Sunkiller: Legacy by J.N. Chaney & Rick Partlow

Author:J.N. Chaney & Rick Partlow [Chaney, J.N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Variant Publications
Published: 2022-02-05T16:00:00+00:00

18

“Ten seconds.” Pri’s warning was still buzzing in Chase’s helmet when he echoed it to the others.

Hanging off the safety strap in the utility bay, straddling the frame of the belly ramp, Chase was transported to seven years ago, to another ship just like this one, though the world where they’d landed had been light-years away. Unlike the boreal forests skirting Telemark’s equator below them, that landing had been in the northern hemisphere of Shenyuan, in a tropical rainforest. The Chinese already had a colony there, so it had proven the perfect place to station troops. Plenty of food grown by what was essentially slave labor by forced emigrants, an agreeable climate if there was air-conditioning and weather-sealed buildings to sleep in—which the military troops and government officials had, if not the aforementioned peasants—and overhead cover that could be combined with camo netting to make sure American ships couldn’t target them from orbit.

They’d done it the hard way, boots on the ground, and it had been a slaughter. Not just of the invading American Army and Marines, not just of the Alliance troops, but of those forced emigrants. The Chinese had used them as human shields, and God knows the Americans had tried to avoid killing them. Or at least, Chase’s CO had. He couldn’t speak to anyone else. But it hadn’t been avoidable. The Alliance had known it wouldn’t be avoidable, and they’d milked the propaganda value out of it even after the military defeat.

They’d been damned good at that, which is why the US and her allies had been so ready to sit down at the table and sign the Accords that had formed the Colonial Authority, despite the hundreds of thousands of deaths on and off Earth.

And that was another reason I got out.

The chill wind whipping up at his face from the descending belly ramp broke Chase free of the memory and dragged him into the present with a lash of cold air.

“Go! Go! Go!”

The last word arced upward in tone as he flew out the back of the Tamar at upwards of twenty miles an hour, as slow as the ship could go without attracting unwanted attention from the Telemark traffic control radar tracking her. It would have been a painful landing, particularly for a Ranger within spitting distance of forty, except for all the snow. Chase tried to land upright, but his momentum carried him forward and what he meant as a barrel roll turned into an undignified plop into a snowbank four feet deep.

His jacket and pants were made for this kind of weather, theoretically sealed against it, but of course the snow found a way down his neck because Murphy didn’t give a shit about how well sealed his gear was. Chase swore under his breath as he clambered to his feet and did a restrained dance to shake the chill fingers off his neck and down his back until they reached his belt. His M27 looked like a cookie version of

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