Heaven's Fall (44 page)

If so, it meant that this imagery was old . . . centuries at least. Or, if the rumors about Keanu’s age were true, millennia.

It was crazy enough to think about invading a planet—though given the Aggregates’ success in taking over a good chunk of Earth, not entirely crazy—but to do so based on information that was current when humans had yet to plant a crop of wheat . . . that was audacious.

The size of Rainbow explained the need for a massive force. (And Whit had seen one tiny window displaying what he believed to be the “order of battle,” with the “portal” opening in three different locations on the planet.)

The tour of the Rainbow city ended, and when Whit tried to click to additional images, he found himself back where he started, falling through the atmosphere.

It occurred to Whit that he might not be seeing imagery at all, but rather generated material, like a video game. Hadn’t Counselor Kate said there would be simulations? Weren’t sims just like games—?

In spite of his misgivings, both about THE enforcement methods and the nasty side effects of the Ring’s ignition, Whit couldn’t help being excited about being involved with this . . . it sure beat the work he’d been doing in Vegas.

“Five minutes.”

Time to pay attention. Everything seemed to be going fine . . . except for the orange displays in the corner of his screen. It didn’t seem to be a critical area—the windows were labeled
RANGE
and
I-STRUCTURE
and
ENVIRONMENT
.

Whit wished he could talk to Dehm. It was possible, he supposed, that his older friend was in one of the other cubicle stations. Without Dehm, he was stuck with Counselor Kate. “What’s all this orange?”

“Deviations from design.”

“Shouldn’t they hold until it doesn’t deviate?”

“Humans might,” Counselor Kate said. “Aggregates won’t. They have faith in their designs that we don’t.”

“Yeah, but some of this material may not be included in their design.”

“Do us both a favor and don’t tell them.”

“I’m only talking to you,” he said. He hoped.

“One minute.”

At that moment the Aggregate unit passed behind Whit. If reaching the last minute before the First Light hadn’t ramped up his heart rate, the presence of a dozen aliens would. It didn’t matter that he had grown slightly more comfortable with Carbon-143; Whit still found the Aggregates menacing.

Especially since the formation stopped, leaving at least three of the chunky creatures directly behind Whit and Counselor Kate.

“Thirty seconds.”

There were flashes from Whit’s screens . . . the mirrors making minute final adjustments. The power levels all reached the top of their various graphs. Whit realized it was silly, but he thought he could
feel
it, as if the entire building were throbbing and ready to explode.

“Twenty,” the voice said. “Fifteen. Ten. Systems are enabled.”

Whit wondered what it would look like? A big flash? Or would it just be invisible—?

It was a flash, so fast and so bright that it overwhelmed the camera filters and made Whit blink.

A new window opened on Whit’s screen showing a ridiculously large cone with rippling edges rising over the desert landscape. Wider and taller and taller and wider, as if it reached to the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Still transparent, the edges solidified . . . and then, for an instant, Whit could have sworn he saw dark space inside the cone, and the edge of a planet that could have been Rainbow.

Then there was another flash, less intense but no less startling, this one from the upper left-side screens—the orange ones were now bright red.

The cone collapsed, so quickly and dramatically that Whit hunched, as if he expected a structure as tall as ten mountains to land on his head.

Don’t be stupid!
he thought. The cone was just an energy field. Though God only knew what particles and rays it threw off as it spun up.

The control center was absolutely quiet, surprising Whit. Where were the alarms, the hooting horns? Because this was clearly very bad news.

No one seemed to be moving, either, not even the Aggregate formation. It was as if everyone were either staring at a screen in numbed shock, or receiving data downloads in a similar state.

Finally he heard: “First Light plus fifteen seconds,” from the calm and apparently artificial control center voice. “System shutdown.”

Whit loved euphemisms. He would have called the event an “utter failure.”

“This is bad,” Counselor Kate said, the first truly human thing Whit could recall her saying.

“What happened?”

“What do you think? Something failed and the whole thing crashed!”

“System crash, you mean,” Whit said. “It looks as though most of the hardware is still whole.” It appeared that way in the windows on the right-hand side of his screen, though it was possible they were screen captures and hadn’t been updated, that entire pieces of the massive complex lay in ruins.

“No, I’m seeing a lot of damage to the projectors at segment 270.” Whatever that was, likely some portion of the Ring.

“What do you think happened?”

“Really? Somebody ignored a bunch of warnings and went ahead with the test.”

“Well, it wasn’t me,” Whit said, regretting his words the moment he said them.
You get nervous, you make dumb jokes.

Fortunately, Counselor Kate was too upset to notice. He heard her speaking to others, likely her two THE comrades.

“Operators,” the countdown voice said, “please secure all data.”

“What does that mean?” Whit said.

Counselor Kate was now standing behind him, reaching over his shoulder to his keyboard. “Freeze your screen so every operation can be analyzed. Like this.”

While Whit appreciated the assistance—he had no idea how to “secure all data”—he was concerned that a thorough review would expose his snooping into the invasion of Rainbow world.

Given the complexity of the Ring system, and his peripheral role as a mere observer, it wasn’t too likely he would be examined.

Or so he told himself. He could see several silver linings in this dark cloud for the Aggregates.

First, the “invasion” appeared to be off.

Second, North America and most of Earth were spared for a while yet.

The downside, of course, was that a delay still left the Aggregates in charge of Earth.

Now there was general motion in the control center. The nearest Aggregate formation stirred to life, moving in groups of three to block the aisles.

Standing up, Whit could see at least two other formations—two dozen individual units—entering the center.

“All human operators remain on console,” the system voice said. “No one is leaving.”

Day Nine

SATURDAY, APRIL 21, 2040

SPY PLANE SHOT DOWN OFF CALIFORNIA COAST!

China suspected; no comment from Pentagon

DRAGONSTAR 3 EXPECTED TO WIN WEEKEND

Latest thriller and game opening across Free Nation U.S.

FAITHFUL FLOCK TO ARIZONA

Holy sightings on North Rim

HEADLINES,
NATIONAL TIMES
,
7 P.M., FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 2040

“There’s our hermit now.”

Dale almost jumped at the voice behind him: Harley Drake, with Jaidev. Somehow they had sneaked up on him.

Well, there had been chaos in the Temple for the past two hours. People were rushing in and out, many of them immediately heading up the ramps to the upper floors, creating, of all things, an HB traffic jam as they collided with those coming down. There were raised voices, several shoves, and no doubt some bruised feelings.

It would have been a disheartening sight for those, like the recently departed Rachel Stewart-Radhakrishnan, who often said that the HB community was somehow better than any comparable group of Earth-based humans. “Our shared struggle to survive in an incredibly inhospitable environment made us better,” she said more than once in Dale’s hearing.

To be fair, Rachel had been in her midtwenties then . . . and Dale wasn’t perfectly certain that those had been her exact words. But her attitude seemed to be that because they were freed from the whole apparatus of human life in the twenty-first century—no computers, television, fast food, air travel, assault rifles, or runway models—the HBs had been able to create a more perfect world, an idealistic commune of some kind that, unlike most communities, had a clear common goal . . . to free Earth from alien overlords.

There was some truth to that. And at times Dale had allowed himself to wallow in the warm bath of the idea.

But to his mind, over time the HBs turned out to be just as greedy, petty, stupid, and confused as any group of humans.

Witness this day and the circus.

Eating a leftover meal of curry and naan, Dale Scott had been watching calmly, if a bit resentfully, from a corner of the ground floor.

His resentment was partly due to his lack of involvement in the activities, most of which seemed directed at the looming launch of the new Keanu vesicle, the big common goal that struck Dale as only slightly less ludicrous than Rachel’s
Adventure
mission. When he was thirteen he had read a lurid paperback with a title like
Seven Against Infinity
. (Had good old Wade Williams written that?) Even then the idea of one small group of humans successfully waging war on a planet filled with hostile aliens struck Dale as unworkable. The reality had not been an improvement.

Compounding the original attempt with a second effort that might involve twice as many humans equipped with exotic weapons—well, it was slightly better but still not in the doable range.

“Shouldn’t you two be planning your new invasion of Earth?”

Harley waved a dismissive hand. “Zhao’s got that, don’t worry.”

“When do you launch?”

Harley looked at Jaidev. “Four hours,” the engineer from India said. He seemed worn down, far older than his years. Planning invasions must do that to a man.

“You don’t seem all that enthusiastic.”

Jaidev flopped down on the chair across from Harley. “Too many unknowns.”

Jaidev had never had much time for Dale Scott, and vice versa. Dale found the ISRO man arrogant and too certain that he was the smartest individual in the habitat. Jaidev no doubt found Dale too irreverent and untrustworthy.

Nothing had happened to change that . . . yet here he was, apparently open to a conversation. So Dale ventured a question: “Such as whether to send Sanjay Bhat?”

Now Harley Drake sat down, too.

The Sanjay situation was the secondary cause for Dale’s pique: His time with the Revenant had been brutally cut short. They had just managed to make a connection, some bizarre link through Keanu, Dale believed. But then Zhao had a question, and while that was being dealt with, Sanjay’s girlfriend interrupted the whole affair.

Not that Dale had anything against women. Being too attentive to women had hurt him in the military, at NASA and pretty much everywhere he’d gone. Hell, he could make the argument he wouldn’t have wound up on Keanu if not for his involvement with Valya Makarova in Bangalore.

But he preferred women who understood the larger realities. Such as the fact that her boyfriend had actually been killed. Whatever relationship they had had was over, defunct, history. Maren whatever-her-name-was had no further claim on Sanjay’s time—or his heart.

Especially since, as Dale and everyone knew . . . his time was limited. Like all Revenants, the man had been reborn for a specific purpose, to communicate a message . . . not to play kissy-face.

Harley smiled. “What do you think, Dale? Knowing what you do, would you send him?”

Dale’s impulse was to say,
Absolutely
—this in spite of his eagerness to work with Sanjay. But he wanted to see what cards Jaidev and Harley would play. “What do you two want?”

“I’m for it,” Harley said. “Jaidev is a big negative.”

Dale turned to Jaidev. “Why?”

The engineer shifted in his chair, as if he resented being questioned by an outcast. “We’ve spent too much time training the team. The vesicle is smaller than the ones we flew in; resources are strained.”

“Oh, come on, you’ve got the magic printers and Keanu tech!” Dale said. “You’re going to send this thing to Earth on a fast burn, right? It’s not going to take four days. That’s a false argument.”

Drake laughed. “He’s got you there, Jay.”

“All right,” Jaidev said. “I’m not sure Sanjay can be trusted.”

“He could be a Reiver-powered Revenant?”

“Something like that.”

“That’s unlikely to the point of non-existence,” Dale said. “Even less likely than the chances that your two ships are going to take down the Reivers on Earth.”

Jaidev sat up straighter, as if Dale had just poked him.
Good; now he’s paying attention.
“We think we have a good chance—”