“Kill it,” he told the comm tech. The being disappeared from the viewer, replaced by a zoomed in view of the frigate. It was a tactical view, with the obvious weaponry on the vessel highlighted. There were a pair of megawatt-range lasers and a quartet of missile tubes. There might be more weapons hidden, and of course a couple of defensive arrays on the stern wouldn’t be out of the realm of probability.
“What do you want to do?” Chu asked, getting out of the chair she occupied as soon as Ramos left the command chair and headed toward her own.
“Keep them targeted,” Ramos ordered, glaring at the viewer. “If they make a single move that looks hostile, take them out.”
“That’s giving me a lot of leeway,” the captain said, her tone not completely accepting.
“Then log it in that I gave the order. In fact, let me record it right now. I have given the captain of the Guadalcanal, Melody Chu, orders to engage the ship opposing us if they show the least sign of hostility. Satisfied?”
“It still might not be enough to save my ass, but it’s acceptable.”
Actually, since they’d been hired to take this planet, it was well within their rights to destroy anything trying to prevent their insertion. Whether that would hold up in court was another matter, since the contract had been revoked, even though payment had been made. The legal precedents in a Galaxy where many matters were settled by hiring military might were unclear.
“How fast can you get us into orbit from here?”
“We’re basically sitting still in space,” the captain said, looking over at her navigator, who nodded his head. “From here I can get us into orbit in less than an hour at maximum acceleration and deceleration, assuming our drive doesn’t take too much damage from that fool.”
“If you have to open fire, boost for the planet.”
“And if they fire at us from the surface?”
That was a better question than it seemed on the surface. By Galactic law, they weren’t allowed to bombard the surface of a world from above an altitude of ten miles. If they were fired on, they could return fire, but only at the weapon batteries’ locations. The problem with that was they had to wait to be fired on. If there was something powerful down there, the transport could be reduced to a hulk in the merest of moments. He didn’t think they had those kinds of defenses, but no one knew for sure.
“If they fire, fire back. Hit their batteries with the most powerful warheads you have.”
Ramos turned to walk off the bridge, turning back just before he reached the hatch. “And keep monitoring the surface. If White Eagle and his people are down there, maybe they’ll get a signal to us.”
Or they could already be dead, in which case Ramos’ Ravagers would be forced to sit here in orbit until they got tired of sitting here. The colonel could only hope they were still down there, alive and kicking, and getting ready to do some more kicking.
* * *
Sandra Clemenceau was a skilled diver and a strong swimmer. She’d been diving in the oceans and lakes of Earth since she was a small child, taken into the water by her marine biologist father. This time it wasn’t a pleasure trip into the deeps. The water was shallow, filled with animals she had no experience with, and there were people nearby who would love to kill her. And possibly something deployed by them in this small river was waiting for someone like her to come along for the same purpose.
Since there was nothing she could do about any of the above, she kept pushing ahead. The memory plastic of her boots and gloves were formed into fins and webbed gauntlets, giving her more pull through the water. The tiny rebreather unit on her back was sucking in air from the small oxygen tank, scrubbing out the carbon dioxide, and augmenting it with the dissolved gas of the water. No bubbles, no sound.
“How much longer?” Ahmed Mohammed asked over the short-range sonar comm.
Sandra looked back at the man, exasperation running through her. She’d told the others not to transmit unless absolutely necessary. Even on tight beam, there was a chance that enough sound would bleed out to alert something. She waved a hand at him, a signal to shut up, then held up a couple of fingers, indicating two hours.
A sonar pulse came from ahead, strong enough to generate a return on anything in its path. The four Humans were just above the bottom, and at a signal from Sandra, they dropped down even further.
The Kalagarta with them were also low, though slightly higher than the Humans. From the way they covered the sides of their heads, they were directly in the path of the beam. Several went into convulsions, and the sniper knew what kind of weapon the robots used against the amphibians. Another sonar pulse, followed by a third, and most of the fifty Kalagarta were dead in the water.
Sandra looked closely at the nearest comatose Kalagarta and was relieved to see his gill slits were still moving. They weren’t dead, but whatever weaponized sound had struck them had done its job. And here came the things that had produced the sonic beams.
A pair of fish-shaped objects, streamlined and propelling themselves with no visible means, approached out of the murk. They were about Human-sized, a little over six feet in length. Both had also deployed some tentacles. The first to get within reach of a Kalagarta made a slashing motion with one of its tentacles. The murky water became even more so as the blood of the native flowed into the river.
We’re not having any of that, the sniper thought, pulling her rifle from her back and making sure it was ready for underwater combat.
Chemical propellant weapons had problems firing underwater. The charge would still go off, but sometimes the pressure of the water would cause a backup explosion that shattered the chamber. There was no such problem with high-tech magrail weapons. They could be used in any environment, from a high-density liquid to total vacuum.
She took aim at the closest robot and fired. The water swirled around the projectile as it cut through the liquid. Clouds of silt rose from the bottom under the action of the suction, obscuring the scene.
There was a loud crack as the round struck, blasting through the body of the robot. That damaged the device but didn’t destroy it. The small explosion of the round within its body finished it, and the robot fell to the bottom to settle.
The other robot reoriented and headed toward what it had assigned as the primary threat. It sped up, coming in at fifty knots, and Sandra tried to draw a bead on it before it could get in a slash. Her armor might protect her, but then again it might not, and she had very little time to react. She tried to line up the shot, but the rush of fear-induced adrenaline made aiming difficult.
Ahmed and Yusef had her covered, though, and their rifles sent out projectiles that hit the front of the robot. Their rounds didn’t have the explosive heads of hers, and the smacks of bullets hitting the robot did little to slow it down, but they did reprioritize the robot’s target selection, and it put on a burst of speed as it went for the mortar team.
Sandra couldn’t develop a good sight picture as it flashed by. She had one chance, one shot, and she took it, firing from an underarm position. The sniper wasn’t sure she’d fired at the right time; she was afraid the two mortarmen would find themselves in a close-in fight with the murderous machine. The sound of a smack, then the small explosion let her breathe a sigh of relief. The robot fell through the water, joining its partner to become wreckage on the bottom.
“Damn,” Yusef said over the sonar comm. “I guess we know what took out the Kalagarta who came this way.”
Yeah, and the poor bastards didn’t have a chance. The robots had stunned the Kalagarta with sonics, then cut them to pieces with their razor tentacles.
“Only use the comm in an emergency,” she cautioned the others. “There might be more of them.”
The Kalagarta around them were starting to stir, moving with intent, some faster than others. They all looked at the Humans with new respect. They’d thought the aliens would be weak in the water, and yet the Humans had saved them from certain death.
Sandra motioned, and
the Humans started forward; the Kalagarta fell in, this time behind instead of ahead. They were a pragmatic people, and now that they knew what was waiting for them, they were willing to let the allies better able to handle the threat lead.
Several hours later, one of the Kalagarta motioned to the bank, his mouth moving as he croaked out a few words. “We’re here.”
As much as she loved diving, Sandra was glad to get out of the river. She found a place a couple of yards from the bank that looked like it might give good cover and took a seat. Pushing a setting on her boots, she retracted the memory plastic fins, then did the same with her gloves. Disconnecting her mask, she stowed the rebreather in a pouch on her bag, then pulled out her camo covering and her Ghillie suit. In a few minutes she was almost invisible to the naked eye, and difficult to even pick up on infrared.
The other Humans and the Kalagarta hurriedly put on their own camo. Checking the time, Sandra found it was still a couple of hours until darkness, and the attack wasn’t scheduled to begin until an hour before dawn.
“Is there a better place to wait nearby?” she asked the Kalagarta war chief who was leading the party of natives.
“A couple of hundred yards that way,” replied the being, pointing to the northeast, where a cluster of rocks stood just off the river. “Large depressions.”
That sounded good to Sandra. Their best bet was to lay low until dark, then move to the hill where they could set up. The trick was to only move when necessary, and otherwise stay still. There was a lot of open area to cross, with the possibility that the enemy had people scanning that region, which called for very slow movement.
After darkness fell, the group started to move, hunched over, making as little of a target as possible without getting into a crawl. The natives did the same, taking their cues from the Humans. It took just under three hours to make it to the hill where the snipers would set up. The mortarmen peeled off before they reached the hill, heading for a depression to the north where they’d deploy.
“And now we wait,” Sandra said to Sarah.
The other sniper lay beside her, motionless. The night was hot. In a tropical region like this, it didn’t really cool down at night. It some ways, that was an advantage, since the differential from hyperthermic animals and the surrounding area was minimal. They’d still put out heat, and if they were in line of sight of the compound they’d eventually be picked up.
Sandra had something to make that detection a lower probability, even though she wasn’t in the viewing area of the compound. The woman pulled a couple of hard probes from the lining of her camo cover and pushed them into the ground as deeply as they would go. The superconducting threads attached to the probes would transfer much of the heat building up under her coverings into the ground, cooling her and preventing escaping heat blooms.
“You go ahead and sleep first,” the senior sniper told her subordinate.
Sarah nodded, turned over, and immediately fell into a deep sleep. Since most Humans had brain implants, and one of the most basic was a sleep inducer, none of the company had any trouble with anxiety keeping them awake. And if anything happened, the other sniper would be awake and alert in an instant. Sandra would watch half the night, then take her own rest. Sleep inducer or not, there would still be anxiety in their dreams. And if anything forced them awake before they were ready, it would probably be more than they could handle.
* * *
“We caught a couple of the amphibians trying to cross the dead zone,” the soldier said, looking out of the comm unit at his commander.
“Have you interrogated them?” Mmrash asked, leaning forward.
“Not possible, sir. The ones we didn’t shoot down stuck themselves with sharpened sticks and fell dead.”
That damned poison of theirs, the commander thought, ears twitching with disgust. They’d used that poison very effectively against the Syndicate. Until recently, they hadn’t been known to use it on themselves. That they were committing suicide to prevent capture was something new. Kalagarta had always resisted capture with every possible strategy and tactic they could come up with. When they were captured, though, they came along. Sullenly, but they came along. Obviously they didn’t like losing their freedom and working as slave labor, but they didn’t think death was a better outcome.
“How many?”
“Five. It looked like a small scouting party.”
“No others?” He was expecting some of the Kalagarta to come through the dead zone. Maybe not to join with the Humans in an assault, since he couldn’t see them making much of a contribution to a higher tech attack, but at least to gather intelligence. Was this one of those parties? If so, where were the others? And the Humans?
“That’s all we could find, sir. We put people on the ground to sweep the area, while drones flew overhead looking for body heat.”
Mmrash had been wondering if the natives had come across some solution to masking heat sensors. He couldn’t think of any way they could, and none of the technicians he’d asked could come up with anything. There were things in the Xlatan inventory that could deflect heat, and the Humans were sure to have many of those items. Not the natives.
Then how in the hell do they keep sneaking in like that? he thought. That he didn’t know was a failure on his part. It was his business to determine all the capabilities of the natives who were opposing him and find out how to circumvent them. In this respect, he was failing.
“Bring your people back to the compound,” Mmrash ordered. “I’ll want them up and out at sunrise.”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant replied, his ears telling his commander what he thought of the order.
Too bad, Mmrash thought, scowling at the trooper until the vid died. They’d spent almost a year on this world, and much of it had been spent sitting around doing nothing. It was time they earned their pay, and if they had to go without proper sleep for several weeks until the situation was taken care of, then that’s what they’d do.
“You heard?” Mmrash asked Lrator, whose face appeared on another viewer. “What do you think?”
“I think the Humans have enlisted the Kalagarta to their side.”
“Then you think they’ll attack? When?”
“Within days. Probably not tomorrow, but I wouldn’t put it past them to attack on the run.”
“But you doubt it?”
“I do.”
“Me too,” Mmrash said, his tail swishing through the chair hole behind him in frustration and anxiety. “But we’ll still have an alert in the morning. I want all our people turned out just before sunrise. We’ll do the same for the next week, until either the Humans attack, or we find them out in the jungle and destroy them.”
“You don’t want to take prisoners?”
“I don’t. These creatures have caused us enough trouble. The sooner they’re dead the better.”
He saw the disapproval in the ears of the other officer, and his own ears twitched in frustration.
“You don’t agree?”
“I agree we need to stop them, sir, but I’d prefer to take as many of them prisoner as we can.”
“Lieutenant. Your orders are to kill every one of the Humans you encounter. If any try to surrender, you are to execute them on the spot. Understood?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll admit I don’t like it, but I will follow orders.”
“Good. Then we’ll have no further discussion about this. Perform your duties to the best of your abilities, help me destroy these pests, and you’ll be on the next ship home to attend the academy.”
That brought a staccato response from Lrator’s ears that showed satisfaction. Of course it did, the commander thought. The life of a Xlatan officer was one of wealth and ease, compared to the hardscrabble existence of the common soldier. And getting off this backwater planet? He almost wished he could turn the command over to Lrator and go back himself.
* * * * *
Chapter Twenty-Six
It was time. Jonah White Eagle made a last-m
inute check of his equipment, making sure everything was functional. Amateurs went into battle with faith that the equipment they checked out the day before would be ready. Professionals constantly checked their equipment. They were obsessive compulsive with their checking. It made sense. If a weapon failed when most needed, they were dead.
The five people around him were doing the same, checking power levels on rifles, making sure their spares were secured in the proper pockets. Ivan pulled both of his grenades off his web gear and looked at them, then replaced them. Joey cycled through the functions of his helmet, while Amobi Kabir checked his grenade mags. Avgust stood ready with his detonator set. All had left their Ghillie suits on the ground behind them while they squatted in their high-tech camo covers, all but invisible as the nanofibers projected the image from behind to the opposite side. All had probes in the ground sucking off enough body heat to keep them from roasting alive inside the heat seals of their body armor.
Dotty Farrah was completely motionless, lost in her thoughts. Her job was to attempt the rescue of any of the company who went down in battle. With the weapons the enemy was using, it was unlikely anyone hit hard enough to go down would survive, and Dotty would be taking the risk of trying to reach them and keep them alive. Risking her life for little chance of success. If needed, she’d lend fire support to the others, but that would only last until the first casualty.
A hundred yards to the north was Charley’s team, with Manny Fernandez, Achilles Antonopolis, and Cheung Xou squatting with him. Kevin Graham lay on the ground in prone position, his shoulder into the heavy laser that was their only beam weapon for this fight.
The two ninjas, Asuka and Hotaru Yamashuri, were nowhere in sight. They were using their active camouflage and their superb training to close with the compound. Xou had located the gaps in the sensor net, and the married pair had moved with consummate stealth to within yards of the berm, climbing on top and going to ground. As soon as the action opened they’d be through the fence and roaming the compound. They’d been given a kill zone that was out of the blast area of the mortars and grenades. Anything that moved in their zone was to be taken down, and Jonah almost felt sorry for the poor aliens that entered their range.
When Eagles Dare Page 31
