by Joshua James
The impact was catastrophic for the walls of the base. They were instantly blown over, ripped into thousands of chunks of rock and metal and debris like so much shrapnel.
Clarissa felt pain and pressure in her back for an instant, and then she was airborne. She smashed into another wall just as it went tumbling over, and somehow it provided a soft place to land, or at least a hard place that was moving away from her and lessened the impact.
She stumbled over the interior wall, now flat, and found herself staring right into the huddled bodies of Ada and Wan.
“Ada?” For the first time since the battle started, it was quiet, and her voice carried clearly across the dozen feet of downed wall.
“Clarissa?” Ada looked as shell-shocked as Clarissa felt. “What happened?”
Ada was standing now, staring over Clarissa’s shoulder. Clarissa turned around and looked behind her at the battlefield beyond, or what was left of it.
There, in the middle of the clearing where LeFay had made her last stand, was a large crater with scorch marks going in every direction. Dead soldiers littered the ground.
Clarissa looked up at the growing AIC fleet that was gathering in the sky above. There was just no time to mourn. It wasn’t fair, but it was true. “We have to move,” she said.
“What the hell happened?” Ada said again.
“Does it really matter?” Wan said hoarsely, finding his voice at last.
“LeFay,” Ada suddenly said, a growing look of horror on her face, as if she’d just put the pieces together. She knew the answer before she asked it.
Clarissa shook her head.
“I’m sorry.”
“Tomas?” asked Clarissa.
Ada shook her head.
Clarissa closed her eyes. The pain of all this loss was crushing. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to go on.
“Hey! You guys!”
They all three turned back toward the central base, which had been devastated by the blast just as clearly as the triple walls had been, to see Doc Congo scampering over the rubble. The doctor looked like she’d been through hell, but she was alive.
“Doc!” Wan exclaimed. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”
Congo ignored him, but Wan didn’t seem to notice. For once, Clarissa felt she might be able to identify with the damn asshole. It was nice to know somebody made it through, even if they didn’t really like you. A familiar face was a familiar face.
“We need to get out of here,” the doc said. “Before we get turned into rubble along with this whole damn base.”
“No argument there,” Ada said. “Any suggestions?”
“I have an idea,” Wan said.
Ada glanced at Clarissa, and she could tell she was thinking the same thing. Anybody else got an idea?
“Spit it out,” Ada said.
“The same way we got in here,” Wan said.
Clarissa frowned. “In chains?”
Wan snorted. “Hoverbikes.”
“And you know where they are?”
“Nope,” Wan said. “I wasn’t at the main complex to see where they parked them.”
Ada looked sourly at him. “None of us was.”
Wan raised an eyebrow, then pointed at Doc Congo. They all slowly turned to look at her. Doc’s eyes grew big. “I was setting up a triage, I wasn’t sightseeing!”
“It would have been tarped,” Wan said, “but with easy egress to the front gate. Sound familiar?”
Congo shook her head.
“C’mon, think,” Wan said, leaning toward her. “I know you. You don’t miss details.”
Doc’s eyes grew unfocused for a moment; then she looked up in surprise. “Yes,” she said eagerly. “I mean, I think so, but I’m not sure.”
The ground began to rumble. They all looked up at the massing ships above. A trio of battleships began to drop low.
“I’m beginning to understand why we haven’t seen those soldiers yet,” Clarissa muttered.
“Why storm the base…” Wan said.
“When you can just flatten it,” Ada finished his thought.
“Bingo.”
Clarissa stood. “I think at this point I’m willing to gamble on Doc’s memory.”
“I like that bet,” Wan said, standing as well. “Then again, I’ve been known to take a bad bet or two.”
Ada gritted her teeth and started off.
“Let’s go.”
Epilogue
A NEW MISSION
“Dad?” Ben couldn’t believe his eyes. All of this, the only reason he was on a dreadnought, the only reason he’d been through hell was for this moment, to see his father. To save his father.
“Ben,” said Lee unsteadily. He climbed out of his stasis pod. Ben stood up, backed up a little bit, and looked his father up and down, not believing his eyes.
“How?”
“Long story, son. Unfortunately we don’t have time for me to tell it.” Lee looked around the prison cell. “Where are we?”
“Is it really you?” Ben couldn’t help himself. “I mean, all you?”
“It is,” reassured Lee. He looked down at his stomach. His wounds were plugged up by a little bit of the Shapeless’ black oil. “Mostly.”
Seeing the black liquid made Ben quickly retreat to the wall. “No, it’s not! You’re still one of them! But how? I killed it! The Herald Stone… I separated you!”
“You got rid of the Shapeless, yes. This is, like I said, a long story. But it’s me, son. One hundred percent your father. I need you to trust me on that.”
“I—I—" Ben stuttered, not knowing what to think. It looked like his dad, sounded like his dad. It even had a hard time showing emotion, just like his dad.
“Please, Ben, trust me. Because I need your help.”
Ben narrowed his eyes. “My help? To do what?”
“To end this. I’m guessing we’re on a ship? A dreadnought?”
“Yeah, the Veruvian.”
“A rebel ship? That’s…not ideal, but we can make it work. We need to get a ship of our own.”
“For what?” Ben was still having a hard time processing everything.
“I know where these monsters come from,” Lee said. He looked at Ben with the deepest, most penetrating stare he’d ever known. “I know where their home planet is. And I’m going to go there and blow it the hell up.”
Carefully inspecting his father’s face, Ben was finally convinced. The Shapeless could’ve mimicked his voice, even learned things he might say. But they couldn’t possibly replicate the steely determination that made his father a war hero. No, that was his dad standing before him, no doubt about it.
“Then I’m coming with you,” Ben said.
Book 8: Earth Arise
One
Blood Moon Rising
Detective Rowan Sydal was awake but his eyes stubbornly refused to open.
An unpleasant prolonged machine sound was repeating over and over somewhere near his head, like a robot with a stutter. Was this what hell sounded like? If oblivion had a soundtrack, did it consist of annoying sounds for eternity?
Sydal finally managed to force his eyes slowly open. He went from darkness to overwhelming brightness as he was assaulted by fluorescent ceiling lighting. It flickered on and off. Figured, Sydal thought. So few things on the moon worked properly.
“Matthew!” Sydal tried to yell out, but his throat was dry and sore. He tried sitting up. He was in a hospital room of some kind. Every inch of his body yelled at him to stay down, using pain to prove its point. That didn’t stop him. He sat up in his bed.
Several IVs fed Sydal fluids. The hospital room was empty. A tube in his nose must have helped him breathe while he was out.
How long was I out? Where’s Matthew? What did they….no, don’t think that way. You’ll find him. You’ll get out of here and find him.
Sydal knew he had to move. Time was his enemy. His son’s trail would go cold soon. If nothing else, his job had taught him the importance of urgency
.
The first thing Sydal did was rip the IVs from his arms. Then came the tube in his nose that had fed him oxygen when he was unconscious. Alarms went off on the machines around him monitoring his health. They made the previous beeping sounds seem positively therapeutic. He ignored them. He ignored everything.
If he was going to make it out of this hospital, Sydal knew he had to get out of the hospital gown and into his own clothes. He’d worked enough nasty business, homicides and worse, to know that they normally put the clothes a patient was wearing inside a bag in their room, assuming they hadn’t had to destroy his to save him. His head was groggy, and he couldn’t quite seem to remember the circumstances of his ending up here. He looked all around the room, then saw a closet with a long mirror on it.
Sydal reached to open the closet, eager to change out of his gown. That was when he saw himself in the mirror. One of his eyes was swollen. There was a big bruise on the opposite cheek. Wrapped around his head was some gauze with blood that had seeped through and stained. He had the beginnings of a beard.
How long was I out?
Sydal tried to ignore the sad sight in the mirror and continued to look inside the closet. Sure enough, hanging from a hook was a white plastic bag with the hospital’s logo on it.
As he got dressed, Sydal found it odd that he didn’t hear anything. There weren’t the voices of nurses and doctors. He didn’t hear the sound of footsteps in the hallways outside his room running to check on him. It was creepy and didn’t feel right.
Sydal, now dressed, walked across his hospital room towards the exit. He pulled down the door handle and tried to push it open. It barely budged. Something was blocking the way.
Annoyed, Sydal pushed again with more force. It took a little bit of elbow grease, but he got it open.
And he also saw what was blocking it.
A dead body—a nurse, from the look of her uniform—was slumped on the floor in front of his door. When he looked up, he saw several more bodies scattered across the hallway.
“What the hell?” he croaked through the pain and soreness in his throat.
Sydal didn’t know exactly what he’d expected to see outside his door, but he knew it wasn’t this. Maybe UEF armed guards, or Waterman-Lau security outside his room, but not death. He sat silent and still, trying to sense any movement. Nothing. He had a feeling the scene in front of his door was just the beginning, an appetizer for a hellscape to come.
He stepped carefully over the corpse and entered the hallway. It was dark. Only the light from a handful of open rooms lit it. As he walked out a little further, his shoes hit something metal.
Sydal knelt down and picked up spent shell casings. He didn’t need to be a detective to know that something bad had happened here. He pressed forward, hoping to start connecting dots.
He noticed blood smears on the walls. Many had bullet holes in the middle of them, and bodies right under them. Someone, or a group of someone’s, had come into this hospital and started shooting. With the seemingly random placement of bodies, it wasn’t done execution-style, but haphazardly. And according to the shell casings Sydal had found, military-grade weapons had been used.
When Sydal reached the end of the hall, he peeked around the corner to make sure no one was there. All he saw were dead hospital staff. A couple were still behind their desks. This death, this killing, he figured it must’ve come as a surprise. One poor bastard, a janitor by the look of it, still had his mop in his hand. His own blood mixed with the dirty mop water on the floor.
“HUD, give me the lunar news feed,” whispered Sydal as he looked around for a downed security guard. Hospitals had security guards. And security guards were usually armed. He’d feel a lot better if he had a weapon.
To Sydal’s surprise, there was no feed. There was only static. He couldn’t remember a time that that was the case. Even when there were the AIC guerrilla attacks a few years earlier, the feeds had stayed on.
“HUD, track Matthew Sydal. HUD ID #34576890.”
Sydal didn’t want to use his tracker. It ran through his department, and anyone watching would know he was active. He’d never imagined a world where he couldn’t trust his fellow cops, but right now, he didn’t trust anyone.
After a moment of accessing and approval, it brought up a search window. After a minute, it had tracked his son’s HUD implants.
“Shit…that’s not ideal.”
According to the tracker, Sydal’s son was smack-dab in the middle of the lunar UEF base.
Sydal took a moment to catch his breath. He took inventory of his situation. Without knowing what was going on outside the hospital, he had to assume it was just as bad as on the inside. He was unarmed; he needed a gun, a dead security guard. He needed something to drink, which shouldn’t have been that big of a problem. There had to be water, soft drinks, juices, anything he could think of somewhere in this facility. He needed something to deal with the pain, and the pounding headache making him nauseous. Once ready, he’d tackle the seemingly insurmountable task of saving his son.
If he was still alive. If he was still Matthew.
Sydal found a security guard just outside the employee break room. He, too, looked like he’d been taken unaware. The guard had a pistol with one extra magazine. Sydal pocketed both. Then he raided the cabinets and fridge in the break room, trying to ignore the dead bodies sitting at the tables. One poor doctor had been shot from behind as he was at the vending machine, his innards sprayed on the glass.
Fed, with a bag full of snacks and water bottles, Sydal was ready for the last step before leaving the hospital. Not being in the medical profession, it took him a little while to find where they stored the drugs, the good stuff. It took him even longer to figure out which to take when he did find it. But if there was any time to take a gamble, this was it.
Sydal made his way down to the hospital lobby. He wasn’t prepared for the cruelty, the results of which were all over the bottom floor. Doctors, nurses, guests, and patients were stacked up in piles.
There were no flies in the moon domes, but there were stray imported pets. Dogs, cats, and the ever-popular Dats—exotically bioengineered dog-cat hybrids, feasted on the free flesh seemingly offered up to them by some unknown benefactor.
Sydal raised his newly acquired pistol and fired a shot into the ceiling. It was impulsive and dangerous, likely to draw attention, but he was too disgusted. Most of the strays went running off into the dark, though a few bold souls stopped just beyond the doors.
With the collar of his shirt up over his nose, the detective made his way through the lobby towards the blown-out front doors.
They’re gonna pay for this. So help me…I’ll kill all of them.
Two
The End Of The Beginning
“Are you sure this was a great idea?” asked Ben as he and his father were escorted through the halls and corridors of the AIC Veruvian. Behind them were four guards, all with their guns trained on their backs, the desire to shoot their enemy practically oozing out of their pores.
“It’s the only idea, Ben. The only plan. The only way we’ll win,” responded Lee.
“And an alien told you how to do it?”
“Yes.”
“Quiet, you two!” yelled one of the AIC guards.
“A little grey alien with glowing yellow eyes? Who also has telepathic powers?”
“Yes,” whispered Lee, a little surprised. “You know it?”
“I had a run-in with that yellow-eyed thing myself.”
“What did he tell you?”
Ben looked behind him. For a moment he was worried that the guards escorting him would think he was crazy. Then he remembered he didn’t give a shit about them or what they thought.
“He told me how to free yo—” Ben got hit in the back with a rifle butt, hard.
“I said shut up!” yelled the surly AIC guard.
Ben and Lee reached the captain’s quarters on the Veruvian. Standing in front of a wall-sized window
was Captain Rhule, back to his shackled guests, hands clasped near his lower back. Director Engano sat on a couch in the corner, sipping what looked to be some kind of alcoholic beverage. She smiled and waved at Ben and his father, just with her fingers.
“Leave us,” ordered Rhule.
“Sir?” The surly soldier was surprised.
Rhule turned his head and looked at his subordinate. “That was an order, Private.”
“Sir, yes sir.” The guards left the captain’s quarters, leaving them alone.
“Come take a look.” Rhule said it like a suggestion, but Ben knew that it wasn’t. He and his father walked over to the window.
From the window, Ben and Lee could see Europa in the distance. Between them and the battlefield that was Jupiter’s moon, they saw a floating ship graveyard. They were a mix of AIC and UEF vessels, but many more of the latter. A fleet of fully operational AIC warships, battleships, and dreadnaughts, with their fighters in tow, waited alongside the Veruvian.
Rhule turned to Ben and Lee. “I’m guessing you’re wondering what happened here. Let me tell you.”
“We won,” interrupted Engano. Rhule gave her a dirty look. She shrugged. “Not that it will matter in the end.”
“Won what?” asked Ben.
“After the attack on Vassar-1, by what command believes was your United Earth Federation, all our ships and troops were recalled from throughout the universe. All of them. We haven’t been impressively organized of late, certainly not in the last few years of this bloody war, but that business on Vassar-1 had quite an effect. I have to hand that to you.”
Rhule nodded at Lee as if he were personally responsible for the ruin that was the AIC capital world. Ben expected his father to refute the charge, or at least clarify that the UEF wasn’t at the heart of all this, but he merely glanced at the warships outside. “And they were all sent here, to this moon,” Lee said.
Rhule raised his eyebrows. “Do you know why?”
