by Joshua James
Clarissa hugged LeFay’s lifeless body tightly to her as they fell. Behind her, she heard a strangled screech from the Saito creature’s direction.
Then LeFay’s core detonated, engulfing that entire side of the Atlas in the explosion and flames.
Thirty
“And you’re sure it flew up into the Atlas?”
Ben had taken two more passes at the Atlas, while one of the others in the Blue squadron had added another hell-gel missile to the Atlas’ open, gaping wound. If the ship weren’t some kind of living alien abomination, its superstructure would be punctured by now, and the entire thing would have broken in half.
He could hear the incredulity of some of the other pilots as they said as much to each other. Until they understood that what they were up against was aliens and not the UEF, their sense of inferiority next to the UEF was only going to grow.
But that wasn’t Ben’s problem at the moment. “Blue One, we got knocked off our run. Request another.”
“Go for it, Blue Seven, you’re it. We’re out after you. Then we’ll start sending in traditional munitions.”
That might actually work, Ben thought. At this point, the damage to the Atlas was so severe that standard missiles might be able to make a difference.
Then again, Ben could make a difference, too.
“Okay, starting our run,” he said. Once again, Blue Two came up alongside as his wingman, but there was almost nothing to worry about from the ship now. Whatever power it had, it appeared that it was no longer directing it toward its cannons. There were no anti-aircraft cannons of any kind firing.
“This is going to be easy,” Blue Two said.
“Don’t say that,” Ben said. “That’s the one thing we never say up here.”
He lined up his approach. He let his thumbs rest naturally on the release button.
What the hell?
Ben couldn’t believe his eyes as what looked like two people jumped out of the Atlas.
“Holy shit, that’s a helluva way to go,” Blue Two said.
A split second later, a massive explosion blew out the side of the Atlas.
Ben spun away from the explosion, then swung back around. “Blue Two, you got a good lock on where that explosion happened?”
“Sure do,” he said. “It was close to primary already.”
“Well, now it’s our new target.”
“Copy that,” his wingman said.
Ben came in tight alongside the injured Atlas, fire kissing the bottom of his ship. He lined up on the massive new hole in Atlas’ side.
“Missiles away,” he said, sending his hell-gel rockets right up into the gut of the alien ship. He could almost sense the beast of a ship shudder at the deep explosion that occurred from the missile impact. In his mind’s eye, Ben could see the incendiary going to work, spreading and burning as it went.
“That’s a good hit,” Blue Two said.
As his wingman peeled away, Ben started his own maneuver out from under the massive ship. Suddenly something landed hard on the nose of his fighter. It was heavy and unexpected enough that it caused him to briefly lose control. He struggled, but somehow managed to regain stability. “What the hell?”
Ben stared in shock at a man hanging off the nose of his fighter. He’d managed to wrap his arms around the nose cone and was hanging on for dear life, or at least it seemed so to Ben.
He dove hard for the ground, getting some separation from the Atlas, which was starting to definitely fall from the sky now. The man started tearing off pieces of the nose cone as easily as one would peel an orange. It was clearly a Shapeless.
Above, Ben could sense the Atlas falling from the sky. The mission was over. This wasn’t a fight he needed to win.
“So long, you bastard!” he shouted aloud as he grabbed the eject handle next to his seat. He pulled it, but nothing happened.
“Attention. Error,” said the HUD inside Ben’s ship. He saw movement along the edges of the cockpit, and realized that tendrils were shooting out from the mystery alien’s stomach. They wrapped around the cockpit, preventing him from ejecting.
Ben’s mind raced. He grabbed the stick again, but the controls were next to useless. The creature must have done damage to the flight surfaces. He at least managed to keep the nose up, but he couldn’t arrest the fighter’s steep descent.
His visibility was too restricted to see what was coming. The ship hit something, maybe the corner of a building’s roof; he couldn’t be sure. The world outside the fighter spun end over end. But the impact shook the Shapeless creature loose and sent it flying.
Free from what had been restricting it, Ben’s cockpit escape pod ripped free of the dead fighter’s fuselage and shot up in the air. It immediately filled with safety foam as it tumbled to the street below.
Ben fought to keep consciousness in the jarring impact that followed. The safety foam hadn’t had enough time to fill the cockpit, which only gave him half the protection he needed. His body ached all over, but he was alive. That was all he kept telling himself as he climbed out of the pod.
Ben fell to the street and sat there in stunned silence for several seconds, trying to catch his breath. The constant flow of adrenaline started to subside, leaving him feeling sick and exhausted.
Movement grabbed his attention. On the side of the building opposite where he sat, Ben saw the Shapeless. It clung to the structure and let out a loud screech. Then it jumped down to the street and walked unsteadily toward him. The creature seemed mostly human-shaped, except for the tendrils that seemed to be propelling it forward.
Ben desperately searched his body for a weapon. All he had was a pistol holstered on the side of his uniform pants leg. He grabbed it, and tried not to think about what condition it might be in. He barely remembered putting it there to begin with.
He watched as, out of the smoke and fires of the Vassar-1 streets, the alien emerged who had taken down his ship. As it got closer, its features became clearer. It was exceptionally humanoid, he realized. It was even holding a pistol of its own, which seemed odd. Something about the features looked familiar—
Ben felt his jaw drop. “Dad?” he whispered.
It was Lee Saito. His features were bloody and distorted, but there was no mistaking them.
Am I dead? Is this hell?
Ben fought back tears as he tried his best to rationalize that it wasn’t his father coming towards him—it was one of the Shapeless—but something in his mind wouldn’t let him. It rejected that idea. This was his father. This was the man he’d been searching for. This was who he’d come to the edge of the galaxy to find.
Ben raised his pistol. His hands were shaking.
Lee didn’t slow. His eyes were black and cloudy, as if they’d oil injected into them. From his waist Shapeless tendrils extended, razor-lined and wild. Black veins protruded against his skin, giving him a vascular look. He opened his mouth wide and let out a bone-chilling screech.
Then he charged.
Ben froze. He couldn’t pull the trigger. His hand refused to obey his commands.
Lee was almost on top of him.
Shoot, he screamed at himself, shoot! Ben quivered, desperately trying to squeeze the trigger.
Gunshots ripped into Lee, causing him to stumble and tumble on the street. More super-heated high-velocity rounds hit the ground around him as he tried to get up.
“Run!” screamed someone behind him.
Ben rolled over to find Ace rushing up, with Tomas at his side. Both had their rifles up, firing at Lee as they closed with Ben.
“What?” Ben said in a daze. “How?”
“Great questions,” Tomas said as he reloaded. “We’ll answer them later. Let’s go!”
“Now!” Ace said as he shook Ben out of his stupor.
Lee got up off the street. His alien features conveyed rage: pure violent, homicidal rage.
“Screw it.” Ace grabbed Ben by his arm and started to drag him away.
He didn’t make it fa
r. A single well-placed bullet hit Ace between the eyes.
He was dead before he hit the ground.
“Ace!” yelled Tomas.
Ben looked up at Lee, who held a smoking pistol. He turned it on Ben, but before he could squeeze off a shot, Ben raised his pistol and unloaded into the center of Lee’s chest. He drove his father back, rising to his feet and screaming as he did so.
Tomas joined in, lighting Lee up with his rifle. Together, the two of them pushed him back a dozen feet. Perhaps it was the fact that he wasn’t fully Shapeless yet, or maybe there was something else at work; whatever the reason, the Shapeless tendrils extending out of Lee’s body whipped around, spinning him and dragging him off into the smoke and fire of the city.
Ben looked down at Ace. Both of his eyes were wide open as a pool of blood grew under his head.
Ben wanted to puke. Nothing made sense.
“Goddamn it,” Tomas mumbled as he looked down at Ace. “Goddamn it.”
“This is my fault,” Ben said. “This is all my fault.”
“We gotta move. We’re too exposed out here.”
“This is my fault,” Ben said again.
He felt Tomas grab him by the back of his flight-suit collar and haul him to his feet. “The thing whose fault it is went that way,” he said, motioning in the direction that Lee had run. “We can either go back to the bunker and regroup, or we can go after him.”
The ground rumbled beneath their feet. Off in the distance, the Atlas had crashed into the center of downtown. Ben watched the flames begin to rise from the destruction.
Something hardened inside him. He pulled free of Tomas grip and felt the cool metal of the pistol in his hand.
“We’re going after him.”
Book 5: Beyond Ruin
Prologue
Lunar Police Detective Sergeant Rowan Sydal was a simple man. There wasn’t much he needed in order to be happy: just two things. One of them lay asleep next to him.
Sydal heard a beeping noise in his head. All he wanted was to ignore it, sleep in with his wife, and enjoy his weekend. Instead, he knew that sound meant he had to get up. The only question was for what, and where did he have to go?
Sydal lived on the dark side of Earth’s moon. Apartments there cost significantly less than those bathed in light and breathable atmosphere, and they needed to save money. It was the only way they’d get off that gray rock.
Sydal sat up in bed, swung his feet over to the side, and looked out his bedroom window. It was almost pitch black. The only source of illumination came from the stars.
Can’t ignore them. They’ll just keep calling.
“Answer call,” ordered Sydal through his HUD as he wiped sleep and any hope of a pleasant morning out of his eyes.
“Detective? Sorry. Did I wake you?” asked Officer Marsh, the designated police dispatcher for the third shift.
“I can’t remember the last time the third shift DPD didn’t wake me, Marsh,” whispered Sydal, not wanting to wake his wife Maria. “Just get to the point, Bob.”
“Looks like we got a homicide for you, sir. Chief wanted you on the case. That’s why I’m calling so early.”
“Great.” It was hard to be sarcastic while whispering over a HUD, but Sydal hoped he’d managed. “Where?”
“Under the dome. Waterman-Lau Docks.”
Even better. I’m gonna have to deal with company assholes. Can this morning get any better? “What number?”
“What’s that, sir?”
“The company has a whole hell of a lot of docks on this rock. Which one?”
“23. Near Bierman’s Crater.”
“Got it. Tell the chief I’ll be there in thirty.”
“We can send a thruster unit to pick you up.”
“And get shot down by a kid with a pea-blaster who hates cops? No thanks. I’ll take the bus.” The truth was, Sydal just didn’t want the awkward quality time with a robot cop unit, if he could help it.
There was a long pause while Marsh seemed to cast around for how to respond to that. He settled on the wrong argument. “The chief would prefer—”
“The chief can screw himself. End call,” Sydal said. He took another minute or two to stare out at space. How did he get here? It was a long way from living on the bottom level of Chicago, back on Earth, but he still felt trapped, despite having left the planet to escape that very feeling.
Sydal felt Maria’s small, warm hand on his exposed thigh. Always warm, her body was like a little furnace, and that wasn’t because of her Latin temper. At least, not completely.
“Why aren’t you laying down?” she asked in a groggy half mumble that was barely intelligible. Luckily, Sydal was an expert translator.
“Work,” Sydal said. He wrapped his fingers around his wife’s hand on his thigh.
“What time is it?”
“Way too early.”
“I thought today we were going to—”
“Maybe after,” he said. “Depending on what this shit is.” He paused. “Just go back to sleep. Hopefully I’ll be back before you wake up.”
Sydal gently removed his wife’s hand from his thigh and stood up.
Ten minutes later, he struggled to get a lid on his coffee as he joined the line to get on the forty-five bus from the dark side of the Moon to the Dome. Specifically, he was going to get off at the Navy docks, then walk to the Waterman-Lau sections. From there he could take the lunar tram. It wasn’t the most convenient trip, but it was better and a whole lot cheaper than hiring a rover.
A little coffee spilled out on Sydal’s hand. He cursed the coffee, his life, and the damn moon. The person in line in front of him turned around and gave him a dirty look.
It took almost ten minutes, but Sydal finally made it to the front of the bus line. But just as he got there, the LTS worker that managed said line started to close the airlock. There was no way Sydal was just going to wait there patiently for another bus in fifteen minutes. “Stop. Don’t close that airlock,” he ordered.
“Sorry, sir. UEF regulations. We’re only allowed to board a maximum of—”
Sydal flashed his detective badge. “You can make an exception this time. It’s official police business.”
The LTS employee hesitated for half a second. It wouldn’t be the first time Sydal had been shot down by a bored asshole who was willing to roll the dice that he was just running late and full of shit.
But the man only grumbled to himself as he reopened up the airlock door. Sydal climbed onto the short walkway that connected the depressing buildings of the dark side with the docked bus. Then he got aboard the bus, bulkheads closing behind him.
Soon as he stepped on the bus, Sydal regretted not waiting for the next one. It was packed from wall to wall. He ended up pinned inside by the door, looking outside the window. If anyone moved, he and his coffee would likely smash up against it, getting the precious life-giving liquid all over himself.
“Welcome to LTS Line 45, service to the Naval Docks. Please move away from the doors as we depart.” The automate voice of the 45 Bus’ public announcement system went on to talk about what to do in case of emergencies as the transport backed away from the dark side airlock.
Like most on that bus, Sydal took this route a lot. He knew that it was about a twenty-minute ride before they got to the dome itself. One big energy burst from the transit station, and the bus would just ride inertia and a handful of thrusters to the dome station. Then another ten or so before they reached the Navy Docks. Once there, the tram would’ve taken another ten minutes or so. Why he’d told Officer Marsh he’d only be a half an hour was beyond him. It’d already been that long already.
But the dead weren’t going anywhere. They could wait.
The moon’s surface was boring. All Sydal saw were the lights of the dark side’s facilities growing more distant, smaller, and the endless grayish-black moonscape as the bus slid over. Somehow the ride being smooth made it worse. He couldn’t even feel the only exciting part of the
large rock—the topography.
Sydal switched his focus from the now-disappearing dark side to the Earth’s moon’s dome. Made from super-hard but light dura-plastics, the city-sized dome kept in breathable atmosphere and climate controls, providing the lucky denizens there all the comforts of home, but without the overcrowding. At least, that was its initial selling point.
Once the military had moved from their stations orbiting the Earth to the ultimate satellite of the moon, the population under the moon’s dome soared. Constant work was underway outside the edges to expand it. With that influx of workers and new residents had come an increase in crime. Sydal’s days had shifted from mostly paperwork to a constant stream of violent crime cases in the last few years.
He hated it.
The moon dome was a beacon of light that stood out against the darkness of the moon itself. It started in the shadows, but expanded into the full light provided by the distant sun. Everything went from gloomy to brightly lit and busy as soon as the bus got close.
Sydal ignored the automated LTS voice as he exited the bus at the entrance to the Naval Docks. It was so much more than just a place to build, load, and unload ships. It was a center of commerce on the moon.
Immediately upon entering the Naval Docks, Sydal’s HUD was assaulted by advertisements. He needed to update his ad-blocker software. It had been a couple of days, and new patches and workarounds came every few hours.
Closing pop-ups as he walked, Sydal tried to make his way through the throngs of people towards a large, glowing neon Waterman-Lau sign. It was always crowded, no matter what time of day or night. Not only were there people on their way to their mundane office jobs—endlessly relocated to the moon for tax reasons—but plenty of others besides. Military making their way to their ships, dock workers and ship builders on break getting a bite to eat or a stiff drink, police bots watching the crowds, and enterprising vendors in a constant battle to carve out space for their stands against the jostling crowds.
