The Knife's Edge (War Eternal Book 3)

by M. R. Forbes

  "I don't think he's going to get another," Mitchell replied.

  "Is that how you got off Liberty, sir?" Alice asked.

  Mitchell shared the rest of the crew's stunned silence as he watched Kathy quickly score three more points and end the match. When it was over, she bowed to Cormac, her face tight and her eyes focused. Cormac returned the gesture though he seemed embarrassed to have lost.

  "Okay, everybody," Millie's voice echoed in the space. "Show's over. If you don't have a job to do, come and see me and I'll give you one."

  A murmur passed along the crew as they began filing out of the storage room, bowing to Mitchell as they passed.

  "Guess I have to get back to it," Alice said. "Admiral has me on clean-up duty."

  "I should hit the sims," Alvarez said. "Are you going to be flying soon, Mitch?"

  Mitchell tapped his head. "No p-rat, remember? I'm offline for the time being."

  "Your magic helmet will get you in," Alvarez said.

  "You're right," Mitchell said. He had forgotten all about it. "Maybe later."

  She squeezed his shoulder as she passed him. "See you then. Maybe."

  "She's still trying," Millie said, approaching him a few seconds later.

  "There's no harm in trying."

  "I meant what I said earlier. About you and Alvarez. It's okay with me."

  "I've got a thousand milligrams of who knows what in my system just to be able to walk. The sleep helped, though. So did you." He gave her a half-smile. "Debriefing soon?"

  "Yes." Her eyes twitched as she checked her p-rat. "How about an hour?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  She squeezed his shoulder the same way Alvarez had as she left. Mitchell turned back towards where Kathy was standing, still holding the shock sticks in her hands.

  "Are you okay?" he asked.

  She turned her head, staring at him for just long enough that it seemed strange. "Yeah."

  "Where did you learn to fight like that? Your father?"

  She smiled, the tension draining from her. The shock sticks fell to the mat. "My mother, believe it or not. I've been taking lessons since I was four years old."

  "Not in stick fighting."

  "A few different martial arts. The sticks aren't any different than any other instrument. An extension of the body. Anyway, mom thought it was a good way to work off excess energy." She giggled. "I had a lot of excess energy."

  Mitchell could imagine the release she was probably finding in the workout, and in having somewhere to target her anger and hurt. That was why Grimes thought she would be fine. She had an outlet.

  "She's gone," Kathy said. "Everyone else I've ever known is gone. My father is still out there, somewhere. This ship is my only chance of getting him back, so I need to prove to everyone here, you and Admiral Narayan especially, that I'm not just a little girl. I can do my part."

  "Beating the crap out of Firedog is a good start."

  "Maybe you and I can spar sometime?" she asked.

  Mitchell shook his head. "I don't think so. I don't need to be embarrassed like that."

  "Oh, come on. I know you're a better fighter than he is. You're the Hero of Liberty."

  Mitchell opened his mouth to counter the statement, staying silent for a second time. Liberty was gone. Did the truth even matter anymore?

  Kathy shrugged. "Oh well, I'm going to get cleaned up, and then I'll find Jacob. He's having a hard time with what happened. I don't think he should spend too much time alone."

  "That's a nice thing for you to do," Mitchell said, impressed with the maturity she was showing.

  "It's like I said on Liberty. The strong need to take care of the weak. Not everyone was born to be a soldier. I guess it runs in the family."

  She smiled and bowed to him, fleeing the room.

  "I guess it does," Mitchell said, watching her go.

  12

  Mitchell was in Goliath's main meeting room an hour later, a smaller room one floor below the bridge that had once been planned for astral navigation. While Origin had no need for the maps and charts that could be projected onto the central surface of the room to get from one place to another, the table still had value to gather around and get a view of different portions of the galaxy.

  The projection system was turned off at the moment, the central column dark. They were assembled around it - Millie, Origin, Singh, Tio, Long, Alvarez, Watson, and himself. He had been dismayed to find that Watson had been invited to the party, but he understood why. He was the one who had asked Millie not to airlock Cormac for what he had done and insisted what they could get out of people was more important than the kind of people they were using. She was going to make him deal with the consequences of that decision.

  "You all know why you're here," Millie said, opening the meeting. "Colonel Williams, if you could please get everyone up to speed on the events leading up to the destruction of the planet Liberty?"

  "Of course, Admiral," Mitchell said.

  He spent the next hour debriefing the rest of them on everything that had happened from the moment the Valkyrie had left Goliath's hangar. It didn't matter that they had all witnessed that part. It was important that they had as complete a picture of everything as he did. To that end, he didn't leave out or gloss over any part of it, though he wondered if he should have when he saw how Millie's face twisted when he mentioned General Cornelius. And when he mentioned the part about Christine and her relationship to Origin, it drew a number of confused stares. Even so, nobody said a word until he had fallen silent and taken a step back away from the table to indicate he was done speaking.

  "Did I hear you right when you just said Goliath is being run by a Tetron? As in, one of the enemy?" Major Long asked.

  "Yes, Major," Mitchell said.

  "You told us that you found the ship uninhabited. That the intelligence controlling it was dead, and you were using what it left behind."

  "I lied."

  Major Long's jaw clenched. "Why?"

  "Because we didn't trust you," Millie said. "And for good reason. I recall the first thing you did was try to take command of this ship."

  "And that should have been a surprise to you? As far as anyone in the Alliance military is concerned, Colonel Williams is a rapist and a fraud."

  "You know that isn't true," Watson said, surprising Mitchell by sticking up for him.

  "I do now." He heaved out a deep sigh. "I suppose it doesn't matter, does it? We only got off the planet because this Christine of yours was one of them. You said the intelligence on this ship was part of her or something?"

  "A configuration," Origin said. "A partial copy. An incomplete representation of the whole."

  "Right. So, this thing is on this ship, and is flying us through hyperspace at this very moment." Major Long cast his eyes around the room. None of Origin's tendrils were visible inside. "I don't suppose we can speak to it?"

  "Of course you can," Millie said.

  "Does it have an ARR key?"

  "I do," Origin said. "But it would be much more efficient to speak to me directly since we are in the same room."

  Major Long looked at him sideways. "You?" His eyes narrowed. "You're a Tetron?"

  "This form is a human-based configuration, based on Ensign Singh's genome and constructed of reconstituted cellular matter. It was created to better integrate with you. To fit in."

  Alvarez leaned forward to get a closer look at him. "You sure do fit in. I would never have guessed."

  "That is the idea."

  "One of your kind destroyed a planet," Long said.

  "Yes, I am aware of that, Major. If the matter has eluded you, we are at war."

  Long laughed. "You say 'we,' like you're one of us."

  "Enough, Major," Mitchell said, approaching the table. "Origin is the reason you and I are both here and not floating around as no more than dust out there. Christine arranged for her configuration to bring the Goliath forward into our timeline so that it would be present and available to assis
t in fighting the Tetron force here and now."

  "And you think you can trust it?"

  "The same way I think I can trust you, and for the same reasons. You stuck it out on Liberty and came through. Origin has gotten us this far."

  "Yet that trust only extends so far," Tio said, entering the mix. "I too stuck it out on Liberty. And I have offered you my resources to continue the fight. The truth is out. Perhaps you will reconsider my request?"

  "To examine Origin's source code?" Mitchell asked.

  "Yes, Colonel."

  "No. Not right now."

  "What if my offer of assistance depends on it?"

  "Does it?"

  Tio was silent for a moment, calculating his next move. Mitchell had a feeling the Knife wasn't expecting to be rejected so bluntly.

  "I already gave you the coordinates to my outpost. It doesn't leave me with much leverage, does it?" The older man smiled. "I might have something else of interest to you."

  "Go on," Millie said.

  "You were wondering why Christine Arapo might have remained in hiding on Earth, instead of traveling forward with the Goliath. I did some digging in the ship's archives. I believe I may be able to answer that question for you."

  "How did you get into the archives?" Watson said. "There's no wireless uplink."

  "And your knives are out of commission," Mitchell said, motioning towards the augmentation on the man's wrists.

  "Shorted by the EMP, yes. I repaired them." He turned his hands over, and the blades slid from his wrists. "Despite the volume of the Tetron covering the skeleton of the Goliath, there is quite a bit of conductive wiring still networking data to various subsystems, such as life support. It was trivial to find a quiet location to open an access panel and connect."

  "I thought you didn't have a p-rat?" Mitchell said.

  "I don't. What I do have is an enhanced neural network localized to my brain stem. It is my own design. No external access, for obvious reasons."

  "So you hacked into the Goliath's onboard computers," Mitchell said. "I thought the idea was to earn our trust, not circumvent it."

  Tio shrugged. "You wanted me to prove that you could trust me. Not only did I tell you what I did, but I expended my effort to your benefit. I could have used my tools to attempt to get into the Tetron's systems directly and learn what I wanted without your permission. I didn't."

  "I should applaud you for only being half as dishonest?" Mitchell asked.

  Tio shrugged.

  "Why would the archives have any information on Christine Arapo?" Millie asked.

  "They don't," Tio said.

  "Katherine Asher," Mitchell said.

  "Yes. She was a pilot on board this ship, was she not?"

  "Yes," Origin said. "She planted me on board."

  "And came forward with you in Christine's place. Her personnel file was locked." He shook his head. "Security was so primitive back then. Anyway, I have been preparing a sorting algorithm based on her records. I have quite a collection of archives of my own, which I will run the algorithm against as soon as we arrive."

  "We already did that," Watson said. "That was how we found Goliath."

  "Interesting," Tio said. He was silent for a moment before he raised a finger. "I am betting you ran a limited match against a limited data set."

  "Military archives," Singh said. "Heavily encrypted."

  Tio laughed. "Your team is quite resourceful, isn't it Colonel Williams?"

  "We have to be," Mitchell said.

  "Yes, well, I am quite resourceful as well. I have a copy of those same supposedly secure military archives. I also have access to the Frontier Federation's data banks."

  "What about the New Terrans?" Watson asked.

  "A small subset. Their security tends to be of a higher quality than the other major powers."

  Watson looked pleased with the abilities of his home nation.

  "You said you can answer the question," Millie said. "That doesn't sound like an answer."

  "I'm confident that I can answer it for you once I have access to my full array of resources."

  Millie nodded. "Then I'm confident that you'll be granted access to Origin's source code once you've delivered."

  Tio's mouth shrank to a thin line, his furious displeasure quickly vanishing behind a fake smile. "As you say, Admiral."

  13

  "So, we've covered what happened on Liberty," Millie said. "Let's talk about what happens next."

  "We take the fight to the Tetron," Major Long said. "One at a time if we have to."

  "With my army," Tio said.

  "You offered it," Long replied.

  "It seems the logical thing to do."

  "Origin," Mitchell said. "Bring up a map."

  A star map appeared on the table in front of them, projected slightly off to give it a three-dimensional appearance. It was old technology, and Mitchell had no idea how to work it.

  "What system is this?" he asked.

  "This is Earth," Origin said, waving his hand out over the table. The view sped forward through thousands of stars until the blue marble was front and center. "By now, they're only starting to hear about your exploits. They also have no idea that the Tetron are out there and headed for them."

  He waved his hand and the galaxy sped by.

  "This is Jigu. The capital planet of the Frontier Federation."

  It looked enough like Earth that it would be easy for anyone to confuse the two at a glance. Same blue sky, same green and brown surface, same white clouds. Only the formation of the land masses and the presence of four moons made it different.

  "I can show you the capital of New Terra as well?"

  "Maybe later," Millie said. "Show us the position of the Tetron."

  Origin nodded. "Clearly, precise coordinates are impossible to determine. Even taking past histories into consideration. Numbers are also difficult to determine, although I believe that eighty percent of our race have entered this timeline."

  "Eighty percent?" Tio said. "Why not one hundred?"

  "I don't know."

  "Then how did you arrive at that estimate?"

  "That is the number I have."

  Tio opened his mouth to ask another question. Mitchell put up his hand. "How long until they get to Earth?"

  Origin moved his hand over the table. The galaxy zoomed out, filling with stars. Earth stayed a bright blue dot while Jigu turned green. A number of red circles appeared around the planets.

  "I am focusing only on the home worlds because they are the most populated, and also the richest and most valuable targets for the Tetron. Since my information on their positions is limited, I have drawn parameters based on various probabilistic models. As you can see from the circles, the minimum time to arrival in Earth's solar system is approximately four months."

  "Two months to Jigu," Tio said, correlating the circles.

  "Yes."

  "We don't have a lot of time."

  "No."

  "Wait a minute," Millie said, staring at the map. "What the frig are we doing?"

  "What do you mean?" Mitchell asked.

  "Mitch, we're going this way." Millie pointed towards the Rim. "The Tetron are going that way." She pointed in the other direction. "We've already been reminded that hyperspace is a somewhat fixed speed and that human ships go half the speed of Tetron ships."

  Mitchell knew what she was getting at. "So how are we going to get to Earth before the Tetron destroy it?"

  "Yes."

  Mitchell looked at Origin. "Well?"

  "I never said you would arrive ahead of the Tetron, Mitchell," Origin said. "Only that you would survive to fight back against them, and have a chance to set your people free."

  "What people?" Mitchell shouted. He had never put the simple string of logic together before. There hadn't been time to think about it. "Everyone is going to be dead before we get there."

  Origin was unfazed by the outburst. "It is possible. It is not definite. I do not know if the Tet
ron will advance directly towards Earth, or if they will readjust their strategy based on the outcome of your actions on Liberty."

  "As in?"

  "They may determine that your continued survival is statistically more significant than the time at which they arrive in the inner core of worlds."

  "Meaning it's more important to kill you than to conquer the universe," Major Long said. "That's got to make you feel good."

  "Yeah, I feel great," Mitchell said. "Origin, it's a damn big universe out there. How do we find a Tetron?"

  "Mitch," Millie said. "I don't think that's a good idea."

  "Why not? If we can draw their attention, we can divert them away from Earth. Not just Earth. The other planets in the core, too. Liberty was a ghost town compared to those worlds. Origin, how do we find one?"

  Major Long moved forward to the table. "Colonel, I know why you're thinking the way you are, but that's crazy. We have no support and hardly any crew."

  "We beat a Tetron once before."

  "With help from the Valkyrie and a number of fighters, most of which were destroyed in Liberty's orbit."

  Mitchell leaned forward, staring at the table. "There has to be something we can do."

  "Continue to the Rim, get some reinforcements, and then head back," Long said.

  "We don't know there will be anything left by the time we get there."

  Millie walked over to Mitchell, putting her arm around his shoulder. Her bionic hand vibrated softly against his tense muscles. "Mitchell, we're in no shape to take on the Tetron. I know you know that. We need to think with our heads right now, not our hearts. I'm as eager to get back at those bastards as you are."

  Mitchell sighed. "I know. I know you're right. Both of you. Frig it all." He stepped back. He wasn't happy about moving in the opposite direction of the enemy. He wasn't happy about leaving his home world to take its chances on its own. What else could they do? Right now, all it would take would be to run across a single Tetron with even a small human slave force and they might be as a good as dead.

  Origin believed he was humankind's best hope of defeating the Tetron. He had never said how much of humankind would be left by the time he did.