Sparks cleared away a space lower down and wedged her fingers into the small gap. Buster found a spot slightly higher up. Seb returned to the crevice he’d cleared out at the top. The large grey rock stood taller than him by a few inches.
“Right?” Seb said. “One, two, three …”
All three of them pulled. The rock didn’t budge.
When the other two let go, Seb said, “We need to try again.”
“What’s the point?” Buster said.
Before Seb could reply, Sparks said, “You don’t think we should get Owsk to shoot it?”
“No. It’s too risky.” Seb then pulled a deep breath in and slowed his world down. He’d already tried looking at the rock in slow motion, and for the second time, he saw no weakness in its structure. Yet he still drove a hard punch into it, his metal fist making a solid connection. Other than a wedge of snow falling down on top of them, nothing happened.
Just as Seb wound back for another blow, Buster pulled on his shoulder and said, “Stand back.”
At first, Seb remained where he was. Nothing about Buster up until that point had shown him he cared for the safety of their three friends. But when Sparks pulled on his arm too, he let her drag him away. He trusted her judgement.
Still in slow motion, even Seb struggled to see it. With a slight twitch, Buster drove his thick tail against the rock. The whack rang around the mountain range like a thunderclap and more snow fell from above.
After jumping aside to avoid the falling cold rush, Seb looked back at the rock and the cracks now running through it.
Buster gave it another whack, which did even more damage to the rock’s structure.
When Buster wound back for a third time, Owsk came through on Sparks’ computer. “Stop!”
Buster looked behind him in the direction of the ship.
Owsk’s voice came through again. “The ship’s scanners have just detected movement high up in the mountains.”
“Someone’s coming?” Sparks said.
“No, I think you’re destabilising large amounts of snow up there. Another hit and you might bring another avalanche down on top of you.”
Seb looked up the mountain, but the heavy snowfall blinded him. When he looked back, he couldn’t see any better. Not that he needed the visuals to comprehend being hit by a wall of snow and then being tossed out into the oblivion that was the fall behind them. On their way over, Sparks had filled them in on what the lower down air would do to their lungs.
For the briefest moment, Seb’s world had returned to a normal speed. Once he’d slowed things down again, he saw the rock completely differently. Moving past Buster, he pointed at the spot that stood out as the weakest. “Sparks.”
The small Thrystian snapped her head up in acknowledgement of his call.
“Can you electrocute this spot here?”
Although she frowned at him, Sparks still came forward and looked at where Seb pointed. She raised her computer before sending a bolt of electricity shooting from it.
The large rock instantly turned to rubble and fell as if the bonds holding it together had suddenly failed. Now a small pile of jagged pebbles on the ground, it revealed the dark cave beyond.
A second later, Reyes and then SA appeared in the space. She might have been distancing herself from him, but Seb still ran up to SA and wrapped her in a tight hug.
When she squeezed him back and said, Thank you, he gripped even harder.
Chapter 37
When Seb let go of his love, he looked into her calm bioluminescence. Not as present as she’d been before they started on this mission. She clearly still wanted to keep her distance, which he respected. Although nothing would change how he felt about her. If he had to wait forever in case she changed her mind, he would.
Seb had been so caught up in the moment that he’d only just noticed it. As he looked from Reyes and back to SA again—both of them shivering in the cold—he said, “Where are your jackets?”
The same wince at the same time on both their faces. It sank dread through him.
Because of the darkness inside the cave, Seb couldn’t see into it. “Where’s Bruke?”
Reyes rubbed her face before she said, “It’s not good.”
“Huh?”
“I think we’ve lost him.”
Sparks stepped forward. “Lost him where?”
After heaving a weary sigh, Reyes said, “We think he’s dead.”
“What?!” Seb said. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“You had enough to worry about.”
“Where is he?”
Tears glazed Reyes’ brown eyes and she bit on her trembling bottom lip. She pointed back into the darkness.
Seb led the way at a charge. The second he entered the shadowy space, he saw Reyes’ computer from where it had the light on. It had been too bright outside to see it, but now in the cave, he saw how it shone on Bruke. He lay on the ground, covered in both SA’s and Reyes’ coats. He lay perfectly still. Dead.
Fire ran through Seb’s kneecaps when he crashed down next to his friend on the hard stone. His hands buzzed with their need to touch him. A chaotic mess of emotions swirling through him, he did his best to ignore them as he lay his palms on the still figure.
Warmth throbbed through Seb’s touch as if it poured from him. But nothing happened. Bruke continued to lie there. Still. Cold.
The others crowded around. The only sound Seb heard—other than his own frantic pulse through his skull—was the sound of the howling wind outside.
“Try again,” Buster then said. The cold detachment he’d looked at Seb with outside had gone. “Give it another go.”
Another deep breath, Seb tried to still his mind as he put his hands back on Bruke.
“Look,” Reyes said, pointing at Bruke’s foot.
Another twitch ran through it as if responding to her observation.
The heat continued to throb through Seb’s hands.
Another twitch, this time much more obvious than the last. Not sure how he did it, Seb focused his attention on the flow from him to his friend.
Bruke’s mouth then flew wide with a gasp, making Seb jump. The large lizard coughed and spluttered, but he didn’t sit up. Instead, he twitched and twisted on the cold rocky ground. Far from recovered, his eyes were white from where they were rolled back in his head. But he looked better than before. Better than a corpse.
“Get a stretcher,” Sparks said.
Both Reyes and Buster ran out of the cave.
While the others were gone, Seb held Bruke’s large hand and spoke in a calming voice. “It’s okay, mate. We’re here for you. We’re going to get you out of here.”
Not sure whether he heard him or not, Bruke continued to fit. As upsetting as he found it, Seb would have taken that over what he’d walked in on. At least he still had life in him.
Chapter 38
It might have only taken a minute, maybe even less, but it felt like hours passed before Reyes and Buster returned with the stretcher. They laid it down on the ground and all five of them lifted the heavy Bruke onto it.
Buster took the front of the stretcher, managing the weight of it with ease. Seb took the back. SA took one side and Reyes the other. Although Sparks tried to help, she must have quickly seen the futility of it and ran ahead of the others out into the snow.
As they left the cave, Seb heard a loud whack. He saw Buster’s tail bounce back off the wall it had crashed into. Before Seb could say anything, a rumble came from above them.
Reyes obviously recognised the sound and shouted, “Avalanche!”
Almost blinded by the driving snow, they ran in the direction of Owsk’s ship, the thunderous roar of frosty death behind them. Sparks tapped against her computer, clearly in contact with him. When they got close enough to see the silhouette of his vessel, he’d already lowered it and turned it around, the open cargo bay ready for them to run straight in.
Sparks hopped on first. Then Buster. Once he’d gotten on, R
eyes and SA slid the stretcher into the large hold.
While they carefully loaded Bruke on and jumped aboard the ship themselves, Seb felt the ground rumble more violently than before. He wanted to shout for the others to hurry up, but could see they were moving as quickly as they could.
Seb looked behind. Where he’d seen sheets of snow falling from the sky, he now saw a swollen cloud rushing towards him.
It took for the stretcher to get ripped away from him before Seb looked back at the ship. They’d cleared the way.
Seb’s feet sank into the now shifting snow as he tried to find purchase. The rumble swelled around him, making the ground harder to stand on. Reyes and SA leaned out of the cargo bay and held their hands out to him. His footing then slipped with the moving ground. Before it could carry him off the side of the mountain, he made a lunge for his friends.
The second Seb’s hands touched theirs, both of them gripped tightly and Reyes shouted, “Go!”
The ship lifted with Seb still hanging out of the back of it, his legs dangling down. The air from the dense and vast white cloud clattered against his ankles on its way through, swinging him underneath the ship so he crashed against the underside of the vessel.
But Reyes and SA held onto him, and when he swung back around, they pulled him to safety.
Out of breath and shaking with fatigue, Seb fell flat against the cargo bay’s cold metal floor. He rolled over onto his back and looked up at the others.
“You okay?” Sparks said, her purple glare narrowed as she inspected him.
Seb nodded. Before he could reply, he heard movement on the stretcher behind him. When he lifted his head, he saw Bruke sitting upright.
Bruke looked like he’d just awoken from a nap. A wonky smile on his thick face, he said, “Uh, did I just miss something?”
Seb let go of a long exhale, looked at the others, laughed, and then fell flat again. While staring at the ceiling, he shook his head and closed his eyes. “Not much, Bruke. Not much.”
Chapter 39
Seb spooned the salty and rubbery mushroom derivative into his mouth. He chewed on it for a few seconds to make it easier to swallow. Each bite released a saline kick and not much more. At least it had the right nutritional balance to be everything his body needed. A good taste would have been a bonus.
The others ate different foods. Moses had packed them all, making sure each being had the optimal mix of what they needed. By the looks on their faces, their food didn’t taste much better than his. The worst of the lot had to be Owsk’s meal. It looked like snot, and it took all of Seb’s resolve to refrain from watching him drink the slimy substance. It didn’t help that he gulped several times after, his eyes watering. The gloopy solution clearly didn’t go down too easily.
They drifted in space just out of the snowy planet’s atmosphere. The second Owsk had lifted them high enough, he’d thrown the ship on autopilot so they could all have a moment to regroup.
While they ate, they caught up on what had happened with everyone. All of them except Buster, who watched, taking in everything said around him without offering his own story.
They finally got around to the slaughter of the mandulus in the warehouse, which Buster had witnessed before being captured. He’d rubbed his eyes several times during Sparks’ retelling of their experience as if he could push the tears back in. He winced to hear about what had happened with the last one, whose head had exploded.
They talked about the Quartz and how they’d found it crashed on the mountainside purely by accident. On their way out of there, Reyes had asked Sparks to scan the wreck. They found as many dead bodies on there as had left Aloo. Wherever they were headed, it looked like they hadn’t made it.
They’d been drifting for about fifteen minutes when Seb looked at Bruke for what must have been the thousandth time.
“What?” Bruke said.
He was perky as if nothing had happened to him. Seb laughed. “We thought you’d died down there.”
A look at the floor as if he could see through it to the planet below, Bruke shrugged. “I don’t remember any of it.”
Seb’s bottom and legs had turned numb from where he’d been sat on the cold metal floor. He shifted to find comfort and then opened his mouth to reply.
But Buster spoke instead. “I think I know what happened.” Because he’d been so quiet until that point, his voice caught Seb by surprise. When he looked at him, he noticed all of the others do the same. “There’s something about that planet below,” he said. “Something in the air.”
“The chemical that turns your lungs to liquid?” Reyes said.
“That,” Buster conceded.
“A shitload of snow?” Seb offered.
Again, Buster nodded. “Yep, but there’s something much more. Something less obvious. It’s almost as if the emotion of the place is toxic.” While looking at Bruke, he said, “My guess is Bruke here’s quite a sensitive creature. More sensitive than most?”
The others smiled, but none of them confirmed it beyond that.
“This is a dark, dark planet. Vile things happen here.” They all hung on Buster’s words as he dropped his voice lower. “Hellish things. I think Bruke picked up on that and it got into him. Poisoned his heart, if you get my meaning?”
Seb looked from Bruke to Buster and said, “Which is why he made such a miraculous recovery when we lifted him off there?”
“Right. So as long as you keep him off the planet, he’ll be fine.”
“Why did it only affect him?” Sparks said.
“I would guess he’s the most sensitive out of all of you.”
Ever the cynic, Sparks’ eyes narrowed. “How do you know all of this?”
“The beings who captured me were bounty hunters.”
“We’d figured as much,” Seb said.
“They were working with the ship that you followed here. The one that crashed.”
“The Quartz?” Reyes said.
“Right! The bounty hunters spoke freely in front of me. They must have assumed the hard part was done, that it was just a case of getting paid and handing me over. The Quartz was tasked with arranging the bounty prior to them giving me up.”
A look at Owsk and Sparks, Seb said, “So they weren’t expecting us on that watery planet when we turned up?”
Buster shook his head and finished his next mouthful before he continued. “They didn’t trust the transaction would go smoothly, so they hid away and were ready to fight. It wasn’t an ambush you stumbled upon, they simply hadn’t lowered their guard. Bad luck more than anything.”
“For them,” Sparks added.
A wry smile, Buster conceded the point with a nod and laughed.
“So who is it that wants you bad enough to kill all of your helpers and try to cover their tracks? I mean, who was prepared to pay enough to get you?”
A shrug, Buster said, “Isn’t it obvious?”
“We thought it had something to do with her.” When Seb looked at the others, he saw none of them had anything else to add, so he turned back to Buster. “But she’s dead.”
“She wasn’t when she put the bounty on me. Also, I’m guessing her operations are still ongoing.”
“The slaves?”
“Yeah. The thing is, despite what she may have thought, I don’t know much about what she did. Her operations were one of the galaxy’s greatest secrets. No one knew if she didn’t want them to.”
“Moses said as much,” Seb said. When Buster’s eyes narrowed, Seb elaborated, “Moses knows everything that goes on in Aloo. Moses wants information about the Countess and her operations. When I told him we thought you’d know something, he said you helped slaves, but you didn’t know much beyond that. He would have come to you much earlier if he thought you had anything on her. So if you don’t know what’s going on, why did she put a bounty on you?”
“Paranoia. She must have thought I knew something when I didn’t. Maybe I was close to finding something out and she wanted to stop me
before that happened.”
With a heavy sigh, Seb looked at the others and saw his own disappointment in their faces. “That’s a real shame.”
“Why?”
“We want to track down her operations, and you were our only hope.”
Buster smiled.
“What’s so funny?”
“You’ve really not worked it out?”
After snapping a shrug through his shoulders, Seb looked at the others for help and then back to Buster.
“We’ve just left the planet where her slavery ring is. I thought that was obvious. That bounty she put out on me was her playing her hand too soon. If she’d have left me alone, we would have been none the wiser as to where her operations are.”
“Are you sure?” Seb said.
“Why do you think half of the bounty hunters came here? They wanted to get paid directly from her. The others said as much while they were holding me beneath the water. As soon as they had me, she gave up her location. My guess is she was confident about killing us all. Until you all killed her, that is.”
Reyes shifted as if trying to find comfort on the hard metal floor and leaned towards Buster. “And that’s why the atmosphere in this place is toxic? Not just lower down the mountain, but why it affected Bruke like it did?”
Buster nodded. “Like I said, she does some dark things down there. I don’t know what exactly, but I’ve dealt with a lot of beings who have been processed by her, and it ain’t pretty.”
Silence for a few seconds, Seb then said, “Okay, so if the Quartz never made it there, maybe we still have the element of surprise on our side. We need to get down there and see what the deal is.”
When Bruke’s eyes widened, Seb said, “We obviously can’t take Bruke down there with us. And, Reyes, you and Owsk could do with retrieving the other ship you came here in. Buster, you’ve helped us enough already.”
Seb looked at Sparks and then SA. “You with me on this?”
Both of them shared a look with one another. A strange unison as their faces steeled. They both looked back at him and nodded.
The Shadow Order - Books 1 - 8 + 120 Seconds (The complete series): A Space Opera Page 110
