Everything slowed down as Seb struggled to breathe. Wedged between the pallet and the ground, he shook his head to try to clear the sleep-induced daze from his mind.
Chaos rushed into the small hut as several Crimson foot soldiers entered the place. Two of them pinned Gurt to the ground, and one held Sparks in a headlock. Another one, who acted like the leader of the group, walked up to Phulp.
Smaller than the others, she had a crackle to her voice that dragged sharp fingernails down Seb’s spine. Despite being the smallest of the group, she stood in a way that spoke of a confidence in her strength. The little rat held herself like she could bite a windpipe out in an instant.
A quick scan around the small and dark space and Seb didn’t see SA anywhere. He couldn’t help but smile to himself.
Two more foot soldiers squeezed in. “How many foot soldiers can you fit in a mini?” Seb said and laughed.
The two newest arrivals stared at Seb, and the one on top of the pallet put more of his weight on it. Pain spread out from Seb’s hip as it pressed into the hard ground. They’d obviously come for the four newest arrivals to Solsans and wanted to make a show of it.
The small leader’s face remained hidden by the shadow of her hood, but Seb could feel her glare as she stared at him. For a second she remained perfectly still. She then tilted her head to one side. “Who are you?”
So maybe they weren’t there for Seb and his crew. Seb didn’t answer.
The small soldier seemed to lift by an inch as she pulled her chest back and stepped toward Seb. “I said—”
“I heard what you said, and I chose not to answer. So save your breath, yeah?” A quick glance at Sparks and Gurt, and he saw they remained restrained by the guards. SA still hadn’t appeared.
“We’re here by order of the Crimson Countess and I demand—”
Phulp interrupted her this time. “You’re not here on official business. You’re here because I owe you money and you’ve come to collect. Don’t pretend it’s anything other than that.”
Silence filled the small space again and the slight soldier turned back to Phulp.
Still fighting for breath beneath the weight of the heavy soldier and the pallet, Seb shifted to try to find a little more comfort.
A finger click from the lead soldier and the two newest arrivals walked over to Phulp and patted him down.
“So where’s my money?” she said, her voice coming out like electrical distortion. The sound scrambled Seb’s brain, and were he not incapacitated, then he might have knocked her out just to stop it.
A shake of his head and Phulp stared straight at the soldier. “I don’t have it.”
The two soldiers who’d searched him pulled away and one of them said, “He hasn’t got anything on him.” The pair searched the shelves and very quickly found his new stash of food.
After she’d looked at several of the offerings from the soldiers, the leader said, “You seem to have an awful lot of food for a slum dweller.”
The slightest shift in the darkest corner of the hut caught Seb’s attention. It had to be SA. How they hadn’t found her in the small space yet … Before Phulp could reply, Seb said, “I bought it all for him.”
The small leader turned to Seb again. “Well, you can pay his debts for him, then.”
“No.”
“No?”
“You heard me. No. They’re not my debts.”
Just as the small soldier stepped close to Seb, the bioluminescent glow of SA’s eyes opened in the corner of the hut. She crossed the cramped dwelling, and he saw the glint of one of her smaller blades just seconds before she drove it into the throat of the tiny soldier. A gargling noise and the leader fell. Before she’d hit the floor, SA threw a knife at the soldier on top of Seb’s pallet, driving him backwards and giving Seb the opportunity to get to his feet.
Seb’s world flipped into slow motion again and he saw the beast who’d pinned him grab for the knife in his chest, so he kicked him in the face with a wet shlop. It knocked him out cold.
SA took out the two soldiers who’d searched the place. She then went for the ones who had a hold of Gurt, one on each arm. Seb went to Sparks’ aid. Before the Crimson guards could react, he’d knocked out his one, and Sparks had killed hers. Several bodies lay on the floor, two of them still fighting against the life leaving them.
Three more soldiers ran into the hut and Gurt shot them one after the other. When the large Mandulu looked at the ones Seb had dealt with, he shook his head. “I’ll do your dirty work for you again, then, shall I?”
Although Seb opened his mouth to respond, Gurt had already shot the two soldiers dead.
“We can’t leave anyone alive on this mission,” Gurt said. “The last thing we need is one of them running to the Crimson Countess to let her know what’s coming.”
As much as Seb liked to argue with Gurt, he couldn’t at that moment. The stocky beast had a good point.
SA stood by the door and peered outside. “Any more?” Seb said.
The brilliant blue glow of her eyes moved from side to side as she shook her head.
In the moments that followed the eradication of the soldiers, the five of them all breathed heavily, but none of them spoke until Phulp finally said, “Oh dear.”
They all looked at him, but Sparks replied, “Oh dear?”
“Well, they may not have been here on official business, I do owe them money from a card game, but …”
“Spit it out,” Gurt demanded.
“They were still Crimson foot soldiers. Their deaths won’t go unnoticed.”
Gurt sniffed and wiped his forearm across his nose before he said, “It ain’t the first lot of these cloaked idiots we’ve killed.”
“It’s not?”
“No.”
“Oh dear,” Phulp said again as he gathered up some of his supplies that he’d bought from the shop. “Then we definitely need to get out of here. They’ll be looking for you.”
It took no more than ten minutes for the five of them to help Phulp pack up his things. “Right,” the small and pale creature said, “let’s go.”
Seb stood to one side to let all the others leave before him. Just before he followed on their heels, he knelt down next to the lead foot soldier and pulled her hood back. The sight hit him like a pit fighter and he nearly fell over backwards. A black and wrinkled face stared back at him. Two deep pits sat where she should have had eyes. She looked like she’d been burned from head to toe, yet she still walked. And she could still see.
“Seb,” Sparks called from outside the hut, “we’ve got to make a move.”
Seb shook from the shock of what he’d seen. He remained rooted to the spot for a few more seconds before he got to his feet on wobbly legs and walked out of the place.
Chapter 30
Phulp led the way through the dark and tight streets of the slum again. His awkward gait—an almost waddle in the way he tilted from side to side with each step—looked all the more comical for the creature’s disproportionately wide shoulders. Seb hadn’t seen it before that moment, but the small creature was square. Sparks walked behind him, her rucksack on her back and some of Phulp’s food in her hands. They all carried as much of Phulp’s goods as they could. After what had happened in his hut, he wouldn’t be returning there any time soon.
Gurt strode behind Sparks. Rounded shoulders and a heavy scowl, he kept his blasters hidden but seemed to be itching to draw them at any moment. The graceful SA walked with her chin held high while she scanned their environment. Ever alert, she padded through the dark, windy, and stinking streets like a deity.
Seb—as he had mostly done since they landed on Solsans—took up the rear. The slum seemed to be sleeping because they didn’t encounter many beings as they walked along the side of the path, the glisten of sewage in the full moon just inches away from their every step.
“Are you all right, Gurt?” Seb asked the large Mandulu.
Gurt spun around and glared at him. The br
ute ground his jaw, his horns moving up and down with the mashing movement. After he’d drawn a deep breath, he opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say a word, SA sprang to life. She slipped Phulp’s food beneath one arm, shoved Phulp, Sparks, and Gurt into a side alley, and then grabbed Seb before she dragged him into a dark recess on the opposite side to the others.
A shadowy alcove between two huts, they stood so close their bodies touched and Seb could feel the heat that came from her form. The sweet and floral smell he’d yearned for since they were last that close returned. As he listened to her slow breaths—ever calm—he relaxed in her presence.
A few seconds after SA had dragged Seb aside, a loud alarm went off in the slum. The heavy stomp of boots ran toward them down the path. About two dozen Crimson foot soldiers filed past them at a jog. Seb held his breath as he watched them, ready to drop Phulp’s food and fight should he need to.
Once they’d passed, SA stepped out into the street and Seb followed. The others came from out of the other side and Gurt looked at SA for a second before he dipped a nod at her. She nodded in return and they set off again after Phulp.
Now the alarm rang through the slum as a whining air-raid siren catcall, it made it harder to hear if someone approached.
Seb remained on edge as they walked through the streets. Many of the slum dwellers that had come out of their huts since the alarm had sounded watched the group walk past.
Slightly further back than the rest, Seb distanced himself enough so he could avoid the stares from everyone they passed. When they had their attention on the other four, what did one lone traveler matter?
Before they’d gone much farther, Phulp ducked into a hut that looked much like all of the others around them. The rest of the gang followed him in. Seb brought up the rear and chose to sit next to SA as they all made themselves as comfortable as they could be.
“This is my cousin’s hut,” Phulp said in a whisper once they’d all sat down.
“And he doesn’t mind us being here?” Sparks said.
“He’s dead, killed by his son in the square.”
The statement took Seb back to the images burned into his mind. Throats being cut, blood spraying everywhere, the reek of metal from so much spilled claret. “What was that about?” he asked Phulp.
Phulp’s eyebrows pinched in the middle, but he didn’t reply. He then drew a deep breath and stammered for a few seconds. The grief of reliving whatever ritual Seb and the others had witnessed seemed to trigger some kind of trauma buried deep within him.
Seb saw Gurt wince at Phulp’s discomfort and the large brute spoke. “So why don’t we keep going? Isn’t it a bit obvious for us to stay in the slum?”
“I’d say the exact opposite, actually,” Phulp said, apparent relief on his face at not having to relive his past pain. “As far as the foot soldiers are concerned, I’ve left my home. They won’t assume I have another one. So many people don’t even have their own place in here. They won’t search the huts; instead, they’ll go to the outskirts of the slum.”
“You sound like you know the Crimson soldiers pretty well,” Sparks said.
Phulp shrugged. “So we’re going to be here a while, until morning at least. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not in the mood for sleeping.” As he spoke, he opened a can of something, took what looked like a huge date from it, and passed the can around.
When the can got to Seb, he didn’t want to seem impolite, so he too took one of the pieces of dried fruit. He hated the taste of dates, but maybe this fruit would surprise him. The sweetness spread through his mouth when he bit into it and he salivated as he chewed. “Wow, what is this?”
“It’s one of the only fruits that grows here. It’s called a plipple. We export it to the galaxy because as far as I know, no one else has the conditions to farm them.”
Seb put the rest of the fruit in his mouth and grinned. “It tastes wonderful.”
“I don’t want to ask why you guys are here,” Phulp said, “that’s none of my business, and I’m probably safer not knowing. So tell me a bit about yourselves instead.”
Silence swept through the small space until Gurt finally said, “I’m a Mandulu. We’re a warrior race that grow up fighting.” Gurt pointed to his horns with one of his large fingers. “When we’re little, these horns grow all the way up the side of our face. If you fight when you’re young, they snap off quite easily during battle. If you wait until you get older, they have to be ground off, which is excruciating. I hated fighting as a kid, but I got used to it.”
“Why can’t you just leave your tusks to grow?” Seb asked.
“Horns, Seb.”
Seb smiled at Gurt.
“Because they eventually grow into our eyes and blind us. They have to be removed one way or another, and it’s often done just before we hit puberty. Not only is it more painful to have the elders remove them for you, but it’s also more shameful. If you don’t lose your tusks in a fight, then you haven’t fought enough.”
After a deep sigh, Gurt looked at the ground and Seb gasped. “You had to have yours cut off?”
Of all the times Gurt had looked at Seb with malice burning in his red glare, none compared to how he looked at him in that moment. He glared at him with such ferocity now, Seb nearly felt the heat of it. “I fought,” he said. “I fought a lot. And I won a lot. I was always under the impression that a pretty fighter is the one you should avoid.”
“I think so too,” Seb agreed. “Someone who’s been beaten up a lot suggests someone who can’t fight.”
“Right? But it isn’t like that in my culture. If I’ve not been beaten up enough, then I’m lazy and I deserve to have my horns ground off. After that day I focused on what I did best.” He pulled his jacket open and showed Seb his blasters.
The vulnerability in Gurt at that moment almost warmed Seb to him. Almost.
Although Seb had heard Sparks’ story of being orphaned at a young age and living on the streets, when she said, “… and my real name’s Louisa Grace,” he snorted a laugh.
The others in the hut turned to look at him and Seb’s face heated up. “Sorry, I just wasn’t expecting that.”
Gurt seemed to be reclaiming some of the power he clearly felt he’d lost when telling them about his childhood. He said, “You thought she was named Sparks from birth?”
“Um, I suppose I didn’t think about it.” Seb looked at his small friend. “I’m sorry, Louisa Grace.”
The tiny Thrystian scowled at him. “I prefer Sparks.”
Seb couldn’t hide his smile as he dipped a nod at her. “Right-o, LG.”
Sparks continued with her story, and once she’d finished, the room turned to Seb. The attention made him uncomfortable and his breathing grew shallow.
“Um …” he said. “I … um, I’ve not got much to say. I was a little shit when I was younger.”
“Weren’t we all?” Phulp said.
“Yeah, I suppose. I gave my parents hell—not that I cared what my dad thought—but my mum died young and never got to see the man I’ve become. I used to fight a lot. Unlike Gurt, my culture doesn’t like fighting, and those who did it would be outcast and excluded from many situations. I should have paid more attention at school, should have gotten smarter, but instead, I fought people. It was all I wanted to do. It took for my dad to die for me to try to do something else. Although it didn’t take long before I ended up in the fighting pits again. I have a brother who also likes to fight like I do. He went too far and killed someone. He’s now incarcerated on our planet. He’ll never come out again. I think my dad worried I would end up in the same situation, and maybe I would have if I hadn’t left the place. Have any of you been to Danu?”
When Seb looked up, the other four all stared at him and shook their heads.
“You don’t want to, it’s a horrible planet. Dusty all year round. Hot in the winter, burning in the summer. I felt permanently thirsty living there. And the sandstorms … I’m surprised I have any
skin left because of the constant sandblasting every time I went outside. So, yeah, nothing that exciting, but that’s me, really.”
The stories of their pasts seemed to lift Phulp, who grinned as he watched the group with his albino stare. “And you?” he asked SA.
Just before Seb could speak on her behalf, she drew a deep breath as if to say something. The hairs lifted on the back of Seb’s neck and gooseflesh ran along his arms. The entire planet seemed to stop to listen.
Although quiet, SA sang the most perfect note. Long and drawn out, Seb’s mouth hung loose as the gentle tone changed pitch. A celestial lullaby, it came in waves. Seb swallowed back the lump in his throat. When he looked at Sparks, he saw her cheeks dampened with tears and even Gurt seemed to be moved by the song.
The longer SA sang, the more her eyes glowed. The expression seemed to be her truth and Seb squinted in the face of her radiance.
SA finished, blinked away her tears, and dropped her gaze to the ground.
Phulp said it as well as anyone could have. He gasped and uttered just one syllable. “Wow.”
Chapter 31
Silence filled the hut, and it took Seb a few seconds to notice the chaos had returned outside. When SA sang, everything else had vanished. As he listened to the heavy footsteps of what sounded like more soldiers, he stared at the graceful woman. SA continued to stare at the ground with her eyes closed. When she finally looked up, she locked onto him, the blue glow of her orbs glossy with her tears. Until that moment, he felt like he’d had all the breath dragged from his body by her song. When SA met his gaze, his lungs expelled a little more. She had him in the palm of her hand. He’d never felt so vulnerable.
“This hut isn’t comfortable at all,” Gurt said, and Seb looked at the brute. Now he’d broken away from SA he suddenly felt self-conscious about the way he’d stared at her, his face on fire.
The Shadow Order - Books 1 - 8 + 120 Seconds (The complete series): A Space Opera Page 28