by M. R. Forbes
Published by Quirky Algorithms
Seattle, Washington
This novel is a work of fiction and a product of the author's imagination.
Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by M.R. Forbes
All rights reserved.
Cover illustration by Tom Edwards
http://tomedwardsdmuga.blogspot.com
Contents
• Copyright • About The End of Liberty
XENO-1 • 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 • 26 • 27 • 28 • 29 • 30 • 31 • 32 • 33 • 34 • 35 • 36 • 37 • 38 • 39 • 40 • 41 • 42 • 43 • 44 • 45 • 46 • 47 • 48 • 49 • 50 • 51 • 52 • 53 • 54 • 55 • 56 • 57 • 58 • 59 • 60 • 61 • 62 • 63 • 64 • 65 • 66
• Other Books • Join the Mailing List • Thank You • About the Author
About The End of Liberty
An ancient starship discovered...
An eternal enemy revealed...
An impossible mission to save humankind...
The Goliath has been discovered, the first of its secrets revealed. Now the race is on for Captain Mitchell Williams and his crew to return to Liberty and recover Origin's lost memories before the enemy can complete their violent conquest.
It's a mission with a near-zero chance of success. A mission that only the Riggers would be crazy enough to accept, and skilled enough to survive. A mission that will test the limits of Mitchell's mind, body, and soul, and force him to make an impossible choice that could cost the lives of millions.
This is war, and if he can't win a battle for a single planet, how can he possibly change the outcome of a conflict that has raged beyond eternity?
Where did it come from? Damned if anyone knew. Space, sure. That much was never in doubt. Alien? Of course. The whole time the world was fighting over it, the scientists were wondering. Asking questions. Trying to work it out. If an alien craft had crashed on planet Earth, it meant that us humans weren't alone, and that there was something out there that was more advanced, more evolved, and maybe more intelligent. Definitely more intelligent, if television those days was any judge.
How many times did they call for the fighting to stop? How many times did they ask the right questions, and worry about what the tech could do for humankind, instead of what it could do for this or that nation? How many times did they wonder, loud and in public, if the aliens who lost the ship would ever come along, trying to find it?
The fighting did end, of course. Those very same scientists did get their crack at the wreckage. It didn't take long for them to begin to unravel the secrets. It was all there in ones and zeroes. In the simple, glorious, holy and universal language of math.
It was as if God had sent the ship Himself and spoke unto the masses, "thou shalt discover the stars."
- Paul Frelmund, "XENO-1"
1
Major Christine Arapo crouched against the inner wall of the building, holding her M97 carbine tight against her chest. Her hair was disheveled, her forehead was sweating, her arms were bare and dirty. Almost every inch of her was covered in some measure of blood and grime.
None of it was hers.
A tight beam of clean light pierced the darkness of the space where she was hiding. They were searching for her, and getting closer.
She sniffled out softly to clear a bit of dust that was lodged in her nose, lifting the carbine a little higher so she could see the readout on the left side. She was down to fifty rounds. She knew the enemy had more than fifty soldiers.
A lot more than fifty.
She still wasn't completely sure what had happened. Every event from the moment she had rescued Mitchell from being outed as a fraud by Tamara King, to assisting him in escaping the reach of the UPA military police seemed almost like a dream to her, a waking dream where she could observe her actions in a strange, millisecond delayed hindsight. She was only able to question them once it was too late to do anything about it.
She knew it was still her. Her decisions. Her control. She didn't regret what she had done. When the MPs had come for her to take her in for questioning, she hadn't offered excuses. She had let them bind her hands and take her back to base, past the blown-out entrance to the hotel's basement where a number of Liberty's finest had died.
At Mitchell's hand.
Because she had helped him get away. Because she had to.
There was nothing random about what Mitchell had done or what she had done. It wasn't an isolated incident, a beginning and an end.
It was only the beginning.
They had brought her back to the Space Marine base in York. They had placed her under guard. General Cornelius had come to her a few hours later, begging her for answers. Why had she, with the spotless record and the multiple commendations, with all of the trust and respect and power of UPA Command ready to back her up, helped a suspected rapist and proven fraud escape justice?
She risked a smile at the thought. Justice? There was none. Not here. Not now.
Christine watched the beam of light sweep across the floor in front of her. It was made of polished stone, and the light made too many shadows and reflections against it. She was motionless, breathless, her eyes shifting back and forth, searching for any sign that she might be revealed in it.
She could hear the boots now, the slightly off step of soldiers in light exo casing the area in tight formation. She shifted her arms, bringing the muzzle of the coilgun down and aiming it towards the sounds. Her finger eased onto the trigger. She was at enough of a disadvantage to be without the mechanical musculature that enhanced their strength and speed. She was also without her p-rat, having disabled it during her escape from the York barracks. She didn't know how she knew which tools to grab from Medical, or how to use them on herself to break the link between the small computer and the secondary implant in her brain. She just did.
There hadn't been any time to wonder about it since.
Once she had gotten away from the base, it had been easy to blend in with the crowd. Disappearing was one of her simpler skills in a much wider array. She had thought to stay in York, to track communications and try to determine where Mitchell had gone and if there was any way she could reach him. She had thought to continue her own personal research, driven by a curiosity that had plagued her for as long as she could remember, as though that would somehow get her out of the mess she had found herself in.
Artificial intelligence. It was hardly a new concept. In fact, it was one that had been conquered by humankind years ago. The skies of York were policed by self-regulating drones, the streets navigated by autonomous vehicles. Most households had a service bot of some kind or other, and even the military used AI to good effect. Such research was more akin to a history lesson.
Except...
Anti-AI sentiment was growing across the Alliance, a new revolution stirring. Tasks that had long ago been abandoned by people and turned over to learning machines were being reverted to their former handlers. New advances were being lambasted in the media and discouraged at all levels of the scientific community. "The return of the golden age," some had claimed.
Christine didn't trust it. She didn't believe in it. Her instincts and her training told her that the sentiments were misplaced. That the collective consciousness was being misdirected. Why? To what end? She didn't know. She was certain there was something to find there, something to learn.
Something important.
The soldiers were getting close. Too close to avoid being spotted if she re
mained. Christine slid along the wall, back towards the open lift shaft she had spotted on her way in. She was deliberate with every step, careful to stay quiet and keep from finding herself bathed in the light. She had the carbine ready in case it was needed.
She nearly tripped over a body, cursing in silence for not identifying the obstacle earlier. A civilian, a white-haired woman in a suit. They had killed her because she didn't have an implant, and she was too old to be useful for anything else.
She had only been back in York for a day when the madness had started. When David Avalon, Prime Minister of the Delta Quadrant, had made a surprise appearance on Tamara King's stream and declared martial law. When the combined force of the military and law enforcement units from around the globe had started rounding up civilians.
She had been curious at the announcement, and as eager as any of the other residents of the planet for answers.
Then she watched one police officer shoot another in the head at point-blank range.
Then she had seen the people wandering from their homes, their meals, their jobs, out into the street and away in perfect lockstep.
Then the military had moved in on the ones, like her, who remained. The ones who didn't have an implant.
Or had disabled it.
They grabbed the adults and killed the children and elderly. Without conscience. Without remorse. They swept through York like a tide, leaving the city a nearly empty shell and searching for the stragglers who had avoided them.
Stragglers like Christine.
From a dark corner at the top of a thirty-story building, she had seen the growing light in the sky, blue flame and liquid metal descending towards the city center.
She knew it then. She felt it for the first time she could ever remember. It was a feeling she had avoided during her first live-fire exercise, her first drop into an enemy war zone, her first run in full exo across a verified ambush point. A feeling she had even brushed aside the first time she shared a bed with a strange man in a strange place because that was what the mission required. A feeling that had always existed at the fringe of her understanding but had never truly made itself known.
Fear.
They had come.
2
She reached the lift shaft, craning her neck to see in. The power had gone out two days ago, the mains shut down and the backups failing. They were still damaged from the Federation's earlier assault on the planet. The lifts had followed protocol, dropping to the base of the shaft and leaving nothing but a smooth square tunnel above them.
It wasn't a good escape route. There was nowhere to go but down, and she had thought hiding out on the fourth floor would be safer. That there was no way they could find her with so many places to search.
She had thought wrong.
She had seen ships leaving the planet in the days after the strange one had arrived. Jumpships and transports laden with soldiers, being sent off to - where? Other planets in the Delta Quadrant? The Federation? The only thing she was certain of was that the soldiers, the police, even Tamara King and the Prime Minister, weren't in control of themselves. Watching the way the people had moved as one, the way those without augmented reality receivers had been gunned down, that much was clear.
Her eyes scanned the abandoned office, the darkness causing everything to take on an unfocused appearance. She needed somewhere to hide, some cover to protect her if she were discovered. She didn't want to be discovered. She was alone against so many.
The light swung towards the elevator, pausing a few feet from where she stood. She froze with her back at the edge of the shaft and slowly adjusted the position of the carbine, pointing it back towards the source of the beam. She kept hoping they would give up the hunt, call off the search, and move on. There were others still out there. Some of them were even fighting back. She could hear the gunfire and explosions. She had seen the mechs moving through the streets to combat them. Once people figured out the alternatives, resistance was inevitable.
It was also going to be short-lived. They couldn't stand up to an army. They couldn't pilot any of the heavier machines without an implant. The best they could do was shoot, run, hide, and repeat.
Christine had tried only to hide. To stay concealed and seek a way off of Liberty. There was no way off, she discovered. There was no way out. And they continued coming, continued seeking, continued closing in. It was as though they were looking for a single thing on the entire planet, a lonely star in a dangerous universe.
Her.
She wasn't sure of it, but the dogged pursuit had left her to wonder. Was it because of her role in Special Ops? Was it because she had high-level clearance? Did they know the work she had done in the shadowy corners of military propriety and legality? Did they know what she had been searching for?
Or did it have something to do with Mitchell?
She cursed under her breath when the light continued angling towards her, taking away the few options she had left. She fired the first of her fifty remaining darts through the corner of a wall and into the soldier behind it, continuing to wonder.
She had helped him escape, despite herself. She had even kissed him. Mitchell "Ares" Williams, the non-hero of the Battle for Liberty, a man she had found juvenile, irresponsible, and arrogant. A man whose judgment was based more on sex appeal than rational, civilized intelligence.
She crouched and turned, shifting her aim six inches to the left, firing a second round. The carbine was almost silent as it fired, save for the sonic boom of the dart as it left the barrel at high velocity. It tore through the wall and into a second soldier.
They were stupid to be moving in a standard formation. She didn't even need to see them to hit them.
Of course, Mitchell was handsome. And there was no way to deny that his aptitude as a pilot was at the top of the charts. His dossier suggested his intelligence was solid though she couldn't resolve the disconnect between the paper version and the real thing. But to kiss him? Maybe there was one thing she regretted from the dream-state she had been in.
Two more shots dropped two more soldiers. She still couldn't see them, guessing their position by sound and memory, thankful that the weapon she had managed to capture was up to the task. Even light exo made too much noise for the hunt.
She winced each time she heard a grunt, and then a thud. She was killing soldiers, her brothers and sisters who had no control over what they were doing. She reminded herself that they were slaves and that given a choice they would never want to remain that way.
She told herself she was doing them a favor.
Silence.
She didn't move, staying near the shaft and listening. No footsteps, no clattering, no signs of mechs outside the building. Her eyes traced the beam of light from where it had settled on a far wall back to the source, to the helmet of the soldier she had shot just below the lantern. Her dart had plunged through the armor, through the head, and out the other side.
It couldn't be that easy.
Could it?
She waited, counting breaths and listening. Once she reached one hundred, she started inching towards the downed soldier. She wanted his weapon, his ammo, his supplies. She would take as much as she could carry.
She was almost silent padding across the floor, keeping her carbine leveled, her finger on the trigger. She glanced out towards the windows that bordered the outer edge of the room. No light. No motion.
It took her ten minutes to cross the ten meters of distance. She didn't make or hear a sound. When she reached the bodies, she crouched low and examined the soldier's firearm. A standard issue assault rifle, a railgun with an adjustable dampening field at the end of the muzzle that could be used to change the projectile velocity. It was a good weapon for fighting in a range of theaters, including places where too much stopping power could be catastrophic.
It was a downgrade from the sheer brute force of the carbine, but an upgrade in terms of overall usefulness. It also had a full magazine, and two more rested on the
grunt's belt.
She started reaching for it. Something in her mind told her it was a bad idea. This was too easy. Way too easy. She should know better. She should be smarter than this.
She pushed herself back with all the strength in her legs, turning and sprinting away. Stupid. She was so stupid.
The drone dropped to the window and opened fire, revealing itself behind the assault. Carbonate didn't shatter. First it melted and cracked, and then the projectiles broke through, turning the spot where she had been crouching, and the body she had left behind, into pulp.
She raced for the shaft, throwing her hand back and opening fire with the carbine, absorbing the stress of the recoil with her forearm. Her aim was non-existent, and she didn't think she was even close to hitting the wedge-shaped vehicle. It was getting closer to hitting her, the slugs chewing up the floor, getting close enough that the stone was chipping up and cutting into her ankles.
She saw the opening to the lift in front of her. There was nothing there but a four-story drop. Maybe she would survive the fall, but there was no way to escape with a pair of broken legs.
A bullet hit the ground an inch to her left, making the decision easier. She grunted as she threw herself forward, diving into the dark, gaping mouth of the shaft as the projectiles exploded the ground behind her.
Her body smacked into the smooth wall at the far side of the shaft and she began to fall.
3
"I don't believe it," Singh said. Her voice was a monotone whisper.
Mitchell watched the transport headed towards them, an uncontrollable smile growing across his face. "Origin, can you open a channel?"
