When Eagles Dare Read online

  When Eagles Dare

  Book Five of the Four Horsemen Tales

  By

  Doug Dandridge

  PUBLISHED BY: Seventh Seal Press

  Copyright © 2018 Doug Dandridge

  All Rights Reserved

  * * * * *

  Get the free Four Horsemen prelude story “Shattered Crucible”

  and discover other Seventh Seal Press titles at:

  http://chriskennedypublishing.com/

  * * * * *

  Cover Design by Brenda Mihalko

  Original Art by Ricky Ryan

  * * * * *

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  * * * * *

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  About the Author

  Excerpt from Book One of the Omega Wars:

  Excerpt from Book One of In Revolution Born:

  Excerpt from Book One of the Salvage Title Trilogy:

  * * * * *

  Chapter One

  “I really don’t like this,” groaned Sandra Clemenceau, holding her sniper rifle tightly as the shuttle bucked from the turbulence of the drop. The pert blond stared with wide blue eyes at the padded interior as the ship shook again.

  “What’s not to like?” Ivan Zhukov asked, turning a sharp heavy blade over in his scarred hands. “We’re coming down like a rock and hoping we aren’t spotted by the people we’ve come to kill. What could be better?”

  Jonah White Eagle snorted, glad that the pair, two of his oldest employees, could banter. It helped to relieve the tension of a drop. Of course, Ivan was correct. If their prey saw them coming, there could be trouble. Which was why they were taking this top-of-the-world route.

  “Fifteen minutes to touchdown, sir,” the pilot called back from the cockpit. “Sure you don’t want to be up here?”

  Jonah took a look around the compartment they were riding in. It was the utilitarian green of military vehicles of Earth make. Web chairs were all they had to sit in, though at least they came with straps to hold them in if things got rough. Not the newest thing in orbit-to-ground transport, but it was tried-and-true technology, and the best they could afford.

  “I’m fine, Ed. I’d rather have the pair of you up there handling this part.”

  He looked over at the Tri-V map. They were coming down over a thousand miles from the cliff edge, toward the middle of the seven-and-a-half-mile high plateau that made up most of the only large continent on the planet Kalagart. It was hoped that they wouldn’t be picked up coming in like this, since the enemy had no known satellites in orbit. Touchdown would be six miles from the cliff, and they would walk to it. Nothing to it, thought the Apache-descended leader. He’d taken much longer hikes with a lot more equipment.

  He looked over at his partner, the second-in-command and Vice President of the Fierce Eagle Company. Charley Thapa was a Gurkha, a born mountaineer, but even he had evidenced some trepidation at scaling the thirty-nine-thousand-foot-high cliffs down to the foothills of the canyon.

  Nothing to it, Jonah told himself again, trying to calm the pre-mission butterflies fluttering through his stomach. Once they were down in the canyon, they’d be fine. It was the kind of territory they were used to operating in, forest and jungle.

  He took another look at the Tri-V as the shuttle straightened out to fly low over the terrain. Kalagart was one unusual bitch of a planet. The eighteen and a half million square miles of the primary continent was divided into two completely different environments. In the canyonlands, a series of deep depressions carved millions of years before by the rivers flowing through them, the environment was much like many found on Earth and other planets. The canyonlands covered almost four million square miles, a little larger than the old United States.

  The life forms in the canyonlands used the same amino acids and proteins as Earth life, meaning it was edible to Humans. Unfortunately, that also meant that Humans made good snacks for some of the larger beasts. They used different nucleotides, but still transmitted them between two sexes for reproduction.

  The plateau biosphere had some similarities with the land below, and many more differences. The biologists thought that life in the thin, cold atmosphere came from the same biogenesis event that produced the lowland and ocean life, but it had evolved over billions of years since the uplift of the plateau to become very different. The animals had much lower metabolisms, with what amounted to anti-freeze in their blood, and enormous lungs. They were warmer than their environment, but not what most scientists would call warm-blooded. Humans could still eat the life there, but too much would cause alcohol poisoning.

  It didn’t really matter if the life on the plateau was compatible or not, since they weren’t equipped for a long stay. Their high-tech outwear would help them blend in with the surroundings, and keep them warm enough in the short term, but they would have to carry their air with them or haul along a machine to concentrate oxygen and refill the tanks they had.

  We’ll be there in three hours, he thought of the cliff face they would walk to, looking up the cabin at the rest of his team.

  “I wish we could have brought our CASPers along,” Erik Menendez said, shaking his head.

  The man was cross-trained in the combat armor. The company only had a trio of the suits, since they weren’t their standard mission equipment. For some reason, the contract hadn’t called for them to bring them, as there was no stated need for them. Ramos’ Ravagers were the heavy unit on this mission. Jonah had worked with them before, but that had been years earlier, and he wasn’t familiar with their current membership. Working with people he didn’t know well tended to make him nervous.

  The twenty-five operatives he’d brought along were all good people. All had military training, and all had graded out at the top of their profession. Some still didn’t have enough experience to suit him, but with a little help, they’d be fine. He hoped.

  Some were married; most weren’t, but they’d all left someone behind. Sandra had left a husband and some eggs, just in case she didn’t make it back. Most had girlfriends. Hell, even he had someone, though he was sure the couple he’d left his cat with would take care of her if something happened to him.

  “Think we’ll take any sc
alps on this mission, Colonel?” one of his newer people asked.

  “That’s not politically correct, Joey,” Charley said, putting his kukri back in its sheath.

  “Then why’re you carrying that big bastard, Major?” Joseph Many Bears said, unable to keep the grin off his face. “And I’m Sioux, so I can say stuff like that.”

  Joseph Many Bears was a full-blooded Sioux and a veteran of Earth’s defense force. Jonah thought he’d work out. Despite being raised on the Great Plains, he could move through brush as quietly as anyone the leader had ever seen.

  “Just get us down,” Sandra said, gripping her rifle tightly. “And puppy,” she continued, looking at Many Bears, “I don’t think the people we’re going after have scalps. Not as we understand the term.”

  “The Besquith do,” the smiling young man said. “I’d sure like to prove myself against one of them.”

  “Then you’re crazy,” Ivan said, looking up from his own knife. “The only way to take down one of those monsters is with a large-caliber weapon like Sandra has.”

  “The colonel took one down,” the young man said, looking over at Jonah.

  “I was lucky. And we’re unlikely to run into any of them here.”

  Jonah had studied the intelligent life forms they were likely to encounter. The native aborigines, the Kalagarta, were bipedal, with slime-covered skin and secondary gills. They could move fast enough on land, but they could really tear it up in the rivers. The species they thought of as the bosses was one Humans didn’t encounter too often. Large lumps of muscle called Groff, they still rated high on the intelligence scale, which was why they were running the operation. And then there were the Xlatan, a relative newcomer species to the mercenary game. They were supposed to be tough. Maybe not in the same class as the Besquith, but close enough.

  “Not from what I heard. I heard…”

  “We have company, Colonel,” called the pilot over the intercom.

  “Who are they?” he asked, alarm bells going off in his mind. No one was supposed to know they were coming, and it seemed improbable that someone would be cruising along there at the same time by chance.

  “I don’t know, sir. But the missiles hanging from the hull make me doubt they’re a short-hop shuttle.”

  “Can you lose them?”

  “I’m good, Colonel, but not that good. There’s no place to hide up here. Maybe if I can make it to the edge and down into the canyon.”

  “Then push it.”

  The engines sounded through the hull. The shuttle could go hypersonic, but they needed to think about dropping over the edge, not flying as an easy target over the lowlands where their enemies were located. He also didn’t think they’d be able to outrun whatever was on their tail. Definitely not their missiles.

  “We have missile launch. Four birds in the air.”

  Jonah changed the view of the Tri-V, pulling up a tactical plot that showed the four weapons streaking in. The following craft was just under a hundred miles back, and the missiles, accelerating quickly, would impact in seconds. The shuttle bucked a bit as the heat-producing and radar-spoofing countermeasures were launched.

  One of the missiles disappeared, hit by the defensive tail lasers of the shuttle. Another went a moment later, then the third. Jonah was allowing himself to hope they’d get them all. If the enemy craft had more, it might not mean anything in the long run, but the longer they were alive the better their chances.

  Everyone now had their helmets on and chin straps set. A few had pulled out the oxygen masks they’d planned to use in hiking to the edge and climbing down. Not everybody had thought that far ahead.

  “Masks on,” Jonah ordered, pulling out his own.

  “Hold on!” the pilot yelled as the craft yawed to the side, then pitched downward.

  Something boomed in the air outside, then objects clanged into the hull. A couple of holes appeared, and one of the new people gasped as red fluid burst from his chest. Jonah looked on in horror. If he could get to the man, he might be able to save his life. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get to him with the ship pitching and bucking, and the trooper bled out without ever getting to use his skills on the mission.

  There was another boom, and this time the shuttle bucked as if it had hit a wall. Jonah shook his head, feeling the strange fuzziness of a concussion. The upper part of the compartment became the floor, then they hit the ground. Luckily their angle was good, and they went into a slide.

  What if we go over the edge? he thought as the craft rolled again. The straps kept him in place, but like everyone else, he was tossed around within the grip of the belts.

  Something hit the colonel in the helmet, hard enough to make his vision blur at first, then blacken. His last thought as consciousness fled was that this was it. The mission was over, and his life with it.

  * * *

  “Should we go down and make sure?” the pilot asked in the high-pitched growling voice of the Xlatan.

  “No,” said the leader, Mmrash, looking down at the wrecked shuttle.

  The elongated hull of the craft lay where it had slashed into the ground, raising berms of frozen earth around its path through several hundred yards of land. Wisps of smoke rose into the thin air through slashes in the hull. Some of those spots still glowed red.

  Twitching his ears in the manner of his kind, Mmrash spoke. “They’re done, and it looks cold as the hells down there. We’d be wasting our time, and I look forward to some food. I hear they’re preparing some of the slower-working aborigines.” He smiled, showing his sharp carnivore’s teeth. “Fresh meat tonight.”

  Xlatan weren’t obligate carnivores and could get by on grains and some select vegetables. Still, meat was preferred, and they weren’t picky where the meat came from.

  “Perhaps I should put a couple of missiles into them,” the anxious pilot replied. “Make sure.”

  “We already used six missiles as it is,” the leader growled, staring into the eyes of the pilot from the co-pilot’s seat. “We won’t be getting any more for the foreseeable future, and I’m ready to be clear of this depressing landscape.”

  The pilot gave a brisk ear twitch, and the tufts stood up. With two upper hands gripping the wheel and the two lower ones on the levers on the sides of the chair, he started the craft on its way, rising up and turning to head for the cliff. The frozen landscape passed by below until they reached a spot where the cliff could be seen. In moments they were over the canyonlands, the pilot angling them down on a course for the camp.

  * * *

  While they flew low over the tops of the trees, the pilot worried about what the boss might say. He glanced over at the commander sitting his chair, lower arms crossed over his stomach while the upper pair held a reader.

  The pilot wasn’t so sure they shouldn’t have checked on the shuttle and made sure all were dead. But he wasn’t in command, and it was up to the officer to make the decisions. Just as it would be the officer who would pay the price if the boss wasn’t satisfied with that decision. He still worried some of the backlash might trickle down and affect the rest of the company.

  With a huff of breath, the pilot put all worries behind him and paid attention to his job, getting them back in one piece. It was an easy job, after all, since there was nothing below capable of knocking them out of the sky.

  * * *

  “Sir,” a faint voice said as something touched Jonah’s face lightly.

  A strong, astringent, chemical smell came to his nostrils, and he coughed as consciousness returned. There was a faint ache in his head, and some blurring of his eyes.

  “What happened?” he asked, looking up into the face he recognized as Ivan’s. “Are we okay?”

  “We’re alive,” Ivan said with a frown. “That’s as okay as it’s going to get right now. The shuttle is down, and we’re quite a way from the cliff.”

  “Can we get her up again?”

  “Not a chance,” Charley said, pulling off his oxygen mask as he made his way throug
h the cabin. “The only way this bird is going to fly again is if we get her to a repair depot.”

  Jonah focused his eyes and took in his surroundings, while his other senses probed the environment. Air was whistling from the holes in the hull, while the odors of vomit and the loose bowels of the dead permeated the cabin. Air hissed in the distance as the life support system tried to make up for the loss of air.

  “Sandra and a couple of the lads are outside, patching up the hull,” Charley said. “I figured we’d want to keep what air we had while we made ready to leave.”

  “And our friends?”

  “Just flew off toward the lowlands,” the Gurkha said, shaking his head. “They must have thought we were all dead.”

  “Damned sloppy of them,” Jonah said, unstrapping himself from the webbing so he could get to his feet. He wobbled for a moment before he trusted himself to step away from his chair. “How many did we lose?”

  “The flight crew and two of the troopers,” Charley said, closing his eyes and grimacing as he finished speaking.

  “Trooper Patrick,” Jonah said, recalling the death of the man he’d witnessed before he’d lost consciousness. He thought of the young recruit, his smiling, freckled face and Irish accent. He’d been so proud to be hired by the specialist merc company. He’d died before his boots had ever touched the surface of a planet other than Earth.

  “Yeah. Him and Kowalski,” Charley said, naming the dead, making them real for Jonah. “And the pilots, Rodriguez and Xu. Their compartment took a direct hit. There’s not enough left for identification.”

  The colonel closed his eyes again, picturing the other dead men. Two of the men had been veterans. Paulo Kowalski had been with the company since the start, while Raul Rodriguez, the pilot, had joined over a year ago. Lydia Xu, the copilot, had signed on just three months prior.