The Circadia Chronicles: Omnibus: The Complete Colonization Sci-Fi Series by Heather Heckadon (portable ebook reader .txt) 📕

open to see only frozen water, and the steam of my breath rising into the air. Attempting to sit up was a struggle that ultimately failed. I was too weak and frail to make myself rise. Thudding to the ground, I cried silent tears. To be so helpless was dehumanizing. I lay in the dark, prepared to die, for the second time in my life.

Hours passed. I was sure that no one would find me, until I heard voices coming from the second wooded area. Another hour passed before someone stepped out on the edge of the forested plot, just barely within my range of sight. A very dark colored man of tall stature yelled my name. The comfort of knowing I was found was enough to put me back to sleep.

“Aella, hey. Can you hear me?” Idris asked.

I blinked rapidly, trying to comprehend what was happening around me. I looked down at my arm to see an IV leading to a bag with fluids hanging above me. Taking in the scenery of the inside of a large hut, I relaxed. When I glanced up, I saw Idris standing above me with Garrett directly behind him. “You found me,” I said.

“Yes, I did. I’m glad I found you, but I thought you were dead,” Idris said.

“What the hell were you doing out there, anyway?” asked Garrett.

“I just needed to get away.”

“Well, next time you need to get away, tell someone, or don’t go as far,” Garrett chastised.

“I think we need to punish Leslie,” I said. I hadn’t even thought about it, or didn’t think I had, but there it was, falling out of my mouth. “He needs to pay for what he’s done, Idris.”

“What are we supposed to do, Aella?” he asked. “We don’t have a jail cell. We can’t order manual labor, because that's already going to be required of him. We don’t have a lot of options at the moment.” He shook his head. “Besides all of that, this is the last thing you need to be worried about right now. You have an IV in your arm. You could have died. Focus on you right now.”

“You could cut his rations,” Garrett offered.

“If we cut anyone’s rations further than what has already been done, they will die. Look at her, right now. We cannot cut rations,” Idris said. “We’re just going to have to forgive this. I know it’s not easy, but that’s our best option right now.”

I curled my lip in disgust. He was right, there was nothing we could really do to Leslie that was humane in light of the current situation. I watched as Garrett nodded his head slowly, as if trying to digest the truth as well.

“I do agree, however, that we need to determine, for future reference, how laws will work on Circadia for future offenses. Before, we didn’t really have a need for laws, but with this many people, it is going to become an issue,” Idris said. “Not an issue we need to deal with right now, though. Later, when it’s necessary. For now, you need to get feeling better.”

I nodded and turned to my side to rest. Never had I been so comfortable in my life as I was lying on a cot with fresh linens in Dr. Darcy Mayhew’s hut.

DURING THE NEXT TWO days of cold, I felt better, but was still bitter. I watched Leslie Marshal intently, from a distance, sure that he would be up to something. I became obsessed with learning his schedules and routines, who he talked to, what he did to contribute, and what he didn’t. For the most part, it seemed that he spent most of his time bitching about anything and everything.

Leslie lived in a ‘wattle and daub’ hut like the rest of us, which was unsatisfactory for his liking. Quickly enough, he had weaseled his way into living in one of the new stick-built homes that Ronald had built for all of us. He used the excuse that he had allergies, and therefore needed a more secluded area to sleep or he ‘might die’ as he put it. People eventually got tired of listening to his bitching and gave in.

Mr. Marshal was used to eating high on the hog, and in abundance, judging from his body shape. Here on Circadia, that wasn’t an option even with his advanced manipulation skills, and he was quickly learning what it meant to be hungry for the first time in his life. Not to mention the manual labor that he was unfamiliar with. Not that we did a lot of work during the darkness, mostly just making our own fires and occasionally helping prepare meals, but that  alone was too much for him. The howling never ended.

With the darkness being a great motivator, the solar team finally got their systems up and running. Working in conjunction with the chem team, they made light bulbs that a few people were able to utilize. Mostly they were used for work, and the rest were installed in the new homes. The rest of us looked on in disgust from our mud huts as we watched the lights in Leslie’s new home flick on and off at his leisure through his glass pane windows.

Just before I was about to set my sights on more interesting things, I noticed a change in Leslie’s routine behavior. All of a sudden, he stopped bitching and started socializing. Talking with crew members from the last voyage, and in private. I quickly became more interested and decided to watch him even closer. It surely could not be that he felt he had more than us and was comfortable, because for a man like Leslie, enough was never enough.

On the last night of darkness, I watched as he and two other crew members snuck into the cave that held all of the food we had saved. No one was supposed to be down there except for the nutrition team, but they walked right