Rogue Trooper #1: Crucible by Gordon Rennie

Author:Gordon Rennie [Rennie, Gordon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Fiction, Science Fiction, Adventure, Juvenile Fiction, Fantasy & Magic
ISBN: 9781844161119
Publisher: Black Flame
Published: 2004-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

As Rogue expected, the morning sun cast a heavy pall of low-lying chem-mist over the ruined city. During the night, much of the pollutant material in the air had frozen into a toxic chem-frost that clung to every available surface. Now, in the heat of the rising sun, it melted into a hovering layer of poison mist that offered just as much cover as the shell-shattered buildings and strewn fields of rubble.

"Been listening to the Souther Command daily weather bulletins, Rogue," reported Helm, their appointed squad comedian. "Outlook today, after these mists burn off, is supposed to be clear and sunny, although heavy acid rain downpours are expected later in the evening. The Milli-com weatherman says if you're going out today then to be sure to bring along some hard target headgear and any armoured plasti-skin you might have, since otherwise unexpected showers of random artillery shelling and not-so-random incidents of enemy sniper fire may put a serious crimp in your day-tripper excursion plans."

"In other words, just another ordinary day on Nu Earth," grunted Rogue, not in the mood for Helm's early morning wisecracking.

"Yeah. Synth out, Helm," said Gunnar irritably. "We're here to do a job. We find the traitor, we plug him, we hand ourselves in, we get sent back to Milli-com, we get re-gened and then maybe after that, if you're real lucky, we start paying attention to you and your lame-ass jokes."

"Amen to that," echoed Bagman. "Don't know about you two schmoes, but the first thing I'm gonna do is hit the bars big time and get myself a drink. And I mean a real drink. Been biochipped so long, I can't even remember what a slug of the proper hard stuff tastes like. And then, after that, I'm gonna call in all those bets you three suckers have lost to me over the years, cash myself in and retire out of this chickenshit operation an honest-to-god millionaire, with all you three dopes' backpay in my pocket."

Rogue allowed his team their usual moment of pretend ill-tempered banter. Most of it was pure fantasy, of course. GIs were officially classified as military hardware created and owned by Milli-com, and not as ordinary enlisted soldiers, so all Bagman's talk about retirement and backpay was just knowing make-believe, as was his spiel about going to an enlisted man's bar and getting pissed. When you were a GI, built to withstand the most toxic substances created by man, it was kind of difficult to get drunk on a few shots of synthi-scotch. A GI could probably drink an entire battalion of ordinary soldiers under the table, one man after another, and still get up and walk away sober.

There was one thing that was true, though, and that was the part about getting back to Milli-com and getting Helm, Gunnar and Bagman re-gened. That was the whole point of what they were doing, Rogue knew. Kill the man responsible for the destruction of the GI Regiment, and then get the members of his biochip comrades returned to life.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.