by Joshua James
Ben finally pried pieces of the alien tendril off his head. “Stop!” he screamed at his father.
Saito, putting all his new alien heft into crushing LeFay’s windpipe, slowly raised his head to look at his son. The remaining Shapeless child turned from the unconscious Tomas and Clarissa and began to make a slow approach toward Ben.
“Stop!” Ben screamed again.
“The offer is unchanged,” Saito said. “Join me, and I’ll let your friends go.”
Ben stared at the carnage around him. Ada appeared to be regaining her consciousness, but that would just put her in more danger.
“I’ll come with you,” he said.
Saito stared at Ben for a long moment, continuing to squeeze LeFay’s throat and threatening to pop her head like a balloon. Then he smiled.
One of his tendrils shot out and impaled the Shapeless child through its head. Then it flung it up over the buildings, out of sight. Saito let go of LeFay, who fell to the ground gasping for air.
He walked over to Ben. “So, shall we?”
Ben slowly got to his feet. Saito pointed back down the alleyway in the direction they’d come. “After you.”
Ben walked ahead with his father behind him, his tendrils making a strange sound as they slid across the uneven ground.
As he reached Ada, she was still on her knees. She stared up at him. “You can’t do this, Ben.”
Ben gave what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
Behind him, his father chuckled. Ben ignored him. “I promise.”
Twelve
Catching A Ride
LeFay’s neck hurt from that bastard standing on her, and her arms hurt from that damn Shapeless bitch kid attacking her. But mostly, her soul hurt from the getting asked the same question every five minutes by Tomas.
“And he’s just gonna let you use it?”
Maybe it was just his way of coping with the group’s somber mood. Apparently when nobody wanted to talk, Tomas took that as an invitation to bitch.
“Like I said, Vran owes me. And it’s time to pay the piper.”
“Must be some favors,” Tomas said. His voice was huskier than usual, or maybe it was just the burns on his now bare chest. God knows they must sting.
“I locked his ship down. Set up a new access key. Pretty sure it wasn’t broken,” she said.
“So you’re really not sure that the ship is even still there?” Tomas asked.
“No, I’m sure. Unless it somehow got blown up, which is doubtful. Like most shady characters I know, he kept it hidden. Think of it like a garage, a really big garage for a spaceship.”
“Wouldn’t that be a hangar?”
“Hangar, garage, whatever, flyboy. The point is, the ship will be there.”
“Gotta tell you, you’re not filling me with confidence,” Tomas said.
“I get that a lot,” LeFay said.
Clarissa was helping Ada walk. The Marine was all sorts of banged up inside and out, LeFay knew. She wasn’t really talking to anyone. She could hardly stand up straight. Arm draped around her shoulder, Clarissa was able to carry her weight despite her own nicks and bruises.
“We have to go back for him,” Ada said.
“We have to get off this rock,” Clarissa said. “Ben is alive. If we’re ever going to save him, we have to stay alive too.”
“Now for the tricky part,” LeFay said. She wasn’t lying when she’d said their ride wasn’t far from the safe house. She knew it because the safe house also happened to be near a city boundary.
City boundaries were just that. Just past the wall in front of them were the expanses of wild Vassar-1. Mostly untamed, it was a truly alien world, with animals, insects, and diseases unlike anything on Earth. Only those who’d lived there their whole lives had any immunities, or knowledge of the dangers in the sun-bleached grasslands.
The barrier that kept the slightly-adjusted atmosphere of the city was just thin plasma. It wasn’t meant to keep anything out; it only kept in the air that human beings were accustomed to. Still, transitioning through it was strange. It was hard to explain.
“This is gonna feel weird, guys. Even for me,” LeFay said after she climbed up on top of the city boundary wall. She helped the others up one by one. “Don’t overthink it. Just, you know, hold your breath and close your eyes, I guess. It’ll make the landing a little harder, but who cares, right?”
“This isn’t gonna, you know, mess us up or anything, is it?” asked Tomas as he slowly reached out for the plasma barrier.
“Just man up and go through.” LeFay picked Ada up easily, and held her in her arms.
“I’m fine,” Ada said.
“You’re weak as shit, and worse off than the rest of us. So just let me help you out.”
“Fine,” Ada said. “I guess this is what cyborgs are for.”
LeFay mock grunted. “Jeez, what do you eat, girl?”
Ada flipped her off.
When Tomas hesitated, LeFay rolled her eyes and jumped through. She instantly felt it grow noticeably harder to breathe. The mix of oxygen and carbon dioxide wasn’t quite the same as it was in the city.
Tomas and Clarissa jumped through behind her.
LeFay was sure that Clarissa felt differently than the rest of them. It was like returning home for the old farm girl. Or maybe it had been so long ago that she’d forgotten.
The lands outside the city were expansive. At first glance, it was far from hospitable. In fact, the first settlers had felt like they were sentenced to die of thirst and hunger in a wasteland. Below the dusty rolling hills and mountains, though, barely beneath the surface, were fertile farmland and vast reservoirs of fresh water.
“So are we just going to walk? How far away is this place?” Clarissa asked. “We don’t have any cover out here. No pilot—Shapeless, cultist, or otherwise—is going to miss us out here if we don’t get shelter soon.”
“I’m hurt, Claire,” LeFay said as she put Ada down. “Truly hurt. You really think I brought you all the way out here to get spotted by some Shapeless jock on a modified moped?”
She stopped at what looked like a little gray rock that looked out of place. After picking it up and throwing it away, she bent down and grabbed the soil.
“Uh, what are you doing?” Tomas asked.
“Digging for gold,” she said. “Now shut up for a second.”
Finally, her hand touched the corner of the buried tarp.
Bingo.
LeFay pulled up the tarp, and dirt and pebbles rolled off, revealing a metallic hatch. She entered in a code that unlocked it. Then she turned back and smiled at the group.
“Who’s down for some spelunking?” Of course no one answered. As always, she was in a better mood than anyone. Enduring years of extremely painful surgery and rehab might’ve helped her put a perspective on things.
LeFay grabbed the door handle and pulled it open. Under it was a little staircase that led down into darkness. Without any hesitation, she started walking on down. “These tunnels, they got ‘em all over the outskirts of the city. Been here for years.”
She wasn’t sure what possessed her to decide she was now a glorified tour guide. Maybe she really was as crazy as they said she was. And since she’d started most of those rumors herself, that was even more fascinating to consider. Eh, being a borderline schizophrenic had its upsides.
There were hanging lights every twenty feet or so along the path. Water dripped off the tunnel ceiling. On both sides of the slick, narrow path were shallow streams. All of it led downwards.
“Smugglers?” Tomas asked.
“More like drug and weapon dealers. Oh, and the occasional spy or two. But this tunnel, this one in particular? It’s a special brand of tunnel now. It belongs to pirates.”
“Wait,” Clarissa stopped. “Your friend with the ride is a pirate?”
“Did I not mention that before?”
“Shockingly enough, you didn’t,” Clarissa said. The
n LeFay saw the light bulb go off for her. “Wait a second. Please don’t tell me you mean who I think you mean.”
“Here we are,” LeFay said as the tunnel ended at a thick steel door. “My good friend Captain Daison Wan’s abode.”
“This is a really bad idea,” Clarissa said.
“Do you have any better ideas? Character flaws aside, he needs us to get off this planet, just like we need him. Not to mention, we have more than a few cuts and bruises to take care of, and his ship has a full medical suite. Hazards of his job, you know.”
“His ship is the Orion,” Clarissa said.
“That’s the one,” LeFay said.
“You know this guy and his ship?” Tomas asked Clarissa.
“Everybody does,” Clarissa said. “For all the wrong reasons.”
“People say that about me, too,” LeFay said.
“Fine,” Clarissa said. “We’re here now. But if he ends up shooting us or jettisoning us into space, it’s your fault.”
LeFay laughed. “I can live with that.”
A camera protruded out from above the door on an extended arm. It got right in LeFay’s face. She didn’t look surprised.
“You have a lot of nerve showing up at my door,” said a voice through a hidden speaker somewhere near the entrance.
“Hey, Wan. How’s it going?” LeFay asked. “Holding up well through the apocalypse?”
“What’s to stop me from tasing your ass right now and hacking into your damn brain for everything I need to get my ship flying again?”
“Manners?” LeFay answered.
“Try again.”
“Because it’s not just me out here, Wan,” LeFay said. “I have people that need your help as well.”
“Keep going.”
LeFay sighed. “And I have access to AIC intelligence bank accounts.”
“Which will be worthless after the universe learns that the capital is in flames.”
“There’s plenty of places it’ll still spend,” LeFay said. “And you know all of them.”
Wan was silent for several seconds. “LeFay?”
“Yeah, Wan?”
“I hate you.”
“Love you, too.”
The door swung open.
Epilogue
Ben walked beside the thing that had once been his father.
Neither of them spoke.
The thing’s face, beyond the obsidian-black eyes and some residue of the black oily substance that stained the inside of his mouth, looked like his father. The body, save for the strange tentacles it seemed to have sprouted, looked like his father too.
Ben’s logical mind told him that this was a Shapeless creature doing an uncanny impersonation of his father. He’d seen them do that before. It was, after all, their defining feature.
But all the Shapeless he’d seen before this had been people he didn’t know well. Simply acting human was enough to fool him, or anyone else not paying close attention.
But this was his father, the man he’d known all his life, and all the mannerisms and quirks were there. The subtle way he moved. The twitch of his eye. The way one arm swung more than the other.
His heart refused to process the possibility that buried somewhere inside this thing wasn’t his real father after all.
“You made the right decision,” the thing calling itself Lee said.
“You say that like you gave me a choice,” Ben said. “Either I came with you, or you murdered my friends.”
“Still.”
“What happened to you?” Ben asked, watching for any reaction on his father’s face.
But Lee remained unmoved. “That’s not important. What is important is what you’re going to become.”
“What if I don’t want to become anything? What then? Are you going to force me to become something?”
“I won’t need to force you to do anything.”
“Really? Because you forced me to come with you just now.”
“I gave you a choice.”
“Yeah, come with you or you murder my friends,” Ben said.
“They didn’t matter.”
“And I do?”
Lee stopped. Ben kept going a few steps until he noticed. He paused and looked back.
“Of course,” Lee said. “You’re all that matters right now.”
“Why? Because I’m your son?” Ben again searched Lee’s face, desperately searching for one little spark that indicated there was still a man in there to save.
Lee started to move again. “Come. I have so much to show you.”
He led Ben through the city. It was odd to move so freely. Ben walked by cultists who not only let him pass, but seemed to actively avoid him. He passed by Shapeless who, instead of chasing him and trying to slice him into little pieces, didn’t pay him any mind.
When they reached what was left of the Atlas, Ben saw only the molten remains gurgling in some ongoing chemical reaction, like a massive lava rock. The shape of the ship was nearly unrecognizable. Floating in front of it was a dropship-sized black sphere. It undulated and moved like the massive sphere Ben had seen outside of the sanctuary station.
One side of it opened as they approached.
“What is this?” Ben asked, coming to a stop.
“Our ride,” Lee said. “No reason to worry.”
Ben looked coldly at Lee. “No need to worry? Is that a joke? Can genocidal murdering piece of shit aliens make jokes?”
The tendrils from Saito’s torso reached out for the black sphere. They penetrated it, then were absorbed. By those tendrils, Saito was lifted off the ground and pulled into the ball. He reached back to Ben. “Genocide. Murder. There’s no such thing. That’s just one of many things I have to show you. Just take my hand.”
Ben stared at Lee’s outstretched hand. There was something profoundly appropriate and sad about seeing this compromised, corrupt version of his father in front of the burning effigy of the ship that he’d once commanded.
“What else are you going to do, son? What can you do? Are you just going to wander these wastes? Look for other survivors?” Lee smiled. “I’ll kill whoever I have to, as many as I have to, to bring you home. To reunite our family.”
“Mom’s dead. There is no family.”
Saito’s outstretched hand didn’t waver. “Death, like genocide, isn’t the evil you think it is. Come with me and I’ll show you.”
Ben thought of the others. Of Ada and Clarissa. Of Tomas. Even LeFay. He told himself that if he could buy them time, this was worth it. And if he got some answers at the same time, so be it.
One thing he wasn’t going to do was bend to the wishes of this creature in front of him. But he could play along for now.
Ben took Lee’s hand. Together, they disappeared into the black sphere.
Book 6: Orion Inbound
One
A Pirate’s Life
Captain Daison Wan was only supposed to be on the AIC capital planet for a week. He’d do a little business, unload some cargo—legally procured and otherwise—and let the crew get a little rest and relaxation. He’d be off the rock before anyone was the wiser.
Things hadn’t turned out the way Wan had planned, but then again, when did they?
It had all gone to shit when his old friend LeFay had shown up for a night of poker while half his crew was in the city. She’d set up plenty of business for him over the years without giving him an ounce of respect, which was probably Wan’s relationship with half the people he considered friends.
She’d managed to get Wan drunker than usual, and then proceeded to taunt and insult him while taking all his money, before somehow goading him into putting his ship on the line. Since he always cheated at cards, he felt good about it—until he found out she cheated better than him.
Once she’d gathered all the money and most of Wan’s pride, she’d asked to take a tour of “her new ship.” Wan knew it was just to humiliate him, and he was waiting with a blaster to escort her out of the hangar when she
got done gloating. There was no way she was getting his ship. She had to know that.
But the joke was on Wan when LeFay managed to kill the power to the hangar from within the ship, and then slipped out while Wan and the rest of his boys were trying to figure out what had happened.
He assumed that humiliation was the end of it, until one of the shit-for-brains he paid to maintain the ship told him the next day that LeFay had managed to somehow lock them out of the flight controls.
That had been on the second day on the planet. Wan knew that with enough money and enough bribes, he could find someone to fix what she’d done, but it was going to throw off his schedule and his profits. In the end, he was sure she’d be back in a week or two, demanding a piece of his action in return for letting him use her ship. Whatever. He could wait her out.
Two days later, he found out he was wrong. When the UEF attacked Vassar-1 with their huge dreadnoughts, Wan and the rest of his crew were trapped.
Wan was smart enough to not be courageous. He ordered his men to stay underground in their little base. Soon enough, whatever was happening would blow over. It always did. That’s how the universe worked. Once the coast was clear, he’d get a hacker to fix what LeFay had done, and they’d leave. Or, depending on the situation on-planet, look for a way to profit first, and then leave. His whole career had been built on these little disturbances in the universe.
This little disturbance, however, had grown out of hand. Wan had listened on his back-channel network as the word had gone out to the rest of the Outer Colonies about the battle over Vassar-1. He’d been as shocked as anyone when he’d learned the fight had led to the complete annihilation of the AIC capital.
The Outer Colonies were amassing their forces, dead set on getting revenge against Earth. There must be some command structure out there, because the official channels were full of surprisingly accurate chatter. A counterattack was coming. Wan could feel it in his pirate bones. While there might be profit in that, too, he’d had enough of this little high-stakes drama. He was ready to get off-planet and on his way.
