Banner: By me
Title: Doomsday
Author: Steffi
Couples: All (M&M; M&L; K&T, A&I)
Rating: Adult
Summary: When your life is suddenly falling apart and everything you’ve ever known is threatened by an act of God, you’ll be able to distinguish your true friends from the rest.
In dark times a small group of people – from different places and statuses – will find their way together to face the inevitable.
Disclaimer: Sadly, I don’t own anything.
Author’s Note: I might borrowed one or two ideas from the movies “2012” and “Deep Impact”.
Author’s Note 2: Thanks to my wonderful beta Angel.
Chapter 1 - 01.01.2012
Chapter 1A
- Arizona – Mount Graham International Observatory – 0:05 -
A wide yawn, combined with a growling stomach disturbed the absolute quiet in the observation room of Mount Graham’s International Observatory. The room was only lit by several monitors, all of them showing a different section of stars from the clear night.
“Happy New Year, my friend.” Melody Davis smiled encouragingly when she entered the room and held up two fresh-made coffees. “I brought our drinks to celebrate.”
The only man in the room took off his glasses and threw them on a paper he had been working on before he rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Just what I need, thanks.” He took one of the disposable cups from his co-worker. “Oh, and happy New Year’s to you, too. Yay,” he said without the slightest bit of excitement in his voice.
Melody smirked and took her seat next to him again, hammering a few keys on the keyboard to make her routine checks before she leaned back in her seat again. “Why do we have to work on New Years Eve again? Oh right, because our boss is a real son of a bitch.”
The other man shrugged. “Didn’t have anything better to do anyway.”
“Yeah,” she snorted, “because you don’t have a life, man. You work like 24/7 and it’s not like we’ve found anything exciting the last month. But ME, I had a date for tonight. An actual cute, sexy, hot and very exciting date.”
“What, you don’t enjoy my company?” he asked playfully hurt.
“You’re not my type.”
He made a face. “You’re not mine either.” Okay that was a lie. Melody was pretty much everyone’s type even if she was 35 – ten years older than him.
“Don’t you have any family that’s throwing a party or something? I mean, there has to be at least someone.”
“Not in this state,” he shrugged. “My family lives in Washington.”
“Friends?”
“As you pointed out correctly, I work pretty much.”
Melody sighed. “You’re way too young for that, my friend.”
“You’re ten years older and still unmarried, single and no kids.” He grinned. “So I think I have a lot of time compared to you.”
“Oh, shut up,” she laughed and smacked him with a small folder she took from her desk. “And if I hadn’t had to work tonight I would probably be on my way to change things.”
“Like last time, huh?” He snorted into his coffee when he saw her expression and some drops of coffee splashed into his face. At least he hadn’t been wearing his glasses, he thought and wiped them off.
“That was just bad luck,” she smirked when he gave her an eye roll. “Hey, I didn’t know he was a callboy when I met him in the supermarket.”
“Um-hmm,” the man shook his head and placed the half-empty coffee on the desk next to the keyboard before he got up. He straightened his jeans and walked over to the reason he had agreed to do this job far away from friends and family… one of the world’s biggest telescopes.
Melody knew that meant his mind had gone back to work and she shook her head in amusement before she turned back to her computer as well. So much for a New Years mood, she thought.
They worked in silence for the next 30 minutes, saying little more than a few words dedicated to different coordinates and names of comets and meteors only they would know. He had always been fascinated by the stars. At the age of seven he had gotten his first mini telescope from his parents and ever since then he had used one every single clear night in his life. The choice of his career had been the easiest decision in his life and thanks to parents with some influence he had gotten the job he had wanted since the first time he had seen the moon in more detail than his eyes could see.
“You’re awful silent,” she stated when he hadn’t said anything. “I still need the new coordinates, ya know. I can’t hear what you think.”
“Yeah…” he said, his voice sounded like he was lost in thoughts. After a moment he pulled his head away from the telescope and rubbed his eyes before he turned to look at his co-worker with a frown. “Can you give me the recordings of the last coordinates from last year same time on the big screen?” He pointed at the monitor behind him.
“Sure,” Melody turned back to her computer. Quiet sounds of fast fingernails on a keyboard were heard and a moment later a small cut-out of the huge universe was on the big screen, showing just a few dozen stars. “What’re you on to?” Her hair flew around her face when she looked at him again.
He just held his hand up to let her know he would tell her soon, while he looked back into the telescope and then on the screen again. “Who are you?” he muttered to himself.
“You’re making it very thrilling. See a New Years rocket?” she joked.
He pushed a few buttons on the machine in front of him before he walked back to his desk without commenting on her last sentence. A moment later a picture appeared on his monitor and he looked at it again, his heartbeat rising with every passing second while his thoughts ran fast and crazy.
“What do you see?” She stood up and walked behind him to look at the picture he was staring at. She couldn’t really see anything.
He leaned forward and pushed a button so the cut-out of the sky would appear on the big screen, directly next to the one from last year.
Melody turned around and looked at both pictures for several moments, but still she couldn’t see what he was obviously seeing. “What…”
“On the right,” her co-worker got out of his seat quickly and walked over, stretching up and standing on tiptoes to point at an object on the newest sky photograph. Then he moved two steps to the side and pointed at the older picture.
Her eyes widened in surprise when she saw that the slight red dot on the newer picture was missing in the former one. “How can…” she frowned. “That’s too big for not being there last year.”
“I know,” he nodded and walked back to the telescope in the middle of the room. “Search the database of former photographs and find out when we first caught it with the telescope, while I get the exact coordinates.
She nodded and started her search immediately. Seconds and minutes passed with little more than the sound of pressed keys, nervous coughs and loud breaths together with an almost unbearable tension. It took nearly 30 more minutes before they looked up again at almost the same time.
“Got it,” he said and went back to his computer, sitting down and wiping his forehead with a nervous gesture. “Any luck yet.”
“Yeah…” she said slowly when she checked on it again. “I think it came into view in 03-03-2010.” She pointed at her screen. “See Jupiter here, it’s right behind, you can just see it if ya know about it.”
He took his glasses from the desk and leaned over to look at her monitor. “You’re right,” he nodded. “Send this all to our baby. Together with the coordinates we should be able to calculate its size, speed and direction.” Their ‘baby’ was the new efficient computer in the room next to the one they were in.
“Done,” she said after a minute. “How long will it take to get the first results?”
“No clue,” he said honestly and grabbed his coffee. “Damn thing better hurry.” His palms were sweaty and he wiped one on his jeans before shifting the disposable cup to the other hand and repeating the gesture.
“Let’s move to the other room,” she got up and took her drink as well.
“Yeah,” he followed her.
The room with the computer was small and didn’t have a window. After a few minutes he could already feel the temperature rising a few degrees and he pulled on the collar of his shirt. Or was it just his blood?
Almost 90 minutes passed while they tried to make conservation about banal things, but the tension was undeniable and both of them knew that the result could change nothing or everything in their lives. The beeping made them both straighten up as if it was the alarm clock and you were sure you had overslept.
They both stared at the screen in front of them while the computer started to give out the first results of the things it had calculated.
He could feel the sweat on his forehead breaking out, while his heart hammered in his chest as if it was just going to burst in a few seconds. His hands grabbed the backrest of the chair in front of him tightly, trying to hold onto something when his knees got weak and wobbly.
“Oh my God,” Melody whispered and reached out to grab a handful of his shirt.
He wasn’t able to say anything in that moment and kept staring at the computer in front of him. His view became blurry while he tried to come up with a logical explanation why the computer was wrong, but there was nothing to set against it. From afar he heard a voice, something was pulling on his clothes…
“We need to report this,” Melody kept telling him again and again while her hand was still fisting his shirt.
He nodded absentmindedly and went to the phone at the other end of the small room. Without taking his eyes from the screen he fumbled for the earpiece. When it almost fell to the ground he snapped out of his daze and tried to remember the number he had read so often but never used. Come on, think about it, he forced himself and his fingers started to move over the buttons.
“You have the right number?” His co-worker asked when he just held the phone up to his ear.
He didn’t answer her when he heard a female voice on the other end of the line. “Defense department of the United States, Stacy Delany. What can I do for you?”
He cleared his throat, trying to remember what the protocol was in this very unlikely case. “Code LTMOC.”
The voice on the other end went silent for a moment before he heard a slight cough. “One moment, Sir.”
The line went silent for what felt like hours before he heard some crackling. “Ed Harding here.”
He straightened up when the Secretary of Defense of the United States spoke to him. There were other sounds in the background, revealing that he had just disturbed the man at a New Years party.
“Hello, Sir. This is Alex Whitman calling from the Mount Graham International Observatory in Arizona.”
“Well, Happy New Year, Mr. Whitman. I hope you have a good reason to call me at this time.”
“Would an object five times larger than Mars heading in our direction and able to annihilate mankind be a good reason?”
Tess likes to call people by their first initial, so I’m gonna do that with you now. 