by C H Gideon
Now, she stared into the pit, where he was ready to do battle once more. She had seen him in action nearly a hundred times.
As she watched him pace, the crowd let out a thunderous roar, and she yanked her eyes from Ka’nak and shifted them to where his opponent would enter.
Her heart hung in her chest for a moment as Ka’nak’s challenger emerged from the shadowy tunnel entrance.
“Now that’s a monster,” Reynolds said with more than a hint of awe, something Jiya hadn’t thought the AI capable of.
The challenger had to duck to slip out of the archway without hitting his shaggy head on the ceiling. Braids that looked like tentacles whipped about, metal ties holding them together, and Jiya saw silvery blades at the end of each, gleaming in the sunlight that shone on the pit.
Reynolds muttered, pointing out the blades. “One good whip of his head and he could slice himself into ribbons. But not only that, but he’s basically providing his opponent with a weapon. So stupid,” he told her. “Though, given that the beast is easily over three meters tall, I’m not sure anyone could reach high enough to grab one of them.”
Jiya didn’t bother to respond. She was too caught up in the monstrosity that stomped across the sand in the pit.
She’d brought Reynolds there to see Ka’nak destroy his opponent. To show the AI she’d made a great choice in muscle for the crew, but now…now she wasn’t quite so sure the display would work out as she’d imagined.
That guy was freaking huge!
“And introducing our challenger, hailing from western Toller, the leader of the fierce Mahai tribe, welcome the ‘Leviathan,’ Ala Ka!” Jiya could almost hear the excited drool in the announcer’s voice as he screamed out his introduction. “Weighing in at over two hundred twenty-six kilograms and standing three meters tall and then some, Ala Ka has come to eviscerate all challengers!”
Reynolds nodded admiringly. “I might just have to place a wager on this magnificent slab of meat.” He rubbed his chin and glanced at Jiya, who glared back. “No offense to your man, of course, but if I were a betting AI—and I kind of am—I’d think Ka’nak wouldn’t last more than a few minutes in there with the Mahai.”
“He’ll do fine,” she shot back, but the casual words most definitely didn’t match the uncertainty brewing inside her.
She’d watched Ka’nak fight men bigger than him and win easily enough, but Ala Ka wasn’t just bigger, he towered over Ka’nak as they met in the center of the pit. His head was easily twice the size of Ka’nak’s, and his biceps looked nearly as large around as Ka’nak’s thighs.
Jiya was surprised to find that neither of the two carried any sort of weapon, barring the makeshift blades on Ala Ka’s head. This was to be a purely physical contest, a meeting of flesh and bone and will.
She swallowed hard at the realization.
This didn’t bode well for Ka’nak.
The referee, a tiny slip of a woman, was clearly in there for looks, since she didn’t possess the remotest of chances of separating the two combatants. She raised a hand and called for the crowd’s attention. The throng went quiet, the cheering and shouting fading to a muffled rumble before going totally silent.
Jiya nodded, impressed with the tiny woman’s ability to control the crowd. She pushed the two combatants back a step and smiled, turning the illumination of it on the crowd. Then her voice rang out, loud and clear in the silence.
“To the death!”
The gathering erupted in screams and catcalls, and the woman darted away under cover of the noise. Once she was safely back outside the walls that defined the pit, a great horn sounded. It echoed through the pit and vibrated Jiya’s bones.
The two fighters went to war.
Ala Ka snorted like a bull and charged.
Ka’nak hunkered down and stood his ground, grim determination seizing his features. His eyes glimmered, pools of darkness against his reddish skin, and he sneered, baring his teeth at his opponent.
Ala Ka laughed and kept coming. He clasped his hands together and raised his joined fists over his head. His great muscles rippled, looking like rivers cutting lines through the land.
Faster than Jiya could have imagined, the massive hammers of Ala Ka’s fists dropped toward Ka’nak’s skull. Jiya stiffened in her seat, stomach roiling with anxiety.
“Your boy’s about to get his melon busted,” Reynolds told her, chuckling. “Splat!”
Jiya cringed, thinking the same thing, but Ka’nak had other ideas.
He waited until the very last instant, Ala Ka’s fists no more than a hair’s breadth from his head, and then Ka’nak darted back, moving as fast as a bolt of lightning.
Ala Ka realized what had happened. His opponent no longer there, but it was too late. Momentum had full control.
His combined fists finished their arc, but there was nothing there to stop them. He gasped, trying to slow his forward motion, but he’d put too much effort into it, having planned to end the fight in a single blow.
Unfortunately for him, that wasn’t how it went down.
His fists slammed into his groin with a boom that shook the stands.
The crowd, shrieking and screaming and hooting and hollering just seconds before, went totally silent, not a whisper to be heard.
Ala Ka grunted, breaking the silence, doing his best to battle both the blow to his nuts and his ego at the same time.
He did neither well.
With a throaty huuurk, Ala Ka flopped to his knees, bent over double. Great strings of spit ran from his mouth and pooled on the sand, his forehead settling into its golden warmth.
Ka’nak kicked him in the head.
Ala Ka’s upper body whipped back, eyes rolling in their sockets, and he slammed to the ground. He still clutched at his groin, and he stared at the bright sky, moaning like an animal desperate to be put out of its misery.
Ka’nak obliged him.
The Melowi warrior jumped on top of his downed opponent and buried his face in Ala Ka’s neck with a growl. A geyser of blood erupted right after, spraying up and sprinkling down on the sand, coloring it crimson.
Then Ka’nak shook his head back and forth like a lion tearing flesh from its prey.
And that was exactly what he was doing.
He yanked back and stumbled to his feet above Ala Ka, arms raised in triumph, and he spun about to show the crowd the grisly trophy still gripped in his mouth, blood streaming down his chin and chest.
Jiya tasted bile when she realized it was Ala Ka’s throat.
The Melowi warrior made a lap of the pit, strutting to show everyone the results of his victory, only spitting the remnants of Ala Ka’s throat out when he reached the place where Jiya and Reynolds sat. He grinned up at them, eyes gleaming like black holes threatening to consume them.
Reynolds gave the warrior a thumbs-up and cast a furtive glance Jiya’s way. “Well, I’m glad I held off on that bet. I would have regretted withholding your first month’s paycheck to cover my losses. That would have been devastating, although I’m thinking more to you than me.”
Jiya swallowed hard, ignoring Reynolds’ banter as she stared down at the warrior. She offered him a nod of congratulations, unable to muster any words—not that he would have heard her anyway. She slumped in her seat and tried to catch her breath amidst the standing ovation that roared around her.
“Looks like we have our security officer,” Reynolds said, still staring at the bloody man holding his ground in front of them. “Think we can pay him in steaks?”
Chapter Nine
Back aboard the superdreadnought, Jiya and Reynolds stood on the bridge staring down on Lariest through the viewscreen.
Jiya couldn’t help but be awed by its majesty, despite the chaos that reigned below. Largely fomented by her father, it made her both sad and angry.
“Your last candidate, General Adrial Maddox, is going to be much tougher to collect than the others,” Reynolds told her. “The whole ‘in jail for political dissidence�
� thing is close to a deal-breaker in my mind. Do we really need him?”
“A rebel with an actual cause,” Tactical jumped in. “I like it. He does have a real cause, right? He wasn’t caught protesting for softer toilet paper in schools or anything like that, was he?”
Jiya dragged her gaze from the planet and turned her glare on Tactical’s seat. “The general was jailed for defying my father and doing his damnedest to turn the people against him, all in the name of a better world. Then he was quietly retired to the south, imprisoned for standing up to my father.”
“Noble, I’ll give you that, but it doesn’t answer my question,” Reynolds asked. “What does Maddox bring to the table, that we need to put ourselves at risk for and break him out of prison?”
“He’s a tactical genius, far beyond anyone I’ve ever met,” she answered, not mincing words.
“I’m right here,” Tactical called. “We’ve survived this long without the general.”
“Wasn’t that the point?” Jiya asked, raising her hands questioningly. “You wanted a crew to alleviate the stress of doing a bunch of different jobs, and now you’re going to bitch about me finding you one?”
Tactical grunted. “Your point is?”
Jiya sighed and turned back to face Reynolds. Even though she knew he was the exact same entity as Tactical, she couldn’t help but think of them as individuals.
I’m becoming as damaged as they are.
“Look, Reynolds, Maddox is as much a genius in his field as Geroux is in research and computers and Takal is with technology and Ka’nak is with fighting. We need him.”
Reynolds nodded. “Okay, I’m willing to give it a shot, but we have to be realistic. He’s not the most accessible person on the planet.”
“A few quick blasts of a railgun and we can walk right in the front door and pluck him out of his cell,” Tactical said, sounding smug. “Easy-peasy quite consleazy.”
Jiya cast a thumb Tactical’s direction. “This is exactly why we need a new tactician.”
“I can see your point,” Reynolds answered.
“Are you kidding me?” Tactical argued. “This third-world planet—a little bit of offense intended—can’t compete with us. A quick blast and there’s no one around to challenge us. You really think the meatbags down there want to match firepower with a superdreadnought? Not likely.”
Jiya raised her hand. “As one of those meatbags you’re referring to, no, maybe the planetary defenses can’t match your destructive power, but we’re not looking to go to war with the planet in our search for a crew. And we’re not looking to destroy civilizations, only Kurtherians and from what I’ve heard, there aren’t that many.”
“I beg to differ,” Tactical countered. “This is Darwin’s theory at its finest—survival of the fittest. Those who live and manage to throw a halfway decent punch at us get the job. Those who get scorched provide the fire to cook our marshmallows over. Pretty clear-cut decision from where I’m sitting.”
“And, for the sake of argument where I completely discount your blatant homicidal tendencies—”
“Which is truly my best feature,” Tactical clarified.
“—we’re trying not to draw a bunch of attention to ourselves, remember?”
“Vaguely,” Tactical admitted.
“And forgive me for being so dense that I don’t understand the great mind that is you, but wouldn’t nuking the planet make people notice?”
“Not if you do it right.” Jiya could practically hear Tactical shrugging.
Reynolds coughed, demanding their attention. “Look, we can’t go blasting the planet. We’re not here to start a war. Bethany Anne would kick our metallic asses if we went back and all we had to show for our efforts was a bunch of cratered worlds in our wake and a slew of new enemies the Federation would have to go to war with because of us.”
“No, our job is hunt down Kurtherians, and we’re wasting our time debating how we’re going to free a local inmate from prison when we should be seeking our real enemy,” the XO interjected.
Reynolds sighed. “He’s not completely wrong.”
“But he’s not completely right either,” Jiya argued. “Will a few days make such a huge difference in your hunt for Kurtherians?”
“Yes,” Tactical answered immediately. “The longer we wait, the farther they can run and the deeper they can burrow.”
“You don’t even know where they are!” Jiya shouted, her frustration clear. She clenched her fists, wishing she could punch Tactical in his nonexistent mouth.
“Don’t you go whipping out logic and reason,” Tactical warned. “We were having a perfectly good argument without any hint of fact or correctness, and you had to go and ruin it.”
“Which is your concession that she’s right. Stow it, Tactical. The decision is made.” Reynolds continued, “We don’t know where the Kurtherians are, and we need a crew to repair our ship and better prepare us to find and annihilate them.”
“Guns are the answer,” Tactical insisted. “They’re always the answer.”
Jiya grunted. “Much as I hate to admit it, he might well be onto something.”
“I’m marking this moment on the calendar,” Tactical exclaimed. “Jiya Lemaire agrees with Tactical for once. Shit, this should be a national holiday.” He chuckled. “I’m going to petition Bethany Anne when we get home. It’ll be glorious. We can celebrate with donkey balloons and pin them with tails that say, ‘Tactical is right!’ Then we can watch all the hot air spew out as the balloon goes limp, kind of like how Jiya is doing right now.”
Reynolds sighed. “How about you explain what you mean before Tactical starts off on another tirade?”
“Well, I wasn’t exactly thinking of using guns to free Maddox,” she replied, returning to the viewscreen and looking down at the planet below. “I was picturing something more…explosive.”
“We’re raising a monster,” Helm muttered from his console. “I blame you, Tactical.”
“I’ll take it,” Tactical replied.
Reynolds grunted. “You might well be right, Helm.” He came alongside Jiya, meeting her at the viewscreen. “What did you have in mind.”
She turned to face him, grinning, holding up her hand, thumb and index finger about two centimeters apart. “Just a little explosion,” she answered, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Boom.”
Ex-General Adrial Maddox sat in his cell, staring at the wall.
It had become a ritual.
The dull gray stared back, right into his soul. The paint peeled in places, and Maddox had helped it along in a few spots, doing his best to manipulate the removal so that the resulting pale sections stood out against the darker gray.
He’d managed to make one look like a cat, and he’d even scraped a fingernail across the paint to mimic whiskers. There was another that resembled a spider about the size of his fist, which he hadn’t meant to do because he wasn’t fond of spiders, but he hesitated to scratch it away given how perfect it was.
Then there was the ancient battle tank, which was his favorite. He’d aimed the barrel at the door and imagined it blasting the guards every time they opened his cell door.
Which wasn’t very often, actually. They ignored him more often than not, spending their time playing cards and napping out in the main room that adjoined the section of cells he was locked in. He could hear them snoring or cursing as they lost money and arguing among themselves, but the angle was horrible. He couldn’t see a thing.
That only compounded his misery.
He’d been so proud of himself when he’d faced down President Lemaire. He had been certain the people would embrace him and rise up. Stand behind him and overthrow Lemaire’s corrupt regime.
“Oh, how wrong I was,” he muttered, always a bit perturbed by the sound of his own voice.
Even though he talked to himself quite often—it wouldn’t do to forget how to speak, now would it?—he didn’t think he sounded like him. The raspy, tired voice that came out of
his mouth was nothing like the bold, powerful baritone he used to project.
These days, he sounded like he’d spent his life sucking down drain-cleaner shooters with a side of glass shards. Felt like it, too.
He flopped on his cot and groaned.
His world had shrunken from the whole universe to this tiny six-by-six-meter cell without a window. He’d had a life before—women, wine, and even the occasional song—and Lemaire had taken it from him.
Maddox shook his head, letting out a quiet growl. “Get over it, Adrial,” he said, chastising himself. “No matter how often you bitch about this, nothing is going to change.”
He hated that he was right.
The last eight years locked away had worn on his confidence, on who he’d been before being hauled away in his sleep. Morning had landed him in this exact cell, and he’d been here ever since.
Not once had the guards taken him out so he could get some fresh air or stretch his legs. That didn’t mean he hadn’t stayed in shape. Every day, first thing when he woke up, he worked out, doing pushups, sit-ups, and running the width and breadth of his cell until he was so tired he was ready to crawl back into bed.
Still, if he were honest with himself, there were days when he yearned for some attention and someone to talk to. Hell, he’d even greet a torturer with a smile as long as it got him out of the cell and gave him someone to interact with.
But no, Lemaire knew Maddox too well to offer him anything that might break the monotony. It wasn’t the cell that was the torment, not the imprisonment or the loss of his former life. The absolute emptiness of his existence was what threatened to cast Maddox over the edge.
He’d held on for all these years, but he could feel himself slipping more and more every day of late. It wouldn’t be long before he chewed the veins from his arms in an attempt to bleed out and end the misery.
A crooked smile stretched his lips at the thought, and so caught up was he in his dreams of peace that he barely noticed the loud thump in the courtyard that stirred the dust in his cell and caused it to rain down on top of him.