by Logan Jacobs
I turned around slowly, and my Zen got instantly put to the test.
Tyyraxx, dressed in his usual black leather overcoat, stood in front of me. He was a six and a half foot tall walking Iguana looking asshole. His flat iron shaped head had a row of spikes that went down the middle like a bony mohawk and his mouth was full of tiny needle-like teeth. He had thick scaly skin the color of obsidian that covered cords of powerful muscle. Tyyraxx was quite possibly the Crucible's deadliest and most well-known champion. He was ruthless, cunning, strong, and evil. Tyyraxx had once been an alliance mate of Grizz’s until he’d stabbed him in the back.
Literally.
I had vowed that I was going to take revenge on the asshole for Grizz if it was the last thing I would ever do. But that chance wasn’t going to be today. With a conscious force I took a deep mental breath and let the anger and hatred blow away as if on a breeze.
“Tyyraxx,” I said as I struggled to keep my voice calm, “sooo good to see you too. Just terrific. You look good. Like a belt I once had.”
“Ha ha ha,” he over exaggeratedly laughed. “You need some new insults.”
“Maybe I need a new belt?” I shot back.
“Why? Have you gained weight?” Tyyraxx asked with a confused look suddenly on his big stupid face. I didn’t respond. I just chuckled as if I was in on a joke that he wasn’t. It annoyed the hell out of him.
“Let’s save this for the show, shall we?” Trillium answered and motioned for us to take our seats behind a long fancy, metallic desk. Tiny, tennis ball sized camera-bots floated all around us.
I took a deep, steadying breath. Trillium had laid her trap very well, but she didn’t know that I’d grown to expect this kind of thing from her, which meant that she was now in my trap. I smiled and took my seat beside the hulking lizard behind the desk.
“In three… two… one…” A well-coiffed Trillium clone production assistant counted down and then the studio’s light blazed to life to bathe us in imperfection erasing soft white light.
“Hello, megaverse,” Trillium said directly into a camera-bot, “welcome to another exciting and enlightening episode of Forge and Friends. I’m your host, Trillium Vou, and today we have one of the most popular, and deadly, champions the games have ever seen, Tyyraxx, and the young upstart, Marc Havak of Earth.”
Camera-bots zoomed around our heads to capture us from every angle. I had gotten used to them for the most part at this point. They were a constant presence during a match since they were all live broadcast for trillions of viewers across all of inhabited space.
“Greetings, Trillium,” Tyyraxx said with a smooth, false voice that I’d never heard him use ever before. “Such a pleasure to be here.”
“Yeah, thanks for that glowing introduction there, T. Vou,” I deadpanned. I saw the shiver of annoyance run across her at the slight of her no longer used moniker.
“I felt it fitting for a champion of your demure stature, especially as you sit beside a veritable giant of the games,” she shot right back. “Tell us Tyyraxx, about your meteoric rise to prominence over the last one hundred and fifty years.”
“A hundred and fifty?” I said in mock surprise. I knew exactly how long Tyyraxx had been a champion. In my spare time for the last few months I’d researched the overgrown cowboy boots on two legs pretty thoroughly. “Why in the world would you be willing to sit on a show with me? I mean, I’ve only been here a few months. Pretty neat we’re sitting next to each other on the most popular show in the megaverse as if we were complete equals, right?”
Tyyraxx opened his mouth to say something but whatever it was dried in his pink tongue filled mouth, which closed with a click. Both he and Trillium had looks of utter surprise on their faces.
“Um, uh, it really began on during that fateful match about a century ago,” Tyyraxx began. It took him a second to recover his reptilian composure and then his lips pulled into what I assumed he thought was a smile.
“Is that one where you defeated the once mighty Grizz?” The words slithered out of her mouth like vipers. On any other occasion a red haze would have threatened to fill my vision. It would have pulsed in time with my hammering heart and would have tried hard to shove the fury that had just bubbled like lava back down into the pit whence it came. That’s what these two amateurs were counting on. I just smiled at them as they stared at me, looking for any reaction at all. The trick was, I wasn’t faking. I was as calm as I'd ever been. In the last few months I’d faced giant sand crabs who wanted to eat me, freaky spider things that wanted to eat me, a mummy that wanted to eat me, and a ton of shit that just wanted to blow me to bits. I’d survived it all. The little game these two, or three if Tyche was as involved as I figured he was, were trying to get me to play was laughable. I sat silently grinning and waited for Tyyraxx to continue.
“Yes, the fool had made the mistake of trusting me,” Tyyraxx bragged. “Knowing that my kind form no emotional attachments to anyone. The look on his face was indeed priceless.”
The two of them chuckled pleasantly as if they were discussing interior decorations and not the brutal betrayal of my trainer.
“So really, the only reason you’re sitting here is because Grizz was such an amazing mentor that the only way you figured you could ever beat him was to stab him in the back?” I asked as if this were a polite presidential debate.
“What?” Tyyraxx’s face fell. The only emotion I’d ever really seen out of him had been seething anger but this one was good.
“When you stabbed him in the back, instead of fighting him face to face like a true champion, did his face look like yours is right now?” I continued, and I think I did a good job of not smiling.
I was winning.
“The look on your face is going to be priceless when I mount your head in my living room!” He snarled through clenched teeth.
“Just make sure I face the TV so I won’t get bored, if that’s okay,” I sighed and rolled my eyes with boredom. “So much ferocity, right, T. Vou? I’d hate it if he got all upset on your show.”
“Well, Champion Havak, perhaps we should talk about, your sexual promiscuity,” Trillium tried to dig at me as Tyyraxx seethed.
“Sure,” I answered with a wave of my hand. “Last time we talked with my president, he inferred that you want to ride my cock. Should we do that on TV, or maybe later in my suite?”
Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of Artie. Her face was one big surprised smile, and she quietly clapped her hands. Beside her, Tyche just stared. He looked neither happy nor upset which told me that he was practically boiling over with rage.
“No, I meant for that to be… Um, I mean… I wasn’t trying to make a pass at...” Trillium stuttered and fumbled, her eyes wide, not used to not having the words. Tyyraxx growled beside me.
“Oh, sorry, Tyyraxx,” I said and turned back to him. “I forgot you were there. I don’t remember anyone asking you to have sex on this show. That’s a shame, ‘cause you seem like the kind of guy who likes--”
“I’m going to skin you and wear you like a fucking jacket, you worm!” He snarled.
“And now you’re stealing my insults,” I feigned insult.
“I’ll do more than steal your insults.” Tyyraxx stood and loomed over me. “I’ll rip your life from your body.”
The table in front of us fell to the floor. His chest heaved in anger, and I saw his plate sized hands ball into fists. I turned and looked up at him, winked and then turned right into the camera. “This guy, am I right, folks? What a hot head.”
“Well, well, well, looks like we’re going to have end our interview here, folks,” Trillium sputtered as she tried to gain control of her show back. “Make sure to stay tuned after the break where we’ll discuss the exciting new upcoming game mode - The Passage of Pain.”
The red lights on the cameras died, and the lights faded back to their normal glow. I continued to stare at Tyyraxx. His arms began to pull back as if he were going to strike me. My mu
scles coiled ready if he did.
Tyche coughed from across the studio, and Tyyraxx looked over at him. They stared at each other for a second, as if communicating in a silent language, then with a snort from his ugly snout Tyyraxx walked away. Before he left the room, Trillium tried to console him. He shrugged her off and stormed out. She then sauntered over to me and leaned in so that no one else could hear.
“You made a big mistake insulting me, Havak,” she whispered. “I could have been a powerful ally, but now, well now, I’m not going to rest until you are disgraced and destroyed and that shitty backwater planet you come from is overrun with aliens who want to pillage it for all it's worth. Tell the President the Skalle send him kisses.”
“Maybe you should tell them?” I shot back with an arrogant grin. “Oh, dang it, you can’t. I killed them all.”
She smiled back at me, and it was like looking into the mouth of a shark. Without another word she turned on her heel and stalked out of the studio, her assistants and sycophants in tow.
I grabbed Artemis by the hand and walked out into the lobby of the building.
“Marc,” she said, almost dumbfounded, “that was fucking awesome.”
She then threw her arms around me and kissed me hard on the mouth.
“Yeah, I know,” I said and kissed her back as everyone in the lobby just watched.
Chapter Eight
The desert wastes of Cruxia were majestic, harsh, and barren. A blood red sun beat down on the ocre sand and made the sky look purple with huge, billowy white clouds that floated lazily over the sparse landscape. Bluffs and craggy buttes, made from rich, brown rock smattered with flakes of shimmering crystals, dotted the blanket of dirt that stretched out for as far as the eye could see. There was no vegetation of any kind. In fact it looked this planet wouldn’t even know what the color green was.
I glanced to my left and then to my right and then back straight ahead into the dessert that would soon be filled with all sorts of destruction. Surrounding me were vehicles of every shape and size, the Behemoth, what we had dubbed our super-charged maxed out semi-truck and trailer was dead in the center of a line of twelve other teams. I couldn’t make out all the other vehicles but the few I could see made a small smile creep across my face.
Next to us on the right was a full blown, Seventies style top fuel drag racer. It’s huge, thick, black rubber tires stood at least five feet tall and had spikes and blades that came from where the hub cap would have been on a normal car. The body was a long, thin, pyramid that had to be a good twenty feet long and came to a two foot wide point where the front wheels were mounted. The wheels at the front looked like knobby dirt bike tires and had the same type of blades and spikes as the seventeen inch wide rear tires. Unlike a top fuel dragster this one housed two people in the cockpit and there was a dark, tinted bubble canopy over the drivers who sat in front of a massive engine that was the size of a baby elephant with five valve exhaust ports that flared out from both sides of the engine that looked like the wings on the Golden Age of Comics Flash’s helmet. There were two machine guns mounted on the front of the dragster and one that was as big as a .50 caliber placed on a rail over the top of the engine that pointed backwards. The jet black dragster was topped off with a massive whale tail spoiler at the back that actually flapped like the wing of a plane.
Just to my left was a four passenger armored dune buggy designed by a paranoid, methed out serial killer who worked for the military. The chassis was made of modular tubing and was covered with plates of plastic kevlar like armor. It sat on top of four oversized tires on the end of an extended tension rod suspension so that the whole thing was a good two feet off the ground like some kind of four legged spider. On top of the roof there was a light machine gun that had a mortar cannon mounted in and over-under configuration turret. It had been painted dark neon blue and purple in an effort not to blend in at all. The four aliens on the inside had oversized goggles on their eyes since the dune buggy had no windshield. One held the wheel tight in his grip while the others clutched various weapons.
The only other vehicle that I could make out completely was a sleek, matte black chopper motorcycle. It sat low to the ground on thick, black tires held in place by magnetic axles so that there were no spokes, the inside of the tires were empty circles that you could see right through. Green energy flowed around the inside edges of the tires and along thin piping up the front fork, down around the teardrop gas tank to the flying V style two-cylinder engine from the bowels of hell. Angel’s would weep at the sight of the figure that rode the tricked out monster of a motorcycle. The male alien was clad head to toe in a black bodysuit that had bullet-proof plastic polymer armor plates on its chest, back, shins, and forearms. A black helmet with a thin, electric blue line where the eyes should be sat atop his head. Sword handles protruded from over his left shoulder and a quiver full of black arrow shafts over his right. A fancy, futuristic compound bow was holstered on top of the chopper’s handlebars. The rider was a NecroWraith known as Vex. He was a former teammate of Tempest's who was now on his own since the dissolution of their alliance.
The very sight of him was enough to send a shiver down my spine even in the blistering heat of the desert. He projected an aura of death incarnate like a violent pheromone.
I pulled my gaze away from the dark spectre on a two wheeled metal horse of the apocalypse and looked at the women who sat with me in the extended cab of the truck.
Aurora sat next to me in the molded captain’s chair seat. She looked like a princess of Armageddon. Her normal lingerie as combat wear had been modified for the race. She wore what amounted to a chainmail bikini with spiked shoulder pads, knee high armored motorcycle boots, studded leather gauntlet-gloves, and her normal black cloak hung from points on her shoulder pads. Her silvery hair was teased out and flowed about her head like an Aqua-Net lion’s mane. She had a whole Tina Turner and Rob Halford of Judas Priest love child thing going on. It was weird, but still hot as hell. She grinned and winked at me as her blue, geometric tattoos pulsed with her quickened heartbeat.
Behind her on a plush bench that could seat four was Nova Qwark. Her Paladinian Space Knight armor had been modified as well to fit the Cruxian environment. Instead of black and white, she was clad in muted browns and tans. Her chest plate, greaves, and forearm protectors all had stubby spikes and shoulder pauldrons had been added. She reminded me of a character from an old Seventies movie that I’d seen on cable one day called Roller Ball starring James Caan. Not the early Two Thousands remake with Chris Klien. Her head was covered in an open face foot-ball helmet thing with a slit in the top that allowed her auburn hair to poke through like a mohawk plume. Her hands held a stripped-down version of her normal waist mounted plasma cannon that Darry had modified to fire projectile weapons and be hand held. She looked fiercely futuristic.
I opened the cab door, leaned out and glanced out at the top and back of the trailer to where Tempest and PoLarr were stationed.
Tempest manned the armored heavy machine gun turret mounted at the junction between the trailer and the truck. She too was decked out in all tan and brown. Her bright orange hair was pulled back in a super tight ponytail that made her almost bald with how slicked back it was. Chunky goggles covered her eyes to protect them from the harsh glare of the red sun and gritty dust. She wore a short waisted heavy canvas jacket, and her sniper rifle was strapped to her back. The pockets of the jacket bulged with ammo. She tossed me a flippant wave and then racked the bolt on the heavy machine gun.
PoLarr had taken a position behind the quad-harpoon gun at the very tail end of the trailer. She too had chunky goggles to protect her eyes, and her bright blonde hair was spiked up in her normal shark fin do. The flight jumpsuit she usually wore was now dark brown and accented with leather knee and elbow pads. Darry had modified both her Equalizers and her Val’Keeyre jetpack to meet the restrictions of Cruxian technology. The Equalizers were like chromed and Magna-Ported eight inch barrelled Colt Pythons w
hich only held six shots each. They sat in tooled leather holsters hung low on her thighs like a post-modern gunslinger. A long, cracked brown fireproof leather duster jacket stretched down almost to her feet and flapped gently in the breeze. Her Val’Keeyre jetpack poked out of a hole in the back of the duster and was all tricked out in black chrome. Before we teleported into the match, Darry had told her that due to the technological restriction it would not support sustained flight anymore. It would be good for short bursts that would allow her to hover for a few seconds or jump about fifty yards at a time. I caught PoLarr’s gaze, and she gave me a quick thumbs up.
Satisfied, I swung back into the cab and closed the door of the truck. I adjusted myself so that I sat comfortably in the chair and rested my right hand on the chrome skull head topped manual transmission shifter. I had on a pair of dark green camo BDU pants, Vietnam era style combat boots, an olive green light thermal shirt, and a battered, black motorcycle jacket with built in kevlar shoulder pads. Fingerless leather gloves were pulled tight on my hands and a pair of goggles sat on my forehead. My own modified Equalizer pistol was holstered at my hip, its weight familiar and comforting. A stripped-down version of my Eradicator assault rifle hung from a rack behind my head. Darry had switched out the barrel and bolt mechanism so that it used the same type of ammunition as the Equalizer which was a suped up, overcharged, .357 magnum shell. He’d taken off most of the high-tech gizmos, and it now resembled an M4 carbine used by the US military. A red-dot laser sight replaced the normal triangular purple auto-sight that had come on the gun and the magazines held forty five rounds instead of a hundred and fifty. It wouldn’t Eradicate like it had, but it would still make someone's day real complicated. The only other weapon I’d been able to bring with me was my chainsaw-sword.
I’d gotten the weird weapon during my first real trial as a champion. It consisted of a small, compact, short bladed chainsaw that was attached to a handle with a foot and a half of chain. I could activate it with the push of a button, and it was a spinning implement of doom. With the push of another button the whirring chainsaw blade would ignite in flame. Which was awesome. The pièce de résistance was that with the push of another button on the handle, and the chain would solidify and turn the whole thing into a buzzing, mechanized, flame covered, sword. Hence the name “chainsaw-sword”. This was the first match I’d been able to use it in since that fateful match that seemed like forever and a day ago. It was housed in a neat little holster carved into the door of the truck.