Orion Colony Complete Series Boxed Set by J.N. Chaney (best detective novels of all time .TXT) 📕

his hopes and dreams, I was becoming fond of the little guy, despite his putdown of my “fragile” race, and didn’t want him to leave us yet.

“I think I liked him more when he was all ticks and S’s,” John said, making a valid point.

“Agreed,” I added. “Who would have thought the Rung were so morbid? I thought they were supposed to be smarter than the Remboshi with all their tech.”

“We are,” Dama said.

“No, they’re not,” Tong answered at the same time.

Dama and Tong looked to each other, surprised, then exchanged a smile. Oh boy.

“Well, before this gets awkward and they start flirting again, let’s come up with a plan,” Stacy said. “We know where we need to go. The most direct path is closed, with those double doors Legion is trying to get through. Is there another way around?”

“Yes,” Dama said, either missing her remark about flirting with Tong or choosing to ignore it. “Out the rear of the main chamber is a narrow maintenance hall that would lead you around Legion. That way would be twice as long, however.”

“Well, I vote we take the predator straight up the gut,” John said, crossing his arms in a belligerent stance. “I didn’t come all this way to avoid a fight. I’ve got some aggression built up if you haven’t noticed.”

“Whatever Legion has on the other side of those doors trying to break it down could give even the predator a run for its money,” Stacy thought out loud. “I’m not sure that’s the right move.”

John looked at me.

“Hey, don’t look at me. She’s the boss,” I said, pointing at Stacy. “For what it’s worth, I don’t like the idea of sneaking around either. But if it’s our best shot, we owe it to Lou to do just that. We can’t fail here. Not for him, not for anyone we’ve lost along the way or can save by defeating Legion. We have to succeed. There’s no choice there.”

A moment of quiet fell over the room as human, Remboshi, and Rung all thought about those we would never see again. Worse perhaps, those we would still see, only now infected by the Legion virus.

“And you’re sure these power armor suits will be enough to defeat Legion?” Tong asked, looking to Sulk then Dama. “This is the end for him?”

“Each power armor suit is a tank.” Dama motioned to the image on the armor suit on the screen. “We’ll be able to travel four times as fast at a run. The steel is four inches thick. Flamethrowers and blades on the forearms while dual plasma cannons rest on the shoulders. We have hundreds of the prototypes ready. Legion doesn’t have anything that will be able to stand against us. We just need pilots.”

“We go through the rear shaft and around,” Stacy said, biting her lower lip. “I don’t want children with us.”

Dama opened her mouth to argue.

“I get that it’s your culture,” Stacy cut her off. “I get that, trust me. I’d rather see children fighting than dying, but only if it comes to that with no other choice. What we do right now gives them a chance. You leave half your forces here and we take the other half. Taking all forty warriors will be too many to sneak around quietly anyway. Take your fiercest twenty. If we can’t do it with twenty, we won’t be able to do it with forty.”

Dama held Stacy’s eyes a moment longer as if she were weighing her words in her mind. Eventually, the Rung decided not to argue and accepted Stacy’s demands.

“Sulk, our fiercest twenty,” Dama said with hard, determined eyes. “We leave in eight hours. Enough time for the blood rite and to rest.”

“Immediately,” Sulk said, leaving the room.

“Do we even want to know what the blood rite is?” I asked.

“A sacred tradition passed down from generation to generation,” Dama said. “It’ll put the warriors in the right mind.”

“Your people?” Tong asked. “This is all that remains in only just this installation, correct? This can’t be all the Rung. You have other underground bunkers throughout the wasteland?”

“We do, but we have lost communication with them.” Dama lowered her large yellow eyes to the ground. “I have faith others have survived Legion’s attacks, but we do not know for certain.”

“If they’re out there, we will find them,” Tong assured her, placing a hand on her shoulder. She looked over at him, smiling. He smiled back at her as the two shared a moment.

I raised my eyes to the ceiling and cleared my throat awkwardly to get their attention. “And in the meantime, we have more than enough humans to pilot these suits of power armor,” I answered. “We’ll end Legion once and for all.”

“Dama?” Stacy asked from her position next to the large screen on the wall. She had walked to the screen, going back to the map of the underground bunker. She pointed to a massive room on the opposite side of the bunker. “What’s this room? More importantly, what is this craft?”

Stacy piqued my interest. “Craft?” I asked. “Like a spacecraft?”

John and I joined Stacy at the screen. She wasn’t wrong. What looked like a small four-person spacecraft sat in a hangar.

“It’s untested and only a prototype, but we are hoping that it will evolve into us being able to explore the stars and worlds beyond our own,” Dama said. “We put the Nebula Project on hold to work on the suits of power armor years ago.”

My mind was having a difficult time processing what I saw on the map. Our entire time on Genesis had been filled with trying to survive. In the back of my mind, I always thought we’d be able to eventually begin work on creating a spaceship capable of leaving the planet.

Seeing it here already in front of me was something else entirely. Surely between what the Rung had already done and our own scientists’ knowledge of the stars, we could leave. If the Rung would allow us