Banished Worlds Read Online Free PDF

on this side of the back stabbing, does it?”
    “Send them on their way. Come back with my daughter and all of you will be set for life. Fail to do that, don’t bother coming back. You have a maximum of seven days to return,” the President ordered.

CHAPTER 2
     
    The hum of the energy shield hit the ears like a hammer to the skull. It hurt, but currently we were prisoners, and no one cared if prisoners fake, or otherwise were hurt. I was not too sure how fake our prisoner status was at this point.
    The heat shielding folded up around to mid chest level with the energy shield coating from the decking, enveloping the prisoners, us, in a heatproof barrier. The energy shield barrier locked you in place against the launch and the ride down to the planet. The system had been developed and designed to put armored agents on the ground in a hurry. In battle armor, this ride was a breeze.
    When the government ran out of people to fight, the drop zone system got taken over for prisoner transfers. It was a one-way delivery system. The second web shield of the pad energized and came up around us, locking everyone in place for the trip. The energy shield that housed the pad wrapped up around the web and encased us in our transfer bubble.
    The platform lowered into the launch deck below with Garrett and his agents watching the entire time, as if we could escape the transfer pad at this point. The upper deck opening sealed as we cleared it, then half a heartbeat later we were ejected from the President’s ship, and were a fireball headed to the prison planet, Tirus.
    I watched the dead of space for the split second. The flames of entering the upper atmosphere whiteout everything. You cannot feel the heat through the drop zone pad, or the double layer of energy shield, but even with your eyes closed tightly, the brightness of the light hurt the eyes. Between that and the headache from the shield generators hum, the ride hurt.
    We hit the lower atmosphere hard with a leg numbing impact, but of course the shields held us locked in place. The white hot brilliance had faded somewhat, and I opened my eyes to see the white flames turn blue, orange, and yellow. I could not turn my head, but I could shift my eyes up to see the column of gray-white smoke trailing our descent platform. The ride would be over in minutes at this point. The energy shield of the landing pad would lock onto us, slow our decent and pull us to the prisoner offload hall. It was all automated, even the power source and controls were sealed deep underground to insure no tampering by the prisoners.
    As soon as we were down, the foam guns would coat our energy shields removing the last of the heat from our bubble, then the blowers would come to life and clear the foam. Our mission had begun.
    ***
     
    Newly arrived prisoners would normally find themselves standing in the middle of an open area with no one around to even say hi, welcome, or go to hell, nothing. We would land and find the settlement; there would be some kind of a settlement. The prisoners before us would have to live somewhere, and I was betting it was not in the streets.
    New prisoners had to find their own way on their new home, which in our case meant locate the crash site, find the President’s daughter, then let Roberts get us the hell off of the planet.
    I could feel the pad slowing. Our fireball ride was nearly over, and we could get to work. On the horizon, out and around us, there were buildings in various levels of decay.
    It looked like we would be landing in the night cycle of the planet. That would work to our advantage, as less people would see us depart the landing area. There would be a few seconds of confusion at landing, but I would get everyone organized and moving out of the area fast.
    We hit the ground, settled onto the landing pad and the foam covered our energy bubble. When the blowers came on and removed the foam, I could see life was not going to be as easy as I had thought, or hoped