All Fall Down (54 page)

           
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?”

           
“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 personnel 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.”