Deception: Part One

What follows is a serialized piece of long fiction. The story, titled Deception, is set in my Desert Moon universe. The time is 2443, and guess what? The human race still has a lot to fight over. I'll present this in several installments (duh, I guess that is what serialized means, no?). It's military science fiction. Not goofy space opera stuff, but rather gritty ground-pounder stuff. Oh eah, there's a touch or horror. Always.

Deception

Major Brody Jack concentrated on his tablet, blocking the shudder of the cargo lifter. The huge aircraft, capable of carrying a pair of Punisher tanks, a stomper, or a company of infantry, had just crossed the coastline of Yunglelan, and the warm continental air buffeted the plane furiously. A combat veteran, Brody wasn't worried. The Condor class was the most technologically advanced lifter flying Terra Novan skies, and Brody trusted technology, believed in technology.

Brody glanced out the thick, plastiglass window beside his seat. A hundred meters distant, hanging majestically in the rich blue sky, flew another Condor, the effect of the buffeting thermals unnoticeable from his vantage point. He knew that yet another lifter held station on the opposite side of his plane. The three lifters carried the men and machines of his small command. Three stompers, a platoon of infantry, their transport, and the technicians and support personnel to keep them in the field.

"Landfall." The pilot's voice rasped, received via the implanted bone transceiver.

Brody pressed the dermal transmitter forward of his ear to reply. "Roger." 

The thermal buffeting eased as the lifter cleared the coast and moved inland.  Below Brody scrolled hundreds of kilometers of jungle. Lush, green vegetation, thick with Ironwood trees. And therein lay the problem. The northern continent, the western continent, hell all industrialized Terra Nova, wanted that Ironwood. Wanted it for furniture, wanted it for houses, wanted it for yachts, wanted it because Ironwood was the best, the highest quality, almost indestructible. From what Brody understood, they were willing to pay for it too, but that didn't matter to him. He was a mercenary, an officer of Rock's Raiders, and he went where he was ordered, fought where he was told.

It didn't matter to the Ndabe either. The region's natives, the Ndabe didn't care for money, they cared for their home, their home where the Ironwoods grew, and they were fighting for it. Hard.

He scanned the tablet's images. A loggers’ camp, the loggers slaughtered, beheaded, the heads impaled on stakes and planted in a circle tracing the camp's perimeter. Beneath each bloody head, often painted with the victim’s grisly fluids, swung a small, intricately-carved Ironwood tree model, tied to a lock of the victim's hair with plant fiber. No survivors, the pictures taken by a militia detachment responding to the radioed pleas for help. Yes, the Ndabe were brutal, but they were also effective. The loggers armed themselves well, the evidence of that arming clear in several pictures. The Ndabe had not only slaughtered the loggers, men and woman alike, but also neatly stacked their weapons, flechette guns, assault rifles, spitters, in the center of the camp. The Ndabe had no use for modern technology, they killed with bow and arrow, machete and spear. Yet despite their primitive weapons, Ndabe were not a stupid people. With a swipe of his finger Brody flicked to the next picture, a shot of abandoned yellow gear. Huge, tracked cutters and haulers, the machines used to clear the jungle, sitting idle. After the Ndabe killed the loggers they poured water sugared with their cane into the machine's tanks, or sand into the oil sump. A simple way to render useless a million cred piece of gear. Low tech, trumping high tech.

Brody sighed. The Ndabe were clever, certainly they had brought the Ironwood logging to a standstill.  But loggers and militia were one thing, the most technologically advanced mercenaries in the inhabited systems were another. Brody powered down the tablet and leaned back into his seat, they would be landing soon, and he wanted rest for the work ahead.

**

Brody smiled at the limp splatter of water. It was, well at least it was what passed for, a shower out here, kilometers from civilization, at the edge of the massive Ironwood jungle. Their employers, South Continent Pulp and Paper, were willing to provide air-conditioned birthing, a cafeteria, and showers at the airstrip, but Brody didn’t want that.  

"No thanks," he had monotoned.

"These are not acceptable?" queried the company rep, a chubby twenty-something with wire-rimmed glasses, neatly trimmed hair, nice slacks and a collared shirt. Behind Brody his command deplaned. The runway shuddered as the stomper pilots walked the ten-meter tall biped weapons platforms to their staging area. Above him white clouds ambled across the azure sky, the red dwarf had set, the yellow primary still shone brightly. Brody could feel the humid air popping sweat on his temples.

Brody fixed him with a cool, gray stare. "Are the Ndabe here?" A breeze swept across the runway, the scent thick with oil, metal, and hot asphalt.

"Well, no..." the rep stuttered, glancing to either side of Brody, as if for help. "No, sir they aren't, but..."

"We go where the Ndabe are."

That was yesterday, and this was today. Tonight actually, and the Ironwood forest surrounded them. They had set up their base at the very logger's camp the Ndabe had destroyed. All signs of that destruction had been removed, and in its place were weapons pits for crew-served spitters, anti-personnel radar, patrols, and stompers.

He stepped out of the gravity feed shower, and into the red light of the sanitation tent. Red lights were the only lights Brody allowed after dark, red lights didn't ruin your night vision, red lights kept you ready to fight.

Lieutenant Palash Kut stood in front of a sink, shaving. Palash caught Brody's eye in the mirror and nodded in greeting. The razor scrapped softly against his neck, pilling the soap in front of it. Brody stepped to the sink beside him.

"Ready, Pal?" Brody asked as he pulled a razor from his kit, using the nickname he used when the two conversed in private.

Palash nodded. "Ready, Boss." The two had served together for three years. Thirty-six standard months of boredom, intense danger, hard drinking, and the shared sorrow of close death. Neither man needed to state what Palash should be ready for, it was understood.

Palash commanded the first infantry platoon. His men had perimeter watch for the night. Palash was duty officer. "The anti-personnel radar is up and running. Calibration checks done. The weapon pits are manned, Sergeant Drttz's squad is on patrol." Palash shrugged, "We're ready."

Brody lathered his face and began shaving. Palash finished, wiped up, and headed out. Reaching the door he paused, "What do you think?" His dark eyes showed no fear, his tone was more conversational than genuinely inquisitive.

Brody drug the razor across his face before answering. When he did, he looked at Palash and smiled. "What is there to think, Pal?" He wiped the remaining shaving cream off his chin. The menthol scent filling the portable shower facility. He turned to face his friend. "The Ndabe are zealots. Clever, courageous, skilled zealots, but zealots none the less, and you and I both know zealots don't win battles. They can't fight stompers, radar, smart rifles, and auto-mortars with their passion." He threw his razor back into his kit. "I think we wade into that jungle, smash the tribesmen, and fly home. That's what I think."

Palash nodded. "I'm with you, boss."  Without another word Palash left. Brody repacked his toiletry kit and followed him into the night.

The base was small, no more than a two-hundred meter circle, and completely blacked out Brody knew that inside the buildings--the squat mess tent, the prefabricated operations center, the barracks, and the officers bivouac, there were troopers who lay awake, played cards, studied the Ndabe briefings on their tablets, or spoke in hushed tones, but the lights in those facilities were red, and the entrances were double curtained to prevent light from seeping into the night.

The habitation and operations structures stood in the camp's center. The weapon pits dotted the perimeter, and his three stompers were dispersed to provide support as needed. He passed one of the anti-personnel radars, the dish purring atop it's ten-meter tripod, its scans transmitting to the command center. If something moved outside the perimeter, an alarm sounded at the Ops Center console.  No one could get in, and that fact made what happened next even more curious.

Brody slipped through the slit in the operation' center exterior blackout curtain, and then parted those on the inside. The interior's cool air rushed to meet him, the chill welcome on his skin. It took but a second for his eyes to refocus in the soft red light. The three soldiers on watch paid little attention to his entry. Rock's Raiders didn't stress military protocol when in the field, they stressed doing your job, and doing it well.

One man sat at the radar console, a square display with the strobing line of the radar sweeping the screen. Any object bigger than a rabbit would blip the radar, instantly providing a direction of movement and speed. Enemies, as determined by programed parameters, would be marked in red. Beside the radar operator sat the communications tech. All of the Raiders had bone transceivers and dermal transmitters, but the radio watch controlled powerful digital radios, capable of bouncing signals off satellites back to the north continent, the home of Rock's Raiders.

Sergeant Tuk Tadwadders, the watch officer, rose to greet Brody. Tadwadders stood almost two-meters tall, and full of muscle. Dark hair, blue eyes, and an easy smile topped his powerful frame. He had joined the Raiders not long after Brody, and the two had fought together on the North Continent as well as Sediana. 

"Howdy, Skipper," Tuk boomed, his voice matching his physique.

"Quiet night?" Brody queried.

Tuk nodded. "Quiet as quiet can be, Captain. We haven't seen anything all night. Not a thing."

Brody halted behind the radar tech, a nervous habit more than anything. Brody knew that if the radar tech hadn't seen anything then neither would he. "Nothing?"

Tuk pursed his lips. Brody took the hint. Nothing was nothing. Brody inquired about Suzanne, Tuk's wife, chatted for another minute or so and excused himself. He had about an hour of paperwork before he could catch any sleep, and he wanted to get it done.

The door in the rear wall of the operations center led to Brody’s small office. The door locked automatically. Brody wasn't a particularly private person, and he often propped the door open with an ammo can as he worked at the desk, but his computer contained hundreds of classified documents as well as personnel records. It was Raiders' policy, as well as good common sense, to secure the information behind a locked door. Only Brody could access the room. A small digital scanner on the wall adjacent to the door read his thumb print, and the lock retracted with a light snick.

"Computer on, lights on, night setting." Brody spoke, and the voice recognition system acknowledged. His computer bleeped in response, and the overhead illumination tube glowed, bathing his office in soft, red light. Brody strode to his desk, at least that was what he intended to do, but his desk stopped him dead in his tracks. Not so much his desk, as something on his desk. There, next to his softly whirring computer, stood a small, perfectly scaled, Ironwood tree, carved, of course, from Ironwood, and from a small branch dangled a bloody, human ear. 

To be continued...

Mark H. Walker served 23 years in the United States Navy, most of them as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal diver. He is the owner of Flying Pig Games as well as Tiny Battle Publishing the designer of the aliens-invade-Earth game Night of Man, the author of Desert Moon, an exciting mecha, military science fiction novel with a twist, with plenty of damn science fiction in it despite what any reviewer says, as well as World at War: Revelation, a creepy, military action, with a love story, alternate history, World War Three novel thing, Everyone Dies in the End, and numerous short stories. All the books and stories are available from Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing right here. Give them a try. I mean, what the hell? The games? Well that's Flying Pig Games and Tiny Battle Publishing Retribution will release in the spring of 2016.