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

by Michael Robertson

  Patel stuttered and shivered. His breaths manifested as small puffs of mist. He still wore his helmet, which must have been how they’d heard him on the radio. Although, with how his arms were tied, something else must have been pressing the button for him.

  Were Patel not such a good friend, Reyes would have held back. Especially after what she’d had to do with Grady. As she and the WO drew closer to him, she stopped again. What she’d taken to be welts on his torso, she now saw as something more. After opening her mouth several times, she finally got the words out. “They’ve been eating him alive.” Teeth marks ran around the edge of the chunks. It confirmed what she’d thought when first walking into the freezer. “And it looks like it’s been done by humans.”

  While she spoke, her dad dropped to one knee and busied himself with untying Patel’s ankles. Patel continued to shiver and shake, his eyes wild as if he had just the barest comprehension of them being in there with him.

  “We need to get out of here,” Hicks said. Of all of them, he stood the farthest back. “We need to get out of here now!”

  It took for the warrant officer to release the first rope before Patel looked down at him, the delirium of only a few seconds ago giving way to laser-like focus. “No,” he hissed, the WO jumping back and knocking into Reyes. “They’ll come. They’ll come.” While shaking his head, he repeated himself. “They’ll come.”

  The WO moved back towards Patel and continued to untie his bonds while Reyes put a hand on her friend’s shoulder and leaned close to him. Despite his clear delirium, she had to try. “Who will come, Patel?”

  He snapped out of it again and stared straight at her. “Them. They said to sing. As long as I keep singing, they won’t do it anymore.”

  “Do what?”

  Patel shouted so loudly, Reyes flinched away from him. “Eat me! They’re fucking eating me alive. They said if I sing, they won’t eat me, but they lied. They said they couldn’t resist. They lied. Just kill me, Reyes, please.” His tears magnified his brown eyes as he looked at her and whispered, “Kill me.”

  “What the hell?” Hicks said again.

  “No.” Reyes shook her head. “We’re getting you out of here.”

  The warrant officer lifted Patel to his feet, and Reyes’ heart sank to watch her friend fall forward. He slapped down against the floor like the false wall had. As he lay face down, she saw more holes in his torso. They’d also taken chunks from the back of his legs. The WO said, “What the …? They’ve chewed out his Achilles tendons.”

  It took for Chan to speak for Reyes to look back and see the others had stepped away. “Shit,” she said. “He’s screwed. How are we going to get him out of here? And how’s he going to survive those injuries?”

  The lucidity with which Patel had pleaded with Reyes had gone. He now shivered and twitched on the floor. A fish on a riverbank, he’d gone into shock. The kind of shock that preceded a painfully drawn-out death. As much as Reyes wanted to say she’d carry him and they’d get him some medical attention, she didn’t. “You’re right.” She looked at Chan while drawing her blaster. One of the others would have done it, but she owed him this. “This is the only thing I can offer you now, brother.” She paused, her hand shaking and her trigger finger weak as the tracks of her tears turned frigid. She wanted someone to tell her to stop, but none of them did. A gulp against the painful lump in her throat, she said, “I’ll see you on the other side.”

  Reyes loosed a blast into the back of his head. The top of his skull and brain matter exploded away from him, and blood grew as an ever-expanding pool on the white floor.

  Although she felt the others staring at her, Reyes didn’t look up. Instead, she said a silent prayer for her friend. She’d done it for him. She’d given him the peace and escape he needed. May he rest now and know he was loved.

  It took for Reyes to look up to see her dad staring at her. Tears covered his blue eyes. Sad, sure, but something else sat in the gaze. He bowed at her. “You’re a force, my girl.”

  Reyes drew a breath to reply. Maybe now she could have the conversation she’d wanted to have with him for years. If time had shown her anything, it was that the moment would never be right. “Dad?”

  The moniker clearly threw him off. It wasn’t something she called him in front of the others.

  But just as Reyes opened her mouth to continue, Julius said, “Um … I think I’ve just found out what we’re up against.”

  Chapter 37

  Julius had been examining the dead and strung-up Marines and stepped out from between two of them. Reyes had done her best not to focus on them, and she didn’t try to work out who the two closest to Julius were now. They were already dead, so there seemed little point in giving them much more of her attention. However, the longer she spent in the frigid space, the harder she found them to avoid.

  Only when Julius fully emerged did Reyes see why she’d called their attention to her. In her right hand, she had what looked like the skin of a lizard. It was big enough for her to wear as a shawl, and clearly weighed a lot because her large bicep bulged under the strain of it. She paused for a few seconds as if making sure she had the focus of them all on her.

  “Archows,” Julius finally said. When no one spoke, she elaborated. “They’re lizard creatures that live in the frosty mountains of Aye-ow-ey. They’re the only things that live up there because they’re the only creatures that can. For eight months of the year, they eat the roots and plants that grow there. By the end of the feeding season, they can barely move they’re so fat. For the other seven months, the temperatures drop so low, the place becomes uninhabitable. Instead of leaving, they let the harsh weather freeze them. Their bodies take on the cold and shut down until they’re as good as dead. It’s like a cryogenic sleep. When their warm season comes around, they thaw out and reanimate.”

  Maybe Reyes should have waited, but she spoke before she’d thought about it. “I’m struggling to make the connection between them and what’s happening here. You say they eat plants, so that makes them herbivores, right?”

  “Right,” Julius said, “but the Archows are dead. Whatever creatures are on this ship—”

  “Humans,” Reyes said, casting a glance down at Patel’s half-eaten body by her feet.

  “I’m sure you’re right because the lizard skins are the correct size for humans, and the food in the canteen looked like something humans would eat. But whatever species they are, I think they use the Archows’ skins as shawls. The freezer and the Archows’ skin go cold enough to disguise them to heat sensors.”

  “The skins go that cold?” the WO said.

  Julius nodded. “I think we can also assume there are no more than thirteen of them because there are only thirteen suits.”

  The warrant officer shrugged. “Unless they have more freezers on board.”

  Another nod, Julius said, “That’s true.”

  The WO took that moment to clear his throat with a gruff cough. It released an explosion of mist in the cold space. He gripped his rifle with both hands, pausing for a moment to look at Crouch upside down, his innards exposed and hanging from his body just like Reyes had seen in the corridor. “Well, we now have evidence that gives us a good idea of what we’re facing. And sure, we’re in their domain, but we can beat humans if we come across them.”

  A sound then rang out in the dining hall. A metal cup or plate being dropped, it made a tinkling noise as it hit the ground several times. They all turned around to look through the hole where the door had been. Hicks stepped backwards into the warrant officer, who shoved him towards the freezer’s exit. “Get a spine, man.”

  Although Hicks shook, he nodded and stepped forward a pace. “But what if it’s a trap?”

  “Weren’t you listening?” Reyes said. “This entire ship’s a trap.” She just wanted out of the damn freezer. Everywhere she looked, she saw the blue face of someone she cared about. The blue face or the ever-expanding crimson pool of Patel’s blood.

  Wh
en Hicks didn’t respond, the WO said, “How long do we have until the Crimson Destroyer shows up, Julius?”

  The mixture of cold and shock seemed to be getting to all of them. Reyes watched the tablet shake in Julius’ hands as she looked at it. “Twenty-five minutes.”

  “Right, let’s get off this damn ship, then. If we meet any other people on the way, we blow their fucking heads off, right?” The warrant officer then barged through Hicks and Chan and led the charge out of the freezer.

  Chapter 38

  Reyes took up the rear again as they moved from the freezer, through the still-immaculate kitchen, and into the dining hall beyond. The second he entered the large domed space, the sound of an alarm tore through the ship. A voluminous and angry quack, the lights around them flashed in time with the noise, from bright white LED to blood red. The shadows brought to life by the alternating illumination made it seem like the ship changed shape with the pulse, the floors and walls shifting one way and then the other.

  The optical illusion made Reyes even more cautious as she ran over the uneven floor. When she entered the dining hall, she had the butt of her blaster pressed into her shoulder. The others had stopped in the middle of the space and also had their weapons ready. They were all taking in the room, the lights altering their appearance, twisting their features with the deep shadows like they did everything else in there. The tables and stools hadn’t moved—they looked to be a permanent feature in the hellish space—but the banquet had been re-laid. She wasn’t close enough to see exactly what food had been put out.

  It took for Reyes to look up to see why the others had stopped. Spikes protruded from the ground around the edge of the room. They were spaced evenly—a gap of about two metres between each—and ran an entire ring around them. There looked to be about thirty in total. All the poles were made from the same black metal as the rest of the ship. Each one had the decapitated head of a human stuck on top of it.

  Hicks made a retching sound before he bent over double and vomited on the floor. The rich, acidic tang of it added to Reyes’ already churning stomach.

  While wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve, Hicks stood up straight again and said, “What the hell’s happening? What are they doing to us?”

  As much as she’d wanted to avoid looking at them like she’d avoided looking at the corpses in the freezer, when Reyes glanced across the room, one of the faces stood out to her. Austin, he stared back from one of the spikes. The bright glow and then deep drop in the light animated him, and it took a few seconds for Reyes to confirm his features weren’t moving, despite there being no body attached to his head. His mouth hung wide, his tongue forced from it. He stared at Reyes through listless eyes, blood still dribbling from where his neck had been severed from his body.

  Reyes stepped closer to the table and looked down. When she saw what had been laid out, she shook, and it took her a few seconds to get her words. “Are they what I think they are?”

  Hicks came back quicker than the others. “They’re body parts. Fingers, toes …”

  When he stopped, Reyes looked up at him to see why. He now stared at the wall. Scrawled on it, only visible in the bright light, were words written in blood. The glare of the LED bounced off the glistening script. The blood still fresh, it read WELCOME TO HELL.

  While Hicks whimpered, the WO shouted over the alarm, “As shocking as this is, they’ve not confronted us yet. Sure, it’s horrible to look at, but they’re trying to turn our own fear against us. They’re cowards.” He then shouted even louder, “Show yourselves!”

  They all looked around as if his words would have the same effect on their captors as it had on them. Of course they didn’t show themselves; why would they? They were in control, and no amount of the WO’s wrath would change that.

  The warrant officer then moved towards one of the doors out of there, the rest of the survivors following him. When he pressed the button, it didn’t open. Not that Reyes expected it to.

  They moved at a jog to the other exit. The WO had to shove Austin’s head to one side to press the button next to the door. It remained closed. “Damn it. Get back into the centre of the room. It’s the best position to defend from. How long do we have left, Julius?”

  “Twenty-two minutes.”

  “We’re screwed,” Hicks said, shouting over the incessant alarm. “We’re sitting ducks.”

  When they reached the middle of the room, Reyes looked down to make sure she didn’t step in Hicks’ vomit. Regardless of all the blood she’d already trodden in—and even crawled through—she couldn’t cope with sick. The same alternating lights from red to white, the white helped her see the glistening pile like it had helped her see Austin’s head and the writing on the wall. But it showed her something else too.

  Her stomach doing backflips, Reyes hunched down closer to the sick and reached for the piece of the floor Hicks’ had vomited on. Because the ship had been so dark for so much of their time on there, they’d had no way of seeing it until now. She slid her fingers into the grate, the slick feel of Hicks’ bile against her touch. While wrapping a tight grip around it, she pulled. A section the size of a manhole cover came free.

  Reyes threw the cover away from her with a clang before she looked up to see the others watching. “Sorry about the noise, but I think I’ve just found out how they get through this place without us seeing them.”

  Normally the warrant officer would go into the hole first as the leader, but at his age, he didn’t have the dexterity to head up a team through a rat run. Before they could have the discussion, Reyes sat down—the seat of her trousers turning wet with Hicks’ puke—and slid into the dark hole, her nose flashing past the acrid stench of vomit.

  After flicking on the torch on the end of her gun, she pointed it one way and then the other. The tunnel looked clear. At least, what she could see of the tunnel looked clear, and because they now had a floor between them and the lighting, her torch was much more effective than it had been above. “It looks okay,” she called up at the others.

  While straining her tired eyes to see as best as she could, she said, “I think this might be our way out of here.”

  Chapter 39

  Despite having a view much farther ahead now they were in the tunnels, Reyes still couldn’t see the end of the section they were currently in. She headed up the team—Julius at the back—and they pushed on into the darkness, the occasional splash of light coming down through the grates as they passed beneath them. The grates were so few in number there was no way she would have noticed them were it not for Hicks vomiting where he had. A glance at his still-pallid complexion, he wore a glazed look that suggested his mind had gone elsewhere.

  They moved at a slow pace, no one speaking as they walked down the tight tunnel in single file. The organic and tormented twist of the walls, floors, and ceilings above them hadn’t carried down to where they were. It looked more like a maintenance corridor, every surface flush, right angles where the walls met the floor and ceiling. It was functional; aesthetics be damned. Reyes would take functional any day—especially over the aesthetics above. The risk of falling might have been seriously reduced, but they still needed to go slow so they remained as quiet as possible. Should the cannibals choose to confront them down there, they needed to hear them coming. The loud quack of the alarm above made that much trickier.

  When they came to the first fork in the tunnel, Reyes stopped. She shone her torch down each option in case the obvious choice revealed itself. It didn’t. The WO stood in the middle of the five, so she turned to him, shrugged, and showed him the two options by shining her torch down them again. He motioned for her to go right.

  Surely a guess, but no one else offered anything better, so Reyes took the right fork and plunged on into the darkness. Every urge told her to run, but the second they did, they’d lose any hope of hearing their enemy.

  After a few metres, the tunnel opened slightly wider. Although Reyes looked up through one of the grates, she
couldn’t see anything other than the alternating glow of the lights. But she knew they were now beneath the main corridor down the right side of the ship. The side that led to the door with the number three above it. She moved off again, heading for it and hoping it would give them a way through.

  A few metres farther down, Reyes stopped when something caught her eye. She pointed her torch up at the ceiling to show the others; it lit up a switch of some sort.

  When Julius shoved forward to see what she pointed at, the hench Marine said, “They’re manual overrides. I suppose we now know how they opened and closed doors at their will, even with the main control computer down.”

  “That makes me feel better,” Chan said.

  Julius shrugged. “How’s that?”

  “I didn’t want to say it, but since you shot the control computer, I was worried they might be able to get The Faradis to make the jump to hyperspace. I mean, they were still controlling it somehow. I thought they might be using a backup computer to lock the doors and mess with the lights. Now we know they did it manually, I feel more confident that the hyperdrive is definitely down. I can’t see them cranking that thing up by hand.”

  Although Julius nodded, she didn’t reply.

  The switch sat in the top of a doorway that led through to a larger space beyond. Reyes had been right to think they were beneath one of the main corridors, because the layout of the tunnel mirrored what they’d seen above. From the look of things, they were currently beneath the door to the control room; the space on the other side of the doorway was an empty representation of the room they’d been in earlier. If they looked hard enough, they’d probably find the hatch the cannibals had used to drag Lombardo’s corpse through. “Let’s keep moving,” she said, leading them off down the tunnel again.