The Fallen

by Paul B Spence

  "Best guess, Captain, is that we are only a few hours away." The Centaur had been on a diplomatic mission to Delta Eridani in the Emerald Conglomerate when it intercepted the message. Exact distances in hyperspace were hard to gauge accurately due to gravitational flux, but the Pi Orionis system should have been within two to five light-years of their current position. "I'll be able to give you a better estimate once we drop out of hyperspace, sir."

  The Pi Orionis star system was just over twenty-six light-years from Earth, right on the edge of the Federation Frontier. Only the fourth planet was inhabited. Serendipity had been colonized during the exodus nine hundred years before. The cold, unforgiving planet had never been of strategic importance to anyone. It had only been a full member of the Earth Federation for a little over fifty years. The native population spoke a form of debased English that was closer to Neo-Gaelic, and there had been resistance to the enforced learning of Normarish, the primary tongue of the Federation. On occasions, that resistance had reached the point of rebellion and terrorism. The captain hoped with all his heart that wasn't the case this time. He had no stomach for the reprisals he would be ordered to perform. He hadn't joined the Fleet to fire on civilians, no matter how misguided they were.

  "Make it happen." The captain turned to his executive officer. "Notify me when we get closer. Until then, I'll be in my office."

  The Centaur transited from hyperspace into the Pi Orionis system through a cloud of hydrogen ripped into existence from the very fabric of space-time. The ship's thrusters brought it around to point at the massive white star that dominated the system, and the four primary fusion engines ignited at maximum burn. They were seventeen light-minutes from the star, eleven from the inhabited planet. They hadn't been able to jump closer due to the proximity of a gas giant in the outer system.

  "Where are they?" Singh asked impatiently.

  "I can't find the Warbird's beacon, sir. I'm searching for fusion trace now," the sensor chief replied. "If they have their engines on, we'll find them."

  "They would most likely have been in orbit around Serendipity," the captain mused.

  "It certainly makes sense, Captain," replied Executive Officer Santiago.

  "Adjust course for Serendipity, helm." Captain Singh drummed his fingers on the edge of his couch as he waited.

  "Yes, sir. We should reach the planet in thirty-six minutes at present speed. Still no sign of the Warbird or any other ship."

  "Not finding the beacon suggests the Warbird has been destroyed," Lt. Commander Mary Santiago said.

  "I'm aware of that, XO."

  "Shall I put us on high alert, Captain?"

  "Not just yet. Let's see what our sensors detect first. The Warbird reported an attack by some alien organism, not a ship."

  Santiago didn't point out that it would have taken a ship to get an alien lifeform to the Warbird. "You're hoping for survivors on the planet, then, Captain?"

  "It would be the logical place to look. At the very least, the local government may have received a clearer distress signal, or have some idea what is going on."

  The captain fidgeted with his displays while the light-minutes sped by. He didn't like to think about some of the things that might have happened to the Warbird. He liked it less and less as his ship moved further into the system. There had been troubling reports of ships that were lost in hyperspace or just vanished from systems without a trace. No one could say for certain what was causing the losses. Whatever it took, Singh was going to make sure that his ship didn't become such a statistic.

  "Sir!" Master Chief Madison exclaimed.

  A curtain of fire showed on the forward screens, a rippling wall of energy propagating spherically across the system from the vicinity of the inhabited planet. It was unlike anything any of them had ever seen. The sheer scale of the wave was staggering. It was light-minutes across.

  Santiago reacted instantly, her hand slamming down on the alert button. Acceleration harnesses snapped over the bridge crew as they scrambled to get their helmets on.

  The captain used his datalink to set the gravitic compensators to maximum just as the shock wave hit the ship.

  Chapter Three

  "Come on, Warbird, answer," Tebrey muttered to himself.

  He’d been trying again to raise the ship, but there was still no response. The surviving enemy prisoners, over a hundred, were locked into a small hanger. There had been a certain amount of chagrin when they discovered that they'd surrendered to one man. He didn’t want them to have too much time to think about it.

  Yeah, because I didn’t help at all, Hunter sneered.

  They didn’t know you were there when they surrendered, Tebrey replied. They surely would have surrendered faster if they’d known.

  Wiseass.

  Takes one to know one. Tebrey smiled to himself and tried the ship again. Nothing.

  We’re entering the tunnel to the city now, Hunter thought to him. Hunter was leading the refugees back to the city. Tebrey hadn’t been certain at first if they would follow Hunter. The refugees had been terrified of the giant panther, but they were too exhausted from their ordeal to argue with the forbidding figure in powered armor that had saved them from the merciless enemy.

  Be careful. Tebrey didn’t trust the locals not to attack Hunter.

  Yes, Mother, Hunter replied ironically. The huge bioengineered cat had been decanted from a vat fully grown, born with a sub-dermal layer of armor and a bone structure reinforced with beryllium steel.

  The sense of humor had come later.

  Tebrey patrolled the base one more time. It was still smoking in many places, but the actual fires had died down. The drifts of bodies were beginning to freeze. He shook his head in disgust. The enemy soldiers had been brave, but their commander had had a stubborn streak. That stubbornness has cost him hundreds of soldiers. The laser rifles the enemy troops had carried couldn’t hurt Tebrey’s armor; they'd died where they stood.

  What concerned Tebrey the most was the machine standing in the center of the compound. It was a stasis field generator, technologically superior to anything that the Wolf Empire should have, but that wasn’t what really bothered him. It looked like it was designed to hold a man.

  It wasn’t a medical pod.

  It looked more like a trap, designed to trigger the field effect when entered. Had it been designed to trap someone, or something?

  You should stay away from it, Hunter thought to him. Tebrey could sense the concern.

  Had it been brought here for that purpose, or had something already been inside when it arrived? Tebrey was afraid to get too close to it; he didn’t want to get caught by the trap, and it felt wrong to him.

  It felt like things he didn’t want to think about.

  Some premonition caused Tebrey to look up. The sky had gone crazy. Indescribable colors not part of the visible spectrum swirled and churned. Sudden pain ripped through him, and he cried out, falling to his knees, aware on some level that Hunter was also screaming. Everyone was screaming. Across the whole planet. The pain came from deep inside, not just his head but his whole body. It felt like his soul was on fire.

  The ground fell away from beneath him as gravity seemed to fail. The buildings were coming apart, bodies lifting into the air in bloody pinwheels. Then gravity came back, and he slammed down to the ground with crushing force, just before everything exploded around him.

  Smoke filled the bridge of the Centaur, but the flame suppression system was still working; the fires had been quickly quenched. Emergency lights cast a pale red tint through the smoke, bathing the crew in a seeming aura of blood, as the systems automatically restarted.

  "Full power restored, Captain," Santiago said unnecessarily as the displays flickered on and the lighting returned to normal. "The hull is intact. Fusion containment holding within tolerances."

  "What caused that?" the captain demanded. "Talk to me, people!"

  Santiago shook her head. "Some new weapon? What could release energy on that
scale?"

  "I don’t know, XO," said Singh.

  "Sir, I have a debris field and intermittent energy readings ahead, about three light-minutes from our current position. I think it is ship debris, sir."

  "The Warbird?" he asked.

  "Most likely, sir. Computer analysis of the energy wave indicates a hyperspacial gravitic shock wave. We were hit by a hydrogen wake from the dimensional bleed-through. The energy released and the dispersal of the debris are consistent with the implosion of a cruiser-size hyperdrive. They must have overloaded their engine, sir."

  "Shakti," Singh prayed softly. "They tried to jump while still in orbit. Is there any chance of survivors?"

  "I wouldn't count on it, sir. Not unless they got off the ship before it tried to jump, and I'm not sure even then. That shock wave had to have hit the planet hard. Frankly, I'm surprised I was able to detect any debris at all."

  "That couldn’t be an accident, Captain," Santiago said. "You’d have to manually override the safeties."

  "I know. I’m more concerned about what could have driven someone to do it. Helm, move us in as soon as you can. We'll do a sweep anyway. Then we need to think about how it may have affected the planet. In the meantime, I want to see a damage report. How bad is our situation?"

  "I've got reports of minor injuries from across the ship," Santiago replied. "No deaths have been reported, and the computer registers all crew as accounted for. Engineering reports minor hull damage, mostly stress fractures in the forward armor, nothing critical. More worrisome is that we lost sixty percent of our forward sensors, and our defensive weapons are currently offline. Environmental is purging the excess hydrogen from our atmosphere. We’re lucky we weren’t closer to the epicenter."

  "Are there any other ships in orbit?"

  "Nothing detectable, Captain," Santiago said without certainty.

  "How about primary lasers and the missile tubes?"

  "Online, Captain.’

  "That’s something, anyway. At least we can fight. The Warbird was a cruiser?" the captain asked.

  "Yes, sir, Wolf class."

  "Damn, that's over twenty-six hundred crew..." Captain Singh closed his eyes in real pain. He was a peaceful man by nature. "Get me Lt. Commander Smith. We're going to need teams to go through the wreckage. We need to know what happened. Contact Fleet Command, report our situation and find out why the Warbird was in this system. If they were in orbit, then they may have had personnel on the planet. I'm going to want to talk to any survivors. Bring up the planet on the display."

  On the viewscreen, the blue and white world grew larger. Shock waves were still visible in the atmosphere, racing around the planet. Dust and smoke now obscured most of the hemisphere that had been directly under the ship. Captain Singh felt a premonition of dread as he looked at the world. He had no idea what had happened to the Warbird or whether or not it could happen to his ship as well.

  "Captain, a gravitic shock wave like that would have caused catastrophic tectonic upheavals. The atmospheric effects alone could have killed millions. I think we should send aid down to the planet before we begin the search in orbit. Serendipity has underground cities; those cities will have suffered cave-ins. It is doubtful we'll find any survivors from the Warbird, but we can still save a lot of people on the surface."

  "Good thinking, XO. We'll send down teams as soon as we are in orbit. I want marines with each team. We still don't know what actually happened. Notify Fleet Command that we are facing a planet-wide disaster. Request backup."

  Hunter's pain drove Tebrey to drag himself out from under the rubble, that shared pain being the one downside of the empathic link that joined him to the massive cat. Wind was still howling past, and Tebrey could see a looming cloud of dust and steam billowing up into the stratosphere, blotting out the sun. In the distance, avalanches flowed down the high cliffs. Visibility was less than two kilometers, even with the sensors on his suit.

  Hunter? he thought frantically.

  I'm okay, Hunter replied. I think. I was caught in the entrance tunnel to Newhavensport. Most of the refugees should have made it inside; they were in front of me. The tunnel to the surface is full of rubble, but I think I can get into the city. The way out is completely blocked. I can’t even see the sky.

  You're sure you're okay?

  My foot was pinned under some rocks, but it is free now. I may also have broken a few ribs, nothing major. How about you? Was it a nuclear strike?

  Tebrey stumbled to his feet. The ground was still shifting uncertainly. The dull bronze of his bare armor-alloy showed clearly; the adaptive camouflage outer layer had been sandblasted off in the explosion. Tebrey quickly checked his displays, but detected no radiation above standard background level.

  I'm fine, Tebrey lied. I don’t know what happened. The damage looks like a kinetic strike, but there doesn't seem to have been a significant thermal flash. There are a few fires, but not what I would expect. That also doesn’t explain what happened to the gravity. I don't know what the hell is going on, but I'm going to find out.

  Chapter Four

  Howling wind greeted Lt. Commander Calvin Smith as stepped from the shuttle into the icy field. His shuttle was the first down to the surface from the Centaur, homing in on the beacon of the only known survivor from the Warbird. He’d heard the report, seen the planet from orbit, but Smith was still unprepared for the chaos of the landing zone.

  The ground shifted under his feet with a growling, grinding noise, and the wind was gusting strong enough to immediately make him order safety lines rigged. In the distance, a recently erupted volcano spewed ash and fire into the turbulent, stormy sky. Lightning slashed out of the billowing clouds. It was like a vision of hell, and Smith was glad he was in an environment suit. To top it off, the surface temperature – already below zero – was falling fast.

  The blowing snow and ash obscured his vision and stuck to his faceplate, but Smith could see a tall figure in dully gleaming armor limping toward the shuttle. His sensors had already told him the man was there. Smith stepped out to greet him.

  "You must be Lt. Commander Tebrey," Smith shouted.

  "The one and only," Tebrey replied. "What’s the tactical situation in orbit? Where is the Warbird?"

  Smith was startled. He’d thought someone would have told the man before now. "The Warbird is gone… destroyed!"

  "What? How they did they manage that?"

  "Who?" Smith asked. He gestured back to the shuttle, where they would be able to talk without shouting over the com. His team continued to rig up the safely lines. He ordered them to stay near to the shuttle and not to wander alone.

  Tebrey shook his head and limped to the shuttle. Smith wanted to help him, but he knew that in armor, the man weighed far more than he’d be able to lift. All he could do was follow.

  Tebrey settled into the acceleration couch with a grunt of pain, then unlatched and removed his helmet. He’d been on the planet for what seemed like an eternity, and it felt good to breathe air that didn’t smell like recycled Tebrey.

  The marine commander settled into the couch across from him and lifted his visor. "You’re bleeding," he said, pointing to the right side Tebrey’s head.

  Tebrey reached up, and his gauntlet came away with blood, bright on his fingers. He shrugged. "Busted eardrum on that side." His vision wasn’t doing so great, either. "What’s the situation in orbit?"

  "The Centaur came in response to a distress signal from the Warbird. We arrived just before she blew up. I’m responsible for finding any survivors from the Warbird and getting them back up to the ship. So far, yours is the only beacon."

  "You won’t find any others; my companion and I were the only ones on the surface." Federation ships didn’t carry lifepods. What was the point? Anything that could destroy a ship would destroy lifepods. A ship was too valuable to abandon.

  "Companion?" Smith asked.

  "I’m Special Operations. My companion is a neo-panther."

  "Oh. Where
is your companion now?"

  "Hunter is trapped in the city nearby. He was taking refugees there then all hell broke loose here. What happened? And what happened to the Warbird?"

  "Well, those two things seem to be linked," Smith replied. "The Warbird detonated its jump engine in orbit. We’d really like to know why."

  "You and me, both. I lost contact with them a few hours before the explosion."

  "Why were you on the surface?"

  "The Warbird received a distress signal from the planet." Tebrey told him about the ships in orbit and the Wolf Empire base on the planet. He told him about the civilians who had been forced to toil in the sub-zero temperatures. He didn’t mention the device that had been in the center of the compound.

  "That doesn’t make any sense," Smith replied. "Why would they do that? What could they hope to gain by a war with the Federation?"

  Tebrey shrugged. "There may be a few survivors buried in the rubble to the west. You can ask them. In the meantime, I need get to my companion." Tebrey had a few unpleasant thoughts about what might have actually happened aboard his ship, and the motivations of the Empire, but he didn’t feel like bringing them up at this time. If he was right, there hadn’t been many people left alive aboard the Warbird when she was destroyed. He coughed wetly.

  "No offense, but I think you need to get up to Medical. You may not have noticed, but there is blood coming from your mouth and nose now. My orders are to get you up there as soon as possible."

  "You concerns are noted, but I must insist on finding Hunter first." Tebrey sealed his helmet. "You can help me or not, but you know you can’t stop me."

  Smith shook his head and stood. "We’d better get busy, then."

  "I’ll show you where to dig."

  It took most of the rest of the day to remove the rubble from the tunnel into the city, even with a few dozen marines and navy crewmembers helping Tebrey. The quaking ground kept shifting rocks dangerously. Two marines were partially crushed and had to be rushed back to orbit. There were other bodies that were beyond salvation, civilians who had been in the tunnel but hadn’t made as far as Hunter before the collapse.