Earth Unending (Forgotten Earth Book 3)

by M. R. Forbes

  Clint’s face had gone pale as he realized the stupidity of his attempted murder. Maybe Hayden had tied them up, but he hadn’t harmed them when he could have. He had been about to leave peacefully.

  Hayden lowered his revolver and turned back around.

  “You aren’t going to kill us?” Billy asked.

  “Unless you’re lucky, you’re going to be dead soon, anyway,” Hayden replied, looking back over his shoulder. “Tinker is aiming to end the world. You also almost killed the only idiot out here who’s dumb enough to try to stop him. Gus, let’s go.”

  He made it to the door out to the stairwell.

  A horrible shriek sounded from above.

  Unfortunately, they had to go that way to get out.

  Chapter 34

  The sun was down by the time Nathan started the descent into Edenrise, guiding the Pulse in smooth rotations around the giant spear of the shield spire. James was with him on the bridge, slumped in the captain’s chair, still dressed only in a pair of underwear.

  Nathan had been surprised to see how much of the replica had been replaced with machine parts. He already knew about his hands, but it was also part of his torso, his left shoulder, his entire right leg, and his left leg from the knee. In fact, he was almost more machine than man, the volume of dull metal outpacing the amount of flesh that held it all together.

  “We’re here, James,” he said, glancing back at the other man.

  James opened his eyes and slowly lifted his head. His human eye was bloodshot and heavy. “Already?”

  “I took a more direct route back,” Nathan said.

  It felt like a long time to him too, even if the flight back had taken less than an hour to complete. The original return course guided the Pulse back into orbit and down again, but Nathan didn’t think they had time for that. He had patched James up and gotten him stable, but he still wanted Doc to check the general out. He wanted her to check him out too. Whatever they had seen, whatever had happened, he had no idea if there were lingering effects, physical or otherwise.

  He had skimmed the Pulse along the clouds, staying high and dark enough there was no way anyone on the ground could have spotted the starship as more than a dark spot in front of the star field beyond. He wasn’t sure it even mattered. The NCP was Proxima’s rule, not Tinker’s. He doubted the leader of the Liberators cared if the populace knew someone had access to a ship.

  They would all be dead soon, anyway.

  Nathan shuddered slightly at the thought. It was a thought he was trying to keep buried and not think much about. It was a thought that had been bothering him with increased frequency in the forty-eight minutes since they had taken off. Retrieving the mainframe brought them one step closer to completing Tinker’s master plan, assuming he was right about the data stored on it. It had brought them one step closer to destroying the world. His vision of Niobe’s murder had rattled him and left him questioning again if he was doing the right thing. She had been murdered to make this happen, to try to bring the Others into the narrative.

  After everything he had just experienced, was Tinker about to make a terrible mistake that would cost them all not only their control of the planet but their sanity too?

  Was he about to be a major reason Tinker might succeed?

  “You should have followed the plan,” James said.

  “I wanted to get you back here so Doc can look at you. There’s no way anyone could see us at fifteen kilometers.”

  “That’s not the fucking point, Nathan,” James grumbled, his voice still low and tired. “You have a hard time following orders and sticking with procedure. You have too much of a mind of your own.”

  “Why are you surprised? You’re a Stacker too.”

  “I’m the General. You’re the Colonel. Tinker is over both of us. He entered that flight plan. You should have followed it. Even Stackers understand chain of command.”

  “As long as it suits us. Come on, James. Considering what we talked about earlier?”

  James put a finger to his lips. Was Tinker able to listen in to communications on the ship?

  “We’ll have a full debriefing with Tinker after we get checked out by the medical team,” James said. “Whatever your thoughts are regarding the mission, save it for that.”

  “Yes, sir,” Nathan replied. “I’m sorry, sir. I believed your health was sufficiently compromised to initiate an emergency extraction.”

  He heard James laugh behind him. “Shut the fuck up, Nate.”

  Nathan smiled. James wasn’t that mad at him over it. Maybe he wasn’t mad at all? If Tinker could be listening in, the light chewing out might all be for show.

  He touched the Pulse down on the tarmac a minute later. A pair of transports were already waiting for them, one to take them to medical and one to unload the mainframe and bring it to Tinker’s lab. Nathan had thought Tinker might come in person to see them home, but the leader of Edenrise was probably busy preparing to receive the computers and get to work unlocking their data.

  “Can you go take care of the preliminaries?” James asked. “I need to find some pants.”

  “Yes, sir,” Nathan said.

  He rose from the pilot’s seat and exited the bridge, heading down to the hold. He hit the controls to open the ramp, standing at the base of it as the airlock hissed and the pressure equalized.

  “General Stacker,” the man on the ground said once the ramp was down. “Lieutenant Klein.”

  “Colonel Stacker,” Nathan corrected. “General Stacker will be along in a moment. He needs immediate medical attention.”

  “Colonel.”

  Nathan turned his head to the left. Doc was approaching him at a fast walk from the medical transport.

  “What happened, sir?” she asked, reaching him.

  “It’s a long story,” Nathan replied. He looked back at Lieutenant Klein. “Do I need to sign anything or can you get to work unloading the mainframe?”

  “Just one form, sir,” Klein said, holding out a tablet. “Shifting the responsibility from you to my team. If anything happens to the mainframe between here and the lab, it’ll be my head that rolls.”

  Nathan took the tablet and scribbled his signature on the bottom. “I don’t envy that.”

  “Yes, sir,” Klein replied. He took back the tablet and turned to his squad, lined up behind him near the transport. “Let’s move, soldiers. I want that gear loaded and delivered within the hour.”

  “Yes, sir!” his squad replied. They grabbed their gear and headed up into the Pulse’s hold.

  “If you’ll excuse me, Colonel,” Klein said.

  “Of course, Lieutenant.”

  Klein moved past him, starting up the ramp.

  “General Stacker,” Klein said a moment later.

  “Lieutenant Klein,” James replied. “Carry on.”

  Nathan turned as James descended. He had slipped into a USSF jumpsuit, only zipping the front halfway up. His forehead was sweaty. So was his chest.

  “General,” Doc said. “You look like hell.”

  “I’m fine,” James said.

  “Bullshit,” Nathan said. “You look like you’re burning up.”

  “General, get in the transport immediately,” Doc said. “Or I’ll have my team sedate you and carry you over.”

  “You don’t have that authority,” James said.

  “I do, and I’ll use it if you make me.”

  James smiled. “You’re beautiful when you’re bossing me around.”

  Doc began to flush, and she glanced at Nathan. “He’s definitely not right, is he?”

  “He almost died,” Nathan said.

  “How? I don’t see a scratch on him.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “You said that already.” She sighed loudly. “Just get the fuck on the transport so we can run you through some tests, okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” James said.

  He took a few steps and stumbled. He would have fallen over if Nathan hadn’t
caught him.

  “I need a gurney!” Doc called out. “Stat.”

  Her team scrambled to grab the gurney and bring it over. James had gotten back up by then, and he tried to wave the medical team away. Doc ignored him, and a minute later he was on his back, unconscious and in the transport.

  “Should we tell Tinker?” Nathan asked, climbing into the back of the transport with Doc. He was worried about James. The general had seemed like he was recovering. Had he been trying to fake it?

  “No,” Doc replied. “I know him. He won’t care.”

  “About James?”

  “He’ll say if it’s his fate to die, then he’ll die. Otherwise, he’ll live. He’s not a warm man.”

  “I gathered that much, but still. James is as close to a son as he could be.”

  “There’s not a lot of room for compassion with what he’s trying to do, is there?”

  Nathan stared at her for a moment. He hadn’t considered it before, even if it was pretty obvious. Tinker was willing to sacrifice anything and everything to do what he believed needed to be done, no regrets.

  It was something he would need to remember, especially if things went wrong. It made Tinker more dangerous.

  Was it also something he could use against him?

  Chapter 35

  The hospital in Edenrise was more impressive than the field hospital at Fort McGuire. It was cleaner and more modern since a lot of the equipment had come from Proxima, traded with the Trust in return for the advanced weaponry and tech Tinker was producing, shipped back to the asteroid mining rigs and waiting for a war they all hoped would never come.

  A war with the Asteroid Tossers.

  Nathan smiled when he thought of the name. It was suitable for the aliens who had ruined Earth. Or at least, tried to ruin Earth. The building he was sitting in was a testament to their failure. Not only had humankind reached the stars, but they had also settled there and initiated trade with one another. Illicit trade, but trade all the same. And once the trife were gone and they could begin to rebuild?

  Their failure would be complete.

  At least until they came back.

  If they came back.

  One thing Nathan had decided — though he hadn’t shared the thought with James and wasn’t sure whether or not he would — the Others weren’t the answer. If the artifact or something that came through the artifact was the cause of the hallucinations that had nearly killed both of them, there as no way they could use it again.

  He still felt a chill when he thought of the soldier attacking him, and how real it had seemed. He got a bigger chill at the vision of Niobe begging for his help and the creature standing outside the base watching them fly away. Had it been real? Had they unleashed something they didn’t understand and couldn’t control? He sure as hell hoped not.

  Doc had taken James for tests straight away, sending him to a private room with a nurse to wait his turn. It had been an hour since she had rushed the general away on the gurney, plainly nervous about the fate of the man she loved. Nathan understood it. He would have felt the same way if he was in her position.

  The room was small and comfortable. A soft bed, a stream box set up with dozens of old movies from before the war. A machine tracking his heart rate and blood pressure. A large window on his left, from which he could see past the buildings of Edenrise to the water beyond.

  The nurse had tried to give him an intravenous drip to ensure he was hydrated. He had allowed her to hook up the machines to check his vitals, but he drew the line there. He had a glass of water on the table beside the bed instead, and he picked it up and drank from it. The water tasted strange to him, as though it was filled with metal. It was probably just sediment from the pipes used to carry it through the building. He hated the taste.

  He looked toward the doorway when he heard someone approaching, soft soles on the tiled floor. He was expecting the nurse or Doc and was surprised when his door opened, and Ebion stepped in.

  “Nathan,” she said. “I heard you were back, and that you were injured. I came to check on you.”

  It was strangely compassionate.

  “Thank you,” Nathan replied. He had to remind himself she was a machine. “I’m doing fine. Things got a little weird, but Doc brought me in as a precaution. Did Tinker send you to check on me?”

  She shook her head, walking over to stand beside him. “No. I acted of my own accord.”

  “Are you allowed to do that?”

  She smiled. “I’m a companion, not a slave, Nathan.”

  He wasn’t going to argue. “Well, I’m glad for the company. Do you want to sit?” He patted the side of the bed. They hadn’t left him with an extra chair.

  She sat beside him, reaching out and taking his hand in hers. It was warm, like real flesh. He also expected her to be heavier, but she didn’t sink that far on the mattress.

  “Are you really a robot?” he asked. “Because right now I can’t tell at all.”

  Her eyes illuminated in golden light. “I’m made of silicone and circuits, alloy and synthetics. That doesn’t mean I can't react to external inputs and simulate emotion.” Her eyes settled back to their normal green. “And that question was rude.”

  “I’m sorry,” Nathan said. She was the most advanced AI he had ever interacted with, and he told her as much.

  She laughed. “Maybe it would be better if you stopped thinking of me as artificial? It would be much healthier for our relationship.”

  He felt his face begin to flush. Relationship? He was going to make another comment that she would have probably deemed inappropriate, and this time he held his tongue.

  “Did I miss anything while I was gone?” he asked instead. “How is the end of the world progressing?”

  “You joke because you’re uncomfortable with the situation,” she replied.

  “Shouldn’t I be?”

  “Not at all. I thought you understood the longer view.”

  “I do. And I accept it. That doesn’t always make it easy to live with.”

  “I understand,” she said. “The lab has begun the mass production of the virus. They’re able to produce enough of the toxin for six thousand delivery vehicles per day. The techs are inspecting each of the DVs to ensure they’re fully operational.”

  “How long will it take to make enough of the virus?”

  “There are one hundred forty-three million square kilometers of land mass on Earth. Minus approximately fifty million square kilometers for the poles where no humans or trife want to go. Ninety-three million square kilometers. Approximately fifteen days.”

  Nathan paused while he did the math in his head. He could barely believe the result. “You have one hundred thousand delivery vehicles?” he asked.

  “Approximately.”

  “That seems impossible.”

  “Each DV is the length of your arm and powered by an ion thruster the size of your thumb. Enough to launch them to a low orbit and then drop them toward the set coordinates. They’ll release the virus two kilometers from the surface, allowing it to spread. We’ve calculated each warhead can cover two thousand square kilometers at that altitude, but we’re planning to half that to be sure.”

  “It all sounds like such a massive undertaking.”

  “It is. Tinker didn’t start this yesterday, Nathan. He and his progenitors have been working on this for nearly a century. ”

  “What about Tinker’s brother? Where does he fit into this?”

  Ebion opened her mouth to answer, stopped from responding when Doc entered the room.

  “Nathan,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine,” he replied. “How’s James.”

  “Stable and improving. Asleep for now. We gave him a sedative to calm him. Can you walk?”

  “Gladly,” he replied.

  Ebion stood up, and he slid out of bed beside her. They had put him in a robe that hung open at the back, and he felt the breeze on his body as he rose. He reached behind and held
it closed.

  “Ebion, out,” Doc said.

  She rolled her eyes in response. Then she leaned up on her toes and kissed Nathan on the cheek before leaving the room.

  “I think she likes you,” Doc said.

  “She’s a machine.”

  “Don’t let her hear you say that. Technically, we’re all machines. We’re just made up of organic components instead of synthetic ones. Considering you’re a copy—”

  “She’s still a machine.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first person to have a machine think it was in love with them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I thought that was a pretty straightforward statement. Come on, Colonel.”

  Nathan followed her out of the room. The last thing he needed was a fake person’s simulated feelings deciding it was in love with him.

  “James’ brainwave scans turned up some irregularities,” she said. “Including hypersensitivity in the gyri, temporal, and prefrontal regions.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means that whatever you two were seeing, I think it was because something fucked with your brain.”

  “What?”

  “That’s my question. I’m hoping between the two of you I can come up with a common denominator. James was exhibiting increased output of serotonin, but I haven’t come up with any unexpected compounds in his bloodstream yet.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Again, that’s my question. Something caused the reaction. Both of you had it. But James’ was much stronger. Because he thought he was dying? Because more of something got into him? I don’t have any answers yet.”

  She brought him to a lift, and down two levels. They crossed through mostly empty corridors to a room with a large cylindrical machine in it.

  “Have you ever done a fMRI before?” she asked.