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

The older man to my right wasn’t full-on staring, but he tried to sneak in a glance at me every time he thought I was too busy to notice. Through my peripheral vision, I caught him squinting at me.

“Can I help you with something?” I asked, turning to him. Already I had a good idea why he was looking at me like that. It was something that happened to me less and less through the years but still came up every now and again. Usually, I ignored it and moved on. I don’t know what came over me. Maybe it was the dream I had just woken from, maybe it was something else.

“Sorry, sorry to bother you,” he said, clearing his throat. “You just bear a striking resemblance to a gladiator I used to watch. I followed the sport religiously back on Earth.”

“I’m just a mechanic,” I said with a shrug.

“Of course,” he said with a bob of his head. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” I told him.

He gave me a polite smile and walked away.

“Man, this other guy people keep thinking you are must be your doppelganger,” Ricky said, slapping me on my back. “Didn’t that Warlord leader back on Earth think you were the same guy?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said, heading out of the bathroom with Ricky, back to our tent to deposit our toiletries and then to breakfast. “You never followed the gladiator fights?”

“Oh, you know, I bet on them, sure, but it really wasn’t my thing,” Ricky said with a shrug. “I’m more of a dice or card kind of guy.”

“Right,” I said as we made our way to the cafeteria tent.

The twin suns of the planet were just making their ascent to take their places in the sky and blaze their wrath down on us. All around the outside of the Orion, colonists were making their way either out of their tents or descending from the levels of the Orion, where they chose to sleep.

Not everyone felt comfortable on the ground floor in a tent. A large number of the colonists had chosen to sleep in the Orion. Despite their rooms being turned on their sides, they were willing to accept the discomfort if it meant having walls around them.

I understood that. I had been tempted to stay in my old room back on the Orion. If it hadn’t been so far from the food and a bathroom that wasn’t sideways, I might have.

One of the cafeterias on the Orion had been powered and was up and running. It was decided the food would be cooked there and run down to the cafeteria tent below.

I wasn’t part of the team tasked with righting the cafeteria level, so all the refrigerated and frozen lockers stood upright, but I had heard a group of mechanics complaining about how much work it had been unhooking and figuring out how to reconnect all the ovens and stoves used for cooking.

Ricky and I entered the long cafeteria tent to the smell of bacon and eggs. One thing I knew about life was that whatever position you found yourself in, bacon could be the healing balm for a lot of it. We fell in along a table where we were ladled a spoonful of steaming eggs onto a plate and two pieces of bacon.

To drink, we had an option of water or coffee. It wasn’t much, but only a few days after crash landing on an alien planet, people were coming together. Everyone was finding a way to pitch in.

Everyone’s helping fine right now, but I wonder how they’d feel if they knew the truth, I thought to myself. I wonder what they’d say if they knew the Orion was sabotaged and there was an ancient alien-made door on the planet leading to who knows what.

We sat in silence, eating our breakfast in two chairs facing one another. There were no tables yet. Compared to everything else going on, tables for eating didn’t seem like a top priority at the moment.

My mind wandered to the alien door we had found. It was obvious it was made by someone or something else, but who? What was behind it? Should we be doing more than just having Iris monitor it? What could we do? We were barely surviving ourselves.

“You look lost in your own head,” Boss Creed said, pulling up a chair beside us. “And I don’t think I’ve ever heard Ricky so quiet.”

“Moufful,” Ricky said, pointing to his packed lips dripping with bacon grease.

“I see,” Boss Creed said.

He looked better. When we lost Ira the day before, I knew he was in a tough spot, mostly because Boss Creed was the type of leader who would blame himself for something like that, even if it was entirely out of his control.

“There’s going to be a service this morning for everyone who knew Ira,” Boss Creed said in a matter-of-fact tone. “If you two would like to attend.”

“I’ll be there,” Ricky said, swallowing a mouthful of food.

“I’ll come too,” I said.

“Thank you.” Boss Creed exhaled loudly as if he were holding his breath until the conversation was over.

The dark green tent flaps to the cafeteria opened. In walked Captain Harold along with a pair of suits.

8

Captain Harold strode to the center of the cafeteria flanked by his suits  carrying pulse rifles. He wore the same dark blue uniform and black tactical armor. A blaster rested on his hip.

“Good morning,” he said in a loud voice as he looked around the room.

With shifts working around the clock to get the wall and essential living functions back online, a  series of mumbled responses were returned to him as a few hundred colonists looked to one another for answers.

Captain Harold found an empty chair and used it to stand on. He looked over the egg and bacon eaters with a measured stare.

“For those of you who