Rage of Winter (Terran Strike Marines Book 2) Read online

  Rage of Winter

  Terran Strike Marines Book 2

  by

  Richard Fox

  and

  Scott Moon

  Copyright © by Richard Fox

  All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission.

  ASIN:

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  FROM THE AUTHORS

  Read THE EMBER WAR for Free

  Chapter 1

  Lieutenant Hoffman hurried through the maze of tree-lined boulevards, his boots crunching through ankle-deep snow as he ran, his breath fogging in the frigid air as he worked his stiff fingers against his gauss rifle. The looping lanes of ancient Koensuu City connected parks, fallow orchards, and ice-encrusted mausoleums. Narrow trees with white bark towered above his team, their branches heavy with snow.

  He felt like the dead alien culture surrounding him was watching from beyond the veil of extinction, judging his efforts.

  “You called it, LT. They cut straight through the alien quarter,” Garrison said on the infrared radio tight beam. “Don’t fall behind. You’ll get lost. I promise.”

  “Wouldn’t be much of a challenge if the spies only operated in Terran-built areas with checkpoints and alert security.” Hoffman checked the map on his forearm screen. “Do you have eyes on the target?”

  “Little help from above would be nice,” Garrison said, breathing hard but not gasping. “Your girlfriend is really making good time.”

  “Surprising,” Booker said on the IR, not winded at all. “With that monster she calls a bodyguard, I figured they’d be walking half-speed.”

  “Uh…LT, I’m gonna need some help with this intersection. Which of the eighteen possible turns should I take?”

  Hoffman tapped his forearm and checked his tactical map. “The Falstaff says continue straight. Other paths are one uniform temperature.” He spent three extra seconds double-checking the map, zooming out for the big picture. “The area they’re heading for looks like it was designed for defense. Mountains on three sides and this tricky isthmus through the frozen lakes.”

  A cheerful, well-rested voice sounded in his earpiece. “Falstaff One to Hammer Six, I’m seeing frozen marshlands mostly. Looks like Celtic knotwork from orbit.”

  “Roger that,” Hoffman replied to the captain watching down on him from orbit.

  “Your target is within reach. C&C recommends a snatch and grab, soonest. Target is breaching burial site KC-zero-zero-niner-alpha. Be advised, the structure looks solid.”

  Hoffman keyed his squad link. “Prepare to execute.”

  “Received and understood. Breacher up,” Gunnery Sergeant King responded.

  Hoffman hustled to a snow-dusted dome where King, Garrison, Max, and Booker crouched against the cover, gauss weapons shouldered and ready.

  “Breacher, copy. Ready to violate ancient burial grounds,” Garrison whispered. “Max, take the eye so I can open my kit.”

  “Ha, ha. You know ghost stories freak me out,” Max said, tapping him on the shoulder to take over the point position.

  Hoffman reviewed basic facts about the alien city from the mission brief. An advanced race had evolved on Koen, then allowed their technology and manufacturing levels to slide back several hundred years. Koen birth rates declined to post-apocalypse numbers. Faculty members of the Phoenix Anthropological Department argued this had been an intentional tactic to evade the Xaros advance. Now the planet was a human colony and a newly founded forward base in the war against the Kesaht—a foe few members of the Terran military had faced yet.

  As Terran frontier worlds went, Koen earned mixed reviews. Military intelligence pointed to hard evidence of an Ibarran cell operating several safe houses in the city. Half the colonists wanted to level the ancient buildings and monuments, while the other half treated them like holy shrines. Deadly weather systems swept the planet with brutal regularity.

  Hoffman was here to tie up a loose end before she could make it to one of the Ibarran safe houses. Memories of New Bastion and the blonde traitor kept him warm on this winter world. If the woman was here, she was after something important. And so was Hoffman—redemption.

  Memories of New Bastion fought for his attention. He shoved them down, but he still tasted the arid climate and felt the sweat running inside his gear as the woman called him a coward and a traitor. All in contrast to the snow-damped silence of Koen. He’d nearly gotten his team killed trying to save her on New Bastion, and the fallout from that event had been a political nightmare for the Terran Union.

  “You all right?” Booker asked

  “Yeah.”

  “We got her this time,” Booker said with confidence.

  “Remind me when we’re frog-marching her into the brig with zip ties on her hands and feet.”

  “We’ve never been this close to nabbing her since Nouveau Marsellie. She’s running scared,” Booker said. “Right, King?”

  “I’m working here,” King said. “Not chitchatting.”

  “Sir,” Max said, “got another footbridge over a delightful frozen marsh-river. Targets came this way and tried to hide their tracks. I’ve got thermal signatures of footprints and brush marks from one of these Aspen-like tree branches.”

  “Can you confirm movement reported by C&C?” Hoffman asked, decreasing his distance from the point team.

  “Straight as an arrow, sir. Right to one of these squished-down ziggurat buildings,” Max said.

  “Probably a tomb. Can you see the doors? Which way do they open?” Garrison asked.

  “C&C can confirm. You are on target,” Coltrane, the ship’s captain, said. “We’re passing out of direct IR good hunting. Wide frequency comms will monitor in case of emergency.”

  The IR comm links were working well today, Hoffman thought, until the curve of the planet got in the way.

  “Can you imagine how cold it is without Strike Marine armor?” Garrison asked. “We’re across. Setting up security. Max, I definitely saw a ghost.”

  Max cursed.

  “Garrison, that’s enough. Report to the PT deck on the Falstaff for a 10k timed run when this mission is over,” King said.

  Hoffman smiled. The powerlifting door breacher wasn’t huge, but neither was he a runner. “Focus,” he said, then confirmed the location of his team members on his forearm display, keeping it turned into his body for the sake of light discipline despite the early morning sun. “Bounding overwatch, two by two. Rally on the last point of cover before target structure.”

  His team crossed a series of footbridges leading toward the squat building. Each bridge reminded him of a little fortress full of secrets—buried treasure, dangerous trolls, squads of Ibarran legionnaires waiting to launch and ambush.

  Beyond the sparse forest was the stark skyline of the Terran colony and spaceport. Few of the new human buildings rose higher than the top of th
e boreal forest and never too close to the ancient parks. The spaceport landing zones were farther away, in the center of the city on the highest level of a terraced plateau the size of Tucson.

  Hoffman viewed the surreal dream world with tactical overlays displayed on the interior of his helmet visor.

  He pointed his gauss rifle skyward, waggled the barrel twice to signal an advance, and moved after his point team—Corporals Eric Garrison and Austin “Max” Maxfield. Private Opal 6-1-9, the last doughboy in active military service, stayed close and on his left, the six-and-a-half-foot-tall brute moving with the stealth of a smaller man. He performed every military task with textbook efficiency programed into him by Ibarra’s engineers during the Ember War.

  Gunney King brought the rest of the team up the snowy lanes behind him. “The city’s waking up. Lot of air and ground traffic from the colonists this morning.”

  Lights blinked on the signal arrays of taller buildings, warning airships heading to landing pads downtown. Local traffic moved lethargically as small ships and ground cars headed out for a day’s work.

  “Hoffman for Max, report.”

  “False trail leading past the structure,” Max said.

  “Duke, report,” Hoffman said.

  The team’s sniper overwatching the alien quarter did not respond.

  “I’m confident the hottie and the brute ducked in this morbid tomb,” Max said.

  “Garrison?” Hoffman asked.

  “Best I can tell, door slides up into the frame. Which sucks. Hard to blow off hinges when there aren’t any,” the breacher said.

  “Options?”

  “If they run, we’ll have to chase them,” Garrison said, sounding disgusted. “I really wanted to breach this thing, but if I blow that door, we’ll take our prisoners home in buckets. All I have now is this stupid aerial burst flash-bang.”

  “They’re squirting out the back!” Duke’s transmission crackled in Koen’s unreliable atmosphere.

  In one motion, Garrison stowed his breaching charge and pulled his special-use shotgun. “Permission to deploy aerial burst flash-bang?”

  “Do it. Team, execute!”

  Garrison shrugged his gauss rifle and breaching kit higher onto his back as he aimed the short shotgun toward the fleeing figures. He toggled from “frangible breaching round” to “aerial burst” and pulled the trigger three times.

  A trio of rounds raced ahead of the spies, exploding around them in a triangle of blinding light and thunder.

  “King, right flank and converge. I’m advancing with Opal for the takedown.”

  “Acknowledged,” King said, sprinting into the maze with Booker hot on his heels.

  “Duke, report. I want them before they get into the city,” Hoffman said.

  “They didn’t like my little friends.” Garrison laughed. “Second volley away.” One, two, three more flash-bangs arced through the trees and exploded like an artillery barrage without teeth. Garrison raced after his shots.

  “Opal, catch them!” Hoffman said.

  Opal sprinted forward like a freight train, carrying his oversized gauss rifle at port arms as he ran. His boots flung up snow behind him like a charging horse and his pneumatic hammer bounced where it was strapped to his back. Mist exploded from his mouth with every breath and he made a sound that scared Hoffman each time he heard the doughboy charge.

  Hoffman and the others followed. Within seconds, Opal sprinted past Garrison and gained on Max, one of the fastest Strike Marines in the company.

  The chase rushed around a turn as snow shivered down from branches. Gauss fire erupted just ahead of Hoffman’s lead element, but no rounds came his direction.

  “I’m hit,” Duke reported, pain filling his voice. “Winged the big guy about the time he opened up with suppressive fire.”

  Hoffman and the rest of his team arrived seconds after Max and Opal engaged the spy and her hulking bodyguard. Gunney King and Booker emerged from a snow-packed lane and aimed their weapons, ready to fire on the spies from their flank.

  King shouted, “Drop that weapon, Medvedev! Do it now!”

  Hoffman instinctively took a headcount of his people and moved to support. Duke getting injured worried him. As the team’s most senior operator, he normally predicted problems and solved them before the others had time to worry. Now the sniper was separate from the rest of the team and far from Booker, the medic, and first aid.

  These tactical considerations and others flickered through his mind. Time crawled, then rushed ahead, then staggered as adrenaline affected his senses. “Masha! Tell the legionnaire to stand down. He’s your bodyguard, not a martyr.”

  Medvedev pulled the blonde woman behind him as he fired his gauss rifle one-handed and they took cover behind a stone fence. The bruiser then whipped a compact gauss carbine over the edge of the wall and let off a single high-powered shot that blew through the snow packed on top of the wall like an explosion.

  Max hunched forward, blood spraying out of his back, staining the snow. Strike Marine armor was tough, rated for anything but a direct hit. Whatever the Ibarran was armed with was designed to kill Strike Marines. Another round caught Max in the shin and took his feet out from under him.

  The comm specialist’s life signs flashed amber on Hoffman’s visor: armor breached, massive blood loss, tissue damage, and a cardiac rhythm in danger of shock. The lieutenant realized what Medvedev had done; he’d fired to wound, to slow down the pursuers and buy the two a chance to escape.

  Opal, still charging at Medvedev, raced right past Max as he lay bleeding and moaning in the snow. Medvedev stood up and aimed center mass on the doughboy. A burst of rounds hammered Opal’s thick breastplate, deflecting off the heavier armor but managing to slow Opal’s charge.

  The Ibarran’s barrel glowed red-hot as Medvedev popped the capacitor out of the weapon and pulled a new battery from his belt. High-powered shots were energy hogs, and the Ibarran had just left himself vulnerable.

  “Enemy!” Opal roared. “Kill enemy!”

  “Alive, Opal! Alive!” Hoffman ordered as he ran toward Max. “Medic to the front!”

  Opal swatted the carbine out of Medvedev’s hands, but the bodyguard ducked the doughboy’s meaty fist and drew a pistol from inside his open jacket with expert smoothness. Medvedev jammed the muzzle into the seam of Opal’s armor and fired the pistol on full auto, stitching along Opal’s chest. As the doughboy twisted aside, recoil swept the pistol away. The last rounds in the gun sparked off the wall, and Masha, huddled against the stone, shrieked.

  Opal, blood dripping from his armor, swung a lazy hook that Medvedev blocked with an elbow. For an instant, the two giants were face-to-face with Opal having the slight advantage in height and weight. Snorting like an angry bull, Opal smashed his forehead into Medvedev’s nose, and the bodyguard flailed back and bumped into the wall. He sidestepped Opal’s snap kick and the doughboy’s foot only managed to knock off a layer of ice. Opal grunted and swiped a backhand that glanced off the bodyguard’s head and sent him facedown into a puff of snow.

  The doughboy raised a foot and Hoffman thought he was about to crush the Ibarran’s head, then Opal set his boot heel between Medvedev’s shoulder blades. The bodyguard snapped over and rammed a knife into the thin armor behind Opal’s knee, the blade sinking home with a meaty thunk. Opal opened his arms wide, let himself fall forward, and flattened against the Ibarran.

  Hoffman heard an ugly groan as all the air was knocked from Medvedev before Opal raised a hammer fist and struck his opponent on the temple. Medvedev’s head lolled from side to side and he went limp.

  Opal kept one hand loosely around the Ibarran’s neck and pulled the knife free with his other hand. He dropped the bloody weapon to one side and pointed at Masha.

  “No run.”

  Masha, her blond hair peeking out from beneath the folds of a knit cap, raised her hands with a sneer. One hand kept moving toward the back of her head.

  “Don’t!” Hoffman came around t
he wall, weapon trained on Masha. “You’re wanted alive. My orders didn’t say anything about bringing you in with both hands.”

  “You’re that good of a shot?” Masha asked. “In this cold? All that adrenaline throbbing in your veins. Pull that trigger and you’ll probably blow my face off.”

  “Try me.” Hoffman took a step closer, the crosshairs of his holographic sights on her right wrist. “Please.”

  Masha glanced over at Medvedev, unconscious and pinned beneath Opal.

  “You almost had us on Tarkara,” she said sadly. “I thought giving you the slip then would have gotten you fired.”

  “Got you now.” Hoffman motioned up with his rifle. “Extend your arms up and lock them out. King?”

  “Sir.” The gunney came around the other side of the wall.

  “Search and secure,” Hoffman said as he caught sight of Booker working on Max. He ached to go check on his Marine.

  “I demand a female to search—hey!” Masha’s protest was cut short as King grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and slammed her face-first into the snow. He cuffed her hands behind her back and tossed the cap at Hoffman’s feet. A thin spool of metal glinted in the moonlight.

  Masha sputtered, snow clinging to her features as King quickly patted her down.

  “Booker busy?” she asked Hoffman. “Oh, then where’s Adams, your other lady Terran?”

  King pressed a knee into the small of her back and slapped black rings onto each of her ankles. He touched a button on his forearm screen and the rings locked, binding the spy’s legs together. He covered the bottom half of her face with a plastic muzzle, muffling her protests. A silk hood went over her head and tightened loosely against her neck.