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

by Mike Robertson

  After the whack, Sparks cowered away from Seb, and Seb looked up at the chute he’d fallen down. The chimney ran so high he couldn’t see the top of it for darkness. The action of looking up wedged spears into the base of his neck, and although Seb shifted from side to side to try to ease the pain, it gave him little relief. With the tiny computer still in his grip, he stood up from the cold metal floor and took several breaths to ride out the agony from the fall. He looked at Sparks. “Where are we?”

  “The control room,” she said, her bottom lip poked out as a petulant child would. “Now give me my computer back.”

  Wires came from everywhere and ran along the walls. They all gathered together in the middle and ran into what looked like an electronic brain. A multicoloured mess of flex in the base of it like a spinal cord, the huge brain hung suspended in the middle of the room.

  “The entire ship is controlled from here. If we can mess with this, we can lower the ship’s defences long enough to get out.”

  “We? So we’re a team now, are we?”

  With an outstretched hand, her fingers the length of Seb’s forearms, Sparks smiled, her purple eyes aglow in the dark. “We are if you give me my computer back.”

  “I need something from you first.”

  A limp jaw and vacant eyes met Seb’s request.

  “My dad’s necklace.”

  “I don’t have it.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “What?”

  “I said that’s a shame. Without my dad’s necklace, I’m afraid you ain’t getting your computer.”

  “You’d jeopardise everything to get your dad’s necklace back?”

  “Yep.”

  “So we’re going to remain prisoners on this ship for the sake of a piece of tin.”

  “It ain’t a piece of tin, and you and I both know it.”

  “I don’t have it.”

  Seb kept a hold of Sparks’ computer. “I suppose we just need to wait here until we get caught, then.”

  After she’d looked over her shoulder at the door and back to Seb several times, Sparks tutted. “Fine.” She pulled the necklace from her pocket. “Here, have it.” She threw it at Seb.

  Seb caught it. “Useless piece of tin, eh?”

  Without another word, Sparks walked over to him and snatched her computer away.

  As the small girl tapped against the screen of her computer, Seb got to his feet and walked around the cramped room. Other than the electronic brain in the centre, the place had walls lined with computers and servers. “How do you know we won’t crash if you shut everything down?”

  Without looking up, her long fingers moving so fast over the screen they were a blur, Sparks shrugged. “I don’t.”

  Seb stared at her to see if she meant it. A heavy frown and no hint of mirth suggested she did. “Great.”

  It seemed awfully convenient that Sparks had been in the control room when he fell into it. But just before Seb could ask her how she got there, a loud thunk ran through the entire ship. The poor lighting in the room got even worse as the emergency lights switched on and cast the place in a red hue.

  A loud alarm pulsed through the ship and the door to the control room slid open.

  With wide eyes, Sparks looked at Seb while she tucked her computer into her jacket and said, “This is it. We need to go now!”

  Chapter Thirty

  The siren pulsed as a wet throb that rang so loud it both hurt Seb’s ears and upset his balance. It didn’t seem to bother Sparks, who sprinted from the control room out into the corridor.

  With the electronics blown, the ship had fallen into a safe mode that cast the entire vessel in a deep red glow. The warm light pulsed in time with the alarm. Not quite a strobe light, the dimming and brightening of the red glare hurt Seb’s eyes and sent his head into a spin. Every time it darkened, the rapid Sparks vanished from his line of sight. At any moment, Seb expected for the ship to return from darkness and for Sparks to be gone.

  Fast for her size, Sparks sped through the corridors. Seb fought to keep up and ran with all he had, his tight lungs fit to burst. Every time the ship went dark, he winced in anticipation of clattering into something. The wrong kind of fall and he wouldn’t be getting off The Black Hole.

  The prisoners seemed to realise at the same time that their cells couldn’t contain them. Doors opened all around Seb, and the corridors became swamped with all manner of beings. They obscured Seb’s view of Sparks even more. When he caught sight of her, he saw her small frame weaving through the chaos without missing a step as if guided by an innate sense.

  Up ahead, Seb saw two prisoners of the same species. Huge red things, they had massive snapping jaws and were both holding up a prison guard. One had the guard’s head and shoulders and one had the guard’s legs. Not that Seb liked the prison guards in this place, but the way the prisoners looked at the guard, and the guard’s helpless struggle, sank cold dread through Seb’s guts. Sparks ran through the low archway created by the horizontal guard.

  The polished metal floor shone and reflected the red light. Seb dove onto his front and used the low-friction mirrored surface to slide beneath the guard too.

  Once back on his feet, a thick and wet ripping sound squelched through the corridor. When Seb looked back, he saw the guard had been torn in two, his insides hanging down and dripping in blood. The corridor around them glistened with the guard’s fluids. Thank God he’d gotten through before that happened.

  With Sparks at the edge of where he could see, Seb fought against his tired body and pushed on, shoving the prisoners aside as he barged through after the little rat. If she ran away without helping him …

  As the light grew in brightness again, Seb saw Sparks had stopped in front of a door. The glow of her computer screen lit up her face as she stared down at it. When Seb closed the distance, he nearly laughed. In any other situation, he would have.

  Once he arrived at the door, he grabbed the handle, which sat too high for Sparks to reach, and opened the door for her. Although she didn’t say anything, Sparks looked up at Seb, an irked expression on her small face.

  The door led to what looked like a maintenance shaft. Dark like the rest of the ship, it too pulsed with the red light that made everything so difficult to see. Stairs led both up and down.

  With Sparks still locked on her computer screen, Seb looked at the carnage in the corridor behind them before he closed the door on more prisoners taking over the prison. Just before he shut it, a guard screamed as he fell to a barrage of blows. “Which way, Sparks?”

  After a couple more seconds of staring at her screen, the diminutive Sparks lifted her head and pointed down the stairs. “That way.”

  ***

  Sparks took off again, leaving Seb in her wake. She ran down three flights of stairs before she stopped beside another door with a high handle.

  When Seb caught up, he gasped for breath as the small woman pointed at it. “We need to go through there. There’s escape pods on this level and the next one down. If we can activate one, we can get out of here.”

  The girl hadn’t broken a sweat. Exhausted from trying to keep up with her, Seb had stars in his vision from his ragged breaths. After one final gasp, he reached the high door handle and pushed the door open.

  The collection of guards on the other side turned as one. A quick count and Seb saw six of them, and they all stared at him and Sparks. “Damn it,” Seb said as he pulled the door back to hide behind it. He managed to close it in time for it to act as a shield against the first rush of blaster fire.

  When Seb looked around, he saw Sparks had taken off again and heard her light footsteps tap the metal stairs as she ran down to the next floor. Seb followed her down.

  This time the door had a chair next to it, which Sparks used to reach the handle. She shoved the door open and ran through. Seb followed after her.

  The sound of Seb’s clumsy footsteps echoed in the narrow metal corridor, and Sparks opened up another lead on him.
They’d obviously found a part of the ship with no prisoners because the tight tunnel stood empty. Good job. The girl already had the beating of him; he didn’t need any more obstructions.

  Clearly not at a full sprint, yet faster than Seb, Sparks rushed ahead and stared at her computer as she ran. With the alarm as a disorientating throb through his skull, Seb chased after her. The last person on the planet he would have trusted before now, Seb had put his life in the small creature’s large hands.

  As they rounded a bend, they came to three hatches for escape pods. Sparks arrived at one of them and pulled on the door. When she looked back at Seb, her wide purple eyes spread wider. “It’s locked.”

  “Well, open it, then,” Seb said.

  With her attention on her computer, she shook her head as her fingers danced across the screen. “I can’t! I need to hack it.”

  The stampede of what must have been the guards they’d left on the floor above them beat a tattoo against the steel floor of the corridor as they closed in on the pair.

  Seb looked behind but couldn’t see them for the kink in the passageway. “You need to hurry up.”

  “You’re going to need to buy me some time, Seb.”

  A deep breath did little for Seb’s tight lungs, but he had no choice. When he turned around to go back to the guards, he shook his head. “I knew this was a bad idea.”

  Before he rounded the bend, Seb did all he could to level himself out. Six guards, he’d have to bring his A-game to beat them. One final breath and Seb stepped around the corner.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Six creatures faced him—all of them ugly, all of them a different species, and all of them larger than Seb. Even the smallest of the pack stood a good head and shoulders above him. As one, they raised their blasters and pointed them at him.

  The world around Seb dropped into slow motion and he ran at them.

  The red lasers from the blasters flew, each one travelling much quicker than the fists he’d grown used to fighting. With the pain of the last blaster fire still in his left ear, Seb dodged the first wave, moving like a flamenco dancer with his contorted twists and turns. At least, that was how it felt. He probably looked more like a geriatric one step away from falling flat on his face.

  When Seb got close to the first guard, he jumped at a wall, kicked off from it, and used it to propel himself forward. He led with a clenched fist. Like most creatures, the guard had a weak spot on its chin. When Seb connected with the scaled and leathered skin of the monster, its head snapped to the side with a wet slap and its eyes rolled back.

  As it fell, Seb moved onto the second creature. With his focus on the second guard’s chest, Seb jumped again and drove a kick into where her heart was. The impact forced the wind from her with an oomph. The stench of her breath nearly broke Seb’s focus. She smelled like she ate her own waste. The guard flew backwards into the others before she collapsed to the ground.

  As the others found their bearings, Seb jumped over the second downed guard and drove two quick jabs to the faces of the next two. They both folded like wet paper.

  Seb caught their blasters, one in each hand, and let off two shots at the remaining guards. Each shot scored a hit. Like in the sewers, he hit them in the legs. Enough to halt their progress, but not enough to kill them.

  The pair rolled in agony on the floor as Seb closed in on them. He punched the first one in the temple and it instantly went limp.

  As Seb stood over the last of the six, he looked down at it. A Mandulu, it stared up at Seb. The speed of Seb’s world returned to normal and he said, “Welcome to nature’s anaesthetic.” He kicked the dumb being square in the chin. A wet crack and the thing turned floppy like all of the others had. With his jaw clenched, Seb stared down at the monster, resisting the urge to hit it again. They needed to get out of there regardless of his desire to inflict pain on the dumb beast.

  As he picked his way back through the six downed guards, Seb fought for breath. Each one lay unconscious on the floor, breathing but not moving. A quick glance to check none would get up again and Seb ran back toward Sparks.

  When he came around the bend, he heard the whoosh of boosters. A glance out of one of the porthole windows and he saw a tiny pod shoot from the ship. His entire being sank. Sparks had left him behind.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  With his fists balled so tightly he dug his nails into his palms, Seb clenched his jaw to keep himself from shouting. It would serve no purpose for him to rage. Now he’d been left on the ship, he simply needed to find somewhere to hide. With the escape pod turning into a dot as it shot away from The Black Hole, Seb shook his head and breathed heavily through his nose. Of course the rat would screw him over at some point. Seb had been an idiot to trust her. Sure, he had his dad’s necklace back, but a fat lot of good that would do when he got caught and locked up again. They’d probably process him sooner than thirty days now just to make an example of him.

  On his way down the corridor, Seb broke into a jog. The escape pod that had been fired had a red light above its closed door. However, the light above the one next to it remained green and the door hung open. Hope lifted in Seb’s chest. He could still get off The Black Hole. Maybe Sparks wanted to go her own way, but at least she’d given him an escape too.

  When he arrived at the unused pod, slightly out of breath from the run, he peered into the tiny vessel to see the wide purple eyes and wonky grin of Sparks staring straight back at him.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “I … I thought you’d—”

  “Left you? No, not yet at least. Sure, you’re annoying, but not so annoying that I’d leave you in the lurch.”

  As Seb stepped into the small pod, he rolled his eyes at her comment.

  “Did you take out all of the guards?” Sparks asked.

  “Yep. They won’t be getting up again anytime soon.”

  Sparks made room for Seb to sit down and pressed a series of buttons. The door hissed as it closed on them. Not quite crushed—another body and they would have been for sure—Seb and Sparks sat hunched up in the small space.

  “So why did you send out an empty escape pod?”

  “If anyone’s watching for escapees, I wanted to give them something to focus their attention on. I thought it would give us the best chance of getting away unnoticed. If we’d had more time, I would have sent them all out. It’s much easier to hide when you’re one of many.”

  The tiny pod shook, and Seb laughed as he sat back in his seat. As much as he wanted to knock the little rat out, she saw angles Seb hadn’t even considered. Something still struck Seb as odd. This whole meeting seemed far too convenient. “Sparks, how did you get out of your cell?”

  Numbers counted down on the small screen in front of Sparks, who didn’t seem to hear Seb as she focused on them.

  3 …

  2 …

  1.

  The pod wobbled and rattled, forcing Seb to reach out and steady himself by grabbing onto a handle inside the tight space. A few seconds later and it shook so much, it rocked Seb’s vision. Such a tight grip, it hurt Seb’s knuckles as he held on with all he had. The pod then punched away from the ship and spun off into space.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Despite the parachute to slow them down, the escape pod hurtled toward the ground of the planet they’d set their sights on like it would bore straight through to the core. Sparks said she didn’t know anything about the place; she just picked one of the several closest planets she could find to get them away from The Black Hole. They’d not managed to say much else to one another as the pod whooshed along.

  Seconds before they crashed down, Seb locked a tighter grip on the handrails inside the pod. His stomach lifted into his throat, and his palms ran damp with sweat.

  They collided with the ground with an almighty boom. The shake ran through the entire pod and threw Seb across it. He crashed into the opposite wall and his vision tilted like he’d pass out.

  As the pod
skimmed over the ground like a flat stone over a lake, each jolt, though diminished from the one before it, tossed Seb around the pod. Sparks, who gripped onto the railing like Seb had tried to, somehow managed to remain in the same place the entire time.

  Once the pod finally rolled to a halt, Seb sighed and fell back, his entire body aching from the beating he’d just taken inside the small vessel.

  Unable to move, he watched Sparks jump to her feet. “How the hell did you manage to stay in the same spot?”

  “We may be small,” Sparks said as she kicked the door away from the pod. The heavy metal cover hit the solid ground with a clang. “But we know how to ride out a crash landing. As a species, we make a habit of quick getaways.”

  A wind—so bitter it gave Seb a sinus headache—rushed into the escape pod when Sparks jumped out of the doorway. The aggressive cold rush of air kick-started Seb to life, and he too jumped up and clambered out of the small spherical vessel.

  Sparks had already taken shelter from the wind behind a rock, so Seb joined her. The ground they stood on, although dark, could also be seen through; it looked almost like black glass. The chill in the air ran straight to Seb’s bones. As he stood out of the wind, he shivered and looked down. Veins of deep red ran through the rocks. “Is that—?”

  “Lava?” Sparks called back at him, shouting over the wind.

  “Yeah.”

  “It sure looks like it, doesn’t it?”

  “But it’s so cold.”

  “Maybe the planet’s external temperature stops it getting any higher than this? The cold wind must be what makes this planet habitable.”

  A stamp on the ground showed Seb just how solid the surface was. “How curious.”

  “So what do we do now?” Sparks said.