Read Online Alien Enigma by Darrell Bain, Tony Teora - Free Book Online

Earth had colonies and hadn't been conquered by now. He certainly had no idea, but the Sinchik had originally been very curious about the location of Earth. If they had been told anything, no one knew what they had done with the knowledge. That was one of the worst things about their situation, not knowing what might be happening back on Earth.
    "Here?"
    "Jah," he answered as if Doug was his superior.
    Doug grimaced at the way the boy spoke but it wasn't his problem other than in a broad sense. "Hello!" he called and parted the curtains. He stepped inside.
    A naked woman with flowing red-blonde hair rolled off the low lounge she had been sitting on and came to her feet. She took one look at him and turned her back.
    "Buster, if you came here to get laid, you may as well go back where you came from. I'm not raising a kid to grow up as a slave."
    ***
    "I don't know where we're going," the tall rangy NCO with six stripes and a diamond in the middle of the chevrons and rockers said. He was answering Corporal Dan Bullet's question, the first one after his short brief on the alert the unit had just received. First Sergeant Ian Watkins spoke with a very slight lisp from a scar that began near the corner of his mouth and ran up the left side of his face to near the hairline. "All I can tell you at this point is that it'll be an extra-solar mission."
    The corporal nodded his thanks soberly but Watkins could see how hard he was trying not to grin with excitement. It made him nostalgic for a moment, remembering when he had been that young and enthusiastic about going off on hazardous missions, having not a thought in the world that he might die in the process. All youngsters thought they were immortal. It took seeing the bloody carcasses of friends and comrades to remove those deep-felt thoughts that it could never happen to you.
    And of course, Watkins did know where they were headed. The clandestine network of senior grade enlisted marines had passed that bit of intelligence on to him but he'd never reveal the source. He was more likely to turn his back on an enemy than do that. They were going to the area of a small cluster of stars where interstellar ships regularly disappeared, three so far, a potential clusterfuck, or so he figured. Otherwise, why the need for six hundred marines? He'd also heard there was something unusual on a planet within the cluster but that was as far as it went. What it meant to him was that he needed his troops even more prepared. Lots of bullets, bombs and extra weapons, Watkins thought as he looked out at the marines in the base gymnasium. The gym also served as an auditorium.
    As he continued answering such questions as he could, he couldn't help wondering what might be waiting for them out there. He, like all the others here, had volunteered for this particular unit, a strange bob-tailed battalion of two companies, consisting of three platoons each, and with a heavy weapons platoon and a headquarters platoon added. It counted a shade over six hundred troops overall and was top-heavy with combat-experienced NCOs and junior officers. Each platoon registered eighty of the toughest and most experienced marines available, drawn from all over the Corps.
    A few navy Seals and Black Op Special Forces were aboard, but they seemed to stay out of the way and kept to themselves. Watkins once had a bar fight with a Seal which he'd won by finally smashing a beer bottle over the man's head; he'd never really appreciated the attempt to steal his lady. But that was when he was younger and a little less wise. Whatever the mission entailed on this extra-solar excursion, he thought it would be a fitting capstone to his career. He had volunteered for exotic-world training shortly after the quantum drive opened up their little corner of the galaxy to exploration and gone on to see action on a number of planets. He read incessantly about the colony worlds and what was being found on them and how other marine units had fared