Read Online America's Galactic Foreign Legion - Book 1: Feeling Lucky by Walter Knight - Free Book Online

eyes, didn’t have a chance. We cut them down
unmercifully. Private Nesbit, with total disregard for his own
safety, nuked an entire company of spider commandos. Private Lopez
engaged the enemy in hand to claw combat, stabbing a spider
commando through the eye. Medic Ceausescu tried to patch up a
wounded spider, but the bug just kind of fell apart. Also, we found
looted personal effects from missing colonists. We are still
investigating what happened to them. I expect the
worst.”
    “ Great! Good work,” said
Coen. “Can you put Ceausescu on the video camera? It will make a
good human interest story to get a female legionnaire’s perspective
from the front.”
    As I turned to look at Private Ceausescu, the
camera panned to the right and zoomed in on her. “Screw you,
Sergeant Wilson!” said Ceausescu, still upset as she flipped the
bird at the camera. “Come join us, and I’ll shoot your other foot
off – and more!”
    “ And that was medic
Ceausescu gesturing about what she thinks of the spiders,” said
Coen. “Cut! We will do some editing on that, too. No problem. We
have enough. By the way, Sergeant Wilson won’t be joining you. He
is staying back at base camp in his new capacity as liaison for the
press and all things video-related.”
    “ Good place for him,” I
responded.

    * * * * *

    We searched in a grid pattern. Rooting out
the spiders began in earnest as the rest of the First Division
landed. Captain McGee was so happy about all the good press his
company got that he promoted me to staff sergeant and made Lopez a
corporal. Even Sergeant Wilson got another stripe. We had no more
contact with the enemy. When the platoon made camp at the fourth
spider hole, we enjoyed the downtime.
    This spider hole had iron
doors on it. Nesbit was about to nuke it when Captain McGee ordered
us to wait for the engineers to blow it. The locals were
complaining about all the nukes being set off. Something about the
damage to the environment. Okay, so ... a
tree is a tree. How many more do we need to look at? Don’t they
know there’s a war going on?
    Another problem was that every time we set
off a nuke, the spiders would pop out of a hole and shoot a nuke
back at us. I guess that made the headquarters geeks nervous.
    It was pleasant just lying there in the
evening shade doing nothing but watching the starships in orbit go
by. My feet hurt. We couldn’t go anywhere anyway because supply
hadn’t caught up with us. We still had plenty of ammo, but we were
short on food. I got bored, so when the engineers didn’t show up on
time, I blew a small hole in the iron doors with my rifle
mini-grenades.
    Suddenly, there were bright flashes coming
from space. It was a spider counterattack. Nukes were going off on
the horizon and getting closer. We jumped into the spider hole. It
quickly took us deep below the surface of New Colorado. And a good
thing too, because a nuke crashed down on our old campsite. The
hole was sealed shut, so we kept going. We walked for miles. The
radio was dead. It wouldn’t work below ground. Or maybe Kool broke
it. I don’t know. I hate the dark. It gives me the creeps.

    * * * * *

    #64, habitat tunnel company
guard, and his two companions saw the humans approach way too late
for an effective ambush. That was the price for not being alert on
a boring do-nothing post. There must have been twenty of the human
pestilence. They would flash a red strobe light every ten seconds
to light their way. #64 pressed himself as flat as he could against
a nook in the side of the rock wall. #88 did the same at the
opposite wall. #89 pressed flat to the ceiling. The human
pestilence on point passed by. If only the other humans would pass,
too, #64 would shoot them from behind as he radioed for help.
However, the humans stopped a claw’s length away. Come on, just go by ,
thought #64. God, they are so hideous
looking. Monsters!

    * * * * *

    I stopped. The hairs raised
on the back of my neck. Total darkness. I