Skyfire

by R J Johnson

  The crowd roared as bookies on the sidelines began taking last minute bets. Emeline pushed her way through the crowd and spoke with one of the bookies near it. He nodded as Emeline swiped the credits Meade had borrowed from the loan shark. She ducked under the rail showing her ArmBar credentials to the officials standing there. She approached the ring looking up at Meade giving him the thumbs up.

  He nodded and began to nervously jump on the balls of his feet to expend all the extra nervous energy he was feeling. No matter what happened next, it was too late to go back now.

  “In the Red Corner, standing at six feet, two inches, one hundred and ninety five pounds… the Martian Menace… James MEAAAAAAAAAAADE!”

  The boos rose in volume again which made him smile, Sounds like Chau’s got his fan section in attendance.

  The announcer leaned in to Meade holding the mic away from his mouth, “They’re out for blood tonight. I hope you’re ready to put on a show.”

  Meade didn’t respond. He had enough on his mind than to worry about putting on a good enough show so the moles didn’t riot by the end of it. There was nothing worse than Martian miners who were bored and drunk.

  The mood changed as the lights above Meade in the arena flickered. Three spotlights tracked over to Chau’s entrance ramp as fog began to snake out from the doorway. A low drumming began to echo through the arena as the crowd chanted Chau’s name. The drumming became more intense and louder as the crowd chanted louder and louder. The announcer stepped away from Meade and jutted out his chin.

  “In the Blue corner… standing at six feet, six inches high… weighing in at two hundred and thirty five pounds… from parts unknown… Keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevin CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAU!!!”

  The doorway exploded and Kevin Chau stepped out to the roar of the crowd. He stood looking out at the crowd with a grim expression. His black arms were covered in tattoos and snaked with thick muscle put on by hours of dedication at the high grav gyms. Swirling tattoos covered his exposed muscles, each one incredibly intricate in its design. As he slowly made his way down to the ring, the cape he wore fluttered behind him in a gentle breeze created by the deliberate steps he took down the ramp.

  Meade never got scared exactly - he always chalked up whatever he was feeling to an upset stomach. In fact, it was one of his rules that he had to keep him from making questionable choices. Rule Number Fourteen – Don’t get scared, fear makes mistakes.

  However, the second Chau stepped into the ring, he had to admit what he felt was the slightest tinge of fear stabbing at his guts. He swallowed it down and continued staring Chau down as hard as he knew how. Chau entered the ring, his eyes never leaving Meade as his entourage began taking the fighter’s ornaments off.

  Meade shook himself out of his fighting robe and approached the middle of the ring as Chau tested his gloves by punching his fists together. Satisfied, he approached the center of the ring where below them a large red number 1 was emblazoned on the green canvas. The circle that they stood within in the center of the ring was one of five that were scattered throughout the ring. Each ring (depending on which round it was) would alternate between zero gravity and higher than the Earth normal gravity.

  The manipulation of gravity was accomplished by a Higgs Generator – large machines embedded underneath them that had the ability to affect the amount of gravity that was on you at any one time. Higgs Generators didn’t manipulate gravity directly of course, instead it adjusted the relative strength of the Higgs Field (which gave particles its mass) within its target area

  After each round of a Zero-G fight, the amount of gravity each circle generated increased by a factor of 1. The second round’s circles alternated between projecting twice the normal amount of gravity and zero-gravity. The third round would have three times the amount within the circles, and so on and so forth. By the fifth round, if a fighter found himself trapped within a +5G circle, the fight was over.

  Suddenly, the Coalition National Anthem began blasting out of the loudspeakers overhead. Meade glanced away from his opponent for the first time since he entered the ring and looked up into the crowded arena.

  Above him a large procession was filling the VIP boxes. Two of the spotlights that had been fixed on Meade and Chau quickly tracked up to the VIP Box. There, he could see the Coalition Ambassador along with her chief of security William Hugh enter the arena in her private box. She paused and waved to the people she represented to the Coalition below. The crowd dutifully cheered, as the last bars of the Coalition national anthem trickling out of the stadium speakers.

  He was surprised to see Ambassador Andromeda Corcoran. He knew she was a fan of the Zero-G league, but he never imagined that she’d deign to attend one of his fights. He looked back at Kevin who still hadn’t taken his eyes off him, and realized she wasn’t there for him. She was there to watch Chau take him apart in the brutal fashion he had become so well-known for.

  The ref approached Meade and Chau checking their gloves for anything that might rub off into their opponent’s eyes. Meade didn’t figure Chau for a cheater – if there was one thing the Warlords took seriously, it was the Zero-G fights. There weren’t many stupid enough to cheat – there was far too much money involved and if one Warlord decided to cheat, they all would send the sport into a debilitating spiral.

  “Keep it clean gents, I see enough blood and I don’t give a good goddamn what you say, I’ll stop the fight. You get it?” The ref said in a gruff tone that left no doubt that he was a man of his word.

  “Roger that Cochise,” Meade said lightly and offered his gloves out to his opponent.

  Kevin Chau just stared at him, his black bald head shining with sweat. Chau was there for blood, but he was there to help Chau get used to disappointment.

  Meade smiled and winked at the man. Chau slammed his gloves into his fists as hard as he could.

  “Back to your corners and when the bell sounds, you’re on gents,” the ref said.

  He backed away to his corner, never taking his eyes off of Kevin Chau. Chau did not look away either.

  Emeline appeared at his corner and hissed at him to get his attention.

  “Are you sure?” Emeline asked once he had crouched down to her eye level.

  “Little too late for me to get cold feet, I’m fairly sure if I didn’t fight in here, the crowd out there would tear me to pieces,” he motioned to the crowd who was whipped up into a frenzy looking for a good fight and as much blood as the fighters were willing to spill. He pointed up to the VIP Box. “I even rated a visit from all those upper muckety mucks and they didn’t come all the way down here to watch me run away.”

  Emeline laughed derisively, “She’s got other things to worry about.”

  Emeline was referring to the upcoming meeting of the Coalition Parliament on Mars. It was an annual meeting for representatives of each Block to air their grievances and vote on bills that would appropriate money to each Block for structural improvements. The Coalition Representative House had long ago been taken over by the Warlords, with each of them pushing their own pet projects. It was how it always was, the rich got richer off the poor. It was one of the biggest reasons Meade remained a Runabout and eschewed all politics regardless.

  “Better her than me,” he said shrugging. The bell rang and he put his mouth guard in. “Time to go to work. Keep my seat warm.” He gave a mock salute to Emeline and moved cautiously to meet his opponent.

  Kevin Chau was a brutal fighter. During the hours of tape Meade watched of the man’s fights, Chau knocked out ninety percent of his opponents within the first two rounds. None had made it past the fourth round. Chau was a master at timing the switch between Zero-G and the enhanced gravity, so that one minute he’d be flying a dozen feet over head, and the next, he’d be behind you dealing a devastating roundhouse kick.

  Meade knew he couldn’t compete in a toe-to-toe knockdown drag out fight, nor was he as agile as Chau while navigating the G-circles. The secret to beating Chau was waiting for when he
got tired.

  Chau was in fantastic shape. He obviously spent a ton of time sculpting his body into the 235 pound powerhouse compact bunch of muscles he’d become. But all that effort came with a weakness - after four rounds of carrying his muscles around, Chau started getting frustrated and tired – and that’s all Meade had to wait for. Chau usually began to make his mistakes in the later rounds – he guessed that the anger Chau felt at his own failure to put someone down within the first few rounds degraded his judgment, making him impatient. All Meade had to do was survive the first few rounds. Since he was no slouch in the ring himself, he was looking forward to see how the fight would play out.

  Chau approached Meade quickly and threw the first punch. Meade leaned back and felt the speed and power that had nearly taken his jaw off whiz in front of him. Meade followed up Chau’s initial missed punch with a shot to his right ribs, and felt his hand explode in pain.

  He drew back away from Chau, shaking his hand. He had nearly broken it while attempting to hit what should have been the soft meat of Chau’s kidneys. Instead, it had felt like he had just punched concrete. Chau grimaced slightly, and turned back towards Meade as he threw a haymaker down on him.

  It felt like Chau had brought the hammer of God down on his head. Meade fell to the ground, his bell thoroughly rung. Dazed, he looked up through the stars to see Chau bringing his foot down with a kick to try and finish the job.

  Meade barely rolled out of the way and retreated to the side of the ring as Chau cautiously followed him. He brought a glove up to his temple and felt the slick warm heat of blood flowing down his ear. His eyes narrowed and he looked closely at his opponent who was still stalking him around the ring.

  Chau hit hard, but nobody hit that hard and his fists had felt like steel. Meade cocked his head looking closely at his opponent’s thin fighting gloves. There, he could see the individual bumps of Chau’s knuckles protruding which didn’t look quite right. That’s when he figured it out - the bastard had brass knuckles – literally.

  Cyber enhancement had become incredibly popular for the general public over the last few years but it usually came with strict regulations. For instance, a fighter who found in the Zero-G fights was prohibited from having anything installed on his person that might give him an advantage over a natural born human being.

  Meade felt his right hand throbbing and he shook it, hoping to relieve the pain a bit. He had no doubt that Chau also had body armor installed under his skin in addition to the brass knuckles. Chau had to be in an incredible amount of pain – they scanned fighters directly before every match in order to avoid situations like this which meant that the fighter had to have the microsurgery to install his enhancements only ten minutes before entering the ring with him. Any half-decent surgeon could do the surgery anywhere at any time, but the amount of pain Chau had to be in was unbelievable. Too much anesthesia and Chau wouldn’t be able to effectively fight, too little and he’d be disabled by the pain.

  Generally cyber enhancement surgery took a person anywhere from two to three weeks to fully recover and here Chau was fighting in one of the most brutal places on Mars less than ten minutes after his surgeries.

  Meade wiped the blood out of his eye and realized this fight just got a whole lot tougher than he ever imagined. Fifty to one was generous, he thought to himself, continuing his cautious retreat.

  The crowd didn’t like it. They wanted to see a fight, not two men chasing after each other. They booed Meade as he moved to stay away from Chau’s deadly fists.

  The circle near him flashed green and a red 0 appeared. Meade ran towards the circle jumped and felt gravity let go. He floated up to the top of the ring, pushed his feet off the side and flipped over Chau. He landed gracefully behind Chau and swept the black man’s legs out from under him. Chau went down hard.

  He retreated to the circle next to them that was flashing and waited patiently for his opponent to get back up. Kevin recovered, growled and turned, seeing Meade standing behind him with a smirk on his face.

  Chau roared and charged at him. Waiting for the last possible instant, he jumped just as the flashing circle he was standing on flipped from normal gravity to zero-g. He flew up and over Chau as the brutal fighter charged him, but found nothing but empty space. Chau lost his footing and crashed headfirst into one of the metal poles that held up the ring.

  The crowd roared in approval of Meade’s sneaky move as he slowly landed back in the middle of the ring. He knew he couldn’t allow himself a second of celebration, Chau might be slow in getting up, but it was only the first round and they had a long fight ahead of them.

  A bell rang signifying the end to the first round. He relaxed and walked back to his corner where Emeline was waiting with his water bottle and spit bucket. He removed his mouth guard and let Emeline spray some water into his mouth.

  “He’s got body armor,” Meade said his face grim. He checked the free flowing wound on his head. “I don’t know if I’m actually gonna be able to beat him if he’s wearing that.”

  “You’ll beat him,” Emeline said, trying to reassure him. “It’s either that, or he kills you.”

  Meade shook his head and put his mouth guard back in, “Thanks for the pick me up Em.”

  The bell rung and Meade stood. Round two - double the gravity, double the fun.

  Chau wasted no time. The second the bell rang, Chau sprinted over to his corner and started throwing punches trying to overwhelm Meade. He didn’t expect a direct attack like this – Zero-G fights were usually a bit more graceful than just a knock down drag out fight.

  Besides, his head and body were taking shot after shot from Chau’s enhanced fists and it hurt. With as hard as the man was hitting him, Meade felt sure that he would need a few days in the Med-Bay to recover, but if he wanted to recover at all, he’d need to keep out of Chau’s reach.

  Suddenly Chau connected with a glancing blow on his right arm that left it suddenly numb and useless. He cried out in pain and braced one foot against the pole he was trapped against and shoved hard, pushing Chau off of him and into a +2G circle.

  Chau fell to the ground harder than he would considering the fact that he was sitting in twice the normal gravity. Most fighters trained in 2G gravity, so they would be able to stand up if they found themselves in this sort of exact situation. Chau was no different. As soon as he stood, Chau moved quickly through the enhanced gravity as if he were walking through sand. As soon as he was clear, he moved back towards Meade who had taken the time to recover.

  Meade didn’t let him come too close as he threw a strong right rabbit punch into Chau’s jaw. The initial punch wasn’t so much to inflict damage, but rather to distract Chau from the left handed haymaker that followed. Chau fell to the ground, his lip bleeding profusely, and the crowd leapt to their feet, the sound deafening. Meade heard none of it - his entire world consisted of the ref counting out Chau. Meade was breathing heavy, and his head hurt, but he was still alive, which was better than what some of Chau’s opponents could say by this point.

  Chau got up slowly, and Meade saw a newfound, well, it wasn’t respect in his eyes, but the man’s thinking about their fight had definitely changed. He was slowing realizing that Meade wasn’t going to be like the rest of the soft cases he’d put away on his trip up the ranks.

  Chau moved slowly around the ring, his eyes never leaving Meade’s hands. He was watching him, Meade realized, waiting for the right moment to strike – which unfortunately, was exactly what he was waiting for. Unfortunately, Chau wouldn’t get tired if all they did was dance around. Eventually the judges would be forced to call a draw and no one would go home happy. Meade would lose his million dollar payday, and Chau his shot at the title. There was a lot on the line for both of them, they just hadn’t figured out how to beat their respective opponents yet.

  Meade decided to make the first move. If he could provoke Chau into one of his frenzies that he was so well known for, that would go a long way towards making him tired
. The only problem was that Meade’s original plan had included taking a few shots here and there. With Chau’s brass knuckles and body armor advantages, it’d be much tougher to absorb any blows from him gracefully.

  Meade looked behind him and saw the gravity circle he was standing in was about to turn from normal gravity to 2G. He moved to get out in time, but was caught.

  Suddenly everything around him became twice as heavy. His hair clung annoyingly to his forehead and he pushed it out of the way with his glove. Chau halted his advance and watched as he waited for the circle to cycle through the 2G, knowing that the extra weight was tiring him out quick.

  The weight on Meade was crushing and he felt his knees begin to wobble. He was currently trying to hold up nearly two hundred extra pounds. Meade adopted a defensive posture and faced Chau as he stalked Meade within the circle. Meade knew the second the circle changed from 2G to Zero, Chau would be on him in an instant, so he needed to be ready to make his escape.

  Meade felt the weight suddenly lift and he jumped, hoping to escape before Chau could get ahold of him. He nearly got away too, but Chau was ready for his jump escape this time and grabbed Meade’s right ankle dragging him back down. He bounced off the deck hard and Chau hit him even harder in the chest knocking his whole body up against the side of the ring.

  Chau roared with relish and continued to pound at Meade’s ribs and chest. He lifted Meade up and slammed him on the ground, his body bouncing off the rough canvas. Chau raised his fists in victory as the crowd leapt on its feet shouting its approval of the brutality. Meade felt the wind go out of him and gasped, feeling as if he were drowning.

  The bell rang, signifying the end of the second round and saving Meade’s bacon for at least the next thirty seconds. The ref moved over to Meade and looked down at him.

  “Are you okay to continue?” the ref asked him. Meade coughed and spat a wad of bloody flem onto the ring’s floor.

  “’Bout as good as can be expected,” Meade grumbled.

  “I need to know if you can continue!” the ref demanded.