The Royal Marine Space Commandos- RMSC Omnibus by James Evans & Jon Evans

Author:James Evans & Jon Evans [Evans, James & Evans, Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Imaginary Brother Publishing
Published: 2018-12-26T07:00:00+00:00

13

They had a few minutes’ warning, no more. The techs had set up sirens at key points around the city, but it was mostly deserted with only a few teams still working to clear supplies and equipment.

Everyone froze, just for a moment, as the sirens wailed and personal communicators pinged increasingly desperate warnings of imminent doom. Then things started to move as tasks and machinery were abandoned and the teams rushed to clear the impact sites.

“Kinetic bombardment,” said Atticus in a matter-of-fact tone as he reviewed the stream of updates coming in from the ground-based monitors they’d been able to set up over the last few days, “at least, I hope it’s kinetic.”

They had discussed contingency plans for other forms of attack – nuclear, biological, chemical, high-explosive and the old favourite, boots on the ground – but kinetic bombardment from orbit was always the most likely option, now that the Deathless knew they were opposed.

“Simple, cheap, effective and with little lasting environmental impact,” Warden had said as he summarised the advantages of dropping high-velocity asteroids on the city, “and there’s bugger all we can do to defend against it.”

And now it looked like Warden had been right. The monitors had found several fast-moving missiles heading towards Ashton but there were bound to be others, possibly hundreds of others, that wouldn’t be spotted until they struck the ground.

Atticus and Denmead made their way to the designated lifters, chasing the last of the salvage teams from Government House as they went. The people were surprisingly calm given what was happening but the atmosphere was one of tense excitement. After days of fevered work under horrible pressure, the time of preparations was now over and, soon, the real fighting would begin.

“Is that everyone?” yelled, Atticus, standing up in the lifter to get a better view. “Come on!” he yelled at a pair of stragglers who were moving slowly under the weight of an archive crate.

“Leave it,” screamed Denmead, the delay now starting to disturb her. The pair struggled a little further then one tripped, pitching over onto the road and dropping the crate.

“Shit,” said Atticus, springing down from the lifter and sprinting across the open ground. This Deathless body had a few advantages over the standard human combat clones and speed was one of them. He covered a hundred metres in a few seconds, shouting at the two salvagers to forget about the archive drives that had fallen from the crate.

“Just move,” he yelled. He gave one a shove then grabbed the half-full crate, hefting it easily. The two men sprinted away and Atticus loped easily along behind them, crate tucked under one arm.

“Hurry,” shouted Denmead, one eye on the sky as the time ticked down.

The two men scrambled into the lifter and Atticus tossed the crate in behind them before leaping up onto the flatbed.

“Go, go, go,” yelled Denmead and the driver needed no further encouragement. She punched the controls and the lifter pulled away, slowly at first but accelerating all the time.

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