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

Whether it’s just normal alien planet weird or there’s something else going on here is yet to be seen.”

Heads nodded around the fire as everyone thought back to his or her own impressions of the planet we landed on so far.

“Hey, we don’t have a name for this place yet, do we?” Elon asked. The Eternal had been quiet while we spoke of the possibilities of the planet. “I mean, we don’t even know where in the galaxy we are, so we can’t say if this planet has even been named yet.”

“Are you saying we get to name a planet, right here, right now?” Tom asked, surprised.

“I don’t know if it’ll stick and how official this is, but we can make an unofficial name. Suggestions?” Elon asked.

At that exact moment, another shriek echoed from the jungle interior.

“No, we’re not calling it that,” Tom said back in the direction of the jungle.

We all got a chuckle out of that one.

“Something like ‘havoc’ or ‘mayhem’ would fit well,” Hannah suggested.

“Planet Mystery or Wonder,” Tom added.

“Planet X,” I said, looking into the fire.

All eyes turned to me.

“I was just throwing it out there,” I said, shrugging.

“We should all vote on a planet name once we get back to the Orion,” Elon said as another ear-piercing screech came from the jungle. “Well, I’m not sure if we’re going to be able to get any sleep, but we better try. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

Elon was right. I lay in my tent for the majority of the night, falling in and out of sleep thanks to the banshee at our doorstep. The thing never stopped either. After a handful of hours of broken sleep, Doctor Allbright woke me.

“Dean, it’s our watch,” the older woman said through the tent fabric. “Are you awake?”

“I’m up,” I said, thankful at the very least that the sleep I did get was uninterrupted by nightmares of my past.

I spent a few seconds pushing my feet into my boots. I slept in my clothes, so there wasn’t much to put on that I wasn’t already wearing. I zipped the flap to our tent open and headed out into the chill morning air.

Doctor Allbright motioned for me to follow and we both made our way just outside of our camp to where Tom and Lou stood guard. The early morning darkness was just giving way to the twin suns on the horizon. It was the time of morning when the sky was neither black nor yellow but rather grey.

There would be a few hours until the camp was ready to be broken down and we would move on. Tom handed me his rifle, grateful to be rid of it. Lou did the same to Doctor Allbright.

“Nothing to report, really,” Lou said, eyeing the area of the jungle where the latest screech came from. “There was one point in the night I thought I saw someone running through the jungle, a young girl. I can’t be sure, though. It was too dark. Once I used my flashlight, whatever I thought I saw was gone.”

“We’ll keep an eye out for it,” I said, placing the thick black strap on the rifle around my shoulder. “Get a little more sleep if you can.”

Lou nodded a tired head and moved back into the camp.

Tom followed close behind. The man looked dead on his feet. He limped when he walked as if he weren’t used to doing this much hiking.

“Anything seem a bit off to you about our new friend, Tom?” Doctor Allbright asked as we watched him go. “For someone who’s supposed to be trained to live in the wild, he didn’t look like he knew what he was doing yesterday when he was starting the fire.”

“It does seem strange,” I said with a shrug. “But, if an outdoor man having a hard time starting a fire is the worst of our issues, I’ll take it.”

“I hear you there.” Doctor Allbright craned her neck forward to look into the jungle interior. “What do you think it is? Lou said he thought he saw a little girl.”

“It sure doesn’t sound like any little girl I’ve ever heard of,” I said.

I hadn’t noticed, but Mutt followed me from where he lay outside my tent to where I stood with Doctor Allbright. The giant dog that looked more like a wolf lifted his nose to the morning air to get a sniff of his surroundings. He licked a pink tongue around his maw.

I thought he was onto something for a moment when he trotted off. A second later, he was squatting and defecating.

I moved my attention back to the jungle as another screech came again. I still couldn’t see anything.

Doctor Allbright and I spent the rest of our shift making small talk and going long stretches in comfortable silence.

14

The morning of our second day found us with our camp packed and eating breakfast on the road. It wasn’t more than water with protein bars and coffee, but I liked it well enough.

Two hours into our hike, we came across the first fallen escape pod. This wasn’t the craft marking our final destination, rather a smaller two-person escape pod, the same model Ricky and I used on our own trip down from the Orion.

Stacy and Boss Creed took the lead with their blasters out.

The terrain hadn’t changed much, still, grassy fields interspersed with a few trees or bushes here and there, and the jungle a half kilometer to our right.

The white pod was circular in shape with the escape hatch open. It looked like it had descended onto the planet as designed using its thrusters, then a landing bag before it touched down.

“Hello?” Stacy asked as she held her blaster in a two-handed grip, barrel down. “Hello, is anyone in there? We’re survivors from the Orion as well. We’re here to help.”

As we moved forward, I caught the stench of death before anything else.

Stacy held her left hand to her nose as