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

by Michael Robertson

  “Oh?”

  Seb stopped, and everyone stopped with him. A look at the others showed him their slightly tense stances. They’d spent so much time together, they shared a sixth sense. They knew when things had the potential to turn sour. “Why would the creatures who took Buster want to leave a survivor?”

  The mandulu’s broad shoulders lifted as his entire frame tensed. His breathing quickened, and he scratched the side of his face with a shaking hand. He looked everywhere but at Seb when he said, “What do you mean?”

  Seb raised his gun to his shoulder and addressed the creature down the barrel of it. “Step back.”

  The others followed his lead, all of them pointing their weapons at the mandulu.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the mandulu said, backing away whilst he looked from one Shadow Order member to the other.

  Seb continued to watch the creature down the barrel of his blaster. “What do they gain from leaving a survivor? They wanted Buster and they got Buster. I don’t get it. It makes more sense to kill everyone so they’re harder to follow. We’ve already seen they weren’t afraid to take lives.”

  Sweat beaded the mandulu’s brow. “I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry.”

  “What’s happened?” Seb said, his pulse pounding that little bit harder. The mandulu stopped, so he said, “Keep walking.”

  Tears filled the mandulu’s eyes. “I don’t know what they’ve done to me. I know it’s not good. I wanted to come with you, to the hut you’re talking about. I want to see a doctor. Maybe they can help me.” The creature started to back away quicker, its hands raised in front of it as it urged them to calm down. “They said they couldn’t afford to be followed. They felt bad for what they had to do, but they had to do it. It would be more than their lives were worth to pick up a tail. I’ll just go back to the warehouse. Can you please send someone to check me out?”

  When he’d gone about fifteen metres away from them, the mandulu’s eyes turned transparent. They then glowed.

  “What the—?” Reyes said.

  But before Seb could answer her, the mandulu’s eyes and mouth flared bright orange. It then screamed so loud, it sounded like it tore its throat. It clamped its large hands to the side of its head moments before an almighty boom shook the air around them. Its head exploded, a fireball forcing its way out and rising into the sky amidst a red cloud.

  The wind tossed blood and flesh at Seb and the others, but Seb barely noticed. Instead, he watched as the mandulu’s headless body remained on its feet. Its skin crawled as if something lived inside it.

  The tall mandulu then fell towards them, showing Seb the hole where his head had been. Inside, he saw a crawling, churning mess of something. It looked like scores of small insects writhing inside it.

  Now they’d been liberated, they sloughed off the dead creature’s skin as they rushed forward.

  Chapter 17

  Now in slow motion, Seb watched the creatures. About six inches long, each one looked to have the body of a snake and the spindly legs of a spider. They hissed as they came forward in a wave. Forked tongues and fangs, their hard little feet clicked against the concrete ground. A green spray of what must have been poison squirted from the mouth of one of the little beasts at the front.

  As always, a knife passed Seb first, SA’s attack cutting three of them in two. Blasts then crashed into the ground, bursting the creatures like they were water balloons. Each one released a large milky-yellow splash, but it did nothing to slow the progress of the others.

  The five of them stepped back as they lay down heavy fire against the things. Maybe thirty dead, there were at least three times that amount left.

  Blades, blasts, and yells, they took the things out. But they moved back slower than the plague advanced.

  One of the streams of laser fire died down. Seb looked to his left to see Bruke staring at the top of his gun. When Reyes stopped firing too, he shouted, “Remember, the guns overheat.” His own blaster turned from green to orange at that moment. He released his pressure on the trigger. The carpet of hissing chaos didn’t let up.

  Bruke’s gun came to life again, driving the little things back. Reyes started shooting too.

  Although they’d gotten closer, the shots were landing, and as they thinned the numbers, the little beasts’ forward momentum slowed.

  They’d travelled about another two metres back by the time Seb’s blaster worked again. As he fired, he watched between the heat indicator on his weapon and the now thinned pack of bugs. “Keep it up and they won’t get to us.”

  About ten seconds later, Seb stopped firing. He looked at the others, who then stopped too. SA held onto her knives. The mess of limbs, bodies, and milky-yellow sludge stretched from them all the way back to the mandulu’s corpse. It looked like they’d gotten all of them. “Well done, everyone.” Seb panted as he wiped his brow. “Well done.”

  The other four stared at Seb, all of them fighting to catch their breath.

  “Sparks,” Seb said, “I need you to tell Moses there’s more of a clean-up than we first anticipated.”

  Sparks nodded and then pulled her computer from her pocket. She tapped at the screen.

  Before Seb could speak again, Bruke rushed at him and shoved him aside.

  Seb stumbled and fell. Back in slow motion as he hit the ground, he saw the creature Bruke had shoved him away from. It ran past him and headed straight for Reyes.

  As Seb watched it, he tried to call out, but he was too late. The bug leapt up—mouth open wide—and clamped its fangs in to the back of Reyes’ hand. A knife cut the thing in two, but even SA moved too slowly. It had already bitten Reyes.

  Time froze. Seb looked at Reyes and then the wide mouths of the others as they all stared at her too. Instead of screaming, Reyes fell to the ground. Her eyes rolled back. Foam then burst from her mouth in an explosive cough. A second later she fell into a violent fit.

  “They have a medi-port at the hut in the square,” Sparks said as she watched their friend. “If we can get her there, we can plug her into it.”

  It took a second for Seb to process what she’d said. He then ran over to Reyes and lifted her waist. SA charged over and took her head and shoulders. Bruke grabbed her legs.

  Seb shouted at Sparks, “Lead the way.”

  Chapter 18

  SA in front of him, Sparks even farther ahead, Seb ran with Reyes’ waist in his grip. Every second that passed presented another moment where he nearly dropped her, the thrashing Marine still taken over with a violent fit. She twisted and kicked, twitched and spat.

  “You okay, Bruke?” Seb called back as he looked at the white foam on Reyes’ lips. Her eyes rolled again before regaining clarity. It was the cycle he’d witnessed in the short time since she’d been poisoned. If Bruke responded, he didn’t hear him.

  When Sparks reached the end of the walkway between the two ships, she stopped to wait for them to catch up.

  As they got closer, Seb watched her look back at them, her face gripped with impatient anxiety. She then turned to the crowd while holding her computer out in front of her. A second later, a buzz sounded out. A blue bolt of electricity shot from her device, and several beings jumped away from her. The initial shock over, those beings turned on the small Thrystian, their hackles raised, their teeth bared.

  Despite the hisses and growls, Sparks wouldn’t be intimidated. She shot another bolt at them. The creatures backed away.

  By the time they burst from the alley with Reyes, Sparks had already made a pathway for them.

  Another buzz cleared more of the crowd. The beings ahead of that seemed to get the idea and moved before they felt Sparks’ wrath.

  His world in slow motion again, Seb looked from the fitting Reyes to where they needed to go. Their route to the square now clear, every being on either side of them stared as they ran through.

  When they made it to the square, the path seemed less obvious. Many beings could see they’d get a shock if they st
ood in Sparks’ way, but they clearly couldn’t predict where her way was. A couple of angry buzzes later helped her make it perfectly clear.

  They headed for what appeared to be an abandoned shipping container. Although Seb didn’t want to look over his shoulder at Bruke in case he tripped and fell, he called back to his hulking friend, “Well done, we’re nearly there.”

  Sparks reached the shipping container first and banged her fist against it. The bass drum boom called through the square, but nothing happened.

  Another hard rap against the metal doors.

  Still nothing.

  By the time they’d caught up to her, the container remained shut. The run had winded Seb, so he had to fight for breath when he spoke to Sparks, Reyes still twisting and fitting as he tried to hold onto her. “What’s happening?”

  Sparks banged against the door again before throwing a sharp shrug. “I don’t know.”

  “This is the place?”

  “Yes!”

  When Seb banged against the door, Reyes nearly slipped from his grip. He quickly grabbed her again and waited. No one answered.

  “I don’t know why they’re not opening it,” Sparks said.

  This time Bruke spoke. “I do.” He put Reyes’ legs down, so Seb and SA lowered her to the ground too. SA kept a hold of her thrashing head to prevent her from banging it.

  “Please help us,” Bruke said as he stepped towards the busy crowd, his thick arms spread wide. “We have a human here with a rare disease. We’re hoping to put her in this empty container so she doesn’t infect anyone else. It’s too late for us; we’ve already picked up the black death. Can someone help us get her away from here? We need to make sure this entire planet doesn’t fall to the plague.”

  It took for Bruke to say that before Seb saw just how many beings watched them. And why wouldn’t they? With the fuss they’d just made running into the square, of course they’d have an audience.

  When Bruke stepped forward another pace and said, “Please! Help us, somebody,” the crowd stepped back.

  A usually shy creature, Bruke put on the performance of a lifetime, hacking up a deep booming cough as he stumbled and lurched towards the crowd. “Please, we’re all going to die!”

  Much like when Sparks had electrocuted them, the crowd hissed and shrieked. They backed away, tripping over one another to avoid the infected Bruke.

  A glance at the exit to the square, Seb watched them pour out of it, a bottleneck building up as all the beings tried to get through the narrow path at once. A scuffle broke out. Then another one. But neither of them stopped the mass exodus.

  Bruke continued to lurch and stumble towards them, calling out, “Help me. Please! Help me; I’m dying. We’re all dying. We need to get the human away from here. Help!”

  Every being in the crowd had turned its back on Bruke as they fought to get away from him. When Seb heard a click, he looked at the shipping container’s door to see the slightest gap from where it had been opened from the inside. Despite his stress levels being sky-high, he couldn’t help but smile.

  Chapter 19

  The second Seb stepped through the slight gap in the large metal door, his jaw fell open. The outside had looked like an old abandoned shipping container; battered through years of wear. But inside it looked like the future by comparison. They had screens on nearly every surface. Lights flashed while CCTV footage of Aloo played out. Dull bulbs lined the ceiling, but most of the light came from the monitors on the walls surrounding them.

  Seeing a couple of leather seats on wheels in the gangway, Seb then looked at the pod at the end. Although he hadn’t seen one before, he didn’t need to be a genius to identify it. It had Medi-Port written along the side.

  Two beings stood in the space with them; they were smaller than Seb by about six to eight inches. They looked like standing jellyfish. They had large eyes on each side of their domed heads, cerise skin, long spindly arms, skinny legs, and tiny bodies. They moved with a strange twitching motion as if permanently on edge.

  And why wouldn’t they be? Sparks had come into their space like a hurricane, shoving them and their chairs aside to clear a path to the medi-port so Seb and SA could carry Reyes.

  The port looked similar to the pods Seb had seen used for cryogenic freezing, except it had a whole host of functions, needles, and monitors. When Sparks got to it, she yanked the clear lid open and shouted, “Put her in here, now.”

  His arms straining from the effort of trying to control Reyes, Seb put her bottom half into the port while SA did the top half. As always, SA presented an aura of serenity, delicately laying the thrashing body down while showing no apparent strain from the task.

  Sparks made several quick taps on the keyboard, which triggered the lid to close with a hissing sound of hydraulics. Seb watched the small Thrystian chew on her bottom lip as if she might bite it clean off. One final tap against the keyboard, she then stepped back from the machine.

  Near silence in the space, everyone watched as a small bar appeared on the side of the port. It had a reading of twenty percent on it. Seb pointed at it, his voice loud in the tense silence. “What’s that trying to tell us?”

  After she’d let go of a heavy sigh, Sparks kept her attention on the pod and said, “She’ll be okay at one hundred percent. Twenty is about the lowest they can start at if they hope to make a full recovery. We got here just in time.” She turned to the two cerise creatures. “No thanks to them.” Both of them quivered and moved back a step.

  When the door to the container clicked shut, Seb turned around to see Bruke had entered the space. One of the operators then spoke in a high-pitched voice. “We couldn’t let you in with so much attention on us.” It then nodded at Bruke. “Thank you for the distraction. We didn’t know how we could help you and not give away what this place is. Moses would kill us if the secret got out.”

  The stocky Bruke breathed heavily as he regarded them with a dark stare. They had no reason to trust them just yet.

  When Bruke came close, Seb patted his wide friend on the shoulder.

  Maybe twenty screens in total, Seb then looked at them one at a time. They showed footage from different parts of Aloo. The spaceport, the square, the fighting pit. “So you watch everything that goes on on Aloo?”

  The creature who’d spoken stood a few inches taller than the other one. A snap of its head, which looked like a nod, it said, “Of course. You can never be too careful. But we rarely have a reason to act upon what we see. After all, Moses believes in giving beings all the freedoms he can. As long as they pay their tariffs and don’t harm anyone, then he lets them go about their business.”

  Thoughts of the caged children in the sewers came to Seb. “So what about the slavery I’ve witnessed here?”

  “It’s small fry.”

  Before the creature could say anything else, Seb stepped close to it and shouted, “Small fry? I’ve had to save children from being sold here.”

  A moment to seemingly compose itself, the creature nodded with another sharp snap of its head. “Sorry, bad choice of words. We care, we really do, and Moses tells us to watch for that, but we’ve never seen anything that’s worth blowing our cover for. If we take down a slave ring, we need it to count.”

  “You don’t think kids count?”

  “They do. But sadly, what happens here isn’t enough to strike. When we do take them down, we want to end it permanently rather than force the business to another planet where we have no control. We can only blow our cover once.”

  It made sense, but Seb didn’t have to like it. When he looked at Sparks and then the status power bar on the medi-port, he saw Reyes on fifty percent already. “How long will she need to recover when she comes out of that thing?”

  A shake of her head, Sparks said, “She’ll come out feeling better than we do. She’ll be fighting fit and ready to go.”

  Pain still streaked through Seb’s face from having fought Moses and then being dumped in the prison cell.

&nb
sp; Sparks clearly read his intention and shook her head. “We don’t have the time to heal us all.” Then she turned to the two creatures running the hut. “Moses has told you what we need?”

  Both creatures nodded once in perfect unison. The taller of the two threw a sideways glance at Seb, as if wary of him, then said, “There were two ships that docked this morning. They arrived together and left together. They left with one extra being on one of the ships and nothing else.”

  “Why are you telling us about both of them?” Sparks said. “Why not just the one with the extra being?”

  “Because they travelled together, both in and out. We thought it would be prudent to speculate that the extra being could have been on either ship. Who’s to say they didn’t have some awareness of us watching them and sent an extra crew member back on the other ship as a decoy?”

  Other than the hum of computers around them, the small space fell into silence for a moment.

  Sparks nodded. “It makes sense.” As she looked at Seb, SA, and Bruke, she said, “What do you want to do?”

  It felt strange to look into SA’s bright stare after he’d spent the past few hours avoiding it. It robbed Seb of his ability to think straight. Maybe she’d been correct to want to put some distance between them.

  Fortunately, Bruke spoke. “There’s nothing else we can do. We’ve got to split up, right?”

  Sparks shrugged and waited for Seb and then SA to nod their agreement. Her attention back on the creatures, she said, “Can you give me the tracking codes for both of them?”

  “Yes.”

  When Sparks handed her computer over, the smaller of the two beings took it and plugged it into one of their dashboards.