Underworld (Shadows of the Void Space Opera Serial Book 5) Read online

  Underworld

  Shadows of the Void Book 5

  J.J. Green

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter One

  Sayen was the first to notice that the shuttle they were in wasn’t flying to its scheduled destination. She was sitting in a window seat and was in no mood for talking. After telling Carl what she’d found out at the Global Government Security Headquarters, their conversation had drifted to silence. She was worried about her parents. She wondered what their message meant in terms of their own safety. They’d written that it was no longer safe for her to go home, but had they meant that it was unsafe for her because the Shadows were looking for her, or that their house was under threat of attack? She had no way of finding out because they’d also told her not to do anything that would allow them to be traced, and that included contacting them.

  Her thoughts had preoccupied her so much that she hadn’t really been registering her view of the landscape below. When her ears popped, the sensation jolted her out of her distraction. The shuttle was descending. She scanned the ground for a familiar sight of her state’s capital, and with growing alarm she realized she didn’t recognize what she saw. Instead of a large metropolis, below them was a small town. On the horizon was a mountain range that she knew, but it lay in the wrong direction.

  She clutched Carl’s arm on the seat rest beside her.

  “Something’s up, isn’t it?” he asked in an undertone.

  “Yes,” Sayen replied quietly. “We’re landing in the wrong place. How did you know?”

  “We started descending too soon.” He leaned over her to peek out the window. “Do you know where we are?”

  Sayen nodded. “At least three hours’ drive from where we should be.” She looked past him toward Jas and Makey across the aisle. The kid was asleep, his head lolling against the security officer’s shoulder. The woman was staring at the back of the seat in front of her, her face set and expressionless.

  “The pilot hasn’t made an announcement,” Carl said, “so he’s in on it.” He reached across the gap between his seat and Jas’ and pulled on her sleeve.

  She snapped out of her reverie. “What?” she asked him, frowning.

  Sayen waved to get her attention. She pointed out the window and shook her head in an exaggerated gesture. Jas’ eyebrows rose. She mouthed the word krat and pushed Makey upright so that he woke up. As he opened his eyes, she put her finger to her lips and leaned over to whisper in his ear.

  Around them, a hum of conversation rose in the cabin as some of the passengers also began to notice the shuttle wasn’t landing where it was supposed to.

  A ping sounded from above as the overhead speaker came to life. “This is your pilot speaking. I’m sorry to report that bad weather has forced us to divert to Silversville. An autobus will ferry passengers on to your scheduled destination. We apologize for any inconvenience. We will be landing in fifteen minutes. Please stay seated with your seatbelt fastened.”

  Sayen looked at the clear blue sky outside. Bad weather? The rest of the passengers weren’t buying the excuse either. Angry voices rose on both sides of the cabin and call buttons chirped as people demanded the attention of flight attendants. The attendants all seemed to have disappeared, however. A few men and women undid their safety belts and got up out of their seats, and the volume of protests and complaints inside the shuttle rose.

  “Are y’all thinking what I’m thinking?” Sayen asked the others. They nodded. There was no need to spell it out. Shadows were in control of the plane. The only question was, was this a general kidnapping, or did the aliens know that Sayen and her rescuers were on board? There weren’t many shuttle flights from Antarctica. It wouldn’t have taken a genius to narrow down the possibilities as to where they were, and the news of her escape from the Shadows’ base must have gotten out by now.

  Jas was standing and taking down her bag from the overhead locker. After putting the bag on her seat, she said to Sayen and Carl. “We can’t let them stay in control of the shuttle. If we go along with their plan, they’re going to have a nice reception committee waiting for us when we land. Carl, can you fly this?”

  “Probably,” he replied.

  “If you can get us on the ground without killing everyone, that’ll be good enough. Sayen, how are your arms? Can you hold a weapon?”

  Sayen’s forearms were still painful from laser burns she’d received during her escape. “Yes, I can.”

  “Great. Short, sharp bursts, okay? If you melt a hole in the shuttle, we’re all dead.” Jas turned to Makey, who was craning his neck, trying to hear what she was saying. “You stay right where you are. You’re just another passenger, okay?”

  The kid scowled. Jas still hadn’t forgiven him for not following orders when he’d taken part in Sayen’s rescue. She grabbed her bag and surreptitiously pulled out a weapon for Sayen and Carl. “Let’s go.”

  The three of them made their way to the front of the cabin, which was already blocked with angry passengers trying to find the flight attendants. The attendants all seemed to have retreated into the pilot’s control room. Sayen hoped that none of them were human.

  “Get back to your seats,” Jas shouted. “Everyone, for your own safety, return to your seats and fasten your seat belts.”

  She got some attention, but not enough. Most of the passengers ignored her. “Who do you think you are?” asked a woman, shrilly. “We want answers. My husband is waiting for me at the spaceport. This diversion is unacceptable.”

  Jas raised her weapon and pointed it above the crowd. The woman gasped and stepped back. “She’s got a gun. Oh Lord, she’s got a gun.” That got everyone’s attention. The angry passengers melted away like overnight frost under the morning sun, and in a few moments their path to the pilot’s cabin door was clear. The place was filled with the sound of seatbelts being hastily fastened.

  Sayen and Jas advanced, and Carl brought up the rear, covering them against Shadows that might be among the men and women watching.

  Jas raised her weapon to fire it at the lock on the door, but Sayen grabbed her arm and shook her head. The Shadows could be expecting them to do just that, and they would shoot as Jas went through the door. Jas frowned at her, puzzled. As Sayen put her ear against the wall, the woman’s brow cleared and she lowered her gun.

  Sayen listened with her enhanced hearing. No voices could be heard inside, which wasn’t surprising as the Shadows communicated with their minds, but she could detect the sounds of movement and—if she listened very hard—breathing. She held up four fingers to Jas. The pilot and three flight attendants were inside. She dropped two fingers and pointed with the others, indicating the positions of two Shadows. Jas nodded and aimed her weapon. A faint Oh my Lord, repeated, came from behind.

  Saye
n aimed at where she estimated the pilot’s head to be and prayed that she hit it and not the window. With a mutual exhaled breath she and Jas fired, then altered their aims and immediately fired again. The shuttle lurched, and Sayen fell onto a seat occupied by an obese man. The cabin door swung open and a laser beam shot out, narrowly missing Sayen but hitting the obese man in the gut. He shrieked, and screams and yells from the other passengers echoed his cries.

  Jas shot again, and the Shadow that had fired fell out of the doorway, half its head missing. She’d killed it, but at least one of their shots had pierced the shuttle. Air whistled out, and the door began to slam shut but was prevented by the body of the dead Shadow. An alarm sounded and oxygen masks fell from overhead. Jas and Sayen jumped over the fallen Shadow and ran through the door to the flight deck, quickly followed by Carl. Two Shadows lay dead on the floor, and the pilot was slumped dead in his seat, a smoking hole through his back.

  Another hole had been melted in the window, and Sayen fought not to be dragged toward it. She grabbed a serving tray that one of the attendants had dropped and flung it over the hole. The air pressure inside the cabin held it in place, and the whistling stopped.

  Carl had already dragged the pilot out of her seat and was strapping himself in. As he adjusted the controls, the shuttle’s steep descent began to slow.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “Anywhere that isn’t where they were taking us,” Jas replied.

  “Okay, I’ll find an unihabited area outside the city.”

  Sayen removed the headphones and mic from the pilot and listened with one ear. “Please report on your position,” said a voice. “Please respond.”

  “Who is this?” Sayen asked. “Who am I speaking to?”

  A gasp sounded, then the headphones went dead. Her eyes met Jas’. “The Shadows are at space flight control too,” she said.

  The aliens’ spread seemed to grow wider each time she encountered them, but the exchange with space flight control had told her one thing useful: the aliens couldn’t communicate telepathically over long distances. For that, they relied on electronic comms, the same as humans.

  Chapter Two

  By the time Carl landed the shuttle a few miles from the capital, the passengers were subdued and quiet. Makey had joined Sayen, Carl, and Jas in the pilot’s cabin. The obese man sprawled unmoving in his seat, a large pool of blood beneath him. None of the passengers had made a move to attack, so either there were no Shadows among them, or they were remaining anonymous.

  Landing a space shuttle on an area of unprepared, natural landscape didn’t hurt the shuttle, but it destroyed the surrounding area. When they opened the doors, the smell of burning plants and scorched earth drifted inside. As they were trying to figure out a way to traverse the ten-meter drop to the ground unharmed, one of the passengers spoke up.

  “Hey, what’s going on? What’s going to happen to us?”

  “It’s too much to explain now,” Sayen answered, “but those things we killed weren’t people. They’re aliens called Shadows. They look exactly like us, and they’re trying to take over the planet.”

  That drew intakes of breath and exclamations from the passengers. The Oh my Lord woman started up again.

  “We can’t help you,” Sayen continued. “They’re after us, and we have to get away. Maybe you can call for help, but please be very careful. The Shadows might come and pretend to rescue you, only to make you another of their victims. It’ll be better if you can make your own way home. After that, tell others what happened here, but watch who you speak to. If anyone you know has disappeared for no reason for a short time, they might be a Shadow.”

  The passengers murmured as they digested this information. A young man stood up, and Jas instantly aimed at him. The man blanched and raised his hands. “Woah there. I just wanted to say, use the emergency slide to get down. That’s what it’s for.”

  Of course. Sayen opened the casing beside the door and activated the mechanism. A bright yellow slide inflated all the way to the ground. “Thanks,” Sayen said.

  “No problem. Good luck to you,” replied the man, sitting down.

  Jas went to retrieve her bag from her seat. The curious heads of the passengers poking out into the aisle retreated as she passed them and popped out again as she returned to the front. Sayen hoped Jas has plenty of stuff in that bag of hers to help them survive.

  “Thanks for saving us, honey,” piped a voice. It was Oh my Lord.

  “Ready?” Jas asked Sayen and the others.

  They jumped onto the slide one by one, and scooted out of the way immediately when they hit the bottom. The ground was still smoking from the shuttle’s engines. Sayen coughed, and her eyes watered. Fifty or so meters away were some low hills. She suggested they made their way over to them as they were in the direction of the capital. She was thankful for the enhanced skin on her bare feet. In their hurry to leave Antarctica, they hadn’t even stopped to buy her some shoes.

  As they went along, Sayen glanced over her shoulder. The shuttle passengers were beginning to leave, sliding down to the ground. She wished them well but also feared for them. The Shadows seemed to be everywhere, surely and steadily infiltrating every avenue of life, so that soon no one would know who was their family or friend or colleague, or who was a Shadow.

  In a few minutes they reached the hills and started climbing the slopes. She estimated that twelve to fourteen kilometers lay between them and the city. It was late afternoon, and if they wanted to sleep in a bed that night, they had a long walk ahead of them.

  Her stomach sank as she remembered what her parents had said: don’t use anything that will allow you to be traced. The minute they used the credchips embedded in their wrists, they would be identifiable. If they couldn’t pay for anything, how were they going to stay in a hotel, or buy food? How would she buy herself some shoes? And she needed a change of clothes. Walking around in Makey’s oversized loans wasn’t only uncomfortable, she looked so ridiculous, she would stick out like a sore thumb.

  If they were to avoid detection by the Shadows, they had to disappear, her parents had said. How they were going to do that, she didn’t have the faintest idea.

  As she mulled over their problems, the four of them climbed higher into the hills, following narrow tracks created by hikers. Makey led them. He seemed to have a knack for finding the quickest path through the undergrowth and often found a new track when none seemed to exist. An hour passed, then two, and still they pushed on. The sun was getting lower, and the hills stretched out before them. They were heading in the right direction, Sayen was sure, but the city remained out of sight.

  “Let’s rest a while,” Jas said as they were passing a piece of flat, grassy ground.

  They sat on the grass. Carl pulled stalk to chew and lay down, spreading out his full length on the ground. Makey sat with his back to them. He was probably still mad at Jas, or maybe she was still mad at him.

  “Hey, Sayen,” Carl said, “your parents said someone would meet us at the spaceport with a package. Maybe we should go there and try to find them?”

  “Our flight should have landed there hours ago,” Sayen said. “Do you think they’d still be waiting?”

  “No,” Carl replied, his face twisting with disappointment, “you’re right. They’d be long gone by now.”

  “It wouldn’t be safe for them to wait around,” Jas agreed. “The Shadows will have announced that the shuttle crashed, or another excuse. They might not believe it, but there wouldn’t be anything they could do. And the spaceport’s so far away, we’d never make it there. I don’t know what to do. I’m out of ideas.”

  Something had been nagging at Sayen, and then seemed a good time to bring it up. “There’s one thing I can’t figure out—how did y’all know where to find me? Did you find out about the Shadow base and guess I must be there?”

  Carl sat up and shared a look with Jas. Neither replied to her question.

  “What’s wrong?
Why won’t you tell me?” Sayen asked.

  “Sayen, I’m sorry,” said Jas. “I forgot you didn’t know.” She pulled an interface out of her bag, brought up a screen, and handed it to her.

  Sayen studied the blinking blue spot and the map surrounding it for several moments before she began to understand what Jas was telling her. “Hold on, is this me?” Her mouth fell open as the penny dropped. “My parents had me fitted with a tracer? I’m carrying a tracer? You’ve got to be kidding me.” She jumped up, and Jas quickly took the interface from her. Sayen clenched her fists and looked down at her body. “Do you know where it is? Did they tell you?” She probed the skin of her stomach, hoping to feel the hard edge of a chip.

  “They didn’t say,” Carl said. “Sayen, they were worried about you after what happened on the Galathea.”

  “I’m a grown woman, and my parents are keeping tabs on me like I’m a little girl. Worse than if I were a little girl. Can they even do that? It’s illegal, right? It’s an invasion of...krat. My own parents.” She sat down again.

  “Well,” said Carl, “looking on the bright side, if they hadn’t, we would never have found you. You’d still be back in the Shadow base, being experimented on.”

  Sayen threw him a dark look. He was right, of course, but that didn’t make her feel any better. All her life her parents had been overly protective, and it had made her fearful to try new things or do anything remotely risky. She’d finally overcome that fear, only to learn her parents weren’t prepared to let her go and stand on her own two feet.

  “We’ve got to find that tracer and get it out of you,” Jas said.

  “Yes, we have,” Sayen replied, then, suspecting that Jas’ reasoning was different from hers, she added, “Why?”

  “You know all about the Shadows on Earth now, and they know you do. They’re trying to keep their operations secret, so they’ll want to stop you from spreading the word about them. If they find out that your parents fitted you with a tracer, they’ll try to use it to find you.” She looked at the interface in her hands. “Come to think of it...” she said as she got up. She went over to a rock and put the interface down on it. After searching for a moment, she found another rock and brought it down heavily on the interface, shattering the plastiglass screen. Jas continued to hammer the interface until it was nothing but small fragments. Finally satisfied that the device was completely destroyed, she said, “We can’t be too careful. Let’s get out of here.”