Deus Ex - Icarus Effect Read Online Free PDF Page B

and with a final, tortured screech of
    stressed metal, the wreck of the flyer tumbled to a halt, inverted, half buried in a drift of loose earth packed around the nose cone.

    A wave of punishing heat pressed in on Saxon through the cowl of the solidified shock foam and he felt it running like molten wax under his
    hands. He dragged his left arm up through the mass and his fingers found the handle of the heavy jungle knife, lying in its holster atop his
    shoulder pad. The soldier lurched forward, cutting through the clogged restraint straps still holding him in his seat, then down through the thick
    foam-matter.

    He used his right arm, his cyberarm, to peel back the curdled material. A gust of hot, putrid air washed over him. The cloying, sickly-sweet
    stench of burned flesh and the tang of spent aviation fuel made him cough and spit out a thick gobbet of bloody phlegm.

    Fire beat at him; the cargo bay was open to the night on one side where an entire quadrant of the fuselage had peeled back off the veetol's
    skeletal airframe. The rest of the space was filled with black smoke and sheets of orange flame. Seats where men and women had been
    strapped in were now little more than charred, indefinable things. The smoke was thickening by the moment, and he wheezed, cursing, calling
    out their names as he sliced through the straps still holding him upside down. The knife cut the last and he dropped, falling badly. A shard of
    agony shot up from his right hip and he howled.

    The flames were all around him now, and Saxon felt the hairs of his rough beard crisping with the heat. He stumbled forward, reaching for spars
    of broken steel, searching for a foothold to get him up and out of the wreckage. The metal was red-hot and he hissed in pain as it burned his
    palms through his combat gloves. The smoke churned around him, clogging his lungs. It was leaching the life from him, dragging on him. His
    chest felt like it was full of razors.

    Saxon gripped the fire-scorched spars and dragged himself up the side of the fuselage, ignoring the singing pain from the places where jagged
    swords of hull metal slashed his torso and his meat arm. Then he was out, falling into the dusty brown loam churned by the crash. He grasped
    for his canteen, and through some miracle it was still clipped to his gear belt. Saxon thumbed off the cap and swallowed a chug of water, only to
    cough it back up a second later. Panting, he staggered a few steps from the wreckage.

    The tree-lined hill extended away, becoming steeper, falling to a fast-flowing creek bed a few hundred meters below. A black arrow of smoke
    was rising swiftly into the night air. There was little wind, so the line was like a marker pointing directly to the crash site.

    He stopped, fighting down the twitches of an adrenaline rush and took stock, running the system check. Red lights joined the green, and there
    were more of them than he wanted to see.

    He couldn't stay here. The drone that had shot them down would be vectoring back to scope the crash site, and if he was here when that
    happened ...

    Kano's face rose in his thoughts and Saxon swore explosively. He glared back at the burning veetol. Am I the only one who survived?

    "Anyone hear me?" he called, his voice husky and broken. "Strike Six, sound off!"

    At first he heard only the sullen crackle of the hungry flames, but then a voice called out—wounded, but nearby. He turned toward it.

    Pieces of hull were scattered over a copse of thin, broken trees, small fires burning in patches of spilled fuel. Saxon blinked his optic implants to
    their ultraviolet frequency setting and something made itself clear against the white-on-blue cast of the shifted image.

    A hand flailed from underneath a wing panel, and he moved to it, crouching to put his shoulder under the long edge. Bracing against a boulder,
    Saxon forced it away and heard a moan of pain. Sam Duarte looked up at him from the dirt, his tawny face a mess of scratches. The