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

the two we thought were our friends. We would never find out their true intentions for leaving, but we knew one thing for sure, instead of abandoning us as we'd thought, they'd saved all of us.

Sitting in silence, I bowed my head in relief. That could have been us, I thought. Only for a moment though, because the feelings of relief were quickly replaced with fear.  We were stuck.

Chapter Fifteen

Our last hope had blasted into the sky. No tears fell from my eyes, as I looked around at my fellow colleagues. My family. What I saw was heartbreaking, there were no tears there either. Most of them seemed to be just staring down at the ground or off into space. We were grieving the loss of our own lives. I thought back to sitting in a large room filled with desk and chair combos all facing a professor talking about the Kubler Ross Theory. He explained to the classroom that there were five stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I had never really dealt with loss. Hard, concrete loss. My mother had probably died on Earth, but I could never be sure, and I never got a chance to confirm it with everything that happened. I guess if I was being honest with myself, I was still in denial about that too.

Denial was a strong feeling, one that I felt took ahold of the group quickly. “They’ll come back,” I heard one in the group say.

“There’s gotta be another ship on this planet, somewhere...” another said.

“I think I’m hallucinating,” one man said.

I couldn’t take it anymore. Someone had to bring the truth to these people. I didn’t want to believe it either, but it had happened. “Hey, guys, they’re gone,” I said. “Our ship exploded. The space crew took it and it exploded.” It was useless. I was talking to blank faces. I kept trying though. “We are stuck here with Leslie. At least we weren’t on that ship though, right?”

Catching one man’s ear apparently, he looked to me quickly, his eyes full of bewilderment. “It would have been better if we were on that ship!” he screamed. “It would’ve been quicker, easier, than what’s going to happen to us now!”

Not expecting a reply, and definitely not one of that magnitude, I took a step back as he stepped closer, obviously infuriated. “I have no idea why we followed you! Look at the mess you got us into! How are we supposed to get out of this? We can’t!” As he yelled at me, people rallied behind him. Some came to stand behind him, while others shouted words of encouragement for him to continue on his rant.

I had nothing to say. After doing my best, and taking the advice of those close to me, and trying to include everyone in the group in our decisions, I didn’t know what else I could have done. We had done everything in our power to ensure a victory and still failed. There was nothing left to be said. I just stood in shock, as his group grew larger to a count of at least thirty to forty people backing him.

Shifting topics, since they were getting no reaction out of me, one man in their group spoke up loudly. “I bet Leslie would still have us, just not her,” he said. “We could probably work something out with him, right?” Everyone started mumbling to the person next to them. My heart was racing as Smith grabbed my arm.

“We need to leave,” he said. “This is going to get ugly. We need to go now, Aella.”

“I can’t,” I said. I shot him a glance and instantly noticed his brows furrowed and his hands shaking. Maybe he was right, we needed to leave. As everyone continued to talk amongst themselves, we slipped out through the trees. Quickly, Jane, Dr. Mayhew, Ronald, the old crew’s men, and Sierra joined us one at a time.

“They’re already talking about turning Aella in to Leslie,” Jane told Smith.

“I figured that would come up in conversation shortly,” he said.

‘“Why would they do that?” I asked.

“You’re nothing more to them than a bargaining tool right now, Aella,” the leader of the crew’s men said. “Leslie wants the leader of the rebellion, and that’s you. They know that, and they want back in.”

“Surely they wouldn’t go that far,” I said. “I know they’re panicking, but they wouldn’t!” I pleaded. I loved each and every one in our group. Even the people I wasn’t completely familiar with. They had banded together to fight with us. For us. They were just misguided right now. Once they had time to rationalize, they would think twice. They wouldn’t, I thought.

Before I could get another word out, I could hear someone running behind us through the trees.

“Holy shit,” Smith said. “That was fast.”

“We need to split up,” Ronald said. “We don’t want Leslie to have all of us at once.”

“Please, no! We can’t split up!” I said.

“We have to, Aella,” Smith answered. “Let’s go! You go with the crew! One of them still has a gun, and they’ll keep you safe. You trust them, right?”

“Of course, but what about you?” I asked.

“I’ll go with Jane and Ronald. Sierra and Dr. Mayhew can take off in the other direction. If we make it out of this, whoever does, we will meet back at the crater! Okay, go now!” Smith explained.

“Please!” I pleaded.

Before I realized what was happening, the leader of the old crew’s men was grabbing me by the waist and dragging me away. I fought against the pull for a bit, yelling for Smith and Jane to stop, but before I knew it, they had disappeared into the cover of the trees. Turning to run with the crew’s men, we heard the roar of the ATVs starting up in the direction we had begun to run.

Dashing in the opposite direction of the ATVs and bright lights shining through the trees, we quickly ran into