Gladiator (Gauntlet Prime Book 1)

by Barry Solway

  She gave Evan a subtle thumbs-up, but he shrugged and went back to showing her how the battery bomb was supposed to work. Anna and a training robot had kept a close eye on this training station the first week, but as Evan’s skill improved they had given him more leeway in the last few days. He explained the new process would cut the time of the chemical breakdown to less than half of the old process. Mel’s eyes immediately glazed over. Evan checked the battery, then turned back to his tablet. Sitting next to him was a metal box that he used to test his improvised bombs.

  “It should be ready in about two minutes. When the plastic on the outside of the battery melts, it separates into a few different chemicals. When that mixes with the catalyst in the battery and an electric charge is applied, it creates a pretty potent explosive. The nice thing is that the chemical mixture is fairly stable by itself. So unless you smash it with a lot of force or apply electricity, it’s safe to transport, even in the melted stage.”

  “Fascinating,” Mel replied, stifling a yawn.

  Evan nodded. “Let’s move it to the safe now, just in case. It’s hot enough that it should finish melting on its own.” Evan turned away to open the safe, then grabbed a set of tongs.

  But Mel was distracted, still thinking about Evan’s discovery. Currently, it was impossible to plot any kind of escape when Kathor and Anna knew everything they said and saw.

  “This thing really stinks,” she said.

  “Yep,” Evan chuckled. “It means it’s almost—” Evan turned a bit too fast and the tongs clanked against the pot, knocking over the electromagnet resting on top. Evan swore and leaped forward, pushing Mel aside just as the pot exploded and a fountain of liquid flame flew into the air.

  Mel fell backward with a yelp, Evan landing on top of her. He scrambled away from the bubbling mass as Gorgeous and Sharon screamed behind them.

  Evan’s hands were shaking “Mel, are you alright?”

  Mel caught her breath, then looked at Evan. “Your leg!” Green goo splashed across his calf, smoking as it ate away at his pants. Evan screamed and rubbed it with the end of his shirt, trying to clear the liquid away. His shirt immediately started smoldering and Mel could see red welts forming on his hands.

  Anna appeared above them with a large canister. She aimed it at Evan and a yellow foam squirted out, covering his hands and leg. Evan took a ragged breath and then lay back with his eyes closed.

  “Thanks Anna. That was close.”

  “You’re a mess,” Mel said. He was covered in yellow foam, that turned an ugly brown color as it mixed with the green goo from the explosive.

  Jeff nudged Evan with a foot. “You should be more careful. You almost got Mel hurt.”

  “I’m fine,” Mel said. “I think you’re going to fail the next workplace safety inspection, Anna.”

  Anna raised an eyebrow. “Get up, Evan. I’ll take you to medical and we’ll make sure there’s no permanent damage.” Anna turned to the others. “Everyone take a break until I get back.”

  As Mel reached down to help Evan up, she noticed another electromagnet lying on the floor next to the melted pot, a spare that Evan had removed from a pistol earlier. She helped Evan to his feet, trying not to get the brown and yellow foam on her clothes. “That foam smells horrible. Go get cleaned up before you gas us out of here. I can clean this up.”

  Anna looked at her curiously for a moment, then shook her head. “Wait until I get back, please. The robots can handle the dangerous work. We don’t need anyone else to get burned.” She nodded to Evan and led him to the door.

  “What a dweeb,” Jeff muttered. “You sure you’re alright?”

  Nodding, Mel bent down and pretended to brush her legs off, surreptitiously palming the electromagnet as she stood. Jeff didn’t notice. Hopefully Anna wouldn’t either.

  Chapter 23

  Mel searched for a place to hide the electromagnet, while trying not to look at it. She assumed that the translators couldn’t tell what she was feeling with her hands, so as long as she couldn’t see the translator, then neither could Anna or Kathor. Her clothes were almost formfitting and it had been difficult to keep it out of sight. The only place in the main bedroom area to hide it was under her blanket. In the bathroom, the sink attached to the wall and there were no cabinets. A small nook was recessed into the wall, but it wouldn’t hide anything. She held the electromagnet in one hand behind her and tried to trace under the sink to see if there was a ledge or cubbyhole. The magnet slipped from her hand and dropped to the floor. With a click, a section of the floor popped up half an inch.

  The panel was obvious once she knew to look for it but the seams blended with the floor when it was down. She wasn’t sure why it had suddenly sprung open. Maybe the force of the magnet falling on it. She lifted the edge and could see a patchwork of cables and pipes. Curiously, she pushed the panel down and it clicked shut. She pressed on it, expecting it to pop back open, but nothing happened. Prying it back up was useless, as there wasn’t enough of a groove to even get a fingernail in. Curiously, she palmed the magnet and slid it along the floor without looking at it. As it passed over a corner of the panel, there was another click and the panel popped up again.

  This time, she swung the panel backwards on its hinge. It was a square section of the floor, about eighteen inches on each side. She leaned into the space, poking around at the cables and clear tubing that glowed with a reddish light. Fear of being electrocuted kept her from prodding too much, but she realized there was a space under the wires and pipes. Pushing the tubing and cables aside, she stared down into a small service tunnel.

  With a flash, her dreams came back to her. It had first happened weeks ago, when she had dreamed about the zombie on the beach. But she’d had a similar dream a few times since then. They were normal weird dreams until someone with Anna’s voice would randomly talk about the virtues of tunnels. Tunnels went everywhere. Tunnels were the way to go.

  And now she was staring into a tunnel that ran under the floor.

  Mel looked at it dubiously. She thought she could fit, but it would definitely involve losing some skin. There would be no room to turn around, and if she got stuck she wasn’t sure anyone would rescue her, or what might happen to her if they did. On the other hand, this was a situation where she could likely play to Kathor’s apparent need for her. It gave her a little confidence that she would be treated leniently if she got caught.

  Was it possible these tunnels really went everywhere in the ship? It made sense, she thought. Pipes for water and cables for the lights and computers. There had to be some way to service it all. The small tunnel didn’t seem designed for human-sized people. Maybe they used child labor. She laughed morbidly at the thought. The kids went from working in the tunnels to playing in the deadly gladiator games. She shook her head. More likely, the tunnels were designed for service robots.

  They were on a break now. She didn’t know how long it would last, but she should have some time alone. If she could fit in the tunnel, she could see where it led. Just a quick exploration.

  Without hesitating, she held the electromagnet up to the side of her head. She thought she could feel a difference, but since no one was talking in an alien language it was hard to tell. Still, it had worked in the training hall and she had to make sure Anna and Kathor wouldn’t know what she was doing. She hoped they would just assume that the lack of transmission was her taking a nap.

  She would have to move the cables out of the way and squeeze between the edge of the entry and the pipes, a space just larger than a foot. It was hard to tell, but the service tunnel looked like it went in two directions parallel to the door of the bathroom. The tunnel itself didn’t seem much wider than the gap to get into it. Barely two feet wide, she thought, and not even that tall.

  Wriggling in, she wedged her feet into the hole. The cables had enough slack to move easily, but it was still a pain to not get tangled in them. She got stuck almost immediately, unable to bend her legs sufficiently in the right dire
ction to get her waist through. And she had to make sure that once in the tunnel, she could get back out.

  Switching tactics, she opted to shimmy in head first. This was fairly easy and felt a bit like swimming through the cables and pipes. As she wriggled through, she tried to feel where her legs and hips were so she could recreate the movements in reverse when she returned.

  Finally, she was in the tunnel, panting heavily. While not particularly afraid of tight spaces, she wondered if this experience was going to change that. She could just barely spin onto her side and back if she needed to, but there was barely an inch on either side of her shoulders. If there was a junction she wanted to take, she doubted she would be able to bend into it.

  She practiced crawling forward and backward. It didn’t help that she couldn’t see anything behind her and had to feel her way with her feet. If the tunnels had fans or lasers, she was going to be in big trouble. All the secret passages in movie spaceships had lasers. Hopefully that wasn’t a thing in real ships. Another problem was that she had to periodically remember to hold the electromagnet to her head to keep the translator from coming back online. She took a deep breath, reminding herself to go slowly and take things one step at a time. Finally content that she was as comfortable as she was going to get, she crawled forward. She rested after a minute. Pushing with her feet helped but the effort was exhausting.

  She paused for a moment and realized she could hear muffled voices. Backing up slightly, she rolled to her back and saw she was below a panel. She grabbed one of the pipes and pulled herself up, almost to a sitting position. Even with the cables out of the way, there wasn’t enough room to sit up fully. She hooked an elbow over a pipe and hoped her weight wouldn’t pull it off. Carefully pressing her ear against the panel above her, she listened in.

  The voices were still muffled, but she could make out a higher pitched voice and a lower rumble that she thought was Jeff. She thought he must be talking to Sharon, but the voice didn’t sound right. Could it be Anna? That didn’t make sense. Curiosity won out and she reached out with the electromagnet and waved it over the corner of the panel that had the lock. With an audible click, the panel popped up.

  Mel held her breath; that click sounded way louder than she remembered. But there was no reaction from inside the room, so she relaxed and pulled herself up to the small crack in the panel. The high-pitched voice was talking again, but she couldn’t make out words. It almost sounded like someone was singing, and the voice seemed familiar. Was Sharon singing to Jeff? The thought was weird enough that Mel momentarily forgot to be jealous.

  “I said you were cute enough,” Jeff laughed. “Cute enough is still cute.” More singing. “I like the way you move.”

  Another trill of notes. “What is it with women? No, you don’t look fat.”

  And then it hit Mel. The sing-song voice wasn’t Sharon singing. It was Gorgeous. Mel realized that without the translator she couldn’t understand what Gorgeous was saying. Mel suppressed a laugh. Based on Jeff’s comments, it was pretty clear the alien girl was flirting with him.

  “Wait, wait!” Jeff said, in obvious frustration. “I didn’t mean…. Look, you don’t look fat, but that’s okay. I like athletic girls, okay? No, no, you’re not ugly, you look fine.” Sing-song. “I’m sure that the other girls are just jealous. I know you think you’re too skinny, I’m just saying you look fine.” Sing-song. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. Wait, what are you doing? Look, look you can’t… we can’t do this… do you even have the right, you know, stuff, I mean… just back off! Seriously.” Sing-song. “No, I didn’t say you were too skinny! I didn’t say that. Mmph—”

  What the hell? Was Gorgeous kissing him? Mel didn’t know what to think, but decided this wasn’t what she had crawled into the tunnels to see and didn’t know how much time she had. Wishing she could see how it ended, she quietly pulled the panel back down and heard it click into place.

  She let herself back into the tunnel, rubbing her arm where it was sore from holding onto the pipe. Flipping over, she continued her search.

  Periodic intersections widened slightly into circles that gave her just enough room to turn a corner if she twisted the right way. Fortunately, she was flexible enough to pull it off. She kept a map in her head of the layout. Jeff’s room was actually the opposite direction she wanted to go, so she took the first left she came to. Now she headed down the length of the ship with the main hallway somewhere off to her left. The tunnel wasn’t directly under the hallway, which was a bit of a problem, since she wouldn’t be able to easily pick a specific room to go to. She kept moving forward.

  After several rests and a lot of panting, she thought she might have to go back. It wasn’t that she hadn’t found anything, it was that she didn’t even know what she was looking for. And she had lost track of time. She had no idea when someone might notice her translator was off, or if Anna had come back to the main room to check on everyone. She rolled onto her back to rest, closing her eyes and breathing deeply. The air in the tunnels was warm, but not horribly so. The space felt almost comforting, as if she had crawled into a little den and was protected from the outside world. She wondered if the others would eventually forget about her if she stayed down here long enough.

  Opening her eyes, she spotted the telltale sign of another panel. She pulled herself up. The last two panels she had found led to empty, dark rooms. Unless she completely crawled out of the tunnel, it was impossible to tell where she was or what room she was under. Still, having the ability to explore the ship was huge. This was just an initial foray, she decided. The next time she explored, she would have to go into the rooms and map out the ship.

  But it wouldn’t hurt to check out one more room before she headed back. Carefully, she pulled herself up and triggered the latch on the panel. Immediately, her breath caught as an icy fear clutched at her chest. She could hear voices, and one was Kathor’s.

  She froze, afraid to close the panel. Kathor’s voice had stopped; had he heard the panel open? He had a guttural speech pattern, with clearly distinct words, but it sounded hoarse and dangerous. Without the translator, she was helpless to know what he was saying.

  A second voice came in, slightly lower in pitch than Kathor’s. He was talking to someone else in his native language. Was there someone else on the ship? Another voice joined in, a deep baritone, then another. Some kind of meeting.

  Again, Mel’s curiosity got the better of her. She pulled the electromagnet away from her ear and waited. This was a massive gamble, as it might clue Anna or even Kathor into realizing where Mel was. The translators could see what she saw, but only if she had her eyes open. If she kept her eyes closed, someone would have to be listening to her conversations to know she was spying on Kathor. At least she hoped that was the case. Mel counted on the idea that Anna probably didn’t listen in on every word everyone said.

  After a long wait, she felt a strange sensation in her head and Kathor’s voice shifted into English.

  “I did find the rocks. I have three, one for each of you,” Kathor said.

  “I want two!” a low-pitched voice demanded.

  “No, I want two,” said another voice, even deeper.

  “You can’t have two. There’s only three,” the first voice said.

  “You each get one,” came a slightly higher-pitched voice. “The third one is for your father and I.”

  Mel almost forgot to keep her eyes shut and nearly let go of her grip on the pipe. Father? He was talking to his wife and children! The thought of it sent Mel’s head spinning.

  “Now let Daddy tell us about how his work is going,” the voice said.

  “Ah, it’s going excellent,” Kathor said. “Amazing results in my latest round of research. Funding is always a problem, but it’s being taken care of.”

  “Are the aliens scary, Daddy? They’re nice aliens, right?”

  Kathor’s wife laughed. “Your daughter told—” some undecipherable mess that Mel realized was a
name, “that the aliens you were studying had escaped and were coming to eat her. No desserts for this one.”

  Kathor laughed. “No, my dear little one, the aliens aren’t scary. Quite harmless, actually, and not very advanced at all. That’s what our research is about, to understand them better so we can help them. Eventually, if they are smart enough and can learn, they may even be able to become full citizens of the Sovereignty.”

  “Then we can have them over for dinner,” one of the voices said. It threw Mel off that the children had the lower-pitched voices, but she thought this was the youngest one.

  “Perhaps, perhaps. Why don’t you two run off and watch the entertainment projector? Daddy needs to talk to Mommy.”

  “Grown-up conversation is icky,” the older child said. They both made a sound that the translator indicated was laughter. There was shuffling and then Kathor’s wife spoke quietly.

  “How are you feeling? Be honest with me, Kathor.”

  “I’m fine. The condition is holding stable for now. Slight degradation in the cell count, but it’s more or less a sustainable course.”

  “How’s your energy? You work too hard.”

  “Fine, fine. I have to work hard if I’m going to find a way to beat this.”

  “The doctors thought you only had a year left. You’ve already proven them wrong.”

  “Yes, but… well, that doesn’t matter. I miss you and the children.”

  The inflection in his wife’s voice carried a great deal of sadness. “What? What doesn’t matter?”

  Kathor sighed. “I don’t know that it means anything. The cell count is holding steady, but plasma acidity is increasing.”

  “That would indicate cell breakdown…”

  “Perhaps. I’m going to send you samples and need you to run some tests. I’m thinking the treatments are increasing cell replication enough to offset the breakdown. That would explain both findings. But it means I haven’t stopped the progression. I don’t know how long this balance will last.”