by Barry Solway
“I’ll tell you about it later, Evan,” Mel said. She realized suddenly that she had never removed her hand from Evan’s forearm. It was partially because her robotic right hand didn’t pick up on sensations as well as her normal hand would have. At least, that’s what she told herself as she quickly pulled it away.
“That’s crazy. Is he really that tough?” Evan asked.
“We dropped a building on him and he walked out of it,” Riley said. “So yeah, he’s that tough.”
“And now for the million-dollar question,” Anna said. “Now that you know who you’re dealing with, do you still want to do this?”
“No,” Jon said immediately.
“Dammit. Hold on, everyone. We need to think this through,” Mel said. “When would the next gauntlet be that we could qualify for?”
“Within two months for sure,” Anna said. “There’s no guarantee he won’t be in that one. Or someone worse.”
“Right. And how much money will we make from doing this gauntlet?”
“I could tell you a number, but it’s hard to understand what it means. Things cost different amounts on different planets, and what would be expensive on Earth is cheap here, etc…. The best way to think about it is that we need something like half a million dollars to hire a ship to get to Kathor. If we win this game, we’ll get around a hundred thousand that would normally be split six ways. If we lose, we get a third of that amount.“
“We need to fight in five gauntlets to have enough?” Jon said. “There’s no way we can survive that many games.”
“You need to win five gauntlets. But it depends. I’ve created some algorithms to allow us to invest small amounts and earn a profit. If we run it through members of the Viro Kara, it won’t be traced to us, and it’s legitimate, so there’s no concern about me having to hack anything. Instead, I’ll anticipate what is the equivalent of the stock market here. Shouldn’t be a problem to raise a hundred grand that way.”
“I want to marry you when we get back to Earth,” Riley said. “Do you think marrying an AI will be legal by then?”
“Riley, stay on the subject,” Mel said. “Look, if we wait two months, it’s going to take forever to get the money we need. It could take years. There are going to be tough players, we know that. Stoner isn’t the scariest one we’ve faced, although I grant he’s the toughest. We just need to play smart.”
“I guess I’m fine with it,” Riley said, shrugging. “Whatever the team wants to do. Although sooner is better than later.”
“I’ll go with the team,” Gorgeous said. “I just want to help.”
“Beats? You’ve been quiet over there,” Mel said.
“Mmm… I stayed up late reading. I don’t like it. Any of it. I don’t like getting wet. I don’t like swimming. I don’t like to fight Stoner. But you’re right. If we’re going to do this, there’s no reason to wait.”
“That’s four of us. Jon? Evan?”
“I already said no,” Jon said, throwing himself back into his chair.
Evan shrugged. “I don’t know enough about this Stoner guy to have an opinion. He does kind of look like he’s stoned, doesn’t he? Anyway, I’m as good with it as I’ll ever be. It’s kind of dumb to do the gauntlets either way.”
Mel pondered it for a moment. She couldn’t force Jon to join them. She wouldn’t want to even if she could. He needed to be fully committed, or the risk of him endangering the rest of them would be too high.
“Do we have to decide now?” she asked Anna.
“No, but you run the risk of losing the slot.”
“Five of us are in. Go ahead and take it. We’ll let Jon decide on his own time. If he decides not to do it, then we’ll have to find someone else.”
“That means you’ll have to pay them,” Anna warned. “It would take you six or seven games with the remaining income to make what we need.”
“It’s worse than that, isn’t it? You said half a million to find Kathor. Does that include money for training? For getting to the gauntlets and back? For food?”
“Food is a drop in the bucket. I’ve estimated training at the equivalent of twenty thousand dollars for a decent setup. That’s not included, but it’s a fraction of the total cost and we need it now anyway so we’ll have to find another way to raise that money. The half-a-million estimate includes transportation and medical care.”
“I hadn’t even thought of medical care. So, seven to eight matches if we have to hire someone.”
“Yes,” Anna said. The image of Stoner disappeared, and Anna’s holographic image hovered above the conference table. Her voice didn’t sound very optimistic.
Mel nodded. “It is what it is. Maybe Anna’s investment idea will make us more than we think. We just need to take this one step at a time. Reserve the spot now. Jon, you need to make a decision. Not now, but soon. You don’t have to be excited about it, but you do have to decide of your own free will.” Jon looked sulky but didn’t respond.
Anna’s image shifted. “I just sent a message to reserve our slot. I’ll let everyone know when I get a response. We have two weeks to train. I’ll get the training hall set up as quickly as possible. I imagine Evan and Simon will enjoy that part.”
Jon left without saying a word. Beats grumbled about his legs cramping as he stiffly got to his feet. With the drug cocktail that Anna had instructed Sheila to make, his torn tendon was healing quickly, but he still moved slowly and used the crutch. Riley and Beats left with Evan, discussing the training hall and what Stoner was capable of. Mel sat with Gorgeous and Anna.
“Anna,” Gorgeous asked. “Were you able to find any information on Kathor’s ship?”
“I haven’t tried,” Anna said. There was a long pause before she added, “Mel told me not to.”
Mel looked at Anna in surprise. “I didn’t tell you not to. I was just saying it was dangerous and that it made sense to wait.”
“Of course. That’s what I meant,” Anna said.
“Too bad,” Gorgeous replied. “My fear is that the ship is destroyed, and all of this is for nothing.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Mel replied. “Maybe we should start looking into it.”
“Is that also a suggestion?” Anna asked.
Mel responded carefully. Something was up with Anna, and Mel couldn’t figure out what it was. “It’s always a suggestion, Anna. I didn’t mean to sound… bossy. Or whatever you thought it was. Honestly, I’m used to you ignoring me.”
Anna smiled, and Mel thought it was genuine. “Sorry, I was teasing you. Gorgeous makes a good point. I’ll start poking around for signs of Kathor’s ship. I’ll let you know what I find.”
Mel nodded and stood to leave with Gorgeous. She knew she should confront Anna. They were going back into the killing fields of the gauntlets, and the last thing she needed was a problem with the AI construct that was keeping them alive. Mel hated to think of Anna in those terms. Even as an android, Mel considered Anna to be her friend. But she was also their lifeline to navigate this alien world. Without her, they would have been dead or captured several times over.
But Mel’s heart wasn’t in it for a confrontation at the moment. She needed to rest, to think of what to say. It wouldn’t hurt to wait a day.
Chapter 19
Mel leaned sideways as the ship banked left and then leveled off for a gentle landing. The door slid open, and they glimpsed the city for the first time. As a level two gauntlet, they were allowed to bring in a select number of weapons and gear. Any gear they brought in affected their score, so they had to balance it against both their individual scores and the entire team score. Beats’s score was high enough he wasn’t able to bring anything in, while Mel had much more leeway. For this gauntlet, she had elected to bring her pistols. She really wished she had the armor she’d used in their last game, but it had been lost when their ship crashed, and was far too expensive to buy.
Through some haggling with members of the Viro Kara, they had acquired an ancient but s
erviceable rifle for Jon. Between that and Mel’s pistols, the team score was so high that Riley and Gorgeous were stuck with the bladed weapons they used in training. Unless they found a cache of weapons, this would be all they would have for firepower. Mel checked that her pistols were in place, then adjusted her backpack before heading for the door of the dropship.
They had landed on the roof of a ten-story building and she paused to take in the view. Roofs were the only flat dry spots she could see. Water flowed in the streets below, lapping at the buildings. About a mile to the east, Mel could see the bay that eventually led out to the ocean. Sunlight glinted off the blue water in the distance. It could have been a tropical beach resort except for the deserted, flooded city.
Riley approached behind her, tightening the straps on his pack. “At least we didn’t have to bring water this time. Makes the pack lighter.”
“Just make sure you use the filtration devices. We don’t need to win the games and then die of disease.”
“Will do, boss.” He hopped the two feet down to the roof and turned back to Mel. “Need help getting down?”
“Sweet of you, but I can manage.” Mel jumped down next to Riley and made room for Beats and Gorgeous to get off. Beats limped slightly, but he moved well enough in training that Sheila and Anna both approved him for the gauntlet. With a bit of prodding from Mel. Occasionally, she felt a pang of doubt about it. But they didn’t have much choice. Without Beats, they would be a man down, and the chances of winning a game would be close to zero.
Evan struggled to get off the dropship. Cybernetic parts were legal, but they were limited in capabilities. The Order required that any parts be no more than ninety percent as strong, fast, or durable as the original biological parts. They considered the natural, unmodified state of all life to be sacrosanct, and wouldn’t allow a cybernetic part to make a person better than they otherwise would be. Seeing people with cybernetics wasn’t uncommon, but even Evan conceded that he felt people looked down on him because of it. Sometimes people modified the parts to make them stronger or more durable, but the penalties if you were caught were severe. Evan said it varied slightly by planet, but on Latanu there would be a multi-year prison sentence. And he would be banned from ever having cybernetic parts again.
Evan moved well enough, and ninety percent of his normal leg strength wasn’t usually noticeable. But instead of hopping the two feet down to the roof, he sat on the edge of the doorway and put his feet on the ground before standing.
“You okay?” Mel asked him.
“Yeah. I hate jumping. The legs are fine, but it hurts where my abdomen is connected to the harness. The interface doesn’t absorb shocks very well.”
Mel wondered if that was going to be a problem. She sighed. There were enough things to worry about. Evan would have to take care of himself. Still, it was a good thing to know.
They backed away from the dropship so it could take off, then set themselves up in a circle to review their options. Mel pulled out a map of the city and checked their landing point, stabbing a finger at the blue zone where they would find the goal.
“About two miles east of here,” she said. “Maybe an hour to cover that?”
“If we don’t get attacked by the other team or run into any major snags,” Riley said. “It would be easier if we could find a boat.”
“We’ll keep an eye out for one,” Mel agreed. “Let’s do a quick walk around the building to see if anything jumps out at us. Jon, any thoughts on where you’d like to set up?”
“It’s too early to know. I’ll figure it out when we get closer to the goal,” he said. Mel already knew that, but Jon was much easier to work with when she asked his opinion.
“I’m going to check out the east side,” Mel said. She realized that she did have a tendency to give orders, but she wasn’t trying to tell people what to do. She did it because it made sense and she hated it when everyone stood around and didn’t do anything. But she was trying to be less direct about it.
Gorgeous followed her to the east edge of the roof. Mel looked cautiously over the edge, trying to ignore the vertigo. There were old, rusted vehicles, washed up and upside down against the side of the buildings. But the flooding had happened long enough ago that the water ran clean, without much debris. As Mel scanned to her right, she could see that a smaller, three-story building a few blocks down had collapsed into rubble, forming a small island of concrete and brick that the water flowed around.
“That building there, the one that collapsed. Is it just me or does that look kind of recent?” Mel asked Gorgeous.
“Mmm… I guess,” she replied with a shrug.
“You okay? You seem a bit down,” Mel said.
Gorgeous frowned, then shook her head. “I’m fine. Maybe the water eroded out the foundation. It’s odd about the cars, though, the ones that are upside down. The water doesn’t seem that fast.”
“The original flood was probably worse. Also, Anna said they get intermittent tsunamis from mild earthquakes offshore. So that probably increases the water flow.”
“I hate water. Almost as much as I hate heights,” Gorgeous said, stepping back a bit from the edge. “I hate the gauntlets and this place and… just everything.” She shuddered slightly, but Mel wasn’t sure if it was from the heights or something else.
“I didn’t know you were afraid of heights,” Mel replied in surprise. She realized this was the second time in ten minutes she had learned something new about a member of the team that could impact how they performed. It irritated her to find these things out in the middle of a gauntlet. They would have to talk about this more in training. Then she wondered what things she was afraid of that she hadn’t told the others.
“I didn’t say I was afraid of heights,” Gorgeous corrected her. “I said I hate them. There’s a difference.”
Mel laughed. “Got me there. Just so you know, I’m afraid of snakes and mice and rats. And it’s not that I hate them, I’m sure they’re nice little rodents and lizards and all. I’m just mortally terrified that they’ll eat me.”
Gorgeous’s mood changed suddenly as she laughed. “Hopefully we won’t be attacked by a mischief of rats.”
Mel looked at Gorgeous strangely, wondering if the translator had heard her wrong.
“I think the translator’s not working for whatever you tried to say. What’s a mischief of rats?” Mel asked. She turned with Gorgeous to walk the perimeter of the roof and check out all sides.
“When you have more than one, you know. A group. A mischief of rats,” Gorgeous replied, obviously confused by Mel’s confusion. On Gorgeous’s last use of the word mischief, an idea floated through Mel’s mind. Group of rats… more than one rat… was that what a group of rats was called? A mischief? And why did the translator use a word that she didn’t even know?
They finished the walk around the building and met up with the others. They hadn’t spotted anything that could really be used as a boat, so the most obvious path was to go to the bottom floor and start walking east, towards the bay and the goal.
As they moved towards the doorway, Mel leaned over to Evan and spoke in a whisper. “Have you ever heard a group of rats being called a mischief?”
Evan grinned at her. “That’s a weird question. But sure. A mischief of rats. And a group of crows is a murder.”
“Gorgeous said it and it didn’t make sense. How can the translator use a word I don’t know? That seems slightly useless if you ask me.”
“I guess. I suppose the translator doesn’t know you don’t know it, right?”
“It eventually translated the word for me, in my head. So it’s not only translating alien gibberish, it’s translating English into more basic English.”
Evan laughed. “Does it feel like you’re back in school?”
Mel rolled her eyes. She had grown so accustomed to the translators that she really didn’t think about it anymore, but now she felt a bit stupid realizing the translator knew something about English that
she didn’t.
Beats easily broke the lock to the stairwell. The Nipunee were much smaller than Beats, and he had some difficulty navigating the stairway, but they made it down quickly. They ran into another weird issue that no one had anticipated. The Nipunee had the ability to use their hands and feet to stick to vertical surfaces. Mel had seen one walk on a ceiling in a video. And the architecture of the building seemed to include areas where it was expected that someone didn’t need stairs, but could just climb the wall. There were doors that hovered in the middle of a wall six feet off the ground. It ended up not being a problem where they were going, but it was strange, and Mel hoped it wouldn’t cause problems. She hated the lack of control, of not being able to predict how things would go.
Three feet of water covered the bottom floor. The first floor was exactly at street level, so they shouldn’t have to worry about it being deeper in the streets. But walking waist high in water would be exhausting and take forever. They came to the door of the lobby, pushing aside a very soggy sofa-like piece of furniture that bobbed in the water. Mel gasped as she felt something slide across her leg.
“There are things in the water,” she said.
Riley reached down and put his fingers in the water, wiggling them gently. With a sudden flash, his other hand hit the water and pulled out a wriggling yellow fish. Except it didn’t look much like a fish. The thing was less than a foot long and had smooth skin instead of scales, looking more like a dolphin. But it was flat and had two bulging eyes on the top of its head and a gaping mouth underneath that opened and closed like it was gulping for air. Four fins ran across the top and two flipper-like things sprouted from the sides. It clearly breathed in water, though. So like a fish, but not like the fish on Earth.
“Doesn’t have any teeth that I can see,” Riley said. He threw the fish back in the water, away from the group. The water was clear enough that Mel could see the fish streak off down a hallway. “There’s probably a ton of fishy-like things swimming around here. But Anna said the only thing that should be a problem are the long eel things.”
