Eradication: A Space Opera: Book Four of The Shadow Order

by Michael Robertson

  “Right,” Seb said, looking at the others lined up next to one another. “Everyone ready?”

  Sparks had removed her backpack and pulled both of her blasters out. She held onto one and handed the other to SA before re-shouldering her bag then nodded at Seb. Bruke held his semi-automatic blaster and nodded too. SA stared at him.

  “Okay,” Seb said before he turned his back on them and led the way over to the hangar at a jog. Despite the muted sound through his suit, he heard the footsteps of the others following him.

  The doors stood at least fifteen metres square. They would have let most passenger vessels in with ease. Up close, the building looked huge. In reality, it sat as a pimple on the vast landscape.

  The timer changed on Seb’s screen and dropped down to read ‘2h59m’. Only a minute, but his breathing sped up regardless. Something about the ticking clock put him on edge. But he wouldn’t need his suit inside the complex; he had to remember that.

  When they got to the building, Sparks walked towards the control panel by the massive doors. Seb went to one side of the structure so he could see past it. SA walked to the other side. Both of them had their blasters ready to fight should they need to. Not that Seb could see anything other than an endless expanse of red rock.

  The sound of the wind on the vast plain ran through the speakers into Seb’s ears, but the suit muted most of it. When he stepped a couple of paces away from the mining complex, a hard breeze pushed against him and sent him stumbling. The hangar must have shielded them from the worst of it when they’d disembarked the shuttle.

  Sparks lifted her head from the keycard slot and called out, “The next area is free of gas.”

  “So we can use our blasters?” Seb asked.

  “Yep.”

  Seb nodded to himself as he watched Sparks run several quick finger taps against her screen. The red light above the card reader turned green.

  Just before Sparks pressed the screen to open the huge hangar doors, a deep thud banged against the other side of them. Even with his muted sound, Seb’s heart kicked because of the loud crash. He watched the two doors shake from the impact.

  A look at the others and Seb saw SA move close to Sparks. She dropped into a defensive crouch, ready for whatever would come out of the hangar at them.

  After Seb had moved to the opposite side of the small Thrystian, his automatic blaster raised, Bruke joined them.

  Another loud crash hit the other side of the doors. Seb turned to Bruke to see his face creased with a worried frown. He put a hand on his friend’s shoulder and said, “This is what we came here to fix. We were expecting this.”

  Several more bangs clattered against the doors.

  Bruke stepped back half a step.

  “Just follow our lead, okay?” Seb said.

  Bruke nodded.

  Sparks looked at Seb, her finger ready to press the open button. A deep breath to slow his world down and Seb turned to SA. She seemed ready. He turned back to Sparks and nodded. “Do it.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Seb looked at the huge hangar doors and drew a deep breath. It did nothing to calm his hyperactive pulse. He watched Sparks point her long finger at the touch screen on her computer. One more ineffective inhale and he watched her press it.

  The door’s mechanism whirred. It added to the very few sounds around them. The wind, the whir, the banging of tens of hands.

  With a dry mouth, Seb swayed from side to side to loosen up. He raised his gun, fitting the stock into his shoulder. Keeping one eye closed, he looked down the barrel at the crack running down the middle of the doors. The bright glare from the chrome forced him to squint. Were the sun any stronger, he wouldn’t have seen anything.

  As the crack opened, screams from what could have been hundreds spilled out. A deranged noise, it sounded like they were hearing themselves yell for the first time. They tested out the twisted undulations of their tormented cries. The quartet all stepped back a few paces.

  Even with his world in slow motion, Bruke’s shots surprised Seb. The scaled beast let out a high-pitched scream and fired on the slowly opening doors. Many of the green blasts crashed into the chrome barrier. Only one or two made it through the gap. At least that was what he guessed; it was hard to tell with the shower of sparks exploding away from each impact. It forced all four of them back a little more. Probably not a bad thing to get some extra distance.

  When the doors parted wide enough, a sea of infected miners spilled out of the gap like guts from a split stomach. Radiation be damned, they flooded from the hangar unsuited.

  The Shadow Order stepped back again as they opened fire.

  Children, men, and women—they all wore the same twisted expression of rage. Of hate. Red eyes, twisted snarls, swinging arms. They slashed at the air, rapidly reducing the metres separating them and the Shadow Order as they charged. They had to be put down. Nothing could save them.

  The line of monsters at the front fell to the blasts. The ones behind jumped them and kept coming forward. They didn’t fear death. They didn’t seem to even have a comprehension of it.

  Even though ten were down already, about twice that amount pushed out through the ever-increasing gap behind them.

  Seb blinked against the sweat running into his eyes. He had to stay focused. The blaster continued to shake with his rapid fire, the buck of it running through his entire body. But he kept the trigger down and blinked against the stinging saline trickle. He couldn’t wipe it with his visor in the way.

  Hot beneath the suit, Seb smelled his own funk and listened to the echo of his heavy breaths. A manifestation of his panic he couldn’t ignore.

  Then Seb’s gun stopped working. Cramps ran through his trigger finger as he squeezed harder. Nothing. A look down at the top of his weapon and a red light glowed. It had overheated. “Shit!”

  One of the infected miners rushed Seb. He tossed his gun to the ground when just a metre separated them. Red eyes, bared teeth, utter rage, she screamed the same demented scream he’d heard from all the others.

  Seb punched her square in the face. The force of his metal fist buried into her. Even through the layer of radiation suit, he felt her nose turn to mush. It felt like her skull had cracked too.

  As the creature fell away, Seb watched her in slow motion. A huge dent sat like a crater in her face. The rage in her eyes had gone. Any sign of life had gone. Blood ran from her mashed nose.

  Bruke had also stopped shooting. His gun must have overheated too. Probably sooner than Seb’s had on account of him shooting it first. Sparks and SA continued to rip off single shots into the creatures, but it wouldn’t be enough to stem the flow of enraged bodies.

  Because they were fighting humans, Seb saw the familiar weak spots on their chins and faces. Every punch he landed sank into their fragile bones. Each one threw back a nauseating crack. His new metal fists landed like bombs. It didn’t matter that the suit restricted his movement, it looked like he had them beat.

  A green blast then ran past Seb’s face. He didn’t even have time to flinch. He looked at SA, who had her gun pointed at him. He then looked at the infected miner she’d shot. A scorched hole sat in the centre of its furious scowl. He hadn’t seen it coming.

  The suit protected against radiation. However, not only did it restrict Seb’s movements, but it also created wicked blind spots where the visor didn’t accommodate his peripheral vision. He looked back at SA and nodded thanks. Hopefully she’d have his back again if he needed it.

  Five more miners, Seb rushed forward to meet them and dropped one after the other, barely breaking stride as he worked through them. Even though he had no feeling in his fists, he cracked skull after skull. Every blow turned another miner off.

  It looked like they’d killed them all, but Seb still watched the gap in the hangar doors for more. Heavy breaths ran through him and he sweated harder than ever. Unable to wipe his face, the tickle of sweat ran torment against his skin.

  “I think that’s all of t
hem,” Seb finally said and picked up his gun. The red light had gone. It must have cooled down. He looked at the bodies of women, men, and children around him. They all lay limp on the red rocky ground. The timer on his screen read ‘2h57m’.

  Seb continued to get his breath back as he walked towards Bruke. Of all of them, he needed the most looking after. His scaled friend stood frozen to the spot, breathing so fast his entire body rocked with his panic. “You okay?” he asked him.

  But Bruke didn’t reply, his wide eyes glazed as he stared into space.

  Because of Bruke’s size, Seb couldn’t move him. When he tried to enlist the help of Sparks and SA, Sparks spoke for both of them. She suggested they let him recover on his own. Take him into the hangar in his current state and not only would he be useless to them, he’d be a hinderance. They’d potentially have to protect him as well as fight more of the things.

  Seb looked at the reading on his screen, his anxiety manifesting as him bouncing on the spot. ‘2h50m’. Although he’d been trying to persuade Bruke to move for the entire time, he still continued to talk to his friend. “Come on, I know we have three hours in these suits, but I’d rather not waste it waiting around.”

  Suddenly Bruke snapped to life, lifting his blaster and ripping off a shot at Seb’s feet.

  Seb’s world slowed down again as the green beam flew at him. He jumped at the last minute to avoid it.

  Where he’d stood only a moment ago, Seb now saw the fried body of one of the parasitic worms. Just a few inches long, it lay dead. After a look at the parasite, he returned his attention to Bruke. He opened and closed his mouth several times before he said, “Thank you.”

  Where there had been anxiety in his friend’s deep brown eyes, Bruke now stared determination at Seb.

  “See?” Seb said to him. “You’re meant to be here with us. Without you, I wouldn’t have even made it into the hangar. You just saved my life.”

  The frozen panic that had occupied Bruke lifted. He pulled his shoulders back and straightened his spine. After a curt nod at Seb, he said, “Shouldn’t we be asking where the worm came from?”

  Why hadn’t Seb thought about it? When he turned around and looked at the dead miners, he saw the cheek of one of the kids bulge. It looked like he’d come back to life and moved his tongue. The tip of a grub then appeared through his pursed lips. Before it could get any farther out, Seb shot the kid in the face. He didn’t need to tell the others what to do. When he looked, SA and Sparks had raised their weapons again and stared down at the sea of corpses.

  Another deep breath, another woeful attempt to stifle his anxiety, and Seb looked down the barrel of his gun, waiting for the rush of parasites.

  CHAPTER 13

  Sparks ripped off the next shot, burning a hole in the cheek of a fallen man.

  Seb then grabbed the kid he’d blasted and dragged it away from the pile of bodies. “We need to move these ones aside so we know which ones still have parasites in them.”

  A green blast hit the face of a woman next to Seb. SA had shot her, so he dragged the woman away too. Were Sparks not so small, she might have been able to move the man she’d shot, but because she couldn’t, he moved that one next.

  While the other three shot the grubs, Seb took on the job of moving all the corpses. They couldn’t leave until all the parasites had gone. The bugs might not have been able to survive Carstic’s radiation, but they couldn’t rely on that.

  Shot after shot, the faces of each miner snapped from the blasts.

  After she’d dispatched three in quick succession, Seb moved past SA and dragged all three bodies away.

  Even Bruke found his aim, blasting the dead miners’ cheeks whenever he saw movement.

  CHAPTER 14

  By the time they’d killed all the grubs, sweat poured from Seb. But he had to let it be, his suit preventing him from doing anything about it. His arms ached from the effort of dragging all the corpses aside. His hands still buzzed from the need he’d had to heal every one of them, even though the power to heal the dead had eluded him thus far.

  Regardless of his fatigue, Seb walked into the massive hangar first. Not that he had any illusions of being an alpha male; those men always reminded him of primitive humans. The reek of their testosterone hung so thick around them it left an aftertaste on his tongue. But he wanted to put himself in the firing line first. The others seemed to defer to him as their leader, so he felt he should be the one taking the risks. He couldn’t let anyone else die the way Gurt had, even if it did mean SA staring at him like she wanted to knock him out. A born leader, she clearly hadn’t been shoved back often.

  The echo of Seb’s footsteps came back at him as he walked through the hangar. A huge warehouse of a space, it had brushed metal walls. Being dark grey, they must have had the lead lining Moses had talked about. The floor that stretched through the space was the same red rock as outside. Wherever the radiation came from, it couldn’t have been the ground. It must have been airborne.

  A large collection of vehicles were scattered around the space. Mostly ships and shuttles, but there were a few tanks too.

  It made Seb dizzy to look up at the high ceiling. It stood a little taller than the huge double doors. Now he’d seen the inside of the space, he had no doubt the place could accommodate large passenger shuttles with plenty of room to spare.

  Still only a fraction of the way in, Seb stopped. Bruke and SA walked up next to him and also stopped. They waited for Sparks, who went to the keypad to close the double doors.

  Several quick taps and the large barriers started to close with a deep whirring noise, the acoustics in the hangar accentuating the baritone sound.

  “At least they were right about there being plenty of ships,” Seb said to SA and Bruke while taking in the vehicles available to them again. “We should be able to fly out of here when we’re done.”

  Having only taken a cursory glance before, Seb now zoned in on a large black tank parked over to one side. Something about the vehicle fascinated him. As big as the shuttle they’d flown in on, it had huge chunky tyres instead of tracks. They looked rugged enough to chew into the red rock. The design, with the slight wedge shape to its front and wide spoiler on the back, looked like it was a vehicle built for speed.

  At the other end of the hangar, Seb saw another large set of double doors. Although this time, the doors were built into the ground.

  “I’m guessing that’s where we’re going,” Seb said with a nod of his head. “Into the earth.”

  “A mine’s not going to be in any other place, is it?” Sparks said, her voice echoing from where she called over to him.

  Bruke didn’t speak. Instead, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Clearly anxious, but not as anxious as before.

  The sunlight finally vanished, cut off by the closing of the huge hangar doors. A swirling rush of air buffeted the black fabric of Seb’s suit and wobbled him where he stood. It didn’t seem to bother SA. Bruke, on the other hand, spun around as if the elements were attacking him.

  When the wind had died down, Seb saw Sparks look up above the hangar doors. He looked too and saw a large red light turn green. The radiation had been pulled out of the area. It had to be airborne like he’d thought.

  As if to double-check, Sparks held her computer up, nodded, and said, “It’s fine to take your suits off.”

  And not a moment too soon. Seb slapped the button on the left side of his head. His visor pulled away from his face and let in a fresh rush of air. It ran into his suit and cooled his hot skin.

  Then the stench hit Seb as a wave of waste and rot. The parasite obviously curdled its host. It smelled like it turned them into festering bags of meat. Liver left to rot in the sun.

  Seb heaved while he wiped the sweat from his face. When he’d recovered a little, he looked across at the others to see varying degrees of twisted disgust. “If it smells like this up here, what do you think it’s like in the mines?”

  The others looked
at Seb, and Sparks spoke. “I think it’s best we don’t think about it.”

  Despite the reek, Seb still felt happier out of his suit than in it. He slithered free of the thick fabric, his surroundings brighter now he didn’t have to look through the yellow tint of his visor.

  Seb walked to the tank in the centre of the hangar and tossed his suit on top. The others copied him, although he had to help Sparks throw hers over the tall vehicle. When he smirked at her, she threw him a hand gesture that must have been an insult where she came from.

  Another wipe of his brow did little to stem the flow of sweat. Seb pinched the front of his shirt and fanned it to help circulate the air. It brought him a little relief.

  Bruke and Sparks looked as hot as Seb felt. SA, on the other hand, stood as a picture of cool serenity, as always. She looked around the space, her wide bioluminescent eyes taking it in.

  “Right,” Sparks said. “I don’t know about you lot, but I want to get the hell out of here as quickly as possible.”

  She didn’t wait for a response, instead walking over to the cellar doors leading down into the mines. And maybe the best way to deal with it; after all, they needed to get the job done. The more they thought on it, the more ominous the tunnels below the ground would seem.

  The doors lay flush with the ground, and the keypad controls for them were on the wall next to them. Sparks looked at several keycards hanging from a hook. She took four and handed them out. Each had a lanyard, so they all dropped them around their necks like medals.

  “These should make it easier to get through the closed-off sections,” Sparks said. She then turned to the screen and hit a couple of taps against it. The green glow of it lit up her purple eyes and bounced off her glasses. “It looks fine down there. No gas leaks, and if there’s no radiation up here, there won’t be any down there.”