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

form under the white sheets. His eyes never left him. “I wish I could have known you longer, Ira. You were a good kid with a smile on your face, always willing to do what needed to be done. This planet has taken a lot from all of us, and for some of us, it’s taken everything. All I can promise you is that we’re going to get off this godforsaken rock. We’re going to get off, and people will remember you and what you did here. Rest easy, Ira. We’ll take it from here.”

Boss Creed never looked up at those gathered while he spoke. It was as if his entire speech was just a private conversation between himself and Ira. You’d think Ira was alive and well. I half expected him to respond.

As Boss Creed moved aside to allow Lou to begin the closing remarks, I felt a tickle on the tips of the fingers on my right hand. I looked down to see Mutt grinning up at me. His ears made the brush against my hand.

“Where were you an hour ago?” I whispered to him. “I could have used you back in the cafeteria tent.”

Of course, Mutt didn’t respond. Instead, he went down to all fours, placing his head in his paws. His eyes rested on Ira’s still form, and he gave a tiny whine.

The ceremony soon ended with people awkwardly heading back to the Orion and the steel wall being constructed. I didn’t blame them for not knowing what to say. I didn’t know how to transition from a moment of somber reflection on death to what was for lunch either.

Boss Creed and Ricky stayed behind with Lou to lower Ira’s body into the grave and cover his corpse. I would have offered a hand, but my interest had never swayed from the copse of trees beyond the cemetery grounds.

I still didn’t want to mention it to anyone. It could have been a kid playing or maybe someone who had gotten lost and retreated back into the brush when they saw they were about to interrupt a funeral.

Mutt jogged alongside me, sniffing the air with his long snout.

“Where you going?” Stacy asked, catching up to me. “The Orion’s back that way.”

“Not headed to the Orion,” I answered. “I think I saw something in the brush over there during the ceremony. I’m going to go check it out.”

“What did you see?” Stacy asked. She kept pace with me and scanned the trees in front of us.”

“Don’t know exactly. Someone was in there,” I said, searching for the right words to express the feeling I didn’t want to push out into the world.

It couldn’t be him, I said to myself. He died in the crash. The holding cell with the two prisoners in the Orion broke off upon descent to the planet. Odds were whoever was on that section struck the ground like a meteor and died before they knew what was happening.

Stacy placed a hand on the blaster on the right side of her hip. We crossed the rest of the grassy field in front of us without an issue. There was a grouping of trees in front of us with bushes on either side. This was where I had seen someone. The thin foliage pushed further back, interspersed with wide open plains.

Whoever had been snooping around in here was a professional at sticking to shadows. After the two times I had seen him, he disappeared using the sparse terrain as cover to retreat.

Stacy and I entered the brush searching for any sign of who I might have seen poking around. Mutt lowered his head to the ground, sniffing hard both in and out on the dirt soil.

“I’m just going to be honest with you here,” I said, examining the ground for footprints, broken leaves from the plants, or anything else that might signal someone passing in the brush. “I don’t really know what I’m looking for. I’m not a tracker.”

Stacy smirked. She was bent over low to the ground, her right hand still on the handle of her blaster. “You know, the normal stuff: tracks, threads of clothing that may have been tugged off, bent or pushed down grass as the person passed.”

We both spent another ten minutes scouring the area. There was nothing there except the eerie feeling we were being watched. It was the same feeling I used to get in the arena when my opponent thought they had the upper hand on me.

It was Mutt who finally stumbled on something.

A low growl came from the beast’s throat. Both Stacy and I exchanged glances and headed over to where the dog stood snarling at a piece of cloth caught deep in a prickly bush that looked more like cactus than anything else.

My heart seized in my chest as I realized what the piece of cloth was. It was a red handkerchief, the same kind someone could wear over the lower half of their face to conceal their identity. Memories of both Disciples on the Orion flashed in front of my eyes. It was the same one they wore. The same crimson red Disciples used to conceal their identities.

I had come up against the cult twice so far, the first time with Maksim Petrov and the second time with Marcy Knot. Marcy was dead from the explosion she set off that took the Orion out of slip space. Maksim had been in the cell block of the ship when it broke apart on reentry. We assumed his section of the ship exploded on impact. Maybe we assumed too much.

“What are the odds this has nothing to do with Maksim?” Stacy asked with a heavy sigh as she took in the same article of clothing I did. “What are the odds this is some random handkerchief blown in by the wind? I mean, there’s debris everywhere.”

“I wish,” I said, looking at her with a raised eyebrow. “I want to believe all that, but I saw someone. I