the
ecliptic plane at a steep angle before becoming caught in the sun’s gravity well. It had looped around the sun once and was then thrown back towards the outer reaches of the solar system.
On its way back out, this dwarf star – named Shiva by the astronomers tracking its progress – had passed close enough to Earth to yank it out of its normal orbit and send it slowly
spiralling outwards, into a new orbit that lay much, much farther from the sun. They’d known almost from the moment Shiva showed up in their lenses just what was coming to them. And once it
became public knowledge, anyone with a rudimentary grasp of orbital mechanics was able to come to the same conclusion: their world was coming to a terrible end.
When it finally happened, being literally dragged out of its regular orbit triggered unprecedented earthquakes right across the globe. Schultner had shown me recovered footage of vast tsunamis
sweeping across continents, of terrible storms ravaging cities all over the planet. The few who lived through it got to enjoy the slow freeze that followed as the sun grew dimmer and more distant
with every passing day.
Amongst these people were a few who had been preparing for survival almost as soon as Shiva was first detected on the extreme edge of the solar system. The Icelandic government in particular had
thrown its every resource into digging deep subterranean shafts and caverns to shelter its populace indefinitely.
Once you knew a few salient facts about the geography and underlying topography of Iceland, the actions of that country’s citizens made perfect sense. Their island home had certain
properties that made it ideal for surviving even such a catastrophe: it straddled two continental plates and was dotted with a spectacular number of volcanoes, many of them active.
Like the Iceland of my own alternate, it had long since capitalized on this source of free geothermal energy to heat and power its homes. By the time Shiva loomed in their skies like the
harbinger of death it was named after, most of the island’s citizenry had already relocated into the deep artificial caverns – heated and powered by that same geothermal energy.
Unfortunately for them, however, survivors in other parts of the world – mostly military, and mostly in command either of deep underground bunkers or nuclear submarines – decided
they wanted those caverns for themselves. Whatever it took. They sailed for Iceland even as the temperatures plummeted, armed with weapons of inconceivable destructive power.
The Icelanders had never stood a chance.
Nadia took us around the edge of the abyssal shaft, and before long we were rolling down the steep-angled road that looped around the edges of the shaft. Some of the mountains
on the outskirts of Reykjavik’s ruins were, in fact, nothing more than mounds of excavated dirt. On the way down we passed numerous abandoned vehicles that had been used during the
excavation.
It took a full twenty minutes before we finally reached the bottom of the shaft and the first enormous door, designed to seal the city within from the harsh environment without. Someone had used
nukes to blow through those doors – the Americans, perhaps, or the Russians, or possibly even some other faction within the multilateral navy whose ships were still moored in the frozen sea
off the coast.
This hadn’t worked out well for the invaders, or the people they were invading. From the presence of their tanks, armoured cars and other weapons of war, it was clear that this army of
nations had succeeded in taking the caverns from the native Icelanders, killing a substantial portion of their population in the process. Then, so far as anyone could tell, they had set about
killing each other. In the process, they had done sufficient damage to the Retreat to ensure that no one was going to survive the big freeze.
We trundled on down the sloping floor of a long tunnel. The twin cones of light from our
ecliptic plane at a steep angle before becoming caught in the sun’s gravity well. It had looped around the sun once and was then thrown back towards the outer reaches of the solar system.
On its way back out, this dwarf star – named Shiva by the astronomers tracking its progress – had passed close enough to Earth to yank it out of its normal orbit and send it slowly
spiralling outwards, into a new orbit that lay much, much farther from the sun. They’d known almost from the moment Shiva showed up in their lenses just what was coming to them. And once it
became public knowledge, anyone with a rudimentary grasp of orbital mechanics was able to come to the same conclusion: their world was coming to a terrible end.
When it finally happened, being literally dragged out of its regular orbit triggered unprecedented earthquakes right across the globe. Schultner had shown me recovered footage of vast tsunamis
sweeping across continents, of terrible storms ravaging cities all over the planet. The few who lived through it got to enjoy the slow freeze that followed as the sun grew dimmer and more distant
with every passing day.
Amongst these people were a few who had been preparing for survival almost as soon as Shiva was first detected on the extreme edge of the solar system. The Icelandic government in particular had
thrown its every resource into digging deep subterranean shafts and caverns to shelter its populace indefinitely.
Once you knew a few salient facts about the geography and underlying topography of Iceland, the actions of that country’s citizens made perfect sense. Their island home had certain
properties that made it ideal for surviving even such a catastrophe: it straddled two continental plates and was dotted with a spectacular number of volcanoes, many of them active.
Like the Iceland of my own alternate, it had long since capitalized on this source of free geothermal energy to heat and power its homes. By the time Shiva loomed in their skies like the
harbinger of death it was named after, most of the island’s citizenry had already relocated into the deep artificial caverns – heated and powered by that same geothermal energy.
Unfortunately for them, however, survivors in other parts of the world – mostly military, and mostly in command either of deep underground bunkers or nuclear submarines – decided
they wanted those caverns for themselves. Whatever it took. They sailed for Iceland even as the temperatures plummeted, armed with weapons of inconceivable destructive power.
The Icelanders had never stood a chance.
Nadia took us around the edge of the abyssal shaft, and before long we were rolling down the steep-angled road that looped around the edges of the shaft. Some of the mountains
on the outskirts of Reykjavik’s ruins were, in fact, nothing more than mounds of excavated dirt. On the way down we passed numerous abandoned vehicles that had been used during the
excavation.
It took a full twenty minutes before we finally reached the bottom of the shaft and the first enormous door, designed to seal the city within from the harsh environment without. Someone had used
nukes to blow through those doors – the Americans, perhaps, or the Russians, or possibly even some other faction within the multilateral navy whose ships were still moored in the frozen sea
off the coast.
This hadn’t worked out well for the invaders, or the people they were invading. From the presence of their tanks, armoured cars and other weapons of war, it was clear that this army of
nations had succeeded in taking the caverns from the native Icelanders, killing a substantial portion of their population in the process. Then, so far as anyone could tell, they had set about
killing each other. In the process, they had done sufficient damage to the Retreat to ensure that no one was going to survive the big freeze.
We trundled on down the sloping floor of a long tunnel. The twin cones of light from our
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