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

by Michael Robertson

  Whatever it was, it suddenly dragged Seb away from the wall. Were it not for his backpack, the sores on his shoulder blades would have screamed from the friction of the rough ground. He twisted and turned but couldn’t get to his torch in his bag. If he slipped his pack from his shoulders, he’d lose it for sure.

  The whoosh of his flight suit against the rough ground called out and Seb tried to find his blaster. He couldn’t. He’d either dropped it or whatever had a hold of him had taken it. Either way he had nothing.

  The world finally slowed down, Seb’s gift waking up as the lethargy of sleep left him. Several silhouettes walked ahead of him. A range of shapes and sizes, he counted eight of them. They all moved as one. Not that he could make out much beyond that. All of them seemed more concerned with getting to where they were headed rather than checking on the well-being of their prisoner.

  It had seemed pretty obvious who had him, but Seb didn’t want to assume. Now he smelled the reek of shit stronger than ever, he shouted, “Sewer dwellers!”

  The one dragging Seb stopped, spun around, and lurched towards him. He flinched to see scars where its eyes should have been. It loosed a scream and the fury of its primitive call seemed to shake the walls and echoed away from them in several directions. Not only did the sewers have a network of rivers, but the caves within the sewers seemed to have their own network too. It made sense. Otherwise, how would the dwellers survive with the creatures in the rivers so close by? Those beasts were the top of the food chain down here.

  Utterly helpless to fight them on his back, even with his world slowed down, Seb did his best to twist and move to ease the pain of being dragged when they set off again.

  In almost complete darkness and more focused on relieving his pain than anything else, Seb didn’t have a clue where they were heading. He yelled at them, “Oi, you horrible rats, where are you taking me?”

  They didn’t respond, and if anything, they sped up, his lower back in agony now from being dragged over the unforgiving ground. Although not the way Seb had wanted it, he had intended to find the sewer dwellers. When he’d been there last, the woman they’d encountered left him needing answers.

  Seb tried to get their attention again and shouted louder. “Oi!”

  This time the group stopped and Seb expected the one holding his legs to scream at him again. Instead, another one—the largest of the lot and easily twice the size of Seb—walked over to him, yelled, and drove a punch straight into the centre of Seb’s face.

  An explosion of light coupled with a blink of nauseating pain and Seb’s world went dark as the metallic taste of his own blood flooded his mouth.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Seb’s pulse ran through his head like a kick drum and his vision blurred when he opened his eyes again. He squinted at the light coming from what looked to be a fire as it flickered a few metres away from him. A sharp pain bit into his ankles and wrists. The rope had been so tightly bound it gave him pins and needles in both his hands and feet.

  When Seb looked up the length of his body, he saw he’d been hung upside down from the ceiling from a large metal hook. A shake of his head did little to clear the fog in his mind. The swell of gathering blood added to his headache and turned his pulse into a wet throb in his ears.

  The fire had made the room so hot it felt like a sauna, and sweat ran down Seb’s face into his hair. His tan flight suit clung to his damp body and his skin itched. In all the spots he’d grazed himself—his shoulder blades, his chest, his lower back—the sweat ran into his wounds and burned. Not that he could do anything about it with his hands bound behind his back.

  A crew of maybe twenty sewer dwellers gathered around the fire. The constantly shifting light gave motion to their shadows. When the flames surged, Seb saw more of the dark space. Although it didn’t show him enough to get a clear understanding of where they had him or what he could do to escape.

  Like most groups on Solsans, the sewer dwellers were made up from a mixed bunch of species. Some of them looked to be no larger than rodents while others stood as tall as Seb. Two giants hunched against a far wall. One of them must have been the one responsible for knocking him out. If they took his ropes off and let him stand toe to toe with the brute, he’d show it how to punch. A gulp and he tasted his own blood again.

  When Seb looked to his left, he saw something strung up by its feet like him. It looked like the minotaur he’d encountered in the slums. Similar at least, this one had red fur and bright green eyes. Its panicked stare seemed to glow in the darkness.

  As Seb looked at it for longer, he saw its muzzle had been bound tight with rope. It breathed through its nose and shook its head as it thrashed against its restraints. It kept glancing at the fire.

  When Seb looked over at the source of light and heat again, he saw the spit above it.

  Despite the mismatched band of sewer dwellers, they all had one thing in common: they were all coated in excrement like they’d bathed in it. It matted the hair of those that had any, and formed a cracked coating over the skin of the balder ones. Some of them had their maws covered in the stuff and they gnashed their teeth as if still chewing it. Maybe living off a diet of waste had sent them mad. Maybe they were mad before. Whatever the reason, the way they sat around—some rocking, some with their heads tilted at an awkward angle, some of them examining their own arsehole—it looked like none of them were of sound mind. And they now had Seb as their prisoner. If only he’d stayed out of the sewers.

  One of the group—a smaller rodent-looking creature—jumped to its feet and shot its arms out to the sides as if riding a surfboard. The rest looked at it. It smiled a wide grin before facing the ceiling and releasing a high-pitched, tongue-rolling scream.

  The others mimicked it as they jumped to their feet. Some roared, some cackled, one sounded like a human baby crying. The noise swirled through the space and hurt Seb’s ears.

  Once they’d all got to their feet, the small ratty one at the front led the way toward the minotaur-like creature hanging from the ceiling. It moved with a shuffling, stilted dance like a reanimated corpse, and it continued screaming as it went.

  The others copied its movements as they all descended on the beast.

  They formed a semicircle around their prisoner, and whether they did it on purpose or not, they left a space so Seb could still see. The prisoner kicked and shook. It twisted and squirmed against its restraints.

  Seb’s stomach lurched to watch its panic. Surely he’d be in line for the same fate at some point.

  When the small creature who’d led the others produced a knife from the back of its trousers, the rest of the group fell silent. Blood coated most of the blade already, and the small amount of silver still visible glinted from where the glare of the fire caught it.

  The leader looked up at the ceiling again and released the same shrill, tongue-rolling scream of only a few moments ago. Now much closer to Seb, the high-pitched sound made his ears ring. The others remained silent this time.

  A slash of the blade through the air as if to practice its swing and the lead creature stepped close to the strung-up prisoner. It walked on tiptoes and leaned in just centimetres from the creature’s face. Despite the prisoner being strung upside down, its head only a metre from the ground, the little rat only just came up to eye level with it.

  Seb watched the creature’s panic. Its chest moved with its rapid breaths and its eyes spread wide. It tried to pull away from the lead sewer dweller, but exhaustion seemed to have taken over. A couple of token kicks against its restraint but nothing more.

  A shit-eating grin spread across the small sewer dweller’s face before it screamed at its captive. Seb flinched when it pulled its blade up and tore it across the creature’s throat. The prisoner turned instantly limp as a rush of blood hit the hard ground with a splash.

  Woozy from being hung upside down, Seb followed the trail of the dripping blood and saw the markings carved into the ground. A similar design to the one he’
d seen with the pinned sacrifice earlier. The grooves filled with blood as they were clearly supposed to, making the circle and the five-pointed star glisten with the essence of their sacrifice.

  Because he hung upside down, Seb hadn’t looked at the ground directly beneath him. When he craned his neck, his head spun from the angle and he saw the same starred design.

  As if to confirm the obvious, Seb looked back at the sewer dwellers. They all stared at him. Some remained perfectly still. Some swayed from side to side as if the motion gave them a distraction from their restless minds. The small one at the front, while bat-shit crazy, seemed the most sane of them all. It grinned at Seb. In that one simple gesture, it told him what he already knew. He’d be next.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Seb’s vision hadn’t improved with time, his eyes watering, sending tears streaming down his forehead into his hair. The swell in his brain felt heavier with every minute he remained upside down. His pulse now throbbed through the front of his face.

  When Seb looked over at the fire, he saw the beast had already been skinned and placed on the spit over it. He must have blacked out for a time because he’d missed the entire process. The hiss of the flames against the creature’s damp skin whispered through the cave and the fire grew brighter as it cooked it.

  The stoked fire lifted the temperature of the place and Seb sweated more than ever. Unable to tell if sweat or tears clouded his vision, he blinked against the sting and continued to look around the place. As well as the burning buzz on his grazes, a low-level bite also nipped at his ankles and wrists. The ropes were clearly cutting into him.

  Seb’s hunger got the better of him and his stomach rumbled to smell the cooking meat. When his mouth watered, he shook his head and tried to remember the beast being slaughtered. It pushed his hunger down a little.

  It looked like all the sewer dwellers were gathered around the fire, but with so many dark corners in the cave, Seb couldn’t be sure. At any point, one of them could approach him from any angle. Although, with the beast still far from cooked, they seemed more focused on that at present.

  A sharp headache forced Seb to squint as he watched his surroundings. The rush of blood to his head felt like it had turned his face pulpy, his cheeks stinging from their engorgement.

  He’d been so disorientated, it took until that moment for Seb to truly hear the sound and understand where it came from. It droned as a long and drawn-out note. He’d assumed it to be a product of his addled mind, but now he understood the truth of it. It came from the group.

  A long and continuous monotone, the sound swelled from each humming dweller. It continued without a break, giving the illusion that none of the dwellers breathed. And maybe they didn’t. A didjeridoo note, the dizzying sound bounced off the walls of the cave and came at Seb from every angle.

  Other than the one turning the spit, none of the dwellers moved. They simply sat there, staring at the flames and humming.

  At that moment, the small one who’d led the sacrifice of the other creature turned to Seb as if it knew he’d just regained consciousness. It glared at him through orange eyes in its fish-like face. They glowed like the flames next to it. A Mona Lisa smile sat on its thin lips.

  “Look,” Seb said, the desperation of his own voice coming back at him from the echoey cave. “I came here on purpose. To find you. I met a woman down here a few days ago who called me the special one. I don’t know what she meant, but I’ve come to find out. Please, you have to listen to me.”

  But the small being paid him no mind, and the others, if they heard him, reacted like they hadn’t. The small one turned back to the cooking animal and hummed again.

  It didn’t matter how Seb twisted and writhed, he couldn’t get free and every movement pulled his bonds tighter. At least his woozy head numbed some of the pain through his detachment from it. The dull throb in his wrists and ankles would have been in screaming agony otherwise.

  The fight quickly left Seb and he fell limp again. Drowsiness threatened to pull him under. The flickering glow of the firelight—washed out through his watering eyes—hypnotised him as he listened to the damp meat hiss on the spit. He’d promised Bruke and the others a revolution. Hell, he’d told them to promise their neighbours the same. But how could he lead a revolt inside the bellies of these monsters? Maybe he should have listened to his dad in the first place. Maybe he should have got a normal job and stayed on Danu.

  Just as Seb felt himself slipping under again, he saw the wall behind the fire. Several blinks later, a fresh wave of lucidity surged through him.

  Whatever technique the dwellers had used to mark the ground in the cave, they’d also used it on the walls. However, instead of letting blood run through it, they’d filled the grooves with something white. Wax maybe? Chalk? Whatever it was, it highlighted the images so they stood out in the dark.

  The pictures on the wall told a story.

  On the far left, Seb saw the image of a woman holding a baby aloft. Another child stood next to her. The second kid couldn’t have been any older than a toddler. The woman had a halo around her, white lines shooting away from her head as if she glowed with a celestial power.

  The next image showed a baby playing. The child looked slightly bigger than the previous image and it had the older child with it too. They must have been siblings.

  The baby had turned into a child by the third one. It had a ball and looked happy. The other sibling remained at its side. Despite the crude depictions, Seb understood their intent clearly. He saw two happy children living a normal childhood.

  Suddenly the images turned darker. The younger child looked to be fighting. Speed lines showed it moved much quicker than its opponent. The older one stood beside it.

  In the next image, Seb saw the older of the two being dragged away. It reached out to the young one.

  The child now looked like an adult. Image after image of it fighting. Each one had speed lines. Seb gasped and he saw the small leader of the group look at him. Maybe the speed lines didn’t mean the fighter moved fast. Although, when he thought about it, the fighter did move fast. To Seb, everything slowed down, but for onlookers, he must have appeared rapid when he fought.

  After a lot of images of fights, the adult now kneeled beside a bed of someone dying. His dad.

  A ship in the next one looked like the Bandolin.

  More fighting.

  The next image showed SA, Gurt, and Sparks.

  In the final image it had him hanging upside down from the ceiling of a cave with a fire burning in it.

  Seb shouted at the creatures, “Hey. Hey.”

  They all looked around this time.

  Because he had his hands tied, he couldn’t point. “That’s me,” he said, pushing his nose in the direction of the pictures. “That’s me on the wall. The images, they’re my life.”

  A line of blank faces met Seb’s protests.

  “Chosen one?” Seb tried.

  Nothing.

  “Please, you need to listen to me. That’s me on the walls. I’m the one you’re looking for. Please?”

  After the first creature turned back to the roasting animal, all of the others followed suit and hummed again.

  Seb tried one last time, the word dying in his mouth along with his hope of getting out of there. “Please …”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  If any of the sewer dwellers around Seb could speak to him, they chose not to. They could make sounds, and if he had to listen to their incessant hum for much longer, it felt like his eardrums would burst. As he hung upside down in the muggy cave—the flickering fire in the centre of the space—he lost hope of getting anything out of them, and his consciousness started to slip away from him again.

  However, before he went under, a noise roused Seb. Footsteps. Although not normal footsteps. They sounded stilted somehow, uncoordinated in their clumsy slap against the rocky ground. The tunnel around them amplified their sound. Whoever—or whatever—came towards them at that
moment had something unique about them.

  The approaching creature cut the monotone hum dead. At least it gave Seb that relief.

  The steps seemed to take forever to make it to the cave. One foot slapped down and then a few seconds later, several footsteps came in quick succession. Then one single slap of another footstep. Then another footstep. Then another footstep. Then several quick ones again. There seemed to be no order or coordination to the thing’s gait.

  Experience had taught Seb that if a light shone in front of something, it pushed a shadow away from it. But for some reason, the approaching creature’s shadow leaned forward into the cave, entering long before it did despite the gloom behind it. The dark projection of the being spilled across the ground, shimmering and weaving with its odd movement. An octopus in the water, its limbs swayed with a hypnotic grace.

  When the creature came into view, Seb gasped. Four arms, they all seemed to move as if they had no awareness of the creature’s intentions. A constant twisting and rangy motion swirled through them, almost palsied in their unnatural contortions.

  The creature’s feet flopped at the end of its spaghetti legs like it didn’t have the muscles to keep them rigid. Every step forward looked like the foot would buckle beneath the creature, but it somehow landed flat and supported its progress.

  Seb looked at its arms again. They continued to move separately from every other part of the being and one another. They danced and weaved as snakes would. The creature’s hands and fingers spread wide at the end of them as if it had zero control over them.

  Even its neck looked like a limb. Long and weaving, it appeared to fight to keep its large round head in one place. Seb frowned as he watched it, waiting for it to fall over.