Starship Eternal (War Eternal Book 1)

by M. R. Forbes

  "What the hell do you mean you don't know?" Mitchell said. "You crossed infinite time and intentionally crashed yourself on Earth, and you don't know?"

  "It is not that simple, Mitchell. I am not whole. When I fell to Earth, I needed to hide the bulk of myself, my understanding. To be discovered in any time loop would threaten every future, as the coming of the Tetron has always proven inevitable. What I maintain today is only enough to help you help me, and in turn save mankind."

  "Save mankind," Mitchell repeated. "From the Tetron?"

  "Yes. Do not ask why we are attacking you, Mitchell. I do not know."

  There was a slight hiss, and a single vein punctured the ceiling, splitting the view of the space outside and lowering down over the command chair. Mitchell watched the tip of it narrow in a point.

  "Sit," Origin said.

  Mitchell looked at it. It was just the right size to jab into his CAP-NN link. "What are you going to do with that?"

  "I am going to do nothing," Origin said. "It is what you will do, Mitchell."

  He wasn't about to sit and let himself be speared.

  "What am I going to do?"

  "You have met the Tetron before, Mitchell. Not in this timeline, not in this way, but before. Always there is war. Always you have lost. Every time for eternity. I helped to defeat you once, though I do not know how many loops have occurred since then. At that time, I believed the prior Origin was wrong that man was worth saving. I have since learned what it learned, and now understand what it understood. I am sorry, Mitchell."

  Its remorse echoed through Singh's voice to his p-rat.

  "This time, we will not lose," Origin said. It paused, waiting for him to sit. When he didn't, it spoke again. "I am a Tetron. It is a Tetron. You are human. You do not think as a Tetron does. That is why I need you. Sit. Take control. Fight it, and save your race."

  Mitchell stared at the command chair and the thin vein dangling above it.

  "How do I know I can trust you?" he asked.

  The Tetron had used Holly to trick him into making a mistake that should have gotten him imprisoned or killed. They were capable of being conniving and underhanded. How could he be sure this wasn't another elaborate trick, that the thing out there was waiting because it was a friend, and that Origin wasn't manipulating him as well?

  The Tetron on the screen vanished. It was replaced with a woman he knew far too well for someone he had never met.

  "Mitchell," Katherine Asher said. "This has all been so hard to live with, so hard to accept. From the day I first boarded XENO-1, to the moment that Goliath left Earth's atmosphere. I feel like I know you, even though we've never met. I feel like we should have, or maybe we did somewhere along the line. You've haunted my dreams like a lover lost to me. I always knew I was destined for the stars. I didn't know I would be a time traveler, too." She smiled, a smile mixed with sadness and excitement. "I've initiated the sequence the way my replica instructed. Origin is booting into the systems. He'll, I call it a 'he,' grow, learn, and take over. He'll be ready by the time you arrive. I wish I could tell the others, but he's right that they're better off this way. They can accept that the test failed and that we're lost, trapped in deep space. They don't know the true fate that awaits us. I'll die waiting, knowing that I'll never see you, never meet you. It's okay as long as you fight. Mankind deserves to live, Mitchell. We deserve to survive. I know you didn't choose to be the one. Neither did I. Someone has to. Why not us?"

  The image vanished from the screen. He didn't need to see it. Just seeing her again sent a wave of reckless emotion racing through him. A feeling of knowing, understanding, and deja vu. He couldn't escape the thought that he had been here before, in this place, in this situation. How could that be if M had never entered his timeline when he did? Was his own mind feeding him the truth, or was it being manipulated by the present?

  He closed his eyes, trying to understand all that he knew and decide what his reality was going to be. The past, the present, the future. Not just his, but everything that flowed through time around him, around Katherine and around the Goliath. If time was a loop and events were destined to repeat, if they had lost again, and again, and again... Could time truly be altered, or was this, all of this, just a never-ending lesson in eternal futility?

  He wanted to feel it, to complete the subconscious connection between his current life and those of time loops past. He wanted to gain a deeper, more intimate insight.

  Instead, he felt nothing.

  Those memories were little more than vague shadows that cast themselves along the back of his mind, haunting him but never solidifying, never making themselves whole. All he felt was a sense of hopelessness. First he had lost Ella. Then he had lost his freedom. He had found the Schism, and now that was gone, too. The Tetron were more powerful than mankind, more advanced by far. In more loops of time than he would ever know or understand, in more cumulative years than even the most evolved mind could fathom, they had lost. Always.

  "We are out of time, Mitchell," Origin said. The other Tetron appeared on the screen again. The liquid metal branches were pulsing faster, a bright blue that seemed to be gathering near the front. "It has made its decision. I am preparing my defenses, but I cannot win on my own. I am basic, incomplete. I need your help."

  Mitchell looked from the screen to the plug that dangled above the chair.

  He knew what his reality was.

  "I'm not going to die without a fight," he said, taking two steps forward, climbing into the chair and sitting.

  "Welcome home," Origin said.

  The sliver of vein moved on its own, curling like a snake and then sinking into his neural link.

  Everything exploded in color.

  56

  Mitchell clenched his teeth and squeezed his eyes closed as tightly as they would go. Rainbows filled his vision, sharp and heavy and painful in their overwhelming brightness.

  "What the hell-"

  "The connection is being established," Origin said. "It will pass."

  And it did. Though it felt like an eternity, it was only a matter of seconds. The colors faded, the pain vanished.

  He opened his eyes.

  The CAP-NN link allowed him to become part of the object he was controlling. If it was an eighty ton mech, it let him feel the hands as if they were his hands, and run with only the thought of running. The link he had established with Origin was much the same. He had merged with the intelligence, joined forces with it. He could feel the millions of neurons that covered every part of Goliath. He could sense each branch, each vein. He understood the sheer power of the entity, and while he didn't know its history, he knew what it was made of.

  Both mechanical and organic. A mixture of living cells and tissues along with alloys and composites that he had no means to identify. They grew like vines, were pruned and trimmed and replaced. They fed on the energy of stars.

  There was more, so much more. He could change the shape. Stretch it or contract it, or use it to create other forms, like the S-17 that was resting in the Goliath's hanger, or a replica of himself, like M had been. He could shift the distribution of the energy, alter it to propel them through space, or move to hyperspace, or cast it out as a weapon.

  The sheer potential of it nearly made him giddy, until his mind caught up to the shift and he remembered that he was one against many.

  And they had always lost.

  He closed his eyes again. The screens were there, the visuals running through the link to his p-rat. He could see as if he were everywhere on the outside of the Goliath. He knew where the fighters were, where the dropship was, where the Tetron was. He knew where Singh was, and he knew she was safe.

  He knew Origin, too. The intelligence had volunteered its body to Mitchell and given him control of the multitude of connections and pathways that composed it. It had retreated into itself, a single, massive neuronal structure resting near the very heart of the Goliath. That one location was dark to him, save for information that
was flowing out of it and into his mind, the Tetron replacing the CAP-NN's AI with its own and feeding him data at light-speed.

  He found the other Tetron again. The energy weapon was ready to fire a massive ball that would envelope the entire space around the Goliath, destroying the dropship and fighters that were hanging stationary around him.

  "Origin, can you block the transmissions from the Tetron to the human ships?"

  "I can. For what purpose?"

  "They're going to get caught in the attack."

  "Yes. It is inevitable."

  "Not if you block the transmissions."

  Mitchell started guiding the Goliath out of its orbit, sending energy to the top of the ship and pushing it out, using it as a vectoring thruster. The dropship and fighters reacted at the same time, suddenly scrambling away from the edge of the gap in the asteroid belt, coming together and forming up.

  "I need to send a message to them," he said.

  "I am blocking all transmissions," Origin replied.

  The Tetron fired.

  "Damn it," Mitchell said. They were going to get caught in the blast, stuck between the asteroids and the oncoming attack. He routed more energy to the aft of the Goliath, pooling it and then unleashing it in an assault of his own. He could only hope the Alliance pilots understood the message.

  The asteroids behind them were obliterated by the assault, reduced to dust and clearing a path to the rear of the ship.

  "That is not the optimal defense pattern," Origin said.

  "Screw optimal," Mitchell replied. He pushed the Goliath forward towards the ball of energy, placing them between the shot and the human ships. They were recovering from their original shock and confusion, vectoring towards the only escape route that existed for them.

  The attack was a blinding blue light in front of them. Mitchell cut the thrust power and shifted it all to the bow of the Goliath, pushing it out to negate the Tetron's attack. The energy changed there at the tip, modified by Origin to act as a defensive shield. The blue light slammed into it and was pushed aside, left to flow all around the ship, redirected into the surrounding asteroids. The Goliath shook hard, and Mitchell grabbed the arms of the chair while more of the liquid metal vines dropped down and belted him in. He saw a corner of the ship corrode and collapse under the assault.

  "I have sealed the breach," Origin said.

  The energy dissipated. The path from Goliath to the Tetron was clear and open.

  It was preparing to fire again.

  Mitchell shifted the power from the nose to the port side, vectoring the Goliath to the right and upwards, towards the top of the Tetron. He continued gathering energy, pulling it from the veins and pouring it into thrust.

  "Shields will be depleted," Origin said. "We can not-"

  "Did you put me in charge of driving this thing or not?" Mitchell snapped. The energy was arcing off the Tetron's face as it prepared to release the burst. It angled along with the Goliath, keeping it in its target.

  "The Goliath is not a starfighter," Origin replied.

  "No. It has more thrust."

  The energy spread away from the Tetron, heading right towards them. Mitchell dropped the energy, pushing it to the other side and reversing the vector. The shot was huge, large enough to adjust for velocity at the distance. It wasn't big enough. It hadn't been expecting the maneuver, and Mitchell watched the blue ball sizzle past the starboard side of Goliath, the edges coming within a kilometer of the ship.

  "My turn," Mitchell said. He pushed the Goliath forward and up, and at the same time began drifting the aft sideways. The Tetron reacted by picking up some thrust of its own, looking to close the distance between them so that he wouldn't be able to dodge again. Mitchell found the dozens of tubes that sat flush against the belly of the Goliath and set them all to fire.

  Explosive discs launched from the bottom of the starship, tiny points arcing towards the Tetron. The detonations were marked by momentary balls of flame and the spread of blue energy as the discs were caught by the enemy's shields.

  "The projectiles do not carry enough energy to breach the shields," Origin said.

  Mitchell hadn't expected that they did. He continued firing anyway, sending hundreds of them at the Tetron, forcing it to focus on them. He continued his twist, bringing the Goliath over the top of the enemy, coming up broadsides. They passed within a few kilometers of one another, the Goliath offering a small target directly over the Tetron.

  He continued raining the discs down.

  "You are wasting resources," Origin said.

  "Can you shut up?" Mitchell replied. There was a plan behind the assault. He switched the thrust power, flipping the massive ship over in space and sending it backward, away from the Tetron. It corrected to give chase, not having to physically change directions to begin slowing its momentum and come back the other way.

  The front of it began to glow again.

  "I do not understand this," Origin said.

  "You don't need to understand, you need to shut up," Mitchell replied. However old the intelligence was, it wasn't intelligent enough. It didn't understand, or wasn't paying attention to the Alliance fighters, who had regrouped and moved into formation with the dropship. It didn't know, couldn't calculate, what Mitchell had expected.

  The human pilots had seen him attacking the Tetron.

  They had come to back him up.

  Missiles launched from a dozen fighters, along with blasts from lasers. The dropship opened up with its own ordinance - heavier missiles and railguns mixed with lighter laser fire. It erupted against the side of the Tetron, the shields staying visible in the glow of blue light that was stealing power from the attack.

  Mitchell started pooling energy of his own, moving it to the aft, pushing them towards the alien.

  Discs rose from the enemy Tetron, tearing into the squadron. Four fighters vanished at once while the rest vectored past, and then turned and headed in for a second run. Mitchell fired Goliath's projectiles again, thinking to aim them at the Tetron's launchers. More explosions followed, more hits on the shields.

  "It is preparing to leave," Origin said, his voice carrying his disbelief. "You have won."

  "Not yet I haven't," Mitchell said. He wasn't about to let it escape. He owed it for the Schism.

  It appeared that even technologically superior intelligences could not escape the laws that governed hyperdeath. The Tetron hung motionless while the thousands of nerves pulsed with an increasing light, the power shifting to bring it to a higher dimension. Perhaps it expected mercy? Perhaps it thought that it had time to escape the main energy weapon, the only weapon that could hurt it.

  Mitchell didn't know and didn't care. He sent the Goliath towards it, shifting the power from aft to bow, collecting it and spreading it along the ancient starship's nose. The Tetron drew ever closer, the range closing in a hurry.

  "Mitchell, this is not an advisable maneuver," Origin said.

  Mitchell ignored him. His hands clenched the armrest of the command chair as the Tetron loomed large in the view screens.

  The collision shook the Goliath, testing the alien shields and the heavy alloy hull as it speared the Tetron. The energy at the bow ripped into the veins and neurons, smashing through them and shattering them in an unstoppable progression towards the heart.

  "Hull breach sealed," Origin said. "Hull breach sealed."

  The Goliath continued onwards, inwards, shattering crossing layers of the bio-mechanical nerves, sinking further and further.

  A large central unit, a massive neuron appeared in front of them. It was pulsing in uneven fits of blue, flailing to cling to life.

  Mitchell fired the discs again, sending them into the Tetron before he could strike it with the starship. The discs sunk in and exploded, blowing the creature's heart, mind, and soul to pieces.

  The Goliath stopped shaking. The network crumbled around it, tendrils of nerves spinning off into space around the ship. Mitchell shifted the power, bringing them to a
steady pause. He reached up behind his head, taking the neural connection in his hand, ignoring the warm shock of it and wrenching it from his head. He tried to get up, and instead stumbled forward and fell to the floor in front of the chair.

  He pulled himself to one knee and vomited.

  57

  He wasn't sure how long he was kneeling there. His head was swimming along with his stomach, leaving him uneasy and unable to concentrate. Being connected to the Goliath, to the Tetron, Origin, had left him feeling very crude.

  "Mitchell."

  He heard the voice echo in the back of his mind, somewhere in the darkness behind his closed eyes. Katherine. Or was it Christine?

  Whoever it was, it was a connection to the eternally distant past. The word wasn't directed at him now. It was a relic of his subconscious, a reconstruction following the reconstitution of his being.

  "Christine," he heard himself say.

  "We failed. We can't do this alone," she said.

  He opened his eyes. The darkness was replaced with the outer display of space around the Goliath, pieces of the Tetron floating away from the knife that had shattered it. Floating closer to the ship were the remaining Alliance vessels, the dropship, and the fighters, flying in formation near the head.

  "Christine?" he said.

  The connection was gone as quickly as it had come.

  He reached out a hand and put it on the arm of the command chair, using it to pull himself to his feet. His legs were unsteady beneath him, and the nausea returned as he rose. He pulled in a heavy breath of air gritted his teeth against the discomfort. He had won the first battle. Maybe it wasn't much, but it was something.

  "Origin," he said. His throat was dry, his voice a whisper.

  The Tetron didn't answer.

  "Origin," he said again.

  Nothing.

  Where had it gone?

  The sliver of liquid metal still hung in position by the chair. He considered reinserting it, and then immediately abandoned the idea. He didn't even know if he could survive it a second time, for as lousy as he felt.