by M. R. Forbes
He tried to turn his head again, getting it to move a few centimeters. Just enough to see the source of the noise.
A girl. A young girl. Min? No. He knew her. She had been on Liberty with him. What was her name again? He clenched his teeth against the pain. Kathy. That was it. What was she doing here?
He tried to call her name. He found some air, the word coming out as a dull moan. Her eyes narrowed, and she put a finger to her lips.
What?
She ran over to where he was laying, kneeling next to him. She looked frightened but confident. How had she survived the package? She was just a kid, he remembered. She didn't have a receiver or an implant. Her brain was pure and clean, the way he should have kept his own.
She reached for the device on his neck and then paused.
"No," she said. "It's too risky. I'm sorry."
She stood up, running away from him. He tried to call her, and she turned and put her finger to her lips again. He watched her dash across the hangar, to Mitchell's starfighter. What was she doing?
The rungs didn't extend for her. She jumped and grabbed the edge of a wing, pulling herself up. She climbed over the top of it, behind the cockpit. He couldn't see what she was doing there, but a minute later the ship began to hum. She jumped down, her eyes moving to the hangar bay. It was still open, Origin's shields preventing the atmosphere from leaking out.
The starfighter began to lift off the ground. Somehow, it was flying on its own.
Kathy ran across the hangar, back the way she had come. She jumped over Tio without looking at him, retracing her steps in a hurry.
The S-17 spun to face the open hangar, thrusters firing and sending it through the shields in a hail of blue lightning as its own shielding pushed back against Goliath's. Then it was through, speeding out into space, piloting itself.
The hatch nearest Tio opened, and Watson came rushing in. He was no longer carrying Origin's complete human configuration, only his head. He watched with Tio as the starfighter vanished. Then he hurried over to Tio, resting Origin's head next to the Knife, the neck cauterized to prevent it from bleeding.
"What happened?" he screamed at Tio.
Tio didn't answer. Watson growled and pulled the torture device from Tio's neck. The sudden relief was almost enough to make him weep.
"What happened?" he repeated.
Tears sprang to Tio's eyes, and he began to laugh.
"Don't laugh at me," Watson said.
He punched Tio in the face. It only made Tio laugh harder.
"I said don't laugh at me." He punched him again.
"Be careful," Tio said. "You still need me alive."
Watson froze, catching himself.
"You're right. It doesn't matter, anyway. Let Mitchell come. He won't stand a chance against us without Goliath."
"Us?" Tio said.
"I'm stuck here while we finish uploading the data stream. Do you think I was going to wait by myself?"
Even as he said it, a Tetron appeared next to the Goliath, a small Alliance fleet surrounding it. Its liquid metallic frame pulsed and glistened as it hovered beyond the open hangar. Tio had never seen the enemy like that before, and his mouth opened as he marveled at it.
"Is that you?" he asked. "The full you."
"No. I'm too important to waste time as part of the rear guard. We are impressive though, aren't we?"
Tio didn't answer. He leaned back, his body still shivering from the pain it had been put through.
Mitchell would come.
Was it too late?
61
Nearly one hundred men and women crowded into the Carver's briefing room. They were a mix of military and mercenary, some stiff and intense, others loose and almost jovial. They were the commanders of Tio's fleet that had made it to the rendezvous point so far, along with the officers from Steven's four remaining ships.
It was almost an impressive display, so much more so because of what it represented. A military to fight back against the Tetron. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing.
Mitchell was standing at the front of the room with Steven, Calvin, and Germaine. While the Federation Admiral had no ships to offer, he had promised his assistance as former decorated starfighter pilot, using one of the fighters Mitchell's team had salvaged from Hell. He had also offered the hands of his fellow officers, and a promise that he would do his best to enlist more Federation resources whenever possible.
"Let's see a show of hands," Steven said. "How many ships here have nukes on board?"
Steven raised his own hand. Three of the commanders under him followed his lead along with twelve of Tio's pilots.
"Sixteen ships," Calvin said. "Not bad."
"Who has more than one?" Steven asked.
Only four hands remained up.
They had already explained the situation as they believed they knew it to the gathered crew. Steven's eagle eyes had spotted the S-17 the moment it had fallen out of hyperspace. They had immediately put the Carver on an intercept course, leaving the starfighter with only a short distance to travel to place itself on board. How it knew to land on the Carver, or that Mitchell was there, was a mystery to all of them. The flight helmet had been waiting in the worn cockpit, which opened at Mitchell's approach.
There was no question the arrival of the starfighter and the absence of Goliath meant that things had gone bad near Asimov. Had the Goliath been destroyed? Had Asimov? There was no way for them to know without returning to the site, which meant being prepared to encounter at least one Tetron, and maybe more.
Which meant nukes.
It was the only thing Mitchell knew could stop a plasma stream. He didn't have proof that they could do much of anything else against a Tetron since they depended on the air inside human starships to do the most damage, and as far as he knew the skeletal structure of the enemy had no oxygen to fuel thermal effects. What they were hoping for was that if they could hit the same Tetron with enough missiles at once, the massive doses of radiation and EMP would weaken and perhaps destroy the enemy's shields.
At that point, Mitchell would blast the frig out of it with the S-17's amoebics.
It was a complicated, risky plan, but it seemed they had enough nukes to hit at least one Tetron hard.
What if there were more than one?
Mitchell was doing his best to stay positive. To believe that Millie was safe and that Goliath had escaped whatever had happened. He wanted to believe that Origin had sent the S-17 to signal for him to return to the asteroid because it was in the clear.
As much as he wanted it, he knew it was bullshit. Millie would never have altered the plan on purpose. In the back of his mind, he knew what he expected to find. Asimov destroyed. Goliath destroyed. Millie, Alvarez, Alice, Singh, and all the others destroyed with it.
The end of the war?
No. It wouldn't be over. No matter what happened, he wouldn't give up until he was dead. Even if it was just him, all alone in the S-17, strafing the hell out of the Tetron for all he was worth.
"Okay, we're going to divide the launch capable ships into squadrons with the decoys. When we drop-"
"What do you mean decoys?" someone asked from the back of the room.
"It's just a word," Steven said. "It means you can't hurt the Tetron."
"Yeah, okay. But does that mean we're just out there to get blasted?"
"No," Mitchell said. "It means you're out there to protect the launch vehicle. There are going to be other starships and starfighters under enemy control. Your job is to take them out."
"Okay. I don't want to just be a target."
Steven glanced at Mitchell. Mitchell shrugged. They had to work with what they had.
"As I was saying," Steven continued. "When we drop, I'll call out the targets and the squadrons. We're going numbers only for brevity. Make sure you know your squadron number. As Mitchell was saying, the goal is to get the launch vehicles into position. We want to hit a single target with as many nukes as possible in un
ison. Timing is going to be everything here, so you need to keep your ears open."
Mitchell stepped forward. "In addition, we need to be careful about how we form up. The enemy has the capability to fire a focused EMP blast in a single direction that will short your systems and leave you as space junk. Manage your vectors and don't pile up. We can't be a massive wave crashing over the enemy. We need to be more like a net, encircling it and closing tight."
"And remember what you're fighting for," Steven said. "This isn't about what you believe in, or whose side you're on. We're all humans here, which means we're all on the same side. It's them or us, and I'd really like it to be us."
That statement got a reaction from Tio's commanders, who stomped their feet twice, creating an echoing vibration in the room. It was an affirmation Mitchell hadn't seen before. He liked it.
"We don't have time to do this the right way, so we'll have to wing it. If you raised your hand, go stand over there. Otherwise, we'll start counting numbers. We have ninety-seven ships in our fleet. Ten groups of almost ten." Steven pointed to the first seat on the left.
"One," the occupant said, a slender woman with multi-colored hair.
"Two," said the next.
"Three."
They circled the room, counting off their groups. When they were done, Steven distributed the launch vehicles to each group.
"Make sure you have a squadron channel open, along with our general channel. I'll be issuing orders from there."
Tio's crew stomped their feet again.
"Everybody back to your ships," Steven said. "Departure in twenty-five minutes. Let's kick some alien ass."
This time everyone stomped their feet. Mitchell missed hearing the shouts of "Riiigg-ahh," but it was a decent replacement. The commanders rose and filed out of the room, some murmuring to the others in nervous excitement, others calm and stoic.
"Let's kick some alien ass?" Mitchell said to Steven once the room was empty.
Steven shrugged. "I've always wanted to say that."
Mitchell took Steven's hand. They had made up a complex handshake a long, long time ago that they had plainly called the "Williams Shake."
Both of them still remembered it.
"Let's do this."
62
Tio's head slumped, his body too tired to support it.
"You're stronger than I gave you credit for," Watson said. He was standing in front of the Knife, watching him react to the torture.
Tio wasn't sure how long he had been there, strung up in front of what had once been Origin's core. He knew it belonged to Watson now, the Tetron having managed to overwhelm Origin's configuration and gain control of the intelligence, and of Goliath.
It had been easy for him to do. Easy enough that he could have done it anytime he had wanted, even before they had ever arrived at Asimov. Of course, there would have been no purpose to it at that time. He wanted the data. He wanted Pulin.
Tio refused to give him the access he needed. He was in constant agony, holding on to each second, forcing himself to survive it and move to the next. There was no way to track time like that. There was no way to understand anything that was happening anywhere else.
"You're smarter than I gave you credit for, too," Watson said. "And I give you a lot of credit in that area."
Smarter. Yes. At least in that. The biometric security had ensured that only he could access the encrypted files, and Watson had originally believed all he would need to unlock the door was Tio's body. It was enough to get through most of the layers of security. Not all. There had been one more trick up the Knife's sleeve.
Brainwaves. He had secured the stream with a specific brainwave pattern that would only be repeated if he intentionally thought of a certain memory. Without being able to replicate the pattern, there was no way Watson could hack into the data quickly. That meant he needed to find a way to make Tio do it.
And Tio wouldn't do it. Especially now. With Min dead, there was no reason for him ever to give in. He didn't blame Millie for what she had done. He blamed Watson for giving her no other choice. He blamed the Tetron for everything, and it strengthened his resolve to unbreakable.
"Come on, Tio," Watson said, his voice almost a whine. "You've been here for six days. The upload has taken a lot longer than we calculated, but it's almost complete. Whether you help me or not, I'll break the encryption sooner or later. All you're doing is delaying the inevitable."
"Mitchell will kill you," Tio managed to whisper. Six days. It had felt like months.
Watson waved his hand like he was smashing a bug. "We've run the calculations. There is a zero percent probability that Mitchell will survive a battle here. He doesn't have the firepower."
"He has my fleet."
"It isn't enough," Watson said. "I respect Colonel Williams, but it just isn't. The math doesn't lie."
"He has his fighter."
"Not enough."
"You killed his girlfriend."
"Not enough. Is this what you're clinging to? This foolish notion that somehow Colonel Mitchell Williams, the Hero of the Battle for Liberty, will appear in his golden starfighter and save the day? I've been working you a little too hard if you're believing in that fantasy. Perhaps I should ease off on the shocks."
He pressed the shock stick to Tio's genitals, laughing as Tio groaned.
"Perhaps not," Watson said.
Tio breathed through the pain. He couldn't give in. Maybe he was ridiculous to think Mitchell could do anything about this. It didn't matter. He wouldn't open the data stream. At the very least, he would die knowing he hadn't surrendered.
He could be a hero in his own mind if nowhere else.
"Fine. Hang there in silence." Watson dropped the stick, letting it clatter on the floor. "The upload is at ninety-five percent. When it's done, I can begin attacking it myself."
Then the Tetron was gone.
Tio continued to let his head hang. Watson the human configuration was gone, but Watson the Tetron was all around him. If he did anything, the intelligence would know it.
It wasn't as if there was anything he could do, anyway. He was more certain than ever that he was going to die like this.
A hero in his own mind? It was false hope, and he knew it. His entire life had led to this, and he had failed more miserably than he could have ever imagined.
63
Mitchell watched the clock hit zero in the overlay behind his eyes.
He felt the tug as the universe moved back into its proper place.
He hung motionless among the stars, his grid picking up the targets while the rest of the fleet appeared around him.
They had set their coordinates as aggressively as they dared, bringing them in as close as possible to where Mitchell had left the Goliath. It had been an exercise in rushed calculation with little enough margin for error, especially since the Carver had no means to avoid dropping into the exact same spot as another ship.
Hyperdeath left them all hanging there, stationary targets spread far and wide enough to hopefully avoid losing too many to a Tetron plasma stream.
Mitchell's overlay showed the Goliath where he had expected it to be, still remaining in a synchronous orbit with the rock that was Asimov. The asteroid didn't register to his sensors, but he could just barely make out the dark spec of it against the planet behind. He only knew it was there because he knew where to look.
A third object, a Tetron, was sitting next to the Goliath. A dozen Alliance ships surrounded it.
He knew immediately that the Goliath had been compromised. Disabled or taken, it didn't matter which.
They would have to take it back.
There was no time for him to worry about Millie. He had done enough of that on the two day trip to the area. There was no time to wonder what had gone wrong, or how. The time for thinking was done.
Now it was time to react.
He slammed the S-17's thrusters the moment they came online, the starfighter bursting forward. Steven's voice regis
tered in his head, splitting the squadrons and ordering them to more precise positioning.
The enemy ships began to move into a defensive formation.
The energy readings on the Tetron's surface started to spike.
Goliath remained where it was, neither attacking or defending. According to his sensors the ship's shields were down, her power levels minimal.
He forced his breathing to remain slow and steady, pushing himself towards a reactive state, focused and ready for anything. Ahead of him, a stream of projectiles launched from the enslaved Alliance ships, racing towards his position.
Mitchell shifted his thrust to the topside vector, pushing the S-17 relatively downward. It was easy for him to avoid the projectiles at this distance. Except the enemy ships weren't shooting at him.
He knew the Carver was at his back, grouped with nine other starships. The missiles streaked over him, and he turned his head to see defensive systems fire, cutting most of them down. The remaining volley exploded against ready shields.
"Squad one to six, move towards the Tetron," Steven said. "Seven through ten, concentrate on the Alliance ships. Mitch, clear as much of a path as you can. All fighters are go."
The general channel clicked and he heard a personal channel open.
"Mitch, what's our plan on Goliath?" Steven asked.
"Let it be for now. The Tetron is the priority. Let's see if we can get a shot off on it. Watch for the plasma spike on its surface, that'll give you an indication where it's going to fire."
"Roger," Steven replied.
Mitchell was approaching the Alliance ships in a hurry. Starfighters began pouring out of launch bays as he neared, thickening the soup. He opened fire with his guns, strafing the launching fighters on the closest cruiser, tearing two of them apart before they could get clear, causing the next few after to slam into the debris. He rotated up and over the starship, shooting past them as the first counterstrike against them vectored in.