by Joshua James
“We lost one of ours earlier this week. That guy was a replacement,” answered Corporal Kelly, the stabber.
“Too bad. Hate to see a kid like that go so young. Don’t bother getting rid of the body. This place is going to be rubble soon,” said Chevenko.
Once they reached the hangar, Chevenko and his guards hurried out across the cavernous space to the open sliding back doors. Only about half of the ships there had launched, so most were too busy to notice their commanding officer fleeing.
“Load that thing onto my ship.” Chevenko referred to the yellow-eyed alien he’d locked up in the specialized case he’d been given for just such an occasion. It was held by one of his security detail.
As soon as they got on board, Chevenko headed to his quarters. The dreadnaught turned on its stealth features as it lifted off. He logged into the Europa base’s main operating system. He used his authorization codes to manually shut down the base’s shields.
“HUD, call Anita Lau using a secure line.” Chevenko waited patiently for about half a minute as his dreadnaught slipped unseen out of the base towards the atmosphere.
“Good news I presume, Admiral?” Lau appeared in the small video call window, looking annoyed.
“Everything is going as planned. Europa base is about to fall.”
“Have the sleepers awakened yet?”
“No, not yet. They told us they’ll wait until the other UEF fleet arrives, and destroy as many of them as they can.”
“Good. Our preparations here on the moon are almost done. Every ship here is now company property or belongs to the Saviors.”
“Do you need me to come there, to the moon?” asked Chevenko.
“Not necessary. We have all the protection we could ever need here. We need you to take that fancy ship of yours—the one we built for you—and go after an old friend of yours.”
Chevenko was confused. “Ma’am?”
“Lee Saito. He’s become a threat to the Saviors. You need to stop him before he reaches his destination.” Lau felt right at home giving commands to Chevenko.
“Consider it done,” he said.
“Follow the beacon on his ship. We had an agent activate it. Make sure he doesn’t reach his destination. Then we can talk about your role in the new world. End call.”
“Fancy flying,” said Ada as Clarissa pulled the corsair up out of the mountains, now a much safer distance from the rocks.
“More luck than anything,” she demurred.
“We’ll take luck as long as it holds,” Ben said. “Now let’s go bomb some shit.”
“With pleasure.” Clarissa homed in on the spot she’d marked on the map, where the AIC had hidden a potentially planet-killing weapon decades ago.
The weapon was built in a bunker constructed into one of the smaller peaks in Europa’s long mountain ranges. It stood out from the others because it wasn’t just a mountain. Long before man had stepped foot on Jupiter’s moon, before the reclamation process began and the water-ice surface had been converted for vegetation, the small peak was an active volcano. Dormant now, it was ideal, considering the large opening at the summit through which the weapon could easily be lifted out. There would be no lifting now, though. All they wanted to do was bomb it, take it off the table.
“Look at that,” Ada said, nodding back in the same direction as the fighting in and around the UEF base.
When Ben and the others did indeed look, they saw an arriving fleet of AIC ships. It was Rhule.
“Are they here to help or to finish the job?” asked Wan.
“They’re not firing on the base, so…help?” Congo tried to figure it all out as well.
“He knows the score,” Ben said. “He knows what’s behind all this now. The AIC’s fight isn’t with the UEF.”
“But he’s too late,” Ada said.
“What do you mean?” Clarissa asked.
Ben saw she was right. The arrival of Rhule’s fleet was merely delaying the inevitable. “Look. The shields are down,” he said. That glowing blue transparent layer that surrounded the Europa base was gone. Nowhere to be seen. “Without them, all those ships up there will pummel it into rubble, even with the new arrivals trying to stop them.”
“Shit.” Ada felt guilty. She felt like they’d left the other UEF military to die.
“It sucks, I know, but we need to focus on the task at hand. Then we can talk about helping them.” Ben wanted to go back and help too, but the whole point of coming to Europa was to take out that weapon so that the Shapeless couldn’t obtain and use it.
“Thirty seconds until we reach our target. Preparing bombs, opening bomb bay doors,” said Ada, as it was her job at the weapons station to drop them. Though she had no experience, it was all pretty self-explanatory, and there was more than a little machine assistance.
“Okay. You ready, guys? This is what we came for. This is why we had to fight. This is….”
Ben stopped talking when he and the others saw the same thing.
The top of the hollowed-out volcano in which the AIC’s superweapon was supposed to be housed started to crumble. All around it, the mountains started to shake and break apart. Out from under those mountains rose something gigantic.
“Oh, you’ve got to be shitting me! They’re already here?” Ben couldn’t believe it. A huge, perfectly spherical ship made of churning liquid metal—a Shapeless mother ship—rose from under the ground. Pieces of the mountains themselves fell off, making the deadliest of rain below. The sun shone harshly off the ship’s mirror-like surface, making looking at it almost blinding.
At first neither the AIC nor UEF really knew what was happening. Neither side had seen a Shapeless ship before, not like this. The overwhelming majority of them didn’t know that the aliens existed. But there, on and above Europa, they all saw it for their own eyes. And in a matter of a few seconds, a few minutes, a lot of them were going to die with that knowledge.
“What does this mean? Do they have the weapon?” asked Clarissa.
“I think that’s a safe bet,” answered Ada.
“We need to take it out then, right?” Congo thought the solution was simple. She too had never run into the Shapeless before. Neither had Wan.
“I don’t see any guns or protection. Let’s blow that beautiful marble to kingdom come and be on our way,” Wan said.
“It’s not that easy,” said Ben. “Shit! We need to get out of here. We need to get the others out of here. None of us are ready for this fight.”
Suddenly tens of thousands of sharp-tipped spikes came flying out of the Shapeless mother ship in every direction. Some harmlessly hit the remains of the mountains below, creating mini-craters and kicking up rock and black soil. More of them hit UEF and AIC ships, skewering them, destroying them like kebabs cooked too long over a camp fire. Unprepared, a lot of the smaller and more maneuverable fighter ships flew into the spikes, destroying them all the same.
Ben and the others’ corsair was just out of range of the spikes. Still, Ben felt like the Shapeless ship was staring straight at him, mocking him. He knew deep down that the Pale Man was inside it, planning his next move.
“What….what is this?” Wan was up out of his seat, nose almost touching the viewing window. He looked on in disbelief and awe as the spikes quickly retracted back into the huge undulating liquid-metal sphere that was the Shapeless’ ship.
“This is what we’ve been fighting, what we’ve been trying to warn everyone about.”
“So…that’s an alien ship, huh?” Wan looked at the Shapeless vessel, more fascinated than scared.
The ships that had been impaled fell to Europa’s surface in flaming pieces, crew members freefalling to their doom unless they’d been lucky enough to die in the initial impact. There were too many casualties to count. While the AIC and UEF fleets weren’t completely destroyed, they both suffered major losses. Both of them stopped fighting each other and pulled back to their respective larger support ships.
“What do you want
to do?” asked Clarissa, turned around in her pilot’s seat. Her gaze, like all others, was focused on Ben.
Ben had to rack his mind. He had to outthink the Pale Man and the Shapeless. He needed to join what was left of the AIC and UEF together. And in order to do that, he needed to get back to Rhule. Hopefully, once there, he could also regroup with Chevenko and get the message back to Earth that death was coming and they needed to prepare themselves.
Ben ordered his HUD to make the call. “HUD, call Captain Rhule, Veruvian.”
“Young Mr. Saito, you’re still alive,” Rhule said matter-of-factly. Ben hadn’t actually expected him to answer. “You’ve got more lives than I thought.”
“We’re still alive, and we need some help.”
“I’ll do what I can, but you’d better hurry. We’re preparing an attack on that thing. Those are the aliens you spoke of, aren’t they?”
“No!” Ben said hurriedly. “Don’t attack it.”
“Like hell we won’t, son. Did you see what I just saw?”
“Conventional weapons will be ineffective, Captain,” Ben said. “This will play out just like it did over Vassar-1.”
Invoking the doomed capital world made Rhule come up short. “This thing was there?”
“It’ll kill all of you if you go rushing in,” Ben continued. “They’re counting on us being angry, making mistakes. They’ll allow you to inflict meaningless damage until you’re fully committed, and then … Trust me, I know these things. If you want revenge, we need to regroup, get a message to Earth about what’s coming, and join up with Commodore Thorne and the AIC.”
Rhule was silent for a moment. “That’s a lot to ask, son.”
“I’m not asking, Captain! I’m telling you, this has to happen or all of our families, our friends, all of Earth is going to be in flames. I’m talking a goddamn apocalypse!”
Rhule didn’t answer for a few seconds. “Where are you?”
“We’re in a corsair. We’re coming to you now.”
“Okay. No promises, but I’ll put in the call to Earth right now. They’ve seen what we’ve seen here.” He rubbed his chin. “Not that they’re going to be much excited to hear from me. Did you talk to the admiral?”
“I did,” Ben said. “I think he understands. I think he can convince the UEF.”
“Very well. Hurry up. It sounds like we don’t have time to spare. HUD, end call.”
“We’re in business,” Ben said. “Clarissa, take us to the Veruvian. I’ve entered in their beacon. Let’s get out of here.”
“We’re just going to leave it, let them take the weapon?” Ada said doubtfully.
“We don’t even know if they have it. All we know is….what is it doing?” Something caught Ben’s attention.
The spherical Shapeless ship rose up slightly in the air, above where the two fleets held their positions. An opening appeared in the bottom of the otherworldly alien vessel. Out of it emerged what looked like a very, very large dish with an extended central tower.
The corsair’s instruments instantly registered a huge power spike.
“Shit!” Clarissa knew what she was looking at. They needed to get as high up as possible, so she flew as fast as she could upwards and towards the Veruvian.
“What is it?” asked Wan.
“It’s the weapon! They’re about to use it!”
The gigantic dish that jutted out of the Shapeless’ mother ship lit up a bright orange. It was as bright as the sun before a huge beam of energy came flying out of a point that floated just beyond the forward tower in the center of the dish and towards Europa’s surface. The power was so daunting that even before the beam hit the ground, a crater started to form. That crater turned into a deep, deep hole as the beam’s energy punched through it.
Ben felt his jaw drop open. Nobody else spoke.
The UEF fleet immediately broke off the fight with the AIC forces and started to ascend away from the planet at top speed. But incredibly it was the AIC ships, with the exception of the commanding dreadnaught, that went into full attack mode.
“Those idiots! What the hell are they doing!?” Ben watched the AIC attack incredulously.
Thirty seconds after the huge orange energy beam hit the Europa surface, the whole moon started to shake. Molten rock started spilling out the cracks the beam’s impact had created. The tops of mountains explosively flew off, sending magma plumes high into the air. Like the biggest earthquake ever, the whole surface of Jupiter’s moon fractured, cracked and split apart.
Swallowed by fire, super-heated rocks, and gases, the attacking AIC fleet disappeared along with the Shapeless ship. Ben and the others didn’t stick around to watch a moon die. They needed to survive, and in order to do so they needed to reach the Veruvian as fast as possible.
Clarissa had her work cut out for her, flying through a moon-sized erupting volcano that was already wreaking havoc with the local gravity. As she did her best to dodge magma, super-heated gas, and gigantic rocks thrown about at the velocity of bullets, Ben and Ada’s minds and attentions were focused on something else entirely.
Both Ben and Ada, with strong ties to the UEF military, looked on in horror as the base crumbled and was enveloped by a rolling cloud of gas and rock. Both were silent as they knew that every single last soul stationed there was surely dead.
As nimble and skilled a pilot as Clarissa was, there was just too much debris in the skies to completely avoid. The sun had been blocked out by the planetwide volcanic cloud that quickly spread, and it was hard to navigate safely. She used all the tricks she could, but she didn’t catch a large boulder that flew up towards the corsair from below.
Everyone in the cockpit was surprised when the large airborne boulder hit one of the corsair’s wings. Clarissa struggled to keep control of the vessel as it spun side-over-side. The piloting stick threatened to wrestle itself out of her control as the contents of everyone’s stomachs threatened to spill out of their mouths.
Clarissa didn’t know what to do. The corsair was spiraling down towards the maelstrom below. It looked as if death was going to be certain. Then she felt another hand over hers on the piloting stick. It was warm, comforting, familiar. It was Blake’s hand. With his added strength, or perhaps just his encouragement, she managed to right the ship’s course and correct it. And she did so just in time, as the bottom of the vessel was kissed by magma before pulling back up.
Perhaps seeing the trouble that the corsair was in, the Veruvian moved a little closer to help. Its landing bay was wide open, waiting to welcome Ben and the others, to deliver them from one fight to the next one. Soon enough, Ben knew, it would be the last one.
Eleven
As Above, So Below
Sydal was thankful that the flamethrowers he’d picked up from those cultists he’d killed a lights on them. Otherwise, even with his map, he would’ve been lost in those dark sewer tunnels. Combine the dark with the smell, the dampness and the tighter confines, and he wished for the tunnels he’d barely escaped after Aitken Basin.
According to the holographic map he’d acquired from the water treatment plant, the sewers had several openings and tunnels that branched off from them. One he recognized: it was the tunnel from Aitken to the Lunar Dome. He didn’t want that one. Another was a sewer line that connected to the dark side, also unwanted. The third one caught his attention. It connected to a tunnel that went to the exotic matter generator. The EMG fed the Earth’s moon its entire power supply. Past that was a tunnel that led to what he figured was a hatch under the UEF military outpost, so the third option it was.
“Who’s there!?” Sydal swung around behind him when he heard a loud shriek in the sewer tunnels. He had to hurry. Though he was armed to fight a Shapeless, he had no desire to do so.
Sydal picked up his pace, though the going was slow and hard as his boots were mired in shin-deep grey water and the muck accumulated below. The shrieks got louder, which meant they were getting closer. He kept glancing behind to make sure that
he didn’t see anything in the flashlight mounted on his flamethrower. Then his attention returned to the sewer tunnel ahead.
According to the holographic map in Sydal’s HUD, and the way marker, he wasn’t far from where the tunnels branched off towards the EMG. There was another shriek, and the sound of something moving through the sewer water. It sounded close.
Okay. Screw this, I’m tired of running.
Sydal decided to hold his ground. He turned, aimed his flamethrower down the sewer tunnel in the direction of the noises, and waited. Then his mounted flashlight started to flicker and went out.
“Are you kidding me?” Sydal smacked the side of the flashlight, but nothing. He heard water slosh inside it. That must’ve shorted it out.
There was another shriek. This one was loud, very close. Sydal’s heartbeat shifted into high gear. He aimed his flamethrower towards it and gave the trigger a brief squeeze.
A small ball of flame shot out of Sydal’s flamethrower. In the light he saw a dark shape dive down into the shallow grey water. That was the last thing he wanted to see.
Something wrapped around and grabbed Sydal’s ankle. It was the ankle on his bad leg, which didn’t have the strength to resist the strong pull from the Shapeless. Before he knew it he landed hard on his back, or more accurately on the flamethrowers strapped to his back.
A strong force pinned Sydal’s leg’s down. It was hard to see in the near-pitch dark, but he could feel the trigger of his flamethrower. Not knowing if he’d hit anything, he fired.
Flames cascaded across the arched top of the sewer tunnel. The light revealed a Shapeless right on top of the detective, ready to stab him, but the heat scared it and made the alien retreat.
The ceiling of the sewer tunnel still on fire, Sydal got up out of the water, his ankle twisted and feeling like it was badly sprained or worse.
The fire in the sewer tunnel revealed not one but a whole posse of Shapeless, too scared to move forward under the flames, snarling, gnashing their teeth and shrieking at Sydal. He stared at them for a little while, getting his first calm look at the monsters that were tormenting him and the citizenry of Earth’s moon. They were ugly creatures that always looked like they themselves were in great pain, lashing out against anything that wasn’t. The oily blackness of their being reflected the nearby fires. All of them tried to reach out, but immediately their tendrils and clawed hands retreated once they got a taste of the flames’ heat.