Through the Storm by Kyle Pratt
Acknowledgments
Creating a novel involves many people. Sure, I imagine the plot and write the manuscript, but as soon as I’m done, many more people become involved.
First of all, I need to thank my wife, Lorraine. She reads every chapter multiple times before anyone else sees it. Without her support, ideas, and constant encouragement, I would not be an author.
After Lorraine, the next to see any chapters are members of my critique groups. These include Robert Hansen, Barbara Blakey, Carolyn Bickel, Debby Lee, Kristie Kandoll, Pat Thompson, and LeeAnn Thompson. These people are more than fellow writers; they are friends and mentors.
After the critique group finishes with the manuscript, a few dedicated beta-readers pore over the novel. For this book, the beta-readers were William Childress, Micheal Hurley, Jennifer Vandenberg, and Debbie Majoros. These detail-orientated readers look for problems in grammar, plotting, and continuity.
Thank you all for making this book possible.
Prologue: Events on the Sun
Six storms churned on the sun. Over several weeks they grew to encompass an area fifteen times the size of Earth. Invisible magnetic lines of force danced, curved, and weaved above and between them. But on this particular day, as the magnetic fields bent and reconnected, a huge amount of ionized gas, called plasma, became trapped in the sun’s atmosphere.
For the next few days, the plasma swirled and pitched in the corona region of the atmosphere, while it absorbed radiant energy and grew hotter than a nuclear fireball.
Finally, the superheated mass reached a temperature of more than ten million degrees Celsius and exploded as a solar flare. Much of it fell back to the sun but, on the edge of the magnetic fields, several planet-sized clouds snapped like a whip, broke free of the sun’s gravity, and flung into space.
Astronomers call these plasma clouds Coronal Mass Ejections, or CMEs. Each possessed more energy than an entire year of the world’s electrical production; these were hurtled at speeds faster than a bolt of lightning on a collision course with Earth.
Day Zero
Reno, Nevada, Saturday, September 3rd
The world might end tonight and the last words Neal Evans had spoken to his oldest son were in anger.
No, don’t be paranoid. Everything will probably be fine. But just to be sure, Neal hunted for the TV remote. When he finally located it in the chair where he had left it, he switched to a trustworthy news channel. There, talking heads discussed upcoming Senate hearings on a new crime-fighting bill.
Such mundane stories rarely held his interest. Neal retrieved the toiletries bag from his luggage. Before heading to the shower, he turned up the TV volume so he could listen to the news.
Several people at the conference had talked about the aurora borealis being visible tonight. In the hotel lobby, a young man spoke with others about an electromagnetic pulse that could end civilization.
Neal glanced out the window. The sun drifted low in the sky, barely above the big box store across the street. He wasn’t that paranoid. Chances were that no aurora would light the sky tonight, and almost certainly no EMP would slam civilization to its knees. Well, at least not before he returned home tomorrow.
He undressed and enjoyed the cool spray of the shower for a moment. Then he lathered head to toe, a habit from his navy days.
It had been a long seven-hour drive from Vegas to Reno, and he didn’t want to worry, pace, or even think. He wanted only this cool shower and a mind-numbing action movie. He would start home to Washington state early on Sunday and arrive there in the afternoon.
As he rinsed the soap from his body, the dong of a news alert sounded.
“We have additional information about the lead story of the day. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with the Space Weather Prediction Center, reported earlier in the day that a coronal mass ejection had occurred on the sun.”
Neal turned off the shower, stepped onto the cold tiled floor, and grabbed a towel.
“We have Dr. Jacob Becker on the phone. He’s a professor of astronomy at Stanford. Doctor, what is a coronal mass ejection?”
“These are huge bursts of gas and electromagnetic radiation thrown off by the sun. They travel through space like clouds but at speeds of up to thousands of kilometers per second.”
“Yeah, I know all of this,” Neal grumbled. He hung the towel over one shoulder as he walked from the bathroom. “Where is the plasma headed?” he asked the television.
“Should we be concerned about this one?” the announcer asked.
“Usually, no. However, this is an extraordinarily large CME, on the G4 or G5 scale, and it is on course to hit the Earth’s magnetic field.”
Neal rubbed his chin. Local Washington state media often turned minor floods into biblical deluges, or two inches of snow into the storm of the decade, giving Seattle residents an excuse to stay home. The CME might be headed toward Earth, but was it large enough to do more than dance across the sky as northern lights? He continued to listen.
“FEMA advises that due to the scale of this phenomenon, there is a likelihood of some power and communications failures.”
The government might consider the loss of phones, Internet, and power for a day or two to be catastrophic, but Neal would be fine without them.
“… of this, federal and state officials are urging people to stay home and avoid travel tonight.”