Point of Origin (War Eternal Book 4) (5 page)

"How does this thing work?" Steven asked, looking down at the ring on the floor.

"From what Digger told me, it's like a p-rat, but everything is external. The projectors give a full view of the interface, and it responds to voice commands and motion to control it."

"Didn't dad have something like that in the basement?"

Mitchell laughed. Their father had been into classic VR gaming, and he had owned an ancient machine he'd salvaged from a recycling yard somewhere and managed to repair. The system originally had over a thousand games published for it, but he had only been able to find one that still functioned properly.

A war game.

Fighting aliens.

Truth really was stranger, and often shittier, than fiction.

"I don't think we need to worry about any giant eyeballs or tentacle monsters," Mitchell said, entering the circle.

"Not inside the circle, anyway," Steven said.

"Unauthorized users detected," the computer said. "Please authorize."

Mitchell approached the touchscreen and typed in the code Digger had given him.

"Users authorized."

"It sounds like that gaming rig, too," Steven said. He mimicked the stilted, synthesized voice. "Ready, Player One?"

"Look at this," Mitchell said. The folders Tio and Millie had created were floating in front of them. Mitchell navigated to the "Yes" folder and played the videos he found in there.

"That's Katherine?" Steven asked.

"Yes," Mitchell said, feeling a chill at the sight of her and Christine together. "And Christine. Origin."

"She's very pretty. Not as pretty as Laura, but I can see why you're attracted to her."

"It's not that kind of attraction," Mitchell said. "I mean, it is in part, but there's more to it than that. A lot more. Ever since M shot me, I've felt this connection to her, as though I know her intimately even though we've never met. It's like there's this thread that binds us across eternity."

"I'm not used to you sounding so poetic," Steven said.

"I'm still not used to feeling like this. When I met her representation in the Construct, I could barely think straight. I was so filled with excitement and joy and passion at the sight of her, even though I knew she wasn't real. All I wanted to do was put my arms around her, kiss her-"

"I get it," Steven said. "You've always wanted to sleep with women you thought were attractive."

Mitchell shook his head. "Stop being shallow, Steve. I told you this was different. A feeling I've never had before. I cared about Ella. I cared about Millie. I told them both I loved them. This was something else."

"And all you wanted to do was have sex with her?"

Mitchell clenched his fists in frustration. "I wanted to be close to her, to be near her, to just have her be right here." He held his arms tight across his chest. "It wasn't about sex; it was about that connection. As if I could make sense of it if we were together."

Steven shrugged. "Okay, Super-casanova. The video shows the two of them together, buying a corporate access badge."

"I assume the badge says Kathleen Amway on it," Mitchell said. "That's why Millie told me to remember the name."

"So how do we search the system for the name?"

"Tell the computer, I guess. Computer, search for Kathleen Amway."

"Querying Kathleen Amway," the computer said.

"This may take a while," Mitchell said. "I would guess this thing can multitask?"

"It doesn't hurt to try."

"Computer, plot the coordinates 16-28-47, 18-52-9," Mitchell said, the position a memory forever burned into his mind. "Estimate distance from Asimov."

"Plotting coordinates," the system said. "Action complete."

The star map appeared in front of them, showing Asimov on the left and the point in space on the right.

"Ouch," Steven said. "Three weeks."

"It's past the Rim, well into unexplored space," Mitchell said. "If it takes us that long to get something on Pulin, we've already lost. It's also going to put you almost three months behind the Tetron. What do you think Earth will look like by then?"

Steven shook his head. He had been hopeful the location wouldn't be so far out. "We can't beat the Tetron as we are now. Does it matter what home will look like in that case?"

"It's too far, Steven, and you know it. We should try to get a jump on Pulin and see if there's anything he can do. If we're still shit out of luck and totally out of options we can head out there."

"You don't know how far getting to Pulin will carry you. We could end up doubling the travel time or more."

"I know. I appreciate that you want to go there, but no. If you head that way, for that long, you'll never catch up. If you never catch up, it doesn't matter what you find because we won't be able to use it."

Steven and Mitchell stared at one another. Steven knew he was right. There was no way they could stay in communication at that distance. Whatever was out there, it would have to wait.

"Yeah, okay," Steven said. "Damn it."

"Agreed." Mitchell squeezed Steven's shoulder. "Don't get down on me."

"I'm okay."

"Query complete," the computer said. "No results found."

Mitchell felt his heart fall. That couldn't be right. Tio had one of the most complete data archives in the universe, and it didn't contain a single reference to Kathleen Amway? Had Digger been wrong about Watson's inability to remove data? Or had the information been removed from existence by someone else? Origin, maybe? If so, why?

"Well, shit," Steven said. "I wasn't expecting that."

They spent the rest of the afternoon in Tio's study, trying every query they could think of to connect to Kathleen Amway. While they failed to find mention of her anywhere in Tio's archives, they did learn that the company, Nova Taurus, had been a pharmaceutical corporation based out of New York. They traced the name forward through mergers and acquisitions, covering the centuries until they eventually came to a head with the name of a mega-conglomerate: Newterra Bionetics, more commonly known as the company that had sponsored the colonists who had founded New Terra.

Was it a coincidence? Mitchell didn't think so, considering that Watson was a New Terran. Somehow, Origin, or Kathleen Amway, had discovered a connection there. Did that mean the Tetron had embedded themselves into that nation all of those centuries ago? Did it mean that the New Terrans on Asimov were the ones they needed to be concerned about?

Did they even have any New Terrans on Asimov?

In any case, the best they could do was speculate. There was no other information to go on, and nothing else to suggest or strengthen the Tetron's tie to New Terra beyond that single instance. There was also no obvious reason to believe that Nova Taurus' absorption by that specific mega-corp was anything more than coincidental. They could have been bought out by any of the founding companies of the Frontier Federation just as easily.

"So where does this leave us?" Steven asked as they stepped out of the ring.

Mitchell was tired, and his head hurt from the hours spent sifting through the data. "The same place we already were. I was hoping to find some answers about what happened all of those years ago, but they seem to be answers that don't want to be found."

"If you had, do you think it would have helped us with the war?"

"I'm not about to rule it out. Kathleen Amway vanished, though. The only explanations are that Origin wanted that name to disappear, or that name was only used the one time to get into Nova Taurus."

"Should we keep looking? Maybe search on other variables? I noticed that the initials they use are almost always K.A. Do you think there's a reason for that? Maybe we can query for names beginning with those letters plus the right age and appearance?"

Mitchell nodded. "It isn't a bad thought. Let's pick it up in a couple of hours. I'm spent, and I need to check in with Aiko and Digger."

"I can keep going," Steven said. "I'll run the queries for you and let you know what I find."

"You aren't tired?"

"I'm a dead man walking. I'm also not about to quit on you. If you think this information might help, I'm all in."

Mitchell considered it for a moment. If Steven wanted to keep going, there was no good reason to stop him. "Okay. Just make sure you take a breather to piss."

"Roger."

Mitchell put his hand on his brother's shoulder. "Thank you, Steven."

"You're welcome."

Mitchell retreated from the room, and the home, heading back towards Operations. His entire body felt numb, and he hated himself for being tired. Not that he had any time or intention to sleep. He had to get his eyes off the projections of images and videos and old databases. He had to think about something other than the past.

He found Aiko at the singular working terminal. Two of the other techs stood on either side of her, Devin and Maria. They were all staring at the same kinds of things he had been sifting through with Steven. Query results of records dating back a dozen years or more.
 

Pulin had been off Tio's radar for years.

"Anything to report?" he asked, coming up behind them.
 

Aiko shifted in her seat, startled. "Colonel," she said, blushing. "I didn't know you were there."

"I could see how engrossed you were. Anything to report?" he asked again.

She nodded. "I haven't found any solid information, or even any leads so far. What we have done is write an extension of the search algorithm to include mentions of code names that were used for some of the projects he may have been associated with. Tio had surprising access to classified Federation data, so we've been able to pinpoint research details that fit Pulin's profile."

"Do you have an example?"

"Sure. Classified project PRFD-23451. A system for autonomous stream transmission. It's all technical jargon, but it appears to be work on a meshed network of jump-capable drones that would be able to synchronize to deliver long-range communications in less time. The goal was a four hundred percent improvement."

Katherine had called the science that kept recursion stable the Mesh. He doubted it was related. "Did it pan out? That kind of capability would give the Federation a huge advantage over the Alliance."

"The document is ten years old. They put together computer models, and there is a report about the AI systems required to handle the calculations and manage the pathways, but I don't think it has seen the light of day yet."

"Interesting. What about Pulin? Was he involved?"

"The data doesn't provide the names of the team members, sir. Only numeric designations. We're trying to match up the designations to other projects to see if we can identify any of the participants. Even then we'll only have a number."

"Which can be traced back to the actual human being with data collected from a Black Hole," Mitchell said.

Aiko nodded. "That is what I understood the situation to be, yes."

"Raiding a Black Hole is a fallback option. Focus on finding him without it."

Aiko turned to look at him. Her face was stone.

"You want to say something?" he asked.

Her cheeks were still red. She bit her lower lip and then nodded.
 

"Don't be shy. If you think you have anything that can help, say it."

"Well, Colonel," she said, her voice soft. "From what I gathered we're in a bit of a race, both against time and against the Tetron, Watson. I understand why you're hesitant to consider the Black Hole option first - it's risky and very dangerous. I would agree with you on that, except I believe this approach will be significantly faster. We may be able to narrow the list of numeric identifiers down to less than fifty. Then all you would need to do is get the master list from a Black Hole, and we can identify Pulin. Once we have done that, finding his current location should be fairly straightforward."

Mitchell stared down at her. Her lower lip quivered nervously while he considered her words. Going after secured data on a planet that he imagined would either be still in Federation control or occupied by the Tetron was a little more than what he would consider risky.

"How much faster?" he asked.

"We can probably make a strong, educated guess within three days."

"Educated guess? I thought you would have his number?"

She smiled meekly. "Well, of course, we can't be certain of Pulin's number without the master list. We can only make a strong guess. I would say the margin of error would be ten percent or so."

"You make it sound worse the more we talk about it," Mitchell said.

Aiko bowed her head. "My apologies, Colonel."

"No, don't apologize. This is good work. How long do you think it would take to track Pulin down purely on the data we have?"

"I don't know for sure."

"Make an educated guess."

She smiled. "Assuming we have the data we need, ten to fourteen days. But there is a good possibility we don't have the data, and then we'll be back to the other approach, anyway."

Mitchell paused to think about it. He glanced at Davin and Maria. "What do you two think?"