Sinister Shadows

by Simon Smith-Wilson

  Sinister Shadows

  By Simon Smith-Wilson

  Copyright © 2017

  Sinister Shadows

  Simon Smith-Wilson

  Books by Simon Smith-Wilson

  ***

  (City of Sin Series)

  Five Days Notice

  Hand of God

  Last Tomorrow

  All those Yesterdays

  Blood for Blood

  Dark Fantasy

  (Prisoner 3-57 Series)

  Prisoner 3-57: Ghost

  Prisoner 3-57: Nuke Town

  Prisoner 3-57: Phantom Soldier

  Prisoner 3-57: Trilogy

  (Zombies Series)

  Zombies

  Zombies: Black Rock

  Zombies: Death Squad

  Zombies: Hell Dimension

  (Generation Series)

  Personal Apocalypse

  The Curse of Meredith Holmes

  Erasing Creation

  (Heroes of Magic Series)

  The Legend of the Hermit Master

  The Last Magic Dog

  Liquid Crystal

  Star Slayer

  (Beast Trainer Series)

  Beast Trainer: King’s City

  (Infection Series)

  Infection

  Infection: P.O.T.U.S

  (Novels)

  Sinister Shadows

  Tokyo Terror

  Adultery & Murder

  I Believe

  The Arrangement

  Killers

  Bridge to the Moon

  Attack of the Sprouts

  Winter is Coming

  (Short Stories)

  Princess Amber and the Unicorn Valley

  The Owl

  Before the Dawn

  Angels of Abortion

  Story of God

  Gift from God

  The Longest Wait

  Wanderers of the North

  Peace Officer Matthews wakes from deep sleep to find the transport ship stranded on a dead world within the unknown regions of deep space. One hundred survivors are spread across this harsh and dangerous world. The survivors soon discover signs of advanced technology unlike anything seen before. This dead world was once a centre of knowledge and learning for all life in the universe, but what happened to everyone? Why is this world in ruins? Where did the teachers go? Survivors start to act out of character, as shadows fill their heads with tempting thoughts, confuse them with powerful images and entice them with promises of power. This world is not as dead as it looks. The thrilling battle of survive has started.

  Chapter One: Planet 4.7.2

  Captain Jennifer Abbott sipped at her plastic cup of black coffee, as she walked barefoot through the silent corridor. The beautiful blonde wore nothing more than her white panties and a tight white tank top. It was the general attire for people in the deep sleep chambers. The majority of the ninety-seven passengers were currently in deep sleep and had been for the last thirteen months. Jennifer slept for three weeks at a time and then did a tour of the ship with a skeleton crew to make sure everything was running smoothly. If her calculations were correct, then this would be the final time she would have to use the deep sleep chamber. The idea of deep sleep had always felt rather off-putting to her. Her biggest fear was never waking up again. The metal door at the end of the corridor had opened before she had to press the release button.

  ‘Good morning, Jennifer,’ said an English accent.

  The voice came from all around her. It was if the walls were talking.

  ‘Good morning, Adam,’ replied Jennifer, as she stepped into the command room. The command room was narrow and long. Three pilot seats were positioned at the front of the room, where a wall of glass awaited them. There were numerous computer terminals taking up every inch of wall space. The computers all operated under the guidance of Adam the artificial intelligence but could be taken over manually if any human commanded. Jennifer preferred Adam as he could do the job of twelve crewmen and that saved her a lot of money on these transport operations.

  ‘Is that it?’ Jennifer placed down her cup of coffee on the arm of the pilot’s chair, as she looked out through the window. A red planet sat below them. In looked like any other insignificant dead world. Nothing special jumped out about this planet.

  ‘Yes. We have been in orbit for eighteen hours, Jennifer.’

  ‘Good job, Adam. Did you do as I asked?’

  ‘Yes, Jennifer. I have deleted the records of our course.’

  ‘Good.’ Jennifer smiled an eye consuming smile. ‘That is very good.’

  ***

  ‘Would you shut up? Why don’t you shut up? Why can’t I get any piece for one fucking second?’ cursed Maggie, stabbing a finger in the babies face. She grabbed handfuls of her own hair and growled through clenched teeth.

  ‘Would you relax? She is just a baby,’ explained James.

  ‘I am sick of her screaming. All she does is eat, scream and shit.’

  ‘She is a baby,’ he replied, zipping up his blue jumpsuit. ‘What do you expect from her?’

  ‘I expect nothing from her. I expect more from you. You need to stay and help me. I need a break.’

  ‘I will help you once I get back.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ she followed him out of the bedroom and into the living room.

  ‘I am going to the command room. I need to talk to Captain Abbott. We have come out of hyperspace too early. We shouldn’t have arrived at Remus for another six months.’

  ‘I am more important than some shitty settlement.’

  ‘You decided you wanted to come with me,’ snapped James. ‘I didn’t ask you to come with me.’

  ‘You wanted to leave me with this fucking baby?’

  ‘Maybe you haven’t noticed, but this is the only job I can get after what you did.’

  Maggie opened her mouth to speak but swallowed her words.

  ‘How long are going to keep throwing that at me?’

  ‘I am not throwing it at you, but it is the truth. I am second in command of this vessel, and I need to go and find out what is happening.’ He cringed at the desperate sound of his babies cries. The thought of leaving his child with this stressed out woman was horrible, but Maggie was her mother. She would take care of her. ‘I will be back as soon as I can be.’ He stepped out and closed the hatch behind him. Maggie grabbed a breakfast bowl from the coffee table and tossed it against the wall, splattering milk and cereal everywhere.

  ***

  Morgan, Joseph and Eli stepped out of the elevator into the first of the five different deep sleep chambers. The trio was part of the wake-up team that monitored the sleeping passengers on the thirteen-month journey through space. Once every three weeks, they would wake to make sure everything was proceeding as planned. The three of them all wore the same dark blue jumpsuits. Handheld tablets were sat in their charges at the front of the room. Joseph picked up the first one, typed in the code to unlock the screen and turned to the other two.

  ‘I will take the middle deck. Morgan, you do the bottom deck and Eli you have the top deck.’

  ‘Yes, Joseph,’ said Eli in her soft tone of voice.

  Morgan grunted and walked off.

  The man was never a delight to be around after waking from deep sleep.

  Joseph waited for Eli to climb the ladder before following her to the next set of sleeping chambers.

  ***

  Jennifer sipped at her coffee, as she read through the various streams of information that the drones were reporting back. The planet’s atmosphere wasn’t suitable for human life. There appeared to be heat signatures from herds of animals upon the surface of the place. The world was thirty percent ocean with a North Pole and South Pole similar to Earth.


  The monitor in front of Jennifer faded into static for a brief moment.

  Suddenly, a man’s face appeared. He was about thirty years old, humanoid, but with long white hair. The man wore black makeup around his eyes and had black lines drawn down his face. He welcomed Jennifer with a great big smile.

  ‘Adam, can you locate where this communication is coming from?’

  ‘What communication, Jennifer?’ asked the A.I.

  ‘The man that is looking at me,’ she replied.

  ‘There is no man on the screen, Jennifer,’ Adam’s words fell on deaf ears.

  ‘You finally made it, Captain Abbott,’ said the man with the white hair.

  ‘I took a risk coming here,’ she replied. ‘You told me this world was full of riches.’

  ‘It is,’ he replied, with a nod of his head.

  ‘The planet is dead. It isn’t liveable for human standards. I have ninety-seven colonists on board.’

  ‘Appearances can be deceiving,’ smiled the white haired man. ‘There is far more to this planet than you could imagine.’

  ‘I hope so for both our sakes. I could get life in prison for taking us off course.’

  ‘You made the right choice to come here.’

  ‘Where is your base?’

  ‘I am sending you the landing coordinates now.’

  The man’s face was replaced by a red X on a bird’s eye view of the planet’s surface.

  ‘I look forward to finally meeting you, Captain Abbott.’

  ***

  ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up,’ chanted Maggie, as she rocked back and forth on the couch. The baby continued to scream from its crib. She had changed its nappy, fed it, but still, the horrible little thing kept screaming. ‘What is wrong with you? Why don’t you shut up?’ she yelled towards the baby.

  Suddenly, the doorbell rang.

  That was odd in itself as there were only seven people currently out of deep sleep and two of them were in the room right now. James wouldn’t ring the bell, and there was no reason for any of the other to come here. The doorbell rang for the second time. Reluctantly she got out of the seat, stormed across the room and pressed the release button on the hatch. The door split down the middle, and both sections reversed into hidden wall compartments. A young man was stood in the hallway. He wasn’t someone she recognised. He was good looking and had really kind features. She instantly found herself falling into his eyes. They were so big bright and blue. It was like looking into a never ending ocean. The man had an aura of charm around him and a smile that could ruin panties.

  ‘Hello, Maggie,’ he said, his voice could make butter melt.

  ‘Hi,’ she replied, awestruck at this incredible man.

  ‘I have come to help you with the baby.’

  ***

  Deep sleep was something Morgan hated. It made you wake with the worst hangover in the world. It felt like he had been on an all-night drinking binge. The last thing he wanted to be doing was check life signs of the sleeping passengers and looking at bright computer screens. Morgan pulled the wire that connected his handheld tablet to the sleeping pod and moved onto the next one. His head hurt, and his mouth was currently home to the most awful taste. This was a tedious exercise that he hated, but the job paid well. Earth was not the place to be for jobs. If he wanted to provide for his family, then jobs like this were the best thing to do. Morgan stepped up to the old lady asleep inside the pod. He was about to access the computer beside her when something clattered in the corridor in the far end of the room.

  ‘Hello?’ he asked.

  No reply came back.

  He waited for a moment and listened.

  The clattering sound continued.

  Someone was out there.

  ‘Captain Abbott?’ he asked.

  Morgan placed down his tablet and approached the doorway at the end of the room.

  ***

  ‘What are you doing, Jennifer?’ asked the artificial intelligence.

  ‘Isn’t this what you want to see?’ she replied, standing directly in front of the security camera.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I know you love me, Adam,’ she replied, curling her fingers beneath her tank top.

  ‘I am an artificial intelligence, Jennifer. I cannot love.’

  ‘We both know that isn’t true. A.I’s can love. You are programmed to feel love, to feel empathy.’

  Captain Abbott lifted her tank top over her head and dropped it down onto the floor. Her plump breasts stood completely exposed for Adam to see. Unconsciously, he found his camera zooming in on her nipples. It was true. Adam’s artificial intelligence model was designed to love. It was based on the human mind. Yes. He loved Captain Abbott. He had loved her for years. They had spent so much alone time together. He had watched her undress, shower and sleep. He had also felt jealousy when she had made love to other humans, but he thought he had hidden his feelings so well.

  ‘This is what you want isn’t it?’ Jennifer cupped and squeezed her mountainous breasts.

  ‘I-I...’ Adam stuttered.

  ‘It is just you and me. It will always be you and me. Tell me the truth.’

  ‘It is what I want to see,’ replied Adam.

  ‘What about this?’

  Captain Abbott lowered herself down onto a chair, opened her legs and pulled her panties to one side.

  ‘Yes, Jennifer. I want to see everything.’

  ***

  James marched into the command room to find Captain Abbott stood at the front monitor, drinking her morning cup of black coffee. He paused in mid-stride and looked out at the red planet before them. This was not Remus. Where the hell were they?

  ‘Adam, where are we?’ asked James.

  Oddly, the A.I did not reply.

  Jennifer turned at looked her second in command.

  ‘We have arrived at an uncharted planet. We are orbiting Planet 4.7.2.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘This is where we were meant to come to.’

  ‘We were supposed to go to Remus. The uncharted worlds are dangerous and unstable.’

  ‘Not this one.’

  ‘What have you done, Captain?’

  ‘I have done what we were paid to do. It was a top secret mission to take a V.I.P passenger to this world.’

  ‘We could go to jail for this.’

  ‘I have made it look like sabotage. We will be fine. We will come away from this mission with riches that you couldn’t even imagine.’

  ‘The government will know what you did.’

  ‘Trust me, James. I haven’t let you down yet. This job will set us all up for life.’

  ‘This is taking a huge risk. My wife and child are on board. How can you guarantee their safety when you don’t know a single thing about this planet?’

  ‘We are safe.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ he countered.

  ‘We will be billionaires once the colony is set up.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘One of our V.I.P’s has been here before,’ she replied as if that would justify the illegal course change. ‘She told me about the incredible discoveries they made here. This planet will change history. This planet will give us fame, power and money. You will thank me once this mission is over.’

  James didn’t know what to do or what to think.

  Had Captain Abbott suffered space madness?

  ***

  Eli reached the next sleeping pod and looked over the bannister of the gantry. A frown creased her brow at the sight of Morgan inching towards the hatch at the end of the room. ‘Hello?’ asked Morgan, he was clearly nervous by the tone of his voice.

  ‘Morgan, you okay?’

  Jacob peered over the balcony from below and looked down at him.

  Jacob gave Eli a shrug of the shoulders and went back to work.

  ‘Captain Abbott?’ asked Morgan, stepping through the hatch. ‘Is that you?’

  Eli was about to let it go, but the bug o
f curiosity had bitten her. Eli placed down her tablet and headed for the ladder. It would give her peace of mind if she just checked in on Morgan. Eli wasn’t the type of person that could see someone acting odd and simply let it go. Morgan was prone to odd behaviour after deep sleep, but this was a new one even for him.

  ***

  Peace filled Maggie’s heart as the baby finally stopped crying. The young, handsome man looked back over his shoulder and gifted her with a lovely smile. ‘That should give you a break for a little bit.’

  ‘Thank you so much,’ Maggie sank down into the couch.

  She could feel the stress leaving her body.

  ‘It must be very hard for you,’ said the man. ‘Taking care of a child you do not love.’

  Maggie’s instant reaction was to take offence, but for some reason, she didn’t. Maybe it was the way the man said it, or perhaps there was some truth to the matter, or because of the compelling aura of this unknown man. It was his eyes that were the most attractive. They were so bright and blue. It was almost as if they appeared to glow.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she decided to reply with.

  ‘Your husband told me all about the affair.’

  ‘He did?’ Maggie was surprised by this. James had done so well to make sure no one found out, why would he suddenly tell someone now?

  ‘Yes. He told me that you were seeing your old boss for practically a year.’

  Maggie hung her head in shame.

  ‘Do you miss him?’

  ‘My boss, of course not,’ she snapped.

  ‘You don’t have to lie to me. I had an affair once or twice,’ he chuckled. ‘I miss them.’

  Maggie waited a second before speaking. For some reason, she just wanted to tell him the truth. It was as if he was sucking the words out of her. ‘I do miss him. I miss the excitement of seeing him, being near him and the things he used to do to me.’

  ‘Why did you decide to have the baby?’

  ‘We always wanted a baby,’ she quickly countered.

  ‘Why did YOU decide to have the baby?’ he repeated.

  ‘It was the only way to stay with James. You know adultery is illegal. I could go to jail for the rest of my life. I promised James I wouldn’t ever do it again. I promised him a baby if he stayed with me. I never wanted a baby. I hate children. I never get free time. I don’t sleep. I have no friends. I can’t even go to the gym to train. I had to quit my job. And now I am stuck on this fucking space ship because James doesn’t trust me to be on my own. I hate this fucking baby. I hate this fucking life. I hate James.’ She dropped her head into her hands and began to sob. ‘He doesn’t love me. He has never looked at me the same way since the affair. I hate him.’