Blood and Stone by C. E. Martin Read Free Book Online Page A

are just entering the tunnel.”
    “Be careful, Colonel.”
    ***
     
    Victor Hornbeck was nervous. Even though his stomach was made of stone and didn’t even have acid in it anymore, he felt butterflies. The Colonel had explained before, that could happen—he likened it to the same phantom limb sensation amputees often felt.
    Victor wasn’t nervous about the breakneck speed they were traveling in their boat. He knew that his stone body could survive a crash at this speed. What worried him was the fact he was going on his first real mission since being petrified.
    Victor reflected on that as he and Colonel Kenslir raced through the long underground tunnel that connected Argon Tower to nearby Homestead Air Force Base. The water-filled tunnel that they used boats, very fast boats, to travel through.
    Victor had only been a stone soldier a month now. And even though his training had been going well according to the Colonel, he wasn’t sure he was ready for this. He checked over his gear again as Kenslir raced the boat along, at full throttle.
    Victor was wearing black, gray and white camouflage battle dress uniform pants with black boots and a black and gray combat vest. An over-under, double-barreled, pistol-sized grenade launcher hung on his right thigh—a weapon capable of firing a variety of 30mm rounds. On his left thigh he had pouches, holding ammunition for the weapon. On his left hip, under his armpit, a large automagnum pistol was holstered, the barrel pointing back, behind him. It fired armor-piercing rounds that could penetrate just about anything.
    The walls of the tunnel were whipping by now, the speed they were traveling displayed in bright green letters in his field of vision, thanks to the over-sized goggles he wore. They were connected by a thin wire that ran down the back of his neck to a small transmitter in a pouch on his vest.
    >>>TWO MINUTES<<< Colonel Kenslir transmitted from his own tactical targeting visor. Unlike Victor, the Colonel could control his visor cybernetically by means of small electrodes in the goggles reading signals from the skin of his temples.
    Kenslir was dressed similarly to Victor—he had on the same black, gray and white BDU pants, but wore a tight, black, long-sleeved shirt under his combat vest. And instead of one Bowie knife on his vest, he wore two, handles down.
    Almost to the second, they arrived at their destination—an underground bay at the end of the tunnel. Kenslir all but rammed the boat into a slip, where several Air Force Airmen on the dock quickly tied up the craft.
    Kenslir leaped nimbly from the boat, then pulled Victor up onto the dock. Despite Victor’s immense four hundred pounds of living-stone weight, the Colonel lifted him with no apparent effort.
    “Let’s go!” Kenslir grabbed up his rifle case and sprinted down the dock. Victor followed him with his own rifle case in hand.
    The two supersoldiers entered a small elevator that rocketed to ground level surprisingly fast. Faster than Victor remembered from their training run.
    When the doors opened, they were in the Detachment’s special hangar, located in the southeast corner of the base. The hangar was large enough for most commercial aircraft. But what it housed no commercial pilot had ever flown.
    The aircraft were sleek, black, and looked more like spaceships than airplanes. The pilot of the closest aircraft, dressed in what looked like a spacesuit, was already in the cockpit, being buckled in by ground crew.
    Kenslir walked toward the closest of the twin MA-12s, pulling his rifle from its case—that he then handed to a ground crewman. The Colonel then walked over to a long, open tube on a cart. The tube was slightly larger than man-sized, a streamlined projectile just over three feet in diameter. Inside the tube looked like a coffin—lots of padding, and a pillow for a headrest.
    Kenslir climbed into his transport tube and pointed to the one on another cart, its upper section also hinged back,