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

We moved on in silence for the next hour, following Sulk’s instructions as he led us to the foot of where two of the mountains met. True to his word, there was a small canyon cutting through the mountain range.

Sheer rock walls reached high into the sky on either side of us. The canyon was wide enough that we could move side by side if we chose, but only just barely.

We pulled level with one another, examining the passage. I looked over to John, who was driving the other predator. He glanced at me, shaking his head.

I know, I don’t like it either, I thought to myself. This has ambush written all over it.

The mountain range was all dirt and dark rocks stretching right to left as far as the eye could see. Here and there, small lizard-like animals scurried, trying to find food or shelter—maybe both.

The suns had nearly set behind the mountains. Legion didn’t make mistakes. He had flushed us out for a reason. That much I was sure of.

“We only have two options,” Stacy said, thinking out loud. “We go through or we scout another way around. Looking at the live feed, I don’t think there’s a clear way through like this, for who knows how long. It would take us days to go around.”

“We don’t have days,” Lou said as if he were talking to himself. “The way is narrow and the path is steep.”

“That some kind of ancient proverb or something?” John asked.

“Something like that,” Lou said with a slight smile. “For what it’s worth, I say we go forward. Now that we all have the live feed, any move from Legion and we’ll see him coming miles away. But it’s not my decision and I can respect that.”

I looked over to Stacy, who stood in the back of her predator with the Blood Shot. At the moment, her arms were crossed over her chest as if she were deep in thought.

There was no real choice here. I knew that and so did she. We had to go through, though I respected her for taking the time to consider any and all other options before voicing her thoughts.

“This is the only way,” Stacy finally said. “Eyes open. Legion has something up his sleeve, but the faster we get to the Rung, the faster we end this.”

“Let’s go,” I said, turning my predator forward. We entered the canyon at a crawl that turned into a steady pace a few seconds later. With the light dying overhead, I turned my high beams on. They illuminated the dark, but we still couldn’t make much sense of what was ahead of us.

The predators’ giant wheels slowly crunched over the dry terrain. My head was on a swivel. Everyone was right. There was something going on here we couldn’t see. My sixth sense told me this was all kinds of wrong.

An eerie silence descended on our group like a thick blanket on a hot night. I watched the overhead satellite’s view inside my visor of the satellite expecting to see signs of Legion, but it stayed quiet.

Sulk clicked something hard.

Tong clicked back.

The two exchanged a brief but intense conversation.

“Want to fill me in here?” I asked. “Not all of us speak clicky S language.”

“He sees something,” Tong said, leaning forward from his position as if he were trying to see into the distance. “A man.”

I looked forward again. Thus far, the canyon had been nothing more than a few rocks and boulders I had to navigate over or around. I craned my neck forward, trying to get a glimpse of anything.

There shouldn’t be anyone human around here. If there were, we could be almost certain it was an infected.

“There, on the feed,” Stacy pointed out, tension and anxiety evident in her voice. “It came out of nowhere. It wasn’t there a second ago, I swear.”

I looked down at the small bleep on my feed. While the satellite was zoomed out, the figures appeared as tiny dots. When it was zoomed in, we could make out distinct images of the individuals. Right now, it was zoomed out, showing us as a pair of tiny dots going through the canyon and whatever it was in front of us as a stationary dot.

Stacy was right, it was as if the interloper had appeared out of thin air.

I slowed the predator to a crawl as the headlights pierced the darkness, picking up the figure of a human man as we drew closer. He was tall with grey hair and a grizzled face. Unlike the other infected, he was clean, as if he had just taken a bath and gathered new clothes. The only thing at all that set him apart from a normal man was those black eyes. They were piercing and scary, feral-looking and lacking humanity.

I stopped the predator, allowing John to pull up beside me. Something about the man was off besides the fact that he was immaculately clean and infected by an alien entity. I knew him.

“Captain Harold,” John breathed. “It’s him.”

Realization struck a moment later. Captain Ezra Harold had been sent with a second expeditionary force when I left with mine toward the prison section of the Orion.

We came after his party later. The only sign of them we’d found were dead bodies, courtesy of the Rung. It wasn’t difficult to imagine Legion had snagged one of the survivors as they fled from the Rung.

“I’ve come to talk,” Legion said, speaking through Captain Harold’s body. He turned in a full circle. “You can see I have no weapons. I’m not here to try and kill you.”

“Not this time,” Stacy countered. “What about that little ambush you just tried to catch us with?”

“Well, you can’t fault me for trying,” Legion said with a shrug that was meant to emphasize his capitulation. “I knew you’d be tired after your long drive. Come on. All I want to do is talk, I promise. I’m alone.”

“Do you trust him?” I asked Stacy.

“Not for a