Titan's Fall

by Zachary Brown

  “What have you just done, Awojobi?” Anais asked, a hushed shock in his voice.

  “He’s right,” Ken said, sounding totally at peace. “This is mutiny.” Ken reached forward with an armored hand and flicked Anais in the temple. Anais slumped to the ground, and Amira reached out to catch him before he could hit it.

  “Is he dead?” I asked, dazed.

  “Knocked out.” She stood up, holding a slumped Anais in her arms. His arms hung loose in the air, and his legs hung over her forearm. “Now what?”

  I stared at them both.

  27

  Amira shifted and slung Anais over her shoulder. “Okay, boss, what now?” she repeated.

  “You’re looking at me?” I was still in shock. “Me? I didn’t . . . I mean, there are other people in charge. We need to go and talk to them. Create a plan.”

  “Talk. Plan.” Amira swept her hands around. “The jumpships are here. Armor’s on the ground. This is happening now. What’s next, Devlin?”

  The line of armor up near the tunnel exits folded back several paces, overwhelmed by the sheer numbers pressing against it. The secondary line pulled weapons. The babble on the common channel was overwhelming. A thunderstorm of voices and panic. The crowd could sense something wrong in the air.

  Everyone in armor would get on aboard those ships.

  Everyone in blue would stand on the plains of Shangri-La and look upward as the ships burned their way up into the atmosphere and left them behind.

  Again.

  I took a deep breath. “I don’t have the rank.”

  “It’s falling apart anyway,” Ken said. “Right in front of us. Command structure.”

  “Armor’s fighting over who gets on the first wave,” Amira said.

  Ken raised both his hands. “Do you have a plan?”

  “No.” I shook my head in my helmet.

  “All of this is happening because you’re pissed off that this is unjust,” Amira snapped.

  “Because there has to be a way to save them.” I looked out at the growing crowds. “Because there has to be a better way. Because this is a waste.”

  “Then how?” Amira asked.

  “I don’t know!” I looked around. “I’ve been thinking about it. I can’t stop trying.” We just didn’t have time.

  “Take a moment. What tools do we have?” Ken asked.

  “The only damned tool I have is that everyone seems to know who we are. And what good is that?”

  “It means everyone will listen to you. The hero of Icarus Base,” Ken said. “Yes. Yes. How do we use this?”

  “I fucking hate that shit,” I said.

  “No. You’re going to embrace that shit,” Ken insisted. “You’re going to own it. We must use any weapon we have. What is it Anais said?”

  “PR,” I blurted.

  “PR,” Ken repeated. “What do we do with it? Is it enough for us to take command of everything on Shangri-La?”

  “I’ve spent all this time struggling to control just a platoon, Ken. Without your help, I would never have been able to handle all this,” I told him. Maybe, I realized, for the first time. “Taking control of all this?”

  And then, I thought, losing so many more.

  So many more lives that would be my fault when they died.

  It was easier to fight and complain when Anais was in charge. It was easier to hate the decisions. Now Ken had made a decision that put me in charge. Now the problems could be mine.

  Leadership wasn’t just giving orders, though. It was listening. “We’re not going to take command of Shangri-La. That’s not my place. I can’t usurp the chain of command. But there is something else I can do.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s time to leverage the one thing we have that no one else has,” I told Ken. “You’re right. Get me to the command center. Amira, I need you with us. I need you to boost signals.”

  “What are you planning to do?” she asked.

  “Use our greatest asset to save as many lives as we can,” I said.

  28

  Amira, with Anais still thrown over her shoulders like a bright blue fur coat, moved around the command center, checking equipment over. The emergency lights still flickered, bodies had been pulled to a side of the room, and everyone had left to get to rally points. We’d forced our way through angry blue surface suit crowds to get here.

  “It’s not time to think about taking over something,” I said. “Because then I’m only someone giving the orders. Just different orders. And then my reach is limited to whoever is on the ground. We need to think bigger.”

  “Bigger?”

  “It isn’t enough to just have different orders. We need to offer a chance. For all of us. Amira, I want this to go out everywhere. As far as you can boost.”

  “Titan-wide?”

  “Orbit. Beyond. Human forces in the system. Up the quantum-­entangled comms, throughout CPF. Anywhere you can get it. Conglomeration. Common channels. Anything and everything.”

  Amira had stopped. “Everything?”

  “Everything,” I repeated firmly.

  There were moments of clarity. Like when I had crouched in front of a child during the riots outside the acting president’s mansion in Richmond to stop him from being shot at. Or deciding to fight back against the Conglomeration at Icarus Base. Moments where I knew what I was doing was right. Regardless of what made sense, or what I’d been told to do.

  Stand tall, let history judge. Even if it judges harshly. Something my dad said.

  Though he would barely have understood any of the decisions I’d made since leaving to join the CPF. To save his life. My mother’s. To buy everyone back home time to live, survive, and move on.

  Amira pointed at me. “I’ll amplify anything you say on the common channel.” She held up four armored fingers.

  A babble of noise swept through all the various channels, my head tracking them all automatically thanks to the neural link to the armor.

  “Mayday, mayday, mayday . . .”

  Emergency squawk.

  Two armored fingers.

  The squeal of digital code transmission over common analog channels.

  And Amira closed her fist.

  Silence.

  I stood still for a long moment. Then took a deep breath. “To anyone who can hear this: I am Devlin Hart. You may know me as one of the survivors of Icarus Base. I am currently making an emergency call from Shangri-La Base to anyone who can hear me. We need your assistance. We need it now.

  “There are almost a hundred thousand citizen contractors here on the base. They are engineers, workers, builders. They are us. They’re our future. Our hope. Our brothers in arms. And the Accordance has ordered us to abandon them yet again as we pull out. But this time, it means certain death. The Accordance is about to unleash a weapon to destroy everything on Saturn and its moons. And anything, or anyone, left behind will suffer.

  “So, I’m calling on any- and everyone with the capacity to get down from orbit and back, please come. CPF soldiers, you’re being ordered to get aboard jumpships. I’m begging you, get aboard only three at a time, and give everyone else a space. Make the ships come back again and again. Pilots, make more than one trip. Carriers, send everything you have. We cannot leave people here to die like that.

  “I swear to you. I will be the last person to leave Shangri-La Base.”

  I looked over at Amira. She nodded. “Okay, that’s it.”

  Responses began to trickle in. Unauthorized broadcast. Cancel that. Everyone was being ordered into the ships. But there was back chatter. Confusion. It rippled out and around. I could hear my squad leaders checking in with each other as they moved through CPF platoons, moving to convince others this was the right action.

  “Come on,” said Ken. “We need to get up there and help.”


  Amira gave a thumbs-up. “Chaos is spreading. I’m hearing ships detaching to come down against orders. Command is ordering them back into their berths.”

  The first wave of jumpships was already leaving when we got to the surface. On the ground: armor. Lots of it.

  “Okay,” I ordered. “Start pinging the incoming ships, find out how many. Then let’s make lines. We have a sense for how many we can cram into each jumpship. Mark every group, and then as they land, assign each group a ship. We board fast. They burn for orbit. Drop them off. Come back down.”

  “If the Conglomeration attacks now, a lot more of us will die. Soldiers that could have gotten away in that first wave,” someone said on the common channel. “Lieutenant Hart, you better fucking hope they don’t start picking us off.”

  “They’ll be running,” Shriek shouted. “Now that Hart broadcast the Accordance plans. They likely suspected it, but now they’ll know for sure.”

  I swallowed. “I’m worse than a mutineer. I’m an Accordance traitor now. What death does the Accordance have for a traitor?”

  “They were willing to destroy every life here,” Ken said. “Without qualm. How can they expect loyalty if they’re willing to toss our lives aside?”

  “Some humans who were helping shuttle other Accordance resources around are coming down now,” Amira said.

  Seven jumpships burst through the clouds over the plain and landed. CPF troops got aboard, three to each ship, packing blue surface-suited people aboard as tightly as they could. People were lying down on top of each other, holding onto anything they could.

  “Any Conglomeration out there?” I asked one of the pilots, standing in front of the cockpit windows and waving.

  “You Hart?” he asked.

  “Yes. Any Conglomeration?” I repeated.

  “Yeah, we’ve seen some cricket swarms. But they’re leaving us alone. Boogying for orbit. Rats off a sinking ship, man.”

  Two CPF soldiers shoved people on board and then ­struggled to close the doors. Gravel and ice spattered my armor as the jumpship roared off.

  Anais groaned and struggled to sit up. Amira dropped him to the ground. “Anyone have zip ties?” she shouted.

  Ken got down on the ground next to her. “I do,” he said, and then proceeded to hog-tie Anais.

  “What are you doing?” Anais asked groggily. He yanked at the zip ties and looked around. Then he wriggled onto his back to watch the jumpships punching for orbit far overhead.

  “Good morning, sir. Nice to have you back,” Amira said cheerfully, leaning over him.

  Anais stared at her, rightfully suspicious at Amira’s sudden sunny use of formal protocol.

  “Hart, you’re trying to evacuate everyone,” Anais said fuzzily. He looked over to me. “Get me off the ground and out of these restraints. I will try to figure out how to fix this if you do it. Now. You have no fucking clue how deep the shit is going to get on this.”

  “It’s the right call,” I said softly.

  Anais looked to Ken next. “Awojobi, you of all people should understand how horrible this decision is. You’re committing treason.”

  “Me, of all people,” Ken said. “I gave my all to the Accordance. My family gave their all. I came here to protect them. To protect them and stop the Conglomeration. Now I see how easily the Accordance would leave them to die.”

  “There are many examples of countries in war turning their guns on things the enemy might come back to use. This is not sports. There is no honor here in war, only winning or losing,” Anais snapped. “And thanks to you, we’ll be losing CPF soldiers today.”

  “We lose if we leave these people to die,” I said. “Maybe not today. But we will lose.”

  “You’ve read too much indigenous literature. You think there is honor, that there are rules, in battle? It is a human construct, Lieutenant Hart. And you are caught in the middle of a war between aliens with alien values.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe that’s PR we tell ourselves to commit horrors in war. No one is ever fond of hearing the words ‘I was just following orders’ when it all settles out. I learned that from reading too much indigenous literature. I think there is only life. The life we lead. And the choices we make in that life define it. So, I don’t know if I’m going to live through this, but I know I’m going to make the right fucking choice, Anais. I’m going to save as many lives as I can.”

  “You can’t save them all,” Anais said.

  The next wave began to circle down out of the clouds. Jumpships darkening the skies.

  And yet there were far too few of them to save the surging, panicked crowds of blue. Anais was right. I couldn’t save them all.

  How many more trips could I get away with before some Accordance officer reasserted control over this and stopped it? Before fear gripped the soldiers on the ground who wanted to get away?

  As ships hit the ground, I picked up Anais, slung him over my shoulder, and walked him over to the nearest ship. I packed him in with all the other blue surface suits. “Cut him loose when you get to orbit,” I ordered. Then I looked at Amira and Ken. “You two should go.”

  They didn’t answer. They shoved more surface-suited people aboard until the inside of the ship was a mess of limbs and people standing shoulder to shoulder, and then shut the doors on them.

  The jumpships began dusting off one by one and following each other back up to orbit.

  We were alone on the ground again.

  “How many off the ground?” I asked. “Anyone able to keep a headcount?”

  “The carriers are saying six thousand, if you include this lift,” Amira said.

  Didn’t seem like enough. But considering that the rally points had only been set up to lift a couple thousand troops back to orbit, it was impressive.

  But not impressive enough.

  The ground shook. “What’s that? Are we expecting that?”

  “It’s coming from thirty miles away,” Amira said. “Not local.”

  How the hell did she do that? “Anyone on the hills?”

  “I can bounce up,” Min Zhao said. “I’m close.”

  “Yeah, let’s get some eyes on the hills.” The shaking increased, knocking loose a few boulders on the hills. Then it stopped. We all stood around nervously.

  “There it is,” Amira said.

  The form rising up above the hills was familiar. The matte-black jellyfish shape of a Conglomerate starship. And even though it was thirty miles away, it was big.

  “Everyone get into the tunnels,” I shouted. “Or take cover.”

  We’d stood against one of these on the Earth’s moon. I wasn’t sure what we could do against it here. We’d gotten lucky that first time.

  The alien starship, loaded with an overwhelming Conglomerate force that had attacked us to take Shangri-La, shook off the last pieces of Titan from its shell as it accelerated for orbit, followed by a swarm of crickets that surrounded it like an ominous black mist.

  The clouds swallowed it.

  “We’re no longer the tourist destination we once were,” Amira said.

  + + +

  The next wave of jumpships came in aggressively. Ten ships that circled around the air above the basin, sniffing and hunting for something.

  Me.

  They surrounded the three of us and Accordance energy cannon dropped from their bellies, tracking our suits.

  Twenty CPF in armor jumped the last hundred feet to the ground and fanned out toward us, weapons drawn.

  Lana Smalley jumped in. “What do you need us to do?”

  I stepped forward. “We need those jumpships to touch down and take people back to orbit.”

  “Our orders are to take Lieutenant Devlin Hart, Sergeant First Class Ken Awojobi, and Sergeant Amira Singh into custody and get to orbit,” their commander stated. “That is a direct order
from Colonel Anais. There will be no more lifts.”

  “There have to. There are still over ninety thousand people down here. Hell, most of the CPF soldiers are still on the ground,” I protested.

  “Something you’ll have to answer for,” the commander said grimly. “But there’s no time left, Lieutenant. The Accordance missiles are incoming. There will be no more jumpships to Titan after these ten.”

  “Then take someone else instead of us. I said I would be the last one standing here. I will keep that promise.”

  Amira very casually shifted her EPC-1 forward.

  “HELLO, DEVLIN HART,” a voice boomed on all frequencies. “I HAVE HEARD YOUR MESSAGES. KNOW THAT YOU ARE KNOWN TO US, AND THAT I AM KNOWN TO MANY AS HAPPILY SLINGSHOT, AND I AM HERE TO ASSIST YOU.”

  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?