Prologue

COUNTDOWN TO DESTRUCTION

      "Four minutes to engagement," the stale computer voice announced, and a visible shiver passed through everyone in the giant control room the size of a small auditorium.

     What if today was the day everything died?

     Standing before a wall-sized view screen displaying satellite video-feeds of troops crossing a desert, Dr. Deanna Danvil cast her sight over the room filled with desks and computers and people wearing white coats, business suits, military uniforms. So many spectators to witness the grand crime to be committed against Earth, they stood shoulder-to-shoulder, appearing thrilled for this day, decades in the works.

     It might be Doom’s Day.

     "Three minutes, forty-five seconds to engagement."

     The greatest living minds in twenty fields of science stood beside generals and industrialist barons, awaiting the first full-powered test of a mechanical monster. Deanna knew some of the scientists, like herself, attended in silent fear, quiet disgust, suffering shame for having contributed to the creation of the most powerful weapon Humankind has yet seen.

     Deanna was guilty, and the weight on her heart never lifted anymore.

     "Three minutes, thirty seconds to engagement."

     Her eyes darted to the countdown clock. Three and a half minutes until HAARP strikes and devastates unsuspecting enemy troops crossing a Mid-East desert to ambush Allied forces.

     HAARP ... It sounded so innocent, heavenly, and peaceful.

     But angels don’t play this HAARP. This apparatus was divine lightning awaiting digital commands from fault-filled humans, not the righteous order of God. Disguised by the pretty name, this Angel of Death was so powerful, the scientists who’d built it weren’t sure what it could do to this entire planet.

     "Three minutes, fifteen seconds to engagement."

     Deanna knew that top-secret byte of information because she’d been in on the fine-tweaking of this technology. And for that, she’s cursed to watch her planet die. What else could be ahead for those in this room but to bear witness to the Angel of Death committing the murders of everything?

     She wished she’d done anything else with her career than to have fallen into the hands of a shadow government creating a weapon capable of the greatest crimes yet imagined. She felt sick. She’d helped to do this, build a device so powerful, the potential range of its effects on Earth were nearly incalculable, unimaginable.

     "Three minutes to engagement."

     HAARP could dissolve the ionosphere protecting the Earth from deadly cosmic rays. Without the ionosphere, everything would die, scorched by the sun’s radiation.

     HAARP could send an electromagnetic pulse into the planetary jet steam, causing weather catastrophes of a strength never seen before. Hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis placed at military- or corporate-significant ground zeroes. Populations could be swept aside in a nation’s aggression.

     HAARP could broadcast a message into the minds of crowds, pacifying them or causing them to turn violent. HAARP could place images into the brains of citizens, making entire populations manipulatable with some image of God or aliens, any concept that could seize control of the populace. Or HAARP could just simply induce brain damage, making the crowd stupid.

     They didn’t know what HAARP could do.

     "Two minutes, forty-five seconds to engagement," the countdown clock droned the warning in a heartless electronic voice.

     HAARP could zap an army on the battlefield with a heat ray, stinging soldiers’ flesh and forcing them to drop their weapons, or outright cook their brains and kill them.

     God should never forgive the souls in this room.

     Deanna shuddered to know the people standing here, those most deserving to suffer the immediate effects of the beast they’d built, instead would likely survive in this underground lab facility built beneath the super-network of radio transmitters combining to create such awful power. The rest of the world might greatly suffer.

     "Two minutes, thirty seconds to engagement."

     Deanna wanted out, and had wanted out of this project for a long time, but The Company--S & B, they called it--had whittled her opportunities until it was the only investor who would fund her psi research. She’d been left little option but to put her education, scientific experience, reputation, and life to task in building this machine to keep the rent paid, and she was sickened by her participation.

     She should’ve run. She should’ve went underground to keep S & B from finding her and forcing her contribution to their macabre design. She’d been too cowardly to run, and try to save the world.

     "Two minutes, fifteen seconds to engagement."

     No one knew for sure what would happen when S & B throws the switch--about to occur in less than three minutes--and HAARP, atmospheric heating technology, inflicts a full-power assault on the planet’s electromagnetic field. Every living thing on the planet might die the first time the machine’s full house is applied. Or perhaps every plant will be scorched and every animal stricken with cancer from the cosmic rays seeping through a weakened atmosphere.

     "Two minutes to engagement."

     Deanna’s eyes moved to the map of the world spread across the opposite wall, blue pin-lights marking major cities. Many red dots flashed warnings, a cluster of them over Moscow and its territories, a group spread over Beijing. The foreign superpowers had developed their own versions of HAARP technology all along, not to be left behind in the super-weapons war. What was a nation to do when her enemies had built similar machines to gain the upper hand over her?

     What if their atmospheric heaters were ignited for full assaults? One day there would be an electromagnetic showdown between the bitter enemies from which no life would emerge unscathed.

     What if that day was today, and total annihilation just hours away?

     "One minute, forty-five seconds to engagement," the countdown clock announced. Frowns hung on the scientists’ faces. Protests ordered to silence, jobs, research, and personal safety threatened. Now those who’d fought the good fight would be made to watch what destruction came of their failure.

     "One minute, thirty seconds to engagement."

     The gigantic video screen was a satellite shot focused on the battalion of enemy combatants crossing a barren desert, unknowing their fate, less than ninety seconds away. The cross-hairs of a target sight lay over them. Deanna knew it didn’t much matter where HAARP’s beam struck. Death could shake the Earth with a widespread ripple of electromagnetic murder.

     Migrating birds would lose their ability to navigate, might fall from the sky. The planet’s oceans would sicken and die, the creatures disabled to navigate the ocean depths by sonar. The bees would die.  Hibernation and echo-location systems in individual animals would be upset, possibly permanently. Or the EM pulse could outright kill them.

     "One minute, fifteen seconds to engagement."

     The unknowns were acceptable, and people merely collateral damage. S & B knew far more about building the doomsday machine than they knew of its possible ramifications. They knew far more about killing people than saving them.

     "One minute to engagement," the countdown clock announced. Sixty seconds before computers uploaded orders to the HAARP satellite and bounced an EM beam down upon a battalion of bad guys positioning to ambush Allied commandos ahead. Who were the real bad guys? How cruel and inhumane would it be if the beam rendered those troops mentally retarded?

     How was God supposed to forgive that? Where was God, anyway?

     She wished she’d become an attorney and done the world no true harm, wished she didn’t know what was coming. She could’ve taken her PhD in Neuropsychology and Psi studies and written best-selling pop-science books.

     "Forty-five seconds to engagement."

     She’d never imagined her lifelong thirst for Psi research could be hijacked to assist in the creation of the most dangerous machine in history. How could such an innocuous pursuit as psychic experience lead to such undreamt-of destruction?

     Angels don’t play this HAARP. But HAARP just may be the Angel of Death.

     "Thirty seconds to engagement."

     Deanna didn’t want to be here to see it.

     "Twenty-five seconds to engagement."

     If she left the room, S & B would arrest and question her, and make her life a living hell. Or kill her outright.

     "Twenty seconds to engagement."

     Deanna loathed every second of this moment, sure she couldn’t watch soldiers become victims of a weapon that held her fingerprint.

     "Fifteen seconds to engagement."

     Her eyes sought out several of the scientists. Physicists, brain researchers, geologists, astro-engineers, cosmologists. Their pallid stares fixed on the video screen, appearing as sickened and worried as she.

     "Ten seconds to engagement."

     The government men and industrial barons looked like the birthday boys of the party, their smug anticipation of their dream weapon written across their greedy faces with little care for their own planet. In less than ten seconds, it might all be gone.

     Deanna wanted to stick her fingers in her ears, clamp her eyes shut, terrified of the upcoming catastrophe. But she could not take her eyes away from the clock.

     Five.

     Four.

     Everyone would soon die, were the words echoing through her head.

     Three.

     Two. Bless me Father, for I have sinned.

     One.

     Zero.

     Screams filled the galaxy.