A Fistful of Credits: Stories from the Four Horsemen Universe (The Revelations Cycle Book 5)

by Chris Kennedy

  One of the first commercially successful indie writers I met when I was just starting out, I’ve known Doug for almost as long as I’ve been writing. We’ve met a number of times, but it’s always been in passing—we’ve never really had time to sit down and talk. I hear he’s a great guy, and I’m looking forward to rectifying that issue soon.

  One thing’s for certain, though; his readers love him, and I think you’re going to like “With the Eagles.” If you’d like to know more about Doug and the books he’s published, take a look here: https://www.amazon.com/Doug-Dandridge/e/B006S69CTU/.

  WITH THE EAGLES by Doug Dandridge

  Crap, thought Jonah White Eagle as he looked at the climb ahead. Another 500 meters. He refused to look back at the 2,000 meters below. Why the hell did I let Charley talk me into this contract? He wasn’t afraid of heights, normally. He had always loved climbing, when the cliffs were 200 meters or less. And when the multi-thousand meter cliff was not on a super-Earth with more than one and a half times Earth’s gravity. The extra weight tired him out faster, and the thought of the gravity-assisted acceleration on the way down was enough to make his hands shake.

  Charley didn’t seem to have a problem with the cliff. Jonah had always thought the Gurkha, his partner from the first day they started the Fierce Eagle Company, was just a bit crazy. But he seemed to know how to pick the best contracts for the company, at least until this one.

  Jonah was of Apache ancestry and had grown up around some tall mountains, but not like these. And he had been a jungle warfare junkie since reaching the age of majority. Jungles had mountains, but they also had lots of trees and bushes to grab onto.

  His partner placed another of the special pitons they had obtained. The flat surface of each hook eye was coated with nanites that bonded to the rock face, alleviating the need to hammer them in or use explosive anchoring that could give them away.

  Jonah pulled himself up the thin cable a couple of meters then looked back, against his better judgment, to see how the rest of the team was doing. Four other operatives followed him up the cord, and none seemed to be having problems. There was no risk in this climb if Jonah stopped to think about it. Each team member had a parachute that would lower them gently to the ground if needed. But then they wouldn’t be available at the top.

  Sandra had suggested they come in by ducted-fan vehicle, using firepower to overwhelm their opponents, but Jonah had nixed that idea. They might have been able to overwhelm the opposition, but not before the enemy killed the hostage, and that would reduce the payoff.

  Charley gave a hand signal, indicating he had seen something. Jonah pulled in a quick breath and went still, depending on the diamonoid nanobubbles to keep his blood oxygenated. They couldn’t be seen ascending the cliff; if they were, one enemy with a laser could wipe them off the cliff like a maintenance worker sweeping ants out of the kitchen.

  Charley gave another hand signal, then started back up. Jonah followed suit, pulling himself up another couple of meters and setting a foot on a piton. With the sound of crumbling stone the shale facing broke off, tumbling down as the piton fell before coming to a stop on the cord.

  I’m going to have a word with that little SOB, he thought, glaring up at his partner. Charley was in charge of the company for this mission, since mountaineering was his specialty. He thought the mountaineer would know more about geology than to use surface contact climbing gear on a metamorphic rock face.

  The climb went on for another hour, with Charley finally disappearing as he went over the lip and into the small sheltered gorge they had located on the satellite view. The Gurkha’s hand came back into sight and waved. The way was clear. It took five minutes for Jonah to make it up to the spot where they would rest and prepare. He lay on the rock panting after Charley helped him up, getting his breath back. Charley helped Sandra up next, then Zack and his brother Ezekiel. Motambe, another mountaineer who was responsible for making sure everyone ahead of him made it, was the last up.

  “How’s it look?” he asked Sandra, who was scouting the plateau with a fiber optic camera.

  “All clear so far, boss. No movement. And I see the cavern entrance.”

  “How do you know it’s the right cavern?” asked Zack, wiping sweat off his face with the back of his hand.

  “Because there’s a Besquith with a large rifle standing by the entrance, you idiot,” she said, handing the viewer to Zack.

  There was some under-breath cussing. Jonah held up a hand, silencing everyone.

  “We knew there might be some of them up here,” he said.

  “So what do we do?” asked Ezekiel, fingering the small medallion hanging under his shirt.

  “We do our job,” said Charley, glaring at the merc. “We take out any of those sons-of-bitches we run into, kill everything else with them, and rescue our target.” He looked at Sandra. “It’s up to you to keep them off us.”

  “Right,” she acknowledged, snapping the scope onto her magnetic accelerator rifle, a magrail like they all carried. “Anything that shows its ugly head will be sporting a new cranial orifice.”

  “We go this way,” said Charley after nodding to their sniper. “Everyone stay low and quiet.”

  Jonah smiled at the worried tone of his partner. Everyone in their company was stealthy; that’s why he’d hired them. If they were the kind of troop that stumbled around and made noise, they would be working in CASPers. Charley started off, crouching, his rifle at the ready, with Zack following right behind. Jonah was last this time, watching the others and making sure they didn’t show above the lip of rock they were hiding under.

  They never did find out what gave them away. Besquith had better hearing than Humans and a much better sense of smell. The team had done everything they could do to mask their scents, but sweating Humans still gave off a distinctive odor. And as quietly as they could move, it might not have been enough. The first they knew they had been spotted was when a magrail round cracked overhead. The rifle made no sound when it fired, but rounds traveling over the speed of sound still carried a tiny sonic boom.

  “Zack, Ezekiel,” called out Charley. “Stay here. Lay down a base of fire.”

  Zack nodded for both. They held their weapons up over the rock wall, the image of what they were aiming at on their HUDs, and started firing. The three remaining soldiers hurried on in their crouches, heading for the high ground. The rock path sloped upward, while the protective wall decreased in height. Jonah expected them to come under fire at any moment. Instead the incoming fire stopped.

  “Sandra got the bastard,” said Zack over their now-activated comm.

  “It took long enough,” said the woman. “He stayed concealed, but then he got greedy and came out to take a clear shot at our boys.”

  Jonah acknowledged, then followed Charley and Motambe up and over the steep lip, rifle at the ready. They had to hurry, no matter the risk to themselves. The kidnappers knew they were here, and it was only a matter of time before they killed the hostage.

  They reached the overlook just as a trio of small, furry aliens, almost like large Flatar, came out of the cave, lasers at the ready. Shit, thought Jonah as he saw the weapons. He hated light amp weapons. The beam was invisible in most cases, only noticeable when there was enough particulate matter in the air to reflect the light. The first one knew they were being fired at was when the beam struck. Jonah knelt and aimed in one motion, putting a burst of rounds through the body of the alien who was turning toward them the fastest. Charley put a burst of rounds into another. The third didn’t aim so much as sweep his beam toward them; it hit rock on the way and revealed the path of its beam with the glow of heated stone.

  “Down,” yelled Jonah, trying to reach out and push Motambe down before the beam swept through him. He was able to reach the man and started to shove him out of the way when the beam struck. A sleeve on Motambe’s jacket burst into flame, and the merc yelled out in pain as it sliced into his arm. Jonah threw himself back and out of the way as
the fabric of his jacket scorched at the shoulder, thanking the gods above that he had opted for the heavier material that could resist the heat for a second.

  Charley sighted in and fired another burst, and the laser wielder went down with pinkish blood splashed over his chest fur. Five more erupted from the cave and immediately sought cover, bringing their strange-looking rifles to their shoulders.

  “How bad is it?” asked Motambe as Jonah landed beside him and gave the burn a look.

  “You’ll live,” said Jonah, showing a quick smile. “At least that burn won’t kill you, anyway,” he continued as a beam shone through the dust and smoke that was now in the air.

  “Bring them in,” shouted Charley over the comm, radio silence no longer needed.

  “Roger,” said a familiar voice in Jonah’s ear bud. The sound of ducted fans filled the air, and the noses of two gunships poked over the edge of the escarpment. The air was filled with the crack of hypervelocity rounds spurting from the cannon on the gunships’ noses as mercenaries in heavy CASPer combat suits leapt out of the large cargo compartments.

  “Shit,” cursed Jonah under his breath. The gunships and the heavily-armored mercs were only supposed to be used if things went in the crapper. The plan had called for them to come in quietly, take out the kidnappers, and free the hostage. He doubted they would get him out alive after all of this noise. Couldn’t be helped, he thought. They would still get half the contract money for taking out the assholes who had kidnapped the local factor of the Caroon-run company. But he didn’t want half the money.

  “Clear,” yelled the chief pilot. Jonah jumped up and ran for the cave entrance, a pair of armored mercs on either side. Charley waved their medic over to look at Motambe, then followed him. Zack and Ezekiel were immediately over the lip of their cover and running the short distance. The entrance was too narrow for the suited mercs, leaving his original team with the task of clearing the cave.

  It wasn’t much of a fight. There was only one alien remaining in the large cavern inside the small entrance…and the being they had come to rescue, lying on the floor with a large burn hole in his head.

  “I surrender,” said the small fury creature. Jonah had never seen his species before, but there were so damned many in just this arm of the Galaxy. Not knowing their capabilities could be trouble.

  “Secure him,” said Jonah, looking at Zack. He looked back at the alien, who had a translator box hanging around his neck. “My employers will be interested in talking to you.”

  “I’m asking for asylum,” said the alien. “This is a political fight between my people and those who paid you to take this pig back.”

  “And where did the Besquith come in?”

  “He was a merc we hired,” said the being after a moment’s hesitation.

  “And I don’t believe you,” replied Charley as Zack pulled the small being’s hands behind his back and secured them with plastic cuffs. “The people who hired us will get the truth out of you.”

  The alien started to protest, but Jonah pulled the translator off his neck. As far as he was concerned, the creature had cost him a lot of money, and that was all that mattered.

  The flight back to the spaceport was a combination of celebration and depression. The employees had made their money. They had fulfilled their contracts to the company and would get paid the full amount, though without bonuses. He and Charley would go without, anything they made going back into the company. Some bills would be paid, but not all, and Jonah could already hear the complaints of their creditors. They needed a successful contract, and they needed it now. But from where?

  “We have a comm from the company,” called the copilot. “Looks like they have another contract for us.”

  * * *

  “Well, this is different,” complained Charley in a soft voice, wiping the sweat from his face with a hand cloth.

  Jonah nodded, feeling the sweat drip down his face. While the last job was on a heavy gravity planet, this one only had point seven that of Earth, so the loads they carried would have been lighter—if it hadn’t been for the fact that they had added more on. Where the last had been cold, this planet was very hot, over forty degrees Celsius, or one hundred and six Fahrenheit. And the humidity was so high Jonah was surprised they didn’t have to swim. All things considered, though, he preferred the jungle to the mountains. This was his specialty. He could move through this kind of foliage with a full load on his back and make less noise than the wind. Their active camouflage would blend them in with the weird red and orange vegetation like they were invisible. The only thing that worried him, besides those they would be fighting when they got to the target, was his unfamiliarity with the local flora and fauna.

  He didn’t know the signals here. What was harmless, and what was deadly? What displays did the deadly ones have to warn him away? At least his inner clothing was proof against most punctures, unless the creature happened to have some sort of super-hardened fangs and claws. Not likely, but not unheard of.

  He did know there was nothing edible in this jungle, at least not by his species. It went both ways. He wasn’t edible by the local carnivores. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t try to take a bite out of him if they could—they would only learn their lesson after they had done the damage.

  The alien who was their guide, a local native wearing only a necklace of animal teeth, fur sandals, and a loin cloth of some reptilian hide, turned and pointed something out, his translator box squeaking out hushed English.

  “Our guide says to avoid those flowers over there,” said Charley, standing closer to the alien than Jonah. “He says they’re dangerous.”

  That was enough for Jonah. He didn’t need to know if they would eject poisonous pollen if he trod on their roots, or if the actual flowers were carnivorous, or even if he needed to eat one to experience the threat. He knew they were dangerous, which meant they needed to be avoided.

  The acting colonel cursed and swatted at something that bit his cheek. He missed, and the creature, this world’s analogue of the mosquito, flew off, six wings buzzing while it brought its eight legs up to tuck under its body. It wobbled in flight, then fell limply out of the air. Eaten something you didn’t like? Jonah thought as he scratched the small wound which itched fiercely. If not for the nanites in his system, he too might be wobbling prior to falling down, thanks to the incompatible proteins the bite had injected. It was a bad match, blood-sucking insect and blood from another world, but the bug didn’t know that. It was genetically programed to attack animals, without a thought that they might not be to its digestive system’s liking.

  There was a cloying odor to the place, a mixture of old rot and the scents given off by plants that had organs resembling flowers. It was sort of familiar, but nothing like the rainforest he had worked in on the Amazon River. His olfactory glands didn’t know how to react to it, and he wondered how many odors there were he couldn’t detect.

  “This place sucks,” complained one of the mercs, pushing up the multi-spectrum visor on his helmet. “I can’t make out shit in this damned shithole.”

  Jonah grinned. They had been warned about this jungle, but many of the people had ignored the briefing. Mostly the newer people. The old hands had learned enough by surviving to realize that any information presented might be used to survive in the future.

  The trees of this jungle were exogenous, producing heat with their metabolism, much like animals. Many of the plants had muscle-like fibers that allowed limited movement. Leaves could turn on branches to seek the best angle to catch the rays of the sun. Or take other, less savory actions. The important fact was they gave off heat, which made infrared sensors almost useless. The larger specimens also had working circulatory systems, the muscle-like fibers forming pumping chambers to move nutrients and wastes through them. That caused the incessant murmuring sound of liquids being pumped, which made it difficult to pick out other sounds. Jonah had hoped all of this would be to their advantage, since they would be harder to see
in infrared, and they would have to make a lot of noise to be heard, but it was turning out to be as much of a detriment as an asset.

  There were bird analogues in the jungle, their cries audible though muted by the background murmur and the rustling of large animals. One especially loud noise caught his attention, and he looked on in fascination as a large creature that reminded him of an armored, trunkless elephant chomped down on a branch while the tree tried to pull away. Jonah wondered what kind of animal preyed on that beast, if any. He had seen videos about the local predators and didn’t want to run into any on this mission.

  “Our guide just informed me it will be night soon,” said Charley, moving to Jonah’s side and taking a look at the battle between herb and herbivore going on, something they were unlikely to see on any other world.

  “He knows we’re going on through the night, doesn’t he?”

  “He knows. He doesn’t like it, but he knows. And he thinks we’re damned fools for trying.”

  Jonah nodded. Of course the jungle would be more alive at night—most were—but they planned to strike the enemy compound in the late hours of the night, just a couple of time units before dawn, when their foes weren’t at their most alert.

  Really being here, in the nightmare of a landscape, he was rethinking his plan. Unfortunately, they had as far to walk to get out as they had to move forward, and calling in an airlift was a non-starter. Anything coming in over the canopy would be seen, especially when they were hovering while pulling the mercs out of the jungle. They were committed. Still, he could understand why some of his people had spoken of preferring garrison duty, where they would be warm, safe, and dry for the most part. And some would rather be in CASPers. Seeing the herbivorous beast, he wouldn’t mind being in the armor as well, though he wasn’t sure even it was a match for a creature like that—at least not without weaponry.