All Fall Down (50 page)

           
Win fell, knocked from his feet. There were more creaks and groans above, metallic structures grinding against each other. But his attention was drawn by the crazy ringleted tube of energy pulsing onto the inselberg, suffusing it with a light, engorging it with potential.

           
Two suns' gravity focused through two planetoids' alignment, onto a rock island, now crackling in golden-green light.

           
“Wow.” He got up on his hands and feet, moved to a kneeling position.

           
More cracking split the air, not bothering the huge ships in the air, but still rocking the
Hand,
and teasing out more creaks and groans above.

           
The video display in his helmet showed the visitors prostrate, their forms unhuman, three legs curving out, bulky arms gripping the pan, the desert floor.

           
The inselberg shuddered, another crack rent the air. Its upper surface, clad in desert oranges, yellows and browns, cracked apart like an egg shell, revealing a seething black mass beneath, matching the body that was starting to disgorge from the earth. The covering rock, its shell, fell in huge slabs to the ground.

           
Revealed, it lifted from the ground.

           
It rose and rose, a vast column of living night.

           
“Ah, log. The... planet's. The only feature on Fall has, is, rising from the ground. It's... I don't know. Enormous. Surface geometry already recorded. It's coming out of the ground. Depth? It's still coming. We must be at two hundred metres already.”

           
Its body kept scraping out of the hole, the nest it had occupied for so long. It filled the space between the ships, its lower portion still pouring upward.

           
“Length... length is at a kilometre already. Its filling the troposphere. Atmospheric effects are starting.”

           
Lightning crackled in the dust falling away, static discharge, arcing to the ships, bridging to the ground. Electric snaps ricocheted above Win's head, flashing into the hull's detailing, melting comets further, causing more rain to patter and evaporate. The creaking intensified.

           
Verigua interrupted Win's log. “Commander I have a connection to the Colony. They are trying to reach you.”

           
He glanced at his ship, back at the vista. The suns moved through totality, started to separate. A white sliver leaked over the occluded blue sun. The moons drifted.

           
“Win? It's Djembe.”

           
“You should be here. Hong-xian would love this.”

           
“Wi...” The connection went again as more lightning crackled through the atmosphere.

           
Some colour touched the sky.

           
The planet had not been destroyed by the conjunction. Fall was safe.

           
Light grew back into the space between the darkness.

           
The golden green ray faded.

           
Win looked at the space where the inselberg had once been, a cloud dissipating. The ground looked raw, the fresh walls of the birthing canal crumbling silently, sucking and blowing the cloud in and out so that it heaved as it settled.

           
Tiny explosions burst onto one side of the mass, fired by the Colony mecha and defensive ships. One swooped by and released a missile at the ship above Win, where it exploded harmlessly against invisible shielding some metres out.

           
“No!” Win shouted, “Stand down, stand down. Colony, stand down the ships. They're a cultural delegation.” But the connection was lost.

           
Immediately, a ray came from one of the jade cities. The mecha stopped, the defensive ships were lowered to the desert floor.

           
The newly born mass fell like a diving bird into the upper atmosphere, kilometres long, heading to the stars, to its companions in orbit. It changed shape, pulling into an ovoid while it travelled through the atmosphere. Win watched it for as long as he could, until it was no larger than a fly.

           
Back on the ground amongst the settling dust, the delegation shifted in the desiccated caul. They went back to their shuttles, which lifted into the air and returned in formation to their great aerial cities. Win held a hand to his helmet, shading the sunlight, watching them go. One ship halted in the air, banked towards him. The unseen eyes on board watched him, he felt observed; the ship angled again to the upper hull, entered, disappeared.

           
He was alone again on the surface. Air currents finally carried dust clouds to his position. The eclipse was passing. The temporary dip in temperature climbed away, the ground air rising once again. He looked over to his ship, alive to the possibilities of a universe in which humanity was no longer alone. A tremendous scraping groan chilled the air. A snapping sound. Win craned his neck, so he had a vertical sight-line. A short deluge fell around him, small chunks of ice thudding into the desert floor. And something else.

           
He had just enough time to make out the human lettering “SS Mar” before the blackened metallic lump slammed into him, fallen from the structures crossing the ship's bottom hull. His suit and sensors shut off, crushed with him. He never registered the pain. Never managed a final word. Never had a thought he'd want to consider his last.

           
Never again would he have the opportunity to walk in a blossom flurry, Hong-xian running ahead, arms pin-wheeling,
 
Xiao-xing's hand in his, at one with his family .

           
Nevermore.

           
The cauterised metal shuddered. Small parts fell behind it, bounced off its spastic hull. It settled and steamed in the brightening day.

           
And on the far horizon, the planet's great storm was approaching.

Voices crossed over each other between the emergency command bunker and the holo suite several floors above.

           
“Who the hell gave you permission to fire?”

           
“Look, they're rising. Following it.”

           
“Surface defences are acting autonomously.”

           
“General, I've lost contact with the ship. The alien craft are distorting comms again.”

           
“'ere, go back on the holo, what was that?”

           
“Sorry, I'm too busy. I'm trying to calculate trajectories for satellite surveillance.”

           
“Hand over control of your command station.”

           
“No, I think they left somethin' behind. Thought I saw something fall off.”

           
“Alien tech?”

           
“General, I apologise for my silence. I am back online now.”

           
“Verigua, thank goodness. Did you see any tech fall from the alien ships? Where's Win, is he on board yet?” Kate's hands were a blur in the holo commands. While she worked to defend the Colony, she was trying to work out what Daoud was doing right in front of her. It looked like he was undertaking strategic tasks. She tried to trace the mecha's assault on the mass to his command table, but found none. She wanted Win back inside to take some pressure off her so she could deal with Daoud. Whatever he had been up to, the Colony was now the most important thing.

           
“Kate,” Djembe interrupted her conversation with Verigua, “we may lose this comms link. The ships are approaching the mesosphere. The moons are holding position.”

           
“My dear General. Commander Djembe. I would like to request your attention.”

           
“Verigua, keep your chatter mission-focused for the moment, please.” Kate pulled energy relay commands, re-routed power through sections damaged by the earthquakes, “None of the landing ships seem to have left anything.”

           
“Suns are one-degree over eclipse.”

           
“General Kate,” Verigua was insistent, “I must tell you something of the utmost importance.”

           
“Mech de-activated by the visitors and on standby. Emplacements charged. Ground crew reporting something moving around.”
          

           
Kate, each hand in a different holo, pulled video stream around, juggled command holicons, gritted her teeth. She heard Djembe, his voice muted, and just half a word, “...melodra...”.

           
Daoud turned from his ministrations, “What is it Verigua?”

           
“I'm afraid I must report the death in duty of Commander Win Ho-Yung.”

           
Kate's fingers clasped at air, clawed without guidance away from the holicons, setting up nonsense command chains. Over the open channel Jonah was the first to speak, “Shit. Sorry.”

           
“What?” Kate stared at nothing.

           
“An object fell from one of the alien craft. The biofeed from his suit tells me death was instantaneous.”

           
Now her hands thumped to the table top, useless, “I don't... Erwhen. When?” Rapid blinking, stutters of her head. A lock of hair fell from behind her ear.

           
“Win was observing the event outside the
Hand
. Just after the alien landing craft returned to their ship, an object fell from the ship above us.”

           
“Deliberate? Did they do it on purpose?” Kate was numb.

           
“It was shortly after the Colony's defences attacked the creature and the ships. The underside of the ship was very complicated. Pipes and so forth. There was a lot of debris caught in the detailing.”

           
“Excuse me, General,” it was Jonah again, “but it's probably what I saw on the vidfeed.”

           
Djembe broke his silence, “What is it? A weapon? Did they return the attack?” Kate could hear him becoming hysterical, his usual steely control breaking down at the death of his friend. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Daoud still moving holicons around.

           
“It's not a weapon, Commander Cygnate.” Verigua's tone expressed curiosity, “The attack was disabled by them, but peacefully. What hit the commander was a ship. A very old, scarred ship of human origin. And I have to say, I have no idea how it could have come here, on Fall. Now.”

           
Kate looked at Daoud.

           
Daoud's face was frozen in absolute concentration.

           
“What are you talking about? Get to the point.” Kate was struggling to contain her voice. Her anger at Daoud was locked into the shock of Win's death. Everything was going wrong. No matter how much she tried to make things right, they kept going wrong.

           
“It's the SS Maris One.”

           
“Impossible.” She glared at the surface holo. Grabbed it, zoomed into the
Hand
's position, saw the twisted wreckage. Quieter, “Impossible.”