Doomsday Warrior 17 - America’s Sword by Ryder Stacy Read Free Book Online Page A

too,” he added with a twinkle in his eye. He lifted the thing and took it to the edge of the rise and began butchering it with a trail-designed laser cutter. Within an hour, as the night turned totally black but for the shimmering magnetic bands of aurora above, they were all sitting around eating a delicious stew of dried vegetables and fresh meat.
    After that, they pretty much fell out, crawling into their sleeping bags as Rockson set up a four-man watch at each point of the hill, to be changed at two-hour intervals. When he awoke, the dawn was already cracking open the night’s blackness and spiderwebbing down subtle weavings of blue light. For a moment he was pissed off, as he had told Chen to wake him at three to check on the camp. But the Chinese martial arts master walked over even as the Doomsday Warrior was rising up, with a steaming metal cup of McCaughlin’s famous synth-brew.
    “Sorry,” the Chinese Freefighter said with a lopsided grin as he handed Rock the mug. “I didn’t wake you because I could see how beat you were. I know you want to keep your hands on every damn thing going on here. But it won’t do any good if the commander of the mission falls out of his saddle and splatters his brain all over the place.”
    “Thanks,” Rock said with a smile, as he realized that Chen was right. Sometimes in the name of being the “perfect commander” he pushed his own body too hard, too far. He felt a hell of a lot better than he had the night before. He took a swig of the steaming brew. “Anything happen last night?”
    “Not a thing,” Chen replied holding his own brew that wasn’t coffee but something the Scotsman had made from various powders and herbs that he always took with him on missions. “Detroit and I supervised the guard—and other than a few rustlings around the hill, some animal sniffing out the situation, nothing to report. I’ll get the show on the road,” Chen said, letting Rockson sit there on his bedding so he could finish his brew.
    They set out, the men in a good mood after they had survived their first day. They headed through the bush for about ten miles and then came to a much less vegetated area, a prairie-like terrain that stretched off for as far as the eye could see.
    Rock paused at the edges of the plain and took out his field binocs, standing up on Snorter’s back to check it out. Nothing threatening, he noted. No earthquake faults or herds of carnivores. He sat down again and motioned the unit forward. Immediately they were slowed to almost half-speed. The ’brids kept sinking down a few inches with each step in the soft, sandy soil. The sun was out with a vengeance today, and after just an hour of riding, Rock had them stop and take out the Shecter survival-suits that had been created just months before to cover their bodies from head to toe. It looked like they were covering themselves in aluminum foil. But though the men laughed and pointed at one another with amusement, they quickly found that the things helped a lot, reflecting back over 90% of the sun’s thermal energy. The ’brids didn’t need their head coverings—yet. They could stand far more heat and radiation than their human riders. Though, if it got much worse, Rock would make sure he’d cover their skulls as well.
    The terrain got deader and deader. And even within the protective suits, the men could feel the searing dry air. They had been out a good four hours with nothing in sight but more of the same when Rockson saw some white objects poking out of the sand about a hundred yards off their due-north route. He headed the team slightly to the right to get a look, and his jaw dropped open as he came up on the objects.
    Bones, huge ones at that; a whole field of them stretching for several hundred yards. It looked like a graveyard for giants.
    “What the hell?” Chen asked as he came up alongside the Doomsday Warrior who had slowed them to a crawl.
    “I’d bet dollars to synth-doughnuts that