Starship Eternal (War Eternal Book 1) (9 page)

Four hundred years. He put his hand up to his head again, feeling the smooth skin where he had been shot. Dr. Drummond told him he was fine, and the scans backed him up. He didn't feel fine. Why was he seeing things, and hearing things? What did they all have to do with this antique starship? If it were still around, he was sure he would have heard about it.

"The bullet messed me up a little, that's all," he said out loud. "It shorted the implant, and somewhere in my subconscious I pulled back the memory of my history class. Probably focused on a strong emotional response. Probably because of Keely."

He flicked out of the image gallery. "Doc's right. Just leave it alone. Keep up the good work as a performing monkey, and maybe you'll get a few days rest somewhere down the line."
 

He felt stupid for even making the effort to do the search. He backed out to the results and decided to scan them, just to see what else he could find. There was no harm in scanning a list.

He scrolled through thousands of results. He found some references to an old Earth comic book that predated XENO-1, but everything else pointed right at the starship. It made him feel better to see it, as though it proved his hypothesis. It also meant it was time to drop the whole idea. The more he obsessed over it, the more obsessed he would become. He wasn't about to take something that could have been harmless and turn it into psychosis.

Mitchell opened his eyes and cleared the display from his right eye. He looked over at the time in his left eye. He still had five hours until the gala. He wanted a drink. That wasn't going to happen. He wanted to head over to Training and hop into a simulator. He doubted the MPs would be too agreeable to that idea either. He sighed and returned to the bedroom. He stripped down and tried on the uniform. Of course, the fit was perfect, and he had to admit he looked damn good in dress blues.
 

He took it all off, careful to keep it in perfect condition. He couldn't afford to be wrinkled in front of Cornelius or the Prime Minister. Then he laid down on top of the bed and closed his eyes.
 

Despite all of his years of training and experience, he had never gotten quite used to the idea of being out of control during a jump. There was a tight lightness in the stomach that came from plummeting to the ground in the cramped confines of thirty to eighty tons of metal, carrying thousands of pounds of ordinance and relying on boosters, aerofoils, and finally foot thrusters to make the landing an arguable degree of gentle. It was an uncomfortable feeling, one that he had never seemed to be able to master.
 

Ella had taught him how she managed to stay so calm. It was the only thing that had ever helped.

"It's all in the breath," she said. "Slow, deep, steady, focused. Mind over matter."

"Slow. Steady," he said to himself, taking control of his breath.
 

He wasn't joking when he told Christine he would rather drop into a nuke field. It would have been bad enough to meet the Prime Minister straight up. He was going to be getting an award from the man. An award predicated on a damn lie.
 

"Slow. Steady."

EARTH. February 9, 2036

Kathy was glued to the television. Her entire family was. Maybe even the entire world.

Almost nine months had passed since it had fallen from space, the gigantic craft that someone had labeled "XENO-1." It had crossed over the northern hemisphere, sending shockwaves for hundreds of miles around it, rattling windows and houses and people on its cruel descent before finally touching down in the Antarctic. It slammed into the surface of the ice with enough force to leave a trail of debris nearly a hundred miles long, and wiped out the permanent field station of more than one nation along the way.

Chaos had followed in the immediate aftermath. Tsunami warnings were issued, the disruption to the southernmost continent creating a slew of environmental concerns. An EMP leak from the crashing ship knocked out power for hundreds of thousands for over a week and a half. People died, the causes too numerous to keep track of. Drowned in the floods, hit by distracted drivers, heart attacks from surprise and shock, heatstroke from losing their AC.

They tried to lie about it at first. They said it was an asteroid. They thought they could get away with it. They were old men trying to tell old tales. Cameras were too good, too sharp. Pictures and videos flooded the internet, detailed shots that clearly showed a structure that was organized and made of some kind of metal. More pictures showed it was charred and scarred, broken and burned, though how it got that way - if it happened on entry into the atmosphere or had been battered on its journey - was anybody's guess.

An embarrassed government updated the lie. People were fired. Life went on. Antarctica was nobody's property, and it now contained something that everyone wanted.

The United States was the first to arrive on the scene, only a day ahead of Japan, Russia, China, Iran, and the rest. They each wanted to claim the wreck as their own. They all wanted the secrets everyone on the planet knew that it held. The secret to traveling in space. The mysteries of how to build something so immense and send it to the stars. A demilitarized zone was formed around it, guns pointing in every direction, the actual crash site off-limits. To enter it was to die, and more than a few tried. Their bodies remained to be buried under fresh snow and ice. The bulk of the ship suffered the same fate.

The news coverage had been running non-stop in Kathy's house since the day the ship came down. She was enamored with the mystery of its origins, and the potential that it held to carry her beyond the blue sky. She stayed up late watching interviews with soldiers who served at the site, with politicians who were part of the arguing over how to best claim it, or share it, or figure out some way to actually do something with the opportunity other than watch it get buried under the cold. She listened to the pundits, the celebrities. She went online and searched the back channels for conspiracies and clues. She even convinced her parents to buy her a t-shirt that read "I saw the crash" and had a blurry satellite photo of the site pressed onto it.

Today was different, though. Today was the day she had been waiting for. A decision from the President, from Congress, from the most powerful nation in the world on how they would solve the quagmire and move civilization forward and into a new age.

Her parents were on the couch beside her. Her father, tall and strong, an electrical engineer. Her mother, a chemistry professor at the nearby community college. They had instilled in their daughter the love of science, the desire to learn. Her younger brother was somewhere in the house, probably his room, disinterested in politics and tired of hearing about XENO-1.

Kathy checked the time. 8:59. She kept her eyes glued to it until it switched over to 9:00. The commercials on the television paused midstream, and the United States seal appeared in their stead. A moment later, that too vanished, replaced with a camera view of a podium.
 

Their house was silent. The room at the White House was also quiet. Kathy could almost feel the tension through the thin layer of diodes. There had been an incident two days earlier. A bomb had gone off in the camp of the Alliance of Nations and killed almost a hundred soldiers.

The President was an older woman, with gray hair and a taut face wearing a conservative blue suit. Her posture was confident and composed as she gained the podium.
 

"My fellow Americans," she said, her voice solid and strong. "These past months have done nothing, if not proven that there is life beyond this Earth, intelligent life that is not so unlike our own. Life that sought to learn, to grow, to reach for the stars and attain them. Life that ended tragically in the snow and ice of the Arctic." She paused, drawing in a deep breath. "We have made every attempt to honor the lives of these travelers who we do not know, and have not met. At the same time, we have worked tirelessly to honor the lives of our fellow humans here on Earth by coming to a peaceful and reasonable resolution to the question of ownership of the stricken craft. It has become abundantly clear in these months that there are those outside of the Alliance of Nations who are unwilling to settle for anything less than complete control of the site, to the extent that two days past they carried out a cowardly terrorist attack to disrupt our peacekeeping operations outside of the demilitarized zone. Intelligence sources have identified the source of this attack as that of the so-called Federation of Allies. While we have made every effort to negotiate with the Federation in good faith over the past four months, it has become clear to me that the leadership of the Federation does not share this non-violent view."

She stopped then, holding the pause for at least ten seconds. She glanced to her left, offstage to where her husband waited and offered encouragement. Kathy leaned forward on the couch, her heart skipping, her fear and excitement building.

"It is with the utmost sadness that I am to announce that the Alliance of United Nations has voted in favor of abandoning our talks with the Federation and reinforcing our claim to the crashed starship, using whatever resources and force is required.
 

My fellow Americans, I regret to inform you that tonight, we are at war."

"Do you always sleep naked, Captain?" Major Arapo asked.

Mitchell opened his eyes. The Major was standing next to the bed, unimpressed.

"Do you always walk into people's quarters without knocking?" He tapped his head, and then blinked a few times. Christine was wearing a little black dress that accented all the best parts of her.

"I did knock. You didn't answer. I thought you Marines were supposed to always be alert." She glanced down towards his midsection. "I see one part of you is."

Mitchell refused to be embarrassed. "That isn't because of you," he said, sliding off the bed right next to her and making her back out of the way to avoid him. "I guess all of this excitement is wearing me out. Or maybe being a statue is making me soft. Hand me my underwear?"

She kept backing up. "Making you soft?" she teased. "Get your own diaper. I'll be waiting outside. You have ten minutes." She turned on her heel and left.
 

Mitchell grabbed the clothes and carried them into the bathroom. He cleaned himself off and got dressed, and then met the Major in the hallway. The MPs had already been dismissed.

"I'm sure you have special instructions for me," he said as they started walking.

"You've done all the training. I shouldn't need to tell you how to smile and wave."

"No words of wisdom on talking to the Prime Minister?"

She thought about it. "Ask him about his dogs."

"That's your advice?"

"Yes. Ask him about his dogs. He has two golden labs, Butter and Margarine."

"Butter and Margarine?" Mitchell rolled his eyes.
 

"Ask him without doing that, or laughing. He thinks the names are clever."

"Right. How many times have you been one-on-one with the Prime Minister?"

"Three."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why were you meeting with him?"

"It's classified."

Mitchell stared ahead of them, deciding if he should try to needle her a little. He doubted she would tell him much of anything.
 

"Which department of Special Ops are you in, Major? Intelligence? Security? Infiltration?"

The look she threw him made him flinch.
 

"That's none of your business, Captain."

"Were you ever in the Army? Or have you always been Spec Op?"

"I didn't say I was Spec Op."

"You didn't deny it either."

She surprised him by smiling. "You're a real pain in the ass, Captain."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I'm still not going to tell you what department I'm in, but yes, I swear I was in the Army. I was on the field during the New Terran's invasion of Antares. Your company didn't leave us with much to do."