The Shadow Order: A Space Opera

by Michael Robertson

  From where they stood, Seb could see The Black Hole up in the sky. As he looked at it, he laughed. “I bet it’s chaos up there at the moment. They’re going to be wanting us more than ever now.”

  When he looked at Sparks, he saw her mouth open and head tilted back as she too looked up at the ship.

  “I think we should move on as quickly as possible,” Seb said. Before Sparks could respond, he climbed up on top of the rock they’d chosen to hide behind.

  The strong wind nearly knocked Seb off, and he shielded his eyes with his hand to look over at the lights in the distance. “I think …” He paused. The same vacant expression remained fixed on Sparks’ face. She clearly couldn’t hear a word he said up there.

  Seb jumped down and landed with a jolt that snapped through him. “There are lights over that way. It must be a spaceport. I think we need to find a cargo ship that we can sneak onto so we can go to another planet. I mean, how long will it be before they track the homing beacon in the escape pod?”

  “A long time.”

  Seb waited for Sparks to elaborate.

  “I disabled the homing beacon. Although, not on the first pod. They’ll be looking for that one before they even think to look for us. And I sent that to a different planet.”

  An urge to hug the strange little genius took over Seb, but he refrained. It would be far too awkward. Besides, the little rat robbed him the last time they hugged. She might have got them off The Black Hole, but she needed to do a lot more than that to gain Seb’s trust.

  As Sparks adjusted her glasses, she grinned. “I reckon we’ll be okay to rest up for the night before we move on.”

  A sharp nod of his head, his body still alive with the aches of their crash landing, and Seb said, “Okay. That sounds like a plan.”

  Without another word, Sparks tapped her tiny computer and it lit up like a powerful torch. A quick sweep of their environment and she stopped a few seconds later to highlight the huge cave just in front of them. The cave didn’t stand high above ground level, which was why they hadn’t noticed it in the dark, but it went down deep, by the looks of things. “That’s got to be as good a place as any, right?”

  A choice of words that Seb wouldn’t have ever used, but it seemed to be the only place they had. Instead of being negative, he remained quiet and followed Sparks into the mouth of the huge cave.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Once Seb had entered the cave with Sparks, he stared into the darkness beyond. The torch on her small computer proved utterly ineffective against the complete absence of light before them. Although the red veins of lava ran through the cold ground away from them, they provided no guide to travel by, just a warning of how deep they would plunge into the darkness should they choose to go farther.

  For a few seconds, neither Seb nor Sparks spoke as they stared into the void. Seb clenched his jaw tightly against the cold onslaught of the wind that cannoned through the place, and he gulped. “How far back do you think it goes?”

  Instead of a reply, Sparks shot an arm out and grabbed a hold of Seb’s right bicep in a tight grip.

  It spiked Seb’s pulse as the small being dragged him down into a hunch, and she clung on so tight, it stung where her fingers dug in. As Seb’s eyes adjusted to the light, more of the cave became clear to him. Not far from where they crouched sat a dense line of growths that looked like a cross between trees and stalagmites. Impossible to tell how far back they went, they spread across the width of the cave as a line of soldiers would when protecting a fort.

  Before Seb could speak, he finally saw what Sparks had seen. The creature moved among the tree-mites, seemingly oblivious to its hungry observers. A dark form, slightly darker than the cave, the quadruped dipped its head once or twice to sniff the ground. Were it to stand on its hind legs, the creature would have been taller than Seb. Not quite the size of a horse, it stood larger than even the biggest dog he’d ever seen. “What is it?” Seb said.

  At first Sparks didn’t reply. The creature tensed at the sound of Seb’s voice. Once it settled down again, Sparks finally spoke in a whisper. “Not sure, but whatever it is, it looks more edible than the slop they fed us on The Black Hole.”

  Until that moment, Seb had only been able to slip into slow motion when a fight came to him. As he turned his attention inward, the sides of his vision blurred and the creature stood out among everything else. The space between its eyes stood prominent for Seb.

  With slow and deliberate steps, Seb moved toward the creature, his fists clenched, his breathing slow. So dark in the cave, Seb could almost feel the absence of light against his skin. When he came to the first row of tree-like growths, he paused for a moment before he delved deeper into their shadowed embrace.

  The creature seemed oblivious to Seb’s approach as he made his way closer on tiptoes. When he got to within a few feet, he stepped on a twig. Even in slow motion, the creature’s head snapped up and focused on him. The brown orbs that were its eyes widened, but it had no more time to react as Seb darted forward and punched it in the forehead.

  Like everything he punched, the creature fell. Several more of the large brown quadrupeds burst from the darkness before they plunged deeper into it. How had he not seen any of them?

  Sparks flashed past Seb and jumped onto the beast he’d knocked down as she plunged a knife into its skull. The brown velveteen creature’s back legs kicked out behind it before it fell limp.

  “How did you get a knife?” Seb asked her. “And how did you manage to keep a hold of my necklace when they locked you up?”

  Instead of answering him, Sparks stared down at the dead beast and said, “Come on then.” She lifted its legs and made out like she wanted to drag it along, but the thing must have been three times her weight at least. “I don’t know what’s down in the darkness of this cave, but I want to get away from it before I have a chance to find out.”

  She had a point. Seb grabbed the large creature around its hooves and dragged it closer to the entrance of the cave. They found a spot where the wall met the ground, an alcove that offered some protection from the wind. The glassy floor might have been hard and cold, but it made dragging something at least twice his weight much easier than it otherwise would have been.

  With her knife still in her hand, Sparks stuck the creature and tore a line down its skin. “You go and get something we can burn and I’ll skin this thing. See if you can get a spit as well, yeah?”

  How dare she tell him what to do?! Although, as Seb watched Sparks peel back the first layer of the creature’s skin, he saw that her skill outweighed his pride. He shrugged and walked into the trees; collecting wood had to be better than what she currently faced.

  ***

  Although not wood, the tree-like growths might as well have been. Seb returned with an armful of branches in varying shapes and sizes from the strange things, all of them dry. When he dropped them on the hard ground, each one clattered with its own pitch. When Seb sat down, the cold and hard surface felt instantly uncomfortable beneath his seat and his bottom turned numb. When hunger rumbled through his stomach, Seb did his best to ignore the discomfort of the ground and arranged the sticks so he could light a fire.

  Once he’d piled them up, the larger sticks on the bottom and the smaller ones on top, he handed Sparks a snapped-off branch.

  “What’s this?” she said.

  “The best we’ve got. You’re going to have to use it to cook with. I have one too. If we spear the meat, we can hang it over the flames.”

  Although Sparks looked sceptical, she didn’t voice her doubt. Good job, really. She wouldn’t have been able to do any better than he just had.

  “Okay,” Sparks said, “stand back.”

  As Seb moved away from the newly built fire, Sparks lifted up her tiny computer and held it to the wood. When she pressed her finger to the screen, a small spark burst from it and landed amongst the pile of sticks. Several more presses sent several more sparks into it until they glowed collectivel
y.

  Seb leaned forward and blew on them while Sparks continued to skin the creature. In between breaths, he pulled away from the smoke and looked at the girl. “Is there anything that computer doesn’t do?”

  After she’d wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her forearm, her hands glistening with the creature’s dark blood, Sparks said, “It doesn’t skin animals.”

  Seb half-laughed before he returned to blowing on the fire.

  ***

  The meat, cooked well enough to eat, tasted rich and gamey. A million times better than anything Seb had had in the prison—or on Aloo for that matter. As Seb chewed on the huge chunk he’d bitten off, he looked around the cave. With so many red veins of lava, the place looked like the insides of some great creature, almost like they’d found their way into its lungs. Were it not for the same effect running through the ground outside the cave, Seb wouldn’t have entertained the idea of coming inside. But from what little experience they’d had with the frigid and rocky planet, the entire place looked this way.

  After he’d swallowed a large chunk of meat, Seb looked over at Sparks. “So tell me about yourself.”

  Sparks looked up mid-chew. “Huh?”

  “Well, why are you such a scheming little rat? There must be a reason for it.”

  Although Sparks shot him a glare, she didn’t deny his accusation. Instead, she lowered the meat from her mouth and took a deep breath. “I was orphaned at a young age.”

  For the first time since he’d met her, Seb found some emotion beneath her cold exterior in the way her voice shook when she spoke. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Now, being an orphan in this galaxy is hard enough, but being an orphan where I’m from is hell.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “A planet called Thryst. It’s stuck in the last millennia and still uses living beings to run most of its industries. Although, they don’t take the jobs willingly because they don’t pay that well, and once you get into them, you never leave. So they use institutionalised people as, essentially, slaves—prisoners and orphans mainly. Because of this, you can’t fart on Thryst without getting arrested, and once they have you in front of a court, they throw the book at you. Of all of the galaxy’s prisoners, twenty-five percent of them are on Thryst. That’s over sixty percent of all living beings on our planet. Soon the place will be nothing but a prison planet, the perfect, low-cost workforce. The people who run the place get fat off its exports. At twelve, I recognised that if I went to the authorities for help, I’d never leave the system. I didn’t want to be a slave like so many of my species.”

  With a deep frown, Seb sighed. “Wow. What a lot to have to deal with. And what a crappy planet.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I lived on the streets. On the first night something …” Sparks broke off and looked down at her lap. Her bottom lip stuck out as she drew a stuttered breath. When she finally looked back up, her purple eyes were glazed and she spoke through clenched teeth. “Let’s just say something happened, shall we? Something happened that will never happen to me again.”

  Nausea locked Seb’s stomach tight and he remained silent so Sparks could continue.

  “The second night I broke into an abandoned building and locked the place behind me. I managed to sleep and get out of there again before morning. After that day, I learned pretty fast how to break in and out of places. I would rob people, bust into abandoned buildings to sleep, and play tricks on some of the powerful people on Thryst just because I could.” With her computer glowing on the ground, she nodded down at it. “When I learned how to use that thing, I became unstoppable.”

  The little sociopath suddenly made sense to Seb. To survive on her own from such a young age, she had to be able to switch off her feelings.

  “So,” Sparks said, “it’s hard for me to trust anyone now, you know?”

  “That’s why you steal?”

  “I see beings as things I can take from, and that’s all. Although”—she looked up at Seb again, her large purple eyes glistening with tears—“you’re starting to show me another way. I’m sorry I robbed you, I really am.”

  A gentle nod, and Seb reached up to his dad’s necklace just to be sure she hadn’t taken it again. “It’s fine. Now I understand where you’re coming from, it’s a little easier to bear. We can draw a line through it and start again. Besides, you didn’t have to wait for me in the escape pod on The Black Hole, so I figure we’re more than even now.”

  After another bite of her steak, Sparks nodded. “Thank you for understanding.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “So, Sebastian, what about you?”

  “If you call me Sebastian again …” When Seb looked at Sparks’ crooked smile, the tension left his face and he laughed. She was not an easy one to stay angry with; he shook his head and adjusted how he sat so a different part of his body took its turn at bearing the brunt of the cold wind.

  “I have a brother,” Seb said. “He’s in prison.”

  “What for?”

  “He used to be a cop. Then he got into a fight and killed someone. It made it even worse that he was a cop, so they threw the book at him. Life without parole. I’ll never see him again.”

  “You don’t visit?”

  “He won’t let us. Said he doesn’t want to be reminded of the mistakes he’s made.”

  Sparks lowered her head. “That’s sad.”

  “I know, right?”

  “Doesn’t he know that you still love him?”

  “Well, the thing is, I’m not sure my dad did. He used to be a cop too and raised us like we were borderline criminals. Like we’d go over the edge at any point. Especially since Mum died. He wasn’t the best communicator in the world. We had a difficult relationship, so when my brother messed up, it kind of felt like he’d fulfilled my dad’s prophecy.”

  “You say ‘had’ when you talk about your dad. Is he not about now?”

  A shake of his head and Seb looked out into the darkness behind him. He studied the veins of red that ran through the rock. They looked like they stretched forever, and maybe tiredness affected his perception, but as he stared at them, he could have sworn they pulsed. “He died just a few years ago.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not sure I am. I did feel sad for a while, but if I’m honest, it felt like a relief to have him gone. When Mum died, it left a huge hole in our lives. The heart of the family seemed to perish with her. I was only ten at the time and I needed someone to put their arm around my shoulder and tell me—” The grief snuck up on Seb and stopped him in his tracks. He cleared his throat. “—that they loved me. Dad wasn’t that kind of guy, you know? So from a very young age, I always felt alone. Like I’d have to work it out myself. Dad came in with advice, well, Dad criticised me from time to time, but other than that, he didn’t have anything useful to offer. As sons, we both disappointed him. One of my regrets is that I never got to tell him how much he disappointed me as a father. The guy let me down. Although, I did tell him the wrong parent died when we had an argument once.”

  Sparks gasped. “Wow. Do you regret that?”

  “I wish I did. I’m not sure I care anymore.” When Seb looked up, tired from opening his heart to Sparks, he saw her crying freely. It shocked him how she’d managed to keep it from her tone. “I’m sorry. Too much information, right?”

  A shake of her head and Sparks spoke through her tears. “No, don’t be sorry. Thank you for telling me. I always wished one of my parents had survived. I wanted a parent to help me grieve, but hearing your story …” Sparks broke down again.

  Seb drew a deep breath, blinked away his tears, and lifted his head. When he looked back at Sparks, he said, “I think it’s about time I slept.”

  Sparks nodded.

  “Night, Sparks.”

  “Night, Seb.”

  Once Seb had lain down on the hard and cold ground, he curled up into the f
oetal position and stared at the fire’s burning embers. He drew a stuttered breath. If only he could see his mum one last time.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  By the time Seb woke up, the coldness from the glassy rock he’d slept on had permeated his entire being. Although he looked at the mouth of the cave and saw daylight, he shivered from how little warmth it brought with it.

  Gripped from head to toe with aches, from his fall and fights on board The Black Hole to his escape and bedding down on the hard ground of the cave, Seb remained still as he stared at the smouldering mound they’d used to cook the creature on yesterday. Unlike normal trees, the stuff they’d built the fire with the previous evening seemed to burn forever. The rich taste of the gamey beast lay as a fur on Seb’s tongue, and it seemed that no amount of dry swallows would rid his mouth of the funk.

  When he finally found the strength to sit up, a pain spasmed through his neck. One wrong move and he’d be locked in agony for days.

  As he slowly adjusted his position, cautious in how he let his body unwind an inch at a time, Seb looked for the carcass of the animal they’d eaten the previous night. Most of it would remain uncooked, but the night sure as hell remained cold enough that the meat would have stayed edible. Before anything, they should cook it up so they had something to take with them. Except …

  “Sparks,” Seb said.

  Although she fixed him with her large purple eyes, her facial expression existed as a snapshot. When Seb leaned close to her, he heard gentle snoring. Seb stared at the small creature for a moment, his jaw slightly loose as he watched the unique way she slept. Her glassy stare made her look dead. A chill snapped through him and he nudged her to banish the creepy vision and spoke a little louder. “Sparks.”

  The girl twitched before she blinked repeatedly. She stretched her arms and legs out as if to force her hands and feet as far away from one another as she possibly could. Her voice croaked when she said, “What is it?”