Mindscape: Book 2 of the New Frontiers Series

Chapter 1

2824 A.D.

T
ime is an illusion.

-Albert Einstein

Love is the only truth. Let mine be yours.

-Catalina

Alexander studied the engravings on his antique pocket watch as he rode the elevator down through Freedom Station to the space-facing docking arm. The watch had been a gift from his wife over forty years ago, just before he left on a mission to another world,
Wonderland.
The Alliance had fooled him and everyone else with that mission, using it to win The Last War, and just a few years later he’d ended up back on Earth with Catalina, retired from the Navy for good.

After more than ten years of service, seeing Catalina for only a month each year, he’d finally earned the right for the two of them to live out their immortal lives in the utopian north. It should have been happily-ever-after.

But life isn’t a fairytale, is it?
Alexander thought with a bitter smirk. He slipped the watch back into one of the outer pockets of his combat suit and climbed down the ladder through Freedom Station’s airlock and into the airlock of the
N.W.A.S. Adamantine
, his new command.

New,
isn’t the right word for this aging battleship,
he thought, noting the discolored walls and flickering lights inside the airlock. The
Adamantine
was the last of its kind, a relic from a bygone era of war. With a unified government ruling over Earth, the only kind of war still being fought was against civil unrest and terrorism. Expensive war machines like this one couldn’t join those battles, so they were left to rot in space, slowly falling apart from years of neglect.

Alexander continued from one ladder to another, passing through the
Adamantine’s
airlock and into the elevator waiting on the other side. The airlock swished shut overhead, and Alexander selected the glowing white button marked
Bridge (65)
from the control panel. He braced himself as the elevator fell through the ship.

The only reason Earth still had a fleet at all was to guard against the Solarian Republic in case they tried something stupid. Mars, Titan, Europa, Ganymede, and a handful of smaller colonies had all watched the stupidity of The Last War, and they’d declared their independence soon after it had ended.

Alexander watched the lights of passing decks flicker through the transparent windows at the top of the elevator doors. This was all too familiar, he thought, looking around at the padded walls of the elevator. He spied the handrails for zero-
G
, exposed conduits here and there—because concealed ones were a pain in the ass to get at for repairs. Thirty years ago he’d wanted nothing better than to get the hell out of the Navy. And now, what felt like a lifetime later, he was right back where he’d started.

At least this time it was on his own terms—not that those terms were pleasant. After Dorian found out what had happened to his biological father, he’d disowned Alexander and Catalina for keeping the lie. They’d had a big fight. Catalina blamed him for his part in what had happened, and left him to go after Dorian.

Alexander would have gone chasing after them both, but every time he’d thought about it, something stopped him. Maybe it was the fact that after all he’d done, and after all he and Caty had been through together, she’d
left
him. He’d waited for her to return, or at least for her to call and apologize, but she never did.

The Mindscape had ruined them, just like it had ruined so many others. It was too addictive. Humanity had abandoned the real world for an endless variety of fake ones.

It starts slow. At first it’s this thing you do as a couple, or as a family. You all participate in building a virtual life together in the same virtual world, but then pretty soon you find another one you like better, and each of you splits off into your own private world. Temptations abound, good and bad alike. For him and Caty it wasn’t any one thing, but it didn’t help that one day Alexander had gone into Caty’s mindscape using an alias and an avatar she wouldn’t recognize, thinking he’d surprise her, only to find her in bed with another man. Something like that happens in the real world and it’s pretty clear cut, but when it happens in a virtual one…

Things get a whole lot muddier.

Most people had open relationships when it came to virtual dalliances, but he and Catalina had decided to hold themselves to a higher standard. Virtual cheating was still cheating. So what had happened?

They fought over the incident, and then made love in the real world for the first time in a long time. They agreed to make more time together, but that never happened. The Mindscape took every spare second of their lives.

In hindsight, Caty leaving him to go after their son wasn’t all that strange. They’d stopped being husband and wife a long time ago.

The elevator stopped with a
screech
of brakes that set Alexander’s teeth on edge.
This ship is falling apart,
he thought. The doors slid open and he stepped onto the bridge to see his crew all assembled and waiting.

“Admiral on deck!” someone called out, and a cheer rose from the crew, accompanied by hoots, whistles, and applause.

Frowning, Alexander shook his head. Not the salute he was expecting. “Settle down everyone. Save the fanfare for someone who deserves it.”

One of the crew stepped forward, a familiar face—blond hair, blue eyes, perfect skin, ruby red lips. Viviana McAdams. Alexander smiled, feeling better already.

“If you don’t deserve it, then who does, sir? You’re Admiral Alexander de Leon,
The Lion of Liberty.
You negotiated world peace and won a Nobel prize, so yes, I think that deserves more than just a salute.”

Alexander spied the silver oak-leaf insignia on her uniform.
She’s a commander now.
“I thought you left the Navy?”

“Likewise, sir.”

“All right, I’ll go first. My wife and son left me. What’s your excuse?”

The corners of McAdams mouth turned down. “Sorry to hear that, sir.”

“I’m not looking for a pity party, just stating the facts.”

“Well, I did leave the Navy, but I came back about two years ago. Turns out civilian life wasn’t for me—Navy jobs are practically the only real ones left. And I’m not the only one who had trouble settling down. I managed to get most of the others transferred here, too.”

“The others?”

McAdams nodded and half-turned to the rest of the crew. “Lieutenant Commander Stone—” a particularly burly officer with a familiar lumpy face stepped forward and saluted. “—Lieutenant Cardinal—” The
Lincoln’s
old weapons officer stepped out of line next. “—and Lieutenant Hayes.” The comms officer.

Alexander felt a suspicious warmth leaking from the corner of one eye.

“Gettin’ all misty-eyed on us, Admiral?” Stone quipped.

Alexander shook his head. “No, staring at your ugly mug again is making my eyes burn.”

Stone snorted.

McAdams smiled. “Welcome home, Admiral.”

Alexander nodded, realizing just how true that was. “Thank you—all of you,” he said, his eyes skipping over the group. There were still a few faces he didn’t recognize.

“Maybe you’d better finish the introductions, Commander.”

“It would be my pleasure, sir.”

* * *

Alexander sat in his acceleration couch staring at the stars. Each of them was another galaxy or solar system that humanity would probably never reach. What else was out there? People had been looking up at the stars and asking that question for as long as humans had walked the Earth, and now that they were flying through space, they were still no closer to answering it.

“Entering lunar orbit,” Lieutenant Bishop reported from the helm.

Alexander nodded. “Keep me posted.”

“Aye, sir.”

Bishop was a gener, like McAdams. Over six feet tall with perfect brown skin, wavy black hair, straight white teeth, and piercing blue eyes. Physical perfection was just one of the hallmarks of his genetically-engineered heritage that set him apart from the natural-borns like Alexander. Of course, there were a lot more geners in the Navy these days, now that any real threat of war had vanished. Disillusionment was universal. Gener or not, plenty of people got tired of the Mindscape and went looking for real fulfillment. Sooner or later those people all signed up—that, or they became Humanists and joined the Human League, where bots, AI, and the Mindscape were all treated like the plague.

Joining the Navy was a far less extreme way to go.

Alexander watched a dark circle rise up under them and sweep away the stars. Then Lunar City appeared, creeping up from the horizon like a luminous spider crouching over the Moon.

“The dark side of the Moon is a lot brighter than I remember it,” Alexander said.

“It’s been thirty years since you last saw it, Admiral,” McAdams said from the acceleration couch beside his. “You have some catching up to do.”

“Admiral, I’m getting a clearer fix on that signal…” Hayes reported from the comms.

“Good. Any idea where it’s coming from?”

“Still calculating, but I should have an answer for you in about a minute, sir.”

Alexander nodded. This mission was the latest in a series of make work projects from fleet command—investigate a mystery signal that Lunar City had reported coming from somewhere out in deep space; help them triangulate it and decrypt it if possible. Alexander sighed. He supposed the fleet had to look busy if they wanted to hang on to what little funding they had left.

“Got it!”

“Give me coordinates.”

“It’s… that can’t be right.”

“Start talking, Hayes. Where is it?”

“It’s coming from the Looking Glass.”

“The wormhole? How can a wormhole produce a comm signal?”

“It looks like the signal is using an old Confederate encryption.”

Alexander’s eyes widened. “The Confederacy doesn’t have a fleet anymore. It was disbanded in 2793. I should know, I helped negotiate the treaty.”

“I’m not arguing with that, sir, just reporting the facts.”

“Well, can we decrypt the signal?”

“Sure. Computers have come a long way in the last thirty years. Easy as cracking an egg.”

“Then get cracking.”

“Aye, sir.”

Alexander nodded to McAdams. “What’s your take on this?”

She turned to him, blue eyes wide and blinking. “Either someone’s spoofing that signal, or some part of the Confederate fleet we sent down the gullet of the wormhole all those years ago actually made it to the other side.”

Alexander shook his head. “Try again. We saw their ships get ripped apart with our own eyes. Besides—the wormhole isn’t traversable. That’s why we tricked the Reds into flying through it in the first place.”

McAdams shrugged. “Then what’s your theory?”

“Someone’s spoofing the signal with a ship or comm drone that they parked in the mouth of the wormhole.”

“Got it!” Hayes announced. “It’s audio-visual.”

“On-screen, Lieutenant.”

“Aye-aye.”

“Time to meet our secret admirer,” Lieutenant Stone said from his control station.

Alexander saw a snowy image appear. Front and center was a woman of Chinese descent, wearing a stained and torn Confederate uniform. In the background, he recognized the CIC of an ancient-looking warship. Flickering lights revealed floating debris, but for some reason the woman standing in front of the camera wasn’t floating.
Magnetic boots,
Alexander decided. “If this is someone’s idea of a joke…” he began.

Then he saw the woman’s eyes. They were completely black, as if she didn’t even have eyes—that, or her pupils had dilated to the size of overripe grapes. “What the hell?” Alexander shook his head.

“Hello wretched creatures. We invite you to look upon your legacy.” The voice was deep and inflectionless, not a woman’s voice at all.

The camera switched from the dilapidated CIC to a darkened space, crammed with floating debris. Alexander sat forward in his couch and peered at the main holo display, trying to decide what he was looking at. Lights flickered between the floating bits of debris as they shifted through the room. Based on the ceiling height and openness of the space, Alexander decided he was looking into some kind of hangar bay or cargo hold.

“Hayes, can you shine some light on the feed?”

“On it, sir. Here comes the sun…”

A second later the darkness peeled away and everything snapped into focus. A few of the crew gasped, and Alexander felt his gut churn.

The debris was bodies, hundreds of them, all floating in zero-G, limbs tangling, mops of hair drifting like seaweed. Fully half of the bodies were children, and all of them wore pressure suits emblazoned with a familiar hammer-and-sickle pattern of gold stars on a red background—the old Confederate emblem.

The scene lingered there a moment longer before cutting back to the woman with the black eyes. “Any race that can do this to its own kind will do worse to others. You have been judged and found guilty. Your sentence will be delivered soon.”