Storm Clouds (The Guild Wars Book 1) by Chris Kennedy & Mark Wandrey

Author:Chris Kennedy & Mark Wandrey [Kennedy, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Seventh Seal Press
Published: 2019-10-29T22:00:00+00:00

* * *

Houston Starport, Houston, Texas, USA

Rahimi led the squad on a march around the starport. Wilson had looked on the ’Net at the layout of the base and knew that they were going in the wrong direction to get to the range. He started to ask about it, then shut his mouth. Mason and Rahimi knew where the range was; if they didn’t head straight for it, there was obviously a reason. Asking would only focus Mason’s legendary wrath upon him.

The platoon went all the way down to the end of the runway, then looped around and came back up the other side. Rahimi alternated walking with running, then finally started using his jumpjets briefly. Finally, Wilson understood; they were either trying to get the recruits comfortable in the suits before trusting them with firing their weapons, or they were trying to have the recruits burn off some of their nervous energy. Or both. On second thought, it probably was both. The one thing about being in the suits was that no one could bitch about it. When they were in the suits, the only way they could make themselves known would be to transmit…and it would be very obvious who’d done it.

Instead, Wilson concentrated on Rahimi and trying to mimic how he operated his CASPer. Although several of the recruits fell when using the jumpjets for the first time, Wilson didn’t.

When they reached the end of the runway again—about a three-mile journey, all told—Rahimi led the platoon single-file down a narrow path to the weapons range. The area was square, 1,000 feet per side, and it had been dug 20 feet into the ground, with all the excavated earth placed along the sides to form a massive berm that encircled the range. A wide variety of alien armor and other targets were scattered around the range, including a Zuul tank with its gun tube pointed at them menacingly.

Rahimi had them drop into the pit, then spread them out across the end. “Initiate range mode,” he ordered, once he had everyone positioned to his satisfaction.

Wilson brought up the indicated weapons mode on his system, and “Range mode enabled” scrawled across his display, indicating the suit’s safety interlocks would prevent its weapons from firing if the suit calculated the rounds would leave the confines of the training grounds.

“I show everyone in range mode,” Rahimi reported.

“Very well,” Mason replied. “Proceed.”

“All right, you knuckleheads, listen up,” Rahimi transmitted. “One at a time, we’re going to cycle through your weapons. We’ll start with your MACs. Everyone power them up and we’ll get started.”

Wilson nodded to himself and armed the magnetic accelerator cannon on his shoulder. His left reticle turned red as the weapon powered up. Unlike traditional firearms, the weapon didn’t use any type of propellant to accelerate its projectile; instead, 17 electromagnetic coils cycled on and off in the barrel of the coil gun in a precisely-timed sequence, accelerating the round to four times the speed of sound. Since the MAC rounds

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