Trapped (Shadows of the Void Space Opera Serial Book 7)

by J. J. Green

  Her paws crunched on the dry leaf mold beneath the trees as they entered the woods. The trees stretched only fifty meters wide. They arrived at the thick-wired fence that stood between the verdant private gardens and the surrounding desert landscape. Sayen searched for watching Shadows, but there were none. It was a good sign. The aliens didn’t seem to have the numbers to surround the place—yet. Mr. Lee led them along the fence to an area that didn’t appear to be any different from the rest. Jas wondered how she would find it again when she returned from spying on the Shadows.

  Mr. Lee took a pair of glasses out of his pocket. After putting them on, he scanned the fence where it met the ground.

  “We have a hidden gate in this fence back near the house, but I’d have to turn off the electricity for you to open it. At this spot, you can return whenever you’re ready. We don’t have to prearrange a time.”

  “Couldn’t the Shadows just dig under the fence, Daddy?” Sayen asked.

  “They could try,” he replied, “but it goes ten meters deep and it’s electrified all the way down, though the underground part is insulated in plastic. Ah, here it is.” He took a bottle from his jacket pocket, opened it, and shook a few drops of a clear liquid on the ground next to the fence wires. “Can you smell that, Jas?”

  She trotted over and sniffed the ground. The stench was so powerful it made her reel backward. She gave a huge sneeze and shook her head.

  Mr. Lee laughed. “I’m sorry. I made the pheromone a little strong, but it works. Humans can’t register the scent, and I’m guessing that Shadow humans can’t either. Only you will be able to find it, Jas. When you return, sniff along the border until you smell it, then pass through where the odor is strongest.”

  “But she can’t,” Sayen said. “Even a small animal can’t fit though the gaps in the wires.”

  “There is no fence just there. Use these.” He passed Sayen his glasses. “It’s an optical illusion.”

  “Oh yes,” she exclaimed. “I can see it. A small gap.”

  “Ordinarily,” Mr. Lee said, “we would have only the electrified fence protecting the grounds and the air barrier to seal in the cool air. I’ve turned the air barrier into a force field that extends all the way to the ground, but left this tiny entrance open. However, Jas, take care not to touch the fence. It’s still electrified.”

  Easy for you to say, thought Jas. You can see the hole. To her, the fence looked complete. She had only the pheromone that Mr. Lee had sprinkled and his word to rely on. Unfortunately, she couldn’t tell him that.

  Looking down at her from his great height, the man seemed to guess her concerns. “There’s plenty of room for you. You won’t be in any danger of electrocution providing you follow your nose, so to speak.”

  Jas approached the stink again and got ready to walk through the apparently solid wires. She took a final look at Sayen and Mr. Lee. Sayen’s hand hesitated, as if she were resisting an urge to give her a pat.

  “Good luck, Jas,” she said.

  “Yes, good luck,” said Mr. Lee. “We’ll return to the lab and check your progress on the screen. Don’t forget, you can activate the sequence to return to your body at any time. It’s preferable that you return in the device, of course. It would take me longer than we have to make another one.”

  He was right. Time was of the essence. Night was falling. She had to go and find a Shadow for them to capture.

  She set her nose toward the fence where the ground smelled strongest and went forward. As she was about to touch the wires, they seemed to suddenly melt away. In a moment, she was through and outside, standing on desert dirt instead of leaf litter. The ground was still hot from the day’s sun, though the fur on her paws was doing a great job of protecting her from the worst of it.

  Sniffing the air, she detected little but dry vegetation in the vicinity, and she could hear nothing but the warm wind passing over the dusty ground. She would have to walk around the estate to the front to find the Shadows.

  Chapter Seven

  Makey turned the truck’s steering wheel and followed the driveway as it led around the Lees’ mansion to the gardens at the back. Driving the vehicle was a lot easier than he’d thought it would be. Not for the first time, he wondered why his Da and the Dawntowners thought that mechanical things were so evil. This truck didn’t give off the bad gases he’d heard them talk about, which had polluted the air and made the global temperatures rise. It ran on electricity. The Lees had charged up the nearly dead battery soon after he and the others arrived.

  Though he didn’t like the truck as much as Carl did, he couldn’t see anything bad about it. It was certainly going to be useful for taking out that suppressor Mr. Lee had told them about.

  He pressed the brake. They’d run out of paved roadway. If they went any farther, they would be driving on grass.

  “What’s up?” Carl asked from the passenger seat. “You’re doing great.”

  “Are you sure it’s okay for us to do this?”

  “Makey, if we don’t drive this truck into that suppressor and destroy it, we’re all gonna die. Do you think Sayen’s parents would prefer a nice lawn over not dying? Geez, mate. Look, here’s Mr. Lee. You can ask him for yourself.”

  Mr. Lee and Sayen were crossing the grass on their way back to the house. Carl lowered his window and called out to them, “Hey, Mr. Lee, is it all right if Makey gets some driving practice in on your lawn?”

  “Go ahead,” said Mr. Lee, “but first, let me show you something.”

  Makey turned off the engine, and they got out of the truck. They went inside and upstairs with Mr. Lee to his office, where he brought up an image on the large interface on his office wall. It was a mass of wave patterns, all flowing across the screen.

  “Our sensors are picking these up. They’re what’s preventing us from sending a deep space packet to our contact at the Transgalactic Council. I’ll show you what I’ve found.” He swiped the screen, and it turned black. With a finger, he drew a sketch of an aerial view of the Shadows’ building. “The suppressor is here.” He drew an X at the bottom left corner. “That’s the side facing away from us.”

  “Not next to the road, the other side?” Carl asked.

  “That’s right. If you crash the truck into this corner, you should destroy the machine.”

  “Won’t that destroy the truck, too?” Makey asked. They were talking about driving into solid brick, not the corrugated metal wall they’d encountered at the spaceport.

  “Yeah, I’d say so,” Carl replied. “She’s a tough old thing, but I don’t think she’ll survive that. More’s the shame.”

  “And then what happens?” Makey asked.

  “We fight our way out,” said Carl, “or something. Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out. The most important thing is to take out that suppressor.”

  Makey swallowed. Suddenly, learning to drive the truck seemed like a piece of cake. He’d thought they’d reached some kind of safety at Sayen’s parents’ home, but of course that had been stupid. No one was safe anymore. It didn’t matter, he decided. He would stop the Shadows, whatever it took, in memory of Mam and Neeve.

  “You all right, mate?” Carl asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. You were saying we have to drive the truck through here?” Makey pointed to the sketch on the screen. “Then I reckon we should come off the road where it bends. What do you think, Carl?”

  “I think you’re right.” Carl put a hand on his shoulder. “Yeah, you’re right. That gives us the best angle. Well done.”

  Makey smiled and felt a warm glow at the older man’s words. Finally, someone was treating him like an adult. If only he had a dad a bit more like Carl or Mr. Lee.

  “Do you really think you can do it?” Mr. Lee said. “You realize you’ll be under aerial attack?”

  “I thought about that,” Carl replied. “Our friend, Ozment, built some kind of missile launcher into the roof of the truck. You can’t see it from the ground. Poor fella died up there.”
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  Mr. Lee’s eyebrows rose. “You must show me. Maybe I can improve it for you.”

  They returned downstairs, and Mr. Lee took them into the conservatory, where his wife was still working on the android. “Carleen, would you come with us? I think you could lend us a hand with something.”

  They all passed through the conservatory doors and into the garden, where the massive, battle-scarred truck now blocked the view of the lawn, lake, and trees. Night lay over the estate, and the stars were coming out. Carl took them into the truck cabin and pointed out the homemade tunnel that led to the roof.

  While Mr. Lee returned to the house for flashlights. Carl went up the tunnel, followed by Mrs. Lee. Carl called down to Makey, telling him not to join them because there wasn’t room for more than two people, so he sat in the cab, feeling a little left out again and wondering what the others were doing.

  Bobbing lights coming from the house attracted his attention. Mr. Lee had returned with an android servant. Both were carrying flashlights and ladders.

  “Would you like to have a look too, son?” he asked as he placed a ladder against the side of the truck. Makey didn’t need to be asked twice. He was out of the cab and up the ladder in a flash, while the android held it steady.

  At the top, he found he was looking down into a pit sunk into the truck’s roof. The top edge was level with the rest of the roof, so unless you were looking at it from a higher point, you wouldn’t know the pit existed. Carl and Mrs. Lee were in there examining a large weapon. Makey had no idea what it was, but it looked powerful. Mr. Lee joined him at the top of a second ladder and shone a flashlight into the pit. The beams lit up the operator’s chair that was next to the weapon. The seat was stained darkly with what Makey realized had to be Ozment’s blood. And now Carl was going to be in the exact same position.

  “Craven,” Mrs. Lee said, “do you think you could make some kind of shield to fit over this thing? It won’t withstand a single direct hit as it is.”

  “I sure can,” he replied. “I can do it overnight. I’m thinking that tungsten/graphene alloy. I have a few sheets left. And I can reinforce the truck walls. What do you think?”

  “Sounds fine. And I’ll work on upgrading this for maximum firepower and automatic targeting. Don’t you worry, sugar,” she said to Carl. “Any of those helis comes within spitting distance of this truck, you’ll be taking them out of the sky quicker than you can blink at them.”

  “Thanks, Mr. and Mrs. Lee,” Carl said. “I appreciate it.”

  “No need to thank us,” said Mr. Lee. “We’re all in this together. Isn’t that right, son?” He addressed his question to Makey.

  “Yes, sir, that’s right.”

  The blackness of the night was split by a dazzling burst of light. The air was filled with a sizzling, crackling noise. Makey was momentarily blinded. The beam that had struck was far more powerful than the ones the Shadow helis had fired earlier.

  “What the hell was that?” Carl asked.

  “Looks like the Shadows are back, and they’ve upgraded,” said Mr. Lee.

  “What was it, Craven?” Mrs. Lee asked. “Do you know?”

  “Some kind of pulse cannon, I guess.”

  “How long can the force field take it?” she asked.

  “We should make it through the night. I wonder if they’ve guessed our energy is from solar power, and that’s why they waited until nighttime to attack?”

  “Lord knows,” Mrs. Lee said. “I hope you’re right and that we make it until dawn. There’s nothing much we can do anyway. Might as well keep busy getting this ready. Can you lend us a hand, son?” she asked Makey. “We’re going to need all the help we can get if we’re going to finish by morning.”

  “Of course I can,” he replied.

  Chapter Eight

  The cool night air chilled Jas’ nose and the tips of her ears, but the failing light didn’t affect her vision. If anything, things seemed to become clearer and sharper. The desert was alive with sound as the nocturnal creatures were waking up and leaving the places they hid from the hot sun during the day.

  She ran alongside the security fence, keeping a good distance from its electrified wires. It wasn’t long before she reached the road. The pavement was deserted. She kept low as she scooted across, a fleeting shadow herself in the deep twilight. Silently, she made her way down the bank and across the distance that separated her from the Shadow’s construction site.

  All she had to do was to find a likely Shadow to snatch. One of the aliens alone in a place it probably wouldn’t leave for a while, such as asleep in bed. Then she could return to the Lees’ home and her own body, and she and Sayen could slip out, take the Shadow, and bring it back as quickly and quietly as possible.

  When they had the Shadow scanner readout, everything would be ready to send to the Council.

  The dark-windowed building was drawing nearer as she trotted along, wondering what she would find inside. She wondered if the Shadows continued regular human lives when they lived in their replicated bodies, or if they behaved according to their alien minds.

  Not panting with exertion after the long run felt weird. The side of the building loomed up. Jas slipped around the back, hoping to find a rear entrance. There was none, and though the windows were only frames without any glass, they were much too high for her to reach. She would have to enter at the front.

  A few Shadows were hanging around outside as if waiting for something. None of them noticed her scurry behind them and into the cooler interior of the building.

  On the first floor at least, the Shadows had constructed rooms with ceilings. They were bare and dusty. Where did they eat and sleep, she wondered. Surely their bodies had the same requirements as those of the humans they’d copied?

  Jas ran silently down a corridor. She turned one corner, and then another. Still, she met no Shadows. What lay around the third corner made her stop in her tracks. A terrifyingly familiar, dark gray shape seemed to rear up. It was a hexagonal block, and in its center was a hexagonal hole. A Shadow trap. They’d built a trap within the building.

  She froze in the center of the corridor, her shock making her momentarily unwary of the danger of being seen. Why had the Shadows constructed one of their traps out in the middle of nowhere? The Lees lived kilometers from their nearest neighbors. Had the aliens gone to all that trouble just to replicate Sayen’s parents, and maybe herself and her friends? It seemed like overkill.

  Her super-sensitive ears swiveled backward as a faint noise came from behind her. It was the sound of voices, as well as car doors slamming. Had more Shadows arrived, or...? Her heart sank as she viewed the trap’s gaping hole. Was it some human victims? Were the Shadows supplementing their numbers at the site by bringing in people to replicate?

  Her ears twitched. The voices were drawing nearer, and the floor vibrated faintly with many footsteps. She glanced left and right. The corridor was bare, with nowhere to hide. Doors had been fitted in the doorways, but they were all closed and impossible for her to open.

  The voices were only a corridor away. If she didn’t get out of sight soon, the approaching Shadows would see her. Maybe they would only be surprised at the sight of her, and they wouldn’t try to catch her, but she couldn’t take that risk. Desperately, she scanned the corridor again.

  Her gaze fell upon a small gap between the edge of the Shadow trap and the corridor wall. It looked barely wide enough, but she could probably squeeze inside. She went in backward as there was no space for her to turn around.

  No sooner had she hunkered down and peeked out than a group of people turned the corner and came into view. There were ten or twelve men and women in ordinary office clothes, and they were chatting about everyday stuff. At first, it was impossible to tell who was human and who was a Shadow, but within seconds, the difference was evident.

  The humans in the group—about half of them—were puzzled and shocked at the sight of the Shadow trap.

  “What the krat’s that th
ing?” one of them asked.

  “Is this some kind of joke?” another asked. “I thought we were going to discuss the building progress, not get taken on a theme park ride.”

  “Ha,” a third said, “that’s right. It looks like the entrance to a ghost walk.”

  “It’s just a little diversion before the meeting,” one of the Shadows said. “It’ll be fun. Come inside.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” said the person who spoke last. “That place looks scary. I hated those kinds of things when I was a child. I’m going to skip it. I’ll wait outside for you folks to finish your fun.”

  “Me too. I’m not going near it. Look, we appreciate it and all, but I think it might be better if we have the meeting and get it over with. We all have our families to go home to tonight, right?”

  The group had reached the trap’s entrance. “We insist,” said a Shadow. “Come on. It’ll only take a minute or two. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Really, let’s just have the meeting,” said a man.

  “No,” a Shadow replied and pulled out a gun. The other Shadows did the same. The people were in the center, and the aliens surrounded them.

  The humans gasped. One of the men tried to grab a weapon. The Shadow holding it shot him at point blank range, destroying his chest. There were screams as his lifeless body crumpled to the floor.

  “Inside,” commanded a Shadow, all pretense gone. It gestured toward the trap, its face expressionless.

  After some hesitation, the humans shuffled in. Some were silently weeping. The Shadows brought up the rear, threatening with their weapons.