Portal Wars 1: Gehenna Dawn Read Online Free

staying sharp and alert despite
the intense heat.
    The battle at Blackrock Ridge the day before
couldn’t be classified as a win, not by any reasonable measure.
They’d inflicted heavy losses on the ambushing Machines, far more
than they had suffered, but that was only normal. The Machines were
relentless attackers and highly tolerant of casualties. They always
lost more. In the end, the human forces were forced to flee the
field, and they barely got away at that. It hadn’t been the
disaster it could have been, but it was nothing anyone was going to
write any songs about.
    Still, the 213th survived, at least some of
it did. For a while that had seemed like an impossibility. Even
Taylor had almost given up hope. By the end, he had everyone on the
line; he even took most of 2nd Team from the eastern flank, leaving
Just Bear and one private to protect against an attack there.
    Taylor still had the images fresh in his
memory. The Machines looked a lot like humans, especially from a
distance. The plain in front of the ridgeline was covered with
their dead. They launched two all-out assaults, and the second came
close – too close – to breaking through. The 213th had been a
hair’s breadth from being overrun. For a few seconds, Jake thought
they had been. He still wasn’t sure how they’d managed to beat back
that last charge, and he knew just how tight it had been. Taylor’s
section had 11 casualties, 3 of them KIA. That was half the
casualty rate of the rest of the strikeforce. His people remembered
what he’d been telling them, what he’d been pounding into their
heads.
    The evac finally came – closer to 30 minutes
than 20 – and it would have been too late except for the pair of
Dragonfire gunships escorting the transports. The big antigrav
craft strafed the line just as the Machines were launching their
third assault. The heavy autoguns tore into the advancing enemy,
massive hyper-velocity projectiles tearing the Machine’s flesh and
steel bodies to shreds.
    Two or three more passes might have shattered
the enemy force, Jake thought, but the gunships withdrew after one
attack. The fire from the ground was too heavy, and the Dragonfires
were too valuable to risk. The 2 gunships were worth more to the
high command than every man in the 213th, so one firing run was all
they got.
    It turned out to be enough. The Machines
suffered heavy casualties and were badly disordered. It took time
for them to shake back into an attack formation, and by then Jake
Taylor and Blackie were mounting up on the last transport. The
strikeforce was on its way back to base, battered but not
destroyed.
    Now it was the day after. Most of the 213th
was sacked, trying to catch up on sleep after the grueling fight. A
lot of guys had trouble sleeping on Erastus; the relentless heat
was just too uncomfortable. But sooner or later, when you got tired
enough, you could sleep through anything. And most of the 213th was
tired enough.
    Taylor was walking slowly down a corridor.
The passage had been dug into the solid rock, the walls smooth and
wavy, like part of a candle that had been melted and re-hardened.
The look was familiar, the tell-tale sign of the plasma drills that
had bored out this refuge.
    He pulled a small cloth from one of the large
pockets on his fatigues and wiped his forehead. It was hot, even in
these subterranean passageways. The mind expected tunnels and caves
to be cool and damp, but Erastus was a different kind of world, its
crust and mantle wracked with geothermal activity. It was almost as
warm underground as it was outside, though at least you could get
out of the direct sunlight. You could even be in the dark inside,
something you couldn’t quite manage outside, even with your eyes
closed tight. That didn’t make it any cooler inside, but it helped
somehow. It was an illusion, perhaps, but on Gehenna, you took what
you could get.
    The mission had been a search and destroy
that turned into a trap. The Machines were