“Tell it to me again.”

“The asteroid showed up on our radars an hour and a half ago. Both of our moon bases confirmed it, and I just got a call from the British space agency saying their satellites picked up the same thing.”

They were in the Situation Room.

The presidential Situation Room.

As in the one the president used.

The president of the United States, if there was any kind of ambiguity.

Jessica Keen kept going, mostly because no one told her to stop. “It’s traveling about 45 kilometers a second. Oblong in shape, with a slight wobble. It’ll hit in about two days. 52 hours, to be exact.”

The president seemed to be having a migraine. His bald head was glistening with sweat, and his forehead was scrunched into a million folds.

One of the generals at the table spoke up. He had gray, close-cropped hair and an iron jaw. “How certain are you on the impact location?”

Jess hesitated. “Reasonably.”

“Reasonably?”

“The shape and the tilt are irregular. We also don’t know how it’ll fragment during atmospheric entry. We’re pretty certain it’ll land somewhere around Long Island, but it could go as far south as DC.”

“Oh, that’s beautiful,” snapped the president. “No biggie between New York and the Capitol, the difference is just TWO HUNDRED MILES!”

The general with the gray hair stood up. “Mr. President, I think we should move this to the Pentagon. The situation room isn’t big enough to accommodate Director Keen or her scientists.”

The president kicked a chair. “Fine. Screw it. Let’s take a little field trip, why don’t we? Three whole days to live!”

They were boarded into black, unmarked sedans outside the White House. From there, it was a cold drive to the Pentagon. Jess got stuck with two generals who looked like they were sculpted from rocks. She had to watch them staring at her, unblinking, while she made the calls to her subordinates.

“Hey Davie… Yeah, it’s urgent. We need you at the Pentagon. No, you didn’t mishear me.”

“Kaya… I need you to call Lawrence and Annie and wake them up. Also, alert the California offices. Don’t expect much sleep for the next few days.”

It went on like that for a bit. By the end of it, most of the team at NASA had been woken and alerted. And half of that team was en route to the Pentagon.”

One of the generals, a broad man with a buzz cut, squinted at her. “Tell me again why we need twenty of you people for this?”

Jess tried not to stare. “Sir, when the universe holds a gun to your head, you don’t sit around hoping it jams. This is an all-hands-on-deck kind of thing.”

The general scowled. “Look, Director, I don’t think you understand what’s going on here. The more people find out about this fiasco, the worse we look.”

Jess merely shrugged. “I hate to break it to you, general, but you’re not keeping this under wraps.”

The general merely scoffed. “We’ll see.”

Within the hour, they were set up at the Pentagon. It was a team of forty in all, the best of the crop that Jess could gather at three in the morning. The rest would be on their way shortly, and when the rest of the offices across the country woke, they’d be able to get a better read of the situation.

None of that seemed to appease the president, though.

“We need this thing exterminated,” he insisted. “Not within the next three days. I need it blasted out of the sky by tonight.”

Kaya piped up here. “Mr. President, sir, that’s not possible. It’s sunward entry–”

The president stared at her like she was something unpleasant on the sole of his shoe. “Keen, tell me what the hell this lady’s saying.”

“The asteroid’s coming from the sun’s side,” said Jess. “That’s why we didn’t detect it for so long. That’s also what’ll make it hard to take it out.”

“What, the most expensive astronomical equipment in the world is getting screwed up by sunlight?”

Jess nodded. “That’s right.”

“Just blow the thing up,” said Buzz-Cut sharply. “Get some nukes out there, and you know…” he made some explosion noises.

Jess stared. It was so comically out of touch with the situation that it must’ve been a joke. “General…”

“Knowles.”

“General Knowles, that’s not really how… bombs work. Or, you know… asteroids.”

The president rubbed his forehead. “I need a timeline, Director. How are you getting this thing out of the sky? And when?”

Jess tried to placate. “Look… Any estimate I could give you on that… the confidence interval would be so low that it would be meaningless. Give us a few hours to figure out what the options are. We’ll probably have to redirect some stuff; our southern moon base has some laser facilities that might be usable. And the French have satellites that could help.”

“This is sounding mighty vague, Director.”

“It’s going to have to be. Best-case scenario, we redirect it so it lands in the ocean. Might cause a minor tsunami–”

“Excuse me?”

Jess hesitated. “I said ‘minor’. Look, we’ll do what we can. I can’t make promises.”

Half the room was scowling at her. What did they expect her to do, fly up like Superman and punch it into oblivion?

The president glared at the screen in front of them. It showed a patchwork of data points and statistics, as well as a 3-D model of what the asteroid probably looked like. It was surprisingly little for the most advanced space agency in the world.

“Fine,” said the president finally. “Do your thing. Keep this under wraps. Only inform people who absolutely need to know.”

Jess blinked. “What? No, sir, we can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“We need to start evacuations. Everyone from Boston to Richmond needs to be evacuated as fast as possible. That’s the impact zone. If we start now, we should be able to get everyone out by–”

Every general in the room was staring at her.

There was a long silence as Jess trailed off.

“What?” said the president finally. “Evacuation?”

“Evacuation,” Jess repeated. “It’s the safest option in the event we can’t stop the thing–”

The president’s eyes were steel. “Absolutely not. Do you have any idea what kind of chaos that’ll send the country into?”

“But if the asteroid hits–”

“Then the asteroid hitting is not an option.” The president’s voice had gone cold. “Do you understand me, Director Keen? I don’t care if World War three breaks out in the next three days, the asteroid hitting is not an option. Do you understand me, director?”

Jess could only nod.

“Good. Now if that’s sorted–”

“But Mr. President…” Kaya popped up again, and Jess’s stomach sank. “If we don’t evacuate, casualties could be in the millions.”

A vein was popping in the president’s bald scalp. For a second, it looked like he might start screaming again. “Jerry!”

The president’s Chief of Staff, Jerry Mathews, leaned in from the sidelines. “And if we do evacuate, the entire country is descending into madness.”

Kaya seemed unfettered. “But–”

“I don’t think you understand what I’m saying, ma’am,” Mathews had the greasy voice of a car salesman, which matched his slicked-back hair. “If knowledge of that asteroid becomes public, the first thing that happens at market open in six hours is the market crashes. Not two points, not five… ten. Twenty. Thirty maybe.”

Jess couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Market crash? That’s what these idiots were worried about?

Davie, next to her, seemed to be having the same concerns. “Look,” he said through gritted teeth, “I think a little dip in the stock market is less important than millions of lives–”

“No,” said Mathews, smiling humorlessly. “No, it’s really not. Because when the market crashes, do you know what happens? It spirals. Investors pull out money. Every man, woman, and child on the East Coast tries to get out. People in Miami will be booking flights to Alaska; doesn’t matter that that fat chunk of rock has no chance of hitting them. The Chinese will take advantage the second they find out about this. They’ll try and sabotage our moon bases. For all you know, they could launch an invasion into Nepal. Not to mention midterms are in two weeks–”

“Midterms?” Davie’s eyes looked like they were about to fall out of his head. “You can’t seriously be talking about elections right now.”

The Chief of Staff barrelled on. “The public finding out about this would be an unmitigated disaster. It’d kill this administration, crash the U.S. economy for the next decade. And any chance of us getting dominance on the moon would be hopeless.”

Davie looked like he wanted to fight someone. Jess had a brief, unwanted vision of her Chief Engineer brawling with the president’s Chief of Staff. She put her hand on Davie’s shoulder to steady him. “Look, Mr. Mathews, this is all a moot point anyway. We can keep this under wraps for a day, maybe. But the second the asteroid gets closer than that, any random person with a telescope in their backyard will be able to find this thing if they know what they’re looking for. Not to mention the Chinese probably already know–”

“What?” The president had been off sulking to himself for a bit, but now he piped up. “What the hell do you mean the Chinese already know?”

Jess tried to keep her voice level. “Mr. President. The Chinese have three bases on the moon. All three are optimally positioned. If our two bases and a tiny British satellite found this thing, there’s no way the Chinese missed it.”

“So they’ve known about this for how long then?”

“A day, maybe more?”

The president clenched his fist. “And they chose not to tell us.”

“Well, of course they didn’t. If you’ll remember, Mr. President, your first executive order in office was to order an information blackout with the Chinese on all matters regarding space exploration.”

The president stared at her. “Are you mocking me?”

Jess kept her face straight. “I’m informing you of an action you took.”

“They were moving nuclear warheads to the moon! I had no choice.”

“They were suspected of doing that, sir. They claimed they weren’t.”

“You’re suggesting I blindly trust the word of the Chinese Communist Party? We had to retaliate.”

“I thought the retaliation to that was a cyber attack on their satellite systems,” muttered Davie. “Killed seven astronauts with that one, didn’t we?”

“Excuse me?”

Every eye in the room was trained on Davie, Jess, and the president.

Kaya looked like she wanted to hide behind a chair.

The president looked like he might blow a gasket, so Jess kicked Davie with her foot. He got the message.

“I’m sorry,” he said with gritted teeth. “That came out the wrong way. I’m sure you had a difficult decision to make.”

For a second, it looked like the president might lose it anyway. Then he growled in anger and stormed out of the room.

Mathews got up from his chair. “You have six hours to come up with a plan, Director Keen. And you heard the president. This rock touches a single American hair, and it’s your organization’s ass.”

He followed the president out, and one by one, every general filtered with him.

Kaya stared at Jess. “Scale of one to ten, Jess, how fucked are we?”

Jess rubbed her bloodshot eyes. “Ask me again in two days. Come on, let’s get to work.”