After the Fall- The Complete series Box Set

by Charlie Dalton

  The door opened and they walked in.

  “What views—?” Isabelle said, cut short by the expansive windows in Humperdinck’s quarters.

  The room looked out on a vista of the Earth, the greens and blues vibrant beneath the glittering sunlight. Isabelle dragged her eyes away from the view and toward Donny.

  “We’re really in space?” she said.

  “Either that or I’m one hell of a painter,” Donny said.

  Still not quite believing it, Isabelle approached the glass and put her hand to it. Ice cold. This couldn’t be a painting. The Earth was still moving. Or they were. Or they both were. She pulled her hand away.

  “I’ve heard of these things called movies—” she said.

  Donny threw up his hands. “Man, what’s it going to take to get you to believe me? I’ve seen movies. They’re great, but this, me touching you now, isn’t a movie. You taking us in your cart and horse from the Station commune, that wasn’t a movie. And us taking off in a rocket and being here isn’t a movie. Get it? We’re really here.”

  He sighed and took a moment to compose himself.

  “Maybe it’s best for you to stay here with Humperdinck,” he said. “Stay out of trouble. God knows we could use your help but one thing we definitely don’t need is someone with a gun at our backs who’s as likely to shoot us as the Bugs.”

  “You forced me into this thing,” Isabelle said. “I’m not going to sit on the sidelines while you act like Action Man. Especially when my life is in your hands.” She shrugged her shoulders and held on tight to the rifle. “Tell me where you want me.”

  “Lucy wants you on the deck,” Donny said. “In charge of the cleaners.”

  “Huh?” Isabelle said, pulling to a stop.

  “We have some serious spillages you need to take care of,” Donny said with a straight face.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Isabelle said. “I’m not cleaning up any mess. I’m gonna kill me some Bugs.”

  She stopped, watching him. Donny grinned.

  “Asshole,” Isabelle said, following Donny into the corridor.

  Boo-ap! Boo-ap! Boo-ap!

  Red lights danced, flickering at either end of the corridor.

  “What does that mean?” Isabelle said.

  “No idea,” Donny said. “But it can’t be anything good.”

  They ran to the elevators and hit the button for the deck.

  49.

  DONNY AND Isabelle exited the elevator. The others were already at their terminals. Isabelle stopped and stared at Lucy’s glass box.

  “Welcome to the deck, Isabelle,” Lucy said over the speaker system.

  “Uh, yeah,” Isabelle said. “Hi.”

  “What’s going on?” Donny said.

  “Lucy detected something coming at us, fast,” Jamie said, pressing buttons at his terminal.

  “A weapon?” Donny said.

  “I don’t think so,” Lucy said. “It’s slowing down. Putting drones on standby.”

  “Where did it come from?” Donny said.

  “Judging by its trajectory, the Bug ship,” Lucy’s voice said.

  “What could it be?” Jamie said.

  “Maybe it’s a scout,” Fatty said. “We used to send people out to get a closer look at anything we didn’t like the look of.”

  “A probe,” Lucy said. “Yes, that fits.”

  “You think they detected us?” Jamie said.

  “It’s entirely possible,” Lucy said. “Turning on the systems might have alerted them to our presence.”

  “Well, that’s just great,” Fatty said.

  “How do you want to handle this, Lucy?” Jamie said.

  Lucy wasn’t sure. They were still in cloak mode. If she tried to do something, anything that might interact with the probe, it would prove they were there. Their location afforded them the benefit of a surprise attack. If they lost that, it would give them no advantage.

  “Prepare to destroy the probe,” Lucy said. “The probe will be unable to send messages as it passes around the moon. We can destroy it without alerting the Bug ship to our presence.”

  “Did it set up relays that would allow the probe to bounce its signal to the Bug ship?” Jamie said.

  “Scans indicate that’s a negative,” Lucy said.

  “They’re overconfident,” Donny said. “It might give us the opening we need. After we destroy the probe, what then? The Bugs will know something’s up because the probe disappeared.”

  “We’ll have exactly six minutes to come around the moon and attack,” Lucy said. “That’s the time it would have taken the probe to pass around the moon and send its signal back to the Bug ship. We can’t take any longer than that.”

  “Six minutes,” Jamie said in deep thought.

  A silence pervaded the group.

  “You know what that would mean, Lucy,” Donny said.

  The event Dr. Beck had told them the Cities’ work had been created for would happen. Fighting the Bugs. But so soon after they arrived? They’d barely even stepped foot on the ship and now they were going to fight.

  “Yes,” Lucy said. “We need to be ready. Looks like we’re going to have to fight these things sooner than we thought. I’m preparing the drones for war.”

  “War?” Isabelle said.

  “We’ve been at war with the Bugs for twenty years,” Jamie said. “We just never knew it.”

  The guys took a seat at their terminals. Only Fatty had any real idea of how to use it, but he was still hesitant. Sweaty palms, knees weak. Their best chance was if the probe couldn’t detect them.

  Please don’t detect us.

  50.

  THE PROBE came in hot, thousands of miles an hour, slingshotting around the moon and using its gravitational force to push it to even greater speeds. It zoomed around the moon, instruments fully tuned and highly sensitive, pointed directly at the space where the tiny signal had occurred.

  There was nothing there.

  The sensors absorbed every piece of information available, blocking out the background radiation. And still, it saw nothing.

  51.

  THE PROBE was still zooming right at them, combing the cosmos for a hint of their existence.

  Lucy analyzed its projected course. Within a minute, it would pass into the radio blackout section on the far side of the moon. This would be the best location to allow the probe to slam itself into their shield and give them the most time to respond.

  52.

  THE PROBE zoomed through space at its unimaginable speed, still searching, still probing, looking for what had caused the disturbance the Bug ship had picked up earlier.

  It passed into the moon’s blind spot but maintained its sensitive equipment, cruising unimpeded through space and—

  53.

  THE PROBE exploded silently. The six-minute timer began.

  Lucy engaged the engines and pushed them in the direction the probe had come from. The Bugs would be expecting the probe to appear on the opposite side of the moon.

  Lucy activated the drones. They filed into the weapons division and attached the powerful weapons the Denver City personnel had built. Multiple hatch doors opened and the drones flooded out.

  54.

  THEY COULDN’T have had a better reminder of what was at stake than the silent planet Earth watching from beneath them. They were fighting for their home, for their friends and family and everyone who mattered. They were fighting for their very survival.

  This was it. The moment the Cities had been planning all those years for. The standoff that decided their fate.

  The drones formed a giant wall, guns facing the Bug ship. They would open fire the instant they rounded the far side of the moon. The giant gun turrets mounted to the hull were likewise fixed on the enemy.

  The shields were up, working at maximum power. They believed they had the element of surprise on their side but it might not count for much with the large distance between them.

  Lucy let out a deep bre
ath, bubbles floating to the top of her tank. She had never felt so powerful her entire life. Quite the opposite, in fact. She always felt a little weak, helpless in her physical form. Now, she was the most powerful person in the history of the human race.

  She could feel the machines under her control, every last drone. She could move freely about the cosmos, exploring, learning, developing, creating new partnerships with alien races. Or she could destroy them. Or they her.

  Her subjects were billions of bits of metal and plastic, she was the culmination of thousands of the smartest minds in the world. She was what they had created to protect them and destroy their enemies because they weren’t powerful enough to do it on their own. They had created her, an almighty being, to take on the demons that threatened their very existence.

  Now she understood what Dr. Beck and his contemporaries were trying to do. They’d set out to achieve what the human race had been attempting to do for ions. They had created a god.

  Lucy was a goddess.

  55.

  THE MOTHERSHIP increased her speed as she moved around the moon. The drones had already deployed and begun firing, closing the distance between them and the Bug ship. It was a game of 3D chess.

  Lucy accessed the tactics and strategies of the great and powerful throughout history, from Napoleon to Alexander the Great, from the advances of the British Empire to the German Blitzkrieg method. It flooded her senses as she set out her pieces.

  The Bug ship began its opening gambit. A large turret dropped from its hull, turned, aimed at the mothership, and fired.

  56.

  THE VOLUMINOUS thick green wedge of plasma sailed through space. Slow, and yet too fast for the mothership to avoid it.

  “Shields up!” Lucy said.

  The plasma struck the shield. It absorbed the bolt and shook slightly. Lucy didn’t have monitors. Instead, it was presented within her mind, thoughts that formed images, shapes, and graphs.

  SHIELD INTEGRITY AT 97%.

  The shield was already recovering, regenerating itself incrementally. It would take time but so would charging up the large cannon on the Bug ship before it could fire again.

  “They’re testing our shields,” Lucy said. “Let’s test theirs.”

  Every turret on the Mothership opened fire. They weren’t as large as the Bugs’ weapon but were cumulatively more powerful. The Mothership had been designed specifically to destroy the Bugs.

  The plasma cannons fired, not needing to recharge and concentrate their fire. The Bug ship’s shield absorbed the impacts but, consistent as the blasts were, severely hampered its ability to regenerate.

  Hatches opened on the alien ship and a swarm of drones emerged, descending like a plague of locusts.

  “Let’s do this,” Lucy said.

  They fired with everything they had.

  57.

  “HOW LONG has this light been blinking?” Donald said.

  He and Dr. Beck had accessed the great cannon’s main control centre. Dozens of other desks were empty. Dr. Beck took his place at the main control unit that had been created as a way to control the cannon from a single location.

  “I don’t know,” Dr. Beck said.

  Static. Hissing on a monitor. The light blinked and then turned off again.

  “What is that?” Donald said, listening.

  “The satellite feed,” Dr. Beck said, taking a seat at the console. “Looks like we’re getting something from a satellite.”

  “I thought the Bugs blocked all communications?” Donald said.

  “They did,” Dr. Beck said. “Maybe there’s a gap in their defenses or—”

  The image blinked, big, bright and clear. It showed millions of warring vessels firing plasma weapons. And on either side of the battlefield, two enormous ships. The image cut to black again.

  Donald and Dr. Beck just stared at the monitor, disbelieving what their eyes had shown them.

  “Hurry up!” Donald said. “Get it back! Get it back!”

  “I’m trying to!” Dr. Beck said, tapping at the keys on the keyboard.

  “Did you see that?” Donald said.

  “Hard not to,” Dr. Beck said.

  “What’s happening?” Donald said. “I mean, are we winning?”

  “I have no idea,” Dr. Beck said. “The battle has already begun.”

  He accessed the control panel and got to work with trying to re-establish the link and get a better, clearer image. This was too important to miss.

  58.

  LUCY SOON gave up using strategies from the nineteenth century. Military genius though Napoleon was, he existed in a two-dimensional world. Forward, back, left and right. That was the extent of the strategies available to him. Then along came airplanes that added an extra dimension, then cruise missiles and nuclear weapons, which completely shifted how battles were fought and won in the art of war.

  In space, they had largely returned to the face-to-face style of warfare, but with an extra dimension. It was this that gave Lucy some early headaches as entire squadrons of her drone units were destroyed by the enemy moving more naturally in the 3D environment. The human race had evolved on the savannah, not in space, and so it was difficult to maintain control of the drones in all directions simultaneously.

  The Bugs had picked up on the devastating effect the Mothership’s large cannons were having on their shields. The constant barrage of fire like the ones she was inflicting on them meant the shields had to replenish themselves in multiple areas, massively reducing their regeneration efficiency. The Bugs used their superior drone number to block fire from the large cannons.

  Engaging in attacking the enemy drones resulted in Lucy’s own drones occasionally getting hit, moving too slowly to move out of the way. The level of technology on both sides was, so far as she could tell, evenly matched.

  The plasma shot from the giant guns moved slowly. The enemy’s drones had plenty of time to block it. Lucy couldn’t copy the strategy with the enemy’s plasma charge as it was simply too powerful.

  “I need to break through their drone defense,” Lucy said. “Any ideas?”

  “In our commune, we used to play a game called Ping Pong,” Isabelle said. “Two people, one on either end of a table. You hit the ball with a paddle back and forth.”

  “Why are you talking about this now?” Jamie said, agitated.

  “Because we could do the same thing here,” Isabelle said. “What if we use the drones’ shields to repel the enemy’s plasma back at them? Or at least, away from us.”

  It was so simple, and yet potentially powerful. Why hadn’t the eggheads in the Cities come up with it before? Because they weren’t generals or fighters. They were scientists and engineers.

  “Of course, it would help if we had the technology to do that—” Isabelle said, couching her idea in doubt.

  “I’ve assigned Computer to the research now,” Lucy said. “It’s coming up with a way to adapt the shield to repel rather than absorb impacts.”

  “Cool,” Isabelle said.

  “Maybe they could help me with my math homework too,” Fatty said.

  Lucy smiled despite herself and their current situation. The others rolled their eyes.

  Until the necessary research was developed, their shields would continue to absorb the attacks. Despite self-healing, the Mothership’s shields were down to 76%.

  Lucy drew her drones together into right fists, attacking the enemy to stop them absorbing so many of the plasma shots from their big guns, then moved them out of the way at the last moment. It worked for a couple of volleys before the enemy reacted by creating a second layer of drones to plug any gaps. It didn’t help that the enemy appeared to have an inexhaustible supply of drones.

  “We can’t get through their defense,” Lucy said. “Any suggestions?”

  “I do,” Donny said. “Their drones always try to block our plasma fire, right? So we, in effect, control where their drones go. Why don’t we fire at the extreme range of their ship, leaving
a big gap in the middle. Then our drones can slip inside and fire at their shields. And maybe the big guns can get some shots in too.”

  “Then they’ll move back to the center to defend themselves,” Jamie said.

  “So?” Donny said. “Then we can fire at the extremities again, then back at the centre, back and forth. It’ll take longer to wipe out their shields but it’ll do it eventually.”

  It was worth trying.

  “Let’s do it,” Lucy said. “I’m giving you control, Donny.”

  Donny tapped at his desk. It was so simple. Tap where he wanted the turrets to fire, how often and at what strength. He could alter the setup any time he wanted.

  But the gang weren’t the only ones able to think creatively.

  59.

  THE BUG attack began during Donny’s second attempt to attack the Bug vessel’s outer extremes before bringing the majority of the drones through the hole in the middle to drive at the Bug’s shields.

  Something shot from beneath the Bug ship’s prow. A blur. . . Until it struck the first drone. It exploded far larger than any drone before, and destroyed the next drone, and the next until half their drone force had been eviscerated.

  “What the hell?” Donny said. “Guys, we’ve got a problem.”

  Lucy replayed the first drone explosion and tracked back from it, frame by frame. The drone moved so fast it was hard to see. A new kind of drone—one that spun wildly and travelled far faster than the others—had been shot from the Bug ship.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Isabelle said. “They used our own trap against us. Clever little buggers, huh?”

  The gap in their drone wall defense was massive. The enemy’s drones rushed forward like a fist. The first few hundred were taken out by Donny’s plasma fire but the rest got through.