“Ships Three and Four, you’ll work your way along the wall, looking for anything unusual.”
“And us?” asked the gunship pilot, a male the commander preferred to keep an eye on.
“We’ll do a scan back a couple of miles from the wall,” he told the male, waving a finger in his face. “I want all scanning equipment to focus on that wall. If anything gives off heat, if anything moves, I want to know. Don’t fire unless I order it, but when I do, I want you to target and fire immediately.”
The male’s ears twitched in agreement, and the commander huffed and turned away. There was nothing he could say to an obedient trooper, but he was still sure that the pilot had been telling the boss about his failures. One day he’d find out for sure, and on that day, the trooper would suffer.
“What if they get to the base while we’re gone?” the pilot asked in a low voice.
“Fool. There’s no way they can get there without some kind of flying craft in that time. And where would they get a flying craft after we shot down the one they came in?”
The pilot looked confused, thinking about an answer to that question. Mmrash turned away with another huff. Let the male waste mental energy trying to come up with an answer to a question that had already been answered.
He wasn’t worried about the base. Not from these Humans, and not yet. There were still forty-five Xlatan there, as well as almost fifty soldiers of a lesser species. Add to that all the technicians who could fight if their hides depended on it, and they had nothing to fear from the abos.
“What’s that?” a voice asked over the comm. “This is Ship Three. We’ve spotted a wide ledge about two miles down the cliff.”
“Go and investigate,” ordered Mmrash, looking out the portal and spotting the ledge they were talking about. “We’ll cover you. Ship Four, continue your sweep.”
Ship Three moved over the ledge, very close to the cliff, its fans stirring up the light dusting of ice crystals that covered the surface of the ledge. Mmrash cursed under his breath. If there had been any tracks on that surface, they’d been wiped clean by the fans of the shuttle.
“We’re down,” came the call over the comm. A moment later the rear hatch came down and the ten troopers ran out, fanning into a covering formation. “Nothing to report so far.”
“Make sure you give that area a thorough look,” ordered Mmrash.
“You think they’re there?” the pilot asked, craning his neck to look to the side where the ledges stretched for several miles.
“It would correspond with the time they had,” the commander said, ears twitching in agreement, “given how far they were from the ledge and the time it would take to climb down.” The commander thought for a moment, his ear tips folded forward in an indication of thought.
Unless they’re still up there on the plateau. Which they might be, if there weren’t many of them left and they were trying to escape detection. That might be the smart way to bet. But his gut feeling was that enough of them had survived that they’d be trying to continue their mission. He might be wrong. In fact, most beings would have given up after being splashed on that high plateau. But from the records he’d read on the Fierce Eagles, whatever those were, they wouldn’t give up easily.
The troopers down on the ledge were moving out, two walking down the ledge to the east and two to the west, while two more went to the cliff face and started looking for anything out of the ordinary. Four remained near the shuttle as a reaction force, a standard Xlatan tactic.
“We’ve found a cave opening,” came a call back. The commander looked down, the HUD on his helmet showing who was talking with a colored pip. Lrator, one of his best sergeants.
“Look inside, but be careful. There might be something living in it.”
He didn’t think that likely; however, he didn’t want to lose troopers because of assumptions.
“It’s a tight fit,” said the trooper who was entering the cave. “Low ceiling.”
“Show me.”
A viewer on the control board of the gunship came to life, showing the commander what his soldier was seeing. It was wide enough inside, with solid rock walls picked out in the soldier’s light. There was a thin sheen of moisture on the rear wall, reflecting the light.
The Xlatan were equally at home in the trees or on the ground, but they’d preferred caves while they were on the climb toward civilization. Their low to the ground method of locomotion made caves and tunnels perfect refuges. This was of a size to fit a clan of his people.
Perfect for us, except for the temperature, the lack of air, and no prey, he thought with a soft snort.
“There’s nothing here,” the soldier said after walking through the cave on his six paws, looking carefully at everything there was to see.
“Head back outside. I still want that ledge searched thoroughly.”
“It’s cold as the hells out here, sir,” said the sergeant in charge of the group.
“And it was even colder higher up,” Mmrash said. The troops had enough warm clothing with built in heating elements. A little bit of cold might seep through, but not enough to be a threat.
“We found something over here, sir,” came another call, this one from the team that was furthest west.
“Show me.”
Again the viewer showed the image of what that soldier was seeing. A large cleft in the cliff, with a space wide enough for a dozen Xlatan to crouch in walking gait. On the far side was a dark hole, reaching down into the earth who knew how far.
“Get a look down the hole. But be careful.”
If the Humans had gone down there, they might be lying in wait to shoot the first being to look over the lip. The soldier moved forward at a slow but steady crawl. He looked over the lip for a moment before drawing back, then looked over again, this time in an attitude of watchfulness. The soldier pulled out a powerful hand light and shone it down the shaft.
Mmrash made a hiss of surprise as he caught the image on the viewer. There was no bottom in sight, even though the light was illuminating the tube down to at least a mile. The soldier started sweeping the light along the walls. He did a thorough job, sweeping the light along the walls, illuminating a ten-foot section at a time. The wall wasn’t smooth, and there were a lot of shadows that couldn’t be seen into. Some overhangs, places where people could hide, but not more than a couple.
The soldier was at it for quite some time. Mmrash checked his timer and was surprised to see that fifteen minutes had passed since they’d found the opening to the tube, and the light was now disappearing into the inky blackness more than a mile in.
“Check it with infrared, then send a radar pulse down.”
It looked like a perfect place for the Humans to descend. Out of the wind, out of sight. But only if there was someplace it was heading to that would lead to their escape.
“Nothing on infrared, sir. Pulsing radar now.”
Again there was no result. The tube was a little over two miles deep according to the return, but that was all they could tell. The trooper picked up a rock and tossed it into the tube, then pulsed radar to follow it down.
“Do you want us to go down there, sir?” the soldier asked, a tone of trepidation in his voice.
“No, but I think sending a drone down might be a good idea.”
The other trooper came into view. With his head and face coverings, there was no way to read his ears. That was the primary means of nonverbal communication among his people, and he missed being able to read those signs.
“Deploying drone,” the second trooper said, pulling out a small disc, no more than six inches across, and tossing it into the air over the tube.
The small recon craft took a few seconds to orient, then started down, its central fan slowing its descent.
If you’re down there, we’ll find you, the commander thought, the tip of his tail twitching in excitement, sliding along the back of his head.
“We’re down a mile, sir. So far, nothing.”
Mmrash didn’t say anything. If the drone found something, it did. If not, they’d have to keep scouring the cliffside.
It took about ten minutes for the drone to reach the bottom, two and a half miles down. It had looked along the circumference of the tube all the way down, checking in multiple frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum. The tube wasn’t smooth, though there were some very smooth sections; mostly it was rough, with the many small crevices and overhangs they’d noted from the examination by the soldier’s light. Still, nothing that could conceal a number of people. If there were a number of people, something the commander still wasn’t sure of.
“We’ve reached bottom, sir,” the soldier said. “A couple of small openings, just large enough for a Xlatan, and a small ledge on the cliff. Other than that, nothing. Do you want us to do anything else to check it out?”
“No. It doesn’t look like they came this way. And it appears from your scan there’s nothing at the bottom. Head back to your craft. We have a lot more territory to cover.”
The relieved troopers both started back, leaning their heads close to each other so they could talk without having to use the comm. The commander couldn’t hear them, as they’d turned their comms down. They can talk all they want, as long as it’s not in front of me, he thought.
“Take us further along the cliff wall to the east,” Mmrash said, pointing to the far side of the ledge. “It looks like a narrow walkway continues on from there. Then we’ll drop down to have a look at that lower ledge.”
The pilot’s ears twitched in acknowledgement and he banked the ship in that direction. Behind them the shuttle took to the air.
“That would have been the perfect place for them to have spent the night,” the pilot said.
Mmrash thought so as well. In fact, he’d been sure he’d gotten them this time. But no, they hadn’t been there, and he could cross this place off his list.
Something was stirring in the back of his mind, something that didn’t fit in with what they thought they’d found. At the moment he couldn’t put a claw on it. No matter how hard he thought, it wouldn’t come to him.
Maybe in a little while, he thought, staring at the cliff as it went by.
* * * * *
Chapter Seven
“A bit of luck, eh,” Basil Paudel said in his English accent.
“A bit of luck, I’ll say,” Joey said, walking right behind the Gurkha Englishman.
They might have missed the opening in the tube wall if not for the sharp eyes of Asuka Yamashuri. The Japanese stealth specialist had eyes like a cat, and he’d spotted the patch of greater darkness in the wall the rest of them had missed. The ninja was fortunately near the front of the line, so there were only four below him who had to climb up, while the rest of them could still climb down.
“It was still a near thing,” Charley said from near the front.
And so it was. Everyone had needed to perform a close rappel. Not really a rappel at all, but a slide down the wall while hugging it. A difficult maneuver, especially when they were trying to remain hidden. If not for the stealth coverings over their winter clothes, absorbing radar while blending in optically with the darkness, they’d have been spotted. Everyone on the team had closed up all the vents on their clothing so that they wouldn’t radiate any heat.
And almost died of heat stroke in a seventy degree below zero environment, the colonel thought, shaking his head. They’d worked fast and had barely gotten themselves and all their equipment into the tunnel. Yamashuri had hung a blanket of active stealth material over the opening, swiftly rippling it to make the textures look like natural rock. They’d heard the drone wiz by on its fans, crouching with bated breath, waiting for it to slow down and scan the blanket more carefully. Fortunately it had continued on, and they’d been able to head down the tunnel.
Now, we need some more luck. If this was a dead end, they were really screwed. Their only chance of survival was to get to the jungle in the canyonlands, where they’d have room to hide, and even more importantly, to maneuver.
“How far do you think we’ve come, sir?” asked Yusef bin Sherif, right behind with his partner, Ahmed Mohammed, carrying the small, lightweight mortar that was their charge.
“No more than a mile, Yusef,” Jonah replied, looking at the tunnel stretching ahead. It had been widening along the way, going from a passage they could barely crouch in to something the tallest member of their party could walk along with plenty of headroom.
It was a couple of yards from wall to wall, and so far they’d continued in a generally downward direction. He estimated that it was still about seven miles down to the foothills of the canyonlands, and at the grade of this tunnel, they only had thirty miles to walk. If they were lucky enough to find a straight way out of here. If there was a way out from this point.
“Sir. You need to see this,” came the voice of Manny Fernandez, their current point man, over the comm.
“What do you have, Manny?”
“It looks like a whole world, sir. A whole damn world stretching out ahead of me.”
“Well, let’s get a look at this place,” Charley said with a chuckle.
* * *
“Nothing,” Mmrash growled, glaring at the cliff as if he was about to attack it for not giving up his enemy. “Not a damned thing on these gods-cursed cliffs.”
“That cave looked like our best bet,” the pilot said, “but I bet there are a thousand caves scattered along this cliff.”
Mmrash could see the cave in his mind’s eye. There was something about it. He punched in some commands on the copilot’s board and pulled up the vid from the soldier who’d gone into the cave. There was nothing there but the sheen of some liquid on one of the walls.
Liquid? It was seventy degrees below zero on that ledge. It couldn’t have been much warmer in that cavern. Unless?
“Shuttle Three. I want you to head back to that ledge and go down that tube. I want a thorough search of all the walls.”
“Sir, we checked it out,” came back the reply from the squad leader.
“Then check it out again. That’s where they went. I want you to find them. So get your men into that hole and find them.”
Mmrash cut off the comm before he started cursing. His voice had already risen well above what he wanted his men to hear out of him.
“What was it, sir?” the pilot asked, looking over at him with questioning eyes.
“Moisture in a high-altitude cave, at below freezing, when there shouldn’t have been any. They spent the night in that cave, and they closed it off and heated it during the night, enough for the moisture to condense on the rock walls.”
“And it hadn’t frozen again? Is that possible?”
“Not if it was water,” the commander growled, his ears twitching. “But if it was some other liquid. Something exuded from the rock wall when the temperature rises. Something that takes longer to freeze than water. I don’t know what it was, but I do know it shouldn’t have been there.”
Mmrash pointed back toward the ledge, now out of sight. “Get us to there as fast as you can. I need to look at that cave.”
* * *
“We’ve withdrawn the contract from the Ravagers,” said the being on the Tri-V, “but I have a feeling their commander is suspicious about our actions.”
They can be suspicious, Jillor, the being known as the boss, thought scowling. The being doing the talking was his immediate superior in the Syndicate. Handling the other Human mercenary company wasn’t his responsibility. Handling the one here was, and he wanted to report they’d been killed. It would be even better if he captured some.
Sometimes the boss thought the hunger for revenge that seemed to infect his species was irrational as all the hells. If they’d just left the Eagles alone, he wouldn’t be worrying about them being here, on his world. It had seemed so easy—just lure them here, get the signal from the ship whose captain had been well paid to let him know when they arrived, then shoot their shuttle down. If not for
that idiot Xlatan commander, they’d have been finished.
Why worry, he thought, closing his eyes. Only a couple of them could have survived, and what can a couple of Humans—not even in their armored suits—do?
But he did worry. This operation, this lucrative commercial activity, was his. He took in the largest cut of the profits, outside of what went up the chain to the council of bosses. There were many organizations that would love to shut them down, and even more who’d like to have this operation in their own pockets.
“Are you doing okay, boss?” his secretary asked over the comm.
“Fine. Fine. But I think I need to get some air.”
Hefting his heavy body out of his chair, he plodded around his desk, then out the door, ignoring the female who stared at him as he passed. Later he might be thinking of her, when he got the heavy things that were bothering him off his mind. He ignored the guards at the entrance as well, waving off the offer to provide an escort. If he, as prime a specimen of his fierce species as there was, couldn’t walk his own operation without protection, something needed to be done to increase their overall security.
The compound was humming with activity. Trucks rolled through the gates, running almost silently on their engines, to line up at the dumping stations. Cranes lifted tree trunks from the beds and dropped them onto the conveyors that ran into the closed building of the processing machines. Dozens of the aborigines worked the line, picking up the vegetable matter, leaves, and branches that fell from the cranes. They went sullenly about their task, until an overseer started plying a whip of agony. Sparks jumped from the long strands onto the slick skin of the natives, eliciting screams. The abos went about their tasks with more alacrity.
There was a scent to the air, the sickly-sweet scent of the vegetation being crushed. The boss couldn’t detect the odor of the substance for which they were mining the forest, but he knew it was there, and it was moving off planet in ever-increasing amounts.
When Eagles Dare Page 7
