by C. F. Harris
After all, I'd been able to resist the temptation on offer with the woman of my species who'd been on display as a prize in my last arena battle.
I looked up at the Kliks surrounding us. Staring down at us with their eye stalks wiggling in anticipation. And I wondered if maybe this woman was the creature I was supposed to fight.
I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't fight. I’d decided that well before the Klik guard came into my cell and prodded me out with that pain stick.
I wasn't going to be their plaything. If it meant my death then so be it.
I thought about trying to address her in the Klik language, but decided against it. They were terribly arrogant, and so far that arrogance had extended to assuming I couldn't understand their language.
I wasn't going to give up something that useful. Not when that could be the difference between escaping and being a captive for life. Who knew when one of my guards might give something away that would allow me to break free?
So I remained silent. I sat down in the dirt, crossed my legs in front of me, and looked up at the Kliks surrounding us.
The reaction from my captors was immediate. They started hissing and making odd noises. They didn't look happy that I dared defy them and their bloodlust.
Well that was their problem. They weren't getting a show from me. I had no interest in killing this beautiful new creature who looked so much like my people but with those subtle differences that made her seem so exotic at the same time.
A hissing from the other side of the arena brought my attention back to the real world and away from thoughts of the sort of things I would like to do with that woman if she was willing. Though from the way she glared I didn't think she would ever be willing.
A pity.
It also looked like my wish to avoid any and all fighting wasn't to be either. No, the bars on the other end of the arena slid up and a broad shouldered man who could only be a foot soldier stepped out with a look of arrogant confidence on his face. He looked over and dismissed me.
I bristled at that dismissal. Sure I might not look like much in a fight, but I had it where it counted. I was a famous pirate, damn it. This guy would've probably pissed his pants if he heard my name.
Not that I had any intention of telling anyone who I was. That was another advantage that I had no plans on giving up any time soon. If the Kliks knew who I was they might put extra security on me.
This new player looked like trouble. That casual confidence, that grin on his face, and more particularly the way he turned and looked at the new prize and licked his lips, told me this wasn't a man who would conscientiously object to killing me and taking her.
No, he looked like the burly muscular type who thought might made right. Who would be more than happy to use that might to make right, if "making right" meant getting what he wanted from this new delectable female creature.
I sighed and forced myself to get up. I suppose that meant I had no choice but to defend her, damn it. She looked like she was more than capable of defending herself under the right circumstances, don’t get me wrong, but she hadn’t been given any primitive weapons like I had.
I should've known the universe wouldn't allow me to continue this pacifistic streak. There was nothing for it but to fight this asshole, and given how tough he looked it wasn't going to go well for me.
Still, I had to try.
This was crazy. Dying for a damsel in distress I didn't know from a species I'd never seen before because I thought she looked familiar. And because I was insanely attracted to her, of course.
I picked up my weapon. A strange object with a half moon blade on one end and a blunt sphere on the other. No barbs on the thing this time around.
Damnation. This was going to hurt.
9
Dalia
Okay. I needed to keep my cool. The last thing I needed was to freak out.
Why would I freak out? I'd only been captured aliens who'd avoided detection at every turn. I'd only become one of hundreds of ships to disappear into the great unknown.
Now I was finding out what the great unknown was, and I wished would’ve stayed unknown, damn it.
I’d been thrust into a situation that was beyond anything I'd expected when I was captured. I hadn't expected to find myself thrown into an arena that looked like something straight out of an old cheesy science fiction show from the middle of the twentieth century.
Honestly. What species did stuff like this?
Apparently the Kliks did. It was enough to make me wonder if maybe they hadn't intercepted some of those old science fiction broadcasts from earth and used them as a template for how to deal with alien species that hewed to Terran norms with the arrangement of their hands, legs, and other parts.
I pressed up against the bars, mindful of the Klik guard behind me. I wasn't in the mood for a repeat performance with that pain stick. Especially considering how eager he'd been to use the thing on my ass.
Yeah, the more I learned about this mysterious alien species the more I wanted to blast them from the stars.
Something metallic rattled against the bars behind me and I jumped away. I was terrified the Klik would shove that painstick through the bars and make me regret pressing up against them.
Not that the alternative was much better. I didn’t want to step into the arena. And that was the only way I could think of to describe it. A fucking gladiatorial arena in the middle of a battle cruiser in the middle of fucking space.
Forget something straight out of bad science fiction shows from the twentieth century. This was something that came straight out of the old Roman days.
Not that I thought the Kliks had visited earth in the bad old days of Classical civilization to get pointers. The Romans might’ve been formidable at times, but something told me they would’ve been conquered in five minutes if they were confronted with alien crabs with power armor and plasma rifles.
I looked across the arena as the alien who was presumably the one I was to fight sat cross-legged. There was something familiar about him, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Not that there should be anything familiar about him seeing as how I’d never seen his species before. That green skin was your classic Little Green Man alien from before humanity achieved the stars, but there was nothing little about him. And I couldn’t get rid of that nagging feeling that I knew him.
He looked over at me and his eyes bored into mine. It was like he looked straight into my soul. That look went straight down between my legs, too, and I shivered and went weak in the knees.
I might be expected to fight this guy, but damn he was hot. In a strange alien way, sure, but I couldn’t deny that he was fucking hot! He wasn't exactly ripped, but he had muscles where it counted. He was toned. Like a guy in the Fleet who spent his free time working out but didn't bother bulking up like some of the roided out scary dudes who worked in ground operations.
I licked my lips and chided myself for licking my lips even as I did it. This guy was presumably here to fight me to the death, or whatever the hell it was the Kliks expected us to do.
Either way, it couldn't mean anything good for me. I needed to figure out a way to get the hell out of here.
My mind went to the blaster in the subcutaneous pattern buffer in my skin. I could teleport that out and fire off a couple of shots at this guy and that would be the end of this.
Only I couldn't bring myself to do that. No, firing on a creature as beautiful as this guy would be a crime. I couldn't bring myself to destroy something that hot without provocation, even if I was acting like a silly Academy girl with a stupid crush on an upperclassman.
He wasn’t acting like he wanted to fight, but it might still come to that. It depended entirely on whether or not he decided to get aggressive when the Kliks started pushing, and I had no doubt they’d start pushing if the fight didn’t start soon.
Still, it would be a damn shame to have to kill a man as fine as him.
I looked up at my surrounding
s, and I didn’t like what I saw up there. Kliks were gathered all around in concentric rings running back to the top of the arena.
It boggled the mind how much space they must’ve wasted to put this arena in here. At least it would be wasteful if you were a human shipbuilder, or maybe even the strange alien species this other guy was from. Apparently the Kliks didn't think it was a waste since it was here.
All the more reason for me to hate them. I was starting to get a sneaking suspicion that the reason everybody disappeared when they ran into a Klik ship was because they eventually found themselves in the middle of an arena fighting to the death.
Not a pleasant thought considering those disappearances had been going on for the better part of a century, ramping up near the middle of that hundred year period and then going back down as humanity stopped being quite so bold in exploring the edges of what we thought of as our territory.
"Great," I muttered. "I'm going to die a million miles from home in single combat while these assholes watch for fun. Perfect."
Noise from the other side of the circular arena drew my attention. A sinking feeling hit me that was a striking counterpoint to the strange burning I felt when I looked at my first companion here in the arena.
That gentleman was no longer my only companion. Another guy stepped through bars opposite the first one, and this guy did look every inch the roided out muscle head that tended to go on ground operations for the Fleet.
He also looked like he was from the same species as my first companion, but bulkier.
I felt a sense of foreboding as I looked at the guy. Particularly as he looked at me and his eyes ran up and down my body.
That was a possessive look. The sort of look that said he was going to have his way with me when this was done and he didn't particularly give a fuck what I thought about that arrangement.
I shivered. And suddenly I was thinking that maybe I wasn't supposed to fight the sexy guy. Maybe the handsome guy was supposed to fight this meathead, and that gave me an idea of what my role was in this fight.
I turned to the toned guy. He still sat cross legged, though he eyed the big guy warily.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" I shouted at him. "You need to take care of that guy!"
I don't know why I thought it fell to him to take care of the meathead. I was just as capable of fighting myself.
The only problem was I was used to doing my fighting from behind a control panel cocooned safely in a ship where I had weapons systems and a targeting computer that did a lot of the work for me. It’d been years since my hand-to-hand combat training at the academy, and on top of that they hadn’t provided any weapons.
I knew just from glancing at this big guy that this would be painful, to say the least. If I was going to have a prayer of taking this guy down then I was going to need help from the only other person in the arena.
The only problem? It seemed that English wasn't one of the languages he spoke. Not that I was surprised. I'd never seen this species before. There was a good chance they'd never had contact with humans, so why would I expect him to speak any human language?
I glanced up at the Kliks surrounding us. There was still another language possibility, but I didn't dare try it. If I spoke the Klik language in front of a bunch of Kliks then that would give away one of the few advantages I had in this shitty situation.
The oddly familiar guy stood. He looked at the big burly guy, but the meathead was busy staring at me with unconcealed hunger in his eyes.
Yeah, it wasn't going to go well for me at all if the big guy won.
Only the first one did something amazing. Something that made me weak in the knees. He let out a roar and ran across the arena at the big guy.
He ducked down at the last moment and the tough one seemed almost surprised as the toned guy smashed into him.
Only it wasn't enough. The big guy might’ve been surprised, but he wasn't surprised to the point of giving up and letting the other guy win. No, if anything he seemed more pissed off.
My hand went to my mouth. I couldn't help it. I hated that I was acting like a damsel in distress, but it looked like the big one was about to do something bad to the other guy. I knew if he did something bad then bad things would happen to me very shortly after.
My eyes narrowed and I frowned. Well we couldn't have that. I wasn't going to stand around and wait for my fate to come and get me. No, I was going to take fate into my own hands. Just like I always had.
The Kliks had been nice enough to put a couple of weapons on either side of the arena where the two combatants came out, and I figured there was nothing stopping me from getting into the fight.
After all, I had more of a stake in this fight than either of those aliens did. Especially considering it was my “favor” they were fighting over, and I'd be damned if I was going to let a couple of alien beefcakes fight for that favor without me getting into the fray and sharing my thoughts with the end of the pointy and blunt weapons the Kliks had provided.
I sprinted across the arena and grabbed a weapon. It was a strange object with a blunt oval at one end and a strange half circle blade at the other end. Again, it looked almost exactly like something out of a cheesy twentieth century science fiction TV show.
It might be cheesy, but it would do. It had a blunt end and a sharp end and I figured that would have to be enough.
I turned on the two fighters and waited for an opportunity, but it was difficult considering how close they were. I couldn’t hit the big guy without risking hitting the other one.
I'm not sure how I knew the smaller one was the good guy. I just had a feeling about him. Something I couldn’t quite explain.
Just like I couldn’t explain how he seemed so damn familiar.
I advanced on them and decided to use the blunt end first. After all, I didn't necessarily want to kill either of them. The big guy seemed like bad news, but I had a feeling he’d been thrust in here against his will the same as me.
Even if he seemed to be enjoying himself now.
Plus I didn't want to hit the good one on accident. That’d be just my luck. Knock him out and leave myself all alone with the big burly guy. Considering how my luck had been going lately that would hardly be a surprising turn of events.
"You can do this Dalia," I muttered to myself.
I waited until the smaller one had spun the big one around so his back was facing me. His eyes locked with me and I knew he’d done it on purpose. He'd seen me sneaking up behind them.
Time to take advantage of the opportunity he was giving me. I slammed the weapon down on the big guy’s back and it landed with a resounding meaty thunk.
And that's about all it did. I'd had high hopes that it might knock him down, but from the way he turned and growled at me it was pretty fucking obvious that wasn't in the cards.
That growl rose to a crescendo and he shoved my alien savior away. That savior slammed to the ground while the big guy turned and advanced on me.
I held my weapon out in front of me, this time twirling it around so the sharp half moon end was facing him, and he looked at it and laughed. He said something, but I had no idea what the fuck he was trying to say.
No, scratch that. I might not understand the words coming out of his mouth, but the look on his face made his intent pretty fucking clear.
I swung the weapon at him as he drew close, but he batted it aside with ease. Yeah, this was a guy who was used to hand-to-hand combat, and I wasn't. Fuck.
Then he was on me. He didn't attack me though. Not like I expected. He pushed me down and the wind was knocked out of me. He moved on top of me and the way he looked me up and down, licking his strange alien lips, made it clear what he was thinking.
He looked up and bellowed something at the Kliks all around. Their eye stalks wiggled and they made a noise like a hissing boiling pot of water.
My captor let out another triumphant roar, and he was still roaring when a loud crack interrupted him. His eyes rolled
into the back of his head and he collapsed on top of me.
I had conflicting feelings about that. On the one hand I was glad his body had gone limp and he wasn't going to be able to do whatever it was he’d been planning. To the victor went the spoils, and I had a feeling I was the spoils in this fight.
On the flip side there was the unpleasantness of his entire weight crushing me. I winced under that weight and tried to push him off, but it wasn't working.
This wasn't how I was going to go, damn it. I wasn't going to allow myself to…
Darkness closed in around me. It would seem the universe didn't care what I thought about how I was or wasn't going to die. It was going to crush me under this asshole and that was that.
The lights were going out. Stars danced around the edge of my vision and I knew with grim certainty that was the last thing I was going to see.
The Kliks were going to get their death, only I was the one getting killed rather than one of the two gladiators.
Everything went dark around me.
10
Kir
“I’m moving, I’m moving!"
My assurances that I was putting one foot in front of the other didn't seem to be enough for the Klik guard following behind me. The tip of one of those damned pain sticks brushed against my back and I cried out in pain.
Which was sort of the point. With a name like pain stick it’s not like it was going to hit me with an orgasm every time it struck me. Unless you were into that sort of thing, maybe, but that wasn’t my idea of a good time.
I stepped a little faster after that prod. I still couldn't believe I was alive. When I saw that giant hunk of meat step into the arena I’d been sure I was staring at my death.
Only that hadn't happened. The strange alien had acquitted herself just as well as the finest warriors I'd ever seen.
