“Yeah.” Phulp looked around. “Whatever resources we have on this planet, it seems a lot of people want them. The Crimson star fleet are always fighting in the skies.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“Huh?” Phulp said.
Seb shook his head. “Don’t worry.” The Crimson star fleet and their inability to shoot didn’t matter. He thought of the slightly pudgy, floppy-haired Camoron instead and drew as deep a breath as he could without choking. They wouldn’t be here were it not for his greed.
Before Seb could think on it any further, a large female—taller than him, red-skinned, and with three horns down the centre of her face—ran from the flames. Her eyes were spread wide and she had the blackened body of a little one in her arms. It bore the same horn formation as her.
It took just one glance at the charred and smoking body to see the child had died, but she didn’t seem ready to accept that yet. Phulp grabbed Seb’s arm and pulled him aside to let her through. The others in their party did the same as they watched the creature run down the pathway with her dead child, her bare feet splashing in the sewage.
Bile burned the back of Seb’s throat. “Such devastation. You’d think with the number of foot soldiers the Crimson Countess has, she’d take the fight to these planets rather than letting them come in and create chaos like they do.”
“The city is much more fiercely protected than the slums,” Phulp said.
“So it’s no great loss to her?”
“Apparently not.”
“Do they ever manage to bomb the elevated city?” Seb asked.
“Not that I’ve ever witnessed.”
Surrounded by the popping and crackling sounds of buildings on fire, Seb heard a different noise. A tearing, crashing sound. He heard creaks and groans followed by loud slams. A look to his right and he saw a group of giant creatures working through the slum, knocking down huts.
When they came across one, a large brute of a monster stepped out before they could level it. Purple and marked with black tribal tattoos all over its body, it had a chest so broad Seb wondered how it managed to stay upright. When it roared at the group of demolition experts, Seb felt the reverberation of its fierce warning against his chest.
Before Seb could ask Phulp about the destruction of the huts, the small and pale creature rushed off to help the demolition crew.
Despite being mobbed by five creatures, the purple beast still put up a good fight.
Seb ran through the huts to join Phulp. SA and Gurt had joined him too. Sparks remained on the path, and Seb couldn’t blame her. She’d gone above and beyond already today.
Seb, Gurt, and SA joined in and they managed to wrestle the big monster to the ground. It bucked and writhed, and when it roared again, the volume of it blurred Seb’s vision. “You can’t destroy my home.”
One of the demolition crew shouted back as he rode the bucking brute, the chaos of their surroundings forcing urgency from everyone as the temperature rose from the fire creeping closer. “If we don’t make a gap in the huts, this fire will burn through the entire slum. Your hut won’t make it either way. Better to knock it down and save everyone else’s.”
The large beast growled as it fought to pull breaths into its wide chest. The inhale and exhale of the monster lifted Seb and the nine others who lay on top of it.
Once they’d pulled its hut down, they got off him. The destruction of its home had robbed the purple creature of its fight and it slumped in defeat. Phulp led the way back to the path. The other three followed and they joined up with Sparks again.
They continued their journey toward the elevated city, and Seb asked Phulp, “Does that work? Pulling the huts down?”
A shrug and Phulp nodded. “Yeah. Usually.”
The closer they got to their destination, the less the fires burned.
Hardly surprising considering what Phulp had said about the elevated part of Caloon avoiding attacks.
The dark sky had cleared enough for Seb to search it for signs of more ships, but he thankfully couldn’t see any.
Such poor visibility meant Seb didn’t realise just how close they’d got to the elevated part of the city until they were virtually on top of it. To look up at it made him dizzy. If there were any clouds on Solsans, the city would have nestled among them for sure. But since he’d been there, the sky had remained clear.
From a distance, it seemed like the elevation had been natural. But now Seb was closer, he could see the work that had gone into it. Stones stacked one on top of the other and held in place with cement showed the huge and wide protrusion had been elevated with intent.
Phulp turned to Seb and said, “Can I take more of my credits as payment, please? You don’t have to give it all to me, but I’m taking a huge risk here, and I want to make sure I get paid something at least.”
After a glance at the others, Seb received their nods of approval before he took the empty card Phulp held out to him and transferred over a large proportion of the credits he’d promised him.
Phulp then grabbed Seb’s arm and yanked it. A loud slam landed behind him. Seb turned around to see the broken body of a boy where he’d stood moments earlier. The kid had a waxy look to him that was similar to Phulp. He must have been about fifteen and lay with his mouth open wide, his black eyes glaring from his dead face.
Instant dryness spread through Seb’s throat as he looked down at the boy. “What the …?”
“A failed Crimson foot soldier,” Phulp said while he stared at him, zero emotion on his blank face. “It’s what I told you about earlier. If they don’t make the grade or they fail to show convincing devotion, the Countess throws them out of the city … literally.”
When Seb glanced at the rest of his crew, he saw they all watched him with the same shocked expression.
“Come on,” Phulp said as he stepped through an archway built into the bottom of the city. “To get into the elevated part unnoticed, you have to go through the sewers.”
The reek of the smoke had been in Seb’s nostrils until that point. When he stepped forward, he caught a stench worse than any he’d smelled since arriving on Solsans. The streets running through the slums stank, but now they’d come to the source of the sewage, it made his eyes water. “No wonder you can get through here unnoticed.” He pressed the back of his hand against his nose to mask the smell. “Who in their right mind would search this place?”
Darker than any part of the city, the stench of waste hung so thick in the air, Seb could taste it as a stale funk on his tongue. The obsidian walls glistened, damp as if sweating the ammonia reek of the place. Like in the sewers below Aloo, they had thin walkways running next to the vile rivers.
Once they’d traveled about fifty metres into the place, a light flicked on and Seb turned around to see Sparks with her mini-computer in her hand. He nodded and then smiled at her.
“So do all of the Crimson foot soldiers end up living in the slums once they’ve done their service?” Seb asked Phulp.
“The lucky ones do.”
“The lucky ones?”
“Yeah. Sometimes the Countess takes a shine to you. You don’t want that to happen because she’ll employ you as one of her personal guards. There isn’t any getting away from that. Fortunately, because of my size, she barely noticed me.” Phulp stopped dead.
When the others stopped too, Seb heard it: the scratch of feet walking across stone.
Despite speaking in a whisper, Phulp’s voice carried in the enclosed space. “There’s someone down here with us.”
Chapter 35
The group remained both silent and still as they listened to the being approach them. The dry rasp of a foot dragging along stone called at them from the darkness. A slap of a heavy step hitting the ground followed by the dry rasp again.
The hairs on the back of Seb’s neck stood on end and his heart beat faster. Swallowing both the musty taste of the stinking sewers and a mouthful of sticky saliva, he stood tense and waited.
<
br /> Each step forward brought the being closer to appearing from the shadows. But, as yet, it remained hidden.
A shrill cackle then came from the darkness. It rang out, stuttered and flighty as if the person laughing had zero control over the sound. The sharp mirthful noise echoed through the caves and ran away from them down the many tunnels.
Seb heard the water break next to him as if something had pushed up through the surface, but when he looked down, he saw nothing in the excrement-filled sludge.
The laugh came again. An erratic titillating noise, it turned Seb’s blood cold. At the sound of movement behind him, he spun around to see Gurt and SA step up to his flanks. Both of them had their weapons drawn and both of them stared into the darkness as if ready to attack.
The sides of Seb’s world blurred, and he too fell into a slightly more defensive crouch. If it kicked off, they’d be ready.
Another splash sounded out down to Seb’s left and he looked at the water again. Because Sparks stood at the back of the group, her torch didn’t provide the best light and he couldn’t see what moved in the dirty liquid next to them.
Seb instantly forgot about it when a human emerged from the darkness. So pale she almost glowed, her hair hung from her red, raw scalp in chunks. It looked like large handfuls of the dark locks had been pulled out. Probably by her.
She dragged one lifeless foot behind her as she walked, and she continued to giggle while getting closer to the group.
Seb caught Gurt in his peripheral vision raising his gun, so he pressed on top of the barrel and encouraged the Mandulu to lower it. “She looks crazy,” Seb said, “but she doesn’t look dangerous.”
“You wouldn’t give her a chance if she wasn’t human.”
And maybe Gurt had a point. Maybe coming from the same gene pool as the deranged figure in front of them did make Seb more empathetic.
Before Seb could answer Gurt’s accusation, Phulp said, “Sewer dweller.”
The woman continued forward, completely oblivious to Phulp’s assessment of her.
“They can’t survive in the slums, so they come to the sewers and sift through the waste of the wealthy.”
“There’s something worth scavenging down here, is there?” Gurt asked.
“If not, they’ve been known to resort to eating …”
Before Phulp could finish, the woman got closer and Spark’s torchlight flashed across her face. She had no teeth and her jowls were coated in what looked like dry shit. Seb stepped back a pace.
The woman locked a glassy stare on Seb as she closed in on him. A zombie with an insatiable hunger, she seemed to only care about him at that moment. She giggled again as if the excitement of being in his presence overwhelmed her.
“Looks like you’ve got a fan,” Gurt said.
The woman raised her right arm and pointed a shaking finger at Seb. The water broke next to them again and he glanced down. Something moved in it.
“It’s you,” the woman said, her voice scratchy.
Seb stepped back and said, “Huh?”
“The one! It’s you. I thought it was you, but I had to be sure.”
“What are you talking about?” The water broke again, and Seb looked down quickly enough to see a thick tentacle covered in suckers. As much as he wanted to turn to the others, he couldn’t take his eyes off the crazy woman who’d gotten to within a few metres of him. When he saw that she had all of her teeth, he heaved. She’d appeared toothless because of the amount of shit in her mouth.
She worked her jaw as she chewed on the brown substance and she giggled some more. “Our saviour,” she said, the reek of waste riding her words. “The son of the special one. You have the gift.”
The woman reached forward to touch Seb and he recoiled, heaving at her stench. She hissed at him and snarled. “Let me touch you. I’ve waited my life in these sewers because I knew you would come. Let me—”
Before she could say anything else, a loud splash sounded out next to them and a huge tentacle burst from the water. As thick as Gurt’s thigh, it had suckers along the bottom of it. A lasso, it wrapped around the woman’s ankle and ripped her from her feet.
The woman’s scream disturbed Seb more than her laugh. Pure high-pitched fear, it hurt his ears and he winced to watch her hit the hard ground with a thud and then get dragged toward the water.
“We need to run,” Phulp said. “Now!”
Although Seb heard Phulp’s words, he couldn’t move as he stared at the spot the woman had occupied just seconds ago. The river ran as if nothing had happened. The woman and the tentacle had vanished beneath its surface.
Phulp, Sparks, and SA all sprinted past Seb, yet he still didn’t move. It took for Gurt to grab Seb’s arm and drag him with them before Seb followed the group into the darkness and away from whatever had just pulled the woman under.
Chapter 36
Phulp took off at a sprint, opening a gap between him and the others. He ran so fast he even left Sparks behind.
Seb shook his head. How did creatures so much shorter than him manage to outpace him?
With his lungs still aching from the fire in the hut, Seb sped along the damp and narrow footpath. It looked like it should be slippery, but didn’t feel it … yet.
It seemed that Sparks did her best to hold her torch up, the white light wobbling as she ran with it. However, it did little to illuminate the dark tunnels. They’d have to follow their guide. Phulp’s pale skin helped keep him visible and made the short squat creature almost glow in the dark.
Although, when the others—led by Phulp—rounded a sharp turn, Seb completely missed it. As his world slipped into slow motion, he felt his leading foot slip as he tried to step on a piece of the path that didn’t exist. Sparks must have turned his way because her torch lit up the frothy water below, showing him the brown stools floating in it. Some were as long as his leg.
Just before Seb took the plunge, Sparks grabbed his shirt. Not only Sparks, but SA and Gurt held on too, anchoring the small Thrystian woman, therefore anchoring him and pulling him back to safety.
Out of breath and without time to thank them, Seb watched Sparks and the others take off after Phulp again, and he followed directly behind them.
The large river of waste narrowed around the next bend and they saw Phulp as he hopped across to the other side. They all followed him a few seconds later.
The place still stank; Seb only smelled it when he thought about it, but he’d already started to get used to the reek, which somehow disturbed him more than the stench itself.
Several more turns and Seb called ahead for the others to wait, his loud voice echoing through the dark and dank tunnels.
Phulp pulled up, as did Sparks and the others.
“Surely we’ve lost it now?” Seb said. He looked down at the water. “I haven’t seen anything move down there since we started running.”
The silhouette of Phulp moved in some way, but it took for him to step into Sparks’ torch beam for Seb to see him shaking his head. He looked as exhausted as Seb felt, his small chest rising and falling as he gasped for breath. “No,” he finally managed. “It may look …”
Before he could say anything else, the sound of rushing water preceded a huge tentacle rising from the funky river.
It wrapped around Gurt like a constrictor, and although Seb worried for Gurt’s safety, he couldn’t help but cringe at the slimy appearance of the beast.
Solid in his stance, Gurt held his position long enough for SA to pull out one of her larger knives and stab the tentacle.
The beast let go with a scream that shook the walls around them, and it instantly withdrew, the tentacle rushing back to the water so fast it turned into a blur.
Phulp didn’t need to say anything else. When he took off again, they all followed.
Chapter 37
After every laboured breath—his smoke-damaged lungs tight—Seb wanted to call out for the group to stop. The labyrinthine tunnels and rivers seemed to never end and
he didn’t have it in him to run forever.
When they came to an open space, Phulp halted. They’d arrived at a square room where the rivers crossed in the middle. A large piece of damp path sat in each corner. “This … seems … like the … best … place to stop and … fight it,” he said between breaths. “We won’t outrun it.”
Seb looked at the others and they all nodded at one another. They took a corner each and Phulp retreated into a dark tunnel.
Seconds later, the rush of water raced into the room, and for a moment everything stilled.
Then—as before—a gushing noise like a large waterfall sounded out as something rose in the middle of them. Somewhere between a squid and an octopus, the monster had thick green skin and a domed head.
Two eyes, each as large as a dinner plate and black like the darkest corner of space, stared at Seb before it stretched open two vast wings. The span—about five metres wide—spread across the entire space. The beast spun on the spot to take in its opponents. Flaps of shredded skin hung down over its mouth like torn fabric. Fleshy and loose, they swayed with the creature’s movement.
Everything had slowed down for Seb and he noticed Sparks in his peripheral vision as she slipped a watch onto her wrist.
The beast locked onto Seb again and opened its wide mouth. Big enough to swallow him whole, the stench of rot and decomposition rode on its breath. When it inhaled, the rush of wind pulled him forward a step before it screamed. The shrill call pierced his eardrums and blew him backwards. The creature shook with the force of its call, the loose flesh in front of its mouth blowing outwards from the release.
Something about the sound rattled Seb’s entire being. It jangled his nerves and implanted the memories of nightmares into his psyche. If he walked away from there today, he’d be taking that sound with him. Like an owl shocks its prey with its screech, he became momentarily paralysed by the aggressive yell of the beast.
The Shadow Order - Books 1 - 8 + 120 Seconds (The complete series): A Space Opera Page 30
