by Dan Davis
“Do you see how the middle claw got stuck between the radius and the ulna, right up in the radioulnar joint? If it wasn’t for that chance occurrence, who knows what might have happened. The anterior and posterior claws caused massive tissue damage in their own right, obviously. The anterior claw passed through the triceps and Bediako would have lost the ability to straighten his left arm. The posterior claw sliced through a number of the extensor compartment muscles of the forearm, which would have immediately impacted his ability to make a fist or to grasp with that hand and it also severed the radial artery. Blood loss from that wound alone would have been significant but with the enhanced coagulant function in that body, he could have fought on.”
“Right,” Ram said, leaning in through the paused blood spray to get a look at the huge alien hand and the relatively short but evilly sharp claws where they hooked into the man’s flesh and blood. They were a darker shade of yellow than the mottled skin, almost brown. “But this one caught and the force was enough to tear his arm off. Makes you wonder if they should make our bones weaker and our tendons tougher. Break my bones but hold me together long enough to make a fight of it.”
“The connective tissue in your generation of this body form has been significantly enhanced from the Mission Three models, I assure you,” Milena said. “Skin, fascia, ligaments, tendons, all of it has been toughened and your bones are denser. Still, the force capable of doing this can’t be denied. Your best course of action will be to avoid getting hit at all.”
“That joke doesn’t get any funnier.”
“I agree but it’s the truth. Avoid being struck by it at all, for as long as possible.”
Ram sighed. “That’s what they told this guy.”
“What do you think he could have done differently in this moment?”
“I don’t know, I’m not sure he could have survived from this point. If had avoided blocking with his arm, he would have to lean even further to the side from his turning maneuver. There’s no way he could have kept his feet leaning far enough to avoid the trajectory of the claws and once he was down, the Wheeler would have him just as much as it did here. I think as soon as he decided to turn and face the alien at this point, it was only going to go one way.”
“So you think he should have kept running?” Milena said.
“Clearly, he couldn’t keep it up for much longer. These bodies can’t sprint for long. I know that he was lighter than me but look how much he was sweating after just a few seconds, the heat he must have been generating was enormous. What’s the air temperature again?”
“The arena is 19.6 degrees Celsius.”
“Right, so he had to turn and fight soon but I think he should have done more twisting and turning. Maybe destabilized this thing.” Ram couldn’t keep the disgust out of his voice. He hated being near even a simulation of it. The lack of eyes, mouth, a head, in general, might have been the worst thing about it. The worst out of a long list of horrible shit.
“Alright so we’ll keep trying to find efficient angles for your own fight,” Milena said. “But what do you think he should have done after suffering this mortal wound. I’ll play it and we can discuss it after. Tell me if you want me to pause or rewind at any point.”
Ram danced back just as the scene came back to life. Bediako’s shriek of anguish and terrible agony filled his ears, the blood spattered across both man and alien and the Wheeler thrashed its claws, flinging Bediako’s arm away, spinning through the air in a grotesque parody of the alien’s own locomotion as the two enemies clashed.
Bediako threw himself against the leading two legs of the alien, crashing against it with a fury and speed that rivaled that of the monster he fought. He hit it so hard with his body that the creature rocked with the impact, twisting itself, pivoting on the two feet it had on the floor. Bediako staggered with it, trying desperately to hold on with his one remaining arm. He failed.
The Wheeler moved so quickly, rolling and twisting so that Bediako, surely in agony, slipped on past it, just a little way. Claws whipped out again, raking down the man’s back and side tearing two gouges through him from the shoulder blade to the kidney on one side. Blood gushed from the wounds and it was all-but over.
Still, the man, his face twisted beyond all recognition, charged back at the Wheeler, heaving in air through the ragged breath of his chest. Heart and lungs inside, giving it their all. Bediako’s strength of will unfazed. Yet it was not enough, could never have been enough, in Ram’s opinion.
“Freeze it,” Milena said, just as the alien’s claws took out Bediako’s throat.
“What can I say?” Ram said. “We’ve been over this so many times. I think the bosses back then messed up when they gave him a brief to prolong the fight as much as possible in order to provide data. That’s a crazy thing to do. What hope did he have when he stepped through the plasma screen and into this place, if he was thinking that he was far from the Alpha for one thing and that even his own commanding officers ordering him to deprioritize winning. Madness, surely you can see it.”
“Of course,” she said. “That’s not something you will have to worry about. Winning is the only objective for you. And at least, with Mission Three, they got us this data. We know the top speed, or believe it to be thirty-one kilometers per hour. We got a good portion of the alien DNA from parts of Bediako’s remains. We lost this fight but we gained a lot besides.”
“Then I don’t see how much more I can learn from watching this,” Ram said. “I need to run additional simulations to try my own tactics, not watch failure over and over.”
“I agree but I do think this is a valuable exercise. More even than you know, perhaps, this will prepare you for the violence you can expect, win or lose. I want you to feel at home inside the arena, so that when you walk out there, you will be used to what it’s like and so you won’t be distracted by the environment. We’ll run our simulations, as many as we can per session but you need to see this also.”
“The blood is pretty striking against the dark background,” Ram said. “I know you guys said that the lighting in here comes out of the floor and walls and stuff but I don’t really get it. The light comes out of the dark floor? That doesn’t make sense.”
Milena sighed. She had little time for questions that she thought were pointless or that distracted from his specific mission goals. “It’s not so strange as you might think. The surface seems to be some strange silicon alloy, presumably, it conducts energy and throws off photons. Whatever the mechanism, it creates this even light of about four hundred lux, which is something like dawn or dusk on Earth. Actually ideal lighting conditions for human visual acuity.”
“Right,” Ram said, looking round. The ceiling was so far away, for a moment he felt as though he were looking down into a vast crater. He closed his eyes until the disorientation passed. “Do you think it’s a coincidence that the light is so good for us?”
“How can it be? Of all the potential lighting conditions you could have on all the planets that could harbor life, from different types of stars and the proximity of the planet, to different atmospheric compositions, possible dust and particulates suspended in the air. That many variables result in a staggering number of possibilities. The chance that it just so happens to be Earth-like?”
“Alright but it’s still pretty dark. Why not make it full daylight?”
“The hypothesis is that the environmental conditions in the Orb Arena are an averaging of conditions on Earth and the Wheelhunter home planet. It might explain why the simulated gravity is point-nine g, why the lighting is so dark, why the atmosphere is composed of this mix of gasses and under this specific pressure. If we’re correct, then we can make a rough guess at the Wheelhunter’s natural environment or at least the planet that they originated from, if they are in fact engineered lifeforms.”
“So their homeworld is probably darker than ours.” Ram stepped up the horrifically lumpy hub in the center of the alien and ran his hand over the rough skin. “A
nd that explains why they don’t have any eyes.”
“Perhaps. It’s hard to draw definite conclusions but that is consistent with the hypothesis. We also assume that their planet experiences approximately 0.8g. Lighter gravity is assumed to allow lifeforms to evolve to be taller than they might otherwise be, although that’s not necessarily the case. And perhaps that helps to explain their notable form of locomotion. Cartwheeling this massive body around on a planet with lower gravity than Earth’s might be easier. And it might not be such a dangerous thing if they fall over.”
Ram grinned, poking at the skin of the paused Wheeler. “But when they’re here on the Orb, they are fighting in higher gravity than they’re used to. That gives us an advantage.”
Milena hesitated. “In principle, yes. In fact, as you can see, they do seem to perform quite well, no? No doubt they are training in the arena conditions, just as you are.”
“Right,” Ram said. “The Victory’s artificial gravity is 0.9g so that the Subject Alpha plus the boarding party are acclimatized when they get on the Orb.”
“The lighting and dark walls in the ludus have been designed to be similar, to ensure a feeling of familiarity or at least reduce the shock of the change in environment between ship and arena. We have a twenty-two point four percent oxygen level in the ludus which is higher than we would prefer and means we have to manage increased risk of oxygen toxicity, however limited that may be. Of course, if we are meeting the Wheelers halfway in terms of atmospheric oxygen in parts per million by volume that means that they are breathing a lower level than they would prefer. Again, though, it doesn’t seem to have impacted their performance.”
“Maybe if the fight went on long enough?”
He could almost hear Milena shrug. “Speculation.”
Ram poked the hub again, pushed on it. It was a tough surface and it barely gave at all. “The briefing notes say it breathes through its skin. Doesn’t seem porous.”
“It can be semi-rigid and still have microscopic pores, Rama.”
“Right, sure.”
“One thing we must prepare you for outside of Avar is the smell of the atmosphere inside the Arena.”
“It stinks of sulfur, doesn’t it?”
“Quite strongly so, yes. As Avar is incapable of simulating the olfactory experience, we will begin to fill the training rooms periodically with sulfur dioxide of ten parts per million.”
“Is that why they’re yellow? They’re from a stinking, volcanic, sulfuric world?”
“It’s possible, though the pigmentation could come from anything. Are tigers full of sulfur? Are lions or giraffes? It could be that the Wheelers or the species that made them live on a world with yellow vegetation and yellow skin is an adaptation for camouflage.”
“Have you considered that their volcanic world might be constantly spewing out great lava flows like on the Deccan Traps? There might be vast plains of basaltic rock which would be perfect for the rolling around on.”
Milena sighed. “Of course they’ve considered that, Rama.
“Do you think when we face future races on the Orb, we’ll have to deal with atmospheres more poisonous than we can deal with without breathing apparatus? What are we going to do about that?”
“It’s not something that you’ll ever have to worry about.”
“Good point.” Ram laughed. “Come on, inspire me about what the future holds again.” He knew by now that if he made it psychological, he was more likely to get his way with his driver.
“Do you really want to discuss this while a man is frozen in the midst of being torn to pieces?”
Ram leaned in and looked closely at the claw which was tearing the young Bediako’s throat out. The claws were about fifteen centimeters long in total and razor sharp, slicing through skin and soft tissue like a scalpel. Partly serrated along the cutting edge and partly axe-like in cross section where it joined the knuckle. A truly horrific weapon and there were three on each hand.
Ram really wished the Zeta Line would have allowed him his own weapon. Even a combat knife would go some way to evening the odds.
Bediako’s body had been ripped to shreds in mere seconds. Every swipe with those evil claws had opened up a new wound deep and wide enough to ruin his combat effectiveness and most of them would have been killing blows on an ordinary man. There was blood everywhere, in the air, on the floor and on both combatants. For once, Ram felt grateful there was no taste or smell in the simulated world.
“No, this doesn’t bother me at all,” he said to Milena, running his finger along the back of a blood-spattered claw. “It’s just Avar. Tell me about the future.”
“Fine, well, you know that after Mission Two the Orb told us we would have to fight with weapons and other equipment in the future. It didn’t really make sense, we’d just seen our great champion forced to remove his weapons and armor before being slaughtered in moments, why was the Orb telling us that? Did it know how we must have felt? Was it monitoring what we were saying and telling us what it thought we wanted to hear? Or would that have been its message anyway, does the Orb have a pre-set sequence of messages that it sends out to every civilization that it encounters?”
“And?”
“Personally, I think it’s the latter. Taking everything that it’s told us so far, after every mission breaks orbit, it seems like it gives us a little bit more context each time.”
“Why does it wait for us to leave? Is it afraid of us, maybe?”
“Hardly,” Milena said. “It allows our boarding parties inside its structure with no hesitation, even when our people are carrying projectile weapons, energy weapons, high explosives and all the rest. Perhaps it waits until we leave to ensure that we are following its instructions. It says hard luck, you lost now come back in thirty years. That’s a hard pill to swallow for us, let me tell you. In the transcripts from previous missions you can see how many of the marines and others on the ships and at Earth HQ are keen to board the Orb and try to penetrate deeper inside.”
“To what end?” Ram looked around the arena. “There’s no one home, right?”
“We really don’t know. It seems obvious to you and me that the Orb Builders are not present in the Orb itself. All indications are that the space station is run by automation. Advanced AI, perhaps or just a series of possibly quite simple algorithms. I could imagine it’s possible that the Orb Builders are operating it remotely from somewhere else in the galaxy, maybe with the faster than light communications that everyone says is impossible. But some people in UNOP are convinced there’s a man behind the curtain. If only we could blast our way through a few corridor walls we could find the control center or the alien queen’s throne room and force them to give up the secrets of the universe.”
“You’re not convinced then,” Ram said.
“I just think they would have more important things to do.”
“You know what I think? I think they’re a long extinct race. They built the Orbs, spread them through the galaxy to impose an order on the constantly emerging, warring civilizations and then they disappeared.”
“A popular theory inside UNOP but I don’t see why they would have to be extinct.”
“They evolved into a higher state of being, becoming pure energy or pure consciousness, maybe. Or they traveled to Andromeda so they had room to expand.”
“Room to expand? You spend too much time in Avar, those guesses have no basis in fact or even in basic reason.”
“Wow, take it easy. If they’re still around, where are they? Why not speak to us directly instead of through this… place?”
“Maybe they’re busy. Maybe there’s not many of them and the galaxy is a big place. The Orb indicated that there are many levels to our staged conflicts. Right now, we are fighting the Wheelhunter civilization. Us and them must be the lowest of the ranks. Maybe there are dozens or thousands of others at this level, fighting for a way into the Orb network. And then there’s a level above that we might reach one day, maybe in a tho
usand years, maybe never. In that level we have well-established cultures that are in direct contact with each other, trading and learning from each other. That’s what the Orb hints at, at least. And also that there is an elite level, perhaps just two or three alien races that run the whole show. Maybe the Orb Builders are one of those? Maybe all three of them designed and established the Galactic Orb Network together?”
Ram sighed. “I wish I could be around to see all that.”
Milena smiled inside his head. “Is this not wondrous enough for you, Rama?”
He laughed, looking around the vast chamber and at the paused image of the alien in front of him. “Sure. I just wish I had a weapon so that I could actually slay this demon.”
“I’m afraid it’s not going to happen. During the Mission Three final selection in the previous subjects were prevented from entering due to large organic structures integrated into their bodies and brains. Dr. Fo’s predecessors implanted all manner of pumps and hydraulics and whatnot to enhance performance, increase efficiencies. All quite brutal and mechanical but constructed from human tissue. It seems that additional organs and limbs are unacceptable for the Orb when surgically implanted. How it is able to discern such fine detail, without invasive investigation and in less than one second, we have no idea. Yet it does.”
“But I have implants. I have an inner ear speaker, microphone, receiver. I have the hormone regulators and stuff like that.”
“Indeed, which is a relief. Clearly, the Orb allows us this much, for these combats with the Wheelhunter, at least. The Mission Three Alpha had a number of enhancements. An artificial eye, a backup heart with a tertiary one intended to activate when the other two had failed, alloy rods molded to his major bones. Our Beta had fewer alterations on her body and in her brain but they were enough to trigger whatever systems the Orb uses. And so on down the subjects they went until they reached Bediako. That gave UNOP the Zeta Line which we replicated in our new designs for the next generation.”