Intelligent Design: Revelations to Apocalypse Read Online Free PDF

been converted to energy for the Terran community’s life support systems and holographic emitters lay on the table. The first thing she’d done when she’d arrived was to recommend periods of taking the cloaking field offline when Earth satellites and probes weren’t around. She found it ironic that she was one of the key conspirators on a hidden planet that Farrell had alluded to so many years ago. Now, fully awake in the present, she noticed a water stain where her head had been, right beside her empty plate and cup. She wiped her mouth. Yes, she’d drooled as she slept.
    “Now, that’s really unattractive,” she muttered.
    Though still dressed in her plain brown slacks, and black and reddish tunic, she wanted to pull off her shoes and crawl into bed just feet away. Her quarters had been built for women of less than five foot three; she was lucky to have two rooms and her own semi-private bathroom with attached bathing area.
    “Just when you thought college dorm life was bad.”
    Her knife, affixed at her waist, gave her the feeling that she had to be somewhere else—she only took a weapon when leaving her quarters. She glanced at the piles of large books, tablets, and paper charts stacked like pyramids around the room. A flash of Terra’s spinning molten core, unusual on a tidal-locked planet, popped into her head. She often wondered how a still planet could generate such a powerful magnetic field solely by the planet’s core. It was fascinating how Terra’s spacecraft used magnetic fields for landings and launches.
    “Wait! The launch! Crap!”
    Perez raced out the door and into the narrow common hall in a bid to make her appointed time. Low lights ensconced and scattered throughout the residence core allowed her to see and wave back to her neighbors and coworkers, who all lived next to each other in a honeycomb structure made of stone.
    “Late for another meeting, Perez?” an unusually large-jawed woman said with an even larger grin.
    “Thanks for overstating the obvious, Hydra!”
    She wove in and out of small pockets of people, all with pale white skin and dark brown eyes. Being a full head taller than her new peers made her stick out in a crowd, and even after all her years here, she still wasn’t used to her lean body. If she exercised as Clematis had suggested, she would become even fitter, could perhaps even become an athlete. Once the first of three flights of stairs came into view, she no longer needed signs to guide her through the elaborate community. She sprinted up the staircase as a siren began to screech. The sound of spinning turbines and other machinery hummed constantly throughout the subterranean world, and periodic sirens marked changes of shifts, announcements, and, rarely, warnings. This siren proclaimed a shift change that meant in a few seconds mobs of people would fill the corridors, preparing either to arrive for their shift or to go home, eat, dance or hunt. Her breath grew ragged and her leg muscles tightened with the effort, but she was determined not to miss her meeting.
    “Not again … I swear I won’t hear the end of it.”
    A group of scientists, identified by their green sashes, gathered just ahead of her. They waved their tablets and spoke with great enthusiasm, while just behind her, another group carried sharpened spikes, spears and other edge weapons for a hunt.
    “You’d think … that with all the advanced technology … they’d have invented elevators or escalators,” she gasped while running up her third flight of stairs. Though not completely out of breath yet, her hope that she’d reach Legate Legionis Clematis and Dux Cloelius dwindled.
    I bet they’re already gone. What the hell, Perez. Lay off the vegetables and mushrooms!
    Despite almost fifteen years of acclimating to her new home, Terra’s gravity still strained her human body. Terra was only slightly larger than Earth, considered by most of her peers as negligible, but they didn’t have to