Read A Deep Sleep (Valhalla Book 1) for Free Online Page B

clearly not used to reporting directly to a captain. She had been further down the chain of command when they landed, but officers and senior noncoms in the scout units had taken heavy losses and she was the highest ranking scout left in the company. “Scouts are just now reaching the outskirts of the town, no enemy blocking action. There is, however, sounds of gunfire and some sort of engagement along the waterfront. I was going to push the scouts out towards that, see if I can get a better idea of what’s going on, with your permission?”
    “Proceed.” Danford was not sure what to make of that, who was fighting in Haikou?

Chapter II
     
    Lieutenant Ava Kim threw herself down as the entire wall she was crouched behind was shredded by an enemy SAW.
    What did you expect stupid, she mocked herself, when you shot at them?
    She glanced at her tac display. Her unit, 3 rd Recon & Special Action Team (RASAT) had dropped into the bay outside of Haikou about an hour ago. They had waited until their special drop pods plummeted to the bottom of the fifty meter deep bay, just in case the enemy had any sort of mobile patrol on the surface. As they emerged the squads had formed up and moved across the bottom of the bay to the docks of Haikou. She still found it fairly amusing that a spaceport happened to be on the water, giving the name a double meaning. Now, they had emerged and struck at the enemy from where they least expected. The enemy had dispersed their supply dumps to protect them from bombardment and nuclear strikes, but Kim had sent a squad against each of the three largest, while her own squad hit the command post with a full barrage of rockets. The attack was coordinated to occur at the same time as the 1 st company nuclear strike, though those marines weren’t aware of their presence as of yet. Now she needed them to hurry up and push on the town. While the Marines had been outnumbered already, her forty-three Marines were outnumbered even worse. The enemy had far less strength in Haikou than intel suggested, but it was still more than enough to engage and destroy her small platoon. Already she had more than ten down, though she wasn’t sure if they were actually dead or if their suits had just been too badly damaged to continue reporting.
    “Sue, patch me into 1 st Company’s CO.” Lt. Kim hadn’t liked not having a name for her quasi-AI, even if it wasn’t actually alive. She found it awkward to just talk or address it as simply ‘AI’ and such. It didn’t seem to be a common practice, but she found it easier.
    “You are connected to Captain Danford, Lieutenant.”
    “Captain Danford, this is Lieutenant Kim, 3 rd RASAT. We’re attacking the enemy position from the sea, sir. We hit three of their supply dumps and shot up their command post, but we’re pressed pretty hard here.” That was an understatement. She could see the enemy forces bringing more force to bear, at least two-hundred and fifty troops were along her platoon’s frontage now. They’d be able to pierce her line anywhere they wanted pretty soon. They’d still be in for a fight, however, RASATs don’t go down easy. Everyone in her unit had at least five years’ experience, five years of continuous war. There weren’t a lot of privates in this unit, that was for sure. Additionally, they were armed unlike most infantry, even other powered infantry. Each of her marines carried the standard marine rifle, but also they had a light rocket launcher with re-loader in place of the lighter infantry grenade launcher. On top of that, each squad had one suit that dropped the launcher and carried an eight pack of rockets. Finally, she had four SAWs, but these were carried by a single marine, with a special mount on the back of their armor for an auto-loading unit. If they went down, the gun was lost, but they could move faster than a normal SAW team and that was important to RASATs. They relied on speed of movement to accomplish their missions, not