With benefit of the obedience chip, his blood had readily grown cold. Janie must learn to kill without that advantage.
“It doesn’t feel natural.” She stilled, her gaze locked on the thrust out blade. “Will they make me fight too?” She let go the sword. He lowered it carefully to the floor.
“We’ll both be fighting for our lives. These weapons are not a mercy, but for the benefit of the viewers.”
“The people paying to see us die?” She slumped in his arms, letting him cradle her. “This is going on the internet, isn’t it?”
“The pirates will inevitably crack the Corporation codes, yes and we will be immortalised on the black beam web. But neither of us will die, this I vow.”
“You can’t kill them all, Kelskar.”
She’d lost condition in the cell, her body pitifully thin, the muscles wasting. He too had lost muscle, though he pulled himself up on the ceiling bars until his fingers bled. Not only muscle, but the better part of his implanted skull cap along with the cupped armour protecting his chin.
“Yes, I can. I’ll kill every last one if I have to.” No doubt at all in his mind, he knew his strengths and limitations, though the latter were few. A soaring star of his master’s Ludus Maxim and undefeated, if he remembered it right.
“Choose the lighter weapons. Those with straps and harnesses to aid in carrying. Your strength will be speed and surprise. Mine, muscle and experience. Together we will survive this.”
“The last knife I wielded was to ice a cupcake.” Janie stooped to scoop up a tri-bladed scala. “Kelskar, I couldn’t kill anyone even if they were about to kill me.”
Kelskar imagined the watching Corporation executives leaning forward, intent on his answer. He paid them no mind. Not here to boost their ratings or stoke their blood lust, he was here to survive.
“Believe me, Janie. When I tell you that yes, you could.”
“Oh hell, what’s happening to us?” A momentary lapse into panic. Still in denial, though he’d explained it to her more than once.
Soon she would see for herself.
“Listen to me, Janie. I know as an Earth woman with limited understanding of other beings, this is hard for you to fathom.”
“Damned right it is. So far I’ve seen nothing but some sick joke designed to scare me shitless.” Two bright spots of colour tinted her cheeks red as anger pushed out the panic. Good, anger would serve her better than despondency.
“You’re no longer on your home world. Soon, you will see that for yourself.”
“You scare me when you talk like that. Kelskar, tell me that isn’t true.”
“I can’t.”
He left Janie glowering and flashing the tri-blade in arcs so small they wouldn’t kill a crawling insect. She lunged, poking it tentatively into an imaginary foe. And then she steeled herself, her face hardened and she flew forward with a savage yell, throwing all of her fury into the lunge.
Fury, he must foster that in her. Help her lose the gentle innocence of the woman who baked sublimely sweet confections and find in herself an angel of death.
He sloughed off his dirty pants and close wear reeking of too many days without bathing, aware the watchers would be taking notes, appraising his body for weakness and strength. Would they allow him the drugs that kept his implanted armour stable? As yet, they’d made no mention of his failing shell. He guessed they prefer he fight as a man not a cyborg. Whatever it took, he would fight.
Naked, he contemplated the garments and selected an under vest and soft, figure hugging close wear, short pants cropped to his thighs. Prison Moon One circled Turas 3, a planet set halfway between the system sun. Temperate and arid with cooler regions to the north and south of the moon, as he recollected. He too would garb himself in as many layers as he could comfortably move in and thus be prepared for anything.
Thermal layers, long coat, heavy boots. Headwear and gloves. The double blade harness and swords, the studded mace and belted sword for his waist. A knife at each boot, one in his belt. The axe that could take a head with one blow.
His speciality.
And a water bottle for each of them.
The thought sparked a memory of the warriors he sent to the underworld where souls screamed out their torment for all of eternity. His eyes tingled, his focus sharpened to painful intensity.
No. He stood unable to breathe, listening to the sparking chip in his head. There and gone as it fell silent once more. His shoulders sagged. Thank the dark gods. Closing his eyes, he muttered a prayer of gratitude.
When he opened them, Janie stood frozen, wide-eyed and staring at him in all his blooded naked glory.
He was magnificent. A sculpted statue of bronze skin etched with a story of scars and blood. Hard muscle and contoured body-armour.
Janie’s gaze dipped lower. After so long in the cold, she caught fire. Every cell fizzed with need for him. She wanted to drag him to her studio. Immortalise him in clay and bronze, in oils on canvas. To light him with dark shadows and capture his beauty for all time.
When he held her in their cage and she felt him hard against her back, heard him murmur in his sleep as his hand cupped her breast and dipped lower she blamed it on their forced proximity and reliance on each other. It was more than that.
Asked to describe her perfect man, it wouldn’t be him.
Yet somehow, it was.
Their eyes locked. Janie turned away from the question in his eyes, cheeks aflame. Survival. Didn’t that bring out the basest of instincts? The need to feel, to lie down with this man and let him take her had become as important as the need to live through this.
In her frenzy to cool the heat in her brain, the rush between her legs, Janie attacked the weapons arsenal, strapping on knives, buckling scabbards and long swords that hampered her movements. What she couldn’t strap on, she’d carry. The hell she intended to die for some sick pervert’s entertainment.
“Janie, stop.” Kelskar gripped her shoulder, turning her around. Mercifully dressed now in leather-like pants moulded to his thighs and calves like a second skin. Studiously, she averted her gaze from his bulging groin.
Not so immune to her, either.
“You need a shirt,” she said, attempting a wry smile. “How do I look?”
Kelskar’s raking gaze doused her in a new wash of heat. “Lose the swords,” he said with a tilt of his chin. “Too long for you, they will slow you down.”
“Okay.” She snapped open the buckle at her waist, glad to be relieved of the cumbersome weapons. Kelskar leaned over her to remove the crossed swords held to her back in a rigid harness. To her surprise he hunkered down and chose another, slimmer harness bearing one sword instead of two.
“This will suit you better. We will find a defensive position on the moon and I’ll show you how to use it.”
He looked so deadly serious the lurid images of end of the world sex dissolved and morphed into thoughts of the Regian, hanging from the cage bars, dripping his filthy innuendoes and threats. A breath caught in Janie’s throat. If it came down to him, or her, she’d kill. She’d have to.
Overhead, a camera swivelled with a grating whirr, blinking its beady eye. Janie resisted the urge to look up and took a measured step away from Kelskar, knowing the cat women and the seedy little wide-mouthed man would be somewhere watching them. Whatever she felt for Kelskar, however he attracted her—that was their secret.
Kelskar nodded and picked up the heavy black shirt selected to wear under a padded tunic and thigh length jacket. The tunic reminded her of a medieval knight’s gambeson, the padding worn under armour. It looked like cotton drill, but given his fantastic claims that they were no longer on Earth the fabric could be anything.
The lack of solid reference points to anchor her to this world confused her more than finding a man with living armour attached to his body.
“Will they let us go today, do you think?” The thought both excited and appalled her. Trapped in this bubble with Kelskar, she’d known
discomfort and fear, but as yet no tangible threats. She might have to fight, she might have to die. Now both those realities were becoming inevitable.
Even a man like Kelskar couldn’t kill them all. Whoever they were.
The shiny floor shuddered out one of the trembling rattles that made her heart jump at the start of this ordeal and now barely gave her pause. She’d become used to the greasy stench of their kidnappers, the smell from their makeshift bathroom facilities. The stale air pushing notes of burnt rubber and decaying food through the grilles high on their cell walls.
Her body and mind had adapted because the other choice involved falling down and waiting for death. And she’d fast discovered she wasn’t the dying kind.
Kelskar pushed his arms into a long coat and proceeded to stuff the pockets with spare under garments for him and her. A big man, made larger by the bulky clothing. A good man to have at her back, especially if more like him awaited them out there.
“I imagine it will be soon. When they let us go, prepare to run and do everything I say.” He wound a long scarf around his neck, tucking the ends inside the coat. “I will kill without thinking. You will hesitate, so do nothing more than defend yourself if called to.”
“And they’ll be watching?”
“From the moment we leave this ship, we’ll be watched. But don’t think of that, think only of staying alive.”
He’d killed, she knew it. They called him gladiator, a professional name worthy of some underground fight ring. She’d imagined his fevered confessions when he dipped in and out of sanity to be a delusion. But his eyes held a truth she could no longer ignore.
“Out there, when we get a moment alone, away from this insanity, you and me are going to have a little talk, Kelskar.” She tried to make light of it, to inject irony into her tone. But she meant every word. They’d danced around this whole debacle for way too long.
“We will speak frankly, yes. But first we remain alive.” Kelskar moved to his chosen weapons stash, inspecting the double harnessed swords, the mace and axe. He slid the short knives into boots and belt, strapped the gladius to his hip. With the crossed swords at his back, the mace in one hand, the axe in the other he looked like a killing machine.
“Food,” she said to distract herself from the one man army standing before her. “Will they give us food?”
“Unlikely. Hungry and desperate make for better ratings.”
“Then it’s really happening?” The draining roller coaster of emotion dipped and hit bottom, taking her spirits with it. A few stern breaths and a faint glimmer of hope ignited. With Kelskar at her side she had a chance. She wouldn’t let him down.
“There’s a book,” she said, noticing the black, hardbound book half-hidden under a heavy blanket. Kelskar had already dismissed the item as irrelevant. She bent and retrieved the book, aware of the cameras moving with her.
Smaller than her hand, she flipped through the blank pages, surprised that with all this technology simple books still existed. She might use it to get down a few studies of Kelskar if she could find something to draw with. With no phone, there would be no record of their meeting, the time they spent together unless she made one.
Kelskar picked up a small round shield, tested the weight and handed it to her. He peered over her shoulder at the book.
“Take it if it fits your pocket. Familiar things act as comfort. Take the shield, too. We’ll be under fire from the moment we make footfall.” He selected himself a heavier version, sliding his arm through the strap and hefting like a pro. “Protect your head and heart first. Injuries elsewhere are survivable.”
“I can barely lift this.” She copied him, grasping the strap, bending her arm as he did, with none of his dexterity. The book, she slid into her jacket pocket.
“The will to live is strong. Lean back a little, let your body take the weight.” Kelskar positioned the shield a little higher and closer to her body, carefully lifting the dark fall of her hair so it hung at her back. “And find something to bind up your hair. It will hamper you.”
She wanted more than once to cut it all off during their captivity. Now she had a knife and really she should. It would be so much easier. She made a swift plait instead and tied it with a strip torn from a long tunic hanging on the rack.
Kelskar nodded his approval, his strange colourless eyes softening for a brief heartbeat. Janie warmed a little inside. In the days of sensory deprivation she learned to crave his approval, to depend on those small signs telling her she still existed.
“What now?” She didn’t stop to ponder why Kelskar knew exactly what to do. Pushed aside the small suspicion that the methodical way he clothed and armed them meant he’d been through this before. She would pin him down for a real heart to heart once this nightmare ended. Justin may have escaped her without a word of explanation or apology. Kelskar was not doing the same.
Bending over her, shielding her from the watching cameras, he touched her cheek with the back of his hand, the curved finger-guards cool on her skin. She leaned into his touch. Another finger guard missing, she noticed, a bloody scab in its place.
“Now we fight, Janie Roberts. Now we fight.” Kelskar smiled faintly. “I would kiss you, but I will not give them that.”
“No, we won’t give them that.” She barely had voice to speak. How did he manage to flip her emotions so effortlessly? In the midst of this chaos, make her want him so much?
Adrenaline, she supposed, messing with her head. Making her limbs tremble and shake. He could have lit the whole town with the energy pouring from his battle ready body. Standing tall, like an immovable wall beside her, Kelskar lifted his face to the tracking cameras one hand curving around the hilt of the gladius at his hip.
“We have all we need,” he said. “We’re ready.”
Chapter Six
“When they make the drop, we need to move swiftly. Who knows what’s waiting for us down there? Do you understand?”
Janie nodded, her gaze darting around the cramped shaft, the access panel at their feet. “Drop? You mean they’ll just let us drop through there?”
“With luck they will allow us a cyber net that will set us down gently.”
“With luck? What the hell’s a cyber net?” She gulped in a steadying breath. “They didn’t bring us all this way to kill us like this, right?”
He understood her nerves. Kelskar bounced on his heels, channelling the energy humming in his body into something he could control. Janie stood beside him, weighed down with weapons and garments, her face a terrified mask.
“I won’t lie to you. They sometimes drop without cyber nets, but shattered bones result in small sport. Not a ratings pleaser. I doubt they’ll do that to us.”
“If you have a plan, Kelskar. I’d like to hear it.”
“Stay alive.”
“That’s not funny.” Janie spat the words at him, a bundle of charged anger at his side.
“It was no jest.” He gave back in kind, stoking her anger. It would serve her better than fear. The ship tilted, the floor shuddered, pitching them both into the wall. He braced and listened to the subtle change in vibration that might signal the opening of the hold doors on this decommissioned military vessel.
Janie put an arm out to steady herself on the wall. “We run and then what?” She let go the anger in a deep exhale. “You must have a plan.”
Plan? Kelskar might have remembered what it was to laugh had the situation not been so grim. He guessed a warrior like he, defending a valuable female might be given a fighting chance. Could only hope the Corporation would gift them a few days of orientation and respite. They wouldn’t want their investment going down in a hail of arrows in the first few seconds of transmission.
“Chances are they’ll let us get away. We command a high price they will not squander.”
“You’ve been here before? Done this before?” Janie’s gaze roved obsessively around the cramped hatch. Two wavering images reflected in the shiny metal walls. A single clos
ed door. Another at their feet. Control panels in the hexagonal walls, a light strip in the ceiling. Pressed against the walls they both stood clear of the horizontal opening hatches designed to pitch them from the ship regardless of their attempts to resist. Take and deposit them on the moon surface in a place of the Corporation’s choosing.
Kelskar prayed for one of the temperate regions, neither too cold nor too warm, with high ground and scattered ruins left behind by the planet moon’s ancient civilisation. Anything offering shelter would likely be occupied by those already aground, but shelter, finding a defensive position must remain a priority.
They’d be watched from the moment they landed.
“No, I’ve never been to this place, but I did watch the transmission in the Ludus Maxim so I know of the variables. Have no fear, Janie. I will protect you.”
“I know.” Her cold, chapped fingers slid against his. “Okay, let’s pretend this is real. What exactly is this place they’re taking us to?”
“Prison Moon One is a Class A penal colony, home to the most dangerous felons in the sector. Administered by the Corporation who purchase death and life-long sentences and process them into entertainment for the masses.” He stiffened, watching the hatch doors for movement.
“So it really is a prison?” Janie mirrored his movement, teetering on the narrow surrounding strip of static floor.
“It wasn’t always so. History tells there lived a cult of dragon worshippers and where there are dragons shifters, rumours of secret treasure are never far behind. The collectives sent in slave labour to mine the dragon hoards and war broke out. The collectives lost control and abandoned the miners to kill or be killed.”
“Hold on, backtrack. Dragons? Shifters?” For a moment Janie looked insulted as if he might be playing her even now. She let out a small, dry laugh. “Okay, so as well as the most dangerous criminals in the galaxy, there are dragons who shift into what?”
“Beings very like us. They have the ability to live in both forms. History tells the dragons suffered greatly in the mining wars. Many were killed and the rest went to ground. They are rarely spotted on screen.”
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