by RJ Johnson
“Back to your corners and when the bell sounds, you’re on gents,” the ref said.
He backed away to his corner, never taking his eyes off of Kevin Chau. Chau did not look away either.
Emeline appeared at his corner and hissed at him to get his attention.
“Are you sure?” Emeline asked once he had crouched down to her eye level.
“Little too late for me to get cold feet, I’m fairly sure if I didn’t fight in here, the crowd out there would tear me to pieces,” he motioned to the crowd who was whipped up into a frenzy looking for a good fight and as much blood as the fighters were willing to spill. He pointed up to the VIP Box. “I even rated a visit from all those upper muckety mucks and they didn’t come all the way down here to watch me run away.”
Emeline laughed derisively, “She’s got other things to worry about.” Emeline was referring to the upcoming meeting of the Coalition Parliament on Mars. It was an annual meeting for representatives of each Block to air their grievances and vote on bills that would appropriate money to each Block for structural improvements. The Coalition Representative House had long ago been taken over by the Warlords, with each of them pushing their own pet projects. It was how it always was, the rich got richer off the poor. It was one of the biggest reasons Meade remained a Runabout and eschewed all politics regardless.
“Better her than me.” he said shrugging. The bell rang and he put his mouth guard in. “Time to go to work. Keep my seat warm.” He gave a mock salute to Emeline and moved cautiously to meet his opponent.
Kevin Chau was a brutal fighter. Over the hours and hours of tape Meade had watched, Chau had put ninety percent of his opponents down within the first two rounds. None made it past the fourth round. Chau was a master at timing the switch between Zero-G and the enhanced gravity, so that one minute he’d be flying a dozen feet over head, and the next, he’d be behind you dealing a devastating roundhouse kick.
Meade knew he couldn’t compete in a toe-to-toe knockdown drag out fight, nor was he as agile as Chau while navigating the G-circles. The secret to beating Chau was waiting for when he got tired.
Chau was in fantastic shape. He obviously spent a ton of time sculpting his body into the 235 pound powerhouse compact bunch of muscles he’d become. But all that effort came with a weakness - after four rounds of carrying his muscles around, Chau started getting frustrated and tired – and that’s all Meade had to wait for. Chau usually began to make his mistakes in the later rounds – he guessed that the anger Chau felt at his own failure to put someone down within the first few rounds degraded his judgment, and made him impatient. All Meade had to do was survive the first few rounds and since he was no slouch in the ring himself he was looking forward to see how the fight would play out.
Chau approached Meade quickly and threw the first punch. Meade leaned back and felt the speed and power that had nearly taken his jaw off whiz in front of him. Meade followed up Chau’s initial missed punch with a shot to his right ribs, and felt his hand explode in pain.
He drew back away from Chau, shaking his hand. He had nearly broken it while attempting to hit what should have been the soft meat of Chau’s kidneys. Instead, it had felt like he had just punched concrete. Chau grimaced slightly, and turned back towards Meade as he threw a haymaker down on him.
It felt like Chau had brought the hammer of God down on his head. Meade fell to the ground, his bell thoroughly rung. Dazed, he looked up through the stars to see Chau bringing his foot down with a kick to try and finish the job.
Meade barely rolled out of the way and retreated to the side of the ring as Chau cautiously followed him. He brought a glove up to his temple and felt the slick warm heat of blood flowing down his ear. His eyes narrowed and he looked closely at his opponent who was still stalking him around the ring.
Chau hit hard, but nobody hit that hard and his fists had felt like steel. Meade cocked his head looking closely at his opponent’s thin fighting gloves. There, he could see the individual bumps of Chau’s knuckles protruding which didn’t look quite right. That’s when he figured it out - the bastard had brass knuckles – literally.
Cyber enhancement had become incredibly popular for the general public over the last few years but it usually came with strict regulations. For instance, a fighter who found in the Zero-G fights was prohibited from having anything installed on his person that might give him an advantage over a natural born human being.
Meade felt his right hand throbbing and he shook it, hoping to relieve the pain a bit. He had no doubt that Chau also had body armor installed under his skin in addition to the brass knuckles. Chau had to be in an incredible amount of pain – they scanned fighters directly before every match in order to avoid situations like this which meant that the fighter had to have the microsurgery to install his enhancements only ten minutes before entering the ring with him. Any half-decent surgeon could do the surgery anywhere at any time, but, the amount of pain Chau had to be in was unbelievable. Too much anesthesia and Chau wouldn’t be able to effectively fight, too little and he’d be disabled by the pain.
Generally cyber enhancement surgery took a person anywhere from two to three weeks to fully recover and here Chau was fighting in one of the most brutal places on Mars less than ten minutes after his surgeries.
Meade wiped the blood out of his eye and realized this fight just got a whole lot tougher than he ever imagined. Fifty to one was generous, he thought to himself, continuing his cautious retreat.
The crowd didn’t like it. They wanted to see a fight, not two men chasing after each other. They booed Meade as he moved to stay away from Chau’s deadly fists.
The circle below him flashed green and a red 0 appeared. Meade ran towards the circle jumped and felt gravity let go. He floated up to the top of the ring, pushed his feet off the side and flipped over Chau. He landed gracefully behind Chau and swept the black man’s legs out from under him. Chau went down hard.
He retreated to the circle next to them that was flashing and waited patiently for his opponent to get back up. Kevin recovered, growled and turned, seeing Meade standing behind him with a smirk on his face.
Chau roared and charged at him. Waiting for the last possible instant, he jumped just as the flashing circle he was standing on flipped from normal gravity to zero-g. He flew up and over Chau as the brutal fighter charged him, but found nothing but empty space. Chau lost his footing and crashed headfirst into one of the metal poles that held up the ring.
The crowd roared in approval of Meade’s sneaky move as he slowly landed back in the middle of the ring. He knew he couldn’t allow himself a second of celebration, Chau might be slow in getting up, but it was only the first round and they had a long fight ahead of them.
A bell rang signifying the end to the first round. He relaxed and walked back to his corner where Emeline was waiting with his water bottle and spit bucket. He removed his mouth guard and let Emeline spray some water into his mouth.
“He’s got body armor,” Meade said his face grim. He checked the free flowing wound on his head. “I don’t know if I’m actually gonna be able to beat him if he’s wearing that.”
“You’ll beat him,” Emeline said, trying to reassure him. “It’s either that, or he kills you.”
Meade shook his head and put his mouth guard back in, “Thanks for the pick me up Em.”
The bell rung and Meade stood. Round two - double the gravity, double the fun.
Chau wasted no time. The second the bell rang, Chau sprinted over to his corner and started throwing punches trying to overwhelm Meade. He didn’t expect a direct attack like this – Zero-G fights were usually a bit more graceful than just a knock down drag out fight.
Besides, his head and body that was taking shot after shot from Chau’s enhanced fists and it hurt. As hard as the man was hitting him, Meade was sure he was going to need at least a few days in the Med-Bay to recover, but if he wanted to recover at all, he’d need to keep out of Chau’s deadly reach.
Chau fell to the ground harder than he would considering the fact that he was sitting in twice the normal gravity. Most fighters trained in 2G gravity, so they would be able to stand up if they found themselves in this sort of exact situation and Chau was no different. As soon as he stood, Chau got up quickly and moved through the enhanced gravity as if he were walking through sand. As soon as he was clear, he moved back towards Meade who had taken the time to recover.
Meade didn’t let him come too close as he threw a strong right rabbit punch into Chau’s jaw. The initial punch wasn’t so much to inflict damage, but rather to distract Chau from the left handed haymaker that followed. Chau fell to the ground, his lip bleeding profusely, and the crowd leapt to their feet, the sound deafening. Meade heard none of it - his entire world consisted of the ref counting out Chau. Meade was breathing heavy, and his head hurt, but he was still alive, which was better than what some of Chau’s opponents could say by this point.
Chau got up slowly, and Meade saw a newfound, well, it wasn’t respect in his eyes, but the man’s thinking about their fight had definitely changed. He was slowing realizing that Meade wasn’t going to be like the rest of the soft cases he’d put away on his trip up the ranks.
Chau moved slowly around the ring, his eyes never leaving Meade’s hands. He was watching him, Meade realized, waiting for the right moment to strike – which unfortunately, was exactly what he was waiting for. Unfortunately, Chau wouldn’t get tired if all they did was dance around. Eventually the judges would be forced to call a draw and no one would go home happy. Meade would lose his million dollar payday, and Chau his shot at the title. There was a lot on the line for both of them, they just hadn’t figured out how to beat their respective opponents yet.
Meade decided to make the first move. If he could provoke Chau into one of his frenzies that he was so well known for, that would go a long way towards making him tired. The only problem was that Meade’s original plan had included taking a few shots here and there. With Chau’s brass knuckles and body armor advantages, it’d be much tougher to absorb any blows from him gracefully.
Meade looked behind him and saw the gravity circle he was standing in was about to turn from normal gravity to 2G. He moved to get out in time, but was caught.
Suddenly everything around him became twice as heavy. His hair clung annoyingly to his forehead and he pushed it out of the way with his glove. Chau halted his advance and watched as he waited for the circle to cycle through the 2G, knowing that the extra weight was tiring him out quick.
The weight on Meade was crushing and he felt his knees begin to wobble. He was currently trying to hold up nearly two hundred extra pounds. Meade adopted a defensive posture and faced Chau as he stalked Meade within the circle. Meade knew the second the circle changed from 2G to Zero, Chau would be on him in an instant, so he needed to be ready to make his escape.
Meade felt the weight suddenly lift and he jumped, hoping to escape before Chau could get ahold of him. He nearly got away too, but Chau was ready for his jump escape this time and grabbed Meade’s right ankle dragging him back down. He bounced off the deck hard and Chau hit him even harder in the chest knocking his whole body up against the side of the ring.
Chau roared with relish and continued to pound at Meade’s ribs and chest. He lifted Meade up and slammed him on the ground, his body bouncing off the rough canvas. Chau raised his fists in victory as the crowd leapt on its feet shouting its approval of the brutality. Meade felt the wind go out of him and gasped, feeling as if he were drowning.
The bell rang, signifying the end of the second round and saving Meade’s bacon for at least the next thirty seconds. The ref moved over to Meade and looked down at him.
“Are you OK to continue?” the ref asked him. Meade coughed and spat a wad of bloody flem onto the ring’s floor.
“’Bout as good as can be expected,” Meade grumbled.
“I need to know if you can continue!” the ref demanded.
“Yes goddammit, I can continue. Leave me alone so I can get to my corner,” Meade snapped and held the side of the ring for support as he moved to his chair that Emeline put out for him.
Her eyes were filled with both worry and disgust at his stupidity, as she watched him collapse into his chair. He didn’t even bother removing his mouth guard as Emeline rubbed Vaseline on his face and applied a thin strip of Dermablast to help seal his head wound.
“You take another shot like that from Chau, I’m stopping the match,” Emeline said firmly.
“No!” Meade said desperate. “I can beat him Em. Don’t stop the match. I can beat him!”
“Are you watching the same fight I am Meade?” Emeline demanded, “Chau is going to kill you out there.”
“He’s certainly trying his best.” Meade said, wheezing as he spat another bloody wad of flem into his spit bucket, “But so will the Warlord of the Elites if I lose this match and owe ‘em fifty g’s.”
Emeline’s eyes widened and she slapped him across the face.
“Oww… easy!” Meade said, rubbing his face. “I’m not taking enough of a beating in there?”
“You… You moron!” she spat out at him. “I knew that money was borrowed, but you took money to bet on yourself from Laszlo?”
Meade shrugged, “I have a system.”
“And it’s clearly working out real well for you too,” Emeline said disgusted. “What’s the vig?”
“Seven and a half points a week, nothing I can’t handle.”
“Nothing an employed Coalition man couldn’t handle. A broke-ass Runabout like you couldn’t scrape that kind of cheddar together if your life depended on it, which apparently, it does!”
Meade shrugged, “Either he kills me,” Meade pointed to Chau who was already standing in his corner waiting for the bell to call the fighters back, “or Laszlo does. Either way, I’m dead, or retired. Seemed like a decent bet to make to me.”
The bell rang indicating the start of the third round, “I guess we’ll get out which it is…” Emeline said sarcastically. “Best go get ‘em.”
Meade put his mouth guard back in and moved back into the ring.
“You fucking idiot,” she muttered under her breath.
The next two rounds saw Meade and Chau trade devastating blows. At one point, Meade even managed to trap Chau on the top of the ring’s cage, dropping him directly down onto a +3G circle. Chau nearly didn’t get up when the ref was counting him out, but managed to escape just in the nick of time.
Meade on the other hand had been pressed to his limits more than once with Chau. By the beginning of the fourth round, he was counting at least four broken ribs and his right eardrum was pouring out blood. His jaw was clicking every time he moved it and he was pretty sure he was missing at least two teeth. The man hit hard, even without his enhancements, but the vicious fight was taking its toll on Chau. Meade was pleased to see that his opponent was finally getting tired.
He moved backwards and accidentally stumbled into a +4G circle he didn’t see and felt the gravity overwhelm him. His legs protested the sudden new weight and he fell to one knee. He cursed himself for being an idiot and not paying attention to where he was standing in the ring. It was a rookie mistake, the type of thing that Chau often used to win his matches.
And he would not let this opportunity pass up either. Meade looked up at his opponent’s massive fist come down on his head and body. They were glancing blows, since Chau was doing his best to stay outside the +4G circle and attack his opponent trapped within.
Meade cried out after the blows rained down on him and felt to both knees. The ref appeared next to the circle and began counting him out.
“One!” the ref cried out.
Meade knew he only had a few more
seconds to get back on at least one knee, otherwise, he’d lose everything. Chau wasn’t letting up though, he kicked him in the stomach and he landed belly first on the rough green canvas. He felt blood trickling out of the side of his mouth, and he saw his vision surrounded with a dark circle.
“Four!”
Four? How the hell did he miss two and three? Meade wondered to himself, and he glanced down at the green canvas below him. He smiled. The countdown was nearing the point where it would switch the Zero-G again. It’d be close, but, he might have enough time left between the ref’s count and the countdown on his circle.
“Six!”
There was two seconds left on the mat. Chau had taken a step back not wanting to stumble into the +4G circle before he had won. He was a cautious fighter, and that made him incredibly dangerous. Fortunately, Meade wasn’t cautious, and that made him even more dangerous.
“Nine!”
The mat switched from +4G to Zero-G and Meade pushed himself up and off the mat, rocketing up to the top of the ring cage as the auditorium exploded in applause and cheers. Somehow, during the match, Meade’s scrappy fighting style had won the crowd over, and many were cheering him. He clung to the roof of the cage and glanced through the blood and hair that was blocking his eyes to see the Ambassador staring at him with a quiet smile on her face. She was enjoying this, almost too much. He looked back down at Chau who paced below like a trapped tiger.
The bell rang signifying the end of the fourth round, and the area erupted again in cheers. Meade slowly floated back down to the mat and limped back over to his corner. Fifth and final round, he thought to himself, if Chau’s not tired, I sure as shit am.
Emeline moved over to him, her eyes wide as saucer plates, “That was incredible!” she gushed. “How did you…”
Meade waved her off tiredly, and motioned for his water. She gladly obliged, spraying some into his mouth. He spat out his mouth guard and leaned back, hoping the dull aches and pains in his muscles and bones would just go away. Fortunately, one way or another in a few more minutes he’d be able to get the finest painkillers the Coalition had to offer. Failing that, two or three shots of Emeline’s special blend would do in a pinch.