Sound the Charge (The Buzzer War Book 3) by Kevin Ikenberry

Author:Kevin Ikenberry [Ikenberry, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2024-11-19T00:00:00+00:00

Caldera

Trion-2

Among the smiling men and women, many injured and barely survived, Justice felt the same elation at seeing EMF forces overhead after nearly a week on their own. They’d positively identified Kestrels and Peregrines among the distant Gryphons dropping toward the south. They’d seen the new airframes he’d seen reports about—the new Ospreys. All of it gave him hope of rescue, but there were far too many problems to overcome.

“Chief?” Justice called. “Where’s Chief Warren?”

The dough-faced chief warrant officer, a dropmaster and the lone survivor of Chimera 02, appeared. By Earth maritime law, he was the second-in-command of the stranded survivors. “Sir?”

“Any luck with those radios?”

Warren frowned. “Nothing, sir. We have power sources, but the radios we’ve got are smashed. We don’t have any panels and if we did…”

Justice nodded. The survival panels were two-meter-long colored tarpaulins which could be arranged in a variety of symbols and used for communications. They’d not been able to locate any in the crash sites nearby and they were increasingly limited on scrounging missions.

Warren shrugged. “We lost two to them cat-things, sir. We’re down to thirty-one survivors.”

Justice bit his lower lip for a moment. “Damn. We can’t get out there?”

“Not for more than a few minutes without more weapons.” Warren shrugged. “We have to chase them away and we don’t have the tools, sir. Damned things are smart enough to figure out we can’t fight them very well.”

“Fire doesn’t work either.” Justice shook his head. With eighteen smoldering aircraft wreckage sites in the area, they weren’t going to be able to stand out by fire alone. “Nothing reflective? Even on the pilots?”

Warren’s already pale face turned ashen. “We can’t keep searching the bodies, sir.”

“That’s exactly what we’re going to do, Chief. We have no choice. It’s not desecrating anything—we’re trying to survive. We’ll give our people the best burials and honors we can, and they’d expect us to find a way to survive to do that. We’re not talking about eating anyone, Chief. In their vests, kits, and personal gear, we’ll find something we can use to get us out of this situation.”

“Yes, sir.” Warren didn’t sound convinced.

“When we get back out there”—Justice pointed beyond the wing and hull of the Chimera and the rock formation it had crashed into—“everything we can find is on the table. Now, get with Gutierrez and find us a way to get rid of those things. We’ve got two hours or so of daylight left. Rain’s moving in again, so we’re not going to signal anything today or tonight. Clear out the aliens, find a way to get more gear, and be prepared to act when the sun comes up. We need to make sure our people know we’re here.”

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