Oblivion: The Complete Series (Books 1-9)

by Joshua James

Control panels exploded in the command bridge. Pieces fell off the ceiling. All the viewing screens went black. System after system began to fail. The dreadnought was quickly losing air. The guards picked themselves up and turned to fight the fires in the command bridge, but Rhule didn’t budge. One way or another, he was going to destroy that damn alien ship.

  Every captain in charge of a dreadnought had the authority to self-destruct their ships. No one had ever actually used that measure before—at least, not since the very beginning of the war with the UEF.

  Rhule already had it ready. He’d expected to use it the moment before the dreadnaught collided with the Shapeless ship. But this would have to do.

  Rhule felt the fire in the pit of his stomach as the computer confirmed his order. He stood up.

  “Execute,” he breathed.

  The great dreadnought complied.

  The Fallen was in the middle of a shitstorm of Shapeless fighters, cultist hovercopters, and a city under siege. Conditions in Annapolis were getting worse by the second.

  Ben, still on the turrets, couldn’t understand how no matter how many ships he shot down, twice that number would appear in the skies above the city. It was an impossible battle. Still, he kept firing. Clarissa somehow managed to keep them flying, and Ada was responsible for twice as many destroyed Shapeless as he was, Ben reckoned.

  But they just kept coming.

  “We’ve got a problem!” Clarissa snapped over her shoulder.

  “Just one?” Wan said sarcastically from the chair next to Ada.

  Even Congo, who’d been trying to help Ben keep the turret from jamming, seemed bewildered. “What now?”

  “Look up,” Clarissa said simply.

  Ben, up in the turret, had the best view. It would have been quite a show at any other time.

  There were several gigantic fireballs bearing down on Annapolis.

  “Those are Shapeless flagships,” Ben breathed.

  “Looks like we’re out of time,” Ada said flatly.

  Ben racked his mind, looking for any possible solution. But sometimes there just wasn’t one. He was thoroughly screwed, and knew it. That was only made worse by what he saw next.

  The Shapeless flagships had created a shield over themselves, made of what looked like lava rock. As soon as they were done passing through the atmosphere, their outer shells cracked and fell off. Those were several tons’ worth of thick rock in each piece, crashing down into Annapolis, crushing buildings and killing an untold number of civilians inside.

  Then the liquid metal of the Shapeless ships opened up and presented what looked like the planet killing weapon found on Europa. They must’ve copied it and equipped each flagship with the destructive ability to level the Earth. Things had just gotten much, much worse.

  “We have to take out those ships,” said Ben, completely lacking any and all enthusiasm, perhaps because he knew it was an impossible task.

  Clarissa sighed. “Agreed.”

  “Good,” Ada growled. “Then let’s do it.”

  Ben wished he had a plan, but all he could do was throw out a suicidal plan and pray that his father would complete his mission before they all died. “Ada, we have any alien killers left?”

  “We do. Three missiles, about a hundred incendiary rounds left for our cannons,” answered Ada.

  “That’ll have to do. I’m coming back down.” Ben turned off the turret and climbed down the ladder back into the ship proper. He hurried back into the cockpit.

  Most everyone in the cockpit of the Fallen had similar looks on their faces. They all knew that this was the end. Congo looked scared. Wan too, but he hid it better. Clarissa just looked tired. And Ada, well, she looked angry, and Ben liked that.

  “Okay.” Ben strapped into his captain’s seat. “We all know this is crazy. Everyone cool with that?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Great. Clarissa, take us to those ships. Let’s remind them what it means to be human.”

  Ada actually smiled. “Living on borrowed time anyway,” she said. “So let’s make it count.”

  Clarissa opened up the scoop thrusters to maximum power as the Fallen flew towards the incoming wave of Shapeless ships. None of the alien fighters followed. Most likely they just didn’t see one Supramax Hawk as a serious threat. They were right, she thought. No matter how determined the crew was, there was no way they could take out even one of the flagships, let alone several.

  “I love you.”

  Clarissa glanced up at Blake, standing next to her chair. She felt his hand on her shoulder and it warmed her all over. She knew this wasn’t real—it was some trick the Shapeless had done—but she didn’t care. Not anymore. “I know. I love you too. And I’ll see you and the kids soon.”

  She glanced around at the others, and could only guess at what they were thinking. Ada must have been thinking about her family back in Stockholm. She’d told Clarissa about her home once. About the fjords and the farm she grew up on. It sounded beautiful. Clarissa wished she was going to live long enough to see it.

  Congo and Wan were a closed book. She knew hardly anything about them, and she regretted that now.

  And then there was Ben. She’d gotten him into all of this, hadn’t she? Convinced Ace to take a chance on him back when she was Morgan and she was still a covert on a mission. Picked him out because he had access she needed to get the job done. And because he had the famous father, the one that everybody thought was a hero. The son hasn’t turned out too bad either, she thought.

  She and Ben locked eyes for a moment. She’d only cared about the Oblivion back then because she’d wanted to save AIC worlds. She wouldn’t have cared if they’d attacked Earth first; she’d even wished they would, so the AIC would have more time. But things hadn’t gone that way and instead, here she was, her own mission ruined, and back on Earth, trying to save it instead. And she’d dragged Ben into this whole thing.

  Ben nodded, perhaps understanding something of what was going through Clarissa’s mind at that moment, and then she turned back to her controls, feeling the weight of all the choices that had brought her to this moment. She owed it to Ben to keep him alive. To keep all of them alive.

  “Wait,” Ada said abruptly. “Wait.” Her gaze darted around the tactical console. She slowly stood up, still pointing down at her console. “Are you seeing this on the radar?” Her head shot up, and she stared at Clarissa. “Tell me you see that.”

  Clarissa looked down and saw it, too. Blips on the Fallen’s sensor reading. Lots of blips. Hundreds of them, then thousands. Then they merged together into a cloud that the sensors couldn’t parse.

  “What is that?” Ben asked. He was standing up now, too.

  “Ships,” Clarissa breathed. She looked up. “From the surface. Thousands of them.”

  She swiped her hand so the viewscreen image showed the Fallen’s rear cameras. She saw countless human ships following them up towards the Shapeless flagships.

  Try as she might, she couldn’t keep a little giddiness out of her voice. “Looks like we got some backup.”

  Ben dropped back into his chair, looking stunned. Had he really expected that his plea for the UEF to rally to Annapolis would produce this? The look on his face suggested the answer.

  But here they were. There weren’t only UEF ships, though. Clarissa saw civilians, city sentinels, anyone who had a vessel choosing to join the fight.

  “Now that’s a sight,” Wan said.

  “It damn well is,” Ben said. His voice turned firm. “Now let’s give these alien assholes hell!”

  No doubt grasping the sudden surge of opposition in the sky, the Shapeless fighters attacking the city broke off and roared back in pursuit to protect their flagships.

  At the same time, thousands of Shapeless fighters came screaming through the atmosphere like flaming rain. They flew straight down towards the human fleet, with no intention of stopping.

  The real battle had just started.

  Clarissa managed to dodge the initial onslaught
of Shapeless fighters, who tried their damnedest to fly through the Supramax Hawk. Though they missed the Fallen, hundreds of the ships below them weren’t so lucky.

  Caught in the crossfire from below and above, on both sides, hundreds of Shapeless and human ships blew up, were disabled, or were destroyed in the first seconds of fighting. Then everyone broke off into their own personal dogfights, and the sky was soon buzzing with cannon rounds and missiles flying in every direction, lighting up the sky. Clarissa had to do her best not to get hit while flying through this ever-changing aerial maze of death.

  The Fallen finally made its way through the thick of the fighting and targeted the nearest flagship. Ben ordered every customized missile on board armed, and incendiary rounds loaded into the cannons. They were going to make a run at it.

  So focused was Clarissa on the single Shapeless flagship ahead of her, she failed to notice a line of the enemy fighter ships coming together. Then another joined them, and still another. The forms of each ship melded into the next one.

  Now none of them could fail to see it.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” Wan said bitterly. “I hate the universe.”

  The huge melding of ships formed a small liquid-metal ball that looked like a miniature version of the flagships; then it changed shape again. It grew a pair of huge wings, with undulating tendrils trailing behind them. The center of the mass elongated and formed a featureless blob of a face, with a mouth full of rocket-sized razor-sharp teeth.

  The tendrils quivered and the wings flapped and what Clarissa could only call a giant flying monster let out a shriek so loud and high-pitched it put a crack in the Fallen’s viewing window.

  “Let’s stay away from that,” Ben said.

  But as they watched, the elongated head turned and pointed its gaping mouth at them. It screamed again and started to dive straight for them.

  “I don’t think we have a choice!” Clarissa said, banking hard to keep ahead of the flying abomination. It was at least four times as big as the Fallen.

  “Dive for the deck,” Ben said. “Take it away from the other fighters.”

  Clarissa began picking up speed as she dove, but the Shapeless monster kept pace.

  “What do we do when we get back down to the surface?” Wan asked. “Are we going to ask it to fly away?”

  “We’ll figure it out later,” Ben said. Then he opened a wide channel the UEF used and started broadcasting on all frequencies. “Attention! Can anyone hear me? Who’s in charge down there?” He kept repeating this over every military channel he knew until finally he got an answer.

  “This is Commodore Grant, from the LA Base,” answered a stern man’s voice from the other end of Ben’s HUD. “This Ben Saito?”

  Ben was surprised that this commodore he’d never met before knew his name. He’d ask questions later. Right now he needed to stick to business. “Commodore, I need you to take your fleet and focus on those big ships up there. They have weapons capable of blowing the whole damn planet. We’ll take care of whatever the hell this … thing is.”

  “I don’t think that’s wise, Mr. Saito. How are you going to handle it alone?”

  “We’ve faced down worse, Commodore. Please, those flagships need to go now. They’re your priority. Are your ships armed for that?”

  “Rhule filled us in. We’re all armed just fine, if his intel is accurate.” Grant paused, like he couldn’t believe he was talking about trusting AIC intel. Then he pressed on. “If you’re sure about this, I’ll give the order.”

  “Do it,” Ben said, then cut the comm.

  “Wait, where the hell are they going?” Wan asked as he watched the human fleet fly right past them towards the Shapeless flagships above.

  “The bigger question,” Clarissa said as the hulking bird-like Shapeless creature came closer and closer to them, “is what the hell are we doing?”

  Twelve

  The End

  “We need a plan,” Clarissa said as she tried her hardest to outrun the Shapeless thing that was hot on their tail. Whatever the advantage this giant flying-monster form gave these Shapeless, they were making better use of it than Clarissa had hoped. It was fast.

  “I agree,” Ben said. “Anybody got one?” He waited a beat, then started to climb out of the command chair. “I’m going to go back up to the turret and see if I can keep this thing off of us.”

  “Like hell you are!” Wan said. “You stay here and get us out of this damn mess. I’m going up top.” He unstrapped and headed back and up to the turret.

  “Clarissa, is there any way to get behind this thing?” Ada asked.

  “Let me see what I can do.” Clarissa took a sharp turn around a building and into the heart of downtown Annapolis.

  Though spacescraper apartment towers and buildings that touched the clouds were common place in a super city like Annapolis, downtown was another matter altogether. The concentration of buildings was much denser, and there was a lot less room to maneuver. That seemed to be what Clarissa was counting on.

  The giant Shapeless eagle creature let out a loud shriek. That sound was so high-pitched it shattered the windows of the skyscraper Clarissa was flying past, sending shards of broken glass cascading off the shell of the ship. She ignored that and kept close to the structures.

  “What are we doing?” Ben asked as he noticed that each turn brought them closer to colliding with a building. Clarissa was flying close enough to reach out and touch them.

  “Leading this thing into shallow waters,” Clarissa said. “It only has eyes for us.”

  “Aren’t we special,” Ada said.

  We are, Clarissa thought. The creature was fixed on the Fallen, and that was an advantage to press. Right then and there she made up her mind what she was going to do.

  Meanwhile, manning the turret on top of the Fallen, Wan kept peppering the monster with cannon fire. It was a bit disheartening, Clarissa suspected, seeing his shots simply bounce off or get absorbed by the creature. But anything to distract it was a good thing.

  Clarissa made the mistake of glancing at the rear camera, and grimaced. The enormous and surprisingly agile creature opened its mouth, and out of it fired telephone-pole-sized spears made of dark grey Shapeless material.

  “They’re trying to skewer us,” Ben said.

  The Supramax Hawk dodged masterfully. Most of them missed by a wide margin, slamming instead into the buildings that were all around them. “No kidding,” Clarissa said.

  Then the ship shuddered, and she knew that one had hit its mark. She cursed under her breath.

  “Cargo bay,” she said. “We’re fine.”

  Then they all heard Wan scream, “You’ve got to be shitting me!”

  He dropped out of the manhole-sized opening that housed the ladder that led up to the guns. Upon landing, he twisted his ankle and was showered by the broken glass from the pod.

  Clarissa grimaced. “Turret pod. We’re fine.”

  “We’re not gonna be fine much longer like this,” Ada snapped. “We have to do something.”

  Congo sprinted the length of the cockpit to check on Wan when he reentered, limping badly. Wan was laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” Congo asked. “Stay still so I can take a look.”

  “I just fought a giant alien bird over the most heavily militarized city on Earth, and all I got is a sprained ankle. I dunno, that’s funny to me.”

  “You’re delirious. Probably from pain. Here.” Congo shot Wan up with a stim shot. “And you broke it, you didn’t sprain it.”

  “Whatever. I’m alive. For now, at least.”

  Clarissa took yet another sharp turn, but this one was with purpose. She pulled the Fallen up behind a huge building that served as the headquarters for the UEF International Bank, the home of the UEF’s galactic schemers. They were probably as responsible for the war as anyone.

  The former AIC spy intended on blowing it to hell. Not out of spite for being from the opposition, but because she could, and she
needed to slow down the Shapeless monster. And she did, since it was too big to take the same turn as quickly.

  “C’mon, you big ugly bastard. This is the dinner bell. Come and get it,” said Clarissa as she waited for the strange undulating wings to turn the corner. As it did, she piloted the ship away from them, towards the other side of the huge building.

  Once Clarissa saw the monster through the windows, she gave the order to Ada. “Light ‘em up!”

  Ada unleashed hell on the Shapeless bastard. Incendiary rounds cut and burned their way through the walls and windows of the banking building, hitting the creature on the other side, hurting it. She also fired several missiles. One hit something inside the building and blew up relatively harmlessly. Another hit the monster in its face. Even if it had no features she could make out, she could tell when something was really pissed.

  The creature flew through the structure, straight at them. But Clarissa was not only prepared for that, she was counting on it.

  She quickly turned the Fallen around and started to fly in the opposite direction. The Shapeless eagle monster’s razor-sharp wings cut through the supports of the huge building as it went. Fourteen floors of steel and concrete fell on top of it.

  “Holy shit,” Wan said. “I think you got it!”

  Clarissa knew better. She spun the Fallen around just above the roof of a nearby building. As she did so, the collapsed banking building exploded, sending chunks of rock and debris everywhere. Clarissa could already see the Shapeless creature ripping and clawing its way out. All she’d done was hurt it, and maybe not even that badly.

  “Rear stabilizer just took a hit from that debris!” she shouted as warning bells sounded and her board flashed an ominous red.

  The Fallen slammed down hard on the rooftop.

  “Can we get her back up?” Ben asked.

  Clarissa shook her head. “Not in time. We’re sitting ducks here.”

  All eyes turned to the Shapeless creature. It had already started to reform itself, shaking off the crumbling remains of the sturdy building like it had been made of toothpicks.