All Fall Down (45 page)

           
Daoud just looked at it.

           
Engine noise rumbled through the ship, frothed with a distant whine. Kate continued, having to shout above the wrenching noise outside, “The two suns are about to eclipse, at the same time as a conjunction of Fall with the system's gas giant and wormhole. Five bodies in conjunction. Our projections show Fall being ripped apart. Undoubtedly the system's smaller bodies are being affected, too.”

           
Daoud looked around, snapped out of his intense stare at the hologram, “Why are the ship engines on?”

           
“Because we're getting out of here. We only have a few minutes.”

           
He glanced over to Kate, mute. She looked into his eyes, sharp as knives.

           
The ship's comms system chimed and the pilot spoke to them, “Strap yourselves in. We're about to leave the Colony.”

           
“You can't take me away from here,” Daoud went to rise. “There's more going on than you realise.”

           
Kate unbuckled herself and flew at him, pinning him in his chair. “You're coming with us,” Kate sat, finally ready for the confrontation she'd been avoiding, rising to her position as General, “I'm placing you under military arrest. You're going to have a long time to explain what's been going on here when we're back in MI custody.”

           
“General Leland, you've seen the twenty three. You know what they mean.”

           
“In about twenty minutes they'll no longer exist, Daoud. The planet's about to be destroyed. Everything you showed me will be no more than ashes and dust.” The ship rocked, dropped sickeningly. “So much for choice and not getting in the way, Administrator.” Turbulence rocked the ship again. Kate steadied herself and tapped a comms device, “Pilot, what's going on?”

           
“General, we're airborne but stuck in some sort of tractor field. I'm trying to gain altitude to escape it.” Massive vibrations shook the ship. A grinding moaned the air around them.

           
“Your pilot is going to tear the ship apart, Kate. Whatever's in orbit is preventing us from leaving. I suggest you put down.”

           
“Can you tell the orbiting ships to let us pass?”

           
“They were not answering hails.” Daoud looked into the holo, “They are not human.”

           
She stared at him now. When another violent bout seized the ship, she jabbed her comms device, “Pilot. Put the ship down.”

           
“The Colony's hangar doors are stuck halfway, General. We can't get back in.”

           
“Then put down on the surface, clear of the Colony entrances and sub-surface pods. Get some solid rock beneath us.”

Two city-sized green ships hung above the planet. Sophie watched them on the satellite feed, while her hand automatically tapped out a security code.

           
“Medical labs. Emergency evacuation drill. All personnel to deep bunkers.”

           
In the satellite feed, a glow like electric water showed the atmosphere's outer limits. The ships, like sea shells, held position above, limpets on the solid certainty of Fall's gravity. To her left another holo display showed the system's two inner planetoids now in far orbit around the planet. Four objects: two ships; two minor planets, visiting moons.

           
“This is Masjid. What the hell are you doing? The drill isn't due to start for another forty minutes. Why have you turned the power off?”

           
She kept his visual feed off, “Like I said, Doctor, emergencies don't wait. Immediate evacuation. The service lifts aren't working from your floor. Please use the stairs.”

           
“It's three hundred metr...” Sophie turned off the audio. She stopped to check that the schools had begun their evacuation to deep bunkers, too, and left the office. She took a restricted transport tube to the lower levels, manually operating its winch system. They had prepared well for this eventuality. In the Central Operations Room all was silence and stolen light.

           
“'bout time you showed up. What the hell's going on?” Jonah poked his head from under a console, his face a ghostly blue in the torch balanced on his chest

           
“I was hoping you could shed some light on that.”

           
Tools rolled away as he got to his knees, “Main electrical system's down. Emergency biotubes are keeping us lit. Major servo-systems, anything with a motor or charge induced movement, are off line. Automata will be down, too. Makes maintenance or emergency response tricky. If the robots aren't working we'll have to send in humans. Some of the shafts are pretty tight. It's slow work.”

           
“Hence the lights and lifts not working.”

           
“Yeah, mining too. Hangar bay doors to the surface are stuck open. There's a bigger problem, though.”

           
“Bigger than the power being off?”

           
“Verigua's gone.” Jonah dusted his clothes, “His cortex is offline. Can't figure out if it's due to the outage or something else. Got my crews out on all levels keeping people calm, in their quarters. Emergency procedures're working well. Just trying to get some emergency power going. Should've kicked in by now.”

           
“Well done. Did you manage to check sensor logs before the AI went down?” Jonah shook his head as he rose to his feet. The torch clipped to his shirt rocked from side to side, showing different sides of his face, “Then let me tell you that there are hostiles in orbit. Two ships, equivalent to
Settlement
-class, and two unknowns which are… bigger.”

           
“Bigger? Ain't anything in the fleet bigger than
Settlement
-class.”

           
“They're not from the fleet. Any fleet. They're Fallen bodies. The system's inner planetoids. They've entered orbit around the planet.”

           
Jonah grabbed the torch from his chest, pointed it at Sophie's face, “I was just about to fire up the emergency computer core. It's shielded, should be protected from whatever's knocked out everything else. You won't mind if I check what you said.”

           
Sophie dipped her head. While Jonah dropped to the console, she sank into her cyberware. There was a faint trace from Verigua, the bond they'd established still active. Whatever had happened, its core was still online. She checked progress on the control code: it was still active in her implants, but its nanocode was erupting like a chain of fire crackers. It wouldn't be long now until she could be sure she was making her own decisions.

           
Jonah dropped under the console. A panel lit, silent, flat. Jonah was tapping at the screen even as he got back to his feet.

           
“Have you found the sensor logs?”

           
“Yup. And an unauthorized ship movement. Your MI friends have scarpered, by the looks of it.”

           
“Then our problems are much reduced.” She walked to his side, “We need to deploy ground defences.”

           
“Not gonna be easy, Sophie. They'll need manual deployment. 's gonna take time.”

           
“Do it as fast as you can. This is Colony Defence Level One initiation. All hands to mecha and emplacements.”

           
“What about evacuation? The lifts're out.”

           
“Already started.” It wasn't part of the plan, at least not this early. Daoud needed a reason for a war to start. He needed exposure, risk. “Get a message to the mining colonies: 'Lock Down'. Return to this Colony structure. Full shielding. Emergency comms network. And see if you can restore a link to the satellite network.”

           
“What about the MI ship?”

           
“If we're lucky, they've escaped and will bring back reinforcements.” She wasn't sure if she meant it. Feuding thoughts occupied her. Follow the plan. Resist the plan. The more she monitored the control code inside her, the more she could feel its effects. She watched Jonah following her instructions. She must have said something right, he hadn't questioned her.

           
Satisfied that she'd found a path that helped the colonists as much as it followed Daoud's plan, so she could buy some time for herself, she left the Central Operations Room. She needed to be shielded from the Colony so she could make a final adjustment to her cyberware and know once and for all which path to choose.

After Sophie had left, Jonah surveyed the suite, which was normally lit by holos, projections, AI neural charts, the rhizomes of consequence trees, flickers of his likeness in analysis cubes. The Jonahverse was quiet, its existence dependent on Verigua's cortex, the Colony's brain. While he sent messages to the main Colony and the outlying mining settlements, he called up pictures of his family, placed them on surrounding panels. “Should've taken that offer, after all.”

           
Noise crackled from the emergency comms panel.

           
“Who's that?”

           
“...ngar bay. We think we … o ships … have ... on to proceed?”

           
“Say again? You're breaking up.”

           
“.... said, it's the hangar bay. We … nch two ships, do … ission to proceed?”

           
Under his breath, “Seems easier to be brilliant when there's fuck all to do.” He cleared his throat, tried to sound commanding, or at least like he believed what was coming out of his mouth, “Hangar bay. Permission granted. Launch.”

           
The pictures of his family drifted slowly across the panels. “Always liked that bit in military training.” His fingers traced their journey.

Clattering. An cacophony of regimented movement. Four floors above her, Sophie saw the legs of the MedLab scientists marching towards her, hands clinging to guide rails while the Colony shivered in Fall's tectonic tantrum. Somewhere below was the exit door to the deep bunkers.
 
She was at the floor she needed. She walked through and closed the door to the stairwell and straightened her tunic.

           
“Now to sort out my head.”

“We need to get off the surface.” Daoud was still strapped into his chair, collected and relaxed.

           
“Where do you suggest we go?” Kate was angry, still shouting even though the ship was quiet now away from the hangar bay, “There's a force field stopping us leaving, and your hangar bay doors are stuck halfway. There isn't enough room for us to enter.”

           
“Then perhaps you shouldn't have abandoned us, General. What will that look like on your record?”

           
His calmness was irritating her more, “Like a tactical decision, Administrator. I have enough evidence to show what's been going on here, and my personal testimony to what you have down there. And the planet, in case you've forgotten, is about to be destroyed.”

           
“No,” he drew out the word, “we need to get underground. It's the safest place. There's an emergency command centre buried deep beneath the Colony for situations just like this. I suggest we suit-up and finish the journey on foot.”