Chapter Four
The sooner Seb got off the damn planet, the better. Cold, damp, and always bloody dark, he hated every second he spent there. But he couldn’t leave without overthrowing the Countess. He’d made that promise to himself if no one else, and he wouldn’t break it.
The farther Seb moved away from the ship, the trickier he found it walking over the uneven ground. It made his progress slow, but he couldn’t use the torch. Not if he wanted to remain hidden.
The ship still burned behind him. At least fifty metres away from it now, it ran hotter than a normal fire and the heat still pressed against his back as if encouraging him away from it. It felt hot enough to burn the cold, damp evergreen trees in the forest, and the air smelled of their sap stronger than it had before.
After Seb had blown the ship up, the easiest path would have been one that led directly to the slums. However, if the soldiers wanted to check out the fire, he’d probably bump into them along that route. In a place as dark as Solsans, the ship burned bright, so it made sense they would come to investigate it. As a result, he moved away from both the ship and the slums, further into the wilderness surrounding Caloon.
The woodland grew thicker, the forest darker. The floor lay dense with fern and bracken. Seb tripped, reaching out to steady himself against a tree so he didn’t fall flat on his face.
The trees were now packed so tightly together, they stopped even the moonlight shining down on the ground.
Before long, Seb couldn’t see a thing. A sharp sting ripped across his face when he walked into a thick, prickly branch. Flexible like a whip with small barbs studding it, it felt almost as if the tree had done it on purpose. The cold air bit into the buzz of the grazes on his face.
After stumbling and tripping for another ten metres or so, Seb looked behind him. He couldn’t see the fire anymore.
The crashed and burning ship must have frightened the local wildlife away. Now he’d put some distance between him and it, the air came alive with the calls of strange birds and the snapping of twigs as creatures moved around him.
Seb un-shouldered his bag, pulled his blaster out, and held onto it for comfort. Although it felt like no more than a token gesture. If he wanted to shoot anything, he’d have to be able to see it first.
When a thud shook the ground, Seb stopped, his heart pounding and his throat turning dry. He looked into the darkness and aimed his gun in the direction of the noise, but he couldn’t see a thing.
A flashback to the bear-like creatures in the mountains and Seb looked at the shadowy city of Caloon. For the first time since he’d jumped out of the Shadow Order’s ship with the others, the dark and built-up area looked more appealing than where he currently stood.
Far enough away from the wreck now and darkness hiding unimaginable horrors around him, Seb changed his course and headed directly for the slums. Hopefully he wouldn’t meet the soldiers on the way.
Chapter Five
The tree line ran up to the very edge of the slum. It seemed almost as if the wooded area kept the poor beings of Caloon penned in, giving them just enough space to live in but no more.
Just metres away from stepping out of the trees, Seb caught the smell of the place. The sewage reek of waste; the reinforcement of the divide between the haves and have-nots. The rich flushed their toilet on the poor in this place.
Seb ruffled his nose while he put his blaster into his backpack. Because he couldn’t conceal it under his clothing, he didn’t want to be walking around the slums with it on display. He already stood out in his ridiculous suit.
One more step and Seb would have revealed himself. He nearly took it before he saw the Crimson foot soldiers.
“What are you complaining about?” one of the soldiers said, his voice so deep Seb nearly felt it. The soldier stood both a foot taller and wider than Seb. He had a slum dweller hung upside down by his ankle. The dweller looked to be slightly shorter than him, maybe about five feet ten inches. Hard to tell in the dark and with him hanging upside down. The dweller—covered from head to toe in green scales—appeared to be naked.
“I’m not complaining, I’m just trying to explain that I don’t have the credits.”
“But you promised us,” another soldier said. This one stood only about three feet tall and had a nasally, goading rasp to its tone.
When the dweller didn’t reply, a third Crimson soldier—about the same size as Seb—walked over to a flimsy tent and pointed at it. “We gave you this because you needed somewhere to stay. We had plenty of beings who wanted it, yet we decided to give it to you. Did we make a mistake?”
“You said you’d get me a hut,” the dweller said, his voice breaking with his clear desperation.
“Shelter. We said shelter,” the small nasally one replied.
“It’s cold and wet in there.”
Seb looked at the tent and shivered. Cold and wet seemed like an understatement; the tent had rips on the outside of it and it had been pitched in the middle of one of the drainage paths. The waste of the city ran straight through it. It defied physics that it hadn’t been washed away yet.
This time the large soldier spoke again. “It’s shelter, which is more than you had before. It’s more than a lot of beings have.”
“I don’t want it,” the dweller said.
“That’s fine,” the nasally voice replied. “Just pay us the month’s rent and another month’s rent for the inconvenience, and you can go on your way.”
Desperation turned the dweller’s voice even higher in pitch and he twisted like a fish on a hook. “But I don’t have any money. I’ve told you that. How do you expect me to get work when everything I own is covered in waste?”
“Not our problem,” the big soldier said.
“Yes, it is,” Seb said as he stepped from the wooded area.
All three soldiers and the dweller looked at him.
The large soldier let go of his victim, and the slum dweller hit the hard ground with a crack. He then cocked his head to the side. “What did you say?”
Each soldier had their hood pulled up over their head, the deep shadows inside hiding their faces. Seb stared into the darkness of the large one’s hood anyway. “I said it is your problem.” He pointed down at the tent. “How can you expect to charge someone to stay in that thing? In fact, how can you charge anyone to stay anywhere in this slum? It’s a horrible place to live, and you don’t own it.”
The small nasally one stepped forward, placed its little hands on its hips, and looked Seb up and down. “We made this dwelling, so we can charge someone to stay in it.”
“Made it?” Seb said and laughed. “You’ve put a ripped, crappy tent in the middle of a drainage path and you think you can charge someone to live in it?”
The prisoner still lay in a heap on the ground and looked from Seb to the small guard and back to Seb again.
“Look, pal,” the nasally one said.
“I’m not your pal.”
“Okay, scumbag, let me tell you, the flight suit doesn’t fool me. You’ve either stolen it from someone in the elevated part of the city, or you’ve killed someone. Either way”—he pointed at the elevated city—“you ain’t from up there. So don’t pretend you have any kind of authority.”
“I suggest you bounce,” the large soldier said, “before I bounce you myself.”
Seb could have drawn the blaster from his bag, but he didn’t need to. Not against these three clowns. A shake of his head and he said, “That ain’t going to happen.”
The big soldier let out a deep laugh. “Oh, isn’t it?”
Seb rolled his shoulders and raised his fists as the edges of his world blurred. He smiled and said, “No.”
Chapter Six
The world slipped into slow motion for Seb as he moved towards the largest of the three soldiers.
The brute dropped into a defensive crouch, but before he’d raised his fists, Seb landed his first punch. A spot within its hood stood out for him, so he aimed his blow
there.
Pain exploded through Seb’s hand. The large soldier clearly had tough skin.
Seb opened and closed his fist to stretch the pain out of it as the creature stumbled backwards. After two or three steps, its legs gave way beneath it and it fell onto its back, crushing the crappy tent it had been trying to rent out and kicking up a splash of sewage.
The smaller of the two remaining soldiers stared at the other one, his tiny frame sagging as what must have been realisation sank through it. Before either of them could do anything, Seb landed two more punches—one into each of their hoods—and knocked both of them out cold.
As the world returned to a normal speed, Seb looked at the fallen slum dweller, who remained on the ground where he’d been dropped.
“Wow,” the dweller said as it looked from Seb to the three downed guards.
Now Seb had dealt with the soldiers, he properly took in their victim for the first time. Green scales covered its entire body. Like most of Solsans’ residents, it looked ill from the lack of light on the planet, paler than it should have naturally been.
Although humanoid in shape, the creature reminded Seb more of an ape than a person. It had long arms that hung down past its waist, and thick bulging biceps. Fully erect, the creature stood about four inches shorter than Seb. Despite its subservience to the Crimson foot soldiers, it looked like it could have given them a good fight if it had the mind for it.
Before Seb replied to the creature, he slipped his backpack from his shoulders, put it on the ground, and undid the zip. If he were to make it through the planet a second time, he’d have to be ruthless.
When Seb pulled the blaster from his bag, the slum dweller gasped and scrambled backwards. It raised its hands in front of its face. “What are you doing?”
Still, Seb didn’t reply. Instead, he walked over to the largest of the three soldiers, pointed his blaster down at it, and pulled the trigger. The weapon bucked in his hand and the large creature snapped rigid before it fell limp.
Seb repeated the process with the other two, and when he turned to the dweller, the creature whimpered, “Please, don’t shoot me too. I didn’t want any part of this.”
A shake of his head and Seb put his gun away. “I’m not going to shoot you.”
“But you just shot them.”
“Of course.”
“What about the Countess? What will you do when she finds out you just killed three of her soldiers?”
“I plan on shooting her too.”
The creature gasped again and looked around him as if the mist had ears. “What did you just say?”
“Someone needs to end her reign. I intend on being that person. If I only knock out the foot soldiers, they’ll wake up then go and tell her what’s coming. A dead body can’t tell tales. Besides”—Seb looked down at the three Crimson corpses—“these three seemed like bad eggs. I couldn’t let them move on to someone else and harass them like they have you.”
The creature on the ground gulped before he offered Seb his hand. “I’m Bruke Swoth.”
For a second Seb considered holding his name back, but what did it matter? “Seb,” he said as he shook the creature’s hand. “Seb Zodo.”
“Nice to meet you, Seb. And thanks. I think.”
Seb smiled. “You’re welcome. Now, tell me, how well do you know these slums?”
“Reasonably, why?”
A look over the ramshackle roofs poking out of the white mist and Seb said, “I need a guide that can take me to a friend’s hut. I’ll be honest, every part of this place looks the same to me.”
“What’s your friend’s name?”
Seb continued to look out over the slum. It made it slightly easier to hide his contempt for the little rat who’d sold the Shadow Order out. He didn’t want to reveal too much to the stranger. A deep breath of the cool and funky air and he said, “Phulp. I need to give him a message.”
When Seb saw Bruke smile, he said, “What?”
“I was worried you’d ask to see someone I don’t know. But, fortunately for you”—he looked down at the dead soldiers—“and me, I know Phulp. Everyone knows Phulp. Come on, let me show you the way.”
And with that, Bruke got to his feet and headed into the slums.
For the next few seconds, Seb watched the creature’s languid movements. He watched Bruke’s long arms swing by his sides, close to brushing his kneecaps. His feet looked like they belonged on marshland; long and flexible, they pressed into the ground as if stroking it when he walked. Completely naked, he either didn’t have any awareness of it or simply didn’t care.
A shake of his head to himself and Seb followed his new guide. Hopefully this one would be more reliable than the last.
Chapter Seven
“How do you know Phulp?” Bruke asked.
Seb looked across at the creature as they walked up the main path running through the slum. His brown eyes—deep and seemingly compassionate—didn’t fit with his green, cold, and almost featureless scales. He said nothing.
Slum dwellers passed them on either side. Most of the stream of beings did their best to avoid the sewage running through the middle of the walkway.
“I mean, you in that fancy flight suit and everything,” Bruke said.
Seb still didn’t speak and did his best to ignore the attention from the strangers passing them. Most of them simply seemed curious about him, but he certainly picked up on the open hostility from others.
“You don’t look like you should be down here, let alone knowing someone like Phulp.”
“You know Phulp well?” Unable to hide his irritation at all the questions, Seb couldn’t keep the aggression from his reply.
“Not well, but everyone knows who he is.” Bruke turned and smiled at Seb. “So how do you know him?”
Maybe he hadn’t made his tone curt enough. A look up ahead and Seb saw the fighting pit on the horizon. A huge structure, fifty times bigger than the next largest building around it. When he looked back at Bruke and the long swaying strides of the stocky creature, he shrugged. “We worked together on a thing.”
“A thing?”
Seb ground his jaw and drew a deep inhale through his clenched teeth. “A thing.”
For the next few seconds, Bruke didn’t reply. Instead, he looked ahead as he walked and swerved in and out of the other beings while trying to avoid the middle of the path.
When Bruke drew a deep breath to speak again, Seb’s back wound tight and the edges of his vision blurred. He needed a guide, not an interrogator.
“And you said you wanted to find the Countess?” Bruke said.
The strange creature attracted attention with his bizarre gait. Add to that the ridiculous flight suit Seb still wore, and they might as well set up a stage in the middle of the square. “Do you want to shout it out maybe?” Seb said. “I’m not sure everyone heard you.”
The space where Bruke’s eyebrows should be pushed together in the middle of his scaled face.
After a deep sigh, which did little to make Seb feel any better, he said, “Look, how about we have this conversation another time, yeah?”
Bruke nodded, smiled, and returned his attention to where they were heading.
Now close enough to the fighting pit for it to dominate Seb’s view, he nodded at it. “How about we go in there?”
A look from the pit, to Seb, and back to the pit again, and Bruke said, “There?”
“I want to see a fight.”
Whilst wringing his large hands, Bruke’s eyebrows pinched together again. “Are you sure? It can get quite violent in there.”
Seb looked at the scores of creatures around him because he couldn’t stand to look at his pathetic guide any longer. Many looked back. He held onto his reply for a few seconds. It did little to cool him down or still his furious heartbeat. He spoke in a monotone when he returned his attention to Bruke. “I can live with the violence.”
Bruke gulped and nodded. “Okay.”
Chapter Eight
A few minutes later Seb and Bruke joined the bottleneck of bodies all heading for the pit. Where the smell of waste had thinned out the closer they got to the arena, it now ramped up again because of the densely packed beings around them.
A mixture of ground-in dirt and shit forced Seb to ruffle his nose and he nearly gripped his nostrils in a pinch, but he held back. It wouldn’t pay to offend the beings around him. Especially as he already stood out amongst them in his ridiculous garb. Besides, they couldn’t help the squalor they lived in. Instead, he breathed through his mouth, the cold air nipping the back of his throat.
It took for Seb to get close to the guards in front of the door to remember his backpack. So snug against his form, he’d forgotten about it completely. But now, close to entering the pit, he remembered he had a blaster and highly flammable wax on him. Hardly the most subtle thing to enter with, it damn near declared war on the place.
Too late to do anything about it, Seb tried to keep his unease beneath the surface. He walked past the guards with his head held high and his face flushed. A look at each of them, and they stared back. He clenched his fists. If he had to fight them, he would. But they didn’t stop him, so he continued through.
Just before he walked through the entryway, Seb looked up at the cylindrical rickety structure that was the fighting pit. The Countess clearly had little interest in the place; otherwise she might have done more for its upkeep. The outside of the wooden arena had patches of different coloured wood plastered over what must have once been holes. Time had eaten away at the structure over the years, and whoever looked after the pit had fought against it as best as they could with fix-up after fix-up. The place looked like it could collapse at any moment.
The Crimson War: A Space Opera: Book Three of The Shadow Order Page 2
