“Hi. I’m Tamara,” she said, turning to Elei, making the effort to be sociable.
“Elei,” the big woman said, her voice deep and matching her appearance.
“I saw you on the run this morning,” Tamara said, then realizing that could sound like a criticism, given that Elei had come in second-to-last and several minutes behind the front of the pack.
Elei just shrugged, however, seeming not to take the comment poorly.
She patted her belly and said, “There’s a lot of me to get around, but I always eventually do.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. I just, I, well, I just meant I’ve seen you around, so I wanted to introduce myself. This is my roomie, Jonna,” she added, pointing to Jonna.
“Glad to meet you,” Jonna said, reaching across Tamara to shake Elei’s hand.
Just then, the door by the stage opened, and a 70’s-something woman, short and petite, walked in and over to the podium, forestalling any more talk.
“I’m Johanna, not Jonna. Only my friends can call me that,” Jonna manage to whisper to Tamara before the lady could begin to speak.
“Ladies, I’m Doctor Ruth Whisperjack,” the woman spoke up, her voice reverberating through the classroom. “You are about to embark on a mission that is vital to the very survival of mankind, but before you become SCSs, it is important that you understand the history of mankind’s war with the Klethos and the history of the gladiators.”
Without any more preamble, she launched right into a short history of mankind’s expansion into space, the formation of the various governments of man, and the first contact with the Trinoculars.[13] Unknown to humanity at the time, the Trinoculars, or “capys,” were being pushed out of their territory by the Klethos, and the first contact between man and capys was with open warfare. It was only later that the capys, being defeated on one side by the Klethos and unable to push the humans in turn, approached humanity and asked for aid. That led to the discovery of the Klethos and the initiation of fighting between humanity and the Klethos on the Trinocular planet Tri-30, which resulted in a total loss of the planet. It wasn’t until the fight on the human world of Yakima 3 that Colonel Ryck Lysander figured out the gladiatorial slant to the Klethos, and half-dead from the Brick, challenged the unnamed d’relle leading the Klethos attack to personal combat, and the rules of warfare, so-to-speak, were re-written.
Tamara felt a surge of pride as Dr. Whisperjack spoke of General Lysander. He was a Marine, after all, and while he later led the coup against the Federation Council, his one flash of inspiration on Yakima had basically saved humanity. Almost all experts have since concluded that mankind didn’t then and still doesn’t have the ability to stand up to the Klethos in standard warfare.
As Dr. Whisperjack spoke, the screen behind her flashed with images of maps, timelines, and live action recordings. When it came time for General Lysander’s fight, she quit speaking and turned around to watch the entire battle.
“And that, ladies, is the start of what you wish to become, Single Combat Specialists,” she said, turning back to face them at the conclusion of the fight. “Of course, as capable as a d’relle is, none of them could stand up to a human in a combat suit.”
On the screen behind her, images of individual gladiators flashed in sequence, images of each and every one who fought a challenge. Initially, all gladiators were from the few military forces who had Gen-Five combat suits: Federation Marines in PICS, Brotherhood soldiers in Sauls, Greater France legionnaires in Rigaudeaus, and Confederation soldiers in Loricas. Forrest Deltan, from Wayard was the only gladiator from somewhere other than these four governments, fighting in a modified Saul. And in four years of contests, the tally was 17 victories for humans, one for the Klethos.
“The Klethos have their warrior code, but they are also pragmatic enough to realize that the field of battle was essentially being ceded to us. So in 378, they demanded a change to the terms. No artificial battle suits would be allowed. The problem with that is that a d’relle masses about 400 kg, and she is armed with a wickedly effective beak and powerful legs. A large man might mass 140, and human teeth are not designed for combat.”
In back of her, two images appeared, side-by-side. One was a Klethos queen, the other a naked man. The man was pretty impressive-looking, and a few appreciative-sounding murmurs from the class reflected that. But as impressive a specimen of man as he was, he was dwarfed by the queen. Even without the d’relle’s combat training, it was intuitively obvious that no human could go up against a queen in hand-to-hand and hope to win.
“Without the ability to enter the gladiatorial ring, we could not avoid all-out war. But sending normal humans without combat suits was simply suicide and a guarantee of a loss of both the fight and the planet being challenged.
“Luckily, there was an answer, as you are all aware. Genmodding could render any human the equal in combat to a d’relle. Also luckily, the Klethos code of combat chivalry required them to allow this and to give us two years to create our new breed of gladiators.
“The first to enter the ring was Larry Vistine,” she said as the man’s image popped up on the screen behind him.
Nicknamed “Shrek” from an ancient flick, he looked like a reject from Dr. Frankenstein’s junk bin. The genmod recipe had gotten much more refined since then, but as one of the first to undergo the process, his body was essentially forced through the process for capabilities, not for quality of life.
“Mr. Vistine entered the ring on March 4, 380, New Reckoning, on Fraceline. He was defeated and killed, but he put up enough of a fight to validate the concept. He just hadn’t had the time to train properly in his new body. The Vistine Fitness Center, which will be open to all of you who move on to Module 2, was named in his honor.
“Over the next 14 years, we were challenged 53 times. Humans won 29 times, so that means we lost 24 times. Twenty-four planets were lost, ironically, one of them being Talimonde.”
Talimonde was the Brotherhood planet given to the surviving capys after they’d been driven completely out of their home-range.
“Then came the watershed moment that affects all of you here today. On April 19, 404, we were contacted by the Klethos liaison, not for another challenge, but by the gender request. We had always known that the d’relle, that all Klethos fighters, for that matter, were female as we understand genders. The Klethos evidently were not as quick on the uptake, and they hadn’t realized that they were fighting our males. When they did, the gladiatorial option was almost taken off the table. Fighting a male in Klethos society is a taboo of some serious degree, and by sending males against them, we had besmirched their precious honor.
“Matters almost deteriorated to war before we were finally able to get them to understand that no slight was intended. However, having male gladiators was no longer an option. We had to switch to females.
“Genmodding, thank goodness, is essentially neutral. Yes, there are some minor differences in the process, but the end result is attainable without regards to gender.
“Two years later, almost to the day, Winnie Kim became the first female gladiator, defeating her opponent in her first battle.”
An image of Winnie flashed up on the screen, a fierce-looking woman with the same close-cropped hair as had been worn by all male gladiators before her.
“Winnie was killed in her third fight, after which we instituted our current rotation schedule.”
Initially, gladiators fought until they were defeated in the ring. But Winnie had become a much bigger personality than most gladiators, a social force that made her the most famous person in all of humanity. Her loss was taken tremendously hard throughout the galaxy.
Dr. Whisperjack went over each of the following gladiators to enter the ring. When she got to Celeste, every set of ears in the classroom perked up.
“As you all know, all previous gladiators went into the ring with their hair either shorn or in a buzzcut. Long hair was considered a liability in hand-to-hand combat. I
t wasn’t until Celeste burst onto the scene that this changed.
“Celeste was, well, Celeste,” Dr. Whisperjack said with a smile. “All who knew her fell in love with her irreverent personality. I vividly remember her sitting right there,” she continued, pointing to a table over two from Tamara’s and up a row. “She asked, well, what she asked isn’t important now. What is important was her force of life. And to you, she has left a lasting legacy.”
“Our hair,” Jonna whispered beside Tamara.
“Celeste was fascinated with the Klethos’ crest. We know now that the crest is filled with nerves, and they have some sort of function having to do with balance and spatial awareness. But the colors they display are also a source of pride among them, even to indicate ranking. We don’t totally understand this relationship, but take it that the crests are important far more than just as a sensory array.
“Celeste, being Celeste, thought it made sense to mirror the crest, if for no other reason than to instill uncertainty in her opponent. So she approached Colonel-General Molinov, then the director of Chicsis, with a request to grow her hair. Although he denies it to this day, the Colonel-General first turned down her request,” she continued with a huge smile. “But Celeste did it anyway, citing that there was no rule against it, and that she was free to do as she pleased. Three days before her scheduled fight, she had her own hair not only accelerated at Illy’s out in town, but then she had it died into the pattern you have seen in countless holos.”
An image of Celeste flashed on the screen, flaunting her famous hair in the yellow, blue, and pink stripes. Most of the class burst into applause.
Dr. Whisperjack smiled and waited for the clapping to die down before she continued, “Many people were shocked by this, and there was talk about not letting her fight. They thought she had made light of the combat. But her name had already been submitted to the Liaison Committee, and Arapaho was too important a planet to simply let go. Five billion people are quite a few to re-locate, after all. So she was allowed to fight.”
An image of Celeste, walking proudly through the crowds to the ring, flashed on the screen. The people of Arapaho who were lucky enough to get in close erupted in cheers as she appeared. One man, looking like a child when compared to her, burst past the holding rope that marked her approach and fell to his knees and kissed her feet. One of her escorts started to haul the man away, but Celeste, ever aware of the stage of life, pulled the man up to her head level, his feet dangling more than a meter in the air, and kissed him. The crowd went wild.
“The first paramour,” Jonna whispered.
Tamara had heard the term the day she checked in, but now she was aware of the legions of men who worshiped and loved gladiators. Which was somewhat of a waste as during the genmod process, a gladiator’s reproductive system was atrophied to almost nothing, and hormones were adjusted so a gladiator was never distracted with sexual urges.
When Celeste appeared at the edge of the ring, the assembled Klethos simply froze for 10 or 15 seconds, staring at her. Unlike the humans who attended each fight in large numbers, there were rarely any more than 20 Klethos at any contest. On Arapaho, there were 17, and all 17 stepped forward in unison, then by putting out one leg in front, bending at the waist, and spreading all four arms outwards like some sort of 18th Century courtier, they performed their honor bow. Contrary to some initial fears, they seemed to appreciate her actions. The consensus was that the hair was considered by the Klethos as an act that brought the opponents closer together in the sisterhood of combat.
Whether Celeste’s hair threw their d’relle off stride or not is still a point of argument. But after a hellaciously wonderful hakka, Celeste defeated her opponent in short order.
Ever since then, a gladiator’s hair was her symbol of pride. Each gladiator designed her own color pattern, and this became sort of a coming out ceremony, a visual confirmation of going into combat. In the flick Queen Killer, the candidates before and after they had been genmodded spent hours discussing and considering their own hair patterns.
Unfortunately, Celeste did not live very long to enjoy her status. She did not die in the ring, but rather from an extremely early and aggressive onset of the Brick. Less than a year after her one and only fight, she was dead.
It took Dr. Whisperjack only a few more minutes to go through the remaining gladiators, bringing the class up to the last fight only two weeks prior, where Grace Patternik had kept the mining planet Uberto in human hands.
To Tamara’s surprise, the lecture didn’t end there. Dr. Whisperjack spoke quietly into her PA, and a moment later, Grace Patternik herself entered the classroom, to the thunderous standing ovation from 100 candidates as they recognized her. Even if they hadn’t recognized exactly who she was, her swirls of magenta and lilac in her hair and the single braid hanging down the side of her face shouted out that she was the real deal, a gladiator who’d seen combat.
Grace walked over to Dr. Whisperjack, dwarfing the woman, who was small anyway by normal standards. She leaned over as an adult to a toddler and gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
“Candidates, welcome to my world,” Grace said in the soft, normal sounding voice of most gladiators that Tamara always felt was a little surreal.
A person that big should have a low, rumbling voice, she thought, but that wasn’t the way it was. She’d heard that voices were programmed in the recipe to be kept fairly normal even if louder either to enable a gladiator’s hakka to be piercing (where a low voice didn’t penetrate as well) or simply to leave the gladiators with an old part of their former lives.
“I’m not much of a speaker, but if Dr. Whisperjack, asks, we all jump to her whim, as you will all learn.”
The doctor simply beamed with pride as she stood beside the huge gladiator. Tamara wondered just what the relationship was between someone who she thought was only an instructor and Grace and what sounded like all the other gladiators.
“There are 100 of you, just as there were in my class three years ago. We sent 68 of us through to Module 2. Fifty-nine came out of M-2 to Module 3.”
Module 2 was the genmodding process. Nine candidates started genmodding, but didn’t make it to the end where they could begin specific and intensive training as a gladiator. Tamara had been briefed back on Tarawa that the genmodding was so severe that not everyone made it through. Some candidates died, their bodies simply not able to take the immense strain. Others were stuck in limbo, neither a normal human nor a functioning gladiator.
Tamara looked around the room. If her class held to the same stats, then nine of them would suffer the same fate. Of course for the remaining 59 who made it to Module 3, all were in the process of dying. But at least some of them would have the chance to defend mankind first.
“Of the rest of us who entered Module 3, two ended up with aggressive BRC and never got out of training. That means just over half of us became potential gladiators. From my class, five have already presented our hair. Two of my glad-sisters died in the ring, and three of us have triumphed, keeping human worlds in human hands.”
She had to stop as the class erupted in applause again. Finally, she held up a huge hand to quite them down.
“This is what you have volunteered for. To go into combat for mankind. And it is for this that you will sacrifice your life as you know it. If there is any doubt in your mind about this, if there is any doubt about giving up the chance for children, for volunteering to die in the ring or from the Brick, stand up now and leave. You won’t be doing anyone any favors by staying around.
“But if you are dedicated, if this is what you want to embrace, then I welcome you, and I hope I am around long enough to call you sisters, and even be on your side when you present your hair.
“I’d wish you good luck, but that is meaningless here. Instead, I wish upon all of you satisfaction in knowing what gift you are giving the rest of humanity.”
As the class rose as one for another round of applause, Tamara saw the glint of a
tear running down Dr. Whisperjack’s cheek. Tamara wondered exactly for what the tear was, and if one would ever be shed for her as well.
Chapter 10
Elei rushed Tamara, knife held high, an expression of pure hate on her face. Tamara instinctively backed up, holding up one hand to block the blow. That was a mistake, a fatal one. Elei slashed down at Tamara’s arm, then at the last moment, diverted it to sweep across Tamara’s throat.
“You’re dead,” Elei said, a smile replacing the grimace as she switched off the training knife’s holo-blade.
“You looked like you really hated me,” Tamara said sullenly. “I thought you’d gone feral from all the stress.”
“Ah, my war-face. You don’t have one? How come you don’t have one yet?”
“Miss Veal,” Combatmaster Hallen said. “What did you do wrong?”
“Aside from getting killed?”
“Aside from that, Miss Veal, yes.”
“I, uh, I backed away?”
“Not quite. Backing away can be a logical movement, but only when it is planned. You backed away in panic. You let Miss Tuputala dictate the fight. Try not to let that happen again,” he said in his reserved, almost prissy manner.
“Try not to let that happen again,” she repeated in an exaggerated bouncy voice—after the combatmaster moved off to the next group.”
“Not bad advice, Tamara,” Elei said.
“It’s not like we are going to be fighting in these bodies,” Tamara said, not willing to concede the point. “And they’re not even training us to really fight. We get introduced to a few moves, then we fight.”
“You know why,” Elei continued, her voice calm and reasoning, as if she was talking to a five-year-old.
That voice only grated on Tamara. She knew they were not actually being taught to fight yet. What she had said about not being in their genmodded bodies was correct. Their natural bodies just couldn’t do what their genmodded bodies would be capable of. The classes now were only to begin to instill a concept of hand-to-hand fighting, to build upon the warrior spirit—and to see who might never develop one. And so far, Tamara had not shown much in the way of being a true warrior. That filled her with a feeling of not only failure, but a fear that she could be dropped from the program. She didn’t want to face that fear, so she projected her distaste to what she considered Elei’s condescending attitude.
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