Titan's Fall (17 page)

29

The Pcholem descended from the clouds with the grace of a large sea creature slipping through murky waters and then lowered itself toward the valley. Its extended invisible fields broke the tips of the hills as it slid overhead and then settled down carefully between us all.

Fleeing CPF soldiers trying to get out from underneath bounced away like tiny fleas, only to find themselves frozen in midair and gently pulled toward the center of the alien starship.

“DEVLIN HART, SO PLEASED TO MEET YOU. COME TO ME!”

Amira raised her hands. “I don't think it's a good idea to ignore the orders of a giant interstellar starship, do you?”

I looked around. “Boost me on the common, if you can.”

“On it,” she said.

“Everyone, get to the Pcholem starship. Now!” I ordered.

The words had their effect. The tide of blue surface suits broke for Happily Slingshot. And mixed in with them, the dark spots of CPF armor springing their way aboard as well.

“Come on, you can't get back aboard the jumpships now,” I shouted. The waspish shapes were turning and heading back for orbit. “Get aboard now, you live. Arrest me later.”

The soldiers slung their weapons and ran with us.

How fast could ninety thousand people board a starship hovering just centimeters above Titan's icy, gravelly surface?

Five minutes for everyone to get within the Happily Slingshot's reach. Five minutes before it decided to leave.

Happily Slingshot rose into the air. People shouted in surprise as they were picked up by nothing, held in the living starship's embrace as it took to the air. The arrow-like shape of the ship's core flattened. Spars reached out from over and underneath like fast-growing ribs.

The shields flared as we spiraled up into the clouds, shoving them aside.

“THERE IS LITTLE TIME,” Happily Slingshot said over all the common channels, drowning everyone out. “WHEN I HEARD THE CALL, WE ALL REALIZED I WAS CLOSEST. I RACED. I FEARED I WOULD BE TOO LATE. NOW I REJOICE THAT WE ARE ALL MET.”

A struthiform shape in armor struggled through the crowds of people standing on what looked like air, and looking down two miles to the tops of Titan's thick clouds, to embrace me. It was Shriek. “Your fame grows wide and far, human.” He pulled back his helmet and fluttered his wings. “You did it. You saved all these people.”

In the distance, broaching another cloud, another massive jellyfish shape swam for the purple line of orbit.

“ABOMINATION,” Happily Slingshot shouted. “I SEE YOU.” But the Pcholem did nothing more than shout at it, veering off away from it to keep climbing.

“WE APPROACH ORBIT,” Happily Slingshot announced. “WHERE SHALL I BE TAKING YOU, DEVLIN HART?”

That . . . was a good question. I looked at Ken and then Amira. “Thoughts?”

“Earth,” they both said. “Get them back to Earth.”

Earth. Where they could pass on what they'd learned. Spread more Accordance technology out to our own scientists. These were going to be the seeds of something new.

I wasn't just a kid buying time for my parents now. I was going to make a decision about how to sow the seeds of the Earth that would come after this war. And I had to assume, I had to plan, as if we were going to make it.

Besides, we didn't have supplies or resources to survive long. Even on the Pcholem.

“Earth,” I said to Happily Slingshot. “We're going to Earth.”

I slid my helmet back and took a breath of fresh air. “The Accordance has me now, though. When we arrive, they'll have me arrested.”

Shriek put a wing hand around my shoulder. “But it does not, my human friend. You are far from their grasp now. Even going back.”

“What do you mean?” Ken asked.

“You know the Pcholem need people that work for them, to help build and equip them with technology. Upgrades. Their trade networks span many stars. And when they found the Arvani, swimming around in their oceans, they reached down from orbit and gave them so much. They were impressed, you see. The way they were able to build their suits to get onto land. To develop their technology despite being in the water. A feat unparalleled! But in exchange, the Arvani tried to rule them. The war ended with Pcholem withdrawing all. But when the Conglomeration came, and then the Arvani
became useful again. The Accordance, an alliance between those who would be swept away. Born out of need. But do not think the Pcholem bow to Arvani. They tolerate them.”

“So, you are telling me we are safe if we stay right here?” I said. We were over Titan now. The world a sphere below us. Explosions dotted the night sky below us. Accordance missiles, scouring the planet.

“As safe as anyone can be against the implacable nature of the Conglomeration,” Shriek said. “And I think maybe, just maybe, there is a small possibility you might live, Devlin. You'll still see your world burn, of that I have no doubt. But maybe there will still be humanity afterward. Because the Pcholem respect what you just did. Your stand for individual lives. They will be your allies. Do not mistake me: I will not be memorizing all the names of the people in your platoon. But I do not regret knowing yours.”

I stared down at the moon below as it receded faster and faster from us. Happily Slingshot had turned on the afterburners, or whatever the alien equivalent was.

“There is a dark stain spreading across that surface,” Shriek said. “It will melt anything alive it comes across.”

For the next hours, as we passed Saturn's rings, we could see the explosions rippling all throughout the gas clouds of the giant planet. Tiny, from our perspective. But each one lethal with self-replicating cellular violence spreading on the winds.

“Your home world,” I asked Shriek. “Was it like this? Was it the Accordance, like Zeus said?”

The struthiform never took his eyes off Saturn. “Did we destroy our nest to save ourselves from the raptors? To gain a little more time to live? Would we have done that to gain a place in the exodus? What rapacious creatures would we be
if this were true? Would a life of service to healing even begin to count against such a horror-full choice?”

I let it go.

“I'm thinking about something Zeus said. Back at Icarus. Back at training.” Ken changed the subject.

“What?” Amira asked.

“That we all decide on the rules of war, on each side.” He looked meaningfully at the flashes on Saturn. “How do you think the Conglomeration will take this? How does that figure into their plans when deciding the next stage of the war against us?”

“The shit's always been this deep between them,” Amira said. “We're just now getting caught in the middle.”

There was a stain spreading across the face of Saturn: the Accordance weapon spreading. Leaping from organic molecule to molecule. Growing. Eating anything in its way and chewing through the howling winds. Down there, anything living was being consumed and burned, the energy from its death fueling the leap to the next target.

I faced away from Saturn with a shiver and looked into the clean darkness of space. Toward the tiny blue glint I had come from. Things might be getting worse. But we were going home.

Home to Earth.

30

Negotiations began in earnest a day before the Pcholem swung us past the moon and into Earth orbit. They continued even as we fell through the upper atmosphere and down into the blue and the white fluffy clouds of Earth. So vibrant. So rich compared to the orange-saturated hues we'd been living in for so long.

So far removed from the landscapes we'd been fighting in.

And then, underneath us, human steel cities glinting in the sun. Beautiful even when scarred by the gouged-out chunks of matte-black Accordance areas, punctured by their organic thorns of skyscrapers built far higher than human reach, from where they could look down upon us. Over the ruins of Washington DC, flashing past Baltimore, and then approaching New York until we flared out over Pelham Bay Park.

Outside, as the fields withdrew from us all and curled back up into Happily Slingshot's belly, the rush of air smelled of sweet spring. People dropped to their knees and kissed the grass. Someone found a tree to hug. Disbelieving laughter was everywhere.

“ARE YOU SURE OF YOUR CHOICE?” Happily Slingshot asked, one final time.

“Yes,” I told the Pcholem.

“IT WAS A PLEASURE TO KNOW YOUR UNIQUE SELF.” The living starship left the ground and ghosted over the park's trees and then curved up into the air as it pulled in tighter and tighter on itself, until the massive behemoth that had taken tens of thousands of us from Titan all the way to Earth was little bigger than a pair of jumpships.

It pierced a cloud and disappeared, leaving the massive crowd of humanity on the grass.

As per my conditions, I'd shucked my armor, leaving it thirty paces away. Amira and Ken as well. CPF squads surrounded us, rifles out, keeping the blue-suited crowd back and away. “Disperse!”

And bit by bit, the crowds did just that.

A hopper landed at the edge of the park after coming in low over the trees. Jumpships, belly cannon dropped and swiveling in to target us, came next. The crowds surged to run. Off into the trees, out of the park, down the walkways. Nothing good came of a fast, armed Accordance swoop like that.

I kept my arms in the air as the hopper hit the grass, and Colonel Anais stepped out.

I couldn't help myself. I flinched. Of course.

He glanced at Ken with a flicker of . . . something. Annoyance. Anger. Laying a note down to come back to something, maybe, but other pressing matters needed to be taken care of. The same for Amira, a wry twitch of his lips.

And then Anais stared at me, eye to eye.

“You managed to get them all home, Hart. Congratulations on the biggest PR coup of the war. A hundred thousand men and women, scooped up from the surface of Titan before
certain death. All of whom will be able to help us continue the war effort. So, well done.”

I didn't answer. To convince the Accordance not to sweep them all up into camps, to come here to this park, for my platoon to not be disciplined, we had to hand ourselves over.

No hiding on the Pcholem. No running.

“You have me; now what?” I asked. “A show trial? And then?”

Anais swept a hand toward the hopper. I stepped in with Amira and Ken. Anais slid the door shut and tapped the bulkhead behind the pilot.

We took off, heading farther into the city, toward Manhattan's core.

“No trial, Hart. You are the destroyer of abominations. The saver of individual lives. The Pcholem love you. Earth loves you. You have a hundred thousand people who owe you their lives. The CPF troops idolize you. Everyone is watching. Closely. No, we bust you down, it's bad PR.”

“So, no jail?” I was having trouble wrapping my head around this after spending three days coming to terms with some horrible fate.

“No martyrdom,” Anais said. “Something worse. We're going to promote you.”

All three of us stared. “Promote?”

“Captain Devlin Hart, Colonial Protection Forces.” Anais leaned forward. “Captain. It sounds nice, doesn't it? But it's just a show. We're promoting you so that you're out of ­trouble's way. Where you can't command any troops to cause any trouble. We're promoting you up so you're going to sit right outside my office where I always have an eye out on you. Me and you, we're going to be like a married couple, Captain. We're going to be joined at the hip, and we're going
to use you to raise so many more recruits for the CPF. They're going to line up like screaming tweens for a concert to see you, and you're going to help us send them back out there. Where you can't go anymore.”

“And Amira and Ken?”

Anais nodded. “They're going to train the recruits you bring us. After this little flight, the three of you will never be a team again. They will not get promotions. They're lucky to avoid an execution squad.”

I glanced at Ken, but his face showed nothing but contempt for Anais.

Anais looked over my armor undersuit and then opened a small can of black grease. He dabbed his thumb in and smeared it randomly across the shoulders and chest. I jerked back when he smudged my chin and cheek. “Verisimilitude,” he said.

“What's going on?”

“They all know you've landed. They saw the Pcholem. They know their families came back safe. It's a parade, Captain. They're all here to see their hero. All those potential recruits and citizens grateful to the Accordance.” Anais returned the small can of grease to his pocket. “The Conglomeration has abandoned Saturn and its moons. An armada now assembles. It will come for Jupiter. It will come for Mars. It will come for Earth. We live in desperate times, and we need to fight back. Because if we don't, the Accordance will get aboard those Pcholem and leave.”

Anais opened the doors. The crowd on the streets around us roared at the glimpse of us.

I turned back to Amira and Ken. “Thank you. For everything.”

“Anytime. Anywhere,” Amira said, her silver eyes glinting in the dark of the cabin.

“You are my brother,” Ken said, reaching out a hand.

Anais pulled me out of the hopper with him before I could say anything more. The hopper screamed and kicked up the air as it lifted off.

I faced the wild crowds, bewildered.

“Now, captain, wave like our lives depend on it,” Anais hissed. “Wave like our world depends on it!”

“I don't feel like I deserve any of this,” I said.

“You don't,” Anais said into my ear. “But wave anyway. Wave for your platoon. Wave for your family. Just wave, dammit.”

I raised a hand as confetti showered down on me, the roar of thousands washing past me.

And I waved.