The Crimson War: A Space Opera: Book Three of The Shadow Order

by Michael Robertson

  “Damn!” Seb called and jumped backwards, colliding with one of the hut’s walls.

  The light shook at the end of Seb’s trembling arm, but he kept it trained on Phulp—or at least, what used to be Phulp.

  The small creature’s previously pasty skin now sat as dark as soot. His red albino eyes had turned black and looked like two lumps of coal. His little mouth hung open as if he’d died screaming. For some reason the tiny form had a massive hole in his stomach. It looked like a bomb had blown up inside of him.

  A strange tingling ran down Seb’s arms to his hands and it stretched out across his fingers. A need to touch Phulp surged through him, so he clamped his torch between his teeth and stretched his hands out in front of him.

  When Seb touched the charred and dead body, he flinched. It seemed like the right thing to do, even though he didn’t know what he expected to achieve.

  “He’s dead,” Bruke said, and Seb spun around to see his green face behind him. He’d obviously found the courage to come back into the hut.

  “I can see that.” When Seb looked up at his guide, he drew a deep breath and dropped his head. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting to find him like this.”

  “It’s okay,” Bruke said. “I didn’t know him and even I’m finding it hard. You know, when you first asked me to lead you to Phulp, I thought you had a beef with him. I thought you wanted to do something horrible to him. Guess I was wrong.”

  The crispy skin of Phulp’s charred corpse felt like a dried leaf to touch. For some reason, Seb couldn’t pull his hands away. “No, you weren’t. I did have a beef with the little rat.”

  Bruke looked like he didn’t know what to say, his brown eyes widening at Seb’s comments.

  “I dunno, seeing him like this helps me understand why he did what he did to us.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Sold us out to the Countess.”

  Bruke gasped.

  “I know. At least we got away from her. It looks like we fared much better than he did. What a way for him to learn he shouldn’t have trusted her. I can see now he just did what he needed to do to survive.” When Seb looked around the hut, he saw the canned goods they’d bought for Phulp. “He needed our money more than we did, and he needed to fight to stay alive in this place.”

  Before Bruke could respond or Seb could say anything else, footsteps approached the small hut. Despite the busy noise of the crowd outside, it seemed clear that the steps were heading straight for them. The pair stared at one another.

  Seb pressed his finger to his lips and pointed for Bruke to go into the darkest corner of the small space, the same place SA had hidden when the guards had busted in on them.

  As quietly as he could, Seb got to his feet and rushed over to the wall next to the door. He pressed his back against it and watched the space as the footsteps drew closer. Then it dawned on him. Why hadn’t he seen it before? They’d used Phulp’s corpse as a trap and he’d walked straight into it.

  Seb drew deep breaths to calm himself down and stared at the doorway. The steps drew closer still. As he balled his fists, the world slowed down around him. If he had to go out this way, he’d go out fighting.

  Chapter Twelve

  Seb stood in the darkness of Phulp’s cramped hut and looked down at the foot of the approaching creature as it entered the gloomy space. Tension knotted in his shoulders, but before he could jump on the intruder, the fight left him. He frowned so hard it nearly hurt. “Phulp?”

  The small being—who looked exactly like Phulp—jumped as he turned to face Seb. Three smaller Phulps followed him in. All of them had the same balding heads as his now dead guide. He’d assumed the look came with age. Apparently not. Unless the small children were considerably older than they looked.

  All four of the creatures had the red eyes of albinos and the same short, squat frames. As wide as they were tall, the tribe looked like four squares.

  “What’s going on?” Seb said as he looked from one to the other.

  “Who are you?” Phulp said.

  Except, not Phulp. Phulp lay on the ground, blown up from the inside and burned to a crisp. Also, this new Phulp had a high-pitched voice. “You’re female?” Seb asked.

  A genuine twist of confusion crushed her face. It quickly gave way to indignation as she straightened her back. “Of course I’m female. I’m Phulp’s wife, Janina. And these are our three children, Jawty, Phulp, and Jince.”

  Seb frowned as he stared at the odd little family. Had he known their species better, he might have been able to tell the difference between Phulp and Janina, but to his eyes they looked exactly the same—even now, when he knew they weren’t. The kids all looked the same too. “So you have one boy?”

  “And two girls, yes.” Janina’s tone had an edge of exasperation. How could Seb be so ignorant?

  “I’m sorry, you all look the—” Seb caught her glare and stopped.

  It took for Seb to see Janina staring down at her husband’s dead body for him to clap his hand to his mouth. “I’m so sorry, I forgot where we were for a minute. We knew Phulp.”

  Although small, Janina had a sharp tongue. As the only protector of their family, if she hadn’t been tough before, she certainly had to be now. Whilst pulling her children close to her, she continued to glare at Seb. “I wouldn’t mind betting you had something to do with his death.”

  The three children all stared at Seb through their wide, red eyes. Accusation burned in their tiny round grief-stricken faces. He raised his index finger at Janina. “Now, wait a minute. I can take a good guess as to what happened here, but I sure as hell had nothing to do with it. I would assume the Countess did this. Or one of her many soldiers.”

  After a deep inhale, Janina let go of a long sigh and looked down at her children. She seemed to be addressing them rather than Seb. “She did do this. But we never found out why.”

  Maybe she told him the truth, maybe she didn’t. A look at Phulp’s kids again and Seb kept his mouth shut. What would the truth achieve? They didn’t need to know their dad swindled him and the others. Let him be a hero in their eyes. “Phulp and I were friends. He helped me out and I—” he looked at the shelves with the tins of food on them “—I bought him some food.”

  The situation had caught Seb off guard, and when he looked at Phulp’s family again, he said, “I’m sorry, please sit down.”

  Janina and the kids sat cross-legged on the cold, hard floor and Seb joined them.

  It took for Bruke to step from the shadows in the corner for Seb to remember he’d been there the entire time.

  Janina gasped when she saw him, and the three kids cowered away from the green-scaled brute. If only they knew just how far his personality was from his appearance.

  “I’m sorry,” Seb said again. “This is Bruke. I needed to find my way through the slums to Phulp’s hut and he helped me. You can trust him.”

  Despite him vouching for the muscly creature, Janina and the kids didn’t seem ready to start calling him Uncle Bruke anytime soon.

  “So,” Seb said as he adjusted his sitting position, “please tell me what happened to Phulp.”

  After another deep sigh, Janina looked at Phulp, tears glazing her eyes. “The Countess was here with him when we arrived.” Her bottom lip bent out of shape and she scratched her face with a shaking hand. “She said we should see it, so she dragged us to the square with him. All of us.”

  All three children looked down.

  “She said she needed to make an example of him and we needed to witness it. The people of the slums should know what happens to traitors.” The shake continued to run through her hands as she held up her thumb and index finger to show a small gap between them. “She has these small wax pebbles, about this big. Have you seen them?”

  Seb didn’t respond. Not sure if he should reveal he had a bucket of them in his bag, he remained mute to give Janina the chance to continue.

  “Well,” Janina said and sniffed, “she made him eat two
. They’re highly explosive. Once he’d eaten them, she instructed one of her guards to electrocute him. The guard did as she said and then ran.”

  Seb looked down at the dead Phulp, his stomach blown wide open, his skin hard and charred from where he’d burned. “And he blew up?”

  Janina pressed the back of her hand to her nose and nodded as her red eyes glazed. Tears ran down her pale cheeks.

  Before Seb could do anything to comfort her, Bruke dropped himself down next to the grieving woman and pulled her into a tight hug. He enveloped her with his huge arms. Although clumsy, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world and Janina sobbed freely. A few seconds later, all three of the children moved into the warm-hearted creature’s strong embrace. He had a wide enough reach for all of them.

  It didn’t matter what Phulp had done to Seb and the others, no one deserved what had happened to him. No one. And to have to leave a family behind … on this planet, of all places.

  Maybe he shouldn’t have said it, but what else could he do at that moment? In the cold hut, sat on the cold ground, the darkness and shadows swamping them, he cleared his throat and looked at Phulp’s family one after the other. “I’m going to take the Countess down.”

  Janina’s eyes widened and she stopped crying for a moment. “What?”

  “I’m going to take her down. I’m not from this planet, but I’ve seen what she does to the beings in this city. I can’t stand by and let it happen. I’m sorry I didn’t do it before this happened to Phulp, but I’ll stop her from doing it to anyone else.”

  For the first time since he’d met them, the eldest girl, Jawty, spoke up. She had a tiny high-pitched voice. “Until you said that, I thought you were one of them. I was worried our time was up too.”

  “Why would you say that?” Seb said.

  When Jawty looked at his tan flight suit, Seb nodded. “I see. And no, I’m most definitely not one of them.”

  The middle child of the three—little Phulp—stepped away from the group hug. He moved closer to Seb. A voice to match his stature, he seemed to be whispering. “She said to Mummy that she’ll come for me when I turn thirteen. I don’t know what that means.”

  “She won’t!” Bruke said. His deep voice boomed in the small space and made Phulp’s family jump.

  Seb looked from the large creature to Janina and back at the boy.

  Little Phulp watched Bruke as if expecting another outburst. When none came, he turned to Seb again. “She said she’d drag me out into the square.”

  Another look at Bruke and Seb saw he’d pressed his lips tightly together as if to hold onto his anger. Janina confirmed what the boy said with a nod. Seb looked back at little Phulp. “Not if I kill her, she won’t.”

  “But how do we know someone else won’t just replace her?” Janina said. “Phulp and I planned to make as much money as we could over the next few years and get off this hellish planet. We have a couple of years before Phulp junior is of age and I’d still like to get away from here.”

  For a moment Seb didn’t reply. The sound of the busy slum outside whispered into the place. “You’re right,” he finally said. “It’s more than her. Who’s to say this way of being won’t continue? We need a better plan than an assassination. We need—”

  “A revolution,” Bruke said.

  Everyone turned to look at the muscly creature.

  “I think you’re right,” Seb said. “The only question is are you ready for one?”

  When Bruke drew a deep breath, he seemed to sit straighter than Seb had seen from him before. Steel shone in his dark eyes and he nodded. “Yes. I think everyone is.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The ground didn’t get any more comfortable as Seb and the others remained sat on it in Phulp’s hut. A cross-legged approach seemed like the best option, but the numbness in his arse had already turned into sharp pains in his hips. Even his knees tingled as the discomfort stretched through his body. If he stayed that way for too long, he wouldn’t get up again.

  A small amount of moonlight stretched into the dark hut. It combined with the stove in the corner to offer just the slightest illumination. Seb’s eyes had adjusted a little to the poor light, but it also helped that his companions had such pale faces. Even Bruke in his own green way seemed to glow in the muted environment.

  The smell of cooked food hung in the air from Bruke having been busy with Phulp’s stove. Not only had he fired it up, but he’d cracked open a tin of meat and was cooking it. Seb didn’t know which animal the meat came from and he tried not to give it too much thought. It smelled great, his rumbling stomach certainly needed it, and after he’d eaten sea slug, anything had to be an improvement.

  For the past ten minutes or so—since Bruke had fired up the stove and covered Phulp’s body with a tarpaulin—the group had sat in near silence. Seb listened to the hive of activity outside the small dwelling. The lack of conversation in the hut suited him. Better to hear an attack coming than make small talk with strangers.

  “Right,” Bruke said, his loud voice making Seb jump, “we have dinner.” He walked over to the children with three steaming cans. Phulp seemed to have a range of the empty containers washed out and ready to use. He must have served all his meals in them.

  One can for each of the kids, Seb watched them jump on them, their little hands spooning the contents into their mouths so fast they turned into a blur.

  By the time Bruke handed Seb his can, hunger had withdrawn his stomach so tightly into him it almost hurt. He hadn’t eaten for a few days. Then he looked down at the three children. They’d all finished their meals already, and they all stared at him. Phulp Junior’s tongue hung from his mouth and dribble ran from Jince’s chin.

  After letting out a deep and grizzled sigh, the smell of the cooked meat slithering up his nostrils, teasing him with what sat in the can for him, Seb handed the kids his dinner and shook his head to himself.

  Jince snatched the can, took a mouthful, and handed it to Phulp, who did the same before passing it along to Jawty.

  “Excuse me!” Janina said.

  The three children looked at their mum, their jaws slack.

  “What do you say?”

  “Oh,” Jince said and covered her mouth as she burped. “Sorry. And thank you.”

  Phulp and Jawty spoke in unison. “Thank you.”

  Seb smiled in spite of himself.

  “But what about your dinner, Seb?” Bruke said to him.

  “It’s okay,” Seb replied. “I’ll have something else.”

  “There’s no more meat.”

  “That’s okay. Are there any grains of any sort.”

  “Yep.”

  “That’ll do.”

  “Plain grains?” Bruke asked.

  A shrug and Seb said, “Whatever’s easiest.”

  While Bruke made some more food, Seb smiled at Janina. “You guys look hungry.”

  “Phulp would always get the food for us,” Janina said.

  When Bruke gave Seb his can of grains, he handed it to Phulp’s wife. “Here, I can wait.”

  Janina wrapped both of her hands around the can and cradled it as if the warmth nourished her as much as the food would. Instead of eating, she stared at Seb. “Thank you. You’re a good man.”

  Heat lifted beneath Seb’s cheeks and he cleared his throat. He didn’t reply to her praise. “So why didn’t you eat some of the food in here?”

  “We didn’t know who the food belonged to. Had we known about it and known it was Phulp’s, then we may have done, but it could have been a trap laid by the Countess. Besides, I didn’t want to come back into the hut with …” Janina looked down at the tarpaulin in the corner.

  “I understand.”

  “This was the first time I felt ready to bring the kids here.”

  “And you found us waiting,” Bruke said.

  “Exactly.”

  “I want you to have the food,” Seb said.

  The familial resemblance struck Seb when al
l four of their faces lit up in the same way.

  “But,” Jince said, “what about Bruke? He needs some.”

  A glance at the scaly brute and Seb nodded. “You’re right, he does. How about leaving him enough for a couple of days and you guys take the rest? Sound good, Bruke?”

  Most beings would have resented not getting as much as someone else, but not Bruke. A large smile spread across his face and he nodded. “I came here with no food. If I leave with a couple of day’s worth, then I’ve done well.”

  Janina nodded and looked from Seb to Bruke. “Thank you. Both of you.”

  Now she’d found her voice, Jince seemed to be getting braver. Without a word, she walked over to Seb and pressed the side of her face to his chest as if listening for his heartbeat. She spread her arms across him in an attempted hug, managing to reach just about far enough for the tips of her fingers to cling onto the top of each of his arms.

  It had to be the stress of the past few days that made the lump rise in Seb’s throat. He quickly swallowed it down.

  When Jince pulled away, Seb saw the small patch of food she’d stained his hideous flight suit with and he smiled. Kids!

  Maybe Seb being overwhelmed by his emotions had seemed obvious, maybe she’d just been curious, but Janina changed the subject as if sparing him any more attention. She looked at Bruke. “So how did you two meet? If you don’t mind me saying, you seem like a strange partnership.”

  Where Bruke had been busy with the stove, he came to life and stepped close to Phulp’s family. At first, he spoke in a near whisper. “It was a dark and misty night—”

  “It was about six hours ago,” Seb said.

  The illusion of the story had already been shattered and the other five stared at Seb as if to tell him that. He pulled back into the shadows.

  Bruke continued. “It was a dark and misty night in the slums. Babies were crying, raised voices rode the cold evening breeze, and danger lurked in every shadow.” He leaned close to Jince, grimacing at her with a wide grin.