The alien stared at Seb through wide orange eyes. “I’m not lying,” it said, its words quick and breathless, its gaze flitting around the ship as if seeing if there were any others. “I didn’t steal anything. I didn’t give anyone any information.”
Seb didn’t reply, his throat dry, his body paralysed with fear.
“I don’t know how a memory stick got taken from here. I don’t know what happened.”
Seb lowered his torch so it shone on the creature’s stomach and stood up. “It’s okay,” he said. “I have nothing to do with the Crimson Countess. I stole this ship from her and found you in the back. Let me cut you down.”
“No,” the creature said.
“No?”
A twist ran through its face and its orange glare hazed over. Tears swelled in its eyes before they ran down its stretched cheeks. The fear had left it, and its voice came out as a whimper. “Look at me.”
Seb looked at it.
“Do you think I’ll recover from this? I’m in agony. I feel like every wound’s infected.”
The more it moved, the more it disturbed the smell of rotting flesh. Seb could have sworn he heard the tacky squelch of its wounds. “We can get you cleaned up,” he said. “Treat your cuts.” His hands buzzed as if he wanted to reach out and touch the thing.
The creature breathed heavily and shook its head. “There isn’t any treating me.”
“Why are you here? What happened to you?”
“The Countess … someone stole information on where the prisoners were kept and it happened on my watch. She’s been torturing me for weeks now. Whether I had anything to do with it or not, she wanted to make an example of me so no one else would make the same mistake.”
At a loss for words, Seb released a deep exhale and said, “I’m sorry.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong.”
It wouldn’t do any good to tell it he’d been in possession of the memory stick. Why inflict that final torture on the wretched beast?
“Please,” the creature said, “just kill me.” It looked down at the blaster in Seb’s pocket. He still wore the ridiculous tan flight suit, and while it had an abundance of pockets and pouches, none of them could conceal the weapon.
“I can’t.”
“Of course you can.” The creature fought for breath and winced again. It closed its eyes and clenched its jaw. A few seconds later, it reopened its eyes as if the pain had eased a little. “What you mean is you won’t. Can’t suggests you don’t have a choice. Please, end this hell and send me over to the other side. I can’t take any more of this.”
And what could Seb say to that? How could he deny the creature’s very real right to an execution.
It took for Seb to hold the blaster up and point it at the poor thing to realise just how much he shook. If he didn’t focus, he could miss it. Even at point-blank range. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“You’re doing what I’m asking of you. Don’t be sorry. Thank you.”
After a deep breath, Seb winced and pulled the trigger. The weapon kicked and sent out a red blast that burned straight into the centre of the creature’s face.
The tall being fell instantly limp and a caustic stench of seared flesh filled the air.
Although the first shot had clearly killed it, Seb kept the blaster raised and trained on the flaccid figure. He’d had too many surprises on this planet to take anything for granted.
Chapter 3
The silence soon overwhelmed Seb, and although he stared at the creature for a short time and kept his gun pointed at it, it still didn’t move. A hole in the face tended to be a hard thing to recover from.
Seb slipped the blaster into one of his large—but not large enough to contain it—pockets, and resumed his search of the ship.
It revealed just a few items. Seb found a lighter, a backpack, and a tub of wax pebbles. Close to leaving the pebbles behind, he then caught a whiff of them. The strong paraffin reek forced his face back as if it had dealt him a physical blow, and he scrunched his nose up. They smelled like a fuel of some sort and were undoubtably flammable. Maybe he could use them.
After shining his torch around the ship several times to check every possible nook and cranny, flinching every time he cast a light on the corpse, Seb shrugged. The vessel had nothing more to offer him. He took a few of the pebbles from the small plastic pot and dropped them in the ship’s entryway. Ten at the most, it barely made a dent in the supply. He sealed the tub back up and slipped the pot into his newly acquired backpack with his blaster.
Once outside the ship, Seb shone the torch around him. The light animated the trees’ shadows, but it revealed little else. Surely someone would come and investigate his crash landing soon. And with the deep groove he’d cut into the ground, they had something to follow that would lead them straight to it.
Now he stood outside, a small distance away from the dead creature, Seb shone his torch on it and stared at the twisted thing. A little easier to look at the beast from a distance, he shook his head to himself. His dad had been naive to think he could live a life without fighting. In a galaxy where beings like the Countess existed, there would always be a need to fight.
A tug on each strap of his backpack and Seb rolled his shoulders to make sure it sat flat against him. He then stepped towards the ship’s entrance, reached down to one of the waxy pebbles with his lighter, and struck up a flame.
The flame transferred to the pebbles almost instantly and spread across the line of them. It weaved, snake-like, as it moved from side to side on top of the white and flammable substance, but it didn’t do much else. Yet.
Seb stepped back into the thick growth of trees surrounding him, his torch in one hand and his lighter in the other.
Once he’d moved about twenty metres from the ship, the wax pebbles glowed a magnesium glare. Seb sped up his retreat.
About fifty metres clear, Seb heard a loud whoosh. A second later the vessel lit up. A sonic boom and the entire thing leapt into the air, glowing like a sun as it hovered for a second above the fierce flames about three metres from the ground.
It crashed back down with another loud boom!
“Damn,” Seb said to himself, the heat from the explosion blowing his hair back and shaking the branches on the densely packed trees around him. “Damn,” he repeated. Now he understood why the slums burned like they did when the Countess dropped her bombs on them.
A quick scan of his surroundings, the air smelling of pine and smoke, and Seb moved off towards the slums. If his crash landing didn’t get anyone’s attention, the small star he’d just ignited certainly would.
Chapter 4
The sooner Seb got off the damn planet, the better. Cold, damp, and always bloody dark, he hated every second he spent there. But he couldn’t leave without overthrowing the Countess. He’d made that promise to himself if no one else, and he wouldn’t break it.
The farther Seb moved away from the ship, the trickier he found it walking over the uneven ground. It made his progress slow, but he couldn’t use the torch. Not if he wanted to remain hidden.
The ship still burned behind him. At least fifty metres away from it now, it ran hotter than a normal fire and the heat still pressed against his back as if encouraging him away from it. It felt hot enough to burn the cold, damp evergreen trees in the forest, and the air smelled of their sap stronger than it had before.
After Seb had blown the ship up, the easiest path would have been one that led directly to the slums. However, if the soldiers wanted to check out the fire, he’d probably bump into them along that route. In a place as dark as Solsans, the ship burned bright, so it made sense they would come to investigate it. As a result, he moved away from both the ship and the slums, further into the wilderness surrounding Caloon.
The woodland grew thicker, the forest darker. The floor lay dense with fern and bracken. Seb tripped, reaching out to steady himself against a tree so he didn’t fall flat on his face.
The trees w
ere now packed so tightly together, they stopped even the moonlight shining down on the ground.
Before long, Seb couldn’t see a thing. A sharp sting ripped across his face when he walked into a thick, prickly branch. Flexible like a whip with small barbs studding it, it felt almost as if the tree had done it on purpose. The cold air bit into the buzz of the grazes on his face.
After stumbling and tripping for another ten metres or so, Seb looked behind him. He couldn’t see the fire anymore.
The crashed and burning ship must have frightened the local wildlife away. Now he’d put some distance between him and it, the air came alive with the calls of strange birds and the snapping of twigs as creatures moved around him.
Seb un-shouldered his bag, pulled his blaster out, and held onto it for comfort. Although it felt like no more than a token gesture. If he wanted to shoot anything, he’d have to be able to see it first.
When a thud shook the ground, Seb stopped, his heart pounding and his throat turning dry. He looked into the darkness and aimed his gun in the direction of the noise, but he couldn’t see a thing.
A flashback to the bear-like creatures in the mountains and Seb looked at the shadowy city of Caloon. For the first time since he’d jumped out of the Shadow Order’s ship with the others, the dark and built-up area looked more appealing than where he currently stood.
Far enough away from the wreck now and darkness hiding unimaginable horrors around him, Seb changed his course and headed directly for the slums. Hopefully he wouldn’t meet the soldiers on the way.
Chapter 5
The tree line ran up to the very edge of the slum. It seemed almost as if the wooded area kept the poor beings of Caloon penned in, giving them just enough space to live in but no more.
Just metres away from stepping out of the trees, Seb caught the smell of the place. The sewage reek of waste; the reinforcement of the divide between the haves and have-nots. The rich flushed their toilet on the poor in this place.
Seb ruffled his nose while he put his blaster into his backpack. Because he couldn’t conceal it under his clothing, he didn’t want to be walking around the slums with it on display. He already stood out in his ridiculous suit.
One more step and Seb would have revealed himself. He nearly took it before he saw the Crimson foot soldiers.
“What are you complaining about?” one of the soldiers said, his voice so deep Seb nearly felt it. The soldier stood both a foot taller and wider than Seb. He had a slum dweller hung upside down by his ankle. The dweller looked to be slightly shorter than him, maybe about five feet ten inches. Hard to tell in the dark and with him hanging upside down. The dweller—covered from head to toe in green scales—appeared to be naked.
“I’m not complaining, I’m just trying to explain that I don’t have the credits.”
“But you promised us,” another soldier said. This one stood only about three feet tall and had a nasally, goading rasp to its tone.
When the dweller didn’t reply, a third Crimson soldier—about the same size as Seb—walked over to a flimsy tent and pointed at it. “We gave you this because you needed somewhere to stay. We had plenty of beings who wanted it, yet we decided to give it to you. Did we make a mistake?”
“You said you’d get me a hut,” the dweller said, his voice breaking with his clear desperation.
“Shelter. We said shelter,” the small nasally one replied.
“It’s cold and wet in there.”
Seb looked at the tent and shivered. Cold and wet seemed like an understatement; the tent had rips on the outside of it and it had been pitched in the middle of one of the drainage paths. The waste of the city ran straight through it. It defied physics that it hadn’t been washed away yet.
This time the large soldier spoke again. “It’s shelter, which is more than you had before. It’s more than a lot of beings have.”
“I don’t want it,” the dweller said.
“That’s fine,” the nasally voice replied. “Just pay us the month’s rent and another month’s rent for the inconvenience, and you can go on your way.”
Desperation turned the dweller’s voice even higher in pitch and he twisted like a fish on a hook. “But I don’t have any money. I’ve told you that. How do you expect me to get work when everything I own is covered in waste?”
“Not our problem,” the big soldier said.
“Yes, it is,” Seb said as he stepped from the wooded area.
All three soldiers and the dweller looked at him.
The large soldier let go of his victim, and the slum dweller hit the hard ground with a crack. He then cocked his head to the side. “What did you say?”
Each soldier had their hood pulled up over their head, the deep shadows inside hiding their faces. Seb stared into the darkness of the large one’s hood anyway. “I said it is your problem.” He pointed down at the tent. “How can you expect to charge someone to stay in that thing? In fact, how can you charge anyone to stay anywhere in this slum? It’s a horrible place to live, and you don’t own it.”
The small nasally one stepped forward, placed its little hands on its hips, and looked Seb up and down. “We made this dwelling, so we can charge someone to stay in it.”
“Made it?” Seb said and laughed. “You’ve put a ripped, crappy tent in the middle of a drainage path and you think you can charge someone to live in it?”
The prisoner still lay in a heap on the ground and looked from Seb to the small guard and back to Seb again.
“Look, pal,” the nasally one said.
“I’m not your pal.”
“Okay, scumbag, let me tell you, the flight suit doesn’t fool me. You’ve either stolen it from someone in the elevated part of the city, or you’ve killed someone. Either way”—he pointed at the elevated city—“you ain’t from up there. So don’t pretend you have any kind of authority.”
“I suggest you bounce,” the large soldier said, “before I bounce you myself.”
Seb could have drawn the blaster from his bag, but he didn’t need to. Not against these three clowns. A shake of his head and he said, “That ain’t going to happen.”
The big soldier let out a deep laugh. “Oh, isn’t it?”
Seb rolled his shoulders and raised his fists as the edges of his world blurred. He smiled and said, “No.”
Chapter 6
The world slipped into slow motion for Seb as he moved towards the largest of the three soldiers.
The brute dropped into a defensive crouch, but before he’d raised his fists, Seb landed his first punch. A spot within its hood stood out for him, so he aimed his blow there.
Pain exploded through Seb’s hand. The large soldier clearly had tough skin.
Seb opened and closed his fist to stretch the pain out of it as the creature stumbled backwards. After two or three steps, its legs gave way beneath it and it fell onto its back, crushing the crappy tent it had been trying to rent out and kicking up a splash of sewage.
The smaller of the two remaining soldiers stared at the other one, his tiny frame sagging as what must have been realisation sank through it. Before either of them could do anything, Seb landed two more punches—one into each of their hoods—and knocked both of them out cold.
As the world returned to a normal speed, Seb looked at the fallen slum dweller, who remained on the ground where he’d been dropped.
“Wow,” the dweller said as it looked from Seb to the three downed guards.
Now Seb had dealt with the soldiers, he properly took in their victim for the first time. Green scales covered its entire body. Like most of Solsans’ residents, it looked ill from the lack of light on the planet, paler than it should have naturally been.
Although humanoid in shape, the creature reminded Seb more of an ape than a person. It had long arms that hung down past its waist, and thick bulging biceps. Fully erect, the creature stood about four inches shorter than Seb. Despite its subservience to the Crimson foot soldiers, it looked like it could have given
them a good fight if it had the mind for it.
Before Seb replied to the creature, he slipped his backpack from his shoulders, put it on the ground, and undid the zip. If he were to make it through the planet a second time, he’d have to be ruthless.
When Seb pulled the blaster from his bag, the slum dweller gasped and scrambled backwards. It raised its hands in front of its face. “What are you doing?”
Still, Seb didn’t reply. Instead, he walked over to the largest of the three soldiers, pointed his blaster down at it, and pulled the trigger. The weapon bucked in his hand and the large creature snapped rigid before it fell limp.
Seb repeated the process with the other two, and when he turned to the dweller, the creature whimpered, “Please, don’t shoot me too. I didn’t want any part of this.”
A shake of his head and Seb put his gun away. “I’m not going to shoot you.”
“But you just shot them.”
“Of course.”
“What about the Countess? What will you do when she finds out you just killed three of her soldiers?”
“I plan on shooting her too.”
The creature gasped again and looked around him as if the mist had ears. “What did you just say?”
“Someone needs to end her reign. I intend on being that person. If I only knock out the foot soldiers, they’ll wake up then go and tell her what’s coming. A dead body can’t tell tales. Besides”—Seb looked down at the three Crimson corpses—“these three seemed like bad eggs. I couldn’t let them move on to someone else and harass them like they have you.”
The creature on the ground gulped before he offered Seb his hand. “I’m Bruke Swoth.”
For a second Seb considered holding his name back, but what did it matter? “Seb,” he said as he shook the creature’s hand. “Seb Zodo.”
The Shadow Order - Books 1 - 8 + 120 Seconds (The complete series): A Space Opera Page 37
