Hard Drop Read Online Free PDF Page B

pods.
    Hog picked up the pace immediately, focusing in on the pods in front of her. Chip, cigarette still hanging out of his mouth inside his visor, didn’t. Missile be damned, he couldn’t be bothered to rush it. Tyco glanced back at the world, eyes tracing the rising smoke trail. It was closing fast, much faster than he’d thought.
    A handful of troopers had reached their pods, clambering up over the safety railing and onto the boarding platform. They were the first, the fastest, and still Tyco knew – if that missile was accurate, even they wouldn’t make the drop. Their pods would never fire in time. With a direct hit, they were all done for, sitting ducks at 150 miles high. Tyco forced himself up over the railing, continuing on towards his pod. Death might be inevitable, but there was no point in waiting for it.
    The missile roared past overhead, fiery exhaust blinding the troopers in a bright white flash. Tyco shielded his eyes and stared upwards, expecting the shudder of impact at any second. It didn’t come.  
    Tyco exhaled sharply, letting out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. He reached down and pounded his pod door release, simultaneously tapping his comm with a newfound urgency.
    “Drop at will!” He shouted. “Drop at will! Let’s get fucking planetside!”  
    Chip strode past Tyco wordlessly, clambering over the rail and dropping into his pod. He moved freely and easily, unhurried but with exact, well-considered precision. No sooner had he dropped into his pod than the red light over its door switched green, marking it ready to fire.  
    To Tyco’s left, Hog and Ringo were boarding as well. He took one last look before dropping into his pod, checking the unit’s readiness. Half were at their pods, another third a mere step or two away. And then there was Poke, and the greenhorns, laboring down the gangway, testing the upper limits of the burn shield on their drop suits.  
    An even brighter flash came from the other side of the ship, followed by a hard rumbling. The cruiser listed dangerously, sliding sideways and falling off-course as the shockwave rolled through it. The missile may have missed its mark, but its effects had not: the detonation rolled through the ship like a wave across the ocean, slamming the cruiser and sending it into a spin.
    Tyco couldn’t wait any longer. He dropped into his pod and sealed it, slamming his fist down and initiating the launch protocol as the Cruiser roiled above. He glanced up through the pod glass at the landing, dreading what he would see. The greenhorns were strung along the landing, some near pods, others father away. Poke had one foot up on his pod and was awkwardly loading his rocket launcher into the weapons cache when the ship rolled violently, throwing him through the air and against the launch bay wall. He collapsed in a crumpled heap, legs going limp.  
    “Come on Poke…” Tyco breathed to himself, staring out at the unmoving greenhorn. Powerless to help, he gritted his teeth in angry frustration.  
    “Ten…nine…eight.” The automated launch control voice interrupted him, warning of the borderline lethal forces Tyco was about to incur from the pod’s imminent, abrupt acceleration through the atmosphere. The pod next to his fired, the reverberations rumbling through the grid and shaking Tyco against his restraints. He kept his eyes focused on Poke, willing him to stand, to get back up. The schematic in front of Tyco blinked and beeped, its colors shifting red to yellow as troopers strapped in, agonizingly slowly. A handful of pods blinked green, representing the mere few that had fired successfully.  
    The ship’s slow spin gathered speed quickly. A larger explosion rippled through the ship – a systems malfunction, a failed thruster, an over-heated cooling system, who knew, but it was enough to seal the cruiser’s fate. Tyco felt the crack before he saw it. He watched in horror as the ship came apart at the seams above