Larry Correia - Monster hunter siege

Monster Hunter Siege

Larry Correia

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Baen

Monster Hunter Siege-eARC

Larry Correia

#6 in multiple New York Times bestseller Larry Correias Monster Hunter series.

GO BIG OR GO HOME

When Monster Hunter International's top hunter, Owen Zastava Pitt, was given a tip about some hunters who had gone missing in action, he didnt realize their rescue mission would snowball into the single biggest operation in MHI's history. Their men are being held prisoner in a horrific nightmare dimension, and the only way to reach them is through the radioactive ruins of a monster-infested war zone.

As if that wasn't bad enough, its also the home base of the powerful creature behind the devastating attacks on the Last Dragon and Copper Lake. It turns out ancient gods of chaos really hate trespassers. But this god picked a fight with the wrong crew, and now MHI wants payback. Calling on their allies, a massive expedition is formed, and with the odds stacked against them, a legion of hunters goes to war.

Its D-Day at the City of Monsters.

BAEN BOOKS by LARRY CORREIA

Monster Hunter International

Monster Hunter Vendetta

Monster Hunter Alpha

Monster Hunter Legion

Monster Hunter Nemesis

Monster Hunter Siege

Monster Hunter Memoirs: GRUNGE (with John Ringo)

Monster Hunter Memoirs: SINNERS (with John Ringo)

Monster Hunter Memoirs: SAINTS (with John Ringo)*

The Monster Hunter Files (edited with Bryan Thomas Schmidt)*

THE GRIMNOIR CHRONICLES

Hard Magic

Spellbound

Warbound

DEAD SIX (with Mike Kupari)

Dead Six

Swords of Exodus

Alliance of Shadows

*Forthcoming

MONSTER HUNTER SIEGE

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright 2017 by Larry Correia

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 978-1-4814-8255-4

Cover art by Alan Pollack

First printing, August 2017

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

t/k

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America

Electronic Version by Baen Books

www.baen.com

PROLOGUE

Thirty years ago Auhangamea Pitt invaded the Soviet Union. It wasnt his first time, and even though he ended up getting shot through the brain, this trip wouldnt be his last.

His team had been sent by an agency with no name, snuck there in a submarine that had traveled beneath the Arctic ice. They were all pros, collected from various elite units, and given this temporary additional duty. Pitt was the senior NCO, but when you got loaned to Special Task Force Unicorn you no longer held a rank. Everybody was Mister whatever their assigned fake name was for the duration of the operation.

Only Auhangamea Pitt had been loaned to STFU so many times now, the full timers just called him the Destroyer. He had developed a reputation over the years. Hed get the job done with minimal drama and could be trusted to never speak of it again. There were plenty of men who were just as good at covert operations as he was, but many of those would be tempted to ask questions afterwards, like how did that guy with the scales breathe fire? Not the Destroyer. Monday morning hed be back at his day job preparing to fight normal Communists, and he wouldnt give Unicorn another thought until the next time they needed some regular human soldiers to babysit one of their special snowflakes.

They carried no identification, their clothing had no tags, and they were armed with subguns manufactured without serial numbers. They were sanitized. If captured, their existence would be denied, and the rest of their miserable lives would be spent being interrogated by the KGB. There would be no international incident, just a shallow graveif they were lucky.

The mission was comparatively straight forward this time. A Task Force asset had been spying on a secure military testing area on an island. The team would take a raft to shore, go inland, and retrieve him. They werent told why he was there, or why it was important enough to risk sending an attack sub into the Barents Sea to pick him up. Frankly, Destroyer didnt want to know. Nothing good ever came from asking too many questions about Task Force business. He had seen some weird things while assigned to Unicorn, and didnt like to dwell on it afterwards.

The team had been briefed aboard the sub, given a pick up location, and the code phrases to make sure they had the right man. The Destroy had violated his personal rule against asking too many questions, because he needed to make sure this particular asset wasnt too special. Not that he minded, but if the asset turned out to be a five-hundred-pound monstrosity with a bulls head again, theyd swamp the raft. Plus, the horns might poke holes in the rubber.

However, they were told that this particular asset would appear and act like a normal man for the duration. Whatever the hell that was supposed to mean.

It turned out that none of those details mattered anyway, because they walked right into an ambush.

* * *

Two minutes into the hopelessly outnumbered and lopsided fight, a rifle bullet struck Auhangamea Pitt through the base of the skull. The 7.62x54R round was fired from a Dragunov rifle approximately two hundred yards away, but it still retained enough destructive energy to easily shatter the bone and fling blood and brain tissue ten feet. His spinal column was severed, and the medulla oblongatathe part of the brain which regulated unconscious functions like respiration and heartbeatwas completely pulverized.

He had been running. Moving target and poor light. It was either a really lucky shot or the Russian sniper was damned good. Either way, it didnt matter, the base of the brain was the best target in the human body. Hitting it with a bullet was like flipping a kill switch. Hed made that shot several times over the years, and knew that it meant instantaneous death. Lights out.

Only somehow the lights stayed on as hed toppled over the edge of an icy cliff. The sixty foot fall would be more than sufficient to break most of the bones in his body. Going down, he knew he was double fucked, but it wasnt like you could be extra dead. He hit the rocks like a trash bag full of stew.

So when Auhangamea Pitt found himself lying broken in a puddle of blood, paralyzed, but still somehow conscious of the world around him, his first thought was well, this is bullshit.

He laid there for a while, listening helplessly as the rest of his team perished. Once the gunfire tapered off, the Russians walked to the edge of the cliff and shined a light down on him, but it was obvious that he was dead, so they didnt even bother to climb down. Once the flash lights werent pointed at his eyes, he was able to watch the northern lights. The aurora borealis was so beautiful, this wasnt the worst place to die. There had been plenty of close calls in stinking jungles and third world back alleys that would have been worse, so he watched the pretty lights and waited for death, more mystified than frightened.

He was a warrior and warriors die in war. There was no reason to be a big baby about it. Or maybe the bullet had torn out the part of his brain that processed fear? There was either going to be something next, or nothing. All he knew was that he should have gotten on with it by now.