Love of Olympia- Tournament of Stars

by Kennedy King

  “I’ve got a whole crew’s worth of debt on my head. If I want a breath of freedom for the rest of my life,” Deidra paused to strafe back from a kick that almost cracked a rib, “I have to do this.”

  “That’s why you entered the Olympia. That’s not enough reason to hit someone, not like you mean it. Why are you trying to hit me?” countered Galia. She jabbed the side of Deidra’s face.

  “Because you said to!”

  “Not good enough!” Galia shouted. She dodged to the side of Deidra’s frustrated fist.

  “Because I need practice!” she tried.

  “No, that’s not it! Switch!” Galia cried out. She fell back a few steps, but left Deidra with, “Think about it, while I’m gone.” Galia bounded for Rey. Kostic came at Deidra.

  “Hey there, newbie,” she greeted with a heel driven for Deidra’s face. A pulse of instinct made her bash the shoe away with her invisible gauntlet. When her conscious mind caught up, Deidra’s first thought was how did I do that? It was a sentiment shared by Kostic, who stared with wide eyes. Deidra seized the opportunity to strike.

  She got to know each member of the Dreamweaver’s crew a little more intimately in the game of fists that followed. Each strike taken and received told her something about them, before the call of their captain to face another. The tightness and power of each punch despite her petite size told Deidra Kostic was a hard and frequent trainer. Switch! Demitri was lighter on his feet for such a large man than Deidra would ever have guessed. He also winced each time he threw a punch, betraying his large heart. Switch! Fogan was an artist in every sense of the word. He moved like fluid. He struck like a viper. He was the only one of the Dreamweaver’s crew that never smiled when he fought. Switch! Rey, the wildcard. His every strike was as brutal as Galia’s, as any other opponent Deidra might face in the Olympia. It was a hard lesson everyone had to learn, to live, but no one wanted to teach. His blows came often with advice.

  “Don’t duck so low that you get lost.” “If you kick, you’re sacrificing half your balance. Remember that.” “Never put more than half your strength behind a punch you’re not more than half sure will connect.” Were some of the pieces that stuck in Deidra’s mind. Switch! The captain, again.

  “Well, do you have your answer?” said Galia.

  “I don’t know what you want to hear,” Deidra shrugged her bruised, battered shoulders.

  “I want to hear what’s in your head, when you’re in the thick of the fight. What makes you angry. What’s going to keep you alive through these next challenges because, to be honest, it’s been pretty close!” Galia roared at first, but lowered to a rumble. A thought began to tumble through her mind. “What about Devin?”

  “What about him?” A hint of annoyance poked through Deidra’s voice instantly.

  “How did you feel about him?” Galia prodded. The last thing she wanted was to dredge this up, but if it was the anchor that would keep Deidra grounded in the fray…

  “I love him,” Deidra confessed. Her eye twitched. “He’s my oldest friend. My brother. The only person who knows exactly what I go through because he’s up to his waist in it with me.” Galia’s face showed none of the hesitation that bubbled through her innards.

  “Loved him. He’s gone now, Deidra,” she said, indifferent enough to make Deidra’s skin crawl. She gritted her teeth.

  “Rex killed him, I killed Rex, his crew tried to kill me. The wheel of revenge keeps spinning,” said Deidra, more hurt than angry.

  “But who’s fault is it really? Who is it that put you in this situation, really, Deidra?” Galia dug in, “Who forced you into a situation where you had to kill for a gasp of freedom? Who keeps you a servant with insane interest rates on loans they probably tricked you into taking out?” Deidra’s lips tensed with the grind of teeth behind them. “Who have you always been too afraid to stand up to?”

  “The Gold Standard! AAARGH!” Deidra’s fist pounded firmly in Galia’s grasp. Her fingers trembled against the stockpiled fury of twenty years in servitude. Twenty years of abuse. Galia hardly believed it, but she couldn’t hold the blow. She had to step aside, lest Deidra overcome her. Silence fell across the rest of the crew as they watched, paralyzed, their captain step aside.

  “Alright,” Galia smirked. She shook out her tired hand. “Remember that feeling. Keep it close. Switch!”

  The crew of the Dreamweaver had one more day to train, then rest, before the Thruway. They had every intention of sparring through the morning. With most of the hard-fought lessons taught in pain the day before, Galia planned to take things easier. She’d even give them breaks this time, while she disappeared behind a hill to pee, and pop a handful of taxotrol. That was before the remnants of the Hammer arrived, with the crest of the sun.

  “We heard there was some sparring going on in the hills outside the Forge,” said one of them. Galia recognized her by the long scar down the side of her face as Corelia.

  “That’s right,” Galia challenged, “For combatants that didn’t withdraw from the Olympia.” She knew on sight of them, though, that they hadn’t come to spar. Phase-blasters weren’t permitted in the Thruway, yet Corelia and the rest of the Hammer had their fingers inches from belts full of them.

  “Yeah, well… since you guys seem to be getting along so well, I figured we’d come give you some more advanced practice,” said Corelia. She drew her phase-blaster, but not before a shimmering blue ring of energy kicked her chest straight back. The crew of the Hammer tensed up around her. They searched the Dreamweaver contingent below, but none of them had a controlled thermal weapon, like the one that had thrown that first-degree ring. The burn was etched into Corelia’s collarbone, right through her clothes.

  “You heard the captain. Sparring’s for active combatants only,” announced a half-digitized voice. Galia, Deidra and the rest of their crew spun to find the speaker behind them. The voice had come through a jet black helmet with a bright yellow line across it. “Save it for the Reverie. You withdrew, so withdraw,” commanded the Terra Eagle. She pulled back the action of her thermal pistol, the same sleek shade as her helmet and exosuit. She was sure to flick up the heat to the third degree. “Unless you want something a little more permanent.” Corelia took the offered arm of a crewmate to climb to her feet.

  “See you at the Reverie,” she grimaced. The Hammer’s crew vanished one begrudging member at a time. Galia turned to face the Eagle instantly, while Deidra lingered with her eyes on the hill Corelia had been on. She wasn’t quite ready to face her masked savior, three times over.

  “Thanks,” Galia said, cautiously. She kept the cylinders that projected her invisible gauntlets tucked under her thumbs, hidden.

  “I despise cheaters,” explained the Terra Eagle.

  “You sure… it has nothing to do with your friend Deidra?” Galia dared. Deidra turned to a human statue behind her. The Terra Eagle’s scanner line turned to a dot, which shot to Deidra, then back to Galia.

  “Friend? I’m here for the practice,” said the Terra Eagle. She holstered her thermal pistol. The jet-disks in her exosuit boots shot her forward. Galia and Rey deployed their gauntlets instantly.

  “Hold!” Galia shouted to the rest, who lunged to join the fray. All of them but Deidra, who was frozen. They’d end up doing more harm than good, with six sets of fists flying.

  She managed to strafe away from the Terra Eagle’s first two mechanical swings. The third doubled Galia over at the waist. Rey slammed his invisible gauntlets into the side of the Eagle’s helmet. His fist reacted more than she did. It bounced back an inch before the Terra Eagle’s arm cracked across his face. It was a blur of motion that ended with Rey facedown in the grass. Galia charged with both fists cocked back. She rocketed them straight into the fluorescent green seam of the Eagle’s waist. Her exosuit lit with a grid of shock absorption. Her knee popped up into Galia’s forehead. She fell back on her hips. Before she could spring again, Deidra stepped between them.

  “Why are you h
elping me?” she demanded. The Eagle’s jet black gloves unfolded. Even when Deidra activated her own invisible gauntlets, the exosuit hung relaxed. Even when she threw her first punch, and the second, third and so on. “Do you know me? Do you pity me? What…” Each word was a punch that turned the Terra Eagle’s helmet one way, then the next. “What is it?” Galia propped herself up to charge.

  “Your father… had been betting on the Olympia Gold long before I started entering them,” said the Terra Eagle. Deidra’s fists froze, dropped, then opened. Her gauntlets dissolved. The mention of her father, after so many years, from the mouth of a stranger added fifty pounds to each of them. The damnable man.

  “You knew him?” muttered Deidra.

  “Wait…” Galia grumbled while Kostic helped her up. Her mind did backflips all the way to the Prelude, to a particular rumor she’d never heard before. “It’s true… you enter the Olympia to honor a friend of yours… who died in the games.” She shuddered at the fate that had left Deidra orphaned and in debt. The Eagle’s yellow scanner dot burned into Galia’s amber irises.

  “You… Kayn,” Deidra realized. The Terra Eagle turned on her glowing heels. She would have jetted off just then if not for the hand that seized her mechanical wrist. “Is it you?” The Terra Eagle turned her helmet back just slightly enough to be a silent yes. “You lost your friend? That’s what people say about you? I lost my father!”

  “He dug his pit with all his gambling,” the Terra Eagle returned in a horrifying robotic roar. “I was fool enough to jump in it with him.”

  “And then you killed him!” Deidra screamed. The Eagle ripped her exosuit arm away. She turned fully towards Deidra and Galia for a second, to pop her visor down with a button press. The only human part of what was left beneath were the smoky blue eyes Deidra remembered from when she was a child. The eyes that regarded her with the love of the mother she never knew, before she died. The rest of her face was a mangled mass of scar.

  “You have no idea what happened that day,” said Kayn the Terra Eagle. Her true voice was hoarse, like a long wheeze given shape. “Be careful of Daniel.” With that, her boots lit, and launched her to the top of the hill behind her. Deidra fell to her knees. Galia fell to wrap her shoulders in a gentle embrace. The Terra Eagle was gone.

  Chapter Twelve: Thruway

  “Welcome folks! To our third event: the…” Cybil’s voice sprang through the sickening dark. Eyes shut tight, fists clenched, Deidra was back twenty years in her mind. Then, she’d seen this event from the audience. She’d watched her dad jump down the black mouth of the chute. It was his body that came out the other end, floating loose in the normalization zone, free of soul. The last thing she’d seen on a viewing screen was Kayn turn on her dad before a deceptively kind Gold Standard chaperone guided her away. She’d never seen the woman again. “Thruwaaaaaaay!” Cybil blasted like a high horn note. Spotlights flared on. Deidra was back. APC 56 - it was her turn now. She’d have her eyes open on the other end of that chute if she had to strangle every last person in it with her.

  “Gear up, crew,” Galia mumbled to the five comrades she had left. Each of them had their invisible gauntlets as a failsafe, but there was so much more to use from the armory of the Dreamweaver. Galia has saved a lot of it for a challenge like this. Strict melee with one goal: put everyone you can down for a nap, or for good.

  Galia cocked back the machinated knuckle plate of her armored glove. It wouldn’t release its pent-up kick until contact with her next target. Rey reformed his multerium club with the press of a switch on its handle. The weapon’s thick neck almost doubled in size, its head stretching wider while its outside coated itself in steel. Kostic and Demitri each had a longer version of Galia’s kinetic batons - they were more like staves. Fogan had something that looked like a wooden katana, though Deidra doubted that was all. As for her, she donned Clarabelle’s gift. She flipped down the motion-tracking visor of her energy helmet. She turned the knob on its side until the sensitivity rating that floated in space before her rose to 40%.

  Fifteen human shapes stained the light around the steel hole in the planet; four crews pitted in opposition. The Dreamweaver’s six faced the Torrent’s five, the Terra Eagle’s three, and Daniel. Cybil’s explanation of the event bounced through the bleachers in the grass around them, down the Thruway, into the depths of Ares. The distant cheers of audience booths in the Thruway walls rose up on a breeze that played with the combatants’ hair. Deidra couldn’t care less what Cybil had to say this time. She’d seen this event a thousand times in nightmares. Edged weapons and firearms prohibited. Knock one another bloody. Surviving teams proceed. Last team awake gets the bonus. Deidra was more preoccupied with her breathing, the weapons of others and the clock ticking down.

  “Combatants, prepare to jump!” Cybil instructed with sickening glee. In a sweep, Deidra saw shields, energy clubs, beaded whips, handheld cannonballs and a ticking clock. At the buzz of zero, a steel plate scorched under Deidra’s feet. Whether or not she was ready, she jumped. Galia and the rest of the crew shot down like bullets around her, into the near-eternal tunnel.

  “Spread wide, like we-”

  Galia’s reminder was cut short by the audible crack of an iron ball on Demitri’s skull. Blood spurted once from the sides of the crater it left in his head. His eyes rolled back. The sinister orb popped itself free and zipped away for its next target at the will of the Torrent crew member who’d thrown it.

  “Damnit!” Galia screeched. Even she couldn’t hold back the human impulse to reach for him while his arms and legs swung loose in freefall. Galia knew he was gone already. “That’s a seeker’s orb. It tracks movement, so forget going wide. Box up, face out, and watch each other’s backs!” she issued. Her crew formed a perfect shell. Demitri drifted away while the killer orb ricocheted between The Terra Eagle’s crew and Daniel.

  It was a sight in itself to see the man glide around like a phantom in his pinstripe suit. The way he matched the Terra Eagle’s every mechanically-enhanced dodge with nothing but his formal humanity rattled the spirits of the other crews in their chests. Galia and hers had only seconds to marvel at it, before the Torrent flew straight at them. Smart, Galia realized, break up the competition. The five bodies of the Torrent blinked through the racing Thruway lights.

  The scanners on Deidra’s energy helmet told her just which one of them was coming for her. She leaned back from the studded end of a long, braided silver whip. It snapped back to the wielder while she snapped out the kinetic baton Galia had lent her. She brought it down with two arms, hard enough to blast her opponent straight down. She thought she’d knocked the girl unconscious until the whip lashed around her ankle. Deidra jerked down, out of formation. So simple a crack was just enough for chaos to flood in.

  Galia’s enhanced punch bucked her opponent straight back into space. He wouldn’t stir again until after the round. She glanced down at Deidra, wrestling with another woman and her whip. Something whizzed behind Galia’s head. Her head jolted to follow it - the seeker’s orb. She jerked back to look at the Eagle and Daniel, now locked in a stalemate of lightning fists. She couldn’t afford to let the shock in now, with the orb ripping through both her crew and the Torrent. Thankfully she hadn’t seen how the orb changed course, or she wouldn’t have had a choice on when the shock got in. Daniel had caught it with his bare hand and hurled it at them.

  The seeker’s orb missed Kostic by inches and struck one of its masters in the Torrent instead. A triumphant second left her open to a following strike by a crewmate. Rey shoved her from the lash of an energy club. He gave the attacker a solid bash across the face, then had to withdraw himself from the seeker’s orb. Kostic paid him back with interest by wailing it directly with her kinetic staff. The release of energy churned the already volatile chemistry of the orb. The second after contact, it exploded. The conscious fray of the Torrent and the Dreamweaver was blasted apart.

  Galia saw, when her sight refocused, Kostic’s arms cross
ed over her gut. Red trickle coursed between them. She’d taken the brunt of the shrapnel. Her eyes fluttered more with each second.

  “Stay with it! Keep to the edge!” Galia told her. Kostic tried, but her eyes had other plans. They had to shut. “No…” Galia mumbled. “No… no!” Her throat scratched up to a roar. She cocked her gauntlet back again. Galia spotted the nearest of two Torrent members and launched.

  Below, Deidra heard her captain scream. It was the first note of pain she’d heard in so calm and cynical a voice. It was the signal for her to flip the switch. To let the rage in. She caught sight of a passing maintenance window, full of servants in a uniform like hers. In an odd, furious clarity, she even recognized some of their faces. Dirty. Haggard. Destitute. Like Devin. Like her. And yet, this woman had opened her door. Let her into her crew. Galia. The name rang through her head in a different key than it had before. Deidra ground her teeth. She read the coming strike with her visor. She put her arm up to the relentless whiplash. This time, she took the strike of its reinforced beads with her forearm. An instant burn raced through her. Then the whip lost tension, just for a second. Deidra coiled it around her arm just as its wielder yanked it back. Deidra went right with it, up at her foe, kinetic baton flying. The collision of its neck and her foe sent the woman sailing backward across the Thruway, unconscious. It also put Deidra level with Galia and the others and left her with the woman’s whip. It was two Torrent members against four Dreamweavers.

  One of them went for Galia but was blindsided by Fogan. The swipe of his wooden katana revealed its true nature. It lit with the crimson runic designs of blazing hot thermal tech. With two swipes he left streaks of permanent skin damage across the chest of Galia’s attacker. A third across his neck put the man out. Fogan didn’t see the last Torrent member behind him, but Deidra did. She snapped her new beaded whip around the man’s throat. Deidra’s foot on his chest was enough to turn his face blue, but not enough to stop him from reaching in his belt for a second seeker’s orb.