by Scott Sigler
Chai didn’t like the bats; he didn’t like anyone, but there was a gold star next to the bats’ name on his list. Marcus swore up and down that the Creterakians had an entire covert agency keeping tabs on professional fighters. Chai believed it, liked it even less. They tolerated the mod-saturated sport of mixed martial arts for the same reason they introduced football to their conquered sub-races: it kept the plebs entertained and sedate. Unlike football, where any kind of performance-enhancing technology was banned to the point of imprisonment and/or death, the bats allowed them in MMA fights sanctioned in Creterakian-controlled systems.
Chai knew the reason. Mods elevated the fights beyond cheap distraction to grand spectacle. Besides, a football team was essentially an army, and the last thing the bats wanted was battalion of cyborg soldiers breeding in their own backyard. A fighter, on the other hand, was a gladiator, fiercely independent by definition, a lone warrior with a short life expectancy and no allegiance to anyone or anything except his own glory. In the bats’ eyes that made mods worth the risk.
Chai wondered if the Creterakians had ever read up on Spartacus.
Marcus met him in the antechamber a few moments before a fluttering Harrah page summoned them both inside. He was decked out in a formal tunic the color of hull rust and matching slacks. His silver-threaded hair was slicked and combed. He’d even shaved.
“So do I look respectable?” the old man asked Chai.
“You look like crap.”
Marcus laughed. “I love you, too, kid. Let’s go.”
The chambers of the Galactic Fight Council resembled a church nave, something evangelical and baroque from ancient Earth. The room was expansive and circular with a holofresco hanging overhead that shifted every sixty seconds to display a stained-glass-style relief of a different Hall of Fame fighter. The nave flowed to a dais on the other side of the room. The Council’s three senior members were seated behind the altar-like bench rising from it.
The center chair was reserved for Solon the Half-Lidded, an utterly ancient Quyth Leader. Many decades earlier he’d barely survived an assassination attempt, and as a result his single eyelid drooped, causing him to look perpetually half-asleep. Rising high to his right, Banshee, a Sklorno, was no less worse for wear after years as a competitor. A willowy titanium tendril with a high-speed image processor affixed to its end had replaced one of her four eyestalks.
On the far end of the dais, a huge lump of a creature the pink of fresh scar tissue named Shuti-Tom-Ko represented the Ki Referee Union. While not an official member of the Council, he had a voice in Council matters. He was still missing the digit Chai bit off when Shuti was forced to pull him from Parmak the Splitter’s prone form in a one-round blowout two years previous. Chai was fined astronomically, but Shuti didn’t seem to hold a grudge. It was part of the job.
The three beings were as fair and equitable a trio as you could hope to find in any bureaucracy. It was the Human to Solon’s left, the third senior Council member, from whom Chai was anticipating a possible reaming.
Cole Draba was a former heavyweight champion, having held the title for all of one month in his career. The opponent for his final fight was Marcus Diablo. Marcus ruined Draba’s hopes of a second run at the title and forced him into early retirement. He didn’t just take Draba’s eye; he damaged the socket so badly they couldn’t even reconstruct it to put in a new one. As a result, the left side of his face was a crater bolted over with a fitted grate, and Draba had spent the intervening years playing politics to keep himself relevant in the fight game.
If there was a way to beat down Marcus, and by proxy beat down Chai, Draba would use this hearing as his metaphorical boomstick.
“We convene here under the banner of the Galactic Fighting Association,” Solon began, sounding far more alert than he looked. “In deliberating the matter before us today, I will call upon our Human representative to be the voice of the Council.”
Chai heard Marcus mutter a gravelly curse under his breath.
“Council member Draba,” Solon prompted.
“Thank you. And as the Human representative on this esteemed Council,” Draba began, sounding so earnest he couldn’t possibly be anything but full of it, “and because we’re dealing with a Human fighter’s conduct, it’s been left largely to me to guide us on this matter.”
Another expletive from Marcus, and this time Draba’s voice began to rise.
“The Council has reviewed the incident in question, and our ruling is as follows. Chaiyal North will be stripped of the Galactic Fighting Association heavyweight championship and ordered to complete an association-supervised program on the ethics and philosophy of personal combat.”
“What about our appeal?” Marcus demanded.
“What about it?” Draba shot back, not even attempting to hide his perverse satisfaction.
“This is outrageous,” Marcus began, but Chaiyal silenced him.
He stepped forward. “You want the title?” Chai addressed the Council directly. “You can have it. Not even the chump whose waist you put it around will believe he deserves it. As for the rest, you can shove ‘ethics’ and ‘philosophy’ in the orifice of your choice. All of you. You want to teach me about respect? I showed Brocka more respect than you’re showing me right now. The only thing I owe you or anyone else is a good show. I gave you one for the ages. But you want it both ways. You want high buyrates and blood by the gallon, but you also want to show the galaxy clean hands and pretend you’re running a pads-and-headgear spar-fest that’s fun for all ages. You showcase warriors. Warriors fight and kill. It’s what we do. It’s what you make your living on.”
“You won’t see the inside of a ring until you comply with the Council’s mandate,” Draba informed him with relish in his undertone.
“Maybe not,” Chaiyal conceded. “But I will see you in the parking lot at the end of the day, you dead-eyed hack.”
Chai stormed from the chambers, nearly taking the doors off their hinges and decapitating two Harrah pages as he did.
Marcus followed after him. “Hey! Kid! Chaiyal!”
“I’ll meet you back at the hotel.”
Marcus never caught up with him. Chai left Council headquarters and was at the hotel just long enough to tear his suit off and change into workout pants and a To Pirates jersey. He had no intention of sitting in his room letting the hand puppets’ ruling chew his guts all night. Shuck them. They could score points on the cards with a few jabs, but they wouldn’t beat him. No one beat him. Besides, everybody wanted to comp the champ while he was on-planet.
And Chai was still the champ, period.
It was still early enough to catch the hoveressedari matches downtown. They gave him a private box. Chai sat and watched the tricked-out war-chariots skirt the foul-smelling air of the arena. Heavily armored Harrah referees buzzed just outside their field of combat. The combatants never fought face-to-face or hand-to-hand, barely peeked out of their flying batteries at each other.
“Freak show,” Chai proclaimed after fifteen minutes and split.
He decided to hit a few clubs. The Bootleg Arms had become the hottest nightspot in Ionath City since Chaiyal’s last visit. The music was the sonic equivalent of an industrial press, and the dance floor teemed with half-a-dozen different species, all of them performing a version of the same mindless, trendy dance. Flashbugs seemed intent on giving any susceptible being a migraine as they beamed nuclear colors in time with the music.
Chai swatted one of the creatures and shot the nearest pair of Ki bouncers a deep-crimson look, daring them to try their four hands at ejecting him from the club. They seemed stupid enough to accept his unspoken invitation until something stopped them. The realization of who Chai was, no doubt.
“Elder North,” a meek voice called from behind Chai. He turned toward it to find a Quyth Worker practically bowing at his feet.
“What?”
“I am Tikad the Groveling.”
“I’m never going to get this th
ing with you guys and the names.”
“In my case I believe it was both a personal observation and a jest at my expense.”
Tikad presented him with a tray containing a harp-shaped bottle of exotic liquor and a glass filled with ice.
“Our best, compliments of the new owner of the Bootleg Arms, who requests your presence in his private booth.”
The last thing Chai wanted to do was glad-hand another jerkface VIP and pose for pictures. Instead he grabbed the bottle and the best-looking Human girl sitting at the bar before splitting.
He was halfway through the bottle by the time the taxi brought them back to the hotel. Chai ditched the girl in the lobby after he decided he wanted to be alone. Nothing was distracting him tonight, and nothing would.
His suite was dark and cool and spacious and smelled of alien flowers. Chai entered the foyer, pouring booze down his gullet at a rate that burned his throat and frayed his senses.
Five feet past the threshold Chai realized he was not alone in the suite. He could smell them, sense them. Chai raised his right knee and smashed the bottle over it. Gripping the jagged-tipped glass neck, he whipped around and threw it like a knife. It would’ve speared the heart of a Human, but instead bounced harmlessly off the hardened carapace of a hulking Quyth Warrior.
There were two of them, moving to flank Chai from the shadows of the darkened room. Without hesitation Chai advanced on the one he’d pinged with the bottleneck, batting aside strikes from arms and pedipalps. Chai shifted his right foot behind him, bringing his opponent’s focus to his left leg, then quickly pivoted and delivered a vicious switch kick. A second before impact, Chai changed levels and turned it into a sweep.
His shin collided with the spade claw of the Warrior’s right hind appendage, shattering all but one of the digits and throwing the Quyth off balance. In the same motion Chai popped back up and used his other foot to stomp on the joints of his opponent’s left hind claw. The digits there folded with a wet crackling sound. Rather than allowing the being to fall forward onto his front appendages where he would still be a threat, Chai exploded with a front kick that sent the already off-balance Quyth onto his back.
The other Quyth Warrior was on him by then. It was impossible to clinch with a Quyth the same way Chai would clinch with another Human, by cupping his hands behind his opponent’s head and drawing it downward. Instead Chai captured and coiled an arm around each of the Quyth’s rippling pedipalps. He thrust his legs back and planted his feet, using the tight underhooks to control his opponent, to keep his body out of range of the Warrior’s upper appendages.
Chai brought knees up into the Quyth’s softball-sized eye. Its thick, leathery hood snapped shut in time with Chai’s strikes; the Warrior was experienced but that unaware Chai was only using the knees to distract him. Chai suddenly shifted his weight, twisting his body to the left with those muscled pedipalps still held in his underhooks. The Quyth’s surprised body had a choice: yield to Chai’s momentum or have its pedipalps torn apart. There was an ornate table in the center of the foyer. The Warrior’s carapace reduced it to splinters and shards as Chai released his underhooks and sent the Quyth crashing through the piece of furniture and sprawling onto the floor.
The entire skirmish had lasted only a few seconds. Chai spread his feet apart and bent his knees, waiting for the pair to recover, waiting to finish it. His hands were gnarled, knotted killing tools, and held aloft they were enough to take down a battalion. It didn’t matter to him that the fallen Quyth Warriors were now reaching into the belts of their gray pants for the plasma weapons holstered there.
“Virak! Choto!”
The voice was authoritative, and its commands were obeyed without question. A light filled the main room of the suite. The speaker, a diminutive, furry being, was seated in the largest chair.
“That was quite impressive,” the Quyth Leader complimented Chai. “These are two of my finest Warriors.”
“That wasn’t even a warm-up,” he said, and it was true. Neither his breathing nor his heart rate was the least bit elevated. “You should’ve let them finish it.”
“That is not why I am here.”
“Then you should’ve knocked. How’d you get in here, anyway?”
“I own this hotel, as well as the Bootleg Arms. You should know refusing my invitation was an inexcusable insult.”
“Do you hear me making excuses?”
The two Quyth Warriors advanced on Chai again; ready to go another round over his disrespectful tone. Their Leader snapped off something in the Quyth language, and they halted immediately.
“I appreciate your brashness. It is a necessary quality in a fighter. You are not like soldiers. You stand alone. You fight alone. You die alone.”
“Everyone dies alone.”
“That is a very philosophical point. However, not everyone stares his own mortality in the face and courts death with taunts. In that you are solitary.”
“I like it that way.”
“Yes, but outside the ring there are battles you cannot conquer without help.”
“What’re you selling?”
“I am Gredok the Splithead, Mister North.”
Chai nodded. He knew the name.
“Is that a To Pirates jersey?”
“Yeah.”
“You do realize you’re in Ionath City, home of the Krakens.”
“Yeah.”
“You do know I own the Krakens.”
“Yeah.”
“You enjoy antagonizing those around you, don’t you, Mister North?”
There was something about Gredok, something beyond the knowledge of his status as an underworld crime lord, which broke down Chai’s usual smart-aleck shield. Most beings Chai had encountered in his life filled the air with fetid molecules of self-deception every time they opened their mouths. Chai liked to chew it up with a heavy grain of sarcasm and spit it back at them. There was none of that with Gredok. His insight into Chai spoke of a being who cut through all the bullcrap.
Chai actually took a moment to think before answering him. “I enjoy reminding people like you why I’m allowed to antagonize them. I’ve earned it, by spilling blood and stacking bodies higher than anyone I’ve put on that pile. Until the day comes when I run into someone who can take me out, that’s how I’ll conduct myself.”
“Today is that day. I caution you against antagonizing me any further.”
“I want you to make your point.”
“My point is simple. You wish to fight Korak the Cutter. You wish to prove to the whole of the galaxy that you are the best fighter in it. I can make this happen.”
“How?”
“By brokering a deal for you in the IFA, of course.”
Chai laughed pure bile. “The GFA is going to bury me until I prove to them I can be a corporate champion. They’ll never release me from my contract, especially to fight in the IFA. They’d lose millions, in currency and in viewers.”
“These are matters of business, Mister North. They are best left to businessmen. You’re a fighter. Your concerns begin and end in the ring. I am offering to facilitate those concerns.”
“What’s the price?”
“All I would ask from you is a certain level of appreciation. A small amount of loyalty.”
Chai shook his head. “I don’t swear fealty, not to anyone, not anymore.”
If there was a Quyth version of the Human sigh, Chai thought he heard it then.
“Very well.”
Gredok shuffled from the chair, then past Chai. He was filled with the sudden urge to step on the Quyth Leader, but he suppressed it. He realized there was something he cared about more than losing the GFA title and being barred from every GFA ring, and that was the last battle he needed to fight to prove to himself he was the best anyone had ever seen.
“Shamakath,” Chai called to Gredok, surprising the Quyth Leader with the sign of respect and his correct pronunciation of it. “I don’t care who makes money off my fights. I don’t c
are about money, period. If you really do have the juice to get me in the ring with Korak, then do it. Just make sure your bet is big and your money is on me. You won’t have my undying devotion, but I’ll owe you one.”
Gredok made a gesture that was akin to nodding. He departed, Choto the Bright in his wake, the Quyth Warrior forced to bounce up and down on his upper appendages to compensate for his broken hind digits.
Virak the Mean, Gredok’s other bodyguard, the one with pieces of the foyer table still stuck in his carapace, lingered.
“Work on your takedown defense, tough guy,” Chai advised him.
“You gave Brocka an honorable death,” Virak said. “Let us hope I can return the favor someday.”
Chai was still laughing when the door to his suite closed.
Round Five: Doc Patah
When you’re the personal physician of the heavyweight champion of the galaxy, you get a few perks. Not a lot of perks because there is only so much luxury available in the single high-pressure gas facility in Ionath City, a fifty-story cylinder set right downtown near the football stadium. Still, being able to afford the best Harrah-specific accommodations the city had to offer made Doc Patah’s few hours of downtime quite enjoyable.
His room was on the top ring, with all the trappings of luxury. Most rooms were just a bubble. For the occupants to conduct business with any of the groundling species, they had to leave their room and go to a common area. Doc’s room, on the other hand, came complete with an airlock antechamber so that he could receive groundling visitors. That made it convenient when Timmy McMurphy wanted to come talk shop. All the boy ever wanted to do was talk shop, talk about ways of making Korak the Cutter faster, stronger, more resilient. Timmy, it seemed, had no hobbies.
But there was no shop talk now, just the pure release of air sliding across his hide. There was a certain irony in working for one of the best-conditioned athletes in the galaxy and having almost no time to work out himself. So when he got a chance to fly, not hover, he relished it. Doc Patah climbed, shooting straight up the cylinder’s hollow center. He passed some old ones, and some young ones passed him. That was the way of things.