Survivors (Hell Squad #19)

by Anna Hackett

  Hell Squad’s leader would have a better view than Tane’s squad at the bottom of the hill. “Acknowledged. Stick to the plan.”

  Lifting his carbine with practiced ease, Tane drew in a slow breath. The aliens had been attacking the Enclave surrounds more regularly over the last two weeks. He knew the tactics. Keep the humans scared and on high alert, and too busy defending themselves to be offensive.

  If they were busy, they had no time to find a way to defeat the aliens’ endgame.

  The thought of the three world-ending bombs made his gut clench.

  But he had no time to think any more about them because the first raptor crested the hill.

  Tane strode into the open, giving the aliens a focal point.

  “Tane,” his brother, Hemi, hissed. “Get the fuck down!”

  “Stick to the plan.” More raptors appeared on the hill.

  The alien soldiers were big. Humanoid, and over six-and-a-half feet tall, they had muscular bodies covered in thick, scaly, mottled-gray skin. Large, hairless heads possessed heavy, elongated jaws full of teeth. Their red eyes glowed, making them look like demons out of some twisted horror movie.

  The raptors lifted their ugly, scaled weapons and opened fire. As they started advancing, they sprayed poison across the field.

  “Now!” Tane roared, diving into the grass and rolling.

  His squad opened fire and the whine of lasers filled the air.

  Tane came up on one knee and swiveled, firing his weapon. Then he swung his carbine up on his shoulder and pulled his sleek, new weapon off the holster strapped to his thigh. This one was loaded with cineole bullets. They’d recently discovered that the oil was something the raptors were allergic to, and it made them bleed.

  As he fired, he saw a raptor jolt and go down, writhing. The crack of a sniper rifle echoed across the valley. That would be Hell Squad’s sniper Shaw Baird who performed magic with his weapon.

  They all kept firing and the raptors dropped into the grass. Tane smiled grimly. Yeah, you don’t like that, do you?

  Then he spotted the canids.

  The Gizzida hunting dogs had powerful bodies, with a row of wicked spikes along their backs. Their mouths were full of fangs, drool dripping from them.

  Fuck, not just canids. He stared at the glowing, red bellies of some of the alien hunting dogs. Hellions.

  “Hell Squad,” he said.

  “On it,” came the smooth voice of Hell Squad’s second, Cruz Ramos.

  “Oh yeah, light them up,” Hemi rumbled.

  Tane watched several lines of flames run through the grass, right in front of the aliens. Several raptors hesitated, but the canids kept coming.

  Boom.

  The rows of explosives that Hell Squad had set earlier detonated.

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

  Raptors, canids, and hellions were tossed into the air, along with clods of dirt and grass.

  “Lia, you’re up,” Tane said into his earpiece.

  “We’re coming,” the head of the drone team responded.

  A second later, several drones—black-bodied with four rotors on top—whizzed overhead. Each one was holding a cineole grenade.

  The drones dipped low and dropped their cargo directly on top of the aliens.

  The grenades exploded. The guttural roars of the Gizzida filled the air.

  Tane stared impassively. He had no sympathy for the monsters. These aliens had ravaged and killed, and were trying hard to turn the rest of humanity into aliens. Hell Squad waded into the fight. Marcus and Cruz worked side-by-side, spraying cineole bullets around.

  Gabe Jackson, who towered over them all, fought with hard, powerful hits. Working alongside him was Reed MacKinnon. The former Coalition Navy SEAL was wielding a sharp combat knife.

  At the rear, Tane saw Claudia Frost—the woman was a wild and wicked fighter. She rammed a hard, front kick into a raptor’s gut and once it was down, she lifted her carbine.

  “Leave some for me, Frost.” Sniper Shaw arrived, his tawny hair glinting in the sunlight.

  Claudia grinned at her lover. “Then you’d better move faster, Baird.”

  “Look out!” someone yelled.

  Tensing, Tane swiveled and looked at the top of the ridge. Several large creatures came into view.

  Ah, hell, creepers.

  His lip curled. The spider-like creatures were the size of a car, with orange-red pods on their underbellies. They had six sharp legs and a huge sucker mouth on their head. One had eaten Hemi once. Tane started sprinting up the hill. That wasn’t going to happen again.

  “Tane!” Hemi yelled. “Wait.”

  Unlike Hemi, and the rest of his squad and Hell Squad, Tane didn’t have a lover or partner waiting for him back at the Enclave. There was no one whose heart would break if he was injured or killed. He could take risks that the others couldn’t.

  There was an injured raptor down on one knee in front of him and Tane pressed a boot to the raptor’s chest, leaping over him.

  Tane dodged around a bounding canid and, as he straightened, a creeper skittered closer to him.

  Come on, asshole. Tane yanked a grenade off his belt, primed it.

  The creeper let out a screech and ran toward him, its sucker mouth opening and closing.

  Tane threw the grenade.

  It hit the sucker mouth, circled there for a second like a basketball on the edge of the hoop, then it was sucked inside.

  The creeper paused, skidded sideways.

  Then it exploded.

  Tane ducked his head and was splattered with gore. Around him, the squads were still firing, and the field was filled with smoke.

  “Tane, look out!” Indy shouted on the comm line.

  The hellion came out of the haze—all claws, fangs, wicked spikes, and a glowing, red belly.

  Fuck.

  Tane dropped to his knees and the alien dog brushed over the top of his head.

  Rolling, he watched as the creature landed, spun with a snarl, and rushed at him.

  He yanked out his combat knife. As the hellion attacked, he dodged and plunged the knife into the creature’s red belly.

  Red poison sizzled as it leaked out. The hellion yelped.

  Tane rose and kicked it. It rolled onto its side, the wicked spikes on its back landing in the red goo. He watched impassively as it writhed, several of the spikes melting off.

  The hellion growled and leaped up. It rushed at him and Tane jumped onto its back, dodging the spikes. He landed right where the spikes had been burned off, and hoped to hell his armor could withstand any residual poison.

  The alien dog bucked, but Tane leaned forward and, resolute, stabbed his knife into the base of the hellion’s skull.

  Like a puppet with its strings cut, the hellion collapsed to the ground.

  Tane leaped off into a crouch, sucking in some deep breaths. He rose.

  The field around him was clogged with smoke, the scent of burning flesh, and littered with dead and dying aliens.

  “What the fuck?” Hemi stormed out of the smoke and shoved Tane in the shoulder. “Do you have a death wish? You just strode out there like you were protected by your badassness.”

  The rest of his squad appeared, carbines resting up on their shoulders.

  “Is badassness a word?” Ash Connors asked his fellow berserker, Dom Santora. The dark-haired man shrugged.

  “I’m fine,” Tane said.

  Hemi kicked the ground, sending dirt up in the air. “I’m gonna kick your ass.”

  “I’m more worried about Tane’s dick,” another berserker, Levi King drawled. “Way you jumped on that hellion, close to those damn spikes.” The former biker winced.

  Hemi snorted. “I’ve been more worried about the fact that his dick’s had no action and is gonna turn blue.”

  Tane growled. “I don’t need any of you thinking about my dick, let alone discussing it.”

  There was no one for him. No warm body to snuggle up with at night. No woman to hold in his arms.
He’d lost the right to that a long time ago.

  The image of large, green eyes filtered through his head and he squelched it.

  He strode toward the nearest entrance into the Enclave.

  As his squad followed behind him, bickering, Hell Squad crossed the grass to join them.

  Marcus fell into step with Tane.

  “They’re just worried about you,” the man said.

  “I’m fine.” Tane was getting sick of repeating the words.

  “You think you’re expendable, and you’re not.”

  Tane glanced up and met Marcus’ green eyes, set in his scarred face.

  Marcus shook his head. “Shit, you remind me of me when I was fighting the pull of Elle. Thought I didn’t deserve her. Thought I didn’t deserve any light in my life.”

  Tane’s chest tightened and he remained silent.

  “Best risk I ever took.” Marcus’ smile softened his rugged face. “And now we have a baby on the way.”

  “I’m happy for you, Marcus.”

  “You let her in, it’ll be the best damn thing you’ve ever done.”

  Tane swiveled to look straight ahead. “I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Selena watched Camryn McNab pace the corridor.

  The woman had really long legs, and it didn’t take her very long to get to the end. Cam was tall, with beautiful, dark skin and dark hair that Selena envied.

  Cam was the total opposite of Selena.

  Selena lifted her hand—pale skin, and she had pale, silver-white hair, as well. Humans came in so many interesting colors, unlike her species.

  Although, she had picked up some color since she’d come to Earth. Not quite a tan, but she wasn’t quite so white anymore.

  Selena swallowed. She remembered with perfect clarity the day she’d been abducted from a forest moon orbiting her planet, Florum. She still relived it in her nightmares, although they came less frequently now. A Gizzida patrol had ambushed her while she’d been out doing some of her biology work in the field. They’d dragged her, kicking and screaming, to their ship.

  She’d been terrified. She’d been trapped on a Gizzida ship, and then found herself far from home and everything she’d ever known, on a distant planet called Earth.

  She also remembered the day that she’d met Claudia Frost. The Hell Squad soldier had also been taken prisoner by the Gizzida. They’d been chained together in a cell. Selena had been in captivity for months by then, barely talking, barely eating. She’d been disconnected from the energies of her planet, kept in the dark when she needed the sun and nature.

  They’d become friends.

  They’d been each other’s lifeline during the dark brutality of their captivity.

  Then Hell Squad had rescued them, and everything had changed.

  Cam paced past again.

  Selena had been shell-shocked and overwhelmed when she’d first joined this little enclave of humanity, but she’d been given a new home. She wasn’t shell-shocked anymore.

  And now, she wanted to help protect it.

  “What’s taking them so damn long?” Cam threw a hand in the air. “Mow down some raptors, done.”

  The ground shook, and Selena felt energy run through the Earth. Her species was connected to a planet’s energy flow—its natural systems, flora, fauna. On Florum, every child was born entwined with the planet’s ecosystem.

  Over time, Selena had slowly adapted to the Earth’s energies. It gave her some abilities that were far stronger than she’d ever experienced on her homeworld.

  “Hemi will be fine,” Selena said.

  The big, brash berserker didn’t let anything get in his way. He certainly hadn’t let Cam—or the fight the woman had put up—stop him from claiming her.

  Cam made an unhappy sound.

  There was another vibration, and Selena sucked in a breath.

  Like the Squad Nine soldier, she wanted to be out there, too. She wanted to help fight and protect the Enclave, protect her friends.

  Okay, and there was one dark, dangerous man she wanted to protect most of all.

  Suddenly, the external door beeped and clunked open.

  Both Cam and Selena spun. Hemi Rahia’s stocky body came through the doorway, the black ink on his muscular arms streaked with soot and grime. The man spotted Cam and his bearded face lit up.

  “Babe, we kicked ass out there!”

  Despite the gore splattered over the man’s armor, Cam ran and leaped. Hemi caught her, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. With a laugh, Hemi kissed his woman.

  Selena couldn’t look away. They kissed each other like they needed each other to breathe.

  So much life.

  So much love.

  Selena swallowed. On Florum, they didn’t have a concept of romantic love. Everything was interconnected, no one thing belonged solely to another. When people decided to procreate, it was a rational decision, and they often mated with different people over their lifetime. Her people had emotions, they felt arousal, but it was a muted, tempered sensation.

  Except on Earth, Selena’s emotions had grown and been enhanced. She felt more—fear, happiness, sadness, excitement—than she’d ever felt before.

  Her world was orderly, sedate, quiet. In the pursuit of scientific and academic excellence, she now wondered if they’d forgotten to live somewhere along the way.

  What she loved about Earth and its people was all the life, color, variety. And love. The way two people could fit together and need each other so much. She licked her lips. It fascinated her.

  The rest of the berserkers and Hell Squad moved inside in a jumble of voices and low laughter. They brought the scent of blood and sweat with them.

  Then Selena saw him.

  Her chest hitched. Like Hemi, Tane was covered in raptor blood. He was all coiled muscle and dark intensity. Tane rarely smiled, his dark eyes always unreadable. His dark brown hair was long and in dreadlocks that he kept tied back when he was on a mission.

  His dark gaze met hers for a brief second. Selena felt like she’d been seared by something hot.

  He nodded and turned away.

  Need vibrated through her body. She’d made a life here, and she saw attraction, love, and connection all around her. She looked at the still-kissing Hemi and Cam. Levi smacked Hemi on the back and Ash wolf-whistled as the men passed.

  Selena didn’t just want to protect her new life, she wanted to experience everything it had to offer.

  She glanced back at Tane. He was talking with Marcus.

  She was so hungry for him. He was the only man who seemed to make her blood run hot. The only man who tempted her.

  But she had no idea how to begin to attract a man like Tane Rahia.

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