Kill Box (Drop Trooper Book 9) by Rick Partlow

Author:Rick Partlow [Partlow, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2022-01-17T16:00:00+00:00

16

I suppose it was some demonstration of goodwill between Hachette and us that Vicky and I were invited to the bridge for the Transition into what everyone had taken to calling the Predecessor system. I thought that was counting our chickens before they hatched, but everyone needed some hope and I wasn’t going to make a big deal about it. Hell, even Hachette seemed upbeat and hopeful, though the half-hidden smiles he and Top were sharing was enough to turn my stomach. It was like thinking about your parents having sex.

“Transition in thirty seconds,” the Helm officer warned. “Prepare for free-fall.”

I yanked at my seat restraint, making sure it was tight. God knew what we were going to find. If anything.

“Gonna be a stone-cold bitch,” Vicky said softly beside my ear, as if reading my fears, “if we get there and the whole place has been burned to a crisp by the Skrela.”

“Let’s keep the good thought.”

“All combat spacecraft,” Hachette said, touching a control at his command chair to reach the correct net, “are you ready for emergency launch?”

“Intercept Two ready.” That was Major Brandano, who I had talked to exactly twice on this whole mission and could barely have picked out of a crowd, mostly because he and Dunstan did not get along, and since I was usually hanging out with Dunstan, Brandano avoided us both.

“Intercept One ready.” The fact that Brandano disliked him was just fuel for Dunstan, which was why he waited so he could go last.

“Drop-ship One ready for launch.”

“Drop-ship Two ready for launch.”

Solano was in the first drop-ship with half his company, and if anyone would have asked my opinion, Vicky and I should have been in the second with the other half. But Top had convinced me that snubbing Hachette’s peace offering would have been a bad first step in mending our fences.

“If there are Predecessors here,” Captain Nance said, his gravelly voice harsh, “I sure hope the bastards have metallic hydrogen for sale. Because right now, I can barely guarantee we have enough to get back to Yfingam.”

I whoofed out a nearly-silent breath, surprised. Nance was not the type to make small-talk on the bridge, usually leaving the strategizing and the bullshitting to Hachette. The fact that he was mentioning the fuel situation was either a commentary on how bad it was or how frustrated he was, or maybe both.

“Transitioning now,” Yanayev reported, interrupting whatever retort Hachette might have had.

Reality jerked and sputtered around us and the main screen went from a sterile star map to the inky blacks and glaring whites of realspace. A hesitation rocked everyone, a pause for breath as if we’d all jumped off a two-meter drop and had to suck the breath back into our lungs before anyone could speak.

“G-class star,” Wojtera said, his clipped, professional voice stepping into the silence as if he was dragging us all back to reality. “Nothing too remarkable about it. Six planets—two terrestrials, two gas giants, two ice giants. Asteroid fields between

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