Domination (A C.H.A.O.S. Novel) - By Jon Lewis Page 0,60

set of wicked spikes. Their eyes looked crazed as they fled before the hovercraft overhead.

Rhane broke hard to the left and into a wide clearing. There was a roar like an engine, and the hovercraft dropped down with its nose pointed at the Walker. A spray of bullets erupted from the guns lodged under the wings, ricocheting off the armor. The windshield splintered but didn’t break as Rhane reached over and flipped open a panel. “See those red switches? Flip ’em on.”

Colt did as he was told, and panels opened up on either side of the hood, revealing a set of machine guns. They opened fire, tearing through the leaves and branches. Bullets sprayed the hovercraft, pounding against metal and glass.

“Looks like we’re going to need some extra firepower,” Rhane said. “See the RPG-7 in the back?”

Colt looked over his shoulder to see a rocket-propelled grenade launcher resting on the floorboards.

“It’s loaded with a Thermobaric warhead,” Rhane said. “Think you can handle it?”

“How hard can it be?” Colt unstrapped his seat belt, grabbed the grenade launcher, and leaned out the window, bracing his hip against the door.

The Walker dipped as they went through another pool, and Colt barely managed to keep from falling out. The hovercraft held its ground and bullets continued to fly, but Colt tried to ignore them as he took aim.

The hovercraft was in his sights. Just aim, exhale, and pull the trigger, Colt told himself. The warhead hissed as it left the launcher. Colt watched it streak through the air before it slammed into the hovercraft. There was a flash of light followed by an explosion, and the hovercraft spiraled out of control and slammed into the ground.

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CHAPTER 44 : :

I just got word that there’s another transport,” Rhane said, pointing to his comlink as they continued through the jungle in the strange Walker. “They think it has more prisoners from Earth.”

“Where is it?” Colt asked as he looked at the GPS hologram map that floated over the dashboard.

“About three clicks from here, and Koenig has already sent a Tracker to make sure there aren’t any surprises. But if we hurry we should have enough time to get in and out before it finds us.”

Colt noticed another Walker skittering through the jungle beside them, and then he saw two more, plus five or six armored ultralights and a massive machine that looked like a tank on eight mechanical stilts. It resembled the Walkers but was twice as big, with heavy armor casing and topped with a gun turret.

“This seems like as good a spot as any for an ambush,” Rhane said. He parked beneath the cover of something that looked like a red mushroom, though it was nearly as big as a garage. The other vehicles stopped as well, each one with its weapons systems pointed toward the sky.

Colt felt anxious as he sat there, wondering if any of the prisoners inside the Thule transport might be his friends or maybe Jonas’s mom or even the sheriff of Sanctuary. And he wondered how they were going to knock the transport out of the sky without killing everyone inside.

“Steady now,” Rhane said as the air started to buzz with the sound of an engine in flight. “I can see her in the distance.”

Eyes narrowed, Colt looked at the sky and saw the faintest speck of gray approaching. He watched as Rhane again flipped open the panel that controlled the weapons systems.

“Just a few more seconds,” Rhane said. “Hang on, we’re—”

The ground started to shake and the trees swayed back and forth. There was a cracking sound like wood splitting, and Colt turned to see a massive Tracker heading directly toward them.

“Now there’s a twist I didn’t expect,” Rhane said. He accelerated and headed directly for the Tracker, guns blazing as the bullets ricocheted off the giant mechanical monster. The Tracker’s chest opened like a set of elevator doors, revealing a bank of sixteen missiles that all fired at once. Spinning and swirling, they headed straight for Rhane’s Walker.

There was an explosion as something like a lightning bolt shot out from the massive tank-like contraption with the gun turret. The Tracker’s missiles died as they came in contact with the energy field, and the bolt struck the Tracker in the chest. Energy crackled along its surface, and a second later the lights behind its eyes went out.

“What was that?” Colt asked.

“Think of it as an electromagnetic pulse with a kick.”

The Tracker teetered and fell, but there was