Starship Eternal (War Eternal Book 1) (35 page)

They were going in naked, blind, and four hours from suffocation, with a skeleton crew that was barely enough to cover damage control on the most critical systems.
 

Mitchell laughed to himself. They might actually be better off if the travelers had arrived first.

The comm channel opened again, a public broadcast to the entire crew.

"Riggers," Millie said. "You know the situation. You've spent the last four days preparing for this, and I know you'll do me proud, as you have all done since the day you joined my crew. If things go to shit, I want you all to know that I have been honored to serve as your Captain."

"Riigg-aaah," came the reply from the crew, Mitchell's voice included. It was loud enough that the implant was forced to neutralize the volume.

"Shank, is your team in position?"

"Roger," Shank replied.

"Singh?"

"Affirmative," Singh said, her own version soft and flat.

"Ares? Rain?"

"Roger," they both said.

"Firedog?"
 

"Yes, ma'am," Cormac said.

Mitchell felt his heartbeat accelerating, the p-rat reflecting the shift in the corner of his eye. A red box backed it, a warning that it would be forced to regulate him chemically. He breathed in through the nose, out through the mouth. Slow. Steady.

"We're at thirty seconds to drop. You won't notice life support going out, not right away, but you will notice the lack of gravity. Automatic deck seals will be offline, so if there are any breaches you need to close them as fast as you can. With any luck, we'll be in and out before we take any fire."

Mitchell could imagine her unspoken thought: "Assuming Watson didn't screw us over." There was no way to be fully certain his rig would work, and that he hadn't decided to take the ship and its crew down with him. His fear of death had certainly seemed convincing enough, but the engineer knew the odds of survival and had most likely run calculations and simulations to confirm them. Would he rather be blown into dust on his own terms, or take his chances regardless of the slimness? There was no way to know.

"Here we go," Millie said.

The countdown on his p-rat hit zero. The instant it did, he felt the shift in pressure that followed the drop from hyperspace.
 

The ship started shaking. Hard.

"Drop is on target," Millie said. "Ares, go, go, go."

They had come out of FTL at the upper edge of Liberty's atmosphere. It was an insane move, a ridiculous procedure that required pinpoint accuracy in all of the calculations. A move that even the Captain and Navigator of the Greylock had never tried, even when sticking drops in the hottest of hot zones. The best of the broken. Ensign Briggs had executed perfectly, and now they were surfing right at the top of the planet's atmosphere, waiting to escape from hyperdeath and get the ship back under control, hoping it didn't fall too far before they did.

The hanger doors began to open beneath him. He glanced over at Ilanka, hanging from the second launcher in the Piranha. She would be staying here, waiting for the orders to go out and protect the Schism. They were orders he hoped she wouldn't receive, because they both knew she wouldn't last out there alone. She gave him a thumbs up. They were still alive. Still here. Either Watson's rig was working or news of the Schism's betrayal had yet to reach this part of the galaxy.

He was pushed back into his seat as the launcher fired, sending the S-17 down through the barely open bay door and into the upper atmosphere. A thought put the main thrusters at max, and he shot downward towards the planet.

It was huge in front of him, blue and green with visible splotches of brown remaining from the Federation's assault. He brought up the overlay on the glass of the helmet, checking the space around him. A dozen red dots signaled Alliance starships. They were beginning to move towards them, surprised by their appearance. The risk had been calculated, the position essential. The ship commanders would have to be idiots to fire nukes so close to the planet's surface.

"Singh is in," Millie said through the open channel. "Data transfer starting. Alliance vessels incoming. Fighters launched. It's getting messy in a hurry."

"Roger," Mitchell said, grateful that Singh and Watson had come through. "Don't wait for me."

"I won't."

The S-17 screamed through the atmosphere, the blue tinge of the shields surrounded by the red heat of re-entry. He was coming down hard and fast, headed straight for a thick layer of clouds that was blotting out his view of York. He sent a thought to the neural link, opening a channel and passing Christine's id through it, knocking her ARR.

Seconds passed. There was no reply.

"Mains online," he heard Ensign Briggs say.
 

"Full power," Millie said. "Everything we've got available. We need some height."
 

Millie dictated the move for the sake of the crew, keeping them informed. None of them were assigned to fight on this mission. They would float and wait, ready to take fire and shore up damage. It was as lousy of a role as Mitchell could imagine.

Mitchell sent the transmission again, knocking Christine a second time. What if the Alliance had found out she had helped him? What if they had deactivated her ARR, imprisoned her, sent her off-world? What if she was dead?

There was no way to know. Either way, there was no reply.

"Come on, Christine," he said. He sent the knock a third and final time as he entered the clouds, leaving himself buried in gray moisture. He watched his HUD, making sure there was nothing in his path.

"Firedog, breach on E-deck," Millie said. "Seal bulkheads four and five."

"On it, Captain," Cormac replied.

"Breach on C-deck, near the aft. Bulkhead fourteen. Razor, that's you."

No response.

"Razor?" Pause. "Shit."

"Main three is offline, Captain," Briggs said.
 

"Singh, sitrep."

"We're still receiving," Singh said as if they weren't under attack. "I don't know how much longer, we don't have a full size estimate."

"Let's hope it's enough, we're getting out of here. Moving up and out of orbit. Briggs, be ready to transfer to FTL on my mark. They're going to launch the heavy artillery as soon as we're clear of the planet. Ares, you're on your own."

Mitchell didn't respond. As Millie spoke her final words the S-17 broke through the cloud cover, only a thousand meters above the York skyline. What he saw in front of him nearly made him hesitate too long before pulling the fighter up.

After the Battle for Liberty, a crater at the center of the city had been re-zoned to become a memorial park, a place for reflection and remembrance of the battle and the lives that were lost in the attack. When he had last seen the crater, it had been graded and grassed, the beginnings of a monument taking shape in the center of the bowl.
 

Now the monument was gone, crushed by something else.

A vaguely round shape like an amoeba sat in its place, the metallic surface shifting and undulating as if it were made of living water. Branches of the same material spread out around it, hundreds of lines cast out in every direction, rising up the crater and out into the city, punching through alloy and carbonate. Pulses of energy raced along them in strips of blue and white light that created an eery glow throughout the city.
 

Bodies lay around it. Hundreds of bodies in plain clothes, civilians that looked as though they had simply dropped where they were standing. Beyond that were more dead whose end couldn't have been as peaceful. They were shredded and torn, burned and broken, caught in a rain of fire that had spewed from... where?

The aliens. They were already here. They had beat them to Liberty. The thing at the center of the crater... A ship? A command center? The enemy itself?

"Millie, they're here. They're already here. Liberty is lost. Get out of here. Now."
 

There was no answer, no confirmation. Had the Schism jumped into hyperspace and made it to safety?

Or were the Riggers no more?
 

Was he alone?
 

He strained with his mind, forcing the S-17 out of its dive, sweeping past the city and then making a tight turn to come back around. For all of the death and destruction, there were millions of people in the city and the city itself remained standing, the damage limited to street level. There had to be people still alive out there.

Didn't there?

He choked on the thought, swallowing the anger and upset, ignoring the bloody scene below him. Christine was gone. Dead or not, she wasn't answering, and he had no way to find her. He needed to get back up into orbit, to fire his own FTL and meet the Schism at the rendezvous point, assuming it had survived.
 

He tilted the fighter back skyward, pushing the thrusters and lifting ever higher into the air. He made it halfway before he dropped the throttle, rolling the fighter and letting it fall back towards the planet.

His ship had alien technology. Their technology. If M was right and he was supposed to be the one who defeated them, then he would declare his war here and now.

He set a marker on the alien structure as he shot back over the city, doing a tight loop around the tower and coming in low, down a wide thoroughfare between two buildings. He kept one eye on the streets, searching for anything alive down there. He used the other to lock onto the amoeba.

A tone sounded in his mind, and then the left side of the S-17 lit up in the blue energy of his shields. He turned his head, seeing a Dart crouched low in the street behind a burned out car. It was a light, four-legged mech, a reconnaissance model armed only with light machine guns and lasers. It was too small for an embedded cockpit, and so there was a line of clear carbonate positioned near the center of the torso.

No one was driving.

The surprise attack and the sight of the empty cockpit caused him to lose his focus on the target. He shot over it, coming with a dozen meters from the top of the structure, looking down at the swirling surface as he passed over.
 

A blinding light surrounded the fighter. More alarms sounded, an emergency power spike that threatened to burn out the engines. He cursed, pulling the fighter up hard enough that he felt the pressure of the move in spite of the inertial cancelation, the ship battling physics to grant his request. He watched the altimeter climb, switching to the HUD and checking the theater. The Dart had been idling at low power, camouflaged by the surrounding cityscape.
 

It wasn't alone.

Twelve new dots appeared on the ground, registering as an assortment of Alliance mechs. They poured from between buildings and rose out of subterranean garages in a near circle around the alien structure, an ambush intended for whoever tried to get near the installation. The helmet buzzed around him, the AI warning him of incoming fire. Missiles, lasers, slugs. Everything the enemy had to send his way. He threw the plane into a drunken spin, trying to wind around the fire and confuse their aim. He watched the shield integrity fall. Sixty percent, forty percent.
 

Something hit the shields and it threw the fighter sideways, knocking it off course and sending it into a spin. Mitchell grunted through it, closing his eyes. Slow. Steady. He sent the orders to level off through the neural link, letting the AI do the hard work. Lesser pilots might have panicked, tried to make the adjustment themselves and wound up in pieces. The fighter steadied and he banked left and descended, coming down near the eastern edge of York and using the buildings as cover. He stayed low as he gained distance from the city, reaching the edge of the mountains before vectoring up the side, staying close to the surface and rising back towards the atmosphere.
 

Shields were down to ten percent, the AI unable to restore integrity unless he diverted power to the generators. Power he needed to get back into space and away from Liberty.

He had seen the enemy.

He had fought his first battle.

He had lost.

Badly.

The rendezvous point was ten hours distant from Liberty, a random spot in deep space notable only for a small dwarf star that rested nearby. Mitchell neared it with a strong measure of fear. If the Schism was gone, he was going to be alone again, with only enough power remaining to return to Liberty.

The last place he wanted to go.

He had no idea if the ship had survived the attack. When he had reached orbit he found a dozen military starships and a lot of debris. It could have come from the Schism, or it could have come from any of the civilian ships that the aliens had destroyed. It was an observation they didn't have time to make when they arrived, an observation that had returned the thoughts of anger and fear, thoughts that lingered throughout the length of the trip.

He was lucky to be alive. Lucky to have threaded his way through the oncoming Alliance ships. There had been pilots in the Piranhas that came to intercept him, and for a moment he had wanted to believe that they were still in control of the stars. Then he remembered that the aliens could remote control people with neural implants, the same way they had controlled the mechs on the ground. Neural implants. That meant the entire Alliance military, planetary law enforcement, and a host of civilians who could afford the procedure and had the mental aptitude to make use of the tech.