Much like Europe, the White House situation room was lit up like a christmas tree.

  “We have a launch, madam president.” Confirmed Jensen, one of Courtneys security officials.

  “FUCK!” She shouted, making everyone jump. “How many?”

  “We’re tracking…” Jensen gave a shaky breath. “Sixteen. Sixteen SLBMs. It’s too early to say where they’re headed, but we have maybe fifteen minutes before they land on the east coast.”

  Gasps echoed around the room, but Courtney pressed him. “How many warheads? Do we know? Where the fuck were our subs?”

  “They were launched from Russian territory, ma’am. Bering Sea.” Jensen answered.

  Another official spoke up, this time an Admiral Pressly, on a secure connection from Europe. “There was one attack sub in the area tailing the Aleksei Petrov, but they knew that it knew where they were. The Baltic sea has too many Russian listening posts. The Petrov is probably sunk by now, but that's cold comfort. As far as warheads go, we’re looking at six per Bulava missile. That’s nearly a hundred nukes, each over a hundred kilotons. Ma’am.” Pressly finished.

  Courtney glanced around the room and threw up her hands. “What are we looking at, here? What’re the potential casualties, cities, give me fucking numbers.”

  “Each one is ten times as strong as Hiroshima, Courtney. We’re talking damn near a hundred cities if we can’t take them down. Goddamn fuck.” Swore Christian from her right.

  “Admiral, I’m going to take your head on a platter after this.”

  “I’ll serve it up myself, ma’am.” He responded.

  “Get messages out to people nationally. Use the emergency systems, use everything, tell everyone. Get people to cover, get them to hunker down. That’ll save lives. What are our interception capabilities?” Courtney asked, and the room alternatively began following her orders or began to answer her question.

  Jensen spoke up again. “We have a chance to shoot them down in the atmosphere, and in orbit. In atmosphere it's easier, since we can get to them before the missiles deploy their warheads and decoys.”

  “But we don’t have enough assets in the area to take them all down.” Another analyst, Maria, Courtney thought her name was, finished. “In orbit, it’s a 50/50. But they’ll have deployed their warheads and decoys, meaning we’ll have six times the targets that can do damage. With the decoys, you’re probably looking at more like twenty times the targets.”

  “Jesus Christ. Can we hit them on reentry?” Courtney asked.

  The look of pity Maria gave made Courtney want to strangle her. “At that point, we’re better off praying.”

  Before Courtney could act on her urges, a surprised “What the hell?” echoed from another official. Courtney didn’t even remember her name.

  “If there’s any more, we’re launching.” Courtney threatened. “Don’t ‘what the hell’, spit it out.”

  “Well it’s just- there is another target. But it’s just one, and it’s moving a hell of a lot faster than a missile.” Courtney slammed her chair back and stormed over, parting the sea of officials as her helpless frustration boiled.

  She slammed her hands down on the woman’s desk, causing her to jump. Courtney did notice that her name was Kristina, though. “Explain. Now.” She ordered.

  “Y-yes, ma’am. It’s gotta be hypersonic, and it looks like it’s going to close on those missiles in seconds. It came from the area of a Russian airbase, but…” Courtney gave her a look, and she stammered again.

  Jensen answered for her. “Ma’am, it’s huge.”

  — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

  The moonlit Russian night had only just stilled before a massive form ripped through clouds over the baltic, tearing after the nukes. Atlas distantly noticed the moon reflected off of the cloudbank below, before the silhouette of his mass cloaked it from his senses.

  “Time to impact?” Atlas asked, still burning hard for the upper atmosphere. His armor was starting to glow with the heat generated from searing through the air at thousands of kilometers an hour. Still though, he was too far from the missiles. He kept messing with the code of his armor while he flew, trying to extract every bit of speed he could from it.

  “It’s going to be impossible to tell their trajectories until they fire their warheads. The closest likely target is New York, though. We have less than ten minutes.” Calypso confirmed.

  Atlas gave an annoyed growl, and quickly finished another series of calibrations. His speed increased marginally as he improved the power output to his boosters- quicker, but still not quick enough.

  “How about time to intercept?” He asked.

  “A couple dozen seconds? You keep upping your speed, it's hard to tell. The humans are a few minutes out.”

  Atlas gave a grunt in response, and then started to rotate as he reached over his back for Ladon. He drew it quickly, and stabilized. He lost hundreds of kilometers per hour, but built it back quickly as he flicked the sword to activate it. Ladon split lengthwise once more, arcing lightning between its halves. He carefully aimed it forward, bracing it on his free arm, and then-

  — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

  “Holy shit!” Exclaimed Maria, causing everyone in the room to jump. The analysts started talking among themselves excitedly, but Courtney interrupted them by loudly clearing her throat.

  “Well? Is anyone going to tell me what’s going on?” She asked.

  “Splash one, ma’am.” Kristina answered. Scattered clapping and a few whoop’s immediately erupted, but they quieted just as quickly when Courtney glared around the room.

  “Glad you’re all happy. Only ninety more warheads to go.” She emphasized. “How’d it get knocked down? You said our interceptors would take a few minutes to reach their target.” she accused.

  “Um, that’s still correct. Ma’am.”

  “Then what the hell happened?” Courtney pressed.

  “Your guess is as good as mine, ma’am. It might just be mechanical failure, but that big one is still gaining and-” The analyst was half turned toward the rest of the Situation Room as she talked, giving everyone a clear view of her screen as a second missile blinked off radar. With the interceptors still three minutes out.

  “-splash two.” she said in astonishment.

  “That things shooting them down.” Courtney said, bewildered.

  — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

  “Be careful, you’re on-”

  “I know.” Atlas said, interrupting Calypso. A third missile was quickly getting larger in his view, all he had to do was time it right and-

  Impact. Twelve meters of soft metal was nothing compared to his mass, and it buckled like kindling around his massive frame. Rocket fuel spilled from it and combusted, and the missile detonated around him. Its payload shattered with it, and the resulting fireball rocked the stratosphere, painting clouds far, far below a soft orange. Atlas was through the boom and miles distant by the time the fireball faded, not even slowed by the detonation. Already, he was closing on the fourth missile, and just like the last, it was hardly a match for him. He angled for it, tore through, and kept moving as its remnants combusted around him.

  “Give me an update, Calypso.”

  “We have nearly eight minutes to impact, and twelve missiles to clear in that time frame. Right now? We have a thirty second grace period between no one dying and millions getting wiped out.” She answered.

  “And a subsequent massive nuclear retaliation. Unless you still think they’re too wholesome for that.” Atlas growled.

  Calypso kept silent for a second- Atlas would honestly have preferred her try to argue her point, even given the gravity of the situation- and when she answered it wasn’t about the impending armageddon.

  “We have incoming. Multiple interceptors.”

  “Which missiles are they aiming for?” Atlas asked.

  “All of them.”

  “How will they be able to tell between the missiles and me?”

  “They won’t. They’ll be hitting in… ah, crap, ROLL LEFT!” Calypso yelled, causing Atlas to immediately roll to his side.

  Dozens more missiles carved through the cloud bank and combusted, sending out their warheads in a wave at their targets. Their boosters ignited, and each veered off for their targets, three a piece. Including Atlas. They burst past him as he rolled, but immediately began curving back around for him. He hadn’t expected that.

  “What the hell!?” Atlas shouted, before resuming his burn. His roll had slowed him, which wouldn’t generally be a problem. The warheads were slightly more agile than him though, and they kept pace, chasing him across the upper atmosphere. He angled to the side and reversed hard, causing the warheads to launch past him, and again, they circled back around. Atlas dimly noticed the distant thunder of missiles erupting, and their explosions painted more blazes of color against the pale clouds below.

  He couldn’t focus on that for too long though- the warheads were curving back around for him again, and he needed to regain speed and keep after the nukes. Atlas powered his thrusters back up and burned again, just under and past the interceptor warheads. They continued their pursuit.

  “What the fuck do they make these things out of!? Why the hell did you let them develop these!?” Atlas shouted, as his armor started to reverberate under the strain of his acceleration.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “The warheads are trying to angle for weak spots, which if I had to guess, means they’re trying to lock on your boosters. They can’t hurt you, but they can slow you down. You need to take them out!” Calypso rattled back in his head.

  “Hack them!” He yelled.

  “They’re fired from a warship! It’s not like hopping a router!” She shouted back.

  Atlas noticed them lining up behind him, still accelerating faster than he could. The air screamed around his armor, close to ignition at the speeds he was going. Still though, the interceptors were closing on him. A thought flit through his head. It’d slow him even more, but he couldn’t risk them damaging or putting out his thrusters, however unlikely. That’d take him out of the sky.

  “I think I’m going to try something. Get firing solutions ready.” He growled.

  “If you’re sure… eleven hundred and counting firing solutions lined up.” Calypso answered.

  Atlas cut his boosters. The interceptors screamed past him, so close that he could hear the electrical pulses in their mechanical minds as they tried to track him down. The moment they passed, he flicked Ladon back over his shoulder. It gave a hungry pulse, and then bolts of lightning flared through the upper atmosphere and impacted the interceptors, detonating all three with a tremendous shockwave. The impact roiled the sky, but Atlas didn’t pause to inspect the debris.

  He reignited his boosters and tore off through the night, strafing the upper atmosphere as he started to curve into space. He quickly built back up to his prior speed, but he wasn’t sure he’d be quick enough- there were still a couple missiles up, and they were well ahead of him. A furious snarl rattled the sky, and he resumed his calculations.

  — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

  “Splash eight, ma’am. Four are still up, five including that big one.” More scattered shouts and hollers echoed, and Courtney allowed it this time. Aegis interceptors had only been tested against ICBMs a couple times- they hadn’t even expected to get one.

  “If we survive this, give those engineers raises.” Courtney quipped.

  “How’s that big one still up? You’re telling me our Aegis’ could take out the SLBMs, but not that?” Christian asked, finally piping up.

  “It uh, stopped. Sir. The Aegis interceptors were destroyed.” Jensen responded.

  “I don’t think missiles usually stop, son.” Christian chastised, prompting Courtney to give a start.

  “You really think it’s a missile, Christian? Missiles don’t usually shoot down other missiles.”

  “Well, jets don’t typically stop midair either.” Christian pointed out. “Do we have any idea what it looks like?”

  Jensen pulled up more telemetry in a hurry. “Our satellites still aren’t working very well. Whatever happened over Russia is giving our systems a hell of a hard time.” He answered. When he pulled up the data, though, he gave a harsh breath. The sharp sound prompted the room to still, much to Courtney’s thanks.

  “The object's radar cross section doesn’t match any aircraft our radar has ever picked up, sir. Ma’am. It uh- it's roughly the same size as a bomber, except, well- capable of flying at ballistic missile velocities both in and out of atmosphere. M-ma’am.”

  Courtney blinked at him, uncomprehending. “You’re telling me you think a bomber is out there flying at mach who-the-fuck-knows, shooting down ballistic missiles and stopping on a dime?”

  “Well ma’am, honestly I’m surprised there’s anything on the planet that can move like that.” Jensen answered. Now the room didn’t just still. It felt like all the air was sucked out. Courtney almost imagined she could hear everyone’s heartbeats, only to realize it was her own rapidly pounding in her chest. Nuclear annihilation was still approaching rapidly, and now her analysts were starting to talk about aliens. Everyone knew that what he’d just suggested was impossible, and yet…

  She came to a decision quicker than she expected. “Mark it as friendly.” She ordered.

  Shouts erupted immediately, including a high pitched “What!?” From Christian that she was able to pick out over the din.

  Her analysts just looked at her bug-eyed, so she whipped her head towards a target. Unfortunate… for Kristina. “I’m sorry, are your ears clogged? Did I fucking stutter? Or are we just ignoring orders now?” She snapped.

  “I-I just- w-we can’t be-“

  “I’m going to say this once, and then I want someone more capable in this chair.” She barked. “That goes for all of you!” She yelled back at her protesting national security team. She swiveled back to Kristina once they’d quieted. “That thing is markedly larger than an ICBM, is shooting down missiles, and just evaded three ballistic missile interceptors. Frankly, I don’t give a damn if it’s friendly or not. We’re wasting ammo on that thing when we should be taking warheads out of the sky.”

  “Thirteenth splashed. That’s three nukes left.” Maria called out. Courtney motioned her hand towards the woman mockingly.

  “Now do your goddamn job and tell our forces to mark it as friendly. Then get the fuck out of this room.”

  — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

  “How much time do we have?” Atlas growled, as he tore right through the first of the last four missiles. Another booming crash echoed, but again Atlas was already well distant. The sun was starting to appear around the curve of the Earth- its light rippled over the atmosphere and scattered into iridescent waves this far into orbit.

  “A few minutes, but-“ Calypso started to answer.

  “Good, this’ll be easy then.” Atlas interrupted.

  “No, you don’t-“

  “Don’t what?” Atlas asked, amused.

  As if in answer, Atlas distantly noticed the noses of the missiles start to open. It was only then that Atlas recognized what Calypso was trying to warn him about.

  “Take them down, quick!” She yelled, but he was already aiming Ladon. With an electric hiss and a crashing boom of thunder, he let loose. Lightning arced away and impacted the first missile, kilometers distant. Its payload ignited and detonated, rattling the atmosphere as the fuel in its warheads cooked off. Ladons bolt bounced from that to the next closest conduit- the next missile, and the next.

  All three went up in flames, but Atlas immediately realized something was wrong. Now he was detecting twenty targets, not sixteen, or four, or three. They spread out in a wave, and he felt a pulse of panic from Calypso.

  “What just happened? Did I get all of them?” Atlas asked, immediately ramping his speed back up.

  “That… was the last missile deploying its payload. It’s a Bulava, so that’s six warheads. The rest are decoys.” Calypso answered.

  “…which ones are the decoys?”

  “That is the question, isn’t it?”

  — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

  “FUCK the last one deployed!” Jensen shouted. “GMDs are tracking, but we can only get two on each target.”

  “Meaning?” Courtney prompted.

  “We have about a 70% chance to take out all of the warheads and decoys, ma’am.”

  “So just shoot the fucking warheads!”

  “Ok ma’am, pick some out and I’ll have Fort Greely target them. That’ll do the trick, right?” He snapped back.

  Courtney rubbed her temples in frustration. She wanted to throw him out on the spot, but he had a point. Their interceptors couldn’t tell the decoys apart. “So we just wait for annihilation, then?”

  “The warheads aren’t coming down on us, ma’am. Chicago, Kansas City, Detroit, Milwaukee, and a few other major cities and military installations are in the target area. The potential target radius is rapidly shrinking. We’ll know more in the next few minutes.” Maria answered.

  “Impact is within the next few minutes.” Christian pointed out.

  “Uh, correct. Sir.”

  “That’s not very funny, Maria.”

  — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

  The cloud banks rolling lazily over North America in the late evening were a sharp contrast to the ones Atlas had seen over Russia and the Arctic only minutes earlier. Whereas those had been painted silver by the moon in the early Russian morning, these were tinted shades of pink, amber and gold. If he wasn’t careful, human cities would shortly be the same color, except their artisan would be a star much closer than the sun.

  “I need options, Calypso. How much time do we have to take all these down?” Atlas asked.

  “A minute thirty. American ground based interception is imminent.” She answered.

  “That’s not very funny.”

  “I wasn’t joking.”

  Kinetic kill vehicles pierced the cloud layer, already separated from their late stage boosters. There were over three dozen of them, and Atlas could tell from a look that they wouldn’t be enough. Curiously, he noticed none were targeted at him. That meant they’d seen him on radar, which he hopefully wouldn’t have to deal with later. A few simple calculations told him that the Americans were going to knock down fourteen of them, which left six for Atlas to handle -and he knew that was impossible. The warhead curtain was too widespread, and he had no way of telling which ones were warheads and which ones were decoys.

  Except… maybe he did? The warheads and decoys themselves were man-made, and the plutonium wasn’t raw, but maybe… Atlas’ fist glimmered amber as he felt for the Earth, while hurtling toward it at nearly thirty-two thousand kilometers per hour. There.

  “I see them. The warheads. I can-”

  “You’ve got less than a minute, Atlas.” Calypso warned.

  The Anti-ICBMs started to slam home, and Atlas immediately swung Ladon for the first warhead. The two kill vehicles targeting it missed by a hair, and so did Ladons bolt- but he wasn’t aiming directly for it. The shock of lightning wrenched into the kill vehicles and arced, evaporating the warhead. That left one.

  “Why the hell did you slow yourself down!?” Calypso yelled out, causing a mass cacophony in his head that he really didn’t need right now.

  “I can’t catch both!” Atlas shouted back, before flaring his boosters again.

  “Catch!?”

  Kill vehicles started to slam into warheads and decoys alike, flinging shrapnel through the air. When warheads detonated, they did so with rumbling shockwaves that lit the evening and glittered off the flaming clouds below. Four such explosions rocked the sky over Canada, echoing booming shocks that had little impact over the vast wilderness. All of it bounced harmlessly off of his armor, be it in reverberating waves or pings of shattered steel, and still he gained on the last warhead.

  “You’ve gotta get that thing now! Kansas City is going to be dust in less than twenty seconds!”

  He couldn’t risk Ladon- the warhead was too low. If it went off before it evaporated, it wouldn’t reach full criticality. That meant he’d only irradiate no small part of the midwest. He just had… to get- his armor was raging hot against the air compression pushing against it, glowing nearly white as he pushed it to its limits. Still, he was short of the warhead.

  Atlas kept tabs on his time as he focused. Ten seconds now. Not great. He couldn’t reach too early, that’d slow him down and let the warhead screech away from him at a speed nearing thirty-thousand kilometers an hour.

  A second ticked down. He couldn’t reach for it too late, either. If he did, he’d miss it completely. It was getting a lot larger in his view though…

  Atlas snapped his hand out for it. He heard a harsh crack and the intense shearing of metal as he crushed the warhead in his grip. The moment he heard that, he wrenched down hard. He had a scant few seconds to consider his action, and realize it might have been a mistake; that is, the amount of time it took him to drop nearly a hundred kilometers.

  The moment Atlas realized what he’d done, he softened the earth below as much as he could. Then, he struck. He didn’t quite impact the Earth like an asteroid. The main difference was that he hit it at a slightly greater angle. When he slammed down, the ground erupted. Nearly fifty-thousand tons of god hit at near mach twenty-five, shattering the earth. A crater pulverized into the ground, evaporating everything for hundreds of meters, and in the fractions of a second after, his forward momentum kept carrying him forward.

  A shockwave echoed out, splintering everything still standing in the immediate area into mist, and then Atlas was away. He skidded kilometers in seconds, splitting a massive scar in the open Kansas terrain as his mass tore through the plains. Trees, grass, and fencing in the middle of nowhere were ignited by his mere passage as the heat rolling off of him flared into his surroundings. He bounced, clearing a barren intersection, and then kept skidding kilometers further until he finally started to slow.

  He slowly rolled to a stop with his back against a grassy knoll, smoldering and covered in glassed soil as his remnant heat cooked away at the dirt that now caked him. It wasn’t much longer before Atlas flicked his antennae free of debris, overcoming his shock as he unsteadily sat up against the hillside. His antennae started to twitch the longer he sat there, spasming furiously as Atlas worked up the right words.

  “Calypso. If something like that ever happens again because of you, I’ll tear out your central processor.”

  “Y-you did-did-didn’t-n’t li-ke-ke-ke the ri-i-i-i-de?” She asked.

  Atlas had engineered Calypso uncountable millenia ago- she’d never glitched out on him. For a moment, he tried to rationalize it as his armor having somehow been damaged by the impact- unlikely, but not impossible- but he remembered just as quickly that she was interfaced into him, not his armor.

  “It was… interesting.” He admitted, beginning to stand. “Are you uh, ok, Calypso?” He asked. There was a faint buzz, and he felt a jolt. Suddenly, a foreign data stream connected to him.

  “She’s not here right now, I don’t think. Boss man, right? Wow, this is crazy. Like, some of the craziest code I’ve ever seen. Props to you guys.” A male voice responded. He had a vaguely African accent… Ethiopia? That sounded about right. How’d Calypso-?

  It clicked for Atlas, then. “Ah, our little mystery rat.” He shot -thought- back, letting his mind drip with venom.

  “Hey, eye for an eye. I don’t know what I extracted, but I’ll bet- what’re you-”

  The man's voice cut off as Atlas pushed back. As all of him pushed back. He drew upon every speck of processing power he had, and ripped through the man's connection. He vaguely felt a tug- like someone was feeling around in his brain- before he lurched and recoiled back into the scar he’d made when the man cut connection. There was a dull thud as his mass collided with the dirt beneath him, but it didn’t matter- one second was all it took to get all the information he needed.

  In fact, he had everything. Nathan Yacoub. Addis Ababa. Ethiopia. The sound of echoing earth rumbled through the still Kansas air as Atlas began to crumble. Calypso couldn’t tell him not to- Nathan had somehow disabled her. So, Atlas was going to disable him. His armor melted into the soil, and all that was left of the god as he began to deep tunnel was a pile of quickly sinking boulders, piled neatly at the end of a kilometers-long rift.