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

the inability to work with one another. You, the Rung, and the Remboshi banded together too late. The reason I will succeed is because I am of one mind, of one single need. You couldn’t learn to work with one another, and like I said, now that you have, your window of opportunity has passed.”

Memories of what Jezra said to me of her prophecy, of Lou and his faith, ran through my mind like lightning.

“You’re wrong,” I said, feeling something like anger mixed with conviction rise in my chest. It was time we put this plague in its place. If I could, I was going to give it something to think about. “I’m going to stop you. That’s why I’m here. That’s why all of this had to happen. I’m going to burn you, and my face will be the last thing you see.”

“We will see,” Legion said with a dismissive hand wave to me. “Now go waste your time somewhere else. I need to focus my concentration on bringing down the Orion and infecting everyone in the camp.”

My hands clenched around the Dragon’s Breath I held in my palms as a trickle of nervous, angry sweat ran down my spine, chilling quickly and sending goosebumps to my limbs. More than anything, I wanted to lay into him right there. It would be so easy to squeeze the trigger a half dozen times and turn him into a pile of meat, but that would only kill the one host.

“Soon enough,” Stacy said, placing a hand on my arm. “Soon enough.”

I retreated with Stacy back around the corner and to our forces down the hall.

“Did you mean that back there?” Stacy asked.

“Mean what?” I asked.

“Did you mean that you believe this all happened for a reason?” Stacy asked me with hesitation in her voice. “I thought you didn’t buy into all that mumbo jumbo fate talk.”

I lifted my right hand to the medallion that hung around my neck. I remembered what my dying wife said to me. I remembered the events that took me to this planet and had led to this point. It was hard to explain everything with any degree of rationality. Maybe something else was driving the events that had brought us here.

“I guess I’m starting to,” I answered as honestly as possible. “Maybe Jezra and…and Lou were onto something.” Before I could get into it further, we were interrupted by John.

“Well, the madman’s done it,” John said, coming up to us and throwing a thumb back toward the way he came. “He’s created something, all right.”

I followed John’s line of sight to where the Rung shone their lights down on the ground near where Maksim worked. They had used the inside of a Rung chest plate as a housing for the many smaller bombs the Rung carried. Stuffed into the breast plate were a variety of smaller scrap pieces of metal, knives, screws, and anything else that had been scrounged.

“The smaller explosives will work as a catalyst to ignite one another and send the shrapnel ripping through Legion’s ranks,” Maksim said, looking up from his spot on the floor. “How many of the infected are there?”

“A thousand, maybe more,” I said. “We’ll have to set this thing off and then it’s still going to be a fight to get to the doors.”

“We’ll make it,” Dama said in a hard voice. “We’ll make it, if for no other reason than because we have to.”

16

“You sure you can hit this?” I asked Sulk as I carried the explosive device to the corner of the hall. “I’m going to heave it as far as I can.”

“Don’t worry about me, I’ll hit it,” Sulk said with confidence, taking a knee as he positioned his rifle around the corner. “Throw it high.”

The explosive felt heavy in my hands. It had to weigh a good thirty pounds. Between the small explosive devices and the added shrapnel, it wasn’t going to be an easy feat tossing this thing for distance.

John came over to me, motioning for the bomb.

“We’ll throw it further together,” John said, taking one side of the weapon.

Stacy, Dama, Tong, and the remaining Rung that were still able to fight stood, ready to sprint forward. Our plan was simple enough. Throw the bomb. Sulk would shoot it to detonate the charges. We then would run like hell to the armory doors before Legion could recover.

The idea was nothing fancy, but anyone who has ever been in a stressful situation understands things rarely go to plan. There were a number of things that we hadn’t thought of that could go horribly wrong, but like I mentioned before, our options were pretty limited.

“We throw this and we get behind cover,” I told John. “On three.”

We started to swing the bomb between us, counting each swing as we did.

Legion, for his part, remained content to stand there staring at us, like he was almost daring us to try and break through his lines.

“One, two, three!” I yelled in unison with John.

John and I sent the bomb sailing through the air. As soon as we let go, both of us dove for cover back around the corner.

The resounding boom was deafening. True to his word, Sulk had nailed the explosive, setting it off around the corner. I hoped we didn’t lose our hearing from the reverberation. We needed to be able to communicate.

John and I were just getting back to our feet as the others rushed forward. Our window of opportunity was already closing and we couldn’t afford that happening. With each passing second, Legion was getting his troops up and ready for a fight. And after this fight, we still needed to get home and check on the colonists.

I grabbed my Dragon’s Breath and followed at the rear of the line. In front of me, everything was smoky and dark. Once again, I was assaulted with the stench of so many bodies in a single room and now the acrid tang