All Fall Down (52 page)

           
He looked back at the door, the rounded bulkhead which could withstand sudden de-pressurisation, explosion, and walked away tapping his wrist. Bulkhead or not, he didn't want to be around when the satellite exploded into the farming pod.

           
As he moved away he hoped that some day, someone would understand. Understand that he'd been a hero. Rather than wait for the mass panic of first contact to result in centuries of mistrust between humans and alien species, he was lancing the boil early. A quick war, a sue for peace, and then they could build a better future.

When the
Hand
's Ship Mind sensed the Colony's ship approaching, it fired two geo tags into the ground, either side of the impact zone, and dusted off. Verigua was locked into its language construction exchange. The
In The Palm Of Your Hand
spiralled into the wide blue yonder.

           
From the other direction, Kiran ha'Doek approached slowly, scanning carefully for Win's ID tag.

           
Kiran's jumpsuit was poorly buckled, and the helmet that pilots were supposed to wear in combat operations wasn't properly secured. Everyone had panicked when they'd been mobilised. Fall had never been attacked. Had never thought it would be attacked.

           
“This is the price we pay for strangers.” He scanned the area again.

           
There was movement around Win's body and the buckled ship. He magnified. It was another one of them. Those creatures flitting in formation near the Colony docking pad. But this one was larger, with a smaller companion. He wondered what to do.

           
An alert flashed. The ship told him a satellite had been destroyed. His sensor schematics fizzed, lost fidelity. Through his cockpit window he watched the satellite's remains burn into the atmosphere. Seconds later, a second scar flamed into life, fell over the horizon.

           
His ship arrived at the geotagged site and held position two hundred metres away.

           
Kiran looked at it. Even from here he could see an arm stuck out, and further round part of a boot. “I'm so sorry, Commander.”

           
The ship which had killed him looked ancient, built from spare parts, modules bolted together, each charred and dented. What looked like one of the black pods hovered over it. He brought his own ship to a complete standstill, hanging in the air two hundred metres away, scanning the creature. It had a slightly different signature to the twenty three others. Maybe it was their leader? It hung in the air as he did, unmoving.

           
There was an explosion behind him. “What?” He tried to look around, but had to depend on his monitors, which showed a farm pod blowing its protective shield, dark confetti winking upwards and out. They were under attack. The aliens had ignored them while the lump of rock he'd flown over so often, ferrying supplies to the test sites, had ejected itself like some monstrous worm out of an apple. And the aliens' creatures, the twenty three things milling around near the Colony, had been unresponsive, non-aggressive. Maybe the satellite and farm pod were revenge for the other defensive ship attacking, and the mecha on the ground.

           
An icon bloomed on his control panel. Another satellite had gone. He looked out of his cockpit but couldn't see where it was falling. He checked his vidfeeds, but they were failing as each of the satellites failed. The aliens obviously knew which satellites to take out.

           
Another alarm sounded, a proximity sensor. “Something's approaching. Ship, rear visual.”

           
The ship gave him a holo. Behind the ship massed the twenty three creatures. Kiran's eyes widened, lips pressed to a bloodless line. “Shit. Shit.”

           
Yet another alarm went off. The ship projected another holo, of the mangled ship in front. He magnified the view. The black mass, the big one, was extending something, a tentacle, a probe, to Commander Ho-Yung's dead arm. Kiran tried to wet his lips but his tongue was dry; it rasped over them. He de-activated the ship's safety protocols. Blue and yellow and red and black icons flowered around him, a deadly garden of shapes, each with an obvious, visual link to a weapon system. He bunched several, like a light vine. A hum filled the ship as long dormant systems warmed, energised.

           
He noticed the twenty three creeping forward, the furthest forward of them now over his ship. He looked around wildly. They could move in as one, crush him, suffocate the ship. Thirty metres away the bigger one's tentacle reached the desert floor, snaked over
 
Commander Ho-Yung, Win's arm, gripped it lightly, lifted, lowered.

           
“Fuck. Ah, Colony Colony, this is Def Five. I have a situation. Colony? Colony?” There was no contact. For the first time in his life, Kiran was truly on his own.

           
He was about to try the Colony again, when everything happened too quickly. The thing in front jerked, its tentacle whipped up suddenly, pulling Win's hand from his body.

           
A cl!ang jolted his ship on its port side. There was a flash from the creature in front, which burst near the shielding on Kiran's ship. He panicked and gave the ship a fire command. A storm of lasers, masers and micro-missiles flew at the thing ahead. While the energy beams danced off the thing, angled away, deflected, melted the desert floor into molten glass, the twenty three around Kiran came to life, each one focusing a white pulsing ray on to the attacked creature.

           
Further bangs ricocheted off the ship's hull, causing its weapons to lose target and coruscate the desert in ugly red curves. The missiles hit home, their explosion contained by the creature, splitting it into smaller parts, its colour ascending through violet to a sick orange as it struggled to contain the onslaught. Its parts grew thin tentacles, reaching out to each other, seeking to reform. Kiran looked around wildly, trying to understand what was happening. Barely two seconds had passed. The air around was alight with energy discharges, which now were also coming back from the creature. He caught sight of the ground beneath his ship. Three burned sections of satellite smoked in comic slow motion. And there was a flickering light cone which had its apex in the creature ahead. He realised too late that the creature in his sights must have been trying to protect him from the falling debris, that the explosion on the front of the ship was not it attacking him, but it vaporising a threat. “Oh no no no no.” He reached out to his controls, pawed at them, managed to power down his weapons systems while the thing in front burned silently. The twenty three followed suit. Smouldering char fell to the desert. He could only stare, trying to avoid comprehension, at what had just happened.

           
“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.