Fugitive: A Space Opera: Book Five of The Shadow Order Read online

  A look from one to the other, Seb couldn’t see where to attack them. No weak spot stood out. If he punched them hard enough in the face, they’d probably go down, but he hadn’t had this problem before. Everything had a weak spot.

  The beasts rushed Seb. The lead one raised its pole above its head as if it were a sword. It yelled out with a feminine cry, and when it got close to him, it brought it crashing down.

  Seb darted to the side, the pole sending out a splash of sparks as it connected with the concrete ground.

  The creature who’d tried to attack Seb sprang backwards before dropping down into a defensive crouch. It left another one of the little beasts between them.

  Seb lunged at the one closest to him and punched it in the face. It turned into a ball and rolled a few metres away from him before it got up again, apparently unhurt.

  “Huh,” Seb said to himself as he stared at the snarling thing.

  The distraction gave the lead creature an opening. At the last minute, Seb saw the swinging pole and dodged it. The clang of metal connected with rock again. More sparks in the dark space.

  Then Seb saw it. As he watched the pole-wielding brute retreat, he saw the weak spot in the centre of its back, buried deep within its spines.

  The next beast came at Seb, the one he hadn’t encountered yet. Although he knew it to be ineffective, he punched it in the face anyway. A crunch as his metal fist sank into its snout and it too rolled into a ball away from him. The other two rushed him again before he had time to think, the patter of their hard little feet crossing the cold ground between them.

  This time Seb went on the offensive. He ran to the side to avoid the pole-wielder and punched the other one in the face again. He hit the thing so hard it lifted from the ground and flew backwards. Before it landed, it turned into a ball and rolled to safety. The punches must be hurting it, even if they didn’t knock it out.

  While the other two recovered, Seb looked at the leader’s twisted face as it raised the pole again and attacked him. He avoided yet another skull-cracking blow, and as soon as the pole hit the ground for a third time, he brought a sharp chop down on the creature’s left wrist.

  A snapping of bone, Seb winced to watch the small beast’s left hand fall limp as the pole clattered against the ground. It grabbed its injury while Seb grabbed the pole.

  One of the other two came at Seb again. He lost track of which was which—not that it mattered. Both hands wrapped around the metal pole, he drove a full-bodied swing at it.

  The end of the metal bar connected with the thing’s small jaw. A wet crunching sound rang out and the creature spun away from him, turning back into a ball like they had every time he hit them. Although not as perfectly formed this time. It was clearly getting worn down from his attacks.

  Seb chased after the rolling sphere of spines and jabbed his pole into the weak spot in the middle of its back. The creature unraveled instantly and ended up flat, its spines as flaccid as the rest of it.

  Malice turned to fear in the eyes of the other two, but before they could react, Seb rushed forward. He came to the one with both wrists intact, whacked it with the pole, and then jabbed its weak spot as it spun around from his blow. The same limp reaction, it too lay on its back and stared at the ceiling.

  The leader of the three had taken the opportunity to run, clutching its wrist as it moved. Seb gave chase.

  The creature headed in the direction Seb had just come from. It vanished from sight momentarily as it rounded the bend.

  When Seb followed it, he saw it running along the damp walkway next to the river. It moved fast for such a fat little thing.

  The pole still in his hands, Seb gritted his teeth and sped up. The dim lights kept the creature in his line of sight. Then it disappeared around the next corner.

  Seb panted as he ran to keep up with it. Whatever happened, he couldn’t let it get up top. He’d only just lost his tail, he didn’t need Moses locating him again.

  Before Seb saw the creature, he heard its hard little feet against the metal rungs of the ladder. If he hadn’t broken its wrist, it would be hard to catch. But when he got sight of it again, he saw it made slow progress.

  The creature turned back and looked down at Seb. It bared a small mouth full of sharp teeth and hissed. Seb drove the end of the metal pole into its spiky back.

  The beast fell and Seb could have caught it, especially as he saw its spikes droop. Instead, he stepped aside and let it hit the ground with an oomph. So loud, it sounded like it had driven all the air from its body. It lay motionless from being knocked out.

  The creature’s spines made a whoosh sound as Seb dragged it down the tunnel back to the slaves and its two unconscious friends. He then went to the first cage with the whimpering child in it and undid the lock. The frog creature looked up at him through watery green eyes, its lips buckling out of shape. It looked like it wanted to say something, opening and closing its distorted mouth, but no words came out.

  Seb held his hand out to the small thing and helped it stand up. “I’m getting all of you out of here.”

  “And what about them?” Another prisoner—a tiny thing covered in blue fur—asked him.

  “I’ll lock them up down here. Give them a taste of what they gave you.”

  While Seb spoke to the small thing, he felt something on the back of his belt. By the time he’d spun around, he saw the frog boy with his blaster in his hand.

  The kid aimed it straight at Seb, the weapon trembling with its grief.

  “What are you doing?” Seb said.

  Where he’d seen sadness in the kid’s green eyes, he now saw fury. Rage shook the kid’s entire form, but he said nothing.

  CHAPTER 15

  It only took a few seconds for the kid to speak. It felt like longer to Seb as he looked between the end of the kid’s shaking blaster and his watering eyes.

  “Don’t stop me,” the boy finally said. The high pitch of his voice rang through the sewers, riding the sounds of the rushing water around them.

  “It looks to me like you’re the one calling the shots at the moment,” Seb replied.

  To Seb’s relief, the boy turned the gun away from him. “What are you doing?”

  The only response came in the form of three green blasts aimed at the unconscious slavers. Each one scored a direct hit, the porcupine creatures convulsing with the shots to the face.

  Seb stared at the boy, the air hanging heavy with the stench of the slavers’ singed hair and cauterised flesh. After a deep exhale, he said, “Damn.”

  What had been sad green eyes now steeled as they focused on Seb again. A shake of his head, the boy said, “They killed my mum in front of me.” Suddenly his fury broke and his body fell limp as if taken over with exhaustion. As he crashed down to his knees, he hunched over and addressed the damp, concrete ground, his voice wobbling with his grief. “And that wasn’t the worst of what they did to us.”

  The other kids seemed to share in the boy’s trauma. Not quite sure how he knew it, but Seb felt the collective sadness swell in the air around him. Whatever had happened, it had clearly happened to all of them. A shared experience that none of them seemed willing or able to talk about. Nausea balled in his stomach, forcing bile up into his throat.

  If Seb had had the words at that moment, he would have used them. But how could he offer these children comfort? How could he begin to understand what they might have been through? The shock of the boy killing the slavers had gone. They deserved everything they got. In fact, a blast to the face seemed like a far too easy out for them.

  It took until that moment for Seb to realise the kid still had the gun in his hand. He held his open palm in the boy’s direction to take it back.

  Although the kid reached across with it, just before Seb could close his grip around the weapon, the boy snapped the gun away from him, shoved the end of the barrel up against the bottom of his own chin, and pulled the trigger.

  “Jeez,” Seb yelped as he heard the wet pul
se of laser fire and watched the blast fly out of the top of the kid’s head, dragging brain matter and blood with it.

  A cloud of crimson mist, some of it floated over to Seb and rested against his face. He kept his lips tightly pressed together while he wiped it away with a shaking hand.

  Then the first child cried. A second later a couple more started up. It took just a few moments for every one of them to break down. Seb used all his strength to stop himself from crying with them. He swallowed against the rock of grief wedged in his throat and looked down at the froggy kid. He lay face down. Limp. Lifeless.

  CHAPTER 16

  A small time passed as Seb stared at the dead child. The damp weight of sadness dragged on his heart and rooted him to the spot. It took for a little hand to slip into his to break him out of it. When he looked down, he saw the tiny kid with the blue fur. Damp tracks ran down her hairy face and her eyes searched his. She needed an adult’s guidance. They all did. For the first time since he’d been in Aloo, it didn’t matter about him being human, the only thing they cared for was his help. He pulled his shoulders back and straightened his posture before nodding at the little girl. Together they turned to the cages behind them.

  Once Seb had freed all the children—the newly liberated slaves helping as they moved down the line of cages—he turned back to the slavers and the dead green boy. As much as he wanted to speak, the threat of tears wouldn’t let him. The sound of rushing water ran through the cavernous space. The drips of leaks were everywhere. The heavy breaths of the scared and grieving children.

  For the act of it if nothing else, Seb walked over to the largest of the three porcupine creatures, the one he’d broken the wrist of. He grabbed its ankles and dragged it towards the edge of the stone platform they were currently on.

  To look down into the churning mess of waste flipped Seb’s stomach. The brown river turned over on itself as it rushed through the sewers. A thick and rancid mix of toxins and disease. He looked from it to the lead slaver and then to the dead boy. All of the other children had gathered around the kid’s corpse. They all looked at Seb.

  A clenching of his jaw, Seb then screamed through his gritted teeth and kicked the vile beast in the back.

  The sound of his blow echoed through the tunnels as a slap. The creature rolled in midair as it fell from the ledge and plummeted into the river below. It hit the water with an unceremonious splash before vanishing beneath the surface. No doubt it would wash up on Aloo’s shores at some point in the next few days. Not that a dead body in Aloo would surprise anyone. Hopefully such a frequent occurrence, no one would bother to investigate, but even if they did, they had no way of tracing it back to him.

  Just as Seb thought to go back for the other two slavers, he saw the children bringing them to him. They sent them the way of their leader.

  A line of seven little beings from all over the galaxy, they stared down into the river and watched the space where the creatures had vanished beneath the surface. They needed that.

  When one of the children walked over to the frog boy and grabbed his ankles, Seb shook his head. “No,” he said. His voice cracked when he added, “He’s not going in there.”

  “Then where?” the child, a hairless bipedal cat, said.

  A good question. They could hardly find somewhere to bury him. “We need to leave him down here,” Seb said.

  Confusion stared up at him.

  “Hardly ideal, I know, but we can’t take him above ground. Not if we want to get you lot out of here without any drama.” Did he believe that? Most beings, no matter how ruthless, would want to help the children. But if he had a tail sent to follow him by Moses, he didn’t need to be coming above ground and making a fuss with the body of a dead child. It wouldn’t bring the kid back to life. “I don’t think he should be dumped in the water. He deserves more than we just gave those things.”

  Before Seb could say anything else, all of the remaining children gathered around the frog boy. They went to work on him, straightening his clothes and crossing his arms over his chest.

  It only took a few seconds before they stepped away from his corpse. Seb’s eyes itched and his world blurred. The kid lay on the damp stone ground. His green eyes were glazed with his passing, but he looked at peace, a halo of blood pooling around his head. The torment of only a few minutes ago had left him; forced through the top of his skull by a green laser blast. As sad as his suicide was, it made sense. Just a shame he couldn’t see any other way to process what had happened to him.

  Seb walked over to the boy and crouched down next to him. He stared into his dead face and stroked his brow. “Be at peace. Find your mum, kid.” The gods knew he’d thought about ending it all himself. A thousand times at least. When his time came, he’d get to see his guardian angel again. She probably looked down on him now. The call of down rang through his memory. Maybe not a strange voice. Maybe just a voice he hadn’t heard in a long time.

  When Seb looked back at the children, he met the stares from seven small and dirty faces. Although he cleared his throat, it did little to banish the emotion in his voice. A warble ran through his words. “I know we’re not exactly in the nicest of places,” he said, “but we need to wait it out in the sewers for a few more hours. After that, I’m going to take you to someone who can help you. But I don’t want to wait in this exact spot. We can all say goodbye to …”

  “Artez,” the blue-furred girl said.

  Seb nodded. “Artez. We can all say goodbye to him; then we need to find somewhere else.”

  The kids formed an orderly queue, the blue-furred girl at the front. Seb watched them say goodbye to Artez one by one.

  CHAPTER 17

  A large creature similar to the brown hairy one in the prison cell—the one that looked like Bruke—walked into Seb. The impact sent fire through his right shoulder and spun him almost all the way around. Instinct took over. He clenched his metal fists, slowed his world down, and glared at the brute. It stared straight back, more than ready for the fight it didn’t realise it had no chance of winning.

  But Seb turned away from the creature and continued on, moving through the bustling crowd in the busy spaceport. The only human from what he could see, he pushed forward and took the knocks. Let them try to intimidate him; it didn’t matter. It still seemed like the resentment came because of what he was rather than who he was. He could only assume Moses hadn’t put the call out for him yet.

  What sounded like a million different accents filled the air in the spaceport as creatures shouted at one another. So many voices, the sound turned into white noise for all but the ones closest to Seb. The creatures farther away could be talking about him. Hard to imagine they wouldn’t be with how they all stared at him. But he couldn’t kick off, especially not now.

  The few hours in the sewer had helped Seb lose his tail. At least, he’d seen no sign of it yet. For all the attention on him at that moment, he couldn’t feel the watchful eye of someone specifically sent to track him down. Although, like a salamander, he might have lost one tail, but he’d grown another.

  A look over his shoulders on both sides and he ran through the count. One, two, three, four, five, six … His heart sped. Six?! Seb stopped and the six stopped too. They were to follow him, stay in sight, but not get too close. A human in the spaceport attracted enough attention. If he had seven slave children with him, he wouldn’t last two seconds without something kicking off. Then he saw her, the small blue hairy one. He’d not asked their names because he didn’t want to get too attached. A relieved sigh, he set off again.

  To walk between the two ships on either side of the alleyway to the docks made the guards on the cargo bays of each ship bristle. On his left he saw four beasts. They held chrome handles that would no doubt produce a laser sword of some description. Two guards on the other side, they went for the more traditional semi-automatic blasters. Both crews utterly different from one another were united in what appeared to be a desire to obliterate humanity.

>   Although he had to remain vigilant to the threat, they really didn’t matter at that moment. Seb stared straight ahead as he headed towards the docks. The children followed him.

  The wind on the other side of the ships ran across the expanse of open concrete straight into Seb. All of Aloo stank of salt, but having it rammed in his face intensified the stench.

  Where he’d lost the small blue hairy creature in the busy spaceport, Seb saw her come through the walkway first. He tapped her on the head as she passed him. “One.”

  Several more came through behind her. “Two, three, four, five.”

  A look up the alleyway and Seb saw six and seven walking towards him. But then one of the creatures from one of the cargo ships stepped in front of them. One of the ones with the swords.

  “Wait there,” Seb said to the five children and he headed back up the walkway. “What’s the problem?”

  The creature with the sword didn’t look capable of wielding it. Fat, flabby arms, tyres of blubber running around its middle. It looked at Seb and lifted its plump top lip in a sneer. “What are you doing with these kids?”

  “Taking them to someone who can help them. They were slaves.”

  “You bought them?”

  Seb dropped his voice to a low growl. “I rescued them.”

  “They’re valuable.”

  The two remaining children were mandulus. They were even ugly as kids, but they were kids nonetheless. They were so young they still had their horns. Seb moved between them and the fat swordsman. He shoved both of them in the direction of the others and said, “Go and be with your friends. I’ll catch up.”

  “I can’t let you do that,” the creature with the sword said. A quiet click and the metal handle of the sword produced a purple, cutlass-shaped blade.

  The fighting grew tiresome, but sometimes it resolved things quicker than anything else could. In one swift movement, Seb shoved the creature back, its skin slimy as if it secreted sludge. Before it had time to think, he punched it in the centre of its fat head.