Eclipse scowled. “Bryson lost his wife on that mission, Octavia.”
I glanced at Holland, and he was still, frozen in place. Jade wrapped an arm around him, but he shrugged it off.
“I know that, Ellie. And he did what it took to win, so if we survive today, I have to give him Proxima as promised.” Octavia broke off.
“I’m surprised, to say the least.” Eclipse looked at her screen, and I checked our radar. The giant tentacled ship still hadn’t moved, and so far, no fighting between Liberty and the Defenders had begun.
“Why isn’t it attacking? It’s sitting there.” Octavia’s eye twitched.
“It already displayed its power. I expect it wants us to concede with minimal effort.”
“You know I won’t.” Octavia stared into the screen, and it felt like her eyes were sending me a signal, even though she couldn’t see me.
“I won’t either,” Luther whispered.
“Neither will I,” I muttered.
“Where’s my dad?” Holland asked.
“He has to be around here somewhere,” I suggested.
Eclipse broke the silence on the viewer. “How many people are on Boardroom?”
“Two thousand.”
“You need to get them out of here!” Eclipse had obviously changed her mind after hearing Octavia’s side of the conversation. “We’ll hold this thing off.”
“Do you have a plan? We’ve established our weapons won’t work against them. They have our number,” the Lead Chair said.
“Hang tight. We need to regroup. I suggest we—”
The tentacles began pulsing. I tried to get a feeling for the size of the enemy ship, and guessed it was nearly as large as Boardroom, which currently held a couple hundred of each Primary Corporation. My ship was tiny compared to it, but maybe that was a good thing.
“I have to reach out to them. Try to stop this.” Octavia smiled at her sister over the viewer, and the call ended.
“They’re going to blast the CEOs!” Holland shouted. “My dad might be on there.”
“Captain,” R11 said, but he was drowned out by Bryson’s son.
“Captain! It looks like the ship you contacted earlier is on the move.” R11 sent me a blip on the radar, a tag for Velvet. It was positioning itself between the enemy and Boardroom.
“We have to stop her. She’s not going to be able to do anything.” I began flying. Varn followed, probably thinking this was part of my plan. All I wanted to do was keep Bello and Grid from orphaning their children in the Wastes.
The tentacles burned hot with red energy, the tips cracking and arcing between one another. It didn’t seem to care I was heading straight for its port side, and I flew as fast as I could, using the Racer’s advanced speed to cross the distance quickly.
“This better work, Jade,” I whispered, and didn’t have to tell Luther what to do.
The moment we were within range, he began firing, testing the weapon. At first, I thought it had been stopped by the invisible shield, but it passed through, striking the hull. A bright flame erupted and extinguished.
“It works!” We flew on, Luther shooting effortlessly. The enemy didn’t even target us, but from here, we couldn’t see the front of the ship. I prayed they hadn’t used their weapons yet to aim for my friends. “R11, send out an All-Call to anyone in the vicinity. Reverse the weapons’ polarity and attack! We’re only going to have one shot at this!”
The communication went out, and we received dozens of pings, saying they were ready to assist. The huge Defenders blinked on the radar, and I noticed Boardroom starting their departure. The Board had decided to fight alongside Liberty, and I was glad for it. If these fiends were coming to invade, everyone would be enslaved by them regardless. I’d rather die fighting than lying down, and that was exactly what we were doing.
Varn must have been enjoying himself, because his Number 1 Racer danced under us, firing with everything he had. We circled the giant vessel, and I spotted the crackling tentacles to my left in the viewer. Others came to join the battle, which was fully one-sided up to this point. The enemy hadn’t even acknowledged our existence.
The appendages were huge this close up, extending half a kilometer each, rotating its surplus of energy. I avoided them and moved for Velvet, who’d finally reversed their weapon systems as well, judging by the eruption of the ion cannons breaking through the shield.
It seemed like we were about to destroy them. Our blasts were miniscule against the breadth of this vessel’s hull, but it could only withstand so many strikes. The rest of Eclipse’s fleet was in on it now, and we fired without grace. Jade was talking, but my heart was beating so loudly, I couldn’t understand the words.
The behemoth’s tentacles lashed out, all four of them taking aim as their hull began to break down. At least a hundred of our allies were pounding them with firepower, and it was almost done. The explosions rolled across its exterior, but the arms still managed to fire first.
The red pulses were like nothing I’d ever witnessed. Boardroom was moving so slowly and had no chance to alter its fate. The balls of energy sped through a few ships in the way, turning them to dust, right before striking the giant luxury liner. Both Boardroom and the enemy’s Core exploded at the same moment, and on instinct, I arced away from the blasts.
My ears still rang, but I finally made sense of the shouts around me. “No!” Holland was yelling, trying to reach his father without success.
I stared at the vacant space where the Boardroom had been, and felt nothing but emptiness. “They’re all gone.”
“What do we do?” It was Varn’s voice in my earpiece. He was looking to me for guidance.
No one did anything. It was a mess, a mixture of the Primary Corporation vessels and Eclipse’s gathered fleet. Among the haulers, freighters, skimmers, cruisers, and Racers, I spotted Velvet. Still alive. That gave me hope.
“We did it.” I had to say something. We had defeated the big bad enemy after all.
“At what price? The entire Board is eradicated, along with two thousand of their closest friends,” Luther groaned.
“Tell me Dad wasn’t on there,” Holland said.
“I think he’s alive,” I told him. I searched for Eclipse’s tag Jade had managed to scrounge up earlier, and targeted it.
She appeared a moment later, looking frazzled. “You’re the SeaTech pilot.”
“I am. Hello…Ellie.” I used her real name, the one Octavia had called her.
“Where did you…?”
“We’re in need of some guidance here, and we figured you might be the best person to lead us. There could be more coming,” I suggested.
“My sister was just killed. We’re lucky we got off without all of us being destroyed. This won’t be the end of it.” She whispered to an officer behind her. “You were the first to target them. Nice trick, assuming the shields were designed to protect them against a particular array.”
“Credit due to the great Jade Serrano, I’m afraid.” I smiled at Jade, and she returned it.
“Captain Lewis, we have incoming…” R11’s voice trailed off. I looked at the radar map to find hundreds of inbound blinking lights.
“Ellie, do you see those?” I asked. The plug-in Jinx had provided showcased more and more alien vessels arriving on my radar.
“See what?”
“We have incoming. Drones. And I don’t think they’re friendly.” At first, I thought it was hundreds, but as they neared and spread apart, it was clear they’d been overlapping. There were thousands.
Eclipse’s eyes were wide, panicked. “Where are they?”
I sent her a snapshot. She quickly understood. “What’s that in the center? Another of those tentacled monsters?”
I saw the variance on the ID marker and zoomed on it. No way. “It can’t be.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s my grandfather’s old ship. It’s Obelisk.”
____________
Our fleet
gathered into a defensive position, with the weaker transports already destined toward Saturn. Thirty in total, each capable of holding a few hundred people. At least some of us might escape this terrible day. The thought was fleeting as the enemy horde headed closer with each passing minute.
“How is Obelisk here, Arlo?” Holland asked.
“That’s a good question, since it’s supposed to be destroyed,” I reminded him. Too many things ran through my mind for me to think straight.
“Something isn’t adding up,” Luther said softly.
Holland couldn’t stand it. He looked ready to implode, his cheeks red. “I’m reaching out to my dad again.”
Jade stared at the horde of incoming drones from beside my chair. “Who’s on that ship?”
“We’re about to find out,” I whispered as they grew nearer.
I assumed these drones could be destroyed, like the first vessel had been, but they might have learned from our pattern shift. We’d have to do it again or come up with another ingenuity to defeat them. From what Jinx had shown me, they weren’t violent, just voyeurs, but that didn’t mean they weren’t able to wreak havoc from under those dark hulls.
My viewer flickered to a communication I hadn’t authorized. “Who speaks for Earth?” a voice asked. The figure was shrouded in darkness, a shadow standing ten paces from the camera. I’d seen pictures of Obelisk over the years since its disappearance. Hell, I’d even gotten a grand tour before Preston Lewis had left for his journey to Proxima. I’d been so focused on trying to convince him to stay on Earth with us, I barely recalled anything about the vessel. But seeing the bridge again brought it all flooding back.
“I said, who speaks for Earth?” the shadow boomed again.
“I do.” The voice was a shock, since we thought Octavia had been destroyed on the Boardroom in the initial strike.
“I thought you were obliterated,” the man said. His voice was slightly garbled, telling me he was using a modification application.
“Unfortunately, I wasn’t on it while your friends killed the rest of my colleagues.” Octavia didn’t flinch at her own comment, and I understood. She hadn’t been on the luxury liner. Well played, Octavia. I’d put money on it that Boardroom had been practically empty, and that the escaping vessels held many of the executives.
“I see you managed to fend off the Squid. That’s quite a feat, but it doesn’t matter. I order you to stand down.” The man continued hiding from plain sight.
Octavia’s brows rose inquisitively. “And why would we do that? If we fought this Squid and survived, why not end you as well?”
“Because you’ll find these drones don’t damage so easily. There’s nothing on your ships that will break through their shields. I guarantee this.”
“Holland, are you there?” I heard Bryson on the communicator behind me. With a crane of my neck, I saw him on Holland’s viewscreen.
“Dad?” Holland’s voice was a whisper. “Where are you?”
“I just arrived. What the hell is going on?”
I tried to concentrate on the conversation between Octavia and the man on Obelisk, letting Holland fill his father in on today’s excitement.
I returned my focus to Octavia. “We can negotiate. How is it that our old vessel has returned almost twenty years after we sent her off? We’ve been under the assumption Obelisk and her crew were destroyed.”
The deep voice spoke with anger. “Stand down.”
The drones had encircled our fleet, moving in programmed patterns, and presumably remotely controlled. I flew away from Varn’s Racer and sped toward the nearest drone. “Fire, Luther!”
He did, the blasts dissipating as they struck the shield. “Jade, any suggestions?” I asked.
“Not off the top of my head. The Defenders will have the thermal torpedoes, but if these are designed to withstand our weapons, they’ll do the same against…”
One of the Defenders shot a volley of five torpedoes against the incoming horde, and they all detonated, failing to even scratch the drones.
“There’s my answer,” Luther grumbled. It all happened so fast, and we were back in a deadlock without a chance of victory.
“I told you to concede, and you attack?” the man said, stepping closer. He wore a black armored uniform, unique in appearance. I’d seen the logo before. It was the insignia the Board had created for their Proxima expansion mission.
“Why am I not surprised to see it’s you, Preston?” Octavia asked.
I audibly gasped at the sight of my grandfather. He looked much like I remembered him, except his hairline was slightly more receded, his cheeks hollowed out. Gone was the softness of his eyes, along with the casual smirk from behind which he’d appraised the world.
“Arlo.” My grandpa stared at the camera. “We are destined for great things, and the Lewises are no longer limited to the foolish maneuvering of Earth. Corporate dominance was the downfall of humanity. The moment I met the Velibar, everything changed.”
I tried to breathe, but my lungs betrayed me. I clutched the arms of my chair, gaping at the viewscreen. He was speaking on a comm blast, meaning I couldn’t reply.
“The Velibar are powerful. A galaxy-spanning entity, ready to encompass our solar system. They are also patient, but their tolerance runs thin. They demanded we give up our world, and that fell upon my shoulders. The Velibar assure me Earth will continue to exist, with them in charge. Don’t worry, Arlo. I wouldn’t sell our entire race out, just our leaders. They were the necessary sacrifice. The people will be salvaged.”
“Arlo, is that really him?” Holland asked.
I raised a finger straight in the air. “Listen.” I managed to inhale air and struggled to not shout at the screen. How was this possible? My mentor, the man who taught me so much of what I knew, had returned from the grave, and was accompanied by alien allies. I couldn’t comprehend how any of this had occurred.
“The drones will create the gateway, and today, we make history. Your Space Race is over. The corporations are disbanded. Our people will once again have free will, just under a different leader. The Velibar will be merciful. You will see.” He blinked three times, and I noticed his lip twitch when he was silent. Even he didn’t believe the crap he was spouting. I could tell, because he’d always had that same tell when we played cards as a kid. Maybe there was room for negotiation after all. “Stand down, Octavia. Everyone, your new era begins now. Embrace the change. There are millions of worlds to explore, contrary to the status quo. The Board wants you to stay under their thumb, for their precious Primaries to continue running things and turning profits.”
“And Proxima? What happened to it?” Octavia asked him.
“The Velibar control it. As it turns out, the Velibar encountered Obelisk, sent to investigate Proxima Centauri years ago. It piqued their interest in us. I was forced to leave you all behind, and in exchange, they spared my life. They told me a time would come where I’d be responsible for bringing the news to my people. Today is that moment.” Preston stared into the camera, and a grin crept onto his face.
“I need to talk…” I whispered to myself.
Bryson appeared on screen. He’d somehow managed to interrupt their communication from the bridge of his corporate SeaTech liner. “Preston, you bastard! How dare you sacrifice our people?”
“If it isn’t young Bryson Kelley. Only not so young any longer.” It was difficult to consider the man on screen as my grandfather. His mannerisms were the same, but he was a far stretch from the caring paternal figure I’d grown up around.
“Where is she? Where’s Catarina?” Bryson strode to his camera, his face too close to it. Octavia was there, unwilling to interrupt this moment.
Preston went still, solemn. His chin rested on his chest for a second before he lifted his head to stare Bryson in the eyes on screen. “The Velibar have taken my crew to their home planet. Catarina included.”
Holland made a grunting noise from behind me, and Bryson looked ready to pass
out. “Octavia, we have to hear him out. Perhaps this is the best decision—”
“Bryson, don’t be foolish. There’s more at stake than your wife!” Octavia had regained her confidence. I glanced at the drones to see them moving into formation. My grandpa had said they would form a gateway. To where?
“My mother’s alive,” Holland croaked.
“It’s okay,” Jade consoled him.
“We have to stop them,” Luther said.
The drones were forming into a giant circle. Thousands of the almond-shaped black vessels began interconnecting with one another.
“What if he’s right?” Holland asked. “We could work with the Velibar. You saw how big that thing was. If they send a fleet against us, what chance do we have?”
“I agree the Corporations have gotten out of hand, but how can you trust the Velibar? Did you see that Squid? All I can picture is a hundred of those surrounding Earth. They’d devastate our home in minutes. Even if we managed to destroy one, it was lucky. And they didn’t seem too interested in retaliation. We won’t stand a chance.” I wanted him to see reason, but he stared forward.
Octavia clenched her jaw over the screen, the muscles bunching tightly. “Let us go, Preston. Order the drones off, and we’ll join you in discussions with the Velibar. I’m sure once we’ve spoken to them, they’ll be willing to reach a deal.”
Preston let out a bitter chuckle, his voice cracking as if this was the most hilarious thing he’d ever heard. “I don’t think so, Octavia. They’re coming today. You can choose to run now. I cannot stop you, but within a few minutes, the gateway will be operational. They will hunt you down, and you will each be killed. And they prefer to inflict pain.” He looked like a maniac, his eyes wide, his grin showing too many teeth. “First, they’ll disable your ships. They’ll board them, boots on the ground, and they’ll gather you into a holding bay. You will lose all dignity. You’ll watch them torture your loved ones. You don’t understand their culture. I do. You may consider it barbaric, but it’s allowed them to dominate for millions of years.”
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