The Bad Company: Age of Expansion Book 1
By Craig Martelle & Michael Anderle
Snippet 2
Unedited
Terry made mental notes of the battlefield as he ran from one position to another. He’d brought all six of the shuttle pods carrying the tactical teams, which still put his Direct Action Branch of the Bad Company in an inferior position.
“Run and gun. We need to run and gun!” Terry shouted at the angry red sky. He adjusted his helmet as it slipped backward. He worked his shoulders to loosen his ballistic vest, too, as he subconsciously considered a running battle, with rapid action and constant movement.
But they couldn’t. They came under fire the second they ran off the drop ships. The shuttles had buttoned up and taken off immediately afterwards to hold a position out of range of the big guns. Or rockets. Or mortars.
Terry wasn’t sure about the weaponry, only caring about what he had to do to take them out. His tactical teams were made up of Werewolves, Weretigers, Vampires, and enhanced humans. They had centuries of experience, and were best making surgical strikes, small teams inserting behind enemy lines.
They weren’t immortal, only enhanced by nanocytes, technology taken from Kurtherian scientists. They were still human, but different.
Terry would never say their enhancements made them better. He would say that their minds and their teamwork made them better. They believed that they trained hard to make war anticlimactic.
“Where’s Kaeden with my mechs?” Terry shouted over the explosions.
Charumati, his purple-eyed Werewolf wife put a finger to her ear as she used her internal comm chip to communicate with her son. Terry had a chip, too, but he didn’t want to lose focus on the battle as it raged on all sides of their position.
“This is the most fucked up thing I’ve ever been a part of,” he growled. He clenched his jaw and gritted his teeth. The muscles stood out of his face and a vein throbbed in his forehead. He carried a Jean Dukes Special pistol in one hand and his Mameluke sword in the other. The pistol was dialed to five out of a maximum of eleven.
“He’s over the hill to the right. The fireworks you see are from his section,” Char relayed.
“Can he get through their lines?”
Char’s eyes unfocused for a moment, then she shook her head.
Terry slid his sword over his shoulder and into its scabbard strapped under his backpack. He took his pistol in both hands and dialed it to eleven. “Order a tactical retrograde to our position. We’re breaking through right over there.” Terry pointed to a heavily-wooded area covering the top of a hill.
“Joseph, where the hell are you?” Terry asked out loud, before switching to his comm chip. Powered by human energy, with a little extra boost from the Etheric dimension, the comm chips allowed the group to talk with each other. It also translated a vast number of human and alien languages into English.
The Bad Company’s Direct Action Branch had only had the comm chips for a few weeks and weren’t yet accustomed to them or how best to optimally employ them.
We’re where you saw us last, but we’re dug in better. My people are burning through their ammunition. It’s like an endless tide. I’m not sure we have enough bullets to kill them all, Joseph reported.
Have you tried not shooting them?
The first bunch got close and you know Fitzroy isn’t afraid to break into pugilist form. These things rammed him and bit the holy hell out of him before we could blow their stalk heads off. He said punching them was like hitting a tree trunk. I wailed on one with my sword. I’ll second his observation. It took a lot to cut through that neck. I don’t recommend we devolve into hand to hand.
