CONTENTS
WHAT’S NEXT IN THE SERIES?
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
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
WHAT’S NEXT IN THE SERIES?
Also by Rick Partlow
FROM THE PUBLISHER
About Rick Partlow
DIRECT FIRE
©2020 RICK PARTLOW
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WHAT’S NEXT IN THE SERIES?
CONTACT FRONT
KINETIC STRIKE
DANGER CLOSE
DIRECT FIRE
HOME FRONT
1
Why do I do this to myself?
I should have been going over battle maps, reviewing the operations order, hell, just staring at the inside of my helmet. Anything would have been better than tying my suit optics into the visual feed from the dropship. I couldn’t do a damned thing to affect the battle, could barely tell who was winning it. All I could see were flashes of light in the darkness at the extreme range of the dropship’s optical cameras, the visible remnants of invisible struggles, missiles being intercepted by other missiles or lasers, our assault shuttles and missile cutters or their dual-environment fighters and corvettes dying unspectacular deaths in the dreadful silence.
Just one stray missile, one well-aimed laser or coil gun round and we’d be dead. The dropships were armored as well as they could be, enough to save us from the fragments of a surface-to-air missile, maybe enough to take a shot or two from a ground-defense laser without coming apart, but the main gun of a Tahni corvette would obliterate us like we’d never existed.
The planet swelled in a false promise of safety at the left edge of my view; blue, white and green, and welcoming, but it was all a disguise. Port Harcourt was a hornet’s nest and we were about to stick our dicks in it.
Of course, the battalion briefing had tried to dress the operation up with smiles and unicorns and rainbows…
The battalion leadership was jammed into the main dining room of the best and biggest restaurant in the capital city of Dolabella, and by inference, the biggest and best on the whole Silvanus colony. It was a nice place, decorated in what I was told was mid-Twentieth-Century European style, with lots of hand-polished wood and brass. I felt out of place, and not just because of the décor. Everyone was staring at me, or at least that was what it seemed like. I was the guy who’d gotten six of his own Marines killed, who’d let his platoon sergeant make the sacrifice play to save everyone because I’d been too badly wounded to do it myself. I was the only Officers Candidate School platoon leader in my company while the other four were Academy grads. I was the street kid, the petty criminal, the guy who had to join the Marines or go to jail. The loner.
But not alone. Not anymore.
Vicky Sandoval shot me a smile from the table beside us, at the outer edge of Alpha Company as I was at the outer edge of Delta. It was a comfort having her back from OCS, even if we were in different companies now. I’d even gotten used to her hair being shorter. She didn’t have it cut clear of her interface jacks the way a lot of Drop-Troopers did, letting brown strands drift over the implant receptacles instead. She’d had a buzz cut when I’d first met her, when we were both PFCs, but she’d let it grow out until OCS, then chopped it down to just above her collar. Her face had leaned out, the pain and the stress adding lines beside her eyes and at the edges of her mouth, but the smile was the same, the intelligence and determination in her eyes.
I’d expected her to be there. I hadn’t expected the man beside her, the new platoon leader for Fourth Platoon of Alpha Company. He was tall and lanky, almost gangly, his grin boyish and enthusiastic. I’d met Freddy Kodjoe at OCS and never expected him to be assigned to my battalion, but the war was changing and units were being shuffled to meet needs.
“I like this planet,” he said, projecting his voice to be heard over the gabble of the collected officers of Fourth Battalion, 187th Marine Expeditionary Force (Armored). “It reminds me a lot of Nigeria. What about you, Cam?”
I assumed he meant it was the city of Dolabella that reminded him of Nigeria and not the restaurant and tried to answer in kind.
“It definitely doesn’t remind me of Trans-Angeles,” I told him, shrugging. “And it’s nothing at all like Tijuana, at least not
