The Black Hole: Book One of the Shadow Order: A Space Opera

by Mike Robertson

  Seb stepped out into the open space in full view of the creatures and nodded in the direction of the cages. They’d seen him, so there seemed little point in being anything other than direct. With a clenched jaw, he feigned politeness. “Sorry to break up your trade, but I can’t let this happen.”

  As one, all eight of the creatures outside the cages raised their blasters and pointed them at Seb. Everything slipped into slow motion at that point. The elongated words of the creatures facing him rose in volume and dragged out as deep and indecipherable calls. With so many enemies around, the weak spots of each flashed through Seb’s mind, and he struggled to focus on which one to attack first.

  The pavements that ran alongside the river of waste were wider in the intersection, so Seb had room to dart to the side as the first stream of blaster fire came at him.

  The blasts moved in slow motion like everything else, but the sheer volume of them meant he avoided all but one. As he dodged to the side, a searing hot pain ran across his left ear and he caught the smell of his own cauterised flesh. Rich and sickly sweet, his ear screamed with the pain of it.

  For the briefest second, everything sped up, but Seb found his flow again and pulled his world back under control.

  While moving forward, Seb dodged and rolled to avoid another hit from one of the blasters. They’d tear through his flesh with ease, so he kept his wits and bobbed and weaved, making progress toward the slavers the entire time.

  When he got to the creature at the front of the pack—a wiry thing no taller than him and probably half his weight—Seb grabbed its arm and forced its elbow the wrong way with a deep crack.

  The creature screamed and dropped its blaster. With everything moving so slowly, Seb had time to catch the weapon as it fell and drove a punch across the creature’s chin. By the time the creature hit the ground, it had gone limp from the blow. Leaving it sprawled out on the cold concrete path, Seb jumped aside as another wave of blaster fire came his way.

  Because of the slow motion, Seb saw it before it happened and winced. Several of the blasts, aimed at where he had been, hit the being he’d just knocked down and ran straight through it. Although initially unconscious from Seb’s knockout punch, the criminal wouldn’t ever wake up again.

  With his stolen blaster raised, Seb returned fire. Although he might have done many things, he didn’t kill when he didn’t have to. He fired six shots in quick succession and scored four hits, each of them a leg wound to a different creature. As they fell one by one, Seb moved forward, always closing down the space between them and him.

  Another shot exploded the kneecap of a large monster on the other side of the brown river. With a loud scream, it reached for the wound and toppled forward into the sludge below.

  A heave rose in Seb’s throat as he listened to the muddy squelch from where the beast landed in the waste.

  The only two creatures that remained standing were the ones Seb had met outside their ship. Identical to his untrained eye, they stood side by side, their brown Mohawk fins wobbling as they shook their heads. The two amphibious creatures only lasted longer than the others because the cowards had made their way to the back of the pack. Seb ran at them.

  Two quick leg sweeps and he dropped the pair of them. With his attention on their noses, Seb whacked each one. Their eyes rolled back in their heads.

  One by one, Seb sparked each of the four remaining smugglers. So consumed with the agony of having their legs shot, they didn’t even look up as Seb moved down the line and delivered a knockout blow to each one in turn. Three of them needed a whack to the head, but one required a sharp chop to the neck to turn its lights out.

  The world around Seb returned to normal speed. Six unconscious bodies surrounded him. One more lay dead, and the other one had gone the way of the river of waste. Sure, it could come back and attack him, but it would have to overcome the raging torrent of excrement with a blown-out knee first.

  Seb walked over to the cages. The tiny creatures inside all shook as they held onto the bars and stared through them with wide eyes. One of the finned creatures had dropped a key when it fell; Seb picked it up and opened both cages.

  At first, the children pulled away from Seb and huddled at the back of their prisons. To watch them hurt his heart. It didn’t bear thinking about what had happened to the poor things to get them to this point. The least he could do was make sure they got back to their parents.

  Seb hunched down and held his hand out toward them. “You can come out now. You’re free.”

  The children still didn’t move.

  “I promise you, I won’t hurt you.”

  Still, the children said nothing and remained where they were.

  “Where are your parents?”

  One of the children, a small grey creature with a horn in the centre of its face, spoke up. “They’re up above. We were taken yesterday from them.” With wide eyes, it looked over at the traffickers. “I heard them say they would get us off Aloo before our parents found us.”

  “Okay,” Seb said, “so you know where to find them?”

  All of the children nodded this time.

  “If I deal with the bad creatures down here, can you find your way back?” Seb pointed to the tunnel he’d emerged from. “Just go that way and you’ll come to a ladder that leads to the surface. I’ll be following behind shortly, so I’ll make sure you made it out, okay?”

  The children came out of their cages one by one. None of them stood any taller than about two feet. A bridge ran over the river of sludge, which Seb pointed at. “Cross there, and then run as fast as you can.”

  When wide eyes and pursed lips stared up at him, Seb added, “Or you could wait for me and I’ll show you the way out.”

  What looked like the oldest of the group shook its head. “No, thank you. We’ve been down here too long. We’ll find our way out.” With a trembling hand, it reached out to Seb and squeezed the top of his arm. “Thank you for saving us.”

  As the children walked away, Seb looked at the downed beings. He then faced the damp ceiling above him. “I’m sure you understand, Dad. As an officer of the law, you would have done the same thing.” Impossible not to smile, Seb added, “Although, probably not as well as I just did it.”

  Before he could answer himself in his dad’s condemning voice, Seb walked over to the first of the fishy creatures, rifled through its pockets, and took everything out. He then dragged it over to the open cage and wedged it inside.

  ***

  By the time he’d put the last of the traffickers into the cages and locked both doors, Seb had to stop and wipe the perspiration from his brow. His left ear throbbed from where he’d been shot, and sweat ran into the wound.

  With a pile of belongings on the ground outside the cages, Seb sat down and rifled through them.

  One of the creatures came to while he did it. “Hey, what are you doing?”

  As Seb watched the horrible being squirm and twist in its cramped space, he smiled. “I’m deciding what’s worth taking and what I should throw in the sludge.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “I don’t care who you are. I’m taking what I want from here. And you know what? Most beings won’t care who you are either. Once you’ve rotted in that cage with the rest of your nasty pals, you’ll be no more than a memory. And you probably won’t even be that.”

  The cage rattled as the creature grabbed the barred door and shook it. The noise roused some of the others. Before long, all of them had come to and focused their fury on Seb.

  After he’d cleaned out anything worth taking, Seb stood up and used his foot to sweep the rest of their belongings into the river of crap. Despite their value on the black market—the only market Aloo had—Seb dropped the blasters in too. This generated the most vehement protests from the slavers in the cages.

  “Do you know how much a blaster costs?”

  “You’re paying me back for that, you know.”

  “Why would you throw them away
?”

  Yet none of their complaints provoked much in Seb; he turned his back on the creatures and walked away in the direction of the bridge the children had crossed.

  Halfway across, Seb held up the key that unlocked the cage for all of the creatures to see. “I’ll tell you what. To make it fair, I’m going to leave this key here.” He bent down and placed it on the bridge. “You seem like a resourceful bunch, so I’m sure you’ll work out how to get to it and free yourselves.”

  The creatures in the cage had finally gone quiet, but each of them levelled their own brand of rage at Seb.

  With a broad smile, Seb stood back up again and said, “You know what? You lot don’t deserve a chance. What would have been the chances for those poor bastards that you were about to ship off to who knows where?” With his toe touching the key on the walkway, Seb shifted his foot forward and knocked the key off the side into the sludge below. It landed with the gentlest plop, sat on top of the body of acrid gloop for a few seconds, and then disappeared into the thick goo as it churned with its movement.

  After a quick salute to the traffickers, Seb jogged back the way he’d come. The angry threats from those in the cages chased after him.

  Just before he rounded the bend out of sight, he looked over at the raging faces and threw them the bird. When he turned back around, a bright white light exploded across his vision. The punch turned his legs bandy, and as he fell to the ground, Seb’s world turned dark.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The pain in the back of Seb’s eyes when he opened them streaked through his eyeballs like inch-long metal splinters. The boom of a deep headache pulsed through his face and crushed his skull. The air around him stank of halitosis. The stench hung so heavy, it lay against his dry tongue as a funk that tasted like he’d licked old trainers. Smothered in complete darkness, it didn’t matter how many times he blinked, his vision wouldn’t clear.

  As Seb woke up more, he became aware of the rough fabric of the sack over his head that rubbed against his skin, clawing at the sores around his eyes, nose, and mouth. Heavy and coarse, it lay against his face, and with his hands cuffed behind his back, he could do nothing to lift it away.

  With a numb arse from the cold metal floor, Seb leaned against a wall equally as frigid. The very slight hum of a spaceship vibrated through the structure. It felt like they were travelling at high speed, but he couldn’t be sure.

  Despite the dryness that stretched through Seb’s throat, permeating every part of it and making it hard to speak, he said, “Hello?”

  At first, no one responded.

  “Hello?”

  Still nothing.

  Just before he said it a third time, a meek female voice replied, “Hello.”

  Seb’s heart raced and he shifted closer to the voice to hear her better. He spoke quickly. “Where am I?”

  “I … I don’t know. I can’t see anything. I was hoping you’d be able to tell me.”

  “I can’t see anything either. You have a sack over your head too?”

  “And my hands are tied.”

  No matter how many times Seb blinked, he couldn’t get rid of his headache. With his head tilted forward, he looked at the floor to let the sack hang away from his face. It did little for the reek, but eased the pressure of the heavy fabric and took the sting from his sores. “Where have you come from?”

  “Aloo.”

  “Me too. Someone jumped me and I woke up here. Is that what happened to you?”

  The female said, “Yep.”

  “Damn. I’m Seb, by the way.”

  The girl went quiet.

  “Hello? Did you hear me? I’m Seb.”

  “I heard you, Seb.”

  The haze that Seb had existed in because of the knockout blow suddenly lifted. How’d he not heard it before now? “Sparks?”

  The girl went quiet.

  “Is that you?” As Seb fought to hold the fury from his voice, he tried again, “Well, is it?”

  “I’m sorry, Seb, I shouldn’t have robbed you.”

  “You little rat.” Seb kicked in the direction of the girl. Instead of connecting with the villainous little snake, his shin caught something metal and a wave of hot nauseating pain rushed up his leg. With his teeth clenched, Seb screamed so loud it hurt, “Ow!”

  The sound of Sparks’ voice got farther away as she clearly backed away from him. “I said I’m sorry.”

  “Well, that’s all right then. You only robbed me blind, which forced me into the fighting pit and led me into this hot mess. I have no doubt that I’m here now because I fought publicly. I don’t know where I’m going or what’s planned for me, but I do know that if I hadn’t met you, I’d be getting by and working out a way to leave Aloo.”

  “At least that part of the plan came off,” Sparks said. “Although I’m not sure we’re going somewhere better than Aloo.”

  Even though she’d moved farther away, Seb still kicked in Sparks’ direction. This time, he caught nothing but fresh air. “You’re a damn parasite. Where are my things?”

  Sparks didn’t reply.

  “I said where are my things?”

  “I’m not going to talk to you while you’re shouting. If you speak to me nicely, then maybe we can have a conversation.”

  “Talk to you nicely? What the hell? You robbed me, you little snake. You’re lucky I don’t come over there and wring your skinny little neck.”

  “With cuffed hands?”

  “No one likes a smart-ass, Sparks. Or a thief for that matter. You were out of line robbing me like you did, especially after I bought you those drinks. I swear if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll break you after I get my things back from you.”

  “Look, Sebastian—”

  “No one calls me that.”

  “All right, Sebastian.”

  Seb’s rage raised his body temperature to the point where his face sweated beneath the sack. As he sat there, he took deep breaths to prevent his world from slipping into slow motion. His talent would serve no purpose at that moment.

  “Anyway,” Sparks continued, “as I was saying, I think we have more to worry about than an old piece of tin.”

  “It wasn’t tin.”

  “It was; I had it tested.”

  Silence.

  “Anyway, like I was saying, we have more to worry about than a necklace and some credits. Where are we? Where are we headed?”

  Nothing else mattered to Seb at that moment but revenge. Without another word, he shuffled close to Sparks as quietly as he could.

  “Sebastian? Are you still there?”

  Seb used her voice to guide him. When he felt like he’d gotten to within a metre or two, he yelled and launched himself in her direction like a fish leaping from water. Another bright light flashed, and the tonk of his head connecting with a hard wall echoed through his skull. Seb’s entire world rocked and he fell flat.

  As he lay on the floor, the sharp pain returned to his eyeballs. Seb clenched his jaw and spoke through gritted teeth. “You little—”

  Then everything else faded away as he passed out again.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Seb woke from his second knockout blow. His hands were now free of the cuffs, and the sack had been removed from his head. Although his headache endured, it had diminished somewhat and had shifted so it throbbed through his sinuses rather than his eyeballs. The sores around his eyes, nose, mouth, and even the burn on his ear buzzed. When he grabbed his forehead and felt the lump from headbutting whatever it was he’d headbutted, he winced at the sharp sting.

  Seb sat up and squinted against the bright light. The sores at the edges of his eyes stung from the involuntary action. When Seb put his feet down, the cold floor burned his bare soles. The short and sharp shock dragged him into the present moment. Before he could think about the disappearance of his shoes, he suddenly realised what his surroundings looked like. With an exhausted groan, he looked around his tiny cell. “What the …?”

  On the bot
tom bunk of two beds, Seb looked at the steel door that locked them in. It had a small window criss-crossed with bars. To one side sat a toilet without a seat or toilet paper. If he stood up, he’d be able to walk six paces from wall to wall and no more.

  When Seb tried to look up, what felt like a trapped nerve ran a blinding shock of electric pain down his neck and spine. Instead, he banged his fist against the underside of the bunk above him.

  A second later, the deep male voice of his cellmate called down, “What?”

  “Where am I?”

  “The Black Hole.”

  “Huh?”

  “The Black Hole.”

  The bed, although steel, groaned and shifted above Seb as his cellmate moved around. When he jumped down, the floor shook from the impact. “I wondered how long it would take you to come round.”

  A Mandulu, the big dumb creature stood in front of Seb and stared at him with half a smile on its stupid face. It had the same broken horns common with its species that protruded from its bottom jaw and up over its top lip. Just looking at the thing made Seb want to hit it. Whenever he came into contact with the idiot race, it always ended in a fight.

  For as much as Seb stared at the Mandulu, the Mandulu stared back at Seb. It breathed through its nose with deep puffs that rocked its huge frame. Large shoulders and massive biceps, the creature balled its fists and tilted its fat head to one side. “You got a problem, pal?”

  And he did have a problem. But ‘Yeah, I can’t stand your entire species’ didn’t seem to fit, so Seb didn’t voice it. Instead, he said, “So how do you know what this place is called?”

  “You’ve not heard of The Black Hole before?”

  “Should I have?”

  The Mandulu laughed a deep laugh. “It’s only the largest prison ship in the galaxy. You’re on a floating behemoth that—because it never docks—answers to no one. You have no rights on this ship. You must have done something pretty bad to end up here.”

  “What did you do?”

  The Mandulu’s red eyes narrowed as he looked at Seb.