by Barry Solway
“Where did they get the weapons? Is Kathor going to arm us for these things?” Jon asked.
“At the highest levels, gladiators are allowed to arm themselves ahead of time with preferred weapons and armor,” Anna replied. “Within reason. At lower levels, you can’t take your own weapons in, but the architects will hide caches of weapons, water and food in the battlefield. In some matches, they ban firearms or explosives. In other matches, they encourage them. It all depends on what kind of game the architects are looking for. The caches force teams to make decisions about searching for the supplies as much as the goal. In higher-level games, the caches are even booby-trapped, just for fun.”
“Is the other team going to find guns? Are they going to shoot us?” Sharon asked.
“We’ve been told this gauntlet doesn’t have firearms. This is a level one game, so the architects won’t want to spend a lot of money on supplies for the gladiators. There might be caches with water, food and some simple weapons. We don’t expect the caches to play a large role.”
Anna waved a hand sideways and the image changed. “This next campaign is in an old city that’s been taken over by the jungle. No firearms in this one, but they supplied spears and long knives. Kind of like machetes.” Anna’s finger flicked over her tablet and the view of a jungle came up. From this vantage, you couldn’t even make out the city below the foliage.
"No one died, but there were a number of injuries due to the bladed weapons. This also points out how critical strategy is to success. One side split up to find the goal. The other team took advantage and attacked with their full force. It was five on two. The teams don’t have much time to come up with a strategy based on the circumstances on the ground. So they end up making it up as they go.”
This second match was so bloody that Sharon turned away, burying her head in her arms, and Mel felt nauseous. She noticed that Jon and Nick kept averting their gazes as well. Mel felt like she was floating at one point, when one alien chopped another alien’s arms off with a large machete. The lack of firearms certainly didn’t result in a lack of carnage. There was a lot more blood and injuries than in the last game.
A few hours later, Mel stumbled back to her room, exhausted. Images of blood and hacked limbs drifted through her mind. Obviously, the strategies the teams deployed were key to their success. Teams were made up of six players. Mel didn’t fully understand this part, but each player was ranked and given an overall score. Each game had a limit on the total score a team could have. It prevented a team from having six people like Beast or Mirage and made for more interesting matches. This led to the first piece of strategy, even before the gauntlet started, as to who was going to be on the team. At least every player wasn’t a super-powered monster. Some of the aliens were indeed huge, even bigger than Beast. But others were smaller and obviously weaker than a typical human. On the other hand, some of the seemingly weaker ones had unique abilities, like the way that Mirage could shape-shift. She wondered what kind of score the humans would get. What she would get.
One depressing strategy was to have one or two team members with deliberately low scores. This allowed the rest of the team to be slightly over-powered relative to a more balanced team. Mel had an unsettling feeling that this would be part of Kathor’s strategy with the humans—make a team with a few low-score humans and then have the rest of the team be like Beast and Mirage. On the other hand, if the humans were sent in with deliberately low scores, at least no one would expect them to contribute much. That jungle looked like it had lots of places to hide.
After resting for an hour, Anna took them to the training hall. The wall in the original training room had been removed, creating a huge oval room larger than a basketball court. Anna paired each of the humans with a training robot, training with the sticks they used earlier. Thankfully, this time they started at the very beginning of a progressive training set.
“The sticks are good to start with,” Anna told them as she supervised the training. “Almost every scenario will have some kind of stick-like weapon you can pick up. And the skills translate to blades without much additional training. Even guns can be used this way, if you run out of ammo or get in close.”
Mel was more than a little perplexed by Anna. Was she trying to help them or was she completely in thrall to Kathor? And how had she developed such confidence and expertise in the short time they had been captured? Time was elusive at best, but it couldn’t have been two weeks yet.
The next two days were a mind-numbing blur. Two-hour physical training sessions, then a few hours of watching videos and analyzing the different strategies the teams used, then more training. It quickly became clear that a bigger problem than lack of combat skills would be physical fitness. Jeff and John were both in good shape from doing sports, but the training still pushed them both. With her years of dance and gymnastics experience, Mel felt that she wasn’t the worst of the lot, but the hours of stick combat training left her sore and exhausted. Nick, Evan and Sharon were hopeless. Surprisingly to Mel, Gorgeous wasn’t much better. The alien girl moved well, but got winded easily and would frequently stop to rest unless Anna kept on her. The typical games took twelve to twenty-four hours to complete and the combatants had very little rest time. And most of that time was spent hiking miles through jungles or around obstacles, as the gauntlets had no transportation. Gorgeous, Sharon, Nick and Evan would be lucky if they could hike for an hour without needing to rest and that would definitely need to play into whatever strategy they used.
Overall, Mel had no idea what to make of their first game or what their chances would be. As she went to bed that night, she mulled it over in her mind. The game was the day after next. She would wake up in the morning and they would learn the game conditions and the opposing team’s players.
If nothing else, it would be a relief to know what they would face and to find out if Kathor’s computers really were up to the task of getting them through it.
Chapter 15
Mel ran along the beach, the zombie man from the hotel chasing her. Like twisted characters from a video game, figures wearing bikinis, swim trunks and spacesuit helmets ran around them, shooting blasters and blowing up clouds of sand and each other. The sand slowed her and the harder she pumped her legs, the slower she moved. Finally, the sand sucked her down.
All the people in spacesuit helmets put down their guns and played volleyball on the beach. The zombie man lay on a towel next to her as she sunk lower and lower in the sand. He sipped on a fruity drink and when he talked he had Anna’s voice. He talked about tunnels. Tunnels were the way to get out of this situation. Whether he meant being kidnapped on a spaceship or being stuck in sand to her waist, she didn’t know. But he insisted that tunnels went everywhere and were definitely the way to go. As the sand reached her head, his grotesque zombie face leaned down, his mouth opened wide.
Suddenly, he turned into Jeff and Mel couldn’t tell if he was going to kiss her or bite her face off. “It’s the tunnels, Mel. They go everywhere. You should try the tunnels,” he said, still in Anna’s voice. Jeff’s mouth grew bigger and bigger until his head disappeared. As the sand sucked her down, she fell upwards into a dark passage with no end.
Groaning, she struggled to crawl out of the dream. Her eyes cracked open and she almost sighed with relief to see that she was still on the spaceship. A prisoner, but at least she wasn’t being eaten by zombies. She was up too early, but had no desire to risk going back to that dream. Shuffling to the sink, she splashed some water on her face, then went out into the main room.
Jeff was up, staring at the host of stars rotating outside the ship. She walked over and stood next to him.
“Going to be a big day,” she said.
Jeff shifted slightly towards her, almost touching her shoulder. Mel felt her heartbeat increase as she suddenly became aware of how close he was.
“Yeah. Look… I wanted to tell you… uh…” Jeff began. He paused and looked away.
Mel didn’t kno
w where Jeff was going and didn’t trust herself to say anything, so she just stared at him uncomfortably.
Jeff finally turned back, reaching out to take her hand at the same time. “If we’re both selected for the team, I just want you to know that I’ll protect you. I mean, we’ll all help each other and stuff. But, I like… I mean… I don’t want you to get hurt.” Jeff gazed at her with such intensity that Mel blushed. She quickly looked away.
“I appreciate that,” she said. She laughed a bit self-consciously. “I don’t want to get hurt either, so we agree there. And, you know, I like you too.” The moment she said it, a skeptical voice popped up in her head. Really? You like Jeff? Another voice immediately countered, Well, why not? He was attractive and athletic. Certainly he was the most physically capable of all the humans on the ship, especially with Riley sick. The thought slightly horrified her. Is that what made someone attractive to her now? That they were physically capable, able to protect her and be successful in a fight? A sudden bizarre thought crawled through her brain. What if they never made it home? What if she had to live the rest of her life on an alien planet? So much for a dog and the house in the suburbs. Worse, she had five human males to choose from for a life partner—Riley, John, Nick, Evan and Jeff. For a moment, she imagined dating Nick before quashing that line of thinking entirely. For starters, they were going to get home and she wasn’t going to entertain any thoughts that took her attention away from that. Secondly, it was really depressing to consider that this was all she had to choose from. Maybe she would just be a nun. Assuming she lived through the next two days.
Jeff coughed, bringing her attention back to the moment. He had been saying something that she completely missed and she reflexively nodded in response and said, “Uh-huh, sure.”
Jeff looked relieved for a second, then confused. “Are you sure? I know this is a weird time to bring this up. I don’t even know what it means, honestly.” Mel stared at him thoughtfully, nodding her head, while she desperately tried to rewind the last few moments and figure out what he was talking about.
“Yeah, I’m not sure what it means, either,” she said, fishing for more time.
Jeff squeezed her hand as his head moved in towards hers. It took her a moment to realize he intended to kiss her. She had a sudden flashback to her dream and barely resisted the urge to jerk away. As she tried to subtly lean back and avoid the kiss, the door opened and Anna walked in. She gazed at them blankly for a moment as Jeff took an awkward step back.
“Great timing, Anna,” Jeff said. Personally, Mel thought Anna had impeccable timing. Anna moved over to one of the pod doors to start waking the others. Jeff leaned into Mel, who was afraid he would try to kiss her again. “Should we tell the others we’re dating?” he asked.
Oh crap, she thought. So that’s what he had asked her. Mel thought Jeff’s comment that this was a weird time to bring this up was the understatement of the year.
“Let’s wait, why don’t we? Maybe we should talk more and figure out what we’re really doing first.” Squeezing Jeff’s hand, she pulled herself away without waiting for a response. She noticed Anna arching an eyebrow at her. Mel gave her head a quick shake and realized she may have rolled her eyes when she saw Anna smirk. But she didn’t want to talk about Jeff or dating or being stuck across the other side of the galaxy with a pool of exactly five guys. She wondered if there was a process for becoming a nun, or if she could just do it on her own.
“Hey Anna, do we have the data on the match? I’m dying to get this thing started.”
“That’s hilarious, Mel, really,” Riley said, rubbing sleep from his eyes as he came out of his room.
“If it makes you feel any better, you’re probably exempt from the first mission,” she replied.
“Yeah, I just get to die on my own,” he said.
Mel sighed. Making fun of the situation helped, but at some point the joking always became too real. “Assuming you don’t choke to death on the brown porridge first.”
“How can you two keep joking about this?” Sharon hissed. The bruising under her eyes had faded, but she looked like she hadn’t slept in a week. “We could all die tomorrow. Do you realize that?”
Mel winced. Sharon was definitely taking this the hardest. “Sorry, Sharon. It just helps us feel better about something that makes no sense. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Sharon stomped away. Mel really hoped Sharon didn’t get picked for the first mission. On the other hand, she wished that about all of them.
“Listen up, everyone,” Anna said, speaking over the low hum of voices talking. “We’re going to do a quick thirty-minute review of the game, then break for breakfast. You can discuss it, then we’ll start putting together a strategy.”
Anna faced the middle of the room and issued an invisible command. An image as tall as Mel appeared, projected down from the ceiling: a picture of an alien city, a few paragraphs under it describing the environment, and a chart to the side about the weather and terrain. Alien PowerPoint, Mel decided.
The game was going to take place on the world they were currently orbiting. It was in an old city that had been abandoned seventy years ago. The teams were six members each and each member was given a score that represented approximately how valuable they were to the game. There were three levels of games, with the skill and danger increasing per level. The way Anna described sounded like the difference between high school, college and professional sports. Kathor’s team would start at level one and the total score for the entire team had to be less than 125. While Anna had given them some explanation of the gauntlets, Mel realized she really had no idea how it worked. Did they have a governing body like sports teams on Earth or was it all underground and improvised? Who decided the points per team member? She wondered how they would rate the humans and, at the same time, was afraid to find out.
The presentation gave a quick overview of the abandoned city where the battle would take place. It hadn’t been large, just under a million inhabitants. Still, that made the entire city and outer ring over twenty miles across. They were going to be dropped off two miles north of the center of the city. The other team would be the same distance from the center but heading south. The image faded to a map that highlighted their drop point and had two marked areas, one in red and another in blue. The blue area was half a mile wide on each side, while the red area covered one square block. The blue area was three miles away from their drop point, directly east of the city center. The red area was the same distance in the opposite direction.
Anna pointed at the map. “For this gauntlet, the challenge is to get a goal. That’s a pretty standard setup for low level games. The goal is somewhere in the blue zone. You have to find the goal, then take it to the endpoint in the red zone. The goal will be hidden, and you’ll have to search for it while watching out for the other team. But the endpoint is usually pretty obvious. Sometimes teams don’t bother looking for the goal, but instead stake out the endpoint. We’ll talk about strategies later.”
“You’d think a civilization with spaceships could come up with a better game than Capture the Flag,” Nick said with a smirk.
“I don’t know,” Riley said. “Humans have been to the moon, but I still have to floss with a piece of string. What’s up with that?”
“Guys, would you please pay attention?” Anna said.
“Yeah, like you always paid attention in school, right?” Nick laughed.
Anna looked annoyed for a second, then relaxed and smiled at Nick. “I would have paid attention if I didn’t have my cell phone, I wasn’t high, and someone was trying to help me not get killed. You don’t have any excuses.” Nick sat back without a word.
“Burned,” Riley whispered, just loud enough for Nick and Mel to hear. Mel lightly punched Riley on the arm. She noticed Jeff frowning before returning his attention to Anna.
There wasn’t much else in the initial briefing. The city was pretty standard for the games, with abandoned vehicles and falling apart
buildings providing lots of cover and areas for traps and ambushes. They would have time to work through a route later. The presentation then switched to give a quick overview of the opposing team. Pictures flashed up while Anna described each member.
The first one was a huge blubbery mass. Nick and Riley immediately started making up names and they settled on calling him the Whale, even though he was more like an engorged eel. He stood on four slimy tentacles, several feet taller than Beast. The second was a wispy humanoid about Jeff’s height. Skin the orange-brown of burnt sienna glistened on a bald head. The translator indicated it was a she and the body looked almost like a human female, except she was grotesquely thin with gangly arms and legs. And that mouth. Shaped like the cross section of a starfruit, it took up half her face and when she “smiled”, Mel couldn’t help but notice the rows of teeth. Looking at her, Mel knew she would have nightmares. Riley named her Wicked. For the third one, Mel didn’t even know what kind of alien it had started as—humanoid for sure, maybe the same as Kathor. Both legs, an arm, some of the chest and the right side of his head had been replaced by a mishmash of cybernetic parts. Nick named him Junkyard. Even though Anna told them that cybernetics were heavily regulated and Junkyard wasn’t any stronger than he had been before his modifications, Mel wasn’t ready to believe the mechanical parts wouldn’t make him dangerous.
The next two were little lemur-like creatures that Anna claimed weren’t very physically dangerous but who were very clever and agile. Mel immediately chided herself for underestimating them just because they were small. Riley named them Thing 1 and Thing 2. The last one looked like Kathor. The alien man seemed nondescript, although Anna said that he had a reputation as a sniper. But this game didn’t have firearms, so Anna thought he was an odd choice and didn’t think he would play much of a role. Nick named him Marksman.
After introducing all the members, a table appeared with the individual scores of the team. Anna explained that the scores were general guidelines established by the game architects so the teams could be fairly matched. In this gauntlet, the architects limited each individual to no higher than a score of 45. Anna went down the list of the opposing team. The Whale was rated a 40. Wicked scored a 25. Mel frowned. Two team members had used up half of the total for the entire team. Junkyard was a 20 and Marksman came in at 15, while Things 1 and 2 were 12 points each. Mel’s understanding was that if someone had twice the score of another player, that person was considered twice as valuable. So, someone thought that two Junkyards were as valuable as one Whale.