I followed Jax and Angel’s lead. The four of us rose to our feet and made our way to the rear of the ship. A row of packed jump chutes waited for us along the wall. On top of the gear we carried, we maneuvered our arms through the chutes that looked like tight-fitting backpacks. We checked the straps and buckled in tight.
Our helmets were next; they were black with a clear visors. The oxygen tubes that ran to the small tanks at our back connected to the rear of the helmets.
I put mine on, taking a deep breath of clean oxygen.
“Woohoo!” Jax yelled next to me, slapping me on the shoulder so hard, I nearly stumbled. “Now things are getting real! Any more adrenaline and I might explode!”
We went through the acts of checking each other’s gear, helmets, oxygen and weapons. We were ready. All there was left was to jump.
“Get as low as you can before you deploy your chute,” Angel coached. “Four hundred feet at the absolute most or you’ll be a smear on the ground.”
I saw Cassie slam her right hand into her helmet and jump up and down on her feet, psyching herself up.
The anticipation of the jump was starting to get to me more than the jump itself.
“Contact!” Julian shouted. “The Voy have attacked the GG, go, go, go!”
Red lights flashed off and on inside the dropship. The rear cargo bay doors opened to ice cold air and the most beautiful sight I had ever seen.
Space, darkness with so many little twinkling lights it seemed as though I could never count them all. Below us was a red orb of a planet so far away, I had to wonder if we had flown too high by accident. There was no way we could fall that far.
“Look out for each other,” Wesley instructed over the comms as the cargo bays came to a full open. “Remember your training. Go!”
Green lights coated the inside of the dropship. I was the first out and grateful for it. I just wanted something to do. I hated sitting in my fear and nerves to let my mind try and convince me this was a bad idea. I just needed to get it done.
As soon as Wesley gave us the go-ahead and the green light flashed, I was off. I got a running start and jumped out of the dropship, arms out in front and legs spread behind me.
The feeling of weightlessness took me as I plummeted to the ground below. I knew I was falling like a shooting star, however, it was hard to get my mind wrapped around the idea of how fast I was falling. There was nothing but open air on either side of me. No buildings or structures of any kind to help gauge how fast I was traveling.
“Ease off on your breathing,” X coached. “You’re okay.”
How I was supposed to be calm and take nice even breaths while plummeting to the ground was beyond me, but I tried anyway. I steeled my nerves.
You’ve done this before, I told myself as the cold air whipped past me. You can do this again.
Out of the corner of my eye to the right, I saw Cassie hurtling toward the ground. She had both arms by her sides, her legs straight and together. She reminded me of a missile.
I knew Jax and Angel were somewhere behind me. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear Jax howling like a wild man.
A HUD popped to life on our visors. It showed me the trajectory I needed to follow to land in the middle of the GG. I was only slightly off course. I maneuvered my body to follow the designated route.
“I’m going to patch you into the line with the GG so they know you’re coming,” Julian said over our comms. “Tighten up and stay on your heading.”
“Roger,” I acknowledged.
My heart was still pounding so hard, I thought I’d crack a rib, but I was getting my breathing under control.
I maneuvered in the air slightly to my right to put my course that showed up in a dotted red line on path with the dotted blue line showing the correct heading.
“General Armstrong, this is Julian Fairmount of the Order. We see you’re in trouble and are deploying assets to assist. I repeat, this is Julian Fairmount of the Order. I have a four-man strike team chuting in your area to assist. Do not fire on them,” Julian ordered in a strong tone. “Do you copy?”
There was nothing but static on the open line.
Below me, I was starting to see more of a desert landscape and less of a globe of red. Things came into view clearer and clearer by the second. I still couldn’t make out exact details, but I saw plumes of dark smoke and explosions going off accompanied by red and black laser fire.
I focused my vision, blinking twice. Thanks to X, I could see in the dark and zoom in my field of view to get a better look at what was going on.
Ships fought in the sky, zooming in and out below us. Galactic Government fighters zipped through the sky around a myriad of smaller single-manned Voy crafts.
At least I assumed they were single-manned since they were so small. I couldn’t imagine more than one of the aliens fighting inside the crafts that looked more like flying balls than any ship I had ever seen.
“This is Julian Fairmount of the Order for—”
“This is a military engagement—” a harsh voice I recognized as General Armstrong barked over the channel. An explosion cut him off for a moment. “Do not attempt to intervene or you will be treated as a hostile.”
“General Armstrong.” Julian didn’t back down or pause in the slightest. “We are friendlies here to provide support and assist in extraction. I have a four-man team chuting into your location now. They’re friendlies. I’m sending you their tracking codes now. Do not fire on them. I repeat, we are here to assist you in extraction.”
“Nobody’s extracting anywhere,” General Armstrong yelled over the channel. “These alien SOBs think they can ambush us, well, they got another think coming. We don’t need your help.”
Despite the general’s warning, the closer and closer we got, the more the general’s words seemed further and further from the truth. Past the ships dog-fighting in the sky, I could make out a massive swell of Voy forces assaulting the Way settlement.
The alien number wasn’t like the smaller force they had brought against the settlement when I was defending it from them. This time, the Voy learned from their mistakes. They were not taking any chances. Thousands of Voy soldiers raced across the sand to the walls.
“Daniel, we’re going to enter the space where the ships are dog-fighting soon. Once we get through that, we’ll need to deploy your chute,” X coached me. “But not before. If you pull it now, you’ll be caught out in the open, drifting to the ground with the ships around you.”
“Got it,” I answered through gritted teeth.
“Stay on course,” Cassie yelled to us.
“Right behind you,” Angel answered.
“Hold on to your butts,” Jax said. “This is going to get tricky!”
I wish I could take credit for being able to maneuver my fall through a full out dogfight. The truth was I was a missile plummeting so fast, there was no chance I could do more than maneuver the slightest bit when I saw ships zipping in and out of my field of vision.
The night sky was alive with weapons fire from both the GG crafts and the Voy fighters. Red and black energy beams cascaded across my field of vision. One of the Voy spaceship balls nicked me in the left arm. It was the tiniest of brushes, but it was enough to break my limb and send me off course.
At this speed, anything touching me was going to do serious harm. Pain exploded first in my arm then in my head as I fought to get myself back on route.
“Daniel’s hit!’ Jax shouted.
“Hold on!” Angel screamed.
I felt a hand on my uninjured right side guide me back on course while I fought not to yell in pain.
I turned just enough to see Cassie beside me. She wasn’t looking at me but instead toward our path getting us back on course.
Everything around me was a blur now. The next thing I knew, I heard my team yelling at me.
“Chute, chute, chute!”
I tried reaching my uninjured arm to pull my chute. Cassie reached it first.
“I got D
aniel’s,” Cassie answered ripping the cord free.
I was jerked so hard, I swore I broke something else inside my chest. The black chute yanked me backward, saving me from the hard sand-packed ground below.
The four of us were coasting into the rear of the settlement. The pain in my arm was far from gone, but adrenaline and my own healing factor kicked in. I studied the hell we were getting ourselves into.
The Way settlement was a smoking mass of rubble and craters. Shadow Praetorians in their dark armor took cover inside buildings and around the outer wall. Rockets, mortars, and heavy weapons fire filled the air.
It was like someone had opened the heavens themselves and sent down the most vicious thunderstorm I had ever heard.
I hit the ground at a run doing my best to untie the chute from the straps around me with one hand.
Jax, Angel, and Cassie landed around me.
“Our team is on the ground,” Julian communicated to the general. “I’m putting you in contact with them now.”
“General Armstrong,” I managed to say past the pain. “This is Daniel Hunt. We’re here to help get your people out.”
Instead of an answer over the channel, we were greeted by a dozen Shadow Pretorian soldiers who surrounded us. Each one of them had a weapon pointed at either our heads or chest. Tiny red dots told me as much.
Twenty-Five
“I don’t have time for this.” General Armstrong appeared from within the ranks of his Shadow Praetorians. “Stay out of the way or get put down!”
General Armstrong was a hard man used to hard situations. Even now, being overrun by an alien horde, he wasn’t about to break. His dark mustard-colored uniform was stained with dirt. An intimidating pistol strapped to his right thigh. A smear of sweat and dirt covered his brow.
Before I could say anything, General Armstrong reached a finger up to his right ear. “Is he ready? Then let him loose, for god’s sakes. We didn’t invest billions in Project Nemesis to see him rot in a box. We need him now!”
“Sir.” Another man with salt and pepper hair ran up to the general. “We’re losing the fight in the sky. There’s too many of them. GG headquarters is instructing us to pull out of the fight. The walls are being overrun. This was an ambush from the beginning. We have to go now.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” General Armstrong sneered. “This fight’s not over yet.”
“You think you came to help us?” General Armstrong roared at me over the sounds of war. “Let me show you how much we need your help.”
The general stalked past us and toward the front of the Way Settlement. The Shadow Praetorians lowered their weapons and fell in step with him.
The officer who had run to tell General Armstrong to pull back looked at me with defeat in his eyes. He didn’t have to say anything; his expression was worth a thousand words.
They were supposed to be pulling back. Their tyrannical leader was letting his pride get in the way. There would be no retreat with General Armstrong in charge.
“Plan?” Jax asked. The big man came up to me with his rifle in his hands.
“The GG are refusing to pull back,” I reported into the comm channel. “They’re going to unleash Project Nemesis.”
“Stay and see if you can help,” Wesley said over the comm. “Unless Project Nemesis is some kind of code word for a miracle, I don’t see how they won’t be forced to retreat.”
“Understood,” I answered. I turned to my team. “We’ll help where we can until they have to pull back. Our plan only works if we can aid the GG. They have to see what we do and be willing to fight with us when the time comes for the full-on Voy invasion.”
Cassie nodded along with Jax.
“I’m going to do my invisible thing, see what I can see, and position myself to help,” Angel suggested.
“Okay, keep your channel open, nothing stupid,” I cautioned.
Angel flashed me the peace sign and disappeared.
Cassie was the only one who hadn’t seen her perform the act. The Order member took a step back in surprise.
“You’ll get used to it,” I said, gripping my MK II in my right hand and jerking my head forward. “Come on.”
“You Pack Protocol people are something else,” Cassie said, running beside me with Jax bringing up the rear.
To my knowledge, Cassie still didn’t carry a weapon. I wasn’t about to ask her why. Everything I knew of the woman said she was smart and capable. Plus I had seen firsthand two razor sharp knives come out of one of her forearms and a shield from the other. She had tricks up her sleeve, literally.
We rounded the corner of one of the rear buildings in the settlement to see the true deviation the Voy army had brought with it. More than half the buildings in the settlement were rubble. The outer wall was destroyed in multiple places, leaving smoking charred sections completely in rubble.
I could see Voy soldiers with their four arms carrying blades and blasters maneuvering over the wall and through the rubble. There were too many to count.
A strange lull suddenly covered the battlefield. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. My left arm was nearly back to normal after the break. I’d be ready in a few minutes to enter the fight at one hundred percent if it called for it.
The lull in the fight also came with the lack of weapons being discharged in the settlement. Sure there was still fighting going on overhead, but no rounds were rocketing into the building around us or being fired from the front lines of the Voy inside the walls.
Something caught my eye. A bald man without a shirt walked toward the center of the battlefield. He was slender and toned with tattoos running over his upper body. I couldn’t see his face, but what I did see made no sense.
He was barefoot with dark orange pants. Black energy crackled around him and through his hands. The Shadow Praetorian around him took a step back to give the stranger plenty of space.
I knew this had to be what they referred to as Project Nemesis, which was the only thing that made sense at the moment. The man lifted a few feet into the air. A ball of black matter swirled around him.
A wind picked up from nowhere as if on his command.
Apparently, the Voy had witnessed enough. Their temporary confusion at seeing the stranger dissipated. They opened fire on him. Hundreds of laser rounds pounded into the ball of energy around the man.
Project Nemesis was short-lived, I thought to myself. There go billions of taxpayer dollars.
It seemed I was wrong. Rounds cracked into the ball of energy around the shirtless man but didn’t penetrate the shield.
“Kill them now!” General Armstrong shouted in a voice free of fear.
I looked to my right where the general had taken up a defensive location along with his squad of Shadow Praetorians.
I took up a position with Jax and Cassie in the building just to the left and rear of them.
“That prideful SOB is going to get us all killed,” the colonel who informed General Armstrong to fall back said under his breath as he joined us.
At the moment, he didn’t look at me. His eyes were directed at the man named Nemesis.
Rockets, lasers, and so many rounds it looked like a hose or beam was being directed at the floating man in his black orb of energy. Not a single round penetrated his shield.
With a roar that sounded more pained than angry, Nemesis motioned forward with his hands. A shockwave of force like a tidal wave surged forward from him.
I stood stunned as the black matter rolled forward, battering into the Voy lines and sending them flying through the air as if a grenade had gone off at their feet.
“No retreat today!?” General Armstrong bellowed.
“Sir, we’re losing air support,” the colonel next to me shouted into his comm. “We should use Nemesis to cover our retreat. We are ordered to fall back.”
“Nemesis is more than enough for the enemy ships,” General Armstrong shouted back. “Nemesis, take out the Voy air support.”
/> I had no idea how the floating shirtless man was going to combat space crafts, but at the moment, I felt rooted to my spot. There was something familiar about the man, something I couldn’t place my finger on.
Did I know him from my past life? How could I remember? Jax or Angel would have said something if they’d recognized the man. Right?
Nemesis lifted farther into the sky until he floated a good ten feet in the air. He directed his attention skyward, shooting bolts of black energy from his hands. Voy ships began to take impossible hits, crashing down to the surface.
How anyone could track a ship moving so quickly in the night and hit it from the ground was a true miracle. Ships fell from the sky like meteors crashing into the hard sand ground with deafening explosions.
Soon the Voy air support turned their full attention on Nemesis. Strafing runs were made on his position and still he stood like a mountain in a swirling storm of chaos.
I was just beginning to think that General Armstrong was right, maybe they didn’t need our help after all. Maybe they didn’t need to fall back or retreat.
No sooner had the bud of hope blossomed in my heart than the ground trembled. The terrain beneath us shuddered and quaked.
“What the heck is that?” Jax asked from my left. “Earthquake?”
“This isn’t Earth,” Cassie answered. A hint of worry laced her words. “This is something far worse.”
My mind raced to find an answer. Images of the giant bug-like creatures grown by the Voy militia entered my mind.
“Get back!” I yelled, pushing the colonel along with the rest of my team to the rear of the settlement. I didn’t know how I was so sure, but I understood what was about to happen. The Voy weren’t going to hold back. Not after what happened during the first fight at the settlement. They wouldn’t be defeated again.
The ground exploded upward from the spot we had just been at a moment before. The four of us were thrown to the side like pieces of refuse.
A creature so giant in scope I had to blink to make sure I wasn’t imagining it stood in front of us. Burrowing from the ground itself, it shook the sand from its armored body like a dog would shake itself after a bath.
Vendetta: A Near Future Thriller (Forsaken Mercenary Book 4) Page 16
