Until the Covenant burnt the western hemisphere. Now, the people were at the gates of the marbled Congress hall—the only marble structure on the entire planet, save for private lodgings of the very same regional representatives that now crowded the council chamber. Room enough only for those already standing, more and more people piled into the oval room, stacked with tiered pews and wooden desks. Linen and silk garnished the chairs, golden crests lined bas-reliefs depicting the first settlers striking out into the brave new world. Now, half of them were cracked, and the other half were marred with scorches. Adrian took a seat at the head of the congressional table, took up the gavel, and looked to his sides. His second and third were absent. Whether they were dead or just absent, having fled the planet, he didn’t know. What he did know, that the throng of people ceased, the doors slammed shut, and he found himself in a congressional meeting with hundreds of angry, scared men and women from all corners of the colony. From all echelons of government. Some were young; too young to have their positions so soon. He wondered how they got them. He wondered if the ones they replaced died or fled, but like his second and third, he supposed he would never know. He banged the gavel on the desk beneath him, and the hall fell silent. Those that could sit, did so, and all the rest remained in the gangways. Adrian licked his dry lips and swallowed a bout of fear. It wouldn’t do to be seen in such a state when such serious matters were to be discussed. The tether between this world and the next was shown to be closer than ever before, as close as he’d ever been to the other side, staring down the barrel of a plasma rifle. He held up a hand to quiet the last few murmurings. “Quiet. Please, everyone, quiet.” The room silenced itself, and he set the gavel down next to his hand, clasping his withered fingers atop the desk. “The colonial congress is now in session. We have some matters to discuss, and some difficult questions to try and answer.” He paused. He saw the rest of the men and women present shift uncomfortably under the gravitas of his words. Clearing his throat, Adrian continued. “First item on the docket, the future of the colony.” The sentence dropped upon their shoulders, and everyone slumped slightly. The lead weight was released for all of them to carry. Adrian motioned towards the first row, to a white-haired man no older than forty six. “Senator Martin Yume, you have the floor.” The Senator gathered his datapad, straightened his tie, and made sure to restore the pin of the colonial congress onto his jacket lapel before standing up. He turned away from Adrian, to address the whole room behind him as well as in front. He opened his mouth, took a breath, then closed it once more. He repeated the action, time and again, like a fish out of water—or a man out of his element. He took a sigh, removed his glasses, and wiped them down on his shirt. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, placing his spectacles on once more. “The Covenant attacked. This you all know.” He nodded to each of them. “Most of you remained here for the duration. Many of you aided civilian evacuation efforts in some way.” He nodded to a group that looked far away from the rest, despite the fact that they sat in the middle of the throng. They stared through the world, rather than at it, with haunted eyes and far-off glazed faces. Senator Martin continued, looking down at his datapad. “Now, the Covenant has been defeated, temporarily. We must face the reality that they may well come back, and they may well come back very soon,” he said. “Our battlegroup can’t withstand another attack. Not again.” He rubbed the lines under his brow and slumped, putting the datapad down. “You all know this. We need to decide what to do. Who to turn to for help.” “There’s no damn help coming!” Someone yelled from the far corner. Adrian and Martin both turned to face him. A man stood up from his seat, with withered features and wild eyes, hair stuck out from a once-perfect style, and his clothes were ratty and unkempt. He pounded on the table. “Reach is gone! Earth is under attack. Do you not all see what this is? This is the end!” Adrian picked up the gavel and slammed it on the desk. “Order, please. Let us not waste time with doomsaying, let us instead focus on what we can do.” “We can do nothing!” the man yelled. Adrian banged the gavel again, and gave him a pointed stare. The man withered even more, and sat back down. “Senator Yume,” Adrian said. “Please continue.” Yume cleared his throat, scrolled down on his datapad, and kept speaking. “If we perhaps shift our manufacturing focus—of the entire colony,” he stressed, peering around the whole room and meeting as many eyes as he could, ”we may be able to build some low-tonnage vessels.” “They won’t help in combat.” A woman from the gangway spoke up. “Small tonnage ships are useless in the numbers we could hope to produce.” “You’re right,” Yume said. “All they can do is get civilians off-world.” A quiet shimmer of nervous speech rippled through the congregation like an agitated wave in a pool. “Where would the people go?” someone spoke up. “Where is left?!” the ratty man yelled back. Adrian held up a hand and stilled the roiling wave before it could erupt. He then directed his attention at Yume. “Is there anything else we can do?” The man shook his head. “No.” “See?” The ratty man laughed a maniacal, cackling laugh. “I told you. I told you all this day would come! It is the end!” Adrian slammed the gavel onto the wood so hard it cracked under the force. “There will be order in this council!” he yelled. “I propose,” Yume raised his voice to cut through the tension around him, drawing all eyes back towards him. “I propose we begin instituting increased benefits for industrial and manufacturing workers. We inform every manufacturing corporation to swap over to something our shipyards can use.” He shook his head, murmuring. “Uh, plating, armour, shells—anything that may help the war effort. And if they can’t do it, then give them incentives to support those who can.” Adrian sighed with a heavy breath, that felt like it took something with it on the way out. “What will this cost us?” “It will likely collapse our economy within the quarter,” Yume answered. “The alternative is to continue as normal and pray the Covenant does not find us again.” A total industrial overhaul. No consumer goods for the populace, no amenities they had grown so used to. For a population of nearly three hundred million souls. It would be anarchy. Adrian accepted it. “All in favour of instituting this new emergency corporate renovation?” he asked the crowd. A tentative ‘aye’ sounded from the majority. “And all opposed?” he asked. No one raised their hand, but he counted a fw twitches. No man or woman wanted to be the one who voted against saving lives. “Very well. Motion carried.” Adrian carried the sentencing with a bash of his cracked gavel. “What else?” Senator Yume sat down. Senator Arnolds rose up. “The colonial communications network is down. We can receive, but we can’t send.” Adrian waved a hand. “That’s not a priority, right now.” “It’s exactly a priority,” Arnolds argued. “We need to be able to talk to the other colonies. We need to see how many are left.” “Dozens,” Adrian said. “Hundreds, at least.” “But is it enough.” It was not in any way a question, for they all knew the answer. “What about defenses, we should be consolidating our forces.” Arnolds raised his arms and looked around. “Oh yes?” The woman beside him, fresh-faced and no older than twenty stood up to face him. “And who will lead us? Who will galvanise mankind into action?” She smiled with not a hint of mirth behind it. “You?” She pressed a hand to her chest. “Me? What will happen if…” she froze. Her throat seized up, and she could barely utter the words. The lead weight upon all their shoulders grew a tad heavier to them all. “If the worst comes to pass,” she said, “what will happen? The colonies will each attempt to join forces, but there will be petty squabbles over who should lead. The UNSC, for all intents and purposes, will be gone.” She looked around the room, and tilted her head to one side. “If the worst should happen, that is..” “If Earth falls, you mean!” the Ratty Man squawked from his perch beside the group. Adrian shot up and tossed his gavel down. “Enough!” he thundered. “We have seen it dozens of times before!” The man screamed, pointing up at the ceiling. “They come, they kill, and they burn. Earth will be no different. Earth will fall, and we will all be next, except even worse, there will be nowhere else left to run!” Adrian snapped his fingers and pointed towards two guards at one doorway. “Restrain him. Now!” The men moved through the crowd and grabbed ahold of the Ratty Man before he could utter another word. He growled, and tried to shake them off. “Unhand me. Unhand me this instant!” he demanded. They began dragging him away, and the crowd of grim-faces parted to allow them out. “I only offer the truth of the matter!” he yelled at them as he passed, glaring straight into their eyes. Most couldn’t meet his gaze. “You fear the truth, you fear what it means!” Before the guards could cart him outside, the doors burst open. A man ran up the gangway, with short hair and the drab clothes of a summer placement intern. Adrian furrowed his brow. “Excuse me, boy!” He watched the lad double over, clutching a datapad with white knuckles as he fought to catch his breath. “Council is in session. Did the guards not inform you?” The boy looked up at him, a wide grin parting his pockmarked face. “The guards let me through,” he said. “And why would they do that?” Adrian tilted his head in confusion. “We have contact.” The boy held aloft a datapad. “A message, superluminal, from a slipspace buoy. Not from an entangled relay, from a comms buoy. A slipspace comms buoy.” Adrian clutched the desk. “So?” someone asked. “So,” the boy took a breath. “If they’re using a slipspace buoy instead of entangled colonial networks, then there’s only two bouys that it could be. The one around Reach, or, far more likely—” “The one around Earth,” Adrian said. The boy nodded. “Exactly.” “What are they saying?” Adrtian asked. The boy looked down, and tapped his datapad excitedly. A moment later, a hundred datapads buzzed in unison. Any other time, for any other message, the boy would be fired on the spot for such a breach of conduct, especially sent to a whole group. This time, however, when the men and women stared down at the image on their screens, such concerns seemed far away. There, emblazoned on the screen, were two garbled words across an eagle crest, in front of a flag of stars. E A R T H S T A N D S The boy smiled as wide as Adrian had ever seen a boy smile before. “Earth Stands,” he said. |
