Read Online Titan (Old Ironsides Book 2) by Dean Crawford - Free Book Online

twenty out, Agry reminded himself, with twenty spare for the unexpected. Walking into any Ayleean warship was an endeavour neither he nor his Marines would have undertaken lightly – entering a dangerously damaged vessel was tantamount to suicide.
    ‘Thirty seconds.’
    The pilot’s voice sounded through the fuselage and Agry readied himself, checking his plasma rifle once more and glancing into his optical display to check oxygen levels. His heart rate was elevated, but only by four beats per minute: he’d done this enough times to only get fidgety when the plasma started flying. Not recorded by the monitors was the anxiety twisting at his guts, as much now as it had done on his first combat deployment almost twenty years previously. No matter how hardened a soldier became he recalled his drill sergeant explaining to him that the day a soldier stopped feeling fear was the day they were really in trouble.
    ‘Ten seconds.’

    The pilot’s calm voice filled the troop compartment as Agry called out.
    ‘All arms!’
    The soldiers’ plasma rifles hummed into life as they were activated, and each man checked his neighbour’s face mask one last time for gaps in the seals and their oxygen supply via the tanks carried upon their backs. Satisfied, they sat in tense silence waiting for the ramp to drop.
    They shifted as one as the shuttle swung around, and Agry heard the sound of the engine exhausts change as the pilot altered his power settings to land the craft in the landing bay he had selected on the vast hull. Schematics obtained from Titan’s logs provided a deck plan of the Ayleean ship for the pilots and the Marines to follow via their optical implants, and right now they were using the closest open bay to the bridge that they could find.
    Through the panoramic viewing panels, they could see the Ayleean warship’s shattered hulk, tremendous damage throughout so that they could see deep into the vessel’s superstructure. Then, the side of the Ayleean vessel swallowed them whole as the shuttle entered the landing bay.
    ‘Deck Charlie, midsection, landing now!’

    Agry tensed, one hand ready to punch his harness free as the other held his rifle aimed at the still–closed ramp. The shuttle shook violently as its landing struts slammed down onto the deck and with a hiss of vapor the ramp dropped under hydraulic force and the pressurized atmosphere within the shuttle blasted outward in a white whorl of instantly frozen crystals as Agry released his harness and dashed from the shuttle.
    Behind him forty Marines followed in an orderly flood, running with their suits weighted at fifty per cent normal gravity to provide them with extra speed, agility and stamina.
    Agry thundered down the ramp onto the darkened deck of a small landing bay, the flashlight on his rifle slicing into the gloom. The deck was slippery with ice that glistened like diamond chips in the flashlight beams. Agry ran forward and then dropped down onto one knee, his rifle pulled into his shoulder as behind him the Marines formed two groups and one giant arc of firepower pointed out into the darkness.
    The shuttle’s engines flared with silent white light in the vacuum as it lifted off and pulled out of the bay, ready to return when the soldiers required an extraction. Agry watched the darkness intently but nothing loomed forth to threaten them. His eyes cast down across the ice and sought any sign of footprints, but nothing revealed itself. Behind them, the landing bay doors silently lowered and sealed themselves as the shuttle pulled away into the distance, and suddenly they were totally alone aboard the massive ship.
    Agry looked over his shoulder at his corporal, Ben Hodgson, and pointed ahead with two fingers as he looked. Hodgson advanced forward, his soldiers following him as they were covered by Agry’s contingent. Agry watched as they descended cautiously into the darkness and for a few moments there was nothing but silence. Then a series of