Snakebit - book 8 in the Invasion Earth Series

CHAPTER

Darkness. It was complete and whole, oppressing and permanent. He couldn't see his hand in front of his face.

Literally.

He'd tried.

Lt shifted from a set of push ups to press his back against what felt like a cold steel wall and rested.

The exercise helped. It helped to pass the time, helped to keep his mind occupied, helped to keep him from wondering.

And worrying.

Worry about what happened to her.

Warbucks had been shot. Gut shot, which was the worst kind. The bullet travelled through the sensitive parts of people, ripping into intestines, nicking kidneys, rupturing spleens. He didn't know how bad she was hit. All he knew was she had been hurt.

And it looked bad.

There was a lot of blood.

It was his fault. She didn't have the protective armor he had. The Gen One Suits were designed to withstand a lot of damage, even up to a nuke, maybe. He didn't want to test that one though.

And he'd seen a blaster melt right through the armor.

Crockett took one in the chest even in his Gen One armor and he was gone too.

"Son of a bitch," he rolled over and settled into the push up position.

He could feel the hot rush of tears in the corner of his eyes, but in the darkness, he didn't see them fall, didn't see them land on the metal floor.

Just the burn in his eyes, and the rage in his chest and another creature, something new and small in the pit of his stomach.

"One hundred motherfucker," he growled at himself and dropped down.

He pushed up.

That feeling was despair.

Down.

Up.

Hopelessness. He had gotten people killed.

Down.

Up.

Good kids, boys and children and now his pilot and the first woman to make his dingly bits tingle in a long time.

Down.

Up.

Now she might be dead.

Down.

Up.

And he was a Lick prisoner. He knew the squad would hunt for him, but how many of them might get killed doing it?

He kept going, kept pushing, slow and steady like a piston driving up from the hard deck, fighting gravity to keep from falling too fast, his pectorals screaming as lactic acid churned in the torn microfibers of his muscles.

Gravity, he thought. Still on the planet.

On the planet meant a chance to escape. A chance to escape meant he could kill as many of the alien motherfuckers as he could. Kill them all.

But first, get a message to Babe and the squad somehow.

Tell them not to come after him.

Tell them to hunker down, stay safe, and find Weber.

Lt might not escape, but he could damn sure try to keep his squad from getting killed. And Weber would know about the secret weapon on Mars.

He wasn't sure how they would reach orbit to get to it. Or if they would even find the duo that abandoned them.

Too many factors out of his control.

Too many variables.

He reached eighty and slowed down. Each push was like a heavy weight settled on his back. The muscles in his chest had moved past screaming, moved past pain and into a numb zone of oxygen deprivation, the pain almost a live thing.

A live thing that devoured the despair in his stomach.

Or even if it didn't quite kill it, the agony was enough to take his mind off of it.

He wasn't dead, not yet.

And he could plan, no matter how dark it was.

He had even given up his Suit to try and save Warbucks, but he had been the baddest Lick killing motherfucker in the valley of the shadow of death before they found the Suits, and by God he was gonna go for the title shot again.

He hit one hundred and shifted back to the bulkhead, letting the pump fade, letting the pain turn into a dull throb.

The Licks made a mistake, that much he was sure. Lick Commander, wherever he was on this ship had a problem.

They let him live.

And they were going to pay for it.

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JAKE BURBANK -MYSTERY THRILLER SERIES

DRINKS AFTER WORK