Talosian Chronicles 3: Talosian Alliance by Ben Winston Page B

the Ell-tee asked.
    “You might need to beat a hasty retreat, Ell-tee. This way, you know where your ride home is sitting,” the Pilot replied.
    “I can’t spare a guard for ya, you do this, you’ll be on your own,” the Ell-tee replied.
    The pilot chuckled. “I know which end of a pulse rifle to point at the enemy, Ell-tee. I’ll be fine, but I ain’t leaving you down here all alone; someone has to keep you lot out of trouble.”
    “You are one crazy Aussie, lady. Keep your head down, and we’ll be back as soon as we can. If not, well, make sure you have a deck of cards so we can challenge the devil,” the Ell-tee ordered. “Alright kids, let’s get this done so we can buy her a steak dinner tonight. Team one, point! Go! Go! Go!”
    As the first team hit the roof, digger began playing a song by her favorite group, AC/DC. The Marines of Grave Digger smashed into the meeting room windows as ‘Hells Bells’ blared from their external speakers.
    Half way across the room, and slightly to the Marines’ left, stood the shocked looking target. The Marines, however, only got a glimpse of him as the drone turned the containment field opaque. The floor in the room shook as the bomb detonated. As was normal, the field projected by the drone took so much power, that it had to drop its cloak, and any other protective fields it used in order to maintain the shield containing the explosion, but it did contain the explosion, but not by much.
    Alert guards saw the drone decloak moments before the Marines crashed through the windows, but instead of firing on the Marines, three of them fired at the drone. During the short fire-fight between the Marines and the guards, the drone tried to maintain the field, but one of the shots had punctured its light armor and damaged its power core. As the field weakened, lethal levels of exotic radiation began to leak out.
    As soon as Digger discovered the drone failure, she sent another to contain the radiation, but enough had escaped to do considerable damage. Four Indian guards died almost instantly because they were too close to the source. Several officials received horrible burns and fell to the floor. The lucky ones were unconscious. By standard earth medical knowledge, everyone in that room, including the Marines got a lethal dose of radiation. Marine armor was very good, and protected the Marines from almost all types of radiation, and environments, but it simply couldn’t stop everything.
    Regardless, the Marines had a job, and they did it. The Ell-tee ordered the teams to stun everyone and evacuate them to the shuttle for emergency transport to Star Dancer Medical.
    Digger activated her last two drones and sent them to lift the wounded up to the roof and into her assault shuttle. Marines used their jump packs to get some of the people to the shuttle, but it was still slow going.
    Once knowledge of the incident was known, Star Dancer sent its emergency shuttles to assist in evacuation and treatment. In light of the incident, combat drones of the type used by the Marines received an armor upgrade. The damage was done, though.
    Forty-seven members of the Indian government and protective detail were evacuated from the chamber. Eleven were either already dead, or died before they could get treatment. Twelve more died of their wounds after receiving emergency treatment on site. Six died on the way to the ship, and seven more sustained permanent crippling wounds and brain damage as a result of the exotic radiation exposure. The remaining eleven members lost their hair, had severe scarring on most of the exposed areas of skin, and would have died of cancer within a year of the incident, but Main Medical repaired the genetic damage before releasing them.
    The thirteen Marines of Grave Digger’s Assault team fared only slightly better. The pilot, of course, was unharmed. However, four Marines, including the Ell-tee died in transit to the ship as a result of their wounds and extended