The Dotari Salvation (Terran Strike Marines Book 1)

  The Dotari Salvation

  Terran Strike Marines Book 1

  by

  Richard Fox

  and

  Scott Moon

  To my great grandmother, Emma Garrison, who always encouraged me to do something creative.

  &

  To Nathan James Fox, welcome to the world!

  Copyright © by Richard Fox

  All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission.

  ASIN:

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  FROM THE AUTHORS

  Read THE EMBER WAR for Free

  Chapter 1

  Lieutenant Hoffman felt sweat run off his forehead and down the side of his face. Even with his body glove’s coolant systems running at full power, the oppressive heat of New Bastion was worse than anything he’d felt in the hottest Phoenix summers or during survival training in the Australian outback.

  He wafted air out of the rough cloth robes that the Shadoor aliens preferred to wear outdoors, wishing he could don the full helmet that would bring some respite from the environment once it locked into the rest of his suit, but he couldn’t give the half-dozen screens bolted to the quick-crete walls of his hideout his full attention within the constricted view of the Shadoor-style helmet.

  On one screen, Gunney King sat inside the cab of a delivery truck, his visor slid up onto his helmet, his face set and focused. The other screens showed Hoffman different angles on their target’s location—a fenced-in building bordered by dirt streets filled with cloaked and hooded Shadoor working through the midday market.

  A clock on the bottom of a screen flipped over to a new hour.

  “Mobile, this is post,” Hoffman said, his words picked up by his throat mic and shot out through infrared transmitters he and his team had hidden throughout this part of the city. “No activity.”

  “Mobile, acknowledged.” King’s hand touched a bulge on his chest where the Marine’s gauss pistol was holstered, and he leaned forward and looked out of the alleyway where his truck idled.

  The cab rocked slightly and a muffled cry carried from the sealed cargo pod. King shook his head as a sharp thump punctuated the air.

  “Another one of the damn things got loose, Gunney,” Corporal Garrison said over the IR system linking Hoffman’s team.

  “They’re harmless, wuss,” said Booker, the team’s medic. “And every time you kill a silverfish, it wrecks our cover as a silverfish delivery service. You know that, right?”

  “I swear you’re letting them out on purpose. Do we even know if they’re poisonous to humans? I do not want to go into anaphylactic shock—again—because someone forgot to do a gene screen against—”

  Gunney King slammed an elbow against the back of the cab and the bickering ceased.

  “Duke, what’s your status?” Hoffman asked into the open line.

  A screen showing the view through the scope of the team’s sniper bobbed up and down. Duke’s vantage point nearly ten stories up from within an unfinished building gave Hoffman’s stomach fits, especially when New Bastion’s winds sent a hot gust through the bare beams and struts.

  In the distance, the wall surrounding the quarter formed a gentle arc. The crystal dome that would eventually cover the entire city stretched up from the top of the wall—but only a few hundred yards of the many miles it would have to cover to contain a more pleasant atmosphere and mitigate the heat and radiation pouring in from the system’s twin suns. In the two weeks since Hoffman and his Strike Marine team had infiltrated the city, no progress had been made to the dome.

  “It’s a dry heat, sir,” Duke said. “Kind of wish I was on the hunt for whatever genius decided this was the place for the galaxy’s spacefaring civilizations to work out their differences. It’s like they picked a planet that everyone would agree to hate. Even those tardigrade-looking Orritans seem miserable, and their home world’s hotter than this. Wasn’t the old Bastion on a space station?”

  “It will be again, once the committee works out the specifics of the new design. This will be, of course, a decision from the same committee that picked this planet and is in charge of building twenty-five different environmental domes for all the embassies,” Hoffman said. “Temporary embassies.”

  “And I thought the bureaucrats on Earth were inept,” King said. “By the looks of things around here, I’m sure every race has their top men on that project. Top men.”

  “From what I got from the Embassy Marines,” Hoffman said, “every race with access to the Crucible gates realized if they didn’t work out someplace to cooperate soon after the Ember War ended, there’d be a fight for every habitable planet out there. This shake-and-bake city was a quick answer. They did negotiate the Hale Treaty here.”

  “Embassy Marines,” Garrison said. “Bet they’ve got air-conditioning. Wonder if they’ll accept a transfer…Ow! Why’d you kick me? What about my mic? Oh, is it—”

  On his screen, Gunney King gripped his steering wheel so hard Hoffman worried he’d break it off.

  “Got an air car coming in from the south,” Duke said as a vid capture from his scope popped up in the center of the screens. The taper-nosed vessel flew on four repulsor lifts, and lights glinted off the silver exterior as it banked suddenly toward the target location, its engines ruffling the cloth roofs of the market stalls.

  Icons for small laser guided missiles resting in Duke’s sniper’s perch came online and pulsed amber, ready to launch and home in on whatever target Duke had in his sights.

  Hoffman’s heart pounded in his chest and he swallowed hard.

  “All stations stand by,” he said. “Should be our guy.”

  King knocked twice against the back of the cab and eased the delivery truck forward onto the dirt road.

  On the main screen, doors burst open from the building inside the compound and a pair of broad-shouldered Kroar aliens came out, both holding spiked mauls in their scaly hands. Their broad, flat reptilian heads hung low over their shoulders, and tufts of ochre-colored hair crept out from the edges of their loose sleeves and the collars on their leather coats that stretched down to their bare feet.

  “These two are new,” Duke said. “Scale patterns don’t match the other Kroar we’ve seen patrolling the perimeter.”

  “Target’s trusted bodyguard,” Hoffman said. “Fits with the dossier intelligence gave us.”

  “Secret squirrels finally got something right?” Duke chuckled. “Will wonders never cease? I’ve got a clean shot on the door, sir…”

  “Hold fire. Your rail rifle will set off every security sensor in the quarter and we’ll get locked down in a heartbeat,” Hoffman said.

  “Moving into position,” King said as he made liberal use of his truck’s horn to hurry along a pair Shadoor idling in the middle of the road.

  On the screen, a new alien emerged from the compound. Taller than the Kroar with midnight-black skin and gangly limbs, b
ony spikes ran down his forearms and jutted from either elbow. The Haesh wore a rebreather over his face, and a tube ran from it to a pair of air tanks on one hip.

  Hoffman zoomed in and fed screen captures to the computer core beneath the desk. The computer analyzed the alien’s biometric features and came back with a match to a series of photographs of the same alien taken in the rubble of a blasted cityscape.

  “Got him,” Hoffman said. “Fellerin, the Butcher of Galveston. Mobile, you have release authority.”

  King’s response was lost as the air car rumbled over his truck and landed just outside the gates.

  A Kroar bodyguard stepped between King’s truck and the air car and pointed his club at King, then slowly waved the weapon toward the Shadoor walking along on the street. It didn’t take much in the way of xeno communication skills to recognize “Stay back.”

  “Garrison, Booker, exit left side,” King said as he made a Shadoor hand gesture toward the Kroar, indicating exactly what the bodyguard could do with his club.

  The back door of the truck swung open with a clang and the Marines jumped out.

  Hoffman mouthed a prayer as the two walked past the cab, carrying a wire cage between them inside of which metallic insects the size of the palm of his hand scrambled over each other. The silverfish grew more agitated as the wind blew smoke from a barbeque cooking insects over hot coals toward King’s truck. A Shadoor rapped an empty skewer against his food stand and waved to the Marines.

  Helmetless Shadoors tossed coins into a bowl on the cook’s stand and gestured to the approaching cage. With their bright-red skin and yellow eyes, Hoffman could understand why the Marine embassy guards called the Shadoor “demons.”

  “Remember, everyone, act natural,” Hoffman said.

  “We look enough like the locals with the masks,” Garrison said. “Just don’t talk to them.”

  “Like you’re doing now,” Booker chided.

  “Sir, we’ve got a complication,” Duke said.

  Hoffman snapped his gaze to the screen showing the compound. A Kroar came out of the center building leading a human woman, her blond hair a jumbled mess, her hands bound with silver wire. She wore a beat-up naval flight suit and was limping slightly.

  Fellerin stopped at the gate and waited as the Kroar guard urged the woman forward with a blow to her shoulder.

  Hoffman froze. Their mission brief said nothing about prisoners, human or otherwise. His entire plan, weeks of scouting and preparation, just fell through the floor.

  “Continue mission,” King said, a firm statement and not a suggestion. “No guarantee she’ll get in the air car with the target.”

  “Stalling,” Booker said, setting down her side of the silverfish cage and rubbing her carrying arm.

  Hoffman froze, his mind dancing between options like someone falling out of a tree and grasping for branches on the way down.

  “I want…Gunney, I need you to…” Hoffman pounded a fist against his desk in frustration.

  “Eighteen thousand dead colonists on Galveston deserve justice.” King drew his gauss pistol from beneath his robe and held it against the dash out of view of the Kroar guards. “I can take him as soon as he steps out of the compound.”

  “No! Mobile, deploy the limpet,” Hoffman said.

  Just as the compound gate rattled aside, Garrison “tripped” over his own two feet, sending the silverfish cage tumbling forward into the dirty street and the top bursting open. Silverfish scattered across the dusty street, veering away from the barbeque where their fellows were crisped into snacks.

  Shadoor lurched into the street, grabbing at the loose creatures along with Garrison and Booker. Several silverfish broke for the shade beneath the waiting air car. The Kroar guards shouted in their own language and made exaggerated swings to keep the crowd away.

  “Come on, come on,” Hoffman said.

  One Shadoor grabbed a slower silverfish and struggled to pick it up. The alien’s head cocked to the side in confusion as he tested the heft on the creature.

  Booker shoulder-checked the alien and sent him sprawling into the dirt. The silverfish he held bounced toward the air car, then skittered under the passenger compartment. An icon flashed on Hoffman’s screens as the limpet mine he and his team had disguised as a silverfish magnetically locked itself to their target’s vehicle.

  Their plan called for the denethrite explosive charge to blow the Butcher of Galveston into hard-to-identify chunks once he took off. Hoffman picked up a detonator and rested his thumb against the trigger.

  “Charge set,” the lieutenant said. “Go for phase two.”

  Booker and Garrison picked up the broken cage and pushed their way through the scrum of aliens vying for a free lunch as the Shadoor cook waved his arms in the air, shouting over the ruckus. Hoffman had picked up a few words of the alien language since arriving on New Bastion and understood that the cook wasn’t paying for this delivery.

  “Civilian just got pushed into the target’s vehicle,” Duke said.

  “Let me take him out, sir,” King said, one hand on his door handle.

  “Wait, the car might be for just the—” Hoffman cursed and looked at the main screen just in time to see Fellerin and two of his bodyguards climb into the air car.

  King cursed and slammed a fist against his dashboard.

  The air car rose in a billow of dust and slowly rose over the surrounding buildings.

  Hoffman looked at the detonator in his hand and then back to his screens.

  “Blow it, sir,” King said. “It took us months to track Fellerin down. Who knows where he’ll go next. This could be our only shot!”

  “He has a prisoner, Gunney, a human prisoner,” Hoffman said.

  “You weren’t there on Galveston, sir. I was. Do you know what he did to those colonists?”

  “I know what he—” Hoffman shut his mouth when the air car turned toward the city’s spaceport and accelerated. With one push of a button, he’d accomplish their mission…and murder another human being in the process.

  “Duke, I need you to disable that air car,” Hoffman said. “Get it on the ground. This is now a rescue mission.”

  “You want me to disable an air car…traveling eighty feet in the air at about thirty miles an hour that has a denethrite charge that’ll probably explode if I hit the car with my rail rifle?” Duke asked.

  “Can you do it or not?”

  “Wait one, got an idea.” Duke’s scope feed angled up to the sky as the sniper moved away from the weapon.

  Agonizing seconds ticked by, and a red icon flashed over Duke’s position on Hoffman’s map. One of Duke’s laser-guided missiles zipped through the air toward the Haesh’s air car.

  “What’re you doing? I told you to disable it, not—”

  “Relax, sir. It’s me. Besides, you ask for a miracle in thirty seconds or less, you shouldn’t be choosy about how it’s delivered. Now if I can just get it to…”

  Hoffman looked on in dread as the missile closed on the air car. The missile icon disappeared, and he waited for the sound of a distant explosion to wash through his control room…but it didn’t come. Instead, the air car veered to the side and descended.

  “Ha! Smacked a seeker into a front repulsor engine. Like a bird getting sucked into a turbofan,” Duke said. “Helps that I didn’t pull the arming pin before launch. They’re going down near the water treatment plant.”

  Hoffman panned the map to where Fellerin had gone down and double-tapped the roof of the plant to send a ping to his entire team. He then picked up a holstered gauss pistol and locked it onto his chest armor and ran for the door.

  “Mobile, head for that location I just sent out. I’m taking Opal to the crash site,” Hoffman said as he burst out of the room and took a staircase down two steps at a time.

  “Max, can you read me?” Hoffman asked.

  “Loud and clear,” the last member of Hoffman’s team said.

  “We need an emergency extraction at the water
plant. ETA?”

  “Maybe…eight minutes. Just got a secure message from the embassy. Local first responders are spinning up. Guess that’s us?”

  “Correct. Pick Duke up first. Send the take-down order to the intelligence officer at the embassy if the police go airborne.”

  “I was just about to suggest that. Just another day in the Strike Marine Corps. See you soon.”

  Hoffman ran into the bottom floor of the incomplete building where another Marine stood against a wall next to the stairwell. The man was six and a half feet tall, broad-shouldered, and had hands the size of shovel blades. He wore the same Shadoor garb as the rest of the team, and his full-face helmet followed Hoffman as the lieutenant ran past him.

  “Opal, follow me.” Hoffman picked up a Shadoor helmet and slipped it over his head. Loosening a poncho tied to his shoulder, he let it flop over the gauss carbine locked onto his back, then vaulted through an empty window frame.

  “All our stuff?” Opal asked, his voice low and gravelly.

  “Doesn’t matter!” Hoffman scanned the sky and saw a plume of smoke rising over buildings a few blocks away.

  Hoffman ran toward the crash, Opal just behind him. The local Shadoor hurried indoors, and several watched as Hoffman and the other Marine—who was significantly larger than the aliens—went by. They came around a corner and found their target’s air car canted atop a truck, smoke and sparks flowing from a damaged repulsor engine. The air car’s roof had been bashed open. One Kroar bodyguard crawled out while the other stood nearby, club in hand, sneering and snapping at any Shadoor that loitered nearby.

  Long black fingers curled over the edges of the bent roof as Fellerin emerged slowly from the air car. Bright-blue blood ran down a cut on the Haesh’s forehead as he stepped onto the dirt street.

  Hoffman bowed his head slightly and walked to the other side of the street, doing his best to appear like the other passersby that wanted nothing to do with the overly large and overly angry Kroar and their car trouble.

  “Sir, bad one,” Opal said as his mitt of a hand tapped Hoffman on the shoulder.