Desperate Times (Lost Planet Warriors Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

scanning for the one alien I knew ought to be there: Bran. I didn't spot him until he vaulted free of the mess, jumping across the room and landing near the doorway where I was hiding.
    He lit into the bugs there, taking out one after another. But one of the things disarmed him by spitting some sort of goo at his weapon. Another bug made ready to stab him. Bran's back was up against the wall, with nowhere to run. His men were too far away to help. He was going to die.
    I wasn't going to let that happen. I rushed forward with a yell, firing at the thing as I came.
    "Get away from him, asshole!" I shouted. Then I pressed what I hoped was the firing button. My rifle gave a booming noise and kicked hard. If I'd been firing it from my shoulder instead of my hip it would have knocked me clean over. As it was it still took me a moment to steady myself for a second shot.
    The first blast from my gun hit the bug near a joint between a foreleg and its body. It stopped its attack on Bran. But then it turned its attention on me instead. It jumped forward, closing half the distance between us in a single bound.
    Behind the bug, I could see Bran trying to catch up with it. His feet pounded the deck as he sprinted toward me, but the gap left by its jump was just too big. He wasn't going to get there in time to rescue me.
    "Time to be self-rescuing," I said.
    I fired again, blasting the bug in the chest. The blast hammered its armor and slowed it down, but it gave a loud screeching noise and kept coming at me anyway.
    I fired a third time, hitting it in roughly the same spot. It stopped making any noise at all, and smoke spewed from the hole my blasts had made in its shell.
    There wasn't any time to celebrate. It's momentum and mass were still carrying it forward at me. I tried to dive sideways, dropping the rifle in my haste to get clear. One of the legs, still thrashing, clipped me in the side as I did. All of the wind went out of me at once, and pain blossomed in my chest.
    Worst, it had stopped my roll. I couldn't get clear. There simply wasn't time. Time seemed to slow down, and the shadow of the thing fell across my vision. I turned, raising my arm over my face in a futile feature as the massive bulk of the monstrous dead bug crashed down on top of me. The pain from the first blow was nothing compared to this. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. Everything from my ribs down was pinned beneath its bulk.
    The pain tore into my senses, and I passed out.

Chapter Eight
Bran
    I stepped into the ship's medical bay for the first time since the attack some hours ago. Too many damned crew members here. Too many wounded and dying Cymtarrans, when there were few enough of us left as it was.
    Also one badly wounded human. I found her bed easily enough. She was in a stasis tube, kept alive by technology alone. How she'd survived long enough to get there I had no idea, but I shouldn't have been surprised. The Terran was a fighter. She'd battled a Skree and won. Without armor, without Cymtarran training or our physical advantages, she'd won.
    Now she was near death. Through the glass of the tube she looked dead already
    One of the few doctors we had on board was worriedly hovering at her bedside, turning some knobs on his instrument panel to adjust some small setting on the life support systems.
    "How is she, Idris?" I asked him.
    "Not good, sir," he replied. "She's sustained major injuries to her internal organs. Ruptures. Bleeding. Dozens of her bones are fractured, including her spine. Nerve damage to the lower extremities from the spinal injury."
    He looked up at me from his instruments. "If she was one of our troops, she would be mending already. But as she is...?"
    Every Cymtarran soldier had an infusion of nanites during our training period. The microscopic robots had multiple functions. The primary was to give us more strength and speed for brief periods. But we learned that enhanced power and agility came at a cost. Using the nanites in that