by M. R. Forbes
"Do you recognize this?" he asked, leaning past him to show the code on the terminal.
Pulin leaned in. His dead eyes seemed to gain a spark of life as they scanned the code. "No. It is wonderful."
"You wrote it," Mitchell said. "Rather, a past future you did."
"Past future?" Pulin said.
"Don't confuse him, Colonel," Tio said. "Pulin, I have a job for you. I need you to improve this code. Do you think you can do it?"
Pulin smiled. "Of course I can."
His hand moved on the control surface, scrolling the code. His eyes scanned it, back and forth like a machine.
"What do you need me to do?"
"Some of these systems are highly secure. Find any potential attack vectors and call them out. That's all to start."
"Okay. Can I have some water?"
"Yes. I will have water brought to you."
Pulin didn't respond. He had become engrossed in the code.
"There you have it, Colonel," Tio said. "I'm certain Teegin will contact you as soon as we have something."
"Teegin, can you maintain the link in FTL?" Mitchell asked through his p-rat.
"I will transfer a configuration to the Manibus before we depart," Teegin replied. "I trust the Riggers will vouch for the safety of my physical manifestation?"
Mitchell glanced back at Millie, who was still wearing a sour expression, and at Cormac, who looked disappointed that he wouldn't have a chance to torture anyone.
"I'm sure they can."
"We can't wait for him to solve the puzzle before we depart," Mitchell said, looking at Tio. "We're ten days out from what we're assuming is the New Terran homeworld. He's got about that long to give us something we can use."
"Understood, Colonel," Tio said. "Perhaps you can provide me with a few more doses of the Ethylbromoxide? It will keep him up and at the problem indefinitely."
"I'll see if Lieutenant Chang can help us with that."
Tio nodded, glanced at Pulin, and then back at Mitchell. "Is there anything else you need, Colonel?"
"No," Mitchell replied, smiling. "Shank will be outside. Don't try to wander off without an escort."
"I wouldn't dream of it."
Mitchell retreated from the room with Millie and Cormac.
"He's so full of shit," Millie said once they were back in the corridors, heading for the hangar. "Pulin was a lot more alert than that when he pulled him into the Corleone."
"Meaning?"
"The Federation didn't drug him. The Knife did."
"If that were true, it would mean he already has the drug. Why would he need more of it?"
"Maybe it was his last dose? Maybe he wants to take it himself? Who knows."
Mitchell thought about it as they walked. If Tio was willing to drug his own brother to get the job done faster, did he really have a problem with it?
He decided he didn't.
"Right now, I don't care about the details or the reasons. I care about results. It's bad enough Watson is going to be tearing the Alliance and the Federation apart for the next ten days while we're in FTL. We have to be ready when we get there. Make sure your people know that. We have to be ready. Whatever suicide missions Project Black has been sent on before, this is going to be the mother of them all."
"Roger, Colonel," Millie said. "We'll be ready. Will you?"
Mitchell nodded. "I'll be ready. I have to be."
42
They were the longest ten days, and the shortest ten days, of Mitchell's life. Which was saying a lot, considering he had waited years in a mental hospital to rejoin the fight and get the Goliath back into the future, a plan which had never completely come to fruition. There was a lot for everyone to do. Too much. With only thirteen ships remaining from the two-hundred plus they had started with, and all of them in a pretty bad state of repair, it had meant not only winnowing the field to only seven ships but having those ships spend the entirety of the trip under repair with the hopes of making them serviceable.
It was a distant hope, a hope that Mitchell struggled to hang on to. The other part of him had told him to leave the ships behind, to take the Dove and the Goliath and go off after Watson alone. What were seven ships going to do against the New Terran armada, anyway? Would they even have the capability to defeat a single one of the advanced warships? At the very least, they were targets. Distractions. Mitchell hated the idea of using them that way, especially the Carver, but what else could he do?
They dropped from FTL at various points on the way, where Mitchell collected status reports and updates from the others. Origin also picked up passing transmissions, most of them panicked warnings about the appearance of the New Terran fleet, and the havoc it was wreaking on Alliance forces. It seemed as though Watson couldn't use his short-range control system on military vessels, and so his ships were ripping them to pieces, obliterating the space-faring war machines of two nations without pause. Desperate pleas by desperate governments of distant planets went unanswered until they were shut down as the New Terrans gained absolute control.
The news wore on Mitchell, increasing his worry and leading to a lot of restless hours spent pacing the corridors of the Goliath, waiting for the next bit of news to come in.
Of course, not everything was going wrong. He had gotten more of the narcotics Tio requested, not from Chang but from Steven, who said the compound was also used to dope up critically injured soldiers while they were in the medi-bots. Tio reported they were making Pulin more machine than man, reducing him to two hours of sleep per twenty-four-hour cycle and giving him the concentration to burn through Watson's source.
The Knife's brother had found three separate attack vectors and created a package to take advantage of each in turn. Then he had isolated the networking stack and determined the most likely routine that the Tetron would have extended to manage his configurations. From that, he created a beacon that would send a signal out to any connected devices and clear their activity ques. According to Tio, Pulin believed this would return the configurations to their standard state, a resting state where they would live, play, work, and multiply as though they were one hundred percent authentic homo sapiens. It was the kill-switch Mitchell had been looking for, provided within four days.
The self-destruct sequence was even easier to define. Using the security bypass, it would take only a few instructions to confuse Watson into deleting himself, starting with non-essential systems which would be altered to reduce the priority of systems with increasing importance, until they were all relegated to such a low status that they would stop running.
Or at least, that was what Tio described. It was all another language to Mitchell, and like he had told Millie, at this point he only cared about results. Teegin, on the other hand, was in a near state of disbelieving awe at the way the Tetron's creator's mind worked. He had deciphered the advanced code in hours, creating something in days that had taken him years. As Teegin explained, Pulin had an innate understanding of how to make intelligence from electrons and logic gates, using a level of thinking that was beyond anything he had seen in a human before.
In other words, while Mitchell hadn't thought much about rescuing Pulin during the fact, it had become apparent afterward that he was the only reason they stood any kind of chance at all. He was grateful for the outcome, but that too was tempered with concern. Watson knew who the creator was. Why hadn't he ever tried to claim him? Did he just not know how valuable the man could be? Or maybe he considered himself above his maker? That wouldn't have been a surprise.
And then there was Kate. Her presence made the trip almost bearable and helped the time pass with at least some small semblance of normalcy. Now that he was back on the Goliath they had managed to steal time for one another here and there, and they used it well. Private nights in his berth, wandering the vast halls of the ship talking, or sometimes just sitting in silence. Whenever he was around her, he felt the universe was at peace, even if that was the furthest thing from the truth.
Whenever he was around her, he felt like he could take a breath. Slow. Steady.
Whatever happened, it was all going to be decided when they arrived in New Terran space. With any luck, Watson had rebuilt himself on the homeworld, not some backwater rock well out of reach, invisible to the star map they possessed. With any luck, he was feeling overconfident and would leave himself lightly defended enough to give the human forces a chance to reach the surface of the world and deliver the payload.
With any luck, he would find a way to get them through it, to reverse course and pull victory from the jaws of defeat after that same victory had been snatched away from them.
With any luck, he would have one more chance to confront Watson and finally, irreversibly end him and this damned eternal war for good.
43
"Teegin, give me a feed from the bridge viewscreens," Mitchell said. "I want to see what we're about to step into."
"Affirmative, Colonel," Teegin replied. "Transferring the feed now."
Mitchell brought it up on his overlay. At the moment it was nothing more than the solid black of hyperspace, but in a few minutes it would become his first view of New Terran space.
"Shank, is everyone ready back there?" Mitchell asked.
"Roger, Colonel," Shank replied. "We're locked and loaded."
Mitchell had left the rear of the Corleone a few minutes earlier. They had transferred all of the equipment and personnel they could carry during the last drop, including an entire pod of mechs and pilots from Tio's forces, led by Teal, and enough exosuits to outfit every one of the the Rigger's ground teams with the enhanced armor. Mitchell was wearing exo mounts himself, ready to suit up when the dropship neared the ground.
"Tio?" Mitchell said.
"We are prepared, Colonel," Tio replied.
He was waiting with Pulin and the Riggers inside of the APC that would deliver them from their landing point to the attack position, tasked with keeping his brother in line while they made an attempt to reach far enough into Watson's new core to inject the updated virus. Tio had argued against joining them on the trip, and Mitchell had been inclined to agree until Teegin had suggested they bring both the Knife and the creator along. The brothers had both the tools and the know-how to interface with the core if anything should go wrong, skills that neither Mitchell or any of the Riggers possessed.
It made their participation valuable, but it also made the rest of the drop team vulnerable. As if getting close to Watson wouldn't be hard enough, they would have the added task of ensuring the safety of the APC's passengers, a task that he was certain would be easier conceived than carried out. Once Watson knew Tio and Pulin were with them, it was likely the Tetron would move against them, either to capture or to kill.
"Falcon, sitrep," Mitchell said.
"Integrated and ready to go, Ares," Kate replied.
"Roger." Mitchell put his hand on Millie's shoulder. She was sitting in the pilot's seat of the Corleone, head up and eyes forward, her expression focused. "Millie?"
"I'll get you planetside, Colonel," Millie said.
He appreciated her confidence, even if he was struggling to share it. The drop onto an occupied Liberty in the prior recursion had been crazy enough. Now they needed to insert themselves onto a planet they had never seen, a planet whose overall location was based on an educated guess. A planet they knew absolutely nothing about, defended by an enemy they knew next to nothing about. Sure, they had seen the New Terran starships in action, but how many were going to be waiting out there? And what about the ground forces? It was safe to assume that if the ships were more advanced, whatever might be waiting for them on the surface would be as well.
They wouldn't know anything until the came out of FTL. Until Origin and Teegin could scan the area and start feeding them information. Until they could witness it for themselves. They were going in deaf, dumb, and blind, a state of affairs that made even the most hardened Marine cringe.
But damn it, they were going in.
"Roger," Mitchell replied. "Rain?"
"Standing by, Colonel," Ilanka said.
Mitchell looked over to the side, finding her in her piranha. Her mission was to run interference for the dropship, her starfighter modified to carry one of the Goliath's amoebic launchers. As before, her helmeted head turned his way, and she flashed him a thumbs up.
"ETA to drop?" Mitchell said.
"Two minutes, Colonel," Teegin replied.
Mitchell closed his eyes, thinking about Steven and the others. Their seven ships had been reduced to six when the Nostradamus failed to appear at the end of the third jump; the assumption made that her FTL drive had failed and left them stranded somewhere in the middle of the universe. Six ships? The idea of it had never stopped bothering him, but in the moments before his fears became a reality the responsibility and guilt threatened to overwhelm him.
Slow.
Steady.
There was no time left. To worry. To wonder. To hope. To love. He was a warrior going to war. A soldier on the verge of the fight of his life, for his life and for everything he cared about and everything he believed in. He hadn't asked for this. He hadn't volunteered. He was chosen. By who or what or where, he didn't know, but it was his name that was written along the edge of infinity. His actions that would decide the fate of humankind. He couldn't do it alone. He never could have. But he wasn't alone. He had Katherine and Kate, Teegin and Origin, Millie and Ilanka, Shank and Cormac, and even Tio and Pulin. He had the tools he needed. He had the people he needed.
As individuals there was no way they could pull this off.
As parts of the whole? Maybe there was nothing that could stop them.
He opened his eyes, his mind focused on that idea, his heart calming, his body still and loose. The guilt was gone. The tension gone. The fear gone. He was clear and focused and ready.
He felt the tug as the Goliath dropped from FTL, his eyes glued to the overlay of the feed from the bridge. The stars faded back into view, the universe becoming tangible once more. He turned his head, the feed shifting with his orientation, until he spotted a silvery moon in the distance, surrounded by a haze of what he assumed had to be nebulous gasses. Was that it? New Terra?
He only had a moment to wonder. He had barely put his eyes on the planet when the haze around it started to move, its pattern altering and updating, reforming itself like a massive amoeba, increasing in density as it shifted and tightened.
He felt his heart thump. Once. Twice. Three times. It was still calm and even, but now he wasn't sure if he would be able to keep it that way for long.
"Oh my God," he heard Millie whisper in front of him.
The haze wasn't gas. It was ships. Thousands upon thousands of ships.
And they were all headed their way.
44
He stared at the incoming swarm for a few more seconds, not quite sure what to do. He had expected resistance, but this was beyond anything he could have imagined. There had to be at least fifty thousand. Probably more. He had never seen anything like it. No wonder Watson had been disinterested in the creator and unconcerned about them. The mission had always been on the edge of suicide, but now it seemed that was the only thing they were going to accomplish.
He broke out of his shock, opening a channel to the fleet. "All hands, all hands. Battle stations. Fire at will. I repeat, fire at will."
"Mitchell," a voice said through the Corleone's comm. "I'm impressed. I wasn't completely sure you had the nerve to come here."
Watson. Mitchell felt a chill run through him at the sound of the Tetron's voice.
"Although, I suppose I should know better. The invincible Colonel Mitchell Williams, the Hero of Nothing. The Savior of Humankind. Of course, I'm sure you know I was expecting you."
The swarm was coalescing, swirling around itself and moving closer, the individual members becoming more defined as they approached. They weren't the same design as the ships Watson had sent to FD-09. They were smaller and sleeker
. More like starfighters than cruisers, likely more maneuverable, but not necessarily any less deadly.
Projectiles loosed from the fleet sped out to meet the horde, along with hundreds and hundreds of amoebics fired from the Dove and the Goliath. They tore into the mass, detonating against the ships within, leaving a trail of debris and dead craft in their wake. The first volley destroyed at least a thousand of them, suggesting that their shields were either weak or nonexistent. It didn't matter. It was barely enough to put a dent in them.
"Do you like them, Mitchell?" Watson said. "They're my latest design. They are intended to deal with the Naniates, but you're an excellent test for them. It was an opportunity I couldn't refuse. After all, if I can't defeat you with them, how can I possibly beat the real threat?"
"Falcon, get us moving toward the planet," Mitchell said through his p-rat, not wanting Watson to hear. "Teegin, can we shut him up?"
"Roger," Kate said, getting the Goliath back in motion.
"No, Colonel," Teegin replied. "He is saturating the bandwidth, as he did on FD-09."
"Keep firing," he said across the global channel. "Everything you've got. Get our fighters into the mix and back us up."
"Roger," Steven said, speaking for the rest of the fleet.
"We need to get down to the planet," Mitchell said.
"Here they come," Kate said. "Shields up."
The world around the Dove took on a shade of green as the eternal engine powered forcefield expanded away from the ship, wrapping it in a protective bubble, at the same time the swarm finished closing the gap. Hundreds of lasers pierced the black, painted red by his p-rat to make them visible as they speared into the fleet. A larger portion of the incoming force didn't fire at all, instead aiming themselves directly at their ships, slamming themselves against them. At first, they were obliterated and dispersed by their shields, but it was obvious they could only deflect them for seconds at best.
"Peregrine, keep firing," Mitchell said, urging the Dove to try to cover them. The amoebics were launching from her, one after another, leaving lines of detonations across the space that were dropping Watson's ships in bunches and reducing the impacts against the shields.