Titan's Fall Read online

“We got through it before,” Amira said. “After Saturn.”

  “I got used to just the two squads. I felt like maybe we should just keep going, letting the Conglomeration kill us, until there was no one left,” I said.

  “No one is replacing anyone else,” Amira said, figuring out exactly what was bothering me.

  “I know.”

  I had come to understand why Shriek refused to learn names.

  “Hey!” I looked around. “Where is Shriek?”

  “He wasn’t human, they didn’t jail him. He’ll be waiting for us, I’ll bet,” Amira said.

  + + +

  We were posted to a large airlock, not all that different from the one we were jailed in for what felt like a night. The asteroids here kept to a twenty-hour light cycle, Arvani preferences. Several other asteroids had no gravity and had been filled with water for Arvani officers. Some of the miners had been tasked with stocking pools with shrimp and fish.

  Fresh fish sounded better than goop. We weren’t going to be getting any, though. Let alone any shrimp cocktail.

  On the other side of the airlock was another Pcholem. Our job was to prevent anyone from getting aboard. Or even approaching the airlock doors. But no one had. So, we basically stood in front of the doors. Four hours on, four hours off. Two squads at a time, Bravo and Delta today.

  “Where is Amira?” Ken asked.

  “Not here,” I said.

  He shot me an angry frown. “This again? We’re going to get into even deeper shit if you don’t figure out how to lead.”

  “It’s bullshit, Ken.” I folded my arms, my rifle slung over my back, and stared at the roof. We were helmets down, and Ken had lowered his voice so we could talk to each other without being overheard. “We’re in bullshit because of other things.”

  “Yeah, I know that,” Ken said. I unfolded my arms and stared at him. But he was looking off down the tunnel thoughtfully. “I know she’ll bug out. I know what happens next to us, it is unfair. But you still have the platoon to lead, and you need to figure out how you talk to Amira in front of them or they will all take it as permission to do whatever they wish. And then where will you be?”

  Shriek sidled up to us. “There’s no one in the tunnel,” the alien noted.

  “Yeah, hasn’t been for hours.”

  He wrapped his one good wing hand and one mechanical wing hand around each of us. He hadn’t even bothered to armor up. “Then let’s go in and visit.”

  I looked at the airlock. The inner doors were ten feet high. “No. We’re here to guard it.”

  “How many times do you get to say ‘Greetings!’ to a Pcholem in a lifetime?” Shriek asked, leaning in close. “When your world is destroyed and you flee for your lives soon, you’ll want to know the beings taking you to safety.”

  “We are already on thin ice,” I said.

  “I do not recognize the metaphor,” Shriek said. He let go of us and started banging on the doors, his artificial wing hand banging loudly. “Hello, Pcholem! We outside wish permission to come and speak. Let us talk! It is so boring; aren’t you bored?”

  “Shut up!” Ken hissed. The two squads on duty were turning around and staring at us with various levels of concern.

  “This is . . .” I stopped as the doors lurched aside. Air whistled for a second, popping my ears as the air pressure equalized.

  I stared down the ramp toward the dark-black, coral-like structures inside. Very different from the smooth gothic arches I was expecting to find. But this was another Pcholem, not the one I’d been on down on Titan.

  “Enter,” said a voice.

  Shriek looked back at us and half bowed with his wing hands out and then turned and started down the ramp.

  “Stay on guard,” Ken ordered the two squads still staring at us.

  “Facing that way.” I pointed at the tunnel into the asteroid to emphasize his order. “Shriek, get the hell back here.” I started down the ramp, and Ken followed.

  “This is a bad idea,” he said.

  “I know.”

  The airlock doors slowly shut behind us.

  13

  Green bioluminescence increased until our shadows loomed against the curved walls of the interior of the living alien starship. Our footsteps were muffled, the sound soaked up.

  “Please,” the Pcholem’s voice said, “keep walking to find your companion. I will direct you.”

  The tunnel’s strata shifted, down into a rocky substance. Here and there, we passed through grafted-on metal tubes. We turned as the Pcholem politely requested it. Occasionally, we walked into cathedral-like spaces that hummed with alien machinery. Carapoids looked dully at us and then went back to scurrying around.

  We broke out into outer space. Startled, I sent the impulse to snap my helmet up, terrified that the ship, a creature that lived in vacuum, had led us outside by accident.

  “You do not need protection,” the Pcholem said gently over the common channel. “My fields extend far beyond the visible length of my hull. You are safe.”

  I saw that Shriek, in no armor, stood out in what looked like empty space a hundred feet away. The stars in the darkness that seemed to yawn before us.

  “What should I call you?” I asked, snapping my helmet back down with a snicking sound.

  “Unexpected Dust,” the Pcholem said.

  “May I call you Dust?” I asked.

  “No. I said my designation is Unexpected Dust. If I wanted to be designated Dust, I would have told you this when you asked.”

  I looked at Shriek, who spread his wing hands. “Unexpected Dust is a grandfather to Starswept.”

  Starswept. The ship that left us on Titan. Because the Pcholem were pacifists, happy to move us around like pawns but not stick around.

  I understood humans not wanting to get drawn in. But Pcholem were Accordance. An integral part. I wasn’t sure what to think of them. Were they giant cowardly starships? Or just smart?

  “Starswept has heard you are visiting me, and gives greetings from the orbit of your birth world,” Unexpected Dust said to me.

  “You can talk to Starswept?” Amira asked.

  “Some time ago, the Conglomeration once bargained with us. They were deep in the gravity wells but had the hard metals and curious things we wanted,” Unexpected Dust said. “They helped give us entangled, instant communication. Instead of having to swarm together to keep our minds in synch, we could scatter where we pleased.”

  That was surprising. We’d never heard this before. None of this was approved Accordance history. I was very interested to find out more. “You worked for the Conglomeration?” I asked.

  “We do not ‘work’ for any species,” the living starship told us. “We trade. We move individuals around. We seek mutually beneficial arrangements with anyone broadcasting on radio frequencies displaying coherence. We like to negotiate rights to gas giants in particular, so we were saddened by the loss of the ringed worlds here; they were pretty to swim in.”

  “But now you’re Accordance, right?” I asked.

  “We have begun a mutual alliance after the Recent Unpleasantness,” said Unexpected Dust.

  Shriek nudged me. “They live a long time; they’re talking incidents that are almost a hundred years ago.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “The Conglomeration happened,” the ship said. “They attacked some of us, tried to breed us to create a fleet of ships they could control. But they are a fast species, short-lived. They had no patience. They created the Constructs from our living tissues and histories and technologies. We remember the Pcholem they used, our cousin. And now, whenever the Constructs appear, we can taste, smell, hear those things that used to be Pcholem but are not really Pcholem. Perversions. Tortured, mindless, broken and reshaped. For that, we will hate the Conglomeration until the suns fade away and die.”
/>
  “Those jellyfish-looking starships,” Ken said. “Those are the Constructs. They’re remade Pcholem.”

  “Yes. The Conglomeration pollutes all it touches,” the star­ship confirmed. “There are few Pcholem in this galaxy. We are long to mature, hard to create. Each one of us is a precious mind, a unique and ancient structure that we have carefully fashioned ourselves into. To steal something so carefully self-made, to destroy an individual, is abhorrent. For that, we will help the Accordance attack them. We will help you also, in your quest. And we are delighted to meet the humans who fought against the Conglomeration when Starswept was deep in the gravity well and vulnerable. Your gift, your losses, we do not take these lightly. You are known to the Pcholem. Know this.”

  A carapoid walked up to us with a small package carefully wrapped in a green bow.

  “It is my understanding that humans exchange small tokens of appreciation,” Unexpected Dust said. “Here is a selection of chocolates. Please enjoy them during your guard duty. Please do visit again.”

  The carapoid left us, and then the fields we stood on began to darken.

  “I think it’s time for us to leave now, Shriek,” I said.

  The struthiform cocked his head at me and shook himself. “Its attention is elsewhere now,” he agreed.

  As we moved back through the ship toward the airlock, I wondered out loud, “Unexpected Dust?”

  “Think about it,” Amira said.

  “What?”

  “You’re going faster than light. What’s the worst thing that can happen?”

  I thought about it for a second. “Oh.”

  “Is that a depressing name or a bad-ass name?” Ken wondered out loud.

  But neither the ship nor Shriek knew.

  The airlock doors rumbled back open.

  14

  Bravo squad had shucked down and were taking turns behind a cheap plastic booth to scrub down with wet wipes. The corridors had gotten thick with people being shifted around, temporarily sleeping in rows near the food halls while they waited for their next orders. The air had gone from smelling like saltpeter and rock to human sweat as unwashed bodies crammed up against each other in the asteroid.

  Every level was packed. And when the platoon dallied, they swapped rumors. There was going to be a push to take Titan back. They were being gathered for a retreat back to Earth, skipping right past Jupiter, the belt, and Mars.

  Whatever the plans were, they were keeping us in the dark, keeping leaks down.

  Ken wanted to go back, I could tell. Wanted another chance at Titan.

  But maybe, I thought, beefing up Earth to protect what was most important made sense. Maybe we’d be back within a glance of the blue marble again.

  I missed it.

  “Hey, Lieutenant.” Min Zhao had been up near the rock tunnel for a few seconds.

  “What’s up, Max?”

  She threw something in an easy curve through the air at me. I caught it and looked down. A small drive. “What is this?”

  Zhao shrugged. “Smuggle mail. Been handed person to person all the way here. Came in with the new batch shipped up from home.”

  “Anyone have a screen?”

  Vorhis lifted his mattress up. “I’m not supposed to have this,” he muttered.

  “I know,” I said, and plugged the drive in.

  I’d asked what this was. But I already had a good idea. My mother’s face appeared on the screen. “Hey, son,” she said. “Hopefully, this gets to you safely.”

  I sat down on the ground and put a finger up to the screen.

  “By now, you might know we took a chance during the Rochester camp riots to get away from our minders. We don’t blame you for what you did. What any son would have done.”

  But my father was not in the video.

  “The Accordance is saying they need fighters. They need our help. So, we’re demanding independence. Earth for humans. If they really need our help, now is the time for them to give us our freedom back. I know some might disagree, they might say they’re the lesser evil. But can we really lay down our lives just to end up back under the Accordance if we help them win their war?”

  Even though it had just been months since we’d been split apart, she looked older. There was a scar on her chin, and she’d cut her hair short. Almost military short. She wore a simple vest with extra pockets.

  Were they still protesting? Or had they gone deeper underground? She was filming her message in a tent, I could see.

  She looked thinner.

  “Just remember this, Devlin. You’ve made a name for yourself. You did something amazing out there, on the other side of the moon. People listen to your words. They look up to you. Keep that in mind as you make your decisions. Because we’re all going to be making some tough choices soon. For Earth. For everyone. Be safe, son.”

  I looked up from the blank screen and saw Ken regarding me. Alpha squad was back and shucking. Delta getting ready to walk on out to guard duty.

  “They don’t know,” Ken said. “Yours or mine. They don’t know.”

  “Yours love you and admire you being here,” I said. “Not the same.”

  Ken walked over, still in full armor, as everyone pretended not to listen. “Yeah, they’re all in now,” he said with a bitter twist of his lip. “My sister died when an Earth First protestor set off a bomb in front of the Cairo Arvani embassy; my father still has a limp. Back then, he was a delegate, trying to broker calm, get what he could for many. After that, it was different. Anyway, they’re not that thrilled I’m under the command of the son of known anti-Accordance terrorists.”

  “You still hold anger about it? Me?”

  Ken grimaced. “I buried it for a while. Still hung on to it, maybe even as late as Titan. Now?”

  “Now?”

  “Don’t have any anger to waste,” Ken said. “I spent it all on other things. Anything I have left, I’m saving up for Zeus.”

  “Captain Calamari,” I said. Our nickname for the Arvani commander when he’d been in charge of us back on Icarus Base.

  “Yes,” Ken said reflectively.

  “I doubt we’ll ever see sucker-face again,” I said.

  “Everyone should have something they hope for,” Ken said. “Little things that give us a reason to wake up.”

  + + +

  Another shift. Another change. Another day guarding doors. This time not Pcholem but munitions stores. And the corridors were empty. People being moved to carriers.

  But not us.

  Whatever was going to happen, forward or retreat, was going to happen without the Rockhoppers.

  Amira pulled me aside, her eyes flashing slightly from the nano-ink buried deep inside her irises. “Bad news,” she said quietly.

  “I don’t want to hear it,” I told her. “Let’s just stand here and wait for whatever’s coming.”

  “There’s ghost sign in the network,” she whispered. “Just like back on Titan. I can sense little things. We’re compromised. Hacked. Something. It came aboard with all the new arrivals.”

  “What the fuck do you want to do about it?” I asked her, tired. “We’re not on patrol. We’re just supposed to stand here. Report what you’ve found and let it go up channel.”

  “They’re here,” Amira hissed. “They’re here and that’s what matters. Not how the Accordance deals with it. But how we survive it. You and I both know how the ghosts can get inside a place like this.”

  Because they looked just like us, I thought.

  Or maybe the ghosts were us. The one we’d captured looked like a human. Moved like a human. I’d risked my life to bring the body back, and the Accordance told us we’d be killed if we spilled the secret.

  Or maybe the Conglomeration was already changing humans and using them against us.

  The dead ghost on the moon ha
dn’t told us anything. The Accordance hadn’t told us anything.

  We were fighting blind in the middle of a war between two giant civilizations.

  “Nobody stays more than a few steps away from armor,” I said. “You keep sniffing around. That’s all we can do.”

  “We should be ripping this place apart.” Amira folded her arms. “Why do you think we’re standing around guarding munitions here?”

  “Because even here, Arvani are outnumbered by humans. And the thousands of miners who have Earth First leanings are watching, waiting, and angry,” I said. “But we stumble, and Zeus’s family rips us apart. The Accordance does execute traitors. If our usefulness ends . . .”

  “Finding ghosts is useful,” Amira said.

  “We sleep near our armor and I make sure we all look the other way when you slip out to go sniffing around,” I told her.

  Old habits. Old roles. She should be used to them by now.

  “Listen, more and more people are being pulled into the asteroids. It’s getting crowded. General infantry without armor. Engineers. Technicians. Miners.”

  “So we stay near armor, we stay near the weapons.”

  “We need more, Devlin. More information. More Accordance technology. More. Because when they eventually fall all the way back to Earth and then abandon it, we can’t roll over.”

  “Do you think Shriek’s people are still fighting back on his homeworld?” I asked. “Because I sure as hell don’t.”

  “We can’t just roll over,” Amira repeated, and then shut up as Zizi Dimka came around the edge in armor.

  “Something you should know,” she said to me.

  “What’s up?”

  “We’re to all report back to the cave to the new platoon commander,” she said.

  “New?”

  “Squiddie,” Zizi said. “Just showed up. I walked over because it’s on the command channel and I can listen in on public. Figured you’d want a heads-up on this.”

  “CPF is human,” I said.

  “It said something about a riot and emergency powers,” Zizi said. “It’s agitated. All of us are to get down to the cave.”