Arena 5

by Logan Jacobs

  The Eradicator flew from my grip and slid down the catwalk that ran down the center of the trailer. One of the Vultures pulled the trigger on his blunderbuss, and a blast of birdshot flew all around me. I brought my arms up in front of my face just in time to feel the wasp like stings as the pellets dug into my skin. My leather jacket had slowed the hot bb sized pellets so that they were little more than flesh wounds, but it still hurt. The oversized guns wouldn’t be that effective past maybe five feet, but up close they’d shred skin in a messy and permanent way.

  I dove forward into a roll and came up in front of the closest Vulture. I pushed off with my legs and drove a Krav Maga elbow into his leather clad chin. As he staggered back, I drew my Equalizer and pumped two rounds into his chest. The bullets blew blood covered hamburger chunks out of his back through the hang glider wings. He fell dead at my feet, and I saw clear jet fuel dibble from the holes created by the bullets.

  I didn’t have a chance to worry about that because the other Vulture swiped at me with his talons. I was able to duck out of the way but they still scratched parallel scars down the back of my jacket. I was too close to swing the gun up, so I did the next best thing; I aimed down, and shot his knee. The overclocked .357 magnum round tore most of the joint away so that his bottom leg hung on by a grizzled thread of tendon and flesh. He screamed and sounded just like an actual vulture. I came back around and drove my shoulder into his torso so that he toppled over and dropped from the trailer.

  The final Vulture came at me with a vengeance, his arms flailing in front of him, talons hungry for blood. I used the barrel of the Equalizer to block his swipes. I couldn’t get it around for a clean shot once again and whipped it across his face instead. He grabbed my gun arm when I tried to bring it back down and held it off to the side of his head. I pulled the trigger anyway, and the gun boomed next to his ear. He cried out in pain and released my arm. Another explosion hit the side of the trailer, and a large chunk of it blew away.

  A chunk that had previously been under my feet.

  As I fell backward, I extended my arm and squeezed off two shots that caught the Vulture in the throat and under his chin. The top of his head flew off like a baseball cap in the wind, and he disappeared in the slipstream.

  I reached out with my hands and found the sling of my Eradicator which hung from a torn piece of metal on the top of the truck. It swung me in a small arc and then slipped off the metal. I flew backward and landed in a heap on the inside of the trailer surprisingly safe and relatively unscathed.

  “Huh,” I noted that I still had the Eradicator in my left hand and the Equalizer in my right. “Reflexes of steel.”

  “Hey, steel reflexes, I need some help up here,” Tempest said into the comm.

  “No rest for the weary,” I muttered under my breath, holstered the Equalizer, and slung the Eradicator across my back next to the chainsaw-sword. I leaned out through the hole in the side of the trailer and I saw that Monster-Truck had pulled alongside the cab and was in the process of slamming into the front of the truck. Tempest sent shotgun blasts every few seconds toward it but it was all she could do to steer with the Monster-Truck trying to slam us into the wall of the canyon.

  I swung myself out onto the side of the truck, jumped as high as I could, and caught the lip of the trailer to pull myself up. The wind pulled at my clothes and the wild back and forth made it hard for me to get any leverage to yank my body up. An orange hand reached down and in one pull hauled me on top of the trailer.

  “Need a hand,” Nova said and grinned at me.

  “Now you’re a comedian too,” I said back and clapped her on the shoulder. “We need to get rid of Bigfoot down there.”

  That’s when I noticed the dead body of the vulture I had shot through the chest still lying on the top of the trailer, and it gave me an idea.

  “Hey, Nova,” I shouted at her to be heard over the wailing of engines, the screaming of jets, and war cries. “Shoot this when I say so.”

  I bent over and yanked the body of the hang glider over to the side of the trail and aimed it at the back of the Monster-Truck.

  “PoLarr,” I said into the comm, “which button makes these things go?”

  “Green one by the right handlebar,” she grunted. “I’m gonna have to make a touch and go here in a few minutes, this thing is almost out of gas.”

  “Can you land in the cab?” I asked. Tempest clearly needed help.

  “I could land on a dime in the ocean,” she bragged, and I heard the jet engine scream in my ear.

  I bent over and found the green button.

  “Here goes nothing,” I uttered and pressed the button. The gliders engine roared to life, and it shot out off the side of the trailer toward the back of the Monster-Truck. “Nova, now!”

  Nova aimed her machine cannon with precision and let loose a stream of tracer rounds. They hit the back of the hang glider just as it sailed into the flatbed of the Monster-Truck.

  The explosion was instantaneous and violent. Tempest swerved to the right and ended up putting us into the side of the canyon anyway. Sparks flew and metal tore before she was able to correct. The Monster-Truck didn’t fare so well. The explosion flung it up off the ground ten feet as flames engulfed it. I watched as it crashed to the ground, a mangled mass of metal and bone, as it smoldered, and we drove past it doing eighty.

  “And then there were two!” Chi-Cheshire appeared above the canyon walls. “Vex and team Havak in a mad dash to the finish. They are both guaranteed to pass through the match. If they don’t kill each other first. Can they make it across Gore Gorge?”

  “Who, ha, wha?” I mumbled. “I thought we were in Gore Gorge?”

  “That’s a big negative, Marc,” PoLarr said as she zoomed overhead and dropped deftly from the hand glider into the open roof of the cab to land in the passenger seat. The glider, now pilotless, banked off and crashed into one of the last remaining Vultures as we burst from the mouth of the canyon into a long straightaway. “Gore Gorge is, well, a big ass gorge five miles ahead of us. Maybe a hundred feet across. And, you know, the bridge is out.”

  “Gotta love the Crucible,” I said.

  “Love it or leave,” she shot back with the line from Born on the Fourth of July, that honestly, didn’t fit the situation at all, but I wasn’t about to correct her.

  “Time for us to get into the cab of the truck,” I said to Aurora and Nova. They nodded in return. We were all getting too tired to even speak at this point. Aurora floated out on a disk of dark matter and landed in the backseat area.

  Nova had just turned to jump into the cab when Vex’s chopper screamed from the top of the cliff and crashed into her back. She was flung forward and barely managed to get a hand on to the passenger side door that PoLarr had kicked open just in time.

  The bike skidded to a stop and fell to its side on the top of the trailer. Vex had jumped from the bike before it hit, somersaulted in the air, and came down six feet in front of me with his vibra-sword drawn.

  I went to bring my Eradicator to bear, pulling it up on its sling, but Vex skipped forward and with a slash of his sword, sliced through the barrel.

  “No!” I screamed and let the pistol grip and top half of the receiver fall back. The gun had been with me since my first day in the Crucible and seeing it destroyed was like watching a limb get cut off.

  There was no time to mourn because Vex pressed his attack. This time I was ready. I pulled the chainsaw-sword from my back, hit the ignition button, and smiled as the blade jumped to life, and the whole top burst into flames.

  I caught the vibra-sword in a parry, and Vex and I stared over the shimmering blades of our weapons. His glowed bright blue while mine was awash in yellow orange flame.

  “Time for you to die, Havak,” Vex hissed at me from behind his visor.

  “You first,” I sneered back. I was tired, pissed off, and I had had it with this asshole.

  Around the glowing blades I caught a glimpse of PoLarr and Aurora p
ulling Nova into the backseat of the truck, and since I knew that my team members were relatively safe, I launched a furious attack on the NecroWraith.

  The Glima mod I had chosen way back when was really best when I had my trusty Space Vicking Axes, but it was no slouch with sword fighting either. Swords weren’t the main weapon of an ancient Viking, but that didn’t mean they didn’t know how to use them.

  Vex was taken off guard by my assault but recovered quickly as we traded blow after blow on top of the speeding truck. If that wasn’t enough, some of the flame from my flaming chainsaw-sword managed to ignite the spilled jet fuel from the punctured hang glider earlier and surrounded us in a wall of bright fire.

  We were now two dudes sword fighting on top of a flaming semi-trailer hurtling through an alien desert waste at a hundred miles an hour toward a hundred foot gorge with no bridge.

  Yup, just another day in the Crucible of Carnage.

  “Uh, Marc,” Tempest urged in my ear. “What should we do?”

  “I’m a little busy at the moment,” I grunted as Vex slashed at me. I barely parried the blow and had to retreat down the length of the trailer. “Off the top of my head I say floor and get as much speed as you can then have Aurora make an antimatter ramp and Nova shoot a concussive blast under the truck at the last second. But I’m just spitballing while I sword fight.”

  “Might just work,” Tempest said, and I could hear the shrug in her voice. “What about you?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said and barely dodged a swipe from the vibra-sword. “Gotta go now. Sword fight.”

  Vex and I continued to trade blow after blow, but I was starting to get tired. My regen mod was overtaxed with all the wounds and exertion, and I could feel my arms weighing heavy. Vex was as spry and wickedly spritely as ever. I had to make something happen very fast.

  I spun the flaming chainsaw-sword in a wide figure eight in front of me and tried to gain some maneuvering room on Vex, but the bastard knew what I was trying to do and pressed in anyway. I saw a brief opening and managed to slash a chunk out of his shoulder.

  He growled in pain, and the sound was like angels torn it half. He patted the flames on his bodysuit out quickly. The chunk that had been carved out by the spinning chainsaw blade revealed skeletal skin that emitted a pale, gray smoke but not because it was on fire. It was as if his skin burned when in contact with the air.

  I felt him scream in anger in my soul, and he launched himself at me like a maniac, pounding on my sword with his with blow after blow. I felt my back hit the quad-harpoon and tried to parry the blows.

  Then with a flick of his wrist, Vex chopped the chainsaw part of my chainsaw sword off the top of the chain. It spun out over the side of the truck and disappeared into the wind. The two foot length of chain lost its rigidity and fell limp across my hand.

  Man, both my Eradicator and flaming chainsaw-sword gone in one day.

  This was bullshit.

  Vex cried out in what he thought was victory and raised his sword high over his head to cut me half.

  I grabbed hold of the harpoon gun handle and kicked myself off the side of the trailer. The quad-turret spun around as my centrifugal force flung me out around the back of the trailer until all four of the harpoons were aimed right at Vex. Then I pulled the trigger.

  All four of the harpoons fired as one and slammed into the NecroWraith’s chest. They shot him back across the trailer and pinned him to the machine gun stand. Smoke or blood or whatever the hell coursed through his necrotic veins leaked out of him like rivers.

  Thankfully, I’d kicked off with enough force to swing me all the way back around onto the trailer.

  I had a brief moment of glorious victory then felt the truck shudder.

  “Here we go!” Tempest yelled in the comm-link.

  A ramp of pure dark energy formed in front of the truck that must have been hurtling along at two hundred miles an hour. The front raised at a thirty-degree angle. I had about a second and a half before we hit the air.

  With gritted teeth and grim determination, I sprinted to where Vex’s chopper lay, miraculously still running. I pulled it upright, hopped on, and twisted the gas as far as it would go.

  The bike shot forward as the truck launched off the end of the ramp and Nova let loose one of her concussive blasts. It broke the trailer from the engine car, and the trailer began to sink into the void.

  Vex’s chopper chewed up the length of the trailer, and I flew off the edge into space. I caught one last look at the NecroWrath, pinned to the trailer as it spun away below me into an infinite blackness.

  My momentum began to slow as I was mere feet from the back of the truck. Nova’s blast had given it maybe just enough height to make it across, but if I didn’t hitch a ride fast, I was going to be joining Vex in the abyss.

  My left hand shot out, and the chain that remained from my destroyed chainsaw-sword flew out and wrapped around one of the trucks exhaust stacks. It yanked me from the bike's saddle just as it fell away from under me.

  Before we landed, I felt the familiar tickle as my atoms started to get torn apart, and my team and I were about to be teleported home.

  “Horn, Tempest!” I screamed into the wind.

  Tempest heard my cry and pulled the air horn. The beginning chords of Survivor’s immortal classic Eye of the Tiger blared out into the desert sun as we flew across the hundred foot gorge, a chariot made of steel and fury and victory.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The twin moons were noon high in the sky over Valiance City, and they reflected in the crystal blue water of the infinity pool like bright shimmering orbs in a big blanket of sapphires. The pool was on the very top floor of my apartment building and had completely clear glass sides, and part of it jutted out over the side of the building so that it felt like you were swimming in the sky.

  “Yes, Havak,” Grizz bellowed from the side of the pool where he sat in a holographic lounge chair and sipped on a holographic Pina Colada. He wore a pair of very tight, too tight actually, teeny tiny swim trunks, flip flops, and his skin actually glistened as if he had slathered himself in baby oil. A pair of dark sunglasses sat on the bridge of his nose that was painted with a smear of blue zinc oxide. Wasn’t sure why he’d gone through the motions because I didn’t think holograms could get a sunburn, or moon burn as it were. “I see now why you suggested this. It is magnificent.”

  “Thanks, Grizz,” I said back from the big inflatable chair I was sprawled out on in the center of the pool. The water felt cool and delightful on my skin after the several days we had spent in the desert of Cruxia, but my hand still rubbed absently at the scar in the middle of my shoulder where the crossbow bolt had skewered me.

  The regen mod had done its job well, but it couldn’t keep the skin from scarring. I felt the puckered line of white skin under my fingers and actually smiled. The scars that I was slowly acquiring were like medals. Trophies of near death vanquished and winning.

  I took a long sip from the ice cold bottle of Corona that rested in the float’s built in drink holder. It reminded me of a long ago spring break in Cancun when I had just turned twenty. I’d gone with a group of high school friends, my great Uncle Joe had given me the money as a birthday gift, and we’d had a great time staying in a shitty motel, drinking too much shitty beer, and getting really sunburned. It was the best time I think I’d had in my life until that point. When I got back is when I really started working for the trucking company full time, and the drudgery of adulthood took over.

  I felt that same sense of possibility and freedom now that I had felt back then. Even though I had to fight for my life and the lives of those I cared about on nearly a daily basis, I wasn't brought down by it.

  Yeah, there was a shit ton of violence, but where in the galaxy wasn’t there. At least here I had a say in it. I had a say in my destiny and the destinies of those around me. The struggles we faced made moments like this all the more special. I appreciated them more. Back on Earth I took ev
erything for granted. The ups, the downs. Everything had become mundane as if the color had been washed out of life. Now, though, fuck, now I wanted to suck the marrow out of each and every moment, good or bad.

  Through dark sunglasses of my own I glanced around the pool and smiled. Aurora, who was wearing a barely there string bikini that must have used some kind of space magic to hold her massive breasts in place, sat at the edge of the pool with her feet in the water. She had on a giant sun hat, Audrey Hepburn style shades, and sipped a fruity cocktail from an actual coconut. She caught me staring at her and blew me a kiss. I pretended to catch it and blew it back. She pretended to bite it out of the air. I made a promise to myself that she and I needed to spend some quality alone time together again very, very soon.

  PoLarr, who looked svelte and sexy in a low cut, backless one-piece swimsuit, and Tempest, who had taken a page out of Aurora’s fashion playbook, in a gold bikini, played a game of water volleyball over a net they had set up on the side of the pool. They were both highly competitive and went at it with gusto. Which, was pretty awesome to watch given the scant amount of clothing they had on and the wet streams of water running down their skin.

  Nova, not big on water, was in the lounger next to Grizz. She sat upright and was in the process of emptying a yard glass full of Paladinian Summer ale. She finished with a huge gulp, burped loudly, then smiled at me. That was my warrior princess right there. Her muscular frame was in an athletically inspired tank top and boy shorts that still managed to accentuate every one of her feminine curves and not leave much to the imagination. Images of our night together during the last match floated through my head, and I had to push them away before I sported a chubby. Which would be a major pool foul.

  Artemis floated right next to me in a matching inflatable raft and sipped on her favorite alcoholic beverage, a Long Island Iced Tea. She was a go big or go home kinda gal. A floral print thong bikini covered her private bits while still allowing enough skin for me to ogle unabashedly. She held my hand so that we made a little flotilla in the middle of the pool.