Chaos exploded around Seb, even in slow motion. The six other guards all had their guns ready and pointed at him, so he let off a blast at each. Each shot hit either a shin or thigh, and each shot dropped one of the creatures. With all six writhing on the floor, Seb ran through them and kicked one after the other until he’d knocked each one out.
Panting from the effort, Seb looked around the dark docking bay as everything returned to normal speed. The coast seemed clear. The door to the ship docked there hung open. They obviously couldn’t close it because Sparks had blown the power. Like in the docking bay, the lights inside the ship were off too.
Despite reluctance tugging him back and his body throbbing from the beating he’d just handed out, Seb steeled himself and ran into the ship.
***
No one fired blasters inside ships as small as the one Seb had just entered. A planet hopper at best, it didn’t have the reinforced walls that a larger ship like The Black Hole had. If a shot hit the wrong thing, the ship would explode and take everything with it. Despite this, Seb kept a hold of his blaster with both hands. He’d use it as a bludgeon, and if he got backed into a corner, going up in a ball of hot rocket fuel had to be better than being taken back to The Black Hole. Sparks might have been confident, but no way would he escape that thing for a second time.
The corridors, although large enough to accommodate even the biggest members of the security team, still seemed tight—especially with the lights out. With no blaster fire, and very little room to move, Seb would have to fight smart to get to Sparks.
When Seb heard the high-pitched scream of what sounded like a girl, he started down the corridor in the direction of the sound. “Sparks?” he whispered and sped up, his feet tapping against the metal floor.
Another scream led Seb to a door. Half-open from having no power to close it, Seb peered inside to see Sparks tied to a chair. The three officers that had taken her originally stood around her. One of them—a Mandulu with a particularly malicious face—waved a taser in her direction. “You think it’s smart to rob some of the most notorious enforcement officers in the galaxy, do you?”
Despite the clear threat, Sparks stared at the officer and grinned her wonky grin. Several large blinks later and she said, “Yes. I do. With that notoriety, he’s bound to have something worth taking, right?”
The beast roared, and just as he leaned forward with his taser, Seb shoved the door wide.
As one, the three officers turned to look at Seb. No more than a second passed before the large yellow one that looked like a walking virus came at him.
When Seb’s world slipped into slow motion, he saw the creature’s lunge from a mile off and managed to sidestep it. But when he looked, he didn’t see its weak spot. “Huh?”
After he’d avoided the first officer, the next one came at him—the less evil-looking Mandulu of the two. An uppercut to its chin and it fell to the floor. The next one took a whack to the chin too, which dropped it mid-run.
With the other two officers on the floor, Seb stared at what must have been the lead officer. When the yellow creature opened its wide mouth, it poked out a forked tongue and its sharp teeth flipped forward.
Seb grabbed the taser from one of the fallen Mandulus as the yellow mess came at him, stepped aside, and pressed it into the base of the creature’s neck as it passed him. A spasm snapped through its thick body, but it remained on its feet. When it turned around again, it screamed louder than before.
The beast rushed Seb again and Seb’s world sped up. Seb hadn’t ever been in a fight longer than this and his ability seemed to be failing him. With the yellow beast upon him, Seb’s world tilted as he took a heavy blow to the centre of his face. The pain damn near blinded him, and as Seb struggled to his feet, the monster kicked him in the chin.
The blow shoved Seb backwards and he crashed into a wall of fire extinguishers. A moment of clarity and he saw the brute descend on him again. His last roll of the dice, Seb jumped to his feet, ripped an extinguisher from the wall, and brought it up in time to connect with the underside of the yellow monster’s chin.
The blow forced it back, and it seemed to shake the entire ship when it fell. Blood ran from Seb’s nose and dripped onto the ship’s floor.
With the three of them down, Seb dropped the fire extinguisher and ran to Sparks.
Big purple eyes and a wonky grin regarded him. “You came back for me? You came back?”
“All right,” Seb said, “no need to get all mushy.”
“But no one’s ever come back for me. Well, not unless they wanted to kill me, that is.”
When he’d loosened the ropes, Seb stepped aside and let them fall to the ground. “Come on, let’s cut the drama and get out of here, yeah?”
Sparks maintained her wonky grin as she jumped down from her seat, and just as Seb headed out of the room, she called, “Wait.”
Seb stopped and turned to her. When he followed the line of one of her long fingers, Seb saw her computer up on a high shelf. After he’d grabbed it and passed it to her, he used his sleeve to wipe the blood from his face and said, “Can we go now?”
“Thanks again, Sebastian.”
“Remind me why I saved you?”
Sparks laughed.
“So can we go?”
A nod and Sparks said, “Yep, let’s get the hell out of here.”
Chapter Forty-Four
By the time they’d left the ship, Sparks had overtaken Seb. As she ran through the downed guards, she looked over her shoulder at him. “Wow, I’m pleased I gave that necklace back. Jeez, Seb, how did you take all of these guys out?”
Too gassed from the run to speak, his nose still leaking blood and his eyes still streaming, Seb watched his footing in the dark cargo bay and negotiated the downed guards on the ground.
A few seconds after Sparks had, Seb burst out into the large spaceport. The sudden change in light dazed him for a few seconds, but he kept up at a full sprint and remained on Sparks’ tail.
As Sparks ran down the main walkway, she held her tiny computer up and typed furiously into it. A few seconds later, she pointed at one of the docked ships. “They’re due to leave in thirty seconds. Come on, let’s go.”
Seb didn’t reply, his lungs burning as he ran. With all of his focus on his breath, he kept up with Sparks as best as he could.
Although the tiny Sparks had opened up a large gap between her and Seb, she waited outside the docking bay when she arrived at it. Bouncing on the spot, she chewed on her bottom lip.
When Seb caught up to her, she darted into the bay.
Before Seb followed her in, he heard the moan of the cargo doors closing. A slow and drawn-out groan, it sounded like the yawn of a giant beast.
Seb entered the docking bay to see the ramp had been taken away. With no access for someone of her size, Sparks stood and stared up as a door closed in from each side of the space, reducing the gap all the time. With his teeth clenched, Seb found an extra burst of speed, scooped Sparks up as he ran, and dove through the tightening space, both doors scraping his shoulders as he slipped through the tight gap.
The hard floor in the cargo bay sent a violent jolt through Seb’s left shoulder when he landed, but he managed to flip over and protect Sparks by rolling onto his back.
As the small Thrystian rolled off him, Seb remained on his back and gasped for breath. Until that moment, he hadn’t noticed the stench; but now, as he lay there, he caught the rich stink of manure. As he sat up, he covered his mouth with his hand and stared at Sparks. “What’s that smell?”
“Look,” she said, “beggars can’t be choosers. This was the first ship leaving, so I thought we’d do better to get on it and get away than wait around to get taken back to that damn prison.”
Even as she told him that, Seb saw the wince in Sparks’ demeanour. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Huh?”
Seb tilted his head to one side. “Sparks.”
The small woman feigned a
vacant look.
“Come on, Sparks, don’t take me for a fool.” Then it hit him, and it wasn’t the smell. “Where’s this ship going to?”
“Well, you see—”
“Sparks?”
“Aloo.”
“Aloo?”
Before Seb could say anything else, the lights in the cargo hold sprang to life. Dazzled by the glare, he heard the whoosh of a door sliding open. As he got to his feet and raised his fists, blinking to clear his vision, a voice he recognised boomed through the large space. “Lower your guard.”
When the suited form came into view—about ten feet tall, black eyes, a pointed nose, scars on his grey skin—Seb dropped his fists and sighed. “Sparks, this is—”
“I-I know who this is,” the small woman stammered. “It’s Moses Deloitte, the most feared gangster in the galaxy.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Before Seb could react to the appearance of the rough gangster, bars shot up from the floor all around him and attached to the ceiling. When he looked at Sparks, he saw that she too had been caged.
Although Seb grabbed the bars and shook them, they didn’t budge. His pulse raced and heat flushed his face as his world slipped into slow motion. Seb spun on the spot, but he couldn’t find the cage’s weak point.
When his world returned to normal, he looked at Moses. “I’m not going to fight for you, no matter what you do.”
Moses laughed, slipped a gas mask over his large face, and stood in front of Seb and Sparks as the hiss of gas filled the cargo area.
Within a few seconds, Seb’s head spun.
A few more seconds and he fell to the ground.
***
When Seb came to, he found himself back in a cell similar to the one he’d escaped from. Except this time, instead of a dozy Mandulu, he’d been locked up with Sparks. The small woman sat perched on the edge of the bed, twiddling her long thumbs.
A headache clattered through Seb’s skull and his face throbbed from the beating he’d taken when rescuing Sparks. He looked at his friend. “What’s happened?”
“We’re back on that stinking prison ship. They said they won’t tell me anything until you’re awake. So if you’re feeling up to it, please go and shout through the hatch so they know you’re up.”
Unsteady on his feet, Seb stood up and wobbled for a second. The entire room appeared to move like the deck of a ship in a meteor shower.
As Seb walked to the door, wobbly with every step forward, he drew deep breaths to try to settle the nausea in his stomach.
Before he could pull the hatch open and call out, the locks on the other side of the door snapped free. Two lizard guards, like the ones Moses always had with him, walked into the cell, clamped handcuffs that covered Seb’s entire fists and forearms over his wrists, and did the same to Sparks.
Without a word, the guards led them to a room at the end of a corridor.
The guards then opened the door and led the pair in. There was a table in the middle of the room and Moses sat behind it. With a grin as wide as his thick head, Moses looked at both Seb and Sparks. As he assessed them with his onyx glare, he said, “So, how are you?”
At a loss for words, Seb looked at Sparks, who had her lips pressed tightly together. For Sparks to hold her sass back said something about Moses that Seb had only suspected up until that point. The gangster in front of them shouldn’t be messed with. Taking Sparks’ lead, Seb remained silent.
Moses linked his fingers together, leaned forward, and rested his forearms on the table in front of him. With the same wide grin fixed on his predatory face, he looked from Seb to Sparks and back again. “Let me ask you both something.”
Again, neither of them replied as they stood in the metal room. Like the prison cells, the room had metal walls, floor, and ceiling. The cold grey, combined with Moses’ dark glare, snapped a chill through Seb.
“Have either of you heard of the Shadow Order?”
Seb remained silent, but Sparks raised a cuffed hand. “I have.”
“Well?”
At first Sparks looked at Seb before she returned her attention to Moses. “It’s an intergalactic team that go to whichever planet they’re needed on to sort things out. They’re a secret group that many people think are a fabrication, but they’re not.”
“And you’d know.”
“Huh?” Sparks said.
“Come on, Sparks,” Moses replied. “You’ve been hacking into our systems for long enough.”
Sparks flushed red but didn’t say anything.
When Moses looked at Seb, he grinned again. “As Sparks said, the Shadow Order is a team of beings who get things done. We’re the people who get a phone call when a leader of a planet has been kidnapped or when one army plans all-out war on the planets surrounding it. We go in, we do what needs to be done, and we get out like we’ve never been there in the first place. We employ only the best of the best.”
“And you want us?” Seb said. “A couple of low-level criminals turned convicts?”
“Come on, Seb, surely you don’t still believe that. This prison ship isn’t only a place where we collect bounties on wanted criminals. It’s so much more. It’s also the galaxy’s toughest job interview.”
“Huh?”
“You think many people escape from here? We give plenty of people the opportunity. We set up their cells and escape routes, so if they make the right choices—the kind of choices a member of the Shadow Order would make—then they can escape. You and Sparks made those choices.”
“How did you get out, Sparks?” Seb said.
“They didn’t lock my door,” Sparks replied.
“And you didn’t think to be suspicious of that?”
“Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, Sebastian.”
Before Seb could respond to her, Moses interrupted. “We’ve had our eye on Sparks for ages. What really brought you to my attention, Seb, was when you wouldn’t fight in the pits. You could have made a killing.”
“So none of this was real?”
“No.”
“You don’t process anyone?”
“Not unless they really deserve it. We mind-wipe most of the prisoners here, collect the bounty on them, and drop them back on their own planet. Only the best of the best make it through. Those are the people we employ. You’d be heavily compensated if you choose to work for us. A few years and you won’t ever need to work again.”
A shake of his head and Seb stepped back from the table. “I’m not interested.”
“You prefer the wage of a cargo ship worker?”
“It’s honest money.”
“You don’t get more honest than fixing the galaxy’s problems.”
Although Seb opened his mouth to speak, Moses cut him short. “Let me word this differently. You both have bounties on your heads. You could be up on multiple assault charges.” He then turned to look at Sparks. “And you, my dear, will be hung out to dry for fraud. Working for us has got to be better than prison, right? I’ve seen your skill set. Seb, the way you hunted Sparks down in Aloo, and how you fought in the pit. And, Sparks, you’re a bloody genius!”
Sparks beamed from the praise.
“Besides,” Moses said when he looked back at Seb. “Your dad would be proud. This is law enforcement on a much grander scale. You’ll be doing the galaxy a great service … and you’ll retire rich.”
After he released a deep sigh, Seb looked at Sparks, who clearly wanted in. With a shake of his head, Seb stroked his dad’s necklace. Sure, he would be fighting, but fighting for the law seemed very different to fighting in the pits for money. “Okay,” Seb said. “I’m in.”
The chair screeched behind Moses as he got to his feet and held his hand out for Seb to shake. Seb thrust his cuffed hand forward, and Moses shook it so vigorously it ran through Seb’s entire body. Moses beamed another toothy grin at him. “You’ve made the correct choice.” He then shook the hand of Sparks. “Welcome to the team.”
End of book one.
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