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

“Are we going to go in there?” Ira asked. He was one of the few suits aboard the Orion to make it out alive after the crash. He was a good kid but a little whiny if you asked me.

I was surprised when he directed the question at me.

“Don’t look at me,” I said before motioning over to Boss Creed. “Ask him.”

Boss Creed’s hard eyes roved over the perimeter of the jungle. The leaves were so green they looked fake, like something from a painting, while the bark of the trees had gone black. A variety of foliage greeted us in all directions as if the land were trying its best to hide its true face.

“We should probably go in. I mean, at least a few meters,” Meenaz, the last human member of our scouting party, suggested. She was average height with short curly hair, a grim look settling in her eyes. A familiar look, I recognized. Oh, yes. She’d lost someone in the crash. I would have bet my life on it. She turned to look at me. “That’s why we came here, right?” she asked, and I sensed a coldness in her voice, as though all the emotion in her had gone out.

Mutt trotted over to the jungle and growled. The wolf-like dog wasn’t really the needy kind. He came and went as he pleased. He never left my side too long, as if he were worried about me doing something stupid and came to check in on me from time to time. When we geared up for this mission, he decided to grace us with his presence.

Boss Creed looked down at the dark grey blaster he carried in his hands. He turned the safety off before motioning us to do the same.

“Let’s go take a look,” Boss Creed said, taking time to look at us each in turn. “Safety’s off.”

I looked down at the blaster I held in my hand. The weapon still felt unfamiliar, even awkward. I’d used a blaster only a handful of times in my life before my journey with the Orion. To be honest, I’d always felt better about using my hands than a gun, but I also couldn’t deny the benefit of having one. No matter how talented a fighter I might have been, there was just no comparison. If there really were alien creatures roaming around the planet, I’d need more than my bare-knuckle fists to protect myself.

Boss Creed took the lead with me on his right, Ira and Meenaz following behind.

One of the weirdest parts of the planet—and that was already saying a lot because the place was like something out of a dream—was the lack of noise up until this point.

Both in the woods where Ricky and I crashed and at the Orion crash site itself, there were no birds, no insects, nothing living beside us. For some unknown reason, this all changed once we entered the jungle.

As soon as we crested the line of trees marking the entrance to the jungle, a cacophony of noise hit our ears, from the chirping and squawks of birds overhead to the clicks and ticks of insects on the ground.

“Did you see that? There!” Ira shouted, pointing his rifle into the air above us.

The thick foliage blocked out the suns at certain points of the jungle interior. The spot Ira indicated sat a few meters to our left in a thickly shaded portion where two trees met.

What looked like a fat monkey with three eyes stared at us as if we were the strange ones. It just sat there unmoving with its three weird eyes, judging us. It cocked its fuzzy head to the side as if it were discerning our intent.

Mutt sniffed the air, noticing the creature too, and wagged his tail.

“Hold your fire,” Boss Creed warned. “This is its home. Live and let live.”

Instinct told me to raise my own blaster at the animal. I lowered it to my side slowly.

“He’s not that bad,” I said. “If he were bigger, he’d remind me of a crime boss I knew back on Earth.”

Boss Creed looked over at me with a raised eyebrow.

“Trust me, it’s a long story,” I told him.

He seemed content with that as our small party moved deeper into the jungle. Mutt padded along with me, sniffing anything and everything he could get his nose on.

A few minutes later, Ira stopped us again.

“I don’t think we should go any deeper.” Ira was looking down at the smart pad in his left hand. “We’ll risk losing communication with the Orion if we do. We might be out of range already.”

“Report in to Iris,” Boss Creed said, wiping a line of sweat from his brow. “Let’s see how far we are.”

“Orion, this is Expeditionary Force One,” Ira said into the device. “We’ve discovered a jungle, and we’re checking in to test our range of communication. Do you copy?”

“Expeditionary Force One,” Iris’ familiar voice came through the opposite end. “This is Orion. We can hear you, but you’re on the outer limits of our range at the moment. I would advise that you don’t travel much farther.”

While the conversation was going on, I looked at the fourth member of our group. Meenaz was looking up at the jungle canopy above us. Motion at her feet caught my eye at the same time a low rumble came from Mutt.

Something long and black slithered just behind her boots. Whatever it was, it was nearly the same color as the jungle ground itself.

“Hey, watch out!” I shouted, already lifting my blaster to take aim at whatever the thing was behind her.

In the space of a heartbeat, a creature that resembled a giant snake with a mouth full of sharp teeth and spines coming out of the sides of its head reared up behind Ira.

The creature was so long in length, what I had seen behind Meenaz was actually the middle