by Justin Sloan
To her surprise, in his next attack he came in with a knee, followed by a spinning round-kick that nearly took her in the head. She swept the leg, grabbing him as he fell to spin him around and catch him in an armlock.
“Not a bad try, though,” Valerie admitted, helping him up.
“Where the hell did those moves come from?” Garcia asked, impressed.
As Valerie let Flynn up he replied, “This old man when I was growing up taught me a thing or two. Called it ‘Muay Thai.’”
“I like this Mai Tai stuff,” Robin said with a raised brow. “Maybe you have a thing or two to show us while Valerie’s out there getting her ass handed to her.”
“Muay Thai,” Flynn corrected, “and sure.”
“You want me to have a go?” Garcia asked Valerie. “I mean, you feeling warmed up, or you want more?”
Valerie felt the pump of her blood, the sense of being ready for anything, and shook her head. “Save your energy. We don’t know what I’ll face.”
“Roger that.”
Valerie turned to the array of food Garcia and Flynn had managed to arrange and took a swig of what she supposed passed for water. She followed it up with some local nuts, which were almost red in color and tasted similar to what she imagined dirt tasted like. They’d have to do.
“When this is over…” Robin started, looking around at them, “what do you think comes next?”
“You mean when we’ve gotten our intel and checked in with the colonel?” Flynn asked.
She shook her head. “When the Etheric Federation has won. What then? Go back home and live life on Earth as if none of this exists?”
“Val?” Garcia asked, apparently noticing the scrunched-up look she now realized her face had taken on. “What is it?”
“I don’t know that the war could ever really be over. How vast is this universe? We have gateways, but how do we know how many other gateways there could be?”
“You’re saying the war might never be over,” Robin said, blowing a breath out. “Damn! I mean, you’re probably right, but… Damn.”
She nodded. “That said, if anyone wants to go back to Earth I imagine there’s a way.”
“Forget that,” Robin replied. “You’re here, I’m here. That’s how it works.”
“Same goes for me,” Garcia added.
“Loyalty.” Flynn pounded his chest. “I’m in it to win it.”
Valerie nodded, glancing through the stone window at the sky. Orange clouds swirled overhead. “And this Kalan guy? And Bob? Where do they fit into this?”
“Bob’s a bit of a turd, but…” Garcia wrinkled his nose, “I like him. Flynn, what do you think? You’re Mr. Loyalty, you say, so what’s your loyalty radar say about him?”
“Like you said, a turd,” Flynn replied, staring off in thought for a moment. “Sometimes a giant, stinky, maybe even moldy turd, but I’d say he’s our turd to the bitter end.”
“Kalan seems trustworthy,” Valerie added. “Wouldn’t have sent Bob with him otherwise, and yeah, I’m glad you all say so—although now I wonder what you call me behind my back. If he’s a turd, I’m…what? A harpy? Crazy pile of bat brains? A sour witch's teat?”
Garcia chuckled nervously, but waved her off. “You’re giving me good ideas, but shit, boss—you gotta earn that stuff. You haven’t been half as badass as all that.”
“Fine, I’ll work on it. Increase my bitchiness a bit. I kinda like the sound of ‘Harpy Hag,’ if you ever decide on a moniker. It’s insulting, and yet it speaks to my level of intimidation, you know?”
“You’ve got issues,” Robin replied, then laughed, shaking her head. “‘Harpy Hag?’ You’re more like a mother lion.”
“Doesn’t have the same ring to it.”
A loud drum started banging, echoing through the halls under the arena. It was time.
As many times as Valerie had been in these situations, it still caused a flutter in her heart. She had even fought in an arena before, in Toro, and a different type of fighting competition in the bazaar when New York had still been Old Manhattan—before she’d helped build it back up. Considering that she was on an alien planet and in a completely different situation, it still felt like the first time.
“Let’s crack some skulls,” she said, then took a breath and headed for the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Swarthian Extended Detention Environment (SEDE)
“Kalan, what are you doing?” Bob hissed. He paused a moment, then added, “No, Wearl, I don’t think you should rip his head off. Hold on.”
Kalan kept his eyes focused on the seemingly empty area in front of him where he knew the Shimmers were gathered. He said through gritted teeth, “I know what I’m doing. Wearl, you can see the other Shimmers, right?”
“She says she can,” Bob answered.
“Good. How many are there?”
A long pause, then Bob passed along her reply. “About thirty. Also, she says she’s looking forward to watching them dismember you.”
“Well, I’m glad to know my final moments will bring someone pleasure.” Despite his bravado, Kalan wasn’t entirely sure this would work. All he knew was the Shimmers had come to stop them, and that Sslake was the most valuable prisoner in SEDE. If Sslake died at the hands of an ex-con who wasn’t even supposed to be there, the Shimmers would have some serious explaining to do to their bosses.
He hoped that was enough to buy him a little time to figure out what to do next. As much as he hated to admit it, he didn’t have a grand plan.
“Wearl says they’re creeping closer,” Bob announced.
“Back up!” Kalan shouted. “Just because you’re invisible doesn’t mean we can’t see what you’re up to.”
Sslake cleared his throat and spoke in a calm, quiet voice. “Kalan, if I might offer a suggestion?”
“Uh, yeah, of course. Sorry about this, by the way.”
“Perfectly understandable,” the minister answered. He spoke softly so that only Kalan could hear him. “It seems to me you may not have thought this through. Now that you’ve taken me hostage, you need to commit. I take it you know your way around SEDE?”
Kalan hesitated. “More or less.”
“And I have no doubt you can fight, so here’s what we do. Tell them you will let me go once you are at your ride. You don’t want to free me anymore, you simply want to get out of here alive. Understand where I’m going with this?”
Kalan nodded slowly. “Yeah, actually I think I do.” He wasn’t sure the idea would work, but it was sort of brilliant in a crazy way. A lot of things would have to go right in order for this to work, but he was already running through the possible outcomes in his mind. “We want them to take us to the Nim hangar. If we can get there and buy ourselves a few minutes, I think I can get us out of here.”
“Good. The Shimmers’ understanding of human speech is not the most nuanced, so we’ll need some assistance handling the negotiation portion.” In a louder voice he said, “Wearl, would you come here please?”
The minister then quietly explained the plan to Wearl. “Now, would you please negotiate how many guards they’ll be sending to escort us? We’d like to keep that number as low as possible, obviously.”
Kalan waited, the barrel of the pistol still against Sslake’s head, as the tension mounted. A lot would depend on what happened next.
Bob put his hands over his ears. “Ah! They’re all shouting.”
“What are they saying?” Kalan asked.
“I don’t know. They’re talking too quickly, and I can’t fully process. There’re a lot of threats. Vivid description of how they will desecrate each other’s corpses.”
“Standard Shimmer negotiation tactics,” Sslake pointed out.
Another moment and it was over.
“Okay,” Bob announced. “They’ve reached an agreement. Seven Shimmers will escort us to the Nim hangar.”
“Seven?” Sslake sounded disappointed. “That’ll be difficult.”
“
But it’s possible.” In reality Kalan wasn’t so sure, but he wanted to be hopeful.
“One more thing,” Sslake said quietly. “For this to work, they need to be convinced I don’t want to go with you. At some point before we leave this room I’m going to try to break free, and you need to hit me. Understand?”
Kalan grimaced. Punching the rightful leader of the Vurugu system wasn’t high on his to do list, but if it had to be done, so be it.
“Wearl, are they clearing a path for us?” It felt odd talking to an invisible creature, but since she was the only one who could see the other Shimmers he didn’t have much of a choice.
“They are,” Bob replied. “Wearl says to head straight down the center. They’ll move out of your way.”
“You ready, Minister?” Kalan asked in a whisper.
“To get out of here? Very much so.”
Kalan smiled for the first time since leaving his mom’s house. “Okay, then. Here we go.”
The first step into the passage was the most difficult. He’d grown up with tales of the Shimmers that might as well have been ghost stories. Yarns about prisoners taken in the night, a Pallicon female who dared to breathe a negative word about one of the guards and immediately fell dead, shot by a Shimmer she didn’t know was standing behind her. And his personal favorite, the Skulla male who’d attempted escape, not knowing he was surrounded by Shimmers throughout the entire process. He only found out when one of them removed his scalp with an invisible blade.
Come to think of it, that last one struck a little too close to home.
He didn’t know which of the stories were true and which weren’t. The fact was, even though he’d grown up here, he’d had very little contact with the Shimmers. They only intervened when there was trouble, and while he’d caused his fair share of trouble, he’d also been very good at avoiding being caught.
Besides, he’d had enough to worry about from beings like Zoras who wanted to take control and lord their power over their fellow prisoners. He hadn’t had the energy left over at the end of the day to worry much about Shimmers.
And yet here he was, standing in a room full of them. He couldn’t see the guards, but he knew every one of them wanted him dead. He’d committed the ultimate sin one could perpetrate aboard SEDE: he’d made them look bad.
He crept along slowly and carefully, one arm around Sslake’s throat, the other holding the pistol to the minister’s head.
When they were halfway across the room the politician tensed, and Kalan knew it was time. Sslake was making his move.
Kalan loosened his grip ever so slightly and Sslake took advantage, moving surprisingly quickly for a middle-aged politician. He wriggled out of Kalan’s grasp.
Kalan knew he couldn’t afford to hesitate even for a moment. If the Shimmers got hold of Sslake this was over, so he drew back a fist and let loose, catching Sslake in the eye with a solid punch.
The minister cried out in pain. The act might have been planned, but that cry wasn’t fake. Kalan pushed down the feelings of guilt leaping into his chest and once again grabbed Sslake around the neck. Then he cast a wild gaze around the room, glaring at the guards he couldn’t see.
“Stay the hell back!” he ordered. “If one of you so much as breathes on me I’ll kill Sslake.”
“Wearl says they’re staying back,” Bob told them softly.
“Good. Very good.” Then, in a whisper, “You all right, Minister?”
Sslake groaned. “I said to punch me, not to hit me in the face with a rocket.”
“Sorry. Tried to make it look real.”
When they reached the door Kalan paused and a moment later the door slid open, the scanner apparently having been activated by one of the guards.
Kalan stepped through, then muttered over his shoulder, “Wearl, make sure no more than seven follow us through.”
“She’s on it,” Bob said.
They made their way through the rest of the isolation block at a painfully slow pace, stopping at each door and waiting for a guard to open it. Wearl checked each room they entered to make sure there weren’t Shimmers waiting to jump them.
Eventually they made it out and Kalan took a hard right out of the isolation block, happy to be back in familiar territory.
They proceeded down a long, broad corridor. Kalan was closer to his goal now, but he didn’t dare relax.
Soon they would reach the Nim hangar, and that was where the real fun would begin.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Planet Tol: the Fighting Arena
Valerie wasn’t the first to fight, and that annoyed her as much as it relieved her. She had to stand with an array of stinky fighters in this barred and spiked pit and watch others get their asses handed to them.
A ceremony had started the day’s fights, and Valerie learned through the whispers around her that they were an ongoing thing; there were always fights. Their way of entertaining themselves, it seemed. Their lives revolved around work and this. One Skulla had lived here for years, but had recently had a baby and therefore finally decided his family needed citizenship. A female was in a similar situation, but she had two kids and a mate who had left for another planet in search of wealth and never returned, so she had decided it was her turn to look for a way to upgrade their station in life.
All of it was so sad, and yet when the music started and dancers moved across the fighting pit kicking up sand and waving their silks, she felt as if she too were part of it all. She could almost taste the excitement of the crowd, as well as the anticipation of the people around her. This wasn’t about a fight to the death for most of them. It was a chance at a better life for themselves and their loved ones.
If they died, where did that leave those loved ones? She had to assume the local authorities had distributed their fair share of propaganda to kick this idea out of their minds.
The first fighter was one she hadn’t spoken with—a non-Skulla, or ‘Wandrei’ as she now began to think of them and herself.
“Let the fighting commence!” The booming voice echoed through the arena, and Valerie had to lean down to get a good view of the crowds. Even then she couldn’t see everyone, there were so many. She wasn’t sure she had ever seen this many beings in one place before, even back home in Capital Square.
The fighters jockeyed around, each trying to test the other, clearly not experienced at this.
When one moved to punch the other but hesitated at the last minute and backed up instead, a voice said, “Too slow!” and an electric shock ran across the floor, sending both to their knees in pain.
Cheers rose from the crowd and some even threw rocks at them, though none hit.
“That’s barbaric,” Valerie protested, slamming her hand against the wall in her fury.
“It’s part of the game,” the female Skulla to her right said. “We’ve all seen it. We’ve been briefed. And it works…look.”
She gestured to the fight, and Valerie saw that it had indeed lit the needed fire under their asses. The fighters had charged in and were throwing haymakers and a weird barrage of clearly unskilled assaults.
“This isn’t good,” the female Skulla said.
“What’s that?”
“Judges know that will take too long, or that the fighters will grow tired. Not a good show.”
“So they’ll intervene,” Valerie said as the realization came. “That’s not just.”
“It’s about keeping the people in line,” the male Skulla said. “Give them entertainment, satiate their thirst for blood.” He eyed her and she had a feeling he knew more than he was letting on. “You give the general populace this while giving them a chance to escape the dull, pitiful lives they live, you have won—which means the rest of us have lost.”
Valerie shook her head. “Nobody’s won yet. That’s why I’m here.”
“Okay,” he replied with a grunt.
The female Skulla though, waited a second, and then pulled Valerie aside. After a quick look around she leaned in an
d said, “There are those among the Skulla who’d agree.”
“Hmm?”
“About nobody having won. They want to rise but need a beacon, a symbol of victory. You could be that symbol.”
Valerie leaned in, lowering her voice. “What are you talking about exactly? Rebellion?”
The Skulla nodded.
Valerie glanced around, noticing the guards in the back, a couple of strange-looking alien fighters on the far side of the room, and various modified Skulla.
“How many are we talking about here?” she asked.
The Skulla furrowed her brow. “All.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if they had the right leader, I can’t think of a single citizen who wouldn’t rise against the system. Well, of course the elites might prefer the current system, but even among them there are the corrupt. They volunteered to get where they are, after all.”
Valerie considered that for a moment. The idea of death and where murder put one on the moral scale was tough, considering all that she had done in the name of justice or on her new mission in the universe. But that was different—it didn’t have personal gain as the motive behind it, at least not for her. She couldn’t be sure how often she had been used, or when the moral line was grayer than not.
“Wait a minute,” Valerie hissed. “You’re in here.”
The Skulla glanced around again. “Not by choice.”
Valerie’s eyes went wide. She wanted to ask many questions, but at that moment the others started yelling about weapons.
Everyone dashed over to the viewing area, pushing Valerie and the Skulla with them, so she went with it, determined to find time to ask later.
Sure enough, several stands with weapons had risen out of the ground in the arena and one of the fighters had already grabbed a crude-looking sword. Its blade was bent and had three vertical points coming out the side. Perhaps a local tool?
He charged the other, who was running for a weapon that closely resembled a baseball bat. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t make it.
The next part was gruesome and Valerie had to turn away. Not because she was disgusted by the blood by any means, but because she was disgusted by the crowd’s reactions. Cheers erupted with each stab, again and again.