The Shadow Order: A Space Opera Read online

  “I’m guessing they had you in a holding bay.”

  “And the girl I was with?”

  The Mandulu’s face dropped. “How would I know? I’ve been in here the entire time.”

  A cold chill snapped through Seb, so he pulled his feet beneath him and dragged his bedding around his shoulders.

  “Why didn’t they bring me straight here in the first place?”

  “How would I know? I’ve been here the entire time. Although, The Black Hole is notorious for overcrowding, even with its processing policy, so maybe they needed to wait for a space to become free.”

  “Processing policy?”

  “Yeah. You don’t get a fair trial once you end up on this ship. You get processed in thirty days, regardless of your pleas of innocence. My last cellmate hit day thirty this morning, which is why you’re now sleeping in his bed.”

  The way the Mandulu spoke, drip-feeding Seb information as it rode some kind of power trip, wound Seb even tighter. Maybe he should just bang the dumb creature out and be done with it. It would save them all a lot of hassle.

  When Seb didn’t reply, the Mandulu clearly felt too excited about the information it had to remain quiet. “When they process you, you never return.”

  “So they kill you?”

  “Process you. They call it processing.” The dumb oaf grinned. “But I’d call it killing, yeah.”

  “Why are you so damn smug about it? Surely you’ll be there sooner than me.”

  The Mandulu nodded. “Yep. But trust me; by the time you’ve spent more than a few hours in this cell, you’ll look forward to processing too.”

  “Is there any way to avoid it?”

  A shake of its head and the Mandulu laughed. The mirth fell from its face a second later, and it said, “No.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  After a long sleep, Seb woke to find his headache had eased somewhat. With lucidity came the acceptance that he still remained in the cold cell. When he lifted his head from his pillow, his tacky left ear pulled on the fabric from having been seared by the blaster fire in the sewers of Aloo. The cauterised wound had broken apart while he slept. Before he’d thought about it, he let the yawn out that demanded to be released. It simultaneously ripped open the sores around his nose, mouth, and eyes.

  Seb sat up in bed, his face and head wrapped in the gentle buzz from the pain of his wounds, and saw the cumbersome Mandulu pacing up and down the tiny space.

  “Jeez, son,” the Mandulu said when he saw Seb had woken, “you were out for hours. Do you deal with all of your problems by going to sleep?” Black bags sat beneath the creature’s eyes and mania rode his words. “You only have thirty days left; you should try to experience them on some level before they process you.”

  For a halfwit, the Mandulu had hit the truth on the head. The bit about Seb sleeping on his problems at least. A thirty-day all-nighter didn’t seem like the best use of Seb’s time in the cell unless he planned on going to processing with a frazzled mind and no grip on reality. But, as his cellmate had pointed out, Seb had always had an ability to sleep. The more stressful his life got, the better he dozed. The best night’s sleeps he’d ever had had come after his mum had died, his brother had gone to prison for murder, and his dad’s passing. The first night in the cell came pretty close to those experiences. After he’d found out about The Black Hole and how they dealt with their prisoners, he shut down. The reality of his situation overwhelmed his tired mind.

  “Okay, then,” the Mandulu said at Seb’s lack of reply.

  Before Seb’s cellmate could say anything else, the hatch at the bottom of their cell door snapped open with a sharp crack. A tray with two bowls of brown slop came through the hole, and it closed again with another crack.

  The clumsy Mandulu bent down and lifted their food. He turned to Seb and handed him a bowl and spoon before he took his own and discarded the metal tray. It clattered against the steel floor, and the sound jangled through Seb’s body as it set his nerves on edge.

  For the first few seconds, Seb stared at the sludge in the bowl. It looked similar to the river in the sewers. Fighting back a heave, Seb plunged his spoon into it. But before he could lift it out again, his Mandulu cellmate stepped on his bunk to climb up to the top. The pressure of its heavy foot tilted Seb to one side, and he had to keep his bowl level as he bobbed and swayed on his thin mattress.

  The bed rocked for a few seconds before the Mandulu above finally settled down. Confident he could eat again, Seb lifted the bowl to just beneath his mouth and raised a spoonful of the sludge to his lips. The meal stank. It had a muddy reek like peat, with a slight hint of grass to it. As Seb listened to the Mandulu above him slurp the horrible liquid, he shook his head and took a mouthful of the lukewarm paste.

  It tasted like it smelled. Not necessarily offensive, more like he’d eaten a big slice of lawn.

  Grunting and slobbering above him, the Mandulu slurped away before he finally said, “I’m here because I could never behave.”

  As Seb watched a drop of the Mandulu’s dinner fall and land on his leg, he ground his jaw and drew deep breaths.

  “I just couldn’t back down from a fight, you know. I had to keep moving from planet to planet because of the trouble I caused. I’d fight in the fighting pits when I could. I’m undefeated, don’t you know.” After a pause to slurp his slop, the Mandulu spilled another dribble onto Seb’s knee and said, “But I just had to fight. We’re a fighting race. It’s what we’re meant to do.”

  “You could have said no,” Seb said, like he’d mastered that skill.

  With the Mandulu’s deep laughter came more drops of the brown slop. The edges of Seb’s world hazed slightly, and he fought to pull himself away from the slow motion.

  “Yeah, right,” the Mandulu said. “I’m guessing you don’t know much about fighting, little man?”

  A deep sigh and Seb shook his head. “No. I guess not.” He tasted another mouthful of the muddy sludge.

  “Well, let me tell you, when you have my fighting skills and someone challenges you, you take the challenge. You understand?”

  Deep breaths and Seb remained silent.

  “The people who run The Black Hole are bounty hunters. There was a price on my head and they came to collect it. I’d had so many planets file murder charges against me that they must have been paid well to catch me. The rats snatched me with my pants down. They lured me into a honeytrap. That was another weakness of mine: the brothels.”

  Again, Seb said nothing as he listened to his cellmate snort with laughter.

  “So,” the Mandulu said, “you must have done something serious to end up here.”

  “I don’t know why I’m here,” Seb said. “Mistaken identity probably.”

  “Or maybe just the fact that you’re human.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, everyone hates humans, right?”

  Seb rolled his eyes. “Right.”

  “You invade planet after planet and take control of them when they’ve done nothing to you. You’re such a paranoid species that you start wars on other people before they can start wars on you. The conflict’s in your head.”

  “Don’t you just love pop psychology?”

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t worry; please carry on with your enlightened assessment of my species.”

  The floor shook when the Mandulu leapt from his bunk and landed in front of Seb. The stench of his rancid breath came forward with the Mandulu’s large chin. With his broken tusks just millimetres from Seb’s face, the hideous creature roared so loud it blew Seb’s hair back and smothered him in a stench worse than any toilet Seb had visited.

  A shake ran through Seb as he placed his half-finished meal down on the floor. He then got to his feet, forcing the Mandulu back a step, and stood directly in front of it, staring up into its red eyes. He said nothing.

  “Are you mocking me, you pitiful little human?”

  Again, Seb remained
quiet and simply stared into the Mandulu’s ugly face.

  “Because you’re a fool if you are. This can only end one way.”

  The world around Seb blurred at the edges again as the creature before him slipped into slow motion. He didn’t try to stifle it this time. Like the Mandulu he’d fought in the bar, this one’s bulbous chin presented itself as the place to hit. One sharp punch and he’d spark the thing. However, something else tugged at Seb’s attention. To his left, in his peripheral vision, he felt the presence of something. When he looked at the wall behind the toilet, he suddenly saw its weakness. Like the Mandulu’s chin, it would take one well-aimed punch to break it.

  So close to the Mandulu, Seb could see the pores on its leathered skin. A deep breath, and he swung for him. As true as ever, he hit the beast clean and watched the creature’s eyes roll back before it folded to the floor. The lump crashed down so hard, the cell door rattled in its frame. Hopefully the guards wouldn’t come to investigate.

  Still locked in slow motion, Seb crossed the cell and threw a punch at the wall behind the toilet. The steel panel that had looked solid to Seb’s normal eye bent like it had been made from foil and fell away to reveal what looked like the ship’s ventilation system.

  With the Mandulu out cold on the floor, Seb returned to him and kicked him so hard on the nose it hurt his ankle. It would feel that when it came to. Without a second thought, Seb returned to the hole in the wall, stood up on the metal toilet, and climbed into the darkness of the ventilation shaft.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  If there was anything in the galaxy that Seb hated more than tight tunnels and Mandulus, he’d not encountered it yet. And he’d had to tolerate them both on the same day. As he commando crawled along the ship’s ventilation shaft, the sound of his own breath echoed in the enclosed space. Whatever he had to go through, it had to be better than spending any more time in that cell—it certainly had to be better than getting processed.

  The metal ventilation shaft had been made up of thousands of square tubes. A lip rose up where each one had been joined to the next, so every ten metres or so, Seb would drag his body over another one. The first few had been no big deal, but after crossing lump after lump, the cumulative sting in his elbows and knees turned into a sharp pain that remained even when he didn’t cross a join.

  With the sound of the prison below and above, Seb pulled himself along, his heart in his throat. Better to die trying to escape than to accept his fate like his dumb cellmate had. No way would they process him. No way.

  At an intersection, Seb looked left, right, and then straight ahead. One choice would be as good as any. With no idea where his cell sat in relation to the rest of the prison ship, he couldn’t even guess what direction he should head in to escape. He continued straight and would continue to do so as long as straight presented itself as an option. If The Black Hole came anywhere near the Mandulu’s description of it, Seb could be in the shafts indefinitely, lost as he tried to find his way out.

  Every once in a while, Seb found himself over a grate. Just about wide enough for him to slip through, one of them would provide his way out. As of yet, he’d not found the one he’d be prepared to take a chance on.

  ***

  Seb had crawled for about twenty minutes when he came to the ventilation shaft that stopped him dead. The room below seemed different to the ones he’d seen. A storage room of some description, it looked to house the confiscated belongings of all the prisoners. At least, Seb guessed it to be for all of the prisoners. The vast room had items stacked from floor to ceiling, many of them in clear plastic bags as if they were to be used as evidence in a trial on a planet that actually cared about justice. Not so many of them left.

  There had to be something useful down there, but the room would no doubt be locked up tighter than most of the cells. If he got down, he might not be able to get back out again. Then he saw it.

  On top of one of the crates, in its own clear plastic bag, sat Sparks’ mini-computer. A quick search and Seb didn’t see anything else he recognised, no wallet of his, and more importantly, no necklace. However, if he had Sparks’ computer, he had a bargaining chip to get his dad’s necklace back should he ever find her again.

  The vent had no screws in it, so it came away with a pop. The blood rushed to Seb’s head and made him dizzy when he leaned down to look into the room. Full of goods, but empty of people, Seb lowered himself, legs first, into the storage area.

  With his entire lower body dangling down into the room, vulnerable should anyone walk in at that moment, Seb let go and dropped the last few feet.

  When Seb landed, he fell to the floor and clattered into a stack of crates. For the briefest moment, he froze at the loud crash. For what good that would do; he couldn’t take the noise back. What an idiot. When Seb heard the heavy footsteps of what must have been guards running toward the storage room, he grabbed Sparks’ mini-computer and stacked some crates one on top of the other beneath the hole he’d just slipped through. There seemed no point in hiding in the room among the personal belongings. If they found him, he had nowhere to go.

  A shake ran through Seb’s arms as he layered one crate on top of another. He couldn’t help but notice all of the confiscated items as he stacked them. Wallets, navigation devices, cigarettes … for all of the junk he saw, he didn’t see a single blaster. They must have been stored somewhere else.

  The footfalls that approached the room got closer with every second.

  A wobbly tower at best, Seb jumped up onto the newly stacked crates in time to hear the beeps from the security lock on the door. It sounded like a guard entering a code to access the room.

  The crates swayed beneath Seb’s feet as he reached up through the hole in the shaft. In his panic, he climbed up the wrong way, so he faced back down the shaft the way he’d come. Not that he planned on heading back to his cell.

  As Seb pushed the last of himself up into the shaft, the crates beneath his feet toppled and fell. A loud clatter accompanied his scrabble to get away.

  The second he’d pulled himself up, he heard the door swish open and the guards rush into the room. Although gassed, Seb fought to slow his breaths as he slid the grate back over the hole. It made the slightest click when it slotted into place.

  Every part of Seb wanted to rush, from his shaking limbs to his rapid pulse, but he fought against it. It would make too much noise and blow his cover for sure. A blaster would make light work of the thin metal of the ventilation shaft should one of the guards choose to shoot. As he shifted backwards down the shaft, Seb listened to the guards walk through the storage room and heard their conversation.

  “I can’t see anything, can you?”

  A pause and the other one replied, “Nothing, no. I’m guessing the crates just fell over again.”

  With a view below through the grate, Seb watched the guards. They both wore hats with their uniform, so Seb couldn’t tell their species. Although, with the little travelling he’d done, he didn’t recognise many species other than his own. If they didn’t frequent the fighting pits, he wouldn’t be familiar with them. One of the guards stood tall and wide, the other one much more slight.

  “Shall we call it in?” the smaller guard said.

  “Yeah, it won’t do any harm.”

  The small guard’s radio hissed when he lifted it to his mouth. “We heard a disturbance in the storage room, although we can’t see anyone near.”

  A crackly male voice came back through the radio. “You’ve not found the escaped prisoner?”

  “Escaped prisoner?”

  “Yeah, we’ve had an escapee from cell nine-two-one-seven-four. A human.”

  A moment’s silence before the guard with the radio said, “No, sir, there’s nothing here. If there were a human, I’d be able to smell their stink. Vile creatures.”

  As slowly as he could, Seb backed away from the grate. If one of them looked up, they’d see him for sure. With his breath still held, Seb eased back an i
nch at a time, and the very slightest whoosh sounded out as his clothes rubbed against the brushed metal of the shaft. The reek of aluminium smelled almost like blood. The comparison pulled Seb’s stomach taut.

  With every minute that passed, Seb grew in confidence. They wouldn’t hear him this far back. He had to travel backwards because of how he’d ended up in the shaft, and he didn’t have the space to turn around.

  As he picked up his pace, each join in the shaft became a sharp shock because he couldn’t anticipate what he couldn’t see. Seb let his breaths go more than before. The sooner he found a way out of these shafts, the better.

  Seb worked up a good pace, moving backwards like he’d been oiled up. The ridges might have hurt when he passed over them, but Seb could also use them to propel himself backwards.

  After his hardest push yet, Seb shot along the ventilation shaft like a bar of wet soap down a slide. Before he had time to react, his feet dropped down a hole. In a blink, his legs followed them, pulling his body weight down.

  Although he reached out, his hands slapping against the side of the shaft with a wet boom, he’d picked up too much momentum and couldn’t get a grip.

  Used to slow motion in a crisis, everything happened at double the speed this time, and before Seb could gather his thoughts, his stomach hit the roof of his mouth and he fell into the unknown.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  A tugging roused Seb. Something pulled on him like a dog trying to drag a tree root from the ground. Despite his near delirium, he had the presence of mind to keep a hold of the tiny computer and pulled it tightly to his chest.

  When Seb opened his eyes, he found Sparks on top of him, her teeth clenched as she clasped both hands to her computer and tried to pry it from his grasp. Before he’d really thought about it, Seb kicked out and knocked the small woman away from him. His world spun when he sat up, and a sharp twinge ran up his back. A deep throb set fire to his left hip, and he could taste his own blood.