by Dan Davis
Beyond that square was the Orb Arena itself.
One of the biotechnicians screamed and jumped amongst in a clatter of empty aluminum equipment cases. While his team cursed his idiocy and incompetence and helped him to his feet, he took off his still-smoking helmet and inspected the way that the camera and flashlights on the front had been sheared off by the line of plasma.
“Close shave,” someone said.
Dr. Fo, for once, did not look amused. “If anyone else stumbles into that wall of deadly plasma beams, please ensure you kill yourself in the process or else I will do it for you.”
“Ram,” Milena said. “Please remember to stay away from the smokescreen. This side and the other.”
“I’m out of my mind with all these hormones,” Ram said. “But I’m not a fucking idiot.”
Ram's throat was constricted and his voice sounded weird. His sense of self was diminishing from the growing anxiety. He focused again on his breathing and tried to bring his awareness back to the ever-changing moment to moment consciousness rather than his impending painful death.
“There’s only a few minutes to go,” Milena said. All he could do was nod his acknowledgment. He marched back and forth near to the smokescreen, shaking his arms and trying to keep himself under control, every breath a conscious effort. His hands and face tingled.
While the technicians busied themselves setting up their equipment and everyone else gave Ram space, Bediako stepped up to him.
“You know that I was not selected as the Subject Alpha on the third mission, yes? Did I ever tell you about coming here, to this room, thirty years ago?”
“No.” Ram did not stop marching up and down past where Bediako stood, listening while the instructor spoke.
“They packed Subject Alpha’s body and brain with so much tech that he was basically a cyborg. Augmented to fuck, he used to say. That guy, an American named Duncan, he had metal fused to his bones, He had lenses grafted to his eyeballs. And we all kind of knew that he might not be allowed through the smokescreen. We'd seen what happened on Mission Two with the weapons and body armor. And yet there was the expectation that he would go through, be the one to face the monster in its lair. But it was always strange, how old Duncan had been selected as the Alpha but his performance was only better than anyone else's because he had all the augments. Without that, he would have been down the list, maybe not even in the top ten or the top twenty. So I stood here, right here in this chamber, ranked as the Subject Zeta, while the others waited their turn in front of me and others behind me. None of us knew for sure which of us the Orb would let through that smokescreen right there. We had been training for years and we knew we had to win if our chance came. And we all believed that there was a good chance that, if we fought, we would die. At least, I did. We never spoke of it, would not have admitted it. Then the Orb turned the Alpha down and he had to walk away. Old Duncan was crushed. All of them before me, Alpha, Beta and so on. One after the other, they all felt like they’d failed, that they had let everyone down, even though they never had a free choice about how many augmentations they were given. Fighting in this way is an idealistic activity, it attracts people who are obsessed with themselves, with bettering themselves. That is the nature of fighting. In a lot of ways, I let my spirit be defeated by my sense of self. I was young, then. Even thought I was fighting for humanity, my selection and my failure, it was all about me. I was ignorant to the fact that I was no more than a tool, a weapon for all of humanity. We all were. But you know, now, standing here again and thinking about it, do you know what I feel most of all?”
“No.”
“Anger. I feel a deep rage, right down in my guts. Rage at this Orb for doing this to us, for having the arrogance for forcing us to fight in this way for our existence. But most of all I'm feeling a murderous rage at that fucking alien out there right now. That hideous freak out there right now, that is our enemy, humanity’s enemy. Sure, the Orb is facilitating our conflict but the Wheelers want to take over our planet, our home. They want Earth. They want to colonize us. Us, humanity. How dare they, Ram? Can you feel the disgust? Can you feel the outrage? The anger? The rage?”
“Yes,” Ram growled, his body shaking, vibrating. “Fuck, yes. I need to kill. Get away from me.”
Milena walked up and Bediako stepped back to the safety of the medical officers.
“Can’t control myself much longer,” Ram said to her, hearing his heartbeat racing in the shaking of his voice. “Dial me down or I’ll wreck these people.”
“Focus on your breathing. Look at me, Ram. You know me. You truly know me and I know you. You know I trust in reason and honesty. Now, listen. It is my honest belief that you will win this fight. It's not wishful thinking. It's not my feelings clouding my judgment. It's the facts and my knowledge of who you are. I’m not dialing you down because I know that you can control yourself perfectly for a few more minutes. And then you will unleash everything against your enemy.”
Ram stopped in front of her and closed his eyes. Colors swirled behind his eyelids. He looked down at Milena’s beautiful, strong face.
“You helped make me the best version of myself. This moment, I'm the strongest, fastest, toughest human who ever lived. Because of biologists, engineers, administrators but also because of me. And because of you. I'm going to kill that thing out there. But if I die, know I'm happy I got here. And I don't care if no one else ever knows I existed. I know who I was. And you know. And—”
The Orb chimed three times. The clear pings ringing out and stopping everyone in their tracks while they sounded.
“That's your cue,” Milena said.
Ram leaned down and kissed her soft lips. My last kiss, he thought.
He stepped toward the center of the smokescreen wall and the technicians, the Marines, the doctors stopped what they were doing. And they applauded. They nodded at him as he walked by, clapping their hands all the way.
“You can do it, Rama.”
“Thank you, Ram, thank you.”
“We believe in you, Rama.”
“Kill that thing.”
“Rip it to pieces, man, come on.”
“Go, Rama Seti, you go.”
Ram's throat constricted with emotion to such an extent that he did not trust himself to speak without bursting into tears. He was not afraid. He was wound tighter than a coiled spring, his limbs quivered and everything in him was urging him to fight, to move, to shout and he knew he had to keep control of himself until he got through the fizzing smokescreen before him. He could not risk touching the thing nor could he risk hurting any of the crew around him.
The Orb chimed twice. The clapping died away and the technicians and everyone got back to work on their own tasks. Resuscitation machines and sensors, weapons platforms and communications. Recording equipment stood on tripods either side of him. Ram forgot them all and stood looking out through the swirling barrier at the vast space beyond.
“I'm with you, Ram,” Milena said, her voice sounding in his head. “All the way.”
He turned to take one last look at her but before he did so, the single chime sounded.
The swirling, deadly barrier parted, revealing the vast space beyond.
He took a deep, shuddering breath.
And stepped into the Orb Arena.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE – WARRIOR
The flawlessly smooth, shining black floor of the arena was a perfect circle with a 400-meter diameter. A huge space, as big as a sports stadium emptied of the seats. Above, the geometrically precise half-circle dome of the roof was a dark point two-hundred meters above the center of the arena. The walls all around curved steadily up toward the top. Light enough to see by came from a clear white glow that was thought to emanate through the black surfaces or perhaps even from the air itself. It was bright enough to see clear across the plane of the floor to the other side of the arena.
It stank. The air inside was just as he had been trained to expect and his head filled with the he
ady, high oxygen content, the vile stench of the sulfur dioxide. Expecting it didn’t make the stench any less appalling.
And there it was.
The Wheelhunter. Even from such a distance, it was a strange sight. That glinting sickly yellow, the smooth motion of the legs and hub contrasting with the jerking of the flailing arms with their wicked claws. It came on, lumbering toward the center.
Ram went to meet it.
He had run through the moment in Avar so many times that it was a familiar moment, like a recurring dream coming true. Almost a profound sense of deja vu. Layers of reality overlaid themselves. It was difficult to remember that if he died this time he would not respawn again and again until his Avar session was over for the day. Every move that he made would be the move that was set into reality, into the real history of the universe. There were no saves, no reloading.
The thing came on at a steady pace and he did his best to shake himself out of his dissociative state. This was happening, whether it felt real or not. The Wheelhunters advanced at a pace of around 1.6 meters per second which would bring it to the center of the arena in two minutes.
He would have to avoid the blade-like claws on the arms for long enough to get close to the thing. There was nothing he could do to cut the creature in return so he would have to use brute force to break the Wheelhunter's limbs and then beat it to death. He would have to work out the detail in real time as the combat played out.
In the previous mission, Bediako had been ordered to prolong the combat by evading the Wheelhunter, testing its speed and agility. By retreating and hoping to draw it away, all he'd done was allowed it to get too close and then found himself on the back foot as the encounter proper started.
Ram had options. He could charge the Wheelhunter first, attack it like it had never been attacked before. The surprise might work in his favor. It was the tactic that Bediako favored more than any other but that was only because the success of such a move would vindicate his own past failures. Still, it was the one approach no one had tried and so it was what Ram intended.
His other option was to back away immediately. To not go to the center and to keep away from the alien for as long as possible. Perhaps it would tire, perhaps it would be confused or unnerved. But it seemed like a long shot and the only attraction really was that it might prolong the moments until the combat was joined.
It rolled closer and Ram had his first indication that something was wrong. Something was different.
Ram stopped walking forward. He had about a hundred meters to go to the center of the arena.
“Milena, can you see this?”
“What should I be seeing?”
“It's bigger, I think. Yeah, I'm sure of it.”
“Hold on, we're checking the cameras.” She went quiet for a long moment as the Wheelhunter came closer. “You're right. It seems to be around ten to twenty percent taller than the Mission Three entity.”
Ram swallowed. “That's just great.”
He started backing away from the Wheelhunter, giving himself more time. His opponent did not appear to change its own speed or react in any other way. It just kept rolling on.
Milena’s voice remained steady. “It doesn't matter, Ram. We discussed this as a possibility. The strategic options remain the same.”
“You're right, I was screwed anyway so what's the difference.”
“Ram, you must stay positive-”
“No, I know. It's fine. Really. I'm relieved, if anything.”
She paused. “You are relieved because now no one can expect you to win. But you're just setting yourself up for failure. Stop retreating. You must go forward.”
Ram kept backing away from the alien. “I'm not setting myself up to fail. Honestly, I'm not. This fight was always all or nothing anyway, right? One of the lies you guys told me when I first woke up was that you wanted me because I was an all or nothing gamer. I thought I would win for a while. I think I’m better than anyone ever has been. But I've been holding on to the hope of survival all this time. Now I know there's no chance of that and so there’s no reason to hold back anything at all.”
Milena said nothing for a moment. “I want you to survive this. But you can only do that if you win.”
The Wheelhunter came on as Ram backed away continuously but it was catching up, slowly.
“I intend to win.”
“You can't do that if you keep running away until it chases you down. Don’t avoid this, Ram. It will close soon, it will accelerate faster than you can react to. You’ve seen it a thousand times. You know what your best hope is. Fight on your own terms. Remember the training.”
Ram watched the yellow monster growing larger and larger. The air stank, he expected that. But he thought he caught a whiff of the smell of the alien. A musky, strange, chemical stink wafted through the arena by the cartwheeling motion of the massive footpads.
“Bediako was told to run away around the circumference and that took him away from the smokescreen.”
“You intend to push it into the forcefield and kill it that way. How many times did we try it in Avar? It is too fast, too heavy. If you can get hold of it, you will be unable to move it and you are almost certain to be thrown into the screen instead.”
“Have you got any better ideas? How else can I hurt it? Anyway, I'm not going to push it in. The Orb's rules are that I have to kill it by my actions and it doesn't matter if I die in the process, right? So I'm going to drag it in with me.”
He looked over his shoulder and saw the murky square of the smokescreen about thirty meters behind him. He kept edging back without taking his eyes off the Wheelhunter. It would surge forward at any moment.
“The rules are not clear, there could be other interpretations. We may be losing nuance in the translation.”
“It's within fifty meters now so this is it. I'll draw it close as I can. Oh, man, it’s huge. It must be close to four meters tall. Oh, man.”
The creature’s feet slapped into the floor, over and over, the arms twirling. He recalled how many times his head had been crushed by those feet in Avar training.
“Ram, quickly, attack now before it rushes you.”
“No. I can’t do that, I need to use its momentum against it, I need it to be rolling fast.”
“It's at thirty meters, this is it.”
“Goodbye, Milena.”
The alien stopped.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR – CHAMPION
It stayed motionless. Two huge oval footpads on the floor, one behind the other. The base of the leading footpad pointed right at Ram, with another unseen balancing behind and the final two pointed up in the air, fore and aft. The two arms stuck out from the hub to either side.
“What's it doing?” Milena said.
Ram was about to joke that perhaps it was afraid of him. But he was too unsettled to speak. His heartbeat thudded in his ears.
Milena spoke softly. “We've never seen one motionless before.”
Ram looked closer and could make out the arms and hands moving slightly, up and down. The hub itself was expanding and contracting.
“It's breathing,” Ram said, his voice close to a whisper, afraid to do anything to change the situation.
“We think it's your proximity to the smokescreen,” Milena said, after a pause. “That's the only possible variable. It knows what you plan to do.”
“At least we know it’s wary of the plasma, that means it can be hurt by it.”
“Only if it went near it. Clearly, it is wise enough to stay away.”
Ram swallowed, his mouth dry as cotton wool.
“What would happen if neither of us moved? Is there a time limit?”
Milena all-but sighed. “You know we don’t know that. Perhaps the Wheeler would tire, weaken. Perhaps not. But we know that you would. You cannot maintain this heightened metabolic rate for much longer without losing combat efficiency. All you can do now is attack.”
Rama knew she was right. The thing was monstrous in the f
lesh, the wafts of sulfurous
“I can bait it into rushing me, double back,” Ram said and yet he found it impossible to move, almost paralyzed with fear. He was safe in that moment and taking any action would lead to agony, failure and death.
Milena’s soft breath in his ear. “You should take the initiative before you lose it.”
“I know.”
He had to move. He had to.
His body shaking with the adrenaline flooding his system, Ram took an experimental, slow step sideways, to his left.
The Wheelhunter remained motionless. As if it were rooted to the spot by the two flat footpads against the black floor.
He took another step leftwards and froze when the Wheeler shifted its balance toward him.
Each of the six legs had three ball and socket joints. One joint at the hub, another at the ankle so the foot could pivot at any angle and the final joint in the middle.
As Ram took his next step, the ankle joints on the Wheeler’s two grounded feet bent sideways. As if preparing to tilt over in a turn should Ram run away beside the wall, as Bediako had done in Mission Three.
Instead, Ram turned back to the right and took a quick two steps in that direction. The Wheelhunter leaned the other way and even rolled forward by a few degrees, ready to chase him.
“Alright, then,” Ram said. “This is it.”
Ram tried to remember what he had prepared for his last words. He knew it would be recorded for posterity and it had to be something profound but he was numb with terror and the strain had made him mindless.
“Fuck it,” he muttered.
He ran to his right for five steps, turned completely around and ran back to the left, not approaching the wall nor closing the distance to the alien, hoping that it would be enough to draw it in.