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

by Michael Robertson

  In the absence of the humming engines, Seb heard the wind resistance around the ship. It served as a reminder of just how fast they were hurtling towards the ground. For a moment, he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. It took for SA to reach over and squeeze his right hand before he opened them again. She offered him a tight-lipped smile, which he returned.

  Sparks then projected an image on the windscreen much like the one she’d brought up when they’d rescued their friends from the snowy mountain. Like before, it showed a red-lined schematic of the obstacles in their path.

  Still no replacement for actually being able to see, Seb looked out at the city again. Now they were closer, he saw the flames around the bottoms of many buildings. One or two of the towers had already fallen, a large pile of rubble where they’d clearly been, their skeletal remains still smoking. The lights and flames glowed so brightly, he had to rub his eyes to help combat the glare. “So, what?” he said. “We land at night, find somewhere to hide, and then go into the city when we have some daylight?”

  “There is no daylight,” Sparks said without looking back at him.

  “Say what?”

  While still facing forward, Sparks said, “There. Is. No. Daylight.”

  “It’s always dark?”

  “Not exactly dark though, is it?”

  “All right, smart arse. So it’s always retina-burning bright? As long as you’re in the artificially lit city?”

  “Yep.”

  The words of his mother came to Seb at that moment, reminding him he had nothing nice to say. He pulled in another deep breath and slowly let it go. What else could he do?

  The numbers on the screen in front of them meant nothing to Seb, but they must have told Reyes something. After frowning at them, she said, “We’re going to be landing soon.”

  Tight-lipped, Seb listened to Bruke whine next to him and continued to hold SA’s hand as they descended towards Kajan’s barren desert. He looked at his love to see the colour had returned to her face. She appeared to be strong again and as ready as any of them.

  Suddenly, the ship jolted with a loud bang!

  Instantly in slow motion, Seb let go of SA’s hand and held the back of Reyes’ seat again. “What the hell was that?”

  Bang! They hit something else, the ship jumping higher like a skipped stone.

  The dashboard of the ship lit up like the city in front of them. The pulse and bleep of several warning signals went off. No one replied to Seb, Reyes holding onto the flight stick with both hands as their ship snaked from side to side.

  Bang! Another bone-shuddering vibration and Seb nearly lost his feet as they swung into a death spin.

  “What’s going on, Sparks?” Reyes yelled, her teeth bared. She tugged so hard on the flight stick, she looked like she might rip it clean off.

  Seb continued to grip the back of Reyes’ seat, losing his balance as the bright city’s lights repeatedly came into view and then disappeared again with their spin. He watched Sparks on her computer.

  Bang! They hit something again. It caught their left wing, abruptly halting their spiral. It did nothing to slow them down.

  Still gripping the flight stick, Reyes yelled, “Hold on!”

  Seb’s slow motion gave him the chance to look to his left at Bruke. He clung to Sparks’ seat like he wanted to rip it free from its bolts. Then to his right at SA. She looked as calm as ever. Before he could speak again, the screech of metal ripped through the bottom of their ship. It sounded like they were scraping against rock. It sounded like the ground was chewing through their hull. A fireworks display of sparks kicked up from the bottom of their vessel.

  They lifted for a second before crashing down again. The screeching through the bottom of the ship brought a heavy shudder with it. It turned Seb’s view of the city into a wash of blurred lights.

  After maybe a hundred metres of grinding against the ground, they finally came to a stop.

  Not quite silence, but none of them spoke. Seb looked at the others. Wide-eyed, they all panted—all except SA. She stared calm bioluminescence at him as if she knew they’d be safe all along.

  “Sorry,” Sparks finally said, her voice small. “I forgot to set my scanner to detect rocks.”

  A balled fist, Seb looked at the back of her head. Not that he’d hit her, but he damn well felt like it. He bit back his scream. He had to let it go. Even a being as calculating as her made mistakes. He then said, “We need to get out of here sharpish. I’m guessing that landing just told the locals we’re coming.”

  While holding her tablet in his direction, a splay of thousands of red dots in front of them, Sparks said, “It looks like they didn’t notice. None of them are coming this way.”

  “Are you sure you’re scanning for beings?”

  A facetious smile, Sparks then looked at the others. “I think we just got away with it.”

  If Seb thought he’d felt angry with Sparks, when he looked at Reyes, he saw her staring daggers at her small co-pilot. She worked her jaw as she ground her teeth. Her face moved several times as if she struggled with getting her words out. She finally managed it. “Except—” she took a breath “—we no longer have a ship to fly out of here in.”

  “Let’s look on the bright side,” Sparks said. “We’ve landed, we’re alive, and the creatures in Kajan don’t know we’re here. We can find a ship when we need to get out of the city.”

  Chapter 15

  In the silence that followed Sparks’ comment, Seb cautiously stood up and stretched. No pain in his body yet, but it would come. A crash-landing like the one they’d just been through always took its pound of flesh. The impact of the landing on top of the past few weeks he’d had would no doubt take even more than that.

  Before anyone spoke, Seb heard Bruke sniffing, inquisitive in its nature. Seb watched his friend looking around the inside of their crashed ship.

  When Seb smelled it too, dread crawled up through him as a strong and writhing twist. His heart quickened, and any breath he’d recovered from the crash ran away from him as he said, “I’m not imagining that smell, am I?”

  Before Bruke could answer, Reyes jumped to her feet and yelled, “Get out!” She shooed Seb and Bruke out of the cockpit towards the back door and followed on their heels with Sparks.

  No aches, but still reeling from the crash, the second Seb tried to run, he lost his balance, stumbled, and tripped, slamming down hard against the ship’s metal floor. The team backing up behind him, he felt a shove from Bruke as he stood up for a second time before continuing towards the exit.

  The power out and the ship twisted from the crash, Seb knew what would happen when he tried to open the door. But what other choice did he have? When he shoved it, it remained shut. The heady smell of fuel made him dizzy. One spark and they were done. He gritted his teeth and shoved it again. Still nothing.

  No time for words, Bruke shoved Seb aside and shoulder barged the door. The metal panel flew away from the ship with the popping noise of a large cork, and the thickset lizard rode it out into the desert beyond, crashing down against the dusty ground.

  They all ran out after him into the dark and cold.

  The terrain uneven underfoot and no daylight to show them the way, Sparks took the lead, her computer in front of her as she used its torch to find a safe route. Hopefully, she’d checked for rocks this time.

  As they ran, the ship behind them and the city in front, Seb looked at the illuminated metropolis, his breaths visible as condensation. He’d always associated deserts with heat, but why should this planet be warm? He should have worked it out. In a place where it was always night, how could it possibly be?

  Not far behind Sparks, Seb watched her dart to the right. It took another moment before he saw the large rock she’d avoided. They all followed her, another rock in their way a second later. Were it not for the scattering of large boulders and stones, he would have had a much clearer view of the city beyond. But maybe he didn’t need to get an idea of the full ex
tent of what they were heading into. He didn’t need anything challenging his desire to run as he fled a ship about to explode.

  Despite what the rocks did to their line of sight, they did nothing to mute the sounds from the densely populated area ahead. Screams, cries, roars—the same insanity Seb had heard on Aloo. Torment, fury, chaos—what were they about to go into? Although, what part of the galaxy didn’t have the same level of bedlam running through it? Wherever they went, they’d have to deal with it. Regardless of what went on, they had a plan to follow. Get to the pillar, find out what it could teach them, and then get the hell out of there.

  After she’d rounded several more rocks, the others following her as they got away from their volatile ship, Sparks stopped and pulled out her computer. SA reached her first, then Seb, Reyes, and finally Bruke. The thickset creature might have been the first one out of the ship, but he didn’t have a frame built for speed. Had they not stopped, he would have been left far behind.

  While panting, Seb leaned in towards the others. They all sounded to be struggling like him. It had been non-stop for what felt like days now. When would it end? For a moment, no one spoke, the suffering in the city beyond filling the void. Now they were closer, he heard something else amongst the cries and shrieks. He heard sobbing. Broken and primal, whatever creatures made those noises, they sounded like they’d been to the end of what they could bear.

  “This is where we need to go,” Sparks said, pointing at the map on her screen with one long finger.

  “Of course,” Seb said, staring at the thick cluster of red dots beneath Sparks’ fingertip. So many of them so close together, they looked like crimson frogspawn. “Why wouldn’t we have to go where it’s the busiest?”

  “What did you expect? It’s a monument that represents everything this place stands for. It’s in the middle of the city’s central plaza. They might not be thinking that clearly, but it makes sense that they’d return to their old ways, and if they’re in some kind of second phase with a need to congregate, where else would they go?”

  While Sparks talked, Seb watched her screen to see many more red dots far out of the city. He pointed at them. “Do you think they’re survivors?”

  A moment’s pause, Sparks nodded. “Yeah.”

  “And you said the population on Kajan’s about—”

  “Fifty thousand,” Sparks said.

  “But there can’t be any more than five thousand dots on your screen. At the most.”

  “My scanner doesn’t pick up dead bodies.”

  In the following pause, more screams filled the night.

  After she’d peered around the rock they crouched behind, then back in the direction they came from, Sparks said, “Well, at least the ship’s—”

  Before she could finish, a loud thwoom shook the ground as the ship ignited. The heat blast from the explosion rushed at them, tousling Seb’s hair and instantly lifting sweat on his body. He looked into the sky at what had been the vessel they flew in on. Currently on fire, it had leapt about twenty metres, seemed to hover for a second, and then hurtled back down to earth, connecting with the ground with an almighty clang!

  The explosion made Seb’s ears ring. Had they been much closer to it, it would have deafened him. Although losing his hearing might have been for the better; that way, he wouldn’t have to acknowledge the very real silence where there had been a cacophony of insanity only seconds before.

  For the brief moment it lasted, Seb held his breath and looked at the others. All of them wore the same slack expression as if waiting for something else to happen. Before any of them spoke, the dark planet lit up with cries of chaos. This time it sounded like a shared chaos. An orchestrated chaos. Insanity with a purpose. And worst of all … it headed straight for them.

  Chapter 16

  “We can make it if we go now,” Sparks said, her intense stare flitting between her screen and Seb. “But we have to go now.” When she tilted her computer to show him, he looked at the frogspawn of red dots headed their way. They were close, but not too close. Yet.

  His world in slow motion, Seb had a moment or two longer than the others to think about it. It gave him the time to look at his friends. They all stared at him. In a moment of crisis, democracy went out of the window. He needed to make a decision. He nodded at Sparks. “Lead the way.” Another glance at Bruke, who looked exhausted from what little running they’d already done, he added, “And we move at Bruke’s pace. We either succeed or fail as a unit.”

  At that comment, the others drew their blasters as if readying for battle. Bruke whined, “You should go without me. I’ll hide out here somewhere. Then there’ll be no need to fight. You can get into the city and find somewhere safe. I can make my own way when the chaos clears. We don’t all need to die because I’m slow.”

  Shaking his head, Seb pointed a stern finger at Bruke. “Shut up and get moving. We don’t need to die because you’re wasting our time moaning.” A bit harsh, but it needed to be said.

  The group set off, all of them running at a jog save for the huffing and puffing Bruke. The others looked over Sparks’ shoulder, watching the dots get closer on her screen. The cries from inside the city gave them an audible marker to go with the visual in front of them.

  When Seb saw SA had what looked to be a large grenade in her hand, he said, “What’s that?”

  Before SA could answer, Sparks looked down at it and gasped. “A leveller? Where did you get that from?”

  I took it from Moses’ armoury.

  Reyes’ eyes widened when she looked at it.

  “Am I missing something?” Seb said.

  Reyes continued to focus on the weapon. “A leveller does what it says on the tin. When it goes off, it reduces entire blocks to rubble.”

  Seb gulped. “Let’s hope we don’t need it.”

  Once they’d weaved through several more large rocks, Seb got his first clear sight of the city since he’d stepped out into the desert. Although he knew it to be bright when they approached from the sky, at ground level the brilliant neon glare exploded from the darkness like a supernova.

  “Just go ahead without me,” Bruke said between gasps. He already lagged behind them.

  Seb ignored his stocky friend and looked down at Sparks’ screen again, blinking several times before his eyes adjusted from the blinding the city had given him. So many red dots, he saw they bottlenecked and split, taking different paths from where the streets got too thin to accommodate them all. Another round of screams, louder than before, he looked back at the garish sprawl of the city ahead. For the first time, he heard the thunderous swell of footsteps closing down on them.

  Sparks’ computer might have shown Seb that even the closest of the red dots still had a little way to go, but he found it hard to trust. Instead, he squinted as he scanned the line where the city met the desert for signs of emerging slaves. If Sparks had already failed to scan for rocks, who knew what else she might miss. Even a lone runner would blow their cover.

  Despite him being a few steps behind, they still moved at Bruke’s pace, their boots hitting the dusty ground. It gave Seb the chance to take in more of the city. It looked to be a work in progress. The grid layout had been clear from the sky, and as they drew closer, he saw where new grids had been started. If it survived this, it looked like Kajan would eventually grow in every direction to the horizon. Prostitutes and gambling must have been lucrative endeavours.

  “I reckon we have about fifteen seconds,” Sparks said, her small face flitting between her screen, the city, and the leveller in SA’s hand.

  When Seb looked back at Bruke, who’d lagged behind even farther, he saw the others do the same. Probably not helpful to the poor creature, he watched him wince an apology at them, but fortunately he didn’t try to speak. It would be wasted energy. They wouldn’t leave him, no matter how much he wanted them to.

  A hotel stood as the closest building to them. At least fifteen stories high, every floor glowed from the bright electric ligh
ts inside it. A fire also burned within the tower. It looked like it had started on the second floor. Another glance up the tall building suggested the rooms above were empty. Hopefully it had been evacuated in time. The chaos would have driven the guests out before the fires did.

  The hotel stood as the first building in a new grid. It stood on its own; the next building was at least twenty metres farther away on the corner of a complete block.

  The red frogspawn on Sparks’ screen had split several more times. Clusters of creatures ran down the streets as a crimson flood. They moved towards the edge of the desert, divided by the architecture, but united in their hunt.

  The thunder of footsteps had grown louder. The vibration of their stampede hammered through the streets and shook off the walls. Screams, shrieks, and cackles. Furious insanity. A lust for wanton destruction. It sounded like hell had broken open and the denizens contained within had burst free.

  “We have to make a choice,” Sparks said, her eyes fixed on the burning building. “I say we take our chances and go straight past that hotel.”

  When Seb looked at her screen, he saw they wouldn’t make it to the next block. “I’ll protect you from the fire,” he said.

  A slight stoop in her frame, Sparks clearly accepted what she’d said as wishful thinking. Were the hotel not on fire, she would have guided them straight to it. Hell, when he looked at her screen, Seb didn’t know if they’d even make it to the burning structure.

  The thud of their steps as they moved towards the blazing building, Seb continued to look between Sparks’ computer and the illuminated city in front of them. The sounds drew closer, but still no sight of the insanity that created it.

  A few metres between them and the hotel. The screams louder, the vibration of their footsteps harder. The hotel or bust. They had no choice.

  Just before Seb ran through the smashed glass that had once been the front doors, he saw Sparks’ intention. He reached out and grabbed her, dragging her inside the burning building before she could run past it.