Titan's Fall (3 page)

“The Pcholem don't just live for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. They won't say. But they travel between the stars with time dilation. So, they have seen civilizations rise and fall, wars gutter out. And always they keep swimming between the stars. Long after I finally admit to death, long after you wither, human, this Pcholem will eat the dark between the stars.”

With that said, Shriek waved at the dark, curving belly above us. He walked toward a black tongue of a ramp ahead of us, and the darkness at the end of it.

“This is a war we are in. But even in the mud, and death, and shit, and blood, there is beauty, Devlin. Take a moment to come with me and meet a being that may have been navigating the depths of space before your species could even rub two sticks together.”

We stepped onto the ramp. “Are we supposed to be going aboard?” I asked, looking back. There was no security, no Accordance telling me to get back to where I belonged. Just the dark maw ahead.

“No one tells Pcholem what to do. They ask for a favor,” Shriek said, marching on ahead of me with purpose. “That seed I told you about, once it grows, the older Pcholem gather around it and bless it with upgrades. Like the nano-ink on your friend, or the armor around you. And with those grafts, it gets the ability to extend itself. They grow, change, adapt, as they find things they want or when they find new technologies that they value and will trade for more things to bolt onto themselves. They'll come down into a gravity well, though they hate it here.”

“And this one, it shuttles supplies around for the Arvani?”

Shriek whistled. A derisive sound. “It decided to do this. To bring more supplies here to help Shangri-La. It must have its reasons to pull itself into such a small package of only a mile long, to slim its fields down until all we see is the core.”

We walked into the darkness and stopped.

A second later, a green glow suffused the air around us. The gothic arches and swoops of the interior loomed with ghastly shadows.

Then the darkness around us faded away, the walls
becoming translucent. Outside, carapoids continued plodding to unload cargo alongside other human contractors.

“I apologize,” a voice said from the darkness above, echoing smoothly around us. “The last time you stood here, you flew from a burning world.”

“Hello, Starswept,” Shriek said.

“You know its name.” I was shocked. Shriek refused to learn names.

“It is one of four in this system,” Shriek said. “I think it has come down here because it is smart. They value life above all else. Particularly their own, for they are ancient and each life is a precious thing. They are down here to help the Accordance, to help humans. They'll move us around like pieces on a checkerboard. Supply the pieces. But they won't fight.”

“They are pacifists,” I said.

“Of a sort,” Shriek said. “Corner one, and it will do anything it can to live. But it avoids that corner at most costs.”

“Then why are they part of the Accordance?” I asked loudly. “Why live under Arvani bootheels?”

The answer came from the halls of the living ship as Starswept replied. “You have seen the Conglomeration's evil. And Shriek has seen it as well, from this very spot. Is that not a will worth frustrating?”

Something was coming down a hallway toward them in the dark. The green light finally glanced on the body of a carapoid, again with those strange carvings on its carapace. “I hear,” Starswept said from around us, “that you humans miss your own food, so the last time I was on Earth, I made a point of acquiring something for you.”

The carapoid's thorny arms broke free of the powerful armored wings to hand me a wicker basket filled with boxes of chocolates.

“I'm told,” the Pcholem said, “that this is an appropriate gift between your kind. Is that so?”

I held the basket as delicately as I could between my powered alien-alloy fingers, trying not to break it. “It is.”

“I asked Shriek to bring you here,” the Pcholem said. “You killed the Conglomerate abomination that flew to the lunar satellite of your home world. This is a pure act. An act that Pcholem do not forget. We seek to see all such abominations the Conglomeration has made for interstellar travel destroyed. Know this: You are known among Pcholem, Devlin Hart!”

“I—okay,” I said, stumbling over words. This was getting weird.

In my earpiece, Amira's voice suddenly kicked in. “Devlin, I need you to get out here. Now. I found something.”

4

I left Shriek holding a basket of chocolate, with orders to get it back to the platoon barracks. Ancient alien ship from beyond the stars or not, Amira finding something meant shit hitting the fan.

Rifle in hand, riding a hopper out that I'd commandeered to bus me out with a grumpy-as-hell pilot, I headed out for her location.

“You're not going to like it,” she said. “Foster's going to shit.”

“Why?”

“I'm way off base. I'm into Accordance zones of control. The nearest base is Needlepoint, one of the humans-not-­allowed places. It's a jurisdictional mess.”

“What'd you find?”

“A weak spot in Conglomeration shielding. A buzz. A small bit of leakage. A mistake. But it's under the rock. I got them. I fucking got them. They're here.”

“You make the call to HQ?”

There was a pause. “Rubbed their fucking noses in it,” Amira said, no small amount of satisfaction in her voice.
“Then phoned in to Accordance channels I'm not even supposed to know exist and gave them coordinates. There is a lot of traffic coming my way.”

Even as we flared out over her positions, with the two squads ringing her, I could see even more vehicles converging on us in the sky.

My earpiece started pinging. My helmet filled up with notes from HQ.

Foster was shitting bricks. Accordance too.

I jumped out of the hopper when it was still thirty feet up, cracking the ground underneath me as I landed. Somewhere underneath the rock was something. Something Conglomerate.

Nearby, Accordance forms dropped to the ground as well. The beetle-like forms of several carapoids trundled toward us, massive energy cannons held in their spiky wing hands. Behind them, two squid-like Arvani officers in full armor scuttled over the ground toward us. Their legs kicked up ground-up pebbles in their haste.

I grimaced as they approached.

“Fucking told you so,” Amira said on the common channel to everyone arriving.

+  +  +  +

The Accordance information specialists called it ghost sign. The trace of Conglomerate systems somewhere out there, hidden away. Hinting at the presence of something else on Titan with us.

In the common room, hours later, shucked down and out of armor, Amira held up a cup of a fruit juice and gave a rare celebratory shout. The nano-ink tattoos on her cheeks glinted in the bio-light, and her eyes fluoresced. “They may have kicked us off the site,” she said. “But at least they're aware.”

I placed the basket of chocolates on a coffee table. I pushed one of the boxes toward Suqi. “No tasteless alien food engineered merely to deliver a balanced nutrient mix for human consumption tonight,” I said. This was a party. Or as close as we got in the CPF when deployed.

Suqi lit up. “Is that real chocolate?”

“Help yourself.”

“I'm sorry to drag you all out with me for so long,” Amira said to everyone. “Consider the juice a thank-you.”

One of the new platoon members, Patel, held up his paper cup of fruit punch. “How the hell did you get this?”

Amira smiled. “Don't ask me.”

“But seriously, this is real,” Patel said, awed.

Amira gave him a blank look, the smile gone. “What'd I say?” She looked around at the new platoon members. “Newbies. I swear, no one say shit, or I'll break fingers.”

Patel laughed, but Ken shook his head. “She's not kidding.”

The smiles died away and the celebratory mood with it.

Ken raised his cup. “Captain Foster is still angry. We are going to be cleaning toilets for weeks, Rockhoppers. My only regret is that we do not have something alcoholic to put in these drinks.”

I nodded. Ken hadn't been the one to get the calls from Foster. And the next morning, I had a meeting. To face HQ anger in all its glory. “Something to make the juice kick, yes,” I said. “We could have used Boris.”

Ken slumped a little bit. “Yes,” he said quietly. I had to lean forward to hear him. “Boris would have figured out how to brew something or smuggle it in.”

Even the veteran Rockhoppers glanced at each other, not sure who Boris was.

Ken shook his head and tossed back the fruit juice. “I'm going to turn in,” he said softly.

Amira walked over to me and jammed an elbow into my side. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked.

“I didn't think it would hit him that hard,” I whispered.

“Don't talk about Boris around him yet. He's not ready for that.”

“I'm sorry.” I looked down at my empty paper cup. This was turning into a dud of a party.

“Also, quit staring at Suqi Kimmirut,” Amira said, her voice even lower. “That would really fuck up morale. You're not going to climb the CPF chain of command effectively that way.”

I did my best to look outraged. “Since when are you all rules and regs?”

“Look, we don't shit where we eat.” Amira's eyes flashed silver and black over her brown cheeks.

“That's crude,” I protested.

“Doesn't make it less true.”

I changed the subject. “You did good out there. With the Accordance really paying attention, maybe they'll find something instead of it finding them.”

“Welcome to the real war,” Amira said. “Still think I'm too obsessed with hunting for Conglomerate ghosts?”

“Do you think I'd be happy about getting my face chewed off by HQ if I didn't believe you?” I said.

“Thank you for doing your job,
Lieutenant
.” Amira rolled her eyes. But she grabbed my paper cup and refilled it. As close to a thanks as I would ever really get.

And good enough for me.

+  +  +  +

Lights out, which meant smacking my shins into the bunk bed in the tiny room next to the common area. My armor
loomed by the head, Ken's by the foot, and Ken stirred when I hit the double bunks. “Sorry,” I whispered.

To accommodate the new squads, we'd shifted things around, gotten more cramped. Lots of doubled bunks. I'd given up my quarters to one of the new squads and moved into a room with Ken and Amira until we could get some extra rooms for the platoon.

Ken started softly snoring again, back to sleep after my jolting the bed.

I could hear Amira hitting her own bunk. As I lay down and looked up at the metal bars above my face, I thought about her CPF chain-of-command jab. Did she think I was a lifer? I raised the triangle-and-globe tattoo of the CPF on my forearm into the air and squinted in the relative dark at it.

The thing was something I didn't want burned into me. I was here because the Conglomeration was worse, because I'd seen them kill on the moon. I'd seen their tools at work in the skies of Saturn.

I hadn't talked to my parents since the war started. I wondered what they thought of their son, the Accordance hero. The last time I heard about them, one of the CPF intelligence officers, Colonel Anais, had told me they'd joined an Earth First group demanding that humans not fight the Conglomeration until the Accordance offered independence.

I could see why they believed that. They hadn't seen the Conglomeration burn through one of
their
friends. The pilot, Alexis, wasn't going to be memorialized by them. They'd never seen a cloud of crickets darken the sky.

Never would, if I could do anything to stop it.

But that wasn't going to stop them from trying to do something crazy back on Earth.

I rubbed my face. I hated this moment. Lying here, waiting to fall asleep, while my brain began to spin and spin.

At least the wind wasn't howling outside, like it had been on Saturn. The refinery we'd taken had never let us sleep due to that constant howl of wind. Left us jumpy, exhausted, making mistakes.

This bed was pleasant.

I looked up at my armor. Almost close enough to reach out and touch. Ammo and rifle at its feet. A guardian knight, recharging itself with its chest open wide and waiting for me to slam on in, looking over me in my sleep.

I never felt safe unless I could see it as I lay still, waiting for sleep. Waiting for the drift.

Amira started to snore.

+  +  +  +

A thudding sound. Armor moving around. I rolled out of bed. “Who's that?”

Ken sat up, groggy. “What?”

Someone screamed. I jackknifed out of the bed and out to the door. In the bio-light, I saw a figure stagger forward. “Chef !” I yelled, recognizing Berkhardt. “Report.”

Berkhardt raised his handgun and pointed it at me. I froze, suddenly unable to move. I'd been fighting with Berkhardt since Titan. Since what felt like forever.

The utterly too-loud crack of a shot slammed through the corridor and Berkhardt's brains blew out the front of his temple.

“Chef !” I couldn't help myself.

One of the new members, Maria Lukin, stood behind Berkhardt's body as it fell forward and hit the ground with a wet thump. Her hands were shaking as she lowered the handgun held in both hands to steady the shot.

Then she moved forward as something slithered off Berkhardt's back. Oily, scales, and pronged rear feet that scrabbled at the floor as it ran down the corridor toward Lukin. The pink tail whipped around for balance.

Lukin fired twice, the corridor lighting up. I flinched each time. The driver flopped to its side.

Her face was pale in the dark. “They said in training he's already dead,” she said to me. “They said he's already dead, right?”

I unfroze. “Get in your armor!” I shouted. “Now!”

Maria rabbited away, and I realized that was the first thing I should have done. Rockhopper rules. What the hell was I thinking?

I spun back into the room and started backing into my armor. It wrapped itself shut around me, and there was the suddenly cool sensation of something slithering up my tailbone and neck. The suit linked itself directly to my brain.

“What the fuck were you doing naked out there?” Ken shouted.

I willed the helmet to pop up, and it slid up and over my head and slammed in tight.

I looked left. Amira was in.

“Rockhoppers, armor up!” I shouted, using the suit to amplify my voice. It was quavering. I hoped no one noticed. Chef had been staring right at me in the corridor, I thought. Chef had his brains blown out by
one of us
. That look on Maria Lukin's face. I couldn't shake it. “Don't do anything but fucking armor up!”

The public channel was packed with scared chatter.

Ken calmly cut through the noise. “Quiet, all! Ping me if you're armored and armed and then stay in your room and make sure no one's naked.”

“Are we under attack?” Amira asked.

“There was a driver,” I told her and Ken on the command channel. The armored suits used quantum-entangled communications among the officers. The enemy wouldn't be able to overhear anything here. “It got Chef. Lukin shot it. Him first. Then it.”

“Chef ?” Ken sounded shaken.

“She shot him, and then she shot it. Twice,” I repeated tonelessly. “Be ready for anything.”

“I don't hear anything about orbital defenses being breached,” Amira said. “HQ is silent.”

“Let's get out there and find out what's happening,” Ken hissed.

Amira had her EPC-1 slung over her back. A rocket launcher–looking tube with high-density battery running around every bit of spare space and cabling running down the back. The electromagnetic pulse it created stopped Crickets dead cold. Would have been useful on the flight back to Shangri-La.

I looked out into the dark corridors, thinking back to Icarus Base and all the corpses we'd walked through back there. “Alpha squad, Sergeant Berkhardt isn't with us. Smalley, you're squad leader.”

Lana Smalley. I could imagine her biting her lip as she processed that. Then a calm “Understood. Chaka, Zizi?”

“We heard,” they said.

“Let's poke our heads out and take a look around,” I said.