Oblivion: The Complete Series (Books 1-9)

by Joshua James

  “What’re you...?” Falcon looked over at Clarissa as she strapped herself into the copilot’s chair.

  “Saving our asses. Gonna re-spark the engines. Be ready to get us the hell out of here.” Clarissa reached under the console and felt around. For a second she panicked when she couldn’t find the pump. A quite realistic fear set in. What if, in all his custom work, he’d had the pump removed? They’d be properly screwed. But then, to her relief, she felt a pump handle with her fingers.

  With everyone’s lives quite literally on the line, Clarissa grabbed the pump and started pumping as vigorously as the angle and the muscles in her arm would allow. She could feel the resistance, which was good, but it made the act hard. If the engine didn’t re-spark, she didn’t know how long she could physically keep trying.

  Suddenly the lights and instruments flickered back on.

  “Nice,” Falcon murmured.

  But they were far from out of the fire. Falcon took control back and broke the Orion out of its now slow spin. In a matter of seconds he had to find a new path, a new course to get out of the battle and to Europa. Luckily his customized brain plotted one in half a second.

  For Falcon it was simple. His HUD laid out a holographic path or trail that he just had to follow. It would change, of course, to compensate for any obstacles, but as long as he stuck to it, he should get them out of the fight.

  Everything went fine right after the Orion regained power. Falcon stuck to the path, and other than some jukes and dodges, it looked like their luck was about to change. But then the biggest weakness of Falcon’s HUD’s navigation assistance became glaringly and terrifyingly apparent.

  The holographic path or trail in Falcon’s HUD could only chart what was within his line of sight. Through all the maelstroms of battle, there was still a pretty thick line of UEF ships blockading Europa.

  “Falcon?” Clarissa asked. She, like her copilot and those on the Orion’s bridge, saw the seemingly impenetrable line of UEF ships. Not one of them budged, or even looked to make an aggressive move towards the pirate corsair. It wasn’t a threat, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t blow them into bits at the slightest provocation.

  “I see it.”

  “Okay, well, what are we gonna do about it?” Clarissa went over possible solutions in her head. None of them were particularly good.

  “Hold on, looking for a route through.”

  “How long do we have until the fold jump engine is recharged?” asked Wan.

  “I don't know, let me...” Clarissa looked for the info on the Orion’s instrument HUD.

  “One minute,” answered Falcon.

  “What’re you thinking?” asked LeFay from the back.

  “We’re gonna do a short fold jump, like really short.”

  “A fold skip?” Clarissa had heard of the maneuver before. She’d never done it, though, because it was obnoxiously dangerous. No one did it, which might make it the perfect choice to get through the blockade.

  “Exactly.” Wan wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Can we do it? Falcon, can you find a clear path?”

  “Way ahead of you.”

  In order to make a short fold jump, the Orion needed a little room and a path clear from ships or other obstructions. Unlike a regular jump, they wouldn’t be making a big fold, so there wouldn’t be any skipping over any obstacles or enjoying the luxury of the mostly open universe.

  “We need to make a little room before we can get there,” Clarissa said. She noticed, through her and the Orion’s HUD, the place Falcon had marked as the start point of the fold jump. It involved having to go into the blockade only slightly, so that they could reach that open path.

  “Got it.” Falcon made the Orion take a sharp turn away from the UEF blockade. Two UEF fighters noticed them, and gave chase.

  The Orion shook a bit as its restored shields took several hits from the fighter ships behind it. They were only using their cannons, which was good. If they used their missiles, there would’ve been more reason to worry.

  “Time to squash some bugs. HUD, bring up rear cannon weapons system.” Clarissa switched from the copilot’s screen to a camera-assisted view from the rear of the ship.

  Clarissa, unlike Ada or even Ben, had no reservations about taking UEF lives. After all, she was technically AIC, born and raised with that military and government. So there was no hesitation in opening fire on the pilots who were simply just doing their jobs.

  “If I see them in hell, they’re going to have to wait in line, babe,” Clarissa said quietly as her dead husband stood next to the copilot’s chair, looking over her shoulder.

  Falcon noticed Clarissa was talking to herself, but paid it no mind. He was too busy doing a loop around at a downwards angle. His concern wasn’t only getting rid of their tail, but also reaching the fold jump point in one piece. The battle around them was only getting worse, more violent.

  There were more new obstacles for the Orion. Debris from disabled and destroyed ships was everywhere. Most harmlessly bounced off the shields but bigger chunks, from downed dreadnoughts and battleships, presented bigger dangers. Frozen human corpses floated in the same positions they’d died in.

  After blowing away an AIC fighter in front of them, Falcon had the Orion on the pre-selected path for their fold skip. Clarissa’s shooting kept the fighters pursuing them at bay. Once on the path, the fighters stopped firing at the pirate corsair, out of fear of hitting their allies in the blockade.

  “Spinning up the engines,” said Falcon. Under the bridge of the Orion, everyone felt the vibration from the fold engines starting up.

  Falcon spotted the opening between UEF dreadnoughts that he aimed the Orion at. There was no guarantee that it would stay open, so he sped towards it, again pushing the corsair’s abilities to their limits. Getting there was a hell of a nail biter as the fighters behind them caught up. If they fired a heat-seeking missile from there, they would surely connect.

  “How much longer?” asked Wan.

  “Almost there,” Falcon reassured him, though his lack of confidence bled through into his voice.

  “Brace for incoming missile!” Clarissa tried her best to shoot down the fighters on their tail, but hitting a very fast fighter-class ship mid-flight was extremely hard. If you included the fact that the base from which she was firing was on everything but a straight line, it was almost impossible.

  From her viewpoint, she saw one of the pursuers fire a missile. It was indeed a heat-seeker.

  “We can outrun it!” Falcon wasn’t going to stray from his path. “Jumping now!” He activated the fold jump engines.

  Both of the ships that pursued the Orion collided with the dreadnoughts from the UEF blockade, but the missile they shot jumped along with the pirate corsair, as well as chunks from those same dreadnoughts, crippling one of them.

  The passengers and crew of the Orion were pinned back in their seats for the second or so of the fold jump skip. As soon as the ship came out of it, they were already in Europa’s atmosphere. It had worked, but it had taken a toll on the corsair.

  There was one main drawback of fold skipping, and that was the strain on the vessel doing it. During a normal fold jump, a ship had enough time to gradually slow down at a safe rate before and after coming out of the fold in time and space. During a skip, all that trauma came at once.

  First to go was the shields. After that, different parts of the Orion’s exterior crunched and broke off. Smoke billowed out of every newly opened hole in the hull. Almost all of its systems were in disarray.

  “We made it,” Wan said. He sounded surprised. “Tell me you can land my baby in once piece.”

  “She’s already in a few pieces,” Falcon said. But they were out of the battle up in the space outside Jupiter’s most lush moon. Whatever happened here was better than up there. “But I’ll try.”

  From Clarissa’s view, all she saw was a blue sky with a faint light show in space, far, far away. Then, out of nowhere, the heat-seeking missile
appeared.

  “We got a problem!” she shouted. “That missile followed us through.”

  “What? How?” Wan was apoplectic.

  “Don’t ask me,” Clarissa said.

  But Falcon knew it was theoretically possibly, especially in a short jump. He’d just never imagined it could actually happen. That mean the missile must be very, very—

  “It’s right on our tail!” Clarissa said.

  Falcon saw it flickering in the rear camera even before the computers, coming back online from the jump, blared an incoming missile alert through his HUD. “Can you shoot it?”

  Clarissa tried using the rear guns, but they didn’t respond. She looked at Falcon in surprise.

  He just nodded grimly. “Damaged in the fold skip.”

  “Then what do we do?”

  Falcon raised his chin so his voice carried in the bridge. “Brace for impact!”

  Nine

  Blast From The Past

  What is this?

  Ben woke up in the back of a cab. He looked to his right, outside the window, and was surprised to see the Earth, to see the megacity of Annapolis slipping by. He looked down and saw his own hands and lap, but they were so much smaller, like a child’s. More alarming, but also comforting, was that they were all flesh and blood, not metal and mechanical. He looked to his left and was surprised to see his mother, Beverly Saito, sitting right next to him. Her purse was on her lap.

  Ben didn’t understand how he’d gone from Vassar-1 back to Earth, and in a smaller body. It didn’t make any sense. What made even less sense was the fact that he recognized the situation and setting he was in. He’d been here before. It was the day his family had moved to Annapolis.

  “So where you from, sir? From your accent, pretty clear you ain’t from ‘round here.” Ben heard a voice from the other side of the cab’s bulletproof glass that separated the back seats from the front. It came from the cabbie, who flew the vehicle along the sky paths that served as roads for the megacity. From what Ben could see from behind, the cab driver was bald and wore a trucker’s hat.

  “Japan, originally,” answered Lee Saito, who sat in the front passenger seat next to the driver.

  “Japan, huh? Would never have guessed. Your English, it’s perfect.”

  Lee politely laughed. “Thank you. It’s from a lot of time with the military. They don’t really speak anything else.”

  “Well, good thing they didn’t, because you sound like a genuine American. Really. Mean that as a compliment, sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  “First time in Annapolis?”

  “No, not mine. But my wife and son, it’s their first time.”

  The cab driver quickly glanced back into the back seat, and made eye contact with Ben. Ben immediately noticed the driver’s eyes; they were all black, and shone like obsidian. That, he didn’t remember.

  Ben felt his mother’s soft warm hand on the thigh of his jeans. The cab driver turned back around, and he looked over at his mother. She smiled at him. Then she pointed out her window.

  “Look, Ben. That’s where your father’s going to work.”

  Ben unbuckled his seat belt and climbed over and onto his mother. He looked out the window. There was the Annapolis he knew, with one glaring difference. Where the main UEF base was supposed to be, there was the fake UEF Atlas: the same one he’d helped blow up back on Vassar-1.

  This isn’t right.

  Confused, Ben climbed off his mother’s lap and back into his seat. Something about all of it was off, twisted.

  “What’s wrong, honey?” asked Beverly, concerned.

  “Nothing…I…” Ben didn’t know how to answer.

  “Here we are! The Montcrief Apartments,” said the cab driver as the cab came to a stop.

  Ben didn’t know how they’d gotten there so quickly. Just a second before, they were still flying through the skies of Annapolis. The doors on both sides of the vehicle swung up and open.

  Like most parking spots in the megacity, the lot for the Montcrief Apartments was a large concrete block that hung off the side of the tall building. This particular building had six of seven lots servicing the different levels. The Saitos, while not poor, at this point were far from well off. They were on level twelve, safe from the dangers of the slums below, but far from the open sky views of the upper levels.

  As Ben stepped out of the cab, gone were the amazing views from high above Annapolis. They were replaced by a forest of skyscrapers in every direction, and the smells and sights of the lower inner city. He remembered it all being very overwhelming when he was younger.

  Beverly grabbed one of her son’s hands. They walked next to Lee as they approached the entrance to the Montcrief Apartments. Something urged Ben to look back right before they reached the doors. Behind him he saw the Pale Man standing where the cab once was, smiling and waving at him.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Beverly. She noticed Ben had stopped, which caused a pulling at her arm.

  Ben stared at the Pale Man. He knew that he knew him from somewhere, but he couldn’t put his finger on where. All he did know was that simply seeing him filled him with a sense of menace and danger.

  “He’s nervous. New place and all.” Lee grabbed his son’s other hand, and together the parents led Ben through the apartment building’s doors.

  The halls of the Montcrief Apartments were very much like Ben remembered. Below his little feet was a dirty carpet that pretty much never got washed. The halls were scuffed from people moving in and out. There was this strange, almost mildew-y smell.

  “What number are we?” asked Beverly as the small family made their way through the halls.

  “1242,” answered Lee.

  Ben looked up at the numbers on the doors they passed. He couldn’t make them out. They looked more like glyphs or characters than numbers. He’d never seen anything like them before.

  When Ben looked down the hall, one of the doors opened. From the open door he heard strange sounds, horrible sounds, like dying animals. Out of it came a man that looked familiar. He closed the door and walked towards the small family.

  “Sorry, excuse me,” said the man as he pressed against the wall so the Saito family could pass.

  Ace?

  Ben knew that he knew the man. He was the spitting image of Ace, only without the scars, and with a markedly more pleasant demeanor. His dead friend smiled and nodded at him as they passed, his shirt covered in blood.

  “What is it?” asked Beverly. She wasn’t asking Ben, but her husband.

  “I don’t. Something is off. I think it’s malfunctioning,” answered Lee. Little Ben had no idea what they were talking about.

  Beverly looked over at her husband. “Does he notice?”

  Lee looked down at Ben, whose head was still turned, looking at Ace. Then he looked up and over at his wife. “I think so. We should speed this up.”

  “Got it,” agreed Beverly. Suddenly a door appeared in front of the trio, cutting off the rest of the hallway. Ben thought it was 1242, but it was hard to tell because, again, the writing on the door was so foreign.

  Ben’s parents were gone. It was just him. He was a little bit older, a pre-teen. Under one arm was his hoverboard. They were dangerous little things, but his father wasn’t around enough to notice he even had it, and his mother—well, he loved her, but she was a bit of a pushover.

  When he reached for the door, it opened on its own, revealing the Saitos’ apartment. Ben stepped in. It was dark except for the light in the kitchen. He’d been out all day, so the curtain of night had already enveloped Annapolis. On the kitchen counter, Ben noticed an open bottle of wine and two glasses. Each glass had remnants of pinot noir left behind.

  “Mom? Dad?” Ben, still holding his hoverboard, walked further into the apartment, towards the hall that led to his bedroom, his parents’ bedroom, and the bathroom. The front door slammed shut on its own.

  Ben could hear music playing from his parents’ bedroom. He als
o saw a light under the door. Curious and naive, he slowly made his way down said hall.

  Before he made it too far down the apartment hallway, Ben saw and heard the bathroom door opening on its own. Steam came billowing out, as if someone had left the shower on and hot for a while. Naturally he stopped in front of the open doorway, and wanted to see who was inside.

  The steam parted as if blown away by an invisible ghost. There in the shower, which for some reason had no door, was Ada. She was completely naked, and seemingly unaware of his presence. Confused and turned on, Ben watched as she lathered her shapely body with soap. Then, she stopped.

  Ben backed up a little bit, clutching his hoverboard to his chest as Ada made eye contact with him. She smiled and stepped out of the shower towards him. Just feet from the doorway, she stopped and opened her mouth. Bullets fell out, clanging against the tile bathroom floor.

  Ada knelt down, water dripping off her nude figure. With one finger she beckoned pre-teen Ben closer. He leaned in.

  “I’m waiting for you. I’ve always been waiting for you,” whispered Ada. With that the bathroom door slammed shut, almost hitting Ben on the nose.

  That’s...is this a dream? Ben stared at the closed bathroom door. The steam that had previously billowed out of it got sucked back under the crack of the door. It was getting harder for him to stay conscious and keep any semblance of control. He almost felt like his mind was being manipulated.

  “Ben.” He heard someone call his name. He walked away from the bathroom. Now his bedroom door was open, the lights on.

  If someone gave Ben a thousand guesses as to what he was going to see and get confronted with in his bedroom, he would’ve never even gotten close. Standing there, with its arms behind its back, was something that looked like, or more accurately was, in the shape of a boy about his age, only the boy’s skin was jet black. He was bald and had general, bland facial features. That was, all except for his eyes. The boy’s eyes were large, oval, and wide. Not only that, they glowed yellow.