Point of Origin (War Eternal Book 4) (44 page)

"What about you?"

"I'll keep you covered. I'm the only one who can."

"Father, no. You'll die. The entire fleet will die. Earth will die."

"I know. I tried to stop it. I failed. We weren't smart enough. I wasn't smart enough."

"It isn't over yet," Kathy said.

"We can't beat seven Tetron on our own."

"We have to try. Win here or lose here, Mitch."

Mitchell felt the agony of loss circling his thoughts. The urge to give in and give up was massive, a lead weight on his soul. He gritted his teeth and seethed through them. "Which one is Watson?" he asked.

He didn't wait for Kathy to answer. He didn't need her to. He spun the S-17 in a tight rotation, visually picking out the largest of the Tetron.

"Father, leave Watson to me," Kathy said. "If you and the remainder of the fleet tackle the others, I can beat him and then help you with the rest."

Mitchell continued toward the Tetron for another second before a thought flipped the S-17 around. "Roger. Kick his ass for me."

"Affirmative."

"Kemushi, take charge of the remaining Federation ships," Mitchell said, noting what remained. The Kemushi was one of the ships with amoebic launchers, as was the Sprinter, a smaller trawler that had been at the rear of the formation. "Valkyrie, follow me. Germaine, you too."

"Roger," Major Long said. Somehow the pilot had managed to avoid the explosions though few of the other smaller ships had.

The attack began anew, with Mitchell leading the others in a charge against the first of the Tetron while Kathy redirected the Goliath, preparing a plasma stream and aiming it toward Watson. The other Tetron initially began charging their weapons and aiming them toward the ancient starship but redirected at the incoming Riggers a few moments later.

Watson had accepted the duel.

Amoebics filled the space between the two forces, explosions causing flashes of light across the opposing fleets. With fewer ships remaining, the Riggers were able to spread out more, making the plasma stream inefficient. Anti-missile systems peppered the Tetron amoebics before they could connect, allowing most of the starships to survive the first volley.
 

Most. Not all. It wasn't enough. It couldn't possibly be enough. Four Rigger starships vanished in the hail of projectiles, taken quickly from the fight, while none of the Tetron were damaged. Mitchell threw the S-17 into the thick of it, with Germaine trailing behind him. They circled the Tetron, finding the weak spots in the shields and blasting them hard enough to sneak a few amoebics through. A second volley was released, and ten more of the Rigger ships vanished.

"Kathy, we can't last like this," Mitchell said.

"You have to hold on," Kathy replied.

Mitchell flipped the S-17 back. The Goliath and Watson were a thousand kilometers apart, trading amoebics and plasma attacks with one another.

"I'm coming in," he said. He had to do something to speed up the outcome. "Germaine, with me."

"Check your grid, Ares," Germaine said. "I'm out of drones."

Mitchell cursed. "Ming, we need to target the Tetron attacking Goliath."

"Roger, Ares," Ming replied. "We'll be-"

The channel went dead. Mitchell turned his head to look back through the carbonate. The Kemushi was dead in space, trailing debris. All six of the Tetron remained operational.

"Kathy, it isn't working. It isn't enough. You have to go. Jump. Now. I'll follow you."

"I'm not leaving while Watson is alive," Kathy said.

"That's an order."

"I'm. Not. Leaving!"

The Goliath began to turn, pointing itself in Watson's direction. Watson began to turn as well, rotating the front point of his pyramid shape to face the starship.
 

Alarms blared in Mitchell's ears, and he returned his attention to his own situation. The Rigger fleet was almost gone, and the Tetron were turning their attention to him, a single starfighter against a half-dozen of the enemy.

"Kathy, what are you doing?" Mitchell shouted, doing his best to evade the Tetron's amoebics while watching the fight unfold ahead of him. The Goliath and Watson were on a collision course with one another. It was the same move he had used to destroy the first Tetron he had fought.

Except he had help to weaken the Tetron.

"Kathy, you can't," he said.

"I have to, Father. Keep your promise. Follow me."

Mitchell didn't know what that meant. He sent the S-17 bursting forward, firing amoebic after amoebic at Watson, watching the missiles detonate against his shields. The two objects were closing in on one another, each of them leading with a spear of energy.

"Kathy," Mitchell said, desperate. "You won't survive. You'll kill everyone on the Goliath."

"I know," Kathy said. "I'm sorry. It has to be this way. This is how it ends, Father. This is always how it was supposed to end."

"What?" Mitchell blinked again, trying to clear fresh tears from his eyes.
 

He had gone from joy to despair within minutes. Steven was dead, along with almost everyone in the fleet. Kathy was going to die, along with all of human civilization.
 

That was what it meant to lose the war.
 

The war he had always lost.

Always.

The light that flowed from the two ships when their energy spears collided was brighter than anything Mitchell had ever seen. His eyes drowned in the brilliance, leaving the collision as little more than a blur below a sea of iridescent static. He saw Watson's structure breaking beneath the Goliath. He saw the Goliath compressing and cracking ahead of the Tetron. He swore he could hear the squeal and whine and boom of the collision, despite the silence of space.

He also heard one last thing.

"I love you," Kathy said, right before the channel went dead.

His eyes were blinded and remained that way as the seconds passed. His heart was beating so fast he couldn't believe he was still conscious. He was streaming tears and crying out so strongly his throat was sore.

Time seemed to stop.
 

Everything seemed to stop.

His scream faded to silence.
 

He sat motionless in the cockpit of the S-17. He lifted his arm, putting his hand in front of his face. He couldn't see it, but the fact that he could move it at all told him he was still alive.

Wasn't he?

If he weren't, the Tetron would surely destroy him any second now. He couldn't fight them or escape them when he couldn't see.

"Mitchell."

He wasn't sure how much time had gone by when he heard the voice. His thundering heart had begun to calm. His body felt weary. He fought with everything in him not to lose himself to the pain and despair. His vision was returning as well. He could see the faint outline of the S-17's cockpit around him. He could see his arms and his legs. Strangely, everything outside of the cockpit had gone from pure white to pure black. There were no Tetron. No stars. No Earth.

"Katherine?" he said, his voice hoarse.

"Not yet."

"Origin?"

"Yes."

"Where are you?"

"I'm all around you, Mitchell."

Mitchell's head felt heavy. He took a few breaths. "The S-17. You're the starfighter?"

"It was a configuration. Now it is a duplicate. Kathy had a copy of my data stack embedded in her DNA." A sweet, soft laugh filled his ears. "Watson had no idea. She passed the data to the starfighter when he took control of Goliath."

"You brought yourself to me when I met up with Steven near Asimov." He was feeling groggy, but the pieces were falling into place.

"Yes. I'm sorry, Mitch. I couldn't tell you. We've waited an eternity for this."

"We?"

"You, and Katherine, and me."

"Katherine? Me?"

"Yes. You don't remember. You can't remember, or it would never have worked. This is it. The Mesh has been broken. This is your plan. It is time to finish it or lose forever."

"Kathy," Mitchell said, seeing the Goliath crash into Watson as if it were happening all over again. He was having trouble thinking.

"Our daughter. The three of us. It doesn't make sense to you now, Mitchell, but it will. She did what she was meant to do, and you'll see her again."

He let himself be comforted by the words, even though he barely understood them. "Am I dead?" he asked. "Where are we going?"

The same sweet laughter. "You aren't dead, Mitch. You're in the space between time and space. The Void. An eternal engine brought you here. We're following Kathy and the Goliath."

"Following?" Mitchell said, the words barely audible.
 

Everything was starting to turn black. Was this a dream? Was he dead and he didn't know it? He wasn't sure if he would have preferred that or not.
 

"Where?" he asked.

"To the future."

Thank you for reading Point of Origin!
 

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Forever Until Tomorrow
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