A Hole in the Sky Read Online Free

incredulously. “We brought all of these people here to New York, and you don’t know?”
    “That’s the reality of the situation,” Malikov said defensively. “Vonce ve get inside, and fight our way up to the control room, I’ll figure it out.”
    “And if you don’t?”
    Malikov met Voss’s eyes. His gaze was unapologetic. “Then we’re going to die for nothing.”
    The attack on the tower was scheduled for 0830 the following morning, but for Kawecki and the rest of the soldiers the evening was a rare opportunity to get together in groups of five or six and shoot the shit. And whenever soldiers gather, talk inevitably turns to old battles and old buddies. So as Kawecki and some of the surviving Sentinels sat on their packs and passed a bottleof Jim Beam around, the subject of Joseph Capelli was bound to come up.
    “I say Capelli did the right thing,” a soldier named Budry said as he took a sip and wiped his mouth. “Hale hadn’t had an inhibitor treatment in a long time. The poor bastard was about to turn. Joe did him a favor.”
    “That’s bullshit,” Yorba replied bitterly. He had a head of unruly hair and a beard to match. “Hale was the best we had! And maybe Malikov could have saved him. Plus this is the U.S. Army, goddamn it! Or what’s left of it. Since when is it okay to shoot your commanding officer? No, I’d say Capelli got off easy. They should have put the SOB in front of a firing squad.”
    “How ’bout you, Captain?” a Sentinel named Russ inquired, as the bottle came his way. “Was Capelli right or wrong?”
    “The asshole was
wrong
,” Kawecki said darkly. “I fought alongside Hale and he was a fine officer. And, if I run into Capelli, I’ll blow his fucking brains out. Any further questions?”
    “No,” Russ said with a boyish grin. “I think that covers it.”
    “Good,” Kawecki said as he stood. “This meeting is adjourned. Go get some sleep. We have a whole bunch of stinks to kill in the morning.”
    It was July 4th, and Voss had been up all night. Not because he had to be, or wanted to be, but because he couldn’t sleep. Now the task that once seemed so achievable, and even glamorous, was beginning to look like a suicide mission. The tower was much larger than he had imagined it to be, and it was crawling with stinks. Worse yet, Malikov wasn’t sure of what to do if they made it to the control room. So, having allowed his visions of glory to get the better of him, Voss was going to die.
    But it was too late to change plans or back out. All Voss could do was shoulder his pack and follow a double column of soldiers up the Lexington Avenue Line towards the intersection of 42nd and Third. That was where the alien tower had grown to dwarf the Chrysler Building and touched the sky itself. A six-inch-thick Chimeran power conduit led the way.
    A scouting party had been sent ahead and reported everything was quiet so far. But that couldn’t last for long—and it didn’t.
    The battle began fifteen minutes later as they passed under 35th Street. The first sign of resistance came when three elongated Hunter Drones dropped out of a ventilation shaft and opened fire. The effort wasn’t enough to stop Voss’s team, so Voss assumed the machines were supposed to simply delay them.
    If so the tactic wasn’t very successful, because Kawecki had been expecting something of the sort and his men had two L210 LAARKs (Light Anti-Armor Rockets) prepped and ready to go. The Drones barely had time to open fire before they were destroyed in quick succession.
    The rocket launchers were a bit of overkill, but Kawecki figured the LAARKs wouldn’t be of much use inside the tower, and he wanted to hold casualties to a minimum going in. “That’s what I’m talking about,” one of the men said, as a still-smoking carcass clattered onto the tracks. “We’re kicking ass and taking names.”
    Once the party’s leaders arrived at the point where the tower’s metal roots blocked the tunnel,