After the Fall- The Complete series Box Set

by Charlie Dalton

  As a supplement, she included drawings that described their situation, as well as photos and video footage of the Rage incident and how they believed it was the Bugs who had deliberately done it to them. They would send the message to every planet located on the map they had found on the destroyed Bug exterminator ship’s system. They only needed one of the messages to get noticed for the Covenant to take action.

  Just one.

  “How are we looking?” Jamie said.

  “Good,” Lucy said. “There’s nothing else we need to set up. Only the research.”

  “Do you think it’ll take much longer?” Jamie said.

  “No,” Lucy said. “Not long now.”

  She had no real way of knowing that, except that the unit looked in good condition already. Lucy had plugged herself into the system using the tip of her fingers. She had minimal control but more than enough to launch the drones.

  Lucy wasn’t exactly thrilled about the idea of being plugged into the system again. It had been excruciatingly painful. Perhaps worse than that, it had given her a peek into the kind of power she could wield if she so desired. It was intoxicating. Nothing could ever match that feeling, and it frightened her. It had been difficult to let go and eject herself from the system. Normal life wasn’t without its charms. She was standing next to one of them right at that moment. Jamie.

  “What do you think you’ll do after this is over?” Jamie said.

  “I thought I’d come with you,” Lucy said. “If that’s okay.”

  “Of course it is,” Jamie said, pleased.

  He looked back out the window at the planet Saturn. Its rings truly were gorgeous, a real marvel of nature. It wasn’t something he ever thought he’d be seeing with his own eyeballs, except in his dreams and daytime fantasies.

  Jamie took Lucy’s hand. It was warm and soft. Lucy smiled at him and squeezed his hand back.

  “Things are going to be different after this, aren’t they?” Jamie said.

  “With any luck, yes,” Lucy said.

  Jamie smiled. He didn’t feel the need to keep talking, to fill the gaps of silence with inane chat. He was comfortable in her presence.

  “Research complete,” Computer said.

  Lucy twitched her fingers. She activated their hacked hyperdrive system and created a miniature wormhole before each drone. One thousand of them, each going to a different location.

  “Showtime,” Jamie said.

  The drones entered the gateways, crossing distances of space too large to imagine. Lucy’s grip on Jamie’s hand relaxed. It was the moment she’d been most concerned about. If the drones failed to make the crossover safely, their plan would fail and everything would be over.

  On the other side of each tiny wormhole was a view of something Jamie thought was the most philosophical and beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

  A thousand worlds, each with an intelligent species capable of interstellar travel. What surprised him was the sheer variety of the planets. Some were big, others small, and they were different colours. Blue, yellow, red, orange, purple, pink, grey. . . He bet if he looked at them more closely they would each have a different star system makeup. Large suns, small suns, twin stars, cooling stars, newborn stars. . .

  The drones began to drift forward, their beacons already activated, ready to be picked up by an alien species.

  And then they exploded.

  101.

  “WHAT’S HAPPENING?” Jamie said.

  “I. . . I don’t know,” Lucy said. “They made it through. Their hull integrity was good. They should be fine—”

  Her pupils moved rapidly side to side. She was looking at something, taking in information Computer was feeding her.

  “Oh no,” Lucy said.

  “What?” Jamie said. “What is it?”

  “We’ve got to get out of here!” Lucy said. “We have to leave! Now!”

  A tear ripped through the fabric of space before them, whole new star constellations blinking at them. Then a whole planet emerged. Turquoise blue with dark navy patches.

  “Lucy?” Jamie said. “What’s going on? Where are we going?”

  The Mothership edged forward. And still, Jamie could see the drones, still exploding, one by one. There was only a handful of them left now. And they were leaving them all behind, passing through the gateway to the other side of the unknown galaxy.

  Their gateway began to close, a shrinking window behind them. Through it, Jamie saw something, something that turned his blood ice cold in his veins.

  Three gateways had formed behind them, in beautiful Saturn’s shadow. Huge, gigantic gateways a hundred times larger than their own. Through them came the biggest ships Jamie had ever seen, like miniature planets.

  The gateway blinked closed, leaving the Mothership stranded.

  Wherever they were.

  102.

  LUCY TUGGED the connectors off her fingers and backed away, shivering and shaking. She was crying, screaming, hysterical. She backed into the platform in the deck floor and fell back.

  “Lucy!” Jamie said.

  He bent down to help her but she kept attempting to fight him off.

  “Lucy! What’s wrong?” he said. “What happened?”

  Lucy looked up at him like she didn’t know who he was, her eyes wide and bulging and full of fear.

  “It’s no good,” Lucy said. “The Bugs. They can track our gateways. I don’t know how but they can. Our messages can’t get through. They’ll never get through.”

  “If they can track the wormholes, then—” Jamie said.

  “The Covenant won’t come and help us,” Lucy said. “They don’t know we exist. They don’t know what the Bugs are doing. I managed to get us away from there before they destroyed us—and they would have if they didn’t have to destroy the drones first. They’re afraid we’ll contact the Covenant. And we were close! So close!”

  “Where are they?” Jamie said. “Why aren’t they following us?”

  “The hyperdrive requires a lot of energy,” Lucy said. “It takes time for it to recharge.”

  “How long do we have?” Jamie said.

  “One hour,” Lucy said. “Then they’ll be back. And when they come, they’ll destroy us.”

  “Where are we?” Jamie said.

  “I input the first set of coordinates I found on our system,” Lucy said. “We’re around one of the Bug’s other planets. One they’re working to destroy. Like ours.”

  “Why did you pick here?” Donny said. “There must be a Bug ship around here somewhere.”

  “I didn’t have time to choose somewhere better,” Lucy said. “I just knew we had to get away from there.”

  “It’s okay,” Jamie said. “Nothing has attacked us yet.”

  “My sensors didn’t pick anything up,” Lucy said. “Maybe they’re on the other side of the planet. I don’t know.”

  “So long as they can’t see us, I don’t care,” Jamie said.

  “How did they know about the messages we sent?” Donny said.

  “They didn’t,” Lucy said. “They only know we were sending something to try and stop them. They would have destroyed anything we sent.”

  “How could they possibly know about the wormholes?” Jamie said.

  “They must emit some kind of signal,” Lucy said. “An energy pattern of some kind, something the Bugs can pick up on that we can’t. The wormholes aren’t invisible. They can see them.”

  “They already know where we are,” Jamie said with dawning realization. “As soon as their generator is at full power they’re going to come here and they’re going to kill us.”

  “Yes,” Lucy said. “Unless we come up with a solution.”

  “Why don’t we go directly to one of these other alien Covenant species ourselves?” Donny said. “That seems like the most obvious thing to do.”

  Lucy shook her head.

  “They’ll destroy us before we get anywhere near them,” she said.

  “Is there any way to
change the gateway signal, cloak it somehow?” Isabelle said.

  “This technology is far beyond us,” Lucy said. “Far beyond anything we were ever capable of. I don’t know how to alter it.”

  “We must be able to hold out long enough for the Covenant to reach us,” Donny said.

  “No,” Lucy said. “You don’t understand. The kind of weapons they have, the kind of things they’re capable of. . . It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. The hyperdrive system—their ability to hop from one section of space to another instantly—is just the tip of the iceberg.”

  “We can’t fight them and we can’t go for help,” Donny said. “So what can we do?”

  “I don’t know,” Lucy said, looking at her hands. “I just don’t know.”

  103.

  THEY’D FACED death and prepared to die once before—a few hours ago, in fact—and now they were going to have to go through it all over again. It was difficult accepting the concept of death after you had managed to throw it off. You got the feeling you could beat it every time. But that wasn’t the case. They’d been backed into a corner and there was no obvious way out.

  The planet they’d arrived at provided a stark and surreal lesson. It was one of the planets the Bugs were working on—much the same way they were working on destroying the Earth. A terrible natural event had (apparently) struck the planet and the inhabitants were struggling to cope with it.

  Right then, zoomed in on the monitors, Jamie could see they were right on the edge of the precipice, preparing to die. Only a few of the unfortunate creatures were left alive, struggling to subsist on the harsh reality of their own present and the demise of their planet. There was no water, no arable land. The planet was too hot, its ozone layer depleted. The final few survivors gasped for air through insufficient handmade masks.

  “This is us,” Jamie said. “This is our future.”

  “The final few survivors are still here,” Lucy said. “And the Bugs are already beginning to harvest the minerals.”

  It was the most disgusting display of greed and malice Jamie had ever witnessed. These things were intergalactic Reavers, subsisting off the hard work of the indigenous populations. This had been their home, their planet. And the Bugs came and tore it from them.

  The Bugs, unwilling to wait for the final few local inhabitants to die out, had already brought in their planetary harvesting equipment, plunging their great drilling machines deep into the heart of the planet and tearing the resources out without care. Many of the dying creatures lay on their backs, watching as an alien race had pulled the rug out from under their feet and sentenced them to eradication, wiping out their species in the most aggressive way possible, through no fault of their own, save having evolved on a planet rich with resources.

  “We can’t sit and let this happen,” Jamie said. “We can’t let them do this to us.”

  “We’re trying,” Lucy said.

  “How are we trying?” Jamie said heatedly. “In less than forty minutes those ships will appear again. This time, they’ll destroy us. What can we do?”

  “I don’t know,” Lucy said. Then, sadder: “I don’t know.”

  They’d had a single, simple plan. To send a message to the Covenant. And now, they had nothing. The Bugs would get everything they wanted, and the human race would cease to be.

  They had failed.

  104.

  JAMIE APPROACHED his brother Donny, who stood at the railing of the food court looking out at the boundlessness of space. He was clearly deep in thought and, judging by their current situation, they couldn’t have been particularly welcome.

  Donny glanced at Jamie as he approached.

  “Hey,” Jamie said.

  “Hey,” Donny said.

  What did you say when you were so close to the end? When your lives were most likely over within the next. . . Jamie checked his watch. Thirty minutes.

  “Well, we’re in a real pickle now,” Donny said.

  “I suppose it was always going to end like this,” Jamie said. “We did well destroying the extermination ship. We were a thorn in the Bugs’ side for a while.”

  “Yeah,” Donny said with a smile.

  He took a deep breath.

  “I always loved looking at the stars,” he said. “There’s something so calming about them. So distant and cold, devoid of any emotion. They don’t care if we live or die. They don’t care if the Bugs break us or not. I never really thought about them that way before. Makes me like them a little less. Still beautiful though.”

  Time was very short and Jamie couldn’t dance around what he wanted to say.

  “I’ve seen the way you look at her,” he said.

  “Who?” Donny said.

  Jamie arched an eyebrow.

  “Oh,” Donny said. “That obvious, huh?”

  “You should go talk to her,” Jamie said.

  “Yeah,” Donny said. “If there was a time to talk to her, now would be it, right?”

  “What is it you like about Isabelle?” Jamie said. “Focus on that and it’ll be easy to talk to her.”

  “You are giving me advice on women?” Donny said. “Man, you’ve got some balls.”

  “Not women,” Jamie said. “Relationships, I guess.”

  Donny pursed his lips.

  “I suppose a line can be drawn between those two spheres,” he said. “I’m going to die soon anyway, so what’s the harm? At least I won’t have to put up with many uncomfortable silences.”

  “Why do you like her?” Jamie said.

  “She has the most beautiful laugh,” Donny said, eyes growing misty at the thought of it.

  “Are we talking about the same girl?” Jamie said. “She sounds like a mule with a bee stuck up its nose.”

  Donny gritted his teeth.

  “She does not!” he said. “She has an. . . unusual style. I’ll give you that.”

  “Go after her then!” Jamie said. “Or in. . .”

  He checked his watch again.

  “Twenty-eight minutes, you’ll regret it,” he said.

  “You’re right,” Donny said. “Come on. Bring it in.”

  Jamie didn’t know what he was talking about until he stepped closer and wrapped his arms around him. It felt awkward and uncomfortable. Jamie tapped his brother on the back, more in supplication than with any real warmth.

  Donny pulled back.

  “You’re my kid brother,” he said. “You shouldn’t have to do this.”

  “We’re in the same boat,” Jamie said. “I guess I should have used the word ‘ship’.”

  “You go be with your girl and I’ll go be with mine,” Donny said.

  He paused, forgetting somebody.

  “What about Fatty?” he said.

  “He’s got his food and flight simulator,” Jamie said. “He’s happy already.”

  105.

  DONNY KNEW where Isabelle would be. There was little variation in her habits. He let out a breath, gathered his courage, and knocked on the door. He awaited a response. There was none, so he knocked again.

  “Come in,” Isabelle’s voice said.

  Donny put his hand to the door to push it open but at Isabelle’s voice command made it slide open by itself. He shook his head.

  “I swear, I’ll never get used to these doors,” he said.

  “Same here,” Isabelle said. “Then again, being used to being outdoors all the time, I’m not used to doors full stop. They feel so restrictive.”

  She was busy rearranging some hay on the floor where Humperdinck lay. He grunted and looked up at Donny when he entered, then lowered his head again. Already comfortable around Donny.

  “Where the hell did you find hay here?” Donny said.

  “A girl has her ways,” Isabelle said mysteriously. “I’d have thought you’d be with your brother about now.”

  “We just spoke,” Donny said, leaning against the wall.

  “How is he?” Isabelle said.

  She could be a tough old gir
l—tougher than anyone Donny had ever met—but she also had a good heart. It was an intoxifying combination for Donny.

  “He’s good, thanks,” Donny said. “Good considering the circumstances, I mean. How’s Hump doing?”

  “Relaxed,” Isabelle said. “I’ve told him what’s coming our way but he seems in pretty good spirits.”

  Donny smiled.

  “How are you doing?” he said more seriously.

  Isabelle shrugged.

  “There’s really nothing we can do now, is there?” she said. “I’d be all for going down in flames of glory but if these Bug ships are as big as your brother says then I can’t see how we’ll last more than a few minutes against them.”

  “Pretty dire straits,” Donny said.

  “Have you ever seen the band?” Isabelle said. “You wouldn’t be saying Dire Straits are pretty if you had.”

  Donny wasn’t sure he’d ever even heard of them, never mind heard their music or knew what they looked like.

  “Listen,” Donny said. “I want to ask you something. Do you think maybe we could cut through all the early relationship stuff and—”

  “Want to help me brush Humperdinck’s mane?” Isabelle said.

  Donny blinked, taken aback by Isabelle’s interruption and its bizarre change of course. She knew what he was going to say because she had, apparently, been thinking the same thing. But they only had a few minutes left. Humperdinck meant the world to her, and she was offering to share him—and combing his mane—with Donny. Donny smiled at the offer.

  “Sure,” he said.

  He sat down beside Isabelle and folded his legs.

  “Let me show you how he likes it,” Isabelle said.

  Donny watched her run her fingers through Humperdinck’s mane with one hand and gently brush her hand over his nose and down his neck with the other. It was a new, private part of herself. Her caring side. And this, Donny realized, was all he really wanted.

  106.

  JAMIE DECIDED to go share a few words with his best friend. There was surely nothing worse than being on your own when you were at the end of your life. Especially when you only had twenty-two minutes to go.