Gladiator (Women of the United Federation Marines Book 1)

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  “Ninety-four percent, ma’am,” Tyra said solemnly. “We can’t know for sure without a different test.”

  Hell, that high?

  Tamara felt defeated. Her will started to vanish before she bolstered herself.

  “So that’s six percent that I’m OK?”

  “Well, yes, you could say that.”

  “And let me ask you this: did you see anything from your machine here, the ‘B2050,” that would indicate I’m not capable of doing my job?”

  “Well, no, ma’am. Not yet. But it will. You know that.”

  “But not now. Not today, not tomorrow.”

  “No, not today.”

  “So, let’s just forget this for now. I’ll come back in a week or so, and you can run it again.”

  “But Miss Veal! That’s against the regs! And this is for your own good!” Tyra protested.

  Tamara leaned her head back, closed her eyes, and took in a deep, calming breath. She looked back at Tyra and put her hands on the young woman’s shoulders.

  “How old are you, Tyra?” she asked.

  “I’m 23, ma’am. Why do you ask?”

  “That’s how old I am. Only you have a long life ahead of you. I don’t.”

  “And that’s why we have to care for you. We need to give you as much of a life as possible.”

  “As an invalid? You’ve seen those of us who’ve wasted away, in pain as their bodies rebel against all that’s been done to them. Tyra, I can’t face that. I need to know that the sacrifice was worth it.”

  “But you’ve got two braids. You’ve done your time.”

  “And now I’m needed again. We need to recover New Budapest, and they think I’m the best-qualified gladiator to do it. Do you think we need to jeopardize that?”

  ‘No, but if the Bri—”

  Tamara put her hand over the girl’s mouth, stopping her from vocalizing the word.

  “We don’t know for sure I have that.”

  “OK. If you have a condition that weakens you,” she said after Tamara removed her hand, “then that could put New Budapest at risk.”

  She’s right, Tamara admitted before firmly pushing that thought away.

  “But you said nothing would affect me yet.”

  “I think. I don’t know. I’m not a doctor,” Tyra said, looking miserable.

  “Look, I don’t want to put you where you’re uncomfortable with yourself. I’m just asking you, begging you, to put yourself in my position. Give me my one last chance to do my job. Let me go and fight. I’m sure you can ‘accidently’ misfile the results, and after I fight, you can find them, or I can come back, and you can take them again.”

  Tyra looked unsure.

  “As one sister to another, I need this from you. A week won’t hurt me one way or the other. So just give me this.”

  “And you’ll come back? After you’re done?”

  “After I get back to Malibu, I’ll see you. On my honor.”

  Tyra looked to the inner door, the one leading into the doctor’s offices. Tamara could see the emotions play across her face.

  Finally, she said, “OK, Miss Veal. I’ll probably lose my job over this, but I won’t forward this. I can pull your last one from the files and forward that one. But you have to promise, as soon as you get back, you’ll come in for a new one.”

  “As soon as I get back, Tyra; as soon as I get back.”

  NEW BUDAPEST

  Chapter 43

  Tamara stood in the doorway of the temporary shelter. Soft snores reached out from inside as Elei slept in deep slumber.

  We never got her back. Jonna, yes, but not Elei, Tamara thought with a smile. I could always do it now.

  Instead of a practical joke, however, she stepped out of the shelter. The night was warm, and the greenery-filled air with pleasant, if elusive, smells. Tamara idly wondered if the Klethos had established any of their own vegetation to compete with the human-established Earth trees and plants (or if they even did that on planets they took). The planet’s twin moons gave far more light than Tamara would have expected, something more evident out here in the forest than when she was in the brightly illuminated city a year-and-a-half before.

  This was a far cry from the when Marta had fought. There were fewer than 30 humans on the planet now instead of billions. There were over a million Klethos, however. On most worlds, the Klethos often abandoned them soon after taking them. Not so on new Budapest—the Klethos seemed to be making it into a home.

  Tamara had seen the cities as they came into land. They looked intact from her vantage point. Out here, in the wilderness though, there was an entirely different feel of the planet, one more attuned to nature than to the hustle and bustle from before.

  Tamara knew she should get some sleep, but it eluded her. Too many thoughts filled her mind.

  The pain in her shoulder had started radiating down her left arm. It was probably psychosomatic; it was just too coincidental that it could spread so quickly right after the scan. But in her mind or not, it was a constant reminder that this would be her last fight, one way or the other. In this case, winning the fight scared her more. She couldn’t imagine the coming year or two, watching her body fall apart.

  Neither Jonna nor Grammarcy had to experience that, and the more she thought about it, the more attractive that seemed. A quick death under the blade would be a far better outcome than sitting in a home in Sunset Acres, waiting for the reaper to claim her wasted body.

  If she died in the ring, however, as sweet as a release it might be for her, humanity wouldn’t regain the planet, and that could be forever. No, she’d fight, but there was that certain siren’s call that promised a sweet relief.

  The slope in front of the human camp led down to a creek, she knew. It was on the banks of the creek that the ring had been built. On the other side, about 500 meters away, a couple of hundred Klethos waited, which was a very large number for them. With over a million of them on the planet, though, that number really wasn’t that impressive. Tamara didn’t understand how they could seemingly show such a decided lack of interest in the future of the—their—planet.

  It wasn’t just Tamara who didn’t know what made the Klethos tick. Excepting for a handful of xenobiologists, and probably not even them, humans just didn’t understand their foe. It had taken a warrior, Ryck Lysander, to realize their martial intent, but since then, not much else had been added to the depth of human knowledge. And a lack of understanding could lead to drastic consequences. Humanity was quietly increasing their military capabilities, but an all-out war with the Klethos now would almost certainly end in a complete defeat.

  Without a conscious decision, Tamara’s feet led her down to the ring. It wasn’t the huge arena in which Marta had fought, but it seemed more fitting to her. There was something basic about single combat, something humans had been doing throughout their history. Romans notwithstanding, it usually wasn’t in an arena with cheering crowds. More fights had been fought in the plains, in the forests, in the mountains, with little more at stake than rights to a hunting territory, access to a spring, or to start a family. Tamara and her unknown opponent would fight tomorrow for stakes a little bigger than that, but the basic concept was the same.

  Tamara hesitated, then stepped into the ring itself. She settled her feet in, shifting her weight back and forth.

  “I believe you will find the footing satisfactory,” a voice said from behind her.

  Tamara jumped forward, away from the voice, and out of the ring, whirling to face whoever had spoken.

  To her utter amazement, a Klethos stepped out of the shadows of a copse of fir trees along the creek.

  “Does it meet your approval?” she (he) asked, as calmly as if a waiter was asking if the coffee was OK.

  “You can speak,” was all Tamara could say, stating the obvious.

  “Of course, we can speak. What a curious statement. How else do you think we communicate?”

  “But, you’ve never spoken before. Does anyone
else know you can speak?”

  “I’m afraid you are misinformed. We are an intelligent race, and to our knowledge, no race can attain intelligence unless it can communicate.”

  Tamara was shocked, to say the least. And she wasn’t sure what to say next. Here she was, speaking Standard to a Klethos as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

  “And to answer your other question, yes, humans know we can speak. That is how we issue and accept challenges. I must repeat, that is a most curious question.”

  “I’ve never heard your kind speak. I haven’t seen you speak even on holos, either.”

  “Well, I guess that isn’t too surprising. When under ceelos, that is, when we are conducting a challenge, we follow the precepts and traditions from long ago. It is not the time to speak in other than the mother tongue.”

  “But you screech.”

  “To your ears, perhaps. To us, there is meaning to the words.”

  Tamara stared at the Klethos’ beak. She knew it was hard and bony, and she wondered how it could form human words. Then again, parrots could make human sounds.

  “So I ask you again, is the footing to your statisfaction?”

  “Oh. Uh. . .yes, I guess it is.”

  “I am pleased, then.”

  A thought hit Tamara. “You must be either the ring-maker, or you are a d’relle.”

  “True. I am this challenge’s d’relle,” she said, although her pronunciation of “d’relle” was decidedly different from how Tamara had always heard the word. “And you are Iron Shot?”

  “I am Chief Warrant Officer Tamara Veal,” she answered, standing tall. “Iron Shot is only a nickname.

  “Are you going to fight tomorrow?” she asked after a quick moment.

  “Yes, I am. We only have one d’relle at a formal ceelos. You and I will meet right here,” the d’relle said, sweeping both left arms around to indicate the ring.

  Tamara should feel wary, she knew. But somehow, she didn’t feel the slightest bit threatened. As a species, the Klethos seemed to be protocol-bound, and she suddenly knew she could march right now into the Klethos camp without fear for her safety.

  “Can I ask you your name?” Tamara asked for lack of anything else to say.

  “I am d’relle, and d’relle is me. Once we become d’relle, we lose who we were before.”

  That made no sense to Tamara at all. The d’relle might be able to speak Standard, but that didn’t mean she could convey meaning as well.

  “So Klethos have no names at all?” she asked, trying to understand.

  “Klethos-kee, yes, they have what you have in names. Not the same and the same. But d’relle become d’relle.”

  “So what do I call you?”

  “If you must, you can call me d’relle. Only I will answer here and now.

  “The night is lovely to me. I was born under twin moons, and this brings back memories of the crèche. Is the night also lovely also you?”

  Geez almighty! Now we are waxing poetic?

  “Uh, yeah, it’s lovely.”

  “We are not so different, humans and Klethos. It is an honor to meet another race who understand us.”

  “But we don’t understand you,” Tamara protested. “We don’t understand why you take worlds, why you insist on single combat.”

  “Yes, you do. You are a gladiator. You understand the ring, the pull of combat. You have won twice, and you know the thrill of victory. How can you live without it after once tasting the sweetness?”

  “I don’t—” she started, before stopping.

  The thing was, she did understand that part of it. She’d already been competitive, and winning was paramount. After genmodding, the ring called out for her. She needed to prove herself.

  “I do, I’ll admit. But our race doesn’t.”

  “Like with the others, it takes time to understand what is needed. But while others failed, Ryck Lysander did not. He understood what was needed. And was he not human?”

  They know his name? Well, they can speak, so why not?

  “He was a Marine. He was trained to fight.”

  “Yes, your Marines. A tribe, but still human, no different, if more capable. And we have now studied your history. Your kind, like ours, lives to war each other.”

  “But we don’t kill off whole people. You’ve wiped out two entire races!” Tamara said, trying to distance humanity from the Klethos.

  “Seventeen races, not two.”

  “Seventeen?” Tamara asked shocked.

  “We are an ancient race,” the d’relle simply said.

  “Why? Why do you do that?”

  “If we did not, we would die. We are also a warlike people, constantly fighting. We developed the ceelos to try and stem our self-genocide, but if the Utapurkra had not appeared, we would have killed ourselves off.”

  “The who?”

  “We called them the Utapurkra. They invaded our home system, so we killed them. It took us centuries of your time to develop the spacefaring abilities, but once we did, we hunted them down and exterminated them.”

  As simple as that?

  “And after? The other races?”

  “We needed other enemies to stem our own fighting between ourselves. As long as there were others, we could survive.”

  An owl hooted in from the depths of the forest, almost in counterpoint to the d’relle’s statement. But what the d’relle said had more than a degree of logic—brutal logic, but logic still-the-same.

  “And humans? Do you want to exterminate us?”

  “We don’t want to exterminate anyone. We need a worthy foe, and you are the first to prove to be so. We were more than pleased when we realized that you understood honor in conflict.”

  “You wiped out an entire human world. Why single combat when you have the power over us,” Tamara asked, wanting an answer.

  “What honor is that? That is merely the slaughter of food animals. There is honor in ceelos, honor in the ring.”

  “But we beat you more than you beat us. We’ve gen—” she said before stopping, unsure of what she might be revealing.

  “Your genmodding is a false evolution, in our opinion. We prefer our natural evolution, not that done with artificial influences.”

  “So why do you allow it?” Tamara asked, curious.

  “We may be wrong. But more than that, we need strong opponents as triggers.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We were once small, the size of one of your dogs. During the long wars, we, I don’t know the word in your language, but maybe ‘encouraged’ evolution, growing larger and stronger. When the Utapurkra appeared, we needed to become stronger still, so we encouraged more evolution. But for the last thousands of your years, we have found no worthy foe, so we have stopped evolving. As a d’relle, I am no different physically than my many times predecessors.”

  “And with us, I mean gladiators, to face, you have to get stronger, in case you ever meet a race much stronger than you.”

  “I told you we are the same. You understand. We know only two galaxies. Who knows who else it out there?”

  “But why not genmod? You can see how quickly we’ve been able to develop into your worthy foe, as you say it.”

  “As I said, we find it unnatural. Our method is more estosias, which is another word for which I don’t know in your language. More honest, more genuine, one that breeds true. Your genmodding is an assault on nature, as your BRC shows.”

  So they even know about the Brick? Who let that out?

  “And that is why we agreed to the process, but only if you could not reproduce.”

  What? What was that?

  “Can’t reproduce?”

  “Yes. Surely you know you cannot reproduce.”

  “Yes, of course I know that.”

  I just didn’t know that was part of the deal! she thought, feeling the anger build up inside. Why didn’t they just tell us?

  “So you gladiators pose no real threat to us. To me, perhaps. To the d�
��relle. But not to the Klethos-lee. But our improvements, they will breed true, to every Klethos-lee, and then to those who ascend to d’relle.

  Tamara’s mind was churning. She had no reason to doubt the d’relle, who seemed amazingly open, especially given that they were enemies, but she didn’t want to believe the UAM was pulling their strings like that. She did believe, it, though, she realized. She believed she’d had the heat cut out of her not for medical reasons, but for politics. It was all part of some secret agreement between the human governments and the Klethos.

  The d’relle might have been correct in that humans and Klethos had similarities in warfare, but she doubted the Klethos could be anywhere as devious and as underhanded as human politicians.

  “D’relle,” she started, unsure of what else to call her, “you have told me a lot tonight. Do other humans know all of this?”

  “I am certain your kind knows all of this and more. I am only a d’relle. I have limited knowledge beyond my scope. But I do know that the contact between your kind and mine is extensive, and we hide nothing about us. Your people know much. Without that, how could we arrange ceelos as we do? How can we have protocol as we do?

  “D’relle and gladiators, we are merely the instruments of our people’s will.”

  “Instruments is right,” Tamara said bitterly.

  “But the most exalted of instruments,” the d’relle said. “Who else is allowed to express herself in single combat? Who else is allowed to reach for the glory?”

  That statement was so wrong on so many levels, but it was also so right. Whether from her genmodding or her own natural warrior personality, she understood the d’relle’s point. There was no greater glory in her mind, even if 95% of humanity would vehemently disagree.

  “Can I ask you, have you personally fought one of us before?”

  “Yes, I have. I fought the Gladiator Tall Cliff.”

  That hit Tamara hard. “Tall Cliff” was Jillian Win. She’d been at that challenge, and she’d watched Jillian die. She should be angry, but the anger somehow didn’t surface.

  “You have defeated two d’relle. It is my great pride to have you as my opponent. Tomorrow, we will meet as honored foes, but if I may presume, as respected sisters-of-the-soul, as we say in the d’relle fashion?”