Oblivion: The Complete Series (Books 1-9)

by Joshua James

  Ahmed slung the rifle over his shoulder as he threw a couple of mags of superheated rounds into the cargo pockets on his pants. Right by the exit of the suit-up room was a row of breathers, meant to filter out the dust and dirt of the Magellan 5 surface. They also provided extra oxygen, making it easier to breathe. Having been here three years already, Ahmed was well past the point where he needed one. Still, he grabbed one and stowed it away in one of his many pockets.

  Workers came in from an auxiliary room and dropped off their gear. Some of them, newbies on the planet, coughed up blood, dirt, and grime. Ahmed remembered those days about as fondly as he remembered all the days since.

  The auxiliary room didn’t really apply to people leaving the building complex. It was for those who wanted to remove their equipment and gear and take a disinfectant shower. Most got cleaned coming in through the initial lock, but those who worked sewage or in the pits, they needed a bit of a deeper clean. A tall metal wall divided the exit and entrance sides, and Ahmed paid no attention to the steam spilling out over it.

  Lastly, the decontamination room would’ve been the first that those coming in from the planet’s surface would enter through. On their side, they were immediately disinfected via high-intensity radiation. The white coats claimed that it was just hot and bright enough to kill alien bacteria and viruses, but most workers didn’t believe it. Ahmed certainly didn’t.

  He pressed the exit button at the far end of the final room. Lights around the airlock door went from red to yellow, then to green. With the green light came a loud buzzing sound as the door slowly opened. He put on his goggles, and pulled up his scarf over his nose and the bottom half of his face.

  Immediately Ahmed got blasted in the face with high winds and burnt-orange dust. Undaunted, he casually walked out onto the Magellan 5 surface.

  Despite the suns above and the brightness filtered through clouds of dust, it was cold on the planet’s surface. It was always cold.

  The outer perimeter, a dome made of specialized energy, kept the atmosphere in the colony breathable, albeit not at Earth standards. But it did little to keep the elements or even alien life out, the latter of which concerned Ahmed.

  Ahmed’s job was to enter his assigned watchtower and stand sentinel over a vast section of the outer perimeter. What was he looking for? His primary concern was alien life.

  Magellan 5 wasn’t as barren as it first appeared. In the mountains beyond the colony were fierce, armored predatory creatures they known as sun wolves, who regularly tried to infiltrate the colony and steal food and workers. Then there was the ever-present threat of an AIC invasion. After all, they were still at war, and close to the enemies’ swath of space.

  This was, of course, a job that a drone could do. But because of the difficult conditions on the planet’s surface, it would require high-end drones and frequent, expensive maintenance. Forced labor of the variety that Ahmed and his fellow convicts could provide was so much more abundant.

  On his way to his watchtower, Ahmed passed farms housed in physical domes. There were thousands of them. Magellan 5 was chosen to colonize because of how fertile the land beneath the dust was. Just a little water and it became extremely productive, at least agriculturally. The farms of Magellan 5 fed, either directly or indirectly, the colonies on over a thousand worlds.

  Ahmed pressed a button on his uniform sleeve. A digitally-projected stopwatch appeared across his forearm. The countdown to the end of his shift had begun.

  Ahmed climbed a rickety ladder to the top of the watchtower. Each ascended rung made a hollow creaking noise that almost echoed above the sounds of the wind. He didn’t pay attention. He just kept listening to his orchestral music.

  “Dammit, Ahmed. It’s about time!” yelled Rua Chozaki, her arms rising in exasperation. She left the small semi-enclosed pod at the end and walked across the grated metal walkway towards him.

  “Sorry, Rua. Cafeteria was crazy,” Ahmed said.

  “Because of you, I got less time before I gotta come back up here and stare at this shithole again,” she thundered as she squeezed her way past him to the ladder. “I hope your shift sucks.”

  Ahmed watched her struggle to keep the rifle slung around her shoulders as she descended the ladder. He wondered absently how someone so small could generate so much anger.

  How long has it been? Three hours? Four?

  Ahmed looked down at the counter on his forearm. Not even two hours.

  Ahmed slumped in the lone chair in the semi-enclosed pod at the top of the watchtower. From here he could look out over a gigantic canyon that was beyond grand. Around it was barren wastes, for as far as his eyes could see. In the distance he saw the glowing, transparent sky-blue outer perimeter, and the stations that maintained it in that section. His back ached.

  “All you gotta do is climb out,” said Ahmed aloud to himself. He stared down from the small perimeter wall that encircled the watchtower. It would be trivial to climb over. He knew that because he’d done it. He’d never jumped, but he’d climbed over it, just to see how hard it would be.

  It was twenty stories down to the planet’s surface. ’There was no way he’d survive the fall, not if he dove headfirst. He knew he wouldn’t do it. He was chickenshit. But it was still fun to dream.

  “And then all this will be over,” he said to himself. “And then I’ll be one with the Abyss.”

  Ahmed had recently gotten interested in a new religion. Life was so boring on Magellan 5 that he was always looking for something, anything to stimulate his mind. Then along came a handful of missionaries. They’d tried their luck with the colonists, but ever since a mob had attacked them, they’d been living in the convict quarters with Ahmed and the rest of the guards. Most people called them a cult, but Ahmed was more open-minded than that. The Oblivion religion had plenty of aspects that intrigued him.

  The Oblivion were adamant in their beliefs, that was true, but he found that conviction compelling. Basically, they welcomed one of two forms of unity. Either they believed in unity through death, which they described as the Abyss, a quasi-spiritual vacuum of space that was unknowable by definition; or they believed in the coming of gods from another dimension, which would unite humanity. Either way, there would be no hate, no violence, no war, no hunger, no thirst, and a purpose for every person. It was too simplistic to take seriously, Ahmed told himself. He was toying with the idea more than anything, but he still found himself strangely drawn to it.

  “HUD, display The Tomb of the Abyss, where I left off”.” Ahmed ordered his HUD to bring up a digital version of the Oblivion’s quasi-spiritual text. Everything about the group was quasi-something, mostly because they seemed to refuse to ascribe concrete definitions to anything, no matter how blatant they appeared to Ahmed.

  And yet he wanted to learn more.

  He sat down on the little bench in the watchtower and got to reading.

  As a part of his job as a guard, Ahmed’s HUD was directly plugged into Magellan 5’s security system. An alarm popped up. He opened it, if for no other reason than to just get it out of the way. In his three years on the planet, he’d never seen a real incursion into the colony. Most were just small Sun Wolves that were easily picked off from his or other towers.

  “Mother, this is tower zero-three-six”.” Ahmed tried to hail the communications room back at the main administration building on Magellan 5. He had to inform them of any trespassers past the outer perimeter, even if it was just something minor.

  “Zero-three-six, this is mother,” answered a woman’s voice on the other line of Ahmed’s HUD.

  “Yeah, so it looks like we have a perimeter breach at section fifteen, at the canyon.”

  “Can you see what it is?” asked the woman from home base.

  “Nobody else has called it in?” Ahmed asked.

  “Negative.”

  Damn. Ahmed would have to actually do something. “Hold on,” he sighed, getting to his feet. “Let me take another look. There’s a dust st
orm moving in, so it might be a little hard.”

  Ahmed looked out towards the outer perimeter, which was engulfed by the approaching dust storm. The storm made it nearly impossible to see anything, but he still needed to try. At the very least, it was something to break the monotony.

  Ahmed used a pair of dust-covered digital binoculars that were already in the watchtower pod. He wiped off the lenses and took a peek. At first he saw nothing. The undulating clouds of the dust storm covered everything. Then something caught his eyes.

  “Not sure what it is yet,” he said, aware that he wasn’t supposed to be having a casual conversation over the hot connection, but not really caring, either. “I don’t see any Sun Wolves or…”

  What in the hell is that?

  Ahmed saw a ball of bright light moving rapidly through the dust storm. It looked to originate in mid-air, and screamed down towards the ground. He barely had enough time to finish his thought when the bright ball of light hit something and caused a massive explosion. And that was followed by another, and another.

  Explosions erupted one after the other, all along a line. At first, Ahmed had no idea what they were.

  Then it hit him.

  “Mother, the generators!” Ahmed said, too shocked to form thoughts. “Something is blowing up the generators and the power stations for the outer perimeter wall!”

  There was nothing but static in his HUD. “Mother!” Ahmed shouted. “Do you read me?”

  Everything happened so fast, it was hard for Ahmed to even form a thought. The outer perimeter went down in the blink of an eye. Instantly, the atmospheric seal around the Magellan 5 colony disappeared. Everyone outside in the colony proper found themselves subject to a sudden change of gravity and shift in air pressure.

  Guards and other colonists flew up several feet into the air. Ahmed himself was only stopped by the top of the watchtower pod. Seconds later the emergency protocols were initiated, and power was rerouted through the inner perimeter system. Air pressure was regained, and the integrity of the colony’s atmosphere was restored, albeit more diffusely than was comfortable. Breathing was instantly harder. Everyone who’d floated up in the air was dropped just as suddenly and violently as they’d been lifted.

  Ahmed landed face-first on the pod floor, barely missing the bench that could have easily snapped his neck. He might have been knocked out for a brief second. He couldn’t be sure.

  Dazed and confused, Ahmed lifted himself up off the pod floor. He picked up his rifle and took a look out from his post to see what the hell had just hit them. The colony’s emergency sirens blared so loud they made his ears ring.

  Out of the clouds of the dust storm emerged a dozen or so AIC fighters. They zipped by over Ahmed’s post and into the colony, opening fire with their guns and missiles. He swung around and looked on helplessly as several domed farms and their workers disappeared in explosions. Some colonists tried to run for what they must have thought was cover inside the main buildings, but were only gunned down by the agile fighters.

  It was a massacre.

  Ahmed tried shooting at the ships as they got close, but he had no effect. There was no way he’d be able to hit them, and even if he did, a pulse rifle wouldn’t do much damage. But it was all he could do not to feel helpless. Then he heard a deep rumbling sound coming from the canyon. He could feel a vibration in his pod.

  Ahmed had seen dreadnoughts in space before. They were often on display in military formations on the news feeds. But he’d never seen one this close before.

  At first, it was just a massive black shape lingering in the dust storm. Then it emerged, like something out of a nightmare. As it flew over Ahmed, it was so close he could feel the heat from the hull. He could see the gears moving the on-board cannons, aiming them towards the colony. His ear drums burst from the concussive sound of them firing.

  Ahmed dropped his rifle and just watched the colony go up in flames. He knew that he’d never see home again. He’d never see his family or friends. All he hoped was that it would end quickly.

  One of the cannons shifted and aimed directly at him. He closed his eyes as heat poured over him.

  One

  Immediately upon completing their fold jump, the Lost’s proximity alarms blared.

  “That’s not good,” Ben said.

  “You think?” Morgan snapped. She saw what looked like a fighter ship barreling straight towards them.

  “Uh—” Ace said, leaning forward helpfully.

  “I see it,” Morgan said through gritted teeth. She realized the fighter was dead in space. It started to tumble end over end, badly blasted and scorched, but nonetheless coming straight toward them.

  Morgan banked hard to the left. The debris barely scraped the hull, but the responsive gunship just about avoided disaster—for the moment.

  “What the hell happened here?” Ace asked the question they were all thinking.

  The Lost had come out of the fold jump into the remains of a space battle. The shattered, broken carcasses of spaceships were all around them, forming a thick, impenetrable minefield.

  “We ain’t going through this soup,” Ben said.

  Morgan glanced over at him. There was something about the way he said it that bothered her.

  “We’re fine,” Morgan said stubbornly.

  “Fine?” Ace said incredulously. “You’re a good pilot, Morgan, but you ain’t that good. We need to put on our shields and gently float our way outta—”

  Before Ace could finish, he was thrown out of his chair by a swift barrel roll.

  Morgan couldn’t help it. She needed this. She could feel her skills rusting planetside. Besides, she needed to test the Lost.

  And if she was being honest, it was fun as hell to see the look on the boys’ faces.

  She cut hard the other way, flying too close to a large chunk of debris just for the hell of it.

  “Dammit, that was too close, Morgan!” Ace shouted.

  She laughed as she glanced back at Ace. Then she got a look at Ben. He wasn’t smiling. He didn’t look scared anymore. He was just eying up the ship debris. She felt like she could read his mind.

  Ben had known the Atlas was flying into a trap. They all had. But being witness to the results was a different prospect altogether. She could almost see the wheels turning in his mind. Was his father out here somewhere in a cold, dark grave? Or had he survived and escaped this? Had anyone?

  Morgan easily shifted the Lost’s thruster power, moving in and out of large debris while letting the shields take care of anything smaller than fist-sized.

  “Shut down the engine and kill the power!” ordered Ben.

  “What is it?” Ace asked.

  “If we shut down the engines, I can’t steer this hunk of shit,” Morgan said. She was actually growing fond of the Lost, but admitting that was bad luck; any pilot knew that. “And if I can’t steer, we don’t avoid debris. And if we don’t avoid the debris, well, use your imagination.”

  “We’ve got bigger problems,” Ben said, nodding at an energy signature that Morgan had missed in her focus on dead debris.

  It wasn’t dead. It was very much under power.

  “An AIC salvage ship,” Ace said.

  “Shit,” she hissed as she dropped the Lost to a crawl.

  “Power down,” Ben said.

  “I am,” Morgan snapped. “We can’t just kill it like that. I have to run a reduction cycle.”

  “They’re gonna spot us,” Ace said. “We power down and we got no weapons.”

  “They’re not gonna spot us,” Ben said.

  Morgan thought Ben sounded awfully sure of himself for someone who didn’t know a thing about the gunship they were flying in. He might know space, but he’d been on a supercarrier most of his life. The Lost was a gunship. She wasn’t fast enough or well-armed enough for a real fight. Plus, both the AIC and UEF had pretty strict rules against pirates, raiders, and salvagers.

  “Let’s hope we don’t have to find out,” Morgan sa
id as she killed the last power cell. “We’re powered down. It’ll take at least thirty seconds to re-spool.”

  “So we just sit here and hope?” Ace sounded disgusted.

  “Yup.”

  “Screw this. I’d rather run.”

  “You’d rather die,” Morgan said.

  “Better than this cowering bullshit.”

  “Can you two not bicker like an old couple about anything?” Ben asked, his voice a whisper.

  “You don’t have to whisper,” Ace said sarcastically. “They can’t hear you.”

  “It can’t hurt,” Ben hissed back.

  A red exclamation mark suddenly dominated the Lost’s viewing window.

  “Shit,” Morgan said. “Someone’s trying to hail us.”

  “You screwed us,” Ace snapped.

  Morgan had to fight the urge to punch him, then wondered why she’d fought it in the first place.

  “Don’t panic,” Ben said, sounding decidedly less than totally chill himself.

  “Don’t panic?” Ace said, sounding like he was already well into panic mode. “Do you not see the remnants of a lot of ships bigger than this one around you?”

  “Morgan, answer the call,” Ben said. He leaned forward in the captain’s chair. Whether he’d been in a ship like this or not, he knew that the mirrored transmission would be of him in that chair.

  “Here goes nothing,” Morgan said, flipping the comm line to engage the incoming message.

  A video call opened up on the ship’s main viewing window. In it was a female AIC officer with sharp features to match her dark complexion. Curly black hair was held tight under the three-point hat that matched the brown AIC uniform. She was a fleet captain, if Morgan knew anything about the stars on her uniform, and she looked serious, all business.

  “How can we help you, Captain?” Ben asked, sounding rather formal to Morgan’s ear. Then again, she had no idea how anyone talked out here. What time she’d had flying these buckets previously had been commercial. Ace had the dropship experience with the Marines before he’d become a cop like Morgan, but he hadn’t done it out here in deep space. Only Ben had spent any time out here.