Love of Olympia- Tournament of Stars

by Kennedy King

  “How?” Galia’s response came with the flick of a wrist. Between her index and middle fingers, she pinched a folded square of paper.

  “Spent last night sketching the maze from above. Couldn’t get the whole thing, but from the roof of the hotel, at the right angles, I got glimpses of the Bangbox. It’s in the valley on the backside of town,” Galia smirked.

  “We’re not allowed on the…” Deidra stopped herself at the lack of regard for what was allowed in Galia’s burning eyes.

  “We’re not supposed to look gift horses in the mouth, either. Come on,” she gave Deidra’s shoulder a gentle pat.

  “Welcome back, folks! To the second round of the Olympia Gold: the… Bangbox!” Cybil ignited the flame of the audience. Their revelrous screams shook climbing rows of seats above the high walls of the Bangbox. Galia’s boot soles trembled with their energy. “This is a maze of explosive proportions!” On this cue, a colossal floor panel of sheet iron glowed bright. Flaming tongues jumped through finger-sized pores and surged together as a single firestorm, then vanished. Galia glanced over at Deidra, a few feet from her in the starting line of combatants. Her skin was paler than the looming surface of Greymoor overhead. “That’s right, folks! Every floor and wall panel of this iron maze can and will be remotely detonated at the will of a few lucky audience members. Contestants will be without their ships. Blunt and edged weapons are permitted. Whichever team reaches the center of the maze first will be awarded the bonus for this round, at which time it will end. Surviving crews proceed.”

  Cybil gave the crews the good grace of ten long seconds to take in a potential last breath. Their heels dug in. Weapons braced in hands. Galia had the handle of a retractable baton in each. Deidra clutched a shock-knife in both. You owe it to him to see it through, Clarabelle’s words bounced around her skull. Whether that meant the center of the Bangbox or a pile of ash, she owed it to Devin. Deidra wouldn’t admit just yet that her intrigue in a certain unorthodox captain grounded her, too, to life.

  “Begin!” Cybil cried. Galia felt the heat beneath her instantly. She sprung forward with the rest of the combatants. The iron panel beneath them shone with orange light. Most of them outran the flame by seconds. A few combatants, even in the beginning snap of the round, saw how great an opportunity this was to thin the running. They lashed out blows to chests and slices to ankles. Anyone stricken was consumed by heat before they could scream. When the flame retreated below the Bangbox behind the survivors, all that was left of their crewmates was gray dust.

  Galia held her breath until she saw Deidra. In the thick of the chaos, there was the girl in The Gold Standard uniform. She turned her back to every direction with a shock-knife pointed out at any who wandered near. The Hammer looked to have lost the most in the initial blast, at three. The Torrent lost one. Galia counted Rey and the rest of her crew - they’d all made it. Perhaps that, along with the loss of his own three, is what inspired Rex to charge.

  The captain of the Hammer bounded straight through the scrambled crowd, for Deidra. He was intercepted about halfway by Rey. He lugged a multerium club at Rex’s side. It glossed over with a silver coating at the moment before impact. Rex flashed up a short blade from his belt. He met Rey’s strike, then bounced away. Rex sidestepped a counterstrike, and launched for Deidra again.

  Galia struck out with her kinetic batons to knock anyone from her way, to beat him there. Her strike launched one of Rex’s men with a shockwave that bucked her arm right back at her. The man slid across an iron panel forty feet away. He hardly had a chance to glance up in terror. A particularly malicious audience member with a Bangbox controller incinerated him. Rex froze with his blade in the air. In seconds, he’d gone from a crew of ten to six. He was a statue when Galia fell on him, a statue that snapped into motion. The moments they’d shared in laughter before the Olympia vanished in the smoggy wind that scattered his friends’ ashes. I couldn’t hope more that you and your crew get into the games, he’d said. But this was no legend, they were in. It was a bloodbath, with both Rex and Galia poised to add to the pool.

  Rex ducked under her baton. He knew better than to meet it directly. He wove his way around each swing and slice. Galia switched arms and stepped closer, then back, anything to set him off balance. She felt the hand of heat on the side of her face. Galia and Rex threw themselves sideways together just before the wall beside them spat out an inferno.

  “Galia!” Deidra shouted when the woman slid down beside her heels. She knelt to get her new captain up on her feet. Rex was on his the next second. He lunged for Deidra. She leaned back from the tip of his blade edge, which nicked her collar. A bead of red flicked into the sizzling iron of the Bangbox wall. Galia sprung, She slammed a baton into the ground where Rex had been a second earlier. The kinetic tremor launched him, Galia, and Deidra away and off their feet. All three of them were up again in seconds.

  “That’s enough!” Deidra heaved. Both Galia and Rex stiffened in their respective spots. Both took the moment to suck down hot, earthy breaths. Clangs, screams, cheers and quick hisses of flame filled the odd quiet in which they tried to figure out who Deidra had yelled at. She turned to Galia. “Quit wasting time trying to save me! If you want to get us out of here, get to the center!” she said. Galia hung both batons ready to swing. The words had hit her skull and trickled right off. “Galia! Go!” Galia’s amber eyes found the girl, at last, full of drive. Not a fighter, eh? What could she do, but turn to run? Galia joined Rey and the rest of the crew in their mad dash through the injured, fighting, and fire bursts. She unfolded her sketch of the maze for all of them to see while Deidra held Rex at bay with the sparking tip of her own short blade.

  “Gotta respect your cajones,” Rex chuckled, as if a single thing about this was funny. A man and a woman. Two blades, fire and murder.

  “Which is more than I could say for you,” Deidra prodded, hoping to put him off balance. The twinge of his forehead had betrayed him. What she said affected him, just for a second, which was long enough for her to leap.

  Deidra’s knife tip slit Rex’s turning cheek. A jolt pulsed through the side of his face. Even as his muscles tightened and spasmed, he managed to swing his blade. From somewhere deep in the pit of her back-alley survival instincts, a reflex snapped up Deidra’s hands. She met Rex’s strike with her own shock-knife. Its insulated handle protected her from the pulse of electricity that shot through her foe’s weapon into his bones. Rex tightened. His teeth clenched hard enough to audibly grind away. Through them escaped a guttural roar, a sound just as primeval as Deidra’s instinct to block with her knife. It gave him the rage he needed to pry his fingers from the handle of his blade. It also gave Galia reason to turn back and witness the destruction about to unfold. Rex dropped his weapon. He tackled Deidra, flattened her against a searing orange floor panel. Twice he slammed the back of her head against it. Galia gasped. The panel detonated.

  What Galia couldn’t see in the rising flame was Deidra deploying her blast shield. The very second the fire jumped from beneath them, she popped it open, between her and Rex. Deidra rolled to the side, which rolled her foe off of her. When hellfire fled back to whence it came, Rex went with it. It took Galia’s eyes a second to track Deidra down, several panels away. She leaned against the wall she’d been flung into, her shield still glowing orange from the heat. Galia let herself breathe again.

  “Come on, G!” Rey called out, when he saw his captain a step behind the rest of the crew, “I’m sorry, but she’s dead weight!” Galia glanced back to him, then the vulnerable, bewildered girl who’d escaped flaming death by a centimeter of steel. The captain of the Dreamweaver lunged for her most trusted mate, to slap a paper in his hand. He hadn’t seen the look in her amber eyes for years, when she looked at him.

  “So was I,” said Galia. She about-faced and sprinted for Deidra.

  “Damnit,” Rey muttered. He turned to flee with the crew before their floor panel could combust.

  “Hey… what are
you… doing?” Deidra slurred when her captain took shape through her hazy vision. Galia grabbed Deidra by her arms to stand her up, and pull her away from the wall.

  “Did I give you the impression, when I rescued you, that I don’t care if you live or die?” she shouted. She shook the frazzle from Deidra’s numb frame. “Don’t you ever try to sacrifice yourself again, you understand? You’re part of my crew now, that means you have value! You don’t tell me to go unless you plan to see me later. Do you understand?” With each throttle, Deidra’s eyes widened. At the actual worry in the heartless captain’s face. At the idea that she had value. Galia was the first to assign her any.

  “Yes,” whispered Deidra. Galia shoved her away. A spiked mace whomped down between them. It was a member of the Torrent crew, come to blindside them. It was Galia’s turn to stare, bewildered, when Deidra slammed her shield across the man’s face. He flopped on the ground, twitching. There was no time to finish the man, with the rest of the Torrent closing in around them.

  Galia launched one body straight into the air with a rising arc from her baton. Deidra put her shield up to stop a glowing katana from slicing into her captain’s side. She shoved the attacker off balance. Galia flung her. A lit wall panel forced the brawling crowd to shift just before the flame. Galia, Deidra and the Torrent crew were forced into the remnants of the Hammer. With so many bodies in close proximity, every swing or block came with a wince. Not even Galia could protect herself from every angle, all at once. She couldn’t think about how much danger Deidra was in. All she could think was strike, turn, dodge, strike turn. Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw that katana again. It shimmered in the air above the wielder. It was set to slash down, straight in Deidra’s throat.

  “De-”

  Galia didn’t have time to warn the girl, let alone protect her. Ice and heat warred for control of her heart when she saw the Torrent combatant fling backwards, straight into a fire burst from a nearby wall. A second pulse of visible force kicked one of the Hammer’s aggressors across the Bangbox floor. Galia and Deidra turned to find the last savior they expected - the Terra Eagle with a wave hammer. She slung the sledge in two exosuit-enhanced arms. On her third blast, Galia was sure the strikes weren’t indiscriminate. She was protecting them. More specifically, she was protecting Deidra. The yellow line on her visor collapsed into a dot that focused on her girl.

  “We have a winner, folks!” Cybil’s shout stayed the hands of the clashing crowd, and dimmed the glowing panels of the Bangbox. Galia held her breath along with the audience until he went on, “Reymond Donario of the Dreamweaver has reached the center of the Bangbox!” Though relieved, Galia couldn’t bring herself to scream along with the crowd. Not with the remains of the defeated blowing around her shoes.

  Chapter Ten: Hard-Fought Lessons

  Galia and Deidra sat closer than they realized on the edge of the bottom bunk of their iron-framed bunk bed a few hours later. With its dense mattresses, thick comforters and industrial caged yellow lights, and without the tension of the Bangbox on the horizon, the place was almost charming. The contents of the room weren’t half as interesting to the pair, though, as those of their massive broadcasting screen. Cybil was in the middle of a report on the last round of the Olympia.

  “As we know, favorite of the ladies, Rex, was lost in the Bangbox,” he frowned. Everything about the sentence turned Deidra’s stomach. Was lost, he said, like some bloodthirsty bastard in the bleachers hadn’t flipped the switch that killed him, just to see him burn. Just to see her burn, if not for Galia’s shield. He sounded genuinely upset about it, too, like he had a right to mourn Rex or anyone else that died in this sick competition. But then she heard the voice of the devil’s advocate in her mind saying if he wasn’t ready to die, he shouldn’t have entered the Olympia. She could run in those mental circles for hours if she didn’t let it go. “As a result, the rest of his crew has elected to retire from the Olympia early,” Cybil prattled on.

  “Hey, you trying to grow a third arm or something?” Galia asked when she noticed how tense Deidra was. She’d balled up her comforter in two white-knuckled fists. “Relax. You’ve got plenty of time to tense up in the ring.” Deidra sucked a crisp breath down her nose and let it out slow, between her lips.

  “As all you betters know, the Dreamweaver didn’t start with the highest survival rating, which only dropped after they suffered some damage and picked up an inexperienced new crew member,” Cybil said next. Galia threw a playful jab into Deidra’s arm.

  “Look at that! You made the news!” she cheered. Deidra snorted at how genuine the celebration was.

  “However…” Cybil surprised them with, “This new member, person of interest, Gold Standard servant Deidra did prove herself a little better than helpless in the Bangbox. After surviving a clash with Rex, she and her new captain made a nice display of holding not one, but two other teams. The Dreamweaver’s own Rey Donario claimed the bonus… things are looking up for this team. If you ask me, their spike in survival rating all the way up to forty-eight is well deserved.”

  “Forty-eight, huh?” Deidra mumbled. She never really pictured how the Olympia would look, past the first round. If she had, it certainly wouldn’t have looked like this - her on the news report, the rest of her crew gone.

  “Thanks to you. We dropped when we picked you up, but maybe the rest of the crew will shut up about it now,” Galia chuckled. Deidra turned to talk to her, which was all it took to realize how suddenly close they seemed. There were hardly more than a few inches between their noses. A familiarly frustrating wave of heat flared up in Deidra’s cheeks.

  “I’m sorry, Galia. I put your life and all your friends’ lives at ri-”

  “Can it,” Galia barked, just loud enough that Deidra did. “They’re my crew first. Now you are, too. That means: no apologies, only improvements. Just do better, alright?”

  “Al...alright,” Deidra said. Her lips turned up in a smirk without her notice. It vanished when Galia said:

  “You can start by telling me the truth when I ask you this. How do you know the Terra Eagle?”

  “I-I-I don’t,” Deidra told her immediately. Galia tilted her head at the conundrum. She’d answered too quickly to be lying. Unless it was a lie Deidra had told herself enough times to believe, herself.

  “You’re sure that’s your answer?”

  “Yes I’m sure- what the hell do you mean?” Deidra scooted back from the intensity of Galia’s gaze.

  “If you don’t know her… it brings up an interesting question. Why did she protect you?” she asked. Now it was Deidra’s turn to cock her head.

  “Protect me?” she echoed, “She was just playing the game. Death. Destruction.”

  “Sure, killing and destroying anyone who went for you. Trust me, I… I thought you were a goner. There were a few guys around you with the kill in their eyes. Until the Terra Eagle knocked each one of them on their asses. She didn’t bother with anyone else,” said Galia. Deidra’s mouth popped open with a fresh objection, but the more she thought of it, the less she could argue. In that wild mosh, she had been sure any second would be her last, before a stab or bash turned it all black.

  “No, that’s not… she protected me?” said Deidra, when she was forced to accept the truth.

  “She protected you,” Galia confirmed, “You have no idea why?”

  “No,” Deidra’s head shook while she wracked it for answers. She’d never been within ten feet of the Terra Eagle. Then she recalled: they may have had a mutual acquaintance. “Galia… how did you know where the Crystal Ice Core was, in the Ice Bucket?”

  “Stumbled upon it, running from the icefall your boy Tygon made. Why?”

  “Because… one of the Terra Eagle’s gunners told Devin where to find it,” said Deidra. Galia chewed a lip, and the mystery, in the jaws of a developing hypothesis.

  “She wanted your team to make it… but it must have something to do with you specifically, or else why help in the Bangb
ox?” said Galia.

  “Maybe… we ask her?” Deidra proposed, “‘Cause I’ve honestly got no idea.” Galia chortled.

  “Right, let’s just go ask the woman who never leaves the house without a full body exosuit to reveal her deep secrets. You are new at this, aren’t you?” she teased.

  “Hey! I-”

  “Anyway, I believe you,” Galia waved off the defense. “We can’t ask the Eagle herself, but maybe we can do some digging at dinner.” She hopped up from the bed and pulled on her jacket. Galia was halfway out the door before she turned back to say, “You coming? I’ll have you know I have never been stood up on a date.”

  “A da-da-date?” Deidra sputtered. Galia narrowed her eyes at her, one eyebrow up.

  “I’m asking you to dinner, aren’t I?” she prodded.

  “Well… I…” the words caught in Deidra’s throat, despite the fact she was already getting up. She grabbed her Gold Standard Jacket.

  “Relax!” Galia doubled over in stitches, “I was testing something. I think someone actually surgically removed your sense of humor when you were young. Maybe your fun center, too. If I wanted to take you on a date, you’d know it. Still, even Olympia Gold Medalists need to eat. Let’s go - but leave the jacket, would you? Honestly, I was surprised you didn’t sleep in it.” Deidra froze with it halfway across her back. Her muscles wanted to contract in the same old pattern she was used to. Put on the jacket, then leave the room.

  “But…” Deidra couldn’t think of a single sane reason why she needed it. It just didn’t sit right with her brain to reverse the motion, to shrug the coat off. But she did. She held it out in front of her, wondering just why a piece of well-tailored cloth had so much power over her.

  “Are you competing in the Olympia Gold under the order of a supervisor?” Galia posed.