Second Earth Read Online Free PDF

now distinguish
the true punishment the towers had taken. On one of the spires, a
seven-hundred-foot section was completely missing. A second spire had toppled
about three hundred feet from the top, but was still dangling precariously from
a few strands of girders that were holding fast. The third tower—the only one
still completely upright—had two large segments of its lower base blown out, as
if some enormous creature had swooped down and taken bites from the building.
       Shawn deftly guided
his old, faithful transport in a slow turn around the towers, giving every
craft in the formation an opportunity to witness the same destruction he was
privy to. Something inside him had told him that everyone present needed to see
this: if not for honoring the dead, then for posterity’s sake. As he came about
to a heading that would take him directly to Addison Field, Shawn took the
occasion to glance down to what few city streets he could see far below his
ship. They were littered with vehicles and debris from damaged buildings, and
pockmarked from overgrowth that had sprung up from the craters left behind
after the Kafaran orbital bombardment. With a slow whistle from Raven, Shawn
allowed Sylvia’s Delight to level off
after the turn, and then headed straight for Delta Base.
       With the ruins of
Crystal City now slipping behind Sylvia’s
Delight , the first things Shawn and Roslyn noticed as they neared Delta
were the enormous arched hangars, each fully capable of holding the entire
complement of the Rhea ’s hangar bays
and storage compartments combined. There were two such imposing structures,
built side by side on the west end of two parallel runways that were in a
north-south orientation. To the west of the hangars was the main military base,
a grid pattern of empty streets and decimated, dilapidated buildings. To the
west of the complex, now directly under the Mark-IV, was an enormous crater
nearly eight hundred feet wide which had engulfed part of the base complex on
its eastern rim and a part of a small forest on its northwestern border. Unlike
the smaller craters in the city, this one had yet to show any signs of new life
taking hold inside the colossal bowl shape.
       “I’ve never seen
anything like that,” Roslyn said breathlessly. “It’s massive.”
       “Neither have I,”
Shawn replied in shock. He’d seen the aftermath of a lot of different weapons,
and he thought he’d been familiar with everything the Kafarans had thrown at
the UCS. It now seemed he would have to rethink that assumption.
       “What do you think
it means, Skipper?”
       Shawn was at a loss
for words as he took in the enormity of the wound in the planet’s surface. “I
don’t know, Raven, but we’re going to find out.” He pointed a finger in the
direction of the forwardmost control panel on Roslyn’s right. “Scan for radiation.
Hit those two green buttons on the top, then the two blue ones below them.”
       Raven did as she
was asked. It brought the limited sensor report to her forward display screen.
   Shawn watched as the dark-haired
lieutenant commander squinted at the small display as she tried to read the
report. “So what do the sensors say?”
       “Not much,” she
said with an air of defeat. “I mean, they really don’t say much.”
       Fighting down the
usual defense he would have put up over his ship’s honor, he licked his dry lips
before he spoke with a restrained tone. “ D ’s
sensor palette isn’t that advanced. I’m sure the ELINTs have more detailed
information. I just want to have a general idea of what we’re going to
encounter.”
       “The radiation
levels here are well within bipedal standard tolerances. The levels are only
slightly higher here than in the city center.”
       “Considering that
big crater down there, that bit of news doesn’t surprise me.”
       She cocked her head
slightly. “But what may surprise you
is that this is the only crater of this