The Crimson War: A Space Opera: Book Three of The Shadow Order

by Michael Robertson

  ***

  Unlike the last time they’d visited the pit, Seb managed to get a seat in the middle of the crowd, much closer to the fighting area in the centre.

  The thick smell of bodies mixed with that of sweat and blood. Something about the reek made Seb giddy and he bounced his leg up and down where he sat.

  Bruke glanced at Seb’s twitch, but he didn’t say anything, anxiety twisting his features as he then went on to look around the place.

  Seb had avoided looking at it until now, but he couldn’t ignore the box seats next to them. Sectioned off from the rest of the crowd, the foot soldier who ran the arena sat in it. Tall and slim, the soldier wore the same robe as all the others. The dark shadow of the hood made it impossible to see its face.

  The soldier suddenly turned on Seb and a cold chill snapped through him. It felt like the grim reaper had just focused his attention on him.

  Seb looked away. Maybe the tan flight suit had prevented him from getting searched on his way into the pit, but it certainly attracted attention now he’d entered the place. Someone from the elevated city shouldn’t be in the slums, especially not in the fighting pits.

  While not staring directly back at him, Seb kept a peripheral awareness of the soldier in the box. When he felt the crimson-robed brute look away, he relaxed a little and took in the rest of the crowd. All of them had the same physical characteristics that marked a Solsans resident. All of them except Seb. They had the same pale skin of a being who lived a life without sunlight. Malnourished, pasty, stinking, and under the control of the Countess … could life get much worse for the pitiful beings?

  Another glance at Bruke next to him and Seb saw the large scaled creature bite his thick claws as he too looked at the beings around him. He fidgeted and breathed heavily through his large nose. An animal gripped with panic, he looked ready to bolt at the drop of a hat.

  At that moment, Bruke froze as if he’d seen something in the crowd. Seb followed his line of sight and the tension in his back wound a little tighter. How hadn’t he seen them before now? A group of about twenty Crimson foot soldiers sat in the front row. All of them had their faces hidden with their hoods.

  Seb leaned close to Bruke to ask him what he thought they were doing there, but a voice in the middle of the pit cut him off.

  “Females and males, let me introduce you to the champion of this fine establishment.” The high-pitched voice came from a Crimson foot soldier no taller than about four feet.

  Seb had been in the pits a lot and had seen many intimidating monsters, but as the new champion of this place entered, even he lost his breath in a gasp. Every one of the creature’s heavy steps ran through the large wooden structure like an aftershock. Bruke thrust his arms out to the side as if the seating area would collapse under the vibrations.

  In the same red robe as all of the other soldiers, but bigger than them—much bigger—the champion strode into the ring, got to the middle, and spun on the spot to take in the crowd.

  Impossible to read the brute because shadow hid its face, Seb felt his peripheral vision blur. A natural reaction to being in the pits moments before a fight, his upper body tensed and it took all he had not to stand up right there and challenge the champ.

  “Ten wins in a row now,” the small compère shouted, his whine ringing through the pit. “Every one of them coming within the first minute of the fight. Every one ending in the death of the challenger. Let me introduce you to the one, the only, the Great Gamboa.”

  Seb flinched at how quickly the Great Gamboa removed his cloak and tossed it into the air. The red fabric spun on its way up and sank back down to the ground like an autumn leaf. But for all the flourish of the robe, Seb fixed his attention on the monster beneath it.

  At least eight feet tall, the Great Gamboa had so many muscles that his black skin looked like it might split. The champion clenched his fists, brought them around in front of his navel, and tensed. A series of pops like corn in a hot pan, and the already muscly brute seemed to double in size. Where his neck had already stretched from his ears to his shoulders, it now seemed to start from his temples.

  While turning on the spot, the Great Gamboa worked his thick jaw as he chewed on gum. The muscles in his mandible were as chunky as tow ropes and he looked like he could crush diamonds with his teeth. When he got to the point where he faced Seb, he let out a booming roar that fired halitosis across the crowd and blew Seb’s hair back—even with the fifteen metres separating them.

  “Now,” the small compère shouted, “all we need to know is, who challenges the Great Gamboa?”

  If there were a silence in the galaxy more complete, Seb hadn’t experienced it. Even a vacuum would have seemed raucous compared to the stillness that descended on the place.

  A squeak then came from next to Seb and called through the silenced crowd. He looked at Bruke, who seemed unable to contain his panic. The green creature looked one step away from pissing himself.

  Seb then looked over at the foot soldier in the box, who would undoubtably have been able to hear Bruke’s anxious noise. The foot soldier didn’t look back. Instead, he surveyed the crowd as if searching for a challenger.

  After scanning the entire place, the shadowed face of the soldier in the box returned to Seb. “It looks like we’ll have to select someone ourselves,” he said.

  The rest of the pit looked at Seb at that moment and Bruke let out another nervous whine. If there was ever a time for him not to be in the flight suit … but he didn’t react to the attention. Instead, he stared back at the foot soldier, not confrontational in any way, but he wanted to make sure the lord of this pit knew he couldn’t be intimidated.

  When the soldier looked away, Seb let out a gentle sigh of relief, doing his best to hide it from the crowd. As much as he wouldn’t be bullied, it really wouldn’t help his cause to fight now.

  The soldier in the box raised a long and pointy finger at a huge beast in the crowd in front of him. “You! Get down there.”

  If anything, the silence seemed to quieten further as the giant slumped in his seat.

  “You heard me,” the soldier said. “You’re the challenger for today. Get off your arse and get down there.”

  The giant’s face twisted, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he got to his feet—his shoulders slumped—and he kissed the female version of himself next to him. If no one else in the arena saw it, Seb certainly did. The kiss said goodbye. He wouldn’t be coming back.

  Seb looked at the soldier in the box. Although hard to tell his reaction because of his shadowed hood, he seemed impassive to the sentence he’d just laid on the brute.

  The female giant, along with the rest of the arena, watched the challenger pick his way through the crowd down to the pit in the middle. Tears glistened in her eyes and she shook her head.

  As the beast walked down to the front, the foot soldier in the box glared at Seb again. Or at least it felt that way. It was hard to tell when he couldn’t see its face.

  Either way, Seb had dodged a bullet.

  Chapter Nine

  As the challenger entered the ring, the Great Gamboa turned to the group of Crimson foot soldiers and raised his huge black arms. Another booming roar and the foot soldiers jumped to their feet, clapping their hands and punching the air. A normally conservative bunch, they seemed to want this fight more than anyone. They’d monopolised the services of one of the touts, who currently ran through them, taking their bets.

  Every other being in the crowd remained quiet as though embarrassed about the soldier’s behaviour. As if the Countess’ oppression didn’t feel harsh enough, the beings of Caloon had to put up with the power-trip, bullshit behaviour of the foot soldiers too.

  “And now,” the announcer called out, cutting through Seb’s thoughts, “the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the Great Gamboa versus someone from the slums.”

  The disrespect to the challenger pulled Seb’s stomach tight. They didn’t even bother naming him.

 
“Rrrrrrrrrreadyyyyyyy,” the commentator said, rolling the r and looking for the nod from the Great Gamboa. He didn’t even look at the challenger. “Round one. Fight!”

  Seb sat up straight to watch the challenger charge the Great Gamboa. Were he a betting man, he would have had the fight down as one that saw the Great Gamboa chasing his opponent around the ring until he got hold of him and broke his neck. He would have been wrong.

  Two punches in quick succession seemed to stun the Great Gamboa, his emerald green eyes widening at the affront.

  “You know what,” Seb said to Bruke, “this fight might be—”

  But before he could finish his thought, Seb stopped to watch the Great Gamboa slap his large hand over the top of the challenger’s head and grip on. His huge arm bulged and shook as he lifted his opponent a good metre from the ground.

  When the Great Gamboa clenched his teeth with the effort of his squeeze, Seb saw muscles pop up in even his fingers. The grip looked like it could turn a rock to dust.

  Despite his size, the giant flipped and twisted like a fish caught on a hook. He screamed a broken cry.

  A second later the giant’s raucous agony ended with a deep squelch of his cracking skull. The Great Gamboa let the giant’s body fall limp to the ground before silence swept around the place.

  Bruke leaned forward and vomited on the floor in front of him, and Seb looked at the giant’s wife as she cried freely.

  Seb fought against his pull to stand up and challenge the brute, to show the Great Gamboa he wasn’t so great. But he couldn’t. The Great Gamboa wouldn’t last two minutes with him, but he had to walk away. Take the Countess down and then tie up all the loose ends. A petty fight wouldn’t help the beings of Caloon.

  The acrid smell of Bruke’s sick rose up and joined the stench of everything else in the pit, so Seb leaned close to his guide and said, “I’ve seen enough. Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter Ten

  “I can’t believe they did that to the poor thing,” Bruke said as they walked away from the fighting pit. “His partner looked devastated.” He shook his head, his brown eyes wide in a glazed stare. “He didn’t even want to fight.”

  The slum had ears, so Seb watched his surroundings. Any one of the many beings around him could be listening in, ready to rat them out. After he’d trusted Phulp and he’d sold him out … well, he didn’t need to think about it. “Let’s just get where we’re going, yeah?”

  An instant slackening of his jaw and Bruke stared at Seb as if his words had caused him physical pain.

  While looking around them, including over both shoulders, Seb said, “Don’t get upset. We need to have this conversation another time. You’re too emotional to keep your voice down, and I stand out from a mile away in this suit. We already have too much attention on us.”

  The shock left Bruke’s face and he nodded.

  “Right, so lead us to where we need to go.”

  A deep breath lifted Bruke’s broad chest and he nodded again. “Okay, follow me.”

  It didn’t matter that Seb had walked from the pit to Phulp’s hut before, he couldn’t find the way without a guide. Not that every hut looked the same; in fact, every hut looked completely different. Each one had a personality of its own from where it had been scraped together from salvaged materials. No way could someone who’d only been through the slums once or twice know how to find anywhere.

  The pair didn’t speak as they walked, and Seb divided his time between watching where he trod and checking where Bruke headed so he didn’t lose track of him in the crowd of beings.

  Every few steps, Seb knocked into another slum dweller. Sometimes they seemed to crash into him intentionally, but neither he nor the dweller said anything. It made it easier to think of every contact as an accident.

  Besides, the cramped conditions made it impossible to move without banging into other beings. Any sense of personal space a slum dweller had would have been knocked out of them the second they could walk. A stranger on a strange planet, Seb needed to adapt to their way of being rather than expect them to adapt to his.

  The air turned to mist with every one of Seb’s breaths. The activity around him should have set the atmosphere alight with chatter and noise, but silence hung in the place like the low-lying fog. The slum felt like a graveyard.

  A scream cut through the silence. Seb stopped as the sound ripped gooseflesh up his body. Fight or flight kicked in, his heart running away with him and his breaths coming out in short and sharp bursts. Another scream and he looked over the tops of the huts into the square.

  Like before, a ring of Crimson foot soldiers had formed around the outside of the space. One of the taller soldiers had hold of what looked to be a boy barely in his teens. The boy held the silver curved blade, the moonlight winking off its glistening yet blood-coated surface.

  Because Seb had been watching the square, he jumped when Bruke spoke. “They often do that, you know.”

  “I know, I saw it the other day.”

  “No, I mean do them in quick succession. They’ll come out one day and find all the teenage boys they can get, and then they’ll come out another day shortly afterwards to get a lot of the ones who’d hidden the first time around.”

  “Did you have to—?” Seb stopped when he watched Bruke lower his pale face and stare at the dark ground.

  “We need to do something about it,” Seb said. “I can’t believe how long it’s been allowed to go on for.”

  “Hopefully, you’ll get to the Countess like you plan.”

  The weight of responsibility pushed down on Seb as he watched the square. The Crimson foot soldiers grabbed another boy and dragged him into the middle. They stood him up in front of what must have been his father. “Yeah,” he said while chewing the inside of his mouth. He winced as the boy cut his dad’s throat, and then sighed, “Hopefully.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “This is it,” Bruke said when he stopped in one of the walkways.

  As unremarkable as the huts surrounding it, Seb stared at the small dwelling. He’d been let down before when he’d trusted someone he shouldn’t have. How did he know the hut he now looked at was the one Phulp had taken them to?

  Seb looked at the beings around him. They seemed no different than any other time he’d been in the slum. Busy, each one looked to be on their own mission somewhere. He’d notice an ambush, wouldn’t he?

  Bruke stood with a blank expression for a few seconds as Seb stared at him. He finally said, “What?”

  “How do I know this is the right hut?”

  Confusion crushed the creature’s scaled face. He looked from Seb to the hut and back to Seb again. “It’s hard to tell, isn’t it? I don’t suppose you would know it’s the right hut.”

  “Okay,” Seb said. “So how do you know this is the right hut?”

  “I’ve lived here all my life. I’ve had twenty-six years in this hellhole. That’s enough time to learn where everyone lives.”

  Another glance at the beings around them and Seb saw many of them stare back at him. Although no more than normal since he’d put the flight suit on. He looked at Bruke again. “You go in first.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “But I don’t know Phulp. Sure, I’ve heard of him, but I’ve never spoken to him. I can’t just walk into his place.”

  Seb didn’t respond.

  Anxiety twisted through Bruke’s face and he wrung his hands. “If he gets upset with me, you need to have my back, okay?”

  After he’d dipped a curt nod at him, Seb looked to both sides and then raised his eyebrows. “Come on, we don’t have all day.”

  Bruke walked to the entrance to the small hut and pushed on the palette blocking the doorway. “Hello? Excuse me, Mr Phulp. Um, you don’t know me, but my name’s Bruke.”

  It seemed convincing and Seb had to stop himself from shoving the timid creature aside and bursting in there himself. He needed to be patient. He needed to see Bruke
had taken him to the correct place.

  When no reply came, Bruke looked back at Seb and shrugged. “There’s no answer. He might not be in.”

  “Check,” Seb said.

  Bruke let out an anxious and nasally whine as he pushed against the palette again. This time it rocked before falling into the hut and hitting the rocky ground with a thwack. The scaled beast jumped clean off the ground from the noise.

  Already dark in the streets, at least they had the moonlight above them, turning the mist around them silver. The darkness in the hut looked like a black hole in comparison. One last glance back at Seb, and Bruke said, “I really don’t like doing this.”

  It took all Seb had not to swing for the wretched creature. “Just go in.”

  This time Bruke ducked down and went into the hut.

  Almost as soon as he’d gone in, the large lizard-like creature jumped out with one of his long hands clamped over his mouth. Several heaves snapped through him before he pulled his hand away and threw up all over Seb’s boots.

  Seb balled his fists and glared at Bruke. “What the hell?”

  Before Bruke could reply, he vomited again, this time on the hard ground.

  As much as Seb wanted to whack the creature for throwing up on him, when he looked down at his shoes and the bottom of his tan flight suit, he saw the stains from the sewage in the street had already made a mess of them. What difference did a little bit of sick make?

  Another heave flipped through Bruke and he vomited on the ground again. Seb shook his head and walked towards the hut. It would be easier if he just looked himself.

  The stench hit Seb the second he poked his head into the darkness of Phulp’s home. It ran straight to his gag reflex. No wonder Bruke threw up. A charred stench, it had a rancid, curdled twist to it like burned yogurt or mould and overcooked pork.

  An immobile lump lay on the ground, but the darkness of the hut made it hard for Seb to see more than its silhouette. It didn’t seem to cause him any immediate danger. He slipped his backpack off, rested it on the ground, and fished the torch from it. After he’d re-shouldered his bag, he flicked the bright light on.