Orion Awakened: An Intergalactic Space Opera Adventure (Orion Colony Book 3)

by J. N. Chaney

  Jezra went on telling us her story. My mind wandered to how much work went into the woman’s task of protecting the installation. I couldn’t imagine being alone for so any years. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t exactly a social butterfly, but being completely cut off from everything? That was a reality I didn’t want to have to comprehend.

  A low bellow broke into my thoughts, coming from somewhere on our left. I swung my head in that direction and stared.

  27

  I knew what I was seeing wasn’t an elephant. I knew that in the back of my head, but the creature I saw approaching us sure as heck looked like one. It was massive, dwarfing even the rhino-like creatures we had already come across during our stay here on Genesis.

  The beast lumbered slowly toward us on four massive legs. Each of its limbs was easily the width of any tree trunk I had seen in my stay here. The height of the juggernaut had to be at least three stories tall. Massive ears fell from its head, paired with a thick trunk and a pair of tentacles that fell from either side of its mouth. These appendages dragged on the ground, occasionally slithering up to sway in the air around it.

  Its skin looked thick, like weathered leather. I saw one first then another and another. A herd of the creatures moved our way, not threatening in the least. They actually looked curious to see us.

  “Son of a Remboshi,” Ricky breathed in awe. “That’s what’s been in the mist this entire time?”

  “Yes, the sawg are vegetarians by nature,” Jezra informed us with an easy smile. “They spend most of their time digging through the marsh for plants with their tentacles. They are also great swimmers and have the ability to sense movement in the mist.”

  “And why did you allow them to kill innocent colonists when we landed?” Arun asked with a hard tone in her voice. “Why didn’t you call them off? We have reports of at least one ship being attacked in the mist.”

  “I was away from the control station when your ship landed on Genesis,” Jezra said with regret. “I received the warning there were ships landing. By the time I was able to see with my own eyes what our low-flying satellite had brought in, it was too late. I called the sawg off, but not until they had taken many survivors. Apologizing won’t help them now. I understand that, but I am sorry.”

  Jezra continued to tell us about the events surrounding our crash, but my attention was wrapped onto the gigantic alien animals beside me. I didn’t have words to put behind my thoughts. I was completely dumbfounded. The creatures weren’t just moving mountains, they were amazing animals.

  It was all I could do to keep my attention on the heading Jezra gave me out of the mist lands.

  “You said the Rung tried to gain entry into the Cerberus Installation twice before?” Tong asked, intrigued.

  “Yes,” Jezra explained. “They were turned back both times. They never sent a full force to try and penetrate the mist lands. The first time, they sent a scouting party of four; the next, a group of a dozen. Both times, the sawg turned them back. They never bothered me again.”

  Everyone fell silent, digesting the information Jezra had given us. At the same time, our eyes couldn’t leave the colossal alien animals to our left.

  “I will once again activate the mist when we are through,” Jezra informed us. “The sawg will see that the Cerberus Installation is protected while we are gone.”

  Jezra started humming quietly to herself. It was a tune I felt like I had heard before. Something low and soft, almost soothing.

  We traveled in silence the rest of the way through the mist lands. I focused on the road ahead of me and the plan of action we would need to put in place once we reached the Orion.

  It was highly unlikely Legion was just going to let us through. We would have to bulldoze our way through alien creatures and bodies of infected colonists. Hopefully, we would be within communication distance with the Orion to form some kind of plan before Legion saw us approach.

  There was still the unanswered question of Maksim running around unchecked as well as the roving Rung. Who knew how far they traveled past the mountain range? Who knew how many they numbered now?

  We made good time through the marsh. It was strange to think how peaceful and calm the place was now with the absence of the mist or fog. I almost liked it. It was the most uneventful trip we had had yet.

  Soon the swamp grounds gave way to harder terrain. Live trees began to form around us, signaling our exit from the marsh and our entrance to the forest to the south of the Orion.

  Jezra’s fingers flew over her glass control panel.

  I could only assume she was activating the mist once more. She maneuvered her finger deftly over the glass plate in front of her, bringing up a view of the Orion once again.

  “We can be sure that Legion will know we are coming,” Jezra said with a click of her tongue. “It has eyes everywhere. The more beings it consumes, the smarter it becomes.”

  “And there’s no way of reversing it?” I asked. “I mean, instead of killing all of these people, is there a way to pull Legion out of them? Or even kill the virus?”

  “Not one that we know of, but that does not mean the way does not exist,” Jezra answered. “We may yet find a way to kill the virus without harming the host. Perhaps with the artificial intelligence aboard the Orion, we will be able to come up with a plan.”

  “If there is a way Iris will be able to find it,” I said with hope I didn’t necessarily feel. Something told me the end of Legion would be through violence, not a vaccine. “When the Rung first created Legion and it got out of control, what tactics did you try?”

  “We searched for a cure, tried to fight it in an all-out war, even tried speaking with it.” Jezra swallowed hard as the events of those days played back through her mind. “There was no escape from it. Legion has one goal, like any symbiotic virus: to spread and consume.”

  “We’ll find a way to beat him,” I said.

  “I know you will,” Jezra said with sad eyes. “I know you will because I’ve already seen you do it. You are a champion, Dean. You are a protector.”

  “I don’t know about all that,” I said, shrugging off her compliment. “I’m just a guy trying to survive.”

  “Still, I have faith in you,” Jezra said with unblinking eyes.

  “I’ve really got to introduce you to this guy I know back on the Orion,” I said, thinking of Lou. “You two are going to get along great.”

  “We should keep our eyes open,” Arun’s voice sounded over our dashboard speakers. “We’re going to go through the same area where we came across Dean and Maksim. Who knows if he’s still here or if Legion is still in the area.”

  We traveled through the forest watching for any sign of them. The trees helped block out the hot twin suns overhead. Every time we passed a shadow or a tree branch moving in the gentle breeze, I looked closer.

  My senses were on high alert. I didn’t think Maksim would be bold enough to attack all of us, but if Legion was still in the area, well, who knew what it would do.

  We traveled on the overgrown road with bushes and trees pressing in on us from both sides.

  “There are no animals,” Stacy observed. “Like when we first landed. That first night. There were no animal noises.”

  She was right. An eerie silence covered the forest floor. The air was thick and hot, with even the breeze coming in warm.

  Our scale armor was equipped with an internal temperature gauge, and for that, I was thankful. Despite the armor’s best attempts, a line of sweat gathered at my brow.

  “We should stop soon,” Tong warned us after another hour of traveling through the forest. “The Orion is going to be in front of us soon. We need a plan.”

  “To have a plan, we need to coordinate with the Orion,” Stacy said. “Maybe we pull off the road and two of us go by foot until we can get a signal and word to Elon and Iris.”

  “I think that’s a great idea,” Arun answered. “I’ll g—”

  “I’ll go,” I said, cutting Arun off
before she could volunteer.

  “Great, Dean and I will go on foot to see with our own eyes what’s happening and establish communication with the Orion,” Stacy said.

  I heard Arun mutter something, but she didn’t argue. The simple fact was that I was expendable. Arun and Elon were our leaders as far as I was concerned. In chess, you protected the king and queen. As menacing as the queen might be, she was your best chance of winning.

  We pulled off the overgrown dirt road in a clearing to the right. I could see the edge of the Orion poking out beyond the trees. We were close.

  Everyone hopped out of the predators to stretch or grab a bite to eat. We all met in a circle, checking our gear. Stacy was decked out like some kind of super soldier with a judge on her right hip, and a ray blade on her left. She even removed one of the heavy bloodshot machine guns from the turret in the rear of her predator.

  She muscled the thing over, placing the barrel over her shoulder.

  I gave her a quizzical look.

  “What?” she asked. “I’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”

  “Hey, you do you,” I told her, grabbing a pair of ray blades as well as one of the judges. I rounded out my gear with a Farsight.

  “Don’t go far,” Arun ordered us. “Just as far as you need to see and establish communication.”

  “You got it,” I said, already heading for the Orion.

  Stacy and Arun exchanged a few words I couldn’t hear. I didn’t mind. I made sure my helmet was clipped to my belt with the magnetic hold and moved forward.

  Mutt trotted beside me.

  I let him come. He was well-behaved and I didn’t think he’d make a run for the Orion if he saw the infected.

  Stacy caught up to me a minute later. She trotted along, carrying the Blood Shot like it was a sack of groceries over her shoulder. The chick was stronger than she looked. I liked that about her.

  “Everything okay back there?” I asked.

  “Yeah, Arun just gave me instructions on what to tell the Orion, depending on what they say to us,” Stacy said, shrugging her shoulder in her scale armor. “Let’s get eyes on the Orion first and then see if we can talk with Elon or Iris.”

  “Let’s do it,” I said.

  Together, we wound our way through the forest, heading for a short hill that rose half a kilometer in front of us.

  “There,” Stacy said, pointing. “If we get to the top of that hill, I bet we can see what’s going on.”

  We jogged together the rest of the way. I was going to offer to carry the blood shot for her, but she didn’t look like she was struggling at all. Mutt loped beside us with his pink tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.

  In no time, we were climbing the sloping hill. At the top, we went down to our hands and knees and then our bellies in an army crawl. We chose a spot between two lush trees and peeked out from beneath the branches.

  The scene in front of us seized my gut. The view from Jezra’s low-flying satellite had been deceiving. A horde of infected survivors completely surrounded the Orion. I was bad at guessing at these things, but there had to be twice, maybe even three times the number of our own survivors inside the wall. Added to that were the alien creatures Legion infected.

  “Can you read us, this is the Orion.” Iris’ familiar voice sounded in the comm units inside of our earpieces. “We need help. Can you hear us?”

  28

  “Iris, this is Stacy,” Stacy responded. “Iris, can you hear me?”

  “Yes, Stacy, it’s good to hear your voice,” Iris said. “I’ve been running this message on a loop in all frequencies trying to reach you. Where are you now?”

  “We’re close, just to the border of the forest to the south,” Stacy answered. “We’ve brought supplies and vehicles, but I’m not sure how we’re going to get them to you. Has Legion made a move? Any move at all?”

  “Yes, Legion has given us an ultimatum with twenty-four hours to decide—either we join him or die,” Iris said. “I’m patching Elon into the line now.”

  “Stacy, is that you?” Elon asked.

  “Yes, Dean and I are here,” Stacy answered.

  “Thank goodness. We’re overdue for some good news.” Elon breathed a sigh of relief. “Is everyone okay? What did you find out?”

  “We found the second expeditionary unit. They’re dead,” Stacy said. “We ran into the Rung and ran. Next we found the installation Tong told us about. We have gear and weapons to arm a small army, but we have to get to you first. As soon as we show up, Legion’s going to be on us.”

  “We have vehicles, but I’m not sure they’ll be able to punch a hole through those rhino animals,” I said. “Ideas?”

  The channel was silent on both ends as we all tried to think of something.

  “We just have to figure out a way to neutralize those rhinos,” I said, thinking out loud. “The humans and those centipede things won’t be able to stop one of our vehicles. They aren’t big enough.”

  “We could try at night,” Iris suggested. “Perhaps under the cover of darkness, you’d have a better chance of making it to the gates before the larger creatures reached you.”

  “That night work,” Stacy said through her teeth. “I wish we had a better option than a maybe. What’s to say those things can’t see just as well during the night as the day. Or if Legion can see through all their eyes, maybe darkness isn’t that great of an ally either.”

  “We need something big to bulldoze through them and clear the way,” I suggested. “We need a battering ram or a—we need a sawg.”

  “A what?” Elon asked.

  “Dean, I think you got hit too many times in the head,” Stacy said.

  “No, no, hear me out,” I said, excitement starting to edge into my words as I bought into my own wild idea. “Jezra said she can control them, right, like pets or the way we give Mutt an order. Why wouldn’t she be able to call one here and send it out in front of us to clear the way? I mean, those things were three maybe four times the size of the rhinos.”

  “Hold on,” Elon said, confused. “Who is Jezra and what’s a sawg?”

  “Jezra is another Remboshi we found at Tong’s installation,” Stacy explained as she worked my crazy idea through her mind. “The sawg is a massive alien animal in the mist land she controls.”

  “It’ll work,” I said, looking at the place of the suns in the sky. “We can get it here as the suns go down, then send it in, in front of us while the suns are in Legion’s eyes. It’ll work.”

  “I’m not going to pretend I understand it all, but it’s the best thing we’ve got at the moment,” Elon said. “What does Arun think about it?”

  “We’ll get her on board,” I said. “Trust me.”

  Everyone on the channel groaned.

  “Come on, when have I been wrong?” I asked.

  “How much time do you have?” Stacy asked with a smirk. “We’ll be in touch, Elon and Iris, let us get things set on our end.”

  “Understood,” Elon said. “In the meantime, we have all our weapons on the walls. “We can give you some cover when you make your move.”

  Stacy and I wiggled on our bellies back into the cover of the forest. Mutt followed as we got up and jogged back to the others.

  “You think this is really going to work?” Stacy asked in between breaths.

  “Why not?” I asked. “The sawg are big enough to get here soon if they come now. Jezra said she can control them.”

  We saved our breath for running as we made it back to those waiting. I let Stacy give everyone the update, finishing with, “And Dean had an idea of how to get through.”

  I told them my plan in detail, watching their faces when I finished. Everyone stood silent. Even Jezra just stared at me opened-mouthed, blinking through her thick goggle-like glasses. Tong’s tail swished side to side optimistically. He seemed like the only one already bought in.

  “Will it work?” Arun asked Jezra. “Will the sawg obey you at that
level of detail?”

  Jezra was quiet, as if she were weighing the odds.

  “Oh come on,” I said, interrupting the tense silence. “You’re always telling me to have faith. You’re the one that has all these visions. I’m the last guy to have faith in anything, but maybe, just maybe, I’m the right guy to be crazy enough to do this. I see a way inside our walls. I say we take it.”

  “The sawg have never been outside of the mist land,” Jezra said slowly with a grin. “I know they will come. Getting them back may be easier than we anticipate. They are creatures of habit. They will hear the signal if I send it. I made sure the range would reach out a great distance. I have faith.”

  I looked over to the others. Ricky was grinning from ear to ear. Tong nodded excitedly. It was Stacy and Arun I would have to convince.

  “What’s to keep the sawg from tearing down our walls?” Arun asked.

  “Or accidentally trampling us in the process?” Stacy added.

  “I’ll lead them in a predator right into Legion,” I answered. “Once we’re in, I’ll turn off the signal, letting them go back to the mist land.”

  “And they’ll just return home?” Arun looked over to Jezra for a consensus.

  “If they do not, then we can always lead them back using the same signal to call them,” Jezra suggested. “They know me. I do not think they would attack your walls if they saw me on top of them.”

  We all waited to hear what Arun would say.

  Stacy shook her head like she didn’t like the idea.

  “Stacy, let Elon know what we’re going to do. Have them ready to open the gates,” Arun said.

  “Arun?” Stacy asked like she was about to argue.

  “We’re not going to be able to get through on our own,” Arun told her. “Do it.”

  Stacy didn’t seem excited, but she walked back the way we came to get a signal through to Elon and Iris.

  “How long until the sawg can get here?” Arun asked Jezra.

  “The beasts are surprisingly swift over land if they have a desire to get somewhere,” Jezra looked down on her glass pad. “I’m sending out the signal now that will call them. They’ll be here in a few hours. I should be able to track their progress with the low-flying satellite.”