Matthew hadn’t had time to respond, then. His fingers had touched the loose skin of David’s neck, seeking a pulse. There was no steadying thump, not even a stilted one, against David’s neck or even under his jaw. In an instant, the image of David as this Goliath of a man had shattered and fragmented. For Matthew, David had always been a staple of his life, someone that seemed immortal, who would never be absent. Now, that figure was leaving and would be gone forever unless Matthew stopped it. He had to stop it.
Matthew had taken a CPR course a while ago, as a qualification for a marketing stunt as well as for his own peace of mind. He vaguely remembered what he was supposed to do. He never thought he’d have to use that training in his life. Falling to his knees on the carpet, Matthew had started to do chest compressions on his father and felt the sudden pop under his hands as David’s ribs broke from the pressure. The minutes before the ambulance arrived were punctuated by fear and tears. Matthew had never been more relieved than when the paramedics swooped in and took over for him. David had been loaded on a stretcher, an oxygen mask slipped over his nose and mouth, and one of the EMTs called out that David was temporarily stable before hauling his father into their van.
As Matthew had watched the red and blue lights illuminate him in strobes, he knew that something had fundamentally changed. It was a fleeting impression, because Ruth had commanded him to get in the van with his father, yelling that she and Kathleen would follow the ambulance to the hospital in the car. He had chucked his keys at Kathleen and scrambled into the ambulance. He had tried to fold himself into a small space while the EMTs passed vials to each other, strung tubing from liquid pouches to David’s arms, and spoke in medical jargon beyond Matthew’s understanding.
Now, there would be no ambulance to swoop in and save the day. There were no EMTs to arrive like knights, ready to stabilize and transfer his father’s failing body to a safe haven of treatment. There was only a lonely stretch of road on a mountain, and Matthew’s fragmented memories.
“Matthew,” Wyatt said, once more shattering Matthew’s recollection. “Man, you’re still not going deep enough. You have to press harder.”
“I’m trying,” Matthew said and put as much weight and pressure as he could into the chest compressions. He felt strangely weak, as if after everything, this would be the event that stole his strength. Beneath him, he watched as David slipped further away. The compressions only seemed to rock David back and forth instead of making him breathe again. Matthew bit down on a cry of anger. He tried to keep his rhythm by humming “When the Saints Go Marching In,” but he couldn’t hold the beat. His arms felt like limp noodles. Beside him, Patton let out a thick sob.
“Matthew, this isn’t going to work,” Wyatt said. “Your compressions aren’t working.”
With a grunt, Matthew looked up at Wyatt. “Can you do better?” he demanded.
“Yeah,” Wyatt said bluntly, but Matthew knew the Marine wasn’t being arrogant. “Let me.”
“Okay,” Matthew said, even though it was the hardest thing he had ever done, and let Wyatt’s hands take over. He heard the quiet crunch of broken ribs on Wyatt’s first compressions, and Matthew knew Wyatt had been right. Matthew cursed himself as he slumped on the ground and Patton put a hand on his shoulder. Once again, Matthew had wasted a ton of time thinking that he knew what he was doing, and instead he’d only made things worse.
The crunch of gravel came to his right. He looked up to see that Max and Jade had caught up with them. Jade seemed a touch better, despite her gunshot wound, but her face turned grave when she saw David. Max’s face was pinched with pain. Wyatt glanced up from his ministrations and barked at Jade, “Can you run?”
Jade nodded. “I think so,” she said. “What do I need to do?”
“I can run,” Max cut in and untangled himself from around Jade.
“I’m faster,” Jade said smoothly, and Max’s mouth dropped in irritation, as if to say how would you know?
“Run to the gun club as fast as you can,” Wyatt instructed. “Get Nikki. Tell her we need her. Right now. It’s life or death.”
“Got it,” Jade said as she pressed a hand to her shoulder wound and took off down the side road leading to the gun club. She staggered a bit, but she disappeared quickly around the bend in the road. She was fast.
Matthew let out a deep breath and tried to clear his head. Wyatt was hard at work keeping David alive, but there had to be something Matthew could do to help. The way David seemed so motionless, rocked by Wyatt’s chest compressions, made that building grief inside Matthew swell to bursting point. He couldn’t let it overwhelm him. David still had a fighting chance. They would make it out of here alive and well, but if David was truly unconscious, there was no way they’d be able to haul him the rest of the way up the mountain without help.
“Let’s build a stretcher,” Matthew said to Max and Patton. “We’ll need it for when Jade gets back with Nikki.”
Matthew had no idea who Nikki was, but if Wyatt had sent for her, she must be skilled and could help. Right now, he trusted Wyatt to help him save his father, but Matthew wouldn’t let himself become a bystander. Useless.
“How?” Max asked, looking around in exasperation. “How do we build a stretcher?”
“Find some branches,” Matthew said, studying the huge pine trees surrounding them. “We can gather the fallen ones and lash them together. We need some strong boughs to create the frame, and then smaller ones that will bend and hold his weight. Ones that provide cushioning.”
Patton nodded. “I’m on it, Dad.”
They split up and each ducked into the woods. Matthew found some thick branches from a fallen tree that he dragged back to the main road. He broke off other, greener boughs with still-soft needles from younger trees. Others littered the ground, felled by either wind or animals. With his arms full, he carefully walked back to the road. When Patton and Max returned mere minutes later, they set their hauls on the ground. Together, they laid out the length of the frame and used some long, stringy grasses as rope. Unfortunately, the grass didn’t hold well, leaving their frame to collapse into bits.
“Our shirts,” Patton said, stripping his off and tearing the material.
“Good idea,” Matthew said. He unzipped his overcoat and used it to span the length of the frame, tying the arms to each end. Max handed Matthew his button-down, and soon enough, they had a frame fashioned out of clothes and branches, ready for David.
All the while, Wyatt’s chest compressions kept up a steady rhythm against David’s chest. Matthew closed his eyes briefly, his mind empty of anything except for that welling grief and the word, please.
Get your copy of Erupting Chaos
Available June 9th, 2021
(Available for pre-order now)
www.GraceHamiltonBooks.com
BLURB
Space marines never say die…
Commander Andrew Ritchie swore a vow to exterminate the insect-like aliens that devastated humanity. But when his latest battle turns into a rescue mission, Andrew’s medical background draws the attention of a high-ranking officer who reassigns him to the Valkyrie Corps.
This new medevac unit is a game changer, combining Andrew’s skills as a Medic and a Combat Marine. State-of-the-art Valkyrie power armor allows him to annihilate aliens while simultaneously saving human lives, giving Earth’s forces a fighting chance against their ruthless enemy.
But the alien roaches aren’t about to scurry away in defeat.
When Andrew’s team plunges into a hot zone of death and destruction, the secret behind the enemy’s carnage is brutally exposed. Andrew and his squad must now dish out one hell of a serve of vengeance.
Or else their next battle may be their last…
Get your copy of Undaunted
Available September 8th, 2021
(Available for pre-order now)
www.GraceHamiltonBooks.com
EXCERPT
Chapter One
“Ticks at five
thousand clicks.”
I looked over Darwin’s shoulder to the tactical screen. He had his right hand on a glass globe mounted in the shelf in front of him and twirled it under his fingertips, changing resolution and view. We’d been drifting in the squad ship, our can, for hours. He spun the tactical glass globe—the tacglobe—and the can spun in space to match, taking tactical control from the pilot.
“Verify and number,” I said.
“Hold on, Doc,” Darwin said, squinting at the screen. He reacted to vibrations in his fingertips from the tacglobe as tiny red target dots appeared on its surface, marking hostiles relative to our position. “I’m guessing ticks. Twenty to thirty. Heading to the wormhole, which should be coming over the horizon in about five minutes now. Ticks will be in engagement range about that time.”
Ticks. Opteran drones. Dull, dark gray hardened plastic discs the size of Saint Bernards, torches, claws, and weapons hanging at the front. Just like ticks, just as annoying and thankfully just as dumb.
“Do they see us?” I asked.
Darwin shook his head. We had been drifting in the scattered wreckage of the Galactic Space Ship Salvation for four hours, waiting for a bite. Unless they took a real hard look at us, we were invisible. He rotated the glass tacglobe, made some minor adjustments, and moved his hand to an oversized red lever.
“Shall we open this can and let out the whoopass, Doc?” he asked.
I squinted, peering out the strip of window that ran the length of the bridge, knowing damned well there was no way for me to see ticks 5,000 meters away. A little target practice would let off some steam. But it would also burn some ammo.
“Negative,” I said. My magboots clacked as I paced and stared at the nothing in the starfield through the window.
“Did he just say negative?” Deepspace asked Darwin as if she wasn’t standing a meter behind me. She had already locked her helmet on, and her voice came through comms. Even though it was only the three of us in tactical, it made it sound like she was in another compartment.
I shook my head. “I said negative. There’s some factory shitting out drones faster than we can sling them down. Darwin, give the stick back to Chicky.”
“They’re right there,” Darwin said. “I can practically smell them. Come on, we’ve been sitting here all day, let’s take this.”
If we were some Assembly unit from Center Core, I could have decked him for talking back. But that’s not at all what we were, and he knew I would never do that. I also knew if I said we were staying where we were, drifting in the orbital wreckage of the GSS Salvation like another piece of shattered bulkhead, he’d listen. He unlatched his magboots and swiveled to face me.
Damn puppy dog eyes.
“I am not wasting ammo on another dance with drones,” I said. “There’s a solid chance they’re scouting ahead of an Aggregate ship. We take down a cruiser that big, kill some actual Opterans and not just ticks, maybe we can do something that matters. We stay here. We wait.”
Darwin turned, re-clapped his boots to the floor, and opened allroom comms.
“Doc says sit tight,” Darwin said. “Chicky, stick’s back to you.”
In a transport that small, he probably could have just shouted through the dividers. The can was divided into small cabins so a puncture would only vent one section out and the rest were sealed. Suck three into the vacuum rather than all nine of us.
Even though control of the can went back to Chicky, he didn’t have to do a damn thing. We were just tumbling along outside of the atmosphere of some backwater enemy territory planet, hiding in a floating graveyard of debris.
“Eyes on wormhole in four,” Chicky said over the speaker, and I could hear the deep-fried disappointment in his voice as well.
“Eyes on” is not a phrase that factually applies to wormholes. It’s just tradition. When that wormhole crested over the horizon of the useless planet we were orbiting, it would be a giant gray circle. From every angle. A giant circle. It was spherical, but it didn’t reflect light and the color was really a shadow of some starfield millions of clicks away. No matter how hard I tried, I could never tell the things were three dimensional. It was a bad trick on the eyes, and staring at one gave me a headache as my brain tried to decipher just what the fuck I was, or rather wasn’t, seeing.
“Looks like that swarm is heading for the worm,” Darwin said, watching the dots in the tacglobe.
“We can squash them before they make it,” Deepspace said, pulling off her helmet. Her scalp was more polished than the rest of her gear. “We can get them before they even know we’re coming.”
I looked at her over my shoulder. At the single black line tattooed under her right eye. She had as much a right to Opteran blood as any of us. Maybe more. But this wasn’t blood. Ticks were just rank and file gear no one cares about.
Like us.
“You act like they’re harmless,” I said. “Remember Cody.”
It wasn’t fair, but it got her off my back. She scratched the back of that finely polished head and looked away. None of the rest of us went full cue ball, mostly just buzzed. Otherwise, the black bipoly weave of the suits between the armor plates would yank a fistful of hair out every time you pulled them off.
“Doc, I got incoming from the wormhole,” Darwin said.
“See,” I said. “Spoils go to the patient. What we got?”
Darwin didn’t have time to answer before the comm bleated an emergency tone.
“Mayflower Six. This is Allied Cargo Transit Mayflower Six. We have just crested the wormhole at P9. We are in need of assistance. Incoming Opteran drones. Requesting assistance.”
“Fuck, that’s not the roaches,” I said. That gamble did not pay off at all. I pulled my helmet on and sealed in. The ticks were heading to intercept the Mayflower, blocking off our path. “Darwin, what’s the armament on the Mayflower?”
“Chart says a Carrol class freighter. Two heavy rails, front facing. That’s it. No escort.”
“We’re the escort now. Chicky,” I called, hitting the open comm button. “We’re going in.”
The starscape outside moved as Chicky pulled us from the wreckage of the Salvation. I looked out the window and saw the edge of the wormhole. No way in hell to judge the distance by eye. Darwin unlatched and pushed off to the locker on the ceiling to get into his bubble helm. I heard the whistle of Deepspace’s hand slinger as I readied and primed mine as well.
There was no pair I’d want to go gunning with more than Darwin and Deepspace. I met Darwin right out of basic. Since then, we were never far from each other. Same units, same assignments, same damn bunkroom when we met. Can’t forget that day. I opened the door and he was naked as can be in the middle of our room. Hairiest motherfucker I have ever seen in my life. I thought he was wearing a mohair sweater. That’s the moment he became Darwin. The missing link.
Deepspace was new. But she handled a slinger like some sort of training robot. It was precision that made me question whether her eyes were what she was born with or some fancy upgrade. Given the right intel and arms, I have no doubt she could squash twenty ticks by herself. And she wouldn’t even sweat. Colder than Deepspace. Joke was, any man who earned his way into her bunk would end up getting a certain delicate part of his anatomy frozen off. I didn’t know anyone stupid enough to try. And I ran with some pretty damn stupid people.
“Ready, Doc?” a voice came over the comms. Taylor. He and Chicky would stay in the can while the rest of us got to play.
The name Doc came to me easy. In another life, before a jumpjet and a slinger, I had a stethoscope and a family.
“Ready.”
We each turned for the others to check gear. Our suits were CaliCorps Falcons. That means we had the wonderfully brilliant idiocy of the liquid O2 tank being both the fuel for the thrusters and our air supply. If you’re running low, you can breathe or you can fly. Pick one. But it did make it a lot easier for us to check each other’s packs with so little involved.
C
hicky had gotten us nice and close, less than half a click. Unfortunately, that distance was filling with ticks. The Mayflower was a mid-sized cargo ship. Hundred heads on board, less if the body was full of wheat, ammo, gel or whatever the fuck brought them out here. Would have been nice for someone to tell us they were showing up. But we were the farmhouse cat. No one wanted to deal with us, just let us loose and grab whatever mice ran by. No one remembers to tell the cat when a new cow shows up. Especially when the farmhouse is in enemy territory.
There was a pneumatic whine as our cabin depressurized and the back of the can flopped open. The can was officially called the GSS Vedfolnir Five, but who the hell is going to ever say that? From the outside, it might as well have been an ammo box with wings. Not the sexiest piece of hardware, but it got us around. There was still some pressure in the cabin as it shitted us out. Being puked out the fore cabin would be Yaz, Hippo, and Jimenez. Collie would lower herself from the bottom. She was our commlink and fall back point, staying halfway between us and the can. She was a good dog, built her myself, but something she stumbled into on our last planetary touchdown gummed up her right rear servo, and once we got back to gravity, she’d be hobbling around like a toothless Coalition drunk, reminding me of Dad, until I got a chance to fix it.
The edges of my faceplate lit with the dots showing me where the rest of my squad was, a different color for each signal. Our suits were the usual rusty monkeys of any squad that had seen more than a few scraps, the original CaliCorps colors long since gone. HQ gave us barely any armor, but at least they cared enough to try and stop us from suffocating. Darwin, Deepspace, and I would form the forward triangle. I could trust Yaz that if we banked right, he’d bank his crew left. We’d done the two-prong attack enough times to go wordless. The ticks had a pretty rudimentary AI and were far more effective at dismantling ships than they were at figuring tactics against attacks from two directions.
“This is Allied Cargo Transit Mayflower Six. We are at P9. We are in need of assistance. Opteran drone contact. Requesting assistance.”
EMP Catastrophe | Book 2 | Erupting Danger Page 25
