Fire Fight (Star Runner Series Book 2) by B. V. Larson

Author:B. V. Larson [Larson, B. V.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Iron Tower Press
Published: 2021-02-14T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Two

“They’ve taken the ship,” Trask said, breathing hard over his microphone. “They must have—that’s why we were able to kill the lone enemy down in the tunnels. Maybe he was already wounded. Or maybe… well, it doesn’t really matter now.”

Trask unlimbered his rifle, laid it across a frost-covered wall, and made ready to fire.

“What are you doing?” Jort demanded. “You might hit Dernel!”

“True enough. But if we wait for them to get closer, they might kill me instead.”

Jort was agitated. “What about the girls? We have to go back to the ship right now.”

Trask looked at me in annoyance. “Explain things to your dog, here.”

Thinking things over for a few seconds, I made a quick series of hard decisions. “Jort… We can’t get back to Royal Fortune without killing those aliens first. They’re right between us and the ship. And Trask is right about firing on them now. We have to take them out at range if possible. They’re much more dangerous in close combat. If Dernel dies… well…”

“Captain,” a voice rasped in my headphones. “Captain—it’s Sosa.”

She’d broken radio-silence, but under the circumstances, I thought I could forgive her. The question was whether or not I should give myself away by transmitting over a long distance. Our short range radio transmissions were scrambled to prevent detection, so they sounded like background blips to anyone listening. A more powerful signal, however, was sure to be detected.

“Sosa,” I said, transmitting in the clear. “We’re fighting the aliens. We’re winning so far—but what’s your status?”

“We lost Dernel and Huan. I stuffed Morwyn and Rose with me in the hidden compartment when the aliens broke into the ship—then I irradiated everything. I don’t think anything could have survived.”

My eyes drifted out onto the snowy landscape again. I had to admit, Dernel didn’t look like he was doing all that well. There was no sign of Huan.

“Dernel might live,” I said. “We have eyes on him right now, and—”

“Captain!” Jort interrupted, slapping his big hand down on my shoulder. “The aliens—I think they can hear you!”

It was true. The aliens had dropped Dernel into a snowbank. After casting about like hounds sniffing the wind for a moment, they began bounding in our direction. They’d picked up my signal.

Trask fired the first shot. Jort and I joined in a moment later. The aliens were bouncing around like rabbits, and we all missed. We reloaded and fired again—and again.

The third volley scored two hits on one of the attackers. The alien did a full backflip, slammed hard by the force of the combined blasts. Incredibly, he got to his feet again, but he only managed to stagger a few steps before flopping down dead.

The other alien was smarter, or luckier. He fired a few wild shots at us, making us duck—then he suddenly vanished.

“Where’d he go?” Jort demanded. “He was right there! Where—?”

“The tunnels,” Trask answered him. “He made it to the same tunnels we used to sneak in here.”

“What do we do?” Jort asked in alarm.

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