by Ramy Vance
As the Game Master walked, he spoke. “The catacombs beneath the arena are reserved for our most ardent contestants. Some have battled for years.”
One of the orcs tilted his torch so its light shone on the stone walls of the hallway.
Sections of the rock had been carved out. Some were the size of cells, and others were as large as the dining hall. To Terra’s left was an elaborate dining room scene filled with mummies. The bones of a dragon hung over the table, its jaws wide open.
“For a time, this was how we orcs celebrated our strength. That was until we were provided an opportunity to show our strength to the realms. Do you know what the other races think of the orcs? What they have always thought?”
Terra couldn’t have made up an answer if she wanted. She didn’t even know about fictional orc race politics.
Game Master answered Terra’s silence. “Lesser, across the board. Particularly the elves. They relegated us to a backwater realm. Deprived us of our glory. That is, until the Dark One searched us out. He offered us the chance to have what we’ve always wanted—equality.”
They made their way deeper into the catacombs, passing the only space Terra had seen with a door, which was slightly ajar.
The tracker, which had been following Terra the entire time, dipped to the left and flew into the room.
The Game Master continued speaking. “Have you ever been treated as if you were undeserving of what you knew you had a right to?”
The question cut Terra deep, sparking an insecurity long buried, the same insecurity that made it easy for her to beat up people for treating her like shit, for taking advantage of her. The same insecurity that allowed her to curl up into a doormat. “Sure,” Terra muttered. “Hasn’t everyone?”
Game Master stopped and looked at the scene to his right. A human skeleton sat upon a throne. Dozens of skeletons surrounded the throne, all on their knees, their heads pressed to the ground in a sign of worship. “Sometimes you have to take what you deserve,” Game Master said. “And the Dark One will give you the tools to do such. You could rule. Have your own kingdom. Whatever you desire.”
Terra was quiet for some time. Then she said, “I want to go home.”
Game Master sighed as he turned to face her. “I see. Disappointing. Return her to the rest of the fodder for tomorrow.” He leaned close to Terra, his rank breath curling her stomach. “You have a match tomorrow. We’ll see how you feel afterward. Offer remains on the table.”
One of the orcs hit Terra hard on the back of the head. Everything went black, and the world swept out from beneath her.
Chapter Sixteen
The hangar of HQ was abandoned, as usual. No one other than the stray mechanic ever dropped by. There wasn’t much for anyone to do. The only thing of merit within the hangar—other than dropships, which required clearance to get near—was Roy’s mech. And no one touched Roy’s mech.
The lights flickered on as Roy entered the hangar. He scanned the general area to check if it was empty. Working on his mech was a private affair. The schematics were common knowledge to anyone who had worked on the Dragon Riders initiative, but Roy had made his own adjustments. He liked to tinker in his alone time.
Roy went to the bay where he kept his mech. It was a beautiful piece. Most everyone spoke of the mechs as equipment. You got the stray person who spoke of them as vehicles. That wasn’t how Dragon Riders talked about their mechs. They called them by name.
Roy called his Evelyn. It had been his wife’s name. She was the first person he’d lost to the Dark One. It was only fitting that her memory help him erase the Dark One’s name from history.
The mech was the first ever made, built before the engineers had tried to make them as dragon-like as possible. Roy’s was somewhat boxy, the body of the mech built around the cockpit, which rested in the chest, unlike the rest of the mech’s, whose cockpits were nestled into the mech’s spine.
The immediate downfall of his mech was that it wasn’t nearly as receptive to commands as the newer models. Newer mechs were built around the nervous system of their riders. Not Roy’s. His was old-school.
That wasn’t to say he was using outdated technology. The mech was linked to his muscles’ reactions, responding to how he tensed his forearms or legs to compensate for him having to manually move its arms and legs. Ironically, it gave him a closer link to his mech than any other mech rider.
Roy didn’t even have to form a thought. The mech’s cockpit opened as easily as his heart beat. He climbed into it and began running diagnostics. He slid his legs into the bottom part of the mech’s chassis, felt the weight as he prepared to lift his right leg.
Back when Roy had first learned to ride a motorcycle, his father had told him to check his tires, brakes, headlights, and clutch before heading out. Every time. Never grow comfortable. That was how people died. Wise words from the second person Roy had lost to the Dark One.
Each time Roy suited up, he ran through the people the Dark One had taken from him. There was a lesson in each and every one of those losses.
Roy leaned back and rested in the cockpit. He loved this mech. It looked like an ancient depiction of a dragon. This was his favorite place to be. Riding beat sitting around in meetings any day.
“You come here often?” a voice said from the shadows.
Instinctively Roy pulled up on the mech’s arms and aimed his chain gun at the source of the voice.
Anabelle slid out of the darkness. “Whoa, watch where you point that thing.”
Anabelle wore that wicked grin Roy could never get enough of. He’d never tell her, though. Somehow, he believed if she knew, she’d stop directing it his way.
Roy lowered his gun and disengaged from the mech. He didn’t want to be seen sitting in the cockpit. It felt worse than being naked. “What the hell are you doing down here?”
“Just wanted to come and see you off. Nothing huge. That and tell you I really appreciate you taking the satellite out. I could tell Myrddin wasn’t too stoked about this plan.”
“How the hell could you tell what Myrddin was thinking?”
Anabelle walked up and leaned on Evelyn. Roy felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle. “My job for the last hundred years has been manipulating people,” Anabelle explained. “You think I can’t read body language by now? Besides, you humans aren’t too subtle about that kind of stuff.”
Roy made the conscious decision not to fold his arms. “Oh, yeah? What does my body language say right now?”
Anabelle walked around Roy, watching him closely. “Based on how quickly you got out of your mech and how you stood up straighter when I leaned on it, I think it’s safe to say you’re uncomfortable with me being too close to your baby.”
At this point, Roy realized it was ridiculous to try to hide his body language from Anabelle. Like she said, it was her job.
But the elf wasn’t done yet. “You don’t seem to be too stressed about the mission. But your legs are crossed, one over the other, even though you’re standing. That means you’re probably backed up. Just a little bit.”
“What do you mean, backed up?”
Anabelle gave him that grin that made Roy’s heart question itself. “Backed up. As in horny,” Anabelle whispered.
And then, just as quickly as it had flashed its teeth, Anabelle’s flirtatiousness disappeared. She was all business now, keeping her distance from Roy and presenting herself as disinterested. “So, how are you planning on pulling this off?”
Roy was glad Anabelle had pulled back. He hated it when they were alone together. It felt like Anabelle had all the cards. And he loved it. But talking business? That was something Roy could do. “There’s a hyperspace jump point we’ve been using for a while for receiving gnome supplies. It’s a good ways away from the gnome homeworld. Just one mech, so they never notice it.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Are you worried?” Roy asked.
Anabelle shook her head as she laughed. “No, I just want
to make sure the only person I work with who has any sense in their head doesn’t end up dead. So, make sure to come back in one piece.”
Roy chuckled as he leaned into the cockpit of his mech. “Don’t worry, I will.”
The two of them stood there without speaking for a bit, avoiding each other’s eyes. The silence grew thick between them. Roy glanced at the interior of his mech, wondering what Anabelle was resting her eyes on. Then he remembered he wasn’t in grade school. “Hey, when I get back, you wanna grab a drink or something? Like a date?”
Anabelle’s eyebrows rose slowly. “What do you mean by ‘date?’”
“You know, go out and do something. Get to know each other better. That kind of thing.”
Anabelle moved closer to Roy, her eyes burning. “I do find humans amusing. That might be interesting,” she said with a low growl.
“So, that’s a yes for the date?”
“A date? Sure. But I’d much prefer a night of unrestrained animalistic passion.”
Roy choked on nothing and doubled over in a coughing fit. By the time he righted himself, Anabelle was walking away. “Uh, I’ll call you when I get back!” he shouted.
Anabelle slipped into the shadows and was gone.
Roy climbed into the cockpit and sighed as he shook his head. “Well, fuck me, right?” he muttered aloud. “Let’s hope I come back in one piece.”
Roy looked forward to hyperspace jumps for one reason—naps. The trip took a couple of hours, and there was nothing that he enjoyed more than naps.
As usual, he woke up a couple of minutes before the jump was over. He never needed an alarm.
Roy flipped up the visor of his mech. He watched as thousands of star systems zoomed past him at a blur that the human eye could hardly catch. “I will never get tired of this,” he thought as he prepared to exit hyperdrive.
Roy’s mech snapped into regular space. He stared around, then flipped up his holomap. For some reason, he’d come out of hyperspace earlier than usual for this run. “What the hell is going on here?”
As Roy checked his navigation system, he felt his mech vibrating ominously. He pulled up to get a look around him.
A dropship was flying overhead. It was the largest he’d ever seen, easily the length of three football fields. The ship was heading toward the gnomish homeworld.
Luckily, Roy was far enough away to remain hidden. Still, this was going to be a problem.
Chapter Seventeen
The Dark One’s dropship continued to pass overhead. That wasn’t it, though. More dropships were exiting hyperspace. There were five in total.
Roy’s mech couldn’t handle even one in a straight-on fight. Dropships were equipped with some of the strongest weaponry the Dark One had. Roy had seen guns fired by those dropships that he couldn’t even wrap his head around. A lot of lives had been lost to those ships.
What were the ships doing at the gnomish world? HQ’s plan couldn’t have been discovered unless there was a spy, which seemed unlikely. Everyone in the meeting was trustworthy, and Roy hadn’t mentioned the plan to anyone else.
The leak could have come from somewhere else, though. He’d used the same route he’d been using for his gnomish deliveries. The leak could have come from someone on his side of things. That would have to be dealt with later. Right now, the priority was staying alive.
Roy was trying to dismiss the idea of betrayal, but he couldn’t quite get it out of his mind. The idea of someone close to him ratting him out to the Dark One made his chest clench. That was the problem with wars nowadays. People weren’t honest like they used to be.
Above him, the dropships continued to make their way toward the gnomish world. The ships hadn’t taken notice of Roy. It was possible they were here on unrelated business. Could have simply been a coincidence.
Either way, the ships were taking up Roy’s field of vision, like the bloated carcasses of a school of beached whales. If he was going to enter the gnomish world, he would have to slip past them undetected.
That could play out in a few ways. Roy wanted to mentally prepare for what he was about to get himself into. The easiest one was that he got past without setting off any of their alarms, dropped the satellite, and punched into hyperjump.
That seemed too perfect to happen. Also, it was only a possibility before the other four ships had dropped in. Next on the list of possible outcomes was that he waited until the ships finished settling into their formation, find a flaw in their positioning, and try to exploit it.
Third option was to stick with the coordinates, jump to hyperspace to clear the distance, and then get the hell out of there before the ships had a chance to deploy their fighters. That was what Roy wanted to avoid more than anything else. The dropships’ weapons were powerful but slow enough for Roy to avoid. The fighters were another thing altogether.
Roy had only seen the Dark One’s helkate fighters deployed a few times, and each memory was terrifying. Before Roy had been assigned to the dragon mech program, he had been an ensign on a space freighter. They had been performing a routine supply delivery off the rim of the elvish realm.
The Dark One’s dropship had come from nowhere, silently slipping out of hyperspace in front of the ship Roy was serving on. The alarms had blared instantly, and the whole ship was thrown into chaos. Roy watched the fight from the viewing windows.
The freighter’s fighters had swarmed the dropship, peppering it with plasma bolts and the occasional bomb. The dropship had been unfazed. Then, out of nowhere, a portal had opened in front of the dropship. It looked as if the ship had peeled back space, and there was another universe within the portal.
Then the helkate fighters started to pour through the portal. They were smaller than the freighter’s fighters and were all black, spikes rising from their orb-like bodies. Clouds of electrical energy surrounded them as they zipped around the battlefield, careening between the freighter’s fighters and firing blast after blast, setting everything on fire within minutes.
That was how every battle with the helkate fighters Roy had seen went down. The fighters showed up out of nowhere and tore through anything and everything in their way. As far as Roy was concerned, helkate fighters were the worst-case scenario.
This mission could go off the rails in other ways, but Roy thought it best to limit his imaginary failures to three options. Roy pinged Anabelle on his comm. “Hey, we got a little problem.”
Anabelle chuckled over the comm. “What happened, you get lost or something?”
“No, that would have been preferable. It’s a bigger problem than that. I got dropships. Five of them. So, yeah, just thought you might want to pass the word up to the big guy.”
“What are you going to do?”
Roy was already putting in the coordinates for the gnomish world, hoping to get a little closer. “There’s a mission. And there’s nothing in my employment clause about leaving missions halfway finished.”
“Wait, you have an employment clause? I didn’t get a contract or anything.”
“Well, I mean…actually, I’m not sure. I hope I at least signed some kind of contract. Either way, if I get back, you still owe me that date. If I don’t, it was nice working with you.”
Anabelle didn’t answer right away. “Hey, stop being so dramatic. I’ll see you when you make it back.”
“Right.”
Roy cut the comm and pulled up his holomenu. He dictated a quick message to Myrddin, letting him know what route to take with the dragon mech squad if things didn’t work out with the mission.
Even if Roy wasn’t going to admit it to himself, he was approaching everything with a sense of fatalism. He wasn’t stupid. He knew the odds he was up against.
Finally, he was ready to get started. Doesn’t make sense to keep putting it off, he thought to himself. Everyone’s got to die someday. At least I get to know how I’m going out.
Roy leaned back in his mech, watching the stars outside his window. He was going to miss this. There wa
sn’t anything more peaceful than space. Nothing more beautiful. If he was going to die, it should be out here. This was a fitting place for his final goodbye.
The coordinates were loaded, and the mech was primed. Roy threw on his thrusters and felt the mech surge forward as the stars and space around him stretched.
This jump was going to take skill. There wasn’t a lot of distance to cover, and Roy wanted to make sure he didn’t end up inside one of those dropships. If there was a slight chance Roy could survive, he wanted to give it a shot.
Roy’s mech blasted past the dropships. At the last second, he pulled the hyperspace disengagement lever, dropping out in front of the Dark One’s ships. Without wasting a second, he dipped away from the dropships and looped around, preparing to dump the satellite.
There wasn’t any time. The dropships had already opened a portal each. They must have known Roy was near the gnomish homeworld. Just like he’d been waiting to see what they were going to do, they’d followed the same route. Fucking great, Roy thought.
Once, when Roy had first started training alongside his friend Toppinir, the elf had praised Roy’s piloting skill. “Even if you can’t ride a dragon, you’re more than tolerable in a mech,” the elf had said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you could outrun a few helkates someday.”
Roy had laughed and written it off. Now he was hoping the elf hadn’t merely been filling him up with stale flattery. Today, he was going to find out.
The portals continued to expand, and Roy stared deep within them. Just like the first time Roy had seen the portals open, it was like looking into a reflection of our own world. You couldn’t make out the details, but you knew it was someplace more alien than space.
A dozen helkates came shooting out of the portal. They were smaller than Roy remembered, but the last time he’d seen them, he had been on a freighter, somewhat removed from the whole situation. Now he was in the thick of it. Now he was going to find out how fast these suckers flew.
