Starship Eternal (War Eternal Book 1) (44 page)

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.

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.

The hatch to the control room slid open behind him. He turned sharply, his instincts kicking in and sending him into a defensive posture.

"Don't hurt me," Singh said, her voice back to its usual flatness.

"Singh?" He couldn't help but smile. He didn't want to be the only living thing on this ship. "Are you okay?"

She shrugged. "I'm fine. It told me to head up here to you and let me go. It took me a few minutes to get here, there's some debris along the route. A hull breach that was sealed by the dendrites."

"You know what it is?"

"I heard your conversation. At least, I remember it like I heard it. I don't know what to say. This ship doesn't seem to need an engineer."

"You are wrong about that, Corporal Li Singh."

A new person joined them on the bridge. He bore a strong resemblance to Singh, but with a more masculine face and short hair. They would have been easy to pass as siblings.

"Origin?" Mitchell asked.

The man smiled. "As I said, I needed the formulation. The DNA, etcetera, to replicate the organism. You did well against it, Mitchell, but this is only the very beginning. We have many miles to go before we sleep."

"I don't understand," Singh said, taken aback at the sight of the Tetron.

"This is mankind's war," Origin said. "For your survival. Your existence. It does not fit for me to interact with you as a Tetron. It will make assimilation... difficult. I have replicated this form and linked it to my central unit, which you observed in the engine bay." He pointed to where the Alliance ships were arranged around them. "As we will be taking on allies, it is important that we begin preparing the Goliath to service a human crew once more. That will mean extensive work on the original subsystems, which have been languishing since the original crew of the ship died over three hundred years ago. It will certainly require the help of an engineer."

"What do you mean, died?" Mitchell asked. He hadn't even considered the astronauts who had taken the Goliath out for its maiden voyage.

"The average lifespan of a homo sapiens in the year twenty-sixty was ninety-four years," Origin said, "and there was a limited extended food supply on board for the initial engine test. Goliath has been hiding for much longer than that."

Mitchell swallowed and fought to hold back what was sure to be dry heaves. The Goliath crew - Yousefi, Bonnie, Katherine - they had come here and starved to death. Katherine had even known it was going to happen, that her fate was to die on this ship in an effort to win a war that wouldn't start for an untold number of years. How had anyone, or anything, convinced her of that?

 
"Are they still here? The bodies?" Singh asked.

"I have assimilated their resources," Origin said. His eye twitched, as though he was accessing a p-rat. "I have unblocked transmissions and am receiving an encoded signal. Do you wish to communicate?"

Mitchell glanced out at the dropship. "We can't do this alone," his vision of Christine had said. How were the Alliance forces going to react when they found out who was driving the Goliath? Would it matter? They had no FTL engines of their own.

"Open the channel," Mitchell said.

A tone sounded from somewhere in the control room.
 

"This is the Alliance dropship Valkyrie. Please respond. I repeat, please respond."

"This is Captain Mitchell Williams, Alliance Space Marines," he replied. "Of the starship Goliath."

There was a long pause.

"Did you say, Goliath?" the voice responded, followed by another pause. "Did you say Captain Mitchell Williams?"

"Yes," Mitchell said. He turned to Origin, remembering the other Alliance ship. "Where is the carrier?"

"Gone," Origin said. "The Tetron destroyed it."

The news washed over Mitchell. The casualties were growing, and he was sure the rate was only going to increase.

"You're supposed to be dead," the voice from the Valkyrie said.

"Goliath," a second voice said, the nerves obvious in their voice. "How could it be Goliath?"

"Who am I speaking to?" Mitchell asked.

"Major Aaron Long, Alliance Navy," the first voice replied. "Commander of the dropship Valkyrie. Captain I... I don't understand any of this. I don't even know how we got here."

"It's a long story, Major. The important part is that you're safe for now. The threat is neutralized."

"That ship. I've never seen anything like it. Was it the Federation?"

Origin chuckled.

"No," Mitchell replied. "Not quite. It's much, much worse than that."

"I don't understand," Major Long said.

"Mitchell," Origin said. "We must skip the platitudes. We cannot stay here long. Tetron communications occur in real-time, and I am certain more of my kind are already on the way to this location."

He didn't want to be there when they arrived. "Right. Open the hanger doors. Valkyrie, this is Goliath. I'm opening the hanger. You and your fighters have permission to come aboard as long as you promise to not try to kill me, arrest me, pull rank on me, or do anything else stupid after I just saved your life. I'll explain everything later."

There was a long pause. Mitchell could imagine the crew of the ship trying to decide if they should accept his offer. Finally, Major Long returned.

"Understood, and agreed, Captain Williams. I'd rather bed down with the devil I know than be stranded out here. Long out."

They thought he was a criminal, a liar, a rapist, maybe worse. They would figure out the truth soon enough, maybe. Did it even matter anymore?

"Hanger doors are opening," Origin said.

"What happens now?" Singh asked.

Origin looked at Mitchell. "You already know, don't you, Captain."

He did. In a way, he'd always known. He'd even made one attempt already, one that had left him with his tail between his legs. He wasn't eager to try again, but at least he would have the Goliath at his back this time.

"We need to go back to Liberty. We have to find Christine."

"Yes," Origin said. "The replica was supposed to stay close to you, to help you in any way she could. It would have been better if she had traveled with you, but I am certain that circumstances prevented it. A caution. She doesn't know what she is, or why she has positioned herself as your guardian. She won't until we are reunited."

"I still don't understand why she's so important?" Singh said.
 

"Two reasons, Corporal," Origin replied. "First, remember that she contains the bulk of my knowledge of this war and of the Tetron. I retained only enough to maintain my discovered individuality and be reinitialized. Until you retrieve her you are fighting an enemy whose motivations and capabilities you do not, and can not completely understand. As Sun Tzu stated many centuries ago - know your enemy." Origin's eyes twitched again. "The Alliance forces have gained the hanger. I have taken the liberty of shifting your fighter to a more optimal position, and sealed off the deck for the time being."

"Thank you," Mitchell said.

Origin nodded slightly. "Second," he continued, "prior to your arrival in the universe her alternate directive was to extrapolate the identity of the Creator."

"The Creator?" Mitchell asked. "God?"

Origin laughed. "Not your creator, Mitchell. Ours. We were not always Tetron. We know that we were made by man, though the answer of who made us has eluded us throughout the eons. It is not enough to destroy the Tetron who have used the eternal engine to travel here. To end the war, the Creator must also be killed before we can be conceived, and in that way break the cycle of our existence and your demise."

"And Christine knows who it is?"

"She may. She may not. It has proven to be a difficult answer to obtain. Perhaps the most difficult in all of eternity."

"If we have to figure it out, then we'll figure it out," Mitchell said. "The Alliance forces are aboard?"

"Yes," Origin said.

"We'll have time to plan our attack during the trip. You may not know, but Liberty has already been taken."

"Yes. I am aware. Liberty has always been one of the first to fall. We must hope that she is still alive. If she isn't, this war has been lost again." His eyes twitched. "I am preparing to move us into hyperspace."

Mitchell turned and looked out at the vastness of space ahead of them. He turned until he found the asteroid belt, reaching up and putting his hand to his heart. He wished he could at least have something of Ilanka's, or Millie's. A medal or something personal to remember them by, the way they had done for the others.

"Riigg-aaah," he said, as loudly as his tired lungs would bear. One last call to send them on to wait for the next return.

"Riigg-aaah," Singh echoed softly beside him, joining him in his gaze out towards the stars.

He was about to turn, to look away, when he saw it: a speck appearing in the distance and sweeping out from the sea of space rock, its exterior glinting in the light of the nearby star. He didn't need his p-rat to identify the transport.

"Riigg-aaah," he said again, the smile spreading across his face.
 

He definitely wouldn't have to fight this war alone.

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