Free Battlegroup (StarFight Series Book 2) by T. Jackson King Page B

of every hard shell. But limited fuel kept their use limited. “Nope. No flying yet. But keep your sensors active for approaching enemy.”
    “Active we are!”
    Shaking his head, Richard joined Tim and Jack in aiming his flamethrower and shotgun at the hatch, while tonguing on his belly laser. “Blow it.”
    “ Kabooom !”
    Yellow flame and black smoke filled the tubeway wall. He jumped through as Jerry’s radar sensor told him a large hole had been blown into the tubeway wall. Amidst the smoke he moved left, squatted and leaned forward. The floor thudded as his Marines followed him inside and spread out to the right and left, going to their knees to reduce their exposure to incoming fire. The smoke cleared. Before him he saw gobs of wasps gathered around pillars with tubes sticking out from them. Some still had the tubes in their wasp mouths, while most were trying to rise from the room’s floor where the blast shockwave had knocked them. Three rose in the air and winged toward him and his people.
    “Kill ‘em all!” he yelled.
    Richard tongued a control. A rocket spat out from his backpack and arced through the high-ceilinged room. As it flew its nose cone opened and small bomblets whirred out. The cluster bomb warhead was just one of the options in his backpack.
    His fingers contracted. Yellow flame shot from his right arm, reaching out ten meters. It was joined by streams of flame from Jane, Tim, Jack and Didier. Some of his Marines were firing their shotguns to either side of the room, since the solid shot from the shotguns had a greater range than the flamethrowers.
    Blackened wasps fell from the air.
    Yellow bodies showed gaping red holes as solid slugs punched through their hard outer skin.
    To the room’s rear, two wasps rose up. Each aimed a long tube toward him and his people.
    “Danger!” yelled Jerry in a high screech. “Energy—”
    “Scatter!” he yelled, diving to the floor and rolling to one side.
    Two yellow lightning bolts passed over his head.
    A rocket shot out from Jane’s backpack.
    Its red flame traced a path toward the two armed wasps.
    It exploded in a gout of yellow flame as the napalm warhead created a raging inferno that enveloped the far side of the room. Some of the jelled liquid stuck to pillars and wasps beyond the ball of flame, burning into whatever it touched.
    “Clear?” called Tim from his right.
    Richard rose to his knees, one eye checking his infrared tracker while his other eye looked for movement. “Clear.”
    Mentally he noted his helmet’s counter said there were 21 corpses scattered across the room. A different tracker showed the glows of his four Marines. Their hard shells all reported operational. Jerry’s orange Alert glow had gone to yellow Cautionary.
    “Auggie! Wayne! Watch out for armed wasps! They’ve got some kind of tube that shoots lightning bolts!”
    “Righto,” called Auggie over the comlink.
    “Thanks,” said Wayne. “We’re entering some place that looks like a park.”
    Richard rose up slowly, swinging his arms to cover the space before him even as his fellow Marines did the same. He looked back the way they’d come. The wall behind them glowed red in two spots where the bolts had hit. The red glows were shoulder high. If his people had been standing, someone would have gotten it in the helmet. Which would have either cut through the visor and killed that person, or would have killed all power in their suit.
    “Jane! Tim! Jack! Didier! Grab whatever wall-mounted tech you can find. Whatever this room is, it’s got to have speakers in it. No way does a crowd this size do whatever they were doing without some kind of com tech.”
    “I think they were eating,” called Didier from the right as the Frenchman moved to one end of the room, aiming for a square block mounted on the wall.
    Richard saw his other Marines heading for similar wall-mounted blocks. He noted one side of the room had archways that led into a room filled with large