Decker's War Omnibus 1

by Eric Thomson

  Sal Aran met him by the ramparts.

  “All of the booby-traps we could build are in place, as are the decoys.”

  “Since I didn’t hear any screaming, I guess your boys were able to set them without blowing off any extra fingers.”

  Aran chuckled.

  “I got a couple of scares, but I’ll recover. If you’re good with checking only the odd few, we can stay behind the walls. Less chance of a Shrehari wondering why we’re climbing all over the place again.”

  “Lead the way.”

  “My guys have mixed feelings,” he said as they edged around the improvised explosive devices carefully sited at spots mostly likely to be used by Shrehari infiltrators.

  “How so?”

  “We gave up a good bit of our heavy ammo for the traps, which leaves us only a few rounds for each tube, but on the positive side, we won’t have to hump all that weight back to the other side of the Gandabegs.”

  “They can count themselves lucky I decided to keep all of the big guns. I seriously considered abandoning most of your ordnance so the column could travel faster, but Lora talked me out of it.”

  “Trust her to keep an eye on the toys.” Aran grinned behind his visor.

  Decker knelt by a cleverly concealed mortar round with an exposed fuse tied into a trip-wire.

  “Fiendishly simple.” He nodded. “Even if they have night vision gear, the wires are so fine they’ll be missed.”

  “We used most of the mortar rounds like that.”

  Zack stood up, careful to keep his head below the top of the wall.

  “If that’s an example of your platoon’s work, you did well.”

  They quickly inspected a few more of the improvised explosive devices and decoys, then Decker checked the time readout in his helmet’s visor. If the enemy was going to do a repeat of the previous night’s performance, then according to what Mariko had told him, they had four hours at best to get away.

  “Okay. I think you’ve done what you could. Time to pull out.” He clapped Aran on the shoulder. “I’ll send Kidder on his way as soon as I get to the breach.”

  Decker scampered down to the lowest part of the fort, where the curtain wall had crumbled and left a rough opening that was well hidden by the surrounding vegetation. A narrow path, carved out by running water, went to the base of the hill, from where they could go left towards the overgrown road running through the pass, or right and into the mountains.

  He found Kidder waiting just inside the opening, his platoon already strung out along the path beyond.

  “You’re good to go, Tran,” Zack whispered. “We’ll meet you at home base in three days unless we catch up along the way.”

  He nodded.

  “Three days it is. Good luck, sir.”

  “You too, lieutenant.”

  Soundlessly, Kidder slipped through the breach and vanished. When Zack went to look, no more than a minute later, the entire platoon was gone. Five minutes after that, the remainder of First Company melted into the night.

  *

  Progress beneath the thick, leafy canopy was surprisingly fast, even though the ground was spongy. Little daylight reached through the foliage, and the undergrowth was stunted. By the time they crossed the tree line at the foot of the cliff, only three hours had passed. Vulin’s recon patrol waited for them at the appointed spot.

  “The pass is doable, barely,” the squad leader reported. “We’ll be in a single file for about a kilometer. Anyone gets above us, and it’ll be a shooting gallery, but they’d have to be flown in, so we’re probably safe.”

  A dull thump echoed over the forest and then two more.

  “I think the Shrehari have found our little presents.” A cruel smile creased Decker’s face. “They’re a bit early, but it’ll do. Let’s move out. The less time we spend in the open, the better.”

  Three more thumps went off.

  “Looks like they’re not fast learners,” Aran said, grinning. “I’d figure it would be wise to stop and regroup after the first one blew.”

  “The fog of war will do that to you. Multiple entries, not particularly well coordinated, and not expecting IEDs.”

  “We’ll ask them for an after-action report,” Zack said. “Once we’re across the mountains, so let’s get there.”

  They had heard two more explosions in the distance before the narrow pass swallowed them, but no one had the time to crack wise at Shrehari ineptitude. The recon patrol had been generous when they called it barely doable.

  Anyone with less physical conditioning than the silahdars wouldn’t have made it to the other end. It was just as well that the heavy platoon had left most of their ammo behind. The bottom of the pass, which was at times not much wider than Zack’s shoulders, was a jumble of broken rocks just waiting to snap a careless ankle.

  Adding to the misery, it rose at a sharp angle before flattening out a few hundred meters above the valley floor. That first kilometer took almost an hour, and daylight was smearing the horizon with a band of dirty gray by the time they crossed a broader saddle between two peaks and descended into the next valley.

  The column marched on, stopping for five minutes every hour and for two half hour breaks to eat. There were no signs of pursuit, nor was there any radio traffic. It was as if Decker and his company were alone on the surface of the planet. He said so to Lora Cyone as they chewed on cold rations.

  “I’ve been on worse low-tech missions than this,” she remarked between bites. “The kind where you got a couple of animal-drawn supply carts every few weeks, but of course those weren’t the absolute clusterfuck this one has become.”

  “Talking to you always cheers me up.” He shook his head. “It would have been nice, though, if the Atabek’s budget went to communications satellites. Then we could have called the XO and gotten the battalion skimmers to extract us once we were clear of any pursuit. As it is, we’ll all be a few kilos lighter by the time we can hitch a ride.”

  Cyone snorted derisively.

  “Our former owner is in it for the profits, not for our survival. I’m pretty sure the Gwangar of Chuluk, crap be upon him, paid enough money for our services so that even if we’re a total loss, it’ll have been worthwhile. High tech? That would eat into his margin.”

  “I was going to make a smart-ass comment about officers caring for their troops,” he responded after swallowing a hard chunk of protein. “But then I remembered that I was the nearest thing to an officer right now and that the Atabek isn’t an officer; he’s just another piece-of-shit slaver.”

  “You think the Shrehari are on our tail?” She asked, to change the subject.

  Decker shrugged.

  “No way of knowing. They might have figured that there was no good reason to pursue, now that we’re out of what they probably consider their territory. That would be the smart thing to do, especially if they think there might be backup coming through the mountains.”

  He carefully rolled up the empty ration pouch and tucked it into his rucksack.

  “Pass the word to police the area before leaving,” he told Cyone. “If they are following us, we might as well not make it too easy.”

  A sudden shout stopped him in his tracks.

  “Drone!”

  One of the sentries pointed at a small dot above the mountainside they’d crossed earlier that day.

  “I guess they fixed one,” Cyone said as she ducked under a bluish aspen-like tree. All along the trail, the silahdars had hidden as best they could the moment they heard the warning shout.

  “And they had a brain flash that we might have decided to do a side-trip on our way out.”

  “No one ever said the Shrehari were dumb.”

  “It’s turned back without coming near.” Decker stepped back out onto the narrow path. “Looks like the buggers need line-of-sight to control it, which means the AI’s buggered.”

  “And it means they’re still in the valley next door. I suggest we get moving, just in case.”

&nb
sp; “Agreed.” Decker made the ‘mount up’ signal, ordering the long column into motion again.

  By late afternoon, they slowly trudged up and over the next steep crest, Decker anxious to put more distance between them and the Shrehari, and to avoid spending the night on the valley floor. The local wildlife might not find humans digestible, but that didn’t mean it was a good idea to tempt them. Better to spend the night high up, where it was cooler and less infested.

  Just as the last of the company vanished down the reverse slope, the same sharp-eyed soldier called out a drone warning again. This time, the craft came much closer.

  “The controller’s climbed up the path we took and is sitting high on the other side of the valley.” Zack looked at his company strung out over the bare rocks.

  “Or they could have fixed the AI,” Cyone suggested once they were clear of the ridgeline.

  “Maybe, but I’ll bet they’ve seen us this time for sure. The fact that they’re still interested in us isn’t a good sign.” Decker scanned the narrow gorge below them. “I don’t like that we’re going to be walking eastwards for a while before we can find a slope that’s safe. If the buggers are on Kidder’s trail, we might stumble across them in the dark.”

  “We’re not stopping?” She sounded more resigned than surprised.

  “Not yet. We need to keep going for a few more hours.”

  Night fell with the surprising abruptness they’d learned was the norm on Garada, and soon even the usually stoic silahdars felt the strain as they made their way across the broken terrain, caught between a steep slope on one side and a deep canyon on the other. Though their helmet visors gave them night vision, it was never the same as seeing dangerous ground with one’s own eyes.

  Decker called a two-hour halt around midnight, the company strung out on a narrow shelf running above a chasm filled with rushing water. Though bone-weary himself, he declined Cyone’s offer to keep watch while he got an hour’s sleep.

  “I’m too twitchy, Lora. You might as well take two hours.”

  “A tired commander makes mistakes.”

  “True, that’s why I have you as my better rested XO.”

  Alas, it was not to be. A sound like tearing cloth filled the night air. Though distant, it brought everyone back to full alertness.

  He quickly made his way to the sentry at the rear of the column, stepping over the prone bodies of his tired troopers.

  “Where away?”

  “Down in the valley behind us, I’d say,” the man replied. “A dozen or so klicks.”

  “Did that sound Shrehari to you?”

  “Not a clue, sir. I can’t say that I’ve heard what their automatic guns sound like before this.”

  His reply brought Zack up short. He’d forgotten that almost none of his soldiers had ever met a Shrehari, let alone fought one. The closest they’d come was the harassing mortar fire the previous day. He patted the man on the shoulder and turned back.

  “How far are we from the main pass?” Cyone asked when he rejoined her.

  “Just under ten kilometers.” He called up a map projection inside his visor. “We’ll be able to get off the side of this mountain in about two, but the closest usable ford isn’t for another three klicks after that – if this map is accurate.”

  “So much for the Shrehari being happy with us just leaving.”

  “Sometimes, they want to make a point, like for instance, don’t bother us or we’ll wipe you out to the last hairless ape.” He shrugged. “Mind you, when we went after Shrehari marauders, we did pretty much the same thing. Wiping them out to the last bony skull ridge, that is.”

  “I wonder what caused the shooting.”

  “Some idiot tripped over a root with his finger on the trigger, or they ran into something bigger and meaner than they are? Who knows? At least we got an early wake-up out of it.”

  “True.” She stood and stretched. “It occurs to me that we owe Norik a solid for having been such an ass.”

  “Why?”

  “If he still had First Company, we’d be dead by now, him trying to defend a useless pile of stone because it was the last order he got, and you and I with the main body.”

  Decker grunted.

  “I’ll buy him a beer if I ever see him again, which is probably never.”

  With that, he hoisted his rucksack and made his way to the head of the column. It wasn’t where a company commander was supposed to be, but if they were getting close to the main pass, he had a decision to make no later than when they passed the next ford and for that, he needed to be at the very front.

  Accompanied only by the sound of running water, they eventually made their way out of the narrow gully, walking downhill until they reached relatively flat river banks at the bottom of a broad vale. If the Shrehari were still closing the gap, they were more circumspect after warning them by accident.

  Decker called a fifteen-minute halt and allowed the troops to replenish their water containers. The built-in bug zappers would take care of any micro-organisms that could give a human the runs or worse.

  “You know what I miss?” Cyone asked between bites of a ration bar.

  “Booze, sex and old-time religion?”

  “Seeing stars in the night sky. It’s been a long time since I’ve been on a planet that wasn’t covered in perma-clouds.”

  Decker looked up.

  “Sure, but it might be brighter. This mud ball does have a moon or three and that would help the Shrehari more than us.”

  “Trust you to be unromantic and practical.” She chuckled throatily.

  “Someone has to, sweetheart, and I was voted in as the designated adult, whether I wanted to or not.”

  “Yeah, but if it hadn’t been you, we might not have made it this far.”

  He considered her statement and then, without any sense of false modesty, he agreed.

  “I suppose I am the best qualified for a company-sized game of escape and evasion. Buggering slave soldier bull pucky. The last thing I wanted in life was to be a damned officer.”

  She laid a hand on his arm.

  “You’re doing fine, Marine.”

  Distant gunfire shattered the still night air, and everyone in the column froze.

  “That wasn’t behind us,” Cyone said, eyes narrowed.

  “No. That was probably close to the bridge on the main road.”

  “So the buggering Shrehari did like us and split up their pursuit.”

  “Yeah,” Decker nodded as he climbed to his feet, leg muscles screaming in protest. “It’s time to fix that mistake. Four or five klicks on even ground, say one hour. That’s all Kidder has to hold out for.”

  “What if they’re setting a trap?”

  Cyone slung her rucksack over her shoulders and picked up her carbine.

  “This whole planet’s a damn trap, Lora. We might as well concentrate our firepower. What was it the wise man said: if we don’t hang together...”

  “We’ll surely hang separately. When we get close, let Vulin take point. We need you to get us out. No one else in the unit has enough gall to hijack a starship.”

  He sketched a mock salute and lumbered off into the night.

  The column moved as fast as it could, propelled by legs that had given their best hours earlier. Slave soldiers might not have colors or regimental badges, or even a flag to fight for, but they understood strength in numbers. Kidder’s platoon needed them, and they needed that platoon.

  Decker’s estimate was optimistic, but the sporadic shooting continued, giving him hope that Kidder was still in the fight.

  He didn’t dare use his radio until the last minute. If the Shrehari were to listen in, they’d know he was barreling up their flank. It would be a delicate balance between keeping them in the dark and letting Kidder know the cavalry was on its way.

  He needn’t have worried. Less than five minutes after he fell back behind Vulin’s platoon, they made contact. The volume of firepower that erupted from the head of the column was
more than enough to tell the beleaguered silahdars that help had arrived.

  Help, unfortunately, had no idea what it was running into, nor did it know what was on its tail. All Decker knew was that he’d thrown the company into a firefight where the only way out was through the enemy screen and over the bridge. He had no other choice left after passing up the ford in favor of the most direct route.

  The Fifth Orta’s dead bore witness that these Shrehari had no compunction about massacring humans. What they didn’t know yet was that Decker had no compunction about returning the favor.

  Fifteen

  Zack joined Vulin and his automatic weapons squad in a thicket on the water’s edge.

  “Where?”

  “The tree line on the other side of that bend in the river. I make a dozen shooters, say half a platoon. Probably the flank guard. I’ve got a section probing around the bight, but I think that’s the extent of it.”

  “Who fired first?”

  “They did. Could have mowed my point down, but their fire went right over our heads.”

  Decker’s eyes narrowed.

  “Inexperienced? That’s hard to swallow if they managed to infiltrate and massacre the better part of a battalion. Experienced troops would have let you walk right into them, and they wouldn’t have shot too high.”

  “Their second string, then?”

  “That would mean we have the first string behind us. Cheerful thought, lieutenant.”

  “It’s been a pleasant mission so far, sir.”

  A rustle of leaves announced the arrival of the heavy platoon. Cyone hadn’t been idle while Zack went up to see the situation for himself.

  “Sal,” he grabbed the platoon leader by the arm. “Set up here. Nik’s people can show you the best positions. I’ll take the company around once recon comes back. Make sure you’re spotting IR signals. Three shorts, one long means open up hard, two long means stop. I don’t completely trust the IFF in these helmets, so pay attention. I want to punch through their flank and roll them up until we meet Kidder’s platoon. The moment you see us clear the far side of the bight, pack up and move like you got the devil on your tail. The bogeys behind us will want to close the distance as fast as they can now that they’ve heard shooting. And Sal, machine guns only. Something tells me we’ll need what little we have left of mortar and rocket ammo soon enough.”