Complex Three (The Savage Horde Series Book 3)

by Chris Bostic

  He rolled off Leisa and stared at the devastation in disbelief. He’d never seen a tornado other than the aftermath on television, and this looked to be a hundred times worse. The woods all around them were leveled other than the giant tree.

  But even the towering giant wouldn’t last for long. It leaned hard to the side, creaking under the slightest of breezes.

  Smoke rose from the wreckage, carrying a pungent smell of fiery death to his nostrils and scorching them.

  “Unholy alliance,” Leisa uttered. She sat up with big eyes, and gingerly reached for his head.

  “Am I bleeding?”

  “I-I don’t think so…” Leisa ran a hand through his hair, and it looked like snow, something he hadn’t seen since he was a toddler. There was so much sawdust in his hair that he could have passed for having spent all day in a sawmill.

  Joe desperately wanted to know if the others were alright, but he couldn’t pull his attention from the sky. The smoke burned his eyes. He blinked repeatedly, but watching for danger was more important.

  Finally, he took a minute to dig through the mountain of shredded vegetation to find his coilgun. It seemed so insignificant compared to the way the Hunter-Killer had laid waste to the whole woods.

  “See anyone else moving?” Leisa gestured uphill through total devastation to where they’d left the others.

  “Not really. But if they’re smart, they’re hiding.” Or so he hoped. “We’d better go,” he replied without taking his eyes off the darkening, but empty, sky. “This poor tree is like a beacon. It’s the only one left.”

  Leisa offered him a hand to pull him up. Joe accepted her help. He looked at the tree that had saved their lives and raised a hand to pat its bark.

  “Thanks, big fella.” A crack as loud as a rifle shot made him recoil when he touched it. “Look out!”

  Joe dove to the side, pulling Leisa with him as the crack turned into the squeal of splitting wood—and then a whoosh.

  Time stood still. Joe rolled to the side as the giant came down. It slammed to the earth with incredible force. The ground shook harder than an earthquake, rattling his tired bones.

  “Whoa,” Leisa uttered.

  “You alright?” Joe asked softly.

  “Yeah.” Bloodshot green eyes greeted him when he rolled over to check on her. Leisa looked to the fallen tree. “Why’d you have to touch it?”

  From nervousness, he made an effort at humor. “I didn’t know I was that strong.” With a grin, he flexed his muscles. “I’m a beast.”

  “Well, beast…now we have nowhere to hide.”

  “It’s not coming back,” he said, but didn’t believe that for a second. The pilots had to be well-programmed to make certain of their target’s demise.

  A quick survey revealed that plenty of unharmed forest remained. The devastated area started about where they had formed up earlier, and followed them down and past their final resting place like a mudslide.

  Leisa nudged him with her shoulder. “Think the others made it?”

  “I…dunno.”

  Not if they were anywhere within the blast area, he thought, but didn’t say it out loud. Torn between frantic anxiety and mind-numbing shock, he almost didn’t want to think about it.

  “We’re burning daylight,” Leisa said, grabbing him by the wrist.

  “Okay, Connie.”

  “Whatever,” she said. “It isn’t getting any brighter.”

  “Yeah, we’ve only got a little time left.” Joe gazed back up the hill. Wisps of smoke obscured his vision.

  His eyes watered as they climbed back toward the original staging spot. The burning in his lungs was as much from the acrid smoke as the exertion.

  “This is awful,” Leisa mumbled as she kicked her way through the downed limbs and smoldering trunks. “They could stop the savages with firepower like that.”

  “But they’d rather use it on us,” Joe remarked. “Crazy, huh?”

  He felt sick to his stomach, but wasn’t sure if it had to do with the smoke or the worry. He wanted to yell out for the others. It seemed unsafe to draw attention to them in that way. However, he also wasn’t sure if he could suck in enough of a breath to force out more than a weak croak.

  His throat was raw by the time he made it halfway up the hill. He had to stop.

  Joe covered his mouth with his shirt, but couldn’t do anything about the stinging in his eyes. He kept them forced open, still scanning the sky for their attacker.

  Leisa yanked his arm. “Over there!”

  “Where?” He squinted into the soupy haze and saw nothing more than swirling lumps of gray.

  She pointed more emphatically off to their side, not the top of the hill.

  Anything that had to do with less climbing was fine by him. He nodded for her to lead, content to follow her around piles of fallen trees and scorched stumps, seeing nothing in particular the entire way there.

  And then he did. Only it wasn’t their companions.

  One hundred yards from the relative safety of the unharmed trees, he found his gaze pulled upward to the canopy. An unnatural wind rose. The tops of the trees whipped in a ferocious breeze.

  At first, Joe thought it was a firestorm. With one hand locked on his coilgun and the other in Leisa’s, he sank to a knee next to one of many fallen logs.

  “Get down,” he whispered.

  “What?” Leisa’s eyes pinched. “Oh.”

  A sleek craft of bright silver crested the tops of the trees. Despite the boomerang shape, it hovered like a kite on the wind over the edge of the woods.

  Heart hammering against his chest, Joe slid all the way to the ground. He pushed himself up against the remaining trunk of the broken off tree until he was practically hugging it.

  “Is that the H-K?” Leisa asked.

  Joe had never seen one before, but he assumed it had to be. It was certainly fearsome enough.

  “I think.” He kept one eye on the craft as he slunk even lower, nestling alongside the fallen part of the trunk. Leisa tucked in at his feet.

  The oversized boomerang rotated to the side while still hovering over the forest fringe. Joe had expected slight noise, but not that little. It was exceedingly quiet despite the hurricane-force winds it generated.

  He burrowed closer to the bark, willing himself to blend into the ground. The craft continued to hover as if searching.

  Joe thought it odd that the ship didn’t use the typical ultra-modern magnetic levitation propulsion system of the Republic’s normal hovercraft.

  On this sleek death machine, in the notch of the v-shape behind the leading edge of boomerang, a massive fan much bigger than an old-fashioned helicopter’s blade showered the trees below with hurricane winds.

  The craft spun again until it was facing toward them. Without warning, fireballs streaked from the nose of the craft, dozens at a time.

  CHAPTER 22

  “Cover up!” Joe shouted, though they couldn’t have gotten any lower.

  With eyes closed, he heard the sizzle as fireballs flew across the sky. Impacts dotted the landscape all around them.

  Heat stung the sides of his back not covered by the pack, the only part he left exposed to the flaming projectiles. The already fallen trees crackled and smoked as the firestorm tore into the ground all around them.

  Many seemed to carry far behind them, as well. But Joe could only judge from the sounds of the impacts and the screeching as they sizzled past. He dared not open his eyes and find his whole world on fire. The smoke was bad enough, and then it dissipated.

  The wind picked up.

  “You okay?” he yelled over the hurricane.

  “Yeah,” Leisa answered from behind him along the fallen log. “You?”

  “For now.”

  Joe blinked his eyes open to find the Hunter-Killer almost directly overhead. It settled even lower over the devastated area until it was even with where the tops of the trees had been before.

  The wingspan from tip to tip of the boome
rang had to be several hundred feet. In between, the fan blade spun with such a ferocity that it looked like no more than a menacing gray blur.

  With a body thicker than a transport, he wondered if a ramp would come open and troops would bail out right onto his head. His hands reflexively gripped his coilgun, and a suicidal idea came to mind.

  “Shoot the prop!”

  “What?” Leisa asked over the gale force winds.

  “Time for payback! Bring it down!”

  Joe rolled to the side and raised his coilgun. Leaves swirled all around him as he brandished the weapon and waited for Leisa to follow suit.

  Squinting into the leafy dust storm, she kneeled by his side and raised her weapon.

  He nodded. “Hit the middle of the prop.”

  Focusing proved difficult. The wind was too strong to keep his eyes open, especially with all the debris in the air. He pinched his eyes to the tightest squint and drew a bead.

  He exhaled slowly to try to steady his quivering arms, and squeezed the trigger.

  The weapon shoved against his shoulder. Nickel-plated bolts flew at a furious pace. In a matter of milliseconds, fifty rounds streaked toward the center of the prop. Leisa’s followed right behind his.

  The pinging sound of metal came back to his ears after a short delay. And then the craft wobbled.

  “It’s turning!” Leisa said. “We’ve pissed ‘em off!”

  She rose seemingly to run. Joe held her back.

  “Hit ‘em again!” He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a fresh magazine. He slammed it home while the hovering machine lumbered around to get lined up with them.

  Once again, Joe pelted the center post holding the propeller into place. The disheartening pinging came back to him again; then the wobble increased. With a shudder, the big craft dipped to the side, but somehow the pilot managed to keep it from tumbling into the dirt like a saw blade.

  “Yes!” he screamed while fumbling to load another magazine. “Again!”

  Gears squealed in sickening fashion as the craft tried desperately to gain in elevation. As it pulled higher and began rotating, Leisa launched her second fusillade, also striking the housing on the propeller.

  The Hunter-Killer tipped sharply to the side. The crippled craft spun toward the ground in sideways boomerang fashion and planted a wing in the dirt like a knife less than a hundred yards from their position. It kept rotating, slamming its whole body to the ground.

  Joe covered his head and ducked. The boom followed a second later along with a tremendous gush of heat.

  Even without breathing, his throat burned.

  Joe coughed like he couldn’t quit. Leisa pulled him to his feet, whooping and hollering about their kill, but he couldn’t suck in a breath to join in. Not with the fire raging below them on the hill.

  “Unholy alliance, we did it!” she squealed and pull him into a hug.

  It didn’t help his chest, but he managed a weak grin. “Great shooting,” he croaked, and shook his head incredulously. “It really did work.”

  “I can’t believe it. When it wheeled, I thought we were goners.”

  “Me too.” The heat of the blazing ship continued to pelt them as they stood in the open. In no time, the mangled forest around them was in jeopardy of being turned into a sea of ash. “We need to get gone.”

  Leisa paused, staring at the ship as if she wanted to go check it out. Joe was equally curious, but knew they couldn’t get anywhere near it. The intense blaze showed no sign of slowing. They needed to find cover.

  “Back up the hill?” Leisa asked.

  “Yeah. Right where we were headed…”

  A coughing fit interrupted Joe. Leisa patted him on the back. “Sorry I don’t have any water. I left my pack up-”

  He waved her off. “Just get me away from here.”

  “I heard that. I’ll lead.”

  Leisa took off to the woods, the swirling mist from before having turned darker by the second. At first, Joe thought it might have been from the thick black cloud around the downed hover, but he wasn’t convinced the farther they went. Nightfall was setting in faster than he’d anticipated.

  Out of the gloom, a familiar voice called to them.

  “That was amazing, guys!”

  “Jade?” Joe asked weakly, his dried throat closing up on him.

  Of course, she was able to hear him. As he stopped to try to catch his breath, Jade came running out of the woods toward them. “You guys took down an H-K. I wasn’t certain that was even possible.”

  “Me either,” Leisa beamed, “but Joe knew where to hit it.”

  “Truly amazing.” Jade hopped with seemingly nervous energy from one foot to the other. She continued rambling, gushing praise, as they came toward her.

  When Joe didn’t get to her quickly enough, she sprinted to him and lodged herself under his shoulder. “I’ve got you.” When Leisa looked at her curiously, Jade pulled Joe over toward her. “I have a shoulder for you too.”

  “I’m fine,” Leisa said, but quickly softened her tone. “That’s very kind.”

  “Thank you.” Jade smiled again. “Now let’s get you somewhere safer. We should probably keep moving since the IFP will probably send out a crew to investigate the crash site.”

  “Whoa,” Leisa interrupted. “What about the others?”

  “I’m not sure. You can help me find them.” Jade concentrated on the woods ahead for a moment. “I was trying to listen for them when I saw you out in the open. How’d you survive the first attack?”

  “I don’t even know,” Leisa answered. “Joe again, I guess. He found the best hiding spot.”

  “He’s very clever, and pretty strong too…even if he’s not as big as Sarge,” Jade said. Joe let the backhanded compliment go by without protesting. “I’d swear you two are built as tough as me.”

  “I wish,” Joe said. “Can’t you…feel the heat?”

  “Absolutely. It’s very warm. That’s another good reason to get away from here.”

  Joe looked over his shoulder to see if the flames had crept away from the fallen craft. To his alarm, much of the greenery all around the crash site had already wilted, and the smoldering seemed to be spreading.

  “The whole forest is gonna burn down,” Leisa said, having apparently seen the same thing as Joe. “And we’re headed up hill…right where the fire will move the fastest.”

  He tried to push off from Jade’s shoulder, but his lungs wouldn’t cooperate. “I’m crashing,” he whimpered.

  “Just like the ship,” Jade said. “That was really smart to go after the weakest part. The rest of the H-K’s are practically indestructible.”

  “And loaded with fuel.” Leisa veered off to their right. “Let’s head this way.”

  They adjusted course to run parallel with the terrain. It seemed to Joe like it gave them a slightly better chance to keep ahead of the growing blaze, though he moved so slowly he was unsure.

  He continued leaning heavily on Jade. Despite her slender frame, she remained as solid as a rock.

  “Have you seen the others yet?” Joe asked Jade once he caught his breath enough to force out more than a few words.

  “It’s very hazy.”

  “What about noises? Some of them aren’t quiet,” Joe asked. “You really can’t hear them anywhere?”

  “Nothing. The background noise from the fire crackling is so loud that I can barely hear you. I might need to stop to put in my earpieces.”

  “There’s no stopping,” Joe said. “We’re not going to make it.”

  “We have time.” As if to prove the point, Jade stopped at the edge of the unharmed woods and looked over her shoulder. “The fire is moving more slowly than we are. Barring a stiff wind, we should be able to outrun it.”

  So the breeze stirred. A cloud of ash rushed over their heads. Joe buried his nose in his shirt and tried his hardest not to breathe.

  As the sky grew blacker and the heat soared, he nearly wilted himself—and then
Jade actually did.

  CHAPTER 23

  “Jade!” Joe shouted as she crumpled to the ground, nearly taking him with her.

  A burst of adrenaline kept Joe from collapsing. With great effort, he lowered the unconscious girl to the forest floor. He shared a panicked glance with Leisa.

  She ran fingers to the side of Jade’s throat, and quickly pulled back. “Duh, no pulse.”

  “We need to cool her off.” Joe looked off into the woods, but the combination of impending darkness and heavy smoke made it almost impossible.

  “She already feels cold,” Leisa said.

  “I know. It’s weird.” Joe remembered back when Jade had passed out at the prison camp. He wracked his mind trying to think of how the doctors had brought her back to consciousness, but he had never seen it done firsthand. All he could think to do was get her cooled off. “We have to get her away from here. Down to the creek.”

  He kneeled next to her and sized her up. Though not large, any effort to pick her up was going to be a challenge in his current condition.

  “Get under her shoulder,” Leisa suggested as she crouched on Jade’s other side and rolled her slightly. “Throw her arm around your neck, and I’ll do the same.”

  “Then we’ll pick up her feet and carry her like a sling,” Joe said.

  Leisa nodded. “Can you do that?”

  “I don’t have a choice.” That knowledge alone was enough to keep him moving.

  It wasn’t easy, but the two of them were able to get Jade off the ground and balanced between them. They set off down the slope, heading away from the top of the hill where the others had been meeting before the hovercraft attack.

  “There’s a…creek at…the bottom,” Joe said, panting between every couple words. “We can…soak her.”

  “Okay,” Leisa said through gritted teeth.

  She stumbled over a root, throwing her balance off. Jade’s weight mostly fell onto her shoulder. She slipped, but was able to right herself.

  The glow of the fire helped light their way through the darkening woods. The flames flickered like an old-fashioned lantern, only it was a raging inferno that seemed to be growing.