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

This varied from fight to fight. Sometimes it was a kiss and telling me that no matter what happened, we were in this together. Sometimes it was a wink, and she’d tell me to go kick my opponent’s ass. Whatever she decided on, it was always just what I needed to hear.

She was amazing like that. It was like words of encouragement were her superpower.

I took the few minutes I was alone to walk over to the mirror and look at myself. Clean shaven with a short buzz and Mohawk made me an intimidating figure. Forget about the muscles rippling over my body. Heck, I wouldn’t want to get in the ring with me. I stared into the mirror for a moment longer, still realizing I was in a dream. I begged my unconscious mind to wake up. I didn’t want to see what came next.

7

“Hey, you. You okay?” I woke to Ricky shaking my arm. “I heard you moaning something.”

It took me a minute to realize I was out of my nightmare and in the makeshift tent erected for our quarters. Or maybe I was only escaping one nightmare to live in another.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I lied, pushing my long hair out of my face. “What time you get in last night? I didn’t hear you.”

“Oh, yeah.” Ricky yawned and stretched his arms over his head. “It was the early hours of the morning. I’m not sure. I had a late night with Arun.”

I swung into a sitting position in our bunk bed. We shared a tiny tent barely large enough to hold our bunk bed and meager belongings. The tent was pushed up against the side of the overturned Orion.

“You’re not a liar, but you do have problems relating the truth.” I looked over at Ricky with a raised brow. “You had a date with Arun?”

“First of many, my friend, first of many,” Ricky said, practically beaming with happiness. “She needed my mechanical skills working on a section of the interface that will get Iris’ long-range scanners up and running.”

“That doesn’t sound like a date,” I scoffed. “That sounds like you’re a mechanic and she asked you to do a job.”

“Let’s not split hairs here.” Ricky shrugged on his dirty sleeveless shirt. His head popped out the top. “All I know is that when Arun needs help, she’s calling me and she stuck around for a bit once I started working. Don’t worry. You’ll be invited to the wedding. I’ll need someone to hold the rings.”

I couldn’t help but crack a smile. The best part was that Ricky was dead serious. Maybe somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he was being ridiculous, but maybe we could all use a little more of his brand of humor if we were going to get through this alive.

I busied myself getting dressed in my boots, cargo pants, and shirt. With the heat of the dual suns overhead, I decided to rip the sleeves off of my long sleeve shirt, mirroring Ricky’s move. It would be another day of manual labor on the wall.

“I can’t wait to shower tomorrow,” Ricky said as we exited our tent into the cool morning air. “I feel like I have a layer of grime over me right now.”

Water was still being rationed. However, with less than three thousand people to care for now, we had more than we needed. We had all the water we could drink, but showers were spread out to every other day and only a quick five minutes at that.

In space, the main water supply had been poisoned, making it difficult to allow showers for any of our one hundred thousand colonists. With our numbers cut down by ninety-seven percent, we could afford ourselves some luxuries with the reserve water supply.

Ricky and I crossed the short patch of ground in the tent city erected outside of the Orion. We made it to the showering tent to wash our faces and brush our teeth. The men’s room had been a maelstrom of activity while we were in space. There had been men at the locker section to our left, in the showers to our right, and waiting in line to use the sink in front of us.

The bathroom was a ghost town now. It was a fraction of the size. Dark green tent walls provided shelter for a line of toilet stalls on the left, showers on the right, and three portable sinks in front of us. A single elderly man stood at the sink brushing his teeth. He nodded to us as we approached.

A silver lining in the Orion accident was that the ship was equipped with everything we needed to survive. Sure, we lost half the ship in the crash, but things like portable sinks, tents—everything a new colony would need to live while they erected a proper town—were stored on multiple levels.

This fact, coupled with the idea that we had supplies enough to provide for one hundred thousand, meant that even with the loss of fifty percent of our ships, we had more than we needed.

“Weird, right?” Ricky asked as we found our own sinks.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I mean, I remember thinking that there were way too many guys having to use the same restroom on our level while we traveled in space.” Ricky splashed water on his face. “I remember wishing there weren’t so many guys trying to cram into such a small space. Be careful what you wish for, I guess.”

I worked my hair into a ponytail behind me. I went through the mechanical routine of brushing my teeth and washing my face, all the while thinking about Ricky’s words.

He was right. The saying the grass is always greener on the other side came to mind. There were a few times when we traveled through space that I wished the Orion hadn’t been