Point of Origin (War Eternal Book 4) Read online

  Published by Quirky Algorithms

  Seattle, Washington

  This novel is a work of fiction and a product of the author's imagination.

  Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by M.R. Forbes

  All rights reserved.

  Cover illustration by Tom Edwards

  http://tomedwardsdmuga.blogspot.com

  Contents

  • Copyright • About Point of Origin

  XENO-1 • 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 • 26 • 27 • 28 • 29 • 30 • 31 • 32 • 33 • 34 • 35 • 36 • 37 • 38 • 39 • 40 • 41 • 42 • 43 • 44 • 45 • 46 • 47 • 48 • 49 • 50 • 51 • 52 • 53 • 54 • 55 • 56 • 57 • 58 • 59 • 60 • 61 • 62 • 63 • 64 • 65 • 66 • 67 • 68 • 69 • 70 • 71 • 72 • 73 • 74 • 75

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  About Point of Origin

  A starship lost.

  A creator found.

  A frantic race to save them both.

  For Colonel Mitchell "Ares" Williams, there is no giving up. There is no going back. The Goliath may have fallen into enemy hands, but the war must go on.

  After all, he and the Riggers have what they need to locate the Creator, the man responsible for the alien threat and the key to unraveling their unstoppable attack. All they have to do is get to him before the Tetron do.

  It's no easy task, but nothing about the war has ever been easy, and the Riggers still have a few tricks left up their sleeves.

  Oh, the technology!

  When the scientists finally got their grubby mitts on her, they were amazed at what they found. It was stuff that boggled some of the greatest minds on the planet. Stuff that we had always thought was maybe possible, but we had no clue how. Anti-gravity? Yup. Synthetic musculature? You bet. Fusion???? Yeah, we got that.

  It was amazing, and in some ways terrifying. It was tech that would change the face of the entire world, and the course of human history. It paled in comparison to the one tech to rule them all.

  Hyperspace.

  Want to go to Alpha Centauri? BAM! You're there.

  Want to see what's beyond the range of Hubble? Pack a lunch, hitch the wagon, and head on out.

  Want to find the aliens that built the XENO-1?

  Let's do it.

  - Paul Frelmund, "XENO-1"

  1

  Colonel Mitchell "Ares" Williams stood at the front of the large hangar hidden deep within the bowels of the asteroid Asimov. His hands gripped the sides of a makeshift podium that had been slid into place only minutes before.

  His brother, Admiral Steven Williams, stood a few feet behind him, flanked on either side by a mixture of United Planetary Alliance officers, the Knife's mercenaries, a Frontier Federation Admiral, and two of Mitchell's Riggers.

  Their own Admiral, Mildred Narayan, lay in a makeshift casket to Mitchell's left. Her body had been cleaned, the wounds were covered over, and one of Steven's uniforms had been cut to fit and give her a final dignity. Her bloody fatigues and assault rifle rested on a welded cross behind her.

  Mitchell didn't look at her body. Every time he did, he felt a tide of anger wash over him that was so strong he could barely breathe.

  She was dead because of him, and he knew it.

  She would have argued that point. He knew she would have. None of them would have ever guessed that Watson, the meek engineer with the disgusting sexual habits, was really a Tetron. Mitchell didn't blame himself for that part, though. Not really. He blamed himself for his belief that they needed to squeeze everything they could out of people, even when they knew who and what those people were. How broken they truly were.

  If he had thrown Watson from the airlock when Millie had wanted him to, she might still be alive today. The Goliath might still be in orbit around Asimov.

  They might not be a step away from losing the war against the Tetron.

  She might have argued that point, too. After all, the Riggers had been fully composed of former military who had been court-martialed for any number of serious infractions. And they had been one of the top special operations teams the Alliance had.

  She might have said it wasn't about who or what people were. It's about who or what they are. While Watson had continued with his perversions on board the Rigger's ship, the Schism, other members of the crew had gone from monsters to heroes. Shank. Ilanka. Now Millie.

  Then there was Cormac. The grunt had done a bad thing on Liberty, and Mitchell had convinced Millie to let him live. Cormac had gone to Hell with him. He had saved Mitchell's life, losing half his face to do it. If Mitchell had airlocked Firedog when Millie had wanted him to, he wouldn't be standing there.

  He hated that part most of all. It meant that even while he blamed himself for her death because of his decision, he was alive because of the same decision. It only served to heighten the anger. To raise the tide.

  He held the side of the podium tightly. He had to look. Just once. She deserved that much. He turned his head, fixing his eyes on her face. She looked peaceful. At least there was that.

  He clenched the podium even tighter, holding back the well of emotion. He had lost people he cared about before. He had lost people he loved before. He was a soldier. He was a warrior. War was nothing but loss until it was won.

  Katherine had warned him that he was going to suffer, and he was suffering.

  He looked out at the assembly, another collection of men and women from the different factions. Anyone that could be spared from operating the starships that had survived their attack on the Tetron was here, helping to prepare the remaining occupants of Asimov to get off the station before the enemy returned. They were a ragged, tired-looking but tireless bunch, a group dedicated to doing something, anything, to stop the advancing threat on human civilization. They looked back at him with hopeful eyes. They had all lost so much, so fast. They needed something to believe.

  "Admiral Mildred Narayan was different than any of the other officers I've served under," he said, his voice shaking.

  He noticed Steven shifting out of the corner of his eye, ready to come forward and help him through this. Mitchell made a quick motion with his hand to keep him back.

  "You might be wondering what I mean by that. You might be thinking, but you were in Greylock Company. You served with some of the most skilled officers in the Alliance. And don't get me wrong, I did, and to this day I'm honored to have known them. But Millie was different in a way that I think defines what we should aspire to be, especially in times like these."

  Mitchell paused, taking a long breath to control his emotions. Slow. Steady. He forced himself to let go of the podium and move out from behind it. He wasn't going to hide from these people or his responsibility.

  "Every officer is responsible for order, discipline, strategy. Every CO strives to get the most out of their troops. To motivate them, to inspire them, to raise them up beyond a level they could have achieved on their own. But most officers are given good materials. New recruits, or soldiers that have already proven themselves. What Millie got was the scum under the ailerons. The gunk in the repulsers. Like me."

  He got a small laugh from within the crowd at that.

  "That was Millie's strength. That was what set her apart. She was dealt the shit hand, and she learned to deal with it. More than that, she used it. She took the shit, and she molded it like clay into what she needed it to be. The Alliance sent her lemons, and she made the best frigging lemonade in the galaxy. How
? She knew people. She knew what made them tick. She knew how to motivate them. You might think, so what, that's what all officers are supposed to do. The difference is that she did it with people who had no way out except to die. No life to live except to fight. No families back home, nothing to look forward to but the next mission.

  "She also wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty and do the hard thing. She wasn't afraid to keep people in line, even if it meant getting messy herself." He pointed out to Tio's technicians. "She saved your lives, running nonstop for days with a bullet lodged in her ribs." He turned and pointed at the people behind him. "She saved our lives by getting us here, and believing in us." He turned again. "She saved this entire war effort by preventing Tio's data stores from being wiped out, and she didn't stop, she didn't rest until the mission was complete."

  He looked over at her again. He was channeling his anger now. Using it the way she would have wanted him to.

  "And that's what we have to do," he said. "I can see that you're tired and beat up." He pulled the side of his uniform down to show his patched shoulder. "So am I. But this war isn't over yet because she wouldn't let it be. And we don't have the right to let people like that sacrifice themselves if we aren't willing to return their effort one hundred percent. We keep going. We keep fighting. Take a bullet? Keep fighting. Can't walk? Keep fighting. Lost everything you love? Keep frigging fighting."

  "Riiigg-ahh," Cormac shouted behind him.

  Mitchell's lips parted in a half-smile. "Take a look at the people behind me. Alliance, Federation, Tio's second in command, and Millie's own. We've had our differences, but not anymore. We're one force now. One unit. We're the only ones who can stop the Tetron from wiping out everything humankind has worked for centuries to build. Don't let Millie's death, or the deaths of the people you loved, be for nothing. If you're with me, if you're with us, then you're a Rigger."

  "Riiigg-ahh," Cormac shouted again, this time joined by Major Aaron Long.

  Mitchell moved to stand next to the casket. His heart pounded, his chest heaved. He reached out and took the assault rifle from the cross, holding it up in front of him.

  "What do you say?" he asked.

  "Riiigg-ahh," Steven yelled.

  "Riiigg-ahh," Teal shouted.

  "Riiigg-ahh," Calvin Hohn said, a little awkwardly.

  "Riiigg-ahh," the crowd cried back.

  2

  "Okay," Mitchell said. "Let's talk about what we know, and what we don't know."

  He was sitting in a thick gel chair coated with a layer of soft synthetic leather. It had been Tio's chair once, the place where he had sat whenever he was meeting with his commanders.

  Teal was sitting on his right, Steven on his left. Admiral Calvin Hohn, Captain John Rock, Major Aaron Long, Germaine, Digger, Thomas, and the most experienced of the Operations techs who hadn't been killed by Watson, a woman named Aiko, rounded out their makeshift leadership.

  They were in Tio's main meeting room, directly off Operations. An hour had passed since Mitchell had watched them launch Millie's casket out into space.

  "First, tell me what we know about what happened here on Asimov," Mitchell said.

  He was at the head of the table, taking charge of the meeting despite the fact that his brother held the higher rank and was technically in command of the Riggers now. Technically. There was no way the original Riggers, the ones who were trapped on Goliath with Watson, would have ever followed Steven. He was too nice.

  Thomas leaned forward. "Most of this I only know because the Admiral told me. She and Mr. Tio uncovered information from the archives having to do with Katherine Asher and Christine Arapo. There was a third name, Kathleen Amway, associated with Ms. Arapo. They were planning to catch up on their research into that name later, but before they had the chance they discovered a second film that showed Corporal Watson following Ms. Arapo."

  "On Earth?" Major Long asked.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Four hundred years ago?"

  "Give or take, yes, sir. That's what she told me."

  Major Long whistled. Thomas continued.

  "Anyway, he must have been keeping an eye on what they were doing because as soon as he was outed he made his move. He shut out the lights and then sent these robots out from the tooling area, along with taking control of one of the mechs down in mechanical."

  "He took Tess," Digger said. "I only survived because I was riding her back at the time, working on a minor glitch in the targeting system."

  "We only survived because the mech's aim was off," Aiko said.

  "I adjusted it when it started shooting our soldiers," Digger said. "I threw the aim off by over a meter. It still cut down over half our people before I could pull the emergency reactor shutdown. It was just luck that I was there."

  "What happened to Millie?" Steven asked.

  "I went to the armory with her and Mr. Tio," Thomas said. "He wanted to go back for his daughter. He sent me ahead to look for others to help out, so I did. By the time I got back to the house he was gone, and Millie was on the floor with four rounds in her. We had a patch kit in the armory, so I grabbed it and helped her stop the bleeding. Then we went hunting."

  "You didn't try to talk her out of it?" Mitchell asked.

  Thomas laughed. "I don't think the Admiral could be talked out of anything she wanted to do."

  "No, she couldn't," Mitchell said. "Go on."

  "So there were a lot of those bastard things, and they were smart. They learned from our tactics. Even after we managed to organize a resistance, it still took days to get through the base and get rid of them all. The Admiral, she wouldn't sleep. Not until they were clear."

  "What about Watson?" Admiral Hohn asked.

  "What about him? It took us thirty-two hours to get to the docks, and by then the Valkyrie was long gone. We didn't know for sure that Tio was on it; we only knew he wasn't on the base anywhere that we could find. Anyway, when we got to Operations Millie asked about the data upload. I didn't know anything about it, but Aiko did."

  Aiko picked up the story from Thomas. "I showed her the station that was managing the stream. She asked me if we could shut it down. Luckily, Mr. Tio hadn't encrypted the shut-down sequence with his biometric codes, so we could. But it was still encrypted. It took us days to crack it."

  "By that time Millie had brought me in to look at it," Digger said. "I had a feeling that frigger would do a remote wipe once he was done stealing the archives, so I rigged up a little system to keep that from happening. It was a good thing for her I have a way with shit like that."

  "So Watson never got all of the data?" Mitchell asked.

  "No," Aiko said.

  "How much did he get?"

  "Ninety-seven point seven percent."

  "That's a lot."

  "Yes, but there was a lot of data, and it wasn't being streamed sequentially. Watson may be missing important gaps, not only in time but even within a single file."

  "And what about us?" Steven asked. "You said it was biometrically secured. Does that mean we don't have access to the data either?"

  "No, no, no," Aiko said. "We do. It was encrypted during the stream. The original is still in the clear."

  "The problem is that Watson blew the shit out of all of our portable storage systems," Digger said.

  "Which means as long as we want the data, we have to stay here," Mitchell said.

  "Yes. He wasn't taking any chances we may be able to get the same information."

  Germaine groaned. "How do we know Watson won't be back as soon as he can get Goliath turned around? We used up all our nukes on the other one."

  "We salvaged six nukes from Hell," Major Long said.

  "Six nukes won't do shit against that beast," Germaine replied.

  "With Mitchell's fighter?"

  Germaine acquiesced. "Okay, maybe."

  "Destroying Goliath is our last move," Mitchell said.

  "Agreed," Steven said. "That doesn't mean we can rule out that Goliath will c
ome back to finish off Asimov. We need to get out of here as soon as we can."

  "Which is how soon?" Calvin asked.

  "We need to know what Millie and Tio knew, and take it further," Mitchell said. "We need to find out why Christine took the name Kathleen Amway."

  "That could take weeks," Teal said.

  Mitchell nodded. "It might. I'm not that worried about Goliath coming back, though."

  "Oh? Why not?"

  "The data. Watson wanted the data. It's the only explanation for why he would have kept himself undercover this whole time. Well, he has the data, enough of it that he was content to blow Asimov out of space. Now he can use it."

  "For what?" Captain Rock asked.

  "To find Tio's brother, Pulin," Thomas said. "That's what Millie thought, anyway."

  "Yes," Mitchell agreed. "He's looking for the Creator, just like the rest of his buddies."

  "Except the stream was encrypted with a brainwave key," Digger said. "Mr. Tio would never have given it to Watson, which means it could take days at least for him to crack into the data."

  "Not only that," Mitchell said, "but the Goliath didn't go to hyperspace on its own. Millie thought Tio had forced it to jump. I'm willing to take bets that he also secured the command."

  "Which means we might have some time to do some digging," Teal said.

  "Right. We don't have a lot of time, though. The Goliath moves at twice the speed our ships do. Even if we get the answers we're looking for, we'd need to hope we're already closer to the planet the Federation has Pulin stashed on, or there's no way we'll beat him to it."

  "And what if we do beat him to it?" Steven asked.

  "I'll be ready for him."

  3

  "So that's what we know," Mitchell said. "Let's talk about what we don't know."

  Steven leaned forward in his chair. "I'll start with the obvious. We don't know who is and isn't a Tetron."