by Dan Davis
“I've been in stasis?”
Dr. Fo answered. “A chemically induced coma, you might say. You were in rather a bad way so it might be better to say that you were simply mechanically unable to achieve consciousness for much of the time. I’ve lost count of how many surgeries we have performed to transform your tattered remains into this fine specimen. Dozens of procedures, certainly.”
Ram assumed they were keeping his hormones at semi-sedation levels because he felt emotionally numb at the revelation. “You brought me back from death. Why?”
“Why?” Milena said, grinning. “What do you mean why? Rama Seti, you mad bastard, how can you ask us such a thing? You are the greatest hero of the age. How could we possibly allow you to die?”
Ram stared at her for a moment. “I'm the what?”
“Can you stand? Come on, you should be able to with the amount of augmentation in you.”
Ram climbed to his feet with ease and his head span only a little. “I feel different,” he said, looking down at his hands and body. On the outside at least it seemed to be the same as the last one, perhaps a little less bulky. “What augmentation is in me?”
Dr. Fo clapped his hands in joy. “As much as we could print off and cram into you.”
“What about the Zeta Line?” Ram asked.
Milena walked to the door of the clinic, speaking over her shoulder. “Re-fusing your nervous system lost you a few milliseconds reaction time so you cannot compete on the Orb again.” She stood by the door, waiting for Ram to join her. “But we more than made up the losses, as the doctor says, with a fully integrated suite of military-grade augmentations. Biological, cybernetic and neurochemical, you name it.”
“What the hell for?” Ram said, walking unsteadily toward her.
“We’ll get to that but right now we are on a tight schedule,” she said, her smile dropping momentarily. She thumbed open the door, revealing the familiar white corridors of the Victory beyond. “Thank you, Doctor Fo,” she called as she left.
Ram ducked after her. “Where are we going?”
“I want you to see this on a nice big screen.”
She led him to the Intel room in the medical ring. Ram had been in it before when they'd run him through the Disclosure process. The room was kitted out the same as before but this time, no Intel Officer waited for them. Just the big screen on the wall and an empty desk chair where he had been.
“So I guess Diego is still confined to his quarters?”
Milena settled in the comfortable seat. “Actually, no. In fact, he has been given the opportunity to repay the damage he helped to cause. But forget him for a moment. This is the time to celebrate you, Ram.”
“Celebrate me?”
The screen snapped into life and displayed a flamboyantly-coiffed Avar news reader in an old fashioned style studio handing over to a reporter who was recording a segment from within an Avar projection.
“Thank you, Andro,” the reporter said, before launching into the rapid-speak required to cram audio information into as tight a time frame as possible. “Yes, I'm right here in the latest must-visit Avar destination which has recorded over half a billion unique visits in the last forty-eight hours. The new Rama Seti commemorative square in New Delhi which has opened fully two months before the first annual celebration of his great victory in the Grand Arena of the Solar System Orb. As you can see behind me, the statue of Rama in his famous pose at the end of the already-legendary battle is one hundred meters tall. Cast from a hundred tons of copper, assembled on site and coated with a hundred kilograms of gold, the unconventional pose of the statue has been hailed as a marvel of Indian engineering. Although, of course, as well as praise, it has also attracted controversy. The building site was attacked by pro-human terrorists objecting to the UNOP’s use of Artificial Persons in its program which last year successfully staved off the potential of an invasion of the Solar System by a race of hitherto unknown wheel-shaped alien lifeforms. As well as IRL assaults, Avar users have also come under attack, with viruses, horror suites and doxing being the primary tools Avar terrorists and conspiracy theorists have used in efforts to keep people away. A huge security effort has been put in place on site as well as throughout the Avar network to reduce the threats but, either way and, as you can see behind me, the danger has not put off this unprecedented torrent of visitors from paying their respects to the man that many are now calling humanity's greatest champion, Indian Avar gamer and IRL superhero, Rama Seti. Back to you, Andro.”
Milena paused the replay.
Ram sat staring at the screen and the image of a statue of himself with his face half torn off, his jagged wrist held aloft and ready to be plunged downward into where the Wheeler’s hub would have been. A statue of Rama Seti, in Delhi,
“Is this real?” He looked at her carefully. “Is any of this real?”
“There's ten months’ worth of it, from all over the world. Articles, books, Avar, you name it.”
“How is it possible? How did they find out?”
“We sent all our data, all our records back to Earth. In light of your victory, that is to say, humanity’s victory, the Project decided that the time had come for Full Disclosure. So they released it. All of it. Well, most of it. And the world went crazy. It has taken them a while to go through stages of denial and adjustment. Currently, they seem to be ecstatic about the whole thing. And now you are the greatest singular hero since, well, anyone.”
Ram rubbed his hands over his face and laughed. “It’s like a dream come true and yet I don’t feel much of anything. It still doesn’t seem real, any of it.”
“You have a new body to get used to, all over again. This time, I hope you have a longer opportunity to enjoy it, to feel part of yourself, part of the world again.”
“You don’t sound too hopeful,” Ram said. “Do my chances of death have something to do with that stuff about the pro-human and pro-Artificial Person terrorists and conspiracy theorists waiting back on Earth?”
“It’s just the usual brand of extremists who are willing to murder people in order to protect the sanctity of human life. But there is a significant minority who believe the entire Project is a fake. That all the footage is staged, acted and computer generated. There are all kinds of videos supposedly proving that this is the case, demonstrating inconsistent shadows and utilizing elements of our conversations taken out of context. When you have so many thousands of hours of footage in the public domain, you can edit it to show any version of reality, of history, that you wish and many of these lunatics seem to be doing just that. But none of that is any of our concern, not in the least, so put it out of your mind.”
“Okay, sure, I understand. To be honest, I just hope I get the hero treatment rather than being targeted for assassination when we get home.”
Milena nodded. “As I said, it is none of our concern. Either way.”
Something in her brisk tone alerted him. “What do you mean? How long is it exactly until we get back to Earth?”
Milena stood. “Director Zhukov is waiting for you in the forward observation deck. He would like to tell you himself precisely what comes next for Mission Four.”
Ram had never been allowed out of a few key areas of the Victory, namely the ludus ring, certain medical and admin sections and parts of the crew quarters.
But Milena led him quickly through a long secure tunnel that ran through the ludus ring and into what she called the Forward Observation Deck, a section of the leading ring. A central strip along the floor of the room was a series of six rectangular windows joined side by side. Standing on the center of one of the middle windows was Zhukov, wearing his incongruous gray business suit, looking down past his toes and out into the blackness of space.
“Director,” Milena called out. “Ram is here.”
Zhukov waved him over while Milena hung back.
“Congratulations, Rama Seti,” Zhukov said, taking great care to dramatically emphasize his consonants. “Come here to me and look up
on what your victory has bought for us.”
Ram stood beside the Director, towering over him, and looked down into the absolute blackness of space.
“Is this supposed to be some sort of metaph—”
He broke off as the blinding blue and white of curve of the planet Earth rotated into view beneath him. The ship rotated fully once every thirty seconds and so the planet moved quickly beneath him. Swirling cloud covered the globe and the sunlight reflected off the water. Ram was confused. He knew there was at least another year before they would be near Earth's orbit, probably longer.
And something seemed wrong about the planet.
Most of the surface he saw was covered or at least partially obscured by the cloud cover but still there was something disturbing him until he realized what it was.
Then he was afraid.
There was very little land. None of it was shaped like Earth’s continents and what little land, in the shape of chains and clusters of islands, he could see through the cloud, was all shades of black and gray rock. No green at all.
“I know what you are thinking,” Director Zhukov said, peering sideways up at him.
“That isn't Earth,” Ram said, watching the planet move as the ship’s ring rotated him away from it.
“We are calling it Arcadia. The light reflecting off the surface of this planet and into your heavily augmented retinas is coming from a star called 55 Cancri, which is forty-one light years from Earth. A gift, to humanity, from the Orb Builders. A reward for your victory against the Wheelhunter almost a year ago.”
Ram’s voice came out in little more than a hushed whisper. “Funny, it feels more like an hour ago to me.”
“After your victory, the Orb told us it would maintain the doorway into the 55 Cancri system for us for one cycle. That means a period of thirty years. To keep it open longer we shall have to win the next battle on the Orb Station Zero, assuming that the Wheelhunters wish to challenge us for the system. The Project HQ ordered us to proceed through the wormhole and to take possession of the system while we could, with UNOP colony ships to follow us as quickly as they could. With continuing improvements in propulsion technology first of those ships should be here in a couple of years. We proceeded through and arrived in orbit around Arcadia sixty-two days ago. We landed probes immediately and a few days ago sent down the first party of marines, engineers and researchers to begin humanity's first extrasolar colony and take our place in the galactic civilization. Ex-Director Zuma is in command of the landing party. Her military background and semi-expendable status were an irresistible combination for HQ, it seems.”
Ram could not tear his eyes from the blue gleam of the planet as it passed beneath his feet once more. “The Orb Builders just gave us a whole system? With a habitable planet?”
“An immediately habitable planet, Arcadia here, plus what seems to be a habitable moon and two other terrestrial planets suitable for underground or enclosed colonies, as we have on Mars and so on, not to mention asteroids and dwarf planets so far unseen. A system so clearly attractive and yet uninhabited until the Wheelers were granted it thirty years ago, after we failed our Mission Three.”
“And they've had to abandon this whole system to us? They’ve just gone because the Orb told them to?”
Zhukov was grim yet that amused him, somewhat.
“We assumed that they had gone. We initially detected no Wheeler ships in the area although we have no idea what kind of stealth technology they may have. But we have a problem. A Wheeler ship is heading this way. It was in orbit around the sixth planet, on the far side of the star, when we arrived but it is now coming for us. It will be here in only a few days.”
“It’s coming to fight. And we’re not going to run? Can we beat it?”
“The Victory has some armament but it is not a warship. Nevertheless, UNOP orders are to protect our landing party and continue establishing an outpost on the surface. The good news is that we have reinforcements heading this way, executing an extreme breaking maneuver to join us in orbit and fight the alien ship. UNOP’s flagship, the battleship Stalwart Sentinel under Admiral Goro Howe had already crossed Saturn’s orbit when it was rerouted to the Orb wormhole and so to Cancri system. Its true power is classified, even to me, but it is the most powerful vessel humanity has ever constructed. There are hundreds of crew, it has fighter complement, UNOP Marines, projectile and energy weapons of enormous power. If humanity has a chance of keeping this system, we will have to fight for it.”
“I thought the Orb Station had gifted us this system as loot. Can it step in and help us?”
“It does not work that way. The Orb grants us access with the wormhole and, we believe, it cut off access to the system for the Wheelers. But it has given us, in effect, the legal rights to the system. If the aliens can fight us off, then they will do so. And fighting, they are. The Orb Builders never intended to stop conflict with their Orb Station Network, merely to control it, shape it. Even encourage it, but only on their terms. For us to join the galactic empire, we will have to fight for our place, in the Arenas and in the star systems all across the galaxy.”
“You picked a great time to wake me up.”
“I will be frank, Rama Seti. We need you. I admit that I was wrong about you, about what you could do with converting all your Avar experience into real life results. You have extensive experience in squad and tactical combat Avar gaming. Even before we arrived at Arcadia, we invested so much of our precious and dwindling resources in bringing you back because I knew you would be valuable. But since we arrived, I ordered the installation of as much military grade augmentation as Dr. Fo could possibly graft into your replacement body, some of it experimental and some of it, I am sad to say, currently untested, uncalibrated and inactivated. Because, Rama, we discovered that the Wheelers are still on the planet. Those filthy yellow monsters were deliberately concealing themselves in bases underground on the same landmass that we selected to land upon and our outpost has been attacked twice in the last four days. We have lost a number of people already and we believe the last attacks were only probing ones. Our satellites show the Wheelers are massing a few kilometers away for a full-out assault. You will be attached to Captain Cassidy’s Marines company as a special advisor.”
“You want me to advise the Marines on how best to fight the Wheelers,” Ram said, itching for combat for himself.
“They’re not going to fight them, they’re going to shoot them and blow them into small pieces. Your designation will be as an advisor but I want you to kill the Wheelers, Rama Seti. We need you to join Cassidy’s reinforcements, go down to the planet and help our outpost hold on to what you already won.”
Ram nodded slowly. He wanted this. “When do I go?”
Director Zhukov held out a hand for Milena, passing Ram off to her once again. “Shuttle A is fueled, stocked with Marines and waiting for you. As soon as you get to Shuttle Bay 1 and we are over the entry window for the LZ, you will be on your way. You may well be landing in the middle of a war zone. Our engineers have printed you an assault rifle and body armor suitable for your stature. The armorer reviewed your weapons proficiencies and provided equipment to match. He even made you a gigantic replica of the sword you used in an Avar called Shield Wall. You must hold against the Wheelers on the ground while the Victory holds in orbit, until Admiral Howe’s Sentinel arrives. Good luck, Rama Seti. If you manage to live through this next mission, who knows, perhaps you will have a long career fighting aliens for the UNOP Marine Corp. Now, Rama Seti, time to go to work.”
“Yes, sir!”
***
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Rama Seti’s story continues in Galactic Arena Book Two. Coming soon!
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TIMEL
INE
2039
First Orb signal received
2046
Hanno probe launched
2055
Hanno probe triggers Orb communications
2056
United Nations Orb Project (UNOP) Founded
2060
Mission Zero launched
2068
Mission Zero accident – contact lost
2079
Mission Zero arrives – contact reestablished
2090
Mission One launched – Ambassador Diaz
2109
Mission One Orb Arena combat
2123
Mission One returns to Earth
2124
Mission Two launched – Onca
2129
UNOP Combat Clone Project initiated
2139
Mission Two Arena combat
2140
UNOP Combat Clone Project prioritized
2153
Mission Two returns to Earth
2160
Mission Three launched – Bediako
2164
Commercial Avar System 1.0 released
2168
Rama Seti born
2169
Mission Three Arena combat
2174
Mission Three returns to Earth
2196
Mission Four launched
2199
Mission Four Arena combat
CHARACTERS
Subjects:
Rama Seti
India. Age 29. Avar Gamer. Subject Omega
Mael Durand
France. Age 31. MMA Fighter. Subject Alpha