Recon: A Military Sci-Fi Series (Drop Trooper: Recon Book 1) by Rick Partlow

Author:Rick Partlow [Partlow, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2023-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

13

It was the 23rd Century. Humans had been travelling from one star system to another for 150 years, in space for twice that long. We could step outside our universe, we could replace organs and limbs with cloned flesh on a biomechanical framework, and we could implant interface jacks in our heads and hook our brains up to computers. We could grow meat in a vat and turn algae scum and soy paste into something at least passable to eat with the help of an automated kitchen.

Yet here I was, squatting in the dirt, bare-chested and eating the meat from an elk calf I’d hunted and killed and cooked over an open fire on a wooden spit. What a kick in the head.

Yeah, okay, I’d killed it with a rocket-propelled homing projectile aimed with a holographic reticle in a computerized helmet, and I’d cut the wood with a utility knife honed to a sharpness of a few molecules across, and started the fire with a miniature blowtorch, and I was under the unfinished buildfoam dome of a half-built vacation resort on a planet stocked with genetically engineered wildlife, but still…

The elk calf was delicious. It was my second kill in my two weeks out here at the resort construction site. I wasn’t sure if the Tahni were bothering to monitor the place, but I knew the resistance had looted everything worth taking from it, so they wouldn’t be back. That took care of one of the two groups I was hoping to avoid.

I couldn’t stay here indefinitely though, I knew that. I’d eventually run out of ammo to hunt, or run out of vitamin supplements, and I’d have to get supplies by stealing from the Tahni. By myself, that would be dangerous, but I didn’t see what else I could do besides crawling back to Braun. That wasn’t going to happen. I wished I’d thought to bring some civvie clothes with me from the Resistance base, though; when I was inside and relaxing, the best I could do was to strip my skinsuit down to the waist and try to cool off. And despite the fact that the material of the suit never absorbed my odor, if I spent too long in it, I stank like hell.

Plus, it was lonely out here, especially at night. I was getting paranoid and starting to jump at shadows with no one to watch my back. At least I hadn’t started talking to myself yet.

Ah well, maybe the damn Tahni will stumble across me and put me out of my misery.

That thought hadn’t had time to travel from one side of my brain to the other before I heard footsteps outside. My body reacted before my mind had the chance to dither about it, and I grabbed my rifle and scrambled into a dark corner, as far from the fire as I could get. There wasn’t time to get my helmet on, so I’d just have to hope the fire screwed up their night-vision imaging.

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