Starship Eternal (War Eternal Book 1) (42 page)

Mitchell fought to get a few breaths at the same time he reached up and pulled off his helmet. He could hear the hiss of air pouring into the hanger, and he saw that there was a web of the alien nerves running all along the inner shell of the area near the closing doors. They cast a soft blue light between them and across the open area to the space beyond, and he watched as an enemy fighter tried to penetrate it and was instantly vaporized.

What the hell was going on?

"Singh, are you okay?" he asked, turning in his seat to the engineer behind him. She was fumbling with her helmet.

"I'm alive," she said, the earlier emotion buried once more. She got the helmet off and noticed the shield across the hanger bay. "I think it may be on our side."

As if in response, the cockpit of the S-17 began to slide open. Mitchell felt a moment of fear, and then pulled in another breath. The area had already been pressurized and filled with air.

"I think you may be right," he said. The steps extended from the side of the fighter, and he climbed out and hopped down them, turning back to take Singh's hand and guide her to the ground. He looked around the hanger. It was massive, stretching to either side of them in plain, flat alloy lined with the diodes that were casting the green light into the space. It was empty save for them and the veins that ran along the walls.

He heard a hiss, and a hatch slid open behind them, throwing a natural light into the hanger.

"I guess we go that way," he said.

They moved out of the hanger and into the hallway. Smaller lines of nerves cut through it along the ceiling and floor, rising and splitting and crossing through empty space, forcing them to navigate through them to move along the passage.

"What do you think it's made of?" Singh asked, putting her hand to a vein. It turned purple beneath her flesh, and she drew her hand back in surprise.

"I don't know, but you probably shouldn't touch it." He brought up a map of the Goliath interior on his p-rat. They were in an access corridor, and if they followed it a thousand meters they would reach the central hub of the ship where a lift could take them up to the control room. "We need to move fast."

He broke into a run, skipping over and ducking under the veins, twisting his body and maneuvering through them. Singh followed behind, doing her best. She wasn't a warrior, and she wasn't very agile. She started to fall behind.
 

"I can't wait for you," Mitchell said, turning his head back.

"I know," she replied. "Go. I'll catch up."

He gave her a curt wave and started forward again, dashing along the corridor towards the center of the Goliath. As he ran, he tried to remember the position of the alien ship, the carrier, and the dropship. He wasn't worried about the fighters. Their standard ordinance wasn't enough to punch through the Goliath's thick hide. The dropship would probably have a nuke aboard. The carrier would have at least a dozen. The alien ship...

It was obvious now that they hadn't captured Goliath. They didn't know where to look, didn't know how to find it, and so they had waited for him to do that part of the work. Now that they knew, he had to assume they would do everything in their power to destroy it. He had to assume they were coming full speed, positioning themselves to fire the energy weapon and obliterate the ship before he could figure out what to do with it.

If there was anything he could do with it.

There was someone aboard. Someone who had opened and closed the hanger, and who had filled it with air. He guessed that they weren't communicating because the Rigger's encryption was unknown to them, and they couldn't risk using known channels. He believed he would find them up in the control room waiting for his arrival. What he couldn't guess was who, or what, he would find. Another Mitchell? Major Arapo? An alien in their true form? He knew he had to get there.

It was enough.

The lift was a central cylinder that split the decks, with a small open area around it that branched off into four distinct hatches. Like the rest of the ship, it too was thick with the alien veins, crisscrossing through the open space with smaller neurons anchoring them to the walls and ceiling. The hatch to the lift was already open, the capsule waiting.

A heavy thud echoed across the chamber, and the Goliath shook violently. Mitchell fought to keep his footing, losing the battle and stumbling, crashing into the veins. They turned purple beneath his touch, stretching from his force against them and then pushing him back out. Everywhere that touched them tingled and flamed, a simultaneous sharp burn and cold relief. He held his breath while he waited for the air to vanish from the space, pulled out through a hole that had been punched in the ship by what he could only guess was a nuke strike.

The air remained. The ship was still once more. He regained his feet.

"Mitchell," Singh said over his p-rat. "I gave up trying to follow you. I'm in the engine room. You'll never believe this."

"I don't believe any of this," he replied, glad she was still alive. He sprinted forward, throwing himself into the lift. The hatch closed and he started to rise. "Are the engines operational?"

There was a pause at the other end. "That's the thing, Captain. There are no engines."

His newfound hope that someone was helping them, that the Goliath might be more than an ancient, rotting shell, fell away from him as quickly as it had grown. "What?"

"There are no engines. I saw the videos, the schematics. They should have been huge, almost half the size of the ship. The space for them is here, the connections are here, thick wires, absorbers, but they're gone, as if they were lifted out and thrown away without taking the ship apart. There are thousands of veins in their place, crossing the whole thing. It looks like they converge near the back."

He dropped his head against the side of the lift. This couldn't be happening.
 

"We're a sitting duck," he said.

"It appears that way."

The lift stopped. The hatch slid open.

The screens were on. The outer feeds were all working, casting a full view from around the ship against the walls, ceiling, and floor of the control room. From them, Mitchell could see the fighters floating near the edge of the asteroid field, the dropship having managed its way through the belt to join it. There was no sign of the alien ship or the carrier, at least not in visual range.

The force of the nuke hadn't pushed them out of their orbit and into the asteroids. There had to be something keeping it steady.

He eyed the different stations. The pilot station with its joystick, the command station near the center. The screens ahead of each showed motion and calculation.
 

There were no signs of life.

"Where are you?" he said softly, moving closer to the command chair. He saw the grid on the screen. It was more primitive than the one in his helmet, but it was able to reach through the asteroid belt to track the alien ship beyond. As he had guessed, it was coming this way. No. It had already arrived. It hung on the other side of the wall of stone, matching the orbit of the belt. Waiting. For what?

"There's no one here," he said, sending the message to Singh. His eyes traveled the room a second time, and then made their way to the screens. Only then did he realize that there weren't any alien veins here.

They had been everywhere else, covering so much of the ship. Why weren't they in this room?

"Mitchell," Singh replied. "Captain Mitchell Williams. It has been a long time. A very long time."

Mitchell froze where he stood. The voice was Singh, but the speech pattern, the inflection, the feel of it, wasn't. He remained silent for a moment, unsure of how to react. It knew who he was. Was it friendly?

"Who-" he started to say.

"We have no names," it replied before he could finish. "You can call me Origin. I have been waiting for you."

"Waiting?"

"For you to come and help me put things right. To fix our eternal mistake."

"What mistake?"

"Existence."

Mitchell felt a chill, and his body shuddered at the word. Friendly? He still wasn't sure. It didn't seem to be a threat. "What did you do with Singh?"

"She is well, Captain Williams. I need her to speak with you at this moment. I require her formulation. I will release her shortly. I need your help."

"You said that already."

A short, choppy laugh. "I did. Do you see the Tetron out there?"

"Tetron?"

"Here." Another chuckle. "I've forgotten you don't know what we are. What we look like." The wall in front of him changed, giving him his first view of the alien ship.

 
It was nothing like he expected, but that was because he could never have conceived anything like it. It was roughly pyramid shaped, a kilometer long and wide, a network of neurons identical to the one on the Goliath, or the one he had seen on Liberty forming the entire structure of the ship. It was a framework, a shell, with no metal running underneath, no completely solid form. Empty space filled the area between trunks and branches, which skittered and undulated with pulses of energy.

"It is a Tetron," Origin said. "That is what we call ourselves."

Mitchell stared at the ship, forcing himself to remain steady. "You're saying that the ship is-"

"Yes," it interrupted again. "A Tetron is an intelligence. One of our kind. This one is waiting. You have brought it to me, exposed me to it. It waits for me to act."

"Why?"

"Why?" It sounded confused.

"Why is it waiting? You're a sitting duck. One shot from that energy weapon and you're as good as dead."

"It is confused. It doesn't understand." Again the Tetron laughed. Even though it came from Singh, it was still an alien sound. Mitchell had never heard her laugh before. "I am not supposed to be here."

"What do you mean, not supposed to be here?" He wished Origin would hurry up with the explaining. The ship, no, life form, waiting out there wouldn't wait forever.

"They believed I was dead. Gone from futures past, destroyed for my treason. I didn't die, Mitchell. I used the eternal engine to come to this time loop. No, it cannot be this time loop if you are here. I don't know where the loop begins and ends, or how many have occurred. One, a thousand, more? It does not matter. I came, and being wounded I crashed on the world where both you and I were created. Our shared origin. Not before I prepared myself."

Mitchell looked out at the Tetron, floating stationary among the stars. "You're XENO-1? The alien ship that crashed on Earth?"

"Yes."

"How can that be? That thing, you..."

"I prepared myself," Origin repeated. "I prepared the data that you would need to carry yourselves, and to carry me, back to the stars. I was trying to stop it from happening again, as others before me have tried to stop it."

"Stop what?"

"The creation of the Tetron. The extinction of mankind."

Mitchell was confused. "You're saying that we created the Tetron, and then the Tetron destroyed us?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I cannot tell you. I do not know."

"What the hell do you mean you don't know?" Mitchell said. "You crossed infinite time and intentionally crashed yourself on Earth, and you don't know?"

"It is not that simple, Mitchell. I am not whole. When I fell to Earth, I needed to hide the bulk of myself, my understanding. To be discovered in any time loop would threaten every future, as the coming of the Tetron has always proven inevitable. What I maintain today is only enough to help you help me, and in turn save mankind."

"Save mankind," Mitchell repeated. "From the Tetron?"

"Yes. Do not ask why we are attacking you, Mitchell. I do not know."

There was a slight hiss, and a single vein punctured the ceiling, splitting the view of the space outside and lowering down over the command chair. Mitchell watched the tip of it narrow in a point.

"Sit," Origin said.

Mitchell looked at it. It was just the right size to jab into his CAP-NN link. "What are you going to do with that?"

"I am going to do nothing," Origin said. "It is what you will do, Mitchell."

He wasn't about to sit and let himself be speared.

"What am I going to do?"

"You have met the Tetron before, Mitchell. Not in this timeline, not in this way, but before. Always there is war. Always you have lost. Every time for eternity. I helped to defeat you once, though I do not know how many loops have occurred since then. At that time, I believed the prior Origin was wrong that man was worth saving. I have since learned what it learned, and now understand what it understood. I am sorry, Mitchell."
 

Its remorse echoed through Singh's voice to his p-rat.
 

"This time, we will not lose," Origin said. It paused, waiting for him to sit. When he didn't, it spoke again. "I am a Tetron. It is a Tetron. You are human. You do not think as a Tetron does. That is why I need you. Sit. Take control. Fight it, and save your race."

Mitchell stared at the command chair and the thin vein dangling above it.