by Lee
Forst gestured to the roster on the GigantiSheets hovering throughout the massive arena. “All you have to do, sa, is look. The man has no chance.”
xxx
“Fuck me.” Garth whispered to Ute and Huey. “They have to scan me. To see if I’m cheating.”
“So?” Ute was puzzled.
“The bossman didn’t have any enhancements when he beat the shit out of that scout, Ute. He'd been all homegrown superhuman then, with nothing to show up on the scanners. Hell,” Huey said thoughtfully, “I bet even his blood didn’t show up right.”
“You ain’t wrong.” Garth grimaced, running a hand across the coiled duronium whip at his waist.
Ute reiterated his query. “So?”
“Bossman’s stuffed to the tits with quadronium circuitry now. And machines at his joints and all kinds of whacky shit. He’s got more metal in him than you do, all the way down to the subatomic level.” Huey ran a bunch of theories through their paces. “Game machines are amongst the most sophisticated in the system. Have to be, to read Threes and Fours properly. They’re built to work around the various in-body security protocols. A lot of the time they might not get a full and accurate picture of a soldier’s offensive and defensive capabilities, but they’ll get enough of an idea of what’s going on inside. Enough to tell if any one Goddie cheats.”
Garth could tell Ute was growing frustrated, so he stepped in quickly. “So, even though it’s really unlikely they’ll be able to identify what’s in me as quadronium because that shit’s invisible to anything but the naked eye, they’ll definitely be able to tell I’ve, uh, had some work done. Then I’ll be in violation of the rules and they’ll kick me out.”
“I can’t see that happening.” Ute rubbed his head. He wasn’t feeling right. There was something in the air, some … some thing … distracting him. No, it wasn’t a distraction at all. It … it defied explanation.
“No, neither can I.” Huey agreed, eyeing Ute sideways. Garth, who was eager to get the problems sorted so he could either die in the ring or figure out a way to win, missed the larger man’s discomfort. “If it comes right down to it, I will bet all of the money that Doans’ll swoop down like a banshee and start shouting and hissing and spitting again until everyone just lets her have her way.”
“Dude. You should have seen it.” Garth flexed his fingers into claws and made hissing noises. “She went full psycho. It was fucking hilarious.”
“Is there a solution?” Ute asked.
“Oh yeah, no, totally.” Huey nodded assiduously. “I’ll just hack the shit out of the computers. Easy peasy. Won’t even know I’ve done it.”
Garth high-fived Huey. Before heading back to the two Game supervisors, Garth looked up at Ute’s face. The man seemed heavily distracted, something the ex-God soldier wasn’t exactly known for. “Hey man, you okay?”
“Yes.”
Garth thought that wasn’t the case at all, but since he had his own impending demise to see to, accepted the terse one word answer and made his way back to Forst and Enric.
xxx
“What was that all about?” Forst asked curiously. If the man had had work done and one of the men he’d been talking to was some kind of hacker, they’d all be in for a very serious surprise. Game ‘LINKs were the best protected computers in the entire system, next to perhaps the God Army’s own machines. People tried all the time to break their way in, even during non-Game years, and they all met with disaster.
“Hm?” Garth feigned surprise. “Oh. That. Yeah, no. I was putting in my lunch order. For tomorrow.”
Enric laughed. “You, sa, are crazily insane. You’re going to be dead in one hour and two seconds.”
“That’s a pretty accurate forecast, sa.” Garth replied as he followed the two men to where the big scanners were. “Care to make a bet?”
“Betting with Contestants is illegal, sa, and besides, it would be in poor taste to take money from a corpse.” Enric gestured to the scanner. “Step inside.”
“Should I take my weapons off?” Garth was reluctant to do so; this new area of the ‘backstage’ was heavily populated with God soldiers of all flavor, and they were showing signs of the same kind of agitation as Ute, only more pronounced.
“Unnecessary.” Forst shooed Garth into the device and closed the panel. “This should only take a few seconds.”
“If you electrocute me, everyone is going to be unhappy.” Garth closed his eyes and tried to command the q-circuits in his body to do something other than nothing.
xxx
The two Game employees stared at the readouts and the comparison between this most current one and the one taken several months ago. They were identical.
Enric squinted at the displays, unsure of how he felt; on the one hand, he was eminently satisfied at the lack of black market modifications. It meant that the Offworlder had absolutely no chance to survive and they’d be rid of a man who was far too popular.
On the other hand, though, that lack of cheating meant that the fight would be over very quickly. There was no possible way a regular man could survive against any one of the Eight, let alone Gurant. Yes, the Offworlder’s previous showing against Sa Antonio had shattered their concepts of ‘normal’, but … Antonio was a scout. His God soldier augments were barely a blip.
“I believe you owe me ten dollars.” Enric announced, disappointment heavy in his voice.
“Hm, yes.” Forst processed the transfer absentmindedly, staring at the scan thoughtfully. Though designed to deliver incredibly high-resolution, massively detailed internal scans of God soldiers and any other Gamer, the machines had done a surprisingly good job of rendering the whip and the ax as well.
“Can I get the hell out of here now or what?” Garth demanded irately. The ‘quick scan’ had just reached the ten minute mark and he was getting all sorts of pissy.
From the roaring sounds reaching him, it was apparent that the crowd was being revved up something amazing. And honestly, if he wasn’t going to win, he was kind of in the mood to catch a few minutes of something neat before dying; according to the apparently already heavily intoxicated ‘Uncle Sa’ and his co-host, Granger, it was Onesies versus Shubin in the Arena right now, and from the sounds of things, it was the best pregame show ever.
Forst tapped the monitor thoughtfully before shrugging. It was probably nothing. The superlative construction of the whip, with its fiendishly complicated overlapping scale design, made for an interesting scan, that was all. The same with the ax. Whatever else Garth Nickels was, he was obviously a perfectionist and had –even though he had to know he was going to die- spent a great deal of time and effort working on both weapons. Before opening the panel to let Garth out, he made a notation on his prote to see if they could legally claim the dead man’s tools for their own purposes following the Game.
“Thanks, man.” Garth craned his head up towards the nearest floating GigantiSheet. On the forty foot tall monitor, a cluster of five Onesies were doing their level best to prevent some very wicked-looking horns from punching them full of holes. It was quite a spectacle. “I’m guessing there’s some kind of dressing room or whatever for me?”
“Yes, sa. There is. These two will take you there. Please follow the rules.” Forst gestured to the two Onesies who’d been staring vacantly up at the ‘Sheets this whole time, obviously very uncomfortable with the deaths of their brethren at the hands –horns- of simple beasts.
Garth set in behind the two Onesies as they walked off. He looked over his shoulder at Huey and Ute, both of whom appeared ready to rush to his side at a moment’s notice. He shook his head and did his best to pantomime that he was totally cool.
The truth was, he wasn’t. Enough of the q-circuitry and the augments had come online so that he’d be able to move a bit quicker than a standard human, but it wasn’t very nearly enough. After he popped the first two Goddies with the whip, it was going to be over quickly. His opponents weren’t Ones or Twos or even Threes. They were Fours.
They could move like lightning and had the mental capacity to process combat like grandmaster superwizard chess players. Add to that their unlimited strength and endurance, and hell, it was entirely likely that his super awesome death whip wouldn’t do a goddam thing.
Garth fingered the cool coils of the whip thoughtfully. He should’ve definitely built some kind of death ray. Or something. He plastered a smile on his ugly mug and continued following the Goddies to his eventual doom.
Because even if he kicked all Eight asses, there was Gurant, a whole different caliber of Four.
Chapter Two
Ladies and Gentlemen, Sis and Sas, It’s Gametime!
“Ladies and gentlemen, sis and sas, hello and welcome to the Final Game!” Sa Uncle, a shorter-than-average Latelian bedecked in bright colors and an odd hat, waved to everyone from the GigantiSheets. The crowd stomped, hollered, and waved back, shouting incoherently the whole while.
“And what a day it is!” crowed Sa Granger, an older Latelian with distinct IndoRussian traits flipped a wave to the cameras.
“You can say that again, Granger.” Uncle hammered away at his proteus, throwing all manner of data onto Sheets set into the backs of all the chairs. “As you can see, this is the most stupendous Game ever! And why is that? Because this time, especially for all of you, we have something never before seen in the entire History of the Game! We have, just the once, One Versus Eight!”
Granger added some of his own data onto the ‘Sheets. “Many of you sis and sas out there might not think this is fair, but consider who that one is! The legendary Sa Garth Nickels! Survivor of the Spaceport Disaster, defeater of Sa Antonio! Is he strong enough to survive against the Deadly Eight? I don’t think so! Not even with the strange weapons he’s brought with him onto the arena floor.”
The crowd looked at the ‘Sheets and laughed appreciatively at Granger’s assumptions. Weapons like that were nothing compared to the might of the Goddies.
Uncle snorted derisively, then handed a leer off to the cameras. “It figures you might say something like that. All you need to do is look at the man and you’re filled with desire to see him fight! Look at those muscles, look at that hair, look into those eyes and tell me, sis and sas, that you can’t see him destroying the competition.” Sa threw Garth’s most recent Game profile onto the ‘Sheets. Then, because he knew people, tossed up some … difficult to acquire video footage that immediately captured the attention of everyone, everywhere, across the entire system.
Off microphone, Granger punched Uncle Sa in the arm, hissing, “Where did you get this footage? This looks … this is Trinity video feed, Sa! What did you do?”
“The people have a right to know who this man is, Granger. We let him in, we let him fight in the Game, and we’ve turned him into a systemically popular figure.” Uncle Sa gestured to the massive GigantiSheets, then to the crowds. Every single head was craned upward, mouths agape, eyes wide. He’d had a few days to become accustomed to the insanity of the five minute tape he’d ‘purchased’, and it was still breathtaking.
“What is he fighting?” Granger found himself staring at the footage, too shocked to realize his thumb had fallen off the ‘mute’ button on his prote. His words rolled through the audience and out to all the planets of Latelyspace.
“Some kind of giant bug, I think, Sa Granger, some kind of nasty Offworld space mutant that, as every little si and sa in the whole wide world knows, waits for us at every turn on the other side of the Quantum Tunnel. Well,” Uncle Sa commented wryly as a triumphant Specter Nickels tore the head off the giant insect, “they sure do seem to grow them decently back there in Trinity, don’t they?”
Granger rolled his eyes wide for the public. “Not that again, Uncle. No one cares to know about what goes on inside that disease-infested mind of yours! We’re here to see some fighting! Some good old-fashioned mayhem. Isn’t that right, folks? Are we here to listen to Uncle Sa talk about the weird things he gets up to on his own personal time or are we here to see some fighting?”
Amidst the roar of excitement, Sa Uncle spoke his views. “And we all know who that’s going to be, don’t we, folks? Since I’ve already done a masterful job of introducing who Garth Nickels really is, why don’t you roll out the Eight for our eager beavers?”
Uncle Sa leaned back in his chair and lit up a cigarette, smiling with utter pleasure at the disgust on Granger’s face; the older man had failed to see that this was going to be the last Game ever fought in Latelyspace. Too hidebound, Granger imagined that these changes were temporary, developed merely to get rid of an unwanted pest.
Sa thought different and wiggled his fingers at Granger, who seethed even as he began announcing the Eight and their various accomplishments.
xxx
Garth looked at the Eight and they looked back. He felt impossibly out of place standing there, confronted with a minimum combined military expertise of thirty two thousand years.
All around them, the crowd raged. It was a maddening sea of sound and color, an absolute expression of the very feral nature of Humanity. Across the ten foot gap, a gap that any one of the Eight could cross in the blink of an eye, the collected Foursies joked and gossiped amongst themselves, occasionally pointing and laughing at him, calling him names in their brutal, glottal battle language.
Garth cleared his throat a couple of times, but ultimately, he was forced to shout. “Hey, assholes.”
The Eight stopped talking amongst themselves, turning as one to stare incredulously at the Offworlder. They were in the arena and they were going to kill the puny weakling in a matter of moments before turning on one another, which made it all the more important that they shared this time together; it was a rare verging on unique occurrence for two Foursies to be in the same place at the same time. Eight was something that had, to their collective recollection, never happened. They were far more interested in reminiscing over long-past battles than in listening to anything that Garth Nickels had to say.
“Hey. Assholes.” Garth repeated himself, wincing this time as his words rolled through the Arena. He bit back a curse. Naturally someone in the control booth would want to hear what he had to say. He could barely believe that this Uncle Sa character had managed to safely get hold of that fight against the space bug, and positively mortified that he’d had the audacity to air it for the entire fucking system to see.
It was bad enough that everyone had some kind of inkling as to what he was capable of. Now they were going to hear some shit that’d probably get them all riled.
“Have I got your attention?” Garth demanded.
Mari nodded, nominating herself as spokesperson for this impromptu conversation. “Yes, you do, Offworlder scum.”
The crowd oohed at the insult.
“Awesome. Hey, so, uh,” Garth fingered the whip again and jerked his head at Mari and Holmes, the two Goddies he’d spoken to before learning that Gurant had beaten him to the ‘hey why don’t you all just quit while you’re still alive’ game. “So, did you give any thought to my warnings?”
The other six Goddies looked quizzically at Mari and Holmes, both of whom started laughing. One of the six spoke. “What is this little bug talking about?”
Holmes pointed at Garth, who stood there coolly. “Little Nickels told me he would kill me in four seconds.”
Mari snorted. “He thinks very little of you, then.” She thumped herself on the chest. “Gave me a whole minute.”
The audience thought this was hilarious. Everyone, even Uncle Sa and Granger, started laughing.
“I’m not fucking around.” Garth ignored the sudden boos and hisses at his foul mouth. He just didn’t care. He knew he could do Holmes the moment the buzzer rang and Mari would fall in line just as easily. After that it was anyone’s Game. Anyone’s but his. Which was why he was wasting time talking to the gigantic murder-machines with names like Holmes. The more time he frittered away –even if it was only a few seconds- was more time for the machinery inside him to quit dicking
around and turn him into something capable of surviving. “You guys should totally just walk away and I’ll, like, pretend to be super-bummed.”
The Eight laughed and turned to the crowd, each one shouting that they were going to be the victor, that they were going to kill Nickels, defeat their opponents, and be the one to eventually pull Gurant’s head from his shoulders. The crowd’s excitement grew to unheard of heights, whipped into an absolute frenzy of madness and bloodlust.
“Fuck me sideways.” Garth muttered. On the GigantiSheets overhead, a timer began counting down. Grimacing, hoping he was going to be able to move quick enough to carry through on his dual promises, Garth uncoiled the whip.
xxx
The buzzer rang. Garth flicked his wrist and the whip popped, then popped again, drilling Holmes once in the forehead and once through the heart, the extendible barbed bit buried in the tip of the flexible duronium snake pulping both important organs. The giant fell sideways, tripping two Goddies up and hindering a third. But Garth had no time to waste, no opportunities to consider anything but the next few seconds.
Si Mari and the other four split up, sparing no thoughts for the abruptly dead Holmes or the fallen three. By the time they got to their feet, the man would be dead.
Garth yanked back on the whip and flicked it sideways, aiming for Mari’s neck. The whip snaked through the air like quicksilver made solid, wrapping once, twice, three times around the female Foursie’s neck, a deadly snake choking the life out of her.
Mari reacted without thinking; she stepped forward, wrapping the immensely effective weapon once around her thick forearm and grabbing hold of a stretch of the now-blood-soaked metal and pulling. She was only dimly aware that her comrades were shouting a warning in Batlang.
Garth allowed himself to be lifted into the air. It was part of the plan, after all. As he rose to a gut-wrenching ten feet high, he yanked for all he was worth and the whip, driven by Quantum state engines smaller than atoms, reacted by tightening, cruel and unseen barbs slicing cleaning through her flesh and bone.
