Free Anstractor (The New Phase Book 1) by Greg Dragon Page B

gates of Arisani and take her. He felt a knot in his stomach that was very much like the one that came about when he thought he would not escape the cylindrical prison of the resource ship with Aurora.
    Rafian was made to don full marine armor, a blast helmet, and trek boots, so without thinking, he kept the 3B suit on and placed the armor over it. The company he was in was nicknamed the Twelfth, since eleven had gone before them on similar missions. He counted thirty soldiers in his unit, and they all seemed to know one another in some way.
    “Time to cash in that death sentence we all signed up for, eh, boys?” a freckled, red-headed marine with a permanent grin on his face shouted as the men and women strapped themselves into their cryogenic chambers in preparation for the jump to light speed. He was met with laughter and a few similar jokes, but the mood was still forlorn, and Rafian hated the way it all felt. The wait after being strapped into cryo seemed to last forever, but in actuality it was only half an hour when the glass doors shut around each one of them, encasing them within individual egg-shaped pods and a cold, thick, white mist coalesced about them, freezing their vitals and placing them into stasis, which would allow them to survive faster-than-light travel. The enormous Shadow Raven lifted up out of the mission central dock and blasted instantly into light speed, only to appear moments later above the war-torn moon of Meruda.
    When the cryo chambers had thawed out, the doors opened up to allow the soldiers to mobilize. Rafian realized that one of his hands had not been thawed and panicked at the sight of his paralyzed fingers and the grim claw that they formed.
    “One second, Lieutenant!” a pretty, young corporal announced as she rushed over. She shoved a six-inch needle into his arm to thaw it instantly. Rafian thanked her and got down on the deck to do his ritual of push-ups and sit-ups, which would allow his body to shake off the strange sensation he felt all over. All of the marines had their post-cryo rituals, and as the ship moved to break orbit and drop them off, they all eventually found the deployment bench located behind the pilot’s cockpit and strapped themselves into it.
    The moon of Meruda had gravity close to what the soldiers would consider normal but it had an unfriendly, nonoxygen atmosphere, making it a mandatory helmet-and-suit affair for air breathers. Rafian thought it was pretty brazen of them to attempt a hostile takeover of a moon that circled the enemy’s planet, but he was excited for the mission and was convinced that there was no other place that he’d rather be.
    The ship cruised near the surface, and the countdown for them to deploy started. By the time it had reached thirty-one and then thirty seconds, a ranged missile crashed into the side of the ship, and the Night Raven no longer had the desire to stay airborne. They were falling fast, and the pilot did his best to level her to the ground as Rafian and the others took emergency measures and waited for the collision. The front of the Teradac-11 hit a large rock, killing the pilot instantly as they slid into the surface of the moon on landing, and the momentum carried them forward a few hundred yards. There was gunfire everywhere as the sounds of the war became real to them, and as a unit, they exited the back hatch of the downed vessel and primed their weapons for the attack.
    “STAY LOW AND HUG THE CLIFFS!” a man with a captain’s shield on his lapel was yelling back at them as laser fire and kinetic bullets rained down on them from all angles. Rafian saw four soldiers go down from gunshots, and the rest of the company huddled close to one another and ran along the face of a raised crater that provided some cover from the onslaught of bullets. Rafian thought the position they were in was simply stupid, but the brave marines pushed through it, returning fire as they could until there were only twenty left,