[Portal Wars 01] Gehenna Dawn (2013) by Jay Allan

Author:Jay Allan [Allan, Jay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: System 7 Publishing
Published: 2014-12-21T16:00:00+00:00

Private Sanjay Chandra glanced up at the two suns in the sky. The heat was unbearable. His uniform was soaked with his sweat, as wet as if he’d dived into a river. A river, he thought bitterly…a river is an elusive dream in this hell. Chandra was crouched behind a small rise in the ground, as bullets flew all around. He was terrified, paralyzed. And the heat was so bad, he felt like he was going to pass out any minute.

Chandra was a rookie, as raw as they came. He’d come through the Portal and taken the transport to Firebase Delta. He barely had time to dump his gear and take a crap before the assembly alarm went off. An hour later he was strapped into another ship - a combat transport this time – and en route to this hellish gorge.

He was hyperventilating, trying in vain to cool himself. The air was hot…so hot. When they told him he was going to Erastus, he figured he’d be well prepared to handle it. He grew up in the streets of New Delhi, and he thought he was used to the heat. But there was heat and then there was…this. It wasn’t Earthly heat on Erastus…the coolest temperatures on the planet matched the worst equatorial heatwaves in terrestrial history.

He was moving through the valley, struggling to keep up with the rest of the team. Corporal Tse had yelled at him twice for lagging behind. But the heat...it was just too much. He tried to move faster, but he almost fainted, and he had to slow down.

He looked at the cliffs on both sides. The Machines had been dug in on those rocky slopes, at least that’s what the corporal told everybody. “Be glad you grunts didn’t have to go up those cliffs,” he had said. “And be fucking grateful to your brothers who did the job, because they lost half their number doing it.”

Chandra couldn’t even imagine fighting on terrain like that. And a strikeforce losing half its strength? How do men do that, he wondered…how do they stand and fight even after taking such losses? His strikeforce was moving through the dry riverbed to assault the remaining enemy line. The Machines were in bad shape, outflanked on both sides, taking fire from the steep high ground…the very positions they had held a few hours before. Chandra and his comrades were tasked with delivering the final blow, opening up the riverbed, allowing fresh forces to move on a major enemy base.

They had it a lot easier than the men who’d gone in already, but Chandra was still scared to death, struggling to keep himself from shaking.

“Attention, 109th Strikeforce.” The voice on his com was firm, commanding. How, Chandra wondered, could anyone sound so calm, so controlled, minutes before going into combat? It was Lieutenant Daniels, who was commanding both Chandra’s unit and the 84th, which was in reserve right behind the 109th.

Chandra had caught a glimpse of Daniels from a distance

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