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

by Dan Davis

  Well, alright.

  The shuttle was little more than a beefed-up reentry capsule with a lander like they used for Mars missions and everyone in the boarding party was crammed inside and strapped into their seats with geometrical efficiency. It puffed its way out through the shuttle bay doors with steady slowness and the thrusters slowed its orbit so the Nemesis shot on ahead. The shuttle descended toward the Orb’s vast, obsidian surface.

  The passenger section of the shuttle held the boarding crew that would be joining him on the Orb. All twelve of the candidates in combat gear and a range of weapons, should anything happen to Onca or if for some reason the Orb decided to deny him entry to the arena. Some other crew members, each with their own tasks supporting the mission with science experiments, mapping and scanning exercises, even sat hunched with equipment clutched on their lap. The cargo sections were filled to bursting with gear required for these various tasks. Not least of all, the medical machines that would hopefully save Onca’s life, should he be badly injured during the combat.

  Hardly anyone spoke.

  While the thrusters sounded in fits and starts throughout the descent into the Orb structure itself, the craft’s engines roared to life right before the shuttle capsule banged into a landing inside the huge space.

  “This is your pilot speaking. Landing confirmed. Welcome to the Orb.”

  Almost immediately, many crew relaxed and began whispering excitedly to each other, unstrapping themselves.

  Onca held himself in a state of calm tension, not allowing his anxiety to rise beyond a certain threshold but not fighting it down so much that it would relax him overly much either.

  The inside of the Orb hangar outside the shuttle was a featureless black cube. Their powerful beams searched around the huge space and yet the walls, ceiling and floor surfaces themselves emitted their own soft glow. The huge bay was a hundred meters on all sides with a fifty-meter opening on the wall opposite the outer door.

  Onca glanced at the screen as the massive outer Orb hull doors slid shut with barely a vibration felt through the craft. Vast quantities of breathable and warm atmospheric gases rushed into the vacuum around the outer hull of the shuttle, causing the alloys and ceramics to ping like a symphony until the temperature equalized.

  They disembarked, most crew focused on unpacking their work just as they had practiced so often. Yet, even the most professionally-minded of them took a few moments or more to look about them, somewhat slack jawed. Their shuttle craft sat in the center of the huge cuboid, the ceiling around 300 feet above.

  After the on-site gaseous and biological analysis confirmed the presence of the sterile breathable atmosphere that previous missions had found, no one wore space suits or breathing apparatus.

  When everything was ready, the boarding crew marched to the fifty-meter portal in the wall opposite the now-closed outer hull doors. The corridor was a klick-long straight line through the center of the Orb toward the central arena. They went in relative silence but for the echoing sounds of the equipment trolleys, whining servo suit motors and the tramping of boots on the hard, black surface. Everyone knew where their place was.

  Onca kept his emotional state as steady as was possible. His fellow candidates surrounded him, as if they were an honor guard, protecting him from the Orb as if the aliens that had built the thing were about to leap from the walls and attack.

  Perhaps they were. It was an affront that they would put humanity in such a position in the first place. Forcing an entire planet to choose a representative and fight another. Bringing one species from some other star system on the other side of the galaxy, or wherever the Wheelhunters were from.

  The presumptuousness of it was offensive.

  Ignore it.

  It was not relevant. That was for other people to think about.

  Onca had one job. The only job he’d ever been good at. The job that he had dedicated his life to and had learned to excel at more than any other man or woman he’d ever known.

  Kill the enemy.

  ***

  In the Orb staging chamber, Onca waited while the other candidates and the rest of boarding team finished their preparations and set up their experiments. These were a range of sensors like seismographs, scanning the interior by banging on the hard floor and walls of the space, attempting to get a picture of the rest of the structure of the Orb using what Onca assumed was ultrasound and the like. From their demeanor, he assumed that they were having little luck.

  The staging chamber itself was another vast, hundred-meter a side cube of a room with the large opening in the center of one side. Another inhuman space, the sheer scale oppressive and unfamiliar. On one wall was the huge square section they called the forcefield or the smokescreen, a fifty-meter square, semi-transparent barrier between the staging room and the vast arena beyond that Onca had imagined himself fighting in, over the long years.

  The swirling, gray-white screen appeared illuminated by its own power. As if it was radioactive. It was the same with the rest of the surfaces inside the Orb. The ambient light, such as it was, glowed almost imperceptibly from the very walls and floors and ceilings so that every person in the chamber was cast in a dull light that cast no hard shadow. It reminded Onca powerfully of the momentary dusk in the rain forest, those few moments when the chlorophyll green darkness of day became the gray-green dusk, pregnant with the utter darkness of a jungle night before it plunged headlong into it. The feeling was so powerful that he swore he heard the cacophony of screeching, clicking and whistling of the creatures of that Amazonian dusk echoing through the huge room around him and he even caught the whiff of sodden earth.

  The pang of homesickness, so successfully stamped down for so many years, threated to overwhelm him. He clamped his eyes shut, took out his enormous combat knife and gently ran the tip along one cheek, deep enough to just about draw blood. He had not yet strapped his face-piece over his helmet and so it was the only part of him not covered in heavy plate or armored fabric.

  The distraction brought him out of his revere.

  “The hell are you doing?” Richter said, concern and fear in her voice and on her face.

  “Proving to myself that I am here,” he said.

  She hesitated then nodded. “Alright.”

  The General waved over the doctor, who swiped the line of blood from his face.

  “Merely a scratch,” the doctor said to General Richter. “The bleeding stopped already.”

  Richter waved the doctor away.

  “You alright, soldier?” she asked Onca.

  “I never suffered from an overactive imagination,” Onca said. “But I was just struck by the madness of all this. And of the thought of home.”

  Just as a dying man might do, in his final moments.

  “Well,” she said, “don’t start using your brain now, Onca. Don’t break the habit of a lifetime.”

  He smiled, dutifully, and felt another pang at what he had given up in order to be where he was. It was too late to change anything and that, perhaps, was why he was feeling so absurdly emotional.

  Focus, Onca, you goddamned moron.

  “I never told you why they threw me out the army, did I?” he said to her.

  She looked alarmed, as well she might. “It’s alright. I believe I worked it out anyway. Now’s not the time.”

  “Got to do something while we wait for this damned Orb to give us the go,” Onca said. “Anyway, not sure I’ll get another chance to talk to you, Megan.”

  Her eyes were full of something. “Don’t go all gooey on me now, Onca.”

  She’s right, you made your choice.

  “I’m just talking, is all,” he said, shrugging his armored shoulders. “It’s not even an interesting story. They ordered me to clear out a village in the far west of Brazil, up in the hills. The idiots were harboring escaped Artificial Persons. Dozens of them. We found them hiding in pits and basements dug all over the area and they seemed surprised by how easily we got them. The man wh
o ran the place did not beg me or anything like that, even when I had him on his knees. All of them, lined up side by side. The humans in one line and the AP fugitives in another. The village big man just said, I feel sorry for you. Peered up at me with pity in his eyes, pity for me and my men. There were kids there, too. I was rattled. Shouldn’t have let that moron get to me but he did.

  “I radioed for confirmation of my orders, which was a stupid thing to do. They confirmed I was to execute everyone, human and AP and torch the bodies. I argued, thinking I was important, that I held sway with command but they didn’t budge. Instead of following orders, I took them all into custody, called in transportation and bussed them out of there. Humans and APs. They were so grateful, it was pathetic. They called me a hero and their savior, no matter how much I told them to shut up. It made me sick. Obviously, I changed nothing. There was some sort of rushed trial, just for show and then they were all killed anyway. The village kids were sent away, orphaned, destitute and destined for a life of shit. And then the army asked me to leave before I was court martialed and sentenced to something serious.”

  “You did a good thing,” Megan said, unsurprised by the story. She was good at uncovering hidden truths. “You stood up for your beliefs.”

  “No. I took the cowards’ path. I let other people do the killing for me and I changed nothing and got myself thrown out the only real home I’d ever had. But it’s alright. It was a long time ago. Such a long time. It doesn’t matter.”

  Megan was growing annoyed. “Those kids are alive because of you. Just like all the hostages you saved over the years. Do you know how many? I added them up. It was over six hundred. Six hundred people that are alive now because you saved them. All those families. Stop acting so morbid, Onca, you’re making me concerned. Look. You did good. You’re a good man. You had a great career. And now you’re going to be the hero of all Earth. Imagine that.”

  “This will be classified for a long time.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But you’ll be in the history books eventually. This will unlock the galaxy for us. But don’t think about that, focus on the moment.”

  He mentally shook himself, looking round. No one was paying him and Megan much attention but if they heard his ramblings, no doubt they would be worried, too.

  “I’m sorry. I’m fine. Just feeling nostalgic, I think. Sometimes people get this way before an operation.”

  “You’re superb at controlling your emotions,” she said. “I doubted that anyone could have the discipline to exert that kind of self-control for that long. But you were right. You are better, clearer. More effective when you’re focused so completely on your objective to the exclusion of everything else. Honestly. But I think you’re just picking up on the enormity of this whole thing. Your focus has helped to screen you from it, in many ways. But it’s alright, you can forget all this, forget everything. You’ve defeated the mechanical wheel a hundred times with nothing more than a knife so you can do this. You know it. The crew knows it. Our superiors back on Earth expect you will win in style. Every other candidate here knows it better than anyone.”

  Onca nodded. “We’ll see.” He reached out an armored hand and placed it on her shoulder, giving her a tiny squeeze. “Megan. Thank you.”

  He knew he should probably tell her that she was the best friend he ever had or something. Tell her that if he would ever have wanted a wife then it would have certainly been her. But she surely knew he felt that way, and if she didn’t feel the same it would be pointless to say so. And he was already dangerously unfocused and emotional. He had to allow himself to become ice cold again. Let the blue mist fall.

  She put a finger to her ear and tilted her head, listening to communication from the ship.

  “Almost time,” she said. “Wheelhunter shuttle has entered the Orb on the far side.”

  Onca nodded and stepped toward the enormous forcefield.

  He was dressed in full combat gear. He strapped the face piece and gorget across his face and neck, fastening it to his helmet and visor. The armorers checked his body armor over, yanking on straps and tightening the plates. Another handed him his sidearm which he inspected and holstered high on his waist. He did the same to his huge combat knife, sliding it up into an inverted chest holster. He checked the magazines, pushed them into the webbing over his belly and kidneys where he could grab them swiftly. Finally, he inspected the assault rifle that would shred the alien to pieces.

  The armorers and quartermasters, as well as the other members of the boarding crew around him were tense. Most of the other candidates had seen action but for all of them, it was a unique situation. No doubt, many were thinking of Ambassador Diaz’s disastrous Mission One and how that man had met his end.

  Onca, though, was not concerned. He held himself in a state of highly tuned readiness.

  All around him, the relevant support crew gave him and each other the “thumbs up”, confirmed verbally in sequence.

  “AugHud, Comms, Helmet and Visor, all go.”

  “Armor set, go.”

  “Ammunition, go.”

  “Sidearm, go.”

  “Combat knife, go.”

  “Assault rifle, go.”

  “All set, Alpha Candidate cleared for combat.”

  As the crew finished their checks, they stepped away, keeping their eyes on him. Onca moved slowly forward, getting closer to the forcefield, ready for when the Orb called to him.

  Unexpectedly, someone started clapping.

  The applause was contagious and Onca advanced through the staging room as every crew member and candidate paused in what they were doing and turned to honor him. The military personnel threw out salutes and a couple of brave souls clapped him on his armored back. But mostly, they stood still and applauded.

  He managed to keep his composure and felt almost like saying something. But what could he say? Something about it being an honor to serve with them would be appropriate.

  The Orb sounded a crystal ping inside the staging area, reverberating as if the sound came from everywhere at once, like the light.

  It was expected and yet everyone froze.

  Silence.

  Onca’s heart rate increased and he took a long, slow breath to calm himself.

  Without a word, Onca stepped up to the swirling smokescreen, expecting the chime to sound again, as it had done in the previous mission.

  The Orb played a low, discordant tone. It thrummed through the walls and the floor under his boots like a digitized, broken air horn. The crew around him flinched, and immediately began arguing about what it meant.

  It was clear to Onca.

  It was just as they had feared.

  Megan was there, at his shoulder.

  “Seems I’m over dressed, General,” he said. “What should we try first?”

  “Keep to the sequence we practiced,” she said, her face taut and her eyes hard as steel.

  Onca turned, handed his rifle to the waiting armorer and stepped back up to the swirling sheet of semitransparent plasma.

  It sounded again, a sound as off-key as fingernails scraping ceramics but felt deep in the guts.

  With the others’ help, Onca removed his visor, gorget and helmet and stepped back to the screen.

  It did not part and the discordant tone sounded.

  The support crew were agitated but Onca simply began stripping off his armor and the men near him jumped in to help, taking off the large, throat-protecting gorget piece from around his neck, and leg sections.

  Still, the screen would not part.

  They took off his chest and back plates, leaving the woven Kevlar and Moztek underlayer.

  Even that was not enough for the Orb.

  The piece he wanted most was the helmet but even that was too much for the Orb and Onca allowed it to be removed with the greatest reluctance.

  Not until he was stripped to his thin underclothes and his boots with no weapons did the chime sound.

  The swirling, smoky grey forcefield blink
ed away, showing the vast space beyond.

  “Wait,” Megan said. “You can’t go in like that.”

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  “So. No armor,” Megan said, nodding. “Okay, we know that now. Fine. Give him back his weapons.”

  The weapons specialist stepped up and handed Onca back his assault rifle. The discordant note sounded and the plasma smokescreen whipped shut faster than the eye could see.

  Even when the rifle was swapped for his sidearm, the Orb sounded the negative tone once again and the screen stayed where it was.

  Onca handed the sidearm back, received his combat knife and stepped up to the screen again.

  The discordant note sound.

  He handed his blade over so that he stood there once more in no more than his thin, stretchy underclothes and heavy black military boots.

  The Orb chimed again, whipping the screen aside.

  “Ah,” Onca said. “It wants me unarmed and unarmored. Of course.”

  The crew and candidates stared at him, horrified.

  All he felt was a growing numbness.

  “No,” Megan said, “you can’t go in like this.”

  Onca nodded. “It will likely be quite one-sided.”

  “You don’t have to go out there,” Megan said, eyebrows knitted together. “We could forfeit. Accept the loss. Walk away.”

  “We don’t know what the implications are,” Onca said, shaking his head. “We don’t know what the Orb would do if we didn’t even try to fight. Perhaps the builders of this thing would destroy the Earth in retaliation.”

  “They’ve given no indication of that. But I get your point,” Megan said, her face rigid with tension, eyes flicking everywhere as if looking for a way out. “Perhaps someone else might decide to go in your place?”

  Onca almost smiled. The candidates tensed behind him.

  Sandra stepped forward, as did Hiroko and Omar and Hunter. All of them willing to take his place and face certain death to save him. The fact that they would do such a thing, without hesitation, was the thing that threatened to overwhelm him. Comrades after all. He waved them back and all he could manage was a brief nod to them, with a lump in his throat, to acknowledge their great generosity and the honor he felt.