by Joshua James
The head swiveled around, and the big toothy mouth opened for another bloodcurdling scream in their direction.
“We gotta move!” Wan said. He started limping for the rear hatch.
“For once, I agree with the asshole,” Clarissa said. She looked at Ben. “It’s time to abandon ship.”
Ben cursed and jumped up. They all started storming toward the rear hatch. Ben and Ada were shouting ideas back and forth to each other as they went, going through what few weapons they had and trying to figure out where they would go.
“First step is to get off this damn rooftop!” Ada shouted. She and Ben leaped off the ramp at the same time. Wan and Congo were already halfway to what looked like an access hatch that led into the building.
Clarissa stopped at the top of the ramp. She hit the retract button and watched as the landing ramp raised up.
Ben heard the small motor humming, and stopped and turned around. “Clarissa?” he asked, his face contorted in confusion. “What are you—”
“I’m sorry, Ben,” she said. “I’m sorry I got you into all this. You didn’t deserve this.”
Ben furrowed his brow. “None of us do. What are you talking about?”
She smiled as the ramp neared full retraction. “Goodbye, Ben. It’s been fun.”
Clarissa leaped back into the pilot’s seat and flipped off the alarm she’d tripped manually and restarted the thrusters. The stabilizers came online instantly.
She glanced out of the cockpit and saw Ben banging on the side of the loading ramp. She slowly spooled up the thrusters, trying not to burn the idiot to a crisp.
Then Ada was beside him, dragging him back and away from the thruster blast as Clarissa took the Fallen back up and spun around to face the Oblivion monster.
“Now,” she said. “Let’s end this.”
She yanked back on the sticks and roared backwards. The creature instantly gave chase.
“This is foolish, you know,” Blake said. He sat in the captain’s chair.
“For a ghost, you sure think you know everything,” she said.
“Kinda like somebody we know?” he said playfully.
Kenna, Clarissa’s youngest daughter, peeked around the side of the chair, holding one of Blake’s fingers. “Is it a monster, mommy?” she asked.
“It is, baby,” she said.
“Are you going to stop the monster, mommy?”
“I am,” she said. She looked up at Blake. “I promise.”
“I think it’s time, babe,” Blake said. “We’re well outside the city.”
Clarissa sat back. He was right. She’d been trying to lead the monster as far away as she could for this. She sighed. “I agree.”
She abruptly flipped the Supramax Hawk around and fired her thrusters straight back at the monster. It roared up from the Annapolis skyline and straight at her.
So long, asshole, she thought as she spun up the fold jump engines.
They sputtered and sparked, having been gravely injured by their earlier fold skip. That was okay. She had no intention of going anywhere in particular.
“He’s coming in too fast,” Blake said. “You need to slow him down.”
He was right. The fold jump engines needed time to prepare for a jump.
Clarissa armed every last weapon the Fallen had on board. She fired all of them at once.
The Shapeless monster, sun reflecting off its metallic skin, shrieked as it ascended towards Clarissa and the Fallen. It rushed straight through the cannon fire; the glowing bright-orange super-heated rounds bounced off, ricocheting into the Annapolis skies. Then the missiles hit.
She’d fired them all, augmented or not, and they created a giant fireball in front of the creature. It flew through it, blinded for a moment, then shrieking as it opened its mouth wide to swallow the Fallen.
“Fold engines are ready, mommy,” said Kenna.
“I know, sweetheart,” Clarissa said. She kissed Kenna’s forehead, then squeezed Blake’s hand.
Then she initiated the fold.
The Shapeless creature smashed into the Fallen, and metal teeth puncturing the roof of the cockpit was the last thing Clarissa saw before the world stretched out toward infinity and disappeared as she and the creature were ripped right out of the sky.
Ben was still standing at the top of the rooftop access point, staring up at the spot where he’d seen Clarissa disappear over the horizon with the monster in pursuit.
He saw the unmistakable flash of a fold engine in operation. There was nothing quite like in the universe. “My God.”
Ada gasped next to him. “Did she...?”
“Just fold jumped with the damn thing.”
“To where?”
Ben shook his head. “I doubt even she knows. Or cares.”
“What do we do now?” Wan asked. He’d come back up to the top of the stairs.
“I don’t know. We need a ship.”
“Are you looking at the same thing I am?” Wan asked.
Ben followed his gaze upward to the battle happening in the skies above as Commodore Grant and his motley fleet struggled mightily to fight the Shapeless flagships and the thousands of fighters still left behind. “This isn’t a battle that we’re going to win.”
“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight anyway,” said Ada.
“It means we shouldn’t fight right now,” Wan said. “Let’s go regroup, figure something out.”
“Run?” Ben asked.
“If you want to call it that.”
Ben couldn’t accept that. He couldn’t accept retreat; after all, so many people had given up to try and stop the coming Armageddon. He couldn’t just hide away and fight after all the dying was done. His mind raced, looking for any possible option, but everything came up blank.
That was when he realized they’d been noticed.
A Shapeless fighter screamed straight towards Ben and the others on the rooftop. It was moving with purpose, too fast to dodge.
They all bundled into the stairwell. Ben was the last one in. The Shapeless fighter smashed into the rooftop and the blast tore through the hatch above the staircase, sending sparks and debris raining down over them.
“We need to get down to ground level,” Ada said. “They won’t be able to follow us down there as easily.”
Ben and the others hurried down a dozen levels before their staircase ended and they found themselves running through the halls of an apartment tower, searching for a staircase that led down the rest of the way. But the going was tough. Residents’ belongings were strewn about the hallways, no doubt the refuse left after a hasty evacuation. Congo and the limping Wan led the way, a scavenger instinct taking over as he pushed further and further ahead.
Ben watched the gap grow between the two groups. He was about to call out to them to slow down when he heard a strange noise. The hall around him shook. In a split second he made the decision to grab Ada and pull her back towards him.
As they spun around to go the other way, the wall right behind them exploded. He whirled, and they fell in a heap as debris fell all around them. It took him a moment to grasp what he was looking at when he came back to his senses.
A Shapeless fighter had crashed straight through the building. Another few steps, and both of them would’ve been smears on the apartment tower’s hallway rug.
“They’re smashing into the building,” Ada said, still sounding a little dazed.
“Move!” Ben yelled as he got to his feet and helped her up. They were both still unsteady on their feet as they scrambled down the hallway.
Moments later, there was another huge rumble of impact as another fighter smashed into the side of the building.
“Down here! We found the stairs!” yelled Congo from the far end of the hallway.
Ben and Ada ran as fast as they could. The building shook from another impact as they reached the stairwell. Ben swung inside the doors so quickly he ran right into Wan and knocked him flat.
As he pushed himself u
p off the concrete stairwell landing, he realized what Wan was looking at. He felt a warm breeze in his face. A giant chunk of the stairwell was missing, opened up to the city floor below.
“Guess the stairs aren’t an option,” Ada said.
“You think?” Wan snipped.
Jumping down to where the stairs continued, past the gigantic hole in the building and stairwell, would’ve been too hard. They either had to go up and find another way, or become sitting ducks for the Shapeless fighters or cultists to finish off.
Ben looked out the hole in the building and stairwell. In the distance he watched the air battle as it raged on. All he hoped and prayed for was that his dad would finish the job before the Shapeless flagships activated their planet killers.
Then Ben saw movement in his peripheral vision. He pulled back a moment before his view was blocked by three Shapeless fighter ships who hovered up and faced off with the group.
Ben knew he should be scared, but he only felt anger replace his exhaustion. “Come on! What are you waiting for? We’re right here!” he yelled.
Ada stood next to Ben, just as defiant, a snarl on her face.
Wan kicked out with his bad leg, cursing and taunting the aliens with phrases Ben had never even heard before. Congo was the only one that looked genuinely, appropriately scared.
And then suddenly, like someone had just flipped a switch, the engines on all three Shapeless fighters flared out and died.
The ships fell out of the sky, dropping like rocks.
Ben leaned over the lip and stared down in confusion as the three fighters all smashed into the ground, sending a wave of heat roaring back up the side of the building. What the hell?
After a long moment of shocked silence, Wan said what they all were thinking. “Why aren’t we dead right now?”
“Look!” Ada shouted as she pointed up in the sky.
The liquid-metal surfaces of the enormous Shapeless flagships had turned to black obsidian—lava rock. Then, seconds later, after every last drop hardened, they started to fall.
Ben, holding on to the stairwell’s inside wall, stuck his head outside the huge hole. He saw thousands of Shapeless fighters, all falling like alien metal rain.
Ada grabbed Ben’s hand. Wan leaned against Congo, who promptly shrugged him off.
The group stayed there in the hallway, looking out the hole at the silent scene unfolding before them.
The sky was suddenly filled with falling debris streaking downward.
Defeated, inactive, dead, the Shapeless flagships plummeted towards Annapolis. It was one last final insult, a final jab from the Shapeless. For when they hit the city they created a mini-tremor, kicked up a huge wave of dust, broken glass, and debris that rushed down the alleys, through the broken buildings, and draped all over the metropolis.
Once the dust settled, Ben, Ada, Congo, and Wan kept standing there, staring at the wreckage that was once the capital of military strength in the UEF.
None of them said anything for some time. When they finally did, Ben remained silent.
To him the victory brought with it a grim reality. He knew that his father was never going to be coming back from his mission to the Shapeless’ planet. He felt it. Seeing the fruits of his father’s sacrifice made it hit him even harder.
“You okay?” Ada asked.
“I’ll be fine.”
She nodded. Then she glanced out at the empty sky and then back at Ben. “Your dad?”
“Yeah.”
“He could still be alive,” Ada said. “You don’t know for sure that he’s gone.”
“I do. I can’t explain why, but I know.”
Ada rested her head on Ben’s shoulder. The two of them looked out at the city turned battlefield.
“How the hell are we still alive?” Ben whispered. “When so many are dead?”
Ada shook her head but said nothing. What was there to say? There was never a good answer to a question like that.
Epilogue
Hunting Rats
Two weeks had passed since the war against the Shapeless had ended, but the war against the Oblivion cultists continued. They were still out there, hiding wherever they could to try and weather the storm of extreme and deserved persecution.
Ducar was one of these cultists in hiding. The head of their elite band of murderers, he’d made a run for it as soon as the Shapeless ships started falling out of the sky. There was no doubt in his mind that his position in the terrorist group would garner the death penalty. If it was anything like the rest of the universe, he’d just be shot on sight.
Having lost count of the days since he went into hiding, Ducar woke up, groggy, in the basement of a ground-level apartment in Annapolis. He didn’t have the time to escape the city after the fall of his saviors. It’d been too dangerous to move since then, as the city sentinels and UEF military set up checkpoints at every port of entry and exit.
At the checkpoints, city sentinel members and soldiers searched for a couple of tell-tale signs of cultists. One was their shaved heads, though that became a less dependable attribute, since some had simply grown their hair out even before the attack, in order to blend in with the public and make it easier to take them unawares. Another was a small tattoo on the back of the upper neck, right below the head and hairline. It was a tattoo of a black moon, one of the symbols of the cult. Lastly, they checked HUD IDs. Though the UEF was still struggling to recover from the attacks on Earth and the loss of its moon, the digital infrastructure was still intact.
Ducar would fail all the tests trying to detect Oblivion cultists at the various checkpoints throughout and around Annapolis. So he had to stay deep underground, away from the prying eyes of anyone the authorities would believe and trust. The ground level of the super city was perfect.
Sticking to a strict routine, Ducar stayed indoors all day. Though the days were considerably shorter with the loss of the moon’s gravitational influence, and the weather was already growing more extreme while UEF scientists tried desperately to understand what could be done, it was still difficult to stay out of sight, especially for someone who had previously been afforded such physical and moral freedom. The nights were the only time he could venture out.
The loss of Earth’s moon had many negative effects on the planet. For one, the previously mentioned shorter days. Tides came in shallower, further from shore. There was open debate about whether seasons would cease to exist, and what effect that might have on the planetary ecology that remained on the planet. With no moon in the sky at night, Earth’s nights were darker than ever, a problem that every city sentinel in every super city had a hard time dealing with. There was a sharp uptick in crimes such as break-ins or thefts. Anyone would’ve been nervous taking a walk in any super city’s lower levels at night before the war with the Shapeless. But now it was truly dangerous, as all humanity’s monsters chose to dwell in this new darkness.
Ducar was one of those monsters that dwelt in the darkness. But on the dawn of this evening, he was a sleepy man who didn’t look forward to another night scavenging for whatever he and his fellow cultists could find or take. He looked at himself in the mirror in the basement apartment he and his comrades occupied. He was a far cry from the police officer he’d started as back on Vassar-1; that seemed like lifetimes ago. His face was filthy, and his beard had started to grow back in. His hair was growing, but at nowhere near the pace he needed it to.
Someone knocked on the bathroom door. Ducar ignored it at first. He went about washing his face and brushing his teeth, ignoring the stench of death that hung thick in the bathroom. That stench came from the tub, where the bodies of an elderly couple, the original owners of this sad apartment, still lay decomposing.
The knocking continued, this time much harder. “Ducar! We need to get out of here! Now!” It was the voice of Gar, one of the surviving cultists, a former zealot like Ducar himself. They’d escaped to this apartment alongside two other cultists, Yason and Onica.
Ducar si
ghed and planted his hands on the sink in front of him. This night was going to be the night they were going to get HUDs implanted by an unscrupulous forger, also on the city’s ground floor. Then they were finally going to escape, hide in the wilds for a few months, and then start their new lives. But it looked like that was too good to be true.
“Ducar! They’re only a minute away! We need to go!” Gar was obviously panicked.
Unlike Gar, Ducar had known this day was coming. Yes, they’d managed to put it off a little longer than the majority of the Oblivion cultists. There was no doubt in his mind, though, that one day, someone would find them and look to enact vengeance.
“I hear you, Gar,” Ducar said calmly. “Tell the others to take up positions and open the door to the tunnel.”
Ducar took out a small coin-sized holodisk. He pressed the button on the side, turning it on. Out of the top a holographic image of his lost love, Vesta, appeared. She was so young and innocent. They’d captured that hologram the day before they’d officially become cultists.
“Soon I’ll join you in the Abyss. Just hang on, wait for me. Let’s see if we can send some of these bastards to you first.” Ducar turned off the holodisk. He put it in his pocket. Then he picked up the rifle that rested against the wall near the sink.
“Do we fight or do we run?” asked Onica. She was ready to do either, with a flak gun in her shaking hands. Was it fear? Certainly, but adrenaline too. He had no doubt she would act if called upon.
“They’re thirty seconds out,” said Gar. He was the only one of them with a HUD. Through it, he could see and track UEF and city sentinel communications. “There’s a team on their way directly to this apartment, with orders to arrest or kill.”
“We fight,” Ducar said simply. The vow to get revenge for his Vesta would have to come now. He released the safety on his crude rifle.
They all stared at the front doors of the small, outdated, filthy apartment, expecting it to be blown open and to have soldiers come charging through, firing. But nothing happened. It was silent.
