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

by Dan Davis

  Also good for exceptionally long rounds of deathmatches.

  He crept through the interior of Building C-12 on the north side, third floor. Listening. Six players plus him left active in the zone, according to his AugHud. Most of the other ten had gone down in the first few minutes but the rest had made it through the initial madness and gone to ground. Onca had turned his audio amplifier up so high that the desert wind on the edges of the glassless window frames sounded like a hurricane.

  Every day was a new challenge. Every few days, someone would fail to meet some benchmark or other and they would be asked to leave. Onca knew they were looking for twelve candidates to take to the Orb but he had worked to become the top contender and he meant to be the number one at the end of the selection process.

  Trouble was, so did everyone else.

  The General was living in a dream world where she thought the most elite soldiers in the world, from all over the world, would end up working together in a team. This, despite the fact that her own selection process was pitting these individuals against each other for months. But that was women, for you. They had no idea about the real world. And women soldiers were the worst. They had no idea about actual warfare, about life on the ground in an all-action, deployed military unit. Women imagined the world as a better place than it was and that was good, in its place. But that place was far from combat.

  He rolled his feet as he walked, instinctively picking out the path through the twelfth building in Block C. It was an office space, with open plan style desks free from clutter and communal areas for the non-existent staff to brainstorm or whatever the hell people did in offices. There were plenty of places for someone to spring an ambush on him so he went slowly, stopping every few paces to listen for the sound of breathing or the shifting of a foot on the floor.

  Or, in this particular instance, the whine of a powered armor servomotor.

  Onca was hunting.

  His prey was called Iveta Katzarov.

  She had slipped into the entrance on the ground floor six minutes before. Since then he had cleared each room downstairs and progressed upward, keeping an ear out for her escaping behind him.

  Sergeant Katzarov was a veteran from Bulgaria’s elite paratrooper battalion and had supposedly fought in battles down in that confusing corner of Europe. Onca didn’t know anything about that part of the world or if Katzarov truly had fought in frontline operations there but he did know that she was good enough to have survived UNOPs selection process while many others had fallen.

  It was possible that she had allowed him to see her enter the building. In fact, considering what he knew of her tactical prowess, it was highly likely. But he was confident he could sniff out her trap before she sprung it. And if he blundered into it, he was sure he could fight his way clear.

  Her powered body armor lent her greater strength and speed than her sex was ordinarily capable of but it was not those traits that made a good soldier. Adaptability, capability, aggression. Making decisions so fast they seemed instinctual to outside observers and ensuring that those decisions were the right ones more often than not.

  On the other hand, her armor also featured adaptive camouflage systems which supposedly blended the soldier into the background visually and also aurally. In practice, however, a trained eye was never deceived. They only worked efficiently in dimly lit environments like night engagements. In the jungle, they were excellent until they got wet—which was always—but in the bright desert sunlight, you could spot the outline of even a stationary soldier at fifty meters.

  All the technology in the world could not overcome pure soldierly ability.

  Still, he went slowly, deliberately and kept checking behind him for another player to come and take him out or for his prey to have got around him, somehow. At the open doorway at the far end of the office, he took position and listened for sounds in the corridor. Nothing but the steady, occasionally gusting, breeze outside the windows.

  A shot. Distant, in Block A, way across the central intersection. A burst of automatic fire, then another.

  In his AugHud, the number indicating total active players dropped to six.

  Onca took to the corridor smoothly, sweeping through at a steady pace before pausing at the next open doorway. Another office inside. No sound. No movement. He sniffed and caught no scent either.

  He slipped in through the doorway, weapon up and proceeded on through, checking the hidden spaces behind colorful couches and desert bushes in huge planters.

  There was no good reason for the General to have called him in and chewed him out. Onca had given no indication to her or anyone else that he had any psychological issues. It made no sense unless she was playing him in some way.

  Footsteps. Distant, perhaps but there was movement somewhere.

  Taking position against the outer wall, he glanced out at the street beyond as the wind howled on the walls of the building, blowing faint clouds of dust down the main street. He couldn’t see anyone and ducked back inside. He bent low and moved to the next window.

  The more he thought about it, the more he was sure General Richter had been attempting to unsettle him. These people were all about pushing the candidates, physically, professionally but also emotionally. Colonel Boone was a player of mind games, too, sometimes praising mediocrity and sometimes criticizing achievements in the most withering way possible and even though Onca knew it and no doubt the other candidates knew it too, it was still unsettling. Even the General’s man, Captain Williams, had pretended friendship for some time before Onca realized it was a ruse. That the officer was a plant who was reporting back to the General and relaying to Onca the information that the powers in charge of the program wanted him to know. The future of humanity hung in the balance so there was no reason for them to leave anything to chance, to not control every aspect of the selection process.

  A noise.

  Somewhere close.

  A howl of wind that became the whining of a suit of servomotors and the grinding of metal on concrete.

  Sergeant Katzarov.

  She came at him while he was turning and he reacted with instinct rather than thought. He fell back into the same mindset he had last felt when the drone autocannons had opened up on him and his men in the boardroom of the factory site.

  Katzarov fired her weapon, her blanks clattering from high and behind him, shattering his mind and eardrums before the sound suppressors could shut down the amplification. He threw himself into her without conscious thought, striking up with his assault rifle barrel before shoving her hard with the butt of the weapon.

  And she was gone.

  A second later, a sickening thump. And he knew what had happened. What he had done.

  ***

  That night, he escaped the base.

  It had been almost a game for him in the preceding weeks. A way of making his spare time more interesting. Every morning he woke at 0500 and was out running at 0510. He ranged all over the base, taking a different route almost every day and during those long runs before starting work he would be working on a project of his own. Onca learned the layout of the base, the delivery schedules, the patterns of behavior that the AP support staff followed. He ran through the back alley behind the kitchens, ran to the airstrip and around the hangars, he ran through the non-combat motorpool and took his turnaround breaks there. Not that he needed to stop for water after a mere ten klicks but the guys who worked there started early and they liked real soldiers and they asked him questions. He would joke with them about how he couldn’t reveal any secrets and while they talked he would see where they locked the starter keys to the vehicles and where the batteries were held.

  Wherever he went, whatever he did, he always had an exit plan.

  And that night he helped himself to one of the off-road bikes, slipped out of a patrol exit and rode hard into the desert.

  It was cold. Bitterly cold with the air rushing over his skin as he got the bike up to speed, bouncing through the rough desert. I
t was a vibrant, pure night but still he had his visor’s night vision on so that he didn’t smash into a rabbit hole or whatever they had out in the wilderness. With the strength dialed almost all the way back, it was almost as bright as daylight though stripped of color. A monochrome daylight view of the desert at night. Stars so bright and numerous that he could not look at them. Occasional glints from animal eyes or discarded pieces of military hardware winked back at him as he weaved between the rocks and rode the lumps and humps while the motor rose to a high whir over the crunching sand and gravel flying out behind. The freezing air hurt as it filled his lungs. The ache was good.

  It was a long way across country to the dirt road, the going was faster when he got on that. At the T-junction, he knew turning right would lead to a city called Reno. Left and he would end up in Las Vegas. He had no interest in either place. There was somewhere closer the idiots in the motor pool had told him about. Onca spent a little time heading north on the highway, weaving through the dense traffic before heading west again down another dirt road, the dirty sign on the corner reflecting his headlamp. He pulled over twice to let a truck by heading back to the highway so he knew he was heading down the right road.

  They called it a town but all he saw of it was the neon glow of the signs declaring there was a bar and that it was open 24/7. The glare of the truck headlamps around the parking lot choked out the light of the stars.

  In the entrance, a hulking thug with his cheap suit stretched tight across his chest, stepped in Onca’s way.

  “I don’t know you,” the man said. “And you look like you’re packing attitude. So listen to me when I tell you we have a zero-tolerance policy here, pal. You step out of line one time, you’re out the door and you’re out for good, you understand?”

  Onca felt the icy mist fill his limbs. The security guard was surely used to being the biggest, toughest, meanest man in the room and, working in the place that he did, had no doubt resolved a number of professional scuffles in his time. It would feel satisfying to break the man, Onca knew. Smash his limbs or dislocate his jaw. But was that how he wanted to spend his evening?

  Maybe.

  “I’ll cause no trouble,” Onca said.

  The hulking thug smirked. “Oh, I know you won’t. You can go in.”

  “Looking for a private dance?” the hostess asked him at the bar. She stood at his shoulder, the caked-on makeup and half-assed cosmetic surgery unable to disguise the hard-lived years.

  “Something more private than that.”

  He followed her through a beaded curtain, along a corridor, and into a waiting room. He sat on an old couch for a while with his drink until the hostess came back with three, bored looking girls, each wearing next to nothing. They had varying builds, shades of skin and hair styles but all had the same dead-eyed weariness and slouched posture of the perpetually jaded.

  Onca had expected to feel something.

  “What about you?” he asked the hostess.

  She barely blinked. “I don’t do that no more.” Bored. As if she was running on automation software. He bet she was asked the same question every night. “Not now I got my girls, here.”

  “Alright, that one,” he said, pointing to the girl nearest to him. One side of her head was shaved and tattooed with a swirling, Polynesian-style intricacy. She looked tough.

  He knocked back the rest of his American whiskey, the burning foulness distracting him long enough to get up and put one foot in front of the other.

  Upstairs, the room reeked of cleaning products and stale sweat and under the sheets the plastic cover over the mattress squeaked when he sat on the bed. It was stiflingly hot.

  “What’s your name?” he asked her as she stripped off what little she wore.

  “Faith,” she said. How original. “What’s yours?”

  “Onca.”

  “That’s a funny name.”

  “It is.”

  She sat down beside him. She smelled of soap and antiperspirant.

  “What’s it mean?”

  “In English, the word is jaguar.”

  She tilted her head, a frown wrinkling her forehead and her nose. “What’s jaguar mean?”

  He sighed. “It doesn’t matter.”

  It didn’t take long for him to finish with her. It had been longer than he could remember since he had been with a woman. She barely had time to feign interest before he climbed off her.

  “You really been on the road a long time,” she said as she wiped herself down with a pink towel. “Been deployed overseas, right? Don’t they got women in other countries?”

  “Yeah. I was recovering in hospital for a long time,” he muttered, like an idiot. “Been busy since.”

  “You’re a soldier. Want to know how I know? Because of your body.”

  “Very perceptive.”

  She almost smiled. “I’m one of the smarter models.” She seemed proud of herself for working it out. “We get soldiers in here all the time. From the base, right? You know, we got plenty of time left. You want to go again?” She tossed the towel aside and lay back, one arm behind her head.

  “Yeah,” Onca said. “Sure.” But he stayed where he was, hunched over sitting on the edge of the bed, looking down at his toes on the plastic floor.

  What are you doing here, man?

  “Take your time,” she said. “Maybe pour us a drink? On the side, there, see? You got to pay but you already swiped over way too much. I’ll have a vodka. Don’t worry about a glass.”

  He rattled through the basket of miniatures on the dresser, tossed one to her and cracked an American whiskey for himself. He drank a sip but didn’t turn back to her. The flavor was bitter and the fumes filled his nose, made him nauseated.

  “Something on your mind?” she asked, sighing. She was so young but already weary and barely present in the moment. Who knew how many nights she had spent this way?

  “No,” he said. “I had a bad day at work.”

  She patted the bed beside her. “Come and tell me all about it.”

  He looked at her, then. “You get paid extra for counseling work?”

  Licking her lips after lowering the miniature vodka, she looked him up and down. “Like I said, get soldiers in here all the time. Mostly, it’s salesmen, factory workers, salt miners. Fat, dumb and old as shit. Losers.” She pointed the tiny mouth of the bottle at him. “You look a movie star. With more scar tissue. And it’s a Tuesday. Slow night.”

  He sat down on the bed again. “There was an accident. I hurt someone, she fell out of a window and now she’s in hospital. I just had to get away for a while, that’s all.”

  “Your fault? You running away?”

  “It was my fault. I’m not running away. I’ll head back, soon.”

  “Going to face the music, huh? What’s this then, one last ride before they lock your ass up?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well.” She ran the ball of her foot up and down his back. “For another hundred you can stay here the rest of the night. If you like. I’m a real good listener.”

  He smiled to himself. She knew a sucker when she saw one. A loser, like she called those other guys. A sad old man who was so lonely that the sex was just an excuse so he had someone to talk to, someone who wouldn’t tell him to shut up.

  “Thank you,” he said, standing up and pulling his clothes on. “Hope you have a good night.”

  On a whim, he swiped another hundred-dollar transfer into her account, then hesitated. The urge to transfer hundreds more, just out of pity for her, came and went. Was it pity? Or was it an apology or, perhaps, a form of penance for his sin? But he could not give her more. He needed to save his money so that he could pass it on to Lena. If he managed nothing else in his life, the least he could do was see that the child would inherit some worth from him. Anonymous cash wasn’t much of a legacy but it was better than nothing. He put his wallet away.

  “Hey,” she said, standing up and holding one of the sheets over her body. �
��You come back again and you ask for Faith, alright?”

  He had a feeling that they would be coming for him. Captain Williams sat at the bar talking with the hostess. Onca nodded to them both but the hostess glared back with open hostility. The life in the bar was even more subdued than it had been on his way in. Subdued and even hostile. But he could detect no threat of violence from any of the patrons or the security. If anything, they all seemed wary.

  The meaningful looks traded between the Captain and the hostess proved that they knew each other well. Onca pushed down the surge of jealousy. She was no one. A brothel keeper. She was like the people he had left behind years ago. Let the Captain have her attention and affection, if such a thing was possible with a woman like her.

  “Just you?” Onca asked the Captain as they left together, stepping from the cloying, sweaty stink of the bar, out into the clear desert night.

  “Not even close.”

  Williams nodded at the small convoy of four HOAVs, lightly armored military vehicles in the parking lot and the dozen military police, half sitting inside their vehicles and the rest covering the area. One of them had his stolen bike mounted on the rear rack.

  No wonder the hostess was so pissed. They were scaring the customers away.

  “Nice of you to keep them outside,” Onca said.

  “Yeah, well, this place is important for the guys on the base. I have a moral obligation to keep us on good terms.” Williams stifled a yawn. “Now, please get in the fucking truck, Major.”

  Williams sat in the back with him and almost immediately fell asleep as the convoy rolled out onto the highway with no fuss. Onca wondered how often the MPs had to come and round up a soldier from the base.

  Onca elbowed Williams.

  “How is she?”

  “Iveta? If you really cared, you might have stuck around to find out. Waited at the clinic like her friends—”