Prolog
Seventeen shots. Seventeen shots slammed into the rough stone right beside me. The bastard had actually just emptied his entire magazine. Me, on the other hand? I just sat there, hands trembling around my automatic rifle, completely at a loss for what to do next.
“Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!” the words kept escaping me as my shaking fingers tried to feel how many rounds I even had left.
More projectiles cracked into the stone dangerously close to me. That’s the life of a skimmer for you, gentlemen. Simple. Complicated, but simple.
I dared to peer out from cover and fired three deliberate shots of my own. The report boomed through the vault of the ruin. For a second, I thought I’d hit him, but I was dead wrong—figuratively and literally. A head popped into view nearly a hundred meters away from where I’d been aiming. In his hands, the guy was holding an EG-89 assault rifle.
“Oh, kiss my ass!” I yelled, ducking back down immediately.
Except this time, the bullet didn’t just slam into the wall—it punched straight through it. A fist-sized hole suddenly gaped in the stone. Armor-piercing ammo? Where the hell did that guy get the money for that? But those were questions I’d worry about once I made it out of here alive.
I shoved the barrel of my automatic rifle through the hole and opened fire blindly until all I heard was a hollow click. Empty. I lowered the weapon, let the empty magazine drop carelessly to the floor, and... realized I didn’t have a single spare left.
“Oh, shit!” I roared and took off running. I was completely unused to being this unprepared. Dammit! the thought raced through my mind. This isn’t just bad, this is fucking life-threatening. Lucky for me, I soon realized the other skimmer wasn’t pursuing.
Utterly exhausted, I made my way back to my small bunker. Back to where she lay. Critically ill. My wife. I collapsed onto the floor beside her—completely at a loss for what to do next.
