“Think Sandra’s in place?” asked Ivan, an unmoving blur to the colonel’s right side.
“If she isn’t, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Jonah closed his eyes and took some deep breaths. The pre-battle jitters were on him. They did him no good, accomplished nothing, and could get in the way of clear thinking. When Jonah thought his mind was as clear as could be, he opened his eyes and looked in the direction of Avgust.
“Now,” he said in a half whisper, then raised his rifle to his shoulder, looking for a target in one of the towers, zooming in with the scope until he was looking into the heat image of a face.
Avgust grunted, and a second later the rising fireballs of blasts rose into the air, followed thirty seconds later by the deep crump of explosives going off twenty miles away. The sound was the signal, and Jonah started the countdown for the unit to open fire. One minute, and he could only hope the enemy did what he thought they would. In one minute, the snipers and mortar crew would open fire, right on schedule. There was nothing he could do about that without giving his company away to the enemy comm net.
“There it goes,” Ivan said, his camo-blurred body hefting the small tube that wasn’t covered in deceptive blurring to his shoulder, holding onto the pair of folding pistol grips.
With the whine of fans, a shuttle left the landing field, swiveling in the air and heading for one of the fireballs.
“Dammit. It’s not the gunship,” Ivan said, his missile launcher swiveling to cover it.
The gunship was the target. It was the biggest threat, with its multiple lasers and slung rocket launchers. The other shuttles could also be dangerous, but not to the same extent as the gunship.
“It’s lifting,” Jonah said, zooming in on the rising craft and making sure it was the gunship.
The other shuttle was heading to the south, almost out of the effective range of the anti-air weapon. Manny was similarly armed, with a pair of missiles for his launcher. Jonah hoped they wouldn’t have to use all four rounds, since there might be an armored vehicle in the compound that would need servicing.
The gunship moved out low and slow, seemingly aware that this might be an ambush, but paying attention to the outward path. Ivan fired, the rocket spit out of the tube by the magnetic accelerator, then flashing at over a thousand gravities toward the target locked into its warhead. It was a perfect shot, but one that the gunship’s stern laser would have handled, only it was locking onto the missile Manny had fired, heading in at a slightly different angle.
Manny’s missile exploded meters from the target, sending plasma and shrapnel into the laser unit on the stern of the gunship, knocking it out of action. Ivan’s weapon slammed into the port engine pod, its shaped charge blasting through the light armor and into the turbine, shredding the fans. Smoke immediately started pouring from the pod, and the gunship wavered in the air before turning around.
“Shit!” Manny yelled, scrambling to grab his second missile and load it. Ivan took his time, going through the motions smoothly and efficiently as he loaded his second warhead, while Manny fumbled his.
The gunship opened fire with its laser. Jonah never knew whether it had spotted Manny, it was just aiming for the area its system told it the shot came from, or if it had a lock on Ivan as well, and just picked a target arbitrarily to service first. The laser swept through the position where Manny was squatting, barely missing a couple of other mercenaries. The armored skinsuits were proof for a second or two against personnel lasers, but not against vehicle-mounted ones, which were many times more powerful. Manny blew apart as the fluid in his torso converted into superheated steam and blasted through the armor.
Ivan fired his second round, the missile flashing from tube to gunship so fast it looked like a beam of light. The missile struck the forward cockpit window. The armored portal was tough, but the warhead was designed to blow a small hole through the toughest armor. It wasn’t much, but it was enough, as superheated plasma blasted into the cockpit and killed both Xlatan. The gunship wobbled again, then went into a shallow dive, hitting the ground fifty yards from the berm before skidding along and through, knocking down one of the guard towers before coming to rest.
May God be with you, Manny, Jonah thought. The man had paid with his life, but the team of Zhukov and Fernandez had knocked down the biggest aerial threat. The enemy still had shuttles, up to three of them, with one heading out but possibly starting to return. Now it was time to open the second act of the play.
Every Human opened fire as Jonah yelled the command through his comm. Rifles sent high-velocity single shots at what targets they could find. His initial target had gone down with the tower, so Jonah quickly acquired one in the other close corner tower, sighting in on the glowing face on the infrared. The colonel squeezed the trigger, then watched as the face in his scope disappeared as his high-velocity round struck the target. Kevin held his fire, since no appropriate target had presented itself, and his weapon could give him away. He’d swiveled around, ready to cover them, when the other shuttle in the air returned.
A blast going off in the compound near the shuttle field indicated that Sandra and her team had made it to their positions. Two seconds later another mortar went off. The third was intercepted in the air by the laser defense system. The fourth made it through, showing that something had happened to the defensive system, meaning his snipers were now on the job.
“Let’s go,” Jonah ordered, moving up to a crouch and starting for the compound.
The people around him moved with him, all but Kevin, who stayed in position to provide covering fire into the compound or to light up the returning shuttle as needed. All was going well until a laser on one of the remaining towers, illuminated by the dust and smoke as it sought a target, lanced out, and the second of his people went down.
* * *
As soon as she caught sight of the rising fireballs on the horizon, she started the countdown in her head, the implant keeping an accurate measure of time.
“You got the laser defense system?” she asked the woman lying beside her.
“I see two domes,” Sarah said, also fully covered in her Ghillie suit. “One on the edge of the landing field, the other over by the low building near the center.”
They thought that was the administrative building, the headquarters. It made sense they’d have a defense system there. What didn’t make sense was there were only two of them. Then again, the Syndicate would be watching their bottom line, and really had no concern about an attack on their compound by anything above stone-age technology, so they’d put in just enough to feel safe.
The clock ticked down, and what the colonel had been expecting happened as a shuttle left the ground and headed out. But it wasn’t the right shuttle. The plan called for the gunship to take off. The mortars could probably take care of the unarmored transports, but they didn’t know if the high-explosive rounds would do the job on the armored gunship.
“There it goes,” Sarah said as the gunship rose from the field, going up to fifty feet and turning in the air before pushing forward and out.
“Pay attention to your target,” Sandra cautioned. “Nothing else matters.”
She’d already picked out her first three targets. Now, the trick was to service them in order before any of them got it in their heads to move.
“Now,” she said as the sound of missile warheads going off on the gunship reached her ears. There were still some seconds on the clock, but no reason to hold back now.
She made sure her first target was centered in her scope and squeezed her trigger in a practiced motion. The rifle slammed hard into her shoulder, sending the ten-millimeter round out the accelerator tube at five thousand feet per second.
The Xlatan soldier on the end of her shot, who’d been looking at the fireballs and presenting part of the side of his face, jerked back and crumpled to the ground. The sniper thought it was a kill. She’d have preferred to get a straight-in shot through the face. Either way, tha
t being was out of the fight, probably permanently.
A mortar round went off in the compound, a ball of fire rising from the landing field a couple of yards from one of the shuttles.
Sandra fired again, this time getting a target right through the face. A sure kill. Another round hit the field, right on top of the shuttle the mortar team had just missed. The ball of fire rose from the shuttle, which started smoking while flames burst from the body. The next round going in was intercepted by something in midair, exploding it just over the ground. The rounds were coming in at a very low trajectory, barely clearing the berm. There was still enough time, though, for the defense system to pick them up, acquire, and hit them with a powerful laser.
“Got it!” Sarah yelled in exhilaration after grunting from the recoil of her rifle.
Sandra took her third shot, taking down another soldier, this one from a different species. She pulled away from the rifle and zoomed in from her faceplate system, spotting the dome and the extended arm that had risen from it. That arm had sported a laser system. Now it sported the shredded remains of one—all that was left after a twelve-millimeter armor-penetrating explosive round hit at five thousand feet a second.
“Second one gone,” Cohen said a couple of seconds later.
At that moment, another mortar round came in, right on target, taking out the remaining grounded shuttle, and making sure it remained grounded for the rest of the fight.
“Got another one!” Sarah yelled out in exultation.
This isn’t a damned game, Sandra thought, looking for another target and finding one. This one didn’t present any unarmored aspect to her, so she went for the back of the helmet. A squeeze of the trigger, and that one was down. Probably not dead, maybe even not permanently injured, but sure to have the Xlatan equivalent of a concussion.
She looked over her scope in time to see one of Sarah’s targets go down, the heavy round of the anti-material rifle blasting through the helmet and mashing the head it covered.
Mortar rounds continued to go off throughout the compound, now landing on buildings and blowing holes through them. The compound was starting to fill with smoke from the shuttle fires and anything flammable the buildings might have contained. Visibility was dropping considerably, though the infrared systems could still look through it, as long as there wasn’t a fire backing the target.
“We’re out,” Yusef said over the comm. “Transitioning to ground assault.”
“We’ll cover,” Sandra said, searching the compound for a target of note, and finding one almost instantly.
She wasn’t sure what the species was called that headed up the Syndicate, but she remembered what they looked like. About the size of a black bear, with gray wrinkly skin under a layer of fur. That skin was supposed to be really tough, like that of an elephant or rhino. We’ll see if you can handle one of my little packages, she thought as she sighted in.
* * *
“Get your ass under cover, Hrallo!” Jillor yelled, waving to his secretary/lover. He’d already sought cover in one of the trenches the Xlatan had dug within the compound. The boss had thought that work a waste of time. Now he was thankful they’d seen the need. Not that he wouldn’t strangle Mmrash anyway when this fight was over, since the attack had blindsided them.
The female ran toward him, more like a slow jog. Their species wasn’t known for being speedy, and the long robe-like dress she wore wasn’t helping.
The female stumbled, and he was about to climb out of the trench to help her when she fell heavily to the ground. Her face was turned to him, and it was a horror of burst flesh and bone. Something had hit her in the head, hard. A chill went through the boss as he thought about what he’d almost exposed himself to.
I’ll miss her, he thought, not letting himself get too concerned over the loss of a female. There were plenty of them around, and a message would get another here to act as his secretary. Any secretary who wanted to advance would fall into the position of lover sooner or later.
No, the concern now was that someone was smashing his operation. His fault or not, the Syndicate would lay the blame at his feet. Being spaced on the way home was probably the most painless way out of the punishment they would have planned for his failure. More likely his death would be long and painful, an object lesson to the next boss that failure was not an option.
“Are you okay, Boss?” came a voice over the comm bud in his ear.
“Mmrash. Mmrash. What in the hell are you doing? Kill those fucking Humans. All of them.”
“They have a bunch of Kalagarta with them, and the slaves in the compound are starting to rise.”
“Then kill all of them! Put down every Kalagarta you see. Just get this situation under control!”
As they were speaking, a dozen of the Kalagarta slaves came running into sight, most armed with whatever they could find. Jillor motioned to the soldiers with him in the trench and they swept their beams through the escaping slaves. In an instant they were no longer a concern. There would, of course, be others, not much of a danger except for their ability to focus attention on themselves.
At least the explosives that had been dropping in on them from the air had stopped. That was wonderful, but as he watched, another worker went down, this one’s head exploding into a reddish mist from a heavy round.
“Will do,” Mmrash said, the tension clear in his voice. The Xlatan had to know that no matter what happened from this point, he was through.
Jillor hoped he had enough people left after this to round up some more Kalagarta. He needed their labor, and this time around it would be more difficult to round up a sufficient number of them, since it seemed they’d moved their villages. After this they’d probably move them again.
* * *
“Ready?” Ahmed Mohammed asked, looking at the blurred image of his subordinate. They’d shot their wad, every warhead they’d humped in with them, all landing in the compound to what they hoped was maximum effect. Thanks to the snipers, only one had been intercepted by the laser defense system.
“As I’ll ever be,” Yusef bin Sherif replied.
“We’re moving,” the senior mortarman said to the hundred or so Kalagarta who were gathered around them. Ahmed thought it a shame what they were using the natives for. The amphibians were wearing their camouflage nets, but when they were moving to attack, they wouldn’t be hard to pick out by the high-tech enemy. They might get a kill or two with their primitive weapons before they were gunned down, but their providing themselves as targets would take the focus off the hard-to-spot Humans, who could kill and kill again. Possibly killing enough enemy for the Humans to come out of this alive, though Ahmed still doubted it.
The senior trooper said a quick prayer to Allah under his breath and moved out of the hollow they’d set up in. Most of the action seemed to be taking place on the other side of the compound, so maybe they’d get lucky. He knew that was a forlorn hope when four of the nearest Kalagarta fell screaming to the ground, each in several pieces.
* * * * *
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“It’s coming back, sir,” Kevin Graham called out over the comm.
Well, we expected it, Jonah thought, crawling to the side of the tractor he was covering behind, exposing the minimum of his head, and sighting in to take a shot. The round missed the head of the alien he was firing at, and it ducked down behind the rock it was using.
“Can you take it out?”
“I’ll try. It doesn’t know where I am, I hope.”
“Try to keep it that way. You’re my ace in the hole.”
A series of crackling sounds came from the south, and Jonah turned his head in time to see a number of flashes. His grenadier was at work, sending his micro-grenades into the enemy. The small explosives could penetrate any body armor the enemy was likely to have. A larger blast came to the north, Avgust using some of the small but potent demolition charges he’d worked up.
It’s a damned cluster, he thought, waiting for the enemy
to pop up again. The battle had devolved into total chaos. No one knew exactly where the enemy was. That went for the enemy as well, and it worked to his advantage. Still, it wasn’t comfortable fighting in such an environment.
The alien head popped up again, the being making two very serious rookie mistakes. First, he came up over the cover instead of to the side, where he’d have displayed the smallest possible target. Second, he came up at the same place he’d disappeared. That was all the colonel needed, and he put a hypervelocity round through the head of the alien, rocking it back. The creature fell behind the rock, and Jonah waited a moment before moving himself to use that cover.
“We’re pinned down here,” the voice of Achilles Antonopolis came over the comm. “They have me and Xou trapped.”
Jonah hoped the enemy wasn’t tapped into his comm net. Not because they might listen in to his transmissions, they were encrypted to the maximum, switching codes every couple of seconds according to a pattern programed into the helmets. He also wasn’t worried they’d be able to locate his people from their transmissions. Xou had deployed every micro-drone he had left, and thousands of them were in the air, acting as relays. What he was worried about was they might jam his comms. The system was switching freqs constantly, but a powerful enough jamming system could take out many frequencies at the same time.
“We’re coming,” he replied. “Where are you?”
“Over by the tower on the other side of the landing field.”
“We’re on it,” Hotaru’s voice came over the comm. “One minute.”
When Eagles Dare Page 32
