Arena of Doom (Clone Squad #1)

by Connor Brixton

  Oog went first, carrying her club as she practically skipped down the corridor. The other raptors followed before Grimsaw rolled underneath, holding the gate up from the other side.

  Yrsa glanced behind her, one last time, at the Arena of Doom. The crowd were still angry, but she had to admit she’d miss the arena all the same.

  She’d enjoy freedom more.

  Rolling under the gate, Grimsaw let go, the damaged metal clanging down on the ground behind them.

  Their weapons left in the arena, Yrsa felt more naked than in the showers as she walked down the corridor, the raptors walking a few feet in front of them.

  This corridor was the same as the ones the gladiators used, yet different. The metal floor and walls looked the same, but they were covered in scratch marks. In grime. There were definitely a few spots they had to walk around, the animals relieving themselves before entering the arena. Some puddles were fresh, some were clearly days old.

  In a way it was comforting, a reminder of the filthier days Yrsa grew up in. Not the strange stale ways of the rest of Hel. Here it was fresh, natural, more like Midgard than anywhere else she’d been since her death.

  A shriek rang out, Oog scampering back down the corridor towards them. A few feet in front of them, her club laid on the ground, crackling with electricity. As they approached the space, the Roman’s shield began to crackle as well. He let go, dropping the sparkling metal to the floor.

  “Curses!” He moved a few paces away from the shield. “They said weapons wouldn’t work; they didn’t say anything about shields!”

  Yrsa guessed the same spell must have been cast on the shield as well.

  Moving down the corridor, the raptors led the way in sleek silence, eventually coming to a large chamber.

  The ceiling was dozens of feet above them. So high up, Yrsa imagined every bunk in the barracks stacked on top of each other would barely reach the top. There were dozens of stables, each one containing different beasts she’d fought in the arena. The giant tarantula was holding itself still on one of the walls of its stable, its inky black eyes watching as they passed.

  “Rwarghty!” one of the raptors called out, motioning his head for them to follow.

  They moved past a cage, Yrsa glancing inside.

  Hitler. Wait, no. Hitlers.

  Dozens of them. All crammed into the same cage. They looked dirty, weary. Some of them sitting on the floor, a couple of them pacing.

  She guessed unlike the other gladiators, this was where Hitler was kept between fights.

  Ignoring the pleas from the dreadful men, she followed the raptors to one of the cages, taller than the rest.

  Inside stood the T-Rex, larger than any beast in the arena. Blue paint across the left eye, it shook one of his small arms as they approached. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the giant beast was waving at them.

  The raptors got to work, pulling at the joints at the bottom. One of them darted away, returning a few moments later with a strange device in its jaw. He handed it to the Roman, motioning to his arm. The Roman undid the straps, tying the device just below the raptor’s claw.

  Typing on the keypad, a strange voice rang out from the device moments later. Monotone, sounding bored even, the voice spoke.

  “Good. This is going well so far.”

  A loud clanking sound gave Yrsa pause. She looked behind her, down the alleyway of stables. She could hear animals screeching, panicking, running around in their cages.

  “I might have spoken too soon.”

  A metal beast stomped around the corner. Taller than any gladiator in the arena, it was shaped like a human. But the face was blank, no features. Skin made of metal. And a circle of tubes around one set of hands. Yrsa had seen the metal guards wandering the halls a few times. But this one moved differently.

  It moved with purpose. Towards them.

  When the tubes began to spin, the raptor slammed into Yrsa, pushing her to the side.

  Everyone scattered as fire burst from the spinning tubes, the ground beneath them blasting apart.

  The strange long-range weapons of the beyond time. The metal beast had them on its arms. Dozens, maybe even hundreds of tiny metal crossbow bolts shooting out in mere moments, tearing apart the ground, the metal walls of some stables.

  A few rogue bullets went even further, piercing into a couple of the Hitlers. They clutched their wounds, the other Hitlers refusing to help them as they fell over, bleeding on the floor.

  Crouching behind a metal stable, Yrsa took a quick glance around her. It seemed everyone had made it to cover, hiding behind a metal stable wall, or rushing down away from the metal beast. Oog had wrapped her arms around the bars of one of the cages, climbing up on top, hiding out of sight.

  Poking her head out from behind the stable wall, one of the beasts turned to face her, fire bursting from the spinning tubes as the bullets tore through the air.

  The T-Rex slammed against the bars of his cage, parts of the bottom bursting off as Yrsa slid back behind the stable wall. The giant beast was still sealed inside. No way of breaking out.

  But the hole was big enough for someone to wiggle their way in.

  “Lizard demon!” she turned behind her. “This metal beast! It will keep on firing at me wherever I am, yes?”

  The raptor nodded.

  Yrsa grunted, standing up behind the stable, jumping up and down.

  Before the raptor could finish typing, Yrsa burst out from the stable, darting towards the hole in the cage door.

  “That’s a bad idea,” the monotone voice said. It might have said more, but the sound was drowned up by the barrage of bullets following close behind Yrsa, hay and sand bursting as they tore into the ground behind her footsteps.

  Too close.

  As she lunged through the hole in the cage, searing pain tore through her calf. She skidded across the hay in the cage, blood pouring out of her leg. She grabbed the wound, warm blood seeping out between her fingers as the metal beast continued to stomp down towards her.

  The T-Rex seemed to gasp, reaching down, gently rubbing his giant snout against Yrsa.

  “I will survive…” The blood seeping from her leg wound poured out alarmingly fast, already pooling around her.

  Yrsa stumbled to her feet, the T-Rex nudging her with his snout to get her standing. She could hear the metal clanking of the metal beast’s feet as it stomped closer. Inside the cage, it would need to stand almost directly in front of the door to strike at her.

  Thankfully, that was exactly what the metal beast did.

  Yrsa lunged to the side just in time, the metal beast turning its arm at the same time, the bullets following close behind.

  Except this time they fired into the large joint at the bottom of the cage, blasting the metal apart as Yrsa landed behind the thick metal wall of the stable.

  The T-Rex pulled back his lips, the grin revealing the jagged row of teeth. He then slammed head first into the gate, the metal joint bursting apart, the cage flying open.

  Before anyone could react, he snapped his jaw around the metal beast, clamping down tight.

  He then pulled the beast up, slamming it back down into the floor once, twice, three times.

  Opening his jaw, the crumpled pieces of metal fell out, raining down on the floor with satisfying thumps.

  The T-Rex leaned back, a loud roar bursting from his jaw, before he stomped away from everyone else. Two more metal beasts approached, presumably from the exit they all needed to leave out of. One of them crumpled instantly under the giant stomping foot of the T-Rex, the other smashed apart by the tail.

  A raptor grabbed something off the wall outside the stable, darting forward. With fumbling claws, he opened the first aid kit, awkwardly slamming a blue gel onto Yrsa’s leg. The wound stopped searing in pain, sealing up in an instant. Yrsa stood, wincing in pain. She wasn’t fully healed, but at least she wouldn’t bleed out.

  As she hobbled out of the cage, the raptor with the talking box on hi
s arm scrambled through the remains of the metal beast. His scaly lips curled into a grin as he held up the arm surrounded by tubes. His arms shaking as he struggled to hold it up, he handed it to Yrsa.

  “I am not deft in these strange long-range weapons,” Yrsa said.

  He typed on the talking box. “Just pull down on the red lever and aim. Trust me.”

  Yrsa looked down at her partially healed leg as the Roman, Grimsaw, and Oog picked up hefty looking pieces of metal from the wreckage. Her leg was better, but she wouldn’t be as strong at melee as she’d like.

  She then looked back at the tubes in her arms. Six in total, arranged in a circle. There was a small handle near the top, which she slid her left hand into. The end of the metal arm was filled with strange tacky multicolored thin roots. ‘Wires,’ if she remembered correctly.

  Yrsa looked at the red lever inside. A handle of some sort. All she’d have to do it squeeze the trigger, and the bullets would start flying.

  She grimaced, looking down at the piles of metal below her. She was about to put the weapon in her hands down, look for a good hefty piece of metal she could swing, when she heard the thumping of footsteps.

  Yrsa spun around as two more metal beasts veered around the corner, stomping towards them.

  Without thought, Yrsa squeezed down on the trigger, flailing the spinning tubes in the directions of the metal beasts.

  The bullets flew through the air, tearing into them, denting the metal, beginning to cut through. Yrsa swung the spinning tubes from side to side, the bullets beginning to cut through the beasts, smash them apart. A few moments later, one of them began to smoke, the strange organs inside bursting from the impacts.

  The other beast fell down, the bullets tearing through its faceless head, smashing it to pieces.

  Yrsa breathed in deep, the burning smell from the spinning tubes intoxicating like a roaring fire. She couldn’t help but grin, looking at the weapon in her hands.

  “It’s called a chain gun. Have fun.” The raptor patted her on the shoulder before crouching down, wiggling his tail to signal her to ride.

  Jumping on his back once more, Yrsa clutched the chain gun tight.

  She’d tried the crossbow, bow and arrow, musket, even a tommy gun.

  But without a shadow of a doubt, the chain gun was the long-range weapon for her. After all this time, she’d finally found a crossbow of the beyond time that suited her.

  Hel was certainly looking up.

  Chapter 33

  Logan T-Rexington.

  There were a few downsides to waking up in the body of a prehistoric behemoth. His tiny hands were useless, too small to reach anything, to use as a weapon, to even wipe his ass. If he had an itch on his back, he needed to rub his entire body against a wall. And the cage he’d been left in was far too small to be reasonable, barely enough room to pace.

  But the worst part was he couldn’t talk. The human Logan and he had worked out a simple communication system. Nodding and shaking for yes and no was the main extent, but they’d worked out only a few short commands.

  Which meant the pun ‘Logan T-Rexington’ had been stuck in his head for the past few days, and Logan had no one to share it with.

  There was only one way Logan could think to relieve the stress.

  He roared, snapping his jaws onto the guard droid, flinging it up into the air. It flew high above the courtyard, spinning as it soared up dozens of feet above him.

  And then plummeted to the ground, the metal snapping and denting as it landed, kicking up sand in all directions.

  For good measure, Logan stomped his giant clawed feet on top, smushing it into the ground. The skin on his giant feet was so thick the jagged sharp edges of metal did nothing to pierce his skin.

  Adjusting to such a giant body had taken some time. The human Logan had guided him well, answering all of his questions. A crying T-Rex was an odd sight, but that was what had happened when human Logan had sat down with him, reading out the file on what had happened to Trent.

  He was glad his son had lived a good life. Upset his body had been used to clone for entertainment again and again. Even more frightened at the idea of spending the rest of his life as a T-Rex.

  Logan and Victor (the velociraptor doctor) had both promised they’d take Logan T-Rexington with them, to try and find technology that would get him back into a human body.

  Would his T-Rex body even fit on the medical ship? They often had large platform doors on the side, made to ferry in dozens, possibly hundreds of injured soldiers at once.

  But Logan had some inkling on how the battle he was fighting would go down. Out of a bunch of human clones, a handful of raptors, and a giant fuck-off Tyrannosaurus rex, people would attack the giant fuck-off Tyrannosaurus rex.

  Sure enough, as he towered above the roofs of the courtyard, several drones flew down from the sky. The sun was setting, outlining the drones in an amber hue, making them easy to spot. Logan snarled, getting a good look at the machines.

  They were the size of a human head, a whirling blade in the middle to keep it flying, laser emitters on the side.

  In an instant, three lasers fired at him.

  The heat tore through Logan’s cold-blooded body, making him roar in pain. He could feel the blood seeping down his sides, his guts screaming in pain. The lasers had definitely cut through some organs. Not the lungs, not the heart, but he was definitely bleeding from the inside out.

  He’d felt like that only once before. The first time he’d died.

  On instinct, Logan reached down with his arms to grab the remains of the chain gun robot at his feet. His tiny T-Rex arms flailed helplessly in the air.

  Logan sighed, a loud grunt escaping his giant jaw as he leaned down, snapped up the remains, and flung them up in the air.

  His aim was surprisingly good, the hunk of metal soaring through the air.

  The drone darted out of the way with ease, firing once more. Logan darted back, his tail slamming into the atmospire elevator as the laser crystalized some of the sand on the ground.

  It was then Logan spotted the dots in the sky. Dozens of drones were coming down, all of them heading straight for him. Not only that, but Logan could see the outline of ships. Dozens of them, taking off into the sky. The audience had the same idea as human Logan, fleeing the Arena of Doom as fast as possible.

  The burst of bullets made Logan T-Rexington flinch as a chain gun fired. He looked down behind him, Yrsa the Viking riding out into the courtyard on her raptor, firing up into the air.

  The bullets whizzed past him, smashing into the whirring blades, the drone bursting in flame before it crashed down onto the ground.

  The raptor ran up Logan’s giant tail, leaping up on top of the atmospire elevator as Yrsa fired up into the air. Logan imagined a Viking would have little experience with a chain gun. But Yrsa was holding the chain gun like she’d wielded it her entire life, firing it up at the drones with surprising accuracy.

  The machine was so loud, Logan was surprised when he heard the stomping of metal feet.

  He spun around, his tail accidentally slamming into one of the raptors. He winced, the raptor back up, glaring at him as Logan raised his tiny arms up, trying to say ‘sorry.’

  Both dinosaurs turned to the noise as four chain gun droids marched out of one of the corridors.

  They all pointed their guns at Yrsa.

  It made sense, from a tactical standpoint. Take out the opponent who was depleting your numbers.

  The group of droids was forty feet away from Logan. He stomped forward ten feet, twenty feet, as the chain guns on their arms spun up. The raptor next to him darted forward when a drone swooped down, firing at the beast, cutting off his tail. Blood poured out as he shrieked, and then fell to the ground.

  Another step, another few feet closer to the chain gun droids.

  He’d never reach them in time. And they needed Yrsa to take out those drones. Otherwise the whole operation would fall apart.

  Witho
ut thinking about it, Logan jumped to the left, the ground shaking as he put his massive body in between the droids and Yrsa.

  His cold body was wrecked with heat, the bullets slamming into him, tearing through his stomach, his lungs, his heart. His tiny arms seared in pain, the bullets firing so fast one of his arms was blasted clean off.

  Logan roared in pain, in anger. He’d already sacrificed himself once to protect his fellow soldiers.

  Looked like he was doing it again.

  Stomping forward, the blood poured down his body, the sand slippery beneath his feet as Logan marched forward another step.

  Ten feet away.

  He opened his jaw, preparing to snap down at the nearest droid. The lids on his eyes heavy, Logan had felt this once before.

  He was dying.

  Again.

  He practically laughed, a few rhythmic grunts instead bursting from his scaly lips.

  With all the energy he had left, Logan threw himself forward, his entire body landing on top of the chain gun robots.

  A loud crunch, his body once again searing in pain as the jagged metal punched into his body.

  His body grew colder than before, his eyes closing.

  One last grunt burst from his lips as Logan T-Rexington died for the last time.

  Chapter 34

  Logan Rexington slapped his card onto the reader outside the origin tubes. He could hear the gunfire above, the roaring of the T-Rex. Talking to his own consciousness in the body of a giant dinosaur had been peculiar, to say the least. Although the shorthand was incredible, the T-Rex keeping up with what Logan was saying with remarkable ease.

  He guessed talking to himself did have some advantages.

  They’d debated for a while which consciousness they should upload into the dinosaurs. Maybe one of each of them? Or maybe a few of them Logan, a few of them Victor?

  In the end it made sense to make them all Logan. He had military training, was the one least out of time, and was willing to lay down his life to win.

  Also, every dinosaur would have a fresh consciousness put into them. The last thing any of those dinosaurs remembered was blowing up the Necrotron mainframe. Explaining to a dinosaur James about the future, and that he was a clone, and that he was a dinosaur?