Free Big Pete (Privateer Tales Book 4) by Jamie McFarlane Page A

with me, so I knew we were in for trouble. Normally, it was my responsibility to communicate the drop. There could only be one explanation.
    The first missile hit the back of the transport just as I felt the familiar release of the drop rail. The explosion tore through the transport and instantly vaporized several members of my squad. Worse yet, the transport was pitched to its side and the shattered hull caught us before we’d fallen clear.
    I’d been in some pretty bad scrapes in the past but this rapidly jumped to the top. If we’d had more altitude, escaping from the badly damaged transport wouldn’t have been quite as critical, but we were fast losing altitude and if we couldn’t get clear of the transport we were done for.
    In my experience, luck and situational awareness are the two most significant factors in surviving any engagement. You might argue that getting struck by a missile was bad luck, but you’d be looking at it wrong. It certainly was bad luck for my squad mates who’d been vaporized. For me, it was simply the beginning of the engagement.
    I looked over at Methane and Mulehog, who were positioned directly across from me. Neither had successfully deployed from the transport either. More troubling, however, was that Methane had his grenade launching rifle aimed right at me.
    One reason Methane was still alive in this war was that he completely rocked at situational awareness. A split second of eye contact and I knew he’d correctly assessed our predicament. The ship was slowly rolling over, and blowing out my side of the transport might be our only escape route.
    I grabbed Patch and fired my suit’s arc-jets so that we hurtled directly toward Mulehog. One second later, Methane fired a grenade at the position we’d just been occupying. Releasing Patch, I flipped over and planted my feet on the transport wall above Mulehog’s head. Counterintuitively and hoping my timing was right, I jumped out toward the explosion from Methane’s grenade. I could feel shrapnel pelting me from the blast and hoped my armor was heavy enough to withstand it.
    Mid-jump I noticed that Patch hadn’t figured out what was happening yet, only I was too far away to do anything about it. Frak ...
    “This way, maggot,” Mulehog’s gruff voice said over our team channel as he grabbed Patch, spun him around, and followed Methane out of the transport.
    The wind pulled at me as I exited and just like that I was dropping like a rock.
    Emergency drop . My AI (Artificial Intelligence) had finally figured out that we were in free fall. Prepare for impact . I’d checked my altitude and we were still a good eight hundred meters above the ground. I twisted around to see what I was about to collide with and before I could figure it out, I’d crashed through a glass window and was tumbling over desks and chairs. The AI contracted the artificial ligaments of the mech-suit and I took the shape of a large armored ball.
    I punched through more than a few walls, but fortunately didn’t fly out the other side of the building. The AI relaxed the suit’s ligaments and I lay there, splayed on the floor. I slowly pulled myself into a seated position and scanned the immediate area. My HUD (Heads-Up Display) didn’t show any hostiles or civilians nearby. I was glad we’d dropped at night. Even with a war going on, these buildings were still occupied during the daytime.
    I stood up and ran back through the holes I’d created in the walls and looked out through the side of the building. The wind was whipping through the opening, but it didn’t bother me much. Between me and the suit, I weighed in at over two hundred and twenty kilos. It’d take a lot of wind to move me.
    I could have asked the AI to locate the transport ships, but it was clear where they’d gone down. Irawan had successfully cleared all of the largest buildings and her ship lay broken and burning, several kilometers from my current position. The other ship had run into a