The third boy jumped up and down in excitement. “Me too!”
“Take it easy,” Kim laughed.
She turned as two young Hispanic girls, maybe nine, ten years old, stepped up to her holding more blue blitzballs. One of them, who had shocking-pink hair, looked at her coyly. “Could I have your autograph?” she asked in a sweet, sugary tone.
“Of course,” Kim said, taking her ball.
“Good luck tonight,” her friend said as she waited to receive her autograph. Kim took her blitzball and signed it, then spun it on her finger.
“Nothing to worry about,” she asserted. “Oh,” she added, “If I score a goal, I’ll ah…” She paused, thinking of an appropriate gesture. “… Do this!” She raised both hands, index fingers extended. “That’ll mean it was for you.” She grinned. “Okay?”
The two girls giggled quietly.
“What seat will you be in?” Kim asked.
The pink-haired girl ducked her head shyly. “East Block in the front row,” she replied.
“Fifth from the right,” the other girl confidently volunteered.
Kim nodded. “Got it!” she said, then turned and looked at the other fans still clustered around her. “Well,” she breathed, “I have to go, kids. Cheer for me.”
The three boys she had spoken to first urged her not to go. “Teach us how to blitz!” they chorused.
Kim looked awkward. “Hey, I’ve got a game to play.”
“Then teach us after,” one of the boys said.
She chuckled. “Maybe tomorrow.”
“Promise?” the third boy asked.
Kim smiled and held up a fist. “Promise!”
The three boys raised their hands above their heads in unison, then brought them down in a sweeping arc to form a circle at their stomachs before bowing slightly. Kim smiled as she recognised the Blitzball sign for victory.
She bid them farewell, then moved on at a slightly hurried pace. As she made her way to the stadium the excitement was palpable in the air, and many people stopped her to say good luck or to ask for an autograph. She smiled, greeted and thanked them, then continued on her way. All around her was the loud, echoing sound of the commentator from the stadium being broadcast across the city, building up the pre-game hype. The stadium itself was a two-hundred-thousand capacity structure with an outer skin of aluminium louvers, and interior lighting that switched colour depending on which team was playing at home.
Arriving at the gate she was swamped by another mad rush of fans. Somehow she managed to weave her way through the crowd and enter the locker rooms of the Fins without too much incident. There she met her fellow teammates warming up for the match, which was scheduled to start within the hour.
“Hey, Kimberley,” the Fin’s goalkeeper, Sarah, called as she spotted the blonde blitzer. The dusky-skinned woman gave her a cool nod, brown eyes briefly looking up from under a cascade of dark hair that hung down over her face from a half-shorn scalp. Sarah Gurlukovich had a dancer’s physicality to her, an aura that Kim could describe only as ‘grace’ - but she hid a lethal and competitive edge beneath it. Her tanned legs were crossed in front of her; long and perfectly shaped, they resembled the framework of racing motorcycles, curved and finely balanced. Standing, she seemed to balance en pointe like a ballerina.
Kim touched fists with her, then gave her a light kiss on the cheek. “Hey,” she returned, smiling. “You ready for this?”
“Bring it on,” Sarah said. She jumped up onto a bench. “Right?” she yelled to the others.
Kim and the other Fins cheered, high-fived and hollered in response, but fell silent as the door swung open. A man entered, a few years their senior, but intense and muscled, with an angular face like carved wood. Rugged, handsome after a fashion… but hard with it.
“Coach,” Kim greeted.
“You guys sound pretty psyched,” the coach said, taking a seat amongst them on one of the benches. His name was Gordon Dansky. He smelled like rich, strong tobacco, and the scent triggered a sense-memory in the depths of Kimberley Stefánsson’s mind. She remembered being a girl, maybe five or six years old, her mom and dad taking her through the streets of London past impossibly old buildings, to a gilt-edged hole-in-the-wall shop, all panelled with mirrors and advertisements for cigars. A man in there, selling packets of raw pipe tobacco, and the strange exotic textures that smelled like the air of distant lands.
The memory evaporated and Kim blinked. “Yes, Coach. Ready to rip the Blackhawks a new one.”
Dansky nodded, then made a dismissive gesture. “Don’t get cocky, Stefánsson. This isn’t going to be easy. Now let’s go over our tactics.”
The team gave a collective groan, but obediently gathered around him as he began to go over their strategies and the tactics of the opposing team.
Reclining against the edge of the sphere pool, which had not been activated yet, Kimberley Stefánsson appeared totally relaxed but in reality she was wound tight with excitement and anticipation. With her eyes closed she listened to the loud sloshing of the water collected in the run off trough and tried to ease the slight queasiness in her stomach. It wasn’t that she was nervous; she had played countless big games before. No, the queasiness came from the feeling of unease, of dread that she had been feeling all day. The feeling she couldn’t quite identify but which interfered with her concentration.
Around her she heard the garish hum of machinery that signalled the sphere pool was about to be activated. She opened her eyes as the two-hundred-thousand-strong crowd started to cheer, and stood holding a blitzball in one hand against her thigh. In the centre of the circular rim, which circumvented the sphere pool and on which she now stood, a ball of glowing blue energy gathered, sending sparks of light into the already charged atmosphere.
The air was filled with a tense silence as the energy ball grew, before it exploded outward in a shockwave of light to form a perfect sphere of water, which stopped inches from Kim’s face. The immense sphere of shimmering water rippled gently in the stadium’s artificial zero-g.
The crowd roared. Kim gave a smirk and reached out with her free hand to touch the seemingly solid surface of the sphere. But her gloved fingers broke the surface and even though the sphere was breached, no water spilled from the hole, kept in place by the inner core of an invisible dual-layer containment field which was a marvel of modern science.
Taking a deep breath, Kim plunged head first through the wall of the sphere pool and into the water within.
High above the night-time lights of the city, where the roar of the crowds and lights of the stadium had been muted by distance, a woman walked casually across the rooftop of a skyscraper. Compared to the twenty-first century environment of Port St. Lucie the woman looked out of place. She was dressed in a black, chitin-like exoskeleton, exotic and strange, bound with an organic buckle at the waist of her spare, whipcord frame. She wore a leather bag over her shoulder, a .32 pistol holstered in a vertical slit on her suit, giving her an almost archaic appearance.
The woman looked out over the darkened city through intense emerald-green eyes, her dark hair - tinged with grey - framing a face that masked doubts with severity. This was a woman who had carried too many a burden, for far too long.
Without so much as a glance at the stomach lurching drop below her, the woman known as Lorelei Chen walked out onto a concrete strut, which jutted out over the edge of the building. Looking toward the sky, her expression held nothing more than calm anticipation. As she watched, the blanket of clouds overhead welled upward in a sudden atmospheric change, slowly at first, then faster as a vast, writhing energy ribbon, as large as a mountain range, descended from high orbit and hovered above the city, whirling, lighting up everything around it with crackling forks of rainbow-coloured energy. A colossal, helix-like monstrosity which resembled some impossible molecular Möbius Strip. A spatial life form, a destroyer of worlds…
Far below, Chen could hear faint screams and shouts as people began to notice and re
act to the monstrous entity. But the gigantic creature did not disturb her. She was ready for this, as she always was. Somewhere in the thrashing surface of the energy ribbon there was a hint of movement and a flash of many alien eyes peering out at her, perceiving her.
Calmly, she reached for her leather bag.
At the stadium in the centre of town, the match between the Blackhawks and the Fins was in full swing. The crowd roared as Kim caught the ball effortlessly behind her back, before spinning gracefully in the water and sending it flying to her teammate in the centre of the sphere pool. Celestine, the team’s midfielder, caught the ball just seconds before a member of the opposing team tackled her from behind, sending the newly acquired blitzball out of her hands and into the hands of another Blackhawk.
Kim gave a malicious smile before kicking powerfully with her legs and aiming for the Blackhawk with the ball, who was now swimming fast in the opposite direction. Her speed gave her the advantage, and before her opponent even realised what was happening, the blonde blitzball star drove her guarded shoulder into her opponent’s stomach, causing him to release the ball - which went hurtling through the surface of the blitzball pool, flew into open air and bounced off the outer core of the containment field about a dozen metres beyond, returning with a splash.
The crowd roared. Kim gave a smirk then retrieved the blitzball, which floated lazily a few feet in front of her. The team regrouped, taking position for the next play. As she moved, she again felt a flutter of uneasiness, and involuntarily looked behind her. There was nothing unusual there… but for an instant she could have sworn someone was sneaking up on her. She shook her head abruptly and returned her attention to the match, which had just resumed, by the blow of a whistle.
She hesitated, watching her teammates, and immediately recognised the swimming pattern for a Sphere Shot, Kim’s signature shot. The team’s right defence and the only guy, Ryker, seized the ball and instead of passing it on kicked it upwards with force. The ball shot upwards, barely hindered by water resistance, and broke the surface of the sphere pool. As it rushed upwards through the night air, just below the containment field’s outer core, Kim followed, her body undulating like a powerful dolphin as she moved through the water.
The crowd screamed in anticipation as they watched the blonde blitzer breach the sphere pool and form a lazy back flip with her body. Just as the ball reached its zenith, she flung out her arms and prepared to volley it towards the opposing team’s goal.
But before she could, and for no good reason, Kim did something she had never done before: she took her eyes off the ball. It was thus that she saw the colossal space entity suspended some distance away, above the harbour, moving slowly. The crackling surface of the thing, so much larger than that of the pool which held the game, rippled and twisted like fire and electricity, a hundred miles wide, and beneath the surface thousands of eye-like lights shifted and swivelled.
Kimberley Stefánsson forgot all about the ball, all about the game - in fact she forgot just about everything, her mind seized and completely blank as she gazed at the impossible, monstrous creature. As she stared in awe, her body already losing momentum and beginning to fall, the creature began sucking up the city centre in the mouth of an incredible vortex. The thing ripped up buildings and bridges as though they were paper, and crushed them into oblivion inside its horrific mouth-like core.
Feeding.
Consuming.
Below her a wave of water engulfed the crowd as the stadium’s mechanisms began to fail, causing the entire containment field to shut down prematurely. As the water began to break up and obey the laws of gravity, Kim too started to fall. She plummeted helplessly, but as she did so she had the presence of mind to grab the edge of the sphere pool run-off. Her fall jerked to a stop, wrenching her shoulder and almost breaking her tenuous hold on the stone barrier. She cried out in agony and confusion, barely able to think.
Below her the water of the sphere pool settled into the bottom of the stadium like a lake and the surviving spectators and blitzball players ran for the exits, which were already falling down around them. Still in shock, Kim’s only thought was to get herself to safety. Swinging her other arm up, she tried to grasp the stone run-off but before she could her other hand, the only one anchoring her in mid-air, slipped on the wet stone.
Kim felt her heart beat once with domineering loudness in her ears before the sickening sensation of falling seized her and she plummeted into the ruined stadium’s depths.
3
Kim’s first sensation upon waking was excruciating agony. She rose up from where she had fallen, her arm tight with pain in a line of new bruises, all along the points where she had impacted. She felt woozy and her hearing was flattened and woolly from the concussion of the collapsing building. She could smell smoke and dirt and a strange scent of crushed death.
She made it up to her knees and blinked; her vision was blurred like a poorly tuned video image, hazing from black and white to colour. She coughed violently, hacking up dust particles. What the hell happened? Before she could ponder it any further the sounds of panic reached her ears and banished all thoughts of pain from her awareness. Hauling herself dizzily to her feet, Kim steadied herself on a large piece of broken masonry and looked around. The stadium was in ruins and people, panicked and in shock, ran blindly around her. The water from the sphere pool, which had since run away between the gaping cracks in the ground, leaving only puddles and pools here and there, had clearly broken her fall. It had not, however, saved her from all injury.
Her wrenched shoulder ached and her body felt like one big bruise. Looking at her immediate surroundings, she recognised the entrance to the stadium. The two enormous marble statues, which had supported the banners of the two teams that were playing that night, lay crumbled in ruins. The grand archway, too, had fallen away in lieu of the powerful force which was assaulting the city.
This line of thought reminded Kim sharply of the reason for the destruction and the sight she had seen just before her rather ungraceful fall to earth. She walked a little unsteadily over the debris, her heart pounding, scanning the sky for signs of the hostile creature. All she could see was fire and ash and blackness beyond, whirling in cyclonic chaos. Dazed and confused, she almost walked straight into Lorelei Chen, who was leaning against a boulder of cement and stone waiting for her.
Kim did a double take, her mind swelling with emotion. Her stomach tightened. How could this be possible? It couldn’t be…
“You!” she said rather stupidly, blinking.
The older woman gave her a bland look and straightened up.
“What are you doing here?” Kim asked, looking around uneasily. Her eyes filled with tears. Memories of her father’s death assailed her in flashes. Memories of being shot, and left for dead, twenty years earlier…
“Waiting for you,” Chen replied simply. She turned, and walked across the smashed entryway, starting down the road towards, Kim noted absently, the source of the panic.
Kim frowned. “What? What are you talking about?” she demanded, but Chen was either out of earshot or simply choosing to ignore her. Kim gave a sigh of irritation and jogged after her.
Before she could catch up with the older woman, however, she slowed to a stop and looked with some concern at the panicking people jostling her from all sides, screaming, shouting. Everything was falling apart. She looked up once again at the titanic, whirling monstrosity of crackling energy above the harbour which was destroying the city, squinting her eyes, raising a hand to shield them from the raging chaos. Perhaps the most terrible thing about the horror was that it very slowly and perceptibly moved as it continued to suck up entire office buildings and skyscrapers. She saw the Magnatron Tower crumble into dust and enter the tumultuous vortex, and wondered not for the first time what the fuck it was and why it had attacked so suddenly. It was so huge! Like nothing she had ever imagined before. Then, without knowing why, Kim looked behind her.
Time seemed to congeal
. For some reason Kim felt a sense of relief, then noticed something rather disconcerting. All the people on the road had frozen in the act of running; the air around them seemed to waver as time slowed to a stop for only them.
“What is this?” Kim breathed, her lower lip quivering. She felt her grip on reality slipping, then time resumed an instant later and the people started to run and scream once more. She fell to her knees. The suddenness of it made her feel uneasy. The monster was so close now. Was it now sucking up time itself? She looked around frantically, and saw Lorelei Chen a few feet away watching her casually.
“Hey, wait!” she called and struggled to her feet. She ran toward the older woman and bent over panting. “Help me,” she rasped.
Chen ignored this and gestured upward. “Look,” she commanded.
Kim frowned, swivelled her head sideways and followed Chen’s line of sight. The vast monster was so close now, so large that it appeared to be directly above them, and extended to every horizon. Below the shimmering surface of the snapping energy ribbon, Kim could clearly make out the shifting scrutiny of thousands of eyes. She recoiled in stark horror, taking an involuntary step back, tasting bile.
“We call it an Asterite,” Chen told her.
Kim looked at her, face pale. Do we? she thought. Out loud she said, “Asterite?”
Chen didn’t answer, but continued to stare at the thing called the ‘Asterite’. It was then that Kim noticed the older woman was holding something in her right hand, a small device made from some fantastic material which glittered like white fire. With little hesitation Chen lifted the device higher, chanting in some strange dialect, and the object began to glow brighter, some powerful energy irradiating from its centre.
“Hold on,” Chen said then.
“What are you…” Kim started incredulously, but was cut off as the shock of an explosion knocked the breath from her body. Lorelei Chen suddenly appeared at her side, looking miraculously unscathed.
The Complete New Dominion Trilogy Page 55