Fallen Metropolis (Omnibus Edition)

by Matthew J. Barbeler

  “I have flown too close to the sun,” Arak said.

  The console split apart, and Arak began to descend the ladder.

  ‘What are you doing? Arak! You’re a fool! I can give you credits! Power! Unending, limitless power! I know that’s what your heart truly desires!’ Veck commanded, but Arak ignored him.

  He reached the bottom of the shaft and stepped down onto the cold metal floor. He approached the control pillar and placed his hand on the illuminated green square. The ghost of Samuel Goldwing didn’t appear, but Arak knew the words that he needed to speak.

  He continued counting backwards.

  Thirty...

  Twenty-nine...

  Twenty-eight...

  When he reached zero he both felt and heard the drop pods eject from the ship. He waited another thirty seconds and said, “And now I must burn.”

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Draco snapped awake as someone slapped him hard across the cheek. The light of an alien sun shone down on him from above. A greasy black trail of smoke and ash stained the sky. The remains of the Icarus.

  Rhken looked down on Draco from above. Tears fell onto his cheek. Reban knocked the wind out of him as she leapt onto him.

  “Oof! Give me a second,” he said as Reban got up.

  “Sorry Captain Goldwing, I just never thought I was going to see you again,” Reban said.

  “It’s okay. Just let me get up so I can give you a hug properly, all right?”

  Draco got back to his feet. They were on top of a sand dune. In front of them was an enormous expanse of water. Small islands dotted the horizon. Behind them were huge, thick trees which covered the rest of the island in jungle.

  Draco went over and hugged Reban under one arm. He brought Rhken under his other. He kissed them both on the tops of their heads.

  “Tell me girls, what happened?”

  “Arak saved you,” Reban said with a sad sense of pride.

  “Not long after the drop pods ejected, the Icarus exploded. Veck was inside of it. His body and his mind. They’re both gone now. Just like the Icarus, like Dad. Like Arak,” Rhken said.

  “Nara-ka and your father died as heroes. Because of them, Veck Simms is gone for good. We’re all lucky to have known them,” Draco said and held the girls tight.

  “Could we... could we have a funeral for them?” Reban asked. “I know their bodies aren’t here, but I think it would be good to say something. Or do something.”

  “I think that’s a great idea,” Draco said.

  Book Two

  The Fall of Metropolis Seven

  Chapter One

  Bill Timms wiped his sweaty brow with a dirty rag. He dabbed his face and stuffed the rag back into the waist of his pants. One of the three main air-conditioning towers for the Residential District of the Metropolis Seven had started to overheat, and it was Bill’s job to fix it.

  For a city-sized spacecraft halfway through a ten-year journey across the galaxy, the Metropolis Seven had its share of mechanical problems. Sometimes Bill felt like he was the only person that kept the ship running.

  Tonight was the first time the huge air-conditioning tower had ever been silent. It was running hot, but nothing within the control unit was the problem. There was a blockage somewhere in the liquid cooling system. He put a finger to his comm unit and opened a channel to his supervisor, Dominic Rosk.

  “Dom, I’ve got some bad news,” Bill said.

  ‘Damn it. I was hoping to get home early tonight.’

  “Me too. Good news is that we don’t have a burnt out tower. Yet. What we have got is a blockage somewhere in the cooling system.”

  ‘How many men do you need?’

  “Just one. Call Merrick if you can. I don’t want to screw up anyone else’s night, and he owes me.”

  ‘Done. He’ll be there in ten.’

  “Thanks boss. We’ll get this sorted.”

  The comm channel went dead, and Bill decided to do what he could until Merrick arrived. He closed the access panel and looked up at the massive air-conditioning tower. Pipes full of cold liquid ran into the top of the tower, and pipes full of warmed liquid ran out from the bottom, back to the cooling stations to be recycled.

  In order to determine where the blockage was, they would need to survey every pipe leading in or out of the tower.

  Bill had a fairly simple method of testing all of the outflow pipes while he waited. First, he held his hand out over the top of the pipe to see if there was excess heat. The first pipe was no hotter than usual. The second test was a matter of acoustics. He took out the biggest wrench from his belt and struck the pipe.

  The metallic impact was muffled by the liquid in the pipe. Outflow pipe one was good. Fluid was flowing normally. He systematically tested the outflow pipes one by one until Merrick arrived.

  “Bill, what the hell did I ever do to deserve this, huh? Today was my day off!” Merrick said.

  He was a tall, lanky man in dirty maintenance crew overalls. One of the younger maintenance crew members stood behind him. His name was John, or Jack or something. Bill couldn’t quite remember. The kid never usually worked the same crew as him.

  “Why’d you bring the kid? I told Dom that I only needed one pair of hands,” Bill said as he struck the final outflow pipe.

  Another dull metallic sound showed that the outflow pipe was working fine. That meant one thing. The blockage wasn’t inside the tower. It had to be in one of the inflow pipes that ran across the ceiling into the top of the tower.

  “I couldn’t stop him, man. I told him what was going on and he practically begged to come,” Merrick said.

  The young boy stood forward and said, “It’s true. Uh, sir. I’m sick of just being a shit kicker. I want to learn a trade while I’m here on the ship. Something so I can get a job back on New Earth when we land.”

  Bill had to smile. This was exactly the kind of gumption he wanted to see in all the kids that worked in maintenance. The kid looked like he was barely out of his teens. He had probably been a street kid, thieving his way through each day, never able to get a job because of some minor misdemeanor that would follow him for the rest of his life.

  “You do exactly what I say, when I say it. No questions. You got that?” Bill snapped.

  “Absolutely sir.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jaxon, sir.”

  “First thing’s first, Jaxon. You take this wrench,” Bill handed the heavy wrench to the boy. “Then, you climb to the top of the tower. Once you’re up there, I need you to hit each of those inflow pipes with it. Hard enough to hear the metal sing, you got it?”

  Jaxon nodded and took the wrench. Bill expected the kid to clamber up the ladder on the outside of the tower awkwardly, but he didn’t. He climbed the ladder with confidence, then looked down triumphantly from above. He gave Bill a thumbs up, which Bill returned. Jaxon then hit the first pipe with the wrench, and a dull metallic impact echoed through the tower room. The pipe was full of liquid.

  “That one’s fine. Keep going!” Bill shouted.

  The boy walked around the circumference of the tower, testing the pipes one by one until a hollow metallic sound rung out.

  “That’s it, kid. Which pipe is that?” Bill asked.

  “Number twelve!”

  “Come down and we’ll work this out,” Bill said loudly to the boy, then quietly to Merrick, “this kid just made you obsolete. You should probably go home.”

  Merrick looked at Bill, confused and annoyed. “You dragged me away from the vidserials down into the fucking air-con tower, and then tell me I’m not needed? Not cool.”

  Bill looked at Merrick seriously. “Consider it payback for the two weeks that I covered your shifts after you came down with the skull shivers after your night with-”

  Bill’s sentence was cut short as something exploded. Suddenly the air was filled with smoke and the screech of rending metal. Merrick screamed. He was on the floor, holding the mangled, bloody stump of
his right leg. He gaped at the wound. Ragged strips of flesh dangled around his jagged splintered femur.

  “Merrick!? What the fuck happened, man?” Bill yelled.

  It looked like Merrick stepped on a land mine. The ground had exploded upwards, as though there was an explosive just below the surface. Red globs of Merrick’s leg were scattered across the room.

  Bill’s comm channel opened and Dom Rosk yelled in his ear. ‘What’s going on down there, Timms? I told you to fix the air-conditioning tower, not blow a fucking hole in the ship! We’re losing atmo pressure!’

  “Hole? What hole?” Bill asked.

  “Something came through from over there!” Jaxon called out from above.

  A foreign object had punched through the hull, and shredded Merrick’s leg on its way through. There was a basketball-sized indentation on the wall next to the tower from where the unknown object impacted and bounced off.

  “It was a meteorite!” Jaxon said.

  Bill looked down at the ground next to him and back up at the impact indentation. The kid was right. “Did you see where it landed?”

  “No, but I’ll come down and start looking!”

  “No, I’ll look! You call the medstation and you make sure someone gets here quick!”

  “Got it,” Jaxon said. “Calling them now!”

  Bill fell to his knees next to Merrick. “What I said before man, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I was just giving you shit, you know? Ah shit, Merrick? Stay with me!”

  Merrick’s eyes rolled back into his head as he lost consciousness. Blood pooled around the splintered mess of his right leg.

  The air-conditioning tower was quiet. But there was a sound in the air that didn’t belong. It sounded like paper being scrunched.

  Bill followed the crackling sound around the air-con tower toward the storage closets and saw a small meteorite sitting on the floor. It was so hot that it had started to warp the metal floor underneath it. A steaming mist rose from its surface.

  Bill opened his comm channel to Dom. “Sir, I’ve found the culprit. It looks like we got hit by a meteorite. It’s still hot, but not hot enough to melt through the floors beneath us. I recommend dispatching external hull repair.”

  ‘It’s already done. You keep that meteorite locked down. No one touches it until we can get a containment crew down there, you hear me?’

  “Of course. Merrick’s suffered some serious trauma. He’s lost his leg.”

  ‘How the hell did that happen?’

  “He was standing right where the meteorite smashed through the floor. Wrong place, wrong time.”

  ‘Get it cleaned up. I want you to debrief in my office within the hour.’

  “Understood.”

  Bill bent down and looked closely at the meteorite. The outside of the rock didn’t look like other meteorites he had seen before. This one almost looked scaled or armored. There was blood smeared across its surface.

  At first Bill thought that the blood had come from Merrick, but the liquid began to pool up under the meteorite, as though it was coming from inside. Tiny cracks appeared across the surface and small vents of steam rose into the air. Bill held his hand over the meteorite and felt the heat it radiated. Without warning it cracked open and sprayed hot liquid into the palm of his hand. He swore, shook his hand, and wiped the liquid onto his pants. There was an angry red welt in the center of his palm.

  Chapter Two

  Bill’s hand hurt like a sonofabitch. The nurse from the medstation did the best she could, but the steam was so hot that it had burned through two layers of skin. She smothered the wound in medigel and wrapped it in bandages. Bill took some painkillers, but they only dulled the edge of the ache.

  Bill knocked on the door of Dom’s office and Dom waved him in.

  “How’s the hand?” Dom asked.

  “Hurts some, but the nurse said the skin should grow back overnight.”

  “Good, good,” Dom said. He took a deep breath and looked over Bill’s shoulder. He stared off into the corner of the room, deep in thought.

  “Everything okay, Dom?”

  Dom breathed out through his nose and brushed his hair back with his hand.

  “I’ve never had a man die on my watch, Bill. Not one. I’ve had more than a few broken bones, but… Well I just heard from the doc. Merrick might not make it.”

  Bill said nothing as the numbness spread through him. He didn’t like Merrick all that much, but it was his fault this happened to him. He singled him out to come down to the air-con tower.

  “He lost a lot of blood. Too much. But they’re doing everything they can to get him right again, but I’ve got a bad feeling.”

  “I’ll go up to the medstation in a couple of hours and see how he’s doing.”

  “You go home and rest your hand, Bill. I’ll check on Merrick. But before you go home… Look, I know I shouldn’t be asking you this, but could you go back down to the air-con tower and check that Jaxon’s got it running again? Last thing I need are restless residents. They’ll complain to Fiamingo and Hane, and I’ll hear about it. After that’s done, go home.”

  “Not a problem, Dom.”

  Bill left Dom’s office and headed back toward the air-con tower. When he arrived, he found the door roped off by MetroCorp Security Officers. Bill stepped over the purple checkered restricted access tape. Jaxon was cornered by two officers while a third looked down at the initial site where the meteorite pierced the floor. The meteorite still sat in the indentation where it landed.

  The MetroCorp Security Officers were dressed in blue armored suits that covered every inch of their bodies. They used a sealed smartsuit with external armor plating that allowed them to operate both inside an atmosphere and in the vacuum of space. It was rare to see them in full combat armor. A hull breach with loss of atmospheric pressure was clearly enough of a threat to make them suit up.

  “Is there a problem here?” Bill asked.

  The two MetroCorp Officers turned from Jaxon.

  “This is a restricted area,” one of the officers said. The other raised his rifle to his shoulder and trained it on Bill.

  Bill raised his hands slowly. The guns the MetroCorp Security Officers used had two settings. Lethal force and non-lethal incapacitation shots. There was no telling what setting the rifle was currently on.

  Bill looked down at the barrel. “We need to get this air-con tower running again before it overheats and takes out one third of the ship’s oxygen supply.”

  One of the officers looked at the others. The mirrored glass helmets showed no sign of who was inside the suit. The officer holding the rifle pointed the muzzle at the ground.

  “Are you maintenance?” the MetroCorp Officer asked.

  “Yes. I was here when the meteorite punched through the hull. I’m Jaxon’s supervisor, and we just need to get one thing done. Then we’re out of your hair, I promise you.”

  “Very well. Get on with it, then get out of here. No loitering.”

  Bill called Jaxon over to the console on the side of the air-conditioning tower.

  “Have you ever seen one of these before?” Bill asked.

  “Never,” Jaxon said. His hands were shaking, but he was trying to hide it.

  “Calm down, lad. The worst is over. If the ship hasn’t imploded by now, it’s not going to. But we need to get pipe twelve clear. Then we can get out of here.”

  Bill showed Jaxon how to cut off coolant supply to the individual pipes. He sealed off pipe twelve and waited for the coolant to drain out. Bill walked over to the supply closet and pulled out a broom handle with a hook lashed to the end with rope.

  “Take this lad, then climb up to the top of the tower again. Unscrew the coolant pipe, then go fishing.”

  Jaxon raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

  “Yep. We may be inside a city flying through space, but sometimes a stick with a hook on the end is still the best way to fix a problem.”

  Jaxon laughed and took the stick. He climbed. B
ill walked over to the three MetroCorp Officers who were now crowded around the impact point.

  The crouched Officer stood up and said, “Parsons just confirmed that the hull breach has been patched. Atmospheric pressure normalized.” The Officer turned to Bill. “We’re almost done here.”

  Quietly, one of the Officers said “Fiamingo wants us back at Metro Tower. Something’s going down.”

  The Officers went to leave when Bill stopped them.

  “Aren’t you going to take that with you?” Bill pointed at the still-cooling meteorite.

  “That’s a job for maintenance, not us. You clean it up,” the MetroCorp Officer said over his shoulder and continued to walk away.

  “What about standard quarantine protocols? Isn’t that why you cordoned off the place to begin with?” Bill said.

  “No, we closed off the area to ensure the hull breach was repaired. We’re not a clean-up crew. It’s just a meteorite. Wait for it to cool, and then take it to waste disposal. Or is that too difficult for you?”

  Bill shook his head and glanced back towards the meteorite. The MetroCorp Officers stepped over the restricted access tape and left.

  Bill looked up and saw Jaxon struggling with the coolant pipe. The kid was trying to unscrew the damn thing without disengaging the safety locks. Bill was tempted to let him struggle for a bit longer, but that meteorite made him felt uneasy. His hand hadn’t stopped aching since it was steamed. It had started to tingle around the edges of the burn.

  The meteorite felt dangerous, and Bill wanted to get the kid away from it.

  “Disengage the locks first. You won’t get anywhere pulling on it like that,” Bill yelled.

  “Locks?” Jaxon asked.