Earthfall

by Craig Delancey

  Contents

  Front matter

  Prologue

  Earthfall

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogues

  The Predator Space Chronicles

  About the Author

  Question Zero

  Title Information

  Craig DeLancey

  OMEGA THRESHOLD:

  EARTHFALL

  Predator Space Chronicles V

  Prologue

  “Wake up!”

  Amir Tarkos opened his eyes and saw nothing. Hard rings pressed down over his face: goggles, painted black. His whole body ached. He lay leaning slightly back, perhaps at thirty degrees from vertical, on a hard surface. Straps tightly bound his wrists, his ankles, and his chest. The strap over his chest had been cinched till it cut into his skin, making it difficult to draw sufficient breath. He coughed and tasted blood. He tried to turn his head, but something hard, like a helmet, pressed against his temples.

  “Where am I?”

  “We ask the questions,” a man said. He had an English accent. Deep, so that Tarkos pictured him as large, beefy, red with anger. What…?

  Yes. It came back to him in a flash now. He had been walking in a Paris street with Bria, his partner in the Harmonizer Corp. They were walking to meet Tarkos’s mother, for dinner. A van had pulled up. They both had been hit with taser darts. Men had surrounded them. The men had struggled, Tarkos remembered, to manage Bria. It had taken four men just to slow her down. Tarkos had been hit by one of the darts and paralyzed by the savage current, and then someone—this man?—had injected him with a sedative.

  Welcome to Earth. Three years in space and he had returned to his home planet expecting peace and the comforts of home. He had expected to show his planet to his partner, Bria, in the hopes of convincing her that humans were not savages. Instead, he’d fought terrorists and alien infiltrators and widespread political discord and now this: kidnapped and in the hands, he assumed, of the Terran Liberation Front.

  His whole body hurt from the cramping caused by the electrostatic charges that had shocked him into paralysis. When had that been, he wondered? Minutes, or hours, or even days before? He checked the clock in his implants. The numbers sputtered but then appeared in his vision, as if hovering before him. Twelve hours. He’d been out almost twelve hours.

  “You will answer our questions,” the man said. “You will answer them all. Your headache will be less severe if you cooperate.”

  Tarkos had no headache. He almost said this, but then a machine hummed loudly, just above his ears. A wave of nausea came and went. His mouth fell slack.

  “Ow my head hurts now my head does hurt what a headache I….”

  For a second, Tarkos wondered who spoke. Then he realized he spoke. His voice trailed on and on. He couldn’t control it. “I know what, I know, I know what, I guess, I know what, you have a magnetic interference helmet, magnets, magnetic field, magnetic, you’re messing with my, with my brain, my brain, shutting down select electrochemical reactions shutting down frontal lobes shutting down inhibition shutting it so no inhibition so I talk I talk I will say anything I will say—”

  “When will the Galactic control towers be activated?” the man interrupted.

  Tarkos tried not to speak but his mouth, his whole body, seemed far away. His voice trailed on. “They’re not control towers they detect they detect things, weapons or explosives or other threats, detect, take me out, let me out, take me out of this magnet—”

  “When will they be activated?”

  “I don’t know, that’s not my—think you idiot I’m a Predator you idiot I fight lifecrime on Alliance worlds, what do I know about pylons going up in New York you idiot Paris idiot London wherever, think for yourself or why don’t you ask them, just call the Galactic Embassy and—”

  “Who are the Harmonizer agents among the Terran Liberation Front?”

  Tarkos tried to close his mouth but it went on without him. “What? I don’t, I think, I don’t know don’t think there are any, who said there were any, we are warriors for life we don’t get involved in domestic matters there wouldn’t couldn’t be Predators in your group besides—”

  “Which Harmonizer agents stopped the TLF agents on the space elevator?”

  “Me, I, Bria, she and me, she and—”

  The voice turned angry. “That was you! How did you know we were going to take the elevator? Who spies on us? Are there Enforcer Agents in the Terran Liberation Front? Galactic Executive?”

  “How the hell should I know you should just why don’t you just put them just put all your people all in this damn headcracker and ask them for yourself you idiot….”

  The humming stopped. Tarkos sagged and stopped talking.

  “What’s happening?” called the Englishman.

  “No more than three minutes at a time,” a woman said in French. She added in English, “Three minutes.”

  The man swore.

  Tarkos’s head felt like it was about to split in two. He tried to breathe deeply through his nose. It didn’t help. He started to feel that he might vomit. The pain throbbed, throbbed with his heartbeat, like his pulse might explode his skull.

  “Where’s Bria?” he demanded.

  “The Sussuratian?”

  “Yes.”

  The man didn’t answer. But then Tarkos heard a huff of air, a familiar snort.

  “Bria!” he called. No answer. She was near. He thought he could smell her. But why couldn’t he interface with her implants, if she were near? That meant they had her in some kind of Faraday field. Or maybe a simple Faraday box.

  But not him. He kept his implants on passive reception, but he could detect the faint signals of local networks. Weak, but something.

  “This was an inside job,” Tarkos said. He strained at the straps. They creaked but did not yield. “Too coordinated to be spontaneous. You knew where we were going. How?”

  Again the man didn’t answer.

  Tarkos spat. Most of his thick spit trickled down his chin. He knew his spit was bloody: it tasted of copper. “You have someone inside,” Tarkos hissed.

  After a long while, the Englishman said, “You aren’t going to live long, Predator, but I’ll tell you this. Many people are not traitors. Even people inside your organizations. Humanity will never be enslaved. We will resist until we are victorious. You are going to lose that vote of yours, to get Earth to willingly join the Alliance. And then, we’re going to chase all the aliens off the planet.”

  “Bien, ” the French woman called.

  The hum started again, and the headache clamped down like they had struck his skull with a stone. Tarkos listened with despair as his voice immediately rambled on, his brain wholly out of his own control. “Ouch you bastards this thing hurts I’ve half a mind to shove you in here when I get out of—”

  “What is your protocol for the acquisition of a dead Harmonizer?”

  “What you mean what I don’t—what, like what would they do what would they do with the what would they do with—”

  “What would they do with the body?”

  “Autopsy cut it up look through it look for evidence but most important take out the implants snip snip hide the secrets the secrets of the Predators and—”

  “Where would they take the body in Paris?” the Englishman said.

  “Oh to the Harmonizer Headquarters nowhere else no jurisdiction for French police no and—”

  “Would they search the body for explosives or any kin
d of boobytrap?” the Englishman asked.

  “What I don’t know maybe but what kind of trap, I mean, they’d have to do that in the autopsy room maybe, always a robot does the autopsy at first so it probably checks for that but I don’t know it seems that—”

  “How can we kill you and preserve your implants?” the man asked.

  “Can’t,” Tarkos’s traitorous unconscious voice rambled out. “Can’t can’t unless you freeze me maybe freeze the head liquid nitrogen maybe….”

  The humming died again.

  “Shit my head hurts,” Tarkos hissed. The salty taste of nausea came and overwhelmed him, the migraine pain sickening him. He vomited. Hot bile poured down his chin. He spat, trying to get the taste out of his mouth.

  “So that’s your plan,” he said, the words clotted with the bile still in his mouth. “Kill us, try to sell my implants, but put a bomb in Bria’s guts, toss her out on the street. Well, if you don’t have antimatter, it isn’t worth the effort.”

  Tarkos listened to the silence. He took it to be confirmation.

  “Where would you get antimatter? None is made on Earth. Do you understand what that means? And what about me? Who do you plan to sell me to? Not some humans. You think you’re in control here? You’re being used. Played, one group of aliens against another. This has nothing to do with Earth’s liberation, idiot. There’s a war coming and you’re playing for the wrong team.”

  “Killing you will be nice,” the man said. “It’ll be a blessing to shut you up.”

  “Do you know what we are?”

  “Traitors to Earth,” the Englishman said.

  Tarkos laughed. It made his chest hurt, squeezing against the straps. His mouth and sinuses burned from the vomit. He was slowly, very surely, becoming very angry. “We are warriors for life,” he said, almost shouting. “We love life and we protect life and we spread it through the Galaxy. Our mission is sacred. You cannot stop us. Kill two of us, and twenty will rise up in our place. But. But. You won’t kill us. In minutes, each of you will be unconscious or dead. Depending on how mad you’ve made Bria.”

  “You’re a bloody traitor. Now shut up. I have to keep your brain mostly intact, but I’d be happy to start cutting pieces off the rest of you.”

  “What’s the point?” Tarkos asked. “The referendum is in days. If you believe people are on your side, then the referendum will result in a no vote.”

  “There’ll be aliens on Earth whether we join the Alliance or not.”

  Tarkos grunted. He threw his head back and concentrated. By the sound of the voices, the room was bare, but large. He could get no signals from far away, none of the usual background chatter that had hissed over his implants in downtown Paris. So they might be somewhere outside the city.

  He would have to hazard an active transmission. He sent a single pulse.

  His gun pinged back. Near. Very near. Close enough to penetrate the walls of this room.

  Come, Tarkos told it.

  The voice of the Frenchwoman behind him called, “Bien!”

  The hum kicked in.

  “How do Predator implants work?” the Englishman repeated. “Is it quantum entanglement?”

  “They don’t tell us they don’t tell us—”

  “What can interfere with them?” the Englishman repeated.

  Tarkos’s suppressed brain betrayed him. “Faraday cage faraday fields work this works in here can only feel a little of a little of Bria only a little of—”

  “Can you transmit for help from here?”

  “No can only feel a little past this room nothing else just a little past and feel my gun….”

  “Alright!” the Englishman called. “That’s enough. We don’t want to fry his implants.”

  The hum wound down. Tarkos coughed again and wretched. He reached out with his implants. The gun answered from just a few meters away. He interfaced, getting a gritty image through the gun’s camera of a brick wall leading up to sky, and the gun’s spider legs pinching into cracks in the masonry. It clung to an exterior wall, facing up. Before it lay a window of opaque green glass. He told the gun to break a small hole in the glass. As it pecked with its alloy barrel at the pane, Tarkos shouted to cover the sound.

  “Bastards!” he howled. His voice echoed in the small room.

  The Englishman kicked him, a hard boot toe in his shin.

  Tarkos laughed. “That’s the spirit,” he said. “You’re just a thug. Let it out.”

  The Englishman panted, standing just a step away.

  Tarkos said, “Take this mask off me. You’re going to kill me anyway. I want it off.”

  “No.”

  “You idiot,” Tarkos said. “I’m a Harmonizer. I can smell DNA. I’ve already sequenced the genomes of fourteen humans that have passed through this room. I can not only identify them, I can find their mothers and sisters. I can smell their second cousins in a crowd. Me seeing you would mean nothing. You might as well lift this helmet.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to see Bria,” Tarkos said.

  “Why?” The Englishman sounded genuinely curious.

  “We’re partners. We should die together.”

  Footsteps walked away: hard shoes on cement, grinding against dirt. Tarkos coughed. He wanted to squeeze his head, to compress the migraine. Tears of frustration filled his eyes.

  The footsteps returned. They stopped right next to him. The hairs raised on the back of Tarkos’s neck, the involuntary response to being vulnerable to someone right behind you. After a long moment, the man sighed, and then Tarkos felt the helmet being lifted off his hair. Cool air rushed around his face. The goggles over his eyes were roughly yanked back over his head.

  He blinked. He faced two walls of a warehouse space. Before him, a cage of fine metal mesh stood in the corner, about three meters on a side. Inside, Bria lay strapped to a table like the one he lay on. She was pinioned like a human. Tarkos cringed: Sussurats were not meant to bend like that. Woven metal straps covered her two wrists, her ankles, and her throat. They had muzzled her. A wide black cloth had been wrapped around her four eyes.

  The man behind him did not step forward. Tarkos closed his eyes a moment. He could feel his gun. The barrel protruded through a hole in the window above them now. He could see the shape of the room through it. He told the weapon to arm.

  Tarkos opened his eyes and very carefully stared at the metal lock that held the cage door closed, and then he peered at both sides of the straps on each of Bria’s limbs, and the extreme edges of the strap over her throat. In the corner, a camera aimed down at him. Tarkos looked at that too.

  “You, up there, how many are you?” Tarkos said at the camera.

  He heard shuffling. “Alright,” the man said. “Get the sedative and decapitation knives and the nitrogen bottle.”

  “Bria,” Tarkos said, in Galactic. “I think you’ll have to be fast. I don’t know how many are here. Just two in this room I think.”

  “What are you on about?” the Englishman said. “I know what you’re saying, I have a translator—”

  “You just dropped my gun,” Tarkos told him. “When you abducted us. You just dropped my gun on the pavement, right there on the street. That was a sentient weapon, a laser. It came looking for me. And it’s here now.”

  He listened to the moment of silence, of confusion, of realization.

  “End game,” Tarkos said.

  “Chief!” the Frenchwoman’s voice came from behind him. Tarkos could hear more clearly without the helmet. She stood or sat not far behind him. “Chief,” she called. “I’m getting some kind of transmission. In here!”

  “What?” the Englishman demanded. “Which one of them?”

  “I can’t tell. Weak. No standard protocol.”

  “Damn it. One of them has implants that can radio.”

  The man snapped his gun as he chambered a round. He stepped forward, just enough so that Tarkos saw the barrel, then the whole gun come into view, aimed as his chest.
>
  Tarkos told his laser to fire.

  _____

  It happened so quickly that Tarkos did not understand what he saw; he had to piece together the blurs drawing from his memory.

  He had given his gun all its targets. The laser fired twelve times in a single second: the beams cut through Bria’s bonds, through the door to the cage that held her, and then cut the camera down from the wall.

  Bria sprung from the table, clawing off her blindfold. She shot through the cage door, which tore off its weak hinges and clattered across the room. The Englishman beside Tarkos, still holding the gun, had only half turned before Bria slammed into him.

  Bria bounded out of Tarkos’s view. Strapped against the table, Tarkos could only stare ahead. The Englishman never said a thing. The impact forced air out of him in a single grunt. Tarkos heard the man roll across the floor, his limbs whacking at the concrete. The French woman gave a single scream, choked into silence by a thud. Then near silence fell over the room. Tarkos watched as the cloth that had been wrapped over Bria’s eyes fluttered finally to the floor.

  Bria hove into his view. She held his weapon, which had climbed down from the window at her command. It changed shape to accommodate her huge claw as well as it could. She pressed the barrel against his bonds, squeezing it between his skin and the table, and sliced down, firing a brief weak burst. In seconds she cut all his bonds. Tarkos fell to the floor, all his limbs numb and useless. He tried twice to stand, and fell each time.

  “Must go,” Bria grunted. A black steel door stood to the right. Bria cut away the knob and lock and slammed against it, bursting through and out of sight.

  Tarkos could see the whole room now: a simple warehouse space. Dirty glass panes lined the walls behind him. One was broken, where his gun had climbed through. On a table before the windows, a heap of machinery fed cables to the apparatus that had been lowered over his skull. A woman lay crumpled under the table.

  The blood flowed only slowly back into his tingling limbs. He still could not stand. But he could crawl. On all fours he worked his way to the man laying on the floor, next to the table. The Englishman was smaller than Tarkos had imagined. Slight, balding, with a wide jaw. Four cuts over his shoulder seeped blood. A blow to his head had left a red welt. But he breathed still.