All Fall Down (46 page)

           
Kate was trying not to throw something at him. She wanted to stand, stalk the room, but they had to stay buckled in case of quick take off. Her energy, anger, determination were straining at her voice, “Administrator, the planet is about to crack apart. I'm much more interested in getting us past the force field.”

           
“Look in the sky, General. What do you see? Two of the system's minor planets in orbit around this one. What are the chances of them being haphazardly thrown out of orbit by a forthcoming eclipse, and both ending up in orbit around Fall? Without smashing into it? Or each other?” She looked at him, cautious, interested, “They are here for a reason. Their course was on a controlled trajectory. And there are two giant alien craft, the size of cities. I have trouble believing that in the gaze of such celestial events that this planet is about to become death.”

           
She breathed deeply, pushed out her breath. Repeated.

           
“Now,” Daoud started to unbuckle, “can we please leave this ship and return to calmer shores?”

           
He was right. She hated him for it. She stabbed a comms button, “General Leland to ship's crew. Prepare for surface travel. Suit up, meet me at the exit. That's an order.” Her eyes fell on the ship's starboard windows, beyond which lay the monolithic inselberg. Huge clouds of dust were falling from its sides, dry avalanches, particle plumes feathering the molten blue sky.

           
They left their chairs for the exit.

           
The ground shook. They skidded down the ship's corridor, fastening suit sections as they went. At the exit hatch, Win was the first to speak, “Kate, what are we doing? The simulations show...”

           
“Administrator Daoud has pointed out that our orbital friends change things somewhat,” she walked over to him, put a hand to his arm, glanced over to Djembe, “and that they are more than likely here for a purpose.” Having Win near made her feel calm again.

           
Djembe looked at the floor, “I have a bad feeling about this.”

           
As they secured their helmets, the exit hatch spiralled open to the airlock, the ramp already lowering to the dirt floor. Dust devils span over the metal as it reached the surface. A glare like burning magnesium dazzled them. Further down the ramp, as their eyes adjusted, they saw colours flickering across the sand, around the central shadow cast by both suns over the ship. The five paused on the ramp's foot in the shade to get their bearings. The pilot was explaining the functions of the environment suits, “Water pouches, like the suit's computer controls, are mechanically powered. Walk, move, you'll pump water to the drinking tube. The biotronics are recharged by moving and sunlight. We can last days out here in the suits, weeks even. The suits are made for deep space evacuation. It makes them a little more bulky. They won't protect you from weapons or impacts.”

           
“Well, we're only moving a couple of klicks,” Win looked to the sky, at the new moons high in its turquoise sea, “I hope we will be fine.” He looked over to Djembe, whose visor was polarised against the imminent glare. He would be worrying about the decision to stay planetside, about not forcing an exit. The eclipse simulation – and his faith in consequence
 
mapping all missions to granular, nanoparticular detail – made him vulnerable around spontaneous events like this.

           
Daoud pointed to their right, “Look through the ship's landing struts,” they craned, leaning over the side of the ramp, squinting through the landing struts, “that's the only landmark we have, other than the ship. Satellite functions seem compromised, so there's no suit navigation. Keep the inselberg to your right, and the ship to your left as we move beyond them. The suns are high. The polarised visors will take off the glare, but it's flat and featureless until you spot the Colony's farm pods and entrance block.”

           
The ground heaved violently. Djembe and the pilot fell off the ramp, knees and hands scraping them to a sudden halt. The others dropped to a sitting position, holding each others forearms. Kate crawled through the rumbling and dropped the short distance to the desert floor, “Are you two OK?” They nodded. An aftershock kept them on all fours.

           
Djembe de-polarised his visor, “We must tread carefully. There may be faults, cracks covered by thin layers of stone and dust.” A smaller aftershock eventually calmed the ground, as pebbles rolled across the parched earth and rock and sand. When the ground was stable, they stepped into the glare and the oncoming eclipse. There were just a few seconds of a degree before the suns touched in the sky, overlapped, before the yellow sun started to ingest the blue and take it inside its circumference, its fiery stomach. A wall of heat engulfed them while their suits reacted to their external environment beyond the shade.

           
Kate stepped into the lead, momentarily baking, the air pressure rising in her suit. With the others at her back she was mutely aware of Daoud, his eyes undoubtedly focused on her, focused on the horizon. They walked in silence for some minutes, lost in concentration as the ground turned traitor. The suns rode across the sky. Faint aurora hung in the mint fenestra above. To their right the inselberg endured the ground tremors.

Sophie was in the bowels of the Colony, heading for the tunnel door.

           
The seismic activity was dampened down here, heard more than felt. The main power was out, though the corridors were lit by the emergency bioluminescence. On her way down here, the emergency power had started once or twice, always snuffed within seconds. It was part of the plan, to create panic, to put people on edge so they made mistakes. It would kick in soon, and go off again.

           
When she closed the door from the emergency stairwell, she found automata circled around it, obviously attracted by the sound of clattering feet beyond. She looked at them carefully. Their guide lights glowed on their head pieces and bodies. The electromagnetic dampening field she and Daoud had rigged obviously didn't reach this far. Good, she would be free to activate her cyberware without fear of it being dampened. When she moved between the automata, they wheeled carefully out of her way, giving passage.

           
A seismic wave moved across the Colony. Dust fell from overhead pipework. The dust got everywhere. She waved the dry cloud from her face and walked slowly along the corridor, heading to the tunnel door. She would have to ensure the twenty three were secure.

           
As she walked, she ran a diagnostic. Her link to Verigua was broken. The dampening field and the Colony above had put her out of reach. So she was properly alone.

           
Sophie walked slowly to the tunnel door and activated her cyberware. It was the first time since she'd come to Fall that she'd fired up all systems at once.

           
A sound stopped her. Slowly, she turned around. The automata were wheeling along the corridor. Experimentally, she turned off her cyberware, and watched the automata come to a stop.

           
“Interesting.”

           
She fired up her cyberware again, and waited. The automata activated and trundled, settling around her feet.

           
“It's a good job I've kept it inactive these past decades.” The automata were silent, still.
 
Looking at them, she decided they could be useful. She kept her cyberware fully switched on and walked to the tunnel door.

           
As she walked, she activated the visual feed and watched the diagnostics running in her field of vision. The nanocode was almost destroyed. She became embarrassed that she had never thought to check for infection after Daoud had saved her life. She should have known better, those were paranoid times. But perhaps the code had stopped her, implanted deep suggestions so she felt safe. Daoud was foresighted. It worried her: what else might he have planned all those centuries ago?

           
Reaching the tunnel door, she stopped and allowed the automata to reach her. There was a score, maybe more.

           
She started pointing at the robots and addressing them with the ID codes on their chassis. “Epsilon seven, here. Rho five, there,” and finished when they were arranged in a semi-circle around her.

           
Internally, she parcelled memories, code and diagnostic tools and looked at the automata. They were about to act as extensions. “Download.” Each robot rocked slightly when she started the transfer to its operating system. Eventually the task was complete. More seismic waves rumbled through the corridors. Holograms sprang to life around her from the robots' projectors. Memories from her past. They ran simultaneously and she watched them all, keeping tabs on them, keeping live her links to each of the robots.

           
A few ran recent memories, of the implantation into Doctor Maki, the alien DNA mixed with Huriko's, and the medical procedures Huriko was subjected to, drugged, with linguistic programming to reinforce it. Another showed Sophie's point of view when dealing with Doctor Cassel's body. Another a decades old memory of creating the pods, the twenty three. Across other holograms were old memories, long buried, from the crash which had killed her, her reconstruction. And from before, when she had not been called Sophie Argus, when she had been the
de facto
leader of the resistance in the Corporate Wars.

           
She watched for several minutes. Ambivalence held her. They all looked like reasonable activities.

           
Her internal sensors reported that the last of the nanocode was destroyed.

           
The holos started to loop, to play over again.

           
At first, nothing much changed. She experienced a moment of disorientation, but that sometimes happened when cyberware was activated or deactivated.

           
Sophie watched an old holo, faces from her long past. The squad leaders she'd once known so well, scarred, covered in stolen clothes, the light of death in their eyes. Her skin prickled.

           
Another holo. The ship in which she was transporting the baby AI, the ship which had crashed and killed her. The activation code was burned onto her cyber-retina, present in her point of view. She had kept this memory saved in one of her cybernetic implants. It was the first time she'd watched it. Her skin prickled again, across her chest, up the back of her neck. In the holo sensors were flaring around her. The ship chasing her was catching up; the killing missile was closing in.

           
She looked at the holo of Huriko Maki. At womb reaction vessels containing small black dots: the twenty three. At Doctor Cassel, Peter's, face.

           
At her old comrades, dead these long centuries.

           
At herself crashing.

           
At Doctor Maki's face, terrified.

           
At her wasted body.

           
At Doctor Cassel's body, burned.

           
At Daoud's face leaning in, his eyes calculating.

           
Sophie started to cry. She looked from side to side. At who she was back then, occasionally caught in reflection, at the softer features, the compassionate skin. At herself now, the steely eyes, the cold demeanour.

           
The automata were arranged in chronological order, oldest memories to her left, newest to her right. She swept them up, and looked for the change. Looked for the fulcrum. She looked at Huriko again. Dead Huriko. The innocent woman chosen as the recipient, her good gene set the basis, looking for a placid, controllable, intelligent hybrid. Tears streamed down her face. She looked at Peter, the burns on his dead face. She looked back to the left. A friend, she dug for her name, what was it? Misha, that was it. Misha, who had sacrificed herself to get the Qin and their technology out. Sophie realised then that she had never mourned Misha, racing as she was to deliver the technology. Sadness rocked her more violently than the rumbling earth around her.