Oblivion: The Complete Series (Books 1-9)

by Joshua James

  “Captain Rhule, this is—” Engano was about to make introductions, but the bearded blue-eyed AIC captain cut him off.

  “Ben Saito, formerly Lieutenant Commander Ben Saito. I know. What I don’t know, Director, is why he’s on my ship, in my briefing room, and not in chains. Not only is he a deserter and traitor to his own nation, but he’s a pirate to boot.” Rhule stared holes through Ben, as did his lieutenants, sergeants, and corporals.

  “Uhhh.” Ben didn’t know what to say to that.

  “Because this man has been fighting our new enemy longer than everyone in this room combined,” Engano said coolly. “Because he and his crew were the first to discover their existence, and he knows why they came here and what they want. Because he’s fought them and lived and wants nothing more than to see those who destroyed our capitol to be dead, buried, and forgotten.” Engano jutted out her chin. She outranked everyone in the room, and seemed to relish it. “Are those good enough reasons?”

  “Perhaps,” Rhule said, unruffled by Engano’s little speech. “And his father? A great man, for sure, but we have reports that he was corrupted by our enemy. The ‘Saviors’ somehow turned him into one of their own.”

  Ben understood where Rhule was coming from. If their positions were swapped, he’d probably harbor the same valid concerns. After all, everyone on that dreadnought was Rhule’s responsibility. Their lives hinged on his decisions.

  “They did. Turn him,” answered Ben.

  Engano gave him a ‘shut the fuck up’ look. “He was infected, in a way.”

  “Infected?” Rhule asked. “Isn’t that another word for contagious? Why not just blow him out the airlock?”

  “You touch him, I’ll—”

  “Do nothing,” Engano snapped. She looked at Rhule. “He’s in no way contagious. This was part of the reason why I brought them on board the Veruvian, Captain. Not only did Ben here find a way to clear his father of said….influence, but we both stumbled upon information vital to our fight against this enemy. A fight that, make no mistakes, gentlemen, is far from over.”

  “We just destroyed their flagship,” Rhule said. “There are men arriving planetside right now to wipe out the rest of the creatures and the cultists as we speak. While it might not be over, it looks like it’s pretty close to the finish line, Director.”

  “How are your boys doing down there planetside, ‘mopping up’?” asked Ben. “How’s that going? What are they armed with? Rifles? Grenades? Maybe some light artillery? Hmmm, how’s that working out?”

  Rhule shifted his attention to Ben. He answered with another icy stare.

  “You need to pull back your men on the ground, Captain,” Ben said. “They need to be rearmed. Traditional weapons will not kill these things.”

  “I’ve yet to meet anything a bullet or a cannon can’t kill.”

  “Until now,” Engano said.

  “With all due respect, Captain,” Ben said, “you and your men didn’t destroy shit. We took down their flagship with a handful of missiles, while you wasted hundreds because we were properly armed.”

  “I’m getting tired of the vagaries, Director. Either you can give me the information you clearly want to, or you and the traitors can get the hell off my ship.”

  Engano looked to Ben. “Well?”

  “Where should I start?”

  “How’s about with what exactly we’re dealing with?” Rhule asked.

  “The Oblivion cult calls them ‘Saviors,’” Ben said. “But we’ve been referring to them as ‘the Shapeless’. We don’t know where they came from, but we do know that they didn’t just find us. I have reason to believe that it wasn’t the cult that summoned them.”

  “You have reason to believe?” One of Rhule’s eyebrows raised.

  “Evidence we’ve gathered supports that conclusion,” Engano said.

  “Of course,” Rhule said. “The queen of intelligence. Didn’t help us much out here.”

  Engano ignored him. “I’ve never been an optimist, Captain, and I’m not going to start now. As far as I’m concerned, we ventured to corners of the universe we were never meant to see, let alone live in. These things were always there, just waiting for their next victims.”

  “Spare me the philosophizing,” Rhule said. “What exactly are we fighting? I don’t care about where they came from or how we met them. How do we kill them?”

  “We don’t know what they are, technically,” Ben said. He looked at Engano for confirmation, just in case she had some data he didn’t. She shook her head. “What we do know is they’re as strong as they are tough. On foot they outclass our soldiers by quite a bit. Standard high-velocity bullets aren’t going to even slow them down. Explosives like grenades aren’t going to do much, unless it’s a direct hit. Small arms and blades…might as well be throwing stones.”

  “Are you telling us that they’re basically invincible?” asked one of Rhule’s lieutenants.

  “Not at all,” Engano said. “Just that they’re very hard to kill.”

  “Extreme heat and extreme cold; they can’t tolerate either. Anything like a flamethrower or cold-cast gun, that’ll kill them,” added Ben. “Electricity. They have a hard time dealing with any big jolts. And Herald Stones. Those are the most effective.”

  “Herald Stones?” Rhule frowned.

  “Uh, right,” Ben said. Rhule hadn’t heard of that. Nobody had. He reached into his pocket and felt the baseball-sized rock. It wasn’t clear to him whether or not he should produce it there and then. Something so valuable, it might be confiscated, and he would almost certainly still need it.

  He almost pulled it out. Almost. But instead, he described it.

  “They look like a simple chunk of lava rock, obsidian. I have reason to believe they’re somehow linked with where these things come from. They’re also their biggest weakness. Not only does direct contact with them seem to kill the creatures, but they also use them to power their ships, their soldiers, everything.”

  Engano glanced sideways at Ben. He’d explained this to her previously, but whether she believed it, he wasn’t sure. It certainly wasn’t information she’d picked up through her contacts. Frankly, Ben didn’t actually know if it was true; not all of it. He had hurt the Shapeless with it, yes, but the larger implications of it were untested.

  “So without these … rocks … they can’t function,” Rhule said. “But they’re also, what, deathly allergic to them?”

  “Allergic? No, more like fatally averse to them.”

  “And you vouch for this, Madam Director?” Rhule asked, a hint of incredulity in his voice.

  “I do.”

  Rhule grunted. “Then the real question becomes: how do we get our hands on these ‘Herald Stones’?”

  “We don’t,” answered Engano.

  Her answer took everyone in the briefing room by surprise, even Ben.

  “What do you mean, we don’t?” Rhule asked. “We clearly need them. Especially if traditional weapons won’t work.”

  “We’ve been looking for these stones for a while. We can’t get to them. Blame AIC intel if you want, but even the UEF has failed. Not that they really knew what they were looking for. Most of us just thought they were, at most, exotic rocks with strange energy readings that somehow affected the cultists that worshiped them. We’ve had at least a dozen leads that didn’t pan out. The cultists treat them like gold, and for the longest time, we assumed their influence was limited to the cultists themselves. Maybe it made them hallucinate or feel some sort of rush they mistook for feeling God or whatever.”

  “So you have none?”

  The rock in Ben’s pocket felt heavier, but he stuck to his guns and kept it a secret. Part of him just knew that he would need it. Then Engano surprised him again.

  “In the end, we found only one, on Vassar-1. I have said rock.”

  Rhule perked up. “Okay, so is it not big enough to share? Can we replicate it, its properties?”

  Engano shook her head. “Not possible,
unfortunately. There’s elements in the rock that we don’t even have a name for, let alone the technology or means to fabricate them. I’m afraid my rock is all we’ve got, and I used part of it as a tip of the missile I fired into the mother ship to destroy it.”

  “Do you have suggestions on what we can do to win this fight, Madam Director, or are you just going to keep telling us what we can’t do?” Rhule asked, his frustration growing.

  “Re-equip your ships and your men,” Ben said. “You need to switch from traditional projectiles—missiles, bullets—to anything with thermite, incendiary rounds. I, we, can show you how to set up missiles that deliver electric shocks instead of explosives. Weaponize your engineering armory, the torches and cold casters. You need to think about fighting them with the elements instead of ordnance.”

  Rhule and all of his officers in the Veruvian briefing room looked at Ben with one eyebrow up. They were silent for a moment. He fidgeted uncomfortably. Not only was he among all military men, a life he’d willfully left, but they were part of the military he and his father had fought for almost two decades in bitter, ruthless war.

  “Do you have any idea how long that’s going to take?” asked one of Rhule’s lieutenants.

  “Do you have any idea what will happen if you go into a fight with these things unprepared?” retorted Ben.

  Rhule crossed his arms. He glanced at Engano, his features hardening. “Make no mistake, Mr. Saito. The Director is the only reason you aren’t dead or in chains. I’ll take your advice under consideration.”

  As Rhule talked to Ben, two soldiers—guards—walked up on either side of him and Engano. “I trust your desire to want to defeat this enemy. I trust the blood that runs through your veins. Your father, I’ve fought him more times than I can count, and I have nothing but the deepest respect for him. But I don’t trust you. Until we get to Europa, you’ll be detained along with your father in the brig. Once we get there and we defeat your former brothers and sisters, we’ll decide your fate.”

  Ben felt heavy hands on his shoulders. He glanced at Engano. She nodded. “Go with them. I’ll have you out of there in no time.”

  “I’m not sure I buy that—"

  One of the hands on his shoulder yanked him around sharply. “Let’s move,” a soldier snapped into Ben’s face. “Now.”

  He smashed his rifle butt into Ben’s midsection, or at least he tried. Ben reflexively spun away and smashed his robotic arm into the soldier’s chest. The man stumbled back and fell hard on his ass, wheezing for breath.

  Before he could think of what he’d done, Ben felt cold metal on the back of his neck.

  “You’re a deserter,” said Rhule into his ear, whispering loudly for all to hear. Ben realized it was Rhule’s pistol that was resting on the base of his skull. Rhule had a strong grip on Ben’s robotic arm. As long as he stayed very close, Ben had no advantage. “A UEF deserter, at that. Killing you won’t bring me any repercussions at all. So don’t tempt me.”

  Ben nodded his agreement. “Sorry, it won’t happen again.” And he meant it. The man had simply surprised him, or at least, Ben told himself that. It would be stupid to pick a fight in these circumstances.

  “See that it doesn’t,” Rhule said. “Or I’ll see to it permanently.”

  The cool metal pulled away from his neck, and Ben was released.

  The soldier he’d punched was on his feet again, and staring daggers into Ben. But he just ignored him. “Out in no time, huh?” he asked Engano.

  “You don’t make anything easy, do you, Mr. Saito?” she said.

  “I’m working on it,” he said, as the soldiers led him away.

  Five

  Diplomacy

  Captain Daison Wan was on his knees in the black dirt of Europa. His hands were restrained behind his back via magnetic shackles that forced his wrists together. Blood trickled down his split bottom lip, courtesy of an asshole’s rifle butt. He really regretted being trying to be diplomatic.

  Ten minutes earlier, Wan had been standing outside his ship, the pirate corsair Orion, with his hands up in the air. He wanted to show that he would peacefully surrender. There was no reason to get into a fight. Plus it was just him, Tonga, and Falcon. Whatever his reputation, his prime was behind him. He was a better drinker than a fighter these days. Tonga was as ferocious as they came, but he had a broken arm and a concussion. And Falcon, well, he didn’t know the last time his cyborg pilot had last undocked from his console. So a fight wouldn’t have turned out well.

  Wan’s instinct was to run, not surrender. He’d spent enough time in the universe’s jails, AIC and UEF both, to know that he didn’t want to go back to another one. But his ship was crippled. The only crew that had survived the landing and stayed behind were working on fixing it and weren’t exactly warriors themselves.

  “Be diplomatic,” recited Wan out loud. He clenched and unclenched his fists. Wan naturally hated authority figures of any kind. It was just in his blood. From the looks of the two ships approaching, with black dust clouds kicked up behind them, they were authority figures. They were military.

  “I’ve got an ID on those ships, Captain. They’re two military-class armored transports. AIC, by the looks of their codes. They’re hailing us. What do you want me to say?” asked Falcon through Wan’s HUD.

  “Tell them we’re refugees from Vassar-1. Maybe that will garner us some sympathy,” instructed Wan.

  Ten minutes later, Wan watched helplessly as two AIC soldiers, in full gear, shot two of his crew members who were helpless, unarmed, and surrendering. His fists clenched again, this time out of sheer anger. They were going to pay for that. They were going to pay for what they did to him and his crew.

  Tonga was thrown onto the ground next to Wan, also in magnetic restraints. Despite being told that the man was injured, the AIC soldiers kicked him in his gut and laughed. After killing his crew, the bastards laughed.

  Normally Wan could talk his way out of anything, when he was given a chance to talk. But these men were only interested in killing.

  Wan was helpless. He looked at his ship, his baby. Still burning behind the pilot’s console was poor Falcon. Unable to disengage from the pilot’s console before the soldiers barged into the command bridge, he’d taken a bullet to the back of his head. Then they left a phosphorous grenade behind to completely burn his body and burn out the ship. Wan didn’t see it, but he could imagine it. He wasn’t sure which would have been worse: his own eyes witnessing the deed, or his imagination conjuring up images over and over. Either way, it would haunt him.

  “Okay, pirate scum. Up, on your feet!” ordered one of the men. He poked Wan hard with the barrel of his rifle.

  The soldiers took the only two survivors of the Orion, Wan and Tonga, into their armored transports and made for their base. It was in the opposite direction of where Wan had watched the others go, which he considered a bonus. At least it meant there was a chance they weren’t dead. Wan didn’t hold out that hope for himself.

  From the back of the armored transport, Wan watched as his burning ship shrank into the distance. He seethed. There was no bargaining with these bastards. Despite normally not being a confrontational man, he was feeling quite confrontational in that moment. His mind was made up. It was time to fight back. At most, he’d die and Tonga might die, but at that point, he didn’t give a shit.

  You didn’t survive as long as Wan had without a few tricks up your sleeve. Literally. Embedded inside the right sleeve of his jacket was a set of lock picks. He slipped one down his forearm, into his waiting hand.

  “I don’t know how the hell you got through that fascist blockade up there, but you’re gonna tell our captain exactly how you did. Understood, pirate? Then, if you’ll lucky we’ll just lock you up and not put you down like your friends.”

  As Wan fiddled around covertly with his copper lock pick, he looked over at Tonga, who looked defeated, staring at the floor of the armored transport. That wouldn’t do. He needed his big islander t
o fight, injured or not. Maybe once the killing started, he’d help out.

  The idea was to stick the copper lock pick in between the magnetic restraints, breaking the arc that kept them pinned together. Then his hands would be free to wreak havoc, something he hadn’t done in a very long time. Wan had really hoped he’d never have to kill another person before retiring on some paradise planet like Yelsin Prime or Turrander. But alas, the best laid plans of mice and men.

  Wan successful broke the magnetic field between his restraints. He looked around to make sure none of the four soldiers in the armored transport were onto him. They gave no indication that they’d seen.

  In his younger days, people had called him the “Golden Lion”. The first part came from his affinity for gaudy jewelry. The second came from his ferociousness as a fighter. In fact, he’d first bought the Orion with money won in the Battle Pits of Vassar-3. Well, mostly bought it. ‘Stole it with a generous donation’ was probably a fairer statement. Even so, Wan might be a lazy drunk now, but he’d been a gladiator once.

  Wan’s first move was to get himself a weapon. His had been surrendered before his crew was slaughtered, but the AIC soldiers had plenty. He had his eyes on the sidearm of the nearest dumb murderous bastard who had no idea it was going to be his last day among the living.

  Wan leaped across the transport, grabbed the weapon while it was still in the holster so the man couldn’t pull it out, and headbutted him hard in the face.

  Wan saw stars himself, but he focused on keeping a grip on the weapon. As the man jerked back in pain, Wan yanked hard on the pistol, and it ripped free of the holster. Before the man understood what was happening, Wan blew a hole in his head. The soldier sitting opposite, shocked and slow to react, tried to swing his rifle over to shoot the pirate captain. But there wasn’t much room to maneuver the long muzzle, and there was even less time to react. Wan put a new hole in his face, too.

  As if suddenly reactivated, Tonga lunged on the third soldier. Even injured, the pirate weapons specialist was a huge man and easily overpowered his foe. He grabbed him by the head with his good arm and kept banging it against the wall of the armored transport until his helmet broke, and his skull followed soon after.