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

Warning lights flickered on and off in my armor suit. I wasn’t familiar enough with the tech to tell what was going on, but I knew it wasn’t good.

“Dean, watch out!” Stacy screamed through the comm unit.

I was fast enough to see another massive alien beast with the three horns approaching like a laser beam from my right. It trampled other infected as it made a beeline for my location.

Oh, this is going to suck, I thought as I lifted my arms up to defend myself too late.

Right before impact, a Rung piloted suit slammed into the beast, changing its trajectory just enough to send it past me. It reeled into the infected horde, trampling many of them flat.

The suit opened fire on the beast, making mush out of it.

“Thought you could use a hand,” Dama’s voice said through the comms. “Come on. We can’t be far now.”

“Thank you,” I said, letting a long exhale of air escape my lungs. “I owe you one.”

“You owe us a few power armor suits as well.” Dama chuckled. “We can talk about it after we defeat Legion.”

I didn’t argue with her there. For what felt like an eternity, we waded through the mass of infected. Legion threw everything at us, from infected Rung and humans to various animals of the planet Genesis.

The Remboshi on the predators to my left were experts with the vehicles. While half of them maintained a steady line moving forward, the other half commenced destroying the infected, both running over them and cutting them down with the high-powered Blood Shots on the rear of the vehicles.

The way they maneuvered the predators through the lines of infected was amazing. I had no idea a predator could move so quickly. I would have to get a lesson from them after this was over.

Elon led the humans behind us as a sort of a cleanup crew from the wreckage the six power armor suits left in their wake.

Before long, I could see the lightning bolt shaped rock appear above the dense jungle treetops. Legion’s brain was within striking distance now. Only a bit farther.

The distance wasn’t the problem at the moment, but rather the level of damage my power armor suit had taken. Apparently, I was hard on my toys. Half the screen in front of me was blacked out, thanks to some kind of injury sustained to the cameras on the exterior of the suit. My left leg dragged behind me and a shower of sparks cascaded down my vision from where the helmet of the suit sat on top of the chest.

“Keep moving forward!” I yelled as my own suit shut down on me. “He’s desperate now. We’re almost there!”

I opened the hatch on my suit to jump down. Just because I wasn’t piloting a suit anymore didn’t mean I was out of the fight.

Legion must have sensed we were on the verge of overrunning his position because a scream straight out of a nightmare ripped from the collective throats of the infected. With one final push, they came at us in a wave of bodies.

22

Nightmarish images of the dead missing legs and arms advanced on our position. Early in the fight, the word had been passed down to either attempt headshots or induce so much brain trauma that it was rendered useless.

We didn’t expect to see what Legion did next.

“What’s that?” Elon asked via the earpiece I still wore. “Behind the latest push of infected, others are carrying something black.”

“The spores,” Jezra warned. “They’re the Legion spores. Don’t let them come near you!”

I went down to a knee, grabbing the Judge that rested on my hip. I pulled the trigger in rapid succession, tearing into the newest wave of attackers.

Elon and Jezra were right. In a last-ditch effort to win the battle, Legion was sacrificing the first wave of infected while the second wave ran toward us, carrying armfuls of thick black vegetation that gave off tiny puffs of ebony powder with every step.

I took one infected down with a series of shots to the chest before working my way up to its head. Another I had to spend two missed rounds on before a third found its skull.

“Going to have to work on that aim sooner or later,” Boss Creed said, coming up on my left. He carried a heavy blaster and unloaded on a group of infected sprinting at us with arm loads of the black spores.

“Dean,” Ricky said, joining us. He handed me a canister with a hose on the front. “Take it. You’ll need it to kill Legion.”

I knew what the flamethrower was. I nodded, strapping the canister on my back. The hose itself I slung over my shoulder. I was ready to do some damage.

“We have to make a move now!” Stacy shouted over the comm. “Legion’s raising the dead!”

All around the battlefield, reports started flooding in through the channel. Legion’s tactic wasn’t only to infect the living but to infect our own dead to rise and fight on his side.

Humans and Remboshi were being brought back via the virus to fight for Legion once more.

To my left, a Rung power armor unit went down under a volley of rocket fire. Another stumbled and fell, only to be swarmed by dozens of infected carrying the spores. They shook the plant, trying to get it into the power armor unit’s cracks and crevices and infect the pilot inside.

“No! Sulk!” Dama screamed as the power armored suit went down like a larger insect under a swarm of ants. “Sulk!”

“Keep fighting!” Sulk said as though he was being strangled from inside his suit. “Never give up! Never—”

Sulk’s voice disappeared. It didn’t take a mind reader to figure out what had happened to him.

“We have to do something now.” Jezra’s voice was calm and clear amidst a cacophony of screaming panic. “Dean, it’s time.”

I had no idea what the crazy old bat was talking about. I had given