Exhaustion made Seb clumsy on his tired legs. He shook his head as if the action would throw off his lethargy. He needed to get ready for a war and he needed to find a way to get the entire slum on side. He might have just persuaded a family of three, but an army of four wouldn’t do much to overthrow a regime.
Despite the stares his flight suit elicited, Seb needed to keep it on. If he looked different to all the other beings, it would give the dwellers a figure to follow into battle. Who’d listen to him if he looked just like they did?
A deep breath of the frigid air and Seb pulled his shoulders back. If he walked with his head high, maybe they wouldn’t look at him. If he didn’t look back at them, maybe they’d get bored. Although if his peripheral vision told him anything, it told him they still watched him as much, if not more, for his arrogant gait.
Close to Phulp’s old hut, Seb picked up his pace. A look over the roofs of the slum and he saw the large cylindrical fighting pit on the horizon. A rickety, yet mammoth structure, it dominated the slum’s skyline.
At the door to Phulp’s hut, Seb slid the pallet aside and called for Bruke as he stepped into the cramped space.
The second he saw his friend, Janina, and the kids, Seb’s tired legs gave way beneath him and he fell forward onto the cold and hard ground.
Chapter 30
Seb opened his eyes to find Bruke’s green and scaly face so close to his he could feel his warm breath on his cheek. He scrambled away from the creature and sat up straight, his sore body screaming in agony at the quick movement. “What are you doing?”
Bruke stayed put, but the kids, Jawty, Phulp, and Jince followed Seb across the small hut. All three of them stared up at him through their red albino eyes as if they’d never seen him before.
“Do you think he’s okay?” Jince said.
“Dunno.” Phulp prodded Seb. “He looks a bit weird.”
“I am here, you know!” Seb said.
Before Jawty could say anything, Seb heard Janina shout, “Kids! Get away from him. Give him some space, yeah?”
“But you said he’d probably die,” Jawty said.
Seb looked across at Janina. “You said that?”
A shrug of her small shoulders and she half smiled. “You didn’t look so good.”
“So you’re alive?” Jince asked.
“Would I be sitting up and talking to you if I wasn’t?”
Despite Seb’s brusque response, Bruke squealed and clapped his hands. “My goodness,” he said as he leapt on Seb and flattened him, crushing the air from his lungs. “We thought you were a goner for sure.”
Jawty cried as she held one of Seb’s hands in both of hers and stroked him. “We were so worried.”
“What happened out there?” Phulp asked, pushing his face close to Seb’s.
“You looked terrible,” Jince added.
“Tell us what went on,” Bruke cut in.
“Enough!” Janina shouted and the four stopped. “Give him some space, yeah? He’s only just come round, so let him get his head together.”
All four of them moved away from him and Seb sat up for a second time. “If you flatten me like that again, Bruke, I won’t be responsible for my actions.”
The green creature stared at the ground. “Sorry.”
In the now silence of the hut, Seb stretched his arms in the air, his muscles aching in protest of his movements. The others looked at him, but he said nothing. Let them wait.
When Seb had finished stretching, Janina handed him something hot in a mug. It smelled good, like gravy. A sip of the scalding liquid and he tasted meat juices and salt. “Mmmm, I needed this!”
Janina nodded, smiled, and then walked away.
“Did you see any dragons?” Phulp asked. The few seconds of silence had clearly been too much for him to cope with.
Seb laughed and shook his head. “Dragons would have been easy to deal with compared to what I had to face.”
“What happened to your wrists?” Jawty said.
Before Seb could reply, Janina walked over and pulled on his hand without the hot mug in it.
Seb snapped it away and held it to his chest. “It’s fine. It’s nothing to worry about, honestly.” They didn’t need to know about what he’d been through since he’d left them. Too many beings had died because of a bogus prophecy; he didn’t want to share that with them.
“Now tell me,” Seb said. “Have you talked to the slum dwellers about the revolution?”
Seb caught the look between Janina and Bruke. “What? What’s happened?”
When Bruke winced, Seb snapped, “Just spit it out.”
“We’ve told people,” Bruke said while wringing his large hands, “but they don’t want to listen.”
Seb stood up as much as he could in the hut. Still hunched over because of the low ceiling, his head spun from the sudden movement.
“What are you doing?” Janina asked.
A shake of his head and Seb shrugged. “We can’t sit around waiting for this revolution to happen. We need to keep pushing this agenda regardless of the scepticism from others. If we take action, we’ll get the slum dwellers behind us. It’s the only way.”
And with that, Seb left the hut.
Chapter 31
The second Seb emerged into the streets, the collective attention seemed to turn on him. It felt as if the entire slum watched his every move. The first creature he walked up to stood head and shoulders taller than him. “This is going to come to an end, you know,” Seb said.
“What are you talking about?” the large blue brute said, its voice surprisingly high in pitch for its size.
“This way of life,” Seb said. “Together we can rise up and overthrow the bitch up there in her palace.” He pointed up at the huge elevation of land.
A slow and laborious shake of its head and the creature shrugged. “You’re crazy.”
“I’m not. This will end.”
When the large being walked away—long strides and slow movement—Seb walked up to a family of purple creatures who stood about a foot shorter than him. They were covered in spikes like hedgehogs. “There will be a revolution.”
The parents pulled their children into them, stared at Seb like he’d lost his mind, and walked off.
He came to two turquoise-skinned, bat-looking creatures next. “You need to be ready to join the cause.”
They didn’t reply.
The next family Seb approached backed away from him before he could speak.
Seb drew a deep breath to shout to all of them around him, but the sound of splintering wood cut him short.
When he looked across the slum and saw three Crimson soldiers tear down a hut, he ducked back into Phulp’s old dwelling. The others must have been about to follow him out because they blocked the doorway. He had to shove them back in so he could enter.
While he sat in the dark hut with the others, Seb listened to the soldiers and ground his jaw. Someone screamed. It sounded like a female, but he couldn’t ever be sure. Human sound recognition only worked when applied to humans; it could have come from the biggest male of their species.
A heavy thud and then an oomph as if someone had just been kicked. The voice he’d taken to be female screamed louder. It must have been the one on the receiving end.
Another thud and another scream.
Another thud.
The creature seemed to be sobbing as the thuds rained down on it.
Before long, the mewling creature’s sounds vanished and just the thuds remained. Seb looked at the others in the hut with him. None of them spoke and they all stared in the direction of the sound, both their eyes and mouths wide open.
It lasted for another few minutes before Seb heard the soldiers walk away and the rip and crack of another hut being torn down on their way past.
Chapter 32
Seb waited for about five more minutes before he left Phulp’s old hut again. A crowd had gathered around the area where the Crimson soldiers had been.
/> Seb rushed over, elbowing his way through the malaise. When he got to the front, he looked down and flinched at the sight. “My god!”
A small being, no taller than about three feet, lay with its mouth wide open and its eyes glazed. Although his hands tingled, he couldn’t do anything to help her. She’d already died.
Several more of her species huddled around her and sobbed. Fury turned over in Seb’s stomach and he tasted bile in the back of his throat.
A large rock remained where their hut had been. The soldiers must have used it to destroy the place. Seb stood up on it and addressed the crowd. He punched his left palm with his right fist as he said, “We need to do something about this.”
The creatures looked at him, silence hanging around the place.
“If we let this brutality continue, it will never end.” Seb pointed down at the grieving family. “Look at these poor things. They’ve lost a loved one today. What will it take for you lot to do something? Will you all have to lose loved ones before you’re ready to stand up and fight? Will you need to lose more than one? I don’t know about you, but I won’t take this anymore.”
The disinterested looks and even open hostility Seb had received prior to the beating had gone. A look across the crowd of faces and he saw he had their attention now. He pointed down at the corpse again. “They’ll pay for this!”
Some of the beings nodded, but most of them didn’t. Although, they didn’t challenge him either. A look over at the silhouette of the palace in the elevated city and Seb repeated, “They’ll pay for this.”
The crowd soon dispersed, but they’d listened to Seb. They’d heard him for the first time. Before he headed back to his hut with the others, he turned to the grieving family. “If there’s anything we can do for you, please let us know.”
None of the creatures responded.
“I also want you to know this won’t go unpunished,” Seb said.
What looked to be an older female stepped forward and held both of Seb’s hands in her own. She stared up at him with tears in her eyes.
For a few seconds Seb stared back.
“Thank you,” she said.
Seb didn’t reply. Instead, he turned from the grieving family and went back to the hut with the others.
They sat in the hut in stunned silence for a few minutes before Seb broke it. “Something about that setting worked.”
The rest of the group looked at him.
“They listened to me for the first time. It was like the violence lowered their guard and banished their scepticism. The violence made it hard for them to ignore the reality of their situation. This won’t go away unless they do something about it, and with it so in their faces, they had to accept that.”
Another few seconds of silence and Seb said, “There’s only one way to get this lot going. I have an idea.”
Chapter 33
“Why are we here?” Bruke asked.
Seb cast a glance around the place before he looked away from Bruke and down at the small being next to him. It had antennae and the damp skin of a slug, but it looked more like a hairless rabbit than anything. Janina and the kids had stayed back at the hut. They weren’t in a place suitable for children. He didn’t answer his friend.
They’d managed to get a seat in the middle of the crowd just a few metres from the box with the Crimson foot soldier in it. They were in a similar spot to the one they’d been in previously.
The former champion of the pit, the soldier in the box stood taller than Seb—as most champions did—and it seemed to lack a moral compass. The fighters lived or died dependant on its mood. Even the champions died if they looked like they might beat his record. Utterly ruthless.
Seb looked across at the creature as he stared down at the pit. At least, his hood faced towards the pit. Because he couldn’t see his face for shadow, he could only guess where the creature focused its attention.
Chatter swelled around them as the arena filled. Beings of all shapes and sizes squeezed onto the circular benches, shoulder to shoulder as they all faced the pit in the middle. Who would be next to fight?
When Seb looked back at Bruke, he saw the lizard-like creature still waited for an answer from him. “We’ve come here because I figured this would be a good place to reach a lot of people. An opportunity for the revolution to be heard.”
What would have been eyebrows if Bruke had them shot up and his eyes spread wide. He looked around before returning to Seb and dropping his voice to a whisper. “But you can’t speak out in a place like this!”
“If we’re to start a revolution, Bruke, places like this are exactly where we need to be speaking out. Sooner or later we’re going to be kicking that bitch’s door in. We need to get comfortable with confrontation.”
While chewing his leathery bottom lip, Bruke looked out over the crowd and frowned. Although he didn’t argue, he looked to be doing everything he could to contain it. As he twisted his hands continuously around one another, he kept throwing paranoid glances at the Crimson soldier in the box.
Seb looked at the Crimson foot soldier too. Although, unlike Bruke, he didn’t fear him. He wanted a reaction from him. Now he’d come here with chaos in mind, he wanted to openly challenge the creature in his own pit.
Most of the Crimson soldiers bore a resemblance to the Grim Reaper, but the soldier in the box looked more like the image of death than many of the others. A long and slim frame, he hunched over like a vulture waiting for the next being to prey on.
Butterflies flipped through Seb’s stomach to be in a fighting pit again. The buzz of anticipation as the gathered people’s excitement grew. Even here, where any spectator could be singled out and made to fight, the crowd seemed hyped for the event. It could never happen to them. They’d never be made to fight in the pit—until they were.
Every part of the arena had been made from wood. Patched up every few metres, it had definitely seen better days. It would probably serve it well to be torn down and rebuilt again, but the Countess didn’t seem like one to invest in infrastructure. Maybe it would take for the arena to collapse before she did anything about it.
A snap of a bolt sent silence through the active crowd. The creak of large hinges and a door in the pit’s wall opened up.
A small amount of light shone through the doorway out into the fighting arena before the large champion stepped forward and blocked it off.
The champion had such a huge frame it had to duck to fit through the immense doorway. Seb grinned to watch it. In the time since he’d been away, he’d forgotten about the size of the current champion. A monster of a fighter, it must have been ten feet tall at least. Its solid arms were thicker than Seb’s torso and its huge fists were the size of boulders. Although, he couldn’t see it in its full glory yet because it wore the red robe of a foot soldier, its face hidden in shadow.
A small Crimson soldier appeared in the ring and looked at the gathered crowd. Its voice echoed around the space. “Beings of Caloon, I introduce you to our current champion. He’s won eleven straight fights—all with fatalities—and it doesn’t look like he will be losing anytime soon. The purse for beating him stands at fifteen thousand credits, enough to change any slum dweller’s life. He’s fought around the galaxy on behalf of the Countess and now he’s here, showing you all what he can do.”
The brute seemed to purposefully stamp his feet with every step as he circled the ring and stared up into the crowd. It had the desired effect, its stomping gait sending a vibration through Seb’s seat.
“The one,” the small commentator said, “the only, the Great Gamboaaaaaaaa.”
The crowd jumped to their feet. All except Seb.
As Seb sat among the celebrations, he watched Bruke whoop and holler with the rest of the crowd, and he smiled. He then looked farther down to see the Crimson soldier in the box. The shadowed hood stared his way and he stared back.
Even though the crowd had died down and everyone had taken their seats again, Seb and the soldier still
stared at one another. As he watched the boss of this arena, he listened to the commentator.
“So do we have any challengers today? Anyone who wants a shot at fifteen thousand credits?”
While still staring at the head of the fighting pit, Seb stood up and raised his hand.
Silence swept through the place and no doubt everyone looked at Seb at that moment, but he kept his attention on the soldier in the box.
“Can he fight?” the commentator said.
Like Seb, the creature in the box hadn’t looked anywhere else. While still looking at Seb, he raised his arm and gave a long thumbs-up.
Chapter 34
Seb slipped his backpack off and handed it to Bruke. He spoke from the side of his mouth so no one else heard him. “Hold onto this for me. There’s a blaster in there. You may need it.”
Although he took the bag, Bruke frowned and shook his head. “You can’t go down there and fight that thing.”
Seb smiled at his friend. “Trust me.”
Everyone in the pit looked at Seb, but he looked at the soldier in the box and the soldier in the box stared back at him, its long body leaning in his direction as if it had something to say.
After he’d shifted past the slug-like creature next to him, Seb moved past a couple of other beings before he got to the stairs leading down to the pit.
Slow and deliberate steps, he breathed in the smell of blood and sweat. The funk of hundreds of bodies crammed into a small space mixed with the reek of a thousand deaths.
The creature in the pit, the Great Gamboa, paced back and forth and stared at him. A rumbling growl like a large engine came from the thing’s hood. Easily six feet wide, the creature would undoubtably punch like his fists had rocket propulsion.
When Seb got close enough to the pit, the commentator addressed the crowd. “Beings of the galaxy, I can’t promise a decent fight today. By the look of things, it’ll be over within seconds, but please welcome the optimistic challenger.”
The Shadow Order - Books 1 - 8 + 120 Seconds (The complete series): A Space Opera Page 46
