Decker's War Omnibus 1

by Eric Thomson

  “Still, Diego Strachan gave me one last instance of usefulness, by 'volunteering' as our first test subject, just as you will be our next.” Amali's voice was flat, unemotional. Zack glanced over at the Professor and saw she mirrored her patron's blank expression.

  A Quas soldier appeared on the screen and the gunner caught a flash of patched chitin at the back of the head.

  “The specimen you see is under the direct control of Professor Rocheford.”

  She nodded absently, her dead eyes staring at the view without seeing it.

  “Now,” Amali's cruel smile reappeared, “the Professor will release the soldier from her control and let it act naturally.”

  It was as if a connection had been severed, or more accurately, re-established. The creature's composite eyes focused on the helpless Strachan, who screamed. In a flash, it closed the distance to the human and its four upper limbs grabbed him, drawing blood where they punctured the skin. Black jaws slid out of the skull and homed-in on Strachan's head. Antennae twitched in a macabre dance as the mouth pincers took hold of his ears.

  Then, the stinger whipped around and impaled the prisoner through the back, its length piercing right through to gleam redly in the middle of the chest.

  Strachan's screams ceased abruptly as he died. The creature’s jaws opened wide and engulfed the bearded head. They closed with a snap, severing the neck. Blood gushed, splattering the Quas' shiny body. But the bug didn't seem to care.

  It methodically tore the arms and legs from the torso, snapping them as easily as Zack would snap the wings off a broiled chicken. The limbs followed the head down its maw. All that remained was the bloodied trunk of what had been, moments earlier, a living, breathing human being, who for all his faults and crooked transactions, didn't deserve such a fate.

  Zack felt fury rise in him, a rage that burst through his self-control, smothering all of his other emotions.

  “You'll die for this, Amali,” he hissed. “I'll make damn sure of that myself. And so will you, Professor.”

  He turned to look at Rocheford and was astonished to see her sit rigidly, like a statue, eyes unfocused and lifeless, tears streamed down her cheeks, trembling hands clenched in her lap, the knuckles white.

  “You must forgive the good Professor,” Amali's silky voice insinuated itself through the layers of Zack's fury. “She is somewhat sentimental.”

  “Maybe it’s because she has a fucking conscience, you sickening shit.” Decker's shout echoed across the room. “But then, I suppose you wouldn't know what a conscience was if it bit you in the ass. You'll pay for that poor sod and everyone else you've murdered. That's a Pathfinder's oath.”

  Amali laughed with derision.

  “You’ll make me pay? I seriously doubt that Decker, unless, of course, you find a way to return from the dead and haunt me.” His laughter was rich, melodious and filled with contempt. “What you just saw, my oh-so-tough friend is your destiny: food for a hungry Quas soldier, a soldier in the future Coalition Auxiliary.”

  “Then get it over with, asshole,” Zack snarled.

  “Not so fast.” The magnate's face became serious again, though a dark malice burned in his eyes. “We must still conduct many tests before I can field my army, and one of those is to see how effective Quas soldiers are against Marines. You, my uncouth friend, are a heaven-sent means to test this: the best of the best, a Marine Pathfinder.”

  “A hand-to-hand fight with that? You won't enjoy the experience. The bug has me cold with his fucking stinger.”

  “No, no, Decker.” He shook his head. “Something more enjoyable: a manhunt. Quas hunting Marine. On this island.”

  Zack tried to shrug, to hide the terror gnawing at his innards, but the restraints turned his movement into a spastic jerk.

  “What's my motivation? If I survive, you'll give me my life?”

  “Of course not. Your life is forfeit either way. But you have the choice to die like Strachan, without a struggle, howling in terror.” He waved at the screen. “Or you can die like a Pathfinder, fighting to the end. The Quas will kill you, no matter what you do. I’m counting on your survival instinct and that unreasonable belief you Marines have of fighting against any odds. Like your spiritual forebears on Farhaven. Interesting that your Marine Corps' most important moment in history is a bloody defeat. Yes, you will fight, Decker. You may even kill a Quas or two.”

  “You're right. Give me a chance to fight, and I will.” Zack snarled. “Marines never surrender. I don't fucking expect you to understand, but your bloody monstrosities don’t have me yet, and neither have you.”

  “Ah, Mister Decker.” Amali shook his head again, smiling. “Brave to a fault. If only I could find a way to distil your spirit and inject it into the sorry excuses that pass for soldiers on Pacifica, I wouldn't need the Quas.”

  “If you were hoping to swim off this island,” he continued, “disabuse yourself of the notion. The seas are infested with a fish resembling Earth's sharks. Only these are more vicious. You will not pass the reefs surrounding the island. Assuming, of course, the Quas are not after you. They can survive under water for short periods. As I said, they're the ultimate soldiers. Perhaps you may hope to sneak into my little colony and steal a ship or weapons or who knows what.”

  Amali shook his head. “Please disabuse yourself of the notion. The estate is surrounded by a fence that will keep Quas and humans alike from entering. Of course, the island is covered with fixed monitors, and I will always know where you are. So, Mister Decker. Are you game?”

  “Fuck you, Amali.”

  But the target of the profanity was already turning his attention to the mercenary guards.

  “Take him to his cell. Make sure he eats well tonight. Give him anything else he wants, within reason, of course: whiskey, holovids, pen and paper to write his will.” Amali chuckled, pleased by his wit. “Tomorrow morning, Decker. Until then.”

  *

  That night, Zachary T. Decker, late command sergeant in the 902nd Marine Pathfinder Squadron, fought off despair by trying to convince himself that Amali's Quas manhunt would turn into a Marine bug hunt.

  Don't count a Pathfinder as dead until you've seen the body, and even then make damn sure.

  But try as he might, Zack couldn't find a way out. Amali had this place sewn up. The guards won't let him make a single step sideways while he was within the compound and once out in the island's jungle-covered hills...

  The only question was how long he could stay alive out there. He knew more than just a handful of dirty tricks, but nothing about his opponents, apart from the fact they had one hell of a built-in weapon, could shrug off small caliber plasma, and ate their vanquished enemies.

  His only consolation was that they hadn't found Avril Ducote yet. Otherwise, Amali would have thrown the fact in his face, or changed his perverted little game to give Zack even more incentive to fight. The gunner tightened with fury at the thought of her in Amali's hands.

  His last meal was excellent and came with a glass of vintage red wine and a snifter of Dordogne brandy. Amali had a strange sense of humor, wasting the talents of his chef and the contents of his expensive cellar on a smart-ass ex-Marine who was about to die.

  Decker slept, after a fashion. But it was a rest tormented by dreams of chasing Quas soldiers, and each dream ended with a long, black stinger piercing his body.

  *

  The mercs came for him as a dazzling tropical sun washed away the last of the night's chill, painting the island's hillsides with vibrant primary colors. For all that Amali despised Decker, he took no chances this morning.

  His escort numbered eight silent guards, each carrying his carbine at the ready. They clamped a thin steel collar around his neck and took him through an underground warren to a large, plascrete walled room. It was unfurnished but sported a wide ramp sloping upwards. At the top of the ramp, sliding doors had opened on a rich tableau of native vegetation. A soft breeze strummed strangely shaped leaves in multiple hues o
f green, turquoise and blue, stirring scents of sweet life and dark decay. The sounds of the living jungle made a pleasant backdrop to the grimness of what would be Decker's last morning in this life.

  Amali, dressed in expensive, tailor-made fatigues, waited at the foot of the ramp, hands joined in the small of his back. He was alone.

  “Good morning, Mister Decker.” He nodded. His politeness had returned overnight, though he looked tired, with red-rimmed eyes. For a moment, Zack wondered whether the man wasn't a junkie himself.

  “I trust you are ready to, as they say, 'show your stuff.' Did you enjoy last night's supper? My cook is such a splendid artist.”

  “Does your cook have a nice, peachy butt too, Amali? Or are you that impressed by his ability to use an auto-chef?” Ave Amali. Those about to die smart-mouth you.

  Zack’s fear had given way to recklessness ever since waking, and that sense of recklessness kept growing. It was the feeling of a man who had nothing left to lose, and therefore nothing more to fear.

  “Spirited to the last. Superb, Mister Decker. You will give us a grand show, I’m sure.” The magnate smiled, but it didn't reach his narrowed eyes.

  “The rules are very simple. You shall have an hour's head start. The entire island, except the estate, of course, is your battleground. You may use whatever you find to defeat the Quas. As long as you stay alive, the game will continue, even if it takes days, which I doubt.” He paused, trying vainly for dramatic effect with a man who didn't care anymore.

  “And for each Quas you kill, I will release two more.”

  “Any weapons?” Zack's voice was steady, even bored.

  “No, Mister Decker. It’s said a Pathfinder's body is a finely honed weapon. So is a Quas soldier's body. Any other questions?”

  “Yeah. In case I don't get the chance to ask later, do you want me to bury you on this island, or feed your body to the fishes?”

  Amali laughed.

  “Excellent, Mister Decker, keep up the spirit.”

  He pointed at the jungle.

  “I will start the clock the moment your feet leave the ramp. It opens outside the fence, right into the forest. One last thing, Mister Decker, just so you know I do have a healthy respect for you. That collar my men have placed around your neck is not only a transponder that will permit me to keep track of you, but also an explosive device. Should you, by some miracle, leave my island, it will detonate the moment it no longer receives its telemetry signals, which will happen approximately five hundred meters from the shoreline. The charge will sever your neck cleanly, I’m told. Like a twist of detcord.” He paused, looking at Zack as if for the last time.

  “Goodbye, Mister Decker. It’s been an interesting few days.”

  Zack gave Amali the rigid digit salute and walked up the ramp. He wore the same gray coveralls as before, with a pair of sturdy combat boots on his feet. And that, with light underwear, was the total of his possessions. No, not quite. A slanting ray of sun glinted off the gold Master Gunner's badge pinned to his chest, briefly catching Zack's eye.

  As he stepped off the hard surface of the ramp and onto the spongy carpet of tropical decay, the armored doors slid closed. The timer had started to tick on his one hour head start.

  Decker remembered the aerial view of the island from his first visit. With the rising sun as a guide, he headed for the saddle between the two hills dominating the center of the landmass, trying to put as much distance between himself and the compound. The jungle was thick, and he struggled to make headway.

  When the undergrowth finally thinned as the ground rose, his hands were scratched and bloodied. His boots were already soaked through, thanks to a short stroll into an overgrown slough. It had occupied the center of a minuscule clearing, and Zack wanted to take advantage of the open space, no matter how small. It was a mistake he wouldn't make again. Thumb sized leeches had attached themselves to his legs as he crossed the stagnant water and their bite had stung.

  Along the way, his trained eyes spotted small receptors mounted in trees. They were simple, passive devices, good only for getting signals from his transponder, but they could come in handy if Amali lets him steal a few. He had said Zack could use anything he found, but men like him had no sense of honor.

  The hour's head start passed quickly, judging by the sun's climb into the dark blue sky. Temperatures also rose, and the jungle became a sweltering steam bath that soaked Zack's skin and painted irregular patches of sweat on his coveralls.

  Perspiration ran into his eyes, and he swore at the salty sting. He removed his t-shirt, ignoring the myriad insects fighting for a bite of his bare torso and, with a savage gesture, tore the khaki fabric into strips, tying one around his shaved head as a sweatband. He tucked the others into his pocket after pulling the coveralls' upper part back over his arms and shoulders. They might come in handy later.

  The jungle had cleared sufficiently to give him a decent line of sight and let him move fast. He would be able to hear and see the bug approach early enough to run. Though where exactly he would run was a question to which he found no answer.

  Going through the motions, Zack took a short stroll in the middle of a narrow fresh-water stream that flowed between the two near hills, just in case the Quas could track him by smell, though he doubted that was one of their built-in strengths. They had no visible nose, or ears, come to think of it. But whether they didn't have good hearing or a good sense of smell depended on what those antennae did.

  One thing was sure, with eyes like that, they likely saw much better than Decker and into the extremes of the visual spectrum too, such as infrared. Which meant the bugs could probably track him and pin him down by the heat his body gave off, and there would be little he could do about it.

  He reached his chosen battleground and turned his attention to weapons. Rocks and sticks were out, for obvious reasons. He needed something more, preferably a twenty millimeter rocket rifle, or a light Gatling gun. And while he was at it why not ask for a full Pathfinder squadron with all the trimmings?

  Another of the passive receivers caught his eye, and he decided to investigate. The native tree's bark was rough and the climb among its turquoise fronds easy. When he reached the fist-sized oblong, Zack saw it wasn't connected by wires and grinned. It had to work on internal fuel cells. He braced himself and slammed the heel of his hand into the device's side sending it plummeting to the ground. Zack jumped after it, landing smoothly on the carpet of rotting vegetation.

  He picked up the sensor and examined it. It was of the disposable type, with a simple plas shell and mass-produced innards. Finding two flat stones, he held it sideways on one of them, and carefully hammered the shell with the other, hoping to crack it at the seam between the two halves. It split open on the fourth hit. Zack grinned. For all his riches, Amali had skimped on quality.

  He examined the inside and nodded, satisfied. It would be an easy job to cross-circuit the fuel cells and set them to overload. If the cells held a sufficient charge, the sensor could blow like any decent hand grenade, sending shrapnel in all directions. Whether it would do anything to a bug was another question, but homemade grenades were better than bare hands any day.

  Zack stripped the connectors, ending the sensor's incarnation as tracking device. Somewhere on Amali's estate, a merc guard must be wondering why this unit suddenly went dead, just after reporting good old Zack Decker near it.

  A circuit overload was seldom, if ever, instantaneous. Even a starship's antimatter reactor took a few moments to go from a short circuit to a big bang. That time delay would be his fuse, and if perchance the buggering things didn't behave like typical power units, then it didn't matter whether he killed himself with a jury-rigged grenade or a barehanded attack on a Quas soldier. Dead was dead, on any planet and in any language.

  Ducking behind a large boulder, Zack slapped the shell halves together, leaving two exposed strands of wire hanging out. With a quick wrist movement, he twisted the wires together, counting the seconds f
rom the moment they touched, and threw the sensor over the rock. It bounced off a tree and landed with a muffled thud.

  At the count of thirteen, the fuel cells exploded with a loud bang that echoed between the hills. Shards of plas, superconductor and metal, flew in all directions, slashing through the leaves.

  “Hot damn! Those fucking bugs are going to experience some serious indigestion from my homemade bombs. And all I have to do is pick 'em off trees, like little red apples.”

  Zack collected five more devices in the immediate area, clearing out the wide space between the two low hills, and quickly transformed them into hand grenades.

  Then, pockets bulging, he turned north and climbed to the summit of the higher knoll, which was as bare as a monk's tonsure, or his own skull for that matter. At least three hours had expired since his release, which meant a bug had been hunting him for two, and if Amali was vectoring the thing onto him, it should show up soon.

  Decker slipped between the quartet of large, black rocks that crowned the hill, taking advantage of the natural cover and the vantage point that gave him a clear view of the slope. He lay down on his stomach, facing the estate and, making sure his throwing arm had room to swing, stacked his grenades within reach, careful that the exposed wires didn't touch by accident. Now, all he had to do was wait, and that was the hardest part.

  *

  The minutes stretched out as the sun beat down on his exposed scalp. A headache began to throb in sync with his heartbeat. Perspiration soaked him from head to toe while the pebbles beneath his body dug into his bruised flesh. He was preternaturally alert, eyes searching the dark tree line, adrenaline keeping his body at peak readiness.