Sullivan Saga 3: Sullivan's Watch Read Online Free

what I saw, but from what I’ve been able to gather, it was the same for all the other rescue teams.”
    Long glanced down at the tablet in front of him. “These… creatures?”
    “Yes, sir.” Ensign Crane blinked rapidly several times and looked around the table.
    Long turned to the officer on his other side. “Bring the footage up on the main screen.”
    A 3-D image projected itself upward from the center of the table. Long watched the shaky camera footage from one of the rescue teams. “Is this from your team, Ensign Crane?”
    “No, I don’t believe so, sir.”
    “But this is the best footage we have, sir,” said the man next to him.
    “Very well. Proceed.”
    As Admiral Long watched, a lanky creature with reddish skin loped into frame. A stained white suit clothed its head and torso, and a reflective visor covered its eyes. The creature leapt forward toward the man holding the camera, and the camera fell to the ground. It was kicked or pushed a few times, dizzily shifting the image, but the final shot was of the creature leaning in toward the prone cameraman. It ripped into his throat with its teeth and began eating.
    Long glanced at Ensign Crane. He had turned away. “Ensign, is this the same sort of creature you saw?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And something similar happened to your team?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Did you see any ships that the aliens could have arrived in? They had to have come from the larger ship somehow.”
    “I didn’t see any, sir.”
    One of his officers spoke up. “Sir, perhaps they possess some sort of teleportation technology. Or they can send biological beings through hyperspace unshielded.”
    Long nodded. “I’ve thought of that.” He looked back at Crane. “Is there anything else you can tell me, Ensign? Anything that will help us understand what happened on Mars?”
    “Yes, sir. It was absolute chaos down there. As soon as we thought we were safe, another one of those things would jump out at us. They were relentless, like they didn’t even care if they lived or died. They just… they just wanted to kill, sir.” Ensign Crane paused and looked down at his hands.
    “Anything else?” Long said, trying to keep his voice reassuring.
    “They’re hard to kill. At one point, I was able to fire my sidearm at one of them. I hit it two or three times squarely in the chest, but it barely even flinched.”
    “The bullets didn’t penetrate?”
    “No, sir. They didn’t even make a hole in the suit it was wearing.”
    “Armor of some kind?” offered one of Long’s officers.
    “Possibly.” Long stood. “Ensign, thank you for your report. And I’m sorry for what you had to see down there. We’ll do everything we can to deal with this.”
    “Thank you, sir.” Crane stood, saluted and was escorted out of the conference room.
    “Ladies and gentlemen,” Long said, “you’ve all seen this footage. You also know that of the five hundred rescue personnel we sent to Mars, only one hundred and seven returned. They were able to rescue only eight survivors. Out of two million people on Mars, only eight made it out alive.”
    Long cleared his throat and took a sip of water before continuing. “Most of the loss was due to the direct attack from the alien ship. That weapon they have is more powerful than anything we can throw at them. If they attack again, let’s just hope their defense isn’t as formidable as their offense.
    “But that’s if they return. For whatever reason, this alien ship attacked Mars and has now left, either via hyperspace or using some other technology. They sent these grotesque creatures to the surface to mop up, finish off any survivors, but they’ve yet to attack Earth or any other inhabited body in the solar system. Why is that?”
    “Testing our defenses, sir?”
    Long pursed his lips. “That’s my read on it. There’s no way of knowing if they’ve attacked the other inhabited systems or not. We’ll hear from Virdis first, I imagine.