Ascendant Saga Collection: Sci-Fi Fantasy Techno Thriller by Brandon Ellis (easy to read books for adults list txt) 📕

again, Fox,” growled Jaxx. He strolled to Fox and grabbed his arm, dragging him toward one of the Mez Beds. He lifted him up with a grunt and dropped him on the bed. He put the strange ear muffs on his newfound brother.

39

J-Quadrant, Solar System - Flood of Dawn, Callisto

Fox shook violently on the Mez bed, then relaxed, his eyes shutting, instantly going into REM mode. He was too weak to move. He’d hit his head hard and everything was a blur, accompanied with a streaking pain around his skull. He thought he must have cracked his lower occiput, where the back of his head met his neck, and blood most likely oozed into a puddle around his head, soon to be dripping on the floor. Yet, no warmth or wetness soaked his upper neck. Meh, who cared. He wanted to shrug it off, he’d been through worse. The problem was; his weakness had him in a strange type of paralysis; no shrugging, no kicking Jaxx’s ass, only breathing.

Jaxx placed the ear-muffs over Fox’s head and around his ears. That bastard. What the hell was Jaxx doing? Before Fox could call Jaxx as many names as letters in the alphabet, a shot of lightning coursed through him, his hands immediately succumbing to numbness, his arms tingling, his chest vibrating.

Fox shook. His shoulders beat against the Mez Bed like a jack hammer. Then it stopped. His body calmed. His eyes shot wide and his blurriness faded.

Then blackness over took. And his consciousness moved forward, traveling at an incredible velocity, heading toward an electric-blue vortex, spiraling in front of him, coming closer, closer.

Quiet.

Chirping.

Birds.

The wind blew across pine trees creating a sound similar to a distant ocean.

He opened his eyes.

He stood outside a dropship, his team fanning out across a hillside on planet Taiyo, the cottony puffs and feathery needles born on dense clusters on woody, stout pegged trees blew in the wind, their large barrel shaped red cones stuck up above the branches.

The cones. If he just sniffed the cones for days and days, it would open up his glands, would open up his inner powers hidden in his DNA.

He shrugged away the nonsense penetrating his mind and gathered himself. If he remembered correctly, he was at the last of the Taiyonian invasion, back to snatch Jaxx away from these soulless enemies. Jaxx had betrayed him, had betrayed everyone, and snuck over to the other side. There would be no pity for Jaxx, only justice.

How could this be? This was a memory, one that was real, happening at this very moment. He was trapped in his body, his movements and thoughts the same as the day this really occurred—during the punch in and punch out operation to extract Jaxx. He couldn’t change the memory, he couldn’t rewrite this operation’s mistakes. Or his mistakes. He couldn’t save his compatriots when they needed him. He couldn’t kill the asshole who caused it all.

“The fucking traitor,” mumbled Fox, the same mumble he had at the same exact time and moment it first came—during this operation at the base of a hill full of green and gold ferns, black rock, and small patches of white shrubbery.

“What was that, Sarge?” asked Barnes, a Special Agent Space Marine, S.A.S.M., for short. They were the S.E.A.L.’s of space, under the same branch, under the same types of rigorous missions, though more dangerous, more deadly. The black void of space was a different monster.

“Nothing, S.A. Barnes, continue to fan out. The Taiyonians know we’re here. They wiped out our last effort to gather Jaxx, so let’s not get burned twice by the same flame.” He hated it when he used cliché statements, but they worked.

He looked over his S.A.S.M. team, all fifty yards from each other, some crouched behind boulders, others trees. They were surveying the area, using their combat ready full-face helmets equipped with a heads-up display to detect any approaching enemy, air or ground. They wore striated-ebb nebula titanium exo-suits, weapons magnetized to a thin metal plate on their backs.

An S.A.S.M. team consisted of seven. This one was no exception. That’s all they ever needed to carry out a successful mission, barring the last team that arrived yesterday. All dead, all massacred, just to retrieve this piece of shit named Jaxx.

Fox wasn’t going to make the same mistake as the last S.A.S.M. team.

He held his PR-8 in his hands, and an PSR-110, a long-barreled plasma sniper rifle, was magnetized to the back of his exo-suit. He scanned the area, his helmet bringing up an advanced scouting infrared Optical Rival Reader, ORR, able to sweep the area and detect...everything.

No Taiyonian was within 2.3 radius miles, the farthest the ORR capabilities could reach, though his helmet’s sound detection was picking up the air battle even farther away.

Good.

The Secret Space Program was creating havoc, interrupting the Taiyonian military capabilities on all levels.

His team climbed and crested the hill quickly, allowing themselves a space of no more than fifty yards from one another, a ghost tactic. If an S.A.S.M. team member was fired upon, they could easily locate the enemy and surround, ending the targets before they ever knew what hit them. Another cliché. He rolled his eyes.

S.A.S.M. exo-suits were fast, acting like the Yivix race Mechs of the inner galaxy. They could jump far, carry a hundred times their weight, and take on ample amounts of punishment from cannon fire from just about any extraterrestrial technology out there.

And all this shit, this S.A.S.M. extraction team, for one man; Jaxx.

Fox shook his head, disappointed.

Yet, there was this pull, this connection that he never understood—a tie between him and Jaxx that he couldn’t wait to cut in half.

The S.A.S.M. team stood atop the hill, studying the surrounding area. Nothing but miles and miles of foreign forest lay before them with a vast city tucked in front of a snow-capped mountain range. The city was their target, as that was the presumed whereabouts of Jaxx, where the last S.A.S.M. team located Defector