Rogues,
I can’t begin to put into words how excited Dan and I are to be finally releasing Orion Axis to you this week.
Anyway, enough rambling, here’s an action packed excerpt, from Book 1 – Tilted Axis, to get the blood pumping!
David
Orion Axis 1 – Tilted Axis Excerpt
The doors slid open and the warm mid-morning air enveloped them. Ahead, the container city loomed. Behind it, a crane swung lazily. To the right, Spire 2 rose into the sky. In the distance, the others did the same, blue against the gray sky.
Everything was still for an instant, the world cut out like layers of paper in front of him.
Ward stopped and looked up, his skin tightening into gooseflesh. Angles. Trajectories. Vantage points. The weight of his tombstone around his neck suddenly.
He drew in a sharp breath and the world slowed down around him.
His muscles tensed and groaned under his skin as he turned, throwing his hands into Arza’s shoulder, shoving her sideways.
The force shunted them apart, her flying right, and him kicking left.
The glass-fronted sliding door behind them erupted in a shower of glass, the crack of shattering tiles ringing out from the reception area. Maude screamed. The air ruptured.
A boom rang out, a clap nestled inside it. Ward’s eardrums sucked against his brain as he landed, the force of the shot ripping between him and Arza enough to warp the air.
His hip cried in pain as he scrambled sideways, rolling and kicking himself to his feet, diving for cover that wasn’t there.
On the other side, Arza was scuttling in a bear-crawl toward some parked cars, swearing as she did.
Ward dove and rolled over his shoulder as another shot rang out, concrete shooting into the air in a geyser of dust and fragments.
He made his feet and started sprinting, legs pumping as he made a beeline for the nearest container, about thirty meters away.
Every few steps, he hit the brakes, twisted, sidestepped, and then took off again.
Two more shots rang out, neither hitting their mark. One clanged into the corner of the container he was heading for and splintered in a shower of sparks, and the other sailed overhead and ricocheted off the ground behind him, the angle too shallow for it to bed.
The main alleyway between the two sides of the container city was wide, but wherever the shooter was stationed, the angle wasn’t deep enough to cut around the near corner.
Ward’s shoulder hit the metal, and he stopped, breathing hard, his skin prickling with sweat.
He knew he trusted his instincts. The shooter had seen them come into the port — followed them maybe — maybe all the way from Klaymo’s, though he didn’t know how — and had watched them go into the admin building. Taking a shot at a moving target wasn’t easy, especially on a bike, and especially with Ward riding like he was. But from a high angle? Targets coming straight toward you? Unsuspecting, through a doorway? Both clustered together? No wind in the container city, a reasonably close shot considering how far Sadler had been picked off from? That was a sniper’s dream. Ward had seen it, felt the scope on him. If it was him, it was how he would have done it. That’s always what the AIA taught. If it was you, how would you do it? Like that, only he wouldn’t have missed.