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

by Michael Robertson

  The small Marine had obviously seen Reyes’ intention because she shook her head almost imperceptibly. No one wanted to put their neck on the line with the warrant officer in his current mood—even more reason for her to do it. Playing the daughter card sometimes worked in her favour.

  Julius tried one more time. “Just please let me explain wh—”

  “Whatever it takes,” the WO said.

  Maybe Julius had sensed she had an advocate in Reyes because she looked directly at her as if silently pleading for her to step in. Chan’s advice in her mind, the need to intervene both rose and died in her. She couldn’t do it. A quick glance at the others and it didn’t look like anyone else wanted to do it either. The warrant officer had made up his mind. Whatever meant whatever, and if she spoke out, he’d slam her down in front of everyone there.

  A heavy sigh sagged through Julius before she burst to life. Moving in one fluid motion, she drew her blaster, aimed it at the screen in front of her, and pulled the trigger.

  The loud pop made Reyes jump. If the wide-eyed Marines around her were anything to go by, she wasn’t the only one.

  Where the monitor had glowed with backlit brilliance, it now fizzed, popped, and kicked out sparks that landed on the dark floor and died.

  However long passed before the warrant officer spoke, every painful second of silence twisted through Reyes. She should have said something.

  “Oh,” the WO finally said while scratching his beard. “That’s what you wanted to explain to me.”

  “It’s the only way to disable the hyperdrive. Now while this ship has many surprises, from what I can ascertain, it only has one control computer. Breaking that should stop it making another jump until it’s fixed.”

  “Should?”

  Julius shrugged.

  So quiet in the room, Reyes heard the sound of the warrant officer scratching his beard again. He then said, “But the Crimson Destroyer definitely knows where we are?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then it doesn’t matter that we can’t access the computer again, right?”

  Julius shrugged. “Right. Also, it would take me days to properly crack their systems to shut down the hyperdrive, so any more time on the computer would be a waste anyway. There’s not much else I can do with—”

  Before Julius could finish, several heavy clunks ran through the ship. They started far away from them. Hard to tell, but if Reyes had to guess, she’d say they started in the sports hall. What she could tell for sure was each one drew closer. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

  Many of the Marines raised their blasters and faced one of the two doors. Austin and Hunt did the same while stepping away from the door they’d just walked through, moving closer to the others.

  The next thunk turned the control room red, the bright lights giving way to the crimson glow of a ship on emergency power.

  Two more loud thunks moved farther up the ship. Then silence reigned again.

  “You could have turned the lights back on though, right?” the WO said.

  Julius didn’t reply. Reyes should have intervened when she had the chance.

  Before anyone could say anything else, there was a scream in the corridor outside.

  Chapter 29

  The scream came from the corridor Reyes and Chan had just walked down. Although the Marines had their weapons raised, none of them moved towards the door. Instead, they all looked at the WO. Without a word, he pressed the butt of his blaster into his shoulder and took slow steps towards the sound.

  Many of the Marines remained rooted to the spot. While walking with her dad, Reyes wanted to yell at them. One of their own was in trouble and they were too scared to move! She’d seen too many die already; she had to remember that most of them hadn’t.

  Another scream lifted gooseflesh all over Reyes’ body. Now closer to the doors—the other Marines finally closing in around them—she heard a voice. It was Crouch. He shouted, the screech of his voice making her swallow with empathy for how it must have hurt his throat. “Why me? What have I done to deserve this?”

  The WO slammed a heavy whack against the button to open the doors, but they didn’t budge. He hit it so hard the second time, the slapping sound clapped through the dark room. He yelled out and drove a hard fist against the resolute barrier. It felt like his blow against the doors shook the entire ship, but they didn’t budge.

  Maybe Crouch had an awareness of them coming, because Reyes heard him call out, “Please, just fucking end it. Don’t leave me like this.”

  Before the warrant officer could hit the button again, Reyes shot the control panel in the wall. Sparks exploded away from it as it shattered, but the doors didn’t budge.

  He spun on her, his furrowed brow a mess of hard lines. The rest of the room looked at her too.

  Crouch’s scream came again, pulling everyone’s attention back to the locked doors. “Help me!”

  Reyes spun around and set off in the opposite direction. She shoved past Austin and Hunt, who loitered at the back of the group. When she hit the button next to the double doors on the other side of the room, they slid open for her.

  “What are you doing, Reyes?” the WO yelled after her.

  She called back to him as she sprinted from the room into the blood-red corridor beyond. The doors were already closing behind her. “I’m getting to Crouch. He’s there because I left him behind. I’m going to get to him before it’s too late. We’re not going to lose any more of our people.”

  The doors to the control room were already closed as Reyes ran down the dark and twisted corridor—her feet turning with the roll of the uneven floor—but she heard the footsteps of the others giving chase. She couldn’t slow down. It sounded like seconds would make all the difference to Crouch.

  The doors to the library opened as easily as the ones from the control room had, and Reyes charged straight in.

  Until that moment, Reyes had forgotten just how dark the room was compared to all the others. A few steps in, she halted and looked at the shelves. Like before, they stretched from floor to ceiling and took up most of the space. But they looked different somehow, like they’d been rearranged. As she took them in again, she nodded to herself. They had been rearranged. Where there had been multiple entry points to the maze the last time she’d been in the room, she now only saw one. It ran a path straight through the centre of the space.

  Still rooted to the spot, her jaw wide, she said, “What the hell is this ship?” Then she heard Crouch scream even louder than before. She took off again, sprinting down the pathway through the centre of the shelves.

  Despite the change in layout, the same twisted black metal housed what looked to be the same ancient tomes, and the room had the same tormented architectural aesthetic. When Reyes had gone through the shelves the first time, she wouldn’t have been able to retrace her steps, so what did it matter if she had a new route now? The fact remained that she needed to get to Crouch on the other side.

  The slap of Reyes’ feet beat against the metal floor. When the sound of her steps grew louder, she couldn’t tell if they were her own being thrown back at her or if the others had followed her into the room. She’d learned a lot about Chan since they’d boarded The Faradis. No doubt she’d be on her heels, and if she ran after her, the others would too.

  There might have been a hellish twist to the maze, but the path through it ran in a straight line. Reyes burst from the other side without incident and kept moving at a sprint towards the doors. But when she tried to press the button, she saw the panel had already been shot. “Huh?”

  A bang slammed against the other side, and Reyes jumped back from it. Her heart, overworked from the run, beat even harder from the shock. Short and rapid breaths, she tried to ride it out. “Crouch?”

  “Reyes?”

  “Chan? You managed to get into the other corridor! How’s Crouch?”

  The door muffled Chan’s words, but Reyes heard her just fine. She wished she hadn’t. “What are you talking about?�
��

  “The door the WO was trying to operate. The one I shot in the control room. You got it open?”

  “No. We followed you.” Several slaps rang out from the other side of the door, where Chan was clearly trying to open it with the button. Then Reyes heard the pulse of laser fire and the fizz of breaking electrical wires. It made no difference.

  “But how?” Reyes had run in a straight line through the maze of shelves. She hadn’t turned once.

  “Are you okay, Reyes? How did you get in? The doors are locked.”

  “They weren’t when I pressed the button a few seconds ago.” It suddenly made sense why the panel on her side had already been shot. Chan had shot it to get them out of the room the last time they were in there.

  A tremble ran through Reyes. She opened her mouth to speak, but Crouch’s call cut her off. As far away as before, getting to him had to be her priority. Maybe she couldn’t have done anything on Q328, but she could do something now.

  Chan continued to beat against the other side of the door as Reyes took off towards Crouch in another attempt to reach him. Then she looked at the shelves again and stopped. They were laid out like they’d been the first time they were in there. Not the straight line through the middle of a few seconds ago, but multiple entry points. She stepped back until she leaned against the door, the vibration of Chan’s thuds running through her back. As much as she wanted to call out for help, she’d gotten herself into this mess. And what could the others do anyway? If they couldn’t open the doors, they couldn’t open them. No amount of whining would change that.

  While resting against the cold metal, Reyes heard Crouch again. His voice came through to her from the other side of the room, navigating the maze as if it were nothing. “Just end it now. Please.”

  If nothing else, she had to at least try to save him. Reyes sprinted towards the shelves, aiming for the path down the centre of the room, which was now more twisted than before.

  It took for the echo of the tight space to make Reyes realise she was crying. Crying for Crouch. Crying for her own fear. Crying for those lost on Q328. The close tunnel threw her gasping grief back at her in erratic and stuttered bursts. She turned left, right, left, right, right, right, left.

  When she emerged from the other side of the shelves this time, she looked straight at the panel beside the door. It remained intact. Before she got close enough to press it, she heard Chan’s banging as she called after her. The sounds came from the other side of the shelves. She’d definitely made it through this time.

  Reyes winced as she pressed the button to open the doors. They parted immediately. She let go of a hard exhale while stumbling forwards into the dark corridor. For the briefest of moments, she convinced herself she’d gotten through the worst of it. Crouch’s wild scream reminded her she hadn’t even scraped the surface.

  Then she saw him.

  Crouch lay on his back on the glistening, obsidian floor. Too dark in the corridor for Reyes to see all the gruesome details, but not dark enough to take the impact of his suffering away. His eyes were wide as he looked up at her, his mouth bent out of shape. The glistening shimmer of his own wet blood covered his face, and he held something in both of his hands. Two hands didn’t look to be enough to contain it all. The pile slipped and spilled over as he tried to balance his recently liberated innards.

  Reyes crouched down in front of him, turning her face away from the rich kick of excrement snaking up her nostrils—excrement and the copper reek of his spilled blood.

  “Reyes,” he said between gasps, his entire frame trembling. “Grady … he’s gone.”

  While stroking his hair away from his forehead, her hand turning damp with his blood, Reyes said, “Where? What’s happened to him?”

  A hypothermic shake racking his body, Crouch opened and closed his mouth several times, but he couldn’t get his words out. Where Reyes had seen stark panic in his wide eyes, a glaze now covered them as if he’d retreated into his skull.

  “Crouch,” Reyes said, “what’s happened? What have you seen?”

  A hard spasm bucked through Crouch’s frame, his legs snapping straight from the jolt. Then he fell limp.

  Still exhausted from her run, Reyes panted as she stared down at the dead Marine. Her legs finally failed her and she fell forwards onto her knees, the cold spread of Crouch’s blood soaking into her trousers.

  Chapter 30

  Reyes didn’t know how long they’d been banging for, but the heavy beat of their fists against the other side of the door helped coax her away from her own internal hell. Still kneeling in the obsidian corridor, she lifted her gaze from Crouch’s corpse. Her tears blurred the details of her crimson-hued surroundings. Her cheeks were soaked with her grief, her trousers with Crouch’s blood. The cold press of it lay against her knees as a damp reminder of another expired Marine.

  The banging came again, pulling a gasp from Reyes and helping her refocus on it. She stared at the control room door, the one she’d tried to open from the other side when they’d first heard Crouch scream.

  Before Reyes could speak, she heard another impatient knock. This time, her father’s voice came through with it. “Reyes? What’s going on out there?”

  As much as she wanted to call back to him, Reyes couldn’t get the words past the lump in her throat. She pressed her hand against the cold metal wall beside her to help her stand. The feel of the undulated surface made her shudder, the image of burned reptilian skin crashing to the front of her currently febrile mind.

  On her feet, Reyes stumbled towards the door on wobbly legs. Her hand shook as she reached out to press the button to open it. If it didn’t budge, she’d be screwed. While holding her breath, she pressed it. The tension fell from her body to watch it slide open. Not even the fierce scowl of the WO surrounded by Marines could quell her relief. She let go of a heavy sigh. “Am I glad to see you lot.”

  The warrant officer yelled and charged forward. He lifted Reyes by the front of her shirt before slamming her—back first—into the wall opposite him. The hard impact drove the wind from her, and she fell limp in his grip, gasping as she fought to catch her breath. When he let her go, her knees took the brunt of the impact as she fell to the solid and uneven ground. Fire in her kneecaps, she cried harder than before.

  The hot breath of the man pressed against Reyes’ face as he leaned down at her. She winced away from the blast of his raised voice. “What the hell was that? Don’t go off on your own. Not on this ship. You think you’re a hero because you saw a weakness in the creatures on our last mission? You’re not! You’re a damn fool.”

  Reyes’ shoulders bounced as she cried freely for the loss of Crouch. Her attention on the floor, she shook her head. It took her several attempts to reply through her gasps. “I had to get to Crouch. I wanted to save him. Too many have died already.” She sniffed against her running nose and stared up into her father’s eyes. He looked like he wanted to swing for her, but screw him. “I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

  The WO’s voice dropped so low Reyes could barely hear him. Each word shook like distant thunder, the promise of a storm coming her way. She knew him well enough to know if he cut loose on her now, he wouldn’t stop. “Then you’ll be dead in a heartbeat.” The side of his face widened from clenching his jaw as he chewed back his fury. Then she saw the truth behind his rage. A wet glaze spread across his blue eyes. A shake ran through him and his voice broke. “I told you not to come on this damn mission, didn’t I?”

  Before Reyes could reply, Julius interrupted them. “Um, sir?”

  The warrant officer looked over at her. She’d gone down to where Crouch’s body had been just moments ago. “Crouch isn’t here,” she said.

  The words cut through Reyes’ grief. She turned so quickly her head spun. His blood still on her hands and lying damp against her knees, she stared at where Crouch had been only seconds before and shook her head. “He was there. I spoke to him.”

  Silence settled over the Mari
nes as they all stared at her.

  “I’m not imagining it,” Reyes said. She held her hands out to show them. They were still coated with Crouch’s blood. “See, I watched him die. His stomach was torn open.”

  Where Reyes expected the WO to say something, he didn’t. Instead, he looked down the corridor at Julius for a few seconds before he walked away.

  It took two Marines to help Reyes stand. They grabbed her beneath each arm: Chan on one side, Simpson on the other. When they’d gotten her upright, Simpson patted her back before moving off. But Chan leaned close to Reyes. “What the hell was that about? Why did you run off on your own?”

  As Reyes stared at Chan, her head cleared, her focus returning. “This ain’t the time to be scoring points, you know. If you’ve come to stick the boot in … don’t.”

  A few seconds of silence between them, Reyes and Chan eyeballed one another before Chan shook her head and stepped off in the direction of the WO. While watching her walk away, Reyes balled her fists.

  Neither the warrant officer nor Chan went far, and neither of them returned to the control room. The rest of the Marines gathered around. The poor light cast deep shadows on many of their faces, but Reyes knew they were all still staring at her, even if the darkness masked their looks.

  Maybe the WO picked up on it, maybe not; either way, he broke the tension when he spoke. “Julius, how long do we have left before the Crimson Destroyer shows up?”

  The tablet lit Julius’ face. “Fifty minutes, sir, if this timer’s still correct.”

  “We have to assume it is. We’ve got nothing else to go on. So that’s fifty minutes to find the others and get to the escape pods. Whatever happens, we don’t split up again, okay? If we stay together as a team, we can get out of here. Watch each other’s backs, and if we hear another one of our own in trouble, we either all go together, or we don’t go at all. One Marine’s life isn’t worth the lives of the group. You understand?”