Dark Victory - eARC Read Online Free PDF

seem to act like comets were put on the back pages, until it was too late.
    Looking up, what I see are the result of the Creepers arriving in orbit, when they destroyed every satellite up there, including the International Space Station, whose resident six astronauts (or cosmonauts, I can’t remember) were the first casualties of the war. So debris is scattered all around low earth orbit, and that debris field was greatly expanded last month when the Creeper orbital base was blown up by that surprise, last-ditch U.S. Air Force raid.
    More debris burns its way down to the ground, leaving a billowing trail of sparks.
    Then, off to the far south, something that’s definitely not a piece of space garbage. A quick pulsing flash, then a straight line hammers down to the Earth’s surface, like a glowing white string stretching up to space. I wait, wondering if I’m going to hear the sound of the impact, but I guess I’m too far away, since I don’t hear a thing. But I know what I’ve seen: one of the Creepers’ killer stealth sats, still at work up there in orbit. Even with the Creepers’ orbital base gone, the killer stealth sats are still at work, either on automatic or being manned by a Creeper or two, we don’t know.
    The target? A military unit. A convoy. A city. Somebody foolish enough to take an airplane up in the air.
    Who knows. Whatever it was, it’s now charred.
    But hey, remember, the war is over.

    The wind shifts. I catch a scent of something.
    I wait.
    Sniff again.
    Cinnamon.
    Creeper sign.
    Beside me, Thor whimpers and leans against me.
    “Yeah, I smell it too, bud,” I say. “Let’s roll.”
    I get off the stone wall and fade into the woods, Thor panting hard at my side. I go in, wait, stand near a birch tree. With the goggles on, I see ghostly shadows of trees, boulders and brush. The scent of cinnamon disappears, then comes back again.
    I scratch the back of Thor’s head, lean down to him. “Go, boy, hunt!”
    He springs out like a rubber band being shot from my finger, and he disappears into the trees. He’s a big dog but he knows how to move silently through the woods. I move as well, not going in a straight line, backing up, trying to be unpredictable.
    Creepers seem to like predictability, and I’m not going to give this one any advantage.
    I move deeper into the woods, the scent of cinnamon even stronger. I lift up my M-10. I know my predecessors, back in the days when they were hunting and killing fellow humans, carried loads of ammo and would often “rock and roll,” meaning they could fire their weapons at full automatic, emptying a magazine of thirty or so rounds in a matter of seconds. I don’t have that luxury. The other members of my platoon don’t have that luxury. And the U.S. Army and associated National Guard units and the Marines don’t have that luxury.
    What we do have is a single-shot, bolt-action Colt M-10 50 mm rifle, and as I go into the woods, the smell of cinnamon strong in my nostrils, I give up another prayer to one Cynthia Ellis-Kimball of Colt Firearms, once upon a time housed in Hartford, Connecticut. One of the few men and women who thought ten steps ahead when the war began, she was a senior engineer at Colt and managed to disassemble and evacuate lots of vital machinery and tools from their plants before Hartford was slammed.
    Thanks to her foresight, me and several thousand others have the only reliable weapon to fight against the Creepers.
    Which is currently unloaded.
    The land descends into a swampy stretch, and I still move about in random directions, pausing, waiting, and then—
    A barking dog.
    Off to my right.
    “Good boy, Thor,” I whisper. “Good job.”
    I shift my direction, slip out of the swamp, and in a low crouch, jog on up to drier land.

    A few minutes later, a light flickers in the distance, and something heavy in my chest goes thump-lump . Real close now. The smell of cinnamon is quite strong. Another bark from Thor, telling me where