by M. R. Forbes
He tilted the fighter back skyward, pushing the thrusters and lifting ever higher into the air. He made it halfway before he dropped the throttle, rolling the fighter and letting it fall back towards the planet.
His ship had alien technology. Their technology. If M was right and he was supposed to be the one who defeated them, then he would declare his war here and now.
He set a marker on the alien structure as he shot back over the city, doing a tight loop around the tower and coming in low, down a wide thoroughfare between two buildings. He kept one eye on the streets, searching for anything alive down there. He used the other to lock onto the amoeba.
A tone sounded in his mind, and then the left side of the S-17 lit up in the blue energy of his shields. He turned his head, seeing a Dart crouched low in the street behind a burned out car. It was a light, four-legged mech, a reconnaissance model armed only with light machine guns and lasers. It was too small for an embedded cockpit, and so there was a line of clear carbonate positioned near the center of the torso.
No one was driving.
The surprise attack and the sight of the empty cockpit caused him to lose his focus on the target. He shot over it, coming with a dozen meters from the top of the structure, looking down at the swirling surface as he passed over.
A blinding light surrounded the fighter. More alarms sounded, an emergency power spike that threatened to burn out the engines. He cursed, pulling the fighter up hard enough that he felt the pressure of the move in spite of the inertial cancelation, the ship battling physics to grant his request. He watched the altimeter climb, switching to the HUD and checking the theater. The Dart had been idling at low power, camouflaged by the surrounding cityscape.
It wasn't alone.
Twelve new dots appeared on the ground, registering as an assortment of Alliance mechs. They poured from between buildings and rose out of subterranean garages in a near circle around the alien structure, an ambush intended for whoever tried to get near the installation. The helmet buzzed around him, the AI warning him of incoming fire. Missiles, lasers, slugs. Everything the enemy had to send his way. He threw the plane into a drunken spin, trying to wind around the fire and confuse their aim. He watched the shield integrity fall. Sixty percent, forty percent.
Something hit the shields and it threw the fighter sideways, knocking it off course and sending it into a spin. Mitchell grunted through it, closing his eyes. Slow. Steady. He sent the orders to level off through the neural link, letting the AI do the hard work. Lesser pilots might have panicked, tried to make the adjustment themselves and wound up in pieces. The fighter steadied and he banked left and descended, coming down near the eastern edge of York and using the buildings as cover. He stayed low as he gained distance from the city, reaching the edge of the mountains before vectoring up the side, staying close to the surface and rising back towards the atmosphere.
Shields were down to ten percent, the AI unable to restore integrity unless he diverted power to the generators. Power he needed to get back into space and away from Liberty.
He had seen the enemy.
He had fought his first battle.
He had lost.
Badly.
46
The rendezvous point was ten hours distant from Liberty, a random spot in deep space notable only for a small dwarf star that rested nearby. Mitchell neared it with a strong measure of fear. If the Schism was gone, he was going to be alone again, with only enough power remaining to return to Liberty.
The last place he wanted to go.
He had no idea if the ship had survived the attack. When he had reached orbit he found a dozen military starships and a lot of debris. It could have come from the Schism, or it could have come from any of the civilian ships that the aliens had destroyed. It was an observation they didn't have time to make when they arrived, an observation that had returned the thoughts of anger and fear, thoughts that lingered throughout the length of the trip.
He was lucky to be alive. Lucky to have threaded his way through the oncoming Alliance ships. There had been pilots in the Piranhas that came to intercept him, and for a moment he had wanted to believe that they were still in control of the stars. Then he remembered that the aliens could remote control people with neural implants, the same way they had controlled the mechs on the ground. Neural implants. That meant the entire Alliance military, planetary law enforcement, and a host of civilians who could afford the procedure and had the mental aptitude to make use of the tech.
The more he learned about the aliens that M had said would destroy humanity, the more he believed in the future of the past.
It left him wanting to know why. What was the motivation for a race so powerful, so advanced to travel infinite years and then lay waste to mankind? M believed it was to stop him from stopping them from their future domination. How could he have tried to stop them before they had come from the past to be stopped?
He knew he couldn't.
Not unless they already existed.
He tried to work through the problem. He put himself back on Liberty, the night Evan was killed. If the timeline hadn't been changed, he would have killed the assassins and hailed as more of a hero than he already was. He would have attended the gala with Christine. No, he couldn't be sure of that. What if Evan hadn't been killed the last time? Maybe he would have attended the gala on his own, or maybe they would have provided him with a different bodyguard. Maybe it was still Christine? That part wasn't important. What was important was his future. The lie would have been intact, his life as a celebrity would have continued. Enlistment numbers would have gone up, public support for the military would have increased, and the military budgets would increase with it. Politicians would make a strong case for going after the Federation before the Federation could come after them.
The Federation?
Their technology had been advancing more quickly than either the Alliance or the New Terrans, and they had already proven their desire to claim Alliance territories and resources.
Could it be?
He didn't think so. The travelers had attacked Calypso, a Federation dock. They had killed thousands of Federation citizens. It didn't make sense.
Except... Why would you need your weak, past self, if you could come into power as a highly advanced, evolved version from an ancient future?
It was possible. It might even be likely. The problem was that no matter how Mitchell approached the idea, it didn't matter. Whether the aliens had been born from the Federation or not, they had come back here and now, ready to destroy them all. They could have been from another galaxy, from the end of the universe, from the other side of a black hole. The end result was the same.
They weren't sparing the Federation from their extermination.
He watched the FTL countdown hit zero on his p-rat. The S-17 shuddered and fell back into real space.
A blue dot appeared on the HUD. The Schism. He eyeballed it a few seconds later. There were signs of damage running along the aft quarter - scorch marks and a gaping hole in the poly-alloy, the blast that had knocked out main three.
It was still there. They were still alive. That was all that mattered.
A knock on his p-rat.
"Ares," Millie said, sounding more relieved than excited. "Welcome back."
47
Mitchell's first hour back on the Schism was solemn. They didn't even waste time debriefing before arranging a quick memorial for the members of the crew who had died. Razor, Leo, Crunch. Mitchell had only known them in passing, by circumstance rather than design. Shank seemed to know them well, and he spoke for a few minutes on their behalf. Mitchell stood at the front of the proceedings, next to Millie in the spot that Anderson had once claimed. He could feel the tension of the crew. He could sense their fear. This was a group that wasn't accustomed to being on the losing end, and it was obvious that they didn't like it.
That was something they could use.
After the service, the crew was released to cont
inue making what little repairs they could, while Millie brought her senior team together to figure out what they were going to do next. Mitchell was surprised to find Watson there when he arrived, already settled into his favorite spot at the table. It explained why Cormac had been positioned in the corridor with a rifle in his hand. The engineer kept his eyes downcast, his posture submissive.
"Thruster three will never fire again," Singh said. "That whole section is lost to space. We had six other breaches, but the crew managed to seal them pretty quickly. In this case, it helped that they were already suited up and zero-gravity."
"What about the rest of the systems?" Millie asked.
"All other essentials are operational. We did lose one of the liquid recycling systems, so we'll have to be careful with water and showers."
"One shower per week. Thirty-two ounces of water per day." She hesitated. "And tell them they need to shut down the distillery. At least temporarily."
"They aren't going to be happy to lose the crude," Shank said.
"Do they want to win this war, or do they want to drink their way through it?" she asked.
"According to Lopez, we have enough rations on board to last us two months," Millie said. "That's plenty of food right now, but I'm beginning to question whether there will be anywhere to resupply it by the time we run out. I'm not going to cut the men off just yet, but we need to consider moving to half-rations sooner rather than later."
"I don't think crew will miss it," Ilanka said, joking about the taste of their diet. The staple food was a nutritionally perfect combination of carbs, proteins, vitamins, and minerals that came in both solid and liquid form. Once a week they would have something cooked - poultry, meats, vegetables. Nothing as delicious or as fancy as what Millie had served, but a week of the rations made the flavor pretty competitive.
"They'll miss it when it's all gone," Mitchell said. "It's better to tell them now, and get all the bad news out of the way."
"You're right. I'll make an announcement. We'll halve everything up front. That goes for all of us as well."
"What about your pheasant?" Ilanka said.
"My personal stores will be added to the ship's larder. I understand that this isn't the time for special treatment." She turned to Mitchell. "It's safe to assume you weren't able to locate Major Arapo?"
"No. I knocked her a few times. She didn't answer. Then I was ambushed by an Alliance mech that didn't have a pilot."
"What?" Ilanka said.
"No pilot. I could see the cockpit was empty. The enemy is able to control them remotely somehow. I think it has to do with the structure that was in the middle of the city. It looked like it could have been a command center." He opened a channel to them on his p-rat and transmitted the visuals he had captured.
"Amazing," Watson said. "Stunning."
"What is it made of?" Shank asked.
"It looks like a nervous system," Singh said.
The statement caught Mitchell's attention. Millie didn't miss it either.
"A nervous system?" she asked.
"Yes. Nucleus. Dendrites."
"There's only one of them," Watson said. "You can't have one in a system. Where are the axons?"
"I don't know," Singh said, glancing over at him, her eyes narrowed slightly. She looked as annoyed as Mitchell had ever seen her.
"Hmmm," Ilanka said. "They could be underground. Is a big planet. Maybe it is spread out?"
"It's possible," Singh replied. "We'd need a higher resolution image or ground piercing radar to make that determination."
"We aren't going to get either of those things," Millie said. "We barely made it out of there alive."
"I can't help but think of the people there," Ilanka said. "Uzhasnyy."
"What about the civilians?" Shank asked. "There are what, something like two hundred million people on the planet?"
"There were a lot of bodies in the streets," Mitchell said. "Not enough to account for everyone. I don't think they killed them all."
"We witnessed their firepower," Millie said. "They could have destroyed the planet. They could have wiped out everything. Why didn't they?"
"Maybe that's not how they work?" Mitchell kept the focus of his left eye on the image of the alien structure, in the forefront of his p-rat. "When I flew over the nucleus, it caused a massive power spike in the S-17. I think the only thing that saved me was that it was made with their tech. Any other ship would have exploded from the overload."
"A power spike?" Watson asked, lifting his head. "Interesting. It could be that they're using Liberty as a foothold planet, a place to recharge their fleet. The nucleus may be a generator of some kind."
"The idea makes sense," Mitchell said. "They can't go back home, which means they need to be self-sufficient here and now. They need to claim resources to support their way of life. Liberty may be their ideal."
"Why not leave one of their own ships there?" Ilanka asked. "If it is that important, why not stay to defend?"
"We don't know how big their fleet is," Shank said. "They might not have enough ships. Anyway, they seemed to be doing just fine using our own war machine against us."
Mitchell felt the chill run through him again. "That isn't just true on Liberty. They don't need to fight us at all. Not when they can transmit to the neural implants and make a large swath of the human race their slaves."
"It's not a random swath either," Millie said, her face tight, her voice soft. She had just come to the same conclusion that Mitchell had during his flight to the rendezvous point. "It's the entire Alliance military. It could be the Federation and the New Terrans too. We all use the implants." Her eyes found Mitchell. "If you hadn't warned us to change the encryption, we might have ended up the same way."
"It was M who warned me. He knew it was going to happen. I didn't imagine that it would be done on this scale."
"They know about the Schism," Watson said. "I captured a band of unidentified transmissions, one of which is highly probable to be the detonation signal. It triggered as soon as we dropped, almost before I could initialize the rig. They're tapped into military channels."
"They could have complete control of the military channels," Millie said. "They don't even need to control every soldier. Take the right command personnel from each government, create orders to have them attack one another, and then sit back and wait. Chancellors, Prime Ministers, Generals..."
She tailed off. Mitchell knew she was thinking of General Cornelius. Her father. He would be a prime target for the aliens if they were planning on using such a strategy.
"They also know you came to Liberty," Singh said to Mitchell. "Not only that you came. You had to send your communications through the standard military channel. The same one they're already using. They know you were there, and they know who you came for."
A heavy silence fell across the room. It was a small detail that the rest of them probably would have missed. A small detail with big implications.
"Do you think they'll put two and two together?" Millie asked.
"If Mitchell has an interest in Christine Arapo, and the enemy has an interest in him, I think they'll want to determine where their paths intersect. If they can figure out what the Schism was doing near Liberty, and I believe it is safe to assume that they can, then yes, I do believe they'll put two and two together."
"Which means if there's anything we can use to find the Goliath in the data you pulled, they'll be able to use it too."
Shank groaned. "What if they beat us to it? What if they destroy the Goliath before we ever have a chance to find out if it can help us? Captain, I think we should give up on finding the lost starship and go full-speed for Earth. We need to warn them now and give the bulk of our forces a chance to mount a counter-offensive."
"How do we know enemy hasn't already reached Earth?" Ilanka said. "Their ships are much faster than this one. They must have beat us to Liberty by days."
"If they've already reached Earth, then the war is over before it's ev
en started."
"Not if we find Goliath," Mitchell said.
Shank got to his feet, his anger flaring. "How do you know, Mitch? Because your alternate self told you so? Maybe he was lying? Maybe this whole thing is one big damn setup to send us in the wrong direction."
"Because we're such a concern to them?" Millie said, coming to Mitchell's defense. "Come on, Shank. We have some skills but don't forget that we aren't here by choice. We're flying a weaponless prison ship with a contingent of two dozen army grunts with no ground to pound, two pilots, a pedophile, and a mass murderer. Do you really think the advanced alien race that invented time travel gives two shits about us if Mitchell isn't on board?"
"So maybe we need to get Mitchell off-board," Shank said. "Sorry, Mitch, but I'm serious. Take your ship, go find Goliath. I'll be rooting for you the whole way. We can get back to Earth and get the brass there to update their implants, and then we can start fighting back. It's my people who keep dying."
That was the crux of his outburst. The three dead today, the others at Calypso. They were under Shank's direct command. He wasn't taking their loss easy.
Millie circled the table to stand with the soldier. She put her bionic hand on his shoulder and squeezed, gently. "They're our people." She paused, staring into his eyes. "And I want to avenge them. I want to kill the bastards who took their lives. If finding Goliath means I can start the killing, then I'm going to find Goliath."
Shank's anger faded, and he broke down into a smile. "Now you're talking, Captain."
She squeezed his arm again, and he took his seat.
"We need to find Goliath before they do," Millie said. "This is a team effort. Watson, Singh, I need the data we pulled parsed and loaded so that we can all review it. One of us might catch something another missed. Not just the people in this room. Every eyeball, every ear in the ship needs to be on this. If there's nothing, then they'll get nothing too. If there's something... We're too slow to beat them in FTL. We need to beat them here."
