Gray Matter Splatter (A Deckard Novel Book 4) (12 page)

* * *

Tampa, Florida

Will slammed his fists down on the table.

“Son of a bitch. I died again.”

“How much more time are you going to waste playing video
games?” Craig asked.

“It’s not just that I’m losing, it’s that they are not
interested in me. I've been going head to head with suspected
intelligence proxies on the PvP server.”

“PvP?”

“Player vs. player. It’s where the players in the game go to
test their characters by dueling with each other.”

“Yeah, great. Whatever.”

“The problem is that they don't have any reason to give a shit
about me. They need some….”

“Some what?”

Will was silent for a moment as his jaw hung open.

“They need some bait dangled out in front of them.”

The corners of Will’s mouth were slowly tugged up at the
corners.

“You're scaring the squares in this office, Will.”

Chapter 10

“Oh. My. God.”

Nate covered his mouth with his hand.

“It’s a tragedy,” Pat confirmed.

They stood in the doorway of the ship’s communal showers, the
steam from hot water billowing above their heads.

“It looks just like a penis,” Rochenoire stated bluntly,
“only smaller.”

“Hung like an elevator button,” Nate mumbled.

Deckard looked up at them with fury in his eyes. His lips were
still blue even after shivering himself half to death in the scalding
hot water for half an hour. Crouched over, he hugged himself hoping
that the feeling would return to his body at some point. At any rate,
it was clear that he wasn’t going to see undescended testicles for
at least a week.

“I h-h-h-hope—”

“Hope what, Deckard?” Pat asked. “Hope that I put you down
and spare you the humiliation?”

“H-h-h-hope y-y-you fffffucking die.”

* * *

It was only by some miracle that none of the Samruk mercenaries
were killed in the cove, but they were all walking around with their
tails between their legs as they paced the deck of the Carrickfergus.
Their pirate ship was normally a heterotopia of guns, high
explosives, and shitty attitudes. Now they were beaten; men had been
shot to pieces and frozen half to death. An organization that was
used to taking no shit from anyone was now having to admit that they
were simply outclassed by the enemy.

With Frank dead, Pat was next in line to assume command of Samruk
International since their CEO was temporarily incapacitated.

“I think we interrupted the enemy. If they had been
expecting us, they never would have allowed themselves to be trapped
inside the cove like that,” Pat said as Samruk ran a video
teleconference with SCOPE in Tampa, Florida. “They were caught by
surprise and clearly didn't think we would catch up with them that
quickly.”

“Hmm,” Pat saw the old guy with reading glasses rub
his chin on the computer monitor.

“But they laid a trap for us, expecting someone to try to
follow their trail at some point. You were right about the enemy
vessel; I've never seen anything like it, but it was definitely
semi-submersible.”

“Forward us eyewitness accounts from your after-action
review,” Will said as Pat briefed them. “We can conduct our own
analysis.”

“I will. Where are we at with our eye in the sky?”

The JSOC think tank members looked down at the table in front of
them. It didn’t take a high-resolution feed to realize that
something was wrong.

“Our satellite in polar orbit was blinded on its last pass,”
Will informed him.

“Blinded?”

“High-powered ground-based laser. We don’t know where it
originated from, exactly. Could have been Russia. Could have been
China.”

“So I don’t have any ISR?” Pat said, referring to
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms.

“We are working on getting Global Hawk into your AO, but it’s
taking time. The Russians are also not cooperating the way they were
in the opening hours of this mess,” Will said.

“None of us know for sure how this thing is going to play out,”
Craig said. “But we will keep working it.”

“No,” Pat said as he looked out from the bridge to the ocean
in front of him, “
I’m
going to keep working it.”

“What the does that mean?”

“One of my boys put a hole in the enemy ship before it got
away. 40mm high-explosive grenade. We’re following a plume of
gasoline it’s dribbling out behind it.” Pat smiled, looking at
the clearly visible trail of fuel left in the ocean.

“Any idea where the hell they are going?” Will asked.

“Ship's captain says they are probably heading to T6.”

“T6?”

“The T6 ice floe,” Otter shouted from the helm. “A giant
piece a floating ice. A Coast Guard aircraft spotted it a month ago
and estimated that it was five miles wide. T6 is projected to be
right in the path of where that bat-boat is heading. It is going to
take us about fourteen hours to get to T6. That semi-submersible can
haul ass above water when it wants to. They might be making a beeline
for the ice floe for an extract, compromising stealth for speed,
instead of staying submersed.”

“A plane equipped with ski wheels would do the trick,” Gary
said, speaking up for the first time on the VTC from Tampa.

“If they are leaking fuel, they might be going slow to
conserve gas as well,” Craig said as he turned toward Gary.

“Irrelevant,” Will cut in. “Get there as fast as you can.
If you see the enemy, wipe them out. In the meantime, we are on the
horn with the Coast Guard and the U.S. Navy. Thankfully, we have a
submarine of our own that was on a routine patrol under the Arctic
that can help cut off access to the Bering Strait. A Coast Guard
cutter is also on its way to this choke point. We prefer to keep this
problem isolated in the Arctic. Once they make it into the open
ocean, there is no telling where they will go. We will have lost
them. At least this way, we know they are somewhere between the polar
ice cap and the coast of Russia.”

“We’ll track ‘em and assault ‘em,” Pat said.

“And Pat?”

“Yeah?”

“Can Deckard move his fingers enough to type on a keyboard
yet?”

* * *

Screams echoed down the cobblestone street. Baskets full of
produce were overturned and laundry thrown off the line as the
townspeople scattered. Doors and windows were slammed shut. In
seconds, the street was empty. A single bucket lay turned on its side
in the middle of the road. The water that had been in it now seeped
between the stones.

A blade master stepped out of the shadows.

He squinted in the midday light and held a hand out in
front of him to shield his eyes from the sun. The blade master wore
ornate black leather greaves and a similar cloak under which his
abdomen was protected by dwarven dragon-scale armor. His knuckles
were likewise protected by Cyridian metal built into his leather
gauntlets, forged by a master blacksmith from ore mined from a
falling star.

At the end of the street, a wooden cart was flung through the
air. It crashed into the side of a house and disintegrated into a
thousand pieces. From around the corner, an orc lord lurched into
view. Standing nearly 12 feet tall, the orc was clad only in dirty
rags, leaving his dark green, muscular body exposed. Spotting the
blade master, the orc roared, exposing his white fangs.

The blade master drew his weapons. A katana appeared in
one hand and a Akkaidian dagger in the other, the weapons specific to
the blade master’s particular style of fighting.

The orc charged the blade master, bum-rushing all the way
down the street. The blade master stood his ground, ready for a
fight. The orc lord was almost on top of him when he was suddenly
yanked back into the alleyway.

“Have you lost your mind?” a voice scolded him.

The blade master was pulled farther down the alley as the orc
lord tried to force himself through the narrow passage. A clawed hand
swept frantically, scratching against the stone houses on either side
as it sought out the blade master.

“You need at least a party of four to take on that bad boy.”

The blade master looked up at his rescuer. His wore a brown
hooded shawl, his midnight-colored skin giving him away as a dark
elf.

“Let’s go,” the dark elf ordered. “I’m going to take
you to a newbie dungeon to show you how it’s done. This is a
different world, with different rules.”

“Yeah, I’m finding that,” the blade master said
sardonically.

Walking through the labyrinthine back alleys of the city, the
pair came to a large, open graveyard. Past the tombstones stood a
towering mausoleum constructed with green marble. The dark elf pushed
on the heavy iron door and it swung open. A cloud of dust shook off
the entrance as they walked inside.

“This way.”

Down the well-worn steps, they came to a balcony. In the dark
chamber below, a reanimated human skeleton paced with a short sword
in one bony hand. A few burning torches mounted in the walls let off
a dim light, casting shadows in every direction.

“Equip your rope dart,” the dark elf instructed.

“Rope dart?”

“Really? The micro-bow mounted to the gauntlet on your wrist.”

“Oh, cool.”

The blade master loaded a dart affixed to a fiber cord into the
six-inch bow on his gauntlet.

“Now fire it at that wooden beam on the other side of the
chamber.”

The blade master fired and the dart slammed into the wooden beam
with an audible
thwunk
, which made the skeleton look around in
confusion.

“Tie the other end of the rope around the balcony railing.”

With the rope pulled taut, the line now wobbled above the
skeleton below.

“A blade master fights using indirect methods, which should be
right in your wheelhouse. You can also use the environment to your
advantage to get the drop on the baddies.”

“I'll give it a try.”

The blade master leapt onto the rope and began balancing his way
over the chamber, putting one foot in front of the other. The
skeleton was now on alert, sensing someone else in the chamber. Once
he was directly overhead, the blade master drew his katana and
dropped down on top of his opponent. The four-foot blade sank right
through the skeleton man’s skull as the blade master landed a
perfect attack. Bones cracked and scattered across the floor.

“Not bad,” the dark elf said from the balcony.

Just then, a stone slab on the side of the wall began to groan.
It receded back into a hidden passage. Inside, the blade master heard
the distinctive clacking of bony feet scraping against stone. Metal
weapons gave off a ring as they collided with each other.

“Uh oh,” the dark elf said, now seemingly fresh out of sage
wisdom for his protégé.

Four animated skeletons burst from the chamber door and rushed
the blade master. Turning, he found a way to escape, up a ramp that
led to another part of the dungeon. Sprinting up the ramp, the blade
master looked back to the see the skeletons following him up. A
wooden barrel sat in the corner where the ramp changed directions,
wax from a long since burned-out candle decorating the top of it.

The blade master threw the barrel on its side and rolled it
toward the ramp. The skeletons would be on top of him in another
second. Kicking the barrel down the ramp, the blade master tapped
into his magicka, casting a fireball at the barrel as it began to
gain momentum. The barrel burst into flames and rolled right over the
four skeletons. Their short swords went flying into the air as they
crumbled and burst into bone fragments.

“OK,” the dark elf said, somehow materializing back at the
blade master’s side. “I think you are getting the hang of this.”

“Now what?”

“Now you go and get their attention.”

“Whose attention?”

“The ones you are chasing halfway across the world, of course.”

Chapter 11

“Keep the drone near the ship,” Deckard told Cody as
he prepared to launch his toy airplane. Thankfully, he had more than
one. “I don't want it getting brought down by electronic
countermeasures or otherwise being spotted by the enemy.”

Cody hurled the drone off the deck of the ship and into the air,
using his tablet to control its flight. The drone spiraled over the
Carrickfergus as it gained altitude. Night had set in and everyone
knew that the coming movement was going to be perilous in the dark,
but on the other hand it would limit the enemy’s visibility as
well. It was safe to assume that an opponent this sophisticated would
have access to night vision and thermals, but just like Samruk, the
Arctic would severely limit their battery life.

“OK, I’ve got something,” Cody announced. “Thermal
signatures on the other side of the ice floe.”

“How far out?”

“Hard to say. A couple of miles, I would guess.”

“OK, get me your best guess at a distance as well as a
direction. We’ll initiate the movement. Keep the drone up, then
bring it back to refuel, and send it back up when we are ready to
make contact with the enemy.”

“I will.”

Deckard turned to prepare the movement across the ice.

“Hey,” Cody said, stopping him. “I heard you are playing
Dungeons and Dragons in your free time or something?”

“What?”

“D&D is great, man. I have some 12-sided dice and a dungeon
master guide at my work station if you ever want—”

“Hey, fuck you dude. That is work-related shit.”

“No, I am a big fan. My character has gone into legendary
status.”

“Go fuck yourself, Cody, I have shit to do.”

“Fine. Fuck you then.”

* * *

One by one the mercenaries scurried down a cargo net that
had been hung from the side of the ship. They slipped down and landed
on the ice floe before moving out and establishing a security
perimeter. No one was more cautious about the landing than Deckard.
He still didn’t feet quite right after his accidental swim in the
Arctic Ocean. Getting crushed between the Carrickfergus and the ice
floe seemed like a better fate than going for another dunk in the
water.