by Joshua James
AIC dreadnoughts.
“I think we found that captain you were so convincing with,” Morgan said, feeling her heart sink. There was no escaping this.
“Boys and girls, we are screwed,” Ace said.
As much as Morgan hated to agree with Ace, it wasn’t looking good. Half a dozen more fighters were deployed, blocking any exit from the debris field.
“Got another lie for this one, Cap?” Ace said sarcastically.
“Because the first one worked so well,” Ben murmured.
“Yeah, that was my joke,” Ace said.
“Not really a funny one,” Morgan said.
“That’s his specialty,” Ben said absentmindedly as he looked at the dreadnoughts and fighters growing larger in the viewscreen.
“I can turn this thing around, make another run through the debris field,” offered Morgan.
“No, they’ll blow us out of space,” Ben said.
“Fair point,” Morgan said.
She glanced at Ace, and could see the abject fear of surrender there. He knew what prison life here would be like.
Ben looked almost as down, but Morgan had a feeling it was different there. She knew what he was feeling. He needed to find his father, dead or alive. Morgan would have felt the same way in his situation. Her own situation with her father was … complicated.
“So…what do we do?” asked Morgan.
“Wave the white flag.”
Four
Ada Ericsson heard the screech of one of the creatures they were dubbing Shapeless now, and her heart almost beat out of her chest. She hid behind a solid steel counter in one of Sanctuary Station 33’s cafeteria kitchens. Before everything had gone to hell, it was a Mexican food spot.
She waited. The sound had seemed far off, but she wasn’t taking chances. After half a minute, she slowly raised her head. The cafeteria was empty.
As quietly as she could, she pulled off her backpack and slipped in some beans, instant-cook ground beef packets, and dried pico de gallo mix. It felt like every sound was echoed and magnified in the empty cafeteria, but she had to take the chance. She and the few other Atlas survivors needed to eat, and the supplies they had back at the apartment were meager.
She had just slipped her pack back over her shoulder when she heard another screech, this one much closer. It was looking for her, she was sure of it.
She turned around, and her now-full backpack bumped against a pan. It clattered to the floor.
Shit!
The screech came again, closer still.
She dropped back down to one knee and slowly peeked over the steel counter. She saw it now. The Shapeless was in the middle of the cafeteria, with several pairs of eyes looking in seemingly every direction.
Before her time on the Atlas, Ada might’ve screamed or been terrified. She still might, she admitted to herself. She was still scared shitless. But she’d lived long enough hiding and avoiding these monsters that she didn’t panic.
She needed a distraction.
Ada surveyed her surroundings. The first thing she saw was a rack of spoons, spatulas, and knives, clinging to the wall via magnets. She could grab one and throw it across the cafeteria. Surely that would get the Shapeless thing’s attention.
They’re easy to distract, but they aren’t stupid.
She needed something that wouldn’t just distract the creature, but would hold its attention. Something it could investigate.
Ada reached up to the small medallion around her neck. She opened the face of it to reveal a small holopicture. An inch above the surface of the device, a tiny 3D video played silently. It was about ten seconds of video capture of her graduation. It was the last time her whole family had been together. As much as she hated the idea of getting rid of her only connection to home besides memories, Ada figured her life was worth the sacrifice.
And it wasn’t just her life on the line. Several people were not only depending on her to get back with some food, but also to help the group survive.
Ada flipped the small medallion closed and kissed it. Then she flipped it over and touched the tiny button that would activate sound on the video capture.
She glanced back out at the creature and made sure she wouldn’t be in direct sight of it. Then she flipped open the medallion and flung it across the empty cafeteria.
Instantly, the sound of her teenage self laughing erupted in the cafeteria, echoing from the bare walls.
The Shapeless spun around, screeching loudly, and rushed in what seemed to Ada was obviously the wrong direction. The echo could be playing tricks on it, but she thought it was still a poor display of echolocation.
She started to run along the far wall of the cafeteria. It was a little odd for Ada, silently running for her life as she heard her father telling everyone to smile through the projector.
As she reached the front of the cafeteria, she ran past the brutally butchered remains of innocent civilians who’d committed the sole crime of calling the Sanctuary Station their home.
Ada made it to the hall outside and stopped. She tried to slow her breathing so she could listen and watch for more of the monsters. Nobody would mistake Ada for a hardened Marine, but considering she was still alive, she didn’t give a shit what anyone else would think. Right now she just had to keep moving.
Still, she made a conscious effort to move with slow deliberateness. She needed to get to the nearest ventilation duct. It was the only safe way to move around the station undetected that they had found. The Shapeless surely knew that she and the few others from the Atlas were still there, but they didn’t know exactly where. For now, that was all they had, and she wouldn’t be the one to lead the bastards right to them.
Ada made a run for the ventilation duct across the hallway. She’d left the grate loose when she’d come this way, so she knew she could get back in quickly. She threw her pack in, took a last glance around to make sure she was undetected, and slipped into the shaft, pulling the grate back up quickly.
No one liked tight spaces. Ada hated them, but at that moment they were a necessity, so she took a deep breath and tried not to think about the metal walls closing in on her and crushing her. Would that have been a better death than at the hands of those things out there? She’d take either over starvation, she figured. At least it would be quick.
On her hands and knees, back intermittently scraping against the seams where the sections of air duct fit together, Ada kept moving, shoving the food bag ahead of her. Through the vents she could hear everything. There were screams. There were screeches. None of them stopped her.
Until she heard the cries of a child.
There’s no way that’s real, she told herself. Think about it. How could a kid have survived this long? You’ve barely survived this long.
Ada was about to move on when she heard the cries turn into pleas.
“Please…anyone, help me. Help me.”
Ada slowed, but didn’t stop. It had to be a Shapeless that had seen her go into the duct. It had to be.
But as the girl’s pleas intensified, she wasn’t so sure. Hadn’t she been careful to make sure she’d gone in undetected? What it if really was a little girl?
Ada finally stopped. Cursing herself for being so naïve, she turned and strayed from the path she’d drawn in marker on the duct walls. She tried to track down the source of the little girl’s pleas. In order to do, she had to take the wrong turn at the forked intersection of the ducts. To the right led over to an office in the commercial district. That office was the gateway down to the residential floor, where the other few survivors took refuge. To the left? No one really knew what was to the left.
Ada took a deep breath and headed left. She didn’t feel like an explorer charting new lands. She felt like an idiot, crawling into what was surely a trap.
Ada thought she’d found the source. She saw a vent not too far away, at a dead end as far as she was concerned. It was just slices of light at the end of a dark, cramped hall.
“Please, help. It hurts.” The little girl still suffered.
Ada wasn’t prepared for what she saw once she reached the vent. From a side view, she saw one of the Shapeless sitting on the floor in front of what looked like an ice cream shop or something. She couldn’t make out what it was doing until…
Oh, God!
Ada regretted coming and investigating the cries. The Shapeless was in a revolting state of shift. Some of its bones were outside its skin. Its muscles and tendons writhed and slithered around its body. One of its hands was inside the throat of a dead girl, no doubt butchered either by it or by those like it. From what it looked like, it was trying to become the dead girl.
Suddenly the Shapeless stopped whatever it was doing. It turned its head towards the vents.
The Shapeless’ face was like the girl’s face, only twisted, not quite put together. It was on top of a crooked neck, still trying to figure out how to be human. Smiling, its jaw hung too low, hauntingly so.
“Please! Help me!” pleaded the Shapeless in the little girl’s voice. It looked straight at Ada with stolen eyes.
Ada scrambled backwards, which was hard in the tight confines of the air ducts. She couldn’t turn around, not without making so much noise the creature would surely hear her. Even if it struggled to use sound to locate her, it would find her sooner or later. So she just kept backing up, eyes on the far end of the vent as she went, waiting for the little girl’s haunting eyes and grotesque, misshapen face to appear.
But the Shapeless didn’t follow. She managed to back her way all the way to the fork. Once there, she was able to turn around. She felt numb. She’d felt numb since the Atlas had arrived here.
And then she was crying. She felt the hot tears on her face, and she struggled to keep herself quiet. She balled up her fists and wanted desperately to slam her hands against the air ducts, but she knew the sound would echo throughout the thin metallic tunnels.
She grabbed her face in her hands and clamped down hard on her wet cheeks until she felt the pain of her fingernails there. She kept going until she drew blood. She jerked her hands free and punched herself in the face again and again until her cheeks ached. It was stupid and pointless. She felt dizzy.
And then she stopped. Slowly, she regained control of her breathing. She wiped the tears from her eyes and the snot from her nose. With one last deep breath, she turned and started down the right side of the ventilation shaft toward safety.
Five
“I just want you to know, I hate you,” Ace said.
“Duly noted,” Ben said.
Morgan rolled her eyes, but said nothing.
Ben, Morgan, and Ace were all in shackles, wrists chained behind their backs.
“We’ll find a way out of this,” Ben said, trying to sound surer than he felt.
Ben scanned the AIC transport ship they were in. He had enough knowledge of ships like this to pick up a good sense of the ship. He could see that Morgan, too, was scanning the room closely. He imagined that with her enhanced eyes, she was getting more details than he was, although he’d be surprised if she had more working knowledge of the AIC than he did. Still, her calm demeanor surprised him, almost like she knew something the rest of them didn’t.
Ben put the thought out of his mind. He didn’t exactly know Morgan, but she’d been as good as her word so far. Besides, it wasn’t like he wasn’t hiding secrets of his own.
“This is bullshit!” Ace barked.
“Shut up!” yelled one of the AIC soldiers in the transport. He stuck the end of his rifle into Ace’s back. Ace struggled around, but only got it dug deeper in.
“What did I just say?” the man said to Ace. “Stop squirming or I’ll make your face uglier.”
“You said to shut up,” Ace said. “Not to stop squirming.”
The man shook his head as the guard next to him smiled. Ben wasn’t sure of the wisdom of trolling a man with a gun in your back, but Ace seemed to be pulling it off. Maybe he wasn’t as useless as he looked.
Which just left Ben. How ya gonna talk your way out of this one, Benny?
Ben contemplated his options as the AIC transport ship landed in the dreadnought docking bay. He didn’t have many. Honesty, up to a point, but how much did the AIC already know?
Ben was supposed to be on the Atlas. For months before the historic ship had launched, he’d trained for the mission. Not only did he memorize every nut and bolt on the vessel, he knew the details of their mission, how to track their homing signal and emergency calls, and even about the four fusion devices, the so called planet-killers, that Ben suspected were still out there, wherever the rest of the Atlas was.
They’d ambushed and destroyed the Atlas, and now they were combing through the wreckage. Why else would they have been out here?
That was certainly what anyone else would think. That was what everyone on Earth already assumed, and there was AIC debris out there in what was clearly a battlefield in space. Everything about it screamed AIC ambush.
But everyone else didn’t know what Ben knew. About the Oblivion. About their shapeshifting alien friends. About their plans to sabotage the peace.
Was it possible that the AIC was in the same boat as the UEF, trying to figure out who’d sabotaged possible peace?
The three prisoners were led out of the transport into the dreadnought docking bay. As they walked down the ramp, Ben caught sight of the captain he’d spoken to earlier. Her hat was gone, but her demeanor still was all business. She was surrounded by twelve soldiers.
“Welcome to the Perseverance. I’m Captain LeFleur.” Her gaze drifted over the three prisoners before landing on Ben. “Ah, I see it’s Ben Sanders of the Swan, wasn’t that it?”
Ben chuckled. “So it is.”
“And what is it really?” LeFleur said. “And before you answer”—she raised one long, thin finger—“remember that you are very much at my mercy for attacking AIC property and evading capture. I’m well within my rights to blow all three of you out an airlock right here and right now.”
“Well, my name is Whydon Yagofuc—” Ace started.
One of the guards shoved a muzzle in his kidney, and Ace crumpled down in pain.
LeFleur glanced at Ace before turning back to Ben expectantly.
Here goes nothing.
“My name is Ben Saito, former UEF Lieutenant Commander, son of Captain Lee Saito, commander of the UEF Atlas.”
Ben could feel Morgan look over at him in disbelief. Clearly, she hadn’t been expecting that much honestly. But if he was going to start lying later, he needed to start telling the truth now.
LeFleur examined Ben’s face for several seconds. Her eyes flittered, and he had a feeling that she was getting information from her own HUD. He didn’t think of himself as being an officer of any great consequence to the AIC, but if they kept the same tabs on them that the UEF kept on the AIC, he suspected pulling the facial recognition was trivial.
“Mr. Saito is coming with me,” LeFleur said. She turned as a pair of hands gruffly shoved Ben forward. “Take the other two down to the brig. We’ll figure out what to do with them later.”
Two soldiers took Ace and Morgan in the other direction. The former tried to fight his way out of custody, cursing and even biting along the way, until one of the soldiers knocked him loopy with the butt of their assault rifle. The latter went silently.
Ben followed LeFleur. Not a word was spoken as they left the docking bay and went into the hallways of the Perseverance. It was fascinating for him to see the inside of an enemy dreadnought. Overall construction methods between the Earth and outer colonies differed little, but it was generally assumed there were big differences underneath. What struck Ben was how similar they actually seemed.
LeFleur stopped in front of her office. She waved off her security team, leaving just her and Ben outside the sliding airtight door. Much to his surprise, she took off his shackles.
“We don’t need these, do we, Lieutenant Commander?” asked LeFleur. I
t wasn’t a real question, seeing that she wasn’t really looking for an answer.
“Kinda depends on what you want,” answered Ben.
“I want the truth,” LeFleur said.
“In my experience, nobody who says that means it.”
LeFleur turned around and jammed a blaster into his gut. Ben doubled over in surprise as the breath was knocked out of him.
LeFleur leaned over and put the cool point of the muzzle to Ben’s temple. She thumped him on the chin until he looked up, still gasping for breath. She smiled wickedly. “Consider me an exception.”
Six
“This way.” LeFleur pressed her hand against the panel outside the door. The soldiers on either side of Ben dragged him upright. He was still unsteady on his feet as he heard a sharp click and saw a green light as the door slid open.
The two soldiers escorted Ben into the office; then LeFleur shared a comment with one of the men, and to Ben’s surprise, they both saluted and retreated out.
LeFleur’s office looked no better or worse than any other officer’s office. The only real difference was that there were an AIC flag and medals on the walls. A model of the Perseverance sat on her desk next to old-fashioned picture frames, pointing towards her side of the desk so Ben couldn’t see them.
“Now.” LeFleur sat behind her desk. She tossed the shackles on it, then leaned back in her chair. “Let’s get a couple of things straight before we begin our…discussion. One, don’t lie to me.” She motioned for a small spherical drone to activate and float beside her. The camera in it was tiny and sleek, as with most AIC tech. “As a UEF officer, you know what this is, yah?”
“A truthteller,” Ben said, still rubbing his stomach. “It’s designed to read the pupil dilation and call me out on bullshit.” What he didn’t tell her was that he’d had his eyes treated to render the device useless.
LeFleur frowned, and Ben assumed she was getting the information in her HUD. “Every UEF officer is swatted,” Ben said, using the popular slang for the procedure. “But I assure you, I have no interest in lying to you,” he lied.