Blackest Ocean (Backyard Starship Book 8) by J.N. Chaney & Terry Maggert

Author:J.N. Chaney & Terry Maggert [Chaney, J.N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Variant Publications
Published: 2022-07-09T16:00:00+00:00

I yelled for the others to come back to the surface, taking two hits as I did. My b-suit stopped them both, but I was going to have some nasty bruises.

“Take them out before they land! They get down in these crops, this’ll get a lot harder!” I snapped, then dodged to one side of the hole, raised The Drop, and fired. I wished I’d brought a long gun but was stuck with the big sidearm and tried to make the best of it. Torina and Zeno had coil guns and now took up fire positions. Like a lethal metronome, they both began snapping out methodical shots.

In seconds, I was embroiled in one of the most intense firefights I’ve had the pleasure of attending. The descending figures poured automatic fire down at us, beating the earth with a hail of rounds that churned dirt and debris like we were rearranging the landscape.

Zeno stood, aimed, and fired, and was rewarded with a hideous scream that will never leave my memory.

“I’d say that’s one down,” I muttered as Torina drew aim and fired twice. She grunted in pain as a round slammed into her side, spinning her with a cry.

My rage bloomed, dark and poisonous. Torina recovered, took a knee, and began firing again even as my second shot took an invader in the skull—the wet snap that followed was satisfying and grotesque.

Perry turned into an angel of vengeance, shredding one of the parachutes and sending the wearer earthward so fast they didn't have time to scream. In blazing succession, Torina and Zeno were both hit—again—then I took a pair of rounds on my b-suit before every descending chute was close enough to hit without long guns.

“Finally,” I said as our collective hail of fire began to punch into each target. Torina and Zeno fired in unison, and our opponents went limp in their harnesses. One abruptly wheeled his chute back toward the southwest at a height of maybe a hundred meters, but he must have caught a favorable night breeze and swept off in that direction, gaining velocity as he went. By the time I lost sight of him, he was hundreds of meters away.

The other four all landed nearby with heavy thuds, either dead or dying. The fact that they might be alive was… unacceptable.

I spoke in a level tone. “Shoot to kill. Center mass past forty meters, headshots in close. Leave no doubt.”

I drew down on a target and put two rounds in him, sending a mist into the night. With a strangled, wet cry, I heard him thump into the earth, but I was already moving toward the next fighter, who was struggling against the ropes of his chute.

His struggle ended suddenly when Torina’s sidearm cracked with grotesque finality.

“Dead,” she said, her eyes hooded and mournful.

I looked over her shoulder at the mess. “I’d say so.”

Wincing and limping from our various impact wounds, we retrieved the bodies and their chutes, then unceremoniously dragged them back to the hole, down the stairs, and dumped them in the hidden room.

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