Ascendant Saga Collection: Sci-Fi Fantasy Techno Thriller by Brandon Ellis (best novels to read in english .txt) 📗

palm and the broken piece of rifle barrel, and all the way past her wrist as firmly as she could handle. Her eyes teared up in pain, and she held in a vomit. This was beyond excruciating.

She lifted her broken wrist toward her mouth and used her good hand and her teeth to tie a knot, then pulled back tightly, making sure the knot wouldn’t come loose.

A sharp sting went up to her fingers and back down her arm. She held her bloody wrist with her other hand, scrunching her eyes closed, waiting for the sensation to die down.

She opened her eyes. If the Kelhoon caught her like this, then she was a dead woman. No time for pain.

She snatched the rifle she’d just broken, and rested the now half-length barrel on her knee. She touched the trigger and aimed at the opening in the floor, hoping the shortened barrel wasn’t a major deterrent to the weapon’s function.

She remained quiet, targeting the open latch. Only an idiot would walk through that hole right now, unless they thought she was terribly injured, or dead.

They must have thought she was dead.

Fingers curled around the edge of the opening, then a green head, yellow highlights around the scaly brow, and white stripes near the mouth poked into view.

Wapooo!

The rifle pressed against the crease in Rivkah’s upper arm, letting out a purple blast. The shot whipped the idiot’s head to the side, cracking his skull where the ion blast impacted. The soldier lost its grip and fell lifeless down to the inner base of the tower, making a loud thud sound when it hit the ground.

A grunt accompanied the thud. There was no way that warrior survived the shot, let alone the fall. The lizard-head shouldn’t have made any sounds at any time after the fall.

It had to be a second Kelhoon.

She scooted over to the opening, slowly pointed her gun down, then peered cautiously through the hole. She quickly moved back, taking a picture in her mind at what she saw.

A long ladder from the lookout extended the entire way to the floor. And indeed, two Kelhoon lay at the bottom of the ladder. One clearly dead, smeared in green blood, and the other pushing himself into a seated position, rubbing his head.

Rivkah pointed her rifle at the Kelhoon, loudly whispering, “Hey.”

He looked up and hissed.

Wapooo!

Rivkah shot true—right between the eyes. The warrior slumped to the side.

She swung the rifle over her shoulder, the strap snug tightly against her, and let her bad arm drop to her side as she took a step after step down the ladder.

Her wrist aching, she did her best to use her bad hand to balance her on the ladder, practically flopping her hand on every rung, moving swiftly, holding in the agony at each step. At the bottom rung, she jumped away from the two dead Kelhoon, and landed, bending over in pain, holding her broken arm, shaking her head. There was no way she was going to save anyone in this condition.

Didn’t matter. She had to.

A cool breeze brushed against her, and she gazed up to see the bottom tower door wide open.

It was her exit. Or her death.

She made it to the doorway, and pressed up against a wall, peaking around the door frame to see if anyone was coming.

She quickly ducked inside. Dozens were heading her way, marching slowly, their rifles pointed at her tower. Slade wasn’t shitting around anymore.

She rushed over to the two motionless Kelhoon at the foot of the ladder. She patted them down, hoping to find a percussion weapon, something that resembled a G9, Galactic Scalable Offensive Hand Grenade.

Her good hand closed around cold metal. She pulled back. A knife. Kind of. This was no ordinary knife, this was a KH Whistle, which she’d used during her time in the Secret Space Program. She had no idea what the Kelhoon called these in their own screwed-up language, but these knives not only stuck into people like regular combat knives, they also had an explosive at the end of each hilt that could blow up an armored vehicle.

She withdrew it from the Kelhoon’s belt, placing it gently on the ground. She searched more, found another, placed it beside the first.

She frisked the second dead Kelhoon. Two more KHWs.

She picked them up one by one, attaching all but one to her belt. She held up the last one, tilting the hilt toward her eyes, wishing that it was day instead of night, so she could see the detonation timer.

“Just go with it, Rivkah,” she said to herself. She bit down on the dull side of the blade and twisted the round timer at the end of the hilt, hearing it click. She didn’t know how much time would elapse before the knife went boom, but going boom was all that mattered.

She flung the knife out of the tower. It whistled loudly as it flew in the air, until the blade stuck into the ground.

Silence.

Then commotion rang out from the Kelhoon advancing toward her, and many heavy feet pounded across the terrain, away from the KHW.

Rivkah hid behind the metallic tower door and crouched.

Krackow!

The tower rocked back and forth, and dust from the cement holding the rocks together fell from the walls. A few hisses and whelps told her she’d tagged some Kelhoon slime buckets. Perhaps they were down for the count, never to get up again.

A Whistle screamed into the tower, then another. Two KHW’s twirled by her, whizzing a few feet from her face, and sticking into the back wall. She heard the tick of the timers counting down, and her stomach turned into a ball of lead trying to crawl its way up her throat.

If she did nothing, in a few seconds she’d be a mess of flesh spread all over the inside of this tower.

She unclipped a knife, and ran out of the tower. The Kelhoon were already baring down on her.

She rushed forward, her boots gripping the grass