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Back Final Days Save as PDF
Chapters (32)
  1. ONE
  2. TWO
  3. THREE
  4. FOUR
  5. FIVE
  6. SIX
  7. SEVEN
  8. EIGHT
  9. NINE
  10. TEN
  11. ELEVEN
  12. TWELVE
  13. THIRTEEN
  14. FOURTEEN
  15. FIFTEEN
  16. SIXTEEN
  17. SEVENTEEN
  18. EIGHTEEN
  19. NINETEEN
  20. TWENTY
  21. TWENTY-ONE
  22. TWENTY-TWO
  23. TWENTY-THREE
  24. TWENTY-FOUR
  25. TWENTY-FIVE
  26. TWENTY-SIX
  27. TWENTY-SEVEN
  28. TWENTY-EIGHT
  29. TWENTY-NINE
  30. THIRTY
  31. THIRTY-ONE
  32. THIRTY-TWO

His heart thudding, he watched the drone pass overhead but, instead of blowing him to pieces like it had Naz, it kept going. Monk let his head fall back against the gnarled trunk behind him and groaned with relief. He had two, maybe two and a half minutes tops, before it came back his way a third time.

He quickly crawled back up the embankment and peered through the long grass in time to see one of the two hijackers wheeling the containment unit back over towards the VTOL. The VTOL’s nose section had meanwhile opened up to reveal a ramp, looking like some winged monster with its jaws wide open and its tongue lolling across the road.

Monk glanced beyond the ruined APC, now struggling to push itself the right way up, like some mortally wounded animal, and saw the drone once more pass across the road and into the treetops on the far side. Before he could change his mind, he leaped up and ran, crouching low in order to present as small a target as possible, before dropping to one knee and preparing to open fire.

One of the hijackers spotted him and shouted a warning. Monk instantly let loose a rapid blast of fire from his Cobra, and saw the man collapse with a scream. The second hijacker ran for the cover of the containment unit, and began to return fire.

Monk flattened himself on the road and glanced towards his truck. He had maybe sixty seconds before the drone passed back over the road and spotted him. If he could take out emaining hijacker before then, he could hide under the truck bed, where the drone’s IR sensors wouldn’t be able to distinguish his heat signal from that of the engine.

Monk heard the surviving hijacker reload his weapon, and took it as his cue to again dart forward. A second later, he heard a buzz-saw whine coming from entirely the wrong direction.

He gazed up in stupefaction at a second drone hovering almost directly over the roof of his truck, the downdraft from its rotors scuffing up dirt and leaves from the tarmac as it moved closer. At the same time, he heard the buzz-saw rattle of the first drone returning through the trees.

There’s two of them, Monk realized, with a sudden lurch of terror. Maybe the second one had stayed invisible on the far side of the truck, or maybe he’d activated a motion detector of some kind . . .

The last thing he saw was the flash from an exhaust port as the drone launched a grenade at him.

FIVE

Copernicus City Medical Centre, Luna, 20 January 2235