Tomlinson watched the technicians as they monitored their boards. High up in the control platform, he, Caretaker, and several other Coalition members, including Dame Lilith, were amazed at the power being created by the generators, which seemed to have doubled in strength as soon as the blue diamond was connected. The time it had taken to recut the blank ends of hardened diamond to fit the new cradle designed by Professor Engvall had delayed the attack by more than an hour.
Tomlinson's eyes went from the generating station to that of the Atlantis defense. Five hundred crack troops were spread out in positions from which it would take a week for any attacking force to remove them, and at a cost that would be devastating. They were spread in the lava dome below the crystal structure that had protected the capital. Ruins of the great city were now teaming with machine-gun emplacements and mortar pits.
'We're ready,' Engvall said as he removed his headphones.
Tomlinson saw the titanium enclosure where the diamond was spinning at twice the speed of sound; the air passing over it would be the only stylus needed to create the ancient tones. The amplification lines led outward from Atlantis to the amplification domes sitting off the coasts of the target cities. He smiled, knowing that New York would be the first to feel the Wave as the Coalition vied to end the old world quickly.
'Dame Lilith, since you are the one lamenting the drastic changes that have come about in your life, please do us the honor of beginning the new life we have chosen. Start the Wave, please.'
Lilith really did not care to touch anything on the platform. Her nerves at this last moment had tuned to jelly and her blood ran cold. Still, as she looked into the eyes of Tomlinson, she knew that she would do as he'd asked. Even Caretaker was standing by, as if he were one of the many stone statues lying in ruins in the city below them.
'Why ... yes, of course,' she replied.
Engvall rose from his chair and gestured for Lilith to sit, momentarily relieved that the responsibility for destroying so much of the planet would not be his. He replaced his headphones and adjusted the mike to his lips.
'Stations one and two, one hundred percent power on generators. The first tone will be a pulse to acclimate the tone amplifiers to their new computer settings.'
Engvall turned to Tomlinson and slowly nodded.
'Dame Lilith, if you would raise the protective cover and push the ignition button, please.'
'This one?' she asked as she saw a red flashing light underneath a clear glass cover.
'Yes.'
Lilith lifted the cover and closed her eyes, then with two fingers she pushed down on the flashing button.
Immediately, everyone inside the city closed their eyes as the soundless tones started their long run for the Long Island Sound.
The first ripple of the Wave triggered Thor's Hammer.
Five thousand miles away, the Hammer fell, and Manhattan started to crumble.
The amplification domes had been laid down the year before by a local chartered workboat whose captain thought he was laying lobster-monitoring stations. That same year there had been a massive kill-off of the lobster beds, blamed on the toxicity of the Sound; little did anyone realize it was from the tuning forks inside the domes, which would sometimes chime in their deadly and soundless vibration that killed the lobsters on the bottom.
As the tones passed through the power lines to the amplifiers, every living aquatic creature shook and became still, and then died, for six miles around. The invisible Wave of Thor's Hammer slammed into the muddy bottom and reached out for the Davidson fault line and the distant continental plate.
At 4:00 PM on this Saturday, many of the workers who normally filed through the massive canyons of midtown Manhattan were at home. However, those who were out to catch the warmth of the sun saw the strangest sight they had ever before witnessed. Every bird in the city as one launched itself into the air, as if a magical switch had been thrown. People covered their heads and turned away from the billions of flapping wings. In Central Park, numerous New Yorkers were hurt as panicked pigeons sprang into the sky. Dogs across the city started barking and tried to break free of their owners. Several slammed through plate-glass windows in an instinctive effort to escape.
The first reaction to Thor's Hammer started in the East River as a barely perceptible wave struck the Brooklyn Bridge. Cars traveled across, never realizing that the bridge had sunk more than half an inch into the mud. That first ripple traveled into the lower reaches of the subway access tunnel far below the mass-transit line. As one shocked electrician looked on, a surface fracture in the old cement at first widened and then cracked through to the river itself. Within minutes, panicked calls were being made topside for assistance.
In Central Park, couples lying on the grass felt it through their backsides. The ground rippled like a wave, not so much as to actually lift a person from the ground, but more of a tickling sensation that people in California would have recognized instantly.
The first of the high-impact tones left the amplification domes and slammed hard into the seabed. The invisible Wave this second time slammed into the Davidson fault line and sent a tremendous jolt through the crust of the earth until it met the plate upon which the eastern United States sat.
Then the Hammer really went to work. As the Wave bounced back like a sonar ping, it hit once more the already damaged fault. The walls of the fault started to crumble only miles from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. As one of the world's longest cable-expansion structures, its pilings were sunk deep into the bedrock of the harbor. At the time of its construction, no one could possibly have seen or known of the minute cracking that had been sent through the rock strata. These small fissures and cracks were the first to let go, and the flowing water did the rest. Passengers on the upper and lower decks in the direct center of the great span felt it first--the sensation of sliding, though they knew that they were not. Then the first real jolt hit the bridge and the movement was perceptible to all. Cars involuntarily change lanes, causing many accidents and pileups up and down the entire span.
Suddenly, eight hundred feet beneath the lowest pilings, the bedrock gave way. As the eastern side of the bridge began to collapse into the mud, sinking forty feet, cars were smashed into the broken roadway on the on- ramp and others slammed into them. The giant cables held firm, keeping the entire east side from collapsing. Later, engineers would say that the collapsing bedrock actually saved the bridge from total collapse because the loose east end gave the bridge enough give to sustain itself against the onslaught of the earthquake.
The same could not be said as the ground shook in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan. Older buildings first started losing their facades, then glass started breaking throughout the city. As displacement waves hit the air, the people on the streets became disoriented, and most could not keep their feet. The Empire State Building received the first real jolt of an earthquake in its long history, but the old girl stood firm.
Then the third swing of Thor's Hammer hit, only this time it traveled east, toward the suburbs of Nassau and Suffolk counties. Long Island was under attack.
For fifty miles up and down the Long Island coastline, older houses started to collapse. The seas were rising into the streets; the surf table was up by 50 percent of normal. The streets of the coastal towns were flooding, hampering police and fire-department responses.
The five boroughs of New York, along with Long Island, started to crumble and burn.
Niles listened to the reports that were coming in from New York. Then they heard that the Wave had started in both China and Russia. The two countries were now saying that Crete had to be destroyed no matter the cost.
With the evacuation of the civilian population still far from complete, they were all in a tight spot. Which population was worth more than any other? they wondered.
'Give Colonel Collins time, Mr. President; he doesn't know how to quit!' Niles said, gritting his teeth.
The president just looked at his friend without saying anything. Then he nodded in affirmation that he would give Collins this one chance.
However, as Niles felt the relief hit him, the first tremble was felt through the flooring of the Oval Office.
