Starship Eternal (War Eternal Book 1) (31 page)

"The crew of the Goliath, T-minus one hour."

Mitchell didn't notice all of the faces. His eyes went right to a single one, crouched in the front row with a big smile that he thought looked slightly strained. He leaned forward on the stool, even though he didn't need to, zooming in on the face and bringing it up close.

He felt his heart thump in his chest. He felt his mouth go dry. There was no mistaking the dark hair, the small nose, the bright eyes.

He had been thinking of Christine and now she was there, in an ancient photo retrieved as a match on the image of her that he had conjured in his mind.

A crew member on a ship that had been missing for four hundred years.

Mitchell left the room, closing the door behind him and completely forgetting to knock Singh and tell her he was finished. His heart was still pounding, and his blood was running cold through him, bringing dimples to his skin and leaving him chilled.

It was her, he was sure of it. More sure than he even should have been. He could feel it, a diode in his soul, shining in on the truth. Christine was there the day the Goliath launched. She was a member of the crew. If not her, someone who looked just like her. Identical.

He made his way straight for the bridge. Millie didn't completely trust the wireless communications, even encrypted, and after what Singh and Watson had said, he didn't either. It was better to go to her in person. Especially since the whole idea of it was beyond reason.

Ilanka was in the lift when the doors opened. She was dressed in her grays, her hair and clothes sweaty.

"Comrade," she said. "Are you well?"

He barely heard her, reaching out and directing the elevator to the bridge without using the p-rat.

"Mitchell?"

He glanced over at her and nodded. "I'm okay," he said. He wasn't ready to tell her anything. "Where were you?"

She smiled. "You haven't seen gym yet? It's not the most modern, but it is a good workout."
 

"You'll have to show me sometime."

"I can show you now?"

"No, thanks. I have to go and speak to the Captain."

"Why not just knock?" She tapped her head and then looked at him sideways. "Making better friends with our fearless leader?"

"She offered me a position as her XO."

"Really? That is good for you, Mitchell. Good for us, too, I think."

"Is she that bad?"

"No, not bad. She does what she must. Maybe a little heavy-handed sometimes, but fair. There has been some fear that if anything happened to her, Anderson would take control of ship. Even if there is resistance."

"Mutiny?"

"Nothing so glamorous. He does have Shank on his side, and inside these walls, the grunts with the exos have the power. Outside? You and me control the outside." She laughed at that. "He won't dare, not after what you did to him. He is bully, but he has respect."

He remembered the personnel files. Now he wished he had at least glanced at Anderson's. What had the Lieutenant done that had landed him here?
 

The lift stopped, the hatch sliding open.
 

"My stop," Ilanka said. "See you later, Commander." She hopped out of the lift and waved as the hatch closed.

Mitchell's thoughts returned immediately to the photograph. He had saved it to his p-rat, and he pulled it up again. This time, he examined a few of the other faces in the crowd, half-expecting to find his own. The crew had been made up of people from each country in the new Alliance of Nations, and so each one was as diverse as the last. He wasn't sure where Christine was from. She could have passed as Italian, Middle-eastern, Columbian... It helped her fade into the image as strongly as she had jumped out at him.
 

The lift reached the bridge. The hatch slid aside. The first thing Mitchell saw was Anderson, standing stiff and straight next to the Captain's chair, arms behind his back. He couldn't see the Lieutenant's face, but his neck was red, the veins throbbing. Was he angry?

He saw Millie's hand resting on the bent arm of the chair, absently tracing the indents and curves she had made with the bionic. He glanced past them, noticing that the bridge was otherwise unoccupied. Where had Briggs gone off to? The pitch black of hyperspace filled the cracked carbonate view.

Anderson's head turned. He saw Mitchell entering, and his already tense face grew even more tense.

"Captain Williams," he said with a slight bow.

"Lieutenant Anderson." Mitchell returned the bow. Then he approached Millie from the other side. "Captain, we need to talk."

Millie looked at him, and then at Anderson. "Dismissed, Lieutenant."

"Captain, I-"

"I said dismissed," she snapped, starting to get to her feet.

"Yes, ma'am," Anderson said quietly. His eyes darted to Mitchell, and then he retreated to the lift.

"Do you have news, Captain?" she asked.

Mitchell waited until the lift arrived and Anderson boarded. "I do. Are you familiar with the events on Liberty before I wound up on the Schism?"

"The Prime Minister's wife?"

"Before that."

"Refresh my memory."

"A few days before the Gala, I was attacked by assassins from the Frontier Federation. They killed my public relations rep and shot me a few times before I killed them."

"Yes, I remember reading about that. Go on."

"After I got out of medical, my rep was replaced. The woman who replaced him was military, but I was certain she wasn't public relations. She was dodgy about it, but she didn't deny it. Her name was Major Christine Arapo."

He accessed his p-rat then, knocking only to send her the picture.

"What is this?" she asked.

"An old photo, taken the day the Goliath was launched into space. See the woman kneeling in the front? Third from the left?"

"Yes. She's pretty."

"That's Christine Arapo."

Millie's head snapped up, her expression finding a path between fear and anger. "What?"

"That's what I thought. Millie, I don't know what the hell is going on, but this Major Arapo turned up at my side right after M said he stopped the Federation, and these new enemies, from assassinating me. She wasn't that friendly, but she stuck to me like glue, and after the incident with the Prime Minister's wife she got me out of a jam before M picked me up."

"You're saying she's one of them?"

"I don't know. I don't know who or what she is. I asked M about her, and he said he didn't know her. She wasn't afraid to introduce herself to Cornelius, and she was doing her job better than my last rep did. I think it's safe to assume if you pull her records, you'll find she's the real deal."

Her eye twitched. "You're certain this is her?"

"It's crazy, I know. I'm sure. There's something about her. I don't know what it is yet. I just know that it is. She's the key to something. It could be the Goliath."

He thought that finding a clue, any clue, might have made her happy. Instead, she stared out into the blackness in silence.

"Millie?"

"Shut up, Mitch. I'm thinking."
 

Mitchell forced himself to stay slow and steady. He waited for her for a couple of minutes. "Every minute is another minute we're wasting."

Millie got to her feet, turning on him. "What the hell do you want me to do, Mitchell?" she shouted. "Make a beeline straight for Liberty? Drop by and kidnap this Major because she looks like an ancient astronaut?"

Mitchell took a few steps back, surprised at the outburst. "Millie, I-"

"Stow it, Captain. We have orders. Orders to meet a transport in four days. If our orders stay the same, we're to be in Polaris three days later before making a two-week trip into New Terran space. Liberty is ten days at top speed, and not in the same direction."

Mitchell slumped. He understood why she was upset.
 

"We can't chase this lead without breaking our orders," she said, quieting her voice. "If we break our orders, we die."

"Let me go," Mitchell said. "I can take the S-17."

"You won't have enough air."

"I will. The air shortage was rigged. M set it up so that-" He stopped talking. He hadn't told Millie any of his hypothesis.

"So that what?" she asked, her anger returning.

"So that you would find me," he said. "In his origin timeline, the Schism went to that rock, gathered the ore, and moved on to the mission without ever knowing a thing about me. I think they knew what the Schism was, what it is here in this timeline. I think he delivered me to you on purpose. I mean, what are the odds that a ship is going to turn up in the exact place in space where I am?"

"Stranger things have happened."

"Stranger things are happening. He knew where the Schism would be then. Which means they also knew where the Schism was going."

"You think the travelers set us up at Calypso?"

"I think it's possible. They may have dropped in to blow us out of the galaxy, and ensure that there wouldn't be anyone to stop them."

"Stop them from what?"

"I don't know what they want, other than to destroy mankind. All I know is that I'm supposed to be the one who can beat them." He took a few steps towards her, getting close. "I don't think I'm supposed to do it alone. This timeline is different, it was as soon as M arrived here. I know we have orders, but we have a more important destiny."

"I don't believe in destiny."

"Neither do I. Nobody says we're going to succeed or survive." He put his hand on her arm. "Let me take the S-17, and go to Liberty. I'll find Christine, I'll find out what the hell is going on, and then we'll meet somewhere after the mission."

Millie looked up at him, thinking.

"No," she said at last.

"Millie-"

She put her finger to his lips. "No. I don't know what happened in this origin timeline. I don't know if we succeeded in our mission to kill Chancellor Ken. If we did, then we would have been sent on this second mission into the New Terran space. What if the travelers know about it? What if they planted someone on the ship that we're going to meet? An assassin? Or even a bomb or something? I get it now, Mitchell. We're screwed, whichever way we turn. We might as well try to save humanity and go down in a blaze of glory." She put her bionic hand to his face. He could feel the humming of it against his skin. "If you're wrong, we're all dead."

"We might be all dead anyway."

"That's why I'm trusting you." Her eyes twitched momentarily. "Ensign Briggs is coming up. We'll plot the course and head for Liberty. If we're lucky, we'll have enough time to scan the surface, find your Major, and get back into hyperspace before the drones can send word that we missed the rendezvous."

"What if we aren't lucky?"

"Our blaze of glory is going to be a silent whimper. We'll be detonated the second we come out of FTL."

Twenty minutes later Mitchell and Millie were back in the conference room, with Ilanka, Shank, Watson, Singh, and Anderson arranged around the table with them.

"You may have noticed we dropped out of FTL ten minutes ago," Millie said. "We're changing our course away from the rendezvous point."

"What?" Shank said. "Away? Millie-"

She shot him an angry glare.

"Captain," he corrected. "If we miss the rendezvous, we're going to be breaking parole. If we break parole-"

"We all die," Watson said.

"That's why I brought you up here. We have a lead on Goliath."

Ilanka put her hand on Mitchell's shoulder. "Really? That's excellent news."

"There's more," Millie said. "We don't have the location or even a vicinity, and the lead is tenuous at best."

"I don't want to die over tenuous," Shank said.

"I don't want to die at all," Millie replied. "That being said, you know the score. You saw what happened at Calypso and Caldera. We have a choice to chase the lead and hope it bears fruit or chase the next mission and hope there's an Alliance left to return to if we survive it. Oh, and I should mention, I've seen the mission specs. That 'if' is a pretty big one."

"What's the mission?" Anderson asked.