Surviving The Theseus by Randy Noble Read Free Book Online

and ran towards it on instinct. The source
of the light came from the front porch of a two-storey cottage. The
cottage looked rustic and quaint, limestone rock adorned the
façade, and a three-storey turret loomed on the left side of the
house. It featured several sash windows and a couple large
Palladian windows , and it had a high, steeped roof,
thatched with straw.
    There were no lights on inside, just two
Victorian lamplights sitting atop eight-foot poles on either side
of the wooden stairwell to the front porch.
    Regina ran for the stairs, without a glance
behind her, and through the unlocked, front door. After a quick
glance at her surroundings -- an open foyer with a wooden spiral
staircase leading up to the second level, an open dining area to
her left, and past that, the first level of the tower -- she looked
to her right and saw exactly what she needed. Going right offered
shadows and darkness, but she saw enough through the murkiness for
her purpose.
    She walked into a large L-shaped living room;
a stone fireplace, with openings on all four sides, decorated the
middle of the first section. Couches and chairs faced the fireplace
on all sides.
    She glanced around the corner, seeing three
black walls that she thought strange at first, because they didn’t
go with the mushroom brown color in the other section, and then she
realized why. Three grey sofas surrounded a ten-by-ten flat black
panel, which looked like it lay on the ground. It was the biggest
holographic viewer she had ever seen. Regina looked up and saw a
thin slit along the ceiling, where a wall would go to separate the
two sections, and then on the floor where a similar thin slit
aligned with the one above.
    Regina walked to the right side of the
holographic room and pressed a circular, blue button on the wall.
As soon as she did, a glass partition slid up from the floor and
down from the ceiling and joined to enclose the room. A second
later, the glass transformed from crystal clear to brown, matching
the other walls. She could no longer see into the holographic
section.
    Regina walked over to a large bay window,
closed the slatted blinds, came back, and jumped behind a light
brown sofa, her running shoes squeaking as she landed on the
hardwood floor. The sofa offered a nice hiding spot, at a
forty-five degree angle against two walls, facing the fireplace.
She pointed her gun over the edge of it, keeping herself as close
to the living room entrance wall as she could.
    Ten minutes passed and Regina heard nothing.
No one approached and no one tried to get into the cottage. Leave
or stay? Were they waiting for her to come out? She cursed to
herself. Wait, it was.
    Another couple minutes passed and then the
porch floorboards creaked.
    Fear nothing for fear breeds mistakes. That
was one of her father’s mantras and one she often repeated to
herself in such situations.
    Regina steadied herself on her feet and
hunkered down. Her right arm rested on the couch and the gun
pointed at the door.
    The porch floorboards creaked again.
     
     

Chapter 16
     
    George, Mary, and Michael waited in a large
boardroom. A large window overlooked the docking bay they had just
chased the runner into.
    George and Mary sat at a massive oak table
fitted with twenty high-backed leather chairs.
    Michael stood by the window, watching the
activity in the docking bay. The runner ship sat askew in the now
waterless upper glass bay.
    The room’s walls were plastered with maps of
star systems, gates, and pictures of Alpha leaders who had
previously been in control of precinct ship Lancer.
    Lights hung from cables, suspended from the
ceiling, dimmed down and throwing Mary and George’s shadows in
long, narrow shapes across the table.
    “I knew they would be kids,” Mary said.
    “SPARS kids, no less,” George said. “Only
two, thank God.”
    “Why,” Mary said. “Who cares how many there
were?”
    “Fewer pissed off parents,” Michael said.
George’s lips pursed into what