Oblivion: The Complete Series (Books 1-9)

by Joshua James

  “With some help from my friends,” Lee concluded.

  He lowered his arm, and the tendril darted out faster than Ben could react and snaked itself around his forehead.

  “Was he always so stubborn?” Beverly asked.

  But Ben barely heard her. His mind was a chaotic jumble of images. He was on his knees, frozen in place. Ben knew in that moment that the Shapeless were invading his mind and leaving his body immobile.

  As his vision faded, he heard his father say, “Afraid so, honey. He’s his father’s son.”

  Five

  Recovery

  Ada dreamed of waterfalls. Specifically, she found herself whisked away in the warm soft arms of the Sandman back home to Sweden. Her family had a cabin nestled in a fjord on a modest C-shaped beach.

  Ada stood on the beach. Her feet sank halfway down in the black sand. She wiggled her toes, feeling the cool grains sifting through them.

  In front of Ada was her family’s cabin. Built just out of reach of high tide, the modest-looking abode was actually a lot bigger than it looked, and a lot more expensive.

  Ada’s family came from old money, back before man ventured out into space. Their wealth was the kind where they never ever had to check their bank accounts or be concerned about any bill, even for jet fuel. But she didn’t want any of that. When she was seventeen, she’d moved out and gotten her first job and apartment. It wasn’t because she had to, or was in an abusive situation or anything like that. She’d simply wanted to make it on her own.

  It had been a while since Ada had been to the cabin. It was back before she’d moved out on her own. She had nothing but fond memories of it, though she didn’t know why she was here.

  Ada slowly walked forward, her feet having gained minds of their own. She looked up and saw a blue sky filled with stars. The moon and sun floated next to each other as if they were old friends, hanging out on the porch of the cosmos. There was no wind, and no sounds of nature.

  All Ada could hear was the sound of music and revelry from inside the cabin. She wanted to reach it, but she didn’t seem to be making any progress, despite walking towards it. All she wanted, though, was to get there, to get inside and join in the fun. So, ignoring how hard it was, she kept walking.

  Suddenly the sky got dark. Storm clouds rolled in almost instantly, but they weren’t grey. They were red, blood red. Ada got hit by a wave of dread as she neared the cabin. Something was coming, but she didn’t know what.

  An unseen force made Ada turn and look behind her. To her surprise, there was no more water, no more ocean. It was simply black sand leading down into the dry fjord bed. Dying fish used their whole bodies to flop up and down, gasping, struggling to breathe.

  Ada heard the creak of a door opening. She turned again towards the cabin, but didn’t find herself looking at it; instead, she was already inside. The door slammed behind her.

  The cabin was dark, quiet and still. Ada tried to call out to see if anyone was there, but couldn’t get the words out. She couldn’t even really form them. Only her thoughts yelled out to see if she was alone, and she was.

  Again guided by the unknown, Ada moved through the cabin. It was much like she remembered it, only draped in darkness. There was the trophy room, adorned with the heads of dead wild game. The antlers cast long shadows that spilled out into the hall. She walked through her mother’s beautiful kitchen. Just like she preferred it, there wasn’t a pot or pan out of place.

  Ada continued through the halls of her family’s cabin, which was a lot longer than she recalled. She passed the doorway to what she thought was going to be her bedroom. Instead, she saw Meryl’s living corpse. The dead older woman was in a rocking chair, rocking back and forth while reading a book to the deceased kids she’d meant to protect and watch over during the Atlas raid. Upon looking closer, Ada saw that she was reading them the standard-issue UEF Marine manual.

  A little creeped out, Ada backed up from the room with Meryl and the dead children, and continued down the hall. At the end of it she saw the star feature in her family’s cabin.

  Ada’s father had chosen this specific location for his family’s cabin for a reason. It was built around a natural waterfall. The fjord stood at the bottom of a small mountain. On that mountain, it rained a lot. That rain trickled in a steady stream from its peak down to the water.

  The cabin incorporated the waterfall, and even the rock wall it was based on. Ada’s father had insisted on not disrupting one aspect of the waterfall. So it went under the swimming pool at its base, and the stream that led to the ocean snaked under the cabin and went out to sea near one edge of the beach.

  What Ada saw as she walked down the hallway was the waterfall, lit up as it often was with a variety of cool colors. The indoor swimming pool, under it but not incorporated, had a light blue glow. When she entered, she saw her favorite feature of her family’s opulent cabin: the sky dome.

  Partially transparent and part video screen, the dome that was over the indoor swimming pool and the area surrounding the natural waterfall could be programmed. It could look like a cloudless blue sky or a star-filled night. In this case, the latter was running.

  No part of Ada wanted to approach the edge of the swimming pool. That feeling of dread that had started when she’d entered the cabin reached a fever pitch. She noticed that she wasn’t walking on the tile floor that should’ve been around the pool, but instead on more black sand. That sand was wet, but stained her feet red. Still, one foot after the other, she moved forward.

  Ada stood above the swimming pool. The water was a bit murky, the only light coming from those lights inside on the sides, but it was clear that something or someone was in it.

  Out of the water rose a fellow Marine, Tanya Martin. She was the first friend Ada had made when she’d joined the UEF Marines. She was also the first friend Ada had lost.

  Tanya didn’t look how Ada remembered. Her skin was frozen, cracked, and covered with little shining crystals from the extreme cold of space. Veins popped up, protruding under her skin. Both her eyes were nowhere to be found, replaced with deep black sockets that still felt like they stared straight at the young Swede.

  Tanya held out her hands. Ada, again not moving of her own accord, reached out for them. When Tanya’s hands opened, the dog tags of dozens of Marines fell into the pool water. Then her dead fellow Marine screamed out.

  After her frozen body cracked and broke up into pieces, Tanya was pulled up towards the sky dome. Ada looked up, and the sky dome was gone, replaced by actual space. But there was no time to watch her friend once again get sucked out into the vacuum of the cosmos, because the Swedish ex-Marine’s attentions returned to the pool.

  Slowly, all together, more bodies rose up from the swimming pool waters. They were other friends and companions that she’d lost since the Atlas. Rollins, Francesca, Ace, and more stood on the small rippling waves and stared at her with their dead accusing eyes. In her core she felt their questions: “Why did you let us die? Why didn’t you save us?”

  Suddenly Ada found herself just feet away from the waterfall. The dead in the swimming pool were still there, staring at the back of her head. Ada was terrified.

  The waterfall changed from clear, cold, and clean to red. Ada’s eyes got wider; hairs stood on end all over her body. She wanted to turn and flee, but her legs didn’t listen to her. They were going to make her stay there and wait for her well-deserved punishment for inadequacy.

  Completely catching Ada by surprise, Lee Saito burst out from behind the waterfall and grabbed her by the throat. He kept trucking forward, taking her off her feet and straight towards the swimming pool. The last thing she saw was him, enraged, on top of her, space above him spinning rapidly clockwise, causing the stars to become streaks of light like super-heated high-velocity bullets. Before they went into the water, time stopped. Lee Saito was again the Captain Saito she’d so admired.

  “Find us. Save us,” pleaded Saito.

  Ada was jarred awake.
Her immediate reactions were confusion and panic, and she had no idea where she was. Was she still dreaming? Everything was so bright and white. Was this heaven?

  When she tried to get up out of her med bay bed on the Orion, Ada felt a gentle but firm hand on her chest, keeping her down. Whose hand was it? She saw a stranger, an African woman sitting over her.

  “Where am I?” asked Ada. It hurt her to talk. Her lips were so dry they’d split and cracked. Her throat was so dry each word scraped the back.

  “It’s the tank. Does wonders, but people can get severely dehydrated.” The heavily tattooed and pierced African woman picked up a glass of water and offered it to Ada. “Here. Only take a couple of sips, though. You try to gulp it down, you’ll choke.”

  Ada drank the water from the stranger. It felt good. She was beyond parched and the hydration, even as little as it was, certainly helped her talk. And she had a couple of questions she needed answers to, lest she freak out.

  “Where am I?” Ada asked again.

  “On the Orion, somewhere in the Milky Way,” the woman said without further explanation.

  “That’s not the most exact locational information,” Ada said. Her head was pounding.

  “That’s about all I can tell you. I don’t care much for the command bridge.”

  “And you are?”

  “Doctor Congo,” the woman said, not unkindly, but all business. She didn’t bother to reach out a hand.

  “And what kind of ship is this, Doctor … Congo?”

  “I suppose you people would call it a pirate ship,” Congo said.

  Ada frowned. “A pirate ship? Why would Ben want to take a pirate ship? Not that I’m complaining. Thankful to be off that damn planet.” She stretched her arms and yawned. Everything was a bit stiff, a side effect of being immobile for so long.

  “Who’s Ben?” Congo walked over to the restoration tank. She pressed a couple of buttons, and the life-saving liquid concoction inside began to drain out.

  “Ben Saito. He’s, I dunno, I guess he’s our captain. Defacto leader? Good-looking guy, has a robot arm and leg? Kinda hard to miss.”

  “Not ringing any bells, lady. Now, if you wouldn’t mind sitting up straight, lemme just make sure we took care of most of that damage.” Congo pressed another button, and then pulled a lever. The restoration tank refilled with the mysterious cure-all. As it filled back up, she took out a handheld medical scanner and waved it over Ada’s body.

  “Clean bill, Doc?” asked Ada as she tried to figure out, in her head, why this doctor on this strange pirate ship didn’t know Ben.

  “Not so much, no. You still have a couple of broken ribs. We were able to stop most of the internal bleeding. You’re still in rough shape, though. You need to rest.”

  “I’ve had enough rest.” Ada stood up, or at least she tried to. Her legs were still wobbly. Some of her wounds may have been tended, but none of that accounted for all the energy it took to reach that point. She needed food, fuel.

  “You should sit back down. Hell, you should lay down.”

  “If it’s all the same to you…” Ada steadied herself. “I think I’ll go find my friends.”

  “Suit yourself,” Congo said. “But if you end up back in that tank, you’re paying for it. That magic juice in there ain’t free, you know.”

  Using the walls to steady herself, Ada made her way out of the med bay into Orion proper. At first she was alarmed as she made her way through the hallways of the corsair. All she saw were unfamiliar faces, and they were mostly the kind of faces that parents warned children about.

  “Ada?”

  She spun around at the familiar voice of Tomas behind her. He didn’t look to be in great shape himself. He wore an open short-sleeve button-down shirt that revealed the bandages wrapped around his chest. She could see the strain his body went through, and the pain he still felt, on his forlorn face.

  “It’s good to see a friendly face,” Ada said. She hurried over to Tomas as quickly as she could. She almost bumped into a stern-looking bearded man who simply grunted at her. “Excuse me.”

  Tomas had to catch Ada as she almost fell over trying to reach him. “Whoa there, Marine. You need to slow down. You were pretty banged up back there. Don’t wanna see you hurt yourself. Need you strong for what’s to come.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “We’re going to, ah.” Tomas faltered, like he couldn’t quite believe it himself. “Europa.”

  “Europa? Why are we going there? If it’s anything like I remember, it’s a damn battlefield. Nothing but death and misery.”

  “I don’t think it’s changed much.”

  “So why?” Ada asked.

  “We have to find that other planet-killer. Clarissa said that’s where it is.”

  Ada felt dizzier contemplating that news than she had just traversing the halls of the ship. “What happened, Tomas?”

  “Come on. Let’s sit down. You shouldn’t be on your feet yet.”

  “So I keep being told, but here I am.”

  “I insist,” he said.

  Tomas led Ada through a couple more halls and corridors until they reached a shared space. It was a common room of sorts, meant for the Orion crew to blow off some steam. There were holographic video games and video screens. A group of ruffians sat around a table, playing poker and terrac. Tomas found a seat for them in the kitchen area.

  “Okay, now that we’re sitting,” Ada said, “and I’m not gonna faint or whatever you thought was gonna happen, what went down on Vassar-1? How’d we end up here on this damn ship?” Her head was bursting at the seams with questions.

  “The raid on the assimilation center. It was successful, sort of. You…you lost some people, but we took it out before leaving,” Tomas said. He was treading carefully, to Ada’s annoyance, but she tried to see things from his perspective. She probably didn’t exactly inspire faith in her condition to take hard news. She’d just gotten out of a restoration tank, after all, and before that, she’d lost a lot of friends. But she still didn’t like being soft-peddled information.

  “Just say it,” Ada said.

  “These pirates,” he said. “Their word, not mine. They seem to be, well, I don’t know if calling them ‘friends’ really applies here. But anyway, they’re LeFay’s ‘associates’. She convinced them to give us a ride to Europa.”

  Ada felt the eyes of one of the pirate crew on the back of her head. “You’re not telling me something,” she said. She could hear it in Tomas’ voice. Plus, he wasn’t the best of liars, even with special operations training. There was only one question she wanted an answer to, and that she could sense he was evading. “The safe house. I remember going back, but I don’t remember much of anything after I went through those doors. Where’s Ben? What happened?”

  Tomas looked around. He wanted to make sure that no one was watching or listening. There was no reason for any of the pirates to know about the Saitos, or what happened with their captain. In fact, the less they knew, the better, at least for the time being. It would stay need-to-know.

  “You really don’t remember?” Tomas asked.

  The exasperation on Ada’s face must have been clear, because Tomas held up his hands. “Okay. So look,” he said. “You entered the safe house. None of us knew what happened inside, but Captain Saito came out—well, something like him. It was a Shapeless, it had to be, but with tendrils like I’d never seen before.”

  Ada frowned.

  “And he was holding you,” Tomas rushed on. “Unconscious. Then he threw you down the street with one arm. It was, I don’t know, I’ve never seen anything like that before. Then he beat the shit out of us. I mean, all of us. Threw my own grenade back at me, hence—” Tomas pointed at his bandages.

  “And Ben?”

  Tomas looked down at his hands on the table. Then he looked back up at Ada. “He went with him.”

  “He what?” Ada barked. She saw all the pirates in the break room shift their attention to her.
There was some fuzzy image in the back of her mind of her watching him go, but she’d convinced herself that she’d imagined it.

  “If he didn’t,” Tomas said, “his father was going to kill us all.” He paused and waited for her to say something. “He did it to save us,” he said at last.

  “First of all, that’s not his damn father! The captain died on the sanctuary station. I don’t know what that thing was, but it sure as hell wasn’t Lee Saito.”

  “I agree,” Tomas said, but he hesitated. “Ben disagreed.”

  “And what, we just left him? We didn’t stick around, figure out where he was taken, and try to save him?”

  “We had to get to Europa to take out that weapon. Or at least, stop the Shapeless from getting it. There wasn’t time to stay. He knew that.”

  “Bullshit. I’m sorry, Tomas, I really am, but I call bullshit. We could’ve stayed and saved him, or at least we could’ve tried. Instead we ran off and left him at the mercy of that thing that was once his father.”

  “There wasn’t time. He would’ve made the same call.”

  “He would’ve left any of us behind? To die?” Ada felt the tension in her shoulders. She knew she wasn’t well yet.

  “Who said anything about being dead?” Tomas said defensively.

  “You really think he can just walk away with those things and be safe?”

  “I’m sorry,” Tomas said. “But we weren’t in a position to stop him. None of us were. What happened, happened.”

  Ada felt a sick dread in her stomach. “And if something terrible did happen?”

  “It didn’t.”

  “If it did?”

  “If,” he said. “If something happened. Then we can’t let his sacrifice be in vain.”

  Ada’s hands closed into fists. She clenched them so hard her fingernails dug into her palms, puncturing them. Blood trickled out onto the table. Anger and frustration had such a strong hold that she didn’t notice the long-bearded man approaching them.