by Kennedy King
“Galia?” came from behind them. She went rigid at the sound of it. A single word undid it all. The ship. The arms dealing. The drugs. One word made her a little girl again, sketching off-world creatures in a notebook under the stairs of their parent’s porch. A little girl huddled next to her sister. “Galia, I know it’s you. I’ve been looking all over this ridiculous building for you.”
“Excuse me,” Galia said to Deidra and Devin. She managed to hold a grin until she turned to leave them, bewildered. She grabbed the braid-haired brunette that had called her by the arm and dragged her to the edge of the Game Room.
“You can change your hair and dress like a gangster, but you won’t get away from-”
“Elaine. What are you doing here?” Galia cut her short.
“I’m here to talk you out of doing something stupid before you regret it,” said Elaine. “Galia, come home.”
“Home!” Galia laughed, “I have every intention of getting back in the Dreamweaver after the Prelude. Sure, I’ll be home.”
“Galia, please… you can imagine how hard it was for me to get in here. If you want me to beg, I will,” the hurt in Elaine’s eyes was etched deep, a river at the bottom of a canyon.
“About as well as you can imagine how hard it was for me. If you think I’m turning back, you have me confused for someone else,” Galia shook off. She put a hand on Elaine, to shove her away, but not before Elaine got one on her.
“Just because your dream didn’t… Don’t do this, Galia. Come back.”
“Where have you been for the last ten years, with all of this, huh?” Galia stared at the ceiling, unbelieving at the water rising behind her eyes. After all this time.
“Looking for you!”
“Attention, spectators and combatants,” Cybil Cerano’s voice rose above the chaos of the meet-and-greet, through his lapel amplifier. Galia and Elaine stopped to listen, along with the rest of the Game Room. “Grab something solid and hold on for descent… the Prelude is over.”
“If you want to see me, keep one eye on a viewing screen. If you want to talk, cheer loud,” Galia smiled at her sister, pushing her. Elaine stumbled back against the wall. She grasped for support, while Galia faded into the crowd. “Goodbye, Elaine.”
Every floor of the Prelude quaked. The floating platform and the estate on it plunged straight down, towards the surface of planet Ares.
The massive cylinder beneath the Prelude slid perfectly into a raised metal ring on the planet. Jet-disks on its underside helped it lower gently into place. The same nanotech that had terraformed the planet carried heavy particles up from its surface. A bridge built itself from the massive front doors of the Prelude estate to the surface of Ares. No sooner than the pathway was completed, the cameras started. The combatants emerged onto the ring-shaped dock. Spectators threw open windows throughout the Prelude to scream and cheer.
Power flooded the lines beneath the planet’s newly born mountains, caverns and towns. Lights brightened for all to see what The Gold Standard’s designers had created. So full of rugged beauty, color and life, Ares showed no sign of the death that would stain its every crease.
Chapter Seven: Frozen Free-for-All
The moment she stepped from the french doors of the Prelude, Deidra’s senses were overwhelmed. The untamed planet around her, the constant urge of Gold Standard coordinators and the countless screens of cheering faces were equal parts familiar and unbelievable. As much as she abhorred the violence that filled those screens every year, Deidra found it preferable to being on them herself. Every so often she caught herself gawking at Ares around her, and snapped to attention. With her mind stretched every direction it would go and more, it was no wonder that time slipped away from her.
Deidra let the parade of contestants carry her across the bridge from the Prelude to a light-train station. The fleeting thought of what she’d read on light-trains in Koslav’s library flickered through her mind. Something about how the bond of accelerant particles that raced opposite of the train turned it into a cosmic torpedo. The specifics escaped her as she followed their Gold Standard guide into the tunnel of technicolor light rays. A domed rainbow all around them. Deidra forgot about how it worked - and the cameras - again. Her head cocked back, mouth open, to drink in the wonder.
“Stand back from the rails!” their guide called out. The first words Deidra actually absorbed since they stepped out of the Prelude. She watched the metal rails below their platform glow hot white. Even Galia twitched back from the train when it took shape instantly from a blur of silver down the rainbow chute. Gusts of displaced air twisted through the crowd while its doors slid open. The train swallowed them and zipped off.
The next thing Deidra knew, she had to button up her uniform jacket up to her neck. It was hardly a shield against the frigid winds that whipped outside. The light train let them out at a raised platform over an entire town that hadn’t existed a week ago. A town made of crystal. Strips of light glowed through clear sheets, whether made of glass or ice, Deidra couldn’t quite figure out. All she could tell was what a feat of human ingenuity the place was. Strip malls and cathedrals and restaurants complete with high-arched columns formed a crystalline settlement, divided down the center by a shimmering violet stream. A construction project of this magnitude might have taken months on Homeworld or Greymoor. The very nature of planet Ares, however, lent itself to developments like this in days. Every grain of sand, every drop of water, was all synthetic. Deidra recalled her self-taught lessons from the library and the Game Room.
Ares was really a massive glob of a substance called multerium, formed in a lab and trademarked by The Gold Standard years ago. Construction was ongoing and eternal, with the recycling, replacing and addition of the stuff from Koslav’s designers. Multerium was derived from minerals gathered by his WBO benefactors. Its makeup was loose, malleable. With some molecular tweaking, it could be anything that reflected high ratings. Magnetic. Wet. Rigid. Static. The right treatment crafted the right product - the modge podge of environments called Ares was testament to that. That was about all Deidra could gather in her mind before the crowd of contestants started to move again.
Everything mixed together inside her, a soup of nerves and wonder. Deidra and her crew piled into a hovercab at the base of the light-train station. It carried them over streets of azure ice, through entire shopping districts for the convenience of spectators. The cracked windows of their cab let in the cacophony of human indulgence. After paying their way to the surface of this fantastic place, people still haggled for better prices with street merchants. Said merchants still fought them, tooth and nail. Deidra wanted to open the door, to roll out across the ice and sell something - to do anything but this. She didn’t want to fight. She couldn’t do this. She wanted out.
“Hey. Breathe,” Devin urged her. Deidra’s eyes jumped to his gentle fingers on hers, pale by comparison. She let in a powerful gasp, and the rest of the evening. She narrated each action as a play in her head that flashed by and went. That was the only way she’d make it through this. One play at a time.
Cab ride to icy hotel. Drag self up oddly tractable stairs. Slam translucent door. Flop deep in the mound of cushions on heated mattress. Scream at fate into fluffy oblivion.
Deidra realized, at once, she’d been asleep. Not napping, like she’d briefly considered between screams. Asleep. Her heated bed and the pile of pillows had betrayed her! She snapped up and glanced around through foggy eyes. Deidra hoped more than anything she’d find a window, and find the barrenness outside the Forge on Greymoor. But, when her eyes lined up with the porthole window, they filled with the sprawl of a crystal city.
“No,” she sputtered when she saw the orange sunrise through her perfectly clear window. It was almost evening when they’d stepped off the light-train. Deidra had slept through the night.
“Combatants. Report to the lounge connected to the front lobby for breakfast. Last call. Your first challenge begins in an hour,” Cybil’s v
oice bounced through the ice.
“An hour!” Deidra blurted before his echoes had worked down through the frozen foundation of the hotel. She thought about burying her face in the pillows again, but she didn’t have a voice left to scream. She rushed straight down the icy staircase to the lounge in the uniform she’d slept in. Only a handful of combatants were left, nibbling unnatural fruits that could only exist on a place like Ares. One of them was Devin. He watched his own face in a chrome fountain that spewed violet water from the stream outside. For once, he looked pensive.
“Anything left of the food?” Deidra murmured. Devin’s head shot over to her.
“God, Deidra, there you are! I thought you’d run for it!” he shouted at first, then muffled himself.
“Believe me, I thought about leaving you to stew in this mess,” Deidra lied.
“Food’s over there. The… binioberries - I think they’re called - are really good. The pink ones. Go grab what you want and get back here. I found out a bit about our first challenge and we don’t have much time left to talk,” said Devin. Deidra vanished, only to reappear with a massive bowl of pink berries, granola and yogurt.
“Alright, spill,” she prompted him with the jab of her fork.
“First challenge is called the Ice Bucket,” Devin told her between chomps of binioberries.
“Woah, no way,” Deidra mused. She choked back the urge to spit more sarcasm. There wasn’t time.
“We’ll be on ship, in a system of ice tunnels and caves,” Devin paused long enough to look down at the floor. Deidra followed his eyes there, to the dark pits and ice spikes beneath the crystalline floor. When she’d seen it yesterday, Deidra figured it was ornamental, some sort of illusion. Then she stared at it long enough for a shadow to pass by beneath. It might have been a maintenance ship, or even rival combatants.
“So, how do we make it to the next round?” said Deidra.
“Keep the Brazen from falling apart, pretty much. Round ends when any crew finds the Crystal Ice Core,” Devin explained, “It’s guarded by estro-materi… estereo-madder… I don’t know what their real name is, but everyone’s calling them ice harpies.” Deidra bobbed her head like that didn’t jostle her spine.
“Good. We find some thick ice and hide behind it,” Deidra concluded.
“Or… we go for the Ice Core and get the bonus,” Devin posed. The look on Deidra’s face said are you out of your mind before her lips could catch up. “I know the way.”
“How?” Deidra pouted.
“Same way I knew the rest of it. One of the Terra Eagle’s gunners. Run these games enough years, you see similar arena schematics.”
“Devin… why would they tell you that, with any level of honesty?” Deidra dug in.
“There was… alcohol involved. And the Eagle’s a veteran, right? She knows what strings to pull, to set the games in their favor. The more teams that stay in it until the end, the less of a pain it is to make it through the Reverie,” said Devin. It was a solid enough idea. The Reverie… she could hardly imagine making it that far. The second-to-last round of the Olympia Gold was the only one consistent through every year. A chance for defeated crews to seek their vengeance. Less defeated crews meant less punishment.
“Alright, alright… considering I’m fool enough to believe you: where is this Crystal Ice Core?” Deidra sighed at last. Devin smirked but found himself forced to tell her on the way when Cybil announced,
“Combatants. This is your fifteen-minute warning. We’ll see you in the lobby for boarding, then on the big screen.”
“Welcome folks, from Homeworld, from Greymoor, from the furthest colonies of Alpha Centauri and beyond… to the first official challenge of the fifty-sixth Olympia Gold. This…” Cybil let the word repeat itself through the brisk, glassy blue caverns. Deidra’s heart pounded twice between each echo. “Is the Ice Bucket! Contestants have access to their ship and their full, personal arsenals in this round. The goal is twofold. Survive your opponents. Claim the Crystal Ice Core from the esero mederi; ice harpies from the WBO’s outer research colonies, to attain the bonus. The round doesn’t end until a crew holds the Ice Core for their own. For anyone unversed on the Olympia, a crew who attains three bonuses wins the Olympia Gold Medal, instantly. That is, of course… unless the runner-up for bonuses challenges them.”
“It’s the sea green tunnel,” Devin murmured to Tygon. He held the helm steady. The Brazen’s wide nose pointed at the center of an open, icy atrium. It was the shared focal point of all seven ships in the games. “It’ll take us straight for the Ice Core.”
“Yeah, it’s the sea green tunnel that everyone will be gunning for,” Deidra hissed in Tygon’s other ear, “Forget about it! Go for the stalactites. They’re decent cover, and we can-”
“I’ve got a plan,” Tygon assured her, or at least he thought he did. Deidra wouldn’t be assured. Not with six other ships poised to strike. Not floating inside an open jaw of icy teeth. Not with timers ticking down the destruction while audience booths in the ice walls rumbled with applause.
“Begin!” Cybil’s voice was drowned by an immediate explosion of firepower. Lights flared through viewing windows, ships bounced back from one another’s blasts, and ice walls splintered. Deidra gripped the controls of her long-barreled cannon to steady herself. She thanked whatever deity would listen when Tygon jerked the Brazen for the ceiling. It went nose-up. Icy javelins plunged around them. Then a shockwave rose through her seat. Something struck them from below hard enough to catapult her into the ceiling of the Brazen. A second later, the ship slammed into the ceiling of the cave.
“Kostic, stabilize the secondary wings, damnit!” Galia barked. She fought with the navigation bars to point the Dreamweaver back at the center of the free-for-all.
“On it, Cap’!” Kostic answered. She’d deployed the smaller, secondary wings from the bottom of the ship at Cybil’s commencement. It helped keep them from drifting too far with enemy fire.
“Rey, who the hell is on us? And who’s injured?” asked Galia. She craned her neck to glance at the others through the viewing screen, but all she saw was smoke and more cannon-blasts. The Terra Eagle ripped through. One of its wings flicked out to slash the Torrent, which also emerged from the smog. Fire unfurled from the gash it left.
“Carol’s out, but breathing. And take a guess who’s on us,” Rey called back with the perfect note of irony to cue her in. Scorch. Carol had slammed her head on a missile-guiding visor pretty hard when the first rounds struck.
“Keep her upright and hooked in,” Galia grimaced. She readied her thumb on the dissolution gun, for Roran and Scorch. The ones that had done this. “Damage report,” Galia issued to the Dreamweaver itself, then “Give me a direction,” to Rey.
“Shields at seventy percent. Minor impact damage to the starboard plate,” the Dreamweaver’s digitized AI voice piped up. A flat diagram of the ship blinked on a screen to Galia’s left with a faint red zone.
“Looks like… five o’clock!” Rey told her when the analysis was complete.
“Alright, kill the jets!” Galia decreed. Her crew complied in complete trust. The Dreamweaver dropped towards a hundred stabbing ice-spears. Galia wrenched the navigation bars. The ship spun around to five o’clock. The cannon crosshairs settled directly on Scorch. “Bring ‘em live!” The Dreamweaver’s disk jets blazed back on to suspend it in relative safety. The dissolution cannon shone with life.
The only thing faster than Galia’s finger was the Terra Eagle’s particle beam. It seared a gaping hole through Scorch’s central engine stack. The inferno that burst from within splintered the ship into fifteen flaming chunks. Roran and his crew rained down in similar division onto icy pikes. The audience cried out for first blood. Eight people dead, most of the crew. Galia couldn’t afford to think about it just then. She jerked the Dreamweaver around cannon fire from the zipping Terra Eagle.
“Return fire! Don’t expect to hit her, just keep her busy!” Galia decreed. The Dream
weaver’s glowing belly skimmed the walls of the icy cove. In the corner of her eye, Galia caught a glance of another ship in duress. The Brazen.
The Gold Standard servant crew had climbed high in the stalactites overhead when the Hammer’s homing missiles converged on it. The blast kicked the ship high. Their pilot made the interesting choice of charging straight into the roof of the Ice Bucket. A bold and creative choice, Galia had to admit. The Brazen took some heavy battering, but in turn, battered the ice. Countless stalactites dislodged from above. They rained down over the other five crews. Each spear stabbed deep into whatever part of the cave it found.
“They’re breaking up the fray,” Galia figured.
“What’s the plan, Cap’?” said Rey.
“Find a tunnel and disappear. Hang tight!” Galia shouted. She swung the Dreamweaver wide, straight down an icy, sea green branch.
“Holy hell, Tygon, did you have to hit it so hard?” asked Devin, while he massaged the massive bump on his scalp. Tygon was too preoccupied with keeping the smoking Brazen centered in the green tunnel to look his way.
“You’re damn straight I did. What happened to Scorch was a few seconds from happening to us in that open theater. We had to break it up. What in the hell are those?” Tygon’s sharp tongue flicks broke Deidra from her own concussive trance. She squinted through the smog of their flying shipwreck at the shapes that littered the cave just ahead. Bodies. Their teal, leathery skin was a sharp contrast to the red stains spreading around them. Their scaly wings folded around them like funeral shrouds.
“I think those are the ice harpies,” Deidra said, numb. Every last one of them laid dead. “Someone’s been here.”
“Someone’s here now,” Devin pointed through the Brazen’s bridge window.