“Yeah, but what now?” Owsk said, many of the others nodding at his question, including Seb.
When Moses returned silence, it showed he didn’t have a plan either. He looked around the room as if hoping for one of them to deliver some insight.
After another few seconds of silence, Sparks broke it by pulling out her computer and projecting footage on the wall at the front. Screams, cries, gunfire, and even a distant explosion or two, she showed them the reality of the chaos. “What we have to face hasn’t changed. There’s anarchy everywhere else; so while getting Aloo back might be a small achievement, it’s no more than that.”
Moses shrugged. “But it’s important. At least we have our base secured. It’s something. It gives us a location to regroup in so we can execute our next plan.”
“Which is?” Sparks said. All the while she kept her attention on her minicomputer, cycling through the footage every few seconds. The scenery changed with her swipes. Open agricultural land, built-up cities, run-down shanty towns—very different settings, exactly the same chaos.
Hard to take his eyes from the footage, Seb winced as he watched a being forced to its knees before several creatures dressed in the rags of slaves hacked its head off with a sword. Unlike the glorified beheadings he’d seen in movies, it took more than one swing to decapitate the poor thing.
When Seb looked back, he saw the others had watched it too. A shuttle crash they couldn’t look away from, they all wore their own masks of horror. “Any ideas on how we can get closer to Enigma?” he said.
An already all too familiar silence settled on the room. Sparks then said, “The longer it takes us to find out where they are, the more beings will die. It seems to me that the only plan we have is to take back one planet at a time. But we don’t have the might for that.”
“And the chaos will spread quicker than we can quell it,” Reyes added.
While nodding her agreement with the marine, Sparks turned back to the others. “We have to come up with something else.”
Because he had nothing to offer, Seb continued to watch Sparks’ projected footage. “Another thing bothering me,” he said, “is how they got so organised on Aloo.”
Sparks looked between Seb and the footage several times. “Huh?”
“The slaves. When I look at them on other planets, they seem to be operating without purpose. They’re attacking anything close by. But when we turned up in Aloo, they all came at us.”
“Like they were working together,” Buster said.
“Exactly.”
Sparks shook her head. “They weren’t working together. Aloo looked just like all of these other places until we turned up. When we did, we became the greatest threat to their safety, which is why they came at us in that way. I would argue that although the slaves were all drawn to Moses’ warehouses as a group, they were acting as single entities. Just look at the way they came out to be slaughtered … there was no co-ordination there.”
It made sense, so Seb nodded. “Fair point.” Not that it got them any closer to a plan. “So what do we do, then?”
Where’s the hostage?
Seb noticed Owsk and Buster flinch at SA’s voice coming through to them. They still hadn’t gotten used to it. “She has a point,” he said. “We should be pressing him for answers. Especially as we have nothing else at the moment.”
Buster leaned forward and spoke in a low growl. “I’ll be more than happy to torture it.”
Seb shuddered at his tone. The rest of the room fell silent.
“What?” A shrug of his shoulders, Buster looked at the others. “I just thought I’d offer my services.”
Silence again, which Seb broke a second later. “Although the creature can’t tell us anything, it won’t deny it if we guess correctly. It might be a long process, but it has to be the best option we have. Is he nearby, Moses?”
The large shark nodded. “I’ll take you to him.”
Moses led the way down one of the Shadow Order base’s many identical gunmetal grey corridors. Seb fell into line with the others, the only sound coming from the contact their feet made against the steel floor.
When they arrived at one of what appeared to be hundreds of identical doorways, Moses paused and looked back at them. “I’ve kept it too bright and too cold for the creature to sleep in. Hopefully the little shit is so exhausted, he’d sell his own mother up the river just to get some rest.”
Before anyone could comment, Moses pressed his face to the retina scanner by the door. Seb watched the light turn from red to green. A second later, the door lock clicked before the entire thing opened with a whirring sound.
The bright glare flooding out forced Seb back a couple of steps, and he raised his forearm to cover his eyes. It took a few seconds for his vision to adjust. When it did, he said, “Oh no.”
The porcupine sat at the other end of the room. About three metres separated him and Seb. His voice ran shrill, a wobble to it as if forming the words took all of his resolve. “Stay where you are,” he said.
Although the others crowded around behind him, Seb remained still and raised his hands as if urging the small beast to calm down. “I’m not moving.” He stared into the creature’s wild eyes. It looked sleep deprived, sure, but something else drove him. Maybe the threat of a punishment more severe than anything the Shadow Order would even dream of doing to him.
The small creature kneeled as if praying. It had pulled two thick spines from itself and had one up each nostril. It shook its head as it rested its palms on the floor and shouted, “Don’t come any closer.” Spittle sprayed from its violent outburst.
“Now calm down,” Seb said, the others letting him take the lead. “Just don’t do anything rash, okay?”
Another shake of its head swung the spines from side to side as an elongated extension of the creature’s actions. “I’m not giving you anything more about Enigma.”
Before Seb could say anything else, the creature shouted, its voice echoing in the empty room, “You’re all going to hell! Long live Enigma.” It yelled out as it drove a head butt at the ground. The sharp spikes vanished inside its skull with a deep crunch. The creature fell instantly limp, the weight of its body shoving its face along the floor towards them. Within a few seconds, blood leaked from its nose and pooled around it.
“Damn!” Sparks said as she elbowed her way to the front. She ran a hand over the top of her head, pulling her black bob from her face and holding it there while she exhaled hard. “There goes our hostage.”
Chapter 12
They were all back in the conference room and had returned to their seats. In the same seats as before, they wore the same blank expressions. None of them had spoken on the walk back.
Buster finally broke the silence, leaning forward and eyeballing Seb. “You’re supposed to be the chosen one.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Surely you know something?”
“I didn’t choose this damn prophecy.”
Silence again.
Sparks brought up more footage of the chaos incited by Enigma. It looked like she did it through boredom rather than any particular reason. “This is Zackint,” she said. “The closest planet to us.”
While watching it, Seb shrugged. “It could be anywhere in the galaxy right now.” The same scenes they’d seen everywhere. Uncoordinated, wild, and destructive creatures fell while buildings and ships burned.
Suddenly, an image flashed into Seb’s mind. Although he flinched, he kept his response muted. He saw a tower of some sort. A monument. A tall milky-green obelisk. After a shake of his head, he looked across at SA, who stared straight at him. Had she just put the thought in his head? Blood then ran from her nose like it had before, and her skin turned paler than usual. This time, he lurched forward to catch her from her seat as she fell.
Chapter 13
The others gathered around Seb, who held SA in his arms and looked down at her. Moses had given him some tissues to wipe her blood aw
ay with. Only a nosebleed, but it spoke of something much more. While lowering her gently to the ground so she could stretch out, he stared into her blue eyes. A slight glaze to her bioluminescence, the clarity soon returned as she focused on him. Something in her stare suggested she knew he’d seen it too. Had they seen exactly the same thing? He checked his own nose by pushing the back of his hand against it. No blood.
It took until that moment for Seb to truly feel the press of his friends around them. Their collective forms blocked out a lot of the room’s light. He looked up at them, trying to keep his impatience from his tone. “Can you please give her some space? She needs room to breathe.”
The others backed away. It took for that moment to see Sparks hadn’t been there in the first place. As always, she stared down at her device, and maybe with just cause. “Look,” she said as she sent yet another projection onto the wall.
The footage showed the same chaos they’d seen all over the galaxy already. Had she just done it to take the attention away from SA?
Before Seb could ask her, she said, “See how they’re behaving. It’s different than before.”
Like the others in the room, Seb watched the chaos while holding SA’s hand. “It doesn’t look any different. The same killing, the same insanity.”
“Look harder.”
Torn between Sparks’ riddles and the woozy SA, Seb threw an impatient shrug through his shoulders. “Why don’t you just tell me?”
Sparks pointed at the projected footage again. “Look at how they’re running around. Before, they were acting on their own, attacking on their own. There was no organisation to the madness, even when they attacked us on Aloo. But look at them now.”
The current destination on the screen was a shanty town of tin roofs, poorly built buildings, and tents. It looked much like the slums of Solsans. It showed the slaves grouping together in packs. Bruke spoke this time. “Maybe something’s attracted their attention like we did on Aloo.”
Shaking her head, Sparks cycled through zoomed-in shots of the creatures in the slum. “But they’re not going anywhere in particular. They’re grouping into larger packs and killing those who aren’t like them. Look.” She showed more footage of seven or eight slaves as they closed down on a large creature and threw it to the ground. Dressed better than they were, it clearly came from wealth.
As they closed in around their victim, Seb winced. He squirmed where he sat, and just before he could say something, Owsk beat him to it. “Do we have to watch this?”
But Sparks didn’t reply, and no one turned away. It twisted Seb’s insides to watch the group quickly beat the creature to death. As much as he didn’t want to witness it, the small Thrystian had made the correct call: they needed to understand the phenomena.
The violent gang left the corpse on the ground and ran over to a group of a similar size to their own. Not even acknowledging one another, they instantly doubled in size as a unit and moved on, searching for their next target.
Seb noticed Sparks looking around the room before she said, “I take your silence to mean you can see my point?”
More silence. It felt as if the footage had dragged the air from the room and the breath from their lungs.
“Maybe I’m stating the obvious here,” Sparks said, “but with the change that’s just occurred, I think we’ve got even less time before every planet’s overrun.” She cycled through more footage. The same thing. Organised chaos. “The last time SA collapsed—”
“Was shortly after Enigma triggered the attack,” Seb said. He felt SA look at him. Did she want a confirmation that he’d seen it too? He ignored her. If she had projected it into his mind, she didn’t need the stress of worrying about it happening again. If she hadn’t, he didn’t want to discuss it until he understood it more.
Even Bruke picked up on what they were saying. “So you think Enigma have triggered a change in the slaves’ behaviour and SA picked up on the psychic broadcast?”
“Exactly,” Sparks said. “It must have been some kind of psychic output that created this, much like the thing that triggered the chaos in the first place.”
Because Seb had his attention on the others, he jumped when SA sat up and held her head. She winced as if she had a headache. I saw something. A place. A monument.
It had to be what Seb had seen. He let her speak.
A large obelisk. It was milky green as if made from jade. It had carvings on it, but I can’t remember what they were. They looked like religious symbols of some sort.
Exactly the same thing he’d seen.
Sparks flicked through a couple of cities’ monuments as if searching for what she’d just described.
SA pointed at the screen when it flashed up. That’s it.
A large green obelisk, it stood at least three metres tall. The city surrounding it had lights everywhere. It looked to be night-time because the sky was dark while the ground was lit up like the sun from the artificial illumination.
“Kajan,” Sparks said.
Bruke leaned towards her. “Huh?”
“SA saw the Pillar of Peace in the centre of Kajan’s main square. It’s a secular society. They celebrate the fact with an obelisk carved from jade. Those symbols on it are the main religious symbols when it was made. They wanted to welcome every faith. Of course, thousands of religions have been birthed and died since it was made, but its message remains: all faiths are welcome. None rule.”
A slight dryness crept through Seb’s mouth, and his heart pounded to watch the insanity in the city. What had been disorganised chaos had seemed like his worst nightmare before this. Now they’d be facing a hive mind moving through the place like a plague of locusts. Systematic in their destruction, they left fire and devastation in their wake.
“It looks worse than any other place we’ve seen,” Bruke said.
“It’s a busy city,” Sparks said. “A population of about fifty thousand beings, the place is built on gambling and prostitution. It isn’t pretty down there at the best of times.”
“Forget it.” Buster stood up, his tail flicking in an aggressive display of his fear. “I ain’t going.”
Seb cut in this time. “We can’t force you to do anything you don’t want to, Buster. I need to go there, so maybe we should focus on who’s coming with me.”
Although she’d sat up, SA still leaned on Seb for support. She raised her hand. Reyes, Bruke, and Sparks followed suit. When they all looked at Owsk, the rock troll shrugged. “I’m guessing Buster’s going to need some help looking after the slaves on Aloo. Maybe we can put out a broadcast to send them here if any beings have any they need to offload. Being surrounded by the sea makes it the perfect place to contain them until we can find something that’ll help.”
It might have been a coward’s answer, but it made sense. Besides, Seb only wanted beings who’d chosen to be there next to him. The city they were about to go to had already fallen. The last thing he needed was resistance from his team on top of everything else. As he watched the footage of Kajan, he felt more aware of his fatigue than ever. His blood ran like tar through his veins while a low-level pain buzzed in his muscles. Although he knew it for himself, he said to SA, “Are you sure that’s the monument you saw?”
As much as she looked like she wanted to say no, she nodded. Certain.
“Well, at least that’s something,” Seb said, doing his best to hide his disappointment. “At least we know where we need to go. Buster, Owsk, we’ll put out a call in case any ships have slaves they need to drop off here. Good luck. The rest of you, I suppose there’s no time like the present.” When he stood up, he offered SA his hand to help her stand too. A look at the rest of the team and they all returned his stare with stoic determination. About to ask them if they were ready, he saw he didn’t need to. Instead, he pulled in a deep breath and said, “Let’s do this.”
Chapter 14
Their ship shook and hummed as they entered Kajan’s atmosphere. Seb lost his breath to see the vast sprawling
city in the middle of the dark desert. The night gave them no choice but to focus on the neon metropolis. Tower block after tower block, the city had been arranged in grids. Many of the skyscrapers burned. Turned into chimneys, they kicked up thick smoke into the dark sky.
Suddenly Reyes turned the ship’s lights off.
“What are you doing?” Seb said. He stood behind her in the cockpit, holding onto her seat. An ache ran through his knuckles from how tightly he gripped it.
Although Reyes kept her attention in front, she leaned back and spoke to him over her shoulder. “You want us to announce our arrival? If we go in lit up, they’ll spot us before we land.”
“Why does it matter?” Bruke said. “We’ll be visible on radar anyway.”
Her focus still ahead, and not aggressive in any way, Reyes shut him down nonetheless. “Any being that can use radar down there won’t give a damn about us turning up. They’ll be too busy trying to hide.”
As usual, Sparks had her attention on her computer. “I bet there aren’t any beings left who can use radar anyway. The ones who might be capable look like they’re making their way out into the desert.” She pointed at a map on her screen. It showed a large cluster of dots in the city and then a scattering of activity far out in the desert in every direction. The lucky ones had managed to flee before it was too late.
A moment’s silence as they all watched what they were heading into, Reyes then broke it. “The point is, we want to land without anything seeing or hearing us.” She then reached forward and flicked a switch on the dashboard. The vibration of the ship’s engines suddenly stopped.
Seb looked at the others before addressing Reyes. “What the hell?”
In the co-pilot seat, still locked on her computer, Sparks looked out of the window in front of them for a second before returning to her screen. “They might hear us. We can glide in from here.”
Despite Seb’s inclination to argue with them, they both knew more about flying than he did. Besides, if he kicked off now, it would just make a tricky landing much trickier.
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