Read Exodus: Empires at War: Book 7: Counter Strike for Free Online

all avenues at once.
    The outer perimeters of the Cacas were still
fighting the Marines coming at them on their level, while the assault force of
Naval Commandos came from above and took the bomb in seconds of intense
fighting.  They duplicated the techniques of the Marines who had disposed of
the first bomb, and then there were two.
    *    
*     *
    The beam converted the torso of Khrushchev to
red tinted vapor, while his head and shoulders, arms still attached, fell to
the floor.  The legs tottered for a second before they joined his staring head
on the floor.  The beam continued on in a sweep that the other men ducked
under, then flew down the hall to hit the canister of negative matter being
carried up the corridor.  The beam sliced into the tank and released the
compressed gas.
    The trailing man yelled out and ran back as the
gas dissolved everything it touched.   Petty Officer First Satrusalya moved as soon as the gas
started billowing out of the rent in the tank, bits of the skin on his hands
and parts of the sleeves on his uniform disappearing, disintegrated by the
negative matter.  He still moved fast enough to jump forward and away from the
disaster, which caught the other man who had been carrying the canister full in
the body.  The Ranger disappeared, taking almost the same amount of mass of
negative protons with him.  The rest ate at the walls, ceiling and floor, as
well as the air around the tank, until it had all cancelled out.
    Cornelius stared
in horror at the place where a man had ceased to exist, not even an apparent
atom of his body left.  It was horrible what had happened to Khrushchev, but there
were still identifiable remains there.  And even worse, the means of disposing
of the bomb were gone.  That’s why we brought along the laser cutters ,
he thought, trying to drive the images of the death of two men from his mind,
especially the total elimination of one.  If that damned bomb goes off,
we’ll all be just as gone, even if it does leave some of our atoms to fall into
the black hole.
    The Cacas continued to put fire into a position
that was untenable from its lack of cover.   The beam flew overhead, forcing
Cornelius to attempt to push the atoms of his body into the floor,
unsuccessfully of course.  He fired his own weapon, sweeping it at chest level
a hundred meters down the straight corridor.  “We need to get out of here,” he
yelled to his men.  The negative matter and its heavy container were the reason
they had taken a corridor in the first place, that and the need for speed.  
“Put something on them that will take their attention off us, and someone find
us an alternate route.”
    “Fire in the hole,” called out Specialist
Owusu, just after a beam forced Sergeant Pasco to roll into the wall to avoid
it.  What looked like a streak of light came through the center of the
corridor.  Something exploded about two hundred meters up the corridor,
followed by a cloud of smoke and the shimmering of a falling invisibility
field.
    “Good job,” said Cornelius, glancing at the
other Ranger.  He looked back in time to pick up a target through the billowing
smoke, the horned head of the crouching Caca unmistakable.  He automatically
developed a sight picture through his scope and squeezed the trigger, sending a
bright beam that split the smoke just before it covered the target again.  The
body that fell forward from the smoke to hit the floor hard, hole through the
faceplate, showed that his aim had been true.
    “I’ve got us a way out of here, sir,” called
out Satrusalya over the com.
    “Show me,” ordered the Lt, relieved that the
Commando was still functional.  The map of the local station came up on his
visual centers through his implants, and he started to crawl back, firing a
beam every couple of seconds down the corridor, as he looked at the route the
Commando was proposing.
    That could work , he thought, flinching
in mid thought as another beam came