Galactic Arena Box Set

by Dan Davis

  “Sure,” Ram said. “Why savor the moment when I could be rushing toward permadeath?”

  Ram towered over Milena, striding along beside her while she hurried through the corridors of the enormous ship. The Victory had a crew of well over a hundred but there was no one around and their voices echoed through the hallways.

  In the primary mission, the ship had transported the crew first to Orb Station Zero, where Ram had defeated the wheeler champion. After he had died, the Victory had journeyed through the artificial wormhole created by the Orb, and then traveled halfway across the 55-Cancri System to Arcadia.

  “I can’t believe they gave us a whole star system,” Ram said.

  “It’s more like a conditional lease,” Milena said. “And the term is up in less than thirty years. We have that long to make our mark, get humanity well established here. Secure, well-defended bases spread across the whole system.”

  The system was a reward to humanity for Ram’s victory. Milena explained that Arcadia appeared habitable, whatever that meant, and the system had a gas giant further out with a moon that might also be a future home for humans. Two other, smaller, terrestrial planets closer to the sun were suitable for underground or enclosed colonies, and there was plenty of other real estate in the thousands of asteroids and who knew how many dwarf planets.

  “In time, hundreds of years in the future, we could have millions of people living here. Billions, eventually.”

  “Well then, what the hell are the wheelers still doing here?”

  They carried on through the seemingly-empty ship, traveling from forward to aft through the ring sections toward the shuttle bay for the descent to the surface.

  “We traveled a third of the width of this system in seven months to rendezvous with Arcadia,” Milena explained, “which we did sixty-two days ago. We had probes shooting throughout the system before that, sending back data while we approached so we knew it would be the best place to set up the outpost. When we got here, we dropped landers, UAVs, GPATs, exploring the surface. A landing site was selected, we spent weeks dropping supplies and structural sections for the outpost. Cutting off pieces from the Victory to do it. Engineers went down and welded sections together to make the structure, then we took lab equipment and the scientists. While this was happening, we detected the enemy ship swinging in from the other side of the system. A very big ship, designated the Wildfire. Coming this way. Everyone worked their asses off to get the outpost built but it still took weeks, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And no sight nor sound of the aliens on the ground for the entire time.”

  “Until they attacked you.”

  “The wheelers were there the whole time. Our outpost on the surface has been attacked by the wheelhunters living on the surface twice in the last four days,” Milena said to Rama Seti as they hurried to the UNOPS Victory shuttle bay. “We lost people in those attacks. Marines and civilians and we believe the last attacks were merely probing ones. Certainly, they withdrew when they might instead have pressed further. But why did they attack when we had the structure built and not before? When we had only a few people on the surface living in tents? Or why not wait until their comrades in the Wildfire attack us?”

  They paused at a closed security door and waited while Milena unlocked it.

  “I give up,” Ram said. “Tell me.”

  Milena heaved the door open. “We have no idea. And now, our satellites show the wheelers massing in the hills a few kilometers to the east, quite possibly for a full-out assault. By the time we get there, the outpost may already be under attack. I hope it’s not too late.”

  “I’m glad they brought me back and everything,” Ram said, following her through the next empty corridor. “I swear, I am. But it would have been good if I had some time to get used to this new body before going into a warzone. You know?”

  “It’s not a new body,” Milena said, brushing her fingers against the back of his hand. “Not really. It is genetically identical to the last one, and to the one you were born with.”

  “But with more augmentation.”

  “Re-fusing your nervous system lost you a milliseconds reaction speed so you will never compete on the Orb again. That meant Dr. Fo and his team were free of any restrictions in terms of upgrades and Zhukov and the UNOP High Command ordered a fully integrated suite of military-grade augmentations so you would be combat-ready. Biological, cybernetic and neurochemical, you got it.”

  “And I got no choice in the matter,” Ram said, feeling the power of his new-but-familiar body as he walked.

  “Legally, they own you. And morally? They brought you back to life,” Milena said, glancing up at him. “It’s not fair but are you really ungrateful?”

  “Not in the least,” Ram said, although he did feel a profound sense of his subjection to a mighty authority. Then again, he was alive when he should be dead. When he was dead.

  Am I the same me as I was before?

  He shook off the thought as one that was too disturbing and made himself grin. “Anyway, I feel ready to go kill some more aliens.”

  Milena was not impressed. “Don’t get too excited yet.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She hesitated for a few strides until they stepped up to the last airlock which had SHUTTLE BAY stenciled above the doorway. “Here we are.”

  A crewman scowled at them as he let them through and Ram ducked in to the familiar sight of the massive room. It was an entire ring section, with the doors under foot that would open the entire deck area to space when launching and docking the enormous shuttle.

  The massive, shining white shuttle sat above the closed bay doors, filling the interior space of the shuttle bay with just meters to spare. The top of the shuttle was attached to the shuttle bay ceiling by a huge docking clamp.

  The shuttle itself—the Lepus—was a beast. Big enough to hold thirty people or more in the passenger compartment and the hold below could handle all their gear with room enough to spare for a ground vehicle or two. The body was fat and the wings little more than stubby appendages sticking out up high but the lines over the cockpit were smooth and pretty sleek. High over the cargo hatch at the rear, the massive engines looked powerful enough to blast the monstrous thing halfway to the sun. Smaller engines were tucked under the wings, tight against the fat hull, for powered atmospheric flight.

  “Why don’t they order an evacuation of the surface?” Rama asked, following Milena through the shuttle bay, past deck crew that swarmed all about the shuttle, performing final checks. The huge landing gear rested on the bay doors, which were plastered with yellow and black warning chevrons and stenciled text suggesting in the strongest possible terms that one should avoid standing on the doors whenever they slide open.

  The shuttle engines hummed high over his head. It was the same shuttle that Ram had boarded the Orb Station in and he remembered it being packed with the boarding party. “Surely, Milena, they could bring everyone back up here safely with just two or three trips with this beast. Keep our people away from the aliens on the surface until the reinforcements arrive on the fleet?”

  After bringing him back to life a couple of hours ago, Executive Director Zhukov had shown him how the UNOPS Victory orbited high above the planet they had named Arcadia. That planet orbited the star 55-Cancri, part of a system forty-one light years from Earth. Access to the system was a gift to humanity from the Orb Builders, following Rama Seti’s victory in the Orb Station Zero arena.

  Ram had seen the planet through a transparent hull section in the observation deck and he imaged it again, through the closed shuttle bay doors. Beneath bright, swirling clouds, the surface of the planet was largely water, with many island chains and archipelagos of black rock stretching across the world-spanning ocean. On the largest land mass, Zhukov had explained, was humanity’s first extrasolar outpost. An outpost that struggled to find a foothold on the edge of a vast plateau on the edge of a chain of jagged upland hills.

 
“We will evacuate the wounded and sick for practical reasons but it’s not going to be any safer up here on the Victory,” Milena said over her shoulder as they headed beneath a stubby wing to the side entrance of the shuttle. She paused to demonstrate what she was saying by pretending her hands were spaceships. “The wheelhunter ship, codenamed Wildfire, is decelerating towards our position, coming in to orbiting the planet, we think. It is surely coming to reinforce the aliens on the ground and to do that, it needs to destroy the Victory. Depending on the rate of deceleration, it will arrive within a matter of days. Our orders are to hold against the wheelhunters on the ground while the Victory holds in orbit until Admiral Howe’s battleship Stalwart Sentinel arrives to defeat the enemy ship. There is a small fleet trailing the Sentinel. These are the frigates Ashoka and the Genghis but they are at least days behind the flagship, all heading this way straight from the Orb’s wormhole out at the edge of the system.”

  Ram followed her up the ladder to the door high on the side of the shuttle, behind the cockpit.

  “The Sentinel is that much better than the Victory?” he asked, watching Milena’s backside as she stepped above him.

  “It’s a warship,” she said, over her shoulder. “The greatest warship ever built. Hundreds of crew, short range fighter complement, many more UNOP Marines than we’ve got.” She waited for him in the doorway while he climbed up. “And the armor and weaponry on it will be enormously powerful so, yes, it might prove a match for the enemy ship. But we don’t really know what they’re capable of and then there’s the main problem with all of that.”

  He reached the top and she moved inside. “The Sentinel is going to get here too late.” Director Zhukov had told him as much.

  “Very likely to be after the enemy ship engages us, yes. Until then, the Victory must stand alone.”

  “Why don’t we all just run?” Ram asked. “Get everyone back on the Victory and head for safety while the Sentinel fleet deals with it?”

  Ram squeezed his massive body through the human-sized doorway just behind the cockpit.

  “Because we’re bait.” Milena watched him elbow his way in. “We keep them where the Sentinel can come and mop up, if need be.”

  “Oh,” Rama said, straightening up as far as he could when he got through, still bending down with the back of his shoulders almost touching the ceiling. He’d been in one of the shuttles before and he recalled that the cockpit was to his left and the seats were to his right. “That doesn’t seem very fair on—”

  He broke off, looking through to the passenger compartment where the semi-reclined reentry chairs were packed in like on a commercial airplane. About thirty of them. Other than a handful of civilians, every passenger was a UNOP Marine, all in their sleek combat helmets and close-fitted armor. Every one looking right at him through their enclosed visor.

  “Hi everyone,” Rama said. “How you all doing?”

  “Sit down, Seti,” Captain Cassidy bawled from the front of the compartment, stomping a couple of steps toward him and Milena. The captain was dressed in his armor, with a sidearm and combat knife on his chest, but without a helmet. A mean-looking Sergeant loomed behind him, glaring at Ram with open hostility. “What the hell took you two so long?”

  “Sorry I’m late,” Ram said. “I was dead.” At the front of the compartment was a reentry chair designed for subjects like him who were two and a half meters tall and muscled like a professional bodybuilder. “This is my seat, right?”

  Milena edged forward, as if to put herself between Ram and the captain. “Director Zhukov demanded to speak to Ram before we— “

  “Yeah, yeah,” Cassidy said, scowling at them both. “Save your excuses and strap yourselves in. We have a battle to fight.”

  While Ram did as he was told, Captain Cassidy marched forward and banged on the cockpit door. One of the pilots helped close and seal the outer door while the shuttle vibrated as the humming engine noise rose in volume and in pitch.

  Cassidy stood at the front, looking back at his Marines. “We have a two-hour flight until our reentry window. In-flight entertainment will consist of me going over the briefing one last time and final equipment checks. Remember, if the enemy ground attack begins during our transfer and descent, we will be landing under fire and deploying into a combat zone. Hold tight for shuttle launch.”

  The shuttle shook and buzzed, the hull clanging as the atmosphere in the shuttle bay turned to vacuum, the doors opening beneath the landing gear and the docking clamps unhooked from the ceiling.

  “Feels like I was just doing this,” Ram said to Milena. “Fighting on the Orb. It really does. But that was almost a year ago for you?”

  “I know,” she said, not looking at him.

  “There’s so much I want to ask you about, Milena,” Ram said over the noise.

  “There’s so much to tell you,” she said, adjusting the harness over her shoulders. “Just leave it for now.”

  “I can’t believe I was dead for a whole year,” he said, half-laughing at the absurdity. “Again.”

  “Not dead,” Milena said, pinching her bottom lip between two fingers. “Just unconscious.”

  “Unconscious and transferred to a new clone body. Again. I died, Milena. I felt myself dying. In the arena, my guts hanging out and my face all torn to—” he broke off, throat constricting at the memory of it.

  She still would not meet his eye. “Try not to think about it right now. We’re heading into another dangerous place, okay? And you need to survive it. Just focus on that.”

  Rama opened his mouth to answer but instead, his stomach lurched and his head felt light, as if he was in an elevator, then his arms floated up all by themselves.

  “Hey, check this out,” Ram said to Milena, grinning. She was not amused. “I’m sorry, am I not responding appropriately to the gravity of the situation?”

  She shook her head, looking closely at him. Searching his face with concern. “Jesus, Ram. You’re hyper excited. Try to relax.”

  His heart was indeed racing and he took as slow a breath as he could manage. It did not help much. “You’re right. What’s wrong with me?”

  “We can talk about it later.”

  “Milena.”

  “Dr. Fo and his team made a few tweaks to your brain chemistry so that you would find the prospect of combat, and combat itself…” She gestured while searching for the word. “Exhilarating.”

  “Those motherfu—”

  A woman’s voice sounded in Rama’s embedded comms. The shuttle pilot spoke.

  “This is Lieutenant Xenakis. We are now clear of the Victory and ready to initiate our first engine burn. Just a nice, gentle kick but please keep your hands and arms crossed over your chest for three, two, one, ignition.”

  It was as if normal gravity was switched back on for half a minute, then it eased off back to weightlessness again over a few seconds.

  “Alright, fellas,” Lieutenant Xenakis said in his ear, “sit back, relax and enjoy the view. We will enter the upper atmosphere in approximately two hours, fifteen minutes.”

  Rama turned to Milena. “So what happened when—”

  “Mr. Seti,” Captain Cassidy called as he floated past, heading forward. “Come with me to the cargo hold.”

  Unbuckling from his chair, Ram pushed himself up, floating in the air over his seat. It felt great.

  “You not coming?” he asked Milena, holding the seat back and twisting himself around.

  Her lips pressed together for a moment. “I’m not going to be babysitting you anymore, Ram. You’re a military man now.”

  “Oh.” Ram paused, holding himself to his chair while his legs floated up and out behind him. “Alright. I’m glad you’re here, obviously but why are you coming down into a war zone, then?”

  She shrugged. “All non-essential personnel were shipped down to the surface to help establish the outpost. Now you’re delivered back to the Marines, I can move on with my other duties.”

  “Non-essential?�
�� Ram said. “You got to be kidding me.”

  She pursed her lips. “It’s alright, I still have value, supporting the new mission. I have many skills.”

  “You sure do,” he said, grinning.

  She shook her head, fighting a faint smile on her face. “You’d better go. Captain Cassidy is not as indulgent as I was.”

  “I sure hope not.”

  Ram pulled himself forward, propelling his huge body with the lightest touch. Stopping required catching himself on the forward bulkhead. A sign said the cargo hold was down a square hatch in the floor and he pushed himself down it, feet first and squeezed his shoulders in.

  He’d never been in the cargo compartment, that he recalled. From the bottom of the ladder, looking toward the rear, the long space was packed with crates and stacked carry cases. Down by the rear cargo ramp, it looked like there were wide, squat dune buggies or something.

  Closer to the front end near to the hatch was an open area surrounded by stacked crates where Captain Cassidy held himself in place beside another soldier, a sergeant called Wu, in front of a row of open weapon and armor cases. The officer and NCO were arguing about something.

  Captain Cassidy looked over his shoulder. His rugged, bony face was deeply lined, with a weathered ruddiness undiminished by years in space. The man exuded confidence that bordered on hostility, especially, for some reason, when speaking to Ram. “Jesus Christ, Seti. You want to play at being a Marine then you got to work on that hustle.”

  Who said I want to be a Marine?

  “Alright,” Ram said, attempting to ignore the deep irritation he felt at being spoken to like he was an underling.

  Cassidy scowled while the sergeant next to him turned away to hide a smile. “You say, yes sir, Seti.”

  “I do?” Ram said, looking between the captain and the sergeant. “For real? Zhukov told me I was here as a military adviser. You know, a consultant.”

  In the low light, Cassidy’s face seemed to glow red and his eyes bulged. “Are you fucking kidding me? The day I need military advice from you, Seti, will be a sad day indeed. Military adviser. You’re a goddamned liability, that’s what you are. I had to wait for them to finish working you over while the rest of my reinforcements sat waiting in that shuttle bay for hours. As if it matters if they bring you round gently. Yeah, you’re a liability. I don’t need your advice but I have my orders and that’s why Gunny Wu is going to get you in your armor while I go and deliver the final briefing to my people. You good, Wu?”