All Fall Down

by Astrotomato

  The movements of his suit's slim helmet gave away his search of the horizon. His hands went to his hips.

  Win turned to Daoud, “Administrator, why is the Colony sending up ships?” Two more dots rose slowly through the shimmering ground air, but were quickly obscured as night fell around them.

  Sophie pulled and the door swung open.

  The tunnel was pitch, the weak emergency light failing to bleed over.

  “Daoud,” she shook her head, “you will pay for what you've made me do.”

  Behind her, the automata were shuffling again. They retreated and banged into each other as they moved down the corridor. She looked at them, frowning. She wanted to use their lights so she could see to reach one of the vehicles. Without their extra light, shadows deepened, crawling up her calves, thighs, waist.

  There was a sucking sound, slow and organic. Sophie looked back to the door.

  A black mass oozed around the portal, small sharp vermilion lines running over its surface.

  She had enough time to realise that it could only be the twenty three, escaped, coalesced, before it shot out, suffocating her face, forcing its way into her mouth, nose, lungs. Other tendrils grabbed her hands, wrists, legs; forced, dissolved, entered every orifice.

  Her cybernetic implants rushed to emergency response, pumped oxygen into her blood. The mass enveloped her, a reversing womb, taking her apart, outside and in. Furious pain roared along her nerves, everywhere at once. She fought for a few seconds and sank into battle time, an accelerated sensory response through her cyberware.

  Sophie scanned the organism looking for a weakness. Images burst into her head. Butterflies in a fractal storm. Children's laughter. Emotion flooded her: curiosity, innocence, the need for comfort.

  She thought of Huriko. The hybrid child Daoud wanted to make. And thinking of that, she knew what she had to do. His war was starting above. She had to end it as quickly as possible.

  While her body burned in digestion and dissolution; while her pores, fat, bones screamed as they were stripped into molecules no longer related to her body; while her cybernetic implants went off line one by one; she brought her cybercode, Verigua's programs and her own consciousness into one, into a singular biological algorithm. She reached out through her remaining cyberware to the automata, tried to download her essence to them, but they returned blankness, no entry signs, empty command lines. And she realised why each one was powering down: its driving force was being retracted. Finally she made a count of them: just over a score, twenty three. She made the connection. The twenty three biological entities in the secret lab had been observing the Colony for some time. Slaving automata, infiltrating Verigua.

  An alien consciousness probed her mind.

  Her body was dissolving into the organic mass. She was once again on the edge of death, her brain and cyberware the last vestiges of what she'd once been. There was no more pain, she was beyond it, her nerve pathways overloaded or gone.

  She made her decision. Once, long ago, she had birthed a new order, brought peace through delivering a baby AI from the Qin to the Settled Quarters. She would do it again, she would die and be reborn, and work to bring down Daoud's plan.

  Her last thoughts were painted in broken pastels, dream fragments. Images, half remembered, of home, of comfort, of peace, of a room full of children, playing, screaming, laughing, bursting with energy. Of a room full of children, wheeling in broken sunlight. Tumbling and falling and climbing over each other, faces coming up for air, mouths wide, eyes sparkling. Of a room. Of children. Of children in a ring, in a circle, running ring-a-ring-a-rosey, and in their centre, sitting proud and sentient and patient and aloof, a cat with butterfly wings.

  Chatter filled the evacuation bunker: moans, sniping. Other voices sought to calm, pacify. Then there were the voices that projected order, the genesis of tasks, evacuation management. Masjid left them behind to make a final inspection of the entrance way. He couldn't contact Daoud or Sophie. The simulation seemed too real. He suspected the evacuation was genuine. His knowledge of the Colony's superstructure remained hazy. Did it have the capacity to induce earthquakes? To shake the stairwells? Surely not.

  His staff, fortunately, were caught in a collective grief, their critical thinking numbed, blunted. No one had yet seriously questioned the deep rumbles. Masjid walked along the entrance corridor. The bunker behind him, voices melting to a hubbub. The door they'd carefully closed behind them he opened once more, against protocol. No alarms triggered. A distant screeching of metal on metal ticker taped down the stairwell, hazy spirals of sound from far above. A bass line fanfare, the chthonic shocks of grinding earth complemented the high pitch of tortured metal. He held up his emergency light, which was lost in the stairwell, absorbed by the hungry dark.

  More rumbling. He felt it though his feet, put a hand to the wall. Above, a door banged open or slammed closed, he couldn't tell.

  “Copper?” There was a tang. Metallic vapours. He sniffed. It was almost a blood smell. Old. Meaty. He refocused his torch to a thinner beam, a longer searchlight, and immediately dropped it, the clatter masking his gasp. Carefully he picked up the torch, swung it up, hand trembling. In the air above hung a spiral, a helix, a merry-go-round comprised of twenty three black pods. He watched them rise into the dark vault of the stairwell and disappear one by one.

  When he returned to the bunker, mouth dry, two solid emergency doors sealed behind him, he forgot about Sophie, forgot about Daoud. He stilled the cynics, lent authority to those organising the evacuation procedures. The bunker was too well protected for them to feel the quivering earth, and the biocrete and carbonised metals shaking around them. Yet still, a tremor ran through his hand.

  Chapter 13 - planetfall

  “What the HELL'S THAT!” The Hand's pilot pointed at the sky, terror cracking her voice through their helmets.

  Night fell so quickly that they were all left stumbling as their suits adjusted. The suns still burned the desert floor a dark radius away. The earth was in a perpetual ecstasy of trembling. Their balance was thrown off by the rushing wind and abused air, by the terrible sound of the mass sliding above them. Win fell back on his military training to control the animal urge to flee into the featureless expanse.

  Above, the carbonised underbelly of a city, a great star cruising ship of no human design, coarsened the atmosphere. They were caught in the deep shadow of its outer edge, the night passing within two minutes as the city took up station towards the horizon behind them, over their own ship. Twin sunlight leaped on them once more: burning tiger in the night. The blue sun was one quarter across the disk of its fatter partner. Hallucinatory aurora stroked the skies, danced around a second city further away to their right, its scarab-like shell rising in gleam and zinced jade behind the inselberg.

  The pilot received no reply until slowly, as if she might crack apart at his touch, Djembe put a hand to her arm, “Whatever they are, they are enough proof that this planet is safe.” The pilot's helmet turned to him, visor polarised, face hidden. Privately, helmet to helmet, “Win? Any readings on those things?”

  He scanned his sensor readings, “Nothing we can't see for ourselves. It's the other readings that are interesting me. The Colony is deploying armaments.”

  “Against those things?”

  “I think Daoud sent a message somehow. Maybe before we left the Colony.”

  Djembe's voice trembled, “How I could get it so wrong? The consequence map never predicted any of this.”

  Win opened a channel to all of them, “Kate, the dampening field appears to be gone. We could head back to the ship. Get out of here?”

  The five stood casting gradually weaker shadows. The raw sea green of the sky purpled, turned to violet as the blue sun slowly moved into alignment with the yellow. Daoud pointed their attention to the eclipse, “Look. The moons, planetoids, they're moving into eclipse too.”

  Win looked and made some quick calculations, “Perhaps they will deflect the gravitation
al impulse of the eclipse? Re-shape it?”

  Daoud pointed to the horizon, “Let's get back to the Colony.”

  Win shook his head, “We need to observe this, gather as much info for MI as possible.”

  “General, your staff can do what they want. I am heading back to the Colony.” Daoud walked on.

  Kate looked at the three MI staff. “I'm open to suggestions, but let's make them fast.”

  The pilot spoke first, “I want to go to the Colony, General. We need solid rock over our heads.”

  Win looked around at the polarised-blank faces and shrugged, “I want to go back to the ship. We need as much data on this as possible to report back.”

  Djembe put a hand on Win's shoulder, “I, too, am going back to the Colony. I need to update the consequence map so we can approach this strategically. Kate?”

  “We have to defend the Colony. Keep the minerals flowing. Win, I'm with Djembe this time. Go to the ship, gather data. We'll do our best to restore power and open the hangar bay doors. Bring the ship back when you can. Keep in touch. You two, with me.”

  Win gave a quick bow of the head. The three turned away, jogged into the gloaming. He watched them for a few seconds, then switched to an aerial video feed which showed the five of them from one of his probes' points of view. Kate, Djembe and the Pilot were running after Daoud.

  Win turned back, towards the ship. The probes maintained a connection to the ship, to Verigua. Win started a conversation about the orbital mechanics of the system, of Fall, with the AI.

  Above, the alien cities hung in the sky. Jade dragons conquering the heavens, from the stories of old that he had read to his son, Hong-Xian.

  As he ran, he put together the jigsaw pieces and the floor beneath his feet shook more and more. He stumbled to his knees a few times. Far ahead lay the ship, just within the lip of the city's shadow. It seemed obvious to Win that the humans were an accidental witness to this spectacle. This must be cultural, a delegation to bear witness or take part in some ritual. Why else would such mighty craft come to a system on the verge of planeticide? It must be something that happened exceptionally rarely, a binary in conjunction with all of its planets and its wormhole. It had to signify something. They had come down either side of the inselberg, the only feature on the planet. Maybe it was a pilgrimage? Perhaps the rock island held some special status?

  Because the suns were behind him and the city ship ahead, the physical edge of the ship above started before its shadow on the earth. He looked back at the eclipsing suns. There was about ten minutes left to full eclipse. The air was full of tricksy colours from the aurora which waved across the arena of heaven.

  A ship shot over his head and curved away from the city's carapace in front of him: one of the Colony ships that had launched a couple of minutes ago. He called up video from his probes. The ship was an older Needle class design. A slim craft, small enough to fit through the hangar bay door's half-open gap. Win looked closely at the ship. In the cockpit was Kiran ha'Doek. The child of Fall who wanted a simple life, suddenly thrust into the centre of humanity's universe, the centre of its future history. What could a minnow do to a whale of the stars? Win continued over the buckling earth, waves rumbling up through his feet and into his body. In the grounded ship Verigua was trying to model the gravitational effects as quickly as possible.

  Red squares appeared in his helmet visor. Warning signals. He opened them into grainy images of the city ship in front of him, hanging impossibly in the sky, pixel-size movement occurring on its iridescent green shell. Dots streamed out. Defensive craft? Had they viewed the Colony ships as real threats? He watched them make formation and descend following the curve of the shell. Their design was simple, curved like pebbles, black, perhaps thirty metres by fifty metres. Landing pads suggested they were coming straight to ground. Win breathed out, relieved. Their course changed, angled towards the inselberg. A separate video window showed similar craft leaving the second city, on the further horizon, these passing around the inselberg, on a trajectory to meet the craft near him. He looked around for the Colony ships. They no longer appeared on sensors, perhaps wisely. Maybe Daoud had ordered them down. Or maybe they were biding their time. Surprises were apt to make people panic.

  All of the alien craft, Win counted ten, settled on the labouring desert floor. He stood in deep dusk, alone, half under sky and half under the city ship's outer edge, the flat expanse of Fall shaking around him. He watched video streams in his visor.

  Verigua gave him an update. “My goodness, what an adventure! I have several updates for you.”

  “Go ahead, anything to help me understand... this.”

  “Well first. Your ship recognises these ships. Their profiles match something you encountered in Fall's wormhole immediately prior to your arrival.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, the Hand is much relieved to talk with me about them. Between you and me it's been jabbering on about how excited it is.”

  “So this is what was trying to come through.” Win looked up. The underbelly of the ship was riven with engineering services. “They would have been earlier if not for us,” he realised.

  “It seems so. Now for the eclipse, Commander. The sky is amazing. Black night. Gold rings. All very pretty. Can you see what's happening where those alien ships are? Can you move your probes in closer?”

  “I don't want to draw attention to them.”

  “Seems sensible, I suppose. Increase the magnification then. Oh wait a moment, I think I have a weak signal to the satellite feed. My goodness!”

  “What is it?”

  “The inselberg. Our only landmark on the entire planet. Well I never.”

  “What?”

  “Have a look for yourself, my dear Sir.”

  A satellite view, top down, unfolded in his visor. The jade curves of the two city ships pinched its edges. In the centre stretched the rock island. Huge cracks in the earth radiated in all directions from its perimeter. A thick black line kohled its circumference. Tiny puffs of dust bloomed along the sides.

  “Is this is a live stream?”

  “Indeed it is.”

  Win looked across the different video windows in his visor. The inselberg cracking the ground apart. “Something else is happening,” three different views of the alien ships, ramps lowering, “someone's coming out of the shuttles.”

  Over darkling sands ran the four. Kate followed Daoud, who ran fast given how old he must be.

  Her mind fumed as the skies boiled with light.

  Ever since she'd assumed military control, nothing had gone to plan. The ships in orbit weren't Admiral Kim's fleet giving back up. A dampening field was stopping anything travelling through the atmosphere. Gargantuan alien spacecraft had come into orbit and then into the lower atmosphere. Daoud – or someone, at least – had ordered the Colony's limited defensive craft into the air, and Kate was wondering how they got out, when the hangar bay doors had locked halfway preventing their own ship from returning. Added to that, nature was rebelling against them. The ground was undergoing immense seismic activity. The suns were going into eclipse and Win's modelling showed that Fall, the system's gas giant and the wormhole would all be in conjunction with the eclipse, and the planet might be destroyed. The two unsurveyed planetoids which orbited close to the sun had left their orbits and travelled at lightning speed to Fall, had entered orbit around the planet and were also coming into conjunction. She couldn't trust Daoud, barely trusted Sophie Argus or Doctor Masjid Currie, there were alien specimens under the Colony and an eccentric AI with deep psychological problems.

  While she ran, she realised with dismay that she may never get home or see her family again. She had failed them. The one thing she had tried to do for the last standard year, and she had failed.

  They ran and the ground shook and they jumped when small sections of rock burst upwards under their feet. The sky was becoming black. Shimmering aurora caressed the sky. The Colony entrance approached.

&nbs
p; Kate re-focused. The mission. Keep the minerals flowing.

  But no. That was wrong now. Admiral Kim had also sent her to investigate Daoud. Kate had discovered murder, a plot to create war. Collusion, betrayal.

  And she was a General with military control of a Colony.

  The aurora above danced and the dust in the air glowed in response. A light surrounded her, despite the approaching darkness.

  She knew what she had to do.

  The Colony's entrance shimmered in the paling heat as the heaving ground shook loose sand into the air, a flower garden of dry, powdered petals. The shakes and jolts lent their running a final boost of speed and energy.

  They reached the airlock and crowded into its lift shaft. They pulled off their helmets, shaking the dust and sand to the floor.

  Emergency power had been restored; the lift dropped through an arterial vein of the Colony, to its hidden depth, the emergency command bunker. Kate thought about the Colony, about Daoud and his mysterious absence throughout this mission. She tried not to think about the effects of war against an unknown alien civilisation, it was all to much, too horrible. She wanted to speak, to say all of this to Djembe, next to her in the lift, silent. But with the pilot and especially Daoud there, she had to bite her tongue.

  Jonah met them at the bunker's entrance, breathing a sigh of relief, “Took your time Administrator. Been doing everything myself. First off, don't ask me where Sophie is. Soon as I got emergency power up, I came here.” The four trooped into the bunker behind Daoud, listening to Jonah. Kate decided not to say anything about the Administrator being under military arrest. Jonah continued, “Figured them big visitors upstairs kinda triggered the procedures. Can't get a proper fix on Sophie, her signal's ghosting. Had her in twenty four locations a while ago. Just got her on the surface now, smeared over a one kilometre square area. Prob'ly them things up there, screwing up everything. I presume she's inspecting the defensive mech; she said to deploy it. Reports are coming in from all directorates ready for review.”