The Galactic Arena Prequels (Books 1 & 2): Inhuman Contact & Onca's Duty

by Dan Davis

  Was he dreaming?

  “Alright,” Axiom said. “I am already recording with my inbuilt cameras, streaming to a secure server. You can do what you want to him and we will broadcast it later.”

  Everything hurt. Breathing was difficult and any strength remaining in his limbs was swiftly leeching along with his blood.

  V3 stepped closer.

  “I always dreamed I’d have the Butcher of Belem in my grasp.” She lifted one knee high and kicked him in the visor.

  Onca allowed the blow to fall and knew that it was time to act.

  All counter-terrorism doctrine was clear. Once you found yourself in enemy hands, every minute, every second you are in custody your chances of escape diminish. Your captors increase their control of the situation and you lose the initiative until your chances of a successful outcome reduce to zero. Once they have you completely incapacitated they are able to do anything they want to you and you have no chance to resist their will. Once you lose the initiative, the best you can hope for is to be quickly executed, a bullet to the back of the head and that would be the end of you. Worse than that would be them using you to further their own agenda. Torturing you for information, forcing you to speak into camera for their propaganda films, attempting to ransom you, committing sexual violence, inflicting long-term pain to exact some kind of revenge for the slights you or your people committed on them and theirs. If you are a high-value captive, your chances of surviving a snatch and grab hostage rescue are very slim.

  Every minute, every second, you lose the initiative.

  They should have restrained him.

  It would be the last mistake they would ever make.

  Onca allowed the weak, womanish blow to knock him sideways into the man on his left. The man holding his right arm lost his grip and the one he fell against grabbed him with both hands to stop him falling down.

  Summoning up the last reserves of strength, he threw off the guard’s grip and yanked the machete from his belt, heaved himself up onto his feet and dragged the machete up and up across the guy’s throat. Even though he wasn’t expecting it, he jerked back and the cut was too shallow to kill. Still, he went wheeling back, shouting in fear and pain.

  An explosion of panic burst around him. Axiom reeled away from Onca’s wild machete backhand, shouting incoherent warnings.

  The blade thumped into the top of V3’s skull, dropping her to her knees. Still moving as fast as he could, he tried to yank the machete from her head but it was stuck fast so all he did was drag her over, dead or dying. He lost his grip on his weapon.

  But to stop moving or even slow down would be to die. So, he let it go and charged the other guard. The man was lost in indecision, trying to pull his most powerful weapon—his assault rifle—off his back instead of drawing his sidearm or even his machete. That indecision would mean his death. Still, the guard backed up, tangled in his rifle strap. He changed to grab his sidearm just as Onca reached him and bore him to the ground.

  The man was one of Axiom’s followers, a Humanus Prosthesis adherent, with eyes shining with data streaming over them, his head covered in components that released nootropic drugs and provided targeted electrical brain stimulation that supposedly increased their combat efficiency.

  Onca smashed his helmet into his face, took his pistol from him, pushed the weapon under his chin and blew the top of his head off. The bang was loud and it bucked in his hand. A heavy weapon.

  Someone shot Onca in the head at the same time. A small caliber round so it pinged off rather than doing damage but Onca’s back was a mangled mess and another round into there would finish him immediately.

  He leaped aside and instinctively turned toward the source of the shot and snapped off a series of his own, the pistol banging in his hand as the slugs hit their target.

  Another of the terrorists fell, a man across the room. One of the Sons of Light in their ridiculous brown uniforms, his chest and throat blown out.

  Onca kept moving, turning back to shoot at Axiom and Father Magnus.

  Both men had fled for the safety of the transparent panic room. The big, old Father Magnus moved surprisingly quickly and Axiom moved like a ninja, flowing into the open-door section of the huge room before Onca could get a clean shot.

  Father Magnus, however, took a glancing shot to the shoulder before the door swung closed and the final two rounds in the magazine smashed into the bulletproof glass and alloy frame.

  Onca tossed his empty weapon and chased down the final man in the room who was attempting to flee. He threw him into the shredded door frame, smashed the man’s eyes with finger strikes then stamped on his neck, leaving him to suffocate.

  He must have blacked out for half a second because he found himself on his knees, looking at the floor, his breath ragged and his chest tight. Onca’s armor was slick with fresh blood. Most of it his own.

  Fight the exhaustion. Fight it. Fight.

  It was the one thing he knew how to do. He would not go out on his knees.

  Inside the panic room, Father Magnus held his wounded shoulder while Axiom typed into a screen on a trolley. Bundled cables snaked out of it and down into a meter-square hole cut into the floor inside the panic room.

  That was how they would escape.

  He could not allow that. Not after what they had done to his men and to the hostages and to countless others around the world. He tried to ignore the bodies of three of his team laying around the room and fought his way to the sentry drone closest to the panic room.

  While Axiom tapped away and Magnus stood watching, Onca checked the ammunition feed on the drone, flicked the switch to manual control and pulled out both restrictor pins. He swung the gun around on its mount and aimed it at the glass wall of the panic room. It hummed with the flow of power from the huge batteries.

  Magus nudged Axiom, who turned and sneered before turning back to his screen. Magnus looked in pain but not afraid.

  They had to die.

  He leaned his weight on the handles and pressed the thumb buttons. The drone barrels whirred into life and the rounds zipped out, smashing into the center of the largest side panel. He kept it focused on a single spot as the heavy slugs hammered into the glass. It swiftly chewed through layer after layer of the glass and polymer, sending shards spinning away in all directions.

  Magnus looked nervous but Axiom turned a final time in triumph, grinning.

  As the sentry gun fired, the building shook.

  A deep rumbling, low and in his guts, that grew and built until the world shook. A feeling more than a noise. And a feeling that he recognized.

  Demolition.

  They were bringing the building itself down, somehow. He recalled the reports of drilling and the chemical sensors that had detected explosives in the terrorists’ equipment.

  It was hard to see but both men climbed down inside the hole they cut into the floor inside. The rounds smashed through and ricocheted around, smashing the equipment into shards of plastic and dust.

  The sentry drone ran out of ammo. The barrels span and smoked. He pulled the Kalashnikov off a terrorist, checked the magazine and, with a snatched-up machete, hacked into the remnants of the shredded polymer and forced his way inside the panic room, armor snagging. Every step he was weaker. Every moment might be his last. Outside, the ceiling crumbled and smacked into the top of the box.

  Consciousness dangling by a thread, he swung himself down into the hole.

  Axiom and Magnus had knocked down the ladder so he lowered himself down the bundled cables.

  He slipped and fell onto his destroyed back.

  The agony was overwhelming and his machete and rifle fell to either side.

  Above him, the building fell, like God Almighty hath smote it from on high and it felt as though the world was ending.

  Forcing air into his lungs, he rolled onto his feet and hurried after the smear of blood left on the wall. His prey may have split up, gone separate ways down the tunnel and it was possible the blood
was a trick. But he had to go one way or the other.

  After limping a dozen meters to the dogleg bend in the tunnel, he took the corner with his weapon up.

  Axiom lay dead. Face down in the center of the tunnel, the top of his head blown off in a spray of filthy pink brains and bone shards mixed with strips of wiring, silicon, and alloy.

  Magnus limped ahead about twenty meters away, his gun still in his hands.

  Onca took careful aim and double-tapped two shots into the man’s lower back. The sound boomed but was lost in the rumbling that came from all around, his vision shaking.

  He made it to where Magnus lay, rolled him over and sat down on his legs. The great leader was dead. Onca had wanted to question him but even if the terrorist had been alive, questioning him would be futile. Onca was not long for the world himself and the building was falling down on him. No one knew where he was and there was no hope of rescue before he died.

  Still, he would not die on his knees.

  Just for good measure he fired a final round into Father Magnus’ head and started walking.

  Around him, the building roared and shook.

  The roof fell.

  ***

  For a while, all he knew was pain and light and confusion. People around him, caring for him, doing things to him.

  It was incredible to him that he had lived. He knew after some time that he was in a medical center, though he could not speak or move and that they were making him better.

  Days, perhaps weeks spent in drug-induced sleep with brief periods of semi-conscious confusion blended together until one day, the military came to see him.

  He knew they would. Even though he had not yet recovered enough to have had a discussion with a doctor about his own injuries, he found himself sitting propped up in his bed. The sun streamed in through a closed window. An AP nurse withdrew a syringe from his arm and walked away, closing the door behind her without a word.

  Leaving two Generals standing in his room. A young one at the foot of his bed and one by his side, older, grizzled and familiar.

  “Colonel Alvarez,” Onca said, his voice little more than a croak.

  The old man’s mouth tightened. “General Alvarez now, Major.” The General spoke softly, almost with warmth.

  “Of course,” Onca said, annoyed at the medication making him so stupid. “Good to see you again, sir.”

  Speaking started him coughing and the four-star General leaned down and held a straw to his lips so that Onca could take a sip of water and ease his throat.

  “This is General Branca,” Alvarez said, introducing the officer at the foot of the bed.

  He was as light-skinned as they came, though his hair was dark. His face was unlined and close shaved. A man who had spent his life indoors. He had only two stars on his shoulders where Alvarez had four.

  “Sir,” Onca managed.

  “Honored to meet you, Major,” General Branca said, his voice as smooth as oil. “Now I can tell my children I met Brazil’s greatest hero.”

  “You’re Military Intelligence,” Onca said.

  General Branca stiffened, a frown on his face. “You know me?”

  “Never heard of you.”

  Alvarez practically grinned at the exchange.

  “I am the Brazilian military envoy to the United Nations Orb Project.”

  Good for you. Onca almost said it but he held his tongue. The young General so clearly wanted Onca to ask what the United Nations Orb Project was that he almost felt sorry for him.

  “The mission,” Onca asked General Alvarez at his side. “It has been weeks, yes?”

  “Five weeks,” Alvarez said, frowning. “The medical personnel have kept you informed of your progress, have they not?”

  Onca closed his eyes. “I remember people speaking to me, now and then. I don’t recall much more.”

  “Well,” Alvarez said, relaxing and perching himself on the edge of Onca’s bed. Branca shifted on his feet as if he did not approve. “They grew you a new kidney and implanted it. They fixed your bones, sewed up your guts and stitched you back together. You will make a full recovery. Back to a hundred percent in no time at all, so they assure me.”

  “My men,” Onca said. “The mission. What happened to my men?”

  Both Generals looked uncomfortable but Alvarez did not flinch from maintaining eye contact.

  “They are all dead. It looked for a while like some might pull through but they were injured very severely indeed.”

  “The whole thing was a trap.”

  “Indeed,” Alvarez said, sighing. “A well-planned, coordinated attack intended to wipe out Sabre Rubro. And in that, I am so sad to say, they largely succeeded. But you killed the leaders of three of the worst terrorists in the Americas. Worldwide, even. And you survived. You can rebuild.”

  “General, this is nothing but failure. Complete and total failure. What about Matos? My Operations Controller, Matos Hernandez, he was at the airport with Maria my Intel Officer and their team?”

  “This is where it gets difficult, Onca. I’m sorry but Matos was killed. Your Intel Officer, Maria, was a double agent.”

  “A sleeper agent,” General Branca cut in.

  Alvarez threw him a look that shut the man up.

  “How?”

  “Knife in Captain Hernandez’s back, straight into the heart. He didn’t suffer, for what it’s worth. Maria was discovered by one of your techs, who raised the alarm before she killed him. She herself was killed trying to escape. She fired on the regular Army guarding the airfield and they shot her in return. The guard she wounded was a better shot that she was. If only they had taken her alive.”

  Branca spoke up. “She would have blown her brains out rather than give up—”

  “General Branca,” Alvarez snapped. “Your input is not required.”

  Branca pursed his lips, as though he was trying to hold in a smile.

  “She was one of them?” Onca said, the additional failure hitting him harder even than any of the others. He pictured Matos Hernandez dying alone with a knife in his back, murdered by a woman that Onca had hired. “I checked her background. I checked it. More thoroughly than anyone. Every detail of her life. I even had every essay she wrote analyzed.” Onca shut his mouth, knowing a stream of pathetic excuses when he heard one.

  General Branca cleared his throat. “With permission, General?”

  Alvarez waved his assent.

  “You could not have known,” Branca said. “I’ve never seen an agent in deeper cover. My Cyber Forensics Team called her a genius. We still don’t know which of the groups she was working for, there’s no record of her ever going near anyone who could be a terrorist. She was seen, by eye witnesses we have interviewed, arguing with and even fighting with terrorist sympathizers while she was at university. But then she was also infatuated with technology and perhaps she always harbored some kind of respect for the transhumanist element.”

  “Axiom got to her,” Onca said, remembering the man’s brains splattered across the concrete access tunnel.

  “We simply don’t know who or what got to her,” Branca said. “But none of this is why we’re here.”

  Alvarez snapped another look over his shoulder at the two-star General standing at the foot of the bed. When it had been Colonel Alvarez commanding the Airborne Assault Battalion that then-Captain Onca had served in, that look had turned many a Lieutenant into a quivering mess. It had a diminished but similar effect on General Branca.

  “So why are you here?” Onca asked the General. “Do you think I had something to do with it?”

  “Good God, no,” Alvarez said. “Never. We know that, despite your past with the Army, you are a true son of Brazil. You would never betray your people. And, in a way, that is why we are here. It is because we need you.”

  Onca chanced a look at General Branca, who returned his gaze without giving anything away.

  “I’m not in the Army anymore, General,” Onca said. “Just a contractor. Or, I was.
I don’t have a company anymore.”

  “You know,” Alvarez said, after a pause. “You could go back to doing just that. I know you won’t feel like it now but when you get back to yourself, back to one hundred percent, then you could rebuild your company. Start a new cooperative. Your expertise will still be desperately needed, despite the hammer blow to the terrorists you gave them last month. I mean it, Onca. Everyone out there in Brazil is mourning Sabre Rubro but they rejoice that you live. They are crushed at your losses but they see it as a victory, of sorts and no one blames you. I promise you something else. You still have every special forces soldier in Brazil ready to join your team. You could go back and you would continue to keep your people safe from our enemies.”

  Onca kept one eye on General Branca, who looked increasingly angry as Alvarez spoke.

  “My men are dead,” Onca said. “I failed them. That’s it.”

  He knew, with absolute certainty, that he should have died with them. A leader can lose men and a commander can be killed. But there is a good reason why it is a Captain’s duty to go down with his ship. To be alive when his men were dead was shameful beyond comprehension. And these Generals, these agents of the God damned Brazilian Army had denied him that.

  “And you should have let me die,” Onca muttered.

  Alvarez pursed his lips. “I understand. You feel deep fried. But I think I have something for you. A way for you to give even more to your people. To serve once again. More than you ever have before.”

  He almost laughed, bitterness rising like a bad taste in his mouth. It was as though they had handed him his shame and then offered a way to take it away, like they were doing him a favor.

  It felt like the old days, all over again.

  “You want me to join a United Nations project.” Onca spoke to General Branca.

  Alvarez smiled. “Even now, drugged to high heaven, he is quick. Didn’t I tell you he would catch on quick?”

  Branca sighed and did everything but literally roll his eyes.