Chapter 15
New York City
8 Minutes to Detonation of Jupiter's Thunder
In some places the chaos was defening with men and women wailing in each other's arms, men taking the time to settle old scores, panic in the streets to try and desperately escape the blast zone. On the shores of the bay though before the Statue of Liberty, though, there was a scene of remarkable tranquility. Tens of thousands of New York City residents gathered before Lady Liberty and stared at her in order to gather some solace before the comming onslaught of darkness. The gigantic space station was visible now with the huge trail of flame filling the air like a comet in the middle of a bright day.
"Evil is not the equal of the good..." A Muslim Iman said to his congregation in their time of greatest need.
"And I saw the Beast, and the Kings of the Earth, and their armies, gathered to make war against him that sat on the throne and against his army..." The Baptist minister read the words of a dark time which would be the fufillment of a promise of deliverance.
"Oh that you would burst forth from the skuies and come down! How that mountains would quake in your presence! The consuming fire of your glory would burn down the forests and boil the oceans dry. The nations would tremble before you then your enemies would learn the reason for your fame..." A Jewish Rabbi spoke words of wisdom to his students.
Even a group of visiting tourists from India spoke the story of the greatest of all epics where the avatar of a god came forth in mortal form to slay the greatest of all threats to animal and god.
The children of Lady Jaye, Flint, and Scarlet had oddly enough chosen like so many other citizens to gather here for the eleventh hour that would determine the future of the Earth. The small ones could not be expected to understand truly what it was they were possibly going to lose in the bright meteor that would cleanse life free from the Atlantic coast.
Marissa thought the sight was rather pretty in a sort of grizzly way, like Haley's comet which she'd not gotten to see and likely never would save on video-tape. She wondered whether or not death would hurt when it struck and whether or not her parents were alright. The idea of what would happen to her country beyond her family was a bit much for her young mind to fully wrap itself around.
Conrad on the other hand was acutely conscious of what was happening to his country and the fact that he was personally in danger hardly registered to him. It was an abomination to a mind that had never truly faced evil that Cobra, the bad guys, might win in the end. The thought of his mother was not something very strong either because he knew that she would be okay no matter what, even if she lost his brother and he.
Dashiel was something of a mixture of emotions as the sight of the flying comet of a space station made him sick to his stomach. The young son of Scarlet was the most concerned with his own impending death and the thought of his mother who was likely out there away from him. It was he who also knew that many others would suffer in the attack and prayed with all of his heart that a miracle would occur.
It was a wish that the universe was willing to grant, though not in the way he expected.

Shareware had an exceptionally difficult time navigating the halls of Cobra Command base, he might have been able to do it easier with his IQ of 2000 or so were it not for the fact that the Computer systems were down thanks to this stupid self destruct thing that had co-opted all the good link-ups. Without the mind boggingly infinite nature of the internet to occupy his vast intellectual resources the boredom was nearly enough to make every step crippling. He had elevated it somewhat by composing a book about the nature of nuclear tactics and searching through his memories to spot every possible piece of subtext in the Xena series but it was still not helping. A short attention span when you had the brain the size of a planet was just something that happened sadly, even figuring out which Mythological Goddesses his boss would sleep with hadn't occupied his time very long. Besides he knew everyone had their bizzare fetishes.
"Salvation! DSL!" Shareware shouted as he came across a door which would lead to one of the escape shuttles with computers functioning directly beyond the level of mere mortal link up.
"Sorry but this shuttle is taken!" A voice rang out which was accompanied by none other than Cobra Commander who ran into the door and immediately shut the airlock behind him.
Shareware blinked as he came up to the edge of the airlock and kicked it. The ridiculousness of this situation was actually enough to distract the living super-computer from his monumental nausea boredom for a moment, but only a moment. "Cobra Commander this is ridiculous. Surely you don't intend to abandon me on this station which is about to be blown to smithereens?"
"Actually, on the contrary. That was exactly what I intended to do," Cobra Commander's voice echoed from within the shuttle.
Shareware winced as he thought about this, it was obviously one of the downsides of serving a warlord who had absolutely no concept of honor whatsoever. It was he supposed a trade off for the statistical fact that men who were willing to break alliances whenever necessary were a full whopping 1.4% across history more likely to conquer their enemies. He probably should have calculated his even more whopping 8% chance to mess over their employees. "But, Mighty Cobra Commander think of this. I know all of Cobra's secret bank account numbers, its design plans, and weapon stockpiles across the world!"
"Which just means you're a security threat," Cobra Commander said menacingly, which was really all he had.
Shareware really hated the original commander of Cobra he realized rather tersely. The man was so amazingly paranoid he was likely to abandon the chances to make sure he knew where all the hidden wealth of Cobra was as opposed to the certain chance that Shareware did. He calculated in his head what was most likely to work here and came up with a viable alternative for his time limitations. "Cobra Commander do you know how to fly this particular type of shuttle?"
"Maybe," Cobra Commander said reluctantly. "I was under the impression that one could simply use an autopilot."
"Well one can..." Shareware said before Cobra Commander interrupted.
"Thank you very much. Goodbye." Cobra Commander waved as he dissapeared through the airlock and the shuttle a few minutes later ejected out the side.
"Ha," Shareware muttered sitting down, calculating that the 99.9% chance of his death now was just as good in it's .1% standing there than trying to find another way off. He decided to play computer games instead, perhaps in the last minutes of his life he could beat his previous Resident Evil record.

5 minutes to detonation
Jonathan Sharp had never really imagined that he would spend perhaps what would amount to the last minutes of his life trying to disarm the pen-ultimate product of his life. In retrospect he should have realized this was usually what human beings tended to do with the later part of their existences if they had time to reflect. It was a pity in his personal opinion that he had never been trained in more advanced technological practices since that inhibited his ability to defuse the situation considerably.

"You're aware I hope that the reactor is well past the point of being shut down or ejected safely. At this current rate even if we detonated it now it would contaminate most of the Eastern Seaboard with incurable radiation poisoning," Iceheart said as she unfortunately could do little more than tell Jonathan how much he was not being effective.
"Thank you Iceheart, but given that neither of us are in any position to escape even were I to wish for my own personal reasons to die doing something wortwhile, I might as well continue trying vainly to re-route the command systems. Curse myself for building such a thorough security system," Cobra General muttered even as he heard the sound of the laser pistol being cocked behind him even as Iceheart was throat chopped and fell to the ground at Scarlet's hands.
"Let it never be spoken that in the darkest hours of the night there are not brief flashes of light...which blind when they should not illuminate," Jonathan spoke as he could feel the energy pistol at his throat and found he did not care.
Snake Eyes he could tell very much wanted to kill him for what was no doubt any number of crimes comitted against what he believed in. He would gladly kill him for the five hundred thousand people estimated to have already died in the "Starfire Rebellion" as the news agencies were already calling it before discovery of the likelihood of their victory, the death of G.I. Joe members in their numerous engagements, and not the least of which was his unholy love for Scarlet.
"Given your here and your not escaping, I suppose your trying to disarm this thing," Scarlet said with a cold professionality that showed no trace of the feelings she felt. They had both chosen duty over their feelings in their lifetimes, unlike he Jonathan supposed she would not regret it.
"Yes, though it is presently beyond my ability. I was locked out of my security codes by a treacherous underling and as such we have approximately four and a half minutes until our doom," Jonathan said with a defeated sigh, a tone he had never taken before.
"It is possible to move the station?" Scarlet said with a short look.
Jonathan closed his eyes as he realized it was so utterly simple that it had utterly eluded his mindset. While he did not have the clearence to override his father's command on shutting down the self destruct system, he did not lack the clearence to change the movement of the space station itself. He did not say a word as Snake Eyes followed him with his pistol, any false motion leading to his being shot mercilessly. Pushing all the rockets to overdrive he knew he'd burn out the engines and lead to an overload within ten minutes. As one could imagine, this was not an overly pressing concern.
The explosion of the station upwards shuddered as he did not know whether or not the speed they would be travelling would be enough to spare the land below them the mindless screaming death that was Jupiter's Thunder's overload. There was a 23% chance that it would detonate harmlessly in the atmosphere with another 50% that fill the seaboard with a meteor shower that would kill thousands but was far better than the hundred million destined to die with his father's kamikaze attack. He didn't want to think about the remaining 27% chance the rockets would fail early and accomplish nothing. Jonathan hardly noticed when Snake Eyes was shot in the hand by Iceheart whose pistol moved to kill Scarlet but was dead a moment later. Iceheart had been genetically enhanced like Jonathan and as such, only he had been fast enough to shoot her in the skull.
"I have betrayed the last of my beliefs in the honor of war," were the last words of Cobra General and even Jonathan Sharp. Both were lies that he had crafted to make him believe that there was something other than suffering in all this. He dropped the weapon on the ground next to his loyal soldier and said "Whatever is left of Cobra I surrender."
He felt annoyingly like Lucifer on the Final Nights.

0 minutes til destruction
Cobra command station detonated it's awesome explosive power well above the Earth's atmosphere in a heat blast which was visible from New York to Europe as the planet was covered in tiny sparkles that served as fireworks for the victory over the most terrifying plot of the darkness yet. With their ground forces decimated at Area 51, their super weapon destroyed, news of the surrender of the leader who had galvanized thousands of age old hatreds under the banner of a New order free of them, .the world's leaders safely returned or held in captivity for their own warcrimes...the Starfire Rebellion collapsed. The majority of rebels surrendered while others simply dissapeared back into the woodwork with their dreams of power or freedom from enemies real and imagined shattered.
Though Cobra Commander would never be found and brought to justice for his crimes, he would spend the rest of his near-immortal lifespan a defeated figure. Living long enough to see the triumph in truth of every ideal he despised.