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

the long chains, gripping it in my hands. I didn’t put the handkerchief on my face. I couldn’t, knowing where it had been before. Instead, I wrapped it around a palm. It didn’t seem right somehow to just toss it to the side, not after everything it had been through.

“All right!” Stacy’s commanding voice filled the void of my thoughts. “On three, we pull together! One, two, three!”

I laid into it. Eyes still open, examining the courtyard, my body did the work on auto while my mind ran through the possibilities.

To think Maksim was here somehow in the courtyard was delusional, or was it? We didn’t find a body when we examined the prison section of the Orion. We thought we saw him when we buried Ira. He could be here, somehow concealing himself among the survivors. No one knew exactly what he looked like, save a handful of us that had apprehended him.

I kept searching those gathered with no luck. My body went through the movements on its own as Stacy yelled out when we were to pull. The carcass began to move inch by inch, leaving a gruesome trail in its wake. The blood was so dark, it was nearly black, crimson like the handkerchief in my hand.

6

Dinner that night was a lesson in gluttony. I’d missed lunch, and after working all day, I decided to take it upon myself to gorge and fit as much food into my mouth as possible.

I sat in one of the cafeteria tents in a chair by myself. I didn’t mind being alone. In fact, it was something I’d begun to miss. It seemed like every day I was needed to do this or that. I ate with my head down and took a hands-on approach to my meal.

Mutt whined next to me and I threw him a fair amount of scraps. He was more like me than I wanted to admit. We both didn’t care much what we were eating, only that it came in large amounts. He snapped up the goods in midair before they fell to the dirt.

A long pink tongue ran over the outside of his mouth. He sat at attention, wagging his tail, staring at me with baleful eyes that seemed to say, “Come on, are you going to eat that? You’re not going to eat all of that, are you?”

I gave him more than I should.

“Dean, Dean, there you are!” Lou came over to my corner of the cafeteria with a wide grin on his face. “I looked for you outside the gates after that carcass started to burn, but someone said you’d already gone.”

“Didn’t see much of the point in watching that poor animal burn,” I said, popping a biscuit into my mouth. “It had already been through enough.”

“I understand completely.” Lou’s face went from a look of happiness at seeing me to concern at the topic of conversation. “That’s partly why I’m here. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what we faced in the jungle . . . and, well, I want to help.”

Mutt and I both looked at him sideways. Lou was a good guy, maybe even a great guy, but I wasn’t sure what he was getting at.

“That’s nice, Lou, good for you,” I said, getting back to my meal. “I’m sure we could use a padre in here. There has to be a lot of people looking for religion at the moment. When the world is at its worst, the church is at its best, right?”

“Yes, no,” Lou said, taking a seat opposite me. “That’s not what I mean. You see, I was praying in my room aboard the Orion. Something told me to go to the top of the ship. I looked out the way we had come through the jungle when we made our escape. That was when I saw it.”

The way Lou let the words hang, I knew he was baiting me. He wanted me to ask what he saw. I refused to get trapped; instead, I took another bite out of my biscuit.

“Well?” Lou asked.

“What?” I said.

“Don’t you want to know what I saw?”

“Not really,” I said, already feeling the fatigue of the day setting in.

“I saw that,” Lou said excitedly, pointing to the lightning bolt scar on the palm of my hand. “I saw that in the jungle and now you bear the mark.”

“Hate to lay this one on you, padre, but I just got this scar today. It was a memento courtesy of our friend Legion out there—if it is a he, after all,” I said, looking down at the lightning-bolt-shaped scar Dr. Allbright and the Med Aid left me with. “Sorry to burst your bubble. It’s not a birthmark or anything like that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Lou said, refusing to be put off. “The only thing that matters is that we stand together and keep the faith. Come with me. I’ll show you.”

It was hard to say no to the man. Usually, I didn’t have a problem with that. Right now, the way Lou looked at me, I realized he wasn’t going to go away until he convinced me to come.

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” I asked.

“Nope,” Lou said, cracking a grin through his white beard. “It’ll take an hour of your time. Two hours at the very most. You must see this, Dean.”

I looked down at Mutt, who only had eyes for the food on my plate at the moment.

“Don’t gorge yourself,” I told Mutt as I left the rest of the food on the plate for him. I put it on the ground and looked over at Lou, who was far too eager. “Lead the way, padre.”

Lou jumped to his feet with surprising quickness and took off through the cafeteria. He didn’t waste time either. He wanted to talk the entire way to the Orion.

“The suns are just setting now. It should be the perfect time of day to see it with the