Orion Colony Complete Series Boxed Set J.N. Chaney (books for new readers .txt) 📖

Mutt’s tail wagged, then he looked like he was about to nuzzle me again. Instead, he lifted his head to the air, taking in a big sniff. Worry crossed his face. The dog ran from his position next to me toward the broken gates, barking like a hellhound.

I knew Mutt well enough now to tell when something was seriously wrong. This wasn’t his happy bark or the one he used when he wanted me to scratch his belly. This one was laced with aggression.

“There!” one of the suits on the catwalk shouted. “In the tree line. There are hundreds of them!”

I struggled to my feet. More shouting ripped through the courtyard as if we were all woken from the spell by Mutt’s barking.

“Are you okay, Dean?” Elon asked, making it to my side and pulling me to my feet.

“I think ‘okay’ is a stretch, but I’ll live,” I said, dusting myself off.

“You’re bleeding,” he said, looking down to a long cut on the palm of my right hand. I’d used my hands to soften the fall and, as a result, paid the price.

“I’m fine,” I told the concerned Eternal. “It’s a long way from my heart.”

Elon looked confused at first. Apparently, that wasn’t a saying where he came from.

Instead of trying to explain it to him, I turned and made my way over to the gate with everyone else. Boss Creed, Ricky, Arun, Stacy, and others were already there.

“This can’t be good,” I said under my breath as I joined them.

I was right.

The suit on the wall was the first to notice people coming out from the tree line to the north. I shaded my eyes from the suns overhead and squinted.

There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands. All survivors from the crash. Unlike the survivors inside of our own walls, these people were already taken by Legion. Their eyes stared without seeing. The blackness dripped from their mouths and ears.

“What are they doing?” Ricky wondered. “What are they waiting for?”

“Orders?” someone asked from atop the catwalk.

“Don’t shoot,” Stacy said.

I agreed with her decision; not only was the group too far away, but there were a lot of them. If they charged our open gates right now, we might be overrun.

“What do you say about getting inside and fixing this gate?” I asked everyone around me.

“I think that’s the best idea I’ve heard all day,” Arun said, turning to address the crowd gathering at the gate. “Everyone, we need to keep you inside. Our mechanics will fix the gate.”

“But those are our people,” someone in the throng shouted.

“They need help,” someone else said.

“They’re infected,” Elon said, raising his voice in a very unlike Elon way. Usually, he left the directing and orders to his sister.

I could see why. Arun looked tired again. The mask of leadership she wore on her brow could fool most, but I knew her better.

“We deserve to know everything you know,” a strong voice called out from the crowd. “We have that right, you know.”

I looked over to see the same large man who I’d run across in the cafeteria when Captain Harold asked for volunteers. His size and girth struck me again. He couldn’t be more than six feet tall, but he was built like a refrigerator. A gleam in his eyes told me he knew how to use his weight to his advantage.

Shouts of agreement from the crowd egged him on.

“You’ve been keeping information from us and we need to know everything,” he said again. “We have rights, too!”

More cheers and yells of affirmation erupted from the group.

“Officer John Bower, that’s enough,” Stacy commanded, stepping toward the much larger man. “There’s a time and place for this. Right now is not it.”

“If not now, when?” John asked, not to be outdone. “Our leadership is keeping us in the dark.”

“Not your leadership,” Arun said, stepping forward. “Me. I made the decision to hold back information until we knew more. To protect our people.”

“Our people?” John asked. “You’re an Eternal. I have no problem with that. If I did, I would have never come on this journey to begin with. What I do have a problem with is you deciding we need protection. We don’t; more than that, we need the truth.”

“Enough!” Stacy yelled, getting into John’s face. “Officer Bower, stand down.”

John ran a thick tongue over his wide teeth. For a moment, he looked down at Stacy as if he was going to throw his blaster to the ground and resign right there and then. Instead, he shook his head and took a step back.

“You know everything we know now,” Arun said. “If you have questions, so do we. We’re trying to figure out exactly how to combat this virus. The alien species we discovered on the planet is helping us with that now.”

A stunned silence fell on the group. They hadn’t had the time to properly digest the fact that aliens were real.

“How many aliens are there?” someone asked, their voice in awe.

“One woke from a kind of cryogenic sleep and there are others still sleeping,” Arun answered. “He is working with us and friendly to our cause.”

“What do they look like?” another voice asked.

“Can we see them?” still someone else asked.

The questions poured out like a dam long overdue to burst.

I still hadn’t forgotten about the horde of infected staring at us from the jungle tree line. When I turned back to look, they were gone. The logical part of my mind told me they pulled back into the jungle, but it felt off and I wondered how they’d disappeared so quickly and silently.

Arun noticed the same thing. She ushered people further inside, along with Elon and Stacy’s help. They moved them away from the gate and began answering all of their questions.

I heard all of this happening but refused to take my eyes off the jungle tree line. I remembered exactly how brutal and violent this virus could make people. Legion was out there waiting for its opportunity.

“Did you see the