Grand Central Arena

by Ryk E. Spoor

  Her face lit up with understanding. ‘‘I think you must be right, Simon. Remember when DuQuesne confronted the Molothos, how utterly freaked Orphan was? Remember what he said? Where a human being would have compared the chances to one in a million, the largest number Orphan could seem to think of in that situation was a hundred. As though only a lunatic would ever place a bet on something more than a hundred to one.’’

  Simon nodded slowly. Exactly. ‘‘Yes, and that’s not the only similar indication; Ghondas’s speech contained other suggestive phrases along those lines. So what does it all mean, that’s the question. Why are we such risk-takers or, alternatively, why are they all so risk-averse?’’

  Ariane shook her head. ‘‘No idea. But I think we should keep this little fact to ourselves for now. If there’s a significant difference, it’s worth our while to hide it until we can figure out if there’s an advantage in it for us.’’ She glanced towards the entrance, instinctively, as she thought of DuQuesne. ‘‘Maybe Marc will have some idea when he gets back.’’

  ‘‘Probably,’’ Simon said. ‘‘And I’m sure, after checking into that Outer Gateway, he’s looking forward to getting back to the excitement here.’’

  Chapter 33

  DuQuesne snarled something wordless as the gun buzzed silently in his hand, demanding a new ammo pack. He dove for cover as a screaming storm of edged shrapnel shredded the foliage where he’d just been standing. Yanking out another from his fast-shrinking store of magazines, he ejected the empty and slammed the new one home. ‘‘Carl?’’

  The control expert’s voice answered in a whisper off to his left. ‘‘Still here. How the hell many of these things are there?’’ Hearing movement off to the left, Carl fired several bursts in that direction.

  ‘‘No idea. We killed the first four, but at least one of them managed to call home base and they sent out commando parties to get us. I think I’ve killed five or six more, how about you?’’

  ‘‘Five or six? How the hell do you get that kind of accuracy with these things?’’ Carl demanded. ‘‘Their armor shrugs even the AP stuff off unless you get a joint or the eye.’’

  DuQuesne saw movement out of the corner of his eye, whirled and fired a burst that made the Molothos whirl away in a dancing gait like a spinning top; as the thing spun towards cover, he switched to single-shot and fired; the bullet carved its way straight through the narrow seam that joined the lower body to the upper; the creature collapsed like a deflated balloon, legs splayed limply about it. ‘‘The waist seam’s my preferred target. I think they keep their brains in that area.’’

  ‘‘The waist? Every time I try for that shot, it bounces off the body armor. Anyway, I think I got two.’’ Carl’s eyes narrowed. ‘‘Marc . . . ’’

  ‘‘I hear it. They’re rushing us.’’ He glanced around quickly. ‘‘This way!’’

  The two humans sprinted from cover. The hissing screeches of the Molothos, translated into various equivalents of ‘‘There they are!’’ and ‘‘Get them!’’ competed with the screeching hisses of their weapons. A rattle of impacts jolted the two, but failed to penetrate the ring-carbon composite armor. Just before reaching the clearing ahead, DuQuesne pushed Carl, pointing, and the two raced around the edge of the clearing.

  Seeing an opportunity to cut them off, two Molothos sprinted across the bare ground, seven legs blurring like piston-driven shafts.

  As the two aliens passed the lone tree and a third appeared at the edge of the clearing, DuQuesne fired a single quick shot backwards. The bullet missed both Molothos and smacked squarely into the trunk of the tree.

  A hailstorm of black and purple shapes plummeted from the branches above, erupted from the ground, spewed forth from fissures in the tree trunk, and enveloped the Molothos. The aliens shrieked in consternation and began firing randomly.

  ‘‘What the hell was that?’’ Carl demanded.

  ‘‘No idea. I figured you never got bare ground in a jungle without good reason. And one of the trees on Earth that’s like that has some very nasty ants clearing the area around it. Figured it was worth a try.’’

  ‘‘Two or three more down?’’

  DuQuesne shrugged, bulling his way through the undergrowth ahead of the more slender Carl Edlund. ‘‘Maybe one, if we’re lucky. The Molothos’ armor probably will hold up against those things, it’s just going to slow them up.’’

  ‘‘I was afraid you’d say that.’’ More movement off to the side. Carl reached into a side pocket and fiddled with something, then pitched the small object in the direction of the noise. A blinding detonation and shockwave followed, and DuQuesne saw with approval that one of the fragments of debris that rained down around them was a jointed leg in armor.

  ‘‘I didn’t recall bringing grenades, more’s the pity. What did . . . a power pack?’’

  ‘‘Yep. Programmed a short across the mains on the pack I had for the laser cutter. Figured I wouldn’t be needing it.’’

  ‘‘Good thinking.’’ He heard more noise to the other side, fired and modified course. ‘‘We’re in trouble, you know.’’

  ‘‘The thought had occurred . . . ’’ More gunshots. ‘‘ . . . to me. On the positive side, they’re using some kind of needle-shotgun thingies that don’t work so well against our armor; probably standard issue for dealing with animals or primitives and they didn’t expect high-tech types here. I guess you’re about to tell me some bad news?’’

  ‘‘We’re being herded. Don’t know what towards, but we can bet it’s not good.’’

  ‘‘Time to make a stand?’’

  DuQuesne shook his head, then saw the river ahead of them. ‘‘Can you swim?’’

  ‘‘Like a fish, and this armor won’t get in the way.’’ Carl grinned. ‘‘I get the picture.’’

  The two sheathed their guns and dove in, going as deep as they could into the water. The Molothos might be able to climb, and could certainly walk well, but they were not built at all well for swimming. They might, if heavy enough, manage to walk along the bottom, but with the fast-running current . . .

  The current hurled them along, bouncing DuQuesne and Carl against rocks. Once, something huge with a lot of teeth made a snap at Carl, but broke teeth on the armor and fled, as the two battled their way through the water. Suddenly gravel grated underfoot, and they staggered from the river, battered and bruised but mostly unharmed. ‘‘Quick, into the trees!’’

  The two barely made the treeline before they saw their pursuers emerge on the other side. ‘‘Six of the bastards.’’ DuQuesne took careful aim, as did Carl, and opened fire.

  Two of the crab-centauroid monstrosities went down in the first barrage, the other four scattering; one’s weapon suddenly exploded in a sun-bright flare, leaving a staggering headless corpse. The others hunkered down behind shoreline rocks and returned fire, scuttling from rock to rock until they reached the water and, to DuQuesne’s dismay, disappeared beneath the surface. ‘‘Damn. Didn’t slow them as much as I hoped.’’

  ‘‘We got three, though.’’

  ‘‘And I’ve got one and a half mags left. What about you?’’

  ‘‘One. And my sword.’’

  He gritted his teeth. I’ll be damned if it’s going to end like this. Not if I can help it, it won’t. The two kept moving, not intending to be caught as sitting ducks.

  It was the sound of vines against carapace that warned DuQuesne, just before the Molothos charged from both sides. He and Carl, with almost rehearsed accuracy, fired on the one on the left; a bullet found its mark and the creature went down, and only one piece of the alien shrapnel-loads penetrated, making an annoying but far from crippling cut in DuQuesne’s upper arm.

  Carl’s katana streaked from its sheath in an iai draw so fiercely driven that the ring-carbon reinforced steel blade carved its way through the armored striking-claws and buried itself in the torso of the second Molothos. The creature shrieked its agony and struck out, barely missing Carl as he wrenched the
blade free. Hurt but still mobile, the Molothos tried to bring its gun to bear on Carl but the sword struck the weapon, tearing it from the alien’s grasp and possibly rendering it useless. DuQuesne fired the last burst from his gun, failing to kill his opponent who dodged at the last moment. The last bullet did, however, strike the Molothos’s weapon, shattering it. With the two aliens momentarily taken aback, the humans sprinted back into the woods. ‘‘We’ve got to find some way of ambushing them. And then finding out where they’re based.’’

  ‘‘Easy to talk about,’’ Carl gasped. DuQuesne realized that despite being in excellent shape Carl simply couldn’t keep up with him much longer. But if he let Carl fall behind . . .

  More movement, to the side. More of these damn things? They turned slightly as they ran.

  As they burst out into a clearing, DuQuesne staggered and went down, as did Carl, striking the ground heavily. For a moment DuQuesne thought something had leaped on top of him, something massing around a hundred kilos, but as he rolled over he felt nothing there, just the increased pressure of . . .

  ‘‘Enjoy our gravity, do you?’’

  In front of them, silhouetted against a sharp, angular shape which could only be some form of vessel, were three Molothos—armed and ready, weapons trained on the prone humans.

  Even getting across the river was in their plan, DuQuesne thought with grim admiration. They may not have expected the casualties, but they knew just how to herd us.

  The trap was set, and now . . . now it’s closed on us.

  Chapter 34

  DuQuesne forced himself to his feet. So did Carl, but he was clearly sagging under what was at least one and a half gravities. Two more Molothos emerged from the jungle behind them, the third wounded one trailing by a short distance. ‘‘So what are you waiting for?’’

  The Molothos leader shrieked. ‘‘Your speech will be silenced. You have killed many of my people, and I will have recompense for that. We have claimed this Sphere, and your intrusion is cause for war! If your repulsive species values its life, you will offer a Sphere or two in tribute!’’

  ‘‘You’re on the only Sphere we have, you monster,’’ Carl said. DuQuesne said nothing, for he was coming to the realization that he stood at the brink of a precipice, or at the edge of apotheosis, and he was at once both petrified and elated. Of all the ways things could have gone, I end up here, in this place, at this time.

  A low hiss came from the surrounding Molothos. ‘‘Scout Master Maizas . . . there was no sign of a ship here . . . ’’ one pointed out. The leader, Maizas, studied them with heightened interest.

  ‘‘Is true . . . ? First Emergents, then! A stroke of perfect luck, almost worth losing a few troopers,’’ the leader said finally. ‘‘An open Sphere for the taking, new knowledge of another race. Good, then, that we have not yet killed you, though twice the order was nearly given. You shall tell us what we need to know, give us entry to your Sphere, and in return I may even permit a few of you to live.’’

  DuQuesne felt strangely lightheaded; something inside him was rising towards the surface and inevitable breakthrough. And why not? It’s too late now. Nothing left for me or anyone if the monsters finish this. ‘‘Sounds like not much of a deal. What if I tell you to go straight to hell?’’

  Maizas hissed contemptuously. ‘‘You care for your fellow creatures, one would hope; you may be animals and less than animals, but even such creatures care, even if with less delicacy and sympathy than we for our own. In this case, you—seeming the leader—shall do as I ask, or we shall kill the other. Very slowly and painfully.’’

  The Molothos had drawn closer, snaring them in a ring of armored monstrosities. ‘‘Here in the area we claim, you are in gravity half again what you knew. You have no more weapons save those you hold in your hands and will be slow and easily slain by my warriors. You will talk, for we can make you do so, and you will be begging for your life to end sooner, if you make me wait much longer.’’

  That is it. The absolute living end. Torture Carl to get me to talk so you can kill me later? No way in hell! As he thought this, he finally let go of all the restraints, the fear and the control he’d spent so many decades to hammer into place, let loose everything he’d feared, all the difference that had separated him from the rest of the world.

  For a moment, he felt both as though he stood outside himself, and that he was suddenly more himself than he had been in fifty years, at once terrified and transported by what was happening. I’d forgotten . . . forgotten what I was. I was so good at repressing the memory, at denying my own past, that I’m now almost unable to grasp who I am. What it feels like to be . . . what I was.

  It feels . . . good.

  His head snapped up and he glared straight into Maizas’s yellow-glowing eye. Something in his stance and gaze registered even with the aliens; the troopers raised their weapons and Maizas took a slight step back.

  Marc C. DuQuesne sneered at Maizas, holding the alien’s gaze. ‘‘That would be a good trick, if you could manage it,’’ he said contemptuously. ‘‘But you’ve got it all just . . . exactly . . . backwards.’’

  With a sudden movement, he leapt into the air, two hundred kilos in over one and a half gravities doing a standing jump that took him three meters into the air. As he’d expected, Carl dropped to the ground, obviously shocked at what DuQuesne was doing but equally certain he needed to be out of the way. One of the troopers, hair-trigger reflexes overstrained, fired, spraying his compatriots with bladed death. The wounded one went down in a fountain of blood as the flechettes found the chinks in his armor. DuQuesne landed squarely on Maizas’s back, the impact driving the body to the ground. The troopers hesitated, fanning out but afraid to fire with their commander in the way. ‘‘Your problem, you pea-brained, overbearing, pompous crayfish, is that you think you have any idea of what you’re dealing with.’’

  As Maizas struggled to rise, he took advantage of that, bounding with the alien’s own strength aiding him from Maizas’ back to the next trooper, catching the striking claw as he descended and then twisting his body just so, wrenching the claw around, hearing both tech and natural armor creak and split under the force. He brought both heels down as hard as he could in landing; the concussion transmitted through the armor breaking the carapace underneath. The Molothos gave an unbelieving agonized shriek as DuQuesne vaulted from him to the next arachnoid creature, tearing the gun in its tendrils away so forcefully that one tendril stretched and tore apart.

  The other tendril and striking claw caught at him, and the shredding mouth seemed far too close; instead of biting, though, it shrank away, closing up. Interesting, he thought, as the thing tried to pound him to pulp with the striking claws; instead, it found the human catching the other claw and holding it immobile while forcing the first claw back.

  The other two Molothos troopers closed in from behind, and DuQuesne dropped to the ground just as four claws ripped through the air. Rolling to the side he went underneath the third trooper, then with a sudden effort grasped the underside of the carapace and rose to his feet in a single fluid motion, heaving the Molothos into its companions like flinging a sack of grain. As the three aliens tumbled and scrabbled to right themselves, he yanked the power pack from the alien weapon—the location of such a pack seemed obvious to him—and pitched it down the throat of the middle creature. Spiked lamprey-teeth contracted convulsively, and the superconductor storage cell paths were suddenly and disastrously disrupted; a sun-bright concussion blew DuQuesne four meters away as he tucked and rolled.

  Rising to his feet, he glanced at Maizas, who was staggering backwards, disbelief written plainly in the alien body language, trying to make it to the low, long vessel behind him. He caught one of the alien’s legs and yanked it backwards, so hard that it dislocated, and dragged the Scout Master right back where he’d come from. ‘‘Oh, I don’t think so, Maizas,’’ he said, feeling the cold, hard, freeing certainty once more, the knowledge that he was doing the right thing
and that nothing in all the universe could stop him. ‘‘I told you you hadn’t any idea what you were dealing with. I was raised in gravity more than half again yours. I was built by people so insane they didn’t realize what kind of a monster they designed, and I’ve spent half a century hiding what I am.’’ Peripherally he was aware of Carl’s wide-eyed stare. ‘‘You brought it out, you son of a bitch. You made me let it out, and I don’t know if I’ll ever find myself again.’’ He spun Maizas to face him, caught the two striking claws in his hands and squeezed hard, feeling the armor bending under the force. Hard black eyes reflected dimly from the surface of the wraparound yellow eye of the Molothos, but he could feel a quiver run through the creature, and not one of simple rage.

  ‘‘You are going to tell me exactly and precisely everything that I need to know, and you are going to do it now, and you will not try to lie to me. Or else,’’ he said, and grinned savagely, ‘‘you will find out how very much worse things can get.’’

  ‘‘I . . . I am not afraid of you. Or of death.’’ The translated voice shook slightly. ‘‘Let me go.’’

  ‘‘There’s worse things than quick death. And you’re damn well afraid of me, unless you are a hell of a lot stupider than I think you are. Don’t try to lie to me; I don’t have the time or the patience for it. If I let you go and leave, the first thing you’ll do is run over to your ship and either call for reinforcements if you’ve got any, or head back home with our coordinates if you don’t.’’