Earthfall

by Craig Delancey

  “You don’t watch television?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You should. It’d help you catch up with civilization. Look, kid, I’ve got to go.”

  “Please,” Tarkos said. “You can still make this right. You can help us. I’m on a ship right now, crossing the Atlantic. I’ll be there in a little more than an hour. We can try to fix this. There are many lives at stake. Millions. Billions.”

  “You think I don’t know that, kid? I’m doing my best to fix this right now. You are not going to be able to help. But let me help you, instead. The people who killed my wife—”

  “What? Your wife? But—”

  “Shut up and listen. The people who killed my wife. They’re TLF. They’re going to doing something bad in New York. Attack the Galactic embassy, most likely. I don’t know where they work out of. I had my people try to track them, but they were good at shaking a tail. I know their base is near the water though. They use boats. So you find them and you stop them. Kill as many as you can, as a favor to me. They got antimatter—only half as much as they think they have, I stole the rest right out from under them—but they still have enough. So don’t let them use it. I’ve got to go now, kid. To make this right, you do as I say.”

  “Sir, sir—” Tarkos said, desperate to keep him on the line.

  “So it’s sir, now, is it?”

  “Yes, sir. I… I came home to Earth not willing to listen. I’ve learned a lot these last few days. I’ve learned about how strong we are. Humans are stronger and wiser than I thought.”

  “Some of them,” DiAngelo interjected.

  “Yes. Some of them. The ones that count. Even our children are brave and wise. But it still may not be enough. The human race needs people like you. Determined people. Strong people. We need everyone. Please, help us. Join us.”

  “Nice thought, kid,” DiAngelo said. “But as I said, I’ll help you in my own way. You help me in yours.”

  He turned the phone off, lowered the window a crack, and pushed the phone through. It bounced against the door before tumbling into the road.

  The taxi turned slowly into the big parking lot for the marina. DiAngelo looked at his watch and opened the software that Lee had written to control the device he held. He found the timer controls for the magnetic bottle, and set them to turn the field off in two hours. He put the countdown on his watch face, where he could see it. Then he opened his fist, where the black pill sat in his palm, hot now from being clenched tight. He slapped his palm to his mouth, and swallowed the container down.

  “Here you go, Mac,” the driver said, stopping the car before the lowered white gate to the marina.

  The rain had stopped. A few low white buildings lined the waterfront, where long docks were crowded with parked sailboats. Their masts bobbed and leaned as the water in the bay tossed big whitecaps. But DiAngelo saw his boat tied up there, next to the start of the peer: a long sleek white needle, its hydrofoils under the water. A fast boat. It would be good to take it out, one last time.

  DiAngelo pulled his wallet. He waived one credit card over the old check-out box on the back of the driver’s seat. Tip? It asked. He wondered about the limit on this card. $100,000 he thought. He tipped the driver $80,000.

  “You got family here?” he asked the driver.

  “Yes sir,” the man said. He stared in wonder at the number on his dash. “Sir. Yes. Five of us. Two daughters. My wife. Her mother.”

  “Get them out of the city.”

  _____

  It took him more than an hour, driving hard, the boat flying on its hydrofoils, till the yacht came into view. He stood on the front deck, too impatient to sit behind the low glass of the cockpit. His suit still felt soaked through, so that he shivered with cold. He wished he had better shoes. Or even just a change of shoes. The wind had blown his hair into a wild mane. The timer on his watch read less than an hour left. He’d cut it tight. But now he was in sight of the boat. He aimed straight for it. He pushed on the throttle, but it was already pressed hard against the dash.

  In another ten minutes, he could read the name on the back of the boat: EMPIRE. Pompous name, he realized now. He should have named it something safer. Like ESCAPE.

  He pulled the marine radio microphone and throttled down. He figured that they had to be listening to every band. Just as they had to be looking at him now.

  He pressed down the transmit button. “This is Alfonso DiAngelo. I’m the one that gave you the boat. Something has happened. I need to tell you about it. That Rinneret needs to tell you. So I’m coming over there to talk. I got no weapons. You can scan me or whatever it is you do. I’m docking at the back and I’ll come below deck. Alright?”

  He didn’t bother to repeat the message. If they weren’t recording and running everything through their translators, then they weren’t worth trying to negotiate with.

  The white stern of the boat loomed up now before him. He cut the engine, and turned the wheel just in time to drift in sideways. He ran to the port of the bow and grabbed the ladder on the yacht. He managed to get a line around it, and tied it with an eight-knot. Not good procedure—the ladder was not strong enough to moor a big boat to—but he only needed to make a show of intending to leave.

  When he reached out for the ladder, he looked down into the water. And then he saw it: something huge there, something black and covered with spikes like swords, drifted just below his yacht. It made a shiver of fear run through him. He didn’t know why. So what, they had their ship here, hidden underwater, below his own yacht. So what. But something of the glimmer of it that he saw made him almost lose his grip on the ladder. It seemed alive and cruel. Yes, that was it. What he could see of it looked cruel.

  “So what,” he said aloud, to reassure himself. “So they got a ship, and they made it look tough.” All the better. Let them put all their assets in one spot.

  He climbed up the ladder, his hard dress shoes slipping on the rungs. “I’m too old for this shit,” he growled, but he clung tight, his cold hand gripping the slick metal with all his strength. When he got to the top he crawled forward onto the deck and just lay there a minute, catching his breath.

  He thought of walking around to the fore hatch, and dropping down into the main galley. But then he decided against it. He should do nothing that looked like an attempt at a surprise. He walked instead to the cockpit. It was silent there, under the low retractable roof. He looked back toward the city, lost over the horizon now. The sunset shone through beneath breaking clouds with beautiful red light. The boat itself seemed to turn red now, the white deck reflecting the colors.

  He grunted. Leave it to his last sunset to be a good one, to be the kind of sunset that made him want to stay. But the watch on his wrist read just twenty minutes now.

  He could sit up here, enjoy the view. But no. He wanted to be face to face with the big boys. He wanted to look them in their bug eyes and let them know that Alfonso DiAngelo did not fear them.

  He pulled opened the teak door by the wheel. Lights flickered on, showing the teak steps leading down into the galley. A horrible smell rose up. It made him step back. A smell like… rotting insects.

  A wave of sorrow and regret went through him. It was strange. He had not even let himself think about the death of Victoria. That would be too hard. He didn’t have time for that and he couldn’t face it. But this, somehow, hurt him. This ship of his, he’d been so proud of it. And Victoria had loved it so. And now, to have it reeking of alien shit, putrid with their reek. This was the violation he had always feared. Their shit and breath and piss and impossible ideas fouling the Earth.

  And God forgive me, he thought. I helped them. I let them here, into my ship, onto this ocean, close to the capital of Earth, New York City.

  “Filthy bugs,” he hissed. “I’m going to fix this.” He stepped down inside.

  He was only half way down the steps when the lasers hit him. An agonizing scalding slash ran from his shoulder to his thigh. He looked down in s
hock. A smoking cut appeared in the fabric of his suit. The cloth fell away. He jerked back in some reflex. His wet shoe slipped out from under him. He tumbled down the stairs and landed, face first, on the floor.

  _____

  DiAngelo came awake naked on the hard wood floor of the galley. He shuddered and rolled over. The lights above glowed dimly. He touched his chest: a burn, painful to the touch, ran across his chest. The laser had been real then, but only aimed to cut away his clothes. He started to sit up—but then a dark motion flashed to his left, and something hard and inflexible seized his left ankle. It felt like two rods of iron were being crushed against his leg. He cried out as the brutal grip lifted him into the air.

  There, before him, the thing. No. Two things.

  “No shit,” he hissed, “you really are bugs.”

  Three meters long, black and red, they looked like scorpions the size of rhinos. One held him aloft. DiAngelo coughed, and looked up at his body. Pale, flabby, covered with gray hair. He could remember when he had been a young man, strong, thin, covered with muscle and unable to feel tired. So this is what they wanted: to strip him to his naked condition. To make him feel cold and weak and alone.

  “So you’re the thing that they all fear, even the Neelee?” he said. “You’re Ulltrians?” It took an effort, to keep his eyes open and look at them. To not shout with pain. To not weep with fear.

  The thing held him in a single claw. It swung him closer. A smell like rotting cockroaches wafted off of it. He coughed on that. It made his eyes water.

  “So I’ve got something to tell you,” he managed to croak.

  The Ulltrian holding him lifted its scorpion tail and prodded him, hard. DiAngelo coughed, losing his breath. He felt he might vomit, and this scared him: would he choke, held upside down like this, before this monstrosity?

  He saw his suit then, in pieces piled beneath him. And there, atop the pile of smoking cloth, his watch.

  00:00:53

  He smiled. A minute left. A minute to say what he had to say.

  “Hey, you.” He looked at what he took to be its eyes: an irregular lump of glassy bubbles on the front of it. They looked more like tumors than eyes. But they shone in the light, and he saw himself in them, pale and weak and suspended from a black claw. Behind it, the other Ulltrian shifted sideways, waving its scorpion tail, as if hoping to get a stab at him also.

  “Hey, you, you fucking bug. I’ve come to tell you a message. This is my boat, and this is my ocean, and that behind us is my city. Your stay is over. I told you not to fuck with New York. But you thought you could have your way. You believe all that shit that the Galactics say about how you’re an evil legend, et cetera, ad nauseum. Well to me, you’re just a bug. Another bug. End of the line for you, you fucking insect.”

  He drew his head back and spat, with what little force he had. But some tiny flecks of spittle landed on the glimmering black eyes. This pleased him. He smiled. What had that philosopher said, the good one? Il n’est pas de destin qui ne se surmonte par le mepris. There is no fate that cannot be overcome with contempt.

  The Ulltrian screamed, a sound like breaking glass. It whipped its long tail back and then snapped it forward.

  But before the point could strike DiAngelo’s soft, human flesh, a light brighter than a star wiped them from the world.

  CHAPTER 10

  Tarkos took the call when they were nearly across the Atlantic. He and Bria soared over a thick bank of clouds that hid the sea below.

  He opened a virtual window, and Vice Commander McDonough appeared there, frowning at him, transparent over the dashboard with bright sunset skies behind him.

  “We think we’ve found DiAngelo. He dropped his phone outside a marina. The people there confirm he left in a boat. He must have disabled the radios on it because we can’t track it. But we think he went out into the Long Island Sound. Supposedly he has a big yacht, and it’s anchored somewhere out there in the sound. We’ll send you a search pattern to follow.”

  Tarkos frowned. “Sir, I request that Bria and I be allowed to join the team pursuing the Terran Liberation Front cell. We could spend hours searching for DiAngelo, and we won’t be much better at it than US military. But we can be useful fighting the TLF.”

  “No. We—”

  A white flash washed over them. The windshield of the cruiser turned black in a nanosecond, but that nanosecond of light was enough to blind Tarkos for a moment. He blinked, the white afterimage fading slowly. McDonough’s image was gone. Alarms rang through the ship. Tarkos recognized their distinctive tone: gamma radiation warning.

  “Antimatter explosion,” Bria hissed.

  McDonough’s image stuttered and reappeared. “We… we’re trying to triangulate. Your ship is talking to our AIs. That was….”

  “In the Sound. Out in the sea,” Tarkos said.

  McDonough narrowed his brow and peered at Tarkos. “Yes.”

  “He said he was going to ‘fix this.’ I think he knew where the Ulltrians hid. And I think he just killed them.”

  McDonough shook his head again. The windshield slowly grew transparent, letting in sun again now that no additional shockwaves of electromagnetic radiation came at the Cruiser.

  “This is a mighty disaster,” the Irishman grunted. “The referendum is in days. And we had a fifty-fifty chance of winning it. Now, with antimatter bombs blasting away in the ocean? Tis a disaster. Feck.”

  “TLF,” Bria said.

  McDonough ran his hands over his face and sighed. “We started the p-detectors, just this hour. They indicate a likely location of antimatter in a warehouse, dockside, in New Jersey. Within sight of Manhattan. There’s a US special operations team there now, but we will try to hold them off till you arrive.”

  He sent the coordinates.

  Bria put the ship into stealth mode, turned on the inertial dampers, and slammed the engines into an apparent three gees of acceleration.

  _____

  Squeezed down in his acceleration couch, Tarkos used his implants to read the short report that McDonough sent. Those silver towers that were set up in New York and Paris and elsewhere—the shining structures that DiAngelo had demanded he explain—were probability-detectors, or p-detectors. They detected virtual particles and quantum parallel paths. Their ability to detect a potential release of energy was proportional to the probability of such an event times its force. The p-detectors formed, therefore, perfect detectors for explosives. All the cities of Galactic civilizations deployed them, to detect and prevent both accidents and attacks. They were a gift to Earth, given before the referendum, and explained to policy makers but few others. After the referendum, Tarkos presumed, the Terran governments would explain the devices to the population and then turn them on. But now, the first installed p-detectors stood in New York, no doubt there to protect the Galactic Embassy and the U.N. And the Harmonizers had seized control and turned them on.

  Anti-matter, were it to touch real matter, could cause a huge redistribution of energy. And so even the small probability of a tiny leak of anti-matter could be detected by the p-detectors. The p-detectors in New York had confirmed a substantial, or poorly stored, quantity of antimatter. Tarkos knew what that meant: the TLF meant to put it on a boat, drive it over next to the Galactic Embassy and United Nations, and turn off the magnetic bottle. Both buildings would fall.

  “Hurry up,” he grunted at Bria.

  Bria lifted a claw and pushed the throttle forward.

  _____

  They landed on a stretch of cracked concrete at the base of a pier. They opened the starboard door and leapt down to the cement. Behind them, dark water splashed against the metal wall of the pier. Before them a long warehouse stretched hundreds of meters along the front. Several trucks were backed up to loading docks and parked there. Three black armored trucks were parked in a neat row against the warehouse, noses facing one of the commercial trucks. It hid them from view from anyone looking from the north.

  The ship remained in s
tealth mode, but Tarkos could see some of its outline in swirling white frosted air caused by the stealth cooling. His armor, and then Bria’s armor, leapt from the ship and landed with a hollow thud behind them.

  They jogged to the trucks, their armor following. A man with short cut hair, middle aged and with skin densely wrinkled around his eyes, slid open a door on one the trucks and looked down at them.

  “What the fuck is that?”

  Tarkos stopped but Bria passed him. She climbed into the truck, and the soldier quickly backed inside to give her room. Her armor followed. Tarkos climbed up after her. The door slid closed after his armor climbed into the truck.

  “What the fuck was that?” the man shouted again. He wore the insignia of a lieutenant.

  Tarkos looked around. There was six men in the truck. They wore black clothes, and black paint streaked their faces. Each held a machine gun.

  “You could have just blown our cover. How do you think they didn’t hear that? My god, in here we even felt it.”

  Bria huffed. She sat on her haunches to fit under the low ceiling, but now she straightened. Her ears touched the ceiling. She lowered her head and closed her top eyes and looked at the soldier with her bottom two green eyes. “Data,” she hissed, in passable English. Talking revealed her long white fangs.

  The soldier did not flinch. “We did not ask for the help of the Predators. And we aren’t asking for it now.”

  “Data,” Bria repeated.

  The soldier swore again but he reached around and touched a keyboard on the wall. “We’ve got heat signatures of at least fourteen humans. No bugs in there.”

  Tarkos flinched. He’d heard that some people insisted on calling all Galactic Citizens ‘bugs.’ But Bria already had her small eyes closed, a direct insult to this man. Nothing he said would change her view now.

  “We got no idea where the anti-matter is,” the soldier continued. “They’ve got a boat moored here. We think we should hit them when they go to that.”

  “No,” Bria said, speaking Galactic. “Will arm the weapon before putting on boat. Attack now.”