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

by Michael Robertson

  The murmurs from many of the Marines confirmed they did.

  “Right,” he continued, “if we work together, we’re going to get off this ship. Stay vigilant, and don’t make any rash decisions. The heat scanners showed there were no living creatures on board, but something’s clearly going on. Until we know what it is, I don’t want any guesses. Speculation and paranoia won’t help us here. If we focus on the basics and take it one step at a time, we’ll be fine. The first thing we need to do is access the other sections of this ship. If we do that, then we can get to the escape pods so the Crimson Destroyer can pick us up. Hopefully we’ll find the others on the way.”

  Chapter 31

  The WO led the line of Marines as they jogged down the dark corridor—blasters at the ready—towards the sports hall and the door to the second section of the ship. Where Reyes usually stayed close to her dad, she now held back. While running over the uneven surface, she watched her own struggles in the Marines in front of her, whose feet turned and slipped as they negotiated the treacherous floor. Their priority was to get to the escape pods. Once they’d secured their way off The Faradis, they could look for Patel and Grady—hopefully, they were still alive. If they found the corpses of Crouch and Lombardo, it would be a bonus, but none of them were going to risk their life or chance of escape for the sake of a dead body.

  At first it had been strange for Reyes, but she’d now grown used to Chan running beside her. Chan had been so put out by Reyes questioning her professionalism she’d gone too far the other way. It felt like she’d taken it upon herself to be Reyes’ own personal bodyguard.

  All the Marines ran two abreast, save for Simpson, who took up the rear on her own. Not that it mattered, all thirteen of them were so close together they had each other’s backs should anything happen.

  Julius ran next to the WO at the head of the line. She had the tablet in her hand. It had proven damn near useless so far. They couldn’t access any satellites with it, but at least it had helped reset their comms, and it had a schematic of The Faradis on it—albeit a poorly detailed one that told them nothing of the two extra sections.

  Before they’d set off, the warrant officer told them they could only speak if they had something urgent to say. They didn’t need all of them expressing how they felt. Their situation was FUBAR; discussing it wouldn’t change that. He’d speak if he had to; otherwise, they needed to keep the channel clear.

  They passed the dry food stores and then the briefing room. As they drew closer to the sports hall, Reyes’ stomach sank. Crouch and Grady had been there when they were last in contact with them on the radio. Anxiety and guilt twisted through her. She and Chan should have saved them. And how had Crouch’s corpse vanished into thin air? If her hands weren’t wet with his blood at the time, she would have questioned her sanity.

  The WO reached the end of the corridor and stopped—the door to the sports hall on his right, the entrance to section two of the ship on his left. He linked his fingers behind his head and pulled in deep breaths. It served as another reminder to Reyes of her dad’s aging. The old dog didn’t have the lung capacity he used to.

  Once he’d recovered and the rest of the Marines gathered around, he looked straight at Reyes. The malice of only a few minutes ago had gone. “This is where you lost contact with Grady and Crouch?”

  “Yep. We were talking to them from the opposite corridor on the radio while we both entered the room through our respective doors. But the second we stepped into the place, the radio cut off and we couldn’t see them.” As she said the words, her throat tightened and her pulse pounded through her skull. The dark and traumatised walls with their glossy red glow felt like they were closing in around her.

  The WO pointed at the door to the second section. “Do you think something came through there and grabbed them?”

  “I don’t know what to think anymore. I mean, it’s possible, but they tested the door while we were still in contact with them. They said it wouldn’t open. Besides, nothing showed up on the scanners, right?”

  “I think it’s safe to assume we can’t trust what we saw on the scanners.” He then raised his voice to address all of them. “That doesn’t mean I’m asking for speculation on our current situation. Just that we need to look outside of what we knew before we got on here.”

  “But I thought we had some of the best tech in the galaxy?” Austin said.

  This time Julius spoke up. “We do. We can even detect beings using zinconium to shield their presence.”

  Both Austin and the warrant officer said it at the same time. “Zinconium?”

  “It’s a metal that blinds most scanners. So if you wanted to avoid being detected, nine times out of ten, hiding behind a shield of zinconium would do it. It’s one of the galaxy’s best kept secrets, which is why so few scan for it. But we do.” Julius fell quiet for a moment, her eyes widening before she said, “Maybe the ship’s sentient?”

  The warrant officer’s response came as a loud bark, making Julius jump away from him. “What?!”

  A shrug of her wide shoulders, sweat glistened on Julius’ brow, the red glow catching her sheen. “It’s just a thought. This ship’s like nothing we’ve seen before, so why rule out sentience?”

  After watching Julius for a few seconds, he turned to the rest of them. “Okay”—his gruff tones bounced off the hard and dark walls—“we don’t know how we’re losing Marines on this cursed ship, and of course we all want to try to guess. I think we need to expect to find something living on here. Although speculation, it’s the most rational explanation for what’s been happening, and it’s what we’re going to stick with unless we get better evidence.” He didn’t give anyone else a chance to offer their theories. Instead, he said to Julius while nodding at the door with the number two above it, “Can you get us in there? We have to find the escape pods, wherever they are.”

  Sometimes it paid off to do the most obvious thing. As Reyes watched Julius walk up to the door and press the button, she almost commented, but she didn’t have to because Austin called from behind her, “I bet you’re glad you brought a techie on board, eh, sir?”

  The grizzled vet glared at him.

  “Sorry,” Austin said. “When I get nervous, I tell jokes.”

  “Bad jokes,” he replied.

  Austin nodded and looked at the floor. “Bad jokes.”

  The WO returned his attention to Julius. The bright glow from the tablet stood out in the gloomy red as she waved it around. “Unless we can get this thing talking to some nearby satellites, I can’t hack anything on this ship. It’s no more than an expensive torch, and a poor one at that.”

  Silence swelled around them. The warrant officer stared at the door as if his intense focus would somehow open it. He then returned his attention to Julius. “How long do we have until the Crimson Destroyer gets here?”

  The screen on the tablet glowed again at Julius’ touch. “I suppose it’s a half-decent timer too. We just need to hope it’s giving us a true reading.” When she met the WO’s stare, she returned her focus to the backlit screen. “Forty-five minutes.”

  After grunting at her, he slammed his palm against the button on the door to the sports hall. Reyes and Chan—who stood the closest to it—jumped away from the loud sound. A moment’s eye contact with her dad, Reyes then turned to watch the door reveal the large and empty room beyond.

  Despite being the closest to it, Reyes waited for her dad to enter the sports hall first before she followed in after him.

  The same red glow in the sparse arena, Reyes saw it looked like it had when she’d been in there last. She turned to her dad. “As you can see, if you walk from one side of this room to the other, it’s quite hard to miss someone coming from the opposite direction. If Crouch and Grady had come in here at the same time as us—which is what they said they were doing—we would have seen them. Even with the poor lighting.”

  A brilliant white glow then filled the room. For the second time since they’d
boarded the ship, the red emergency lights were replaced with the bright white glare of LED bulbs. So bright, they blinded Reyes like they had the first time around.

  While rubbing her eyes, Reyes heard a loud shoom followed by a deep boom that ran a shock through the soles of her boots. She stared in the direction of the noise, but couldn’t see anything.

  Before Reyes regained her sight, she heard the screams. Several Marines were still out in the corridor. She knew what had happened, and as her sight returned, the closed door between them and those on the other side confirmed it.

  Although the warrant officer hit the button to open them again, Reyes saw in his body language that he already knew. They had no hope of getting to the others through that way.

  The Marines in the corridor continued to shout and scream. Their words were indecipherable through the cacophony of their combined panic. The sound of laser fire pulsed for the briefest of moments; then everything fell quiet.

  Only seven of them had made it into the sports hall: Reyes, Chan, the WO, Julius, Holmes, Hicks, and Niamura. When the warrant officer looked at them all, his face pale in the bright glare, he said, “We have to go around. If they’re still out there, we have to get to them ASAP!”

  Chapter 32

  As the fastest of those remaining, and the fastest of those who’d boarded the ship—not that Reyes would admit that to her—Chan set off towards the door at the opposite side of the sports hall. A flatter floor than any other part of The Faradis they’d seen so far, it allowed Reyes to sprint after her.

  Although the closest to Chan, Reyes was still over ten metres away from her by the time she reached the exit and slammed her hand against the button. The doors opened.

  Reyes’ apprehension far outweighed her relief, yet the very slight release of tension to see something go their way unsettled her stride as she closed down on Chan.

  Where they’d simply charged through the doorways previously, this time Chan stepped halfway through and pressed her back against the door to prevent it from closing.

  A second after Reyes burst into the dark corridor on the other side, the rest of those remaining followed her. When they were all through, Chan stepped aside, the door closing as soon as she allowed it to.

  Close to the button to reopen it, Reyes pressed it out of curiosity. The doors didn’t move.

  The remaining Marines breathed heavily while staring at it.

  Sweat beaded Holmes’ dark skin. He too pressed the button with no luck. “What the hell’s going on with this ship? It’s like it’s playing games with us.”

  Reyes saw Julius and the WO share a look, but she knew her dad wouldn’t accept sentience as an option.

  Holmes added, “It’s opening and closing the doors it either wants us to go through or doesn’t. I can’t help feeling like we’ve got no control here.”

  “Without working scanners,” the warrant officer said and threw a hopeful look at Julius as if she might tell him they were back online—she shook her head—“we don’t know anything for sure. It’s possible we’re on the unlucky end of this ship malfunctioning and all these events are entirely random. Now, come on, we need to get to the other corridor.”

  In the few seconds they’d spent talking, Reyes stepped towards the next door. Just before they set off, she tested it.

  The whoosh of the opening door silenced the rest of them, all of them turning to look at the corridor that hadn’t been available to them until that moment. So dark, Reyes couldn’t see any farther than a few metres into it. The floor lay as flat as the one in the sports hall.

  “What do we do now?” Reyes said, raising her torch and shining it into the shadows. “This door might be locked when we come to it again.”

  While staring at it, the WO scratched his head. “We have six Marines back there.”

  Hicks shrugged. “But what if they’ve already gone? Every other time we’ve been separated from someone, they’ve vanished.”

  Had anyone else said it, the warrant officer might have listened to them, but Hicks had always been the first to panic in training. Anything he said had the underlying motivation of self-preservation. Even if he said something that made sense, the fact it came from him undermined the validity of it. The WO shook his head. “We’re not leaving anyone behind. Besides, there are six of them. They should be able to survive against whatever’s doing this to us.”

  Despite his words, Reyes saw the wobble in the warrant officer’s resolve. When she looked at the others, she saw the same doubt on their faces.

  “Damn it!” he said while running a hand through his hair. “We need to go to the others. We can’t give up on them.” It sounded like he wanted to convince himself as much as he did them.

  “But this door might not open again,” Chan said. Her words—unlike Hicks’—gave the others permission to back her up, all of them nodding.

  The glow of Julius turning on the tablet took Reyes’ attention away from her dad. They were running out of time.

  “I’ll stay,” Holmes said, moving towards the door, straddling the doorway, and pressing his back to it so it couldn’t close. “I’ll keep it open and wait for you to come back.”

  A moment’s pause while he stared at Holmes, the WO said, “We can’t leave you on your own.”

  Niamura stepped towards the door. “I’ll wait with him.”

  Not his usual frown, he appeared concerned rather than furious as he looked between Niamura and Holmes. “You sure?”

  Both of them nodded before Niamura said, “Now go. Get the others and bring them back with you.”

  “We’ll be as quick as we can.” The warrant officer then set off up the corridor in the opposite direction to the open door.

  Although she knew they’d find dead Marines at best when they got to the corridor on the other side, Reyes followed with the rest of the group. If there was a chance to save them, they had to try. Now only five of them left, even the group they were trying to save outnumbered them. Holmes and Niamura had best be there when they returned.

  Chapter 33

  The WO led the way this time, his heavy stomp charging up the now brightly lit corridor. Although, how long it would stay brightly lit was anyone’s guess. Also, Reyes found it no easier going for having better vision. If anything, it made it worse. She preferred it when she couldn’t see how easily she could trip and fall.

  The doors to the briefing room were the closest, so the warrant officer headed for them first. When he pressed the button, they parted with the now all too familiar whoosh. The ship obviously wanted them to go this way. To shake the thought of sentience from her mind, Reyes said, “Maybe it has something to do with the part of space we’re in. You heard the Crimson Destroyer; they said it’s a mess around here.”

  It took for her dad to look at her to show Reyes she’d had half the conversation in her head. “The Faradis,” she said. “It might be unpredictable because of the area we’re in. Doors opening and closing, lights going on and off, radios not working—it’s all electrically operated, so I wonder what the atmosphere’s like outside.”

  The warrant officer stood in the doorway to give Reyes and the others access to the briefing room. “How many times? I’m not interested in speculation.”

  The wrong place and time for the argument, Reyes stepped towards the open doors. Before she entered, she looked back down the corridor at Holmes and Niamura and muttered to herself, “I hope to see you both very soon.” When she moved through the doorway, she brushed against the WO’s wide frame.

  Something about her dad as she passed him struck Reyes as odd. He looked unusually pallid. What had he seen? While she studied him, she stepped back to give the other Marines the space to enter the room. As each one came in, Hicks, Julius, and Chan, each one of them lost the colour in their face.

  When Reyes turned to look in the same direction as the rest of them, she damn near pissed herself. The room itself had nothing to it. It looked like a wider corridor. The same seared flesh aesthetic wa
rped the black metal on the floor, walls, and ceiling. It wasn’t the design of the room that had shaken everyone up; it was what they’d all seen at the other end of it. A look as if to appeal to the others, she found all of them returning her focus. The same expression sat on all of their faces. No chance! As the first to enter the room, she had to lead them across it. It would have been the same for anyone in her position.

  Reyes’ heavy legs felt like they wouldn’t work when she looked at it again. Directly opposite them, covering the door on the other side of the room, was a strung up and half-skinned Grady. His limbs were pinned to the wall surrounding the door. Blood ran from where he’d had what looked to be industrial rivets driven through his wrists and ankles. A fifth one had been fired through his forehead, evidenced by the halo of brain matter on the wall behind him. Whatever had done it to him had also opened him up like a frog in a classroom science experiment. A surgical cut down his front, his skin had been splayed wide and tacked to the wall too, revealing his muscles, skeleton, and internal organs. The bright glow of the place lit him up as if he had a spotlight focused on him.

  The bark of Julius’ heave filled the room before the tall woman bent over double and threw up on the metal floor. When Reyes smelled her sick—added to the sight of the strung-up Grady—her body temperature rose, sweat lifting on her palms and forehead like she might vomit too.

  Reyes jumped fully off the floor when the WO shouted, “Grady’s dead. I know it doesn’t look pretty, but he’s gone. There might be others in the corridor outside that we can save.” Not even he could hide the doubt in his tone.

  The doors closed the second he stepped away from them. He walked over to Reyes and shoved her towards Grady’s corpse. Although she stumbled across the uneven floor, it helped her find her legs, and she broke into a run. As the first into the room, she had to lead them across it.