come up with any course of action.

"There has been some extensive damage to the colony. Until the source of the seismic activity and communications disruption is determined, it is recommended that everyone gather in the community center."

Taking a deep breath, I gave reassuring hugs to the frightened children I was holding, trying to pretend I wasn't terrified as well. I could tell by the wide eyes of all the other adults that I wasn't the only one faking calm. I was so proud of them though, not a hint of their fear manifested in their voices or actions as they calmed the children down.

"I think we better do what it suggests," Chital said.

That rather diffident comment was enough to get us moving. When Meredith hesitated, I asked Tina and Moira to watch the kids and Chital to use the replicator to produce several large baskets full of non-perishable food that could last us for several days.

"Just to be on the safe side, in case we want to have picnic lunches for a few days," I reassured them when they started looking panicky again.

The rest of us started packing bags for everyone, including a very overstuffed diaper bag and some toys. Deciding to do things the easy way, Xifeng and Moira loaded everything onto their motorized workbenches so we would not have to carry all the food, toys and gear. About half an hour later, we headed to the community center after trying to raise Steve one more time. As soon as we stepped out of the pod, we crashed to a halt in stunned amazement. The long flat plain that extended to the horizon to the west was gone! Instead, starting maybe twenty or thirty miles away, was a bunch of new, raw-looking mountains. The stone had been smashed up through the ground causing huge cracks to radiate in all directions, including right through the colony. For a few minutes we were rooted in place by the spectacle before us. We could still see the billowing dust clouds being dispersed by the wind and small avalanches as the new mountains settled into place. Many of the pods in the colony had been moved by the strong earthquake and a few even tossed on their sides. Finally, we tore our eyes away and hurried to the community center, unconsciously cringing away from the unbelievable upheavals nearby. We had to detour around several large cracks, so the trip that usually only took a minute or two lasted more than ten minutes.

We were among the last stragglers to arrive. We were greeted by a sea of hopeful but scared faces. It hurt almost more than I could bear to have no news for them and to see the hope fade from their eyes even though it was not our fault we had nothing to report. I realized in that brief instant, that I liked seeing all those faces turned to me filled with hope, and I would do whatever I could to make the hope reappear.

There was definite comfort in numbers and the children were quickly segregated into play rooms by age group, with volunteers watching them. The rest of us gathered together in the huge main room to grill the AI for more information and to comfort each other. Since there were quite a few people who were injured, Xifeng quickly joined the medical team helping to treat the injured and setting up a triage area. The colony only had five medical pods and the most severely injured were put in them.

As I sat there listening to the cries of pain and the whimpers of the more timid, I could not help but remember the disaster stories my mother told me. Of course, Meili was not helping since she was busy recounting stories of the disastrous earthquake and tsunami in Japan she had heard from people who had been old enough to remember it. Her mother had just moved to Japan after years of red tape when it happened. She had been too young to remember much, but did remember other, smaller earthquakes she'd experienced when she got older. Of course, she had to add, none of those earthquakes had caused a mountain range to appear. Since the stories were starting to make me paranoid, I asked the rest of my pod-mates if they would mind splitting up and using all the replicators in the building to start making non-perishable food. We had plenty of fresh water in the reservoir tanks luckily, but food was a problem. Our only source of fresh food was the super-fast growing bamboo we had planted by the waterway next to the colony. The intensity of the sun and the richness of the soil and air made the stuff grow like crazy, so we had a harvesting detail cut it down daily to put in the replicators as a raw material to make food. Of course, that rich air was the source of some misery for us, but the plants thrived in the high CO2 atmosphere.

I was certainly not psychic, but I had an extremely strong and pessimistic feeling of doom clinging to me. I was certain the other -- or maybe the third -- shoe would drop at any minute. My fears were confirmed a few hours later when the AI dropped another bomb on us.

"Analysis of all available data reveals no evidence of tectonic activity. However, it has been determined that the sun is over a minute out of position from where is should be at this time and is 1/20^th of a degree offset. Also taken into account were the up thrusted mountains observed to the west of the colony. The conclusion is that no recorded single tectonic seismic action has ever shifted a planetary body this size by the amount indicated by the orbital period and axis tilt changes observed, nor have earthquakes produced mountain ranges. Therefore, the most likely event to cause the observed changes is an impact with a large celestial object like an asteroid or comet impacting the opposite side of the planet."

The stunned silence was only broken by the happy laughter of the innocent, unsuspecting children in the playrooms. Someone spoke up in a choked voice, "You mean like the one that killed off the dinosaurs?" More than a few people gasped in shock and fear. The AI's response was anything but reassuring.

"That reference is unknown to me," the AI said, "but an impact that resulted in the observed changes will have a negative global impact."

"What the hell does that mean?" someone shouted.

We sat in horrified silence as the AI detailed the cataclysmic events that were in our future. It would start with the blast wave from the impact that would reach us in an hour or two, depending on the exact size of the object and location of the impact. Winds in excess of 3,000 mph were circling the world and would soon scour across the colony along with a sonic shockwave that would be loud enough to be deafening. That would be followed by the sky darkening as the ejecta from the impact circled the globe, blocking out the sunlight. There would also be a period of intense meteor bombardment as the larger pieces thrown up out of the atmosphere completed their ballistic trajectories and fell back to the planet's surface, igniting fires in any areas where vegetation had been planted. Then the airborne debris would start to settle, burying much of the planet in layers of dust and ash hundreds of feet thick in places. This would also raise the acidity of the rainfall and in the oceans, rendering them incapable of sustaining any of the life forms we imported. The killing off of all oxygen producing organisms would cause the already near toxic levels of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to steadily increase. Between that poisoning us and the inhaled ash hardening in our lungs, within a few weeks we would be unable to survive on the surface without protective gear we did not have. The dust shroud would also cause the planet to cool by an unknown amount, possibly to a point of triggering an ice age. The wildly turbulent atmosphere would make air travel impossible for years to come. There was also the chance of lava flooding the colony from the antipode faulting where the new mountains were formed. It sounded like all the worst parts of a nuclear winter, without any of the good parts, only substituting acidic rain for radiation.

In short, the colony was fucked. In fact, the entire planet was doomed to become uninhabitable until a radical planetary terraforming project was put in place. The Civil Service Decurion immediately recorded a quick message and ordered the AI to send message drones to all the nearest colonies detailing what happened and requesting planetary evacuation. Just when I did not think I could get any more scared, the impact of his order set in.

"Planetary evacuation?" I was so scared I could only think how much I wished Steve was here to hold me. Suddenly the true horror dawned on me and I screamed in anguish. All eyes turned to me in shock as I wailed. Finally I choked out, "our sponsors!"

Many people started realizing the truth at that moment, but the damn AI had to confirm it aloud. "Our analysis indicates that the training exercises were almost definitely being conducted within the initial blast radius of the impact."

That simple sentence was enough to cause pandemonium to break out as the others realized that their sponsors had no shelter from the blast and were probably dead. Terrified by the noise, scared children poured into the room looking for comfort that no one was able to provide. Even the Decurion was slowly collapsing into a chair as he realized with horror that he might be the only sponsor left alive on the planet. He was completely unequipped to handle a disaster of this magnitude, not that anyone else was either. Even the AI was silent, struggling to find the correct course of action.

Just then, the wind started to pick up, and the AI instantly activated every forcefield in the colony at maximum strength. The sound that accompanied the wind was an indescribable pressure that built up until it was so loud and painful, all we could do was cover our ears and scream in agony. The entire building was vibrating as the reinforced force field was nearly overwhelmed by the mach force winds. We could hear debris pounding against the forcefield and prayed mightily it would stay up. Dimly, we could hear crashes in the distance and realized that some of the pods were being destroyed as their force fields where overwhelmed. When the winds finally died down, we began to think the worst was over for the moment. The AI dropped the force fields to conserve power, and since the strain had almost overloaded them, they would need to be checked and repaired by nanites as soon as possible. As if to cruelly toy with us, Fate dealt the last card it had been holding in reserve, just in case any of us still managed to harbor the faintest hint of hope.

Everything suddenly went dark. It did not seem possible, but the terrified cacophony got even louder, only to be drowned out a few seconds later by a massive explosion that rocked the building, throwing us to the floor. The only light came from a large crack in the wall caused by the explosion. Looking through the crack, we could see a dispersing ball of fire in the sky surrounded by fiery streamers going in all directions.

"Oh shit," the woman beside me cursed, "we are truly fucked now."

I was afraid to ask, but morbid curiosity forced the words out, "What happened?"

"If a certain type of meteor explodes in the atmosphere instead of burning up or hitting the ground, it causes an electromagnetic pulse like a nuclear airburst." She added, "Everything electronic in the colony that survived the windstorm was just fried except maybe the shielded AI core. Nothing else was shielded since we are a new colony very far from the front line so it wasn't thought to be necessary. So not only do we have to deal with the end of the world from the big one that hit the far side of the world, now this one has taken away any last creature comforts we might have enjoyed while we wait to die."

"Does that mean all the fusion generators will explode or melt down?" I asked in numb despair. The horrific shocks had finally driven me numb. Steve was dead, the planet -- our home-- was doomed and we were all going to die even if the AI had managed to launch the message drones before the EMP had fried all of its external interfaces.

"Thankfully no," she replied, "from what I read, fusion power is far safer than fission. Unlike fission which produces huge amounts of radiation, stays hot for months or years and needs constant monitoring and cooling, fusion reactions just fizzle out when the energy needed to sustain the reaction is disrupted. Any residual radiation is easily contained by the shields, so we are safe from that horror."

"Great," I said bitterly, "so instead of dying of radiation sickness, we are going to die of starvation if we don't freeze to death or asphyxiate first. You realize no power means no replicators, no pumps in the water reservoir and we can't even get the doors open to go out, right?"

Somehow I got a twisted feeling of satisfaction sharing aloud to someone else just exactly how fucked we were. I could feel the dark wings of madness beating at my mind. It was so tempting to just give in and leave everything behind. I almost did give up and succumb to the darkness when a small, trembling body wormed its way under my arm. Looking down through my tears, I saw Meredith's youngest child Naomi looking up at me wide-eyed. She looked so scared and I felt something inside me uncoil. Despite my recent efforts, I had never been very maternal, or paternal for that matter, and kids had always been something of a necessary evil in my mind. Although the past few months with the kids had helped, I did not feel like I would be winning any parenting awards. But looking down into those scared but trusting eyes, I suddenly realized I would do anything to keep her safe and live up to the unconditional trust she had in me.

In that instant, my whole world-view changed and I suddenly knew I had to be strong. Leaning down, I hugged her tight and kissed the top of her head, giving her an honest, reassuring smile. Without really thinking it through, I jumped up on a table. The huge room was almost completely dark except for the sunbeam I was standing in that shone through the crack in the wall, lighting me up dramatically. Taking a deep breath, I stuck two fingers in my mouth and whistled as loud as I could. The shrill whistle got the attention of nearby people, who quieted and turned toward me. That enabled those further back to hear and they in turn looked to see what was going on.

Ignoring the fact I'd only been about five seconds away from catatonic despair, I yelled, "Ok, listen up, all those who want to give up and die, please move to the rear wall out of our way. Those who want to do our sponsors proud and help each other and the children survive please step forward."

There was a moment of shamed silence, and then people started shuffling forward. When it got quiet again, I said, "Listen, I know things are bad; very, very bad and we may indeed die before help arrives, but we need to at least try! First off, we need to pry open these doors and see what's left of the colony. Then we need to scavenge what we can from any remaining pods that weren't blown away or destroyed. I think we need to stay together, so everyone grab all the bedding, clothes, toys, food and essentials you can and bring them back here. Remember, grav lifts won't work, so I want the tall people to make rounds helping the shorter people get up to and down from the upper levels of any pods that are still upright. Everyone with medical training or survival skills stay here. You're going to be in charge of keeping us alive until rescue."

I took a deep breath, wondering how the hell I'd had the nerve to take charge, and then I looked down into those brown, trusting eyes and remembered. Looking back at the dimly lit faces, I added, "Remember, even if the message drones didn't get out in time, we have a colony ship due here in five months. That's our timeline and goal, survive just five months and we will be rescued." I privately doubted we would survive anywhere near that long, but we had to try for the children's sake.

As the shock was wearing off and firm guidance was being provided, the others started moving with purpose. It didn't take long for the doors to be pried open and people headed out to see what they could retrieve. Looking down at those who remained, I sighed and dug in.

"Ok, first off, medical. I realize the med tubes did the majority of the work, but you're on your own now. Review and pool all your knowledge and training, gather what you can for bandages, splints, surgical tools, and whatever else you can come up with. See if any of the nanite med kits were shielded from the blast. I'm terribly afraid they will be desperately needed before long and their diagnostic abilities will take a lot of the pressure off you. Also, think about setting up a birthing room, there may be a few hundred babies born before we are rescued."

They looked a bit shocked and very overwhelmed. They had all been thinking about illnesses and injuries, forgetting there was almost a thousand pregnant concubines due in the next six months, plus all the newborns that needed to be watched.

"Crap, sudden thought, was anybody in the tubes when the power went out, and do they open automatically?"

"Oh shit!" one of the men yelled and the entire medical crew piled out the door. Luckily, the infirmary and command pods had been placed right against a cliff face and the wind storm hadn't blown them away.

Later, I found out that the medical staff had been able to get three people out of the tubes in time, but the other two had asphyxiated. Apparently, the idea of a power failure was so archaic to the Confederacy that the med tubes had not been built with manual releases. The frantic medical personnel had torn their hands raw attempting to force open the tough tubes to a point where some had torn off finger nails, strained muscles and even dislocated fingers.

'This, of course, is high-tech colony that is constantly monitored by AI's who run everything and have nanites to fix anything that needs it, so there is no need for useful items like fire axes, pry bars, shovels or pretty much anything that can be used for breaking or prying, ' I thought bitterly. That was my first regret, not thinking of the people trapped in the non-functional med tubes sooner. I was morbidly certain it would not be my last.

I mean, dear God, we were barely making it with a super-smart AI and Confederacy technology. The air was barely breathable as it was and all too soon it would be far worse if the AI was correct. Just breathing would be incredibly difficult; food I did not even want to think about. At least with a replicator we could pretend the steaks we got were not made from torn apart human proteins when someone was recycled. That was stomach turning enough, but we might not even get that luxury in the future. If there was anything left of the bamboo grove for us to harvest we might have enough for a month or so. Any of the fast-growing bamboo we were using as raw material would not survive more than a few days to a week, assuming that is the roots survived. After that...

Turning to the few people left who had survival training, I said, "While people are still shocked and being co-operative, we are going to need to confiscate every mouthful of food and start strict rationing. We also need to figure out some way to get the water out of the storage tanks and over to here. Please give it some thought and anything else you can come up with to stretch or supplement our food supply. We also need to weather-proof the building and come up with light sources." They scattered, talking grimly among themselves.

My urgent need to pee brought up yet another major problem. With no working plumbing in this building, where could we go that would not expose us to the outdoors, but also not endanger the close packed people that would be living here? My musings were cut short by a young concubine coming in herding a small group of children. She and some of the older children were carrying infants. They were crying hysterically and were barely stumbling forward. I quickly moved to intercept them.

"Shhh, it's ok," I said as confidently as I could. "We can make it if we work together. You'll see, we'll be fine."

I tried to take the infant from her so she could help the children, but she clung to it frantically.

"No!" she yelled, "she's all I have left of them!"

I was rooted in shock, praying I misheard or misunderstood her. "Where are your pod mates?" I asked urgently.

I barely understood her choked voice when she responded, "they decided the children would have a better chance to survive if there were less mouths to feed. I have the highest nurturing skill and am the only one still pregnant so they made me live. I couldn't stop them!" she wailed collapsing to the floor crying.

An electric shock of horror washed through me. Grabbing her by the shoulders, I demanded, "Where? Where are they? Tell me?" I had some faint hope I could get to them in time.

"It's too late," she gasped out as I shook her, "they jumped down one of the earthquake cracks. It's too deep to even see the bottom." Shivering at the memory, she added, "They each kissed the children and me goodbye, then linked hands and stepped off. It was horrible! I eventually heard them hit bottom, but it took such a long time, so very long. I know they are dead."

All I could do was wrap my arms around her and the children, while their tears soaked my shift and my tears rained down on them. I had an awful feeling they would not be the only ones. Some would suicide from misguided nobility, trying to ensure there was that much more food for the children, ignoring the fact that said children would need their parents more than ever. Other might simply selfishly give up, unable or unwilling to live any longer. If it had not been for Naomi, I might very well have numbered among them. In that moment of despair, I had forgotten about the women I loved and the children who needed me. Whichever of the plethora of excuses they chose, an evil, dark part of me could not help but think it actually did increase our chances of not starving and that thought made me cry even harder.

The next few days were by far the hardest of my life. We worked our asses off converting the town hall/community center into a survival shelter. Everyone was emotionally devastated and several of them were little more than near-catatonic zombies. Rooting through the ruined pods was tiring and dangerous work, especially in an environment that seemed determined to kill us. Meredith had no problem relinquishing the leadership role to me. She and my other pod-mates made it possible for me to keep going. They were always there helping me and lending me their support. There was no way I could have accomplished what I did without them, and I made sure they knew how much I appreciated their help.

I was a little surprised that Chandra, Todd's concubine, also seemed to be close by every time I looked around. I had only talked to her a few times in the months before the disaster, so we had kind of lost touch. Losing two sponsors, one who was insane and one who was kind and loving, must have been really messing with her mind. It's kind of sad that I was the only person besides Todd she really liked and trusted. Apparently, Todd's other three concubines had been jealous and never really bothered to bond with her. I tried to make her welcome and included her as much as possible with whatever projects I was working on.

Before we could harvest very much of the bamboo, we were forced to flee indoors for shelter as fiery stones fell from the sky as all the ejecta from the colossal impact completed their ballistic trajectories and rained down on us, just as the AI had predicted. The only tiny piece of luck we had was that none of the meteorites hit the huge community center. While it was going on, we all felt like there was a giant bull's eye painted on the top as we huddled inside, terrified. By the second day, the sky was going dark, frighteningly underlit by the fires of several new volcanoes uncomfortably close to the colony. The crazed faulting and newly upthrust mountains kept us safe from the lava flows at least, and the prevailing winds blew most of the volcanic smoke and gasses away from us.