Rebellion Ebook Full by B. V. Larson Page B

younger. But those who met up with me were all delighted. Word had gotten around quickly: crazy old Riggs had beaten everyone down. I smiled inside my suit, knowing that such moments were great morale-builders—whether they’d started off as screw-ups or not.
    By the time I had located a functional assault ship, I had more than thirty marines from Beta Company following me. The ship’s drill was already blazing, making our visors darken to the point of forming blinders in front of our eyes. We kept stumbling forward, relying on our magnetic boots to keep us from accidently tumbling back out into space. Each man still carried his dish, knowing it was his only ticket home.
    The big laser on the assault ship flared and flashed. Gouts of white light bloomed as the drilling continued. It was alarming to witness. Fortunately, we didn’t have long to wait. The hull wasn’t more than a few feet thick. A vapor-stream and a gush of fire flowed out of the newly burned hole, quickly surrounding the assault ship and turning it into a torch. The men lurched back, recoiling.
    “Looks like she breached. Laser off!” I shouted over my com-link. The pilot cooled the blazing drill, and molten bits of metal cooled and formed orange, floating balls all around us. The station wasn’t big enough to produce significant gravity by itself. Everything was floating.
    The gush of vapor continued. We could see it, like a plume of steam. It reached out into space and completely enveloped the assault ship. I frowned in concern as it went on. Didn’t these aliens believe in bulkheads and sectional ship design? Had we just popped this balloon and suffocated a million innocents?
    After about a minute, the streaming vapor died down to a trickle. The burnt metal of the breach, which had been glowing hot moments before, had frosted over now. The leeching cold of vacuum had done its work, stilling the molecules.
    “I need two scouts,” I said.
    Two men came forward. These were wiry men with lighter kits, and I sent them on recon. I could have rigged up a sensor and dropped a pickup down into the breach on a nanite wire, but I didn’t want to screw around. Delays would give the defenders time to organize. Every second counted.
    The two scouts slid into the breach and had a look around. They transmitted vids of a large chamber full of organic material. Plants, from the look of it—floating in water that was now freezing solid. Apparently, they had some kind of gravitational control which kept the liquid in its tanks.
    I nodded thoughtfully. Maybe we’d invaded their outer farm regions. If their plants operated as ours did via photosynthesis, they would need to be near the surface to collect energy from their star. Possibly, that was why we’d seen such a geyser of vapor. Water, air, relative heat and pressure—it all added up to a blast of steamy air.
    “Move, everyone!” I shouted. “Get in there before they blow this section of their station back into space!”
    My men surged, and soon it was my turn into the breach. I was very glad my suit was tough and impregnated with a self-repairing nanite layer. The breach was like a hot blade. We got through it, however, and one-by-one we floated inside. I had everyone leave their skateboards magnetically tethered to the external skin of the station. Whoever made it back out could use them to escape. Behind me, more and more marines kept pouring in. We’d only managed four breaches, and two or three hundred marines were going into each one.
    “Sir?” boomed a familiar voice.
    I turned and saw Kwon. I wasn’t surprised to see him, it was one out of four he’d end up here, and I knew he’d try to follow me if he could. I was surprised however, to see who he had with him.
    “Lieutenant Marquis?” I asked.
    “Yes sir. Glad to be here, sir,” she said. The woman was of normal height, but she looked like a kid standing next to Kwon. A shapely kid.
    “You thought Joelle was dead, didn’t you?” asked