Loralynn Kennakris 2: The Morning Which Breaks Read Online Free PDF Page B

of flame shot through with black objects rising amid pillars of smoke. Burning debris crashed about them, twisted metal and melted plastic and more ghastly things as Walsh’s spotting info flashed on his HUD. He rolled over to where Carson hunched. “Got it?”
    Carson nodded. He had the mortar ready and they fed the coordinates to it and calculated the spread while smoke swirled thick around them. Neither paid any attention to the holocaust going on below them: one air-lorry had been engulfed by the blast and its fuel cells rapidly cooked off, adding to the carnage; the other had careened into the wall and overturned. The few survivors were huddled at the compound’s far end—many burned, all shocked and stunned, none paying any attention to the activities on the roof, where together Gomez and Carson yanked the safety pins from the first two mortar rounds.
    They fed those rounds into the tube and then more in smooth succession. A light mortar with a two-man team was usually capable of firing eight rounds a minute but they exceeded this, dropping on the enemy position antipersonnel, high explosive or even cloaking rounds as they came to hand. For three minutes, they kept it up and were down to the last case of ammo when Carson looked to the north and, the freshening breeze that heralded half-light having thinned the smoke, saw a quartet of lights approaching. Moments later they heard the peculiar, undulating whine of air-sliders, and Carson cried enthusiastically, “It’s Delta!”
    Gomez, looking north, also felt a burst of elation that lasted only until he realized the air-sliders were not registering on his IFF at all —and Carson stood up. The 20-mm chain guns slung under each slider’s belly opened up and Gomez saw Carson’s face jerk forward, its elated grin unchanged as his torso vaporized beneath it. Vaulting over the parapet, he felt a tremendous blow above his left knee that spun him around in midair.
    He landed on the roof below with a heavy thud, his armor taking most of the impact. His ears were ringing but he felt them ringing as a dense pressure inside his skull, and there was everywhere this heavy silence blanketing everything. With a vast effort, he rolled himself onto his back. The faintly lightening sky shimmered overhead as his eyes focused erratically and he felt the tickle of sweat running down his neck and there was a dull burning ache in his left leg and a feeling of wet heat except he knew he had no left leg anymore and somewhere in the back of his mind he also knew that was his femoral artery bleeding out for all the vasoconstrictors could do and he thought in a vague detached sort of way This is what shock feels like , and then No this isn’t shock and Are they clear yet ?
    Infinitely thankful he’d kept his rifle slung instead of setting it aside, he pulled it across his body and, fumbling because his hands were going numb, chambered a last round into the grenade launcher. The drag of gravity on his arms was shocking as he lifted it, fixed the butt in the gravel of the roof and pulled the trigger. The shrike fired, a light explosive charge taking it up to fifty meters where the tiny rockets would ignite and boost it clear of the atmosphere in just over a minute. There, it would detonate, sending out a distress signal that would bring any League ship within thirty light-minutes running.
    The rifle fell sideways unnoticed and he saw, or maybe just imagined he saw, the tiny rocket motors streaking away into the stars and goddammit his fucking leg was starting to hurt and the little rockets were going out and everything else with them . . .

Chapter Three
    NBPS HQ, Mare Nemeton
Nedaema, Pleiades Sector
    “Anything left in that bottle?” asked the Director of Pleiades Sector Intelligence Group. The Chief Inspector of the Nedaeman Bureau of Public Safety picked up the bottle and shook it gently, listening with an attentive ear. “Two fingers,” he said and reached over his desk to pour