Black Sword (Decker's War, #5)

by Eric Thomson

  Decker smiled to himself. That ought to make sure the staff noncoms kept their packs on their backs at all times and used them for pillows at night. He thought he heard a guffaw over the radio that sounded exactly like Corporal Radzell clearing his throat. Windom wasn’t necessarily as popular among his fellow trainers as he’d have liked.

  The dense white cloud that had enveloped them with such savagery took over thirty minutes to dissipate. When it did, the trainees could once more behold a vast ice sheet seamed with crevices shimmering in the low Antarctic sun.

  Zack saw no trace of the staff, but their armor, like that of the trainees, had an adaptive coating that allowed them to blend against any backdrop. Without advanced sensing gear of his own, he stood no chance of picking out Windom.

  The sergeant could be a kilometer away or behind the next serac, one of many icy ridges rising from the glacier. But Decker knew that Windom would be observing him with what had become an increasingly malevolent gaze since their conversation in the jungle observation post.

  Decker climbed to his feet, the signal they would resume their slow progress. Almost at once, a squad of sims emerged from behind a serac fifty meters to their right and opened up with their weapons. The trainees automatically dropped back into a prone position and returned fire. Decker spied a fold in the ice a few paces to his left.

  “Alpha team will move to a position direction eight o’clock, five meters, the low serac. Bravo team will offer covering fire, on my mark, then join Alpha once we’re in position.” He paused to judge the effectiveness of the sims’ fire, and then said, “Mark.”

  With the four men of alpha section trailing him, Decker slipped across the glacier on his stomach, aiming for the stunted column of ice. Meanwhile, the remaining five trainees poured a controlled, but rapid stream of simulated plasma at the drones.

  As soon as Zack reached the serac, he turned around and waved at the section to assume firing positions beside him. However, before anyone could comply, a loud snap drowned out the sounds of battle, and the glacier trembled beneath him. Then, a crack opened under his legs and the serac, a good ton of hardened ice, sagged towards Decker. He understood at once that it would take him into the growing crevasse, along with the four men tied to him by the safety rope.

  With only seconds to react, he hit the rope’s quick release mechanism, separating himself from the rest of his team. Then, with a burst of strength born from desperation, he rolled away from the serac, hoping to get clear before it struck, something made awkward by the heavy pack on his back.

  The lip of the crevice cracked under his bulk, leaving Zack’s lower body to dangle freely over the newly created abyss. His thickly gloved fingers scrabbled for a handhold as the serac finally toppled, casting a deadly shadow.

  Something hard and unyielding struck the side of Decker’s boot, causing him to lose what little purchase his hands had found and he slipped into the chasm.

  Twenty-Seven

  A vise of pure starship-grade metal clamped around Zack’s left wrist. It arrested his fall into the abyss and almost tore his arm from its socket. The serac bounced off the crevasse walls as it tumbled, filling the air with a roar of thunder as it split into pieces. The faint whine of low power blasters, designed purely for training, made a feeble counterpoint to the savagery of nature, but Decker heard none of it.

  His right hand fought to find something, anything within reach that would allow him to relieve the muscle-tearing strain on his arm. Then, an almighty tug sent a wave of pain through his shoulder, and Decker slid over the chasm’s crumbling edge, out onto the solid ice.

  Half-dazed, he looked up and into Hank Harris’ broad face, framed by a scout helmet one size too small. Surly Hank was holding onto his left wrist as if it were a lifeline to heaven. Wide, dark eyes examined him with an intensity that almost verged on panic.

  “You okay, Pops?”

  Decker, caught between relief and Hank’s uncommonly earnest air of concern, started laughing.

  “I’m good. And I owe you big time. One second later and I was taking a long drop without a parachute. It would have been an embarrassing end for a Pathfinder.”

  “We lose you, Windom wins,” Harris replied, clipping the safety rope to Decker’s waist. “And the bastard ain’t winning this game, not after the hell he’s put us through.”

  “Speaking of which, we still have sims to slaughter...” Decker slithered back into position, wincing with every movement of his left arm. One glance told him no one other than Harris had noticed his near brush with death, or at least serious injury. Or so he thought.

  “Bravo team, we’re in position to cover you. Pull back, but mind the crevasse on our left flank.”

  “Stop everything,” Windom’s voice rang out over the platoon push, “and stay in place.”

  The sims froze, and three figures in fully sealed battle suits materialized moments later, rising from their concealed observation posts.

  “Whate,” the sergeant continued, “you want to explain what the fuck just happened here? As in, why you cut loose from the safety rope? There’s a reason you go up a glacier tied together. If it weren't for Harris, we’d be looking for your fool ass at the bottom of that damned crevasse. Heck, I’d probably be spending the next day writing out a casualty report followed by a painfully long question and answer session with the battalion adjutant.”

  “I’m sorry if I might have put myself in a position to inconvenience you, Sergeant Windom.” Decker pushed himself off the ground and turned towards his tormentor. “But if that serac had fallen on top of me instead of sideswiping my feet, and I was still tied up with the rest of alpha team, you’d be writing five casualty reports. After which, you be spending the next week with the adjutant trying to explain how you lost half of your trainees in one go.”

  Decker’s tone, hardened by anger, skirted the edge of insubordination.

  “Shit happens during training,” he continued, “so I did what I thought best under the circumstances, meaning I made sure as few people as possible get whacked. If you have a better course of action to propose the next time a ton of ice wants to send me into the abyss, I’ll listen. If not, we can resume our little march to the foe. And by the way, your sims are casualties, so their rations belong to us.”

  “It sounds noble.” Windom’s nasal drawl scraped across nerves still raw from a brush with death, and it took most of Zack’s willpower to stay outwardly phlegmatic. “But we’re not here to be noble. We’re here to train hard so we can make nasty sons of bitches die out there, in the big, wide, unpleasant galaxy.”

  Decker grunted.

  “No arguments from me on that last point, Sergeant.”

  He deliberately emphasized Windom’s rank in the way an annoyed officer would. And a senior one at that.

  “I do, however,” he continued in the same tone, “expect to find a full day’s worth of rations for everyone when we reach the next waypoint. Did you wish to send the sims ahead so we can reprise this little ambush?”

  Windom stared at Decker, eyes blinking in momentary confusion as he if sensed that their relative positions of power had reversed. That Zack was now somehow in command. He shook his head to dispel the feeling.

  “Put your asses in gear. The sun’s about to kiss the horizon and spending the night on the ice when there’s a low-pressure system heading this way isn’t something you want to do. Whether the enemy will try to waylay you again is up to chance. Just stay away from crevasses and seracs.”

  “Kind of hard to avoid when they’re everywhere,” Hank Harris muttered.

  Windom gave him a hard look, but the big convict-recruit stared back without a shred of embarrassment, clearly unrepentant and proud of it.

  “You’re a bad influence on the platoon, Whate.” Windom shook his head. “Good thing there’s only the mountain phase left after we finish watching you freeze here. Staff, back to your previous positions.”

  *

  “That was a gutsy move you mad
e today.” Corporal Radzell’s soft voice sounded impossibly close to Decker’s ears, proof the trainer could move in complete silence.

  The platoon had made it across the glacier without further incident, but with one more sim-driven combat encounter. At Zack’s urging, they had found shelter beneath a rocky overhang placed to deflect most of the wind from the oncoming storm. It would also keep them safe from the few, but deadly nocturnal predators inhabiting this barren land.

  Sergeant Windom, after sniffing at Decker’s caution and warning the platoon they were wasting precious mission time by stopping early, had authorized the distribution of a day’s worth of rations. Then, he had vanished into the staff’s own encampment somewhere nearby. Corporal Radzell had remained behind.

  “What do you mean, Staff?” Decker asked in the same low tone without turning his head. He’d taken the first sentry shift, eager for time alone after events that had reignited thoughts of bailing from this mission and finding Redmon through other means.

  “We don’t see many candidates who’ve internalized the old saying about the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few. Convicts typically come to us thinking the other way around, which is probably why they fell afoul of the law in the first place.”

  “I take it you’re not a jailbird, Staff?”

  Radzell slipped into the sentry post beside Zack and peered out at the storm.

  “No, although I was a bit of a disciplinary hard case. I volunteered for the Marine Light Infantry when my CO gave me a choice between a transfer here and an administrative discharge from the Corps. They put me through the abbreviated version of what you’re doing, the one reserved for those who don’t come via the penal system.”

  Radzell paused as if parsing his next statement.

  “I’ve been watching you, Whate, and you don’t strike me as a regular con. Today pretty much sealed it. Not only were you ready to take one for the team, but you jumped on Windom’s ass in a way I’ve never seen a recruit do before.”

  “I was pissed off, nothing more.”

  Radzell chuckled.

  “You sounded like the battalion commander giving us the what-for after Delta Company’s last trainee accident. It shut Windom up, and I’ve never seen that happen. I guess what I’m saying is that you don’t strike me as a criminal. You’re a good Marine, you’ve shown that you live and breathe the leader’s ideal of mission first, then the welfare of the troops and your own needs last. Heck, I can tell that your self-control is miles ahead of anyone else’s. It was evident to me you could have killed anyone in the platoon during the hand-to-hand combat training, but throttled it back. Windom could see it too, that’s why he never went up against you.”

  Decker let out an amused grunt.

  “Earle knows I can break his neck without working up a sweat. He and I have a past, and it wasn’t a happy one.”

  “I figured that out. We’ve had your sort on the accelerated course before, former super-troopers who screwed up their lives, but Windom never showed this level of obsession with any of them. Mind you, he wasn’t fond of the last one, a woman who’d also come from Desolation Island. One of your old bunch, judging by her qualifications. She wasn’t impressed with Windom, and it often showed, but she plowed through without a word of complaint.”

  “Let me guess, around forty, tall, black hair, brown eyes, bodybuilder musculature, a face that looks like it was sculpted with a hatchet, biting wit and no patience for fools.”

  Radzell grinned at Decker.

  “That sounds like Sharon Lee all right. She could outrun and out-march us. Made the course look too damn easy. Lee was a lot like you in many ways, someone without the mental makeup of a criminal. She didn’t fit with the others in her platoon. They sent her straight to the 1st Battalion on Marengo after graduation. Last I heard, she’s working recon — the most dangerous job in the regiment. I wouldn’t be surprised if they shipped you there as well, provided you graduate.”

  “I think that won’t be a problem at this point.”

  “If Windom can keep you from graduating, he’ll be a happy man, so watch yourself. The mountain phase has its own dangers.”

  “As my grandpa used to say, I came into this life with an extensive list of things to do, and right now, I’m so far behind I’ll probably live forever.”

  “Cute, and funnily enough, Lee had the same attitude. A woman on a mission, I guess you could call it. Were you two buddies back before this?”

  “We spent time in the same disreputable places with the same dishonest people.” Although not at the same time, he mentally added. “The Pathfinder community is small. There are two degrees of separation at most between any of us, or rather them, since Sharon and I aren’t part of it anymore.”

  Radzell slapped him on the shoulder as he climbed to his feet.

  “Keep on as you have and you’ll find a new home in this regiment. We might not be super-troopers, but we see almost as much combat as any Fleet Pathfinder Squadron, and that makes for a tight-knit family. Hardly anyone transfers to a regular line regiment after a hitch with us. We have guys who’ve been here twenty or thirty years. It’s a tough life, but a good one, considering the alternatives. Make sure you don’t spend the night brooding out here. You need as much sleep as you can get. The cold weather is a bigger drain on your energy than the enemy.”

  “No worries, Staff.”

  Marengo? Decker smiled to himself. Told ‘em it would eventually turn nasty. Ironic that Hera and I will head back there in a couple of weeks. After graduation, of course. No sense in pulling out so close to the end. Besides, this is turning out to be fun, now we’ve left the chickenshit back at Fort Erfoud.

  Twenty-Eight

  Dark shapes moving through a misty Southern Alps morning caught Decker’s attention, and he dropped to one knee. He raised his right fist, the hand signal to stop. As point man on this second day of the mountain phase, he was navigating the platoon through a high alpine pass, eyes alert for any signs of danger.

  But the shadows he saw crossing the pass ahead of them weren’t those of sims or trainers. Low to the ground, longer than Zack was tall, and covered in dark fur, they could only be carcajou. A whole family of the ferocious hunters, reminiscent of Earth wolverines, but for the size. These beasts, one of Parth’s apex predators, were big enough to kill an unarmed man, even an armored one. And the recruits carried nothing more dangerous than training weapons, save for their knives, which would be useless against a carcajou.

  Trieste, who led the mission, asked, over the platoon push, “What is it?”

  “Carcajou, mother, father, and three cubs. They crossed the trail thirty meters in front of me, from right to left.”

  “Ouch.”

  The platoon’s briefing before heading into the Alps had included an extensive section on the indigenous fauna, much of which would sooner attack than run.

  “Yeah. We need to wait until they’ve cleared the area. The moment either parent senses we might be a danger to their cubs they’ll attack. And only the staff has live ammo.”

  Which they weren’t allowed to use unless all else failed. Parth’s government frowned on the wanton killing of native wildlife.

  “Tick tock,” Windom said over the platoon push. “Time’s a-wasting.”

  “If you’re that concerned with momentum, come out from wherever you’re hiding and stand guard,” Decker replied. “Otherwise, let us figure things out. The beasts are a damned sight meaner than you’ll ever be, Sergeant, and we’re not wearing all singing and dancing battle armor like you. Just keep in mind that if we don’t make H-Hour thanks to them, we’ll still be drawing our daily rations, one way or the other.”

  Windom didn’t immediately reply. By now, he had learned that rising to Zack’s bait would only make things worse. Decker had become the unacknowledged straw boss among the trainees and they followed his lead in most things.

  “Very well,” he finally said. “I’ll scare off the carcajous so you can continue.
Stand by.”

  Decker heard something move a dozen meters above him and to the left, but he kept his eyes on the fog-shrouded pass, hoping to see the animals once more.

  The ignition of a thunderflash, essentially an electronic firecracker designed to simulate explosives, startled them and scared a flurry of avian creatures from their roosts. Decker and his course mates carried the things as well, but theirs were reserved for the mission, not for animal control.

  No sooner had the detonation’s echo died away that an unearthly chorus of yowls filled the air. They didn’t sound like cries of alarm to Zack’s ear.

  “Shit.” Windom’s tone, on the other hand, held more than a hint of panic. A second thunderflash boomed against the mountainside.

  Decker sprang to his feet and, orienting himself by sound, rushed in Windom’s direction while digging through his own load of training explosives. He rounded a boulder in time to see the male adult carcajou rush uphill at Windom, who was desperately trying to draw his holstered blaster.

  The animal was larger than the sergeant, and its twenty-centimeter claws could damage the battle suit’s weaker joints. And it was fast, much quicker than a human. Even with the armor’s augmentation, any attempt to flee upslope would be in vain.

  The adult female meanwhile, had placed herself between Windom and the cubs, who straddled the sergeant’s downhill escape route. She reared up as her mate slammed into Windom and yowled again. The male and his target went down in a welter of fur and limbs.

  Decker tossed a thunderflash to one side of the struggling pair, keeping it as far as possible from the cubs. Then he tossed a second one after it. Both devices exploded almost simultaneously.

  The female turned gleaming dark eyes set into a massive, flattened head towards Zack. A third thunderflash got the male’s attention. He stopped clawing at Windom long enough to assess this new threat, giving the sergeant a brief window of opportunity. Windom slipped out from under the carcajou and scrambled back up the slope.