Point of Origin (War Eternal Book 4) (2 page)

"She also wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty and do the hard thing. She wasn't afraid to keep people in line, even if it meant getting messy herself." He pointed out to Tio's technicians. "She saved your lives, running nonstop for days with a bullet lodged in her ribs." He turned and pointed at the people behind him. "She saved our lives by getting us here, and believing in us." He turned again. "She saved this entire war effort by preventing Tio's data stores from being wiped out, and she didn't stop, she didn't rest until the mission was complete."

He looked over at her again. He was channeling his anger now. Using it the way she would have wanted him to.

"And that's what we have to do," he said. "I can see that you're tired and beat up." He pulled the side of his uniform down to show his patched shoulder. "So am I. But this war isn't over yet because she wouldn't let it be. And we don't have the right to let people like that sacrifice themselves if we aren't willing to return their effort one hundred percent. We keep going. We keep fighting. Take a bullet? Keep fighting. Can't walk? Keep fighting. Lost everything you love? Keep frigging fighting."

"Riiigg-ahh," Cormac shouted behind him.

Mitchell's lips parted in a half-smile. "Take a look at the people behind me. Alliance, Federation, Tio's second in command, and Millie's own. We've had our differences, but not anymore. We're one force now. One unit. We're the only ones who can stop the Tetron from wiping out everything humankind has worked for centuries to build. Don't let Millie's death, or the deaths of the people you loved, be for nothing. If you're with me, if you're with us, then you're a Rigger."

"Riiigg-ahh," Cormac shouted again, this time joined by Major Aaron Long.

Mitchell moved to stand next to the casket. His heart pounded, his chest heaved. He reached out and took the assault rifle from the cross, holding it up in front of him.
 

"What do you say?" he asked.

"Riiigg-ahh," Steven yelled.

"Riiigg-ahh," Teal shouted.

"Riiigg-ahh," Calvin Hohn said, a little awkwardly.

"Riiigg-ahh," the crowd cried back.

"Okay," Mitchell said. "Let's talk about what we know, and what we don't know."

He was sitting in a thick gel chair coated with a layer of soft synthetic leather. It had been Tio's chair once, the place where he had sat whenever he was meeting with his commanders.

Teal was sitting on his right, Steven on his left. Admiral Calvin Hohn, Captain John Rock, Major Aaron Long, Germaine, Digger, Thomas, and the most experienced of the Operations techs who hadn't been killed by Watson, a woman named Aiko, rounded out their makeshift leadership.

They were in Tio's main meeting room, directly off Operations. An hour had passed since Mitchell had watched them launch Millie's casket out into space.

"First, tell me what we know about what happened here on Asimov," Mitchell said.
 

He was at the head of the table, taking charge of the meeting despite the fact that his brother held the higher rank and was technically in command of the Riggers now. Technically. There was no way the original Riggers, the ones who were trapped on Goliath with Watson, would have ever followed Steven. He was too nice.

Thomas leaned forward. "Most of this I only know because the Admiral told me. She and Mr. Tio uncovered information from the archives having to do with Katherine Asher and Christine Arapo. There was a third name, Kathleen Amway, associated with Ms. Arapo. They were planning to catch up on their research into that name later, but before they had the chance they discovered a second film that showed Corporal Watson following Ms. Arapo."

"On Earth?" Major Long asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Four hundred years ago?"

"Give or take, yes, sir. That's what she told me."

Major Long whistled. Thomas continued.

"Anyway, he must have been keeping an eye on what they were doing because as soon as he was outed he made his move. He shut out the lights and then sent these robots out from the tooling area, along with taking control of one of the mechs down in mechanical."

"He took Tess," Digger said. "I only survived because I was riding her back at the time, working on a minor glitch in the targeting system."

"We only survived because the mech's aim was off," Aiko said.

"I adjusted it when it started shooting our soldiers," Digger said. "I threw the aim off by over a meter. It still cut down over half our people before I could pull the emergency reactor shutdown. It was just luck that I was there."

"What happened to Millie?" Steven asked.

"I went to the armory with her and Mr. Tio," Thomas said. "He wanted to go back for his daughter. He sent me ahead to look for others to help out, so I did. By the time I got back to the house he was gone, and Millie was on the floor with four rounds in her. We had a patch kit in the armory, so I grabbed it and helped her stop the bleeding. Then we went hunting."

"You didn't try to talk her out of it?" Mitchell asked.

Thomas laughed. "I don't think the Admiral could be talked out of anything she wanted to do."

"No, she couldn't," Mitchell said. "Go on."

"So there were a lot of those bastard things, and they were smart. They learned from our tactics. Even after we managed to organize a resistance, it still took days to get through the base and get rid of them all. The Admiral, she wouldn't sleep. Not until they were clear."

"What about Watson?" Admiral Hohn asked.

"What about him? It took us thirty-two hours to get to the docks, and by then the Valkyrie was long gone. We didn't know for sure that Tio was on it; we only knew he wasn't on the base anywhere that we could find. Anyway, when we got to Operations Millie asked about the data upload. I didn't know anything about it, but Aiko did."

Aiko picked up the story from Thomas. "I showed her the station that was managing the stream. She asked me if we could shut it down. Luckily, Mr. Tio hadn't encrypted the shut-down sequence with his biometric codes, so we could. But it was still encrypted. It took us days to crack it."

"By that time Millie had brought me in to look at it," Digger said. "I had a feeling that frigger would do a remote wipe once he was done stealing the archives, so I rigged up a little system to keep that from happening. It was a good thing for her I have a way with shit like that."

"So Watson never got all of the data?" Mitchell asked.

"No," Aiko said.

"How much did he get?"

"Ninety-seven point seven percent."

"That's a lot."

"Yes, but there was a lot of data, and it wasn't being streamed sequentially. Watson may be missing important gaps, not only in time but even within a single file."

"And what about us?" Steven asked. "You said it was biometrically secured. Does that mean we don't have access to the data either?"

"No, no, no," Aiko said. "We do. It was encrypted during the stream. The original is still in the clear."

"The problem is that Watson blew the shit out of all of our portable storage systems," Digger said.

"Which means as long as we want the data, we have to stay here," Mitchell said.

"Yes. He wasn't taking any chances we may be able to get the same information."

Germaine groaned. "How do we know Watson won't be back as soon as he can get Goliath turned around? We used up all our nukes on the other one."

"We salvaged six nukes from Hell," Major Long said.

"Six nukes won't do shit against that beast," Germaine replied.

"With Mitchell's fighter?"

Germaine acquiesced. "Okay, maybe."

"Destroying Goliath is our last move," Mitchell said.

"Agreed," Steven said. "That doesn't mean we can rule out that Goliath will come back to finish off Asimov. We need to get out of here as soon as we can."

"Which is how soon?" Calvin asked.

"We need to know what Millie and Tio knew, and take it further," Mitchell said. "We need to find out why Christine took the name Kathleen Amway."

"That could take weeks," Teal said.

Mitchell nodded. "It might. I'm not that worried about Goliath coming back, though."

"Oh? Why not?"

"The data. Watson wanted the data. It's the only explanation for why he would have kept himself undercover this whole time. Well, he has the data, enough of it that he was content to blow Asimov out of space. Now he can use it."

"For what?" Captain Rock asked.

"To find Tio's brother, Pulin," Thomas said. "That's what Millie thought, anyway."

"Yes," Mitchell agreed. "He's looking for the Creator, just like the rest of his buddies."

"Except the stream was encrypted with a brainwave key," Digger said. "Mr. Tio would never have given it to Watson, which means it could take days at least for him to crack into the data."

"Not only that," Mitchell said, "but the Goliath didn't go to hyperspace on its own. Millie thought Tio had forced it to jump. I'm willing to take bets that he also secured the command."

"Which means we might have some time to do some digging," Teal said.

"Right. We don't have a lot of time, though. The Goliath moves at twice the speed our ships do. Even if we get the answers we're looking for, we'd need to hope we're already closer to the planet the Federation has Pulin stashed on, or there's no way we'll beat him to it."

"And what if we do beat him to it?" Steven asked.

"I'll be ready for him."

"So that's what we know," Mitchell said. "Let's talk about what we don't know."

Steven leaned forward in his chair. "I'll start with the obvious. We don't know who is and isn't a Tetron."

"Yeah," Long said. "First it was Christine Arapo and M. Now it's Watson, too? While we're at it, according to your original story, the Tetron showed up together around the time M warned you about them. Now it turns out they've been here in some capacity since XENO-1 crashed on Earth?"

"Or longer," Calvin said. "Why didn't this clone of you tell you there were more out there?"

"Maybe it didn't know," Mitchell said.

"Or maybe it wanted this shit to happen," Digger said.

"What do you mean by that?" Steven asked.

"I mean, all of this shit that's going down is one massive time loop, right?"

"Eternal Recursion," Mitchell said.

"Yeah. Recursion. The same thing happens over and over again. Except in recursion, you can change the variables that are put in and then you get a different result. So how do we know that M isn't frigging with us? How do we know he didn't just tweak the variables a little bit to see what the result would be? It doesn't work if he changes too much or gives away too much information."

"Except how would he know what changed from one loop to the next?" Captain Rock asked.

Digger shrugged. "I don't know. He would have to persist somehow."

"An eternal engine," Mitchell said. "But as far as I know only Goliath has one, and M is dead, so he couldn't go forward if he wanted to. In any case, I don't see the point of doing it that way. The Tetron have Constructs if they want to experiment with probabilities. They don't need to do it over the course of infinite time."

"Construct?" Digger asked.

"Virtual reality simulations of the universe."

Digger's face paled. "Did you say VR of the entire frigging universe? The processing power for that would be off the charts."

"Don't forget the Tetron are originally from a long time in the future. The only reason we can fight them at all is because they suck at war."

"And because you knew they were coming," Teal said. "And because they're going insane. That has to be helping."

"Insane?" Calvin said.

Mitchell nodded. "Yes. When I was on Hell, I entered a Construct and spoke to a representation of Katherine Asher. She suggested it may be because they have discovered emotion, and they don't know how to handle it."

Major Long started laughing. "Wouldn't that be a kick in the pants?"

"Let's get back to what Digger was saying," Steven said. "How do we know that M didn't withhold information from us so that we would end up here? Maybe all of this has happened before? Maybe this is the fiftieth time I'm saying these words. Or the thousandth. How do we know?"