Machine World (Undying Mercenaries Book 4) by B. V. Larson Page A

Toro’s group wasn’t ready. Their machines went sliding and crashing across the deck, slamming in a pile-up against the hull a hundred meters down. Some managed to grab onto things with their grippers, and a crewman was crushed.
    “Toro, dammit,” Graves fumed. “Get your people under control!”
    “We must be in trouble out there,” Leeson said, grunting and hanging on to his clamps with his grippers. “What’s the word from Winslade?”
    “There isn’t any,” Graves answered.
    I noticed Leeson hadn’t moved an inch during the inversion. He was using his grippers to hang on, like they were arms. He instinctively hadn’t trusted his clamps. I thought that was a pretty good idea, and privately ordered my squad to do the same. Pretty soon, every machine in sight was hanging on for dear life.
    The lifter righted itself after about a minute. We pulled hard Gs during a slewing turn, then there came that undeniable feeling of falling at high speed. My stomach was in my mouth, and my heart was pounding in my ears.
    Could Cyclops have been hit? What about Natasha and the rest? I didn’t know anything except that I was about to land on an alien world I hadn’t even had the time to lay eyes on yet.
    “Hey, McGill,” Carlos said. “I’m sorry, I mean Vet . Look at this stream—I’ll pipe it to your tapper.”
    He sent me a streaming feed. Lord only knew how he’d gotten access to it. The image was grainy, and it skipped and fuzzed out now and then, but the scene was unmistakable.
    Three ships hung over a gray-white, mist-clad world. Distantly, a moon of dark rock floated. It was covered in puffing explosions. Were those our strikes or more missiles firing up from the moon base? It was hard to tell, but I figured it was our own broadside shells slamming home. I’d seen them strike before, and their power was daunting. Whatever missile base was firing on us was sure to be toast with three of these ships hammering at it.
    The one worrying thing, however, was displayed as the view shifted. I realized then that the vid was from someone aboard our lifter. Probably a tech who’d released a buzzer and had it fly to a porthole. Buzzers were insect-sized drones that were often used for scouting or even spying by legion techs.
    One of the three capital ships was on fire. It was Pegasus , Solstice Legion’s transport. Normally, fire wasn’t possible in space, but with the released oxygen escaping with other gasses, she was a briefly lit torch. She’d been hit—hit bad. My heart sank to see that.
    Out of the bottom of Pegasus , tiny capsules were firing like bullets. Hundreds of them shot out as if the ship was bombarding the planet below.
    I knew those capsules didn’t contain explosives. They were carrying troops. Each one was a drop pod firing down through the atmosphere into the murky clouds of this new world.
    My heart went out to the Solstice legionnaires. What a way to enter a war! There was no way they’d reached their optimal drop point. The legion commanders had to be panicking to order a general drop from such a height, trying to save their—
    That’s the point I’d reached in my thoughts when Pegasus exploded. I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer for the thousands that still had to be aboard her.

-12-
     
    I’ve been to war in three star systems over the years, with Gamma Pavonis being my fourth deployment. That doesn’t make me some kind of grizzled old-timer, but it does mean I’ve been around the bush a few times.
    I could tell already, this campaign felt different .
    In the past, there’d always been a certain degree of restraint. There’d always been orderly rules applied, to some degree, to each battle I’d witnessed. Hiring out as mercenaries to various planets with internal problems, one never knew when things might get hairy, but there were certain things you could trust would or would not happen.
    One such rule was the sanctity of Empire ships. No one, I mean no one , fired on