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

forget. But you still have a life to live. You still have a purpose to fulfill. Yes, be sad, but there is a time for sadness as is there a time for happiness. I want you to be happy. I want you to be happy, my love. Don’t dwell on us but remember us always with a smile as you live your life.”

I shook my head again, trying to understand what she was saying. I already did, but it seemed strange. Letting her go, letting them go was such a foreign idea.

“You go be the man you were always meant to be.” Natalie placed a hand on my chest. “I won’t be coming back. This is it.”

Natalie moved in closer, placing her lips on mine.

I woke in the back of the crawler, trying to remember my dream even as the details of the event faded. A sense of peace rested in my chest where Natalie had touched me. Tears fell down my face. I rubbed them away then sat up too quickly. A dull pain in my head reminded me of the events that had occurred that morning.

The crawler rocked back and forth underneath me. The sky overhead told me I’d slept far longer than I intended. Bright pinks and purples streaked the sky as the twin suns descended past the horizon.

Mutt looked up at me from his spot beside me on the crawler. His tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth in a dopey grin.

Stacy looked back at me from her spot behind the cab of the crawler. Her legs were bent in an easy stance to absorb the sway of the vehicle.

“I was going to wake you soon,” Stacy said with a smile. “How’s the head, Sleeping Beauty?”

“It feels alright,” I lied, still trying to remember every detail of the dream that had left me with such a deep sense of peace. I couldn’t. “I think I’m going to be okay.”

“Good. Here, I forgot to give this to you.” Stacy tossed me the medallion that Maksim had torn off my neck. “I saw it on the ground.”

“Thanks,” I said, catching it from the air.

“We’re out of range from communication with Iris now, so we’re on our own,” Stacy informed me.

I stood up on shaky legs, going over to where she leaned on the back of the cab for support. I had a chance to study the terrain. In front of us and to the left, dark mountain ranges reached up to touch the sky. To the south, the first lines of the forest scattered out and were lost in the growing darkness.

“We shouldn’t travel in the dark,” Arun said via the comm unit in my ear. “According to the map Iris gave us, we should be reaching the Orion communication level soon. We’ll stop there and rest for the night.”

“No sign of Captain Harold or his team?” I asked.

“None,” Ricky answered. “No tracks or markings they might have left either, nothing. It’s like they disappeared.”

An uncomfortable silence fell on our little group at those words. The crawler continued forward, racing the setting suns. Ricky switched on the vehicle’s high beam lights to compensate.

We reached the foot of the mountains less than an hour later. There was no sign of life save for a few birds in the distance and the scampering alien lizards on the ground around us.

Ricky pulled to a stop at the base of a steep sloping mountain whose peak was lost to the darkness.

“I can try to scout a way around or through,” Ricky suggested.

“No need,” Tong said through the comms. “I can see what you’re looking for there, just to the left of the foot of the mountain.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Follow the slope on the left side of this mountain,” Tong instructed. “You’ll see the silhouette of the section of the ship.”

“I don’t see anything,” Ricky said. “I just see another mountain.”

“I don’t think that’s a mountain, Rick,” I said as I picked up Tong’s line of sight. “That’s a piece of the Orion.”

13

Unlike the prison section of the ship we discovered the week before, this section was much larger. It was deceivingly massive. On the map Iris showed us, it looked small—sure, larger than the prison section by a bit, but not this big.

No wonder we missed it in the growing dark. It rose from the left side of the mountain in front of us like some massive hill. The stars twinkling overhead were obscured by thick clouds, as was the giant moon that usually beamed down.

Now that I saw it up close, there was no thinking it was anything else. It was obvious. I couldn’t unsee it if I wanted to.

“So, what’s our play here, Arun?” Stacy asked through the comm. “Are we going in or waiting it out until daylight?”

“We take the crawler up there and park until morning,” Arun decided. “There’s not enough room for us all in the cab of the crawler, but there is in there. We see what we can for now, find a secure spot, then go exploring with the daylight.”

“Will the vehicle be able to make it up the steep incline?” Tong asked.

“What do you think, Dean?” Ricky asked me. “You think we can make it up there?”

“We’ll make it,” I said. “Just drop it in gear and take it slow.”

“You got it, brother,” he replied, adjusting the gears and sending a hard shiver through the base of the crawler.

“Hold on,” I told Stacy.

Stacy nodded, gripping the handles on the outside of the cab. Even Mutt pressed his belly to the bed of the crawler and spread out on all fours.

Ricky used the high beams and the added floodlights. Two large lights in the grill of the vehicle shot out along with two smaller lights on each front fender. On the top of the cab near where we held on, four more lights opened from the roof and shot brilliant white lights into the darkness.

The mountains were bare of any