by Joshua James
“Other than looking for you? The Atlas. We heard survivors were being herded there. Needed to take a look, see what—if anything—we could do,” said Ben.
“Then we spotted your group, crossing the street to this park here,” Tomas said.
“Well, you found me.” She hesitated. “The others?”
Ben glanced at Tomas. “That’s a bit of a story.”
“You mean, there are others that made it?”
Tomas nodded.
Ada sat back, stunned. She’d held out hope, but she hadn’t really expected them to make it. She’d assumed they were all dead. “Come to think of it, how the hell did you guys survive?”
“That’s a bit of a story, too,” Ben said.
Ada looked back at the corpses of her friends one last time. She’d watched so many die. She wanted to bring them back with her. To bury them, to honor them like the little girl, but that just wasn’t practical. “I think I’d like to hear a story with a happy ending.”
Ben and Tomas shared a dark glance full of meaning. “I wouldn’t say that,” Tomas said. “But we’ll tell you on the way.”
“The way where?” Ada asked.
“To safety,” Ben said.
“The bunker?” Ada asked excitedly. “We tried so hard to find it, but nobody knows this damn city without a HUD, and—”
“No,” Ben said, cutting her off. He shared another dark glance with Tomas. “Let’s just start walking, and we’ll explain everything.”
Two
What Happened?
Ben’s world was black. He tried opening his eyes, but the world was blurry and out of focus. His head pounded. The pain radiated from under and outside his skull.
The last thing he remembered was the crash. That, and….
“Oh God. Dad?” Ben shot up off the floor so fast his head started to spin.
“Relax!” shouted Tomas. “Sit back down.” He was next to Ben, restraining him.
Ben stared around him. Wherever they were, it looked like it was halfway through a demolition project. “Where are we?”
“We’re in the city,” Tomas said. “Taking cover.”
“I…” Ben pushed Tomas away, stumbling around a bit. “I just remember the crash. And my dad. I found him! He’s alive! And—”
“I know,” Tomas said. “You passed out. I heard you. In your sleep.”
Ben stared at him. “It was a dream?”
“I mean, it happened. But you were, like, reliving it.”
Then reality flooded back for Ben. They’d tried to follow the footsteps of the Shapeless that looked like his father, but it was hopeless. With the help of those tentacles, it was too fast. They’d been wandering ever since.
“Come on, sit down,” Tomas said as he watched realization wash over Ben. “Over here.” He managed to grab hold of Ben’s arm, and guided him over to a booth.
“How long?”
“A few hours. Maybe half a day.”
Too long, Ben thought. They needed to get moving. Now he could see that they were in a restaurant made to look like an old-fashioned Earth diner. Earth nostalgia was big in the colonies, even while they shouted anti-Earth slogans.
“So you saw him, too?” Ben’s vision started to steady. The multiple images of what he saw started to line up. He just needed a couple of minutes to get his bearings.
“I saw it,” Tomas said. “Back there. We had to save you from it.”
“We? Where’s Ace? He was there, right?”
Tomas shook his head.
Then it hit Ben. Ace was dead. It was like he had to focus on little pieces of his memory for it to come into focus. “He took a bullet to the head,” Ben said dumbly, like he was watching it happen.
“He’s gone,” Tomas said. Though his eyes watered, his voice stayed calm and his face didn’t waver.
“Saving me,” Ben whispered. He looked down at the table. Despite the destruction around them, the table was eerily unaffected. It was set for the next diner. He angrily swept everything off the table in front of him, sending old-fashioned salt and pepper shakers flying. A bottle of ketchup shattered on the floor.
“Shit, Ben, you can’t...” Tomas hurried over to the windows of the diner and looked out.
“Sorry, I just—” Ben shook his head. “I keep losing my people.”
“Your people?” Tomas frowned. “That asshole might have called you ‘Cap,’ but that doesn’t make you responsible for him.”
“He always had my back,” Ben shot back angrily. Something about the ‘asshole’ comment pissed him off, even if he’d called Ace that plenty of times. “And since Morgan—excuse me, Clarissa—turned out to be lying to both of us, he was about the only guy I could trust.” He paused. “Until you and Ada, of course.”
Tomas’ features softened. “We’re all doing the best we can out here. You speak up, people listen. Simple as that. Some people have that gene. My old man did.” He seemed wistful for a moment. “I don’t. That’s how it goes. Point is, no matter who follows who out here, nobody’s to blame. Ace made his choice. He tried to save you—and me, for that matter. So let’s make it count.”
“You’re right.” Ben got up. A thought occurred to him. “Did you find Clarissa? You and Ace?”
Tomas shook his head. “Nope. Neither did LeFay.”
“LeFay?”
“She went with us, but she had some other plans.” He paused. “She seemed to think she knew where Clarissa was.”
“Where?” Ben asked.
“The Atlas.”
Ben must have looked impossibly confused to Tomas. “That Shapeless thing in the sky?”
Tomas shrugged. “She was crazy.”
“Was?”
Tomas quickly outlined the mall escapade, and the ship that LeFay had flown off in.
Ben shook his head in shock. “I think…” He paused, picturing the red pleasure ship in his mind. “I think I saw her fly up there.”
“What?” Tomas shook his head incredulously. “It was way too chaotic up there to know that.”
“A red pleasure cruiser tends to stand out.”
“I guess so,” Tomas sighed. “Like I said. Crazy.”
Ben nodded. “You didn’t see Ada, did you?”
“Down here?” Tomas shook his head. “She went out with you, right?”
“She crashed,” he said, seeing Tomas tighten his grip on his rifle. “Bailed first, though.”
“I haven’t had any time to look. Had to grab you and get off the streets first. Regroup. The fight out there, up the sky, it’s done. No fighter ships left. No volunteers left.”
“But we expected that, right? We need to get out of here, Tomas.”
“I dunno if that’s a great idea,” Tomas said. “At least not yet.”
“And why’s that?”
“You can barely stand up straight, for one.”
“But I can stand, which means I can walk. Which means I can move. What more do we need?” Ben talked a big game, but he was still pretty unsteady on his feet. “The longer we wait to regroup back at the bunker, the harder it’s gonna be to find the others. And I’ve already held us up long enough.”
Tomas looked him up and down, then shrugged. “Okay. You win. Here.” He tossed Ben a rifle.
Ben snatched it out of the air, and Tomas nodded approvingly. Ben got the impression the big man had been testing him. If he’d fumbled it, he wondered what Tomas would have done. But it didn’t matter; he’d passed that little test. Of course, he’d seen three rifles tossed his way. He’d just grabbed the middle one, but Tomas didn’t need to know that little detail.
Ben checked the weapon, making sure it was loaded, then released the safety. Tomas was right. He wasn’t ready. The world still wobbled a bit around him, but he powered through. At this point only one thing was on his mind: find the others, then find whatever his father had become.
Tomas led the way out of the diner. Staring down the sights of his gun, he made sure to check every corner, every shad
ow, before moving. There was a big difference between the two men when it came to leading the way. Ben operated on instinct. Tomas led like the highly-trained solider he was, surgically.
“How you doing back there?” asked Tomas, before entering the same alley that LeFay had led them down just a day before. How he’d found his way back was beyond Ben, but here they were.
“Let’s just keep going. We need to regroup with the others. Take that captain’s cruiser off this hellscape. Warn others of what’s coming.”
And kill my father if we see him.
Tomas looked tired to Ben. Probably the way he looked, too; they were both weary and spent. But there was something else in Tomas’ eyes. Determination. “That’s not what I asked,” he said.
“I know.” Ben took advantage of his false limbs. His metallic leg bore the brunt of his weight. He used his robotic arm to keep himself up and stable, propped his body against the sides of buildings as he walked, as the world around him still spun a bit.
“Here we are,” Tomas said. “Now all we need is—oh, never mind.” The security gate they’d used to enter the Government District was gone, lost in a heap of rubble.
It hadn’t been a full twenty-four hours, but the Government District looked quite different than the one Ben and Tomas had left. Refuge and wrecked ships littered the mostly open space. Gigantic pieces of asphalt, concrete, and stone had been gouged out of the sidewalks and streets by dropped bombs.
“Just like before, we need to stay low and move fast,” Tomas said. “In three, two, move!”
Tomas didn’t look back. Ben followed as fast as he could hobble.
They were about two hundred yards from the Government District’s clandestine entrance to the Senate Circle. In between the two spots, it was mostly open ground. Only two structures stood between them. There was a series of gazebos connected by walkways over an artificial pond, meant for nice lunches or just a rest in a politician’s busy day. The second was the lone train station stop in the district. Normally meant to ferry the lower-tier workers, janitors, cooks, and groundskeepers, it had been shut down as soon as the attack started.
Tomas and Ben made it about halfway to the Senate Circle, just past the gazebos, when they froze in their tracks. Appearing up above, slowly floating into view, was a fair imitation of a UEF dreadnought.
“What the hell is that?” Ben asked.
“Popped up when the Atlas went down,” Tomas said. “Like they grew right out of it.”
Two more of the huge warships left, Ben thought. “Super.” One of them clearly had a mission to carry out above the Government District.
Knowing that if they stayed out in the open, they’d be spotted and blown up by a cannon round, both Ben and Tomas quickly jumped to cover. Tomas hid behind a piece of fighter-ship engine that had rained down at some point during the air battle. Ben found the closest thing, a small pile of three bodies who must’ve all been gunned down together.
One thing Ben appreciated about space and the many planetary colonies around the universe? The lack of bugs. No flies flew around the dead bodies he took cover behind. But the smell, yeah, that was still there. It was only made worse by the fact that the sun hadn’t fallen yet.
Ben looked over the dead man he hid behind, up at the faux dreadnought. It let loose a barrage of missiles diagonally, down toward the Senate Circle. The first couple that hit, of course, exploded, blowing the roof off the government building. As one after the other followed, Ben realized they were in danger.
Pieces of the Senate Circle went flying in every direction. Large chunks of concrete and steel made for dangerous super-sized shrapnel. Ben got up and tried to run, but with each missile impact and explosion, the blast waves rippled out further and further. That, combined with the shaking of the ground, knocked him off his feet.
Tomas simply curled up in a fetal position—not out of fear, but to reduce his body area, Ben was sure. Less body area meant he was less likely to catch shrapnel. Unlike Ben, he didn’t get up and try to run. It was the right move for him, Ben realized. Tomas could depend on the huge ship engine he hid behind to provide protection. If he was meant to die there and then, running wouldn’t help him at all.
Ben hugged the ground, exposed and gritting his teeth through the last salvo of missiles. His purpose became clear. They needed to get off Vassar-1 and back to UEF space. Then, he needed to warn Earth and her local solar system colonies that death was coming.
These aliens would keep advancing on mankind. He had no doubt of that. He felt it in his bones, just as sure as the shaking from the Senate Circle.
So much dust and sand kicked up that it created a thick cloud. The haze was so substantial that Ben couldn’t see Tomas clearly, even though he was only a dozen feet or so away.
After a full minute, Ben called out for Tomas. He almost choked on all the dust. He could just make out the silhouette of the faux UEF dreadnought, and the glow of its engines. It was flying away. “Job well done,” Ben whispered to himself. “Bastards.”
The lack of visibility, the jarring attack on the Senate Circle, and the effects of the concussion he’d suffered made Ben feel queasy. He needed to get out of here, maybe sit down for a little bit. The latter didn’t feel like a valid option, though.
“Coming to you,” Ben heard the ex-Special Forces member shout back. He sat tight.
Dad, were you commanding that alien ship? Killing what little resistance was left?
As Tomas grabbed Ben by the arm, he almost jumped in surprise. He kept looking up at the sky. Ben tried his best to put out of his mind the fact that his father was alive, had killed Ace, and had tried to kill him. He tried, but that was a Herculean, if not impossible, task. His mind told him it was just another Shapeless, but Ben felt something different in his heart.
Tomas practically dragged Ben towards the only place near them that provided cover from the dust and everything else. It was an underground transit station; Ben hadn’t known it was there. He wasn’t even aware that something like this existed on Vassar-1, and he was sure that Tomas hadn’t been either, but the duo made their way as fast as they could to the entrance.
Looking down into the darkness of the station, Ben was relieved to be able to breathe freely again.
“Any idea what’s down there?” Ben asked hoarsely.
“No idea,” Tomas said, “but it beats up here.”
“You sure about that?”
Tomas grunted. It was almost pitch black. In their shared experience, going underground hadn’t always worked out for the best.
“After you,” Ben said, trying to force some levity through the hornet’s nest that was his mind at the moment.
“Screw that. Let’s get some light first.” Tomas reached into one of his pockets. Out of it he took a light stick, meant for similar situations when you needed to light up a dark room in a hurry. He cracked it in the middle, activating the luminous liquid inside, and threw it down the stairs.
You’ve got to be shitting me.
Three
Nine Lives
Clarissa fell through the air, holding onto LeFay’s lifeless husk of a body. She saw the city, the ground, rushing up fast from behind her savior. If she didn’t make a decision—and a good one—quickly, she was going to be a splatter of meat and blood on the street.
That LeFay had flight alterations was common knowledge to Clarissa. When they’d been younger, LeFay had loved to go out wingsuit flying. When she’d started to go too far with her alterations, one of the first things she’d done was give herself wings.
Clarissa vividly remembered the first time LeFay had jumped without a suit. She’d caused a general panic among the other flyers, who were sure they were witnessing a suicide. Then LeFay had deployed retractable webbed wings between her arms, hips, and legs, and laughed hysterically about the looks on everyone’s faces for a week.
Then she’d done the same the thing the next weekend. It took a few weeks before the joke got old, or at least Clarissa had th
ought so. LeFay never got tired of the shock and revulsion she could generate with her biohacks.
Until one day she did. The day Clarissa had left.
But now she was back, and desperately needed LeFay’s wings.
With her power core gone, Clarissa knew that many of LeFay’s alterations wouldn’t work; or at least, they wouldn’t work in tandem with her biological systems. LeFay had loved to brag about her marriage of biology and technology, until Clarissa couldn’t stand to hear more. And she’d been willing to hear more than most.
“Goddamn you!” she screamed into LeFay’s unhearing ears, her face right up next to LeFay’s, a fist full of material balled up in one hand.
There weren’t any good options. Every landing choice meant serious pain and injury; it was just a matter of which was worse than the other. She could’ve risked just hitting the street, using LeFay as a cushion, but she didn’t want to do that.
Clarissa yanked at the back of LeFay’s arm until the long, curved portion of false skin peeled away. It helped that she knew most of LeFay’s hidden compartments and faux skin. Maybe not the latest, but she didn’t need the latest. She needed her oldest tricks.
She reached in and yanked hard. Instead of a flight wing, a modified muzzle barrel popped out. Clarissa almost tumbled off her back. She pushed it aside and found the support for the flight wing.
She pulled it out. Instantly the wing caught air, and LeFay started to barrel roll.
Clarissa hung on desperately with one hand, her other hand grabbing in vain for LeFay’s other hand, flopping around as they were buffeted.
She finally grabbed it, her fingernails digging into it and drawing blood—all except her ring finger, which was over the faux skin. She yanked it clear, and this time managed to get the flight wing to pop out on the first try.
The roll stopped.
Without the largest flight wing, which would run between her legs and all the way down to her feet, LeFay and Clarissa couldn’t truly glide. But with both arm winglets out, she could at least direct them in a controlled fall.
