Stollar's Gambit by Jason Borondy

Author:Jason Borondy [Borondy, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-12-21T22:00:00+00:00

19

Unknown Location

Planet M051

Haley opened her eyes and then shut them immediately, putting her hands against the sides of her head. The searing pain was too much to bear. She took some deep breaths and gradually opened her eyes. It hurt but she eventually squinted enough to make out her surroundings. She noticed a bag of IV liquid hanging over her left side. A drip line was attached to the bottom of the bag and lead straight to her left arm. Turning to her right she observed her location was a dimly lit cavern. She could make out light brown stalactite structures hanging from the ceiling above her. She turned to her right and noticed other people laying on stretchers, the floor, or sitting against a wall. There was a young woman dressed in an infantry uniform kneeling on the ground wrapping one of the soldier’s legs. She realized she was in some sort of makeshift field hospital. The good news, she thought to herself, was she was not dead.

“Look who finally woke from their nap,” a familiar voice said out of her view. She winced from the pain the sound caused.

“Ow, Sergeant Rook. I knew your voice was annoying, but damn!” she replied, closing her eyes again.

“I can see your sense of humor survived too,” he said with a chuckle. “You’re damn lucky to be alive. Not too many can pull off a stunt like that and live to tell about it.”

She cautiously opened her eyes and turned her head to the right. In view was a soldier wearing desert battle fatigues standing over her. Looking up she could make out his face. It looked just as she remembered from that night at the Enlisted Club. It just had a day’s worth of black stubble. “About that--” she started, “what the hell happened, and where are we?”

Rook took a knee next to her and let out a sigh before he began to speak. “Well after your little stunt took out the last of the enemy Mechs, we were able to link up with the general’s team. It seemed like we were turning the tide against these guys. Then everything went sideways just like that!” he said, snapping his fingers. Haley put her hand on his to indicate to him not to do that again. His expression indicated he wasn’t expecting that, he nodded in agreement. She returned her hand to her side.

“What did the ground pounders look like? Were they one eyed, one horned and purple?” she asked smiling and closing her eyes.

“What?” Rook replied confused.

“Never mind, old Earth song from the Twentieth century. Continue.”

“Whatever you say, but it is hard to answer your question. That’s because we couldn’t capture one of them. What we could replay from the footage from the battle cameras, show that their forces are comprised of different species. All of them wore head to toe body armor, but you had tall, skinny, short, fat, four legged. They covered the whole spectrum,” he said.

“That would explain the different Mech configurations,” she replied.

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.