by Alex Lang
The kick came-a brutal, precise axe kick to her clavicle, the kind of thing an enhanced sparrer would have padding for.
The corner judges moved in while the crowd cheered. Two of them raised her up to get her on her feet. Upper-division morons, Rolle thought. They heal up so fast they don’t get it. Grace trembled. Her gasps sounded like hiccups, growing in intensity and duration.
“Give her some air,” someone shouted.
“No,” he said. “She’s hyperventilating. Get a bag.”
Rolle faced her, his hand against the damp base of her neck. “Grace, I used to be in med school. Don’t turn your head. Try to look straight at me. We’re going to get you to a hospital.”
One of her friends brought a paper bag. He handed it to her, watched her fill it, in and out, in and out, growing slower.
Her cheeks regained color, dampened by more than perspiration. Tears without sobs. Tough gal. But she held his sleeve tightly, still shaking.
“I’m coming with you,” he said.
***
The hospital staff carted her away, after a barrage of forms and identification. Grace’s friends moved into a paneled-off waiting room where a television blared from their direction, a nice distraction for the unimpaired. Hospitals were Eyesore-friendly, probably because some law said they had to be. Down the hallway, Rolle found an old-fashioned corkboard wall mount filled with flyers. A blue sheet marked “Employment Opportunities” stared back at him. All the jobs he could do took more experience or more education than he had. Except for one.
Night-shift medical help. You can’t spar and work night shift, he thought.
The attending nurse turned out to be a guy he’d done pre-med with. A fellow dropout. He told Rolle they’d set Grace’s bone. He also complained about the number of sparring injuries they were seeing. Rolle thought of Grace’s new gambit.
“It’s just going to get worse,” he said. “Unenhanced sparrers are going against really big ones now.”
They wheeled Grace out, her arm and neck bound in black gel padding under a cloth
sleeve.
“Want a hug?” he asked.
“I can still kick you,” she said.
“Let’s get your friends and get out of here.”
“Where to?”
He thought a moment. He’d said he would move out, win or lose. He’d done neither.
“Your place,” Rolle said. “I live with my mom.”
***
Grace blocked a front kick and responded with a right to the bicep, just like Rolle had showed her. Now score the point, he thought. She did. She and the other sparrer faced off again, Grace slightly askew with her left foot forward. Even fully recovered, she still favored the shoulder that hadn’t been broken. They’d need to work on that.
She’d been right, though. The tournaments had grown in recent weeks, more non-Eyesore sparrers and more match-ups between enhanced and non-enhanced sparrers. She knew he hated the David and Goliath stuff, joked that he just stopped by to watch her kill herself. Actually, it was just the opposite.
Rolle had turned down a few drinks that night from old sparrers who told him he was crazy, asking why he gave it up right as the sport began a resurgence. Each time, he politely shrugged his shoulders, knowing they wouldn’t understand. Only Grace, so sure of what she wanted herself, really understood. He’d ceased doing something that he no longer enjoyed, that he couldn’t change. When he watched the others spar, he didn’t wish to trade places with them.
Grace gave him a sweat-damp kiss on his cheek. “Nice of you to stop by,” she said.
“Just on my way to work,” he said. “Try not to visit my office later tonight, okay?”
“I promise not to get slaughtered until after you’ve clocked in so you can be the one to stitch me up.”
As he left the sparbar, Rolle tried not to worry for her. She knew what it would take to win and, for the first time in a long while, Rolle thought he did too. For him, it meant med school. Next year. Night shift pay going to applications money. It gave him hope. Hope that he’d be accepted to a good school in the fall. Hope that he’d get a job to pay off the loans when he finished. Hope that Grace would see fit to keep an Eyesore boyfriend around a few more months, maybe longer. It wouldn’t come easily, but he’d chosen the long-term battle over the quick ones. More delayed pain. He called it a victory by decision.
One forgotten adventure
I HAD LITTLE CHOICE ABOUT getting jacked. I got my first cybernetic device plugged into my cerebellum so I could get a job as a mining scout. I wanted to return to the family business as a space jockey instead of a roid rat like my poppa.
The procedure went well enough, I suppose, but the medic was dreamy, and things just kind of happened. I mostly grew up on my poppa’s ship, see. Mining barges aren’t known as the most private places, and it’s not like I had had much experience with men. It wasn’t my fault I lost my new ship.
There he was, his thin fingers tenderly stroking the lines of a funky tubular gun. He was irresistible-so attractive, so androgynous-a nice change from all the mining hacks I’d grown up with.
“What’s that you’re holding?” I asked him, a bit nervous about jacking an ocular.
He leaned against my medical pod, with a skin-tight black jumpsuit with gold cuffs. The golden icon worn by all high citizens was emblazoned across his chest. That was it for me.
“This is a brand new CI unit. It’s brilliant,” he answered in an offhanded but cheerful way.
“See-eye, that’s supposed to be cute or something?”
“It stands for cyber installer,” he smirked. “You’re in luck to be the first patient in our clinic to have this privilege.”
“What privilege?”
“I will be using this brand new implement on you. Organic aesthetic, isn’t it?”
“Really, you gonna jack me with that?” I asked, feeling the muscles of my neck tighten.
“There’s always a first time for everything,” he chirped.
“That’s not reassuring.”
“I can assure you the CI has been virtually modeled,” he said as he walked confidently towards me. Christ, I would have gotten out of that pod right then and there, but the cool markings that ran along his temples got to me. They led to his sparkling eyes. I’m not talking metaphorically, they actually sparkled, probably the result of too many components in his skull.
God, he’s cute and he must be rich, I thought as I stared at him.
“Well, shall we proceed, Daria?”
“I suppose,” I agreed. I should have known right then to stay away from him, high citizen and all.
“It’s quite safe,” he whispered in my ear.
“I bet,” I muttered, scared out of my wits.
His eyes, right in front of me, shined like the minerals embedded in the dark sooty asteroids my family used to mine. They brought me back to my childhood-the drumming of the barge’s engines, the smell of grease and ozone, flashes of drilling beams cutting through the darkness of space. I imagined my poppa standing by a port window, looking into what he called
“the endless, unforgiving void.”
I remember the day when he spotted what every miner dreaded.
“Poppa? What’s wrong?” I asked. I was only a kid, you know, and it was a really, really shitty thing to happen to anybody … Christ.
“Raiders,” he yelled. “Go get safe, Daria.”
***
I woke up in that medical pod all confused. I’m thinking, my poppa spent his whole life saving money for one of those barges. “Go get safe” were his last words to me … that was the day I became an orphan, see.
“Hello there, Daria,” the medic said, reading my chart.
“Where’s my poppa?” I cried. God, I hate getting sentimental like that.
“Hey, take it easy.” The cute medic stood over me all smiles.
“Sorry, I was dreaming or something,” I explained and sat up too quickly. The room spun. The dark met
al, soot and grime of the mining hulk my poppa was so proud of were still all around me. I brought my hand to my eyes as the light was truly harsh. I took several deep breaths, and slowly looked around the medical bay.
“Congratulations, you now possess enhanced visual acuity. Welcome to the cyborg club.”
“Why is it so bright?” I asked.
“Not unusual,” the medic began to explain. “The photosensitivity is an effect of your improved level of perception. You will get used to it. I think you should rest here a bit longer.” He shot something into my arm and I zonked out.
***
The way the ship was reacting, I knew these were no ordinary raiders. The mining barge shook violently as more electro-charged slugs slammed into us, hurling me against a power relay. The hull rupture alarm sounded; that’s the last thing you want to hear when you live in space. I stood up and looked around. My poppa had gone off somewhere.
The barge began to tilt fast, so I went for the wall that was coming at me. I slammed into it and clung to the grating. It’s no fun when gravitational arrays go haywire like that. More weapons smashed into us … then more. The hammering slugs, the gravity fluxes … I’m telling you, that’s not anyone’s idea of a good day.
Someone picked me up and carried me in a different direction. “What are you doing? Where’s poppa?” I yelled.
The recently hired hand threw me into an egg. I was picked up a few days later by a survey craft. Got to be a ward of the Holy Empire for a while, in some stupid all-girls school. I was glad to be off on my own. Okay, I admit it, the medic was my first date.
***
I heard a soft whining sound and opened my eyes. The medical pod’s upper shell stood ajar. I sat up. The edges of things loomed at me; everything looked angular, not quite right. I inched my body to one side and placed my feet on the floor. No one was in the surgical room.
“Your scheduled time with us is ending, Daria. Please proceed to the exit,” the computer’s idiotic feminine voice announced. “You are medically cleared to depart, Miss Quinn. Thank you for choosing our medical facilities for your cybernetic enhancements. Please tell your friends about us.”
I walked out into the hallway, hoping to see that hot medic again. “Hello?” I called, but my voice was sucked away by the station’s porous walls.
I looked at my hands and noticed how full of detail they were-they appeared primitive, like the hands in one of those old movies. God, everything seemed so damned close. My stomach began to tighten. “Well,” I whispered, “this is what I wanted.” I felt my eyes welling up.
I heard a noise and turned to see him now dressed in a fancy leather vest and relic designer jeans. His naked arms were dotted with biolumen markings. His black hair was spiked with silver. I saw it, every strand of it. Most of us pilots get jacked eventually, despite the nasty side effects. Helps get the jobs, see. But, I was starting to freak. It was too much.
“Daria, I thought you had left.”
“You never told me your name,” I said, wiping my face. God, I hate crying.
“It’s Axium.” He smiled. “You look like you could use a drink. Would you like to join me this evening?”
I ran my jazzed up gaze down his crisp body. “Yea, what the hell,” I said, “but let’s take my ship and fly around the belts first. I need to try these new eyes in space.” The holographic data stream was supposed to give an “almost preternatural” visual response, according to the ads.
“Lovely suggestion, Daria, lead on,” he said, grabbing my arm.
I had preinstalled one of those on-board navigation systems that allow for an “out-of-ship” perspective. I jacked in and, by the gods, I felt surrounded. It was downright freakish. Coming out of the hangar, we passed a hulking transport ship, a massive freighter and several standard haulers; only when we hit open space could I finally relax. Space looked amazing. Okay, maybe it was worth it, I thought, feeling a little better.
The Holy Moradi stargate was an arched golden thing pulsing with energy discharges,
“imposing as it is elegant,” as the dumb ads boasted.
“A bloody, holier-than-thou, waste of money,” my poppa would say about the look of it. I know why he talked like that. He didn’t much care for the ruling families, and his views on religion were, well, let’s just say he wasn’t the churchgoing type.
Axium was pruning himself. I knew my poppa wouldn’t have approved of him, either. We entered the gate, streamed away, and found ourselves in the next system.
“Very nice ship you have,” he said as he changed the pigment of his fingernails with some fancy pen-like device he pulled out of his pocket. “A recent model I take it?”
I laughed.
“I fail to see what’s so funny.”
“This frig a new model?” I choked. “You don’t know much about scout ships, do you?”
“Warships are a mystery to me.” He stared at me with narrowing eyes.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I said.
“Oh, I just thought since you were full blood you …” he paused.
“Yea, go on …”
“On never mind. It’s nothing.”
“You thought I would be rich or something, right?” I snapped. “Well, I ain’t. My family were roid rats, living in the belts. We used to do okay though.”
“I didn’t mean to assume.”
“Well you did, and …” I was about to let him have it when the comm system chirped up.
“This is the captain of the Stomata. We are under assault. Request assistance …”
“Received, Captain,” I replied, looking at the transceiver. The distress call came from a mining barge. “What’s your status?”
“We got some damned pirate testing our defenses, and we’re not done clearing this belt. Ain’t about to let some bloody Gurns run me out. Can you assist? There’s two-hundred creds in it.”
“You can’t be serious,” Axium said. “You’re taking us into a battle?”
“Damn,” I whispered.
“What? Damn what?”
“Well, it’s my first time, see.”
“First time?”
“Never fought the Consordium before.” I looked straight at him, smiled, and added, “Hey, there always a first time for everything, right?”
That medic turned whiter than normal.
God that felt good. It wasn’t really true. I’d been in a skirmish before, but the care bear deserved it.
“You’re joking,” he peeped.
“Don’t worry,” I told him, “this ship’s been virtually modeled.”
Axium didn’t say much for the rest of the trip. He just changed his fingernail colors incessantly with his dumb pen. I was feeling a little bad about the whole thing, and by the time we got to the belt I was gonna offer to place him in an egg and send him off. Then he opened his mouth again.
“I knew that I shouldn’t have asked you out,” he pronounced. “You did choose a lower quality implant.”