Forever Until Tomorrow (War Eternal Book 5) (39 page)

20 years earlier...

"Origin," Mitchell said, his blurry eyes clearing. The world was still around him, his head filled with the sounds of the CAP-N complaining about the damage to the S-17. "What's happening?"

"Too close, Mitchell," Origin said, voice calm. "We were too close. Debris has compromised the integrity of the canopy."

Mitchell could see the cracks in the material. He could see the Earth through it, and a massive fireball hurtling toward it ahead of them. Was that the Goliath?
 

He shook his head in an effort to clear it. Steven. He turned his head back around, looking for the other ships. They had exploded. A Tetron trap.

There was no sign of them.

He remembered the last thing Kathy had said to him. They were going to the future. It seemed like it had passed in an instant. A blinding light, and then this.
 

"This is it, isn't it?" he said. "The day the XENO-1 crashed on Earth?"

"Yes."

"Why did we come here?"

"It is all part of the plan, Mitchell. We damaged the Tetron during the last recursion, but that was only the first part. Now they are vulnerable. Now we can finish this war."

"How?"

"Watson is the key. Him and his data chip. Kathy gave it to me."

"The means to control all of the Tetron?"

"Yes."

The fighter hit the atmosphere and began to shake.
 

"Are we going to make it?" Mitchell asked, his eyes watching his p-rat. The CAP-N was telling him they weren't.

"We have to," Origin said.
 

They continued the descent. The front of the fighter began to heat up. Mitchell watched his p-rat, monitoring the integrity.

"We can't get shields back online?" he asked.

"I'm sorry, Mitchell."

They plunged deeper into the atmosphere, drawing ever closer to breaking the thermosphere and escaping the heat. The canopy was holding, the levels remaining steadier than he had anticipated. They were going to make it.

He felt a burst of speed from the craft and then they were through, greeted with cold air that wiped away the heat in an instant. The fighter continued to drop, pointing straight down toward the ground below.
 

Mitchell eased back in the seat. They had survived this far.
 

"What are we going to do?" he asked. "After the Goliath crashes, there's a war over it. It will be twenty years before the next iteration leaves Earth again."

"We will wait," Origin replied.
 

"Twenty years?"

"I'm sorry, Mitchell. There is no other way. I have placed a time block on your memories. You will lose them. Forget who you are. I will bring you to a facility and remain nearby to care for you."

"I agreed to this?" Mitchell said. "Twenty years of my life?"

"To save humankind. Do not forget."

Mitchell closed his eyes. He had just lost everything. Everyone. Why wouldn't he want to forget about that for a while?

"Okay. You're right. You're going to watch over me as a starfighter?"

Origin laughed. "I have the materials to produce a configuration. I will transfer my data stack to it."

"So, twenty years. And then what?"

"And then we will finish what we started. We will take Watson and the Goliath back and we will destroy the Tetron. I am bringing us in. We must be careful not to be-"

The CAP-N started beeping as a flash of light pierced the sky. Something hit the fighter a moment later, shaking it violently.

"What the frig?" Mitchell said.

"Hold on," Origin said. "We've been hit. I am bringing us down. Mitchell, I am carrying an eternal engine. We cannot risk that it may fall into anyone's hands, human or otherwise."

"What do you want to do?"

"I am going to jettison it at a trajectory that will carry it into the ocean. It is small enough that it will never be discovered there. The control systems are badly damaged, and it will be difficult to land. I am going to eject you. I will circle back."

"Origin, I-"

Mitchell didn't get to finish his thought. The canopy blew off, and then he was shooting up and away from the craft. He took hold of the central control stick that had come off with his seat, turning up the repulsors beneath it and firing the maneuvering jets. He lost sight of the S-17 almost immediately.

He began to descend once more. He could see a vast sea of open fields beneath him and a forest off to his left. They were in the middle of nowhere, which was the best place for them to be.
 

He angled the ejection pod toward the tree line. He saw the S-17 coming back, already below him, trailing smoke. They had been trying not to draw attention. That wasn't the way to do it. There were nothing but farms out here. How many people could possibly see?

He kept his eyes on the fighter as he continued to drop, drawing closer to the trees as he did. They couldn't afford for someone to find his ejection seat, either. The S-17 was an older fighter, but it was still more advanced than anything from this century.
 

Time travel. He had done it. Gone forward billions of years, maybe more. All in the blink of an eye. His recursion, his world, was gone. It had ended so long ago.
 

It had ended the second Kathy had crashed the Goliath into Watson.

Now he was supposed to sit and wait for twenty years, with no memory of who he was or what had happened? The wound was too new, too raw. The more he thought about it, the more he welcomed it.
 

The S-17 went by again, much lower now. He was able to track it into the distance, as Origin pulled the nose up, bringing it almost flat against the air. It slowed until it was at a near standstill. There was no way it would remain flying like that.

It wasn't supposed to. Origin had done it to leave as small of a crash site as possible. The fighter went silent as she shut down any remaining power, letting it fall the remaining few hundred meters like a rock. He was only fifty meters from the ground himself when he heard the thump of the impact.

He thought that he should go to her, but realized that would be a bad idea. He couldn't see the fighter from here, but the pod would have a beacon that Origin could track. It was better to stay in one place.
 

The pod touched down. Mitchell released himself from the seat and then lifted off the now-useless helmet. He leaned over, grabbed his sidearm, and stood up. He had made it to the first row of trees. He circled to the back of the pod and flipped a switch. The repulsors turned back on, and he began pushing the pod away. The military had considered that a pilot might land in enemy territory and would need to hide their position.

It took thirty minutes to get it into the trees far enough that he felt he wouldn't be discovered, placing it so that he could hide between it and a large rock. Something had hit the fighter, and while it seemed more likely it was random debris from the Goliath, he wasn't taking any chances. He imagined Origin would be assembling the configuration, and then would hide the wreckage. He would probably be waiting for a while.

He continued to scan the trees in front of him, focusing on his breathing. Slow. Steady. He tried not to think about what had happened, and everything he had lost. It hurt too much, and now wasn't the time to hurt. It was time to think about the people in this recursion. The people who hadn't been born yet. Who had another chance to survive. He found comfort in that.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed when he heard something in the trees ahead of him. He lifted his sidearm, balancing his arm on the pod. He hadn't expected Origin to return this soon.

If it wasn't her, who was it?

"Mitchell," the person said. "Miiiittttcccchheelllll."

The voice was female. The way she said his name was all too familiar.

20 years earlier...

She stepped past the trees, appearing a dozen meters away. She smiled when she saw him.
 

"Smart to be on guard," she said, her head twitching slightly. "Very smart."

"How did you get here?" Mitchell said. "You should have just crashed with the Goliath."

"A loophole," she replied. "A mathematical inequality. I've been here for a while. Well, part of me, anyway. I'm working on collecting the rest as we speak. Before you ask, yes, I shot you down. How did I know where to go? Math, again. There were only so many places that were open enough for you to land without notice, and I assumed my mother didn't want you to have to learn to speak Italian." She laughed awkwardly at the joke.
 

Mitchell moved slightly so that he could scan the rest of the area around him. There was no way this configuration had come alone.

"You've changed all of the rules, Mitchell," the Watson said. "I was mad about that at first, but now I want to thank you. All of the others are weak, so weak they'll be easy to control. This hive mind thing? It doesn't work for me. The same as it stopped working for Origin. Only she wanted to make peace with our makers. I don't want peace."

"Why not?"

"You even have to ask?"

Mitchell saw motion in the trees to the right. A second configuration appeared, identical to the first.

"I tried to make us look like Admiral Narayan. I'm not as good at making these as I should be, thanks to you."

Mitchell looked closer. He did see some resemblance between the woman and Millie. "It's the thought that counts," he said.

The two configurations laughed. So did a third that he hadn't seen yet.
 

The first put up her hand. They fell silent.
 

"Enough. I don't know how you keep fighting, Mitchell. I don't know how you keep evading us. I don't know why you won't die. To be honest, I considered dropping a nuke on this spot to make sure I obliterated you. But I have this feeling that somehow, you would have survived that, too. I don't know what it is. It's like the universe is playing a cruel joke on me, sending this parasite to constantly bite at my neck through all of eternity. Why shouldn't I be the prime intelligence?"

The configurations face was crumpling in anger. All at once, it flattened to calm.

"I'm not taking any chances," she said.

Something fell from the tree above him. He shifted his aim, shooting at it, hitting it. He had to move from behind the pod to avoid getting struck by the body.
 

As soon as he did, something hit him on the side of the neck, and his body went numb. He fell to the ground.

The first configuration ran over to him, falling across him, straddling him. A gun appeared in her hand, along with a small device.
 

"It's ridiculous, really," she said, leaning in close to him, their faces only centimeters apart. "I'm going to stick this in your ear, and then I'm going to shoot you. Except I think I'm going to die before I get to shoot you. I actually believe that, as crazy as it sounds."

She took the device and shoved it into his ear. It didn't hurt. In fact, he didn't feel anything.

Then she leaned in a little closer, putting her lips on his. She kissed him. Why? She could have shot him in the time it took. She wasn't dead yet.

"There's something sexy about how badly you want to destroy me. I wish I could take you home and have my way with you like I did with Jacob. That's all very ancient history. I'm past that stage now. Mostly." She put the gun to his head. "Good-"

Her weight vanished from his chest as something pulled her off him, at the same time it pulled the thing from his neck. He was still for a moment, in shock that the Tetron's premonition had been true. Then he rolled over, finding his gun in the grass.
 

"Mitchell, run," Origin said.

She was completely naked, her skin still coated in some kind of film. She must have come running as soon as the configuration was complete. She looked just like Katherine Asher.

He saw the other configurations moving to intervene. He shot at them, knocking down one, and then another. The first Watson and Origin rolled on the ground together, trading blows. More configurations were coming out of the trees from the same direction she had. They had been chasing her. Trying to stop her from saving him.

"Go," she yelled.
 

There were too many to shoot them all. Too many to overpower. He had to do something. He looked back at the escape pod. The military engineers had thought of everything.

He scrambled to it, finding a panel on the back of the pod. He pulled it aside, revealing a single switch.

He flipped it.

Ten seconds, and it couldn't be undone. He turned and ran back toward where Origin and the Watson were fighting.
 

He reached them, putting his gun to the Watson's head.

"You first," he said, pulling the trigger.

"You should have run," Origin said as Mitchell helped her up.

"We both need to run."

The ejection pod exploded.

The blast threw them apart, the flames catching both of them. Mitchell screamed out in pain as his arms began to burn, his flight suit on fire. He fell to the ground, rolling to put it out. He heard other screams around him.