Warrior Chronicles 2: Warrior's Blood by Shawn Jones Read Free Book Online Page A

Mai saw a trooper go down. The idiot must not have activated his suit’s energy cage. Without power, the suits were useless and unable to deflect the disruptor blasts. Fortunately, he would be fine when he woke up, and he was the only one to make the mistake.
     
    Some of the members of the Addison pack who had former military experience had been trained and cleared to deploy the old style chemical propellant weapons Cort had brought with him. Two of those men, Dave Gaines and Mike Rage were playing dominoes in the cigar lounge. When the lockdown sounded Dave asked Rand not to block their route to the combat area. They stopped at the main armory cabinet and grabbed assault rifles and sidearms. Kay was in the control room now, and started operating the airlocks as the heavily armed pair passed from section to section.
     
    “Dave, this is Addison. Pin them down with suppressive fire while Mike gets our people out. Kay, disconnect all power and environment from the terminal module. Once they have our people out Mike, you will have to disconnect the maglocks and the physical connections. Then these bastards are mine. Rand, warn Rhodes. They aren’t just stopping here. Total lockdown until our arrival. Then jam all communications.”
     
    Dave began firing three-round bursts down the length of the two modules, careful to fire over the head of Mike Rage, who was crawling down the corridor.
     
    “Prowlers, now!” Sergeant Mai yelled. Lieutenant Marks was down. One of the bursts from a colonist weapon had killed him. Another man was injured too but still moving. Blood was everywhere.
     
    Mike pulled Dr. Wills out first. He didn’t feel paralyzed though. Maybe they just stunned him. Next he pulled out the trainees. Finally, he got to the last of the Addison crewmembers. Halfway back to where Dave was covering him, he took a Prowler hit to his legs. The heavier disruptor left him twitching on the floor of the module. The man he was dragging back had already been immobilized with a level three disruptor hit. In sleep mode, his synthetics completely deactivated. He died a moment later.
     
    Dave saw the two go down. Dropping to his knees, he scrambled into the terminal module and pulled Mike out. Once past the airlock, he ordered Kay to close the doors.
     
    “What about...” Kay started.
     
    “Dead. Close the doors, dammit!” After the airlock was closed, he disconnected the two modules. “Full disconnect. Go get ‘em, Grandpa!” Everyone on the comm channel could hear the grim humor in his voice.
     
    Mai felt the two modules begin to move. What the hell? Oh, shit. “Prepare to repel boarders!” He had the feeling that the predators had just become the prey. He fired off a burst transmission to the other two Diomedes modules.
     
    Cort pushed the two modules five meters away from the rest of the colony. Then he climbed up to the top of the terminal module. Let them listen to their deaths approaching.
     
    “What is that, Sarge?” Corporal Kind asked Mai as they heard heavy metallic footsteps move down the top of the module.
     
    “Bad news. Turn on your atmosphere. It’s coming in.”
     
    Cort reached the end of the freighter and jumped down. He activated his vid and started recording visuals from the suit as well as his own audio. “What you are about to see is what happens when you invade our sovereign nation. Let this be a lesson to you all.” As he finished speaking, he forced the doors open.
     
    Mai stood in front of his men as the doors opened. “Kill me if you have to, but they are just following orders. Let them live.”
     
    “A noble sentiment, Sergeant. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. We can’t take prisoners because we could never trust them. And here on Mars, trust is why we survive. Their deaths will be reasonably painless. Yours will not.” Cort tore the man’s head from his torso, then he raised a sidearm and killed the others.
     
    --
     
    Inside again, Cort took off his helmet and