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

side. You may be here because you like a good fight...but I don’t care. I don’t care one bit why you’re here. Do you know why?” Every word that came from my throat ground my hatred into my speech to them. Stunned faces returned my steely glare. “It’s because I want to kill him. I don’t care why. I just need it done. Do you understand?” Again, I was faced with ‘deer-in-the-headlights eyes.' “Did you hear me?” I yelled. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am!” they replied collectively.

“If you’re with me, there’s going to be no questions asked. That’s it. You do as you're told or you’re gone. I don’t have time to be babysitting you. I don’t have time to be reprimanding you, and I don’t have the manpower to always have someone from our team to chaperone you. So, it comes down to this: either you’re on our team of you’re not. If you are, I’m going to put my trust in you, and you’re going to help me kill Leslie. If you’re not on my team, you will die quickly. If you say you’re on my team, and you’re really not, I promise you I won’t hesitate to swing this damn axe right into your stupid skull. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” they said.

“If you’re with me, follow me, now. We have work to do. If you’re not, go home. I’m giving you one chance. This won’t happen again.”

The group stood, anxiously watching me. No one moved a muscle.

“And by the way, the gunshots in the woods didn’t go unnoticed last night. Next time you disobey my orders, you’re done. Understand?

”

The men nodded.

“Alright,” I said. I could feel a grin sweep across my face. I’d never felt so delighted, or evil, in my life. “Let’s go get him then.”

I took off through the woods, directly to our headquarters. They were going to win unless we picked up the pace, and that was my way of doing just that. Taking a risk. Opening myself up. I was ready for the fight to be over, and preparations began immediately. Arriving back at the campsite, we were greeted with shocked looks and disgust.

“Get used to it,” I said. “If you have a better option, keep it to yourself because it’s too late. We’re either in this or we’re not, and I’m in it. If you don’t like it, get lost.” I was done playing the diplomatic leader. I wanted the son-of-a-bitch dead. Now.

Implements were made to fight. Spears were fashioned in the most primitive way possible, their tips coated with poisonous berries from the nutritional team. We had to be creative, since we only had three guns with forty-three rounds of ammo. We had our science to fight with, but we had used up a lot of the resources available to us, and if they failed, we didn’t want to be on our asses.  It had to be hand to hand combat, and we wanted to give ourselves the best chance possible. Assuming the virus would have them all weakened, we were sure that small weapons would be enough.

Using the old map Idris had made of Circadia, I rounded up teams and assigned outpost points that best fit with the geography of the land. Everything was planned out perfectly. Now, all we had to do was wait, and we agreed to do just that for seven days, giving the virus time to incubate and take full effect. Until then, we would rally and stay hidden. Hiding was easy in the cave, and it gave us all a chance to become a team again. Becoming familiar was great as we prepared for the circadian rhythm of the planet to turn black once more. We knew the darkness would come, and we prepared. We had all seen it before and knew it would be back. Meat and plants were available, dried by the fire. Tons of firewood and fire starter were stacked in various areas to prepare for the bitter cold.

As we stacked the last bit of firewood in neat piles, I noticed my shadow cast out onto the ground in a way that was unnatural to the sun’s normal orbit. Looking up into the sky, we watched as Earth slowly overcame the sun inch by inch, until it was completely shrouded. Instantly the air felt cooler, and everything seemed just a bit bleaker. Garrett wasn’t there to keep me warm at night anymore; it would be just me now and that made the cold sting a little bit more. From now on, I would be on my own in the bitter air.

It would be another week before we would begin to see the sun again, so we all settled in. That night by the light of the fire, I was accompanied by a man from Leslie’s crew that had defected. He was a large, muscular man with a red beard and well-kepted hair. He spoke with an accent common of Scotland from Earth. “I can’t thank you enough for putting your trust in us. We owe you,” he said.

“Yes, you do,” I replied. “Hopefully it won’t be too hard to pay me back, though, of course, you already started the first day you showed up when you helped get us out of that situation against orders.” I gave him a wink and looked back at the fire.

He chuckled a bit. “I’d like for us to be a family. A team. A unit,” he said. “The night before me and my team were shipped up here to Circadia, we all pledged to each other that we would do whatever needed to be done to do right up here. As a token of our permanent oath, we all got tattoos as a symbol. A symbol of our promise,” he said. He held out his left forearm and lifted his sleeve to show three circles intertwined.

“What do the circles stand for?” I asked.

“Earth, Moon, Circadia,” he answered.

“I see,” I said. “So, you knew what the darkness meant