Angry Ghosts Read Online Free

tearing her inside out. Secondary explosions incinerate troops still jetting over on the cables, rocketing their singed bodies through comrades farther ahead. Large chunks of metal scatter in all directions, tearing through anyone unable to move in time. Gritting his teeth, the Team Leader curses.
    “How did they get control?” yells one of his troopers.
    T he Leader bellows, “ The HATCH, you cack-faced mutt! GET IT OPEN! ”
    Seyun-gee glows with damage, venting long plumes of flame and plasma. The venting strains the grappling lines, stretching them taut.
    Looking over his shoulder, the Team Leader sees his troop ers getting clipped, slashed and crushed. All the while, fresh explosions aboard Seyun-gee renew the metallic hail, peppering the survivors with still more lethal fragments. The Leader turns away only to watch Korom’s weapon batteries reorient toward the taut grappling lines. With precision shots, the cables are sliced; and Korom lurches, swaying them in their magnetic boots.
    Like snakes striking prey, the cables whip at the teams—slicing some at the waist, sweeping others off the hull. Their voices flow into the Leader’s headset, turning from desperate pleas for rescue into screams of searing agony when they drift out of shade into the stars’ full radiance.
    Fury grips the Leader, squeezing his heart in a vice, and he pushes past his troopers to get a view of the locked personnel hatch.
    “WHAT'S TAKING SO LONG?”
    A soldier is hunched over the lock control with a small electronic device. “They must have changed all the codes. I can’t get in!”
    Hauling out a small torch, the Leader shoves the soldier aside and kneels down to cut the lock itself.
    Korom lurches again with thrust, building distance from its burning twin and putting an end to the rain of deadly debris. The troopers all breathe a grateful sigh of relief, until they see Korom’s weapon batteries swing back toward Seyun-gee and loose a coordinated barrage. The shots rip through Seyun-gee’s engines, igniting a spherical blast consuming the tortured ship like a swelling sun. The sphere grows faster than the departing ship is traveling, and the moment of relief yields to new tide of panic.
    “Get it open!” someone yells, starting a riot of frenzied shouting.
    While the Leader continues to cut, the troopers hack into the lock with their rifle butts. Some spin their weapons around and shoot into the lock, careless of the ricochets plunging into their comrades.
    At last the bar severs. The surviving troopers crowd around their Leader and shove the door aside as the blast wave of superheated plasma rakes the full length of Korom . The Leader’s team chars around him, the sudden vaporization of their flesh blowing him through the door. He gets to his feet and shoulders the door shut. More tired than he should be, he slumps down, exhausted, and gasps for breath. Perplexed, he looks down at the radiation gauge on his suit. It glows vividly.
    Looking around the small airlock, what he knows will soon become his tomb, his eyelids get heavy. Before they close completely, a shadow steps into the window of the interior door.
    Fear energizes him in his final moments as he searches for a weapon, but he finds none. Once the air pressure equalizes, the interior airlock slides open, and the gasping Team Leader looks his foe over from head to toe, accepting what he sees with great difficulty.
    “ Da’oma Kachi’in …” he whispers with his last breath.
    The figure strides in, clad in stout dark armor, a heavy rifle trained squarely on the slumping Team Leader. It closes the interior door and depressurizes the airlock. Keeping the rifle aimed, it steps over and jabs the creature with the barrel.
    A light on the outer door shifts color, and the figure slides it aside one handed. With the swift shove of a boot, the Team Leader is sent unceremoniously into space.
    The metal clad figure reseals the airlock, pressurizes the compartment, and lifts