Arena 4

by Logan Jacobs

  I saw the Glock 34 on the ground a few feet away as bullets flew past my head and ate the ground around me. Without hesitation, I threw myself into a roll over the writhing body of the Skull-Goon. My hands grabbed the butt of the pistol, and the gun was back up in front of my face as I came out of the roll onto one knee.

  The Skull-Goon who’d shot at me tried to swing his rifle around to track my movement but two Hydra-Shok bullets smacked into his chest. The jacketed center-post hollow point bullets expanded on impact and tore grapefruit-sized chunks of tattered, bloody flesh out of the Skull-Goon’s back as they passed through his body.

  The Skull-Goon who writhed on the ground next to me grabbed at my leg with his good arm, and I emptied the few rounds remaining in the magazine into his chest and head.

  The fire exit was only fifteen feet away.

  My thumb depressed the mag release, and I tossed the empty out of the butt of the gun with a flick of my wrist. My left hand whipped the jacket away from my hip, grabbed a fresh mag from the holder, and brought it up to sink home in one swift motion. I flicked the slide release and felt the precision machined steel slam a round into the chamber.

  And not a moment too soon.

  Three Skull-Goons came at me to intercept my push to the door. They were close enough to smell whatever garlic infused meat they’d had for dinner and as I slammed into the nearest one we became a mass of grunting, yelling, and the loud crack and flash of gunfire.

  I put two, rapid-fire bullets into the nearest Skull-Goon’s gut and side before I spun him around to put his body between me and his buddies. I grabbed the back of his collar with my left hand while I rested my gun hand over his shoulder. His buddies were stunned for a second and didn’t want to shoot their friend. I used the hesitation to push the wounded Skull-Goon forward like a shield as I fired the Glock next to his ear. My aim was true, and the Skull-Goons jerked as the 9mm rounds tore into them at eleven hundred feet per second. My shield began to stumble from pain and blood loss and I guided him to the ground before I brought the Glock around and put two rounds into his Skull clad face.

  My head swiveled back and forth, tracking for another target, but there wasn’t one in the immediate vicinity. In one smooth motion, I slid the Glock back in its holster snug against my right hip.

  I wrenched one of the assault rifles from the cold, dead hands of the Skull-Goon at my feet, pulled the sling from around his neck, threw it over my own, and began to rifle over the body for extra ammo. He had three of the slim mags for the assault rifle on his belt and I relieved him of their weight. He wasn’t going to need them anymore. I slid them into my suit jacket pockets, popped the mag on the gun to check how many rounds were left, and then slammed it back into the mag well. It was three-quarters full. With a quick pull of the arming lever, a fresh bullet flew into the chamber, and I was ready to rock-and-roll.

  My legs shoved me forward, and in three more strides my back pressed up against the wall next to the fire exit door. I sensed motion to my left and brought the rifle up to my shoulder. A second later I put it back down.

  Artemis, with the SunFlare held in her right hand and a Ravager submachine gun in her left, pushed herself to the wall on the other side of the door. There was alien blood splashed across her front and her hair was a tangled mess.

  “What took you so long?” I quipped and scanned the room for threats. All I saw in the immediate area were dead bodies.

  “Ran into some company,” she shot back at me with a positively evil grin.

  “You ready?” I asked. Artemis tucked the SunFlare into a garter on her left leg that I hadn’t even known was there. She saw me looking at it and shrugged.

  “That was supposed to be a surprise for later until these penis flatulences ruined it,” she panted, out of breath. She made a quick check of the Ravager as she moved it from her left hand to her right. Apparently satisfied, she nodded that she was ready to go.

  I stood up, turned, and kicked the door in as hard as I could. As soon as the door banged open, Artemis ducked through the doorway heading left while I sprinted to the right.

  We found ourselves in a large, long hallway that ran around the entire perimeter of the ballroom that was used by the kitchen staff and waiter-bots to get food and drinks from the back of the house to the front of the house, to use restaurant lingo. I’d tried to be a waiter for about three months out of high school. I was very bad at it and decided driving a truck was easier than constantly getting impatient people free bread and refilling drinks.

  Artemis and I didn’t get a chance to catch our breaths because we also found ourselves in the middle of a nasty firefight.

  Both of us had to dive for cover the second we were through the door. Luckily, there was lots of objects to take cover behind. This end of the hall was full of counters, tall metal food fridges, and crates of kitchen supplies.

  My roll took me across the wide corridor until my shoulder slammed into the opposite wall. I pulled myself together and came up in a crouch and found myself face to face with Captain Har’Gitay. Her back was up against a metal counter and she held a huge, high-tech, matte black revolver in her hands. This gun would have made Dirty Harry have gun envy. It was more a hand cannon than a pistol.

  “Hey Havak,” she said. “Nice of you to join us.”

  Before I could reply she popped up from cover, fired two booming shots from the revolver, and then ducked back down as return fire pinged off the metal around us. I saw Artemis on the other side of the corridor huddled behind a big crate of metal water bottles. She gave me a thumbs up to let me know that she was okay.

  “You know me, Captain,” I said, “never pass up an opportunity to wreak some havoc.”

  “Did you just… Nevermind,” she shook her head.

  “Come on, Captain, that was pretty good,” I said and gave her my best cocky grin. “What the fuck is going on, by the way?”

  “Hmm, the Gala got attacked and several heavily armed gunmen absconded with the foreign dignitaries from Earth,” she replied as if giving a report to a superior. “I followed them into the back in an attempt to apprehend the gunmen but ran into heavy resistance. They took him into that freight elevator at the end of the hallway here. It was headed up.”

  “Okay, okay, that clears that bit up,” I said. When there was a lull in the fire from down the hall, I nodded at Artemis, and we both popped up like heavily armed jack-in-the-boxes and sprayed the hallway with full auto bursts from our guns.

  One of us got lucky and a Skull-Goon fell from behind the wall he’d been hiding behind, his body riddled with holes.

  His buddies poked the barrels of their guns around the corner and let rip with their own full-auto barrage. Artemis and I had to duck back down as the bullets and laser blasts flew over our heads.

  “Next question, who the fuck are these guys?” I asked as I changed mags on the assault rifle.

  “Skalle Furia,” Har’Gitay answered as she reloaded her hand howitzer. “Paramilitary terrorist organization from the Trillbuorn galaxy. My guess is that they did not like your President insulting them. If they are true to form, they’re taking him to the top of this building where they will broadcast his execution.”

  “Oh, is that all?” I sighed.

  “I gotta say, Havak,” Har’Gitay smiled as she flicked the cylinder of her gun closed and cocked the hammer, “I don’t know if you find trouble or if trouble finds you but it is never a dull moment.”

  As if to punctuate her sentence the fire exit door blew inward and two fur-covered shapes shot in amid a hail of gunfire.

  Our guns come up on instinct but my finger stopped just before it squeezed the trigger. Fallon rolled up next to me with a pistol held in each hand. She had blood matted to the side of her face and there was a section of her shoulder where the tawny brown fur was singed but other than that, she looked okay.

  The other furry shape had been Baba-Tadao who flipped mid-air and landed in a crouch. He pulled a small grenade from a pouch at h
is waist, pressed a button on top, threw it back into the ballroom and then used his tail to shut the fire door. Baba then sprang up, kicked off the wall, somersaulted and landed next to Artemis.

  A second later there was a boom from the other side of the closed door and then mangled screams.

  I found myself between two very hot, heavily armed, fierce women and I had to say, it didn’t suck. I mean, yeah, we were fighting for our lives and trying to prevent the President of the United States from getting executed on live television, but right at that second, it was pretty fucking cool. We were bad enough dudes to save the President from skull mask wearing alien terrorists.

  “Hey, Fallon, we have to stop meeting like this,” I said in full on scoundrel mode.

  “Havak, you love it and you know it,” she purred back. “Oh, hi Olivia.”

  “Fallon,” Har’Gitay said and shook her head.

  “You know how I love wreaking--” I started to say.

  “Don’t you dare,” Har’Gitay warned. “That joke was lame the first time.”

  “Party pooper,” I said and pretended to pout. The air around us buzzed with bullets and energy blasts from down the corridor. The clock in my head told me that precious seconds were ticking off. “You ladies have any bright ideas on how to get the hell out of this?”

  “Baba!” Fallon yelled across the hall. “Any more of those frag grenades left?”

  “I am afraid not, Fallon,” Baba-Tadao replied and then turned to Artemis. “Nice to see you again, Ms. V-Five.”

  “You too, Baba-Tadao,” Artemis grinned and pushed a sweaty strand of hair out of her eyes.

  Baba held a compact laser pistol in one hand and had drawn one of his ninja swords with the other. Its blade glowed red and steam rose in mirage waves from it. He looked like he was about to say fuck it and just rush the Skull-Goons at the end of the hall who had us pinned down.

  “Settle down, Splinter,” I called over to him. “We don’t need you sacrificing yourself. I have a feeling we are going to need all the firepower we can get when we get to the top of the building.”

  “Why are we going to the top of the building?” Fallon asked while she changed power cells on her pistols.

  “Skalle Furia have Earth’s President and are probably going to execute him,” Captain Har’Gitay answered.

  “Where are your boys in blue, Olivia?” Fallon pressed.

  “The men I had stationed outside were mowed down in the surprise attack,” Har’Gitay snarled. “And then the building went on lockdown before the power was cut. They are probably trying to either restore power to raise the blast doors or working on cutting through them right now, thank you very much. Where are your thugs? I mean friends.”

  “Olivia, I’m sorry,” Fallon cringed. “That was unfair. I know how much you care for your officers. My own guys were mowed down by some of the Skalle as they entered the building.”

  “So,” I butted in, “we are pinned down with no chance of reinforcements?”

  “That about sums it up,” Har’Gitay acknowledged.

  “Okay, I can work with that,” I bragged with more confidence than I felt. The odds sucked. Good thing I was used to the odds sucking. I handed the Captain my assault rifle and did a tactical magazine change on the Glock so that it was fully loaded with twenty-four rounds of jacketed death. “Olivia, you and Artemis lay down a hail of hot lead for cover while Baba, Fallon and I rush the end of the hall. With any luck, at least one of us will make it.”

  “That’s your plan?” Fallon asked.

  “I’m just making this up as I go,” I shrugged. “You got a better one?”

  “No,” she sighed and readied herself. I nodded at Baba who already seemed to know what the plan was. He whispered to Artemis. She looked at me with worried eyes. I nodded as if to say “it’s the only way.” She closed her eyes and nodded back. Potential death was a constant companion who we were both very familiar with.

  I held up my hand and counted down… Three… Two… One!

  Har’Gitay and Artemis sprang out from cover and laid down an impressive blanket of bullets. Fallon, Baba, and I shot out like vipers with our guns at the ready but there was strangely no return fire.

  “Hey, you idiots stop shooting!” A somewhat familiar chorus of voices came from behind the far wall. “I’m on your side for the time being.”

  Four Tempest Dirks, all looking sexy in the red, high side slit evening gown, appeared from around the corner once the Captain and Artemis had ceased fire. The bodies of several Skull-Goons were strewn about the floor at her feet. She closed her eyes and three of them shrank into each other and then back into the one in the middle.

  My cohorts and I just stood, slack-jawed at what we’d just seen.

  “Come on,” Tempest said impatiently. “What do you want? An invitation?”

  “Fuck it,” I said to the ladies and ninja-rat around me. “Let’s go.”

  We jogged down to where Tempest was in the middle of removing a compact rapid fire laser carbine from one of the Skull-Goons. She primed the gun, slung it over her shoulder, and pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail.

  “Oh, hey, Baba,” she said to the little rat.

  “Tempest, good to see you,” he replied.

  “Jesus Christ, Baba,” I exclaimed. “Is there anyone you don’t know?”

  He just smiled mischievously at me.

  “What’s the plan?” Tempest asked as if she were part of the team.

  “Can we trust you?” Artemis asked before I could.

  “We’re outside the arena,” Tempest replied. “I don’t like getting attacked any more than you guys do. Plus, I hate terrorists. Those guys are assholes.”

  “My guess is that the majority of whatever Skalle Furia are left are barricaded on the top floor,” Har’Gitay began. “The elevators here are the only way to get up there but we’ll be walking into a kill box.”

  “Not my favorite kind of box at all,” I joked in very poor taste. The old Havak humor was in full effect.

  “Does he always do that?” Tempest asked and looked at me funny.

  “Yes,” all of them answered in unison.

  “Okay, good to know,” she nodded reluctantly.

  “How do these elevators work?” I asked, ignoring them. I had the flicker of an idea.

  “Hover magnet attached by a cable to the top of the car,” Artemis explained. “Why?”

  “Okay, this is freaking crazy, but it’s probably our only hope,” I said. “Captain, you, Artemis, Fallon, and Baba take one of the elevators up. While you guys are going that, Tempest and I are going to ride that hover magnate, sans elevator car, to the top floor. Once there, Tempest, you do… whatever it is you do to make a bunch of you, and we’ll divert the bad guy's attention so that when the rest of you arrive, you can mow them down. Sound good?”

  “That is the most bat shit insane idea I have ever fucking heard in my life, and I work with a guy known for bat shit insane ideas,” Tempest replied. “And… it’s probably the only thing that is going to work.”

  “Agreed,” Har’Gitay nodded reluctantly.

  “Marc,” Fallon smirked, “you are out of your damn mind. Let’s do it.”

  Tempest gathered up a few more of the fallen Skull-Goons guns and slung them over her shoulder.

  I hit the call button on the elevators which dinged open immediately. Tempest and I got into one while everyone else filed into the other.

  “Good luck,” Artemis said and blew me a kiss.

  “Where we’re going we don’t need luck,” I quipped.

  “Yes we do,” Tempest blurted out. “We need a tremendous amount of luck.”

  “God, I miss PoLarr,” I murmured as Tempest and I walked into our own elevator. “Press the button.”

  While Tempest hit the button for the top floor, I jumped up and supported myself with the small handrail that ran around the inside of the elevator, and then shoved the maintenance panel up and out. I pulled myself up onto the top of
the elevator car as it started to move slowly up the dark, greasy smelling shaft.

  I turned to offer Tempest a hand, but she was already pulling herself up through the hatch. Above me, there was a large, rectangular box that reminded me of an oversized toaster oven with waves of shimmering purple light emanating from it. It was about three feet above my head and connected to the elevator car with a thick metal cable. In the bottom of the rectangle, there was a metal handle that I guessed was used when the unit had to be replaced or repaired. I undid the sling on my assault rifle, flung one end up through the handle and then clipped both fasteners to my belt.

  “You might want to hold on,” I said and aimed the assault rifle one handed where the cable was bolted to the top of the elevator car.

  “If this is your way of coming on to me, not very subtle,” she groaned as she grabbed me around the neck and wrapped one leg in mine.

  “Tempest,” I said arrogantly, “you’ll find that being subtle is not one of my many talents.” Then I shot the bolt, and we zoomed up the elevator shaft like a rocket breaking orbit.

  Ten seconds later, the magnet slowed and came to a stop. I looked down and there was nothing but a gaping black abyss below us. There would be a lot of time to think about any mistakes if we made one and fell. I swallowed hard.

  I swung my legs until we moved like a pendulum and then grabbed hold of the edge of the elevator doorway. The doors were still closed since no elevator had come up the shaft with the hover-magnate. A small ledge ran near the bottom lip of the doorway. Tempest and I carefully set our feet on the ledge as we took positions on either side of the door. There was a manual override lever for the doors near my face, and I grabbed it with one hand but didn’t pull it yet.