Steve Perry - Matador 01 - The Man Who Never Missed

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2024-12-03 0 0 745.62KB 132 页 5.9玖币
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THE MAN WHO NEVER MISSED
Steve Perry
Chapter One
DEATH CAME FOR him through the trees.
It came in the form of a tactical quad, four people walking the three-and-
one, the point followed by the tight concave arc; the optimum number in the
safest configuration. It was often said the Confed's military was always
training to fight the last war and it was true enough, only there had been
enough last wars to give them sand or cold or jungle troops as needed. These
four were jungle-trained, they wore class-one shiftsuits with viral/molecular
computers able to match backgrounds within a quarter second;"they carried .
177 Parkers, short and brutal carbines which held five hundred rounds of
explosive ammo—one man could cut down a half-meter-thick tree with two
waves of his weapon on automatic. The quad carried heat-sensors, corn-
implants, Doppler gear and personal sidearms; they were the deadliest and
best-equipped soldiers the Confed could field and they were good. They
moved through the cool rain forest quietly and efficiently, alert for any signs
of the Shamba Scum. If something moved, they were going to spike it, hard.
Khadaji felt the fear in himself, the familiar coldness in the pit of his belly,
an old and unwelcome tenant. He had learned to live with it, it was
necessary, but he was never comfortable when it came to this. He took a
deeper breath and pressed his back harder against the rough bark of the sum
win tree. He practiced invisibility. The tree was three meters thick, they
couldn't see him, and even without his confounder gear their directional
doppler and heat sensors wouldn't read through that much solid wood. He
listened as they moved past him. The soft ferns brushed against the shiftsuits
of the quad; the humus of a thousand years made yet softer sounds under
their slippers as they walked, but Khadaji knew exactly where they were
when he stepped away from his tree.
He was behind them, a tall figure in plain tan orthoskins with spetsdods
molded to the backs of both hands. He held his breath for steadiness and
brought his arms up, as might a man lifting a small child. He hyperextended
the index fingers of both hands and each of the spetsdods fired once, a polite
cough. Two hits, sounding like knuckles on wood as they pierced the too-
light armor.
They were fast, the last two. The bacterially-augmented reflexes had been
well-trained, but in this case, the instruction was wrong. Instead of dropping
flat, the point and left rear spun, carbines cleared for killing.
Khadaji fired both spetsdods again. The flechettes hit the soldiers halfway
through their turns, on the sides instead of the backs. The point managed to
trigger off a few rounds before he crumpled. The sound of the .177 was very
loud in the thick forest. The smell of the electro-chemical explosive tainted
the air with an acrid tang.
The four soldiers were knotted into odd angles amid the ferns and spider
plants, voluntary muscles clenched in the frozen lock which gave the
ion/molecular/chemical flechette of the spetsdod its name: Spasm. They
wouldn't die, but it would take six months of treatment to bring them back to
normal. Six months of extensive physical and psychotherapy for each victim
of the spetsdod's sting, expensive, time-consuming, draining. Spetsdods were
good weapons for guerrillas—a dead man cost the enemy little, but a
Spasmed soldier was a lot of work; with proper treatment, they never died
and they did cost.
Khadaji turned to leave. One of the quad might have triggered his com
and, if so, a flier would already be on its way. As he started to move, he
glanced back at the soldiers. One of them had a stain on his leg. It was hard
to see because of the shiftsuit, which matched the color of the ground on
which the downed man lay, but it looked like blood.
He moved closer. Yes. Apparently the point's desperation blast had
wounded one of his own. Damn!
Khadaji hurried to the man. No, correction, it was a woman, not that it
mattered. She was hit, there was a crater the size of his fist in her thigh and
she would bleed to death in a few minutes.
For a moment, Khadaji thought about it. He hadn't killed any of them, so
far, and this one wouldn't be on his karma, he hadn't shot her. A flier might
be coming.
He shook his head. No. He had to take the long view.
He found her medical kit and jerked it from her belt. He opened the plastic
case and found the pressure patch. Triggering the unit, he slapped it over the
pumping hole in her leg. The patch whined and sealed around the edges.
Inside, the pressure went up as the rudimentary brain of the medical sealer
clamped arteries and veins and shuttled the flow of blood. If a flier was
coming, she'd be all right. Once he got away from the woods, he would call
and report the downed quad anyway, so there was no real danger. There
were no predators on Greaves and the most dangerous thing which could
happen to the quad was that they might get rained on.
Khadaji rose from his crouch and looked at the quad a final time before he
loped off into the woods. He managed a grin against the drop of adrenaline
which left him feeling drained and tired. The Shamba Scum had struck
again— according to the official dispatches, their number was now estimated
at between six and eight hundred. His smile increased. If the quad he'd just
downed had been faster, the Shamba Scum would have been eliminated—all
of them. For Emile Antoon Khadaji was the resistance on Greaves, all by
himself.
It was six klicks to his next station. He jogged the whole way, alert for any
sounds of more troops or fliers. It was quiet. The earthy smell of the
mushrooms and molds was heavy—brought out by the rain last night—and
the ground was squishy underfoot.
This part of it was hard, too. Aside from the means, the logistics were
becoming more difficult all the time. In the early days, it had been easy. The
Confed's machine came to rest on Greaves as it had a dozen other peaceful
worlds almost without incident. There were no armies on the world, no
underground brewing among the agios and craftspeople who made up most
of the planet's population. Oh, there had been a few students handing out
agitprop, but nothing of any consequence—until ten or twenty troops a day
began dropping with Spasm poisoning. A single message, coded
mysteriously into the Garrison Commander's computer, claimed
responsibility in the name of the Shamba Freedom Forces—quickly
shortened to Shamba Scum by the troops-of-the-line.
Khadaji grinned as he ran along the thin path through the forest. That had
been a nice touch, he'd thought, naming the "Freedom Forces" after Lord
Thomas Reserve Shamba, the twenty-second century war hero. It was a joke
only Khadaji could appreciate, though. It came from Sham-ba's answer to a
surrender call by Confed forces who outnumbered him fifty-to-one at the
Battle of Mwanamamke in the Bibi Arusi System:
To the Commander, Confederation Jumptroopers:
Sir:
Fuck you.
We stand until the last man falls.
When the first man fell in the current insurgency, it would be the last man.
Khadaji slowed to a walk when he was a kilometer from the patrol line. He
checked his confounder, to make sure it was operating, bent and stretched
his legs and back, and took several deep breaths. There were three men on
the line in this sector, virgins as near as he could tell. He could have taken
them on the way out, but that might have made it tough to get back into the
city. The Confed military mind was rigid and not particularly bright, but
neither was it completely stupid. The replacements for these three wouldn't
be fresh meat, they'd be vets, more interested in staying ambulatory than
proving how well they'd' absorbed their training.
The first soldier was so easy it made Khadaji sad. He walked to within five
meters without being noticed. The boy—he could have been no older than
twenty-two or three—stood in the shade of a small fir tree. It was not
particularly warm, but he wore class two body gear, and it didn't take much
to heat up the inside of that to sweatpoint. The boy had shifted his goggles
up and his tight hood back, exposing his face and head to the cooler air. If
Khadaji had been an uprank, the boy would have been in trouble.
"Excuse me, which way is Hartman Street?"
The boy turned, surprised. He started to swing the Parker up, but stopped.
What he saw was a tall man in orthoskins, palms supinated, looking
harmless.
"Jeet, dork, don't slip up on a man like that!" He seemed to relax a little,
seeing that Khadaji was unarmed and smiling.
The Shamba Scum shrugged, raised his left hand slightly, and stiffened his
index finger. "Sorry," he said.
The little dart hit the boy high on the forehead and snapped his face
upward; the Spasm hit him on the way down and he was in the lock before
he touched the ground. The strongest muscles determined the shape of the
knot; this one had strong quads and triceps—his arms and legs stuck out.
Khadaji shook his head. There was no joy in this. The boy would be able to
tell all about the man who shot him— in six months, if he were lucky.
Meanwhile, he would spend an uncomfortable time thinking about his
actions on this day. Spasm froze the muscles but neither the memory nor the
mind which drove it. He wouldn't be able to call out, but he would
remember how stupid he had been. A harsh punishment for a boy, but it was
necessary. All of it was necessary, for reasons this soldier couldn't begin to
understand, even if Khadaji had hours to explain it to him.
Unlike the first, the second man wore his armor—and class two would
stop a spetsdod's dart—but the armor wasn't perfect. Gloves and hoods were
designed to overlap but the material had to be thin in places for a man to
move; knees and elbows and shoulders had to bend or rotate. When the
soldier stretched, after two minutes, Khadaji fired. The fle-chette entered the
thin fold behind the man's left knee, a line only a few millimeters wide. It
was a difficult shot, but an expert with a spetsdod could cut a dragonfly in
half in mid-air—and hit both pieces as they fell. Point-shooting had been
brought to a peak higher than craft, if not art, with the invention of the
spetsdod: the word itself meant "point death." The brush came alive with the
canvas-rip sound of a Parker carbine on full automatic; bushes and trees blew
apart, explosive shells chopped them down from waist-level. Khadaji was on
the ground and crawling before the first leaves fluttered to the forest floor.
The third man had been spooked. Maybe he'd heard or sensed something,
maybe one of the others managed to trigger a com. It didn't matter. He was
shooting at shades, but he would have called for backup. Khadaji crawled at
right angles to the line of fire until he was clear, then stood and ran. Thorns
tried to dig into the tough orthoskins, but failed. He dodged trees and larger
shrubs, but ran over the small stuff. There was no time for finesse, he had to
be a long way from here when help arrived.
He cleared the forest and was among a line of warehouses in the storage
district. He stopped. Behind him, half a klick back, the scared soldier was still
cutting shrubbery with his weapon.
There were few ways to disguise a spetsdod on the back of the hand.
Khadaji loosened the plastic flesh which connected the two weapons to his
body and pulled the flechette guns free. He found a trash bin full of scrap
metal and buried the weapons deeply in it. It wouldn't matter if they were
found since he had others—the better part of a case of them from the
shipment he'd stolen. Twenty spetsdods and ten thousand rounds of Spasm
darts—and that number, ten thousand, was very important.
Although he felt naked without the weapons, Khadaji stepped out onto the
street as if he owned it and started toward the Jade Flower. He would have
plenty of time to get there and collect another pair of spetsdods before his
last station was due. So far, he'd only taken out five of the Confed's finest,
and he needed at least eight more to maintain his schedule. He wanted to
average a hundred a week, but it was getting harder all the time. He'd been
at it for almost six months and the first troops would be coming out of lock
pretty soon. When that began to happen, it would be over. Even if the confed
military tried to lid it, word would eventually get out that only one man's
description kept coming up. They wouldn't believe it, of course, not at first,
but it would plant a seed. They would never admit that one man could
mimic hundreds—military PR would smash the idea flat, that thousands of
trained troops could be downed by a single assassin. But if they knew, it
would be over fast. They were looking for guerrillas in packs, not the owner
and operator of the Jade Rower, the biggest recreational chemical pub in the
city, a man whose business depended on the military, as customers and
patrons. Soldiers needed rec-chem almost as much as they needed sex and
the Jade Flower supplied both in abundance. More than a few of the Sub-
Befals spent time there. Khadaji made certain that upranks got the best
whores, male and female, and the first drink or toke or pop was always on
the house to anybody over line-grade. He was a popular man, Khadaji was.
So, two more stations, six more hits. He sighed. Nearly six months, and he
was getting tired. He didn't waver from his purpose—that was as clear as
ever—but he was tired. Not much longer. Not many more.
He sighed again, and hurried along the street. A quad passed him, going
the other way. The men all smiled and nodded at him. He smiled back. He
would probably see them later.
One way or another.
Chapter Two
THE JADE FLOWER was always open. Before the Confed had honored
Greaves with its massive squat tactics, the rec-chem pub had been only a
small-time operation, serving the locals a narrow spectrum of alcohol and
soporifics, minor hallucinogens and mood elevators. Two or three part-time
prostitutes took care of anybody interested in buying sex, and the operation
was, at best, a break-even proposition. With the coming of the military and
its civilian support population, the character of the Jade Flower was bound to
change. A greedy and well-prepared man would have made a fortune, but
the previous owner was old and tired and not ready to deal with the influx of
soldiers, bored spouses and children the Confed bent to the sleepy planet.
When Khadaji arrived and waved enough standards under his nose, the old
man was glad to sell.
Khadaji looked around the main room of the pub. It was early, not yet
1600, but already the place was crowded. Even with local zoning regs
relaxed, there was usually a line of customers outside, waiting for someone
to leave in order to enter. Khadaji always kept a dozen or so places open, for
any highly-ranked officers who might be interested in a toke, poke or drink.
Anjue, the doorman, had studied the holoproj of every uprank over the level
of Lojt and if one showed up, he or she was escorted to the head of the line
and inside. Rank, as always, had its privileges. The troops-of-the-line might
gripe, but the powers-that-be all smiled at Khadaji when they saw him.
The main room, which was octagonal and dimly-lighted, boasted sixty
circular tables with four stools each. The first thing Khadaji had done on
buying the pub was to have the stools and tables bolted securely to the floor.
He'd had thirty people applying for the job of bouncer and their first test was
to see if they could move the furniture. Two men managed to uproot a stool
each; one woman set herself and screamed, then tore the top of a table off its
mount. And then—well, she was clever. The rest failed. Khadaji had longer
bolts installed and hired the two men and woman who'd proved strongest. If
a fight broke out, nobody was going to be bashing anybody with his
furniture; and before it got too far, Bork, Sleel or Dirisha would be there to
stop it. It was difficult to argue with a man holding you a half-meter off the
floor, or a woman who could break three ribs with a flat punch. There was
very little trouble in the Jade Flower.
"Ho, Emile, how's it hanging?"
Khadaji looked to his right, to see Lojtnant Subru, smoking a flickstick. The
man's dark face was almost hidden behind the cloud of purple-black smoke.
'To the left, Subbie, just like always." He grinned. "How's the ratface job?"
Lojtnant Subru shook his head and exhaled a fragrant blast of flickstick
smoke. The smell of hot cashews surrounded Khadaji. "Busy today, Emile.
Word is there were several skirmishes within fifty klicks of town."
Khadaji raised an eyebrow and tried to look surprised. "Really? Get any of
the Scum?"
The dark soldier nodded. "Body count of fourteen, I heard. They nicked
one of ours in a blastfight, but she's okay."
Khadaji didn't have to work very hard to suppress his smile. He'd heard
this kind of statistic too many times. "Good for the troops."
"Yeah, we should have the Scum cleaned out pretty soon. Only problem is,
I hear 1C has upped their estimates of the numbers. Even with the ones
we've been cutting down, 1C says there are close to a thousand guerrillas in
the field now."
Khadaji shook his head. "Where are they coming from?"
"IC would love to know. I hear the Old Man would give his left nut and a
kilogram of bauxite to be able to spike the leaders." He took another blast
from the flickstick. "You ever do any ratface-time, Emile?"
Khadaji smiled. "Sure. I did my tour sitting planet and pushing disks for a
supply unit. Strictly button-thumbing stats, Subbie. Never saw action."
"Yeah? What unit?"
"14-788 Quartermasters, on Tomodachi. Been a few years." The unit was
real enough, Khadaji had known men who served in it while he was training,
but in fact his own unit had been the 14-433 Jumptroop Plex and he'd seen
more action than most of the soldiers on this world. Too much.
The Lojtnant nodded, not really interested. He looked around for a table
with an empty stool. "Emile, who's working the sheets tonight? Anybody
worth a week's pay?"
"Marj is on, Brin, Roj, Davisito, and... let's see, I think Sister Clamp is on at
1800."
"Sister Clamp, huh? I heard she's something else. Expensive, too."
"You can't take it with you, Subbie. Never know but you might get pulled
out of that air-conditioned T-plex and put on the line."
"Shee-it, they'll have to be scraping the walls for that. Still, I might get
flattened by a ground-effect tank crossing the street. Eighteen, you said?"
"I can put in a word, if you like, maybe get her to give you an uprank
discount."
Lojtnant Subru nodded again. "Yeah. Do that, would you? I'd appreciate
it."
The soldier wandered off, trailing the smell of cashews.
"Afternoo', Chief."
Khadaji's head pubtender stood there, looking grave.
"Butch. A problem?"
"We runnin' low on mid-range sops. Las' week's delivery was short two
gross and we only got half what we need 'til next shipment."
"What do you think, Butch?"
"I think we put a limit on and ration them suckers out."
Khadaji shook his head. "No. Business as usual and when we run out, offer
high-range at the same price."
"Jeet, Chief, we lose half a stad every tab!"
"We can afford it, can't we? We want to keep the customers happy."
Butch shook his head. "I don' see how you make an' profit, you keep tryin'
to give it away."
"We get by, Butch, we get by."
The pubtender left, looking even more grave than before, and Khadaji
began to work his way around the octagon, smiling at the customers,
listening and watching as he moved.
"—holes Uplevels wouldn't know a Scum if it peed on—"
"—said she's more fucking sensitive than I am—"
"—Jammy's still knotted in the stretch ward—"
"—kid's nine T.S. but sharp, lemme tell you—"
"—couldn't pull it out of her if you wanted to—"
"—the Old Man himself said it, so I hear—"
The flow of conversation was full of the things which have always been
important to soldiers: love, hate, sex, money, family, Uplevels' stupidity, the
campaign. Khadaji knew the talk. He'd only been nineteen when conscripted
for his seven and he'd done six years with men and women like these. Most
of them were young, but the military had a way of making you grow up
quickly. He was thirty-nine T.S. now, he could have fathered most of the
soldiers in the octagon. He felt a lot older than that sometimes, an old man
among children.
"—your ass! Get up, elbow-sucker!" Khadaji froze for an instant, then
turned. Two troopers were standing next to a table six meters away, squared
off in military oppugnate stances, each waiting for the other to make the first
stupid move—which both had already done by standing to fight in the Jade
Flower. Khadaji wondered who was on this shift—ah. As he watched,
Dirisha moved smoothly through the crowded pub toward the two soldiers.
Dirisha was a big woman, close to Khadaji's own 183 cm and eighty-two
kilos, but she didn't look it because she was so well balanced. She had short,
dark hair, a winning smile when she was happy—like now—and expert
rankings in three class one martial arts. She was about twenty-eight T.S. and
in a one-on-one, could probably take either Bork or Sleel, the other two
bouncers.
Dirisha reached the two men and slid between them, her back to the larger
one. Khadaji strolled closer.
"Fighting's not too bright," she said. "I mean, make a list: fucking, soak-
toke, good wine or cold simshi and where does getting your face smashed fit
in?"
The soldier she was talking to was about eye-level with Dirisha and he was
obviously angry. He wasn't going to let go of his rage that easily. "Yeah?
Well, I don't think dick-nose over there can smash anything!"
Dirisha's voice got very quiet, and she smiled, her teeth bright against her
dark chocolate skin. People strained to hear her. "I wasn't talking about him
hurting you, Deuce, I'm talking about me. You can sit and smoke your smoke
or you can walk, but you can't fight in here." Her voice was even and there
wasn't a gram of bluff in it.
The soldier seemed to wilt a little.
Khadaji smiled. Dirisha could take the soldier without having to suck a
deep breath and the man was perceptive enough to pick up on it, even if he'd
never seen her in action. If he had, he would have sat as soon as she
approached. He had to get one last shot in, though.
"What about him?" He pointed at the man behind Dirisha.
She didn't bother to turn and look at the second soldier. "He's got the same
options you do, Deuce. So what say you just have a seat and work this out
like preachlegals." It was not a request.
The tension seemed to drain away suddenly. The larger man behind
Dirisha sat on his stool and reached for his mug of splash. The soldier facing
Dirisha wiped at the back of his uniform collar with one hand and nodded.
"Okay. We don't want any trouble with the Flower, we can work it out later,
maybe."
摘要：

THEMANWHONEVERMISSEDStevePerryChapterOneDEATHCAMEFORhimthroughthetrees.Itcameintheformofatacticalquad,fourpeoplewalkingthethree-and-one,thepointfollowedbythetightconcavearc;theoptimumnumberinthesafestconfiguration.ItwasoftensaidtheConfed'smilitarywasalwaystrainingtofightthelastwaranditwastrueenough,...

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