Chapter 64
A few minutes had passed and no more of the pink creatures had jumped from the water. They might still have to deal with the grubs, but Seb lowered his gun all the same. He kept a hold of it should he need it, but at present, their way looked clear.
Seb turned to the other two, but before he spoke, he saw the shocked look on SA’s face through her visor. “What is it?” he said.
When SA tapped her screen where the radiation monitor displayed the remaining time, Seb looked at his own and gasped. “What the …? One hour left? What’s that about? We had over double that a minute ago.”
Suddenly the water looked very different. What Seb had assumed to be the effect of the creatures’ blood now looked like something else entirely. Like a blue glow of radiation. It must have been why the trees were covered in tumours. If they used poisoned water to keep themselves alive, of course they’d look that way.
A look at SA and Seb saw her staring down at the rushing water. She clearly thought the same as him, so he voiced it for both of them as he pointed down at the river. “The radiation on this planet’s coming from there.”
Chapter 65
“We’ve got to turn back,” Bruke said as he backed away from the river, turned around, and reached up the wall to climb out of there.
But Seb didn’t follow him. Instead, he said, “And turn our back on Sparks? We leave here now, and we’ve done nothing to help her. We might as well have got in the shuttle and blown up with Wilson and his family.”
Bruke’s face fell limp as he turned to look at Seb again. “You can’t say that!”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Seb said, “I’m sad about what happened to Wilson and the others, of course I am. I just wanted to highlight the futility of coming into this forest if we’re going to back out at the first sign of trouble.”
“Radiation poisoning’s more than trouble, Seb. If the radiation’s coming from the water, which it seems like it is, and we get caught down here, what good are we to Sparks then?”
“About as much good as we are now. We’ve got to try. Besides,” Seb said, “the time’s adjusted. It’s worked out how long we have down here. We still have an hour. That’s enough time to give it a go. We just need to keep an eye on the clock.”
For a second Bruke didn’t reply. Then he pointed down the river. “Who’s to say going down there’s the right thing to do anyway?”
“Did you see those creatures?”
“Of course I did.”
“They’re much better suited for water than land. This must be their natural habitat.”
“And?”
“They live down here. They belong down here. So if they’re down here, maybe the parasites have found them and holed up with them. Maybe the queen is down here too.”
“And if she’s not?”
“Then we get back to the tank and think of another plan.”
Bruke shook his head. “I don’t like it.”
“None of us like it, Bruke.” The timer on Seb’s screen had dropped to ‘55m’ already. To look at it quickened his pulse. “We haven’t got the time to discuss this. If you want to go back to the tank, you do that. I’ll meet you there when I’m done.”
Seb turned his back on Bruke and moved towards the river. The rock must have been wet, because when he stepped on it, his foot slipped. Although his gift served no purpose at that moment, panic sent his world into slow motion. Already falling, he had nothing to hold onto as he toppled towards the body of water. The water full of those huge creatures. The water potentially still crawling with the grubs inside of them and aglow with radiation.
A splash rang out as Seb broke the surface of the river. An adept swimmer, he didn’t panic. At least, he didn’t panic at first. Not until he started to sink.
Chapter 66
The first time Seb had tried to swim since he’d had his metal fists. They fell through the water like anchors, dragging him with them.
The stripe of light from the crack in the cave’s ceiling faded the farther Seb sank into the river. The faster he fell, the more rapid his pulse beat until it thrummed through his skull. What about the parasites in the creatures they’d just killed? They would come out of the corpses at some point and find him pinned to the riverbed. Hopefully they couldn’t swim.
When Seb looked down, he still couldn’t see the bottom of the river. How would he get back up again when he reached the dark bed? Maybe it went straight to the planet’s core.
And then he stopped. Almost like he’d reached the end of a bungee rope, something pulled beneath his armpits and halted his downward fall. But he didn’t bounce back up like a bungee. Instead, he hung there, his rescuer’s hands enough to halt his drop, but not enough to pull him back to the surface.
Seb turned and looked up into the bioluminescent gaze of SA. Where she usually appeared composed, he saw the struggle in her pinched eyes. She couldn’t drag him to the surface on her own.
When Seb kicked with her, it lifted them both a little closer to the shimmering crack of light above. Fortunately their suits were watertight. The press of the cold river might have pushed against him, but he remained dry and could still breathe.
They made slow progress and Seb’s legs burned from the effort of the swim, but they beat gravity’s pull as they edged closer to land. The shimmering strip of light above them grew brighter.
When they got close to breaking through, a hand reached down and grabbed the back of Seb’s collar.
After Bruke had dragged Seb up onto the riverbank, Seb fell on his back, gasping and sweating from the effort of getting out of there. He watched Bruke hold a hand out to SA, who didn’t need to take it as she climbed from the river on her own.
“Thank you,” Seb said to SA, breathless from the effort of the swim. SA, on the other hand, looked like she’d waited beside the river for the entire time. Were she not wet, he wouldn’t have been able to tell she’d exerted herself in any way.
A look from SA then down to Seb, Bruke said, “I suppose I have to go with you now, eh? I can’t leave you to walk along the river in case you fall in again. I didn’t realise you couldn’t swim.”
“I can swim,” Seb said.
Bruke looked at the water. When he turned back to Seb, he raised his eyebrows.
Seb held his hands up. “It’s the metal that made me sink. I didn’t realise just how heavy they were until now.”
“Come on,” Bruke said, rolling his eyes at Seb as if he were lying. He tapped his visor where the timer was. “We don’t have the time to stand around and chat.”
Chapter 67
How hadn’t he noticed it before then? In the commotion of sinking and being rescued, Seb had focused on his friends rather than his visor. Panic sat close to the surface since they’d landed on the damn planet, it now threatened to reach up and throttle him. “Uh, Bruke?” he said, the breath he’d only just got back running away from him again.
Bruke had walked away from them along a rocky ledge running alongside the toxic river. He stopped and turned to his friend.
“What time does your radiation reading say?”
A shift of Bruke’s eyes from where he looked at his reading. He then looked back at Seb. “Forty-five minutes.” He frowned. “Why?”
One final check and Seb’s heart kicked. “Mine doesn’t.”
“What does yours say?” Bruke’s familiar anxiety twisted through his face. “Please say it’s longer.”
“It says twenty-five. What about you, SA?”
SA pointed at Seb.
“Twenty-five too?”
She shrugged and held up her hands to show all her fingers.
“Thirty-five?”
She nodded.
“It must have been from going in the water,” Bruke said, his voice lifting in pitch, his words coming out faster than before. “I reckon we should give it five more minutes at the most and head out of here back to that tank. We can’t help Sparks if we’re dead from radiation poisoning.”
<
br /> As much as Seb didn’t want to agree with Bruke, he nodded. “You’re right. Let’s pick up the pace, then.”
Chapter 68
They moved at a fast march and Seb stared into the river. “I wonder what happened to the parasites in those monsters we killed?” His voice rang through the damp tunnel.
“I don’t know,” Bruke said, “but if they want to stay away, I’m okay with that. I’d rather not …” He stopped still.
The crack in the ceiling gave them enough light to guide their way, but Seb had to walk an extra few steps to realise exactly why his friend had halted. The stillness of the place forced him to speak in a whisper. “Good job we didn’t turn back.”
SA stepped up beside them, her sharp eyes scanning the vast open cave in front of them.
“You think this is it?” Bruke said, his voice also low.
They’d come to a massive underground lake. So large, Seb could only just see the other side of it despite the light coming in from above. He had to squint as he scanned the walls opposite them. When he saw it, he pointed across for Bruke and SA. “I’d say so.”
Although Bruke kept his voice low, his clear panic drove it a bit louder when he said, “That’s the queen?”
A grub the size of a cow huddled in a dark corner. Were it not waxy and white, they probably wouldn’t have seen it. It looked pregnant like the last one, and pulsated with a writhing mass of fat little grubs inside it. A chill twisted through Seb. “I reckon so.”
“But how will we cross the lake?”
Other than the sound of the river running into the larger body of water, Seb heard nothing else. So when the sharp static hiss of his radio went off before he could reply to Bruke, his stomach sank. The sound rang out like an explosion and echoed through the huge cave. Not anyone trying to get in contact with them, just a crackle from where Seb had left it on. The water might have been damn near glowing with radiation, but it clearly hadn’t killed the radio when it had been submerged in it.
Seb’s pulse trebled as the three of them stood at the edge of the lake in silence, frozen as they stared out at the grub on the other side.
“Maybe the grub is the only thing down here,” Bruke said.
Before Seb could respond, the crash of breaking water erupted in front of them and a massive pink creature leapt into the air. The largest of the beasts he’d seen so far, he stumbled backwards as his world returned to slow motion.
Chapter 69
Just one of the creatures—even one of the largest ones Seb had seen—would have been easy to deal with. But straight after the first one burst from the water, several more of the fat pink beasts followed it. All of them leapt into the air as if catapulted towards them.
Seb, SA, and Bruke stood on a large outcropping of rock. Large enough to give them the room to step back a pace as the first of the beasts landed in front of them, shaking the ground it slammed down on.
A trumpeting roar that blew Seb back a step, and the frenzied thing rushed forward.
The outcropping had seemed large until they hit the wall behind them.
Several more of the beasts followed the first in bellyflopping onto the piece of rock with wet slaps. Each one ran a hard shock through the soles of Seb’s feet.
Before the lead creature got any closer, they opened fire.
They looked good for it at first, taking down the large brute at the front with a shot to the head. Blue mist, it fell limp on the ground, but the others slid over the top of it as if it didn’t exist, pushing it back behind them into the toxic lake.
A wall of red eyes, a wave of trumpeting fury, and the sloshing of their fat bellies sliding over the wet rock. They could overwhelm them at any second.
But Seb, SA, and Bruke took the next wave down. The gun shook in Seb’s hands and he turned his focus to the ones behind the second wave. They burst from the water as if they would never end. More than the previous rush. Maybe too many.
Splash after splash of water broke the surface behind the front line of creatures. They took several down and twice the amount replaced them. They all slammed onto the hard rock, sending an earthquake through the ground.
Maybe Seb heard the crack of the rock splitting beneath his feet and maybe he didn’t. However, if it sheared off, it would drag them into the water and they wouldn’t come out again. He would sink like a rock and the other two didn’t have the beating of the monsters in the lake. On land, they had the slimmest of chances. In the water, they had none. Not that they currently had any other options but to stand there and fight at that moment.
Seb’s arms ached to hold his gun in place. It bucked and shook in his grip and turned the air green with laser fire. Many of his shots did little but hit the hard skin of the beasts in front of them. Every once in a while, he hit their weak spot and dropped them.
The clunk of Seb’s gun jammed in his hands. When he looked down and saw the red light glowing from where it had overheated, his shoulders slumped.
A second later, Bruke’s gun stopped too.
The pair looked at one another while SA continued to nail the beasts. Every one of her shots scored a direct hit, but even with her accuracy she couldn’t do it all on her own.
The splashing from the creatures continued to burst through the cave as they came forward in another rush. The thuds of the beasts continued to land on the rock. The crack of the rock beneath their feet continued to groan like thawing ice. Seb definitely hadn’t imagined it.
Where Seb had seen fear in Bruke’s wide brown eyes, they now narrowed. After hurling his gun at the closest beast, Bruke lost his head.
A roar to rival the one their enemy directed at them, Bruke turned into the creature Seb had seen when they’d fought the Crimson soldiers. He went supersonic, his arms moving in a chaotic swirl as he took the fight to their enemy.
As with his blaster fire, what Bruke lacked in accuracy, he made up for with frequency. Enough punches and kicks that some of them inevitably had to land. Several creatures fell beneath Bruke’s heavy attack. SA took the others down. It forced the wave back.
While the other two fought their enemy, Seb looked down at the reading on his visor. It said ‘20m’.
They didn’t have time to discuss anything now. Seb took SA’s gun from her. At first, she held onto it and pulled it back. A dark glare, and for a moment, she looked like she could turn it on him.
“Trust me,” Seb said. “Please?”
SA relaxed and handed the gun over.
The blasters were much more resilient than the automatic rifles, but when Seb looked down at the gauge on the top, it had a burnt orange glow to it. He looked at SA again. “How many shots do you think it has left?”
She held up one finger.
“Really?”
She nodded.
“Great!”
Bruke continued to drive the monsters back on his own. Those at the rear of the pack were forced to return to the lake.
Although Bruke had the advantage, when Seb looked across the large body of water, he saw the blue surface had turned pink with the sheer weight of beasts just beneath it. It didn’t matter how well Bruke fought, they’d be overwhelmed soon enough.
One shot. Seb raised SA’s blaster and pointed it across the cave. One shot to decide whether they lived or died. Whether Sparks lived or died.
A deep breath to settle his overworked heart and Seb closed one eye. It didn’t matter how long he stared at the queen for, the shot wouldn’t feel any easier. Despite SA having the best aim, he had to take the chance. Almost impossible odds, he couldn’t put that on her shoulders.
Seb pulled the trigger, the gun kicking in his grip as he loosed a green bolt from it.
As the laser shot flew through the air, Seb tested the gun by squeezing its trigger again. SA had been correct. No shots left. He dropped the weapon on the ground. By the time it had cooled down, their fate would have been sealed.
Most of Seb’s attention followed the green shot across the cave. However, he also
noticed Bruke being forced back as the pink creatures started to gain an advantage. Not that the creatures mattered anymore. The shot would either be true or it wouldn’t. That would decide everything.
And it did decide everything.
It missed.
Chapter 70
Seb’s entire world crumbled around him as he watched splinters of rock burst away from where he’d shot. He’d missed by a good few metres. He nearly vomited. They were done for. Stuck in a cave, surrounded by hideous walrus-like creatures, and about to die in one of many ways. Drowning, mauling, radiation poisoning—what did it matter? They were screwed.
A look at SA and Seb saw her face limp behind her visor. He’d let everyone down, and as much as he would have liked to fast-forward to their end, he’d have to live every painful beat of it, his world still dragging along in slow motion.
A pop and crack ran through the rock platform. Seb jumped in anticipation of the ledge giving way. He looked down as if simply staring at the rock outcropping would somehow make everything better. Much more weight on it and they’d be in the toxic river. Minutes of radiation protection left and he’d see it out at the bottom of the water. If the beasts even allowed him that. Maybe they’d tear him to pieces before he hit the bottom. Or worse, they’d rip a leak in his suit and he would slowly drown, doing a strange handstand on the bed of the lake as his metal fists pinned him to the ground.
Bruke continued to fight against the creatures. He’d gained the advantage again, driving them back once more as the fat-bodied brutes slipped into the water. SA moved next to him. Were she able to open her suit, Seb had no doubt that she would have battled with her knives. But the radiation would get to her, so she used her fists, matching Bruke blow for blow.
The Shadow Order - Books 1 - 8 + 120 Seconds (The complete series): A Space Opera Page 76