Read Online The Covenant of Genesis by Andy McDermott - Free Book Online

aircraft.
    A hissing roar from one of the boats, horribly familiar to Chase . . .
    He shoved Bejo back down. ‘Duck!’
    The Otter’s left wing exploded, hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. Shrapnel tore through the plane’s aluminium skin. What few of the windows remained intact were splattered with Ranauld’s blood.
    Chase opened his eyes. The Otter’s engine was still running, but fire was licking up its ravaged port side.
    Another engine started up, an outboard. The other crewman on the pontoon dock had leapt into the Pianosa ’s boat. He revved it to full power, turning as hard as he could to swing round the burning plane—
    He barely got twenty feet. Another RPG lanced from the speedboat and hit his craft square in the side, flipping it over and reducing him to a red haze amidst a storm of splinters.
    More bullets smashed into the boxes. Chase fumbled for the catches of his deep suit. ‘Get me out of this thing!’
     
    The cruiser closed in, dropping another speedboat from its stern hoist into the water with a frothing smack. It leapt away from its parent vessel, heading round the survey ship’s stern.
    The pirate manning the heavy machine gun on the cruiser’s bow took aim at the Pianosa ’s superstructure, pulled the trigger—
     
    Lincoln led Nina along a passageway, seeing another crewman ahead wielding a fire extinguisher. Black smoke billowed round him. ‘Shit!’ Lincoln said. ‘We’ll have to go back around—’
    The crewman’s chest exploded in a spray of gore as a .50-calibre round tore through him.
    The passageway echoed with a rapid-fire metallic bam-bam-bam as more thumb-sized bullets punched a line of holes straight through the hull and inner walls, searing across the corridor and ripping out again through the other side.
    The holes got closer, advancing with frightening speed—
    Nina dived to the deck. She tried to pull Lincoln down with her, but too late. A bullet hit his upper arm - and blew it off below the shoulder.
     
    Chase and Bejo had managed to unlock the deep suit’s shoulder fastenings and some of the clips on its side when the sound of the machine gun reached them. Chase recognised the distinctive chugging booms immediately - a Browning M2, a weapon in service all over the world, practically unchanged for almost eighty years . . . because it was exceptionally good at ripping apart anything unlucky enough to appear in its sights.
    ‘Shit!’ he gasped as ragged holes burst open in the Pianosa ’s superstructure. He clawed at the remaining clips on his suit - then looked round sharply at a sound from behind.
    Another speedboat, rounding the ship’s stern. More pirates aboard it.
    They saw him.
     
    Nina screamed as splintered metal and scabbed paint showered her. More bullets slammed overhead . . . then stopped. The machine gun’s rattle paused, then resumed, now aimed at a different part of the ship.
    She sat up, horrified by the sight before her. What was left of the dead man at the end of the corridor was mercifully obscured by smoke, but Lincoln was slumped against the wall at her feet. The white wall above him was stained with red, a lopsided hole at its centre where the bullet had continued on after inflicting its carnage. Nothing remained of his upper arm but a sickening stump of torn meat, streams of dark blood running down on to the deck.
    ‘Oh, Jesus . . .’ Ignoring the pain in her leg, she crouched beside him and checked his pulse. It was weak, irregular. ‘Can you hear me?’
    Lincoln’s eyes fluttered open, struggling to focus. ‘What happened?’ he mumbled, trying to sit up.
    Nina gently pushed him back. ‘Keep still. You’ve been shot. Don’t move.’
    ‘My arm hurts . . .’
    She choked back a sob. He hadn’t yet realised what damage had been inflicted upon him. ‘Oh, God,’ she whispered, unsure what to do. There was a first aid kit in the lab, but she had no idea if it would be any use on a wound of this magnitude.
    But it was his only