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

I turned, suddenly scanning the woods behind us. I half expected to see the crazed Disciple running at us from some hidden location, a rock in his hand to use as a weapon. There was no such attack at the moment. But I still felt like we were being watched.

“You feel it too, huh?” Stacy asked as she reached down to retrieve the handkerchief. It was burned on one side, dark smoke stains on the other. “Like we’re the fox and the hound is about to pounce?”

“I feel it all right,” I said. “There are no tracks, but he would be well-trained at hiding those anyway. He’s too good to have dropped his handkerchief. He’s playing with us.”

“I’ll get a couple of suits in here,” Stacy said, eyeing the terrain behind us. “If he is here, we’ll find him. I think we should get you a blaster to permanently carry—”

Stacy stopped talking as the earpiece squawked to life. I couldn’t make out what she was listening to, but I got the general sense of doom by the look of dread on her face.

“Yes, I understand, Iris, but isn’t that a good thing?” Stacy pressed her right hand to her ear. She looked at me with large eyes as she listened to what the Cognitive had to say. “Okay, I’m with Dean now. We’ll head back.”

“I don’t even want to know,” I said shaking my head. “Something tells me you’re going to tell me anyway.”

“Danger, Will Robinson,” Stacy said, jerking her head back to the Orion. “Doctor Wong got Iris’ long-range scanner up and working again. They’ve found something.”

11

I made my way back to the Orion with Stacy and Mutt. We traveled through the sideways elevator again to the bridge of the ship.

Arun, Elon, Iris, and Captain Harold were already present.  Everyone in the room was waiting for Stacy and me to begin. Their eyes were grim. If Captain Harold and Arun held any animosity toward one another for the events that morning, neither of them showed it.

“There they are.” Iris nodded toward us with her ethereal blue glow. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt your date. The data we received once the long-range scanners were active required a meeting as soon as possible.”

“Uh, we weren’t on a date,” Stacy said, scrunching her nose as if she just smelled something bad.

“Definitely not a date,” I said as I tossed the crimson red handkerchief on top of the holo table.

Everyone stared at the item. I watched as realization touched their eyes.

“Where did you find this?” Elon asked, reaching for the cloth. He lifted it and frowned.

“It was in a copse of trees just outside the funeral ceremony,” I answered. “I think he was watching us.”

“No, he’s dead,” Arun said, searching everyone’s expression in the room for a consensus. “His portion of the Orion broke off upon descent. It had to have struck the ground like a meteor. He’s dead.”

“Just to be clear, who are we talking about? A Disciple?” Doctor Wong asked nervously, adjusting his glasses.

“We caught and imprisoned a Disciple on the Orion who was trying to sabotage the ship,” Elon explained. “He was in the cell block of the Orion that broke off when we crashed.”

“What are the odds that the wind blew the handkerchief in?” Stacy asked.

“The odds that an article of clothing from a portion of the ship twenty kilometers away could travel this close to our location in a matter of days are exactly zero point zero, zero, two, nine, nine percent,” Iris answered. “Otherwise, very unlikely.”

“Well, that’s a very exact number, Iris,” I said, understanding she would have to know where the cell block of the ship impacted on the planet to figure out that very complicated portion of math. “We know where the cell block of the ship landed?”

“Indeed, it’s about time we had some good news.” Iris smiled. She waved a hand over the holo table. A green planet appeared in front of us. “With my long-range sensors now active, I’m able to see half of the planet, where different escape ships and pods landed as well as where various sections of the ship ended up.”

We all watched as Iris zoomed in on the view of the planet in front of us. A miniature Orion showed up on the planet’s surface. All around and in sporadic intervals across the terrain, dots appeared labeled as “ship” or “pod”. My mind tried to calculate how many there were. There had to be hundreds of escape crafts dotting the landscape like some kind of disease.

Along with the markers on the map showing the location of escaped pods, there were other much larger chunks of debris of the actual Orion itself. Massive sections of the ship that had broken off during descent now showed on the holographic display.

“How many escape crafts are there?” Captain Harold asked.

“There are five more escape ships unaccounted for as well as over two hundred of the single and double escape pods,” Iris said, pointing to the larger portions of the Orion. “As far as I can tell from our long-range scanners, there are also two smaller portions of the Orion still somewhat intact.”

Iris moved her hands over the hologram, enhancing the view. She focused on the east side of the map to where the red mountains rose with their jagged edges. “The section of the ship holding the communication equipment landed here, while the section of the ship housing the prisoner cell block landed closer to the water to the west. There are other sections of the Orion scattered around, but these are the two that I can say landed intact, to some extent.”

“And were your long-range scanners able to detect any… alien activity?” Arun asked, pausing on the word as if she were having a difficult time speaking it into existence.

“No intelligent life that I can discern.” Iris shook her head. “No buildings either, except for those closed doors set into the mountain wall.