by Astrotomato
“Yes, Sir.”
“Well done. Take your teams down to the emergency bunkers on Evac Pattern Delta. I'll seal the bulkheads.”
“Sir, if you'd rather be in the emergency command centre, I can stay here.”
Daoud regarded the foreman, put a hand on his shoulder, “I'll go down with my Colony if I have to. But first I'm going to ensure you're all safe. Go to your bunkers.”
“Aye, Sir.”
The foreman turned, hustled his crews into the stairwells. Daoud set to sealing the bulkheads, closing all the subterranean entrances to the Colony. As each one closed, locked down, rotated its iris-like security shielding into place, he imagined what it must be doing to the MI team's consequence map. Safety features in place. Access restricted. The risk of invasion, penetration, of a breach by forces unknown, reduced, taken to zero. The Colony was slowly becoming a fortress, closed on all sides. The destroyed farm pods, though gaping wounds on the surface, were sealed behind similar bulkhead doors. Would anyone notice he'd sealed them before the explosions? Probably. Eventually. When it was too late, when he was a safe distance away and it was too late to change anything.
By now the Colony's only open point would be the hangar bay opening onto the docking pad on the surface. Their consequence map must be simplifying, focusing onto a survival mission. He stood in front of the final bulkhead, looked down at his wrist, which was dull, quiet. Whatever it was lacking made him frown. He looked around, made sure the area was clear, and stepped through the final bulkhead doorway, into the mining tunnel, and sealed it, locking himself out of the Colony. “Go down with my Colony,” he shook his head. “I didn't go down when I destroyed the original one, foreman.”
He picked his way through the cargo trains to a maglev car, entered, set its speed to maximum. After a few minutes of travel the car stopped. He stepped into the dark and followed a beam of light from his wrist; a red pencil line that pierced the dark. At the tunnel wall he gave a command, “Disengage holo, Daoud Prime Seven.” The weak red light illuminated the scene enough to show part of the rock flicker, disappear, revealing a door set into the wall, which opened to his command.
Inside, the doorway gave onto a small hangar bay, housing a Needle-class ship, much like the defensive ships of the Colony, but older still. Daoud activated it at a wall panel; the small hangar bay warmed to a suffused yellow light at the same time. He went through an inspection of the ship; there was a small cargo cavity stuffed with supplies, and the weapons along its side were still operational. After he'd climbed through the access hatch into the cockpit, a number of lights bleeped into life around the hangar bay walls.
“Set countdown, ninety seconds.”
The ship rose to the distant roof, which parted in a flurry of sand. He kept the ship's ascent slow. When the exit was clear, an oblong of scorching light, he brought the ship to a metre below surface level. The timer counted down, reaching zero at the same time the hangar exploded beneath the ship. He accelerated hard, upwards, dropping a cluster of micro-nukes into the entrance hole. The hangar bay doors closed after them, and he was pressed into his seat as the ship accelerated away. On his display he watched the ground lift, blur, as the micro-nukes exploded. The ground liquefied, ran along the mining tunnel, collapsed the entire run. The em-pulse blizzarded his display for a moment. When it sprang back to life, a number of new signals had appeared. The Eagles Dare was airborne. He pressed his wrist pad, causing another satellite to fall from the sky. It was headed for the first evac ship.
Daoud scanned for the twenty three. At the edge of his craft's sensor range, he found them in space with a signal from a Colony defence ship. And as soon as he'd found them, he watched a massive energy discharge engulf them all.
Daoud brought his ship to a halt. The defence ship's signal, up in space, blinked out. Of the twenty three pods, sixteen signals disappeared instantly. Seven dimmed, dropped to the atmosphere, got lost in the remains of the destroyed ship that fell alongside. He watched the skies, saw debris burning to Fall, falling like stars in a dream. The cloud of signals diminished, obliterated by the heat of re-entry. He glared at the display, “Come on!”
Three signals remained. Three signals fell to ground. He couldn't tell if they were parts of the ship, or individuals from the twenty three. One seemed to be coloured with an organic signal. The em-pulse from the micro-nuke he'd dropped into the small, secret hangar, another apparent alien attack on the Colony, was making it difficult to scan the area.
He trusted that something of the twenty three had survived. All depended on it. They had to survive above all else or the war would be futile.
The display cleared slightly and Daoud watched the In The Palm Of Your Hand move away from the alien ships. He kept an eye on it as he patched into the system's communications relay to the wormhole. There was a comms blackout at its furthest reach; signals near the wormhole were not getting through. But the relay satellite at the outer system edge of the dust shroud was clear enough about one thing: an MI fleet was approaching.
Daoud's eyes shone. “Even better than I dared hope. Our first skirmish.”
He asked his ship to send an SOS signal along the relay, 'Colony under attack.'
His hands moved smoothly into the navigation display. He sat back in his ship, turned over a holicon. The signals falling to ground were moving to the edge of his sensor range. At the outer reaches of his ship's capabilities, they finally resolved into the colours he was looking for, and he allowed himself a smile as space enveloped his ship and Fall fell away.
He detonated another satellite. He had to ensure that the incoming fleet would engage the alien ships in combat. Thinking of the long term good, he made sure the exploding satellite gave a short burst of its control thrusters first, so that the debris would fall directly onto the evac route from the planet.
Daoud set a trajectory to orbit the planet and head for the wormhole, shielded by Fall's mass. He escaped and left his nascent war behind.
The evac ship called the Eagles Dare's formed a comms bridge outside the Colony and brought Kate's displays to life. Information from the surface flooded her holo displays like rain after a drought. Relief washed through her. Finally she could see.
Almost as soon as the holos came to life, they blinked off. A single symbol replaced them: em-pulse; a nuclear attack. After a few seconds the holo came back to scratchy life. The mining tunnels had been targeted. Farm pods first and now mining.
“Djembe, update for you. The Colony's food production and supply lines for processing the minerals have been cut off. Feed the data into your consequence map.”
The Eagles Dare had come to a halt, holding position ten kilometres up. It was tracking the remains of a Colony defensive ship falling through the atmosphere. Kate opened a link to the hangar bay, “Pilot, cancel evac. Colony ships are under attack. Bring the Eagles Dare back in.”
Where was Daoud? She searched for his signal in the Colony's myriad information lines. They all came back empty. She glowered. The anger rose again.
“So it was a trap.” She sat back from the command holos.
Nearly everyone was in bunkers now. The hangar bay signalled that it was sending its evacuees to the Colony's depths. They would not be leaving after all. The Colony's water, waste and energy flows were under control. Emergency food processors in the bunkers were coming on line.
For a moment she had felt in supreme control, performing the tasks of an AI. The Colony had lived, moved, breathed, survived through her. She had lost sight of her self-conscious mind and become one with its information flow. A glimpse of what Verigua must be, perhaps.
After so much uncertainty, wishing she was home, hoping for a promotion, unable to cope with the responsibility she'd been given, she had finally found her focus, only to find it was too late. “You can only fight the devil if you know he exists.” Kate pinched the bridge of her nose.
The Eagles Dare was starting its return to base.
One of the Colony's security p
ersonnel appeared in holo, “Incoming message. Priority One.”
“Put it through.”
Admiral Kim's head appeared in front of her. “This is Admiral Kim to planet Fall. We understand you are under attack. Report.”
“Admiral Kim, it's General Leland. The Colony has suffered significant damage. Farming pods destroyed. Major seismic damage to the structure. A nuclear detonation; the mineral supply is compromised. One of my team's gone. We are making first contact with an alien species. Reports show they've destroyed a defensive ship.”
Kim stared from the holo, “First contact?”
“Yes, Ma'am.”
“And Daoud?”
“I tried, Admiral. The Administrator...”
“Where is he?”
“Unknown.”
“General Leland, your Colony is under attack. Daoud has gone. You have failed in your mission. We will talk when this is finished. I am now taking command.”
“Yes, Admiral.” Kate slumped into an anti-grav chair.
“We are a few minutes away. We will set up a defensive blockade and...”
The holo cut out.
Kate stood, alarmed. “Djembe, where's the comms?”
“Gone. The Eagles Dare has been destroyed.”
“What?”
“On its return to base, it was hit by something. I can only assume a missile or weapon from the aliens.”
“How many people on board?”
“A hundred.”
“I've failed,” she slumped again. “Failed.”
All she had wanted to do was avert a war. It had seemed obvious. Daoud had shown her an innocent city being attacked. She had refused to believe it, tried to stand in his way. And now they were under attack. An unprovoked attack, like in the holo of the mountainous granite city, its shining threads of city life clinging to scarred rock faces, and then smattering in crystal shards as deadly flowers bloomed their explosions.
She realised then that her field promotion must have had some deliberate forethought behind it: a General was sent to war. The Cadre must have suspected something along these lines. The military fleet was here hours earlier than it should have been.
Kate switched to a camera view of the hangar bay. The final evacuees were leaving for the bunkers. She saw the Hand's pilot standing alone, looking up. Flipping the view, Kate saw the hangar bay doors closing, eating away at the intense daylight, and forming a continuous silhouette with what looked like the profile of the In The Palm Of Your Hand.
The bay doors closed. Kate was back in the dark.
She thought over the exchanges with Daoud. He had been opposite her, in here, the war room, the emergency bunker, his hands a blur in the holos, while she panicked, while she procrastinated. She hadn't even checked what he was doing. Immediately, she pushed her hands back into the holos and traced his activity, now fully focused on the investigation.
“Unbelievable,” she stepped back from the holo. “Oh no, oh no.” Brazenly, hidden in plain sight, he had been sending people to the wrong bunkers so they arrived over-crowded, so stairwells were blocked, lifts were used inefficiently. He had amplified the panic in the Colony. And something else. She shifted through holicons, audited their evolution, traced back, back, back. Somewhere Djembe was trying to talk to her, she put him on hold for a few minutes. She went through infolayer after layer.
A jamming signal. Comms had been blocked by Daoud himself.
And a tractor beam projected from the Colony, stopping ships from leaving.
“I should have seen it.”
“Perhaps it's as simple as not standing in the way.”
And he'd walked out of here. She'd sent him out. She hadn't stood in his way, she'd let him get away with creating this panic, and allowed him to leave the bunker, leave the Colony. By now the mecha and defensive ships' pilots would be back in the Colony, telling people what they'd seen. Panic. Attack. Aliens.
She was a midwife to humanity's loss of innocence and the re-birth of its war-loving nature.
She set her jaw, stood up and took a deep breath. She was a General. She owed it to Win, to the colonists, to everyone, to make this right, to turn this around. To bring these great cultures, human and alien, together outside of conflict and death and destruction.
Taking the comms holicons he had been working on, she deconstructed them. Within minutes the Colony's comms were active again. There were enough satellites left to form a communications link. She quickly identified a break in the comms relay in space, and boosted the signal to overcome it. Now Fall was re-connected to comms all the way to the wormhole.
“Djembe, sorry to ignore you. Report.”
“Mr. Kingsland has left the suite. His family were in the Eagles Dare. I've found traces of the pods on the surface. Security holos show they were attacked in orbit. Most were killed. The remaining few surrounded a pilot, and protected him through planetfall. He's on the surface.”
“Is he alive?”
“Yes, but unconscious. It's the pilot we met, Kiran ha'Doek. And something else.”
“Something else. There's always something else.”
“Another alien has joined them. I've scanned it and its identical to the original visitor. It's... merged with the pod material around Kiran. He's in a sort of organic suit.”
“Send someone out, get him back here. With the organic.”
She pulled up a holo from the satellite feed. The fleet was attacking the great ships, which were deploying defensive manoeuvres: not attacking, just deflecting the attacks they were receiving. Beyond them, the planetoids were moving away with their baby. She watched them moving slowly into deeper space, and then the holo warped, and they were gone. The great jade ships started moving away. They moved on a trajectory back to the wormhole, ploughing through the blockade created by the military ships. Kate watched with dismay, shouting at the holo, “Get out of the way you idiots.” But Admiral Kim stuck to her blockade tactics, firing constantly on the alien ships. Half of the human ships were destroyed against the alien's shields. The alien ships accelerated and sped away through the dust clouds.
Kate sat and cried. War had started. Kim would be tracking the ships, had maybe even shot tracers on their hulls. What had happened here, regardless of how it had started, would be avenged. She knew it. It was the human way.
Leaving the emergency command bunker, she made her way to the hangar, asking Djembe to join her there.
They arrived in time to see the SS Maris One brought in, and Win's mangled body, which was placed under a sheet. She had him taken to MedWing, to the morgue.
Kiran ha'Doek was brought in by a MedTeam, wrapped in the organic mass.
Her wrist pad chimed and Admiral Kim's head appeared again, “General Leland, prepare for surface landing and to receive our casualties. Out.”
Djembe looked at her, “This has all gone terribly wrong. It wasn't supposed to end like this.”
“No,” she shook her head, blinked away tears, “this has all gone to plan. Daoud's plan. He wanted to start a war.” She kicked a piece of equipment across the floor. “Look at this mess. Win dead. This, this ship. Daoud said it's last transmission was from today.”
“What?”
“The SS Maris One. The first ship to leave the Sol system nine hundred years ago. Lost. It's last transmission through the Sol wormhole was from today. And now it's here.”
“What does it mean?”
“What does it mean?” She looked at him wild eyed, “What does any of this mean?”
She walked over to where Kiran was stretched out on a gurney, the organic mass writhing around him. She reached out to touch it. It shrank back, at first, and then formed a growth, reached out to her. “He survived planetfall in this.”
Djembe joined her, “Perhaps Daoud was not so stupid. This could be a useful technology.”
“He designed it as a weapon. It's a technology of war.” Kate shook her head. “It's all gone to his plan.”
The Hand's pilot approached her
. “General. The Colony's AI has a report.”
Next to her a black panther leaped from the Hand. “I am sorry, General. I was making good progress. They are essentially peaceful. I was going to some pains to explain why the Colony craft opened fire, when the military ships arrived.” The panther prowled over to Kiran, “I am glad this one survived. And you will be glad to know I am cured. The anxiety loops are gone.” It looked at Kiran's organic technology, “This technology of Daoud's has. How should I say? Matured, in a rather interesting fashion.”
“Where is the Administrator, Ma'am?” The pilot looked around the hangar, as if Daoud might be there, commanding personnel to receive the incoming casualties.
Kate looked at the panther, over at the Hand's pilot and finally into Djembe's eyes, “Daoud escaped the system during the confusion. He's to be considered a terrorist. I will find him. And I will end his war.”
Kate looked up at the hangar bay doors, which trembled as the first military ships landed above, “This story isn't over.”
- end -
Acknowledgements
All books are products of a relationship between the author and anyone who will listen. I am indebted to many for encouraging me to write this and for giving substantial feedback.
Art
I thank Rob Ellis (@MoviesSimple) for designing the wonderful cover art from a long and rambling brief. Goodness knows how he translated my waffle into such a great image.
Proof reading
Thanks to everyone who read small parts of this text and gave comments, especially in the early days. Particular thanks to those who read the entire book, in various drafts, and gave feedback: Dave House (@rev_engineer, a wonderful musician) who also made an early offer to produce cover art for which I am truly grateful; Michael Done and Lisa Herron Done; Sarah Barrick; and author John Harris Dunning (graphic novel fans are recommended to read his Salem Brownstone: All Along the Watchtowers). I continue to be grateful to author Tara Basi for his insight into planetfall and my other writing.