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

Jezra broke off her conversation with Tong when she saw me approach.

“I’ll meet you in the medical wing with food. After a shower and rest, you’ll be as good as new,” Jezra promised.

“You think we’re just going to be friends with you now?” Stacy growled. “You gassed us and nearly killed Dean.”

“The gas only put you to sleep with no other side effects and the Great Dawn needed to be tested. It was unfortunate, yes, but it needed to be done,” Jezra said with a shrug of her shoulders. “This is the only way things could have happened and so they have.”

I was too tired and in too much pain to deal with Jezra now. I just shook my head. Stacy and Arun took me to the medical wing as Stacy filled Arun in on everything she’d missed, and I filled both of them in on my robot battle royal.

When we entered the medical wing, Ricky was awake and propped up in his bed. His lower jaw dropped as he saw me carried in.

“Do you feel as bad as you look?” he asked.

I took his own appearance in as Arun and Stacy laid me on the reclining chair next to his.

“Worse,” I said with a smile. I regretted the action immediately, as pain shot into my lip.

Tong came into the room a moment later, rushing over to grab a stool and examine me.

“I just want you to know that I had no idea what she was going to do,” Tong said nervously. “I apologize on behalf of my people. I—”

“It’s all right,” I said to the Remboshi, cutting him off. “I saw you take a lump on the back of the head. I know you didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Wait, what’s going on?” Ricky asked from his bed. “How long was I out?”

Stacy was about to answer him, when Jezra rushed into the room, a look I had never seen before on the seer’s face.

“It’s Legion,” Jezra said, staring at us with wide, panicked eyes. “It’s attacking the Orion.”

24

“What do you mean?” Arun asked.

“There are two of them?” Ricky asked, seeing Jezra for the first time.

“Show us,” Stacy said in a hard voice. It was clear she was far from forgiving Jezra for gassing us.

I felt strangely indifferent toward the old bag. I knew I should be pissed. She gassed me then made me fight two of her robots. I would’ve liked to think she wouldn’t have let me get too messed up in the second fight if I had lost, but who knew? Either way, I only wanted to lay her out a tiny bit at the moment.

Jezra made her way over to a screen on the medical wing wall. She opened the keyboard below it and typed in a command. A moment later, a view of her low-flying satellite showed the Orion. It was dark outside. Jezra clicked a few more commands and heat signatures popped onto the screen in bright red forms.

My heart stopped. There were thousands of them. Larger inhuman animals showed that Legion had infected more than just the survivors. A variety of creatures swelled the ranks of the human survivors.

We watched, spellbound. As one, they moved out of the forest to surround the Orion.

“What are they doing?” Arun asked. “Attacking at night?”

“I feel like they’d be running or sprinting for the gates if they were attacking,” I said. “Remember how that infected rhinoceros thing came at us before? That was an attack. This, this is a—”

“This is a siege,” Stacy said, taking the word out of my mouth.

“Legion will wait on—on what?” Ricky asked, trying to piece the events taking place in front of us together. “He’ll wait until we have to go out? The Orion has plenty of food and water housed inside the craft. They can stay in there for a long time to come.”

“Maybe Legion doesn’t know that?” Stacy offered.

“It knows,” I said. “It’s doing something else.”

“A show of force to decimate morale?” Tong offered. “Maybe this is all to incite fear into the survivors of the Orion.”

“Whatever it is, we have to get back,” I said, trying to sit up from my chair. A wave of dizziness came over me. I would have completely fallen out of my seat if it weren’t for Stacy. She came over to me and placed a gentle hand on my shoulder, pressing me back down.

“We will go and help, but we’re not going to travel at night anyway, and you need to get stitched up,” Stacy said, looking over at Tong. “Tong, can you get Dean put back together? Arun and I will go over the supplies we need to take back with us.”

Stacy paused a moment and looked over to the ever-blinking Jezra. The older Remboshi held her gaze.

“You’ll show us where all the weapons are kept and let us know if Legion makes a move against the Orion,” Stacy instructed, her tone brooking no argument. “Oh, and I want our weapons back.”

Jezra didn’t seem offended to be talked to this way. She nodded and led the other two women out the door.

“Lean back, Dean,” Tong said, going to work on his monitor. Metal arms identical to those that had worked on Ricky moved down from the ceiling. I ignored the pain the needle brought to dull my aching body.

Tong started cleaning my wounds and closing my cuts as Ricky started the line of questioning.

“So there are two of them now?”

“Yeah, Jezra’s the seer that told of the prophecy of us coming,” I said. “She built that mist wall and the creatures in it too.”

“What the—? I didn’t see that coming,” Ricky said.

“None of us did,” I answered.

“And she can see the Orion?” Ricky asked. “How?”

“A low-flying satellite.” I sucked in my breath as Tong closed the wound on my head.

“Sorry, almost done,” Tong said.

“Man, get laid up and miss all the