The Warmaster
10-04-2005, 22:37
The city of Mon Serat was a bustling metropolis. Nobody had the time to do much of anything that didn’t get them a paycheck until about 6 pm. Most of the populace were employed by the numerous banks and corporations that had offices in the city. Its Merchant Quarter was one of the most busy in the Empire, always packed with vendors, merchants, and con artists. There was a geology institute nearby, but nobody thought that anything would happen. Mon Serat was on the River Arcan, which flowed for four hundred miles before reaching the sea. Although there was a tectonic plate border near the Arcan delta, nobody thought much of it. There wasn’t much about earthquakes in the city’s extensive Emergency Procedure.
To be prepared is to live.
At the Imperial Institute for Tectonic Disturbance, thirteen miles outside Mon Serat, the readings were as normal as they had ever been for nine years. The needle was etching perfectly standard lines across the drum of paper. There was only one scientist awake at the ungodly hour of four am, and he was watching Gladiator on the TV above a control bank. And he certainly didn’t notice it when the needle began to rove a little farther up and down the drum. Lazily, insidiously, the lines got higher and higher until suddenly they jumped sky high.
The low-ranking shaper was jolted upright by the audible alarm and the blazing to life of a flashing emergency light. He gazed around wildly, cursing as fast as he could, for the drum. Gazing at the readings, he blanched.
The Kregaian Plate collided with the Tatronic Plate, sending a massive earthquake rippling through the Tatron Sea.
Marcus of clan Hord was just a farmer. Nothing more, nothing less. He had woken up early tday to get a head start on milking the cows when he felt a rumble in the ground. Marcus was half-asleep and didn’t pay it any attention. “Damn cows, why can’t they milk their own bloody selves?” he grumbled. Walking over to the milking stool, he plunked his bucket down beneath the fat old cow and began to work. At four-oh-three am, he looked up from his job and for the fiftieth time this week prayed his son would have a better life than his. A good last thought.
The titanic earthquake ripped through the countryside in an instant. The house didn’t so much collapse as shatter into a million splinters. In seconds the hills beyond the farmhouse were gone. A visible ripple was moving across the land, and the nearby River Arcan was overflowing with a massive tidal bore tearing upriver toward Mon Serat.
At four-twenty-one am, still the city slept. Not peacefully, of course, or not for very long. But those who died didn’t know what hit them, and for the most part died painlessly. At four-twenty-two am, the wave of death struck.
The skyscrapers wobbled, and fell. The crowns of the tallest ones simply slid off the foundations and fell, smashing any buildings below. The wave made every window in the city explode, slaughtering hundreds as the shards slashed through blankets and flesh. Cars were hurled into the air like pebbles by the wave, and the streets were reduced to rubble. As the gas pipes below began to crack, explosions thundered across the cityscape. They were joined by thousands more as stoves and fireplaces detonated in a fiery roar. Seconds later, the tidal bore ripped up the river and smashed into the docks. Boats were thrown into buildings and splintered like matchwood; the ruins of cargo ships that the wave had carried were similarly hurled, but were big enough to crush the things they landed on. The wave tore on, leaving the river behind it too shallow for swimming, let alone navigation. But in its wake came another swell, this one throwing tons of water into the city streets. Pushing debris before it, the water flowed through the streets, into alleys, through doors. Thousands had been killed in minutes, with billions of denarii in property damage inflicted. Finally the quake abated at the foot of the Crimson Mountains, and the tidal bore crashed onto land in an uninhabited region.
To be prepared is to live.
At the Imperial Institute for Tectonic Disturbance, thirteen miles outside Mon Serat, the readings were as normal as they had ever been for nine years. The needle was etching perfectly standard lines across the drum of paper. There was only one scientist awake at the ungodly hour of four am, and he was watching Gladiator on the TV above a control bank. And he certainly didn’t notice it when the needle began to rove a little farther up and down the drum. Lazily, insidiously, the lines got higher and higher until suddenly they jumped sky high.
The low-ranking shaper was jolted upright by the audible alarm and the blazing to life of a flashing emergency light. He gazed around wildly, cursing as fast as he could, for the drum. Gazing at the readings, he blanched.
The Kregaian Plate collided with the Tatronic Plate, sending a massive earthquake rippling through the Tatron Sea.
Marcus of clan Hord was just a farmer. Nothing more, nothing less. He had woken up early tday to get a head start on milking the cows when he felt a rumble in the ground. Marcus was half-asleep and didn’t pay it any attention. “Damn cows, why can’t they milk their own bloody selves?” he grumbled. Walking over to the milking stool, he plunked his bucket down beneath the fat old cow and began to work. At four-oh-three am, he looked up from his job and for the fiftieth time this week prayed his son would have a better life than his. A good last thought.
The titanic earthquake ripped through the countryside in an instant. The house didn’t so much collapse as shatter into a million splinters. In seconds the hills beyond the farmhouse were gone. A visible ripple was moving across the land, and the nearby River Arcan was overflowing with a massive tidal bore tearing upriver toward Mon Serat.
At four-twenty-one am, still the city slept. Not peacefully, of course, or not for very long. But those who died didn’t know what hit them, and for the most part died painlessly. At four-twenty-two am, the wave of death struck.
The skyscrapers wobbled, and fell. The crowns of the tallest ones simply slid off the foundations and fell, smashing any buildings below. The wave made every window in the city explode, slaughtering hundreds as the shards slashed through blankets and flesh. Cars were hurled into the air like pebbles by the wave, and the streets were reduced to rubble. As the gas pipes below began to crack, explosions thundered across the cityscape. They were joined by thousands more as stoves and fireplaces detonated in a fiery roar. Seconds later, the tidal bore ripped up the river and smashed into the docks. Boats were thrown into buildings and splintered like matchwood; the ruins of cargo ships that the wave had carried were similarly hurled, but were big enough to crush the things they landed on. The wave tore on, leaving the river behind it too shallow for swimming, let alone navigation. But in its wake came another swell, this one throwing tons of water into the city streets. Pushing debris before it, the water flowed through the streets, into alleys, through doors. Thousands had been killed in minutes, with billions of denarii in property damage inflicted. Finally the quake abated at the foot of the Crimson Mountains, and the tidal bore crashed onto land in an uninhabited region.