War of Alien Aggression 1 Hardway by A.D. Bloom Read Free Book Online Page B

wish you never had to be part of this... " His voice trailed off when he remembered it was Cozen that put her here. Cozen had asked for her specifically . Now, Ram knew why: to make sure he had something to lose. "Just don't..." He couldn't even say it. 
    "Don't what?"
    "Just stay alive," he said.
    Minutes later, Mickey led them through a maze of sharp outcrops and jagged rock until she took up a position leaning into the slope of one of Moriah's fractured hills. She waved them all to her. One by one, they assembled on the side of the hill. "Target's on the other side," she said. "You'll see the tower when you're halfway up."
    "First wave, fifty meters to the right," Cozen told them. "Second wave, fifty to the left. Third wave, hold where you are." Ram held his position with Biko and Cozen while Hollis and Lapuis went right with Mickey. Dana shot Ram a glance and a smile, and then she was gone with Oboto, Tse, and D'Ambrosse in the lumbering mech suit.
    They could all hear Cozen's confidence in their helmets. "We will approach the vessel in three teams like we drilled. We will breach its hull, and we will kill whatever we find inside. We will find a way to disable the ETs' jamming, and we will call for extraction. Once we're inside, do not damage the interior of the alien ship. I want her as intact as possible." He paused then, maybe for effect. "I know none of us asked to be here, but this has to happen and you're the only ones that can do it. It's time to step up, people."  
    "First wave!" Mickey called out.
    "Aye aye!"
    "Over the top! Make for the tower. Go, Go! GO!" Mickey leaned forward into the hill and dug in, driving herself up over the crest with Hollis and Lapuis behind her in echelon on her four and eight o'clock. They screamed and kicked up dust as they ran to the top and then jumped – Mickey with her x-ray laser, Lapuis with the bulky, meter-long plasma cutter, and Hollis with one of the pig-sticker swords. Ram lost sight of them after that and since they were using IR comms, their battle cries went silent. If Mickey and the first wave had been burned to a crisp by some alien weapon a second after that, then Ram wouldn't know until he went over the top himself.
    Cozen called out, "Second wave!"
    "Aye aye!"
    "Go, Go! GO!" The second wave went over the hill with D'Ambrosse and her mech-suit in front, carrying the massive, improvised breaching charge. It would make the jump in a single bound. As it took off, Dana ran behind the 4-meter mech, screaming the foreign battle cry Ram heard from her before. She held her pig-sticker up above her head as she jumped with the others and flew out of sight and into silence.
    "Third wave!"
    Ram and Biko shouted, "Aye aye!"
    "Go, Go! GO!" Cozen charged up over the top, and Ram and Biko followed, carrying the same pig-stickers as everyone else. Ram did his best to yell out the most terrifying cry he could make. The ETs couldn't hear him, but the battle cry wasn't for them.
    Just like Mickey said, the ship's tower rose up out of the crest of the hill when Ram was halfway up. At the top, he could see it was only fifty meters to the long, wing-like section of the alien hull. The vertical tower went straight through the 'wing' and protruded out the bottom along with three sets of what could only be landing gear. From hundreds of meters up it hadn't looked so big, but the vertical tower section of the alien ship looked more menacing now, like they were charging a fortress instead of a ship. That's all Ram could take in before he took the first, long, bounding jump from the top of the hill. It took so long to come down that he felt like nothing but a target hanging meters up in the air, just waiting to be ripped apart by some kind of alien projectiles or burned to a crisp by an unimagined ET weapon.
    Mickey and the 1st wave crossed the distance and made the bounding jump up to the wing-shaped section of the hull, almost 10 meters above them. When they landed, 2nd wave wasn't far