Titan's Fall (15 page)

25

Several squads had been tasked with clearing out the burned-out command center. The debris had been dragged out. Teams had scrubbed everything down. Techs were underneath stations hanging cables; someone with an arc welder occasionally lit the room up with sharp searing white light, their exaggerated shadows dancing along the walls. There were bustle and determined hurry everywhere I looked.

“Good to see us back up,” Jun Chen muttered, looking around. We'd been called up to command. I'd picked Chen and Vorhis from Bravo squad to run with me.

Anais dwelled at the center of it all, the eye of the CPF hurricane.

But he didn't look all that calm.

In fact, for the first time since I'd ever met him, Anais looked flustered, exhausted, and worried.

“I didn't know you were in command of the operation,” I said, joining him at the center of the calm. “I thought General Song would be here.”

“The general didn't make it to ground,” Anais said. “I ended up being the highest-ranked to land.”

I searched my mind for something appropriate to say and came up blank. Instead, I half shrugged in my armor and grunted something vague.

Anais looked at me in the full armor. “Rockhoppers never shuck, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I'm thinking that should go company-wide. Everyone in Shangri-La.”

“Bombs got under your skin?” I asked. “Not enough people turn out waving flags to welcome the CPF back?”

Anais brushed that aside. “It's not
people
I'm worried about.” He took a deep breath and then rubbed his forehead. Then he looked around as if worrying about anyone hearing him. Decided not to say anything. Then changed his mind again.

I'd never seen such an uncertain Anais before.

“Alien problem?” I prompted.

“The engineers and Zeus set charges in the heavy weaponry. We're vulnerable from above,” Anais finally told me.

“We have orbit. Four carriers and their anti-ship weapons.”

“What if we lose them?” Anais responded quickly. “I'm asking for replacements, my superiors are saying they won't be able to bring anything in.”

Trouble in paradise. I suddenly realized that Anais was in the dark with the rest of us. “You don't know why the Accordance all left us in orbit, do you? They're shrooming you like the rest of us?”

“Shrooming?”

Too long spent with his tongue up Arvani assholes. I shook my head. “Putting you in the dark, feeding you shit? Like a mushroom.”

“Oh.” Anais nodded. “I wouldn't say I don't know what's happening. Come.”

We walked across the control center to one of the old officers' cubicles. It had been quickly reinforced with heavy rebar welded into place to create a makeshift jail cell. Zeus sat inside, still in full armor. But his armored tentacles were all manacled to the walls.

“He has enough working environmental equipment to last a week or so if we give him some food here and there,” Anais said. “He's talking to us.”

“Talking?” I had to bite my lip. I wanted to shoot the Arvani in the faceplate, over and over again until it cracked and his water ran out and he choked in the air.

“They're not going to drop in any equipment to Titan,” Zeus said, stirring to stand awkwardly despite the chains holding him in place. “Because they've already written off everything down here. No sense in throwing good after bad.”

I whirled on Anais. “By putting this traitor piece of shit here in your command center, you're letting the enemy sit and whisper in your ear.”

“You accused me of not knowing where the rest of the fleet went,” Anais said. “Here's what I do know. Everything is on a fast burn for Saturn.”

“Saturn?”

“But that's not the target. It's a fast burn and then a skip. They're going to whip around and keep going. Not coming back,” Anais said.

“They're just going to leave us here?” I asked. “You truly believe that?”

That weight he'd been carrying. I could see what it was. “I think we were a diversion,” Anais said wearily.

“You were,” Zeus boomed. “There are too many Con­glomeration even on Titan for you to do more than hold Shangri-La for a while before being overrun. They are underground, in other Conglomerate bases. Once the humans here agreed to terms, most of the invasion forces left. I was enough, with my bodyguards.”

I glanced over scornfully. “What, you're telling us this out of a desire to help?”

“To assist myself, yes,” Zeus said, large octopus-like eyes wide behind the watery glass. “If what Anais says is true, nothing else matters other than my need to get off Titan.”

“So, it is self-preservation?” I raised an eyebrow, dubious.

Zeus shook his shackles. “Titan is lost. Saturn is lost. It is now time to poison the reef to keep it from your enemies. To leave the stain of death upon it forever so that it will be tasted in all the currents nearby, so that all understand what happens when your territory is taken from you.”

Anais and I both moved closer to the welded rebar as one. “What do you mean?” I asked. “What happens next?”

“You've already seen it, humans. You've seen what happens to the worlds that are taken from the Accordance. It is broadcasted to you all. The Conglomeration do what they can, but they die in the plagues and horror the Accordance unleash so that the Conglomeration
cannot
use those worlds against the Accordance.”

If I wasn't locked into full armor, I would have wanted to sit down. “The Accordance?”

“If we lose a world,” Zeus explained, “we unleash biological bombs. Weapons that won't pop and fizzle in a small little area. We unleash something that will destroy
everything
. If the Accordance fleet has left you, if it is burning for Saturn, then everything in the Saturn system dies.
Taking Titan, that was to get the Conglomeration to pay attention here.”

“We drop down. We kick things up, and then we go back up to the carriers and run away,” I said. “That's how you'll know if the squid's right. If we get ordered back upstairs.”

Anais was leaning against the bars, holding himself up on them. “Would they bomb everyone down here? After we leave?”

“The Conglomeration is here,” Zeus said simply.

I turned to Anais. “How do you like your masters now?”

“Now is not the time for treasonous talk,” he said wearily.

“
When
is it the time?” I asked.

“The traitor is messing with our heads. You were right at the start,” Anais said, straightening up. “I shouldn't have chained him up here. Or even talked to him. There are Conglomeration that will be counterattacking. We need to prepare for
that
.”

“You have just hours before the call. You know the fleet is swinging close to Saturn,” Zeus said on the common channel. “You need to start evacuating now. Get yourselves, and me, well clear of here.”

“Get back to your platoon, Lieutenant,” Anais ordered, face hardening as he ignored the Arvani. “And stay armored up.”

“Rockhoppers don't shuck,” I said.

Anais looked at Vorhis and Chen. “They good?”

“Rockhopper solid,” I said.

“Leave them guarding Zeus. They don't listen to anything he says. They don't let anyone talk to Zeus.”

“You're splitting up my platoon?” I wasn't happy with that.

“I need everyone else putting things back together or sweeping tunnels. I need two on Zeus that have seen the fight.”

“I'll do it. But you called me here because I know Zeus,” I said. “You wanted that expertise. We trained with Zeus. We fought Zeus. You wanted my opinion. Here it is: The squid is right. You want advice from your heroes of the Darkside War? Get prepared for the worst, not just dug in.”

26

I looked at Amira. “It's happening all over again,” I said. Some sort of sick, bizarre déjà vu. “We're going to have to abandon Titan. This was all bullshit.”

Ken stood up in his armor, a complete look of horror on his face. He looked as sick as I knew I must have. The three of us were in the platoon's chosen barracks, but the squads were out on tunnel duty. Amira and Ken were waiting for me.

Amira didn't look surprised. Or much of anything. She just nodded. “Okay. We're evacuating again?”

“Amira, are you even listening to me?” I snapped.

“Yes. We're abandoning Titan. It's all bullshit.” Amira looked from Ken to me. “What?”

“The carriers, the jumpships, we can't get everyone off Titan.” I explained it slowly, as if to a child.

Amira sighed. “You studied history, Devlin. Ken, you trained for this. You have to know this happens all the time. This is fucking war. Armies abandon positions. They retreat. They come back. They protect. They abandon. They win. They lose.”

“The Accordance is going to destroy everything so that the Conglomeration can't have it,” I told her.

“They're salting the fields,” Amira said.

“
We're
the fields.”

She looked at me. I was wrong; there wasn't a blankness there. There was an intensity in her silvered eyes. “We always were the resources they were fighting over. That they wanted utter control of. Now we know: The Accordance would rather destroy us than not control us. What does that tell you about your dreams of Earth rule?”

That if they won against the Conglomeration, they wouldn't gratefully hand us anything.

I stalked around the barracks. “We have to think of something. We have to start getting them off planet now. We need a plan to show Anais so that we're ready when—”

Armor blared an incoming all-call.

“All platoons to rally point three.” Anais sounded tired, his voice cracking slightly. “Situation Feather. Jumpships incoming.”

Situation Feather. Carry only weapons and ammo. Get to your predetermined point within the next ten minutes. Get there alert and weapons hot.

No, I moaned to myself. No. We were abandoning Shangri-La.

We had to pause. We had to think of something.

“Jun Chen, Alpha Company Third Platoon to anyone listening: Command is under attack. I have wounded. I need assistance now!”

Without a word, we grabbed our weapons and skidded out. I slammed into the wall across from the barracks, shattering rock and leaving gravel in my wake as I sprinted up the tunnel and back toward Command. Ken and Amira rocketed along with me, careening off turns as they raced with me.

“Chen, report!” I shouted.

Nothing from Chen. The chatter of gunfire from up the tunnel turned into loud smacks as bullets bounced off my armor. We ducked behind bulkheads.

“Human,” Ken said. “Lead.”

“Chen!” I shouted. “How many do you think?”

Amira responded. “Judging from gunfire, four, in the hallway between us and Command.”

“Cameras?”

“They knocked them out, I'm blind,” Amira said.

What surprises were in store?

“I'll take point. Amira, cover. Ken, right behind me. Tight.”

“Got it.”

I swung around cover and charged. Acting as a shield for Ken in case there was something more heinous than bullets waiting for us. Conglomerate energy weapons.

The first man with a submachine gun dropped, still backpedaling for cover. His blood splattered against the rock wall. The second screamed as her weapon exploded in her hands, a snap shot from Ken. “Stay behind!” I ordered.

Through and into the command center. “Take left,” I said. I swept the room, Ken splitting off from me to sweep left. The emergency lights flickered, illuminating bodies.

Movement. I snapped my rifle up, and two shots cracked. Two bodies slumped forward, grenades of some kind in their hands. “It's Chen; don't shoot!” She stepped out from the shadows without armor, a pair of pistols in hand as she kicked the grenades aside. “That clears the command center.”

“Clear,” Ken whispered on the command channel.

“Coming,” Amira said.

“Where's your armor?” I asked Chen.

“Fucked.” She pointed at it. A dissolved hunk of twisted material lying face down on the floor.

“Vorhis?” Ken asked. Amira stepped into Command, covering the way we'd entered.

Chen pointed at another burned-out chunk of armor. “Inside. Didn't get out in time. Screamed a lot. The grenade sticks and starts eating away at the armor. Conglomerate. I got out of the line of fire and shucked while they were cracking Zeus out.”

“Which direction?” Ken asked calmly.

“They're going topside,” Chen said. She staggered a bit. I saw blood dripping from her side.

“Shriek, get up here or send someone. Chen's wounded. Vorhis is down. There may be more in the command center.”

“I regret having known their names,” Shriek said.

“Not the time, Shriek,” I growled.

“I have cameras,” Amira said. “I have Zeus. Topside.”

“Chen?” I asked.

“Go,” she hissed.

“Shriek's on the way,” Ken shouted back at her as we followed Amira back out into the tunnels and then up onto the plains.

“Fourth has eyes on them,” Amira said. “They're up on one of the slagged sections of hill. Zeus and three humans are running hard.”

“Yeah, I'll bet,” Ken said. “But he's not going to be running too fast after you destroyed his joints.”

“No, they're helping him across the ground. What are they running to?” Amira asked. “That's what I'm trying to figure out.”

“If Zeus wants to commit suicide on the surface, I'm happy to help.” Ken leaped out front.

“Hold back, let's encircle,” I ordered. “They might have more of those grenades. And we're outside here. Get Fourth down off the hill, Amira.”

“That's a polite negative from them,” she said. “Anais's orders are still in effect for falling out to the rally point. Jump­ships are incoming. Now.”

I glanced up. The waspish shapes of jumpships were breaking through the thick clouds and circling overhead like mechanical buzzards.

We had air support. Orbital cannon. What the fuck was Zeus doing out here.

“Crickets!” Ken shouted.

A swarm of mechanical crickets burst out of the ground near the foothills ahead of us. Behind them, through the thick, rapidly spinning cloud, I saw the great maw of another worm-like cricket wriggling free of a freshly chewed hole. The cricket swarm had come in behind it and now surged around the worm.

“That is a large cloud,” I said.

“If Zeus gets into that tunnel, leading who knows where, and they plug it behind him, you know we'll never see Zeus again,” Ken shouted.

“We can't face off against that many out here,” Amira said, slowing down.

But Ken charged on, heading for the edge of the cloud that swirled around Zeus and the three people in surface suits.

“The swarm's not engaging us, just defending,” Amira noted.

Ken, ahead of us, pounded toward the roiling boundary of crickets.

“Devlin?” Amira asked.

“Clear us a path, Amira,” I said.

“I can't kill them all.”

“I know; just get us in there.” I sped up, struggling to get to Ken as he hit the wall just as a wave of crickets fell out of the air in front of him, struck by the beam of Amira's EPC-1 at the apex of one of her long jumps. The world around us darkened, light blocked by thousands of small bodies whirling above.

“I'm going to run into the tunnel after I grab him,” Ken said, speaking for the first time. The three human escorts spun to attack him, but they were no match for Ken. He bounced and jigged around them, leaving their still bodies on the ground.

I ran through a hailstorm, crickets smacking armor as Ken and I surged through into the eye of the mechanical hurricane. “Can you bring down orbital on us when I call it out?” I asked Amira. Crickets peeled off to follow us, a levitating arm of dark swirling material. But we pushed the armor to its edge as we smacked into Zeus.

“The tunnel, now!” Ken shouted. Ken yanked the Arvani off his tentacles, hugging him to his chest like a prize and not slowing down a bit.

I spun around as I jumped and threw grenades out behind us and then started firing as I flew backward down into the tunnel, not knowing what I was going to hit. The thick, chittering cloud boiled and swerved to follow me in. The large earth-eating cricket machine stirred to life, raising itself up and opening its mouth and then jamming rotating bits into the tunnel head.

“Amira: Fire! Fire! Fire!” I shouted, smacking into the dirt and bouncing. I struggled to keep facing the mouth of the tunnel. Our fire chipped away at the large machine's hungry mouths but did nothing to slow it down as it wriggled toward us.

The ground thumped and shivered. Rocks tumbled and fell down, knocking me aside with their impact.

But the machine kept coming. The orbital energy had probably cut it in half and killed all the crickets outside, but whatever was left came for us.

“Back, back!” I kept fire on it, sparking away.

“Grenades!” Ken warned. Three of them sailed right over my head into the gaping, serrated mouths. I shielded my faceplate as the explosion ripped chunks of crickets out into the air and clattering against us.

It still came at us.

“I'm out,” Ken said.

“We're going to have to run,” I said.

“And where does this tunnel lead?” Ken asked. “Into more Conglomeration? I'll stand. At least Zeus will die before I do, and that is a victory I'll take.”

We stepped back some more, weapons chattering and chipping parts off the machine as it struggled closer. Then it jerked, ripples of motion randomly dancing around the chewing mouths. It slowed, randomly spasming, until it came to a complete stop just ten feet from us.

Several explosions rippled through it, cricket debris falling down from the roof of its throat. Hot fireballs belched from the mouth. Amira kicked through its gullet and pointed her EPC-1 up above her. She fired twice and the machine stopped squirming.

She looked around. “Clear.”

We surrounded Zeus. Ken pulled the magazine out of his rifle, checked it, and then rammed it back home. “I have been waiting to do this for a very long time,” he said to Zeus on the common channel.

Amira took a step back.

“Ken,” I tentatively started, not sure what I was going to say next.

“We kill him here. Say it happened in the chaos,” Ken said.

“I've been blocking any transmission on the suits,” Amira said. “This is a dead zone. No one will know for sure what happened in here.”

“We execute someone, we're stepping over a line,” I warned.

“We were considering running away from the CPF up in the Trojans,” Amira said. “I think, after all we've seen, we're no longer walking within the lines.”

“He deserves to die,” Ken said. “For what he did. To all of them back on Icarus Base.”

If he wanted to do this, I wasn't going to be able to stop him. I wasn't going to raise my rifle on him. Not Ken, who'd had my back through hell. Hell with aliens thrown in. I bit my lip and waited with a sick feeling in my stomach.

“STOP!” Anais shouted on the common channel. He scrambled over the remains of the tunneling cricket machine in a blue surface suit. “Do not execute the Arvani officer! We take him prisoner back with us. Arvani will put him on trial.”

Ken stared down the barrel of his rifle at Zeus's large, liquid eyes.

“That's a direct order,” Anais said.

“I'm sorry,” Chen said, limping up behind him in a similar surface suit and holding a rifle. “Couldn't hold him back any more.”

Something like a howl came over the command channel. Ken pushed his rifle forward until it tapped Zeus's visor. Then he yanked it back and slung it over his shoulder. He grabbed one of Zeus's tentacles and dragged the Arvani along with him through the slagged mechanical entrails of the cricket machine.

“It's time to get on the next jumpship up,” Anais ordered. “Each of you, off Titan now. You're not staying behind to assist. I want you on the first wave. Got it?”

We trudged out of the tunnel and into a burned-out crater above where the crickets had once swirled. Jumpships were lined up inside Shangri-La. Armored CPF waited in lines to get aboard. Burn for orbit. Leave all this behind.

The common channel filled with chatter. People begging for spaces aboard the jumpships. I took a light hop up over our group and scanned the tunnel exits. Thousands of people in blue surface suits were spilling out onto the surface and trying to get to the ships. They were being held back by armored lines of CPF.

“We can't do this,” I said to Anais. “You know this is
wrong
.”

“Last night, half of those blue suits were trying to bomb us. Now they're begging to go with us? How many of them are Conglomerate spies? How many will turn on us?” Anais stayed close to Zeus, keeping an eye on Ken. “Listen, we've been able to create a list. We have room for a few thousand. We'll take the most qualified with no hint of Conglomerate sympathies.”

“Everyone needs them,” I told him. “The Conglomeration
and
the Accordance, they came to this system in just a handful of ships. They both need us. They're fighting over us. And we need them too. These people are our future. They know Accordance and Conglomeration technology. Leave them behind, we leave human survival behind, Anais. It's surrender. If we lose these minds, even if they hate us, we lose
everything
.”

“We don't have the space,” Amira said. “I hate to argue their side. But what's your play?”

We all stopped in front of the closest jumpship.