Oblivion: The Complete Series (Books 1-9)

by Joshua James

  Ben came to a simple, yet not ideal, solution. Every level had access ladders that went all the way to the top. But they weren’t well-maintained, and were only ever used by fire departments and engineers in case of emergencies or needed maintenance. To get to it, though, he needed to go down one level and run underneath the approaching DCPD officers.

  Ben turned and made his way through the crowd. He yelled a question at one of the open market stalls, figuring the quickest way not to draw attention in the crowd was to try to draw attention. Sure enough, the market man barely heard him over the din, and Ben was able to nod his way until he was beyond the main corridor to a narrow side walkway. It had an unguarded ledge with no safety rails. When he got there, all he needed to do was drop down to the ninth level.

  It was quieter here, and Ben had to be more careful. He ducked behind the stall of an old woman who was selling trinkets and took a peek over the edge. His HUD told him it was a fifteen-foot drop down to the ninth level. It was further than he hoped for, and he was unlucky enough that the two levels nearly lined up, but he managed to stick the landing without falling to his death.

  He did manage to almost fall on a guy, who cursed him out as he slunk away. A quick glance told him there were no cops on this level: not yet, at least. Ben hurried towards the old service ladder. The second he grabbed the rusty rungs, he wished he’d brought gloves. Each one he ascended cut a little more into his bloody palm. He tried to swing himself up with his prosthetic arm and almost ripped a rung off. A couple simply gave way under his weight, making his stomach jump up into his throat for just a moment. In order to prevent people from falling off, the ladder was surrounded by crisscrossing metal rings every three feet or so. He was on the outside of the apartment block proper now, and traffic sped just an arm’s length away. In theory, the police could ID him here and he’d be a dead man.

  But he was going to be tough to spot. Still, every step seemed to take an eternity.

  Unpleasant as it was, the service ladder helped Ben go up twelve levels in about ten minutes. He was well on his way to the same floor as the public docks, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe it was a little too easy.

  “Freeze! Don’t move! You’re under arrest by the authority given by the District of Columbia! Stay there, we will send a cruiser to pick you up!” A police drone floated in the air at the twenty-first level. It shone a spotlight on him.

  Ben glanced at the lip of the level he was next to. Level 22. He didn’t even pretend to obey the drone. It didn’t have nearly the firepower of the robots on the ground level. He scrambled up and over the ledge, expecting to get shot in the back.

  Thirty

  Ben

  The drone did fire, belatedly, but most of the bullets ricocheted and bounced off the metal rings meant to protect the ladder climber from falling off. A couple made their way through the cracks, but hit Ben’s prosthetics. Someone must’ve been looking after him. Maybe his mother.

  Would she be ashamed of the cop he’d killed? Part of him knew he deserved to take a couple of those shots. He deserved to die right there and then.

  He started to run. Ace had had an illegal scrambler installed in Ben’s HUD upon joining the Lost’s crew. Identifying and tracking him was nearly impossible now, unless he was within sight.

  That would have to do. He’d have to try and lose the drone in the crowds.

  As the midway point of the megacity, 22 was the point where the scenery changed. This was where most of DC’s middle class lived. There were small coffee shops and diners, but no open-air stalls or markets, and it was significantly less crowded. That meant less cover.

  The drone popped up and tagged him visually. Ben cursed to himself. Nothing to be done now. He turned into a small deserted walkway. There was less chance of him or the drone killing somebody else here. His profile was high enough already.

  He took his pistol out of his holster. There was another maintenance ladder here; they seemed to be everywhere in the haphazard block. He waited there for the drone, hoping to use the ladder cage as cover. He waited for a three-count after he saw the drone turn into the walkway. He fired three shots. The first two hit the front of the drone, but didn’t do much damage. They were just to help him home in on the third bullet that hit the mark, directly in the drone’s camera/eye. The super-heated bullet flew through it and out the back of the machine.

  The drone stuttered in the air, then dropped like a sack of potatoes without ever getting a shot off.

  That was lucky. Ben started to climb up this mysterious new ladder, but it only went another level before it dead-ended, along with his luck.

  He couldn’t go back out to the main ladder. He was down to his last option. The worst one.

  Ben ran towards an elevator bank that could take him to the thirtieth level. He was sure that the police would be able to ID him easily once inside.

  As he drew closer, he saw that a crowd of upset people was gathered around. The elevators were shut down.

  Ben heard the unmistakable hum of a police hoverbike coming up from below. It was following along the inside of the elevator shaft. He had seen them do this before. Soon the doors would open, and the hoverbike would come in. The bikes had remote access to the shaft controls. This biker, or one of his pals below, must have shut down the elevators and taken controls of the shafts.

  Ben knew that in moments, the doors would open, and he’d be face-to-face with the bike rider. The crowd would offer some cover, but only for so long.

  He turned and started to rush back the way he came. Then he saw a dozen new police drones pouring up and over the edge of the ladder he’d come up.

  Shit.

  He turned back to the shaft, a crazy idea forming in his mind. A crazy, stupid, reckless idea.

  It wasn’t that the idea had any real merit. It was just that he was out of options.

  Crazy it was.

  Ben rushed forward. Some in the crowd had seen his waffling and must have known something was going on. They pointed him out, and everyone in the group seemed to turn in unison as Ben ran straight at them.

  “Move!” he screamed, waving his gun in the air. The crowd parted—more reluctantly than he would have thought, considering a lunatic with a gun was rushing at them, but then again, this was DC. Somebody screamed something in his ear as he rushed through.

  Without stopping, he leapt at the elevator door, thinking how stupid he was going to look if the doors didn’t open.

  And they almost didn’t. But at the last moment, they snapped open. The timing was so tight that his shins grazed the inside lining of the doors.

  He flew through, balance all wrong, leaning backwards, legs splayed wildly.

  He almost flew right over everything. As it was, he had to reach down and desperately hook his arm around the neck of the hoverbike’s rider. Naturally, the cop was pulled off the vehicle by his body weight. Ben would’ve flown off with him if his artificial hand hadn’t managed to grab the gravity-defying bike and hold on.

  DCPD’s standard-issue hoverbikes were built to hold up to five hundred pounds. That took into account not only the weight of the person piloting the vehicle, but also if they had a prisoner on the back. With that said, they weren’t meant to carry all that weight from the rear of the vehicle, where Ben hung on.

  Slowly the hoverbike lowered as it struggled to hold Ben’s weight. He managed to pull himself up onto the seat. Once he had a grip on the handlebars, he felt comfortable. He was where he was supposed to be as a former Navy pilot: flying.

  Ben turned the hoverbike around and ignored the screams and expletives from the cop who’d landed just a few levels below on one of the inset ledges. He burst-fired back out of the still-open elevator shaft doors just as the officer started shooting up at him.

  The crowd, which had started to reform, again scattered as Ben shot past them.

  He had to find a good path up through traffic on every level in order to get up to the public docks, and he needed to do i
t fast, because this wasn’t a low-visibility way of travel.

  There wasn’t any time for Ben to contemplate his path, due to the fact that two police cruisers had caught up with him. There were also a handful of drones now watching his movements.

  He was a very, very marked man.

  The cruisers cut in front of him less than a hundred yards ahead, blocking his way. Ben should slow down, or at least change course.

  He did neither.

  Thirty-One

  Ben

  Ben twisted his wrist forward, causing the hoverbike to speed towards the cruisers. At the last moment, before colliding with them, he pulled the handlebars back towards his chest and angled up. The exhaust from the hoverbike’s engines stripped paint off the hood of one of the cruisers, it was so close.

  It was a strange thing to say, but this was probably the first time since the terrorist attacks that had taken his limbs and his mother that Ben had yelled out in pure joy.

  He was happy piloting a vehicle, any vehicle. He smiled as he weaved through the traffic flying up-level, just narrowly missing getting hit. The cruisers, sirens blaring, followed him up.

  Ben led the two police cruisers through the narrow alleys in between apartment blocks and super skyscrapers. He ducked, dipped, and juked in and out of the tightest spaces he could find, hoping that the cops wouldn’t follow. They did. It became clear that he wasn’t dealing with amateurs. He needed to turn up the danger a bit.

  Ben saw a fair bit of construction up ahead. With it came a lot of scaffolding. And then he saw them.

  Garbage chutes.

  Ben twisted the accelerator forward and leaned over hard, speeding his hoverbike up. He’d missed the roar of an engine, even if this time it was between his legs. He’d missed the feeling of the wind in his face and the g-forces that pushed him back when he accelerated.

  Ben had to duck as he sped directly into the maze of scaffolding. He took a couple of scrapes and cuts as he just barely fit through. Construction workers dived out of the way. Some jumped off the scaffolding; only their mag harnesses kept them from plummeting to probable deaths.

  The two cruisers followed as far as they could, but not into the scaffolding. There was no way they’d fit in there. But they followed just outside of it, determined not to let him out of their sights.

  Here we go. Mom, I may be seeing you sooner than I thought.

  Ben took a sharp turn up into the garbage chute outside the super skyscraper. Just as he got started navigating the chute, he got a call on his HUD. It was Morgan.

  “Captain, oh Captain….where the hell are you?” asked Morgan.

  “I’m a little busy!” he shouted.

  “So, close then?” she asked.

  “Yes, I’m close. Shit!” Ben looked behind him. The chute caught fire, and was threatening to catch up with him before the cops. “Just don’t leave without me! End call!”

  Ben knew that he couldn’t follow the garbage chute all the way up, since it went to the top of the super skyscraper, far above the public docks. Plus, someone was bound to use the chute for its original purpose. Even as he thought it, he saw pieces of plaster falling down from above.

  Ducking down so that he didn’t lose his head on the top of the chute, Ben managed to swing one leg over and have both on one side of the hoverbike. He took one hand off the handlebars and took out his pistol. Simultaneously he jumped and fired at the canvas in front of him.

  He couldn’t imagine his mom would approve, but somebody up there liked him, because not only did his plan work—he burst through the canvas, free from the triple threat of falling plaster, burning garbage chute, and the hoverbike itself—but he managed to burst through more or less at the height of the nearest level rather than between them, where his fall would have been further. He still managed to land hard on his back, but he was alive.

  The hoverbike quickly tangled with the chute and ignited the material around the tank, which led to a partial explosion and the spectacular sight of hoverbike parts ricocheting off in all directions. That caught everyone’s attention, leaving him free to get up and discreetly walk away. He checked the nearest notification board and nearly fell over all over again.

  He was on level thirty.

  Somebody really was looking out for him up there.

  Ben could see the public docks. He just had to walk past the shops nearby to get to them, and get to his ship, the Lost. Covered in scrapes, cuts, and bruises, people justifiably gave him weird looks as he passed.

  Not that he cared. All he cared about was that he was still alive and not in police custody.

  Then he saw an all-news bulletin across the newsstand he was walking past. His heart almost pounded out of his chest for a moment. Were they really sending out a bulletin on him? He though back to the cop in the hallway. Shit, this was so much worse than he’d imagined—

  Then he saw the alert.

  “Atlas lost!” said the headline link transmitted into his HUD as he passed. He didn’t want to, but couldn’t help himself.

  “Open link,” said Ben. His HUD opened the video news story.

  Thirty-Two

  Ben

  “In the latest on the historic mission of peace by the Atlas, the UEF has now confirmed the widely circulated rumor that all communications, both primary and secondary, have been lost with the state-of-the-art dreadnought. Sources say that after their scheduled fold jump, the Navy has not been able to get in contact with the crew. There is a growing consensus that the AIC, who were meant to meet with the Atlas on Vassar-1, are responsible. I go now to our reporter Tracy Hashimoto on Calatan station, outside AIC-controlled space.” A beautiful DC news reporter appeared in a video window on Ben’s HUD.

  “Thank you, Vanya. I’m here with Navy Admiral Linda White. Admiral, do you have any comments on the reports saying that all communication has been lost with the Atlas?”

  Next to her stood a stoic, professional-looking woman clad in a stars- and bars-adorned uniform. “All we can say at this moment is that we’re having trouble raising the Atlas, but that’s no reason to worry. Often, after fold jumps, communications can be temporarily lost. Now, I assure you and your viewers that we are doing everything in our power and can guarantee that the crew of the Atlas are doing everything they can to restore said communications,” said Admiral White.

  “How about the families of those on board who’ve been trying to reach the Navy, asking about the status of their loved ones? What do you have to say to them?” asked Hashimoto.

  Admiral White gave her an obvious dirty look. “I would tell them not to worry. Their loved ones are on the most advanced, safe, and heavily-armed ship ever sent into space. Even in the very unlikely event that they were met with any resistance, I’d assure those families of those brave men and women that they’re more than equipped to handle and dispose of any opposition.”

  Ben slowed, but didn’t stop in his tracks. This wasn’t news, not really. He’d known the very first rumors were likely true ever since he’d seen those detailed schematics on the Atlas that the Oblivion had. But somehow, hearing the government admit it made it hit home for him.

  He closed out the video window and took a moment to digest what he’d just heard. What was he going to do? He could ignore it, and leave his father to his fate. Then again, he did captain a ship now. Well, sort of. Could he convince Ace and Morgan to go try and find him?

  Should he? It would put them all in danger, on a mission they almost certainly wanted nothing to do with.

  “Hey you!” Ben heard a man yell. He looked over and saw an angry-looking officer coming toward him. He raised a rifle, and there were muffled screams. He had black soot all down one side of his uniform. It was the same one he’d dragged off the hoverbike, Ben was sure of it. “Don’t move!”

  Naturally Ben ran. No shots were fired, as he’d hoped. Raising a rifle in a crowd would get that cop reprimanded. Firing it would do much worse for his career.

  “Call Morgan,” Ben ordered
his HUD. “Now!”

  Ben figured that he must’ve really pissed that cop off, because he was firing at him into a crowd of people. It wasn’t a dense crowd, but still.

  “Let me guess,” Morgan said. “You’re really close this time.”

  The crowd was thinning. The cop would start shooting soon. Just then, a bullet whizzed past him.

  “What do you think?” Ben ducked. “Be prepped to launch!”

  “Was that a gunshot?”

  “Just be ready! End call!”

  Ben saw the Lost on the other side of the public docks. He looked back to see how close his pursuer was, and almost soiled himself when he saw the one cop had turned into six cops, somehow. His natural leg ached, so he let the metal one do the brunt of the work as it pushed him just a little bit faster.

  As Ben was less than thirty feet away from the Lost, he saw Ace calmly walk out onto the open loading ramp.

  He held a very large gun.

  Without a word, Ace opened up. Ben had to duck as the shots just barely missed taking off his head. He closed the distance quickly, then dove onto the loading ramp.

  Ace calmly spun around. Ben looked back to see the damage Ace had caused. Two of the cops were down, their comrades checking on them while shooting back, their bullets bouncing off the Lost’s shields.

  “Dammit, stop shooting!”

  “You’re welcome,” Ace said in a monotone voice as he followed Ben up the loading ramp.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here!” Ben yelled as he reached the cockpit of the small ship.

  “Thought you’d never ask,” said Morgan from the pilot’s seat. She decoupled the docking locks and slowly ascended.

  Ace sauntered in.

  “What the hell was that?” Ben barked, right up in Ace’s grill. He couldn’t say why he was so angry about it. He’d killed a cop already today, but he hadn’t meant to. Somehow the distinction mattered to Ben. Maybe it was the casual way that Ace had done it.