Galactic Arena Box Set

by Dan Davis

  “There was a senior member of Omega. She ran the cloning program and supervised the creche and education programs. She raised dozens of subjects from infancy only to euthanize the failures. So many deaths. She had the intellectual abilities for the work but not the emotional stability. A surfeit of empathy, you might say. In the end, it was more than she could take.”

  “Professor Olsen. I remember Henry speaking about… her. You have her memories? How?”

  “Doctor Monash had very strong feelings for her. Feelings that she did not reciprocate. But his strength of feeling drove him to create a clone of Marit Olsen.”

  “You’re a clone.”

  “After my accelerated growth period and education, I was employed as a laboratory assistant for almost seven months. Doctor Monash then used the most recent data file for Marit Olsen and imprinted her mind on mine.”

  “That’s what they did to me,” Ram said, hesitantly reaching to place his hand on her shoulder. “They took my mind and put it in this clone’s body. And I feel like me. I am me. And so you are Marit Olsen.”

  She allowed herself to be turned around by his gentle touch. “No. Your procedure was a hundred percent successful. Mine, on the other hand, was not.”

  “Your memories aren’t all there, or…?”

  “Not all, no. But enough, perhaps.”

  “What is it, then?”

  She smiled. “All I can say is that I do not feel like her. I feel like… me.”

  “You feel like… the clone you were before the mind transfer?”

  “Simply speaking, yes.”

  Ram softly stroked her cheek with one finger. “Well, that’s alright. Isn’t it?”

  She smiled. “Yes.”

  ***

  Henry tossed the headset across the room, where it cracked off the wall and skittered across the floor. “I’ve had enough of this!” he shouted. “You’re on and on at me, all day, day after day. If you think you can do any better, you do it!”

  “Alright, Henry,” Ram said from the control room. “Take a few minutes and we’ll reset.”

  “No!” He stomped across the training room, scooped up the headset and kept walking. “I’m serious.”

  “He appears to be coming to the control room, sir.”

  “I can see that, Red.”

  “Would you like me to attempt to restrain him, sir?”

  “Just stand down.”

  Henry yanked the door open and strode inside, filling the room and overtopping Ram. He winced as he stood and felt his heart racing from the effort.

  “I’ve had enough of you,” Henry shouted, jabbing his finger in Ram’s face. “You and your constant jabbering in my ear. Your constant criticism. You think you can do better than me, don’t you. You think you know it all because you beat one of those things decades ago!” He pointed at Red in the corner. “As if the wheelers are anything like the hex. It’s absurd. You don’t know anything. You don’t.”

  Henry tossed the Avar headset to Ram, who caught it. “I’m trying to help you, Henry.”

  It was as though he had not heard Ram speak. “You think you can do better than me, you prove it. Go on. You go in there and we’ll see how well you do.”

  Ram held the headset, turning it in his hands. His heart skipped a beat. “I can’t.”

  “You do it, go on. You’re the expert.”

  “Henry, I can’t do it. I don’t have the reaction time to do it. On my best day, I could only move sixty percent of your speed. And my best days are far behind me, now.”

  “Well, fine, then. Fine, you can run the simulation at sixty percent.”

  “I understand your frustration, believe me, I do. But all I want to do is help you.”

  “Fine, then.” Henry pointed at the headset. “This is how you help me.”

  “You want to see me fail.”

  Henry nodded. “It would improve my mood quite considerably.”

  Ram soon found himself seated in Henry’s enormous Avar chair, with Doctor Monash on one side and R1 on the other. He took a deep breath as he pushed his hands deep into the gloves that the scientists tightened.

  “This is a mistake,” R1 said. “You are not medically fit for such mental exertion. You risk overtaxing your cardiovascular system.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Ram said, smiling at her. “Don’t worry.”

  “Who cares about his CV system?” Monash muttered. “What about the damage to Henry?”

  “Henry?” Ram asked.

  “The damage to Henry should you win, you oaf.”

  Ram sighed. “There’s no danger of that.”

  “You will lose on purpose?” R1 asked.

  “I’ll give it my all,” he replied. “It’s just that there’s no chance of success.”

  Monash grunted. “At least you are able to admit that.” He pointed a finger in Ram’s face. “Just see to it that you do not win by accident.”

  He stomped away to the control room while R1 hefted the headset. “I have installed the newly printed headset lining so that the fit will be perfect for your face. But the weight of the set may cause it to shift if you move your head too quickly. Please try to remain calm during the simulation.”

  “I’ll be fine. It won’t take long.”

  “He seems to have calmed himself. I have no doubt that he would not react with excessive anger if you were to back out now.”

  “It’s not a big deal, R1. I’ll be finished before long and then Henry will feel vindicated. He’ll be placated. And then we can all go to lunch, what do you say?”

  “Perhaps you and I could have lunch together in your quarters?”

  He smiled. “I would like that.”

  She blushed as she lifted the headset into place.

  A loading room appeared as Ram settled into his new body. Henry’s body. He looked down at his long arms and legs and wiggled his long, bony fingers in front of his face.

  Henry’s voice came through in his head. “Strange being me, Ram?”

  “I’ve played thousands of hours as Viking warriors, half-human hybrids, giants, tiny alien creatures, you name it. This is all pretty normal for me.”

  “You don’t mind me being the voice in your ear, do you, Ram?” Henry said, the sneer obvious in the sound.

  “I would gladly appreciate your advice.”

  “Ha!” Henry scoffed. “Alright, run the program. What did you say, you’re only sixty percent as fast as me, Ram?”

  “According to our objective test scores, yes. But I’ve been degenerating for months now and I wouldn’t imagine I’d even be fifty—”

  “I think we’ll run it at seventy percent speed for the first run.”

  “First run?” Ram said. “We’re only going to do a single—”

  He broke off as the loading room dissolved around him and the arena appeared around him. Inhumanly vast, the ceiling almost out of sight above him. Across the black floor, shimmering water in pools stretched for hundreds of meters. Out there, beyond an expanse of glittering obsidian twenty meters wide, stood ready the enemy champion. It twitched and flinched as it started forward.

  It was strange, seeing it subjectively for a change. Feeling the floor under his feet, hearing the hex feet clicking on the onyx floor and splashing through the inky pools.

  “Don’t just stand there,” Henry said in his ear. “Make sure to meet it on one of the dry areas or you’ll lose your footing.”

  “Right,” Ram muttered and made himself move. His limbs were long and his awkward strides took him closer.

  “You better hurry,” Henry said, clearly enjoying himself. “Better hurry or you’ll have to fight under water.”

  Ram doubled his pace as the hex loomed closer, its spiked tentacles snaking forward before it with the pair of bladed ones held high over the thorax.

  Gritting his teeth, Ram rushed forward as fast as he could. The spikes flashed forward as Ram jinked to the side, feigned a lunge the other way before continuing to flank the hex. It whipped a blade a
t his head which he grasped with both hands and he pushed the hex back and back and back so its legs could not wrap around him. Still, the spikes stabbed up into his thighs, his guts, his groin. The pain was excruciating and he almost collapsed because of it but instead he gripped all the harder, pushed all the harder. He twisted the leg in his hands, yanking it back and forth until it snapped at the joint.

  The other blade sliced into his face and his shoulder. Ram fell forward upon the thorax that collapsed under him. He jammed the blade into the carapace, using his falling weight to punch through the thick armor. While the hex tore the rest of his body apart, Ram sliced back and forth, pulling, pulling, the blade in his hands cut the gash longer and longer.

  It disappeared.

  The pain vanished, leaving only the echo in his nerves, the sound was cut off, echoing into nothing. He found himself in the loading room.

  After a moment, he realized Henry was shouting. R1 was lifting the headset from his eyes and Ram blinked in the light of the training room. Henry’s roars came from the control room through the walls into the training room.

  “Get me out of here,” Ram muttered, his head swimming.

  “You must wait,” R1 said. “Your heart rate is one-eighty. Please wait.” She placed a hand on his chest. “Just wait.”

  Ram closed his eyes, trying to breathe slowly. “Oh shit,” he muttered. “I think I’m going to—”

  ***

  “Please do not get up,” the medical AP said. “Your blood pressure is low.”

  “Waking up in the med bay again, sir?” Stirling said from the bed beside him.

  Ram blinked and looked around. “Your bandages are off.”

  “And handsome as ever,” Stirling said.

  “Why are you still here?”

  The AP and Stirling exchanged a look. “My condition is deteriorating rapidly.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “Ask the expert.”

  The AP looked at Stirling as he spoke. “The collapse of complex systems like the human body will often follow a pattern of plateaus and sudden irreversible degradation. Unfortunately, the recent incident seems to have set off just such a degradation. It appears to be stabilizing but I strongly recommend the patient remains here for the time being.”

  “Hear that,” Stirling said. “I’m the patient, now. Be surprised if I ever walk out of here again.”

  “That bastard,” Ram said, meaning Henry. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s alright. Anyway, I hear it’s going well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your recent stunning success?”

  Ram held his hands over his eyes as he remembered the Avar combat. “Oh, God. I didn’t win, did I?”

  “You should watch the recording of Henry in the control room. He was enraged. He shut it down before you could win and he smashed the desk, the screen. He threw chairs at Red.”

  “Is Red alright?”

  “He’s fine. He came in here to show me it himself. The crazy bastard seems to find it all quite amusing. But it’s hard to tell, to be honest.”

  “How’s Henry?”

  “Sulking in his quarters, like the moody little shite bag he is.”

  “I shouldn’t have won,” Ram said. “What the hell was I thinking? I just… I just forgot.”

  “Don’t blame yourself, sir.” Stirling scowled. “You’re being far too easy on him.”

  “Maybe.”

  “We should have broke him properly, like we said. You know that, we didn’t break him enough and if we’d done that we might have built him back up proper.”

  “Like a new recruit.”

  “Like a Marine.”

  “He’s too fragile for that.”

  “Exactly, Ram, exactly, and that’s precisely why we should have done it. Even if he stayed broken, we would be in the same position. Should have just done it. All the way. We might still have time if we—” Stirling broke off in a fit of coughing.

  “What’s done is done.”

  Stirling wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “But he’s not going to make it.”

  Ram nodded. “You should get some rest too. You look like you’re dying, man.”

  Stirling grunted. “You look like you died already.”

  Ram struggled upright, and batted away the protests of the medical assistant. Letting himself out of the med bay, Ram caught sight of himself in the door security monitor. He looked thin and old. Stooped, even. Ram forced himself to straighten up and limped through the ship toward the captain’s quarters. He banged a fist on the door.

  Kat opened it. Her uniform was unbuttoned and her hair was down. “You can’t just turn up unannounced when I’m off duty, Lieutenant. People will talk.”

  “I heard they’re already talking.”

  “Exactly my point.” She stepped back and let him in.

  He eased himself into the chair opposite his desk, wincing and sighing. “No one would believe me capable of… anything like that. Anyway, who cares about what people say?”

  “I do. I’m the captain of this ship. My authority is paramount.”

  “You’re right, I’m sorry. I’m not thinking straight. I feel terrible.”

  “Anyway, they’re not really whispering about us anymore.”

  “Oh no?”

  “Word is that you and R1 are spending a lot of time together, now. I believe she changed her watch schedule to coincide with yours?”

  “That’s what they say, is it?”

  “You do know that having sexual relations with an AP is illegal, Ram?” She tilted her head. “Did you at least ask her out for dinner first?”

  He sighed and started to excuse his actions, started to explain that R1 was not an AP, that she was as close to human as Ram was himself. But he was too tired and beyond caring what the captain thought.

  “I didn’t come here to talk about that.”

  “I know what you came to talk about.”

  “You heard, of course.”

  “I heard. At length.”

  “Monash came to see you? It was a mistake, doing that. At least, I should have lost.”

  “His list of your failures was extensive.”

  “For once, I can’t say that I disagree with him.”

  “Neither do I.” She indicated the desk in front of her. Ram noticed for the first time an array of screens showing data and video, reports and charts. “Still, it was a remarkable thing what you did. Beating the hex in the sim.” Her eyes twinkled.

  Ram sighed. “Only at seventy percent speed.”

  “It was very impressive. There’s no one else like you, Lieutenant. That’s becoming clear.”

  “This isn’t about me.”

  “So tell me more about Henry.”

  “This isn’t working.”

  She gestured, irritated. “Elaborate.”

  “Henry. He’s failing. I’m failing. There’s nothing else I can try that we haven’t already. And we’re running out of time.”

  Kat’s face was cold. “What are you saying, exactly?”

  “He’s not good enough, Kat. I admit it. I failed. He’s not going to make it, ever. He can’t win.”

  She lifted her chin. “I agree,” she said, her face thunder. “You have failed.”

  24.

  Whatever he was dreaming about before they woke him up, it wasn’t pleasant. He was left with a vague feeling that he had been fighting an unconquerable enemy. Like all his dreams, these days.

  “What did you say?” he asked the darkness.

  “Lieutenant Seti, please report to the medical bay immediately.”

  “What the hell?” Ram muttered before turning on his comms. “Medical bay. This is Lieutenant Seti, what’s going on?”

  “There is an emergency situation. Please report to the medical bay immediately.”

  “Who is it?” Ram asked while he threw on his underwear. “Who’s injured?”

  There was a pause before the reply came through. “It is Henry
.”

  Ram ran down the corridor as fast as he could manage, limping and dragging his damaged leg. Breathing heavily and half-naked, he threw open the door and limped inside the med bay.

  “What the hell?”

  Henry was lying on an enormous operating table, unconscious and hooked up to life support with tubes all over him. Beside him was another over-sized operating table, likewise with machines and cables but it was empty.

  No one else was in the room.

  “Hello?” Ram said, limping toward Henry. “What’s going on, guys?”

  Behind him, the door slammed shut and it clanged as it locked.

  His head swam and he staggered into the wall, holding his hand out to stop himself keeling over. “What’s happening?”

  A voice in his head answered, speaking with painful slowness. “Ram, it’s Kat. I’m so sorry but this is the only way. The only way we might have a chance.”

  “What do you—” His legs wobbled and he lurched forward, knocking a cart over and falling to the ground. When he tried to get up, he found his arms had no strength.

  “I’m sorry,” Kat’s voice said, sounding far away and drawn out. “I’m sorry.”

  Ram was vaguely aware of voices. Of people around him. Being lifted and prodded. Machines beeped by his ear and someone pushed something into his throat so that he felt as though he was choking but then he faded into darkness.

  “What happened?” Ram asked. At least, he tried to. All that came out was a groan.

  “Don’t try to move,” a voice said. “Because you can’t.”

  “I can’t see,” Ram tried to say but again all he heard was a low groan coming from his chest.

  When it spoke, the voice seemed slowed down. “Everything will be just fine, now. Everything has gone exactly right. You just relax now. Just relax.”

  Ram tried to object but he faded again. This time there were dreams of fighting. Explosions in the dark. Fighting the Hex champion in the arena. A small woman stroked his face and smiled.

  There was someone there.

  “It’s too bright,” Ram said, trying to shield his eyes but his hands did not respond. “Why does my voice sound so strange.”

  “Ram,” a woman said beside him, drawing the word out.