War of Alien Aggression 2 Kamikaze Read Online Free Page A

everything in its path and shook the whole carrier.  
    It was over less than two-seconds. When Ram realized the full force of the blast had missed him and he was only bruised and singed, he inched to the blackened edge and looked up through the smoke coming off the burnt walls. Up at the top of the Hab module's tube, bulkheads had been mangled and hatches had been blasted open and a hole two meters wide now led out to open space.
    That last alien warhead had breached the armored outer hull and the inner hull, too, but it hadn't been a direct hit. If it had, a much larger section of the Hab module's hull and multiple decks would have been vaporized. If it was a direct hit, then he'd be dead, Ram thought.
    "This is Commander Devlin. I need redsuits and medical teams to midships Hab. External hull-breech at the top of the forward tube. Medical teams are advised to expect major casualties."
    There would be burns, Ram thought, and anyone actually touching a bulkhead up there when the shock wave passed through might have got spammed if the vibrations transferred to the fluids in their bodies. That kind of energy could burst a man. And those were crew quarters up there – men and women in their racks resting before their next watch. If the same plasma that burned and blasted a crewman in front of him had flooded those compartments, then they might all be as dead as she was.
    In the first days of the battle, Hardway had been able to stop the endless salvos. But they were getting through now. Where the carrier hid herself behind the gas giant, the Squidies couldn't blow her from the sky with the blockade gun. The alien gunboat cruisers sent to destroy them had been bested. But the ceaseless salvos of flying bombs that came round the planet were wearing Hardway 's crew to the point where they were beginning to fall apart. 
    Ram Devlin looked down the tube for the crewman and the damage control team that had helped pitch him up the tube from the spine, but they were gone.
    Hardway 's XO pushed off up the charred tube and into the dark. There had to be survivors up there. Below him, everyone who'd been in the midships mess was now suited up again and coming out the hatches. When Burke saw Ram up the tube and saw the burned and rent bulkheads, the first thing he said was: "How the hell you keep from getting cooked, Mr. Devlin?"  
    "Shut up, Burke," Salinas said. "The XO wasn't in the tube when it hit." 
    "This is Commander Devlin. I called for medical teams to midships Hab. Where the hell are you?" Already, he was high enough up the tube to see through some of the rent bulkheads and into the compartments where dozens of blackened rag-dolls drifted, bent and broken backwards. It was worse than he thought it would be.
    "We can do it faster ourselves, Ram." That was Asa Biko's voice and the blinking icon in Ram's visor told him that he'd heard it on local comms, the local suit channel. That meant Biko was close. Ram looked down through his feet, and saw him outside the mess hatch on the ledge before the tube, floating close to one of Hardway's pilots, Delilah Pardue.  
     Biko launched out into the tube. In flight, he turned and pointed at crewmen on the ledge. "You. You. And you. And you three. You're with me and Mr. Devlin. We're going up tube to identify the living and get them to Medical. We can get half of them to Doc Ibora before the stretcher teams or the Staas Guards on paramedic duty even get here. Move!" Biko pushed off and up the charred and smoking tube towards Ram, and they followed him.
    *****
    Harry Cozen had given Asa Biko a Privateer commission and the rank of Lt. Commander. He assigned Biko to command the Hardway Air Group partly because the man had been Hardway's Teamster union rep. For years, Biko had pushed back against the company to protect the interests of the men and women on Hardway . They trusted him. If anyone was watching out for their well-being, it was him. Even Hardway's new, non-union personnel liked