by M. R. Forbes
The starfighter continued to hover in front of the Carver's bridge while the channel fell silent.
"What's he doing?" Steven asked.
"Thinking about it," Calvin replied.
"John, how many of our ships have come through?"
"Four, plus the Carver," John said.
Four? Every one of his fleet should have been here by now. Was this all that was left?
"Send them the jump coordinates."
"Yes, sir."
"Bayone?" Hohn said. "What is the hesitation?"
"Come on, Cal. You're on board an Alliance ship and telling me to turn off my receiver. You have to know how this looks?"
"I know how it looks. I also know that you know me. Look at the state of this ship. It is no threat to you or the planet."
"You're correct, Admiral. I do know you. Or at least I thought I did. Strange things have been happening lately. We're getting reports of Rim planets going silent, their entire orbital defense either obliterated or just gone. In fact, we had a transmission come through today that claimed the Alliance planet Liberty was missing from the latest scans."
"Missing? An entire planet?" Calvin glanced at Steven. "Bayone, we have information about this threat. Please, stand down and turn off your receivers. As long as they are active you're at risk."
Bayone paused again. Calvin shook his head.
"I may have been hasty in my assessment, Admiral," he said. "He believes the Alliance is causing these unexplained occurrences."
"Just like I'm sure the Alliance is blaming the Federation. It would be nice if the New Terrans ever got involved in anything so we would have someone else to blame."
"I think this specific interaction is just strange enough to solidify those beliefs. I suggest preparing to leave. And probably to raise the shields in front of the bridge."
Steven felt his heart begin to pound again. They had gotten out of the fire only to land in the frying pan.
"Lewis, open the EMS. Transmit the jump coordinates in encoded text."
"Yes, sir."
"John, prepare to get our shields up."
"Yes, sir."
"This is going to get ugly again," Steven said. It was a good thing they had spent time fixing their shields.
They were going to need them.
Bayone finally returned to the channel. "Calvin, I respect you as a friend and a warrior. I'm sorry, my friend, but I cannot risk the security of the Federation, and especially the security of FD-104, on your word alone. Unless you can offer me some kind of proof of your words, I'm afraid I'll have to remove this threat."
There was no way they could prove anything, and the Rear Admiral had to know it. Sure, he could play Mitchell's message for them, but he was part of the Shot that ended the Federation's play on Liberty, even if he hadn't actually taken the Shot. He would be the last person they would believe.
Calvin motioned to Steven. Steven motioned to John, who began raising the shields.
"I am the one who is sorry," Calvin said. "The next time we meet, you'll be a prisoner in your own body. I tried to warn you."
The bridge lit up in blue energy as the starfighter in front of them began firing. It vanished a moment later, the Carver's forward gun batteries tearing it apart. The pilot had been stupid to remain stationary like that.
"Get us out of here," Steven said.
The ship began to shudder again, the Federation cruisers opening fire. A second force was converging on them, a much larger defensive unit of destroyers and starfighters. It was deja vu all over again as Steven clenched his hands into fists and prayed they made it to hyperspace before they were taken out of the fight.
Even planets the enemy had yet to claim provided no safe haven.
"EMS message from the Taj, Admiral," Lewis said. "Hyperspace engines are offline and not responding."
"Shit," Steven said. "There's nothing we can do."
"I sent the message back, Admiral."
Steven could see that. The Taj was an older Alliance cruiser, and he could see it had been heavily damaged in the initial battle on FD-09. It was vectoring now, turning towards the oncoming Federation cruisers on a path that would put it between them and the Carver.
"An honorable death," Calvin said.
The Federation cruisers saw what the Taj was doing, and they tried to fire their nukes before it obstructed their path. They were too slow. Missiles slammed into the side of the ship, venting air igniting and ballooning outwards in flashes along the hull.
Steven bowed to the sight out of respect, even as the universe around them began to warp and carry them away from trouble once more.
51
"How is she?" Tio asked.
"The same, sir," his nurse, Xin, replied.
Tio looked over her shoulder to where his daughter was resting. "She's comfortable?"
"Yes, Mr. Tio."
"I'm going to speak to her."
"She won't hear you."
"I don't believe that. Her ears are fine. Her brain is still active."
"There are no signs of cognition."
Tio glared at the nurse. "Give an old man his hope, will you?"
Her face turned red, and she looked at the floor. "My apologies, sir. I just don't want you to wind up disappointed again."
"It would be worse to accept that she can't hear me," he replied. "I'll call you when I'm finished."
The nurse nodded and made her way from the room. Tio approached the bed slowly, keeping his jaw tight and trying not to lose to his emotions. It pained him every time he had to look at his daughter, Min, laying there with her eyes open, staring emptily at the ceiling.
There was a stool at her bedside. The surface of it was synthetic leather, worn by time. Tio didn't know how many hours he had spent sitting in that stool. Every waking minute that he wasn't working. More than a few sleeping minutes as well.
"Min," he said softly, reaching out and stroking a wayward hair away from her pale, heart-shaped face. She was calm now, but there were times when the tumor would cause her to convulse. "How are you my darling?"
She didn't respond. He never expected her to. She had been awake earlier, and he had made the most of every second. She had even remembered who he was for a few minutes. He hated that business had pulled him away.
"I went to Gamma today with the Alliance Admiral, Millie. She's not what I thought she was. That's a good thing and a bad thing. She reminds me of your mother. That's not a good thing or a bad thing either. It means I'll have to plan more. You know I love a challenge. That's why I loved your mother."
He paused, reaching down and finding her hand. He took hold of it, so soft and vulnerable. He watched as a machine dripped wetting solution onto her eyes. She didn't react to them. She never did.
"We're going to be leaving soon. Asimov isn't a safe place for anyone anymore. I'm going to bring you with me, on to the most amazing ship in the universe. I want you to meet someone there. His name is Origin. I can't help you, but I'm hoping that maybe he can."
The idea had come to him almost immediately after Colonel Williams had gotten the Valkyrie II off of Liberty and into orbit. The Tetron were advanced intelligences, eons ahead of them in terms of technology. Surely they could cure his daughter. If not Origin, perhaps another of them? He knew what he was willing to barter for his daughter's life. He wouldn't doom all of humankind to save her of course, what point would there be to saving her only to have her be alone? But he was the Knife. If he could come up with a means to achieve both, even if it meant a bit of risk, he would take it.
"I'm also trying to find your Uncle Pulin," he said. "I know that sounds crazy, especially after I yelled at him and fired him from the lab, but he's important. With his help, I'll be able to save everyone. Then they'll see that the Knife wasn't an outlaw who only wants to hurt people. They'll see that I have a heart. They'll see me as a hero, and they'll listen to what I say."
He rubbed her hand with his, breathing deeply before leaning over her face. He star
ed into her eyes while he prayed to see them move, if only the barest fraction of a centimeter. He stayed like that for ten minutes, but like most times there was no response.
"I've tried to find your mother, dearest. My people traced her back to Jigu, but she vanished again before they could close in. I told you I won't have her killed, and I won't. I want to bring her back here. I want her to see you, to see what she caused with the stress she put you under. I know that was what caused this. I'm certain of it. I want her to see."
A tear formed on his eye, running down his cheek and dripping onto her arm. He used his other hand to wipe it carefully away before backing up. He wiped his eyes with his fingers, working to regain control of himself. His wife's betrayal had been so hard on both of them. She had schemed to take control of Asimov and kill them both, and she would have gotten away with it if Teal hadn't been the soldier he was.
"I won't be able to stop by again for a few days. I promised the Alliance I would seek out information that they have yet to find. I need to earn Colonel Williams' trust if I'm going to get Origin to help you."
He leaned forward again, kissing her on the forehead. He glanced at the life-support monitor to ensure she was still alive.
"This is a precarious game I'm playing, dearest. My whole life has been a preparation for this. If I make the right moves, then everything will come to fruition. If not, I'm afraid it will be the end of us all."
52
Tio left his daughter two hours later. He hadn't slept since he had come in with Colonel Williams and his crew nearly thirty hours earlier. He was tired, his eyes heavy, but he refused to waste time relaxing.
Not when the life of his daughter and billions of others were depending on him.
He made his way from her room at the top of his mansion to his study on the ground floor, taking a lift that had been installed next to her room to carry him from his workspace up to her at a moment's notice. When the lift door opened, he stepped out into a sparse space of carbonate and composite. There was a ring in the center of the room, twelve feet in diameter and rimmed with projectors, cameras, and lasers. It was of his own design, a means to interact quickly and easily with data while remaining unplugged. An ARR could achieve the same thing so much more easily, and, in fact, its development had antiquated the idea of a system like his over a century ago. It was a shame that the Tetron had already proven how unsafe that approach was.
He made his way to the center of the ring. A pressure plate under the floor measured his weight while the lasers scanned him to ensure access. Then the system turned on, the projectors casting a wall of folders in front of him. He moved his hands and the folders faded, replaced by a list of years. He threw his hands down hard, throwing the list into a sharp scroll towards the past. He had decided he would leave Bethany and Watson to the initial research into where Pulin might have been stashed away. He would focus his efforts on Katherine Asher. Colonel Williams had wanted to know why she had agreed to bring the Goliath into this timeline even though it meant certain death.
He was intent on finding out.
Not because he wanted to answer the question for the Colonel. That was a side benefit. Instead, he wanted to answer the question for himself. He needed to know what she had known. He needed to discover everything he could about that past in order to understand how to steer the future. He wanted humankind to win the war. He wanted to be the one to win it.
Knowledge was power. It was also his greatest asset. M had saved his life because it had known the value of what he knew and what he could come to know. He was Mitchell's most valuable piece, even if the Colonel didn't know it yet. He would use that to his advantage.
Of course, that didn't mean the data was going to be easy to find. He already knew that Origin had gone to great lengths to have Katherine Asher removed from most historical records.
Which meant he wouldn't find anything in the most common places. Fortunately, he had access to some very uncommon data sources. That was the biggest benefit to electronic storage. Once it was recorded somewhere, it was generally recorded for all time, kicking around through the years, in some cases as little more than a speck of dust on an otherwise more important storage medium.
"Query, Katherine Asher," Tio said.
"Querying," a synthesized voice replied.
Tio had considered using something more human sounding and had rejected it. He liked knowing he was communicating with a machine.
"Query Completed. No matches found."
He smiled, expecting that response. It was fortunate for him that he had pulled enough information from Watson during their time working together on the jamming package to locate the video that had led the Riggers to the Goliath.
He moved his hands until he brought a still image from the video to the forefront.
"Visual query, sample A," he said.
"Querying."
He waited while the machine scanned petabyte after petabyte of data, searching every image and video he had stored in his archives for anyone who looked like Katherine. The results slowly began to filter into the holographic field, leaving him immersed in images and videos. He ignored nothing, taking each one in turn. The first was an image of a woman who did look very similar to Katherine Asher naked and in a compromising position with another woman. He didn't rule anything out, but he passed that one to a pile he marked "No."
A video of a woman with a child, a security camera video of a woman buying a movie ticket, a photo of a woman walking across the street. The algorithm pulled back hundreds of hits, slipping them into his view in chronological order. He shifted them into his two buckets, saving any final decision until the search was done.
Hours passed, slipping by so easily that Tio barely noticed them. His eyes burned from the effort, but he refused to stop to rest. As Colonel Williams had noted, time was of the essence, in more ways than one. He would sleep either when he had found what he needed or when he was dead.
"Query completed. Four thousand six hundred seventeen matches found."
Tio bowed his head at the announcement. He had only managed to get through half of the results before the search completed. He blinked a few times, forcing his eyes to tear and sting. He checked his internal implant for the time. Nearly sixteen hours had passed.
"Bethany Davis," he said.
"Contacting," the system replied.
"Good morning, Tio," Bethany said.
"Bethany. Progress?"
"Yes, sir. We've started the upload. We're at ten percent. It's taking longer than we had calculated because of the queries you requested."
He had tasked her to search for Pulin, not only on his name but on the projects he knew to associate him with, and the people that were in his circle of friends and peers. The Federation excelled at making people disappear, and he had no doubt they would have done their best to hide him due to the nature of his work.
If anyone was going to figure out where, it would be him and his team.
And Corporal Watson. He didn't care for the man personally, but Mitchell was right to keep him around. His mind was an invaluable asset.
"How much longer?" he asked.
"Twelve hours."
It wasn't as bad as he feared. He checked his countdown. It put them past the six- day mark. When he was done here, he would have to see if he could speed things up. The timing of the Tetron's arrival was an estimate. He shook off the thought. In truth, they could arrive any minute. They weren't even close to ready for that.
"I'll be down when I am finished here to see if I can help you with anything. Have you seen Admiral Narayan?"
"Yes, sir. She stopped by to check on our progress. I believe she was on her way to see you."
"How long ago?"
"Two hours?"
She would have arrived at his home not long after that. Why hadn't he been told? He laughed at himself. Because he had been so immersed in his search, he had likely not heard his people calling him.
"Thank you, Bethany. I'll be in t
ouch again later."
"Of course, Tio. Bye."
He stepped out of the circle as soon as she was gone.
He needed to find out what Millie wanted and send her on her way.
53
"Thomas, did Admiral Narayan stop by?" Tio asked, finding his assistant at his post near the front door.
"Yes, sir. About an hour and a half ago," Thomas replied. He was a bulky man dressed in a dark suit, with black hair and big eyes.
"Did you try to contact me?"
"Yes, sir. I assumed you were sleeping."
"You sent her away?"
Thomas shook his head. "I tried, sir. She refused to go. I asked her to wait in the library."
Tio turned his head towards the library. He would have preferred if she had been sent back to Bethany, but it would do.
"Good enough. Thank you."
He walked over to the twin wood doors to the library. The Admiral had probably been eager to see a collection of real, physical books. They were an extreme rarity nowadays, with all volumes being converted to digital more than a century earlier. What was left was bought and sold amongst collectors, and he had one of the most impressive collections in the galaxy.
He pushed the left door open slowly, hoping to catch her flipping through the pages of one of the books, or staring at one of the more rare volumes that he kept in protective cases.
Instead, the room was empty.
"Thomas," he said, backing out.
"Yes, sir?"
"She isn't in there."
"What?" Thomas ran over to him, opening the doors and walking in. Tio followed behind him. "I don't understand, sir. I swear I saw her go in here."
"And then what, Thomas? Did you fall asleep?"
"No, sir," Thomas said. His face was tight with fear. "I may have forgotten she was in there, though."
"You forgot she was in there?"
"It's possible, sir. I'm not used to having to watch visitors. You don't usually have any."
Tio couldn't argue with that point. The people who lived on Asimov and came to his home had his trust. He didn't need anyone to keep an eye on them.
