The Shadow Order - Books 1 - 8 + 120 Seconds (The complete series): A Space Opera

by Michael Robertson

  With a second to take his eyes from the beasts around him, Seb looked down the hill again. Sparks and SA had returned to their snaking paths, one on either side of Gurt, who boarded backwards, a blaster in each hand as he ripped off shots at the creatures.

  The flurry of laser fire stood against the backdrop of the pitch-black night’s sky. Every shot Gurt fired connected, and the bears went down one after the other. Yelp after yelp after yelp.

  Seb’s slow motion kept everything manageable as he weaved down the mountain, just out of the reach of the monsters on his tail. Snapping jaws full of teeth came close—too close for comfort—but none of them made contact.

  The pack had been considerably thinned by Gurt’s volley of laser fire, so just three of the beasts remained on Seb’s tail. Maybe the most persistent. Maybe the ones with the best stamina. Maybe the slow ones who couldn’t keep up but found themselves left by virtue of being the ones at the back.

  Two laser shots ripped past Seb, one on each side of him. They ran so close they damn near tore the fabric of his jacket.

  Not knowing if he should look at Gurt or the beasts he’d shot at, Seb watched the bears fall and then turned to the large Mandulu. A shake of his head and Gurt looked at the last bear on the slope.

  When Seb looked behind, he saw the brute directly behind him. It made it impossible for Gurt to shoot him.

  Seb moved left and the beast followed him. He moved right and so did the bear. With every metre they traveled down the mountain, the large animal gained on him.

  A scan of his surroundings and Seb saw no sign of any rocks, trees, or any other obstructions he could encourage the bear to crash into.

  Puffed out from avoiding the others, Seb felt the hot breath of the creature pushing against his back and the thud of its heavy footfalls through his board. When he looked down at his team, both Sparks and SA looked up, their jaws hanging loose, their eyes spread wide.

  Gurt, however, pointed at the ground. How much did Seb trust the imbecile? He’d had no reason to before that point. The loud snap of the creature’s jaws sounded closer than ever and Seb’s heart backflipped. Another glance at Gurt and he saw him point at the ground again.

  As if he were about to dive into an icy lake, Seb took one final deep breath and went down.

  Like before, Seb hit the solid slope hard and spun over and over, the board still attached to his feet. Each impact against the compacted ground rattled through him, and as he rolled he caught glimpses of the brute behind him. It had leapt forward, its large paws—each one the size of his head—were outstretched in front of it. Like the first one that had caught up with him, this one seemed to have an abyss of a mouth that could consume him whole. Its rows of needle teeth would perforate him so he’d leak blood like a sponge leaking water.

  But just before it landed on top of Seb, a red laser blast crashed into its nose, throwing the brute backwards. Its legs swung underneath it as the impact of the blast tossed the head of the beast away.

  While still barreling down the hill and still moving in slow motion, Seb pushed up from the ground and got upright on his board again. A glance back the way they’d come from and he saw the mountainside strewn with the dead bodies of the bears. Blood soaked the white snow, and each brown lump of fur lay motionless.

  Chapter 20

  Seb caught up to the others at the bottom of the mountain. They’d stopped by the entrance to a cave.

  The danger from the bears had passed, but Seb’s world still moved in slow motion as he did his best to control the board strapped to his feet.

  A glance at Sparks and SA, and then Seb looked at Gurt. He judged himself through the Mandulu’s eyes for what he planned to do next, but he didn’t have any other choice.

  As Seb had already done a couple of times on the descent, he let himself fall over. He crashed into the snowy ground and rolled several times before he stopped at Gurt’s feet.

  The world returned to a normal speed for Seb as he looked up at his comrade, who shook his head at him. “You need to work on your boarding skills. What would you have done were I not there to save you?”

  Although Seb opened his mouth to protest, Sparks stepped forward. “You don’t get it, do you, Gurt?”

  “Huh?”

  “Seb went down on purpose.”

  A heavy scowl gripped Gurt’s features. “Why would he do that?”

  Still recovering from the run, Seb fought to get his breath back and stood up. Every slight movement ached his body. “You’re right, Gurt, I don’t know how to board. I needed to slow down enough to get behind you. It was the only way I could think of to get you guys to look up the mountain to see the monsters chasing you.”

  “So you purposefully went among them so we could see them?”

  A look at SA and her brilliant gaze and Seb blushed before he let out a self-conscious laugh. “Um … yeah. It would have been a nasty surprise to be ambushed by that bunch, eh?”

  Although Gurt looked like he had more to say, a grimace twisted his face and he remained quiet.

  Chapter 21

  After Seb detached his snowboard from his feet, he sought shelter inside the damp cave, rested his board against the wall, and removed his salopettes and ski jacket. He tossed them down on the black stone ground and inhaled the musty reek of the place.

  No one spoke for a few seconds as the slow drip of melting snow played its wet metronome in the space. Seb stared down at his discarded items and broke the near silence. “I’m guessing we won’t need this lot again.”

  A glance down at the equipment and Gurt raised an eyebrow. The Mandulu clearly still stung from Seb’s purposeful falling over on the slopes. Or rather, his inability to see it where Sparks had. Other than general contempt, he had nothing to level at Seb at that moment and he seemed unsettled for it. He returned to removing his clothes and made a point to check that all of his blasters remained in place.

  Sparks—who Seb had noticed watched Gurt like he had—shrugged and finally responded, “I hope not.” After she’d tossed her board and clothes on top of Seb’s, she put her rucksack on the ground, opened it up, and inspected the contents.

  SA said nothing, as usual, but she also checked her equipment. Every razor-sharp knife caught the light and winked as she examined it. Like Gurt, she wore a leather harness that clung to her lithe form. It made the most practical use of the space to get as many knives on her person as she could physically carry. They were all strapped so tightly to her, she moved without a sound.

  For the first time since the fight in the canteen with Gurt, Seb relaxed a little. With no equipment to check, he focused on his deep breaths as he tried to centre himself.

  After a short while, Gurt seemed to be satisfied with the security of his blasters against his body and he turned his attention to Seb, as he often did when he got bored. “Why don’t you have any equipment?”

  At risk of sounding like a douche in front of SA, Seb raised his fists. “I don’t need anything more than these.” His fists and the ability he’d inherited from his mother. But Gurt didn’t need to know that.

  “How about some shooting practice?” Gurt suggested. The twinkle that sat in his red eyes whenever he tried to wind Seb up returned. Pleased with his own incredible wit, he flashed a facetious grin. “You could do with that.”

  But Seb didn’t respond and Sparks stepped between them before it went any further. “Right, where do we go?”

  “The fighting pits,” Seb said.

  The purple gaze of Sparks locked on Seb and she appraised him like she would an alcoholic asking to be taken to a bar. “Really?”

  “As foreigners to this planet,” Seb said, “the fighting pits are the one place I know where we won’t stand out. They’re always rammed with creatures from all over the galaxy. We go there and we can learn a lot about Caloon without raising suspicion.”

  An approving nod and Sparks looked at the other two. SA also nodded. Gurt remained silent. It wouldn’t get any better than that from
him.

  Sparks had left her rucksack open, and when Seb saw a pair of binoculars on top of everything else, he leaned down, picked them up, and walked outside the cave.

  Back out in the elements without his warm clothing, Seb tensed up against the frigid blast of nature. He clenched his jaw and shivered as he put the binoculars to his eyes. He looked out over the slum and elevated area of Caloon. Fog hung heavy in the air, but he could just about see the shapes of buildings through the green glow of night vision. When he saw the pit amongst the small raggedy huts that made up the slums, he pulled the binoculars away and handed them to Sparks.

  Now Seb had seen it, the silhouette of the pit stood much clearer on the horizon for him. A huge colosseum of a place—as most of them were—he pointed for Sparks to see. “That has to be it.”

  Sparks handed the binoculars to Gurt, who used them before handing them to SA. When Seb took the binoculars back from SA, she held onto them a moment longer than he expected and the two looked at one another. A slow blink and she let go of them.

  “I’m not a fan of this plan,” Gurt said, bursting through the moment. “I mean, anything this rat says,” he said while pointing at Seb, “I’m tempted to do the exact opposite of. There must be a better idea than this.”

  Seb looked at Gurt, as did Sparks and SA. None of them spoke. After a few seconds, Gurt sighed and his shoulders sagged. “Fine, if it goes wrong, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Before either Seb or Sparks could reply, the sound of voices came at them from around the corner. As one, they all looked in the direction of the noise and withdrew back into the cave they’d just emerged from.

  “We saw something on the radar,” one of the voices said. A female voice, it sounded deep like it came from a creature of considerable size.

  “It could just be some space junk,” one of them replied. A male this time, his voice higher in pitch than the female’s.

  “But we have to check it out at least. Imagine if it was something and we didn’t do anything about it. The Countess would skin us alive.”

  The last comment silenced the group. It seemed like the beings in the Countess’ employ feared her like everyone else did.

  The rustling of a bag pulled Seb’s attention to the ground next to him. He saw Sparks rummaging through her things. When she stood up again, she had a small microphone plugged into her computer and she held it in the direction of the Crimson foot soldiers.

  “Hey,” one of the foot soldiers called out. “Look here! Footprints.”

  A deep breath to settle his rampaging heartbeat and Seb looked at the others. They didn’t need words at that moment. From the looks on their faces, Seb could tell they all knew things were about to get hairy.

  Chapter 22

  The crunch of boots moved through the snow towards them and Seb edged closer to the cave’s exit. Gurt and SA stepped forward with him, SA by his side, Gurt a little further back.

  The moon cast enough light to throw the shadows of the foot soldiers across the snow. There must have been at least ten of them. Adrenaline pulled Seb’s stomach tight and the edges of his world blurred as his gift kicked in.

  When the first of the Crimson foot soldiers came into view, Seb couldn’t identify its gender. Its face masked in shadow, it stood a little taller than him and a little wider. Not that gender mattered. When he saw the weak spot roughly where its nose should be, he lunged forward and drove a balled fist into it.

  Before the foot soldier had a chance to look up, it crumpled beneath the blow, its legs folding under it. It sparked the battle to life.

  Even when viewed in slow motion, SA moved like a tornado as she slipped out into the snow—a knife in each hand—and spun through the crowd of red robes.

  All different shapes and sizes, the foot soldiers numbered far more than the ten Seb had anticipated. Forty or more, most of them had blasters and, after the initial shock of the ambush, they all drew their weapons. As SA worked through them—her long limbs fluid in her movement—the guards fired several shots in retaliation, all of which missed.

  The weak spots of each creature stood out for Seb and he moved through the ones SA hadn’t yet got to. Each one went down with a single blow as he avoided their sluggish attacks.

  After he’d knocked out several of the brutes—his fists stinging from fighting in the cold—Seb caught sight of SA again. She moved with the poise of a ballerina, each graceful stroke controlled, seemingly choreographed for both beauty and deadly efficiency.

  White light exploded through Seb’s left eye and dragged him away from the mesmerising SA. He looked up to see a beast twice his size with fists like boulders. As he reeled from the blow, his world sped up.

  The chaos of the battle surrounded Seb: screams, cries, blaster fire. Slow motion rendered sound meaningless, and although it didn’t mute the battle, it stretched each noise out to the point where he didn’t hear it.

  At full speed, the cacophony of the fight made Seb dizzy, SA turned into a blur, and Gurt spawned pyrotechnics from his blasters. He didn’t realise what Gurt could do until he saw him in real time. With his thick fingers working on the triggers, he released a constant stream of fire and every blast hit its mark.

  A shake of his head and Seb returned to slow motion just in time to duck the next blow from the brute that had already hit him.

  Seb’s legs coiled like springs as he dropped down, fueling his leap to explode back up again and catch the monster on the chin. A wet clap as fist connected with jaw, and the beast’s head snapped back. It stumbled for a second and then fell into the snow.

  Coming into line with SA’s moves, Seb joined in her dance, dodging, parrying, and punching his way through the crowd. The cold bit into his exposed skin, but he kept pace with the beautiful assassin and dropped faceless red robe after faceless red robe.

  Once they’d taken down every foot soldier, Seb’s world sped up again. He breathed heavily as he surveyed the damage. The reek of cauterised flesh rode the strong winds, lifting the beginnings of a heave in his stomach and forcing him to scrunch his nose up.

  Many of the foot soldiers lay dead in the snow. The only ones that hadn’t passed were the ones Seb had hit. Before he could think on what he should do with them, Gurt walked through the carnage and executed every one with a shot to the face.

  As much as Seb wanted to be brave in front of SA, he flinched to watch a hole bored into the centre of each guard’s head. A wet squelch and another acrid kick of seared skin responded to each of Gurt’s blasts.

  A search of the bodies only turned up blasters and one walkie-talkie. Sparks walked out into the bloodstained snow with the walkie-talkie in her hand. She lifted her small computer up next to it and pressed the button to speak into it.

  The sound from her computer made no sense to Seb; it was a foreign dialect he couldn’t understand. Because Sparks’ computer didn’t have a translator chip implanted, it must have been how the soldiers sounded when they spoke to their base.

  A few seconds later, Sparks discarded the walkie-talkie and looked at the other three. “I just told them the object on the radar was probably some space junk. That we hadn’t seen anything after a thorough search of the mountain.”

  “So that’s why you recorded the other soldiers when they first arrived?”

  Sparks smiled, the purple glow of her eyes lighting up.

  The snow crunched beneath Gurt’s feet as he walked forward and shook his head. “So much for coming in unnoticed. What else has Moses failed to grasp about this mission?”

  “I think it’s safe to assume our intelligence isn’t very,” Seb said.

  None of the group spoke as the snow swirled around them in the fierce wind.

  “Right,” Sparks said and clapped her long-fingered hands together. She chewed the inside of her mouth and looked around. “We’re on our own from here on out. The first thing we need to do is get away from this place. Someone will come looking for this lot sooner or later.”

  “D
o you think we should hide their bodies in the cave?” Seb said.

  “Have you looked around at the snow?” Gurt replied. “Whether we hide them in the cave or not, it’s hard to avoid the fact a massacre happened.”

  Gurt might have had a point, but as always, his words were dripping in condescension.

  Chapter 23

  A dark wood of densely packed trees covered the steep slope down to the edge of the slums of Caloon. Now the group had reached the same level as the slums, they left the fierce cold behind and Seb’s numb extremities tingled as they heated up. Or rather, they had not gotten any colder at least. The temperature certainly hadn’t reached anywhere close to warm.

  At the rear of the group, Seb walked directly behind Gurt. The large Mandulu might have moved with a wide strut, his heavy legs and feet connecting with the ground with a solid thud, but he couldn’t hide his limp, even if he’d tried. Only subtle—a part of his walk even—Seb had seen Gurt’s weakness in the pit simulation, and now it seemed glaringly obvious to him. If the others had noticed, they hadn’t said anything yet.

  At the front of the line, Sparks flapped soundlessly and jumped to the side of the path as if she’d trodden in something she’d rather not have. She turned and said something to SA and Gurt before Gurt turned to Seb. “Their shit runs through the streets, keep to the side of the path.”

  A blanket of fog covered the small huts that had seemingly been made from whatever the residents could find. The small dwellings looked to jostle for position in the cramped space. The paths probably only remained free of them because the sewage needed to run somewhere. Despite the waste, at least it gave them a clear route through the place.