by Mel Odom
When the initial concussive blast swept by him, Sage tried to catch his breath and couldn’t, no longer able to hold onto the Roley and barely yanking the .500 Magnum from shoulder leather and bringing it up. The pistol felt like an anchor at the end of his arm. His feet felt like lead as he lifted them to walk into the hangar. It was possible that the detonations had killed his quarry.
Black comets swirled in Sage’s vision as Velesko Kos stood up and fired his coilguns. The bursts ripped into the hangar around Sage and tore through the air.
Sage struggled to sort which image of Kos was the actual man, trying to remember how impaired vision worked when a soldier was suffering from hypoxia. He picked the middle one and pulled the trigger three times as quickly as he could.
Kos was blown backward and lay on the hangar floor in the midst of the aircraft wreckage.
Knees going out from him, senses swimming and his head too heavy to continue to hold it up, Sage walked over to Kos.
The man lay on his back, pale and panicked as he tried to breathe through his burst lungs. As Sage watched, life drained from Kos’s dark eyes and left his empty husk behind.
No longer able to stand, no longer able to keep his senses together, Sage thought he heard someone calling out his name, but he didn’t have the strength to answer. The suit’s near-AI switched on his emergency GPS locator and he sank into the darkness.
0341 Hours Zulu Time
“Is the sergeant dead?”
Standing at the display screens broadcasting vid from the satellite they had above the jungle where Sage had just defeated Kos, Zhoh flicked his eyes toward the data in the upper left corner. Phrenorian drones flitted through the area, hauling in raw intel they gleaned from light hacks into the Terran hardsuits.
Sage still lived. Barely.
“He’s alive,” Zhoh said to Mato, who stood behind him.
Mato’s primary hands clacked irritably. “It would be better if he were dead.”
“Yes,” Zhoh agreed. “The time will come soon enough. We’ll bring this whole planet to its knees before long.” He turned away from the vidfeed, already lost in his plans.
Sage’s injuries would slow the man down, and if he was slowed, the Terran Military would be slowed too. But the overall timetable was speeding up and Zhoh knew that, even if the other officers he worked with refused to see that.
Sage was a catalyst, an element of entropy that had entered the carefully constructed blueprint the Phrenorian Empire had for Makaum. The others would choose to overlook the human, not realizing the changes he could make, but Zhoh intended to capitalize on Sage.
In the coming battles, Zhoh would take back honor and glory that had been stripped from him. He would spill enough enemy blood to wash away the disgrace he had been framed with committing. There were plenty of people to sacrifice to reach his goal.
EPILOGUE
Surgical Hospital
Charlie Company
Fort York
0728 Zulu Time
Beeping hospital equipment woke Sage. His head felt thick and his tongue felt swollen. He glanced at the displays with blurry vision and tried to remember what all of the numbers meant, but even that grasp of the situation eluded him.
“You survived,” a woman’s voice told him.
Sage swiveled his head to the foot of the bed and the effort took a lot more out of him than he thought it should have.
Kiwanuka stood there in ACUs. She didn’t look battered or bruised, or like she’d just stepped off of a battlefield.
“We’re not dead?” he asked.
She grinned at him. “No. Although the colonel tells me that you nearly got to find out what being dead was like.”
“It seems pretty quiet. At least, that’s what I remember.” Sage licked his dry lips. “How long was I out?”
“Five days. The surgeon put you in a medically induced coma while they rebuilt your lung.”
Sage pulled a hand up to his chest and only felt a little sore.
“They replaced the original with a bionic one. There’s not a lot of donor material to be had out here.”
“Did we get enough intel to expose DawnStar?”
Kiwanuka nodded. “We did. Colonel Halladay and the diplomatic teams are sorting it all out now. Of course, DawnStar insists that Velesco Kos was running a rogue element inside the corp, which gives them a layer of deniability. We’ll have to wait to see how the dust settles on this, but the black market on Makaum has taken a big hit. It’s not dead by any means, but it’s been shut down a lot. Many of the major operators have been exposed as a result, and the Makaum Quass is cracking down harder on its people. Things are changing, Sage.”
“But?” he asked. He could hear the but in her words.
“The direct action Charlie Company took out in the jungle has split the Makaum people even more. The drug cartels are shutting down, but the civil war is heating up, and we’ve lost some ground with the Quass. I guess you could say they’re more sharply divided. There aren’t many ambivalent Makaum left when it comes to our presence on this planet. The Makaum left who like us are really supportive, but the (ta)Klar and the Phrenorians have gained support as well. You don’t find many fence sitters out there now.”
“I take it the general isn’t happy?”
“Not even. He’s made it known that whenever you’re well enough to ship out, you’re welcome to go anywhere you want to.” Kiwanuka smiled at him. “So I guess you have what you wanted before you got here.”
Sage thought about that, thinking of the war that was calling to him out there, but he was thinking about Makaum as well. “There’s still a lot here to do, and the situation is even worse than it was when I got here. I learned a long time ago to clean up the messes I made.”
“I’m glad you see it that way. Colonel Halladay and I both think that a large part of what we’re facing now is due to you, so it’s only fair that you pitch in to help patch things up.” Kiwanuka took a breath and looked more serious. “Also, we think we know what a high-ranking Phrenorian like Zhoh GhiCemid is doing here.” She placed a miniature holo projector on the serving table at the side of Sage’s bed. “We just got this a couple days ago from Jahup.”
“The kid’s okay?”
Kiwanuka nodded. “He’s running scouting expeditions for us now. He’s brought on a whole group of young Makaum that are definitely pro-Terran military.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“It is. It’s working out pretty well. If it hadn’t been for Jahup and his hunting bands, we wouldn’t know about this.” Kiwanuka switched on the projector.
The image was grainy and indistinct.
Sage squinted at it, not certain what it was supposed to represent. Then he saw the unnaturally straight lines that took shape out in the jungle.
“Is that what I think it is?” Sage asked. His thoughts suddenly burned crystal clear.
“If you’re thinking this is a secret Phrenorian base hidden on Makaum, roger that. Because that is what we think it is. We haven’t gotten close enough to ascertain that, but we’re working on it.”
Sage stared at the image, seeing it more clearly now.
“It looks like you don’t have to go find the Phrenorian War, Sage,” Kiwanuka said. “It’s coming to Makaum.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MEL ODOM is the bestselling author of many film and computer game tie-ins, including Forgotten Realms, Mack Bolan, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel. He won a prestigious Alex Award for his YA fantasy novel The Rover. He currently lives in Oklahoma.
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COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover art by Gregory Bridges
MASTER SERGEANT. Copyright © 2014 by Mel Odom. All rights rese
rved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition February 2015 ISBN: 9780062284433
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062284426
FIRST EDITION
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