Arena

by Logan Jacobs

  The rest of the raging battle seemed to get the message from the cruisers and inexplicably ceased fighting. All attention was focused on our little white escape pod shining in the light of a strange sun in a strange solar system amidst the tempest of a strange war.

  Our breathing was the only sound. Artemis looked at me as the beginnings of a hopeful grin began to pull at her eyebrows. I got more anxious. That’s when the pod’s warning system started to blare, and emergency lights lit the display panel up like a Christmas tree.

  “Warning!” the onboard computer voice exclaimed as loudly as it could. “Weapon’s targeting systems locking on to our position. Evasive procedures highly recommended.”

  A small, very simple white joystick popped out of my armrest near my right wrist. It was molded slightly to fit my hand and had a single red button set in the top. Near my left hand, a similarly molded joystick emerged, this one set horizontally with a graduated scale underneath that I assumed was the throttle. I whipped my head to the left and the right and saw the barrels on the cruisers start to glow as they charged to fire.

  Just before the barrage of lasers unleashed, I prayed to any and all deities that might have been listening that my days playing Lock On would come back to me and jammed both joysticks forward. Blue flames shot out of the rear of the pod as we did a quarter roll to the left and shot straight down to barely escape the barrage of coherent monochromatic light destruction.

  “Never tell me the odds!” I yelled with none of the confidence of my favorite movie character of all time as I found myself the target of every piece of flying metal around. One, the pod was certainly not the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy, and two, the fleet that was on my tail made the Empire look like a Cub Scout troop on a canoe excursion.

  Orange, green, and purple lights flashed all around us, a laser light show of sudden death, as I tried to pilot us through the sea of ships. The pod’s warning system still blared, proximity lights angry reminders that we were in very real danger. There were ships on my tail, ships that came in from above, ones like spaceborne sharks lurking below, and others that flew in on both sides.

  My right hand jerked the stick around furiously and sent the pod into a series of barrel rolls, spins, and loops as I tried every trick I could remember from my brief but intense obsession with aerial combat games.

  “What are you doing?” Artemis cried as she grabbed on to me tighter.

  “I’m just making this up as I go along,” I answered breathlessly. While I didn’t have to combat the physical strains of g-forces, it was still hard work keeping the pod in constant defensive motion.

  Artemis reached out and began to type one-handed on the display screen. It shot back a stream of information that I couldn’t make heads or tails of. I’d managed to give us a slight edge when I shoved the pod into the dive seconds before the other ships fired, but it was an edge that had quickly dulled. I was about to be out of maneuvering room.

  “If you’re working on something, better do it quick,” I barked as I slammed the pod into a negative thrust slide that barely evaded a salvo of missiles. They overshot us by inches and blew up a fighter that was trying to take us out with some type lance on the front of it.

  “The moon!” Artemis shouted with inspiration. “Its gravitational pull will give us some speed and the larger ships will avoid it. Hopefully, the fighters will break off once we’re out of the way.”

  Over the last ten seconds, I’d inadvertently moved us to the edge of the swarm of ships and fairly close to the moon. I added a little more throttle and banked sharply as the pod flew through the last few ships and out of the battle.

  Sure enough, Artemis had been right. The bigger ships all broke off pursuit the second we could feel the gravitational field of the moon grab us and pull us in. The pod shuddered from the strain but still flew straight. I was about to let out a sigh of relief when a bolt of energy slammed into us from behind.

  I whipped my head back around and saw a lone, aggressive starfighter on our tail. It looked like an oversized L with a capital O on top of the shorter line. The long part of the L was lined with gun ports on one side and a giant engine thruster on the other.

  It gained on us fast.

  I only had one trick left and kicked us into a defensive spiral just as we entered the moon’s atmosphere. The outside of the pod began to glow red as friction turned us into a fireball. The attacker’s laser blasts flew all around us but the continuous corkscrew motion of the spiral kept us out of harm’s way.

  Something in the pod’s computer must have sensed we’d entered the atmosphere because wings formed on the underside like they were being stitched together from thin air. Smaller horizontal and vertical airfoil stabilizers grew from the back and top of the pod which gave us control over the dive I’d put us in.

  I glanced back at the starfighter and saw it covered in fire as it dove straight down. It didn’t have any wings and had essentially become a maneuverless meteor as it rocketed toward the surface of the moon. It shot past us and for a second I could see the pilot, an octopus-like alien, as it desperately flicked every switch in its cockpit. Then it roared on past getting smaller and smaller until it exploded in a ball of purple flames as it slammed into the surface of the moon.

  I tried to pull on the joystick to avoid a similar fate, but it wouldn’t budge. Gravity and aerodynamics conspired to keep us locked in the dive.

  “Help me,” I gasped, grabbed the joystick with both hands, and then pulled with everything I had. Artemis put her hands on top of mine, and a shock of static electricity zapped us as she pulled with me. She was a hell of a lot stronger than she looked because the stick began to move, and the g-forces slammed into us like the hand of God.

  We grunted from the effort which quickly turned into a yell as the ground rushed up. With a final cry of exertion, the pod pulled out of the dive about a hundred feet off the ground.

  “Yes!” Artemis yelled in triumph. “Suck on my left macadamia, you big anal orifice!”

  I had just opened my mouth to correct her euphemisms when we crashed into some kind of invisible force field, and the pod's wings sheared off.

  Luckily, we’d had enough speed to break through the barrier without exploding. Unluckily, we were now a runaway projectile flipping end over end doing five hundred miles an hour and losing altitude fast.

  Amid the twirling tilt-a-whirl nausea, I saw the little red button on the joystick blink with urgency. I pressed it seconds before we crashed into the ground.

  Gray foam, like the kind my seat was made from, shot from jets that had appeared all over the surface of the pod to form a protective sphere. I put my arms around Artemis, held onto her tight, and tried not to think about how amazing her body felt pressed into mine as we plowed into the surface of the moon.

  The foam absorbed most of the shock, but it was still teeth-jarringly hard as we bounced like an infield grounder off the installation’s concrete-like surface. We smashed through a small collection of buildings until all speed had been depleted and came to a rolling stop. Right side up thankfully.

  I loosened my hold on Artemis who still gripped me tightly, her breathing fast and excited. I could feel her trembling ever so slightly.

  “Hey,” I whispered soothingly, “it’s okay. We’re alright.”

  “I am sorry, Marc Havak,” she said after taking a steadying breath. “This is my first experience with the feeling of fear. It is exhilarating but I do not like it at all, thank you very much.”

  Just then the canopy of the pod flew straight up in the air, propelled by several small explosions from under the frame. Both Artemis and I let out a startled cry. The canopy flew a good twenty feet in the air and then fell back down, clattering loudly a few feet behind us.

  Both of us turned to look and then burst out laughing as the anxiety of the last few minutes dissipated with each guffaw.

  “Let’s get out of this overgrown Bocce ball before it shoots us out with an ejector seat,” I joke
d as I started to climb out of the little pod. The foam that had been a permanent fixture on my body had deflated the second we came to a full stop. I jumped to the ground with a grunt and turned to offer Artemis a hand down but she jumped on her own and landed without a sound about a thousand times more graceful than I had managed.

  I glanced around at our surrounding and quickly figured out we’d broken through the containment dome of the massive installation I’d seen from space. The surrounding buildings were a drab, Army green and reeked of military origin, each one had alien lettering stenciled on the front in bright white paint, and were laid out on a clear grid format.

  The sky outside the dome was reddish in hue as this solar system’s sun burned on the horizon, and gusts of wind blew swirls of red sand angrily.

  Artemis looked around, and I could almost see the gears in her head spinning.

  “According to my archives, this is Excelsior Minor, Seti Beta Four’s smaller orbital moon,” she claimed, her brows knitted together in consternation. “But, that can’t be right. Excelsior is habitable to oxygen-breathing organisms and should have an arid, but vegetation filled surface.”

  “You don’t know what this Trial was going to entail?” I asked.

  “No,” she answered. “All the calibration trials are different. No one knows until they start.”

  I could hear the wind howling outside the dome, the cracking and popping of the pod as its surface cooled under the foam, and the hum of a power generator nearby. That was all. And that’s when I noticed what had been bothering me since we crash landed. There were no other people here. The place was completely deserted.

  Artemis must have come to the same conclusion because we turned to look at each at the exact same time and said “No people.”

  We both smiled.

  “Jinx, you owe me a Coke,” I chimed.

  “I understand the words that just came out of your mouth, Marc Havak,” Artemis said, her expression deadly serious. “But I have no clue what you are talking about.”

  I was trying to think of a way to explain that particular idiom to her when a shrill, soulless shriek pierced the quiet. It lasted for a full five seconds before it faded. It was eerie, and I noticed I’d broken out in goosebumps.

  “How about we get out of the street?” I said urgently.

  “Yes,” Artemis answered simply. “By the markings, this is a Solow Colonial Marine base, Solow being the largest nation on Seti Beta Four. A base this size should have approximately seven thousand eight hundred and ninety personal and support staff.”

  We had yet to see a single one, nor signs that there had been any people here at all, much less over seven thousand of them.

  Artemis and I walked down the small boulevard lined with buildings. Each door was locked, with the windows shuttered. The red sky started to fade to brown as the sun got closer to the horizon. Both of us began to walk just a little faster, our pace became subconsciously more urgent.

  We’d reached the tunnel that connected this orb to the main hub of the installation and luckily the door to a small, squat building right at the tunnel’s opening, swung inward when I tried the handle. Instinctively I reached for the light switch on the way and thankfully it wasn’t just a human trait to mount them there because my hand found a toggle and flipped it up. Light bathed the room in a soft white glow.

  Artemis and I walked in and closed the door behind us.

  The building was some kind of way station or checkpoint for the bridge. There was a large computer console that made up the far wall with four tall-backed chairs in front of it. Three square desks filled the center of the building, each with a smaller computer display and chair. A row of weapon lockers stood on the left wall, open and mostly empty. A cooler with what looked like bottled water sat in between the desks.

  Artemis walked over, opened it, and pulled out one of the bottles. She read the label, opened the top with a flick of her wrist, and drank the entire contents without stopping. When finished, she let out a small burp and tossed the bottle over her shoulder into a waste bin near the computers.

  “Nearly dying makes me very thirsty apparently,” she said as she reached in and grabbed two more bottles. She tossed one to me and began drinking the other, this time much slower.

  I took the cap off mine and chugged as well. She was right, I was thirsty as hell. The water was cold and had a slight cherry flavor to it. As Artemis walked over to the main computer bank and started to type onto a triangular keyboard, I looked over the desks.

  They were simple, utilitarian, and looked to be very much regulation, or at least that is what I assumed. One did have a small photograph in a metal frame. It showed a maroon skinned humanoid alien in a simple black dress uniform holding hands with a female in a blue dress. Other than the maroon skin and two small horns protruding from their heads right above their temples, they looked like Earth humans. They had smiles from ear to ear and looked very much in love.

  I had set the picture back down on the dust covered desk when Artemis turned to me.

  “We have to get out of here, now, Marc,” she warned, her voice as grave as the expression on her face, “and find a way off this rock as soon as we possibly can or we are not going to live through the night.”

  Chapter Five

  “Why?” I asked as fear began to well up inside of my chest.

  “I just interfaced with the base’s AI program,” she spoke with hushed urgency, “this was originally a science installation conducting experiments on a strange gravity anomaly discovered in the moon’s core that was beginning to knock Seti Beta Four off axis, but they came across something buried deep in the ground that stopped them in their tracks. It must have scared them too because a division of Colonial Marines were stationed here soon after. That was all the AI could tell me before it devolved into nonsense. I have a very bad feeling about this.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I said as anxiety began to worm its way into my gut. I could see the look of worry get worse on her face as well.

  “I’ll go check the weapons lockers for anything useful,” I added with false bravado. “See if you can find anything else about what happened here.”

  “Yes, Marc Havak,” she said with an almost seductive gleam in her eye.

  She turned back to her keyboard and began pounding on the keys as if she were attacking them. I went and looked in the weapons locker, which proved to be almost empty except for a long crate on the floor. I drug it out into the center of the room and tried to figure out how to open the damn thing.

  There were a set of four buttons on the top that had numerical representation pieces along the side. I had no idea what the combination was, so I just went with my old standby, one, two, three, four, and it popped open. The lid arched upward with the hiss of hydraulic pistons until it was at a seventy-degree angle.

  As I peered inside, I was pretty sure a smile the size of the Grand Canyon had worked its way across my face. I stood up to call Artemis over. She was still bent over the computer terminal, and it was all I could do not to focus my attention on the perfect peach shape her ass made in her just-tight-enough jumpsuit. Her eyes flicked back and forth as the computer screen flashed nothing but static, or so I thought. Her head jerked slightly from side to side and up and down in a disjointed ‘stop motion missing a frame’ way that freaked me out a little. I was about to call out to her when she pulled her head away from the screen, her pupils so wide there was almost no iris, and turned her head toward me.

  “Busy,” she croaked, her lips barely moved. “Be. Done. Soon.”

  And then she slowly lowered her face back to the screen. I had no idea if this was normal or what, so I had to trust her judgment about her own wellbeing.

  I reached into the crate and pulled out what looked like a mix between Kevlar tactical armor and motocross protective gear. There were large, molded, segmented plates of some kind of hard but extremely lightweight plastic that covered the chest, stomach, back, and shoulders. Underneath the plates w
as a dense interwoven black fabric in a vague vest shape that held all the pieces together. It was split up the front so that a person could slip into like a suit jacket, which is exactly what I did. It fit well but was a little loose. I noticed there wasn’t a zipper but two small metal pieces where the zipper should be. The second I touched them together, the front of the vest sealed itself, and the cords of fabric moved to cinch the whole thing tight against my chest and around my midsection. It was tight as a glove now, but I was still able to move freely. In fact, it gave some much needed lower back support. I rapped my knuckle against a chest plate, and a small, bright green LED display lit up on the vest just under my collar bone. I had no idea what it was for, but it looked cool.

  Now that the vest was on, I pulled the next item out of the crate. My right hand held firmly onto a molded pistol grip as my left cupped the modular tactical muzzle of a completely bad-ass looking assault rifle. It was roughly the size of an M4 Carbine, much like the ones the Rangers had carried a few hours ago, and had a well-balanced weight. Not too heavy to be unwieldy, but heavy enough to mean business. It looked like something out of Mass Effect had a baby with something out of Doom and would make everyone from Master Chief to Rocket Raccoon salivate in jealousy.

  The molded stock was made out of the same material as the chest armor, with the barrel and insides machined from a dull, silver, titanium-like metal. The pistol grip curved back into the folding stock of a rifle reminiscent of a bullpup design like a Steyr Aug or FN P90, but unlike a bullpup, it had a magazine port just in front of the trigger. The barrel was mid-length and rectangular, with several slanted vertical slits near the business end. I figured they were used to both baffle the rifle and compensate for recoil.

  On top, there were three long, cigar-shaped tubes that had round glass domes on the barrel end. I assumed they were a laser scope-sight although I couldn’t be sure. Attached to the back end of the rifle right above the pistol grip was a bungee-style sling that formed a Y shape with the two open ends capped in a metal clasp. I couldn’t make out how they fit together, but as I brought the whole contraption up to my face to get a better look, the two metal ends snapped home to points on the vest, one on my left rib just under my pec muscle, and the other up near my right collarbone. It kept the gun snug to my body with the pistol grip just under the left side of my chest so I could hold it comfortably with my right hand. When I tried to bring the rifle up to my right shoulder, the cord automatically adjusted to give me a full range of motion. When I let it go, the sling automatically tightened it back to its resting spot. A self-adjusting tactical sling. Pretty fucking cool.