by J. J. Green
The pilot and other officers who remained in their seats were hanging precariously to one side. The pilot was trying to fasten her safety harness one-handed. Someone fell and landed heavily on a dead Shadow.
Jas reached up with her left hand to grab the console leg and hold on more securely. Her right hand was already slipping. She missed, grunted, and reached again. But the ship was vibrating so strongly, her fingertips couldn’t get a grip. Her shoulder felt like it was being pulled from its socket. For the third time, she swung her left arm up and attempted to grasp the leg. For the third time, she didn’t make it.
Her other hand slowly opened as she lost her grip. She was holding on with only her fingers, then they too began to slip. Jas looked down, wondering if she could survive the fall if she landed well. The last of her strength left her fingers, and she dropped like a stone.
When she was halfway down, they jumped.
She never hit the bottom. As they came out of the jump, Jas found herself floating in the center of the bridge. The pilot had shut down the artificial gravity as they’d jumped. The other officers were also suspended in midair or in seats, hastily fastening their safety harnesses.
“Position report, pilot,” said the dark-haired officer. He was floating, trying to hook a foot under a chair arm.
“Just a minute, sir.” The woman scanned her interface.
“You mean you don’t know where we’ve jumped to?”
“No navigator to figure it out, sir. Had to take a chance.”
“Krat, Pilot Kennewell, we could’ve ended up in the middle of a star,” exclaimed the dark-haired officer.
“Well, the chances of that are—”
“Do not answer me back, madam,” the officer barked. “You took an unacceptable risk with the lives of my crew. I shall consider your behavior for a formal reprimand.”
The already-quiet bridge grew quieter still as even the wounded officers’ groans momentarily quietened.
Jas felt for the pilot. As far as she could tell, the woman had saved all their lives. She wondered if the dark-haired officer was just feeling the stress and responsibility of his new command or if he was always a misborn.
After a pause, the pilot said, “Yes, sir.”
Chapter Fifteen
It turned out that they were only a few light years from the scene of the battle. The engines hadn’t generated sufficient power in the short time available to take them very far, but they had escaped the notice of the Shadows, for the time being.
The dark-haired officer asked for ship-wide status reports, and the ship’s crew listed the dead and injured along with the material damage to the ship. As that went on, someone must have been fixing the artificial gravity because, not long after the last of the reports came in, and when it was established that all the surviving crew had gotten themselves to a safe place, the gravity reactivated.
Jas had propelled herself into an unoccupied seat on the bridge. She welcomed the return of the sensation of heaviness. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept properly. She felt beyond exhausted and would have given a lot to close her eyes there and then and rest just for a little while. But there was still plenty of work to be done.
The dark-haired officer was in one-to-one comm with Unity Command, and the uninjured officers began the clean-up. Jas ordered the units to help with taking the wounded officers to the medical bay, but another officer intervened and said that a better use of the androids would be helping the repair crews to seal the hull breaches. She changed her order and sent them to the relevant decks before lending a hand to carry out the wounded officers herself.
The medical bay was already full of injured crew members, and the medics were busily triaging every man, woman, and alien who went in. Jas left them to it and returned to the bridge to help with the more gruesome task of removing the corpses.
By the time she returned, however, the dead bodies were already gone and some kind of order had been established. The dark-haired officer was still bent intently over the comm panel, speaking quietly into his mic. The quadruped had finally stopped trembling.
Technicians were running diagnostics on controls, though more than half of the stations were empty. Everyone seemed busy except Pilot Kennewell. She was resting her chin on her hand and staring glumly into an interface.
“I thought you did a great job,” Jas said, taking an adjacent seat.
The pilot sat up and glanced at the dark-haired officer. “Better watch your words around Pacheco,” she said quietly. “Or he’ll consider you for a formal reprimand too.” She rolled her eyes. “Hey, wasn’t it you who was looking for someone earlier?”
“Yeah. He’s a pilot. Carl Lingiari. Have you heard of him? He joined the battle late.”
“No. I’m sorry. He must be on another ship.”
“I thought so.” Jas was disappointed to find him not aboard, but also relieved to confirm that Carl couldn’t have been one of the pilots who’d been killed rescuing her and the units.
“You’re new, aren’t you?” asked Kennewell.
“Yeah, I only arrived from the Camaradon a little while ago. Just before the final attack.”
“Oh, you’re the...” Kennewell’s eyes widened.
“Yep. I was the one aboard the transport two pilots died saving.” She looked down.
“Hey,” said Kennewell, “don’t feel bad about it. We all knew the risks when we signed up, and the pilots who brought you to safety volunteered for the job. No one ordered them to do it, and if they hadn’t, I wouldn’t be sitting here now.”
In response to Jas’ puzzled frown, she went on, “Your units killed the Shadow pilots who were in the process of picking off the rest of us. If those pilots who died hadn’t saved your units, they wouldn’t turned up to save us, I wouldn’t have been around to fly us out of trouble.”
“What about Operation Penumbra?” Jas asked. “Wasn’t that a response plan?”
“It was, but we only had a few hours to work on it. Commander Torben had begun screening everyone to find out if we had any Shadows aboard, but it had to be done secretly so as not to let the Shadows know that we suspected they were among us. We were also in the middle of a battle. Everyone who passed the screening was armed and warned of the danger. Operation Penumbra was the code sign to let us know that the Shadow rebellion had begun and we were to watch for attacks, defend ourselves, and stun and confine anyone we suspected of being a Shadow. But it was too little, too late.”
Pacheco straightened up and took off his earpiece and mic. “Okay, listen up,” he said, his tone sharp. The man looked weary, and he had to be in a lot of pain from the burn he’d sustained while he’d been hiding with Jas.
“Things aren’t looking too good right now. We lost three ships to the Shadows during that attack from within, which makes seven altogether when we count the ships destroyed during the battle.” He sighed and passed a hand across his face. “Unity Command will send lists of the crews lost as soon as they have them. The Shadow attack turned things around somewhat. The battle’s over, but no one’s won. As soon as we receive coordinates, we will regroup with the remaining vessels.”
He stopped and seemed to have nothing else to say.
After a moment’s silence someone said, “And then what, sir?”
Annoyance flickered across Pacheco’s face. “What do you think, man? That fight was just a skirmish. Now we begin the war.”
How long Jas had known that it would come to this, she couldn’t remember, but Pacheco’s words were no surprise to her. The Shadows were an infestation that, each time you thought you had vanquished them, they would reappear in another place, more numerous and deadlier. Their great strength was their replication of their victims. They could hide in plain sight as the colleagues, friends, family, and lovers of every sentient being they replaced, biding their time until the moment was ripe to rise up and take over.
Jas didn’t know how they could stop them, or if they could ever be stopped. The war had only
just started and it could be years before it was finally over. She was separated from Carl and from her friends, and she was caught up in the conflict with no end in sight.
All she could do was continue to fight their deadly enemy and hope that, one day, she might be reunited with the people she loved.
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The story continues...
Shadow War, the sequel to Shadow Battle and the final book in the Shadows of the Void series, appears August 2017.
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About the Author
It isn’t easy to look back over a lifetime and pick out the bits that others might find interesting. I was born in a humble home in London’s East End—a caul birth—more than half a century ago, but I’m now both British and Australian. I picked up Aussie citizenship after living in Melbourne for many years and working as an Australian Volunteer Abroad. My AVA stint led to some time in Laos before returning to the UK and spending fifteen years or so teaching English to immigrants. Most important to me in all my experiences are my three gorgeous, amazing sons, who graced me with their appearances along the way.
I now live in Taiwan, where the weather suits my clothes, and I spend my days writing about the voices in my head.
Copyright © 2017 J.J. Green
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No part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying without written permission of the publisher or author. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First Edition.