by Astrotomato
“Colony! Colony! Where are you?” There was still no contact.
Another muffled thump overtook the ship, another explosion at the Colony.
What had happened here? One creature trying to protect him, the others – what? Just out to kill it, or trying to protect him, too?
He edged the ship forward, watching the twenty three for signs of aggression. He brought it down a few metres from the fallen ship and Win's body. He fixed his suit to full protection, while looking at the creature's remains smoking in coal-like lumps. He looked at Win's dismembered, gloved hand lying on its side, curled, a question mark in the sand. The smaller one was nowhere to be seen.
The twenty three advanced, formed a ring around the site. He surveyed them from his cockpit, nervous. Kiran wasn't sure what to do. He'd been sent to keep watch over Win's body until the situation passed. With the satellites gone, communications with the Colony would be difficult.
He looked up through his cockpit, to the sky, hoping for some inspiration. The two city-sized ships, button-sized from this distance, were at the centre of a light show. Kiran squinted. He magnified the view. He could just make out a ship – it was the Hand – between them, light bursting around it.
Whatever had happened here with the creatures, there was no mistaking what was happening above. The Hand was clearly under attack. He switched to attack mode again and thrust away into the active skies.
Daoud was still looking down into the Colony's central air shaft. People were fleeing down the stairwells, the lifts full and going to the bunkers and the hangar. He'd told the rescue teams not to tackle the destroyed farm pod. It was open to the skies, burning. The other pods had emptied within minutes, their scientists fleeing in anticipation of further attacks.
Far below, on the habitation levels, he watched people run back and forth on the gantries and walkways, shouting, bumping into each other. Security forces just returned from surface deployment were desperately trying to corral them, failing in the face of mounting rumour, panic, physical destruction above. People ran up the stairwells to flee by ship from the treacherous shaking earth below, and ran down the stairs to shelter in the emergency bunkers beneath. They collided and pushed and shoved and became angry and shouted and swore and elbowed and barged and eventually one hit another.
Concussive blasts shook the Colony's superstructure as more satellite debris hit. But the colonists didn't know that. They thought they were under attack. Cracks started to appear. Robots wheeled between everyone’s feet trying to fix and hold and fill and repair.
And Daoud looked down upon his creation, hands on rails, surrounded by flashing emergency lights, hearing the fraught sound from below, smelling the outpouring of life – life experienced sharply as it always was at the edge of death – with a gleam in his eyes. He felt another pod go up. Its bulkhead door contained the blast, but creaked and whined too alarmingly for him to want to stick around. He punched a few more commands into his wrist device, turned and, for the final time, left this walkway where he had stood so often absorbing the life and mood of the Colony. Absorbed, he left behind death.
Now MI would have to react.
The ship bucked as it tore through the atmosphere. Kiran steepled his fingers. Cupped inside his hands were holicon weapon commands. When he reached the MI ship he would pull his fingers apart and defend humanity.
Djembe swirled his hands through a waterfall of light. The river of satellite data had dried as they were destroyed one by one.
Since they'd come back from the surface, since he'd learned of his friend dying, he had become one with the consequence map. His concentration was in the now, open to changing information and circumstances and feedback and the constant chatter and rumour of the Jonahverse. It flowed through his arms, to his hands, his fingers dancing along vines and tubes and sworls and clusters and blooms and pipes as thick as a tree trunk, down lianas and whips and roots and tendrils. He lived the Colony, its immediate past, its tumultuous present, all its possible futures.
His hands blurred, another farming pod disappeared, food shortages crumbled into the consequence stream, dull grey turned to quicksilver, pink to vicious red. Colours, textures shot through the forest of mapping. Branches waved from the main trunk, their ends flailing in guesswork. The lack of data about the aliens stymied his planning. He sent his recommendations through to Kate anyway, hoping there was enough data, enough scenario modelling in the Colony's library and his own downloaded files to develop a reasonable response to what was happening.
At this time of greatest uncertainty, it was the only thing he had to cling to.
He tried to contact the twenty three, but they were heading to space. Perhaps to follow their brethren.
Beside him Jonah Kingsland was working hard, and when he could, searching through evacuation lists for the names of his wife and children.
Djembe concentrated on saving the colonists from the attack.
Daoud entered the hangar quietly and stayed out of sight for a few moments, assessing the situation.
There were guns trained on the people of Fall. The hangar bay security detail shifted nervously on ship ramps, holding their weapons below grim faces, a look of knowing betrayal in their eyes. The Hand's pilot was using command phrases to keep the panicked mob under control, and Fall's security personnel focused on their jobs, rather than their own friends and relatives. She had, at least, got everyone into clusters around each cargo ship's ramp. For the moment the explosions crumping through the rock were keeping them quiet.
Something clanged above, followed by a rapid burst of metallic beats. Debris rained to the floor, striking at least one person. The MI pilot shouted for a medic. The crowd parted, their attention diverted onto the injured, and the cascade of sand that followed the debris. She looked up. The surrounding explosions must have knocked something loose. The people would panic soon.
Daoud stepped out of the shadows and walked across the hangar floor. She looked over at the new sound and waved her hand, “Administrator Daoud!”
“Report.”
“I have approximately one hundred and ten colonists, Administrator, all insisting that they deserve a place on a ship. They've accepted that they can't board the ships for the moment, though I had to order your security to draw their weapons. And whatever's happening up there is helping to keep them quiet for now.”
Daoud looked around the hangar bay, at the cargo ships with cables snaking out of them, at the quickly packed bags graffitiing the hangar floor amongst the nervous colonists. He looked at his security guards, standing slightly straighter and looking a little more professional now he was here.
He turned back to the MI pilot, “General Leland has ordered an immediate evacuation. I want you to begin boarding of each craft in turn, starting with that one,” he pointed at a structure shaped like a box which was attached to a frame-ship, a cargo transporter that could carry different loads in an external docking cavity, “and send them up with as short an interval as possible. I want them kept in train out of the system, no more than a micro-light second between them, understand?”
“But what about that?” she looked up, “The attack? We don't know what's happening up there.”
“There are still a couple of ships outside, and they haven't been touched. The focus of the attack is the Colony itself. You should be OK.”
“OK, I'll have to double check with General Leland.” She took a deep breath, “This is officially a military operation now.”
“Of course, but I suggest you make it quick.”
She looked at him, nodded and tapped her wrist device, “General Leland, Administrator Daoud is in the hangar, he's given instructions regarding evacuation, and...”
Kate's voice squawked out, “Thank you pilot. I have asked him to take charge of evac. Please follow his instructions.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
Daoud looked on her, “Can you manage on your own?”
“Yes, but I'm sure a word from you will help keep e
veryone calm, if that's OK, Sir?”
Daoud gave a curt nod and turned to the Colonists, many of whom were already looking at him, “My friends! This is no time for grand speeches. I have ordered your evacuation from Fall. This pilot from Military Intelligence is in command. Please follow her instructions, even if you disagree, am I understood?” He looked around, met people's eyes. “Good. I am taking charge of moving everyone else to the deep emergency bunkers. We will all be reunited in good time. Now go, and wish us who stay behind the best of luck.” He turned, put his hand on her shoulder, “Pilot, I place my people under MI's jurisdiction. Please keep them safe.”
He took a final look around the hangar, nodded to the pilot, his security people and strode away as purposefully as he'd approached. He listened to the Pilot beginning evac as he crossed the hangar floor.
“You, what's your name?”
“Chati Kingsland.”
“Chati, it's your lucky day. Your ship goes first. Board the people within the yellow lines around the ship. EVERYONE else. Please go back to the ships you were at. We will board you in a moment.”
Daoud paused a moment at the door, and happy that the evac was going ahead according to protocol, and that the security and higher ranking staff would be distracted, opened it, and left it behind.
“Thank you pilot. I have asked him to take charge of evac. Please follow his instructions.”
Kate killed the audio link with the Hand's pilot. She'd barely registered the conversation. Tactical data was flowing in from the remaining surface sensors, augmenting the consequence map flow streaming from Djembe and, she supposed, Jonah.
Textured glyphs of blue-white light squirmed around her hands, folding, flowering, ballooning, mutating as they grew into and around other glyphs, helicons and sigils. Her hands, and by backward extension, her attention and mind and conception of the unseen events above in the double sunlight, drifted in balletic waves around energy routings, water supply, structural dampeners, medical supplies, emergency response personnel, nurses, oxygen/air mixtures, ship capacities, communication attempts, computer processing capability, food supply projections, fresh water production ability, the things and thoughts and preparations a colony needed in the event of catastrophe, especially on a desert planet with limited off-world contact.
She held the Colony together, kept it working, running, kept people from tripping from fear and panic into disaffection and riot and anarchy. As she worked to limit the disaster, two thoughts pecked at her mind. What was happening with the Hand and Verigua? Surely they had some way of sending a message back to her, to at least let her know how things were going, if they were unable to supply tactical data. And second, why were they suddenly under attack? It didn't make sense. What did the aliens hope to achieve by this piecemeal destruction of the surface features, after they had the opportunity to destroy the ground and air defences, to force entry through the docking bay doors when they were stuck open? And what did that imply about Verigua's efforts? Had they failed? Should she consider both ship and AI compromised; destroyed? The attack seemed too feeble for such awesome ships.
Snatches of her previous conversation with Daoud floated up, dangerous words from deep below, “They are not so different ... They make surprise attacks ... they exploit weakness, the unprepared ... when the time is right we take a chance … We prepare for war.”
Prepare and then commit.
“Djembe, keep trying to raise the Hand. I need to talk to those visitors. And we need Verigua back online here.” She was performing the task of the Colony's AI, while it made first contact. Later, much later, she would reflect on that swapping of roles, between human and artificial intelligence.
“I'm sorry, Kate,” Djembe sounded just as flustered as she felt, up in his consequence suite, “comms are still down.”
“We've got to get comms back online. A few satellites shouldn't have knocked it all out.”
The rushing sound of the atmosphere fell away. Kiran unconsciously leaned forward as if the ship had just burst from an ocean to the thinner fluid of the skies, suddenly unencumbered, free of resistance. The inky cold of space frosted the cockpit window around the various heads-up displays which measured and visualised angles, velocities, threat levels, risk factors. The two city ships glinted in the distance.
He leaned further forward, looking past the tactical displays, trying to make out what was happening in real time, unaugmented. The light show was still going, cannonades of multi-coloured light strobing, in flux through the spectrum around the MI ship, In The Palm Of Your Hand.
His ship flew on. He kept his hands cupped around the offensive weapon holicons. He was ready to defend the Colony, the planet, the MI ship.
Closer now, with the two alien craft dominating near orbit, Kiran was suddenly unsure about what was happening. From the ground it had seemed so obvious. The fusillade of flashes was weapon fire, an asymmetric attack on the MI ship. The explosions around the Colony supported his interpretation. But here on the edge of space something didn't feel right.
The human ship was in position at the apex of a pyramid, with the alien ships as its massive corner stones. The violet night ruptured around it in aurorae, which were immediately followed by glitchy displays from the alien ships. Neither side seemed to be taking damage, neither fell back, neither advanced. The feeling of not knowing what to do tapped its nervous talons onto the back of his head, tap, tap, tap.
“Ship, lock on to the two alien ships, just in case. Just in case.”
Red circles dinked into life around the alien ships. The ship indicated that weapon systems were charged and ready to commit. The distance to the light storm shrank. He flexed his fingers as much as he dared, the weapon holicons still caged inside.
A group of signals flashed onto his tactical display; the twenty three creatures had somehow followed him all the way up here, were catching up with his ship.
Kiran's right leg started tapping up and down, the knee jogging, going nowhere. What were the creatures doing here? Returning to their home ship? But they'd fired on the creature below when he had fired. It didn't make sense.
“Uuuuh, think think!” He stared at the three ships, less than three hundred kilometres away. Soon he would have to commit to a course of action. His ship ploughed on. He bit his lip, took a breath, “This is Kiran ha'Doek of the Fall Colony to the MI Ship In The Palm Of Your Hand. Please advise status.”
While he waited for a response, new signals appeared on his long range sensors. Military ships were exiting the dust clouds deeper into space. Finally, back up was arriving.
A cone of light burst around his ship from the left hand alien vessel. Icons squawked into life, warning of weapons lock, scans. The cone switched off as suddenly as it had switched on. His hands twitched.
Light burst around him from one of the alien ships. His Needle craft shook violently, its inertial dampeners whining as its speed plummeted. Before he could register what was happening, that his ship was being held in a tractor field to hold it at a safe distance, and before the inertial dampers had kicked in fully, his body lurched forward. He put out his hands to stop himself hitting the cockpit. His fingers uncurled, flew apart. Holicons burst forth.
A stream of missiles left his ship, and raced to the nearer alien craft. Kiran's mouth opened in shock. He moved to open a broad comms signal, to shout that he was sorry, it was a mistake, he hadn't meant to release the weapons commands. When they had covered half the distance he watched them explode harmlessly, destroyed by a single burst of fire from the aliens. And just as quickly, light erupted around him. The pods had opened fire in response.
A tearing sound ripped across his senses, replaced by a keening whistle. His cockpit disintegrated into a billion shards of crystal and his ship blasted apart around him. He had time to see his pilot's chair suddenly in front of him, twirling away into void, to put a numb hand up to his visor, which blew out, too. The instant cold of space iced into his exposed skin and he tumbled for a second,
until just as suddenly as it had arrived, just as suddenly as his ship been destroyed by the alien ships, neutralising the threat he'd created, it all went away.
Warmth surrounded him. An organic comfort, enclosure and safety. His stomach told him he was falling. He could feel gravity pulling at him. He tried to move his arms but they were pressed to his side. He knew he shouldn't breathe in, somewhere in the crimson flare of panic and animal terror, his ship evac training was still working. Don't breathe in when falling through the atmosphere. Turn your head to the side, breathe backwards. He tried to do just that. But his head was restricted, unmoving. Something warm and organic flowed into his mouth. He wanted to gag, but before he could, everything went black.
Kate quickly checked on the hangar.
A ship was rising to the surface. The first of Fall's evacuees. It became a silhouette, a solid arrow with a fat body.
Kate checked her comms feed. As soon as the ship cleared the doors, the surface holos improved, and a weak signal came from the remaining satellites. She wanted to be in touch with Verigua as soon as possible.
“Djembe, use that evac ship, the Eagles Dare, as a comms bridge. Get me Verigua.”
The miners dipped their heads as they clambered through the bulkhead. The foreman was the last one through. He stopped in front of Daoud.
“Is that all of you?”