When Eagles Dare

by Doug Dandridge

  “I greet you, Humans,” said one of the older Kalagarta. “I am Chief Allaman of the North River Tribe, and this reprobate to my right is Chief Allasher of the Black Swamp Tribe. The other gentlemen present are the war chiefs of our tribes, as well as those of eight other tribes.”

  “Why have you all gathered here?” Jonah asked, now wondering if the feast being prepared had anything to do with them at all, and if the talk of messenger trees was just something the natives were pulling out to fool the Humans.

  “We are all here to meet with you,” said Chief Allasher, his gill slits opening and closing in a show of emotion. “These invaders have killed our people and destroyed our forest. Ten tribes that used to hunt the lands they despoiled are no more. And soon it will be the turn of our tribes, if something isn’t done.”

  “We aren’t sure what you expect us to do,” Jonah said, watching as the gill slits and eyes started signaling their dismay. “We’re a small unit of light infantry. Our job here was to scout out the compound, so other heavy troops could come in to take them out.”

  “When will these other warriors arrive?” asked one of the younger Kalagarta, hunching forward.

  “We’re not sure they will arrive,” the colonel said.

  The assemblage exploded, everyone yelling at once. It overloaded the translation software, but the colonel didn’t need to know what they were saying to get the gist of it.

  “Why wouldn’t they arrive?” asked Chief Allaman, holding up his hands to silence the rest of the assemblage.

  “We think we were set up by the Syndicate,” Jonah said, looking straight into the eyes of the chief. “The people who run the compound. We must have pissed someone off in their organization during another mission. They were waiting for us and shot us down on the high plateau.”

  “Then you will try to get off the planet and get back to your own people?” asked another war chief. “And we will be left to our own devices to watch our world destroyed around us.”

  “I don’t think we’re going to be able to get off this world,” Jonah said, shaking his head.

  “Then what will you do? Hide in the jungle? We might be able to help you while we can, but eventually you will be on your own.”

  “We know that, Chief Allaman. My people have discussed the situation, and we’ve decided we’re not going to hide out in the jungle until there’s no place to hide. And we’re not about to climb back into the frigid hell up above.”

  “So you plan to do, what?” asked the other chief.

  “We plan to attack their compound,” Jonah said, shrugging his shoulders. “I don’t think we’re going to be successful, but we have to try. And maybe, just maybe, our backup will show up.”

  “Then we will go in and attack with you,” said Allaman, looking over at his fellow chief and obviously getting a sign of approval.

  “Your people aren’t equipped for a fight like this,” Charley said, shaking his head. “Everyone you send in will likely be killed.”

  “And if we sit here,” croaked one of the war chiefs, “we will also be killed. Eventually. Better we die on our feet, attacking like warriors, than cower in the dark until the invaders come for our women and children.”

  “Okay. I guess we really don’t have a choice in the matter. If we say no, you’ll just attack on your own and accomplish nothing. So we need to coordinate.”

  “We saw a modern laser rifle on one of your warriors,” Charley said, already thinking about that coordination. “How many of those do you have?”

  “Probably thirty of the rifles,” said Allaman, looking over at a younger warrior who must have been his tribe’s war chief. “Eleven of their pistols.”

  “How in the hell did you get so many?” Jonah asked, surprised.

  “The enemy had to send out cutting parties and not all of them were well guarded. When the opportunity presented itself, we killed them and took their weapons.”

  “With your prim—uh, weapons?” Charley asked.

  “The off-worlders are more advanced than us with their machines, but this is our world, our jungle, and that they do not know. We can move like shadows in our jungle.”

  “Well then, let’s see what you have,” Jonah said, getting up from his seat, ready to get out of the chamber. The water was cold, and even though his suit would insulate him from it somewhat, enough was creeping in to chill his skin.

  * * *

  Jonah had to admit the Kalagarta looked fierce enough, like barbarian warriors who’d shed their blood in buckets to take out an enemy. Still, they’d be cut down trying to close the distance against lasers across open ground. Even if they did close, they’d be fighting aliens in advanced body armor. They might get some with their poisoned weapons. But enough?

  A group of forty stood with modern weapons in their hands, laser and magrail rifles, along with light amp pistols. The rifles weren’t made for their physiology. They wouldn’t be able to make accurate shots with them, but they’d be able to provide fire. Those with pistols might be able to handle them better, but pistols didn’t often beat rifles.

  “Remind you of the Viet Cong?” Jonah asked, looking over at Charley. Being light infantry, both men had studied that war extensively.

  “More like the Karen in Burma,” said Charley, who was more knowledgeable about the region. “Most of the tribe fought with crossbows, but enough got ahold of Jap weapons to make themselves a pain in the ass. Killed Japanese at the rate of three to one.”

  Jonah doubted their erstwhile allies would do that well. If they took some of the heat off his people and allowed them to get into position to get in some shots, that would have to be good enough.

  “How did you plan to get across the open ground to attack?” Jonah asked Jrattrata, the war chief of the North River Tribe.

  “We have ways of moving that can’t be detected,” said the proud male. He then looked down at the ground. “At least not by sight. But they have ways of hearing us.”

  “We might be able to help you with that,” Charley said, looking over at his boss. “Maybe some seismic charges. Think Avgust can come up with something?”

  “I’ll bet he’d love the challenge,” Jonah replied with a smile. The big man had been toting almost twenty kilos of explosives the entire way and hadn’t been called on to make use of them. And what demolitions man didn’t like to make big booms?

  * * * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Well, that went as well as could be expected, Mmrash thought after exiting Jillor’s office. Even exiting the office was more than he’s been expecting. Coming out with his head still on his shoulders was a plus.

  “I could kill you and would consider it a day well spent,” Jillor had said as soon as he’d entered the office, disarmed. Supposedly.

  He’d treated his claws before going in, determined to take Jillor with him if it came to that. Now he had to scrub his claws once again.

  “How did it go?” asked Sergeant Krassh, now his senior NCO.

  “We’re to prepare a mission,” Mmrash said, grimacing.

  Jillor had told him the tribes were gathering, and Jillor wanted to hit them before they could get up to any mischief. While he was doing that, he was supposed to set up the defenses to catch the Humans out in the open if they tried to penetrate to the compound. On the surface, that sounded easy enough. He was certain against the Kalagarta, it would be.

  But against the Humans? These were stealth specialists with very good equipment. Maybe not the best in the Galaxy, but good enough. What one would expect from a species that had spent most of their history at war?

  “I want you to get two squads together. Take the gunship and one of the other shuttles and go on a search and destroy.”

  “But we don’t know where they are. Or do we?”

  “No, Sergeant. We don’t. That’s where the search portion of the mission comes in.”

  “Can I have a third shuttle and another squad?”

  Mmrash thought about that for a m
oment. It made sense. Or it would have, if he had enough shuttles. One was still out at the battle site, picking up bodies and equipment. That left him with two, and the gunship, and if he was to prepare the defense in depth he’d been asked to, he needed at least one shuttle.

  “No. You’ll have to make do with what I gave you. If you get into trouble, I’ll try to lift a couple of squads out to you. You have your orders. Execute.”

  The sergeant gave ear flicks of acknowledgement, then turned to walk away.

  Too bad I still don’t have Lrator with me, the colonel thought. The sergeant was still MIA. The commander thought he must be dead. If he’d fallen into the hands of the Kalagarta, there was little doubt how the savages would treat the Xlatan. The commander didn’t give a thought about what his people would do to the Kalagarta if given the chance. After all, they were just barbarians.

  * * *

  Lrator stopped on the edge of the grassland, his eyes searching the night around him. He could smell the blood of his people, along with the faint stench of chemical explosives. A battle had been fought there, and he had a feeling the Xlatan hadn’t come out on top.

  He’d made the decision after the first day to trail the Humans instead of running away from them. It was a risky decision, but no more so than wandering through the jungle on his own. Also, he might be able to accomplish something by trailing them.

  The whine of a shuttle starting up its fans reached his ears. He moved out onto the prairie, noting the lights around the ship.

  “Wait!” he yelled, charging toward the shuttle, which was over a mile away. “Wait! I’m here!”

  They didn’t seem to hear him, and the craft rose straight into the air, then started on its way toward home base. Lrator stared in disbelief as his chance of rescue pulled away, and stopped running, out of energy and will.

  Before his disbelieving eyes, the shuttle, its flashing strobes marking it in the air, did a slow turn and started back his way.

  “Here!” he yelled, jumping up and down. He realized the yelling wouldn’t be heard on the ship, but if they thought they’d seen something and were coming back, he wanted to reinforce that thinking.

  The shuttle stopped overhead for a few moments, checking him out. The whine of the fans decreased, and the ship settled toward the ground, coming in for a soft landing.

  “We thought you were dead,” said the soldier who came down the ramp of the shuttle.

  “So did I,” Lrator said, very happy it wasn’t true.

  * * *

  At least we get to sit in dry chairs for this meeting, Jonah thought, looking over the large open area. All of his people were present, along with twenty of the Kalagarta. Only Xebraferd of their original Kalagarta was here. His tribe wasn’t bringing as much to the table as the others, and it was really only a courtesy to the war chief that he was here at all.

  Thinking of tables, there was one the Kalagarta had built according to the instructions of the Humans. Thirty by thirty feet, a sand table, with the buildings of the compound constructed out of woven twigs, placed as exactly as possible.

  It looked to the colonel’s eyes just like the orbital photographs displaying on his HUD. A willing captain of a tramp freighter had come coasting into orbit, acting the part of a friendly merchant. The Syndicate had run him off after a search of his ship. The criminals had erased everything from the data banks they thought might be of military significance. They hadn’t gotten what they were looking for. The incriminating data had been hidden deep in the computer system of the freighter.

  “There is another building, here,” said Kalaprax, the war chief of the North River Tribe. “The main gate has been moved over here, while a berm has been erected along the entire perimeter.”

  Jonah stared at the sand table while visualizing those changes. The berm must have been placed around the camp to prevent any laser shots from coming in and hitting the buildings. The gate had a separate berm set thirty yards out from the perimeter, providing similar cover while allowing egress. But they’d moved it to a position where there was no chance of an angled shot near the landing field.

  “What kind of laser defenses do they have?”

  “Their people have their carried weapons,” said the war chief, “and each of the corner towers has a heavy laser, as far as we could determine.”

  “And how did you determine that?” Ivan asked, putting a finger on one of the twig towers.

  “Because the bastards vaporized the people we sent in to draw the fire of those towers.”

  Jonah shook his head, wondering at the commitment it took to walk into laser fire just to prove the weapons were there. But then, the Kalagarta were committed to saving their world. Just as the Syndicate was committed to killing it.

  The colonel really couldn’t understand the reasoning of the invaders. If they harvested the plant materials they needed while replanting the cut zones, they could produce Invigorate forever. Instead, they seemed determined to rape the world for all they could get, raking in the profits in the process. Invigorate was not only a substance that lengthened the healthy lifespans of many species—doubled or tripled them, while preserving youth and strength—it was also highly addictive. Removing it from those addicted resulted in a fast and painful death, as they lost all the advantages of the substance. The Syndicate could probably addict many billions of beings, eventually killing them in the process.

  The criminals didn’t care. Just like most crime bosses on Earth, they were stupid when it came down to it. The Galactic Union would allow them to operate as long as they didn’t cause undue trouble. Killing tens of billions of intelligent beings would turn the union’s attention toward them. It was attention they really couldn’t afford, but like most who’d operated above the law, they thought they could get away with it forever.

  “How old is your intelligence?” Charley asked, touching each of the buildings and towers in turn with a fingertip.

  “We last saw the compound a couple of weeks ago. One of the teams we sent in finally made it, under cover of a raid from the opposite direction. Or at least a couple of them made it back.”

  “And how many of your raid made it?” Ivan asked.

  “Less than one in ten. We lost two hundred warriors on that raid, but the ones who survived brought back some more weapons.”

  Jonah thought about the war chief’s words. He visualized a mass wave attack into concentrated laser fire. That might not be how it had gone down, but he couldn’t think of any other way these people would have been able to carry out the assault.

  “Did you kill any of their warriors?” he asked.

  “A couple fell to our darts and spears, but the armor their six-legged warriors wear was proof against everything we had.”

  “So what you have is two weeks old?” Charley shook his head, and Jonah knew what he was thinking.

  The company’s job had been to gather intelligence for the Ravagers. The colonel had no doubt that the Humans, in their high-tech passive camo suits, would have been able to sneak in, especially since the enemy wouldn’t be expecting them. Well, that had changed for the worse.

  “Some slaves have escaped, though,” continued Kalaprax. “It is certain death for most of them, but any who think they might have a chance go on the run. From what those few have told us, the compound looks much as it did then.”

  “I wish we had some visuals,” Charley said.

  The colonel had to agree. A bunch of second-hand reports, without physical intelligence to go along with it…well, there was no help for it.

  “How the hell do you get across all that open area?” Ivan asked, closing his eyes and shaking his head.

  Jonah had been wondering that himself.

  “Several ways,” said Kalaprax, looking over at the Russian. “All of them take time. We don’t lose many on the way in, but if we attack, it’s a different story on the way out.”

  “Show us,” Jonah said, activating the Tri-V projector on his helmet. A wide beam of light projected
from the sensor node on the front of the helm, picked up by the moisture in the air and made visible. The top of the table took on the appearance of the map the colonel had uploaded prior to the mission. It wasn’t totally accurate, since more of the forest had been clear cut since the file was made, but it was probably close enough.

  Some of the Kalagarta mumbled to themselves, and Jonah thought his program had interpreted one of the words as magic.

  “Superstitious fools,” croaked Kalaprax, glaring at the other males. “This is just one of their machines. It has nothing to do with magic.”

  Jonah waited for the mumbling to die down, then pointed to the map. “Does this look accurate?”

  “The cut area is larger, but otherwise it looks pretty close, at least as far as I can determine.”

  Of course the Kalagarta had never seen their homeland from the air, so they were having to translate between seeing it at ground level and from high in the sky.

  “How do you get in?”

  “The first way in is from these rocky hills here,” said the war chief, pointing a finger at several square miles of elevation that rose above the forest on the map.

  The colonel did the mental conversion, figuring the hills had to be on the new edge of the forest. He nodded, looking over the other terrain features.

  “We move through these gullies here, until we are within five miles of their compound.”

  “They don’t spot you from the air?” Ivan asked, his own eyes locked on and studying the terrain feature.

  “Sometimes they do. Once, we lost an entire party. But normally we are able to take advantage of the overhead on this side of the gullies. That, and we move really slowly, about ten miles a day, with woven coverings of the jungle foliage.”

  “And the open area?”

  “There we go at a crawl, on our stomachs, creeping along, covering the five miles in a day and night. Again, the woven foliage covers us from whatever the aliens use to pick up our heat. We cover our bodies in the sap of the Hus tree, which covers our own body scent. We haven’t always gotten through without loss, but we did get through a couple of weeks ago.”