Memento Mori - Mark Gardner
excerpt 2 of 5 from Macabre Multiverse
Mark is an accomplished Sci-Fi writer, and has gone meta with this sci-fi horror in which the character’s names are eerily familiar. He used the gimmick of this book (each story is new and crafted just for the book) to create something new and fun.
What you’re about to read is just 5% of the wordcount.
Memento Mori
Mark Gardner
PFC Scranill: “Incoming!”
SPC Law: “Ensign, we’re cut off!”
CPL Coon: “They’re pushing us back, sir!”
SGT Cellini: “We need to get out of here.”
ENS Carter: “Fall back! Fall back!”
Lieutenant Jeremy Thompkin heard his teammates’ frantic voices. He narrowed his eyes and focused on his heads-up display. He refused to give up. Not yet.
“Hold the line,” Jeremy barked, his voice firm despite the chaos around him. He led his sapper team with the precision of a surgeon, dismantling enemy fortifications and laying traps with a bitter sense of irony. They survived, yes, but at what cost? “Regroup and cover each other!”
The 4th ADF Engineers pushed back as the forward line clawed through the Lone Pine Natural Reserve. Jeremy never wanted any of this. He was an engineer, a builder by nature, forced into the role of a destroyer. He honed his knowledge and skills to create and innovate, but now he wreaked havoc and dismantled.
His HUD tagged incoming hypersonic rounds of hardened tungsten. Frantically, the ADF Command transmitted the retreat order. The 4th ADF Engineers had no hope of surviving the Lunatic bombardment. He threw a desperate haymaker at a Loonie who appeared out of nowhere. The blinding flash slammed the combatants together in a violent embrace.
Madness, he thought as the first penetrator round hit the rise his team defended. A strange feeling spread through his left hand, a dull throb travelling up his arm. He lacked time to eject – the exoskeleton seized around him with a deafening crunch. The once-responsive suit, designed to amplify his movements, now became a vice, its servos locking up under the strain. The metal plating buckled inward, pressing against his body as the world around him tilted. The marvel of engineering that had once empowered him was now a prison, trapping him in place as the exoskeleton crumpled.
End (of excerpt)
Macabre Multiverse (the book this story is from) launches 31.10.2024
I am posting an excerpt from each story until launch, with the final email including the link to get a copy.