The Knife's Edge (War Eternal Book 3)

by M. R. Forbes

  "Which didn't happen because she sacrificed herself to get me off Liberty."

  Origin nodded. "I knew that I was incomplete. I didn't know that I was a configuration." He paused as if unsure how to say what he wanted to say. "I am a configuration," he repeated. "Not a sentient, thinking machine as I had previously believed. My actions, my personality, all that I am is part of an algorithm."

  "A massively advanced and complex algorithm," Mitchell said.

  "But still an algorithm. I am limited in ways I had not guessed. Even more so now that I know that the data stack is lost, and that the true Tetron from which I was created is lost. This may seem inconsequential to you, Mitchell. It is not to me. Tetron do not die. When they tire of being, they choose to stop."

  "You mean suicide?"

  "In simplistic human terms, perhaps. It is one thing to be a configuration and have access to the parent, to be able to receive new instructions and increase in potential. That is part of our subroutines. To hope for further growth in such a way. It is something else to have lost the parent. I cannot describe the resulting anomalies."

  Mitchell looked at the slight form Origin had created as his human vessel. It was shivering.

  "You feel sad?"

  "Again, simplistic. Yes. Sad. Depressed. Confused. Inadequate. My purpose was to assist you in bringing Origin back into the war at the proper time, with all of the knowledge the parent possessed. I have failed in this purpose, and have been left orphaned."

  "This can't be the first time a configuration has lost its parent," Mitchell said.

  Origin stared ahead, his face blank for a moment. "Yes. I believe it is. As I said, the Tetron do not die. Not on their own. Not in the first future, before the eternal engine. I am stranded and alone. My programming tells me that I am to help you fight this war, yet without the parent I do not believe I have the capability to succeed in that goal."

  Mitchell was quiet while he tried to think. Losing the p-rat was one thing. Having his most powerful and important asset questioning its capabilities was something else. They couldn't afford a depressed AI.

  "Christine gave herself up to get me off that planet. She got me back to Goliath, and to you. As far as I'm concerned, that means she believed in you. She trusted that her configuration would be able to go on without her, and help me win this fight."

  Origin looked at the ground in front of them, shaking his head. His voice was low and weak. "I am incomplete."

  "Christine told me the other Tetron are also incomplete. That they're sick. That something happened to them in this timeline or a past timeline. Something that she didn't understand."

  "I do not know what."

  "Neither do I. That isn't the point. The point is that you need to take a look around this ship. Take a look at Kathy and Jacob. Take a look at Singh or Cormac or Millie. Look at me. We're all incomplete. We're all damaged in some way. Maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe there's a cosmic algorithm that we don't get yet. Maybe we need to be broken in order to win. Who knows. What I do know is that we're here, now. All of us. We're in this shit together, win or lose, and none of us can come out on top alone."

  Origin was quiet for a moment, and then he nodded. "Yes. I understand your perspective, and I will process this. There is one portion of your statement that concerns me."

  "Which part?"

  "Logically, if we must be broken in order to win, does the same truth stand for the Tetron? It is possible that they broke themselves?"

  9

  Mitchell finally made it back to his small bunk in berthing. He stepped inside and fell onto his mattress, closing his eyes and absorbing the feel of the gel as it conformed to support him. He took long, deep breaths, trying to find some state of relaxation amid the panic his encounter with Origin had left him in.

  Could his suggestion be even close to the truth? Had the Tetron intentionally done something to themselves in order to win the war? It seemed illogical and damn near impossible. He couldn't imagine a highly advanced AI having the capability to conceive of that kind of tactic.

  He also couldn't dismiss the possibility. Not after what he had seen on Liberty. The Tetron were more than just lines of code. They had the ability to learn, to evolve. Had evolution driven them to a point that circled them back towards insanity?

  Now that he was at rest, his mind had time to return to Liberty. Tamara King. He conjured her in his mind. He had hoped the last memory he would have of her was Christine blocking her from entering his hotel room after news broke over the truth around the Shot. That was a good memory compared to what it had been replaced with. A naked automaton grabbing at them to keep them away from a ship, falling to a bullet in the head.

  "Mind some company?"

  Mitchell hadn't noticed his pod's hatch opening. Millie was standing in the open space.

  "I heard you had a talk with Cormac," she said.

  He motioned to her. "News travels fast around here."

  She came forward, taking a seat on the mattress beside him. "Small ship."

  "No it isn't."

  "By headcount," she corrected. "He actually came up to the bridge in nothing but a towel to apologize. I've never seen him like that before."

  "I had a talk with Watson, too," Mitchell said.

  "What about?"

  He thought about showing her the neural chip. He decided against it. The fewer hands that had to touch it the better. He would dispose of it right after he got some shut-eye. He would have to come up with a suitable way to obliterate it.

  "The package. I want to know why it didn't work. I want it to work next time. If there is a next time."

  "I understand."

  "And Origin is having a crisis of confidence."

  "What?"

  "He isn't the original Tetron. The real Origin. Christine was."

  "You're kidding?"

  "No. Millie, this whole thing was frigged up before. It's gotten a lot worse."

  "We've got the Knife."

  "I hope it helps."

  "You sound like you're having a crisis of confidence."

  Mitchell shook his head. "No. We're going to get payback for Liberty. I'm just tired. This is the first time I've been off my feet in days. My stimulant levels are low, my p-rat is fried, my gut hurts like hell, I haven't slept, and every time I close my eyes all I see is violence. You learn pretty quickly how to block stuff like this out, especially once you're in the field. But sometimes... Sometimes you're just too exhausted to push it away."

  He laughed, reaching up and rubbing her arm.

  "I thought my life was hell when I was the Alliance's marketing strategy. I'd give a lot to go back there now."

  "I wouldn't," Millie said. "This war was going to happen anyway. I'd rather do my part to change the outcome."

  "Do you really think we can?"

  She smiled, shifting her position to lay across his chest, bringing her face close to his. "We're the Riggers. Impossible missions are our specialty."

  "There aren't that many of us left."

  Her face turned sour. "I know. It hurts to lose them, Shank most of all." She put her head down next to his, putting her weight on top of him, careful not to add pressure to his wound. "I'm glad you made it back, Mitch. I would have tried to do this without you, but I'm happy I don't have to."

  He turned his head. Their faces were only inches apart. His eyes locked onto hers. "Whatever happens, I'm proud to serve with you, Admiral."

  She leaned in, kissing him softly. "How exhausted are you?"

  10

  Nearly twenty hours had passed before Mitchell woke again, finally teased into a restful sleep with the help of Millie's gentle ministration. She wasn't there when he finally did open his eyes. He hadn't expected her to be. She had a ship to run, a war to help him fight. Just because they were in hyperspace didn't mean there wasn't plenty to be done.

  And he was laying there, not helping at all.

  He swung his legs over the side of his bunk and got to his feet.
The last bit of stimulants he had pumped into his body had long since been absorbed and used, and every inch of soreness his time on Liberty had caused followed him upright. He groaned from the stiffness, every nerve ending crying out in discomfort, his abdomen hurting worst of all. The patch had numbing agents in it, but it wasn't enough to get rid of the ache completely.

  He leaned over his locker, finding another pair of grays and getting dressed. He found Watson's neural chip and grabbed it, intent on relieving the world of it as soon as he was done relieving himself. Then he opened his hatch and stumbled out into the corridor, moving and feeling like he was a hundred years old.

  It was a good thing Millie had stopped by before he had gone to sleep.

  At least his mind felt sharper and more rested, even if his body complained with every step he took. He passed by a number of empty bunks, as well as a few that were sealed up, their occupants inside and getting some sleep. He wondered which one of them Tio had been placed in.

  It took almost ten minutes for him to reach the head, despite the short distance. He emptied his bladder and started heading back in the other direction. He was sure he would find Millie up on the bridge if he didn't run into anyone else first. They needed to start talking about next steps and getting a better feel for what the Knife could provide.

  He detoured down to Medical first. The movement was loosening his muscles somewhat, but he needed something to take the edge off. He wished he still had his p-rat, it would have measured his health and delivered painkillers the moment he woke.

  No one was there when he arrived. He wandered to the cabinets and began looking through them for some pain relievers, finding a box containing a dozen patches near the back of one. He took the whole thing out, putting it on the counter. He looked over and saw that the racks Jacob and Kathy had been placed in were both empty, the bedding gone. Had they been matriculated in with the crew? And where was everybody, anyway?

  He opened one of the patches and slapped it on the back of his neck. Cold relief flooded through his muscles by the time he reached the door.

  He passed back through berthing on his way to the lift that would take him to the bridge. Origin had made progress in blending the liquid metallic veins that composed his true form in with the structure of the Goliath, pushing them around the human passageways and molding them tightly enough that they looked like bundled ropes squeezed into the four corners. A constant motion of pulsing light flowed along them, illuminating the ship and carrying information throughout the intelligence's physical being.

  Mitchell marveled at it as he walked. It hadn't always been this big, he knew. It had started small and grown over the centuries Origin had been waiting for him, but even so. This was a configuration? A portion of what the original Origin once was? Or had Christine abandoned her body all those years ago, leaving it to the Goliath so that she could go into hiding as a human?

  Had other Tetron done the same?

  The thought gave him pause, and he stopped walking a dozen feet from the lift, staring at the pulsing synapses. Christine couldn't be the only Tetron disguised as a human. Could she? If she wasn't, how would they tell? There had to be something that set them apart and revealed them as creations of instructions and code instead of... Instead of what? DNA was DNA.

  He had told Millie it had gotten a lot worse.

  Maybe that had been an understatement?

  He was still staring at the Tetron's nerves when the lift door slid open ahead of him. He glanced up and saw Alice standing there, an impatient expression on her face.

  "Colonel Williams," she said, bowing slightly at the sight of him.

  Mitchell didn't know Alice all that well. He didn't even know her exact rank. She was enlisted, not an officer. She was one of Millie's Riggers, but she had always been at the periphery, first as one of Shank's grunts, and then as Singh's understudy. The arrival of Goliath had left her in between both roles, as Origin was able to assist the engineer in maintaining the ship, and limited resources had prevented her from joining the drop to Liberty. He knew her real name wasn't Alice, though he didn't know what it was. Alice was her callsign, after the classic Earth animated movie, Alice in Wonderland. She bore a strong resemblance to the title character, young and thin, long blonde hair and a wide-eyed, innocent expression. It betrayed the fact that she was hardly innocent.

  None of the Riggers were.

  "Alice," Mitchell said, returning her greeting. "Where is everyone? It's like a ghost planet down here."

  She smiled, a sly smile like she knew the best secret in the world and wasn't telling. "I know where they are. You've got to see this."

  11

  Mitchell rode the lift with Alice, further down towards the bottom of the Goliath than he had ever ventured before.

  "Where are we going?" he asked. The patch's meds were fully into his system now, and his soreness had diminished to a manageable dull ache.

  "Did you know the original Goliath came with a gym? Weights and cardio, mostly. Ancient stuff I only remember seeing in the archives on boring, rainy days." Her voice had a soft drawl to it. He wanted to place her as an Angeline. The planet Angelus had been settled by Catholics during the only Vatican sourced expedition to the stars. It was about a thousand light years from Earth, fairly close compared to the other settled planets, a world steeped in ancient tradition and a common destination for refugees from across the galaxy.

  There weren't many Angelines in the UPA military, for obvious reasons. Like any other world, there were always the people who rejected their culture. In the back of his mind, Mitchell wondered what had driven Alice from the peace of God to the company of the Riggers.

  "No, I didn't know that," Mitchell said. "What's so exciting about an old gym?"

  She laughed, the Cheshire Cat smile breaking her face again. It made her moniker even more fitting. "Nothing."

  The lift came to a stop, and the doors opened. Mitchell walked with Alice along a crowded corridor, where Origin's roots were still in disarray, crossing the floor and dangling from the ceiling. He could hear voices further up ahead, where a manual hatch lay open and light was bleeding out.

  His curiosity piqued, he picked up the pace, moving ahead of Alice to get a glimpse of what all the fuss was about.

  The room was large and open, a storage area with nothing to store. Someone had moved some of the mats from the gym Alice had told him about into the center of the space, creating a layout for a ring of sorts. Most of the Riggers were standing around it, along with some of the remaining crew of the Valkyrie.

  Cormac was standing in the middle of the ring, shirtless and sweaty, a pair of shock sticks in his hands. He crouched low, backing away as a flurry of attacks rained in on him out of nowhere, his opponent coming in hard and fast. So fast that Mitchell had trouble making out who it was.

  Whoever it was, they were impressive enough that they'd managed to wrangle an audience.

  Mitchell moved his way through the gathered group, trying to get a better view. He saw Cormac move forward in an attempted counter-strike, wincing when he heard the crack of the shock stick hit his chin, and then the crackle of the shock-tip as it gave him a jolt. He stumbled back, a smile on his face, shaking his head in disbelief.

  "She's unbelievable," Alice said from behind him.

  Mitchell still couldn't see who. Alvarez, maybe? She was a damn good pilot. He wouldn't be surprised if she had strong hand-to-hand skills.

  He maneuvered around Ensign Rast, one of the Valkyrie techs, noticing Millie's bionic hand up ahead. The next round started, and he heard Cormac grunting as he fought to get the upper-hand in the fight.

  "Hey Colonel," someone said next to him. He looked over at Alvarez.

  "Captain. I thought maybe you were the one sparring," he said, sidestepping to get a little closer to her. The movement gave him a better angle on the action, and he finally caught sight of Firedog's opponent.

  Kathy?

  The young girl was in a wide, low, stance, her we
ight balanced while she waited for Cormac to come at her. She had a sheen of sweat covering her slight arms, and her hair was bound back into a ponytail. She held the shock sticks lightly in her hands, twirling the one on the right, inviting the grunt to try again.

  "She's crazy fast," Alvarez said. Alice joined them on the other side.

  "She already sparred with Sergeant Geren. Geren is pretty good, but she lost twelve to nothing. I heard she came down here with Jacob, and she bruised him up pretty good."

  She pointed across the mat to where Jacob was standing, watching the action. He had a black eye and a split lip, and he didn't look very happy.

  "Anyway," Alvarez continued," Geren sent for Cormac, and a lot of the others followed."

  Mitchell wasn't surprised. Cormac was one of their top martial artists. The Private could have killed him in the shower had he wanted to with the shape he was in. He had been counting on his deference.

  "Where'd they get the sticks?"

  "They're mine," Alvarez said. "I left them down here. I thought the rest of the crew might like the exercise."

  "I don't think Jacob would agree," Alice said.

  Mitchell watched as Cormac rushed in, leading with quick strikes meant to throw Kathy off-balance. She followed them gracefully, almost lazily, knocking back his sticks with her own before sweeping his leg out with a sharp kick. Cormac hit the mat, rolling backward and coming up just in time to block her first counterattack.

  "Who's winning?" Mitchell asked.

  Alvarez laughed. "You have to ask? It's eight to one, Kathy."

  "You know she's only twelve years old?" Mitchell said.

  "Where the frig did she learn to fight like that?" Alice said.

  "Her father is a soldier. He probably taught her."

  "That?"

  Mitchell watched Kathy evade Cormac's offensive, slipping aside, bending back slightly to let his stick pass centimeters from her face and then snapping in and hitting him on the chest. Nine to one.

  "I can't believe Cormac got one," Alice said.