Eden's Children (Earth Exiles Book 2) by Mark Harritt Read Free Book Online Page A

us.  Spread your men across the wall, and we’ll intersperse between you.”
    Mike’s team waited, letting the security team move into position in front of them.  The Mechs heavy tread marked their progression to the front of the landing.  The sec team moved to a secondary location, about twenty feet behind the Mechs.
    “Alright, Spec, move in between Sec.”
    Mike’s special operations team had a hell of a lot more experience at combat than the security team did.  It was experience won by fighting terrorists around the world in the twenty-first century.  Mike, Jennifer, Everett, and Ken had talked about it, and they all agreed that this was the best configuration for combat operations.
    Mike and Everett realized that, while Mike and the team were good fits for the body armor, they could increase their combat capabilities by letting the women ride the mechs, and put Mike and his team back out on foot.  That way, they could step in to bolster the courage of the other grunts.  With the wall in place, the spec ops team had switched with Jennifer and her team.
    Mike and Everett had run training scenarios to get them up to speed, and over the past few months, Sec and Mech had done pretty good.  Combined arms still ruled the day.  The training had involved the mechs and the grunts working as a team.  Still, training could only go so far.  There was no such thing as a fair fight in the real world.  Combat was where you thrived or you died.  You had an innate capability to apply controlled violence or you went home in a body bag.  In this scenario, it was unlikely that Jennifer’s team would have casualties.  If there were casualties, it would most likely be the Spec or Sec teams that had them.
    The Sec team all had shotguns, with pistols as their secondary.  Mike and his team all had their Sig 716s ready, Sig P220s as secondary.
    “Ken, is your team in place?”
    “Roger Mike, team is set.”
    “Jen, Spec and Sec are in place.  Can you share the threat situation with us?”
    Since the A.I.s that the non mechs had were limited, most of the heavy lifting was done by the mech A.I.s.
    “Roger Mike, hostile sit is coming to you, now.”
    Mike’s display suddenly lit up with all of the hostile targets.  A wall of orange showed up in front of him.
    “Jesus Christ!”
    Ken’s voice cut in, “Joseph, none of that!  Everybody, check out your display.  Threat is orange.  Once it’s in range, it will turn red.  Nobody engages until I give the word.  Let me know that you understand.”
    The sec team replied from the highest ranking, down to the lowest ranking, starting with Murphy, and ending with Kendrik.
    Mike reported to Jennifer, “Spec team is a go.”
    Ken was next, “Sec team is a go.”
    “Roger, all teams are a go.  Spec and Sec, we have primary.  We’ll stop anything coming in.  If something gets past us, take it down.”
    “Roger, Mech leader,” Mike and Ken replied, in sequence.
    Mike didn’t have the map display that Jennifer did, which would show where the hostiles were in relation to the friendlies.  The only thing he could see was the orange dots that marked the threat in front of him.  There were eight large threats, and hundreds of smaller ones.  The smaller dots blinked in and out as the heat signatures moved behind trees and rocks.  They looked like an invading army.
    Mike thought, and the neural interface cued a private channel so that he could talk to Jennifer privately, “Jen, you’re in charge.  You need to talk and let everybody know what you’re seeing.  If you don’t tell them, they’ll start imagining the worst.”
    “Thanks Mike,” Jennifer acknowledged his input.
    Jennifer ran with Mike’s advice and started giving orders, “Okay, ladies, we have some targets starting to present.  The eight targets in front are the grown dragons.  That big one there is probably the Ancient.  I’m going to paint him as target one.”
    A number 1 showed on Mike’s heads