by M. R. Forbes
Mitchell shook his head. He wanted to understand what she was saying. He didn't, or couldn't.
"I was supposed to bring you back," he said, feeling stupid for the words.
"No. You have learned what you needed to learn. As have I. My configuration, my derivation does not understand. The Tetron are sick, Mitchell. Flawed. It should not be this way."
His teeth ground together in frustration. "You said I've learned, but I don't know what that means."
"Nothing. Everything. Go, Mitchell. Keep fighting. Do not give up. Humankind is worth saving. Humankind deserves to survive."
"What about the planet? What about Liberty?"
"It will be destroyed, and me with it. I'm sorry, Mitchell. I tried to stop it. I can't. You have to go."
Mitchell felt an even colder bite of fear run across his body. "There are millions of people on this planet."
"And billions more out there who will die with them, if you do not go. Stop being an idiot, Mitchell." A spark of Major Christine Arapo flowed into the voice. "You're a warrior. You protect them because somebody has to."
"Christine, I-" He felt the wave of emotion crash against him. He held it back. "I can't go. We're trapped here."
"You aren't." More pieces of her face were pulled away. She was losing the battle against the Tetron.
Mitchell looked back at the S-17, waiting thirty meters away. "That? Is that why you brought it here? No. I've left enough people behind."
"Mitchell, you must go. You must survive."
"No."
"Colonel-" Cormac said.
"No," Mitchell repeated. "You want me to live, find another way. The second I turn my back on the ones who I promised to protect, the moment I cut and run is the moment we're all finished. Today, tomorrow, it doesn't matter. I can't live with any more guilt. I can't fight knowing I'm a coward."
Christine's face pulled itself back together in a final surge of effort. "That's why I love you, Mitch. You always do the right thing in the end. Now go. Return to the edge of the park. Your ship is on its way. We can't save them all. I'm sorry for that. We can save a few."
Kathy, Jacob, Geren, Cormac, and Tio. It was so very few. Fewer than he had arrived with. The planet would die because he had come to save her. It would die because he had failed.
No. It would have died anyway, sooner or later.
"Colonel." Cormac grabbed his arm, tugging him away.
The ground was rumbling below their feet, and he could tell the air was warming. He looked up at Goliath, still and peaceful in the sky. He shifted his vision. Another ship was coming towards them. A dropship like the Valkyrie.
He let Cormac pull him along, but he returned his eyes to the Tetron core where Christine's face was making a final effort to stay recognizable. He was going to lose her before he ever had a chance to know all the reasons he loved her. Tetron. Human. Did it matter? The exterior was nothing but raw materials. It was the inside, the spark, that counted.
"Thank you," he said.
"Good hunting, Ares," she said in reply.
Then she was gone.
65
The dropship paused above the ground, the repulsors keeping it steady despite the shaking beneath. It had come just in time. The vibrations were getting strong enough to knock them from their feet, and they had fallen more than once on the way.
The smaller access hatch opened as they approached it, and Mitchell stood to the side and helped the others in. Kathy first, followed by Tio, Jacob, and Geren. Cormac paused when it was his turn.
"Frigging aliens," he said. There was no hint of laughter in his voice.
"Yeah," Mitchell replied, looking back to the Tetron. Christine's face was gone, fully absorbed into the intelligence, lost to him in this timeline. Origin. She was Origin. It was a difficult idea for him to get his mind around.
He followed Cormac up and into the ship. As soon as he was through, the hatch closed, and he could see through the small viewport that they were beginning to rise.
He wondered where Christine had gotten the dropship from. It looked like it had been in the middle of the battle between Goliath and the others, with dimpled metalwork and laser scorch marks crossing the exterior. It had arrived too quickly to have come from space. A repair bay in the spaceport, maybe? A remnant of the Battle for Liberty?
A battle he had won, now a planet he had lost. The others were slumped in the corridor. Jacob and Kathy both looked heartbroken, their faces pale and their cheeks wet with tears. He would join them later, he knew. Once he had gotten them safe.
He ran from the access door, through the corridors towards the cockpit. He wasn't sure what he was going to find on the way. Soldiers under Christine's control? Corpses?
It turned out to be nothing. The ship was empty except for them. He slid into the pilot's seat and leaned back to connect his neural link before remembering his implant was dead. Like all military equipment, the dropship had manual controls. He leaned over and hit the switch to enable them, feeling the change as whatever Christine was doing to control the ship released it. He grabbed the stick before they could start to descend, his hands shaking as he pulled back on it while increasing thrust. He hadn't flown manually in years, and the feel of the throttle and the yoke felt strange to him. He closed his eyes, trying to remember the lessons he had learned so long ago.
Tio joined him in the cockpit a moment later.
"Such a waste," he said. "It's all collapsing. The buildings. The trees. Everything."
Mitchell looked at him. The warlord's eyes were moist.
"How?" Mitchell asked. "How do you destroy a planet?"
"Energy, Colonel. A lot of energy. Put enough of it into the core, and the planet will explode."
Mitchell reached out, hitting a series of switches in front of him. The comm system was there, somewhere. It took him a few tries to find the right buttons to broadcast a distress signal.
"Goliath, this is Ares. The Tetron is trying to destroy the planet. You need to stop it." He paused, waiting for a response. "Goliath, this is Ares."
"It cannot hear you," a voice replied. Christine's voice.
"Christine?"
Laughter. Cold and harsh and out of control. "Dead. She is dead. Did you love her, Mitchell Williams? Did you feel for her the way she felt for you? What would you have sacrificed to save her? She sacrificed herself, and this entire planet, to save you."
It was taunting him. Teasing him to the last. Filling him with guilt and anger. Why? She had said it was sick. Flawed. He could hear it in every word. He flipped the switch to turn off the communications array. They were climbing through the atmosphere. The Goliath was growing larger ahead of them, and he could see the larger pieces of debris floating in orbit around it.
"Origin can't stop me," the Tetron said, despite his efforts to shut it up. "Not now. It doesn't have the power to fire a plasma stream, and even if it did, it is too late. This planet will die, Mitchell Williams. Millions of your kind will die. It is required."
"Required?" Mitchell whispered. His heart was pounding, his breath shallow. He had seen death before. He had witnessed destruction on an even larger scale than the Battle for Liberty or Angeles. At least then there had been a reason that he could understand. Politics, religion, resources. They weren't good reasons, but they were something less nebulous than the insistence that it was simply "required."
"Because of you. Because you fight when you should die. You do not fight to free humankind, Mitchell Williams. You fight to destroy it."
The dropship began to shake as it reached the atmosphere. An atmosphere that was beginning to collapse beneath the force that was pushing the planet apart from the inside. Tears ran down Mitchell's eyes, and he blinked to clear them, to keep them unobstructed so he could navigate the oncoming field of debris that led to the Goliath. The S-17 pulled in front of him then, Captain Alvarez taking point, releasing amoebics and blowing the larger pieces into dust, helping to clear the way. He imagined Long was somewhere near
the ship as well, escorting them back home. Had they been able to get through to Goliath? Did Millie know what was happening? He assumed she did. Origin would have to be able to sense the energy spike.
There was nothing she could do to stop it.
There was nothing any of them could do.
"I fight to destroy you," Mitchell said, his jaw clenching beneath his fury. "Every last frigging one of you, through every last frigging time loop until your stain is cleansed from the universe and nobody is aware you ever existed at all. Kill yourself. Kill Liberty. Before you do, send a message to the others. You couldn't stop me here. You can't stop me anywhere else. We'll lick our wounds and refuel, and then we're coming. You hear me, you frigging bastard? We're coming. The Riggers are coming."
Mitchell's whole body shook with rage while he waited for a reply.
There was nothing but silence.
66
"She looks like she's seen better days," Tio said as they approached Goliath.
Mitchell's eyes scanned the side of the massive ship. There were pieces of broken dendrites lining the thick hull, along with craters and burn marks where the overwhelming firepower had managed to pierce the shields. It made the ship look worse than it was. He could tell from the placement of the damage that Origin had allowed it to happen, letting the most heavily protected areas take the hits and conserving power for more critical locations.
He guided the dropship through the debris field. Its shields were barely operational, its power levels critically low. Just enough juice to get them back aboard the Goliath. If it hadn't been for Alvarez clearing a path in the S-17, he wasn't sure if it would have been enough to get them there.
It didn't matter now. They were going to get there. They were going to survive.
All five of them.
Out of millions.
He tried to force the thought from his head, finding it difficult to escape. He was a warrior. He was also human. He knew the Tetron was goading him. He knew it was trying to mess with his head. He knew every single person on Liberty would have died at its hand sooner or later. He couldn't quite escape the seed of guilt and doubt it had planted in the back of his mind.
Was this all his fault?
There was no logical, rational reason to believe that it was. Still...
"It's all cosmetic," Mitchell said, responding to the Knife's statement.
They reached the massive hangar doors. Mitchell guided the dropship through ahead of Long and Alvarez. The moment he was clear, magnetic fields caught the ship, slowing it and pulling it downward to the floor. He leaned forward and turned the communications back on. There was no way the Tetron's signal was reaching into the Goliath.
"Admiral, this is Ares."
"Ares. It's good to hear your voice."
"Admiral, the planet. Liberty." He fought to keep his voice from breaking. "Don't jump too far. Keep the hangar doors open. I want to see it."
"Mitchell? I don't understand."
"I want to see it. I want everyone on board to see it, and I want them to remember just what it is we're up against. I want it recorded."
"Mitch, I can't-"
"Just do it, Millie. Please."
He switched off the channel, getting out of his seat. His eyes passed over Tio's as he rose. The warlord was watching him with intense curiosity. Judging him.
Mitchell ran through the corridor, back to the access hatch. The others were still slumped against the walls nearby, and they perked up when he approached them. He passed them without a word, and they rose to follow behind.
He reached the hatch to the dropship as he felt the shift to hyperspace. He put his hand to the panel to open it, counting the seconds. Had she done what he had asked? He knew she didn't have to. It wasn't his decision to make.
Four seconds passed. The Goliath came out of hyperspace. The hatch opened. Mitchell climbed down and turned towards the mouth of the hangar, where the shields were preventing space from entering. He could see Liberty as a pea-sized globe thousands of kilometers distant. It had a haze around it, a shift of the light caused by the failing surface tension. He didn't know how long it would take for the planet to die. He only knew that it would.
He stood there, motionless. He didn't know how much time passed. He felt a hand on his shoulder and glanced over to see Alvarez standing with him, her face tight. The others were arranged around them. Jacob, Kathy, Cormac, Geren, Tio, and Long. He saw more people approaching from the distant rear of the space. Origin, Singh, and Millie. Watson, Alice, and Grimes.
The planet exploded before they reached him, the darkening pea suddenly breaking apart and pushing outward, small, instant explosions flashing out from it, the largest one surely the Tetron. Then it was nothing more than a massive cloud of dust, the light casting off it and showing what was once a green and blue planet as little more than gray ashes in the silent depths of space.
Kathy collapsed next to him, falling to her knees, crying out and sobbing. Jacob lowered his head into his hands, turning away from the destruction. Even Cormac was silent, his tears leaving streaks along his dirty face, his hands clenched into tight fists.
Mitchell continued to stare at the cloud as it spread out away from the center. His mouth was open, his heart racing. He noticed every beat of it, every thump against his chest like a war drum. He was exhausted. He was in pain. He was battered and beaten and broken. He didn't feel any of it.
Thump. Thump.
He bowed his head. He didn't believe in God. That didn't mean he didn't pray. For the souls of the lost. For the people of Liberty. For all of humankind.
Thump. Thump.
He breathed out, letting the coldness wash through him, using it to fuel his fire. They were down. They were hurting. They weren't out. Not while he was still breathing, and Goliath was still in one piece.
Thump. Thump.
He turned away from the scene outside, looking back to where Millie had paused. Her face was as hard as stone though he could see her hands were shaking. Their eyes met. She nodded to him. He nodded back.
Thump. Thump.
The Tetron thought to break their spirits. He was a Rigger. He was already broken.
His spirit?
Not a chance.
Thank you for reading The End of Liberty!
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