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 © 2016 by M.R. Forbes
All rights reserved.
Cover illustration by Tom Edwards
tomedwardsdesign.com
Contents
• Copyright • About Forever Until Tomorrow
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 • 67 • 68
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About Forever Until Tomorrow
A war lost.
A civilization in ruins.
A spark of hope among the wreckage.
The war is over. The war has just begun. Major Katherine Asher of the newly founded United Earth Alliance knows nothing about the apocalyptic war of a past future. She's scheduled to pilot the newly christened Dove, Earth's first starship, in her maiden voyage. But when a terrorist attack leaves her wounded and hearing voices, she quickly finds herself caught up in the eternal struggle and fighting to stop a future that has no place for humankind.
At the same time, a man in St. Louis decides to leave the psychiatric hospital he's called home for the last twenty years, since the fateful night an alien starship fell to Earth...
1
A man sits in the corner of a quiet room. His hands are resting on the table, clasped together as if in prayer. His eyes are open, his head up and straight. He's staring at the wall a few meters ahead of him, past the second man who sits at the other side of the table, leaning back in his chair. This man's eyes watch every movement of the first with intense interest. Every motion is a sign. Every breath. Every swallow. Every clenching of the hands together.
"Tell me, Reggie," the man says. "Do you think you're ready to get out?"
The man's eyes shift. A centimeter. Maybe two. His mouth opens slowly, and he licks his lips before speaking.
"No," he replies, a touch of sadness and despair filtering through the simple word.
The other man considers for a moment. He's known Reggie for twenty years - since he had been found in an alley uptown by a passerby and brought to St. Mary's. The thought diverts his attention to Reggie's arms, always covered in tight sleeves to hide the flesh beneath. New technology and procedures had helped repair most of the original damage, but it would never heal completely.
Nobody had ever been able to figure out what had happened that night. No one had seen anything. No one had heard anything. He always thought that was strange. If someone were on fire, you would hope someone would say so.
Then again, with everything else that had happened that day, it wasn't a total surprise that basic humanity had been forgotten. Not when humanity had learned that they weren't alone.
"Why not?" he asks.
Reggie continues to stare straight ahead. He spends most of his time this way, looking off into the distance as if he can see through the sanitary white walls of the hospital and out into the world beyond. As if he's looking at something specific, or at least trying to. A memory?
"I have nowhere to go," Reggie replies, eyes never shifting. "I have nothing to do but wait."
"You've been here for almost twenty years," he says. "What are you waiting for?"
Seconds pass. Then minutes. Reggie doesn't answer. His hands shift. They clench together, grabbing at one another and holding tight. Whatever is on his mind, whatever is sitting at the edge of his thoughts, he's trying to capture it and never let go.
For whatever reason, he can't.
The man leans his chair forward so that the front legs return to the ground. He stands slowly, considering. Twenty years. Reggie had come to them with nothing but the burns. No memories. No identification. No name.
He still remembers the first night. The Doctors had called on him because they thought Reggie would need comfort while they scrubbed away the charred flesh. The man surprised them all, sitting in silence while they removed the damaged skin.
Reggie has never presented like the others who have been traumatized. He doesn't shake. He doesn't sweat. He doesn't react to loud noises, or to screaming, or to any of the visual or auditory cues they have used in an effort to figure out who he was or where he had come from. There is something about him. Something different. It unnerves the others. It intrigues him. It always has. It's the reason he's stayed on. The reason he keeps coming back to St. Mary's though he retired from his other duties three years ago.
"Are you hungry?" he asks, changing the subject.
"No," Reggie replies.
"Thirsty?"
"No."
"You've been sitting here for three hours. It's getting late. Would you like to go to bed?"
"No."
The man thinks about sitting again, staying with Reggie. He seems worse today. More quiet. More agitated. Sometimes it seems as if Reggie's mind is split in two, and the active part is trying to see through to the subconscious because all of the secrets are hiding in there, and it wants to know what they are. He doesn't know what it's like to live without knowing who he is. He feels sadness for Reggie. He promised himself he would keep trying, no matter how long it takes.
He can be patient.
"I'm going to get a cup of coffee. Would you like some?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
Reggie's head turns slowly as if it's on a track. The eyes remain fixed, moving with the head until they're locked on his. He takes a step back, a sense of sudden worry washing through him. Reggie's never reacted like this before.
"No," Reggie says again. There's anger in his voice. Upset.
"I. I'm sorry," he stammers. He doesn't want to look Reggie in the eye. He doesn't like what he sees there.
Pain? Yes. Hurt? Yes. Sadness? Yes. But also something else. Something new. A fire, like the sudden ignition of a thousand suns. An anger.
He's always known that Reggie could be anyone, from anywhere. He's always known that if the man ever did get his memories back, they both might not like what he recalled.
For the first time, he wonders if Reggie is getting closer to those memories. For the first time, he wonders if his worst fear is coming true - that all of these years he's been communing with and trying to save the soul of the man on the other side of the table, he's been inadvertently aiding Satan in his work.
He swallows hard and takes another step back, the thought pulling him away. His foot hits the chair, and he trips, his age working against his desire to regain his balance. He feels the world turning, falling away from him. He's ninety-three, and he doesn't know if he can survive a slip without spending months in a hospital bed instead of beside one.
He wants to think of Sophie in the last seconds before he hits the floor. It's been so long since he's seen her, and there's a part of him that hopes he won't live through the impact so he can be with her again. There's no shame in dying this way. It happens all the time.
He doesn't think of her, though. Instead, he can't stop himself from seeing those eyes, and the fire that was burning behind them. He hates himself for that.
Then, before he can strike, he feels a hand grab his hand, and an arm wrap behind him, clutching him firmly and gently
at the same time, slowing his descent, taking care not to harm him in his frailty. He's confused for a moment, until he realizes that Reggie caught him, somehow moving fast enough to reach him before it was too late.
He's lifted slowly back to his feet. He tries to keep his eyes off Reggie's, but he can't. The fire is gone. No. Not gone. Controlled.
"Thank you," he says, as Reggie releases him and goes back to his chair. He returns to the same position. Eyes straight. Hands clasped. Not another word.
He's shaken. His heart is racing. Twenty years and nothing like this has ever happened before. Something is different, but he doesn't know what. He hopes that it's part of God's plan.
"I'll see you soon, Reggie," he says, grabbing the back of his chair and slowly pushing it in. He starts walking away, heading across the cafeteria and waving away the nurses who had come running as he fell, too late to do anything but crowd him as he tries to leave.
"No, Father," he hears Reggie say behind him. "You won't."
2
20 years earlier...
"Halley Station, this is Hawthorne. Do you copy?"
Nigel lifted his head away from the communicator strapped to his chest, returning his attention to the mess strewn across the ice below. His heart was thumping, his mind still trying to make sense of exactly what it was he and his partner were looking at.
"You think it was a satellite?" Adel Hawthorne asked. She had the binoculars, and she was scanning the debris field with them.
"You can see better than I can," Nigel replied. His voice was shaky, his nerves and excitement at odds with one another. How did his wife stay so calm?
"There's hardly any smoke," Adel said. "Do you remember when the TOPOL satellite came down? It was on fire for hours, and smoldering for days after."
Nigel lowered his head again. "Halley Station, this is Hawthorne. Do you copy?"
There was no reply.
"Maybe the antenna came loose again," Adel suggested. She pushed herself to her feet, adjusting her thermal suit so that it sat straight on her waifish frame, and then jogged back to their snowmobile a few dozen yards behind.
A large antenna whip was sticking up from the rear of it, and she grabbed it and tightened it in its base.
"Try now," she shouted back.
Nigel spoke into the small black device one more time. "Halley Station, this is Hawthorne. Do you copy?"
A second of static, and then a voice finally replied. "We hear you, Nigel," the lead scientist, Doctor Charles Abbott, said. "What do you see?"
Nigel opened his mouth but didn't speak. He wasn't sure what to say. Of course, his team had heard and felt the crash. It had registered a 3.4 on their seismographs, and woken everyone up with the noise and shaking. An asteroid, most of them had decided, once they had overcome the initial shock.
"It isn't an asteroid, sir," Nigel said. "It's a ship of some kind. We're still a couple of kilometers away, but from here it looks like it was quite large. A military satellite perhaps."
"If a military satellite just crashed in our backyard, you can be sure we'll be hearing about it shortly. What about the other teams?"
Adel had returned to his side, and had heard the question. She lifted the binoculars, spinning in a circle with them.
"No sign of - wait. No. There's a cat incoming. I'm trying to make out the flag."
"It has to be the Canadians," Nigel said. "They're the only ones due south close enough to get here already."
He heard Charles sigh into the comm. "It figures. With the force of that impact, I bet the entire world knows something came down here."
"I just hope it isn't an American satellite. They're impossible when it comes to recovering what they think belongs to them."
"I've got another team on the horizon," Adel said. "I think everyone's coming to take a look." She lowered the binoculars. "We should head down there, get a peek before the others arrive and spoil it."
"We don't have jurisdiction," Nigel replied.
"Neither do they." Adel waved at the mist of snow rising in the distance, churned up by the snowcat's treads. "Do you want to be the one who misses out?"
Nigel smiled. That was why he loved his wife. She forced his regularly cautious self to be a little more free-spirited.
"Let's go," he said.
They ran back to their ride, starting it up and heading along the outer edge of the crater. Adel kept her eyes on the other teams and on the debris, searching for a place to explore while Nigel tried to find a path down.
"Oh, Nigel," she said a moment later. "I wish you could see this."
He spied a ridge in the crater that he knew the snowmobile could handle and changed direction to head toward it. "I'll be seeing it soon enough."
"Nigel." Adel paused. Her voice suddenly sounded nervous. He wasn't used to that, it caused him to ease off on the throttle.
"What is it?" he asked, concerned.
She didn't speak.
"Addie?" he said.
"Hit the throttle, Nigel," Adel said. "However fast you think you can get down into the crater, do it faster."
"What?"
"Just go."
Nigel knew better than to question. He accelerated again, sending the vehicle scooting forward and then down the ridge. The ride was rough, and he tightened his legs against the sides to hold on while Adel gripped his chest. He couldn't help but smile, feeling a sense of exhilaration at the sudden race, even if he had no idea what he was racing toward.
The snowmobile jostled and shook, each shift in the terrain affecting it differently, some of them threatening to throw them off the edge and plummet into the crater. Nigel handled the controls expertly, keeping them from tumbling and steering them further into the depths.
They were a minute into the descent when Adel tapped his shoulder.
"There," she said, her hand going out ahead of his face and pointing into the distance.
He saw now that they were at the trailing edge of the crash site, near the impact point but still a distance away from where the main body of the satellite had come to rest. He knew how most of the research camps on the continent were grouped, and that their spot would leave them further away from that point.
That was the reason for the race. Adel wanted to get there first, and if he could make it happen, he would.
He pushed the throttle even harder, growing reckless in his pursuit of her desires. The only time he came out of his cautious shell was when Adel was involved. It was the only reason they had wound up together in the first place. He was the nervous, shy scientist. She was the beautiful, intelligent one who always seemed out of place among the geeks and nerds. She had noticed him because he took the chance to make himself noticeable.
He had been taking the same chances since.
The snowmobile shuddered as they reached the bottom of the crater and shifted onto more level ground. Nigel looked ahead, his breath catching in his throat when he saw the massive, torn piece of what he was certain was too big to be any satellite or anything human-made for that matter. It reached high into the sky, the top surely rising above the crater, a long, rounded tube that had been snapped in half, the rear end dripping with slagged metal and wires and piping.
"I don't believe it," he said, just loud enough for Adel to hear.
"I don't believe it either, lovey," she replied. "But there it is, and it's bloody brilliant. We need to get there ahead of the others."
Nigel tried to add more throttle. "She's maxed out," he said. "We can't go any faster.'
Adel raised the binoculars again, searching the sides of the crater for the other teams.
"I think we can make it," she said.
Nigel thought so, too. They had surely been the first to respond.
Three tense minutes passed. The debris grew larger ahead of them, looming up and towering over them like someone had dropped a skyscraper in the middle of the Arctic. And in a sense, someone had.
"Every country on Earth is going to want a piece of this," Nigel
said.
"And we're going to be there first in representation of the United Kingdom," Adel replied. "We'll be heroes."
The thought made Nigel more excited. He never imaged he would be a hero, especially with their shared passion for the cold and the ice. They loved what they did, but it certainly wasn't a high profile position or even a low profile position for that matter. It took a certain type of person to live in the real down under.
He looked ahead at the ship, his heart racing; his every thought and breath focused on reaching it ahead of all the others. It would be a testament to his love and devotion, both to Adel and to science. It was more than he ever could have dreamed of.
He didn't notice the red spot of light that appeared on his chest, just to the left of the communicator.
He didn't even feel the bullet as it punctured his thermal suit and sank deep into his heart.
He didn't have to watch the snowmobile spin wildly out of control, throwing Adel into the side of the ice before crushing her against it.
He was dead before he ever saw the team of soldiers perched at the edge of the crater, crouched ahead of a VTOL jet that had delivered them from a small base at the tip of South Africa.
Something else had been set in motion the moment the massive object had appeared in space out of nowhere, the trajectory calculated and the team dispatched.
War.
Eternal.
3
20 years earlier...
"Looks like we're late," Captain Ivers said, speaking into the mic affixed to the front of his tactical helmet. He put his hand on the front of it, wiping away a smudge with his glove.
"Better late than never," his second in command, Warrant Officer Esposito, replied. "Who do you think owns that VTOL down there?"
Ivers squinted as he looked down at the edge of the crater, still a few klicks out but approaching in a hurry. He could see the wreckage of the ship out of the corner of his eye, and he forced himself to resist the urge to stare. He was special forces, Green Beret. He wasn't supposed to be impressed by anything when there was a mission to complete.
