Forever Until Tomorrow (War Eternal Book 5) Page 14

  Mitchell's smile was weak. "No. I don't think I do."

  He reached up and rubbed his temple. The cold feeling of loss hadn't faded from him the way it normally did. He was stuck with it, and the constant tingle in the back of his mind was making him increasingly frustrated.

  People had died. More people would follow if he didn't catch on to his past and his purpose. Evelyn had died holding his hand. It didn't matter that he barely knew her or that she was a criminal. She was also a human being, and he had failed her.

  Just like he had failed the others.

  He glanced over at Lyle. The Detective was staring at him, watching his expressions.

  "Tortured soul," Lyle said. "I've seen it before. A lot of tortured souls came out of the Xeno War. A lot of people who lost someone close. It was a dirty, messy, cold war."

  "I don't know much about it besides what I read in the streams."

  "First war in over one hundred years. Most of it took place close to Antarctica. South America, South Africa, Australia. Almost every country in the world had soldiers in one of those places, fighting for one of the sides. The U.S., U.K., and Germany had the first units near the crash site on our side. Man, those initial clashes were brutal. I was in the 5th Regiment. We were one of the first units down there. We were completely unprepared, just loaded up and flown down. I think more people died in the first few weeks from hypothermia than bullet wounds. It was like World War One, from what I've read about it. Nobody wanted to risk damaging any of the debris, so it was all small arms fire. Trench warfare. Insane."

  "It sounds horrible."

  Lyle's face turned to stone again, his eyes growing distant. "Yeah. It was."

  Lyle didn't say anything else about it, and Mitchell knew better than to push. He looked out the window instead. The train was starting to move, accelerating quickly to its five hundred kilometers per hour speed. It wasn't as fast as a sub-orbital jet, but it was more relaxing.

  He closed his eyes. As soon as he did, the chill began to intensify, the darkness surrounding him. He opened them again, heart pounding.

  Lyle was gone. The landscape out of the window had changed. He'd fallen asleep. It had felt like a moment. A flash. An hour had passed.

  He caught a hint of his reflection in the glass. A stubble of gray had made its way across his face, and his hair was longer than he wanted it, and also flecked with gray and white. Twenty years, gone. He could barely remember them. Sitting, watching, waiting, preparing. There was nothing else. This was his mission. His responsibility. His destiny.

  "You have forever until tomorrow, but not forever until the end."

  The words danced across his consciousness. What did they mean? So many questions. So few answers.

  "Find her."

  Major Katherine Asher. She had to be the one he was supposed to find. He was trying, but Watson had forced him to head further away to circle back. Would she survive long enough for him to reach her?

  Would he?

  Mitchell closed his eyes again. Mitchell. He thought about the name. Every time he heard Lyle say it, every time he thought of himself with the moniker, he grew more convinced it was right. He was Mitchell.

  "Tell me, Captain Williams. How did you discover the weakness on the Federation dreadnought?"

  Captain Mitchell "Ares" Williams shifted in the pillowy expanse of his seat, getting the bright stage beams out of his eyes. He faced his interviewer. Her name was Tamara King. She was known on Liberty as the Queen of Talk, her morning stream the highest rated within the Delta Quadrant. She was a willowy blonde, dressed in tall boots and a fashionable high-cut sweater that hugged her curves like a second layer of skin. She was bombarding him with a smile that could make its way past even the most reluctant guest's defenses better than a well-placed nuke.

  "It was simple, Tamara," he said. He shifted towards the camera opposite him and returned her smile with a version of his own that was nearly as disarming. "We were watching the fighter formations, tracking the density equations. It was clear they were clustering near a service portal close to the aft, trying to keep our fire away from that portion of the ship. When I saw one of their Kips move into the line of fire and sacrifice itself to prevent one of our tactical's from reaching the boat, I knew there had to be something to it."

  He'd practiced the lines so many times. On the transport, in front of the mirror, and in the hundreds of other interviews he'd given in the two months since the United Planetary Alliance had stopped the Frontier Federation's attempt to overpower Liberty and claim the planet.

  "And there was something to it, wasn't there?" Tamara asked. She shifted in her chair, getting close enough to him that he could smell her. She was light and sweet.

  Mitchell made eye contact, maintaining the smile. "There was, Tamara. A flaw in the design. Weak shield coverage and a direct path for a projectile to hit the reactor. Of course, I didn't know at the time that it would be so effective. I was just taking a shot."

  "The Shot Heard 'Round the Universe," Tamara said, drawing cheers and clapping from her audience. She put the tips of her fingers on his leg, resting them there while the crowd quieted. "Your 'twisted snake' maneuver is already legendary. In fact, my nephew likes to pretend he's Ares Williams, and he runs across the lawn yelling 'twisted snake' until he makes himself dizzy and falls over." She paused, waiting while the audience laughed. Mitchell faked a chuckle through his doll-smile. "What's it like, saving an entire planet, everyone here in this studio included, from certain death? How does it feel to be the greatest hero of our time?"

  Mitchell's eyes snapped open, and he sat upright. His heart was pounding even harder than before, and his arms were burning. He rolled up his sleeve, looking to the left. The skin was scarred smooth and hairless. It was deep red.

  He had gone through this before. Sometimes the circulation would suffer, and his limbs would go numb. He worked to shake them, to encourage the blood to flow again. What had happened to cause the injury? Had it been intentional, too?

  "Mitchell, are you okay?"

  Mitchell looked over. Lyle was back in his seat. He had shaved his face and his head, giving himself a more aggressive appearance. He looked more like a Marine than a Detective now.

  "My arms. Circulation gets bad sometimes." He continued shaking them, the pain beginning to subside.

  "You were talking in your sleep, in bits and pieces."

  "What time is it?"

  "We'll be in L.A. in two hours."

  Nearly seven hours had passed? It felt like a blink. He fought to hold onto the already fading memories.

  "Captain Williams," Mitchell said. "Captain Mitchell Williams. Greylock Company."

  UEA Space Marines?

  That couldn't be right.

  "Captain, huh?" Lyle smiled. "I figured you for an officer. I've never heard of Greylock, though." He raised his hand in salute. "A pleasure to meet you, Captain Williams."

  Mitchell stared at him. He wasn't familiar with the gesture, and he was losing the details of the memory. A hero. He was some kind of hero? That wasn't right. They just thought he was a hero, but he wasn't. That was it. He was a fraud.

  He opened his mouth to tell Lyle what he was remembering and then stopped. Liberty. Planet Liberty? He'd been watching news streams for years. He knew they hadn't gone to the stars. Not yet. That was the reason for the Dove.

  "Mitch?" Lyle said.

  Mitchell didn't understand it. How could he be dreaming of himself in a world that didn't exist. That couldn't have happened?

  Why did it feel so real?

  Maybe Katherine Asher knew. Maybe Watson knew.

  Somebody knew something, and he was going to find out what it was.

  "Mitch?" Lyle said again.

  "At ease, Sergeant," Mitchell said.

  32

  It was nearly twelve hours from the time Mitchell arrived in Los Angeles, to the time he and Lyle were able to get hold of a car to make the drive from L.A. to San Francisco. Trying to move witho
ut leaving a digital footprint was challenging, and in this case came down to the Detective having an acquaintance in the city, another former member of the 5th who had served with him during the war.

  According to Lyle, Corporal Max Starling was one of the finest Marines he had ever met, even if he did have a propensity for an over-indulgence in vices. Prostitution, gambling, drugs - it was all game for the Corporal, who seemed to need the distraction to help calm his mind from the experience of war.

  It was also his way of making enough money to survive now that he was out of the Corps. His main occupation was as a trafficker for guns and drugs, the kind of guy Mitchell would have expected Lyle to arrest, not remain friends with.

  The kind of guy whose value couldn't be understated. Not only did he enthusiastically agree to drive Lyle and Mitchell up the coast, but he also provided them with a small arsenal of weaponry, "on loan" from a few dealers he knew. It was the kind of armament that Lyle explained even he wouldn't be able to get his hands on normally, despite his position in the St. Louis P.D.

  "I'm telling you, bro," Max said, turning his head away from the road for the thousandth time and letting the more simplistic assisted driving system manage keeping him from crashing into anything. "Antarctica was the worst frigging assignment in the universe. And I mean that. I can't imagine anywhere worse."

  "Why was that?" Mitchell asked, playing along. He had taken a quick liking to Max and his big personality. It was rough, but generally kind. He reminded Mitchell of someone, though he couldn't put a name or face to it.

  "No girls," Max said.

  "There were girls," Lyle replied.

  "Military girls. Have you ever tried to get a military girl in the sack?"

  Mitchell shrugged. "I don't think so."

  "Don't think so? You don't know? Hooo. Okay, bro."

  "I already told you, Vape," Lyle said, "Captain Williams had an accident and lost his memory."

  "Your memory, or your mind?" Max laughed loudly, checking on the front of the car. They were halfway between L.A and San Francisco, riding in an old car Max had nicknamed the Beast. It was a classic, built in the mid twenty-first century, before AI had become as commonplace as it was today.

  "Just the memories," Mitchell said.

  "Okay, well, anyway, military girls are tough. They have something to prove. Doesn't matter that they've been equal for centuries, they still feel inferior, you know what I mean?"

  "No."

  "Hooo. Damn. Okay, besides the point. So, number one, no girls."

  "There are numbers now?" Lyle said, laughing.

  "Shit, yeah. Number one, no girls. Number two, cold as frig. You couldn't get up in the middle of the night to take a piss without bundling up, and the middle you whipped it out to take a leak, man if you weren't quick you were going to get frostbite."

  "You're exaggerating," Lyle said.

  "I don't exaggerate, bro. I tell it like it is. Blunt. Honest. Straight up. Hooo. Some people don't like it, think it's rude or some shit. I don't care. Frig 'em." He was quiet for a few seconds before turning back to Mitchell again. "So, what's it feel like to be wanted?"

  Mitchell didn't answer. The destruction at the living complex in St. Louis had been all over the streams by the time they reached Los Angeles, and as predicted Mitchell had been named as a prime suspect, and a bulletin had been posted to be on the lookout for him and detain him if possible. Fortunately, Lyle had avoided Watson's notice, or at least he had decided to ignore the Detective for now. It was Mitchell he wanted.

  "It's a setup," Lyle said, not for the first time. "The AIT has its hands deeper up America's ass than we realized."

  "What do they want with you?"

  "I don't know," Mitchell said. "Apparently before I lost my head I was a pretty large thorn in their sides."

  "Sounds great to me. I heard what went down at that party the other night. Bastards. Anyway, I say screw the law, too. They take the means to defend away from the average citizen, and enable the bad guys to do whatever the frig they want. Good people follow the rules, assholes don't. Which means the rules are worthless half the time."

  "That's why you traffic guns to the bad guys?" Lyle said.

  "They're going to get them from somebody. I run them to regular citizens like you and the Captain, too."

  "You would be a great Law Enforcement Officer. You don't have to be responsible for-"

  "For what? Innocent people dying? Not this shit again, Carson. I was just telling you why law enforcement is bullshit. If I don't provide the guns, the next guy will. So what's the difference? At least I try to balance it out on both sides."

  Mitchell could tell this was an old argument, once the two friends had likely been having since their discharge. He didn't really want to get into the middle of it, but he didn't need to lose his ride because Lyle pissed Max off.

  "You want to know something?" he said, interrupting the flow of the argument before it could get going.

  "What's that, bro?" Max asked.

  "I agree with both of you. But it doesn't mean a thing right now. Right now, the AIT is trying to kill me, and they're taking out innocent people to do it. I don't think either one of you can argue that's a bad thing."

  "Nope," Max said. "I'm with you, Captain."

  "Detective?"

  "I'm still here, aren't I?" Lyle replied. "I left my wife for this."

  "Whatever is happening here, we have duty to try to stop it. To ourselves, to our country, to the world. The AIT is trying to hold back humanity. We're Marines, first and foremost. We have the duty, the will, and the way."

  "Oorah," Max said. "As much as I hated Antarctica, I miss having something to fight for. Look, Captain, I was only going to drive you to the next checkpoint, but if you're a thorn in the side of the terrorists, and you're looking for a little more backup, I'm your soldier."

  Mitchell looked at Max, who stared back at him with a determined fire in his eyes. He glanced over at Lyle, who nodded sharply.

  "You sure you're up for it?" Mitchell asked.

  "I don't have a wife, but I'd leave her if I did. I've been missing the action."

  "In that case, welcome aboard."

  "Oorah."

  33

  It took another half a day to reach San Francisco, with Corporal Starling spending most of it keeping them all entertained with stories about his time both in and out of the Service. At one point Mitchell had to push him to be quiet and let him get a little bit of sleep. After some ribbing about his inability to doze under fire, the Corporal quieted down and focused on the road, giving them all a little bit of peace.

  Mitchell didn't mind Max's chatter too much. It felt familiar to him, like an old pair of boots broken in just so. He couldn't remember the specifics of his military life, but he remembered enough to know he had missed it.

  The maglev station was located near Mission Bay, in what had once been the Caltrain Depot. It was a spider web of tubes and rails, a hub for most of the ground-based mass transit heading anywhere along the west coast. Its size made it ideal for blending in with the crowds. Even so, the crowds left Mitchell feeling exposed, his hood and a baseball cap Max had given him not offering much of a feeling of safety. He felt doubly insecure when he saw that the terminal's many marketing projections and boards were occasionally flashing to a high-res view of him at the complex, courtesy of the commandeered drones, alongside a mug shot of him taken at St. Mary's.

  "You're famous, bro," Max whispered to him as they charted their way through the area.

  "Shut up," Mitchell replied. The last thing they needed was for someone to overhear them.

  "Try to relax. I move illegal shit through here all the time. Stay close and we'll be fine. No worries."

  Max wasn't worried at all. He walked with a swagger, bold for someone carrying a duffel filled with assault rifles, pistols, and magazines and allied to a suspected cop killer. Lyle walked a few feet behind them, keeping an eye on the crowds and trying to be discreet.


  They had come up with a plan on the way north, deciding that the best course was to be as careless as possible. So much security was centered around people trying to be sneaky, so it made sense to be natural. At least, that was what Max claimed.

  They paused at a ticketing kiosk.

  "I got this," Max said, dropping the duffel on the ground and approaching the AI. Mitchell didn't pay attention to the transaction, instead keeping a closer eye on the rest of the crowd. Most of them didn't even look his direction, and the ones who did barely gave him more than a passing glance. They had better things to do, and he was supposed to be in St. Louis, anyway.

  Max returned a moment later. "Checkpoint Alpha clear, sir," he said to Mitchell. "Heading for Checkpoint Bravo."

  Bravo was the inner security scan, the more advanced search and discovery protocols marked by the presence of uniformed officers. Mitchell would not only have to bypass a facial scan, but also get around the scrutiny of actual people. He could feel his heart rate increasing as they reached the checkpoint, adding themselves to a short line. What if the officers recognized him and wanted to detail him? What if Watson had his eyes on the scanning machines and found out exactly where he was and where he was headed? And what about Max? How was he going to get the contraband through?

  Max reached the front of the line first. He smiled at the officers, giving them a charismatic grin and a warm welcome as he reached the narrow archway where all of the sensors were mounted.

  Then he was through, the equipment somehow oblivious to the fifty pounds of munitions he was hauling.

  "I bet you're going to stop my friend back there," he said loudly to one of the agents. "He looks just like that Reggie Doe the St. Louis Police are looking for. You know, the one all over the projections."

  Both officers turned to look at Mitchell as he moved up to the sensor arch. He could feel the heat on his face. Max had said to be natural, not to call attention to himself.

  "Shut up, asshole," he shouted to Max. "I don't look anything like him." He smiled at the agent. "I don't look anything like him."