Ceasefire: Team Orion Nebula (The Great Space Race) by Kayla Stonor

Author:Kayla Stonor [Stonor, Kayla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-11-20T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

H e thought he’d broken through to her. For one glorious moment, he’d felt Ahnna’s mind crack open, seen hunger in her eyes, and then he watched her crawl back into a cell built by HD-X with bars she couldn’t see and a key she carried inside her.

She refused to accept the new paradigm before her, choosing to live the lie that justified her life and beliefs.

Water cans full, wounds washed, they descended the next few pillars in silence. The light began to fade, the deeper they descended.

Ahnna rappelled down a few feet and paused. “We are so ill-equipped for this.” She tapped her comms-link. “Axo, can you hear us?”

The AI’s voice replied to them both. “I am picking up your response loud and clear.

“We’ll keep checking in with him,” Tierc said.

Ahnna swung from her rope, used the light on her weapon to light up the darkness and then switched it off. “What’s your charge?”

Tierc checked. “Ninety-five percent.” He’d burned power lighting the fire.

“Mine’s full. Let’s stick with one light for now.”

“I can see fine.”

Ahnna muttered something Tierc didn’t catch. He ignored it, probably something rude. They dropped another twenty feet. His sharp hearing picked up the rustling before his eyes detected movement. “Skal! Ahnna, hold up.”

She braked, aimed her weapon’s beam down and gasped. As she redirected the shaft of light towards the rock face, a coiling shape launched towards her, venomous teeth snapping. Ahnna squealed, fired, and lit up the rock in a large swathe. A heaving surge of movement fled their position. She looked up at him, her eyes wide with horror. “Snakes, millions of snakes!”

Weapon in hand, Tierc scanned the rock in case one decided to turn back. “Not millions. Hundreds.”

“Thousands! We can’t go this way.” A note of panic shrilled her voice. “They can climb the rock. Cover me.”

“I am. What are you doing?”

Ahnna’s hands whirred as she reorganized her rope. “I’m outta here. We need to find another way down.”

The drone dived past them, filming the critters, skittering sideways when a slew of snakes launched towards it. Tierc fired a split second blast at a sinewy shadow risking a return to the cleared area. They needed to keep their fire to short targeted bursts to conserve power. The charred snake dropped to the writhing nest below. “There could be snakes on other pillars. Take stock a second.”

“I fucking hate snakes.”

Spoken with honest passion.

Zeke spoke through their comms-link. “Not good, dudes. That’s all I can tell you.”

The unexpected intervention said much. Zeke had stuff he couldn’t tell. That meant Octiron must have done more preliminary research for this challenge than they had let on, which made sense given the scientific nature of their assignment. Perhaps there was another way down. He scanned the rock below for immediate danger and then searched the cliff-face around him. A dark shadow fifty feet up and to their right caught his eye. “Ahnna, I think there’s a cave.”

“Crawling with snakes.”

“No, it’s too high. We haven’t seen any snakes until now.

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