Easily the size of sheep, the bugs were larger than any Seb had seen. They rushed at him in a wave of fat and pulsating horror.
Another green bolt flew over Seb’s head and another bug exploded when the shot connected. It would seem it took more than blowing the heads and necks off the creatures to kill the parasites inside them. Maybe they settled in different parts of their host’s anatomy depending on what species they took over. Maybe these parasites had very little to do with the ones they’d seen in the mines. What they’d learned so far could be useless.
Seb returned to the windscreen and rubbed quicker than before, his right shoulder aching from the effort of trying to clear his view. It spread the oil around the glass surface but not a lot else. He redoubled his efforts. SA would keep him safe. He had to trust that.
Shots continued to fly over Seb’s head. Each one exploded closer behind him. When a shot hit the ground not far from his heels, the goo from the inside of the bug splattered his back with such force it thrust him against the tank.
Seb used his hands to brace against the windshield. When he pulled away, he saw the blood had cleared a little where he’d been pressing. The bug’s bodily fluids had cut through the greasy oil.
Seb cleared the screen with renewed vigour, biting down on his bottom lip while he rubbed as hard as he could.
When he’d wiped a spot large enough to see out of—the blasts continuing to fly over him—Seb looked behind again. He wished he hadn’t.
Spurred on by the sight, Seb ran away from the grubs around to the the back of the tank so he could re-enter it. He dived into the vessel, gasping for breath as he slapped the red button to close the tank’s door.
The door seemed to take forever. It slowly rose while SA continued to rip off shots from the cannon.
Sparks fitted with more vigour, the appearance of the grubs clearly riling her. Screaming, shaking, and foaming at the mouth, she fought against her restraints and the entire tank shook with her movement.
The whoosh of the fat bugs slithered over the rocky ground as they got closer to the tank, but just before they reached it, the door clicked shut. A smattering of fat bodies slammed against the now closed door and Sparks turned to watch it, something akin to hope on her face as if she expected them to break through and free her.
After a double-check to be sure the door remained locked, Seb returned to the driver’s seat. The reading on his screen showed his suit had 2h35m left. The three hours had seemed like a good amount of time when they’d landed. Now it seemed woefully inadequate.
Still able to see from the gap he’d wiped in the windscreen, Seb waited for a pause in SA’s cannon shots. He shouted up at her and Bruke, “Right, let’s get out of here.”
As Seb moved forward, the grubs returned to the front of the tank like he’d hoped they would. They threw themselves against the screen, their fat bodies hitting the glass and sliding down it.
Rather than hindering him, they actually helped wipe the screen clear, especially when SA shot one as it jumped towards the vehicle. Its explosion of fluids sprayed the screen and cut through the grease.
The pop of the grubs snapped through the tank when Seb ran them over. The hard tyres made light work of their fat bodies. Between him and SA, they could kill them all without having to go outside again.
As they picked up speed, the rush of adrenaline settled within Seb. His tired arms shook and his breathing eased. At least they were safe inside the tank. Although, when they got to where they were heading, no doubt they’d have to get out of it again.
But he couldn’t think about that. He’d deal with it when he got there.
Chapter 58
“It’s hard to see through the trees,” Bruke said as he appeared next to Seb, bobbing and weaving as if his strange motion would improve his vision.
Seb couldn’t see much either through the dense vegetation. The shock of lush green in front of them stood in stark contrast to everything they’d seen of Carstic so far. Not even the yellow tint of his visor could dull it. Vibrant, alive, and clearly damp like a rainforest. Despite having his suit on, he could almost feel the humidity of the place. “All of Carstic’s water must be concentrated in this small area.”
“Small?” Bruke said.
The forest loomed over them as they stood in front of it. It stretched away from them on both sides. So far Seb couldn’t see either edge. He shrugged. “Relatively small compared to the miles of arid rock surrounding it.”
Bruke looked over his shoulder at the locked-up tank behind them. “It’s a shame we have to leave our early warning system behind. Do you think she’ll be all right on her own?”
The question sent a snap of tension through Seb’s gut. It hadn’t been an easy decision to leave Sparks tied up in the tank. The reading on his suit’s visor said ‘2h30m’. Not an insignificant amount of time to leave her for. “I hope so,” he finally said and shared an anxious look with SA. “I hope so.”
Silence followed Seb’s words as the three of them stared into the forest again.
Seb finally said, “I mean, what other choice do we have? We’re doing this to help her, and we all need to be on hand to fight those things. She may give us an early warning, but she’ll also slow us down. Have you seen the size of the monsters we have to fight? What if there’s something even deadlier in there?”
It clearly didn’t do much to calm Bruke down. The stocky creature moved from side to side, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he held his gun with a tight grip.
The silence hung between them again and Seb looked back into the forest. On a sparse, dry, and barren planet, it stood as an oasis of life. The trees were taller than any he’d ever seen. Although, despite their vibrancy, they had to be the ugliest trees he’d seen too. Lumps littered their trunks like tumours. Thick bracken gathered at the base of them. Red and brilliant blue, it cluttered the ground. At some points it stood over six feet tall.
“The queen has to be in there somewhere,” Seb said. “I just hope she’s close by. We need to get this done for Sparks’ sake if nothing else.”
Seb lifted his semi-automatic blaster as he looked across at the other two. The timer on his screen had ticked down to ‘2h28m’. “Right, let’s do this. You both ready?”
Not that Seb needed to ask SA, who raised her blaster. A few seconds later, Bruke nodded and did the same. SA had only taken one of Sparks’ blasters this time, leaving the other one in the tank with her—for what good it would do.
“Okay.” Seb stepped forward into the lush green forest, pushing through the bracken to enter the place. Condensation formed on his visor for the briefest second before he heard a click in his helmet and the mist cleared. Thankfully their suits were smart enough to deal with the hostile environment. Hopefully they were too.
Chapter 59
No more than two steps into the forest and Seb stopped. He looked at SA and Bruke. “Did you hear that?”
Before Bruke could answer, the sound came again. Louder than before. The rip and pop of snapping branches and the whoosh of bracken as something raced through it. Something large. Something heading straight for them.
The thunder of footsteps shook through the soft ground. They were close, but because of the densely packed trees, Seb couldn’t see them yet.
A quickened pulse and shorter breaths, Seb saw the world in slow motion. He raised his blaster and looked down the barrel of it, doing his best to remain calm and keep himself steady.
A quick glance at SA and Bruke, and they both had their weapons ready to go too. They pointed them in the same direction as him.
By the time Seb saw the pink bobbing head, no more than about ten metres separated them. He ripped off a line of shots at the brute, but it did nothing to slow it down. Each green blast hit the monster’s thick hide. It looked like the beast didn’t even feel it as it continued to charge.
As hard as Seb focused, he couldn’t see the thing’s weak spot. A huge clumsy creature, it came towards him
like a train.
Both SA and Bruke unloaded on the beast too with the same result as Seb. Their guns wouldn’t get through its thick skin.
Already out of ideas, Seb winced as his gun shook in his hands. They were about to fall at the first hurdle.
Chapter 60
They had no other choice. Sure, the time in their radiation suits would run out, but the only thing that might save them now would be a retreat. Seb opened his mouth to shout the order, but then he saw it. The yellow tint to his visor must have dulled his gift in some way, but now the creature had got closer—too damn close—he saw the slightest shimmer above its blood-red eyes.
“Aim for its forehead,” Seb shouted at the others, “just above its eyes.”
It had got to within a few metres of them when SA took a shot at the beast. It sank deep into the spot Seb had identified. A puff of blue blood, the creature tripped, fell, and hit the ground so hard, it felt like the vibrations could topple the trees around them.
But they had no time to gather their thoughts. Where one of the beasts had fallen, three more appeared behind it. Seb, SA, and Bruke opened fire again.
The most accurate of the three, it still took SA several shots to drop the now closest monster, its bobbing head hard to hit as it charged forward.
Seb sent a barrage of blasts at the next one, the heat indicator on his gun already turning a deep orange.
Just a few metres left and probably no more shots, Seb hit the creature in the forehead. It tripped and fell like the other two had.
Although Bruke had adopted Seb’s scattershot method, he didn’t look anywhere near to taking down the last one.
The trumpeting roar of the creature shook the foliage around them. The beast ran straight at Bruke, about to take him down. Then SA hit it with a crack shot. Bruke flinched away from the spray of blood and then jumped aside to avoid being gathered up in its clumsy topple.
It took a few seconds for Seb to regain his senses over the pounding of his pulse, but as he listened, he couldn’t hear any more creatures. He ignored the buzz in his hands urging him to bend down and help the brutes. Maybe they were a passive race, taken over like the humans had been in the mines. Maybe they deserved saving, but he couldn’t fix the dead. If he could, Gurt would be beside them at that moment, and the creatures wouldn’t have got anywhere near to them.
After he’d cleared his throat in the hope it would also clear the memory of Gurt, Seb said, “At least they’re big. We may not be able to see them coming, but we can certainly hear them.”
“What if some of the smaller grubs are in here too?” Bruke said.
Before responding to him, Seb looked at SA and she looked back. “I can’t think about that,” he said. “We’ll deal with it if we have to.”
“But we won’t see them coming.”
“Let’s not create problems, yeah?” Seb said, and before Bruke could respond, he added, “We need to wait for the grubs to come out of these things and then we can push on.” The radiation reading on his suit had dropped to ‘2h25m’.
Chapter 61
Fortunately the grubs inside the large creatures were much easier to kill than the creatures themselves. Four of them, they were easily the size of a small farm animal each, just like the ones they’d met out in the desert. They slid from their hosts’ mouths and met a laser blast for their troubles. Each one exploded, their fat, liquid bodies popping like lanced boils.
By the time they were done, Seb and the other two were covered in slime from the vile creatures. Were it not for their radiation suits, the smell would undoubtedly be unbearable. Just the sight of the sludge as he wiped it from his view made him slightly nauseated.
Before they moved off again, Seb looked at the numbers on his visor. Hopefully they all had the same time. “Bruke, what’s your radiation reading?”
“Just over two hours and ten minutes,” Bruke said.
SA nodded with a slight shrug. She clearly had about that time too.
“Me too,” Seb said. “This is far from a master plan, but I reckon we should walk in a straight line for fifty-five minutes and hope we come across the queen in that time. If we don’t, we’ll have to turn around and come back. Unless either of you have a better plan?”
Both Bruke and SA shook their heads.
“Bruke, you lead the way,” Seb said.
At first, Bruke froze. Then he shook his head again. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. What if I can’t kill one of the creatures when they spring us. I don’t have the reactions of you and SA.”
“We’re right behind you,” Seb said. “If a creature springs you, it springs all of us.”
“I don’t want to do it.”
“Which is why you need to. Being brave isn’t about not being scared. Being brave is feeling the fear and doing it anyway. Come on, Bruke, you’re in the Shadow Order now, you need to lead once in a while.”
Bruke straightened his posture, gripped his weapon, and nodded at Seb.
Seb and SA shared a look as Bruke strode off into the deep brush, pushing the blue and red bracken aside to get through it.
SA looked back at Seb as if to question his decision. But he stood by it. Bruke needed to get braver.
The crack of splitting rock took Seb’s focus away from the ethereal bioluminescence of SA’s attention.
Where Bruke had been a second before, there now sat a huge hole in the ground.
Chapter 62
Seb and SA rushed through the vibrant bracken to the edge of the hole Bruke had fallen into. It dropped down about five metres at the most. Not far. At least, it wouldn’t have been far had Bruke not landed on a large cluster of rocks. He squirmed and twisted from where he’d clearly hurt himself.
What looked like a stream sprang from the rocks. Just a few metres farther along, it turned into a wide river. When Seb looked at SA and saw her still staring down into it, he said, “I suppose we’ve found where the water for this place comes from.”
When Bruke sat up, he reached across and grabbed his left arm with his right hand. A wince crushed his face as he stared up in their direction. Despite the distance separating them, Seb’s hands tingled with his desire to get down to him. To be fair to Bruke, he looked like he wanted to scream, but he held it in.
“We need to help him,” Seb said, sitting on the edge of the hole before slipping down to their friend.
Soundless as ever, SA landed next to Seb when he reached the rocks.
Seb kneeled down beside Bruke and picked up his arm.
“Ow,” Bruke said and pulled in a sharp breath through his clenched teeth. Tears glistened in his brown eyes, but he hadn’t cried yet.
The buzz in Seb’s hands nearly rendered them useless as he lifted his friend’s arm and cupped where he sensed the injury to be.
In a matter of seconds, the twisted grimace of pain left Bruke’s face and he stared in awe at Seb. He spoke as he exhaled relief. “Thank you.”
After a nod at his friend, Seb looked down the underground river. It stretched far away from them. A crack ran through the ground above it, lighting up the long waterway. Bruke must have stood on a particularly weak spot along the crack. Were it not for the long line of light, they wouldn’t have been able to see a thing.
“Where do you think it leads?” Bruke asked, voicing Seb’s thoughts. “To the queen, maybe?”
Before Seb could answer him, the water splashed up by his feet. Not a large splash, but enough to command his attention. The movement went against the natural flow of the river.
Easy to dismiss the anomaly, Seb then heard a loud splash a distance away from them. Too far away to see. When he glanced at the others and saw the looks on their faces, he knew they’d heard it too.
As one, they all stood up and raised their weapons. A second later, another loud splash sounded out closer than the one that had preceded it. “Get ready,” Seb said, his mouth drying, his pulse quickening. He lifted his rifle to his shoulder, closed one eye, and watched the water.
Chapter 63
The next loud splash introduced another pink creature. Larger than any they’d seen, it burst from the water like a giant seal. Seb’s world slipped into slow motion as he watched the huge beast fly towards him. He pulled the trigger on his gun and sent a pulse of blasts into its face.
The first few green bolts hit the brute, but they did nothing. Then one landed square in the centre of its forehead. It sank in and blew a cloud of blue blood out of the back of its skull.
The force of the blast sent the beast’s head backwards, its bum swinging around beneath it before it fell into the water, back first, with a loud splash.
Before the water had settled, another one burst from the river. Despite being the size of hippos, they leapt like salmon.
Bruke shot the next one. The same blue cloud of blood showed he’d killed the thing as it too fell back into the river with an almighty splash.
SA took down the third one. Unlike Bruke and Seb, she only needed one shot. A fourth, fifth, and sixth burst from the river and SA sent three more direct hits into them.
When the seventh and eighth creatures jumped out together, SA shot one and both Bruke and Seb went for the next one. They both missed, hitting its face with a barrage of blasts.
The beast continued to fly through the air at them, so Seb dropped his weapon, stepped forward, and met it with a heavy blow to its fat snout. A wet clop and he drove the creature back, its head flying away from them, spinning it over in a backwards somersault.
As it spun through the air, SA shot it in the forehead, turning the snapping brute limp. A loud splash met its collision with the river.
The blue of the creatures’ oily blood ran through the water, but the pink bodies were nowhere to be seen.
“It must be deep,” Seb said as he bent down to retrieve his gun. He aimed down at the river, waiting for more of them to come. More of them, or the grubs inside them.
The Shadow Order - Books 1 - 8 + 120 Seconds (The complete series): A Space Opera Page 75