Sky World (Undying Mercenaries Book 18) by B. V. Larson

Author:B. V. Larson [Larson, B. V.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Iron Tower Press
Published: 2022-10-06T16:00:00+00:00

-25-

When the lifter thumped down and the ramp dropped, we were all on our feet. We jogged and jostled for the exit.

This was always a dangerous moment for any legionnaire. We didn’t know when an enemy missile might come and obliterate our whole cohort, killing all of us.

The worst part was being near the center of the lifter, trapped inside while the rest charged out through one of the ramps.

“Go, go, go!” I shouted. “Break right, break right! Everybody, we’re moving to flank right!”

Once we’d managed to get out of the lifter, which had become a possible death-trap now that it was down on the station, we found ourselves on an uneven deck of metal and polymers.

The satellite factory was crowded with wart-like lifters. The massive skids had smashed down a dozen air vents, fuel ports and other protuberances. Anything that stuck out into space in a seemingly random pattern was fair game when a lifter came in to land.

The satellite was artificial, and it was machined and constructed in what seemed like a familiar pattern. Still, there were alien oddities to it. Being designed and built by non-human minds, it had a surface that reminded me of a complex circuit board.

There were rows of pipes, wires, bulbous tanks and large, mushroom-shaped valves that released vapor. All kinds of stuff, but I had no interest in trying to identify any of it. To me it was all just cover until we could get down into the satellite itself.

Hopping along, we used magnetic boots and gravity-manipulation to cling to the gravity-free hull. Little puffs of air from our shoulders managed to keep us from flying off into space as we trotted around the surface.

The weirdest thing came whenever a soldier turned his head up—at least from our perspective, it was up—and saw the strange disk of Dark World itself. Noob recruits gaped. They could see the mass of bluish-purple vegetation on the surface. It seemed like the entire planet was cast in the shadow of night.

The sun, such as it was, could be seen in the opposite direction of the planet. 191 Eridani was a weird star. Glancing that way, I found it to be the most alien star I’d ever eyeballed. There were orange patches moving over an otherwise dark surface. I knew I was seeing hot spots breaking through the cooler crust, and they were shifting hour by hour. To me, it looked like a cluster of volcanoes that were about to erupt. There were rivers of gleaming light flowing between the dark spots.

We expected to be assaulted by robots upon landing, but none of them boiled up to meet us. Following the instructions from Primus Collins, I rushed to my waypoint on the tactical map and hunkered down with my troops.

There was a hot gush of plasma fire against our backs. The lifters were taking off again, leaving us to our fates on the satellite. Glancing back at the dwindling sparks and exhaust trails, you couldn’t help but feel abandoned.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.