COMBAT SALVAGE 2165 Read Online Free PDF

can’t last more than six months. It's true. But we’re going to drive hard to Gamma Draconis, hit the Squidies' on their homeworld moon, and end this war in three."

As they crossed the Algol system, J. ‘Jordo’ Colt and the Lancers of the 133rd Fighter Test Squadron, flew long range recon ahead of Hardway ’s battlegroup, the convoy, and the precious breaching ships.
    The dull, yellow clouds of the sec ond planet rushed past through the bottom of his vertical cockpit. Flying this low turned the atmo into nothing but a blur under his feet. It was so thick and opaque that it looked like it could have been made of windswept rock and sand. That’s how it would feel if they hit it at speed. "Get ready to turn and burn, Paladin," he said. "We’re going after Dirty’s radar contacts next time they show."
    "Need live bait on a hook?" Paladin said. "Send in the bloody Lancers. See if the Squidies jump out and shoot."
    " You had your chance to quit this outfit, Lancer 1-2."  
    " Yeah, Paladin ." The way Gusher said it, he leaned on the hero name to the point of mockery. "Everyone knows you like the name too much to quit." Holdout and Gusher heeled their seven-meter interceptors over on their maneuvering jets and dropped into their cover slot supporting their forward flight element.  
    High above their formation, Lancer 1-5, aka Dirty hung a high guard position, burst-firing her thrusters and drifting to make herself harder to see. She said, "When you fly a modded POS Dingo drone and it takes less time and money for the Privateers to train your dumb ass than it costs to train a rifleman, you’re only gonna get sent on the choicest missions."
    She was right. Cheap to produce planes and fast-trained, AI-assisted pilots got used as cannon fodder no matter who was in command. "Stifle it, Dirty. Don’t encourage my wingman’s bitchin’. Like I said, he had his chance to quit."
    A few million Ks behind the Lancers’ exo-atmospheric interceptors, over 100 fighters and junks flew the combat air patrol around the battlegroup’s big guns and the humungous haulers, the broad side of a barn, each one of them. But the Squidies wouldn’t go for those fat targets. The Squidies would attack the fragile breaching ships. After six battles in seven systems, the battlegroup only had two breaching ships left. Without them, nobody was going anywhere and the whole offensive would grind to a halt.

So far, Algol was all quiet, but that wouldn’t last. Algol would be like Kruger 60 and Lalande. Squidy wasn’t about to let them pass without a fight and the spot they’d pick for an ambush was right under the hull of his fighter. The rocky core of that planet below was shrouded in layers of clouds whose weight drove the surface temperature to 700 degrees, but the upper layers of the atmo were low-pressure, billowing, dull yellow fog, plenty cool enough to hide a Squidy ship in if they came down slow using just artificial gravity. With the planet’s hot surface behind them and the murky atmo around them, they could partially hide from IR scans. The clouds made LiDAR almost useless. As long as the aliens didn’t use active emissions, it was a perfect place to hide in ambush.
    " I’ve got intermittent contacts again," Dirty said. "Something maybe in the upper cloud layers. Want me to paint ‘em with narrow beam? They’ll definitely notice."  
    "Hardway wants visual."
    Lightning flashed in the yellow murk below like a detonating salvo. Discharges off aliens hulls? Dirty said, "My OMNI NAV thinks those radar contacts had a 35% probability match for Squidy warships."
    " 35%? Hell," Paladin reasoned, "that’s a 65% probability of it being my johnson."  
    Jordo thought they were light effects in the clouds, but within a second those shapes turned more menacing. The lightning went off again like a storm around them as a trio of Squidy warships rose fast out of the murk like 600-meter tusks, like flying stone teeth, spiked with gun towers and