Starship Eternal (War Eternal Book 1) (5 page)

He reacted out of pure instinct, his years of training working faster than his mind could figure out what had just happened. He took a tighter hold of Evan's corpse and ducked beneath it, at the same time feeling his body begin to warm. His neural implant flooded him with adrenaline, pushing away the inebriated haze. He looked past Evan and watched more holes appear in the clear carbonate, feeling the shock of each slug burying itself deep into the Corporal's flesh. If the force hadn't been reduced by the window, the shots would have gone right through both of them.

Mitchell dropped Evan and rolled to the side, finding his AZ-9 and bringing it to his hand. He came up behind a table, looking out the window and up towards an office on the other side of the street. His p-rat showed him the residual signature of a high-powered rifle. Both it and its user were gone.

He connected his p-rat to central dispatch. "Command, this is Captain Williams. Corporal Kwon is down. I'm under attack."

A clinical, emotionless voice replied. "We have your position, Captain. The authorities are being notified, and a team is being deployed."

"Like I'm going to wait for a team," he mumbled, dropping the connection. He stayed crouched behind the table, his eyes scanning the street. A dark car slid to a stop in front of the building, black window descending to reveal the end of a heavy rifle.

"You can't do that with a corpse," Mitchell spat.
 

The assassins might have expected him to run away, to try to evade their fire. He did the opposite, breaking from behind the table and sprinting towards the door.

The rifle opened fire, spraying the front of the bar. The bullets screamed around him, his aggressive maneuver throwing the shooter's aim just enough. A bullet tore clean through his right shoulder, his p-rat showing the damage in the corner of his eye, assessing and sending stimulants and healing drugs from a second implant in his buttocks. Another shot hit him in the same arm. If he hadn't been left-handed, he would have dropped his gun.

Instead, he brought it up and took two shots into the car. The rifle stopped firing. The driver's side door opened, and a man slid out and started aiming. Mitchell rapid-fired six more rounds. The first four skipped off the roof of the car, the last two hit the driver in the face.
 

He could hear sirens now, the York police dispatched ahead of the military for faster local response. He thought about stopping and letting them handle the cleanup. No. Someone across the street had killed Evan, and he wasn't about to let them get away.

He kept running towards the dark car, jumping and using the open window to vault up and over it. He shoulder-rolled on the other side, a little awkward on his left, and got to his feet, running for the front of the office building. Everything had happened so fast, he doubted the shooter could have gotten down from their perch yet.

He pushed his way past the bystanders who had paused in the street to watch, shoving a man in a suit aside and squeezing through the door before it could finish opening for him. His eyes tracked across the lobby, finding the banks of lifts near the center. A security guard was standing to his left, his hand on the butt of his gun, hesitating to draw on a man in military dress.

"Where are the stairs?" Mitchell asked. He knew he must look frightening. His right arm was a bloody mess, his shirt soaked through. He didn't feel the pain at all. Space Marines were trained to take a beating.

"That way," the guard said, pointing to the right of the lifts.
 

"Is there another way out from there?"

"Service entrance is in the back."

"Is it guarded?"

"Yes."

"Show me. As fast as you can."

The guard started running towards the back. He led Mitchell into the stairwell, where an opposite door had been kicked open, leading into the service area. It was a large room with four loading bays and access to the thermal systems below. A second guard was on the floor not far from the door, blood pooling around his body.

"Oh, damn," the guard said.

Mitchell didn't hear him. He crouched and entered the room, sweeping the area with the AZ-9. He found the rear exit. The door was closed.

He charged ahead, leaping down the raised service platform towards the door. He shoved his shoulder against it, slamming it open at the same time the soft whine of an engine sounded to his right. He turned his head to see a figure mounted on a bike. He tried to rotate around to get his left hand, and the AZ-9, up to fire at the same time the bike began to accelerate away. He took four shots, scuffing the side of the building across the alley but missing the assassin completely.
 

A moment later they were gone.
 

"Damn it," Mitchell cursed. He stared down the empty alley for a few seconds, until his vision was blurred by a drop of blood that rolled into his eye. He used his finger to wipe it away, confused when his entire palm came back red.
 

He didn't remember being shot in the head. He hadn't felt it, and the p-rat wasn't showing it.
 

He blinked a few times. The p-rat wasn't showing anything. When had that happened?
 

He started to feel dizzy. He put a hand to his chest. His heart rate slowed. Everything was getting warm. Flashing lights bounced off the windows, filling his blurring eyes. A shape headed towards him. Law enforcement.
 

"Captain?" the officer said. "Are you okay?"

Mitchell tried to speak, finding it impossible. The stimulants should have been keeping him up and alert, but they couldn't do that if the implant were malfunctioning.
 

"Captain?"

Mitchell collapsed.

EARTH. May 17, 2035

"Give it back."

Kathy darted across the field, a baseball cap in her outstretched hand, shaking it to tease her victim.

"Kathy, stop."

Michael chased behind her. He was big for his age, overweight, too slow.

"Come on, beluga. You can catch me," Kathy said, turning around and running backward, waving the cap at him.

"I can't. Nobody can catch you."

She laughed and stopped the chase. It was true. She was the fastest runner in her class. Maybe in her whole school. She was lean and lithe, her young body already in top shape from a rigorous after-school schedule that included martial arts, yoga, ballet, gymnastics. Anything that was physical and challenging. That and violin lessons. She hated violin lessons.

"Here," she said, walking back to Michael and handing him the hat. "You're no fun."

"I am fun," he said. "Just not when you make me run."

They both laughed at that.

"Let's go back with the others," Michael said, pointing back to the playground where the other ten-year-olds were on swings and slides, or kicking a ball between them.

"Okay."

They started walking back. They'd gone about halfway when Kathy stopped.

"Kathy?" Michael asked, noticing she had paused. She was standing completely still, not even blinking. "Are you okay?"

She turned slowly, her body twisting, her head arching up towards the nearly cloudless sky. She had stopped because she had heard something. No, she had felt something. Something familiar. Something that told her she needed to look up at that precise moment.

There was nothing.
 

Blue sky, the glare of the sun in the corner of her left eye. Her imagination running away with her again.

"Kathy?" Michael repeated.

Still, she didn't look away. She couldn't. She could feel something. A charge in the air that hadn't been there a few seconds ago. A strange pressure in her ears.

She felt a hand on her shoulder.
 

"Kathy, come on. What game are you playing now?"

She reached up and shoved it away. "Just wait."

"What are you looking at?" A moment later, "There's nothing up-"

Except there was. She saw it now. So did Michael. A dark spot against the ocean, a sliver of void.

"What is that?" Michael said. "An airplane?"

She didn't know what it was. Not an airplane. It was something. Something big.

It was getting closer.

A rumble sounded from up there. Way, way up. It was gentle at first, as soft as a purring cat. It seemed to be ahead of the spot, and at the same time trailing it, or maybe circling all around it. As the spot got larger, the rumble got louder.

The playground fell silent.

The others had noticed now. They heard the sound and they looked up. The dark spot had grown and shifted into a longer shape, more like a bullet or a spear.

Seconds passed.

The front of it lit like a match, a small red spot at first, and then a flare of sparks, red and blue and white that spread around it, wrapping it like a blanket. The rumbling grew louder, loud enough to shake the ground they were standing on.

Then it was silent.

The thing was still there. It was still falling. From space, Kathy knew. It had to be entering the atmosphere to be burning like that. She stared at it in wonder, eyes wide and unblinking, heart racing in the excitement. It was trailing across the sky now, sparks and smoke and small bits of debris flowing out behind it. It was coming faster and faster, outpacing the sound of its travel, rocketing across the sky, reaching the face of the sun and momentarily blotting it out in its mass.

She could almost see it, rounded and sleek in its speed. It was approaching the horizon in a hurry, reaching the edge of her sky almost as fast as it had arrived. For all its size, it was still so high. She knew it wouldn't stay there. It was going to come down. It was going to crash somewhere, whatever it was. An asteroid? A satellite? A secret military weapon? An alien? There were too many possibilities.
 

It was the most amazing thing she had ever seen.

It vanished over the edge of some trees and houses that rested outside the school grounds, a massive hulk of a form. Too big to be a satellite. Too big to be anything manmade, and she hadn't seen anything online about any asteroids passing close by anytime soon.

Kathy closed her eyes. The thing had passed them by, spared them from the fury of its impact. Would everyone be so lucky? Where was it going to hit? How many would be killed?

The sound caught up to them, a deafening roar that shook the trees and caused some of the children behind her to start screaming in fear. She felt Michael take her hand in his, and for once she didn't shake him off. Not because she was scared. Because she was happy. All of her life she had dreamed of the stars. All of her life she had felt that there was something out there. She had read every e-book she could find about the space program and the moon landings. She idolized the astronauts who had made their way off the planet and out there, before budget cuts and fiscal restraint had caused a once curious species to resort to small, unmanned exploration and leave the people glued to the planet.

This. This was something. She knew it. She had been training her body, training her mind as if she would one day become one of those astronauts she had read about. As if she would one day make the trip up there. To her, there had never been a question of if, only one of how.

Something told her she had her answer.

"Ares."

"Ella? Am I dreaming?"

"Not exactly."

"Where am I?"

"Find it."

"Find what?"

"Goliath. They're coming. Find it."

"What? Who's coming?"

"They're going to fix it. Don't forget."

Mitchell opened his eyes. He could see the robotic arms of the medical bots positioned over him, rotating and shifting around his right side, picking shrapnel from his wounds, cleaning them out, and gluing him back together. He was too drugged up to feel any pain from it. In fact, he couldn't feel anything below the neck at all, a sensation that might have panicked a civilian.
 

It wasn't the first time had had been shot. He was a Space Marine.