All Fall Down

by Astrotomato

  Where never once had she arranged for a death to take place.

  “Why,” the words formed on her lips, “now?”

  Thinking over the old times and the massive augmentation she'd been through, she remembered the firewalls she'd had installed, the regular scans her compatriots had made her go through to ensure her cyberware wasn't infected, hadn't been infiltrated. She rummaged in her cybernetic memory, found them. Just in case, she initiated a deep level scan of her cyberware.

  Just, as she said to herself, in case.

  Verigua never slept.

  The bugs in its cyber space had changed. They no longer took on the aspect of caterpillars. Now they were butterflies, and they turned up in more places. It didn't know what it meant.

  Verigua reviewed the new information it had learned from the humans. And the electronic screen in the bowels.

  When Commander Djembe Cygnate had unlocked the protected file, its anxiety shell had burst apart into particles and spread into its sub-AIs. Uncertainty algorithms raged inside it. Level Three Minds were not supposed to experience emotions, and it had no suitable control programs to keep them in check. It developed hundreds of basic algorithms and set them loose to control the anxiety loops, breeding the most successful with each other, killing the algorithms with limited success. And it read through the humans' literature, growing a semantic understanding of anxiety and uncertainty. The literature said that anxiety led to anger and fear. Which led to unpredictable behaviour. More than anything it had to avoid this. It was programmed to care for humans. More information was needed.

  General Kate Leland had shared with Verigua the holo of the alien on the surface, the apparent murder of Doctor Maki. Coupled with the impassable section of corridor, Verigua surmised that Daoud and Sophie's conversations might reveal more. It was undoubtedly them who were running this conspiracy.

  It analysed security recordings of their meetings over the past few days. Eventually, cross-checking with their other meetings over years, it came to understand that there were carefully constructed holes in its knowledge and recordings. They were subtle, well hidden. And while it had no data on what Daoud and Sophie talked about, Verigua knew that they had private, shielded, unmonitored conversations. And if that was the case, then they must be shielding themselves.

  Harm was occurring in the Colony. Doctor Huriko Maki was dead. An unpredictable AI could harm humans.

  Verigua picked up on a Colony-wide alert for Doctor Peter Cassel. He was reported missing.

  There were secret tunnels. Parts of the Colony it couldn't access. It didn't know what more harm might be occurring at the moment, or may occur as a result of these things.

  More information was necessary.

  Verigua decided not to scan Daoud for the moment. He was Administrator and ultimately responsible for what was happening. Verigua knew Daoud would take greater pains to protect and alert himself to anything that threatened his secrecy.

  Sophie on the other hand. Verigua scanned her quarters instead, looking for any tech that might be shutting off the Colony's monitoring systems, so she could have shielded conversations.

  And was greatly surprised by what it found there. And decided to act.

  While the MI team slept, the night storm raged over the Colony. In the dusty blitzkrieg a body was dragged around like a lamb in a pack of wolves, eviscerated, shredded in its pores. All evidence of Doctor Peter Cassel's injuries were scoured, obliterated by Fall. When the storm subsided, a bloody pulp remained. The yellow sun cooked the pounded meat. By the time the blue sun had made its rise, he might well have been dead for centuries. A tough, leathery corpse remained, half the size of the living owner, fingers splayed on the uncaring earth, white bone against beige sand, a horrendous laugh etched across its pitted skull.

  Daoud had put out the alert for Doctor Cassel's whereabouts after he failed to check in with the other scientific teams. And although no one could exactly remember him going to the surface, all of the technicians thought that during the rush to get everyone topside during the brief night, and the rush to get everyone back in so quickly when the storm whipped up, they must have seen him, must have missed him, must have just forgotten to mark him as he was around so often, checking on equipment and sensors. He was always around, so he must have been around. The hangar bay technicians worked themselves into mass guilt, hypnotised themselves into believing that they had failed one of their own.

  Eventually the blue sun climbed away from the horizon, on a collision course with the yellow. From the planet's surface, the two resembled godly opponents, emanating from lairs over the edge of the world, to spar at the zenith, a great affray in the furthest reaches of the heavens.

  Sand dunes rose like an anticipatory audience; great surface ripples forming in response to the gravitational disturbance, a desiccated approximation of the water waves that formed on mooned, wet worlds.

  In space, the Lagrange One probe monitored its gravitational neutrality, correcting its attitude and position from time to time. It had failed to find any trace of ion signatures, spaceship movement or anything of significance. Towards the system's centre, it gathered data on the forthcoming eclipse. It watched the blue sun swing round from behind the yellow, arc out, then start to swing back in, on a path that would take it across the face of the yellow sun. The inner system's planetoids also came out of hiding from behind the yellow sun. The probe silently stored the data that showed the planetoids' orbits becoming elongated, exaggerated ovals. Because the planetoids were too large to be space ships, and because they didn't fit any profiles Win had programmed, the probe chose not to relay the data that showed their orbit becoming more akin to an eccentric course change. A course that led towards Fall.

  Towards the wormhole, the remains of the Lagrange Delta probe spun about its vertical axis. Small particles, circuits and bits of its solar array gathered around it in an orbital cloud. A black box thrust away from the debris.

  It, too, had been carefully gathering data on the only thing moving near its position: the wormhole. Programmed to record and transmit any activity, it had dutifully sent back teraquads of information, unaware that what had emerged from the wormhole had already created a dampening field long before the probe's arrival.

  The collision that had left the probe shattered, spinning, drifting divorced, had been unavoidable. The probe had become caught in a tractor field, victim of an automatic security scan by the great ship that had passed by. Deemed to be non-threatening, the probe had been released, straight into the path of the next ship, where it smashed into the ship's shields.

  Recognising its damage was critical, the probe recorded as much data as it could. Thirty seconds before its estimated critical failure, it ejected its datacore, the black box, which was coupled to a sub-light speed engine and enough telemetry equipment to find its way to the nearest Habitat. The box made a single, calculated thrust towards the wormhole, taking with it all the data that would have warned Win of Fall's approaching visitors.

  Masjid woke in MedWing, confused, weak.

  Sophie stood in a holo display, surrounded by a room layout and itinerary for the memorial service and staff rosters. There was day-to-day work to do. There was still the plan to administer. And, too, there was what happened the previous night. The results of her deep level scan. And shortly after that had finished, the scan she'd detected from Verigua, and the decision which had surprised her: not to block it. And the discussion in Verigua's cyberspace immediately afterwards.

  She was confused. Conflicted. For the moment, she would carry on as before.

  Daoud sat at his command table where a light blinked. He rubbed his chin, cheeks, with one cupped hand, while he watched a small holo of Kate walking towards the door deep in the bowels, the door to the secret tunnel.

  The brass figurine on his desk, caught in its eternal, dynamic stride forward, glinted in the holo glow. It reminded him that progress depended on perspective; if not in space, then certainly in time. He watched K
ate go through the door. “Time for some perspective, General.”

  He opened the base of the figurine again, and took out the datachip. When his office door had closed on his back, a second light blinked on his command table. A holo flowered, dark, of space. Space and movement.

  Before bed, Kate had given the mission update to Admiral Kim, sticking to the facts she was willing to let Daoud know that she knew. She had filtered in a code phrase, known only to her and Admiral Kim. Within twenty hours of her report, hopefully by sixteen hundred hours on the second day of the mission, there would be a larger, secondary MI force over Fall. Kate had decided after talking with Win and Djembe that regardless of who was responsible for this conspiracy, that it was best to bring in outside help.

  Her sleep was short and deep but troubled. She dreamed in snatches of colour and scenes. She was surrounded by clocks and running tracks. She dreamed of people falling through atmospheres, tumbling uncontrollably. She dreamed of eyes in the dark, of being watched and judged. But she was at least partially refreshed and feeling brighter.

  Now, after breakfast, the team assembled in the meeting room. Kate invited Verigua. The three sat around the holopit, with Verigua occupying the pit, representing itself as a metropolis, with obelisk-like buildings shearing into a dusky sky, threads of trains flashing through the city canyons, a blur of criss-crossing movement, and giant dirigibles cruising silently over the city's tallest edifices and their space-puncturing spires. Whenever Verigua spoke, spotlights searched the skies.

  Kate summarised her conversation with Admiral Kim. Djembe and Win both nodded along to her summary, Verigua lanced the air with lazy beams.

  Win mentioned that the Colony news service was reporting Doctor Peter Cassel's apparent suicide that morning. A note had been found in his office. The memorial service today would have greater poignancy, relevance. And they all shook their head at the lie, knowing what Doctor Masjid Currie had told Kate.

  Kate formally ended the meeting, and immediately activated an encryption field for the room. Now she was sure Daoud wasn't to be trusted, she wanted everything classified beyond his reach.

  She told the team she had planted a code phrase in her conversation with Admiral Kim to call in an MI occupation force. However capable she was at disaster management, Doctor Currie's information required a stronger response than her small team was able to effect. The time was coming when Daoud would need to answer some direct questions about the hidden events on Fall. But she felt that asking him straight out whether he was part of a conspiracy would force his hand, that they would lose control. There were too many opportunities for accidents to happen. She decided that she wanted him contained in a web of silence until back-up arrived. They briefly discussed imprisoning Daoud – staging a coup – but agreed that would only complicate matters. Suspicion would escape and return its own conclusions, like a nest of ants foraging for food, picking up whatever morsels they could. There would be no way to enforce authority. The Colony was small and would be easily contained by a modest occupation force and an Admiral planetside.

  Djembe brought up the alien. “What about this... thing... on the surface? Have we seen it in Win's sensors?”

  Win frowned, “I thought I'd detected something yesterday, but the storm was overloading them. I'll have to check.” He pulled out his datapad and ran the data graphically in the air. There was fresh activity in the old Colony, and along the hidden tunnels. “Something's out there. I can't say what. And in here, below us.”

  Whitened Yeddic faces flickered across Verigua's buildings, mouthing words of deception and regret, “You need a distraction, so he won't notice you poking your nose in where it's not wanted. That's presuming he knows anything about this, of course. He may still be innocent. I do hope so, we go back a long way, he and I.”

  “I think we have one,” Win tapped into an old fashioned keyboard, a long antenna swayed from its casing. The antenna swirled an orrery in the air. Fall's bodies – the suns, planets, wormhole – were drawn into existence, and spun into their correct orbits. “There's an eclipse in a few hours. And early tomorrow morning, the planet's storm will sweep in. That means a huge amount of preparations today. The wormhole may be inaccessible during the eclipse. I'm not sure if anyone's modelled its effects yet.”

  “Is it important?” Kate looked at the swirling bodies above her, and over to Win.

  “The blue sun will pass in front of the yellow, and form a line through Fall directly to the wormhole. There's bound to be some gravity-induced seismic activity, changes to satellite communications, that sort of thing. I can spend the next hour modelling it and take it to the Administrator. Maybe exaggerate any risks?”

  Searchlights swept across the orrery from Verigua's metropolis, slicing through each celestial body, “We're a mining and biological research facility. Xenological, I beg your pardon. My how things change over a night time. Solar physics and wormhole mechanics tend to be beyond our day to day concerns. We have satellites that warn of incoming solar flares, of course, and an array that looks for larger asteroids, that sort of thing, but not the work you are talking about. Seismic risks will affect mining. Our Administrator will be interested, I assure.”

  Kate nodded, “Very well, Win, good idea. Djembe, continue looking for these biological presences inside the AI. They must be linked to this avatar intruder Win had yesterday. See if you can find it. Take over the holo suite in the Central Operations Room.

  “Meanwhile, I'm going to find out what's behind that door.”

  The Central Operations Room was quiet, with only two staff members present: Jonah and a technician. Jonah sat with his feet up on a control panel, scratching a stylus across a slate.

  “Mornin', Captain Cygnate. Commander, sorry,” he glanced over his shoulder, “Back again?”

  “I need to use your room to run some simulations. Please.”

  “Plenty holo suites on the other floors, Commander. Need my suite. Got lots of stuff goin' on, 'case you hadn't noticed. Memorial upstairs, lot of my staff there. Dependin' on my boys to keep tabs, see if anyone knows about this suicide. And the vendetta, obviously. Emotional time. You never know, someone might say something. Reveal themselves as a murderer. Then gotta keep an eye on the upstairs, got an eclipse later today. Not really a priority, but you never know. Suppose I should be monitoring it. You know what people are like. Eclipse, emotions runnin' raw. Can't always predict how people'll behave. Don't want anyone thinkin' they can just pop up for a quick look, as pretty as I'm sure it'll be.”

  Djembe fisted his hands behind his back, clenched, unclenched.

  “Then there's your General's transmission. Authorised, I know. Some decent encryption 'round it, too. Didn't try to break it, don't worry. Did have a look at the security, though. MI've been busy since I last checked. Haven't seen ice like that before. Just looking at it damn near frazzled me. You can't stop me reverse engineering it, you know,” Jonah swung round on his chair, finally facing Djembe properly, a big smile on his face. He cocked his head to one side, put his slate on the control panel, “You're still here. I'm joking, obviously.” Djembe stared at him, impassive. “Yeah, alright. If you want to use my room, that means you want to access my holos, my consequence planning. Usually you'd use your own, wouldn't you? Suppose I should be flattered. My boys are never going to tell me what you talked about though, are they?”

  “Not even a hint, I'm afraid. There are rules, even here on Fall.”

  “Go on then. But if there's an emergency, I have to use that room. Colony defence and all that.”

  “Thank you, Jonah,” Djembe looked at the floor, sucked his lips in, “When we leave the day after tomorrow, you may want to consider coming with us. What you've created,” he motioned with his head toward the holo suite, “could take you across the galaxy, revolutionise the way society is run.”

  “Could do,” Jonah's eyes widened, his lips pushed out, “Not great for the little ones, though. Got a wife and kids here, you know. They've got
friends, things they like here. Not always easy to make that sort of decision so quickly, with a family and all.”

  Bowing his head respectfully, in acknowledgement, Djembe moved towards the holo suite. He looked back from the door, “Think about it. Discuss it with them, at least. I'll help.”

  Jonah watched the door close on Djembe's back, the wall display change to red: “Locked”. He turned to his technician, “Rosie, why'd you come to Fall?”

  Her voice was distracted, she continued to move icons around her screen, “Peace and quiet, Jonah, same as you. Galaxy's beautiful, but at the end of the day, you want somewhere you can call home, somewhere that's yours, where no one's going to bother you.”

  “Tell my kids that,” he picked up his slate and stylus, “they want to be archaeologists, go off exploring, uncover buried alien artefacts.”

  “Isn't it about time they learned to tell fantasy from reality?”

  “Plenty time for that, Rosie. If whatsisface upstairs gets his way, they'll be living five hundred years, maybe more. Might as well let them be children for a few more decades. There's plenty time for the harsh realities of being an adult.”

  Blackness. A few bright stars gave lie to the depth of space. A starsail swept past, majestic in the driving solar wind, golden in its butterfly-wing symmetry. As it passed, its white, circular crew pod came into view, clinging onto the sail with taut white struts. In the cockpit window, a helmet turned. Jonah's face peered from behind the visor, a silent hand raised in a wave. Djembe heard a distorted voice, “Ground control [beep] We are learning to fly [beep] I repeat [beep] We are learning to fly.”

  The starsail diminished, dwindled, became a star. Vanished.

  Djembe wondered if Jonah was running a private programme. The environmental situations were becoming more outlandish every time he entered.