Wolves and War
Page 23
CHAPTER 6 (Southern Continent)
What none of the twelve children, or their families too for that matter, knew was that the WCPS Electra had also landed on the planet.
The prison ship had crash-landed in the desert wastes of the southern continent. With the breakout of the twenty thousand or so convicts unstoppable, the crew and their families had fled. Commander Camilla Todd, the Electra’s second-in-command, was leading them. This group of refugees had travelled north up the course of a wide river until they had reached, in the more hilly country, a high rocky tor, the top of which they had occupied and called Fort.
Camilla knew that the convicts, once free, would hunt them out and she had a good idea what would happen when they found them.
She was in command because the Captain, Peter Howard and three others had taken the Electra’s power-core, an extremely dangerous object were it to fall into the wrong hands, east and further into the desert where they intended to bury it in the most inaccessible place they could find. The four hadn’t been in contact for some time and Camilla hid a private fear that they had come to grief. She did not voice her concerns to Peter Howard’s wife Anne.
How am I going to keep them all safe? she asked herself repeatedly but never came up with a satisfactory answer.
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