Murmurs, shrugs, and one, “Why not?”
And humans mere mortals beneath their feet, Marcus thought. Only that would be a ridiculous objection, given that everything they watched had happened eons before there were humans. “Sure. What’s in a name?”
Yevgeny said, “So, the Titans, our aliens, had access to video from the Olympians. Why is that?”
“The two groups shared information?” Donna asked.
“More likely,” Yevgeny said, “the Titans spied on the Olympians, maybe hacked into the Earth-based systems.”
Their view changed to a potato-shaped rock, within a dust cloud, and the Moon as backdrop. The image—even allowing for all the sun glare scattered by the dust—was blurry, as if observed from the ground through a telephoto lens and shimmering with atmospheric distortion. A captured asteroid being mined in Earth orbit? Perhaps.
A shuttle, presumably one of the Olympian craft just seen launching, swam into sight. As the camera tracked the spacecraft it closed with a different rock: smooth and cylindrical, festooned with antennae and thrusters, and with large nozzles at one end. When doors retracted and the dartlike shuttle entered a docking bay, Marcus at last got a sense of scale. This new vessel was enormous. Kilometers, long, easily.
He shivered. “More likely, you said. Yevgeny, why is it likely the Titans were spying?” Is it because that’s what you would do?
“Because,” Yevgeny said, “it was no accident that we met robots programmed to kill. Titans and Olympians were not on good terms.”
In the telephoto view, the colossal ship receded. As it shrank from sight, their perspective again changed. Stars no longer twinkled, but appeared diamond-crisp. Now they saw the vessel swell, framed by the jagged edges of a ravine, and with ancient Earth in the background. Like everything that had come before, these streams were on fast-forward, and the spaceship soon zoomed out of sight.
Donna sighed. “That, I think, was the key moment. That bit, right at the end, is the reason for this exhibition. We saw the Olympians pack up and go. The computer—at least I assume some sort of awakened alien AI is at work—is telling us that we should also go. Maybe, because Earth isn’t safe. Maybe, because now is its people’s turn to try colonizing the planet. Either way, it wants, expects, us to leave. I don’t think it realizes we’re from Earth, and the Titans long gone. How could it?
“But anyway, that is the message: just go. And in case we understand Titan speech, I’m guessing that’s the content of the audio feed, too.”
“You are quite trusting.” Yevgeny said. “If it, or they, whatever or whoever is running the show, were inclined to advise us to go, we would know. It would have made the attempt before the attacks on us.”
“Meaning what?” Marcus asked.
Yevgeny smiled humorlessly. “Meaning, we have not come to the end of this performance.”
Chapter 39
I emerge from the lava-tube mouth behind the base, B’mosh by my side. Together, in silent awe, we gaze up at the starry sky, sensing, more than seeing, the world soon to be our home. It is darkest night. The planet is at first phase, teasing its presence as a dim glow in far-red, within an ethereal ring where sunlight filters and refracts through its atmosphere.
I remind myself the Fergash must once also have considered that world seductive, and that we must learn from their experience. That there are but four of us, I suspect, is to our advantage. We will manage on any small, isolated plot of land. At the first, at least, while we learn the ways of our new home world, we can establish ourselves on some island too tiny to support large predators and too remote from any mainland for flying monsters to reach us.
We had not suited up and left our base only to gawk. What sort of pilot and engineer would we be not to ground-check our craft before making even a short flight? The ship, of course, is fine. A year and a little more of sheltered idleness means nothing to a starship. And so, our task soon completed, we had continued the short way to the surface.
“A beautiful world.” Lowering his gaze, gesturing vaguely, B’mosh adds, “I will not be sad to see the last of this desolation. Better, I think, to look up at it from a distance.”
I am ready to agree when a fast-moving glint of far-red catches my eye—and an alert tone trills in my helmet. The apparition is a spacecraft, its heat emissions unmistakable. Even as I turn up magnification on my visor, bright sparks erupt from the bow.
“Unidentified vessel just came over the horizon,” Watcher reports. “Two. Three.”
Unidentified? Fergash, of course. Who else can these be? But how?
“Acknowledged,” I respond, my mind racing.
A dartlike spacecraft shoots past, descending, headed for the level plain not far from the front entrance. It is, unquestionably, a Fergash shuttle.
This moon is enormous, its surface area comparable to the entire land mass of the nearby planet. The Fergash did not just happen to appear over our heads, anymore than the evacuation, or the subsequent radio silence from the planet, had been what they seemed. Their exodus had been staged for our benefit, and we had fallen for the ruse. Somehow—detecting the code we had injected into their surveillance system?—they had discovered we were lurking. And then, knowing to look, they had discovered us.
“M’lok?” Over the radio, L’toth’s voice trembles. “What are we to do?”
For a moment, I hesitate. We four are closer than crèche mates; we have never encrypted our comm. Then again, what are the odds that Fergash colonists know Divornian? For a fact, with those snouts of theirs, they cannot speak it. We will take our chances.
As if we have any choice.
I respond on the common channel. “Everyone, these are Fergash vessels. At least one ship appears to be landing.” Even as I speak, I spot another ship. It, too, is braking, as if to alight at a different spot. The third ship, I suspect, is higher. Circling the area. Flying cover. Because that is what I would do.
With that thought, I spot the last ship. “Everyone, suit up. Put half the missile launchers and handguns inside the rear airlock. B’mosh and I will retrieve them. Bring the rest out the front door. Send a ping when you reach the surface.”
Missile launchers. Scarcely weapons at all! After the Fergash evacuated—or so we had believed!—we had improvised a few items. Designed with nothing in mind but a dumb, flapping-wing creature. And whether or not, as we had inferred from observations, those monsters were warm-blooded, we had assumed so. Our missiles were heat-seekers. They might be of service.
“A-and us?” B’mosh asks.
He, too, looks to me for answers. They all will, knowing I was present at the other equally unanticipated encounter with the Fergash. And true, I was appointed commander of the mission, at least in part because of that experience. But I am no warrior! Not even close. An interrogator, yes—if badly, and guiltily, and ashamedly. Trained to use weapons, yes, but I have never yet fired one in battle.
That, it seems, is about to change.
“Come with me.” I start down the tunnel, ignoring our faithful ship as I pass. Unlike the small Fergash craft, ours, an exploratory vessel, is unarmed. “I will retrieve the weapons. You, configure Ship to expunge coordinates and any description of Divornia and the home system. Then go inside and do the same with Watcher. That action is to take effect in a day-eighth, unless one of us countermands. Or immediately, if a Fergash enters. Also immediately, if any of us should direct it. Then join up with the others. Tell them that if there is a need to abandon the base, our rally point is”—I stop to consider what terrain is both distinctive and somewhat sheltered—“the ravine we first considered and then rejected for our observatory. If for any reason that location seems compromised, then by the two leaning rock slabs.”
And what will ensue if we are forced into retreat? Nothing good. But B’mosh does not ask and I do not volunteer anything.
He has a different c
oncern. “Altering a sentient entity is more your expertise than—”
“So is combat,” I growl. Which is both true and an evasion.
Leaving behind B’mosh, hastening downward to the base rear airlock, my guts knot. What is more fundamental to me than the world of my birth? The world I grew up on? The world in whose defense I have done such unspeakable things? Divornia’s protection is, must be, paramount, and yet the order I had given B’mosh was … what? Something like contemplating murder. More like considering suicide. For me to do as I had ordered seemed impossible.
I reach the airlock, scoop up the holster and the paltry five launch tubes waiting for me, and dash back to the surface. I do not encounter B’mosh; he must still be at work inside our ship.
He needs to work faster.
The launch tubes, dangling from their shoulder straps, jostle one another and jab the backs of my legs as I run. Moments after I emerge from my end of the lava tube, my radio offers a single ping. I ping back twice to confirm receipt, then peek over a nearby ridge to reconnoiter.
In the distance, the first shuttle has landed. Fergash and their mobile units disembark. “Troops on the ground,” I radio. “Expect them to head your way. I doubt they can understand us, but do not count on it. Be indirect. When you can, stay off the radio—and if you do use it, move and hide after.” Because any radio signal, however unintelligible, is a fine beacon. “And as soon as you shoot at anyone or anything, change positions. They will notice from where they have been fired upon.”
Following the first part of my own advice, hugging the ground, I withdraw behind the crumbling lip of a nearby small crater.
However implausible it is that the enemy knows Divornian, I speak a little Fergash. Within the shelter of the lava tube, where I count myself safe from being overheard, I ask, “Watcher, are the Fergash broadcasting?”
“Yes, Commander. Several data streams.”
“From any possible audio channels, send me samples.” It does: all hissing and static. Of course the Fergash are encrypting. On their side, this must be a long-planned campaign. You do not easily fake (or actually?) evacuate an entire colony, recede into the outer solar system, and return, ever hidden from our view by the bulk of this moon. “If you can decrypt anything, notify me. I will download what you have when I can safely.”
L’toth sends a ping.
* * *
I watch with pride and trepidation as two missiles, launched from somewhere near the other lava-tube entrance, streak across a jet-black sky toward the Fergash landing zone. Run! I think as loudly as I can. Run before the Fergash fire back! Before it is too late. Run, my friends!
They will. They must. Because there is no doubting the counterfire toward the area from which they had launched their attack.
But the shuttle—on the ground, its cargo-bay ramp deployed, offloading troops and mobile units—is helpless. Two fireballs erupt, merge, engulf the spacecraft. Enemies fly like leaves in a storm; some do not get up. Even here, the ground trembles beneath my boots.
But now the Fergash know we know they are coming. Even as I fire a missile, the second shuttle breaks off its landing approach. As I hurry, bent double, to a new hiding place, the shuttle jinks up and away. With heat-seeking guidance, my missile swerves in pursuit. The shuttle jinks again, zooming up, then executes a tight flip to dive toward the oncoming missile. Drawn to the superhot plasma exhaust behind the shuttle, my missile overshoots, exploding harmlessly behind its target. I curse wordlessly.
In the few heartbeats before the Fergash inevitably retaliate, I have time to marvel: the shuttle had not deployed flares. Does it have another sort of countermeasure? Jamming? Perhaps. More likely our missiles are simply too slow, too sluggish. The wing-flapping creatures for which we had designed these weapons were not capable of high-speed evasive maneuvers. I dare to hope the enemy’s weapons are as improvised and inadequate as ours, that the Fergash are all colonists, no more warrior than I.
It is bad enough they are better armed, better prepared, and far outnumber us.
From the spacecraft circling overhead, salvo after salvo of missiles erupts. Now I am tossed like a leaf, to crash down on my hands and knees, only to bounce again. Gloves and knee pads protect me from the rough ground. My remaining missile launchers, on my back, may be unharmed.
The silent explosions recede; the shaking underfoot diminishes. Because the circling shuttle has lost sight of me in the dust clouds? Or hoping to hit any compatriots of mine yet to reveal themselves? I wonder how our base, and Watcher, are withstanding this bombardment.
As the shuttle that had eluded my first attack loops back to settle behind a ridge, I let fly another missile. From above, new enemy counterfire rains down around me, more intense than ever. Time and again I crash to the ground. Between bounces, ignoring the pressure alarm keening in my helmet, I scuttle to the dubious protection of the lava-tube mouth. Glancing over my shoulder, I see no fireball rising over the ridge. Another of my scant few missiles has failed.
Inside the lava tube, I slap patches over suit tears revealed by wisps of condensing water vapor. The alarm warbles and dies. Through still-billowing clouds of dust, I catch a glimpse of Fergash and robots coming toward me. Stone chips fly, one ricocheting with a ghostly ping off my oxygen tank. I marvel at their poor aim, given their daily conflicts with monsters.
The enemy knew our location. They might have destroyed us with impunity. By dropping an asteroid upon our heads. By dispatching a precision guided missile, with a massive warhead, straight down the lava tube. Instead, they staged an elaborate withdrawal from the planet to cover a surprise ground assault. I see no explanation for their strategy, and the casualties they must have anticipated as a result, beyond the intention to capture prisoners, or to take our base intact. And I despair as our long-range antenna emerges—in pieces—within the dust of a near miss. The fragments tumble glacially in the maddening low gravity of this world, to disappear one by one into the ravine.
With them vanishes any chance we have to activate our fail-safe.
As the enemy shuttle patrolling overhead crosses the lava-tube mouth, I fire: once, twice, three times.
And I run for my life down the tunnel.
* * *
The Olympian vessel vanished into a fireball. The debris field, with the evanescent fireball in its midst, hurtled on. The shuttle had been flying westward, in its vain attempt to outrun three inbound missiles. The ship’s considerable momentum, distributed across countless red-hot chunks and shards, continued to the west.
Through narrowed eyes, Yevgeny considered the sparkling trail of the shuttle’s remains raining down far into the virtual distance. He said, softly, “I think we just saw the origins of Ethan’s famous iridium trail.”
Chapter 40
When the enemy ship exploded overhead, Watcher had the reflex, if not the musculature, to flinch. In its experience, such a cataclysm was unprecedented. This second disaster shocked the Fergash, staring upward at the slow rain of debris, into brief immobility.
The enemy’s mobile units showed no such hesitation. As M’lok Din ran down the tunnel toward the base, a ragged line of squat machines, their treads spewing regolith, tore uphill to the lava-tube entrance and plunged inside after her. Through sensors grown on the tunnel wall and imagery relayed by the ship over the communications umbilical, Watcher anxiously observed the enemy devices gaining on the commander.
“Open the base outer … airlock hatch,” M’lok ordered, panting for breath, as she passed the ship. The ship’s mind relayed the directive over the umbilical.
Without breaking pace, she would twist and shoot at the machines chasing her. Muzzle flashes, the flight of her bullets, and the mobile units themselves, were unmistakable in far-red. So, alas, were the ricochets as bullets bounced, seemingly without effect.
No, one bullet had penetrated, and that machine ground to a halt. “Comma
nder, aim for the access panel on the side of the turret.”
She grunted, and kept running. The closest machines already had their arms extended, their grippers open, ready to grasp and crush and tear. She was not going to make it to the airlock ahead of the machines.
Then the world shuddered.
Surface sensors had shown a large segment of the enemy shuttle plummeting from almost overhead. Now, rock and dust rained. Long stretches of roof collapsed. Acoustic sensors saturated with the rumble and crash of shifting rock, the trilling of alarms, and the shrill whistles of escaping air; quickly, the sounds faded and died. Many sensors failed; while others (perhaps) remained functional, the circuits to them were severed. To the extent it could still observe, in sudden vacuum-silence dust and pebbles continued to filter down.
Fail-safe circuits had switched Watcher from reactor power to emergency batteries. It found itself without visibility into the reactor room to identify the problem. Fearing the worst, Watcher dispatched mobile units to the reactor room to assess the damage.
As though the damage it had experienced were not enough, quaking registered by the ship’s accelerometers indicated roof collapses deep into that part of the lava tube. As in that passageway the dust settled, the ship’s external sensors revealed walls of rubble both forward and aft. It reported itself (so far) undamaged, but barring major excavation it was trapped.
Where was the commander? Overtaken by her pursuers? Trapped by the cave-in? Crushed beneath the cave-in? For a frighteningly long instant, Watcher did not know. But then, near the rear airlock, where an optical camera remained operational, a grime-coated figure emerged from the still-dense clouds of dust. M’lok. Running!
An enemy mobile unit lurched after her. On the machine’s visible side an idler wheel appeared damaged, and the corresponding track flapped for lack of proper tension. At full speed, doubtless, the track would have slipped off.
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