Perfect! Anders thought. He could remain hidden as he marched.
“If we trek through the night, then we will reach there by early morning,” Moriarty said.
“Then I guess we had better hope that Uskol Hecatia is the sort of man who likes his sleep…” Anders muttered as he started to jog.
“Ten,” Moriarty announced, and Anders stumbled to a halt, hitting his chest and gasping. He had just done another ten minutes of jogging through the Hecta night and now his legs were shaking.
“Sip one third of the water tube, followed by one entire ration pack,” Moriarty informed him. “That will keep your efficiency levels at a minimum calorific spend.”
“Thanks.” Anders did just that. He had so far been doing this exact routine for the last two and a half hours, and Moriarty had told him that he was making good time, but only if he could keep up this pace.
“Rest break six will be for exactly fourteen minutes, sir,” Moriarty informed him, earning a nod as Anders collapsed against a stump of one of the shattered trees. The MPB officer felt exhausted, of course, but his mind had slowed to just a slow murmur of thought. The occasional concern for water or food or a muscle ache, and that was it.
That was because Anders was hunting. It had been like this in the streets of faraway New Gate City, as well, without the exhaustion and the pillars of rock being thrown at him of course, but with the same clearheaded, pinpointed focus. Sometimes, when in a more relaxed state, Anders wondered if there was something wrong with him.
Too obsessed with his work, wasn’t that what Cassandra had always said?
“Help!” Before his mind could wander down dark paths, it was lifted into sharp-edged awareness by the sudden cry. It was a man’s voice, and it wasn’t far away.
Anders was already rising on instinct.
“Sir, do I have to remind you that you are currently engaged in a first-past-the-post game?” Moriarty said. “Any other contestant that you encounter is just as likely to kill you as to require your assistance. Have you considered that cry could be a trap?”
“Hellllp!” The sound came again. It was a wail of despair, and it was followed by the guttural snigger of someone, or something, else.
“How can I ignore that?” Anders shook his head. “I may have been transported here to the middle of this challenge, but I am still an MPB man. This is my job.” He started to climb the hill of dirt between him and the anguished voice.
“Are you going to arrest every murderer in here? Every contestant?” Moriarty asked him.
“If I have to,” Anders muttered.
“Does that include yourself, Lieutenant?” Moriarty asked, but did not get a reply.
It was indeed a human. And he did not look to be anywhere near the sort of human who would find their way into the Challenge.
He was small-limbed, with bleach-blonde hair and slightly large eyes, that right now were wide with terror. His skin was pale. Were it not for the green of his eyes then Anders might have thought that he was an albino, until he realized what he was: The man was a Voider, one of those odd sorts of humans who grew up far out on the edges of civilized throne space, staring into the abyss between the galaxies.
The Voider was also tied to one of the trees, and in front of him was the hellish form of the only Mondrauk contestant.
“Venark!” Anders shouted. Being a citizen of the Hecta System, Anders was acquainted with the changing roster of famous contestants. It was hard to avoid them as they would be plastered over the sides of buildings or talked about constantly in the feeds for months during the build-up and the aftermath of each Challenge.
“Another human!” Venark turned on his hooves and bared his teeth. In his hands was a steel battle-ax. Clearly no one had managed to beat the Mondrauk for that prize on Tabletop Ridge.
The Mondrauk was taller even than the Red Judges, although some of that height was two swept-back horns that started just behind his eyes. A massive bony ridge extended across his forehead, and the rest of his face was squashed and seemingly flattened into what was—to humans—a grotesque, pug-like picture. Hair erupted from the back of his head, down his neck and would be all over his body, the lieutenant knew. Perhaps the most startling thing about the Mondrauks were the goat-like legs that ended in hooves. Venark was a famous Mondrauk, and the shoulders and arms of his dark umber suit were already decorated with a myriad of patches declaring his prowess and achievements.
The alien settled into a crouch.
“Venark, it doesn’t have to go down like this,” Anders was saying, holding his crossbow up and sighting down it as he carefully military-stepped forward. “I’m not here to kill you. But I want you to leave that man alone—”
Venark leaped—and when a Mondrauk with their backward-jointed legs jumped, the results were often spectacular…
Anders barely had time to duck out of the way as the demon-like alien soared over his head. Venark’s clawed hand seized one of the overhead branches and used it to turn in mid-flight, landing on one of the larger boughs of the poison-trees and jumping again. Anders couldn’t follow his quick movements. He was turning one way and then another.
The shape of the Mondrauk appeared right before him, bringing the ax down with both hands.
Drekk! Anders threw himself back to the dirt as the Mondrauk pounced in mid-air—
“Now, sir!” Moriarty said.
Anders pulled the trigger and saw the black bolt shoot upward toward the angered form. There was a grunt of surprise, and then Anders rolled as Venark slammed into the dirt where Anders had been. The Mondrauk was still.
“Congratulations, sir,” Moriarty said, although Anders did not feel like a winner.
“Why didn’t he listen to me!” Anders spat into the dirt. Old habits forced him to kick the battle-ax out of the way of the body just in case, although it didn’t look to anyone in the clearing like Venark was going to be doing any retaliation any time soon. Or ever.
“Th-thank you,” gasped the man from the tree. Quite horribly, he had been tied to one of the poison trees, and although his limbs had been arranged to avoid the mighty thorns, the intention had clearly been to let the toxins of the bark take their toll.
Which they had, Anders saw as soon as he cut the ropes and allowed the man to slump forward. The back of his neck, the sides of his face as well as his hands were now all swollen and puffy, and a painful-looking red.
“Don’t…don’t touch me,” the man shivered in pain. “You might get some on you. I think it’s poison ivy,” he said in gasps.
“It’s worse than that,” Anders said, oddly touched by this man’s small effort to save another human from the torment that he himself was going through. “Here, drink, eat.” Anders gave the man his last ration pack and half of the water tubes before turning to the grisly task of ransacking Venark’s body.
Aside from the crossbow bolt lodged in the aliens’ chest, Venark looked relatively healthy, Anders thought. So that meant that if he also had won a weapon and rope from the Tabletop Ridge crates, there was every likelihood that he had also…
“Aha!” Anders fished out the knife, rations, water, and last the medical applicator pen. “Use this.” Anders threw it to the man, who fumbled and juggled the cylinder at first before catching it and jabbing it into his thigh.
Anders watched a beatific smile spread across the man’s features as the red blotches and marks all over his body started to fade. Now that he wasn’t wrought with pain, it was clearer that he was a Voider. And he was also young. Anders placed him in his early to mid-twenties maybe. Although, with today’s technology, it was hard for anyone to tell anymore.
“What’s your name, friend?” Anders asked as he separated out the stolen rations and water and started tightening his own belt. He didn’t have time to hang around. He had to get back to the trail and hunt down his quarry before he got some game-changing weapon.
“Patch, Patch Maguire.” The man looked a little warily at the MPB officer. “I… I don’
t deserve to be down here.”
“Me neither,” Anders said wryly. He held his thumb over his node, the bio-activation for his identity badge. In the air before them, a very faint holo of a golden crest of scales over a shield appeared.
“You’re MPB?” Patch Maguire looked stunned.
Not as stunned as I am to be here! Anders thought. “I guess you could say I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and someone thought seeing an officer of the law running around down here would be worth the viewing figures.” Anders heaved a sigh. Of course, that wasn’t the real reason why he was here, but that would take time to explain, and it was time he didn’t have. He stood up. “Take my advice, friend. Find a hole and hide in it until the Challenge is over. When the sky flashes three times, the rescue drones will be sent for all of us.”
Anders finished his checks and started walking, ready to start again.
“Wait!” Patch said in alarm, hopping to his feet. “What about you? Where are you going?”
“I’ve got someone that I have to find,” Anders said. “One of the contestants. I hope to find him and talk to him before either he gets killed or ends up killing everyone else.” He didn’t stop walking.
Behind him there was silence for a moment as Patch Maguire must have been considering the dangerous dark of the Challenge jungle, full of people and things that wanted to kill him.
“Hold up! I’m coming with you!” Anders heard the younger man running after him, awkwardly cradling the Mondrauk’s battle-ax that he had just taken.
18
Dawn
“He’s slowing you down,” Moriarty informed the lieutenant.
“I know,” Anders said, but there was little he could do about it. The pair had quick-marched as fast as they were able through into the strange pink-red dawn of a Hecta 3 morning. Occasionally in the distance, they would hear sudden shouts or screams as one or more contestants met their grisly end.
“Why are you after this guy anyway?” Patch asked when they collapsed for another of their Moriarty-scheduled breaks.
“Uskol Hecatia is wanted in the Hecta System for at least one murder, and probably complicit in two more,” Anders said grimly. Which wasn’t technically true as all the cases had been closed, but still.
He has broken the law. And the law remains the law, even if someone up top wants to deny it.
“So, you followed him down here to the Challenge?” Anders saw the young Voider look at him a little owlishly. “That’s kinda crazy…”
“You’re not the first to call me that.” Even Anders had to grin at that.
“I bet,” Patch murmured to himself. “You know, we don’t have the MPB out in the Void worlds,” he commented. Anders wasn’t sure whether to take it as a judgement or a compliment.
“When someone breaks the law,” he commented, “we just send them in a shuttle back into throne space. “
“But aren’t you Voiders a part of throne space?” Anders frowned for a moment. Everyone knew they were a strange breed of humanity, but they were still humans, after all.
Patch looked up at the strange skies above, squinting as if his clear eyes could squint right through the haze to the distant, unfathomable stars. “Things get strange out on the edges,” he said.
I bet they do, Anders thought. He had half a mind to agree with Moriarty, that this Voider was just slowing him down, and about to figure out a way how to tell the young man, politely, to go stay alive on his own.
“Hey, you’ve got a node, haven’t you?” Patch said suddenly, breaking from his strange, starry trance to focus on the Anders.
“Sure,” Anders tapped at the metal bud on his lapel. “Don’t you?”
“I did. It got taken off me when I was sentenced. That’s why I’m here. I attacked a Throne Marine,” Patch said a little sheepishly.
“You did what!?” Anders burst out.
“It’s a long story. The throne stole my research.” Patch waved the matter off as if it were a long time ago. “But if you’ve got a node, I know a way to turn it into a geo-locater. I can pull up your criminal for you, if you want.”
Anders gave the young man a strange look. He knew that the Voiders were famous for their engineers. They created insane devices that they claimed would revolutionize FTL travel, or communications, or perform half a dozen other miracles.
However, usually they all backfired and caused far more problems than before.
“Uh…”
“Subroutine Memory-Beta Override!” Patch called out a little excitedly. There was an answering blip from Anders’s node.
“Hey, wait, what are you doing?” Anders recoiled a little.
“Nodes have voice-activation, right? A coder who knows the right words can reprogram just by speaking!” Patch was now standing and approaching the officer.
“Hold on there, I don’t think I want you messing—” Anders was halfway through saying, just as the Voider opened his mouth and out poured an incomprehensible series of numbers and clicks.
“01011 110’10’000 1 0111’1001…” It took all of a few breathes, and Anders’s node flashed repeatedly before flaring a steady, dull green.
“What did you do?” Anders said, aghast. “Moriarty? Moriarty, are you still in there?!”
“Yes, sir! It’s incredible. He’s used the subroutines of the node to access the communications and sensors, linking them to the Challenge satellites above us.”
“Stop. Does that mean we can communicate outside now?” Anders’s shock turned into glee. He could contact the captain. He could tell them precisely what was going on. He could get the Challenge halted—
“No. The satellites still refuse transmissions, but what this young man has done has allowed us to access their geo-positioning sensors,” Moriarty said. “I now have a map of every Challenge contestant active right now, and, oh…”
Anders didn’t like the sound of that at all.
“And you are currently being surrounded by two groups,” Moriarty said, moments before all hell broke loose.
“Head down!” Anders shouted at Patch as his shoulder slammed into one bank of churned earth and sighted his crossbow along the ridge. There were people up there—other contestants—and it looked like they had formed a hunting party.
“Urk!” Something shot across the ditch they were sheltering in, hitting one of the human contestants on the opposite side. Anders realized, sickeningly, that it was a spear.
“Oh crap,” Anders breathed.
“What? What is it?” Patch cowered beside him.
They were not just in the middle of one hunting party, but two. It wasn’t an unheard-of occurrence, but it was rare. Although only one contestant could win with the most kills, there were hundreds of newsfeeds devoted to Challenge tactics, and the hunting party was one of them.
“With any luck, they’ll be too busy trying to kill each other…” Anders whispered.
“Down there! Two more!” someone across on the righthand bank said.
Of course.
Anders fired, and the scout-spotter went down with a startled gasp. Only to be replaced by a second, but this time, the second contestant was too quick, darting back down the bank of tortured mud and tree roots as Anders’s bolt sailed overhead.
There was nothing for it. “Run!” Anders grabbed Patch’s shoulder and pushed him forward.
There was an explosion of soil and rock behind as something soared through the space where Anders had been. He threw his stride into a zigzag pattern, leaping from one side to another as the ground exploded behind him.
“Stone projectiles. Slingshot,” Moriarty confirmed as Anders released a bolt into another figure on his right as they tried to swamp them. He slammed another bolt home into the stock and raised it again.
“Yargh!” An enraged scream was followed by a yelp of terror as figures started to leap into the ditch ahead of them. The first one was a throne human with a broad figure and a full beard.
He’s got a freaking broadsword, Anders
thought, lunging forward to grab the back of Patch’s jacket moments before the Voider impaled himself on it.
“Down!” Anders shouted as the blade whistled past him and whirled around for a return strike—
Anders shot him in the chest.
The next figure in their way however was going to be a lot more difficult. It was none other than Jacques herself, tall and willowy with blonde hair and holding in her hands two curving sickle blades. She was one half of the duo who had won the Challenge previously.
Jacques leaped forward, not giving him any time to prepare as she thrust and swiped.
Anders didn’t have time to reload his crossbow. Jacques was coming at him too hot and fast. Anders held the metal crossbow in two hands by the stock, using it to bat away her attacks as he gave ground.
“Low center of gravity. She’s faster, but not as strong as you,” Moriarty informed him.
And how is that going to help me!? Anders thought as he stumbled. Behind him, he heard Patch’s wail as another contestant must have landed behind them. The Voider was going to die unless he did something.
“Wall,” Anders hissed, reaching out to shove Patch against the ditch embankment as another swipe from one of the sickles almost took off one of his ears. He had to use his strength to his advantage. But how?
He had to let her overreach herself…
Anders concentrated on just blocking her blows and didn’t try to strike back. It was a different way of thinking than that of attacking. All his brain resources that would have been spent on looking for openings and gauging his opponent dropped away. He was only looking at her approaching limbs.
Draw her in… He hissed as he had to flick his crossbow faster and faster across his body. Sparks flew when the two chunks of metal hit.
And then Anders made his move. He saw her overhead swing telegraphed perfectly toward his neck, and he swung the crossbow up with all his might as if he was hitting a home run in that Old Earth game.
Challenge of Steel Page 10