When Eagles Dare

by Doug Dandridge

  “I sure wish we had some bios,” Xou continued, frowning as he looked down on the tiny screen.

  “Maybe if they’d survived the crash,” the colonel said, recalling that they’d brought along a couple of pounds of the insect-sized biological robots, the cutting edge in surveillance gear. The containers had been ruptured, and the killing temperatures of the plateau had made sure none had survived. “Can you make do with what you have?”

  “Of course,” Xou said with a smile. “Just because the tech of the Galactic Union is thousands of years in advance of ours doesn’t mean there aren’t loads of backdoors. I think the more advanced a society becomes, the surer they are that their stuff is foolproof. Arrogant bastards.”

  The arrogant bastards forbade much of their tech to be sold to Earth, which meant that much of it had come in through the black market. Two things Earth engineers definitely had going for them were inventiveness and ingeniousness when it came to reverse engineering.

  “Okay. Set the battlefield, and we’ll move on your command,” Jonah said, clapping his electronics geek on the shoulder.

  Xou opened a small container he pulled out of his equipment bag, releasing a multitude of midge-sized robots. They floated on piezoelectric wings, oriented themselves, and took off.

  * * *

  “We’re picking up some faint electronic signatures, Commander,” Sergeant Lrator reported over the comm.

  “Any visuals on the Humans?” Mmrash asked, looking out of the Tri-V projected over the sergeant’s comm unit.

  “Not yet, but I have a feeling they’re close.”

  Of course they’re close, the commander thought, grimacing. There wouldn’t be electronic signatures out there if there weren’t intelligent beings generating them. Since the Kalagarta had no technology, and none of the Syndicate people were out and about in this region, it had to be the Humans.

  The Xlatan commander sat in his chair, thinking, letting the sergeant wait for his orders. If this was the entire Human party, he needed to pick up and move his other squads so they could surround them, then move to contact. But what if it was just a small contingent sent to decoy the Xlatan? He ran the risk that they’d move through at some other point.

  “We’re picking up a lot of static now,” Lrator said, ears twitching in nervous tension. “I’m sure something is about to happen.”

  “No sign of the Humans on your own sensor net?”

  “No, sir. Somehow they’re spoofing our systems.”

  If they’re even there.

  “I’m going to pick up one squad and move them to your location. ETA fifteen minutes.”

  Mmrash killed the transmission before the sergeant could voice any more of his worries. That was as fast as he could get the closest squad there. The soldiers had to walk to the nearest clearing where they could be loaded, then landed in the clearing closest to Lrator’s squad.

  “I better put this in motion,” he said under his breath, making the connection with Sergeant Kkrall’s squad. A moment later, while he was talking with the other sergeant, the priority signal came in from Lrator. Even before he made the connection, he knew the worst had happened.

  * * *

  “This is my best guess as to their deployment,” Xou said, pointing to the small map on the paper-thin HUD screen attached to his minicomp.

  Jonah and his fire team leaders were gathered around, along with Xebraferd and several of the Kalagarta warriors. The colonel hadn’t wanted to involve the natives in this battle. There were going to be too many fast-moving and powerful things flying through the air, and the Kalagarta weren’t prepared for such a fight.

  “So ten or twelve of them?” Charley asked, pointing at the line on the map. “And electronics scattered to both sides. An emplacement with an extension of sensors and mines?”

  “That’s my best guess, sir,” Xou said, pointing at some other contacts on the map, “and some to their front as well.”

  Jonah stared at the map for a moment, realizing he had to put a plan together quickly. The enemy had to know there were electronic surveillance assets in the area, and they could have additional soldiers here in minutes.

  “Ahmed, this isn’t a proper area for mortars.”

  “So you want us configured as an infantry gun?”

  Jonah nodded, approving of the thinking of his mortarman. Mohammed nodded back and moved off, calling softly for Yusef bin Sherif to join him.

  “Sarah. Sandra. I want you here and here. Kevin, you and Amobi will set up a base of fire here. Try to keep their attention focused on you, but keep your heads down. Asuka, Hotaru, I want you to work your way through their lines here and get ready to ambush their reinforcements.

  “Charley,” he said, looking over at his partner, “you take half the remaining people in on this side, and I’ll take the rest in here. So, everyone know what you’re doing?”

  He was sure his people had a thousand questions, and they all realized they didn’t have time for that. They needed to move, and fast.

  “We move in one minute. I want the attack launched in five. Now move.”

  Everyone was on their feet as the last word left his mouth, gathering into their groups, doing last-second checks on weapons and equipment, then walking without a word into the forest, moving toward the enemy.

  “My people will be accompanying your center forces, Human,” said Xebraferd, glancing back at his warriors, who stamped their spear butts on the ground.

  “I wish you wouldn’t, Xebraferd. This is no place for people without modern weapons.”

  “You are here to fight for us, Jonah, and we will not let you fight without us.”

  But we aren’t fighting for you, the colonel thought. He wasn’t sure who he was fighting for. The party that was paying him, of course, and he had no idea what their plans were for this world. The might not be to the benefit of the Kalagarta. He shook his head and stood up, walking over to his assault team.

  “We ready?” he asked his people.

  Achilles Antonopolis, Joseph Many Bears, and Manny Fernandez stood there fully arrayed for combat. Camo coverings flickered with light and shadow as they attempted to blend in with their surroundings, rendering them difficult to focus on blurs to those who didn’t know they were there. Weapons were held at the ready, and helmet visors were down. There was some anxious twitching of lips, but the bodies were held erect, and all of them were nodding their heads.

  “Then let’s go.”

  Jonah moved in a crouch, his vibration-absorbing boots moving without a sound on the ground. Ten Kalagarta followed, moving just as silently with their strange, half-hopping gait.

  The team stopped and took to their knees two hundred yards from the enemy. The trees and jungle still hid both contingents from each other. The colonel looked over at Ahmed, who was crouching next to a short tube that was mounted on a tripod stand, Yusef next to him. The leader of the gun team nodded, and Jonah raised a hand in the air, then brought it down.

  The gun tube gave out a phut, sending a round out to fly through the relatively open area between the weapon and the enemy. The fifty-millimeter round, weighing three and a half pounds, flew over the two hundred yards in less than a second. It carried two pounds of the most powerful chemical explosive Humankind had ever made, the equivalent of a ton of the old explosives of pre-space Earth.

  If the aliens had set up a laser defense system, they might have intercepted the round. They only had their personal weapons and the mines they had set out, and they didn’t have a chance to aim and fire at a projectile moving at three thousand feet a second. The round flew through the brush that was in the way, its hard case proof against even an impact with a tree trunk. It flew the programmed distance and exploded in the air, sending out a tremendous blast wave that wiped out a pair of fighting positions and the Xlatan within them. It also filled the air with the anti-laser smoke that had proven so effective against the light-amp weapons in the caverns of the midlands.

  Two seconds later the gun f
ired again, this time hitting another section of the line. Along with it, his two snipers opened up, their rifles firing silently into the enemy lines.

  At the same time as the first round went out, Xou set his electronic warfare plan into action. Hundreds of microdrones flared with power; what they’d normally use in a day passed through their circuits in seconds. It burned them out in less than a minute, but that was more than enough.

  “Go,” Jonah hissed, straightening and running forward, his men on his heels.

  Someone yelled a war cry from the other team, the one Charley was leading. Jonah didn’t like that the mercenary was drawing attention to himself during the attack. Then again, it wasn’t as if the enemy didn’t know they were coming.

  A few beams shone in the air, diffused by the smoke. One hit a tree, and the beam that would normally burn through the trunk in an instant took much longer to go only halfway through. Moreover, it pointed like an accusing finger back at the Xlatan who was firing it.

  A series of grenades went off in the air about twenty yards from the gun. Ahmed and Yusef hugged the ground, then went back to servicing it as soon as the last grenade popped.

  Jonah stopped beside a tree whose crown was leaning to the side, the victim of a laser. Bringing his rifle to his eye, he sighted in on one of the Xlatan, one who was sending a laser in the direction of his other team. The cat in the fighting position ten yards to the left jerked back as his head exploded inside his helmet, serviced by one of his snipers.

  The colonel concentrated on his target, his finger starting to squeeze the trigger, and the world blew up in front of him.

  * * *

  Lrator stared at his controller screen as it turned into a kaleidoscope of flashing lights. The device wasn’t telling him what was going on, but it didn’t take a genius to realize they were under an electronic attack.

  “Get ready!” he shouted into the comm, his anxiety getting the better of his leadership. “Something’s about to happen!”

  It didn’t take long for that something to appear. An object exploded in the air to the far left of the line, about twenty yards from the nearest fighting position. It wasn’t very accurate, but from the concussive effect of the blast, it hadn’t needed to be. The two Xlatan nearest the blast were killed instantly, while the next one over was knocked unconscious. The explosion also released an aerosol into the air, and Lrator frantically clawed at his breathing mask, terrified the smoke might be a deadly gas.

  Another blast went off on the other side of the line, killing three more of his people. If not for their body armor and the shock resistance of their helmets, the entire squad would most probably be dead already. The soldier closest to Lrator on the right fell into the back of his hole, his helmeted head turning toward the squad leader. Lrator sucked in a breath as he looked at the ruin of the soldier’s face.

  His three remaining troopers opened fire, sending laser beams out into the forest, sweeping them like endless swords through the trees. That was when the horror of the smoke became real, as the invisible beams were very visible now, pointing back at the warriors who were firing. One of those troopers went down an instant later, something punching through his face. Yet another was hit in the helmet, the tough alloy resistant to the penetration. Still, the Xlatan warrior fell forward, knocked unconscious from the concussive effect transmitted by the round.

  The squad leader looked down at his control system for a moment, realized it wasn’t going to do him any good, and triggered every defensive device implanted around the unit. Every mine, directional or otherwise, went off in an instant. Lrator didn’t think those explosions were going to save himself or his people, but that was all he could do.

  Something hit his helmet, hard, and blackness filled his vision, while he found himself unable to think. He looked up a moment later, still trying to regain his faculties, to see a Kalagarta standing over him, spear in hand and moving toward his face.

  * * *

  Jonah felt like he’d been hit in the chest by a hammer. In that instant, his combat suit hardened into impact armor, preventing penetration. In seconds, the sensation of being struck in the front had been forgotten, for the moment, as he landed on his back ten yards from where he’d been crouching. He was stunned, his mind barely functioning, as he struggled to a sitting position, then tried to rise. The first attempt was a failure, and his mind kept yelling at him to stay down. His people were in the middle of a battle, so that wasn’t an option.

  “Are you okay, sir?” Dotty Farrah asked, kneeling down beside him and running a scanner over his head, moving some seconds later to his chest. “It looks like you have several small hematomas forming on your chest.”

  “Whatever those mines were, I was hit by some of the projectiles.” He noticed there was a crack in the visor of his helmet, a sign that something had hit there as well.

  “Good thing you were wearing what you were,” the medic said, helping him to his feet.

  Jonah was slightly surprised the woman wasn’t trying to keep him on the ground. Then again, she’d been with him long enough to know that wouldn’t fly. She stayed by his side as he moved forward, pulling his carbine back up to his shoulder.

  “Stop!” he yelled out, his helmet amplifying his voice so it roared over the area.

  One of the Kalagarta had a spear raised, ready to plunge it into the throat of the shocked Xlatan looking up at him.

  “Stop, I said!” Jonah yelled again, trying to run and almost falling over as his head spun.

  Xebraferd let out a loud croak, and the warrior reluctantly lowered his spear. Jonah could now pick out the bodies of two of the Kalagarta. Keeping them company was the fallen form of one of his people. His stomach turned as he tried to make out who it was. The helmet had been melted by laser fire, and there was no face visible through the opening. Instead, it was a nightmare of charred bone and the remains of bubbling brains.

  “Get him out of that position,” the colonel ordered, pointing at the Xlatan. “Bind his arms and get him ready to travel. I want us at the top of the pass in two minutes.”

  “Be careful with him,” Charley cautioned, pointing his rifle at the forehead of the cat.

  Avgust and Manny locked the four arms of the Xlatan behind his back. Manny pulled the helmet off the alien, tossing it into the hole, then started pulling everything that looked like it might be electronic off of his suit. The cat let the mercenary do his work, a shocked expression on its face.

  “Who did we lose?” Jonah asked, looking back over at the body of his man.

  “Basil and Ujjal. Basil took a long laser hit to the helmet,” Charley said, shaking his head. “He kept moving, just like he was trained. But the alien bastard was able to keep contact long enough to get penetration.”

  Basil was technically from the same people as Charley, though he’d been raised half a world away. The colonel had thought of the man as well mannered, quiet, and quite disciplined. And he hated what he was about to order.

  “Make sure all his electronics are disabled. We’ll have to leave him here.”

  There were no complaints, though Jonah knew the rest of his people had to feel as badly as he did. No matter their religious tradition, or lack of one, Humans wanted to believe that their empty husk would be interned with all the ceremony that would set them in the memories of their fellows, not left to rot or scavenged on a world thousands of light years from their own.

  “We have an aircraft on approach!” Xou yelled out as the party ran up the pass, pushing the Xlatan ahead of them.

  Jonah could hear it now, the faint whistling of high-speed engines in the distance, but coming closer.

  “Any sign of others?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Can you take it down, Ivan?” the colonel asked, looking at his chief scout, who was running about ten yards to his right.

  “I can try,” the Russian said, reaching over his shoulder to pull the short tube from its sheath. The mercenary pulled one section out of the other to
extend the tube, then unfolded and engaged the pistol grip and the shoulder stop. “Maybe over there,” Ivan said, pointing with the tube toward a small clearing.

  “Don’t get your ass shot, you dumb Russian,” Avgust said with a short laugh.

  The company rushed up the incline of the pass at about eight miles an hour, a pace they could all keep up for seven or eight miles. The Xlatan was struggling, and Manny kept pushing the cat with his rifle.

  “Keep moving, you bastard, unless you want me to leave you on the ground with a round through your head.”

  The colonel wasn’t sure the alien understood the words, but he seemed to get the meaning. The Xlatan was trying to keep up, but it was obvious he wasn’t used to running as a biped, and his species didn’t have the stamina of Humans. That last wasn’t surprising. Humans had evolved as hunters that ran their prey down over distance. Most other predatory species were ambush hunters and had never had a need for the long-distance stamina of Humans. There were exceptions, but the cats didn’t seem to be one of them. Still, the fear of death drove the alien on beyond his limits.

  “I’ve got it,” Ivan hissed through the short-range comm.

  Jonah angled over that way, stopping just before he entered the clearing. The scout had the tube to his shoulder and was tracking something through the trees that was not yet visible. Then it was, just a flash as it passed into the air over the clearing, flying low. That flash was enough, and Ivan triggered his rocket.

  The launcher was a multipurpose weapon, useful against both armored ground vehicles and aircraft. The launcher pulsed an electromagnetic wave that accelerated the missile out of the launcher in the general direction of the target. A moment after launch, the rocket engine ignited, and it moved too fast for the eye to track. The computer brain of the weapon knew where it was, and where the target was. With a burst of steering jets, it angled toward the target.