Confederation -- 43

Chapter 43

The Pug-controlled FTLs dropped out of faster-than-light speed near the Earth, well inside the Moon's orbit. No one had given the Pugs the message about the efficiency of KEWs. Instead, they had loaded their ships with extremely powerful nuclear bombs. The disruption of the Pug-bears' plans had angered the Pugs extremely. They had their own plans that included gradually taking over the Pug-bears' empire. Now that was not to be, and they were out for vengeance.

The Motherland President sat in the Oval Office in the old White House. It was a building that had been a palace in all but name, and now that he'd renamed it "The Palace of the World," even that distinction had vanished.

The old building was shabby and in disrepair, but the President didn't notice. His mind was not entirely connected with reality, and he often saw only what he wanted to see.

He turned to look out the window, gazing over the rows of gallows on the unkempt lawn and fondly looking at the hanging bodies. He had many enemies, and it was good to know that he had the power of life and death over them. Besides, the population would be less likely to revolt if they were constantly reminded of the fate of those who displeased him.

His mind wandered back to his main problem. Somehow, the foolish people who lived in Denver had defeated his army...his mighty army. He'd hung most surviving generals as an object lesson to the rest. The men he'd promoted to fill their places would do better this time, he was sure.

He looked up toward the horizon, gazing past the distant obelisk of the old Washington Monument at the clouds. Something had caught his attention. Something was falling from high above. He looked hard and then saw a brilliant burst of light inside one of the clouds a few miles away.

He started to say the phrase that many people had heard and subsequently rued, "Someone will die for this!" However, there was only time for "Someone will die –" before the first wave of the bomb's blast smashed through the building, carrying fragments of the monument with it. The intense light and heat instantly crisped him into ash that blew away as if he'd never existed.

The blast was enormous, releasing over 800 kilotons of energy. Almost instantly after the detonation, the center of the explosion reached approximately five times the temperature at the center of the sun, approaching two hundred million degrees Fahrenheit.

The next thing to happen was that a sphere of superheated air began expanding outward at over a million miles per hour, creating a vast compression wave that preceded the fireball.

In the next second, the initial fireball expanded to a mile in diameter and cooled to a temperature that was about four thousand degrees hotter than the surface of the sun. This incredible heat and light instantly ignited fires over a circle of about ten miles in diameter. This flaming wave of fire reached the "Palace of the World" shortly after that, shattering the windows and instantly evaporating all of the water contained in the Motherland President's body.

The Motherland President had been allowed only a split second to see the fireball blaze brighter than ten thousand suns before his eyes melted and his skin vaporized. Shortly after his body converted to ash and blew away, scattered by the blast, the fireball caused fires over an area of nearly one hundred square miles. Those fires forced huge masses of heated air high into the stratosphere, creating a vacuum effect and pulling all the air from surrounding areas into the center of the fire zone.

The fires ignited by the initial detonation began to merge, and within ten minutes after the initial blast, the entire center of Washington was engulfed in flames. This giant fire dwarfed the energy output of the nuclear bomb many times over.

At this point, the firestorm was just getting started, creating winds of over 300 miles per hour. The vacuum effect increased exponentially, so that cooler air rushed inward towards the center of the blaze at speeds exceeding hurricane velocities, uprooting trees and dragging people and entire buildings into the flames.

The city streets were filled with horizontally driven fire moving at such a velocity that it broke through doors and windows, burning the contents of all buildings that had missed the initial destruction. The moving air had an average temperature of several hundred degrees, and its impact produced a lethal firestorm. Nothing remained standing, and no one survived within that area.

The structures directly below the initial blast were vaporized, and all buildings within a couple of miles of ground zero were crushed. High-rises were ripped open, and their flaming contents were dispersed widely, contributing to the flames.

The light from the fireball was so intense that it melted the asphalt in the streets, and all metal surfaces within a mile of the blast began to run as the metal quickly liquefied.

The blast-induced winds spread out over the district, igniting fires and knocking down buildings, melting aluminum surfaces, and charcoaling the skin of all who were unlucky enough to be exposed to the direct light and wind.

Within fifteen seconds, the blast wave had traveled three miles, and the winds had died to a little over two hundred miles per hour. Fires raged everywhere over the area within ten miles of the blast epicenter.

Ten miles away, the flash was still powerful enough to cause third-degree burns for anyone exposed. No one who was within that incredible firestorm zone survived. Even those far underground died from fire-created gases, while those who weren't deep enough simply baked alive.

Once the firestorm had died out, the area was too hot to allow anyone to pass through. The ground and roads maintained an oven-like temperature for days.

The next phase of the horror began as the dust and debris drawn upwards into the stratosphere began to fall back to Earth, tens and even hundreds of miles downwind. Everything that fell was radioactive, and that poison would linger in the Earth, killing and mutating every form of life for years.

The Motherland President didn't know it, but his death was one of millions. The Pugs had exacted maximum vengeance for Dec's actions. Washington, DC, New York, Los Angeles, Singapore, and Tokyo all burned within thirty minutes of each other as the bombs fell from low orbit.

After suffering the terrible effects of the EMP attack years before, humankind had just been struck with what might prove to be a mortal blow.