When Eagles Dare

by Doug Dandridge

  “How goes it, Lrator?” Jonah asked, smiling.

  “I want to thank you again for the opportunity to make up for my past actions, Colonel White Eagle,” the being said.

  The children all turned and looked at the newcomers, several getting to their feet and running over to pat the two colonels.

  “What’s he doing here? Weren’t his people responsible for the excesses of the criminal enterprise that caused all of this?”

  “Lrator was not welcome back on his home world,” Jonah said. “He wanted to make up for some of those…excesses. So we found a job for him that helps everyone.”

  Model continued to ask questions, and White Eagle was starting to get frustrated. The man was a crusader who would save the sentient beings of this planet from the perceived exploitation, whether they wanted it or not. Whether it existed or not.

  Finally, after a meal, the Representative was off with Ramos for the compound and his own shuttle. Jonah wasn’t sure if they’d satisfied the man. He wasn’t sure if anything would have. He wasn’t too worried, since this wasn’t Earth, and he’d arranged to live here for the rest of his life.

  He watched the lights of the shuttle recede, then walked over to the graveyard the Kalagarta had donated to his company. Hard alloy markers that would last practically forever marked each grave, and the Kalagarta lovingly tended to them. Everyone had been moved here, even those who had fallen on the upper plateau.

  He stopped for a moment in front of the grave of Kevin Graham, who had held on to his life beyond reason to help take out the Tortantula. Next to him was the grave of Amobi Kabir, and then that of Sarah Cohen. All lay here, and they all still lived in his heart and mind.

  “Colonel,” Ivan Zhukov said, walking past him to head for a particular grave, flowers in his hand.

  “You doing okay, Ivan?”

  “Fine. Getting better every day.” The man knelt in front of Dotty Farrah’s grave, saying a quick prayer and placing the flowers on the marker. “If not for her, I wouldn’t be here.”

  Ivan hadn’t said a word in a year about returning to missions, and Jonah wasn’t going to push. None of the people who’d fought to liberate this planet would be forced to fight again, unless it was to defend the world of Kalagart. Charley, Sandra, Joey and Hotaru were off planet on a mission. Those four had decided they hadn’t had enough. When they had, they’d be welcome back here, or anywhere else they wanted to go.

  “Thank you,” said Chief Allaman, walking up behind Jonah in the darkness. “Thank you. If not for you, our world would have been doomed.”

  Jonah nodded silently to the old Kalagarta. Every time he came here, the chief thanked him, and every time he didn’t know what to say. Looking at the form of the chief in the dark, he realized he didn’t have to say anything.

  # # # # #

  About the Author

  Doug Dandridge was born in Venice Florida in 1957, the son of a Florida native and a Mother of French Canadian descent. An avid reader from an early age, Doug has read most of the classic novels and shorts of Science Fiction and Fantasy, as well as multiple hundreds of historical works. Doug has military experience including Marine Corps JROTC, Active Duty Army, and the Florida National Guard. He attended Florida State University, studying Biology, Geology, Physics, and Chemistry, and received a BS in Psychology. Doug then studied Clinical Psychology at the University of Alabama, with specific interests in Neuropsychology and Child Psychology, completing a Masters and all course work required for a PhD.

  He has worked in Psychiatric Hospitals, Mental Health Centers, a Prison, a Juvenile Residential Facility, and for the past five years for the Florida Department of Children and Families. Doug has been writing on and off for fifteen years. He concentrates on intelligent science fiction and fantasy in which there is always hope, no matter how hard the situation. No area of the fantastic is outside his scope, as he has completed works in near and far future Science Fiction, Urban and High Fantasy, Horror, and Alternate History.

  * * * * *

  The following is an

  Excerpt from Book One of the Omega Wars:

  A Fiery Sunset

  ___________________

  Chris Kennedy and

  Mark Wandrey

  Available Now from Seventh Seal Press

  eBook, Paperback, and Audio

  Excerpt from “A Fiery Sunset:”

  Avander Pharmaceuticals, Chattanooga, Tennessee, Earth

  “Dr. Avander will see you now,” said the Veetch. The alien obviously thought he was stupid, Major Good decided, as it flipped one of its left hands to indicate the enormous mahogany door behind it that sported the nameplate, “Dr. Ezekiel Avander, CEO.” As it was the only door beside the one he came in, Good really didn’t need a lot of decision-making skill to figure that out.

  Apparently, showing in visitors wasn’t part of the alien’s job description, as it went back to what it was doing without getting up. Nice.

  Major Good walked to the door and turned the handle. The solid mahogany door was every bit the feature-piece it appeared to be and required a decent portion of his augmented strength to open. It probably was meant to overawe visitors. Good, however, found it slightly annoying.

  “Dr. Avander?” he asked as he entered the room. The office was as ostentatious on the inside as he had guessed it would be from looking at the exterior. Luxuriously-appointed furnishings were tastefully positioned throughout the room, with bookcases artfully filled with a variety of works, from classical masterpieces to the latest treatises on the art and practice of war. It was a tribute to an extremely wealthy man who had equally eclectic tastes.

  The other feature of the room was a massive desk that matched the entrance door, on which sat a forest of slates and monitors, to the extent that the man behind them was only glimpsed in portions and slices. From what Good could see, the man appeared in constant motion, working on a great portion of the devices in front of him, nearly simultaneously.

  “Yes?” came a distant voice from behind the monitors.

  “I’m Major Good,” the intel officer replied. “I’m here to talk with you about why you haven’t returned our calls.”

  The motion behind the monitors ceased, and a hand slid a number of the monitors out of the way so Good could see the man behind them. Whatever Good had expected from the merc-turned-CEO, this wasn’t it. The man wore a faded leather jacket, and a giant stogie hung from the corner of his mouth. Lines from his implants trailed off to four of the slates. Although the man was closing in on 150 years old, he looked no older than 55, and appeared in top physical shape. The piercing blue eyes stared at Good for a moment as if looking into his soul, then the man smiled and waved him to one of the two chairs in front of the desk.

  “Please sit,” the man said, “and call me Zeke.”

  “Hi, Zeke,” Major Good replied; “we’ve called you a bunch, and you haven’t returned any of our calls.”

  “There’s a damned good reason why, too.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m not interested,” Zeke said, and he started to pull the monitors back into their earlier positions.

  “One second,” Good said. “Can I ask why you’re not interested? Your planet has been assaulted by aliens, and all you want to do is to sit here and run your empire? Trying to milk a few more credits from old men and women in search of the Fountain of Youth?”

  “Look,” Zeke said, “I enjoyed my time with The Golden Horde, and I think I did very well for you. Certainly, my service helped garner some extra credits for the company. Now, I may not have the intelligence facilities the Horde does, but my network runs pretty deep, and I’m kept passingly familiar with anything important going on, anywhere on this planet, that might affect business. I am well aware of the aliens on Earth and their intentions. I’m not, however, interested in coming back to work for the Horde; I have enough to do here.”

  “What could be more important than joining the resistance?”

  Zeke cocked
his head and looked piercingly at the major again. “Do you know what we do here?” he finally asked.

  “You help old people live another day through a variety of treatments and enhancements.”

  “I help people live longer,” Zeke said. “I help them beat diseases that are untreatable anywhere else on this planet. I do this by working at the cellular level, fixing things that have previously been unfixable by mankind. I give people life!”

  Zeke turned one of the monitors so Good could see the image of a virus on it. “I can also take life,” he continued, his voice quiet, “just as easily as I can give it. You are running around recruiting people for a war that is already underway, a war that I am already fighting. Only my company can tailor viruses to do the things we want. To attack the creatures I want. Why am I not interested in coming back to the Horde? Because I’m far more valuable here.”

  * * * * *

  Get “A Fiery Sunset” now at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CBCK45L.

  Find out more about Chris Kennedy and Mark Wandrey at: https://chriskennedypublishing.com/.

  * * * * *

  The following is an

  Excerpt from Book One of In Revolution Born:

  The Mutineer’s Daughter

  ___________________

  Chris Kennedy & Thomas A. Mays

  Now Available from Theogony Books

  eBook, Paperback, and Audio

  Excerpt from “The Mutineer’s Daughter:”

  Kenny dozed at his console again.

  There he sat—as brazen as ever—strapped down, suited up, jacked in…and completely checked out. One might make allowances for an overworked man falling asleep during a dull routine, watching gauges that didn’t move or indicators that rarely indicated anything of consequence, perhaps even during a quiet moment during their ship’s long, long deployment.

  But Fire Control Tech Third Class Ken Burnside was doing it—yet again—while the ship stood at General Quarters, in an unfriendly star system, while other parts of the fleet engaged the forces of the Terran Union.

  Chief Warrant Officer Grade 2 (Combat Systems) Benjamin “Benno” Sanchez shook his helmeted head and narrowed his eyes at the sailor strapped in to his right. He had spoken to the young weapons engineer a number of times before, through countless drills and mock skirmishes, but the youthful idiot never retained the lesson for long.

  “Benno, Bosso,” Kenny would plead, “you shouldn’t yell at me. You should have me teach others my wisdom!”

  Benno would invariably frown and give his unflattering opinion of Kenny’s wisdom.

  “Get it, ya?” Kenny would reply. “I’m a math guy. Probability, right Warrant? The Puller’s just a little ship, on the edge of the formation. We scan, we snipe, we mop up, we patrol. We don’t go in the middle, tube’s blazing, ya? We no tussle with the big Terrans, ya? No damage! No battle! So, something goes wrong, back-ups kick in, buzzer goes off, we mark for fix later. And when’s the only time you or the officers don’t let a man walk ‘round and don’t ask for this, don’t ask for that? When’s the only time a man can catch up on the z’s, eh? One and the same time! So I doze. Buzzer goes off, I wake, make a note, doze again till I can work, ya? Such wisdom!”

  Benno usually lectured him about complacency. He asked what would happen if they were hit, if the shot was hot enough, deep enough, destructive enough to burn through the backup of the backup of the backup. What if they did have to face the Great Test, to rise and work and save the Puller themselves?

  Kenny would always smile, relieved. “Well, then I be dead, ya? No more maintenance either way. Good enough reason to doze right there!”

  Benno could have reported him any number of times, but he never had. Putting it on paper and sending it above them was a two-edged sword. It would solve Kenny’s sleepy disdain for order, of that Benno had no doubt, but he also knew he would lose Kenny’s trust and the vigorous drive the young ALS plebeian applied to every other task. Plus, it would signal to the officers above that Benno couldn’t handle a minor discipline problem on his own. And it would indicate to the ranks below that Benno was no longer one of their own—when he had gone from Chief to Chief Warrant Officer, he had changed his ties, forever.

  So Benno growled, but he let it slide, content only he would know about Kenny’s acts of passive rebellion. No one else would ever know why the young tech kept getting extra punishment duties. Besides, it wasn’t as if Kenny was actually wrong, in the fullness of things.

  Then, before Benno could check his own side of the console to verify whether things were indeed alright, his internal debate was blown away by the unforgiving, indiscriminate lance of an x-ray laser blast.

  The single beam struck the Puller a glancing blow, centered on a space just beneath the outer hull and aimed outboard. Armor plate, radiation shielding, piping, wireways, conduit, decking, internal honeycombed structure, atmosphere, and people all ionized and ablated into a dense, mixed plasma. This plasma exploded outward, crushing the spaces surrounding the hit and dealing further physical and thermal damage. Combat Systems Maintenance Central, or CSMC, lay deep within the Puller’s battle hull—three spaces inward from where the x-ray laser struck—but that meant little next to the awesome destructive power of a Dauphine capital-class xaser warhead.

  The forward and port bulkheads in front of them flashed white hot with near-instantaneous thermal energy transfer and peeled away, blown out by the twin shocks of the outward-expanding plasma and the snapping counterforce of explosive decompression. The double blast battered Benno in his seat and threw him against his straps to the left. As the bulkheads vanished, their departure also carried away the CSMC monitoring console the two watch standers shared with them into the black, along with Kenny’s seat, and Ken Burnside, himself.

  The young engineer disappeared in an instant, lost without ever waking. Benno stared, dumbfounded, at the blank spot where he had been, and of all the possible panicked thoughts that could have come to him, only one rose to the forefront:

  Does this validate Kenny’s wisdom?

  Benno shook his head, dazed and in shock, knowing he had to engage his brain. Looking beyond, he could see the glowing edges of bulkheads and decks gouged out by the fast, hot knife of the nuclear-pumped xaser. Only vaguely could he recall the sudden buffeting of explosive decompression that had nearly wrenched him through the straps of his acceleration couch.

  He knew he had things to do. He had to check his suit’s integrity. Was he leaking? Was he injured? And what about Kenny? Was he gone, unrecoverable? Or was he waiting for his poor, shocked-stupid boss Benno to reach out and save him?

  And there was something else, something important he needed to be doing. He wasn’t supposed to just sit here and think of himself or unlucky, lazy Kenny. Oh no, thought Benno, still trying to marshal his thoughts back together, Mio is going to be so angry with me, sitting here like a fool…

  “CSMC, report!”

  Benno shook his head against the ringing he hadn’t realized filled his ears. He reached out for the comms key on his console, swore at how futile that was, then keyed his suit mic. “Last station calling, this is CSMC. We’ve taken a hit. I lost my technician, console is…down, hard. Over.”

  “CSMC, TAO,” the Puller’s Tactical Action Officer said through the suit channel, “pull it together! We just had a near miss by a capital class Dauphine warhead. The battle with the Terrans has spread out of the main body. I have missiles up but zero point-defense. I need guns and beams back, now!”

  * * * * *

  Get “The Mutineer’s Daughter” now at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BRTDBCJ

  Find out more about Thomas A. Mays and “In Revolution Born” at: https://chriskennedypublishing.com

  * * * * *

  The following is an

  Excerpt from Book One of the Salvage Title Trilogy:

  Salvage Title

  ___________________

  Kevin Steverson

  Now Available from Theogony Books


  eBook and Paperback

  Excerpt from “Salvage Title:”

  A steady beeping brought Harmon back to the present. Clip’s program had succeeded in unlocking the container. “Right on!” Clip exclaimed. He was always using expressions hundreds or more years out of style. “Let’s see what we have; I hope this one isn’t empty, too.” Last month they’d come across a smaller vault, but it had been empty.

  Harmon stepped up and wedged his hands into the small opening the door had made when it disengaged the locks. There wasn’t enough power in the small cells Clip used to open it any further. He put his weight into it, and the door opened enough for them to get inside. Before they went in, Harmon placed a piece of pipe in the doorway so it couldn’t close and lock on them, baking them alive before anyone realized they were missing.

  Daylight shone in through the doorway, and they both froze in place; the weapons vault was full. In it were two racks of rifles, stacked on top of each other. One held twenty magnetic kinetic rifles, and the other held some type of laser rifle. There was a rack of pistols of various types. There were three cases of flechette grenades and one of thermite. There were cases of ammunition and power clips for the rifles and pistols, and all the weapons looked to be in good shape, even if they were of a strange design and clearly not made in this system. Harmon couldn’t tell what system they had been made in, but he could tell what they were.