Oblivion: The Complete Series (Books 1-9)

by Joshua James

  No! You son of a….you’re gonna move!

  Much to Sydal’s chagrin, there was another rover docked at the service entrance. Judging by its big trailer, he figured it was some kind of delivery vehicle.

  Sydal tried to fire off a near-space message, but the delivery rover wasn’t receiving. The bastard. He had to take more drastic measures. Sydal knew he’d take shit from the chief, but nothing was gonna stop him from docking there and getting inside.

  “Sorry, buddy,” Sydal said as he gunned it straight towards the vehicle. As he got closer, he buckled his seat belt, tightened his grip on the wheel, and waited for the impact.

  Gravity does funny, unexpected things. Seconds before hitting the delivery rover, his heavy-grav units cut off, and Sydal braced himself for a violent crash. The reality turned out to be very different.

  Both Sydal and the docked delivery rover pretty much bounced off of each other, only giving the detective a moderate jolt. He managed to move the other rover’s wheels, but it was still clamped down and docked. So instead of going at it full speed to knock it off, he decided to simply push it off.

  Sydal pressed his rover into the other one. His heavy-grav units repeatedly shut off automatically, but he overrode them each time as he slammed down hard on the accelerator. As with all rovers, the airtight docking door was on the delivery vehicle’s roof, so what he had to do was apply enough acceleration to break its docking clamps so that he could replace it.

  And that was exactly what happened.

  Completely ignoring the damage he did, Sydal quickly took the place of the delivery rover. Then he went about docking. The second the air pressure equalized, he opened the door and climbed the ladder up into the dark side facilities.

  “What the hell, man!” screamed the angry delivery driver. “You wrecked my rover! You gonna pay for that, cause I’m not getting that taken out of m—”

  He’d feel bad about it later, but in the moment, Sydal had no time for any bullshit. He punched the delivery driver out cold, flashing his badge to any onlookers, and started running. Knowing what he knew about the interconnected buildings on the dark side of the moon, it’d take him about fifteen minutes to run to his apartment. That meant he needed to double-time it and shoot for ten.

  There were shops, stands, stalls, restaurants, and stores, same as in the dark side’s lunar dome, only everything was much more rundown and depressing. The homeless here were truly desperate, without even proper clothing or blankets to sleep under.

  Sydal let nothing get in his way. He trucked along, refusing to slow down. Anyone who got in his way either got shoved, run over, or shoulder-checked. Like a runaway train, he absolutely wrecked anything in his path.

  He didn’t slow down until he reached the entrance to his apartment building, and that wasn’t by choice. He had to slow down in order to enter his code at the front doors. Since he was so worked up, his fingers slipped, and he accidentally entered in the wrong numbers a couple of times—to his extreme aggravation—until he finally got it right.

  Sydal reached his apartment door and was about to open it when he took a second to catch his breath. It’d been a very long time since he’d gotten any exercise, let alone that much running. He had to swallow down the vomit in his throat, and took out his pistol. Once he stopped shaking, he opened his apartment door.

  He slipped in, expecting to be faced with Renault, but the entryway was empty. He tiptoed further inside.

  He quickly scanned his apartment, and was somewhat surprised to find it clean and orderly. Nothing was out of place. There was no sign that there had been a fight or struggle. Perhaps Renault had sneaked up on Maria and caught her by surprise. That would make sense. She was too formidable of a woman to let herself be captured without defending herself.

  But the house was completely silent. Finally, he couldn’t take the silence any longer.

  “Maria?” he hissed down the hallway.

  “What?” Sydal heard his wife’s calm voice from the bedroom. She emerged from the bedroom doorway, in her pajamas, looking as relaxed as could be.

  Sydal was confused. Where’s Renault? Why is she so calm? What’s happening?

  “What’s up, babe?” Maria said. “Why are you sweating? And why are you holding your gun? Is everything okay?”

  “Where is he?” Sydal breathed, still not sure where Renault might be in the apartment. He began to slowly inspect the hallway.

  “Where’s who?”

  “Renault!” Sydal thundered. “I saw him! He called me from your HUD and….where’d he go? Is everything okay?”

  “I dunno. Is everything okay? And who the heck is Renault? Baby, you’re scaring me.” Maria walked over and tried to hug Sydal. He was sure that she could feel the trembling of his arms, and the damp sweat that soaked through his clothes.

  “I’m…yeah, everything is okay,” he said, his pulse slowing. After a few seconds of being hugged, Sydal pulled away. Then it hit him. “The kids! Are they…?”

  “They’re asleep, of course.” Maria pressed her head against his chest.

  Sydal felt like he was in a dream. Maybe he was. Maybe he was going insane. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what got into me. I got a call. I thought you were in danger. This guy Renault, some shady guy who works for the company—”

  “Waterman-Lau? Some guy did stop by a little bit ago.” Maria separated from her husband. She walked over to the kitchen counter on sock-covered feet. On it was a small hyperdrive. After picking it up, she brought it over to the detective.

  “What’s this?” Sydal was still trying to make sense of things in his head. He’d been having trouble with his memory lately, but a complete lapse in reality, hallucinations? Silently he told himself that he had to make an appointment the next day to see somebody.

  “A guy from the company, big dude, came over. He did look kind of, I dunno, intimidating, so I didn’t let him in, but he asked me to give this to you. He said it’s a list of people who had access to the docks that day, for your case. And he also said it had security footage.” Maria handed over the hyperdrive.

  “Hmmm, thanks. I’m gonna, I gotta go take a shower.” Sydal was embarrassed and concerned. Was he seeing and hearing things? That begged the question: had what happened back in the lunar dome really happened, or had that been a hallucination as well?

  “Okay. You must be hungry. I made some baked chicken, I’ll warm you up a plate so it’s ready when you get out.”

  Maria was about to return to the kitchen when Sydal grabbed her by the arm. He kissed her. “Thanks, honey. You’re the best.”

  Three

  Liftoff

  “Starting launch sequences,” said Falcon. He spun from side to side as his hands hovered over the screens, and Clarissa had a good look at how he protruded out of the pilot’s chair, if that was even the right term for it. Was it a chair or just … him?

  “All right. Guess it’s time to address the crew.” Wan sat down and strapped himself into his captain’s chair. Joining him on Orion’s command bridge was Tonga Anoa’i, a burly weapons specialist responsible for onboard cannons and missiles. There was the navigator, Tomohiro Naito. Clarissa was in a fold-out chair attached to the wall next to LeFay.

  “Here he goes,” grunted Tonga. With his face heavily tattooed, the Samoan weapons specialist even looked scary when he smiled.

  “Attention, my beautiful crew aboard my beautiful Orion. This is your captain, supreme leader, emperor, and god, Daison Wan. I’m happy to inform you that the time has come to get off this damn rock once and for all. I hope you finished all your double-crosses, broke all your hearts, and said all your goodbyes, because we ain’t ever coming back. We lift off in two.”

  “Opening up the cave.” Falcon flipped a switch. Then the whole hidden pirate bunker began to shake as huge sliding doors above the Orion slowly slid open. From the command bridge, everyone could hear rocks, dirt, and other debris atop of the hidden doors raining down on top of the corsair.

&nb
sp; Wan leaned back in his chair and opened a bag of chewy candy that Clarissa hadn’t seen since she was a child. “Where’d you find that?” she asked.

  Wan shrugged. “Dead kid, I think.”

  Clarissa was repulsed. Then she heard LeFay chuckling. “That’s funny?” Clarissa asked.

  “He bought them. He doesn’t have the guts to kill a fly.”

  Wan threw another bite into his mouth. “Didn’t say I killed him. Said he was dead.”

  “He brought them here with him,” the navigator Naito said in a thick accent, without turning around.

  “Hey!” Wan said, kicking Naito’s chair. “Who asked you?” He popped a whole handful in his mouth and started to munch as the countdown reached “five.”

  “Five, four….” Falcon did the honors of the countdown. The engines started up as the landing gears retracted. No one was outside the ship to see it, but the Orion floated just feet above the bunker floor.

  “Three, two…” LeFay looked over at Clarissa. The former spy looked back. Clarissa could read her mind; she just wanted off Vassar-1. For Clarissa, she was born here. Leaving hurt, but she wasn’t going to show LeFay. She gritted her teeth and turned back around.

  “One. Aaaannnnnnd off we go.” Falcon pulled back on the pilot’s stick, and the Orion slowly floated up out of the bunker.

  “Deploying going-away present,” said Tonga. He pressed a button as soon as they were high enough above the wastes of Vassar-1. A single spherical bomb fell from the bottom of Orion. The explosion that followed was powerful enough to kick up sand, dirt, and dust high enough to engulf the ship momentarily, and send debris falling to the ground in a hundred-foot radius all around it.

  “Was that necessary?” asked Clarissa.

  “Not at all,” Tonga said. “But it was fun. Plus, we don’t want anyone reaping any of the rewards of our exploits left behind.”

  Clarissa suspected that meant illegal cargo that they hadn’t been able to sell or offload before everything went sideways.

  “Yeah, but aren’t you afraid that someone will hear th—” started LeFay.

  “We got company!” Falcon yelled to the crew on the command bridge.

  “What are we looking at?” asked Wan as his demeanor changed from laid-back pirate to fighting mode. He leaned forward, staring at the visual display.

  “How many of those things are there?” Naito asked, his bravado gone. A large swarm of Shapeless, in the form of UEF fighters, raced towards them.

  “Was slipping out undetected too much to ask?” LeFay said, putting her face in her hands. “You guys just had to blow shit up.”

  “Don’t question my methods, cyborg,” Wan said. “Power up the shields. Tonga, it might be a good time to bust out the porcupines. Naito, chart us a fold jump course outta here to the Milky Way. I want a clean one too, outta radar for both the AIC and UEF. I’ll take control of the cannons. Let’s give ‘em the fight they’re looking for.” Wan lowered a visor. The glowing red light inside lit up his face. He smiled as he initiated Orion’s cannons.

  “What the hell are ‘porcupines’?” LeFay asked Clarissa. “Is that an Earth thing?”

  Clarissa shrugged. “A spine-covered mammal?”

  LeFay looked bewildered. Clarissa wasn’t much clearer.

  Tonga slapped a scope that extended down from the ceiling of the cockpit. “Porcupine launcher,” he said, smiling.

  A pair of crosshairs illuminated his face. From what Clarissa could tell, he aimed just above the incoming swarm of UEF fighters. Mumbling to himself, he urged the fighters to get closer, to get within range. A few seconds later, he fired.

  The porcupines the Orion was armed with weren’t living things, of course. Clarissa had assumed that. They were, in fact, bombs: custom-made bombs with a couple hundred smaller explosives on top of them. Once the primary charge went off, it would send the other projectiles in every direction. If those secondary charges didn’t hit anything to set them off, they exploded at a set distance. They were meant to use against ground troops.

  None of the Shapeless sensed the threat of the porcupine bombs, so they just kept flying forward. They discovered the error of their ways quickly enough, though. Eight ships were taken out by the primary explosion.

  Next came the secondary explosives. The first of them hit the Shapeless’ faux EUF ships, taking them out in fiery explosions upon contact. Others blew up right next to the alien ships. Those weren’t as devastating, but still did the job. But with a steely alien resolve, the unaffected fighters kept coming, flying straight through the flames, debris, and smoke of their fallen brethren.

  “Ain’t it beautiful?” Wan asked. “Good job, Tonga! Falcon, let’s get this party started.” Wan started firing on the Shapeless ships, which were almost close enough to fire back.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah!” Falcon flipped a switch and the corridors and compartments of the Orion were filled with the sounds of ancient heavy metal music.

  Clarissa was having serious misgivings about hitching a ride with a crew of maniacs as the music- and adrenaline-fueled frenzy was just starting. Falcon dipped the Orion sharply towards the uneven surface of Vassar-1. Enemy fire hit the ground all around it, kicking up clouds of dust. Those that hit their mark were absorbed by Orion’s shields.

  Undeterred by flying low, the Shapeless’ fake UEF fighters followed the Orion. They unleashed a hail of gunfire, a blanket of lead that the corsair struggled to dodge. Seeing what was happening, Wan had to make some changes.

  “Switch power from the forward shields to the rear,” he growled as he blasted away at the swarm of Shapeless pursuers. “Protect our ass! Falcon, how much further?”

  The man was a good shot; Clarissa gave him that. But there were only two main cannons on the Orion, which simply wasn’t enough to deal with that many bogies.

  “A minute out!” replied Falcon. He dodged and weaved through, over and between the mountains and hills of the rugged Vassar-1 landscape. Clarissa noticed he was taking them further and further away from the city, which actually was a good strategy.

  “We can help! Do you have any more turrets on board?” she asked. She was so used to being behind the piloting sticks that just being a passenger was hard.

  “This is a pirate ship, not a damn dreadnought!”

  “Why the hell don’t you have more turrets?” LeFay snapped.

  “You didn’t let me finish,” Wan said. “We have one more, up top.”

  Clarissa jumped to her feet, flipping off Wan as she went. “Was it so hard to just tell me that?”

  “Now you can appreciate it more,” Wan said with a grin, the red light from the gunnery visor lighting up his features.

  But it turned out that Clarissa had unbuckled at the worst possible time. Just as she stood up, Falcon took the Orion up and then sharply down, into a deep canyon. Clarissa was taken off her feet, almost hitting her head on the ceiling. She landed on her hands and knees, hard.

  Clarissa picked herself up as Wan giggled to himself. “Watch that step.”

  It was redundant, but Clarissa flipped him off yet again. She wanted to tell him off, too, but she was afraid that if she opened her mouth she might vomit. She hurried from the command bridge and stumbled through the hall towards a ladder that led upwards. Though she didn’t know for sure, she figured it was the entrance to the aforementioned turret.

  Orion was a funny ship. It had a lot of modernity mixed with old tech. Clarissa found the turret on top to be more on the old-tech side. Imported and custom-installed from an AIC dreadnought, the turret on top of the Orion was designed to be personally manned. There was a padded chair with straps, which swiveled along with the barrels of the cannon itself.

  Clarissa strapped herself in. She didn’t need a viewfinder or an aim assist. The turret was a thick bulletproof glass dome, so she could see all around her, and there were helpful crosshairs in front of the cannons she manned.

  It took a little while to get used to firing flak instead of bullets, es
pecially with the nearby walls of the canyon zipping by, but Clarissa managed to zone in on the UEF fighters that were right on the Orion’s tail. She took out two or three a shot, but they just kept coming. She couldn’t help but wonder if the Shapeless had an unlimited number of ships to throw at them.

  “There, there, over there, watch out for that guy. He’s trying to sneak up on you,” said Blake. Clarissa’s dead husband seemed to make his appearances when she was stressed, which was entirely too often.

  “I see him,” responded Clarissa, knowing intellectually that she was talking aloud to herself, but also aware that she was alone in the turret and nobody would care about her random ramblings.

  “Look out! That guy over—”

  Clarissa shot a couple more flak rounds, nailing a ship that was trying to sneak in close and kamikaze her turret. Its midsection blew open and it spun away into the canyon wall, thick black smoke trailing behind it.

  Super-heated high-velocity bullets ricocheted off the turret dome. Each one made Clarissa flinch, but she kept firing. Her artificial eyes scanned everything, told her when to fire and where, which really helped. As the skids and burn marks on the dome increased, though, it became harder and harder to see.

  One Shapeless ship completely avoided detection by Clarissa. It popped up from under the swarm and flew straight towards her turret. At the last second, she saw it and shot.

  The Shapeless UEF fighter blew apart, but an alien leaped out from the cockpit as it crumbled around it, and jumped on top of the Orion. Using limbs transformed into hooks, the creature was for the most part in the shape of a UEF pilot, helmet and all.

  “That’s…unexpected,” said Blake.

  “That’s a damn problem. But not for long.” Clarissa swung the turret around and aimed at the Shapeless walking towards her on top of the Orion. It dodged the initial shots. Then it elongated one of its limbs, made it into a giant cleaver, and cut the barrel of one of the turret’s cannons in two.