by David Ryker
“Of course. Can’t you tell?” she asked, looking down at her grubby overalls.
“Uh. Yeah, I mean, sure. I just haven’t met many Meckos,” I said, having not met any before. “So,” I went on quickly, “have you been here a while?”
“Few years — Nak love working on Federation steel.” Her eyes lit up and she interlocked her two top hands and pushed her fingers toward me, cracking on them. “Mech especially,” she said, a hint of sadism in her voice. “I like to get inside — take apart, see what makes them work. Meckos have long, thin fingers — perfect for getting into small spaces!” She cackled as she said it and though he didn’t say anything, I could feel Greg’s nervous silence in my ear.
I laughed politely and cleared my throat. “You said you were a prepper.” I wanted to get the conversation away from the possibility of her disemboweling Greg. “What’s that mean? And, uh—” I paused, listening to the gunfire crescendo beyond the roller doors, and then die. The crowd roared and the klaxons sounded— “what’s going on out there? I thought that the Battle Arena was a holographic deal?”
Nak nodded profusely. “Oh yes, yes. Battle Arena all hologram!” She turned and swept her hand through the air, staring wistfully after it. “Big arena — full of people, all hologram — watch from all across the galaxy — tune in see fights — Mech and droids and all sorts! Many, many people watching.” She gave me another gummy grin. “You shoot hologram, fight hologram — all good show.”
I swallowed and looked down into Greg’s innards, feeling like I’d gotten the wrong end of the stick. “But the gunfire? The explosions?”
She wagged a finger at me and then pointed down, away from Greg toward the corner of the bay, where a huge crate was waiting. “Yes, yes — why you need a prepper!” She leaped down and ran over to it, lifting up the lid with a great deal of effort. Inside was a foam insert holding what looked like plates, all stacked upright. She pulled one out and held onto it with three arms, steadying herself against the crate with the other. It was about thirty centimeters across, black, but crosshatched with what looked like sensors. In the center was a raised nodule the size of a grapefruit with the words ‘Explosives: Face Outwards’ written on it.
“I don’t get it,” I said, watching her push it back into the box and reach for the thing that lay behind it — which I actually did recognize. It looked like a Samson — like the huge rifle slung across Greg’s back, though not quite the same. She didn’t try to lift it out, but laid her hand on it instead, turning to me as she did.
“This your weapon — shoot light — bang bang!” She made two guns with her hands and fired them at me. “Make sound, but no bullets, see?”
“No — I don’t see…”
“I believe I can shed some light on this,” Greg said in my ear. “I’ve been viewing some footage from the arena’s mainframe. It appears that the pads are light sensors, and that the rifle fires a beam of infrared, which when detected by a sensor pad, activates the explosive element, simulating real damage, while leaving the integrity of the bearer intact. Similarly, these weapons appear to be loaded with blank rounds.”
I narrowed my eyes and slumped back into the seat. “So it’s basically laser tag?” I’d seen a couple of places onboard already that offered it — mostly for kids with plastic guns and gear, but with added blank rounds and explosives, this seemed a little more sophisticated.
“You might draw that parallel. However, the Athena Battle Arena offers many types of engagement, all with different stakes. It appears that on Tuesdays they offer what’s called ‘Last One Standing’ to paying viewers, who tune in via hololink, or view the spectacle live, while the competitors fight until one remains.”
“Fight?”
“Once all of the panels have been hit, a competitor is out, and must retire from the competition.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “That doesn’t sound so bad.” I chuckled. I couldn’t believe I’d thought that I was risking Greg’s ass. “Do we go again if we get knocked out?”
“I’m afraid not, James,” he said, his voice grave.
“What do you mean?” I asked, my mouth dry all of a sudden.
“It appears that the losers must forfeit their entry stake to the winner.”
I swallowed and tried not to read too much into his tone. “What is that, like, some credits or something?” I couldn’t stop myself from laughing nervously.
“It appears that the entry stake is me, James. If we lose, you will forfeit me.”
My blood ran cold. “What? No. They can’t make us do that,” I said, my voice squeezing out of a pinhole.
“Did you sign a contract, James?”
I bit into my tongue hard enough to taste blood and screwed up my eyes until they hurt. My silence was all the answer he needed.
“Then,” he said slowly, “it appears that it is already done.”
5
Nak talked incessantly, her shrill little voice bouncing around inside my head. She worked furiously, too, and it was amazing how she managed to do both at the same time with so much verve. She could barely lift the panels herself, and they were practically the size of her entire body, and yet, she seemed tireless and lugged them into the air with two arms while holding onto Greg’s body with the other two, then climbed up and positioned them where they needed to be. They got laid on the armor plates flat, and then a handle was turned to create a vacuum seal. She put one on each chest plate, two on the abdomen, ones on each thigh, each shoulder, and four on the back. And after she’d got Greg all padded up, she went about disarming him. She took apart the grenade launchers on his wrists in seconds and pushed all the grenades into a sack she was holding with one of her free hands. She remarked that I’d have them back following the competition, but then qualified it by saying that I would, at least, if I won, but that if I didn’t, they’d go back to whoever then owned Greg but there was no point worrying about that just then. I asked if not then, then when — but she didn’t have an answer.
She asked Greg to remove his own rifle, as it was at least four times her body weight. He obliged and replaced it with the infrared replica, laying the real one down carefully in the box. I wondered as I watched him do it what might happen if we did lose — whether he’d have to deal with having a new owner, or if he’d just be dismantled for scrap.
Nak had taken a special interest in the pistol, and after Greg had handed it to her, she’d launched into a long ramble about the origins of plasma weaponry, as well as the company who made the one on Greg’s hip. And after that, she told us that if we wanted, she’d modify it for us. And then explained that if we wanted any modification work done that she could do it — given the resources.
As she put it, she’d do ‘stuff the Federation won’t because they lack the imagination’ — something that she had in spades. I said that I’d bear it in mind if I managed to hold on to Greg. I then inquired as to whether there was something she could do to help me out with the task at hand. She seemed offended by the notion. I was allowed to keep my smokescreen, but otherwise, I was totally disarmed, including my knife — which in her hands looked more like a sword. She stored everything very neatly in the box the pads had come out of, and offered me a bit of advice: shoot first, and try not to get shot.
I had to laugh — it was that or bang my head against the wall.
They called us not long after and as the crowd roared through the ceiling I settled into the pilot's seat, still fighting off the claws of a hangover, and strapped myself in. My mouth was dry, my stomach churning on old bile and alcohol, and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I lifted my helmet from under the seat and rammed it down onto my head, flexing my fingers as I did.
I could feel Greg’s engine humming under me, soft and even, and immediately had a pang of anger rush up inside me. How had I gotten myself into this? I was making a bad habit of jumping into things with both feet, and sinking up to my ears. I swallowed hard and cursed myself, watching through the screen in front as
Nak did her final checks, perched on Greg’s arm. She made sure the rifle was fully functional, the pads all active and then she gave me a simultaneous thumbs’ up with two of her four hands before leaping down and perching herself on the edge of the crate. I swallowed hard and headed for the steel roller shutter in front of me. Her seeming disinterest in what was at stake should have been comforting, but it wasn’t, and I couldn’t help feeling like this might have been my and Greg’s last outing.
The door rumbled upward, splattered with oil and grease. Beyond, a room began to open, cavernous and filled with the remnants of what looked to be a village of some kind. It was easily half a kilometer long, and near as wide. In the center, a roadway stretched out, and on either side of it, dilapidated and half broken buildings created a maze of pathways and corridors perfect for tight combat. Fires burned and smoke filled the dark air, but as I flicked through feeds, I couldn’t detect any heat on the infrared scans. It took me a second to figure out that the ceiling wasn’t imitating a night sky filled with stars but was actually a huge black surface dotted with thousands of holographic projectors that were simulating the flames, smoke, and the ash drifting through the air.
I stepped cautiously in, staring down at my rifle, thinking how useless it was going to be in the enclosed spaces. “So what now?” I muttered to Greg, not wanting to make the same mistake of throwing myself into another sticky situation.
Almost in response to my question the air around me froze and the ash quivered in place before, somehow, it began to pull back and move in the opposite direction. The smoke billowed back into the flames, and the overturned vehicles and belongings visible through the destroyed walls of the houses all reassembled themselves and rose from the embers until they stood pristine. The fires dwindled to sparks and then sputtered out and the ash gave way to clear air. The rubble strewn on the ground moved back into place in the walls of the buildings and grass regrew where only charred shoots had been. I studied them closely and saw that the floor itself was a series of grids on which the structures moved like tracks, rearranging themselves to the whim of whoever was controlling it. It looked like the buildings were solid enough — but light and moveable, and everything else — the roofs, the decorations, the furniture, the grass even, was all holographic. A pretty layer of skin on an otherwise basic skeleton.
A klaxon sounded and the lights dipped. In the center of the room, a huge rotating banner exploded in a fiery ball of light and then hung there twenty fifty meters off the ground. It said ‘Athena Battle Arena’ and sparks poured off it, drifting in the still air. The light cast from it illuminated the walls, which I could now see to be holographic themselves. Beyond them, there was a sea of people, half of them holograms, too, projected from their seats, and half real bodies. I guessed that the battle arena was a favorite pastime on the Athena, no matter the time of day. And Nak had said that people tuned in from all across the system to watch what went on.
A booming voice split the quiet all of a sudden and the noise of the cheering crowd died away. “Welcome to the Athena Battle Arena!” It said, deafening but spoken in an even voice. “It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for — we’ve seen droid fights, we’ve seen drone fights, but now, we’re thrilled to bring you yet another winner-takes-all battle extravaganza. Eight will enter, one will leave. It’s the most exciting spectacle this side of the Dark Zone, and it’s brought to you live in stunning holo-vision. Are you ready for blood?” the voice boomed and the crowd erupted in a symphony of cheers and yells.
“Blood?” I whispered in my helmet.
“I believe it’s hyperbole. There is no actual blood, as the rounds in our weapons are not live,” Greg said flatly. He’d lost some of his usual easy-going charm. Was he nervous? Could he be? Was that possible? Was he angry at me — hell, I would be if I were him. I swallowed and eased us forward slowly. “We’ll be okay,” I said reassuringly. He met me with silence.
The voice continued. “Your weekly bloodbath is here. And of course, your reigning champion is making a return for the sixteenth consecutive week! You love her — and you love to watch her tear apart all those who stand in her way. She is the queen of this arena, the living embodiment of Athena herself. Here she is — your very own goddess of war…”
I swallowed hard, wondering who the hell this person could be — and then, an instant before he said the name, a cold realization dawned and I froze in my chair.
An engine flared, and in an explosion of light, a Mech leaped into the center of the room and landed atop a lone square building that stood in something resembling a wide intersection.
“Fuck me,” I muttered to myself, all the muscles in my body tightening as I looked at her.
“Here she is — Alice Kepler!”
She threw her hands in the air and the crowd roared. She pinned the trigger on her rifle and blasted the air with muzzle flash, turning slowly to her adoring public as her weapon spat fire. Her rig looked like an old, custom modified Alpha-Series officers’ Mech, heavily transformed and decorated to reflect the near-primal setting of the arena. It had a tattered scarlet rag hanging from the shoulder, a wicked red tribal paint job with white teeth marking the hull, and a pair of pistols hanging from her hips like an ancient gunslinger. This was an arena-ready battle machine. It looked like there was a whole culture of buying and modifying Federation hardware to use in the arena, and despite the fact that I was shitting my pants, I couldn’t get over how freaking awesome her rig looked.
I couldn’t believe it was her. Thirteen months it had been since I saw her, and barely a day had gone by for the first twelve when I didn’t think about her. I never thought I’d see her again, and now, suddenly, there she was. It had to be fate that we’d be meeting down the sights of our rifles — coincidence couldn’t be that cruel.
“I detect a marked increase in your heart rate and blood pressure, James,” Greg said quietly.
I clenched my teeth. It was beating out of my chest.
“You should try to calm yourself,” he said, his voice carrying more authority than usual. “You make hasty decisions when you’re stressed.”
I flexed my jaw and narrowed my eyes inside my helmet. What the hell was that supposed to mean?
The flames died and Alice let off the trigger. One of the long, armored arms on the Alpha series leaped out and pointed into the arena. She swept it around in a wide arc until it came to rest on me for a second. When she reached what I had to assume was the last contender, all of us having come in from the same staging area, but through different doors, she stopped and drew the finger across the top of the Alpha’s body — where a neck might have been. I swallowed. Despite being a few centuries old, and definitely not a current model, the thing was heavily modified and looked fast. That was its main weapon — agility. It moved like a T-Series and hit like an F-Series. We might as well have been bolted to the floor with all of our bulk to carry. I swallowed and tried to calm myself, but my mind was a whirl. How was Alice here? Last I’d heard she’d been in recovery on a carrier in the Leeam System, as that’s where her dad was, and had ordered her brought when she was put in the coma. I assumed she was still there, and when Mac had said that she was on the Athena last night, I’d been in a drunken haze, and he had, too. Plus, I was sort of more concerned with Everett. She flashed in my mind and I bit into my lip. Shit. I’d totally forgotten about her, but I didn’t have time to think about any of that now. I could ask how later. For now, we had to stay alive. I tightened my grip around my rifle and waited for the cheering to stop.
The commentator kicked up again. “The rules are simple — on the buzzer, it all begins. It’s a no-holds-barred free-for-all! Whoever gets all of their sensors blown is out. Whoever’s left takes it all!”
More cheering erupted from the walls, but I was deaf to everything except the sound of blood in my ears. In a blur of thoughts and nerves, a buzzer split the air. Shit, it was starting. Something flashed in my peripheral and I twisted around, firing blindly at it.
Of course, nothing came out of my gun, so the little flying droid, the size of a grapefruit just hung there, staring at me with a camera lens. Laughter boomed in the walls. It adjusted its focus on me and tracked back and forth as I waved the muzzle in front of it.
“Greg, what the hell is this thing?” I asked.
“It’s a live feed of your activity in the match. All of the competitors have them so that the spectators can track their progress.” He as good as sighed, and then gently urged us forward. “We should move. Statistically, competitors who stay still for a significant period of time are the most likely to be knocked out in the early stages.”
I glanced down the narrow alley in front of me, at the structure that a second ago Alice had stood atop. She wasn’t there anymore.
A moment later, gunfire rang out and explosions began to sound in the air. The commentator's voice cut the din “Ooh, and The Queen claims her first sensor — she won’t disappoint her fans this week, that’s for sure.”
I felt like moving was a good idea, and took off, sticking close to the wall on my right. “Greg, what are we doing here?”
“Trying to remain in the competition.”
“No shit. You said you analyzed some statistics? What are they — we need all the help we can get.” My voice was hoarse in my helmet, my throat tight, lungs pumping like bellows.
“In terms of the results from previous games, those who are new competitors don’t do very well, statistically. Though ammunition is not live, there are no restrictions on modifications that can be made. Arena-customized Mech units look to favor speed, judging by the information available to me, and many of the heavier parts designed to protect pilots and vital internal components from live armaments have been removed to aid with maneuverability. Further to that, weaponry is varied, including small and long arms, rifles both automatic and semi-automatic. A host of other non-lethal ordinance is also being used, if previous games are anything to judge by.”