by Joshua James
Down one gun, she kept firing with the one she had left. What other choice did she have?
The Shapeless easily dodged Clarissa’s fire and reached the bulletproof dome. Then it started pounding away at it. At first it looked like a futile attempt. That was, until it started to crack.
“Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it.” Clarissa waited until the Shapeless was right in front of the bisected turret barrel. Then she purposefully tried to fire it. The resulting explosion blew the Shapeless off the turret and off the ship, though it didn’t die; it simply grabbed onto and was absorbed into one of the swarm.
The blast also managed to blow out the one working barrel. It was useless now.
“How long you planning on keeping this up?” asked LeFay. She could see the obvious. The Orion wasn’t going to outrun the fighter ships, nor did it have enough to fight them all off.
“We’re fine,” Wan said, even as the ship banked sharply around an unexpected rock protrusion and Falcon cursed. “Everything is going according to plan. Trust me.”
“Trust you?”
“Trust me,” Wan said. “I want to live, too.”
“Here we are,” Falcon said. “Everyone hold on.”
“What the hell do you think—” LeFay didn’t finish her sentence before the ship lurched sideways.
Clarissa realized that Falcon wasn’t just trying to outrun the Shapeless fighters. He was trying to lead them.
Located about a hundred miles out from Vassar-1 were the Storm Canyons. True natural anomalies, the Storm Canyons were massively deep canyons with a deep river at the bottom. That cool moisture, mixed with the heat of the land at sea level, created localized storm clouds filled to the brim with lightning. No one ever flew there for fear of getting struck.
No one, that is, other than Falcon Dotterson.
“No,” said LeFay once she got a look at the entrance to the Storm Canyons. Clarissa had to agree. From her vantage point in the top turret, it was quite intimidating. The grey and black clouds lit up every couple of seconds with bright lightning strikes, and they were so thick that you couldn’t see into or past them. Falcon flew straight towards them, Shapeless in tow.
“Yes,” replied Wan. “Ain’t they lovely?”
“No,” reiterated LeFay. “You’re not flying into that.”
“We definitely are,” Falcon said. “But don’t worry, I’ve done this before.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Once,” Falcon said.
“Better than none,” LeFay muttered.
“When I was a teenager and pretty drunk,” Falcon added.
“Didn’t need to know that part,” LeFay said, shaking her head. “I’d really rather not die out here today.”
“Not today, you bitchy bucket of bolts,” Wan said. He turned to Falcon. “Full speed ahead.”
Falcon glanced sideways at Wan, the control stick bouncing in his hand, and rolled his eyes. “Glad you mentioned it.”
Wan smiled back as though he was enjoying himself.
The Orion entered the deep, dark, and dangerous Storm Canyons at a speed no sane pilot would advise. No one on the command bridge could see a thing other than thick black clouds and the glowing—now very much standing out—streaks of super-heated bullets being fired at them from behind. That cannon fire, combined with the random flashes of lightning, created a lethal light show.
Clarissa re-entered the Orion command bridge just as the ship took a lightning strike. Not only was it one hell of a jolt to the vessel, again knocking her off her feet, but it took out all the electronics on board.
“Goddammit,” LeFay said. “Don’t tell me I’m gonna die on a damn spaceship!”
“Maybe,” Wan said nonchalantly. Either he wasn’t worried, or he was very good at hiding it. “But not this ship. Naito?”
“Cycling the engines,” Naito said as he frantically tried to restart the Orion’s electronics and engines as it glided towards God knew what in the Storm Canyons. “Give me a second, we’ll be back online.”
“Not sure we got many seconds to spare,” said Wan.
“Look!” Tonga pointed at the viewing windows and screens on the Orion. The lead Shapeless ship had been struck by the lightning, too; only the lightning had a much more devastating effect on it than on Orion. The blast instantly cascaded down to the next ship behind it, and then to the ship behind that. Soon the single bolt of energy had ripped through every Shapeless fighter. It sent them all tumbling towards the waters at the bottom of the canyon.
“Naito!” Falcon shouted. “Need that power!”
They were heading straight towards a long, tall, skinny, jagged rock that jutted out from the river in the middle of the Storm Canyons. If he didn’t get power and engines back, Falcon wouldn’t be able to steer away from it. “Now, Naito!”
“Got it!” Naito said just as the lights on Orion’s command bridge came back on and the engines fired back up.
“Too late,” Falcon said. “I can’t pull out of it. We’ll have to scrape by it.”
Every sphincter on the Orion clenched as Falcon flipped the ship on its side as they dove down at the big, obelisk-like pillar of rock.
There was a deafening screech inside Orion as its belly grazed against the pillar of rock. It was like nails on a chalkboard.
“That didn’t sound good,” Wan offered.
“It wasn’t,” Falcon agreed as he pulled back hard on the pilot’s stick after correcting it back to horizontal. He angled the ship as sharply upwards as he safely could. Some sparks and minor pieces of the ship’s underside fell off as they sped towards the planet’s atmosphere.
“Whew!” Wan took off the red-lit weapon visor and put it back in place. “That was close. Exciting, huh?”
Clarissa felt bile in the back of her throat again, and concentrated on keeping it down. She was relieved to be headed out to space, at least. There was, she hoped, safety there.
She watched the viewscreen darken as they left the atmosphere behind, and Clarissa felt a little better. “I gotta admit, Falcon,” she said, “you’re one hell of a pilot.”
“I know I am,” Falcon said. “Think I need you to tell me that?”
“And so modest,” LeFay said.
“Simmer down, kids,” Wan said. He took out his mag bracelets. “Naito, we ready to jump?”
“Thirty seconds until jump, Cap,” Naito said as he initiated the fold jump engines, spinning them up. They could all feel the whir beneath their feet.
“Good, good. Oh damn, I forgot. Can someone get our guests some mag bracelets for the jump? Tonga?”
Clarissa got the impression that Wan’s best work involved delegating work to others.
“No problem,” Tonga said. “I got some just over there in the storage shelf. Just gotta—” This time it was the big Samoan who almost got knocked off his feet. The cause? An almost direct hit from a dreadnought cannon. The force was enough that it caused the Orion to spin a couple of times.
“They have dreadnoughts, too!” Wan was beside himself.
“I thought you guys knew what you were up against?” LeFay asked sarcastically. After the spinning, she got up herself and looked for the mag bracelets. Tonga returned to his seat.
“What are our options?” asked Wan as he looked at a Shapeless dreadnought slowly flying up to try and close the range between them.
“We can run,” Falcon said. “That’s about it.”
“I know we can run. We’re still running, still jumping, but if we don’t do something and fast, that fat bastard is gonna blow us out of the sky before we can.”
“Hang on.”
“Hang on?”
Falcon seemed to reach out into the space in front of him and swipe randomly. It took a moment for Clarissa to realize that he was selecting from a projected display that was emanating from one of his control panels. She could see the words flashing by now as Falcon flipped his hand. “C’mon, dammit,” he hissed. Then his hand stopped on a file labeled �
��pendulum”. He selected it. An image popped up; Clarissa couldn’t be sure, but it looked like there were some big red warning words in there. Falcon swiped it away.
“Like I said, hang on—”
Instantly, the Orion swayed left and right around a central point, the thrusters firing in some prearranged pattern, confusing the dreadnought’s targeting systems. Though the giant warship still fired, it kept just missing. That still did damage, though. Wires and screws popped out of instruments on the command bridge from the concussive blasts. All manner of alarms and warning lights and sirens went off.
“Where we at on that fold jump?” Wan asked.
Clarissa shared a glance with LeFay. She wasn’t a big fan of spaceships as it was. LeFay grunted but otherwise stared straight ahead. All Clarissa could do was pray that they’d last long enough to zoom out of there.
“Ten seconds!” yelled out Naito.
Clarissa put on her mag bracelets and pinned herself to her seat. Wan addressed the rest of the crew on the ship so that they did the same, though he didn’t give them much warning. Ten seconds was an eternity when you were getting your ass chewed on by a huge dreadnought, but it wasn’t much time if your life depended on finding a seat and getting your mag bracelets on.
Without wasting a second, as soon as the countdown was done, the fold jump was initiated and the Orion and everyone on board were far from Vassar-1.
Four
Take Your Son To Work Day
The last thing Ben remembered was taking his father’s hand and being pulled into the black sphere.
He opened his eyes and felt groggy. Had he passed out? It seemed like he’d lost track of time, yet he couldn’t be sure.
It was strangely warm and comfortable within the black sphere. It conformed to Ben’s shape and weight. Seconds after he got in—or maybe much longer, he really couldn’t tell—the sphere rose up into the air. While it wasn’t fast, it certainly wasn’t slow, either. The massive burning remains of the Atlas soon became no bigger than a flaming pinprick in the distance.
Ben didn’t truly understand the scope of the destruction on Vassar-1, not until he was high above it with a clear view. And it was near total. All he could see in all directions were flattened buildings and plumes of black smoke. It didn’t hit him for a minute or so, but what he was really looking at was a rare sight.
He looked at a dead city.
The whole ‘resistance’ thing down there was gone, he realized. At least up here, wherever Lee was taking Ben, he was closer to the Shapeless’ heart.
Once I figure out a way to turn him back to human, I’ll stab that heart and put an end to all this.
Ben silently schemed to himself, and yet he could sense his father looking at him. Could he read his thoughts? “Do you know what I’m thinking?”
“Yes,” Lee said.
“Explicitly, or are you just assuming?” Ben asked.
“You’re not yet converted, so it’s pointless to argue with you.”
“Converted? No,” Ben said. “You’re right about that.”
“You’ll soon be convinced,” his father said.
Ben could sense an implied threat in his words. He’s going to convince me or I’m going to die trying, he thought. The way his father looked at him made Ben almost positive his thoughts were being read.
The whole black sphere’s exterior was engulfed in flames as the Shapeless transport pierced the Vassar-1 atmosphere. Ben looked on, intrigued by the fact that it survived the exit. In fact, he found it interesting that although the individual aliens were quite susceptible to extreme temperatures, their vehicles were not. Not only could they survive the cold vacuum of space, but they showed no ill effects from exposure to high temperatures and fire as well.
It wasn’t just the differences in the weaknesses between the Shapeless and their ships that Ben noticed. He also realized that there was no way, if the faux Atlas was a faithful recreation of the real thing, that he and the others should’ve been able to shoot it down with some well-placed missiles, even without the dreadnought’s shields to protect it. In fact, none of their ships had shields, which told him that although the aliens were near-perfect at replicating living things, they had issues with the inanimate.
“Not much further.” Saito pointed out from the black sphere at a much, much larger one. The bigger silver mother ship of the Shapeless was in Vassar-1’s orbit, just outside the pull of gravity. It floated there, overlooking the recently captured planet.
How are you gonna do it, hotshot? You don’t have any weapons. You sure as shit don’t have any explosives. So what’re you gonna do?
Ben watched the sphere of liquid metal get larger and larger as he and Saito grew near.
“Don’t worry about that right now,” said Saito.
“What?”
“Destroying us. I get why you want to right now, but wait until we get there. Wait until you hear us out, and then make your decision. I promise it’s worth it.”
“I knew you were reading my thoughts,” Ben said.
“You’re my son, whether you want to believe it or not. I know how you think because I know how I think.”
Bullshit, Ben thought. That wasn’t some parental intuition. That was pure mind-reading. He tried to shut his thoughts down like a curtain, but he found it impossible to quiet his mind.
The black sphere housing Ben and Saito sped through space towards the larger liquid-silver version. A small opening formed, welcoming in the transport. As they were about to enter, Ben realized just how gigantic the Shapeless’ mother ship was. At that point it was nearly half the size of the AIC capital planet itself.
When they entered, Ben was met with darkness. As the liquid metal sphere closed behind them, the one that had transported them there let them out. Ben landed on his hands and knees on a cold hard floor. Lee landed on the floor safely.
Ben’s heart raced almost as fast as his thoughts. Where was he? What did this thing that was once his father have planned for him? Exactly what did an alien spaceship look like? Under and in between his fingers and knees, the hard, cold floor in the pitch black turned to something soft: a fabric he knew well.
Slowly, light arrived inside the Shapeless mother ship. Ben, still on all fours, looking at the floor, saw a familiar carpet. It was the same one in his parents’ apartment back in Annapolis, before it was destroyed. The aliens had even gotten the odd off-beige color perfect.
Ben rose to one knee. He looked around. Sure enough, he was surrounded by his parents’ apartment. Everything was exact, down to the details of the pattern on their living room couch. It even smelled like it.
That’s when he heard a voice he never thought he’d ever hear again.
It was his mother. “Ben? Benny? That you?”
“Mom?” Ben stood up. Logically, he knew there was no way it was her. He had been there at her funeral. He’d seen her lifeless face in her casket. She was dead and buried in a military crypt back on Earth. But logic meant nothing when he saw his dead mother emerge from the bedroom she shared with his father and walk into the kitchen.
Beverly Saito smiled at Ben, then proceeded to the kitchen, where a couple of bags waited on the counter. She unpacked them as she talked to her son.
“What a pleasant surprise. What brings you by, honey?” she asked, as if they weren’t in a living memory on an alien spaceship.
“What brings me…Mom, what are you doing here?”
Beverly looked up at her son, eggs in one hand, a carton of milk in the other. For a split second her eyes shined obsidian, like Saito’s, but they quickly returned back to normal.
“I live here. Is that what we’re getting today? Silly, goofy Ben? Good. I like that version,” responded Beverly with a smile.
“No, I mean here, on an alien spaceship.”
“Where else would I be?” Beverly’s answer was so nonchalant it was disarming.
“I dunno. In a graveyard, back on Earth?” Ben slowly, cautiously crossed his parents’
living room towards the kitchen. On his way, he glanced out the window. It was a sunny day in Annapolis. He could see the endless skyline of the megacity, and the occasional military vehicle flying by. Through that window, the real one, a missile fired by a cultist drone had killed Beverly Saito.
“I belong here, with you and your father. And you belong here with us.” Beverly left the kitchen and approached Ben.
Ben didn’t know what to think. Instinctively he backed up, not ready for any physical touch between him and the thing pretending to be his mother. He was so out of sorts he tripped over the living room table.
“We can all be together again, son,” his father said from behind him. Ben whipped his head around. He hadn’t even realized Lee had been following him. “A proper family. An everlasting family. None of us will die, none of us will decay.”
“A life built on lies,” Ben said. “And betrayal. How heartwarming.” He stood up. He was never going to give the Shapeless what they wanted. No matter what.
Ben shifted his attention back to Beverly. “I don’t know who you are, really, but enough with the theatrics. As tempting as it might be to give in to this…this lie, this abomination, I will not. Neither would my real father. If it’s all the same to you, just get to the point.”
Ben hoped he sounded authoritative and confident. Inside, he was as solid as grape jelly.
“I tried to fight it, too,” Lee said. He went over to Beverly and put his arm around her. She turned her head and kissed his chest. “I did. But you know what I came to realize?”
“That this is all profoundly creepy and you’re a traitor to your whole damn species?”
Lee smiled. “I came to realize that living a lie, a convincing one, is so much better than living a truth filled with nothing but loss.”
“That’s sick.”
“Let me help you reach the same conclusion,” Lee said. He raised one arm.
Behind Ben, a part of the floor turned into a living tendril formed from a black oily substance. It rose up and waited, coiled to strike.
