This Bloody Game

by Dan Schiro

Zovaco seemed to consider it for a moment. Then he called the liquid-metal chain back into his spellblade gauntlet. “You’re free, Thusulus.”

  Zovaco’s thrall looked up at him with fear in his watery yellow eyes. “Free?”

  “Yes, free,” Zovaco repeated, gesturing over the throne of fused skulls. “Free to return to this uncomfortable chair. Free to become the King of Bones again, if you wish.”

  Thusulus remained quiet for a few seconds, glancing with great confusion between Zovaco and the throne. “Kill me,” he said at last.

  Zovaco shook his bulbous head. “I’ve been keeping you weak, feeding my spellblade, but your full strength should return in time. You should be able to rule with the same brutality you wielded before.”

  Thusulus’ thick head fell to his chest, his bone-shard crown turned toward Zovaco Ralli. “You defeated me… you humiliated me… you must kill me, you must.” He fell forward and crawled toward Zovaco’s bare, three-toed feet.

  “Pick yourself up, fool.” Zovaco stepped back from the groveling giant. “You’ll find people have a short memory for what happened. They remember kindness or pain — but they don’t remember what happened.”

  The three of them left Thusulus sobbing in the throne room and returned to the dark corridors of the abandoned sub-basement, Orion’s datacube providing light. Zovaco led them around a few corners to a spot where pattering drips of water had slowly brought down a neglected wall. Scampering over the crumbling bricks, they made their way into a dilapidated transport tunnel. Precious minutes passed while they walked in silence between the rusted rails and broken ties, Orion’s body feeling heavier with every step. Soon enough they heard the whispers and the scurrying feet scratching through the shadows toward them.

  “The King of Bonessss… has left his throne…” they hissed, just beyond the light of the datacube.

  Orion leaned toward Zovaco. “Any chance they’ll respect you as the alpha dog of this dump and let us pass?”

  “Little.” Zovaco shook his head. “They’ll stay out of the central grid, but the sewers and tunnels belong to them.”

  Kangor sniffed the air. “They come.”

  Orion conjured a longsword from his gauntlet as the white shapes charged forth like slavering dogs. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw liquid metal flow up Zovaco’s arm and over his torso, solidifying into mirror-polished manacite armor. It covered his shoulders with spiked plates, his head with a horned helm, and his chest with a diamond-shaped breastplate. All of the exquisitely shaped armor smoldered with glowing blue veins.

  A delicate sword leaped into Zovaco’s hand, and then the thin trislav disappeared — or rather, he moved so fast that he was a blur to Orion’s eyes. He dashed headlong at the devolved mutants, ran up the curved wall and across the ceiling to swoop in on the horde from one side. Orion heard the hum of a blade as the blur dashed through the ashy creatures, and the mutants fell to the stones squirting geysers of gray blood. Kangor rushed into the scattering horde to wet his claws, and soon the two of them had the pale freaks fleeing into the shadows.

  Orion took a few heavy steps to join the fight, but he had to spin back when he heard hissing close in behind him. He raised his longsword just in time to skewer a deformed creature that had slipped down from a broken grate in the ceiling. He readied his sword to dice the other two mutants wriggling down from the ventilation shaft, but he never had to levy another stroke. The silver blur blazed back past him, and with a handful of lightning-fast slashes, the transport tunnel stood clear but for cooling corpses and pooling blood.

  “Okay,” Orion breathed as Zovaco blurred to a stop in front of him. His half-armored form dripped with thick gray gore and pulsed with the light of fresh life force. “What… what do you call that thing?”

  Zovaco reabsorbed his thin blade and let the manacite armor recede to his gauntlet. “The Blade of Swiftsilver.” He looked into the chrome-covered palm of his hand. “It pains me to admit it,” he shook his head, “but it feels good to let it feed again after so long.”

  Orion nodded. It was an urge, a taste for blood that he had just begun to understand. “How did you draw that armor? I didn’t… no one ever told me you could do that.”

  Zovaco lowered his gaze, shaking his head softly. “The spellblade… evolves. You’ll see.”

  “We’ve no time for toe-counting,” Kangor growled. What few friends we have are waiting for us.”

  “Right as usual,” Orion said to his hulking companion. The blood of the devolved creature had thrown a handful of fast-burning tinder onto his flickering lightness of being spell, and he needed to make use of it while it lasted. “Are we close, Zo?”

  Zovaco nodded, pointing with his gauntlet’s clawed fingertip. “We can ascend the old waste-dump tubes up ahead.”

  Orion nodded, steeling himself with a deep breath. “Sounds lovely.”

  They climbed up a wide tube coated with petrified feces for a few disgusting minutes, Kangor using his natural claws while Orion and Zovaco lashed out with their gauntlets. Orion’s datacube followed them, casting rays of light up through the steady shower of brown flecks displaced by their climb. The thick caking was alive with a kingdom of beetles, centipedes and alien spiders, the last of which filled Orion with especially cold shivers. At the top, they emerged into a dusty crawlspace in the foundation of the modern facility, just beneath the sub-basement that served as the prison’s administrative level. Orion and Zovaco could stand and stoop, but Kangor had to dip into a crouch to fit the low space.

  “We should be close to the control center doors,” Orion said in a hushed voice, “if I’m remembering the layout correctly. Let’s try to do this quietly.”

  Orion and Zovaco conjured ultra-thin blades and wedged them into the tight seam in the high-density plastic panel above them. After a moment of strain, the square of flooring popped loose and light and fresh air flooded the dusty crawlspace. Orion, Zovaco and Kangor scrambled up into the light, bracing for a barrage of pulse bolts. Yet as Orion looked around, he saw that the intersecting corridors stood empty. Alarms blared, and red beacons blazed along the track lighting between the plasticrete walls and ceiling. In glass control panels mounted to the walls, emergency messages called warmechs to A-wing, fire control units to C-wing and tech services to D-wing. At the end of the corridor, Orion saw a heavy-duty security door. A large, multiphasic lock mounted in the middle of it glowered at him like a red eyeball.

  “There, that’s the prison control center,” Orion said with a quick nod. “Let’s get this done.”

  The three of them charged down the corridor, Orion lagging behind as his spell faded again and gravity set its hooks in his muscles. He caught up with his friends at the security door, his heart hammering and his lungs burning.

  “I don’t think we can pry this open,” Zovaco said mildly as he put his flesh-and-blood hand to the door. He shot a wry glance at Orion. “You must have something in mind?”

  “Sort of.” Orion knelt down by the door. “I figured I’d get them to open it for me.” Orion took a deep breath. The animal life force of the mutant he had killed had been spent during the climb, so he only had one ready source of blood magic. He pushed back the left sleeve of his kinetic bodysuit and conjured a silver razor to his right hand. He knew that it would take another few years off the end of his life, but he didn’t see any other choice.

  “Don’t,” Kangor said, reaching out. “You know how that drains you, little friend. Cut me, instead.”

  Orion shook his head. “Wouldn’t work. It has to be taken or sacrificed, not volunteered.” His jaw tense, Orion sliced into his arm and let the rich red flow over his manacite knife. After a few moments, the veins in his spellblade gauntlet smoldered with bloody light. “Knock out,” he hissed.

  After a spark of pale fire, streams of thick white smoke flowed out of Orion’s silver fingertips. The smoky tendrils billowed up and s
wooped back, squeezing under the door as if drawn by a vacuum. Seconds passed, and then the streams of white smoke died along with the dull red glow in the veins of Orion’s spellblade. He pulled the knife back, his left forearm weeping red tears.

  “No,” Orion spat as he groped for a tube of consulin in the pockets of his cloak. “It didn’t work. I didn’t have the juice to—”

  With a sudden whirring of gears, the security door irised open. Inside, they saw the silhouettes of several warmechs clanking about in a veil of thick white mist. They heard coughs and curses, but the warmechs fell still before any of them made it to the fresh air beyond the prison control center.

  Forgetting about the wound-staunching consulin for a moment, Orion retrieved the icebreaker from his smartcloak instead. He held up the circuit-etched black spike and handed it to Kangor. “Think you can handle this one?”

  “I can breathe the belch of a volcano,” Kangor said, shrugging his muscular shoulders. “I should be able to withstand a little bad breath from your demon metal.” He took the expensive piece of malware daintily in his huge hand.

  “Any port will do,” Orion added. “It’s preprogrammed to do the rest.”

  Kangor swaggered into the fog, and Orion absentmindedly squeezed a consulin tube over his gashed arm. Orion knew Mervyn had paid an obscene amount for the complex piece of cyber-terrorism, and if all went as planned, it would do three things. First, it would disable the prison ether dish, blocking communication with off-planet reinforcements. Next, it would shut down the anti-aircraft guns atop the stout prison towers. After that, it would release the “gremlins,” mutating segments of code that would cause system-wide glitches in everything from the glowglobes to the automated security to the toilets and beyond. But most importantly, the icebreaker sent a signal to a ship hiding in the splintered wreckage of Bavara-5’s shattered moon. He thought the plan might just be good enough — if only he wasn’t down a pint of blood and wearing lead shoes.

  Kangor came striding out of the befogged control room as the lights flickered and the bleating alarm faltered. “Easy,” he chuckled, puffing white smoke from his large nostrils. “Little friend,” he said, growing serious when he saw Orion’s drained face. “You look… paler than usual.”

  “I’m good,” Orion said, forcing his lopsided smirk. With the bleeding stopped, he had nothing left in his spellblade to cast something new to cope with Bavara-5’s gravity. “Let’s move. Everything going haywire was the signal for Aurelia and the Briar—”

  “Freeze, slags!”

  Two guards in warmechs came around the corner at the end of the long corridor and opened fire with the pulse bolt barrels mounted to their gauntlets. Zovaco’s inhuman speed blazed into action as he dodged the first few bolts, and Kangor took a pair of shots to his muscled hide, the spots blistering to patches of rocky exoskeleton. For his part, Orion fell on his tailbone and smelled the tips of his spiked blond hair sizzle as he narrowly avoided the bolts.

  “Which way, Orion?” Zovaco asked as he deflected pulse bolts with a spinning silver staff. “Which way to the rendezvous?”

  Of course, the only path went straight through the two instruments of destruction lumbering down the hall. “Keep them busy,” Orion shouted. Hauling himself up off the floor, Orion took a deep breath, wrapped his smartcloak over his face and stumbled into the gas-filled control room. His heart hammered to pump heavy blood as he trudged to the nearest warmech. Reaching out with his right hand, he let the flowing metal of his spellblade slip in through the suit’s cracks, pop open the diamond-glass bubble and tear the slumbering great ape from his seat.

  Seconds later Orion re-emerged into the corridor standing tall in warmech armor and wielding an immense broadsword conjured from his spellblade. He took a deep breath of fresh air, and the guards held their fire for a moment, presumably thinking him one of their own.

  “Stay behind me,” Orion yelled as he thundered past his companions.

  The guards loosed pulse bolts again, and Orion returned fire from his warmech’s left gauntlet, his military-grade lightshield flickering but holding. Orion let his mind slide into the blankness of the White Room as he had been taught, and with every step he felt his body fall more in synch with the burly armament around him. By the time he closed the gulf between them, he felt as comfortable swinging the broadsword as he would a fencing saber in Earth’s gravity. Orion saw the fear in the beady, dull red eyes of the two poxgane as he slashed at them, but he didn’t strike to kill. His massive manacite blade hacked through the warmechs’ mechanical limbs until they toppled over, wires sparking and hydraulic fluid squirting like black blood.

  The guards begged needlessly for their lives as Zovaco and Kangor hurried up to Orion. “Well done, young human,” said Zovaco, reaching him first. “I see you inherited Crag’s talent for improvisation along with his spellblade.”

  Kangor skidded to a stop, the curling yellow claws of his toes scratching the plasticrete floor. “An impressive display, little friend.” His wolfish lip curled with a smile. “Though I’m not used to looking up to you.”

  They ran, the wide metal feet of Orion’s warmech pounding the floor. Bypassing the shuddering, half-open elevators that ran up to the security checkpoints, they came to the long, wide cargo ramp that led to the landing pad. The jaws of the huge door at the top stood open, and Orion glimpsed the ashy sky above Wormrock Penitentiary. Yet just as they started up the ramp, a platoon of five warmechs stepped in between them and the gray light of day.

  “Remember,” Orion said to Kangor and Zovaco as he raised his broadsword and prepared to charge. “We have to do this without killing any of them.”

  Zovaco chuckled grimly. “They might be part of a corrupt, off-the-grid detention camp, but they’re still voters.”

  Kangor roared, but the lead guard threw up his suit’s mechanical arms in surrender. “Whoa, whoa, OG,” said a voice, the features behind the diamond-glass bubble unreadable in the unlit cargo ramp. “It’s Costigan, man!”

  Kangor sniffed the air, probably only now recognizing the familiar scents of the Briarhearts. He bellowed a mighty laugh, while Orion and Zovaco shared a relieved sigh. “What the hell are you guys doing here?” Orion called as they started up the ramp.

  “Looking for you, OG,” said Zagzebski.

  “She’ll be here any second,” added Reddpenning. “We need to be on that landing pad!”

  The two groups met in the middle of the ramp and jogged to the top together, the footsteps of their warmechs echoing off the walls like steel war drums. “Wait,” Kangor said as they emerged into the blustery, mesh-divided courtyard. “Where is the Exile?”

  Sirens wailed in the large pentagonal yard, and guards chased rioting prisoners, striking them down with nets, electrified wires and low-yield pulse bolts. “Lost track of Aurelia after we set her loose,” said Adler, her shaved head shining with sweat behind the cockpit bubble. “She…”

  “She’s mad, Orion,” finished Costigan bluntly. “Once she started her light show, she was blasting guards and setting prisoners on fire.”

  Reddpenning nodded. “Last I saw her, she was melting holes in carbon-compress walls and laughing her ass off.”

  Kangor shook his head. “The Exile is too fierce a warrior for her own good.”

  “Hey guys,” Seals said, pointing his mechanized arm toward the sky. “Looks like our ride is here.”

  Orion glanced up to see a black, crescent-shaped spacecraft descending toward the prison landing pad. Yet as the costly, unregistered Void Phantom 3.6 soared in, one of the guards trapped in the malfunctioning gun towers seemed to realize that it was not a simple prisoner drop-off. An intercom announcement rang out from the powerful courtyard speakers, likely the only channel of communication unaffected by the icebreaker’s gremlins.

  “All guards to Central Landing, all guards to Central Landing — escape attempt in progress, I r
epeat, escape attempt in progress!”

  Warmechs forced their way out of the glitchy security doors around the yard, and the Void Phantom roared down above them, raising a tiny dust storm with its landing jets. As the Briarhearts and the guards exchanged pulse bolts, Orion shouted to Costigan. “You get Zovaco on with your crew, I’ll hold out for AD.”

  “Are you crazy, Orion?!” Costigan screamed back. “We have to leave!”

  “We won’t,” Kangor growled back, a pulse bolt-hardened exoskeleton crawling across his muscles. “A Lady of the Jade Way deserves better than that.”

  “I’ll wait as well,” hollered Zovaco Ralli. Manacite armor again swathed half his form, and he deflected high-yield pulse bolts with easy swings of his staff. “My escape is not—”

  “No, Zovaco, get out of here,” Orion screamed. The Void Phantom had come to a stop, hovering a few feet above the landing pad with its rear ramp open. “Go, keep your promises!”

  Malicious laughter and blazing light disrupted their argument and the firefight. Aurelia floated out through a slag-dripping hole in the side of the prison, a blazing aura of green fire crackling around her. “Cower before me, lesser carbons,” she cried out. “I am Aurelia Deon, Fifth Order Sentinel of the Jade Way, Adept Magi First-class, Sojourner of the Velvet Rift, Siege Breaker of the Holy Emerald Stronghold. I am the Exile!” Rays of viridescent energy shot off her green body, searing through the nanofiber partitions of the courtyard and striking a handful of the warmechs to the ground.

  The remaining guards, perhaps just a dozen or so, panicked. Some fired pulse bolts at Aurelia, their energized payloads splashing harmlessly off her fiery aura. Others fired up at the Void Phantom where their bolts sizzled on the ebon hull. Still others attempted to retreat through the security doors that jerked open and closed like seizing metal mouths. “Go, go, go,” Orion yelled at the others. “Out of the suits, onto the ship, go, go!”

  While the Briarhearts clambered out of their warmechs and climbed up onto the gently bobbing boarding ramp, Orion, Kangor and Zovaco waited until Aurelia floated down beside them. “Easy, Aurelia, go easy,” Orion said, leaping out of his commandeered warmech. She had a mad look flashing in her green-glowing eyes, and for a moment Orion worried that she might burn him down too. “Time to turn off the juice and get out of here!”