by Dan Davis
Ram forgot them all and stood looking out through the swirling barrier at the vast space beyond.
“There is nobody anywhere with a better chance than you,” R1 said next to him. “And... I would like it if you came back.”
He turned to look into her eyes one more time but before he did so, the final, single chime sounded.
The swirling, deadly barrier parted, revealing the vast space beyond.
He took a deep, shuddering breath.
And stepped into the Orb Arena.
27.
The flawlessly smooth, shining black floor of the arena was a perfect circle with a 400-meter diameter.
It was a huge space that always reminded Ram of a vast indoor sports stadium without the stands. Above, the geometrically precise half-circle dome of the roof was a dark point two-hundred meters over the center of the arena. It was so high that a 40-floor skyscraper could fit inside with room to spare. You could fly a helicopter inside with room to spare.
The walls all around curved steadily up toward the top. Clear white light emanated through the black surfaces all around, providing an even, shadow-less glow. It was bright enough to see clear across the plane of the floor to the other side of the arena.
The atmosphere was laden with moisture and he breathed deeply, savoring the high oxygen, wet air. It smelled of ozone and the acrid stench of traces of phosgene oxime with an anise tang from the diphosgene. It was like getting a taste of the hex homeworld.
And presumably just like the hex homeworld, there was water everywhere. Pools of reflective, shining black in every direction, with thin strips of dry floor between and Ram knew the layout by memory and remembered which parts were too deep for him to stand in and so those he would have to avoid at all costs.
And there it was.
The hex champion crept forward. Even from hundreds of meters away, it was a hideous sight.
Its thorax glistened with a quality not captured in the Avar sims. He caught a whiff of its acrid smell, just a hint in the air. The thin legs flicked like mad pistons and sharp feet clicked on the floor as it walked through shallow sections of the pools. Everything about it was sharper, more real than anything he had experienced in the sims.
Ram went to meet it.
He had run through the moment in Avar many times and so it should have been a familiar moment, like a regular daydream coming true in real life. A daydream or a nightmare. Not for the first time, there was a profound sense of déjà vu and multiple layers of reality overlaid themselves until it was difficult to remember that this moment was real.
There would be no reloading the simulation to try again. If he died a loser, would they even bother to bring him back, like Kat had promised? Not only that, a loss would condemn the Earth to at least nine more years of occupation. Nine more years while the enemy grew stronger and humanity grew weaker. They would gradually lose the bases in the Belt, and then they might lose the Jupiter System and if they lost that it would be Saturn next.
The hex picked its way through the system of dry land and shallow banks ahead and Ram shook himself. This was no time to get lost in abstraction.
It was in no rush, coming forward carefully just like they had before. Ram did not know whether it was saving its strength, or whether it was afraid, or why it moved so slowly.
As it came closer, and Ram edged forward to the edge of the watery areas, he was ever more certain it was no larger than the previous hex that had been seen and that had fought in the arena of Orb Station Alpha. The Hex had not engineered a larger champion, as humanity had done.
Still, it would still have the advantage. The environment was tailored for it, not for Ram, despite the engineering that had created his own body. It still felt alien to Ram where the creature creeping closer across the arena had presumably evolved in a similar waterlogged landscape for millions of years.
Not only that, it was likely stronger than he was, faster, and more resilient to damage. All he could do was use the techniques he had developed and practiced.
Even after so much time getting used to the sights and sounds of it in Avar and in archive video and seeing them in person on Earth, the one across the shining water still turned his stomach. It was almost like an insect, almost like a squid, almost a jellyfish, or a spider, or a scorpion. But it was none of those familiar things and his amygdala were working overtime, screaming at him in paleomammalian terror to flee from the unfamiliar thing.
It was possible to control that instinctive terror but even armed with knowledge and the power of reason, it made perfect sense to feel fear. It was probably the most dangerous creature humanity had ever encountered. Worse than anything in hominid evolutionary history, including woolly mammoths and saber-toothed cats. That thing’s weapons were formidable. The venomous spikes alone would make it threatening but it was the pair of razor claws that would be the most immediately dangerous. Even with his dense bones, he could be beheaded with the first scything swipe.
All he could do was avoid the razor-sharp legs as he closed with the thing, let it wrap him up and then he could snap off at least one of the legs and use it to cut the exoskeleton open before the lacerations, toxins, and crushing finished Ram off.
If there was any other option for victory, nothing had occurred to him and it was too late to plan anything different. Tiring it out was an unknown quantity.
The hex scuttled into a section of deeper water, sank down and quickly sprang back out again, shedding a spray of droplets in a shower like a whale leaping from the ocean.
“It nearly fell into a pool,” Ram muttered, looking down at the floor as he moved forward.
“I saw,” R1 said. “Just make sure you don’t go in or you won’t be able to swim out like that.”
“That’s alright,” Ram said, quietly. “I’m staying on dry land where I belong.”
His lack of buoyancy was a serious concern but as long as he did not do something stupid like fall into a deep pool then he would be fine. The hex might achieve victory simply by picking him up and throwing him into the water, like it had tried with a previous champion but it would surely know by now that humans floated and swam very well. It had no way of knowing that Ram was the only one who would sink like a stone and so it would not attempt it. Anyway, it didn’t need to.
“It’s close now,” Ram said, speaking softly as if observing a skittish wild animal that he didn’t wish to scare away. “It’s slowing.”
“If it comes to rest and closes up then—”
“It is, look.”
He watched as the hex found a wide, dry section in the center of the arena and folded its legs under its globular thorax and settled down into immobility.
“Yep, there it goes,” Ram said. “Now, we wait.”
It was like a shiny beetle out there across the arena. Sitting in silence.
They can speak, their hearing is excellent and their words are soft and subtle, just as they are themselves. They just don’t speak when they fight. Because war is sacred and silence allows one to experience the—
Lieutenant Blackman’s voice sounded in his head. “You should attack. Now!”
“Get off the channel, Blackman,” Ram said, angry at the intrusion. “You know the goddamn protocol. One team member on comms!”
“It’s just sitting there, you can get the drop on it. What are you waiting for, quick, go for it!”
“Blackman, if I survive this I promise I’m going to crack your skull into pieces, you hear me?” The Lieutenant began to answer and Ram snapped. “I said shut your fucking mouth!”
Ram’s raised voice echoed through the arena.
The hex seemed to flinch at the sound.
“I’m sorry, Ram,” R1 said, speaking quickly. “He’s off comms now, I promise and he—”
“Quiet, R1,” Ram said, softly. “Let me think.”
She fell silent while Ram’s mind whirred.
The hex had flinched at his shout but it stayed where it was on the dry ground.
&n
bsp; It was still again, settled.
As if preserving its energy or…
With a flash of inspiration, Ram took a great breath and roared a wordless war cry with everything he had. Never before had he shouted in Henry’s body. The sound that emerged from his throat was harsh and yet deep, a sound like a bomb going off, ripping through the silence.
The hex jerked as if it had been struck and half rose on its bundle of legs, pausing there without rising further.
“Are you alright, Ram?” R1 asked, deeply concerned. “What’s happening?”
“I’m just trying something.”
Ram had the profound sense of shouting in a temple, or a cathedral, during a service. A feeling of sacrilege.
Which was absurd because it was not a holy space. Not for Ram. Any awe he felt was due to the scale and the technical achievement of it, not some subjugation to the divine majesty of it. And yet he had been acting that way. Whispering and creeping forward as if it was a holy space in a way that was not simply animal wariness but something deeper. He supposed even an atheist could be moved by the scale and the proportions of a grand church and that was what he had been feeling.
And it was that realization which had motivated him to profane it by shouting.
Because he had recognized suddenly what the hex was doing.
It was praying.
The Wayfinder’s assertions about the hex psyche came back to him. They revered the orbs, saw them as temples. It was communing with its gods, praying for victory or… Ram remembered what the collaborator had said about sacrifice. The hex were willing to sacrifice anything for fulfillment of the orb builders’ plans. The hex champion might have been offering itself up as a sacrifice to its gods in whose temple it now was.
The hex paused halfway to rising and Ram sensed it was somehow glaring it him. Perhaps it was anthropomorphic projection but Ram had the definite impression it was enraged by the intrusion.
They are very emotional beings, the Wayfinder had said. You just lack the insight to see it in them.
They were emotional and this was their temple, the holiest place in their entire religion, their ethos.
Ram took another deep breath and this time he whooped like a siren, over and over.
The hex jerked once more and rose, quivering on its legs.
“Ram, are you certain you’re alright?”
“It’s praying, R1. Or, it was. This is its holy site, right? This is its temple and it was praying so I just wanted to make it angry.”
“I think it worked,” she said.
Because the hex was now scuttling forward, its strides getting longer as it gained speed. Water splashed up from its flickering legs and Ram’s heart hammered in his chest. His thoughts rushed in such sudden confusion that they crashed by faster than he could make sense of them and only one, more of a feeling than a thought, stuck clearly in his mind.
Oh, shit.
The vast pattern of shallow and deep sections of water were the only thing that might slow it down, and so Ram turned and ran to his left, picking out a path of dry floor that led like a wandering maze through a swamp. From the corner of his eye he saw the motion of the hex closing on him and he turned to gauge its distance. It was closer than he had expected, almost right on top of him. But the deeper pools were between them now and the alien slowed its headlong charge and turned to splash its way through the shallows. Ram jumped over a wet area and slipped on the dry floor beyond it, one foot shooting out. He recovered without falling but the hex was suddenly almost on top of him, reaching out with its stingers and poking at the air where Ram had been only a moment before. He twisted and ran on, looking for the way to the dry section he knew was nearby where it would be safe to turn and fight.
It was right behind him. Ram could hear it. The creature was making a strange wailing sound with pops interspersed and a rumble beneath it. By the new noises and the way it flailed at him made Ram certain that the hex was angry now and he had to fight it while it was angry. Surely, that would hinder its fighting ability.
“Watch out, Ram,” R1 said, speaking rapidly. “You’re close to a wide and deep pool of water there. Go left.”
Ram took that path but the hex was closing and he just had to make it to the dry ground and he would turn—
A stinger punctured his right calf, sinking deep into the muscle. At once, Ram felt the pain of the toxins and the strength of the impact was enough to send him tripping to the ground. He tucked himself in as he fell and rolled over one shoulder and was up running again while the razor legs whipped overhead where he had been standing. As he put his weight on his poisoned leg, the next wave of pain hit him and he stumbled once more. They were on a path just two meters wide with deep water on one side and shallow on the other and it was no place to do battle.
But with a sinking feeling he knew that he could not make it any further without the hex catching him.
Ram turned, checked his run and charged into the monstrous great alien beast that was already almost on top of him. He reached for its flailing legs so that he could hug them together but as he did so a razor leg whipped out and sliced half of his right hand off.
He watched it happen.
The slender, wicked blade of the lower leg arced toward him and he reached out to grasp it at the ankle where it was safe to do so. But the creature shifted its body or whipped its leg back and Ram watched as the blade sliced between his ring finger and his middle finger and proceeded to slice through his hand like it was butter. The cut ended at his wrist and Ram saw two fingers and half of his hand tumbling away through the air. There was surprisingly little blood and no pain, at first.
Still rushing forward, his momentum brought him crashing against the hex and Ram reached his arms around the creature’s body and the bundle of legs below it. The legs grasped at him and Ram felt a stinger stab him in the thigh and another snaked around and jabbed in his back near his spine. Ram’s face pressed the thorax. It was surprisingly slimy on his skin and its pungent stench filled his nose and made his eyes water. The razor legs were both free and they lacerated his back as well.
This is how it always goes in the sims, Ram thought. And this is how I always die.
The razor claws raked his neck, the back of his head and across his shoulders. Agony seared through him as the fine blades sliced deep enough to split open his skin and slice at the hardened bone of his skull. Blood gushed out and down his face before the special coagulants in it somewhat stemmed the flow.
As he grappled the hex’s legs, he was hit by disgust for the revolting alien in his hands. It was utterly wrong. The acrid stink and ammonia fumes filled his nose and made his eyes stream.
The claws whipped Ram's back from his neck down past his kidneys to lacerate his buttocks and hamstrings, slicing deeper into him with every moment and the air was filled with the sickly-sweet metallic smell of human blood
He felt the hex start to pull him in towards its maw on the underside of the thorax and he could hear the mandibles already clacking frantically. He was being lacerated and the cuts would join up and go deep enough so his bones would be cut and his organs would be sliced, if he did not collapse from shock first.
Ram's red blood spattered everywhere, smearing the hex's flailing legs while spraying the air with a red mist and splatting shredded skin and gobs of tissue over the shining thorax.
I’m going to die.
He did not know how to win but he knew that trying to break off a leg and use it as a weapon was not going to work now. And he knew that grappling with the hex without that weapon would only end one way.
He released his grip, balled up his intact fist and swung a series of chopping overhand punches against the carapace beside his head. The surface was soapy, slimy, and hard but he sensed the blows hurt the hex. The carapace gave a little with each blow. He punched it again and as the hex grasped at his wrist with one leg and tried to slash at it with another, Ram twisted inside the legs of the hex and kicked his leg in a sweeping moti
on at the writhing bundle of alien feet. As he did so, he shoved it sharply to make some space, intending to simply start pummeling it. He had a vague notion that if he could get his weight on the thorax he could beat the carapace into a bloody pulp.
But the hex released him all at once, the legs snaking from him so that it could steady itself. Instead, the creature slipped into the shallow pool.
It sprang back out again, legs flailing as if in panic and brought itself back to the dry path where it shook itself, scattering water everywhere.
The toxins burned Ram’s flesh and he could feel them being pumped around his body. It was like a million itches inside his skin that he couldn’t scratch, turning with every second toward a burning sensation that he knew would build until it was like a fire raging in his flesh. Blood poured from his back and now spattered from his hand to the floor, pooling at his feet and running into the water on either side of him.
For all the specially engineered features of his body, from the release of acids into his blood and the thick skin, Ram would not be on his feet, or alive, for much longer.
But his mind raced.
If he didn’t know better, he would swear that the hex was afraid of water. That was how it was acting but how could it be? Then again, what other explanation was there?
“Ram, are you alright?”
Their ships and bases are as dry as ours. The air is humid but there’s no water anywhere. Why would there be?
The hex crouched, as if it was content to watch and wait for him to die.
And Ram stood and bled and swayed. But Ram’s thoughts rushed through his mind in an instant as the insights piled up on one another.
We assumed the hex liked living in water. Assumed they were used to fighting in water. That they were amphibian or in some way semi-aquatic but that was because of the conditions in the Orb Station Alpha arena. They like moist air, they liked the sun and warmth of the equator. Perhaps they evolved as amphibians. Perhaps they evolved in marshlands, wading through with their long legs. But they have never been observed swimming. Perhaps they can’t. And they do not fight in water. We’ve never seen that, not even in the arena, not even when they had the chance. This water is not for them. It doesn’t favor them. It favors us.
