The Eagle's Last Stand

By Gibson Morales

The Eagle is the Earth’s best hope against the Anunnaki, but she has never faced a mission like this.

Half her squad is dead, she is unarmed, badly injured, and under-geared. Worse, the gangs of Los Angeles are hunting her for the bounty on her head. On top of that, she suspects her superiors sabotaged this operation.

Somehow, she must break inside a highly-defended Anunnaki base and rescue a girl who knows humanity’s most precious military secrets. Secrets that will doom Earth’s resistance if the Eagle doesn’t rescue her. She has less than ten hours. And then it will be too late.

Now her only way to complete the mission involves outright betraying her last ally. Her best friend.

The Eagle knows the odds of success are low, but she’ll give everything she’s got. She’ll make her stand, even if takes her life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gibson Morales
• Release date: Nov 4, 2017
• ISBN: 9781943575190

Gibson Morales

Gibson Morales is the author of the young adult novels, The Deadliest Earthling and The Boy Who Wields Thunder. He publishes these under his imprint, Mo Bros Books, which he formed with his brother and writer Vicente. Gibson graduated from USC and lives in Los Angeles. When not writing, Gibson enjoys boxing, most things geek-related, traveling, and computer science.

Book preview

1

W e're going down! Menendez cried over the radio .

The dip in Dagos's gut told her they needed a miracle if they hoped to stay airborne. Everything slowed to a slug's pace as she braced herself.

Are we hit? Sledge yelled, gripping his x-shaped

seat

belt

.

The pilot spouted some technical code that Dagos vaguely knew as accidental engine failure.

The high rises twisted below them as the chopper teetered. Dagos dug her fingers into the seat handles. There was the split-second sensation of weightlessness. And then gravity took the reins. The

chopper

dove

.

Her entire body pumped with adrenaline as the centrifugal rush of the chopper shoved her against the foam of her seat. The horizon spun around them. Chrome skyscrapers and glinting sunlight and the hazy blue sky

whirled

past

.

In front of Dagos, the gray-haired woman in the stretcher woke up, eyes vein-riddled in terror. Harnesses held her body and the gurney down, but her arms flailed as she screamed for help. Her heart rate monitor kicked into overdrive, almost in sync with the chopper's alarm.

Dagos clutched her seat belt, her orange para-rescue uniform fluttering like crazy as wind raced through the aircraft cabin. She gasped for breath, her lungs burning. Her vision dizzied. For an instant, the other Snake-eaters in the cabin became nothing more than silhouettes. Someone yelled for parachutes over the radio. The ones stowed below their seats.

Then she managed to breathe, giving her a renewed clarity. She'd be damned if she died like this. Due to engine failure when a million Anunnaki wanted

her

head

.

Forget the chutes, she growled into her mike. High rises were stabbing up at them. They didn't have time for parachutes. Rappel. Three and three. She couldn't help yelling at the top of her lungs. The effort left her dazed as she unbuckled her seat belt. Willing herself toward the chopper's side exit, every buffet of wind threatened to topple her over. Two feet felt like forever. Direction and situational awareness were drifting from her mind. There was only the open door frame.

Somehow, she staggered to it, ripped the orange nylon cord from her belt and snapped it onto the wall clip handle. Protocol demanded she give it a tug to double-check its strength. Instead, she kicked off, praying she didn't fly into the propellers. Her gut flew into her throat as the buzz of the cord's loosing rang in her ears. Then the wind screamed at her. Between that and the blood rushing in her head, she might as well have been wearing ear plugs.

Windows and pigeons streaked past her. A dozen a second. She could've been Spider-man, swinging from skyscrapers. A drunk Spider-man. Suddenly, the cord went taut and her body jerked. Every inch of her

seized

up

.

In that instant of pain, all her senses sharpened. Hyper-alert, she registered the rooftop garden below. Twenty feet? Ten feet? No way to know for sure. The helicopter dragged her back. She wouldn't get a safer landing than this. It was now or never.

She slapped a hand to her belt and depressed the cord's release switch. Once again, the short feeling of weightlessness precluded a fall. This fall like the devil grinning at her. Because she'd escaped death, but, grass or not, this was going to hurt

like

hell

.

She tried leaning to the side and promised herself she wouldn't hit the brick path surrounding the grass. Panic smothered her as her body twisted in

mid

-

fall

.

A crash into grass. She bounced. Another thud into the grass. She bounced again and her body skidded against the brick, edges and nicks digging through her para-rescue uniform. She lay on her side, everything numb. Her bones felt like they'd shifted positions by a few inches. Seconds slipped away, her vision a blur. She blinked, willing it to clear. She couldn't move yet. I'm totally vulnerable.

In the corner of her eye, a figure flew through the sky and collided with a neighboring building. Dread tightened in her and she tried not to think about it. But she knew it was Raimes. She'd been sitting right next to her. She would've been next in line. Except, no, that wasn't a certainty. The fall had rattled her brain. It could be any of her teammates who'd perished. There were three on each side of the chopper and who knew how many had managed to escape.

A violent tremor ran through her. At first, she thought she was going through her death throes. Then she realized it was the chopper meeting the street.

As her heartbeat retreated from her ears, she heard a growing commotion from below. Hollers and curses. Based on the lack of frantic screams, either the helicopter hadn't hit anyone in the crash or it hadn't left anyone alive. Dagos tried to escape that grim thought, but couldn't. Besides her and the five other Snake-eaters, the pilot and the old woman had been on board. She didn't see how they could've survived.

Dagos discovered her body respond. She inched her left arm out from underneath herself. Without warning, her body tilted forward. She jerked her head back, but hit the grass with more force than she expected. Lying flat on her stomach, she gritted her teeth and stretched the arm she'd landed on. Miraculously, it moved. Her entire body throbbed in a weary sort of pain, and her left arm didn't stand out in that regard. But it didn't hurt any worse. Grimacing, she staggered to her feet, her knees as hot as coals.

She peeled off her helmet, shook out her shoulder-length blonde hair, and inhaled deeply, pain spiking in her back with the effort. It might've been serious or just a soft tissue injury. She doubted it was internal bleeding or she would be in a lot more agony. She sighed. None of her injuries mattered anyway. So long as she wasn't dead, the life Conifer could mend any wounds, major or minor. The Anunnaki were a wretched species, but human forces had hijacked some of their best technology. Of course, the life Conifer was a thousand miles away and hard to retrieve. Instead, she'd probably have to rely on Orun's healing tech. And she still had one major rescue mission to complete.

She was closing on forty years old and these stunts never got any easier. She cracked her neck and right ankle then took inventory of the rest of her limbs. All in all, everything worked. Well enough to complete this operation? She'd find out one way or another.

The rooftop garden broadened out around her. A few feet away, a purple mat lay curled along the brick.

Thank God people can still find time to do yoga, Dagos grumbled

out

loud

.

"Don't you mean, thank

the

gods

?"

Her heart skipped a beat at Menendez's voice. He was close. In two seconds, she spotted the legs of his orange para-rescue pants poking out from behind a hedge on the other side of

the

roof

.

You better be careful, Dagos barked, dragging herself over to him. "Say that around the wrong person, like a Snake-eater, and you might

get

shot

."

As she cut around the hedge, she expected to exchange a grin. Instead, Menendez's dark-brown face was crinkled in obvious pain, his helmet and sunglasses a few feet away. A branch speared out from his stomach, his uniform tainted with dark orange. He wasn't sitting up, but the other end of the branch prevented him from lying flat on his back. She didn't want to think about how badly that

must've

hurt

.

Why do you think I said it? he said. He coughed and specks of blood dotted his uniform.

Hermano, she said quietly, using his nickname.

Permission to speak honestly. He winced and assumed it. This mission was all fucking wrong.

We knew the risks, she almost said. Were those Commander Ham Hamilton's words

or

hers

?

If they didn't rescue a girl from an Anunnaki base by eighteen hundred hours, their enemy would win the war. With the chopper gone, they needed a miracle to pull the mission

off

now

.

Dropping to a knee beside him, she grasped his quivering hand in her own weak grip. They both knew there was no way he'd make it off this roof in anything but a body bag,

if

that

.

You don't know the half of it,

she

said

.

There was a hint of mirth in his eyes as he watched her. I don't want to know, do I? I'll bet Ham tasked you with something heavy...

His head sagged to the side, his hand's shaking slowing. "Building across the street. Sledge

made

it

..."

And then his hand went stiff.

2

Most of the time the temperature ran high enough to make Courtney sweat. But right now, her body shuddered like she was in the middle of a frozen tundra. After spending so many hours in Anunnaki detainment, Courtney had no idea if she was trembling from fear, sickness,

or

both

.

A dimly lit cell surrounded her. The only light filtered in through the swirling blur of air above her. It was like looking through heat waves on a hot day. A sort of resonance field to keep prisoners from escaping, not that it was an option. She hated this cell even worse than the last one, where she was at least sitting on an elevated platform.

Suddenly, the swirling vortex vanished and a flash lit up the pit. Courtney plastered her hands over

her

eyes

.

Her body trembled, the shakes climaxing in her arms. She didn't feel outright afraid, yet she sensed approaching danger.

Slowly, she let her arms drop, accepting the barren metal cell, the rising walls and then the top. There he was. The nine-foot gray man with an elongated head. The Anunnaki.

Like all Anunnaki, his orange serpentine eyes dwarfed a human’s. In fact, once you got past the difference in eye color, he looked mostly the same as the others. The lack of hair, the scale-like skin. You had to travel into the very secluded areas of the world to find someone who didn’t know this was an Anunnaki. Or Naga for short. Nebirian to get technical.

The difference between this Anunnaki and all the others was he was the first to frighten her so intimately. There'd always been someone to protect her from the others. There was nothing holding this

one

back

.

With a thud, the Anunnaki hit the ground and