Tango Down

CONTENTS ALSO IN THE SERIES Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Also by Rick Partlow ALSO IN THE SERIES FROM THE PUBLISHER About Rick Partlow TANGO DOWN ©2023 RICK PARTLOW This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the authors. Aethon Books supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights. Aethon Books www.aethonbooks.com Print and eBook formatting by Steve Beaulieu. Published by Aethon Books LLC. Aethon Books is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead is coincidental. All rights reserved. ALSO IN THE SERIES CONTACT FRONT KINETIC STRIKE DANGER CLOSE DIRECT FIRE HOME FRONT FIRE BASE SHOCK ACTION RELEASE POINT KILL BOX DROP ZONE TANGO DOWN BLUE FORCE 1 “That’s the worst smell in the history of bad smells,” Kyler Dunstan declared, not trying to keep his voice down but muffling the words nonetheless because of a protective hand shielding his nose and mouth. “Holy shit!” “Stow it, Dunstan,” Vicky warned him, and from the way Dunstan yelped, I figured she’d kicked him under the mess hall table. She nodded toward the Tahni flight crews shuffling into the compartment and heading for the food processors. “They’re going to hear you… and some of them understand English now.” “Yeah,” I agreed between bites of my sandwich. “It’s taken us months just to get us all to the point where we can eat in the same compartment without anyone starting a knock-down, drag-out fight. Besides, those are their corvette crews, and they’ve been stuck in those little pieces of shit for a couple weeks now without a bath.” I frowned. “Do Tahni take baths?” “Not enough,” Dunstan said with conviction, and I couldn’t hold back a sharp laugh. It hadn’t been that long ago that I’d found Dunstan annoying and vapid, back when we’d first met him flying a cutter as a mercenary for the Corporate Security Force. He’d saved our lives when we were working undercover for Fleet Intelligence, infiltrating the CSF at the behest of Top and Colonel Hachette. But he’d pulled our asses out of so many tough situations now, I’d even come to appreciate his sense of humor. Had it been that long? It surely didn’t feel like it. It could have been yesterday that Vicky and I were back on Hausos, trying our hand at farming, giving up our lives of war and violence for a chance at a new start. That had worked for a year or so, until a gun-running bandit had decided to use our colony as a depot for his cargo… including a Skrela seed pod. That was all it had taken to draw us both back into this nightmare. Wade Cunningham and Ellen Campbell playing on our old semper-fi, oo-rah Marine sensibilities. They were both dead now. So many people were dead, friends and fellow Marines and innocent civilians, that I had trouble naming them all. Dave Clines, Wade, Ruthie Amendola, Karen Fargo, Captain Solano, and now Top—Command Sgt-Major Ellen Campbell, perhaps the finest Marine I’d ever known. All gone. Dropping off one by one, until I wondered why it hadn’t been me. “What?” Vicky asked, her dark stare discerning. She’d recognized the funk I was falling into. We’d been married three years and two of them had been spent killing and trying not to get killed, but she knew me better than anyone. Knew me better than I’d let anyone. “I ever tell you,” I asked her, “about that guy I knew back in Alpha Company who thought he was immortal?” “Probably,” she guessed, leaning on the table with her chin propped on a fist. “But tell me again anyway.” I laughed at the combination of dry humor, strained patience and, beneath them, the ever-present compassion she tried so hard to conceal, as if showing it was a sign of weakness. “Okay. This guy Svenson in First Platoon used to talk all the time about alternate realities and Quantum theory. According to him, there are infinite worlds out there, realities where I got killed in the desert and my dad and brother lived, where I got killed and Tommy Kurita lived in that first combat we saw. And since I’m the one who’s experiencing this particular reality, it only makes sense that I’m the one who survives it. If someone else is experiencing their own reality, they’d be the one who lived and I’d have gotten killed already. That’s what Svenson used to say, except about himself.” I shrugged morosely. “He got killed on Brigantia. Burned in after his shuttle got hit.” “Well, that only makes sense,”