Slipdrift (VayneLine)
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Slipdrift
By E. A. Szabelski
Copyright © 2016 E. A. Szabelski
All Rights Reserved
Slipdrift is part of the VayneLine universe
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Thanks to SKoparov for the outstanding illustration
The violent sport of Gun-Drift still endures with its popularity, despite calls to stop the game, or the occasional rumor of illegal/deadly versions. Nearly every planetary system contains an Arena that has Gun-Drift among its events and carries a tremendous public following. There have only been a few substantiated reports of these unregulated Arenas but have proved difficult to close down the tight crime rings that keep them in operation.
– Terran Intradex Ver. 4: ‘Gun-Drift’
See also ‘Common Games at Arenas’; ‘Gun-Drift: Confirmed Deaths’
“Don’t look at me with those eyes,” he warned as I kept my gaze coldly focused on the man I hoped I would one day kill. His flunky clubbed me in the stomach due to my noncompliance, shouting “Listen to ‘um!” in a drawl. I tried fighting my head and eyes upwards to him one more time, but the shock rod hit me in the back, knocking me to the floor. I staggered one knee up, starting the say the name “Fe…” before I heard the whine of the electrically charged rod hitting me one more time; I went down, blacking out before I even hit the ground, unsure if I was saying his name, or the name of the girl I loved. As my world shut down it would be the last time I saw the natural light.
***
Somewhere in an abyss of unconscious thoughts swirling without any guidance, a vague sensation of something slipping down my eyes eventually became overpowering. “Uhhh…” My partially comatose body rolled to the side, but the strange spilling sensation continued. Like a shock across my body, the lightning strike of awakening blasted across my physical and mental states as I opened my eyes and found myself looking at the rusting pipes of a fixture.
‘Where am I?’ I rolled to the side as I saw the teal-colored thin wall of a repulsion-field extending from the ceiling to the floor; excluding the light this produced, the rest of the locale I now found myself in was dismal, dark and dank.
My eyes rolled around the small space I was trapped in. It seemed I was in a small circular room, with only the set of pipes leaking a foul-smelling liquid providing any visual change to the ragged rock walls that contained me. I tried to not think if the mud I was laying in was a long accumulation of the filth currently leaking out. Only the advanced force field blocking my way out gave a vast juxtaposition with its soft light.
‘What?’ My eyes and mind were still trying to accept all this data, but I noticed another being, or maybe I should just say shape, across from me in a different sealed room. Our cells were set far enough into the rock that I could only see the cell directly across the small muddy area, and as I could barely make out the opposing force field I could not even begin to see what might be in that cell. For what it was worth, the single cell across from mine would be the only other shape I would ever see beyond my own.
As my eyes adjusted and my nanites within my ocular cells layered different filters I could make out the large mass of a Behemon. It sat against the wall, something red slowly dripping on its head from the ground above. If there were any way to tell through its thick carapace and muscles, I would have guessed it had given up its own battle with living as evidenced by its overall downcast countenance.
Was I in a prison? My arm moved, and I felt the alarm of shock in my mind that something was not right. I looked at my arms and my heart dropped.
“No. No…No way…” My voice quivered with the realization. On my wrists were two huge grav-lock bracelets strapped like gauntlets around half of my forearms. Even excluding their heft, they could generate small fields of gravic distortions that would drop anyone to the floor, leaving no way to move. They were illegal, only used on prison and slave planets since you could not get them off on your own. I had no doubt I was bound to Feriko, the man that had led to my imprisonment. Not only was I trapped, but at any moment he could lock me to the ground…if I did ever have the chance to see him. How could I ever hope to kill him if a single button push would end my vengeance?
From the corner of my cell to a nearby one, a creature I could not see wailed endlessly, matching my own internal scream over being so completely trapped. The bracelets trapped me, the field trapped me, the jagged rocks trapped me, the cold filth trapped me; trapped all around me… all around me! I sat there shaking, my arms vibrating wildly with the fear I was being overtaken by. I lifted my heavy arms to my face, tears starting to come rapidly.
“Nooooooo…ahhhhhhhhhh!” I lifted my teary face to the ceiling, my screams adding to the other wails deep within the prison.
***
“Well, you are a smart guy so I am sure you understand your situation,” Feriko’s booming voice said somewhere above me as I lay in the slop. He had indeed come to visit me, confirming my thoughts that it was him who had cuffed me.
As soon as he had come into my cell, he activated my bracelets, pulling my arms fully apart before they sent me crashing to the ground. It was a strange sensation since my arms were completely separate and they had pinned me in a facedown position; I could barely look up off the ground due to the weight holding me there.
‘One step closer… I am going to bite your fucking foot off,’ I thought to his feet that I saw so close to my face.
“Here is your situation,” he continued. “You are a very good Gun-Drift player, so you should have no problem putting up a good show. Here is where it gets interesting: you are going to be playing for your life.”
Life? Gun-Drift was a bloody game for sure: the paralyzing shot could hit someone and send their body crashing and rolling across the ground, but the likelihood of dying was only 2% across the board. Even including outside murders of the players, that only put the death percentage at 10%.
“…this version of Gun-Drift is going to use a modified rifle,” he continued. “ You’d be surprised how much of a market there is in watching people kill each other for real…” All I could do was control my rage at how close he was along with the fact I could not move.
“But what good is a massacre if it doesn’t have a purpose? And what would be the fun if every round fired was real? There would be too many people dying, not enough chance for an underdog to develop before he is killed. People love cheering for underdogs, and I am here to give it to them. To you I give this: a chance for freedom if you win five games.”
“A chance!? Like I believe anything you would tell me, you bastard!” I jerked my head as far as I could upwards to try to see him.
He set his boot right on my forehead, some mud dripping into my eyes. He stood there balancing on one foot, the other on my face. He kicked my face into the mud and feces of the prison floor before stating, “You don’t have a choice.”
***
Feylon! Feylon! - I tried calling to the one girl I loved across our Interconnect-System. My electronic cries were met by only silence for a response. Even with all the upgrades we had both installed, I still could not reach her. I had no doubt this area had some ICS blocking technology in place. I didn’t want to think of the other reason she wasn’t responding.
My eyes caught a glimpse of a silver disk he had left behind. I crawled over and activated the holographic message. It showed him talking, followed by a short introduction of his purpose with my life, and how much the great game of Gun-Drift had been perverted on this un-patrolled planet.
What was worse was that I knew a lot of the players he purposely showed being killed in his video.
The creature near the corner of my cell continued it forlorn howls. Something changed in its tone; I looked up to see some figures in the dim light walking past and presumably going into its cell. They must have dragged the strange alien out of wherever it was this dungeon was located in, dragging it as it continued it morose song. I never saw or heard it again. At first the silence was preferable, but after a very little time I realized it made the place seem even colder.
I was rubbing my arms with my hands, trying to create some friction heat when the huge creature across my cell began talking.
“Krackku Til…” The roaring crack of the Behemon’s voice played in my mind for a moment before my nanites automatically picked the right translation protocol and started translating its speech into an emulated sound I understood. “Don’t get your hopes up of getting out. Every winner is advanced a round, and every round you are fighting that much better of opponents. That means round-five are the players that had survived every successfully harder match beforehand. The odds that you are the best? Low.”
“But I was among the best,” I responded to it cockily. Who the hell did he think he was?
“I don’t think it will be enough,” he replied as he lowered his head to look back down to the muddy ground, done talking to me.
As I sat down in a slump to go to sleep, I realized I missed the sound of whatever that alien was who got carted away, crying out through the dark. The silence was worse. Gave me too much time to think.
***
While I was escorted to the prep room for my first game, I kept my ICS on constant scan for an indication that any message might make it out. It was ready to broadcast at any moment it found an opening.
Somewhere along the line, I had stopped stomping through mud and it became solid floor. Somewhere further I was sprayed with some near-steaming water. “Uhh!” My blinded body tried curling up away from the pain of the water. I could feel my abs flexing and constraining, pulling against whatever was holding me up against the painful stream. Some strong arms hauled me up off the floor I had collapsed on and we continued walking onwards. My naked body was grateful for the cold initially, but then I realized the cold rapidly became almost worse.
A bag was taken off my head and I was looking at the attractive face of a female Aelisha, a very advanced alien race that had saved the Solarian race from a multitude of their problems a long time ago. Normally they were an honorable race, not subject to the foibles and darker desires Solarians possessed. To see a female here was surprising; was she pressed into service, or did even their revered race have corrupt individuals?
“Are you previously registered?” she asked, one of her fox ears bent down slightly in a suggestive manner as she gave me a sly grin. The fact she was trying to flirt with me in the middle of this prison kind of pissed me off.
“No.” Would they actually display my once pristine record if I did indeed want to go by my old name? I preferred not to; I did not want any of the crowd to know what I had been reduced to, or tempt any of the players to try their luck on ‘someone good’. Matter of pride I suppose.
“You have never played before?” Her face looked sad that I said I hadn’t. “You seemed different, thought maybe you could make it.” Her voice changed then to a more nonchalant tone. “Well you are in for a world of pain.”
“I guess we are going to have to see how good am I, huh?” I smirked back to her.
“Well I am going to need a name to keep these ‘good’ records under. We don’t see too many Solarians last too long around here.” Was that a warning? Why would she even bother telling me that? She seemed pleasant enough, but her sarcasm rubbed me a bit wrong.
“I don’t plan on staying around long. My name is ‘Yourself’.”
“Yourself?”
“Yes, that is my name.” It wasn’t obviously, but it was the only name I could think that would provide any sort of tactical advantage, small as it may be. Still, it was something when during a battle, my enemy’s display would show they were under fire by ‘Yourself’; the confusion might be enough initially during the first few rounds to help me advance and figure out what exactly I was in.
“You think you’re pretty good don’t you?” She asked with some derision in her voice. “This is going to be fun watching what happens to you.” I started disliking her the more she talked.
She placed her three-fingered hand on mine, holding it gently, giving it a soft squeeze as she looked with a yearning deep in her forest-green eyes. Feylon used to do something similar; thinking of her made the situation even more unbearable. “Good luck.” She nodded her head in a reverence I was surprised to see given her earlier behavior.
I gave her a small smile as I told her, “Thanks.” Her small action made me let go of my anger I had toward her as I must have misjudged her. Maybe she wasn’t that bad.
“Give me some fun for once,” her voice had turned darker, and she gripped my hand. I tried pulling my hand away, when she jerked hers away rapidly, turning her nails into my flesh and cutting my palm with her nails in a vicious surprise. Her nails left a deep cut that instantly started gushing blood from the back of my hand. The cut went from the knuckle to the wrist, and the slightly alien air made it sting even worse.
“Hey bitch, what the…?!” I yelled at her, but before I could do anything the high whine of a shock baton warned me of my fate that was rapidly swinging in on me. I closed my eyes, but even that ‘blackness’ was different from when the shock baton hits.
***
“Get up, there are more important things then your petty pains, whelp.” My dazed eyes showed a huge brown figure above me. I blinked a few times and realized it was the huge Behemon from the cell across from mine. I shook my head a few times and sat up. Around me was a typical ready room for Gun-Drift practice. The grav-packs glowed their bright pink on the center of the user’s chest.
Next to my naked body was a drift unit waiting to be turned on and a light rifle.
“Why are you even helping me?” I asked the huge alien; in its paw, the light rifle looked very small.
“I want to get out of here. I heard you were the best.”
“That’s what some say.”
“That’s what you say. But your arrogance is refreshing. Perhaps there is a semblance of reality in your words, Solarian.”
I slipped the drift unit on, the straps and belts automatically sizing themselves appropriately around my body to provide a perfect fit. I hit a button and the pink core in front came on, causing me to slowly float off the floor.
I leaned forward, rocketing at a fast speed. I jerked right, and the unit responded immediately. This unit’s responsiveness was among the best I had ever played in. I stopped in an instant, flying backwards as I was checking the limits of this machine. The inertial residue was nonexistent; its inertia compensators and dampeners were pretty impressive. How did they have these state of the art drift units here? How involved with the black market were these illegal games? I flew around some more, feeling the rush of freedom for the first time, as limited as it was given the situation.
I cut out the drift as I realized the show I was putting on might bring unwanted attention to me. The eyes around me were perhaps the scariest thing: it was of men and aliens that had become desperate. They would now kill to get what they wanted, to get their falsely promised freedom. I was nothing but an obstacle to leave dead on each and every one of their paths. That was the first time I felt a legitimate sensation of fear take over me.
I walked back over to my rifle, the Behemon standing there watching. I would have never thoug
ht it, but in that moment the Behemon looked friendly. Compared to the hate around me, its indifference was more than welcoming enough.
“It’s not only one winner advances, is it?” I asked. Maybe the Behemon was going to kill me as the last guy.
“No, they send from twenty to thirty in, and take the top five. If you are in top three, it’s considered a win.”
“And what is the point of being fourth or fifth then?”
“Don’t know. Always made it.”
I was twisting my body back and forth, trying to loosen my spine and neck for the demands that would be placed on them. I would catch the murderous glances of the others in the room, ready to kill me for their chance to get out.
“That raises a question,” I began. “If you have played in here before, why am I in your pool for this round?” The implication of course was that not everyone started in the same ‘round’, and for me it meant I was going against harder people already.
“Guess ‘Best’ got placed in a harder pool,” I was not sure Behemons could show sarcasm, but his tone seemed like it was.
“Damn. By the way, my name is Yourself.”
“I’m sure.”
I picked up my rifle and checked it out. The firing mechanism was typical: a few different firing modes, a bit longer of a barrel for longer shots… A variable scope indicated I might expect a few distractions during the rounds like blackouts or smoke.
I activated my status, checking as I always do before a battle, but then realized my stats were completely blank under my new name.
When I looked at my blank stats, the ominous term ‘Kills’ took on a much darker meaning than when it had only meant how many you had put out of the game, not put out of reality.
“So who should I be looking out for?” I asked him, my fingers still pouring over the rifle, determining what was different. There was something I was missing, but couldn’t place it.