by Dante King
The guard’s face bore a look of triumph as he raised the broken wooden end over his head. He didn’t want to kill me. He just wanted to beat me senseless. I’d only give him one more shot, though. He’d demonstrated that I could be beat, but I didn’t want to go down too easily. I had to enter the arena, after all.
When he swung his stick again, I caught it, yanked hard to bring him close, and gave him a hard left hook to the inside of his ribs. He gasped but didn’t let go, so I hit him again. I really had to pull my punches if I didn’t want my fist to plow through his armored stomach. When another guard ran in to intervene, I yanked the stick again and struck him in the armpit with the jagged end, right between a big gap in his armor. It sounded like it must have hurt.
With him down, I hit the guard, who was miraculously still holding the stick, three more times in the same spot. He collapsed in front of me.
Nobody else was coming, which meant they were having second thoughts. I’d overdone it a little and had to give them a reason to try harder.
“I thought you were guards,” I laughed. “Looks like you can’t even guard yourselves. I bet none of you would last two minutes against any human in the arena. That’s why you don’t want me in there, right? Because you’re afraid of us?”
A cold wad of spit flew past my face. I turned the direction it came from and found a scarred guard wearing too-small armor, staring down at me. He growled and drew the most ridiculous weapon I’d ever seen: a double-ended halberd with a yard long stick in the middle.
I stifled a laugh. I couldn't imagine a safe way to wield such a thing, especially with sausage-like fingers and a giant, barrel-like chest. The guard would be likely to cut his own head off. But such weapons weren’t designed to be effective just intimidating.
Suffice to say, I wasn’t intimidated. Still, maybe it was time for me to feign defeat.
My plan hinged on the guards having a win, so I decided to give them one. I looked around like a scared rabbit trying to find a place to hide. A few more guards joined the circle of those maneuvering to surround me. The scarred one swung his ridiculous weapon back and forth a couple of times. His motions were so easy and so practiced, I started having second thoughts about how useless it might really be. He approached, spinning the stick-blades between his fingers.
I still wanted to act scared, but I couldn’t let him wound me, of course. So, I feigned a kick at his knee. He brought the spinning blades down with a grace I hadn’t expected. I pulled my leg away just in time, though I wasn’t sure what, if any, real damage the blades would do.
When he raised the spinning blade above his head, I saw what was coming. He wanted to throw the weapon, so I feigned that I was going to roll to my left, then to my right, and back to my left again. He’d been expecting the feint, so when I rolled to the right, he threw it. The blade barely missed my body, but it did tear a hole in my new shirt.
“This was a gift,” I said as I lay on my back and examined the hole in my garments.
I looked up as two guards approached me, their weapons pointing at my chest. I waited a full second before one of them and brought his halberd down hard toward my neck. It seemed they still wanted to kill me rather than capture me.
I obviously hadn’t made my true strength clear.
The halberd stopped a fraction from my throat when I caught it in two hands. I flung the weapon back, and it sprang from the guard’s hands before hurtling into the spectators. I heard a thunk but no one cried out, so I figured I hadn’t just killed someone. I twisted my legs and kicked the feet out from under the guard who’d tried to kill me. I heard a snap and figured I’d just broken his ankles.
I jumped to my feet, snatched the halberd from the other guard’s hands, and tossed that one away too. The weapon spiraled through the air before burying itself into the metal wall outside the arena. I grabbed his large body with both hands and threw him over my shoulder. The spectators pushed each other out of the way before he landed where they were a moment ago.
I looked around and noticed everyone was silent now. “So, will you take me to the arena now?”
My answer came when a patch of dirt no bigger than my fist exploded in front of me.
The cool and quiet guard by the gate stepped forward and blew steam from the end of his blaster. “You want in the arena?” he asked.
At first, I was stunned by the question. After all, hadn’t that been what started this whole mess? Then, I noticed a tiny glint in the guard’s eye. He was looking at me. After a split-second, I realized he was actually looking behind me. There was something behind me. Something he’d been waiting for.
The shadows on the ground gave me one clue. A slight shift in the air, along with a quieting of the crowd gave me another. A sparkle, a dark spot, and a horizontal line gave me my third clue. The hoverships had arrived.
I was about to be captured… finally.
I found myself almost instantly cocooned by thin wires ending in hooks that dug into my skin a little. The net tightened, clamping my arms to my sides and my legs together fast enough that I lost balance, so I let myself tip.
The net was tough, but I knew I could easily break out if I didn’t get my way.
The guard who’d watched the entire battle squatted down in front of me. I lifted my head as far as I could to look up at him. He wore a deep frown.
“Human,” he said, “you have surprised me today. But surprise is not enough. You will fight in the arena, and you will die. Unfortunately, whether you decide to fight or stand and die quickly matters little now. The citizens will come to see, and either way, they will be entertained. I wish you a swift death. You have done well, and you have gained my respect.”
I was touched, sort of. He was still a guard, after all, and his job was to make sure the people assigned to fight to the death did so without escaping. My respect only went so far, but I appreciated the words nonetheless.
The net started to move as the hovercraft that launched it began to rise, dragging me across the ground. I feigned discomfort, though the little rocks and pebbles did nothing to my skin. I was tougher than I looked, but I grunted like I was a soft, squishy human.
A moment later, I was a dozen yards in the air. The pilot didn’t have to take me far. We hovered over a short building no more than five yards square with a heavy-looking gate on the top. A guard climbed a short ladder, unlocked and opened the gate while threatening who or whatever else was in there with his halberd.
Then, the net relaxed, and I was falling into the building. I caught myself with my arms, tucked into a roll, and stood, ready to fight whatever else might be in the room. When I saw my companion, all thoughts of breaking something vanished.
“It’s about time,” Reaver said.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Reaver walked out of the shadows at the back of the pen. The time since I’d last seen her must have been difficult on her to say the least.
The pen we were in was made of interlocking stones, polished to a dull glow. The place was clean and appeared to have been recently swept, based on the tiny amount of dust that had been missed. It formed pale brown lines against its gray, sad backdrop.
The construction was solid, and though I was certain I could disassemble the building in short order, I wasn’t sure if I could do so without Reaver getting hurt. I wasn’t an engineer, but I was fairly sure that if I removed the wrong block, the whole structure would come down on both of us. If I didn’t have her completely covered with my own body, she’d be crushed. It wasn’t worth the risk. I was there to save her, not put her at even more risk.
She walked with her hands open and relaxed at her sides. Though her expression was determined and focused, she didn’t seem angry that I hadn’t found her earlier, nor shocked that I’d found her at all. Rigorous military training, it seemed, had prepared her for life as a slave. I only hoped it would prepare her for a life of freedom again, because she’d be free in short order.
Reaver maintained eye contact with me
as she stepped from the shadows. She was a bit thinner, maybe, and was dressed in a tan, canvas karate gi, of sorts. Her feet were covered by well-crafted boots that narrowed to a point and were tipped with riveted steel. They looked like they had protected the slaver’s investment more than once.
The gladiators of old were often treated well by their slave owners, like mankind later treated racehorses. They received the best medical attention, training, and equipment, but that didn’t make the practice of forcing slaves to fight to the death any better. They still weren’t free. They weren’t able to stop fighting if they chose. They’d be beaten, tortured, allowed to starve or dehydrate, and worse. Often, their only chance of escape was in battle, with death being its own reward.
I opened my mouth and struggled to find words.
“You made it,” Reaver said, her voice coming out hoarse. “I knew you would. There’d been rumors of some badass running around the countryside whoopin’ everything that came against it. I knew if it was a Marine, it was you. And by the amount of damage you’ve done, I couldn't imagine it being anything but a Marine.”
“Oorah,” I said with a laugh.
She stopped when she was close enough that I could feel the heat of her body against my chest. Surprisingly, she smelled of flowers—jasmine, maybe—or something like it. Maybe she’d been given some perfume or shampoo as a reward for winning in the arena?
Reaver poked me in the center of my chest with her finger. “Where the fuck have you been?” she asked. “You think it’s okay to just run around blowing things up, slaying dragons, killing Enforcers, and such? Ever thought about looking for us?”
“How’d you know about that?” I asked. Word must have gotten around to the arena constants, which meant that King Demetrios knew about me, too. I was about to ask her more about it when something she said echoed in my mind. “Us?” I asked. “There are more crew members here?”
“Yes,” she confirmed, poking the same spot, “us. There’s at least one more, or there was. Might be dead now for all I know.”
I could tell from the way she pouted that she was at least a little upset I hadn’t come earlier. She’d probably heard about my exploits and wondered why the fuck it was taking me so long to get to Brazud.
“Reaver,” I said, “the second I knew for certain that there were survivors on this planet, I headed for the biggest city center, here. And I found you.”
A shadow alerted me to movement above our heads. A guard was on top of the pen and had apparently heard enough to make him curious. He leaned forward and peered inside, a halberd in his right hand and another of those rod-guns in a holster on his left. He didn’t look concerned, only curious, as if he might get the special treat of watching a fight that nobody else would witness.
I thought it probable that all of the guards were similarly equipped and armored. It was just as likely that those on the city’s wall and around the arena were packing heat even more dangerous than rod-guns. The strongest weapons would likely be located at the walls, but either I’d been too unobservant—which I doubted—or the city’s defenses were well-concealed.
“We’re not on a mission anymore, Jacob,” she whispered. “Our starship is gone. Our crew is gone. As far as I know, we’re the last earthlings that exist anywhere.”
“Except on Earth and Mars,” I said. I didn’t like her referring to Martians as “earthlings” but I wasn’t about to correct her. I didn’t know where the humans had come from on this planet, but almost identical lifeforms evolving on another planet was statistically improbable, not impossible.
“You so sure?” she asked as she cocked her head to one side and squinted.
I shrugged. “I’m not sure about anything, except that I’m glad to see you.”
She pressed her lips together in a tight line as her eyes inspected mine, then my nose, and, finally, my mouth. I wasn’t sure if she was getting ready to kiss me or if she’d picked a target for her next punch. If she wanted to hit me, I’d let her get it out of her system. Maybe then I’d get to see whether she was the “superpowered human” Yaltu had talked about.
Then Reaver moved, fast as lightning, barely giving me time to brace myself. But she didn’t punch me. Her arms wrapped around my waist and hugged me. She buried her face under my chin. She didn’t cry. She only breathed deeply and held on tight as if I might drift away or fade from existence.
I returned the gesture and wrapped my arms around her, being as gentle as I could in case there were injuries concealed under her clothes. Although ancient slavers on Earth traditionally took care of their gladiators, this wasn’t Earth, and it wasn’t thousands of years in the past.
My fingers brushed her back, carefully tracing the landscape of her spine, her strong muscles, and her shoulder blades. She didn’t flinch or shy away from them and seemed to lean in to me more, holding me even tighter. I stroked her back harder and ran my fingers through the hair at the back of her head. Instead of flinching, she pressed my back against the cool, stone wall of the pen.
“Why did we end up here?” She looked up at me and continued. “Did you know that everyone is a slave? They’re all owned by someone in some way. They save even King Demetrios is owned by someone. Only the Sitar are free. This is a slave colony, owned by the Sitar. I don’t know who they are, and they’ve never shown their faces, but everyone is afraid of them. Even the king.”
She pressed her cheek against my chest again. “Not everyone here is bad,” she continued. “but they’re all deluded. Most of them think they’re free. They think they’re actually in charge of something that matters. Even if it’s just their home, they think it matters. They believe that because they dragged the scrap it’s made of for a few miles and welded, bolted, or glued it together that any of it belongs to them. In the end, they don’t even belong to themselves.”
I took a deep breath before answering. “The difference between them and us is one of circumstance and perspective, not reality.” She gently pushed herself away from me so that she could look me in the eyes. “We see them as ignorant only because we came in from the outside and have never been part of their culture until we were forced into it.” I thought of Yaltu, who wanted to break free but still held so many ideas that were a result of her environment. “We have a fresh set of eyes on it. I’m thinking, based on what I’ve seen, that most of these aliens, these people, grew up living under the thumb of the Sitar.”
“Who the fuck are the Sitar?” Reaver asked.
“Evil,” I said. “Whatever they are, they’re evil.”
“And?” she asked. “And that’s it? We let them live like this?”
I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to unite the people and create a force strong enough to break their chains. I’d find these Sitar and make them pay for enslaving an entire planet. I wanted to bring—
Peace to your world...
The voice of the Lakunae invaded my mind like hard-stomping boots of a hungover corporal who got stuck on guard duty again.
“Peace to your world,” Reaver said, looking me straight in the eye.
I frowned at her. “You met them, too, didn’t you?”
“Who?”
“The Lakunae,” I said.
She sighed and pulled away from me a bit. “I did.”
She he closed her eyes, as if she were trying to return to that place, the Void, and remember every detail about it. I’d seen her do the same thing during debriefings after battles, so I remained silent and patient.
“They took me somewhere,” she whispered. “Somewhere dark. It felt like I was in space, sort of. But there weren’t any stars or galaxies. Just blackness. They told me I was not the one who would bring peace to our world but that I had a part to play. They told me I was supposed to assist their avatar or something. They went on and on about how good of a thing I’d be doing.”
I nodded and squeezed her gently. “Keep going.”
“At first, I resisted. I was stuck somewhere I didn’t care to be. I wasn’t
interested in whatever kind of bullshit they were selling. When I told them to put me back with my team… they hurt me. Not like a cut or something… but in my mind.”
I only noticed that I’d tensed when Reaver winced a little. “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t like hearing that they hurt you.”
“I’m fine. But I’m suspicious of the Lakunae. They’re not what they say they are. They act as if they’re just here to do good in our universe. But they act like dictators. They’re spoiled, slimy, squiddy aliens who lash out when they don’t get their way.
“So, I played along with the game to see where it would go, and here I am… with you… finally.” Reaver swallowed and looked up at me with a playful glare. “Speaking of which, how the hell did you let yourself get caught? You’re slipping, Major. Or should I say Captain? Although that didn’t last too long.”
I grunted, and she smiled at me. Any offense I could have felt vanished when I saw her lips turn upward.
I returned her smile. “When I saw you being led to the building, I knew I had to get in. So, I beat up about a half dozen guards. They were more than happy to let me in after that.”
“You’re an idiot,” she said, pushing herself fully away from me. “Now, not only do I have to cover my own ass, I have to cover yours too. Wait… did you beat up the arena guards?”
I smiled and nodded. “Don’t worry. I think I’ll be the one covering you.”
“You do?” she said, a sly, sexy smile pulling one corner of her mouth up. “Look around. What do you see?”
I did as she asked, wondering what she was getting at. “I see a holding pen and a couple of gates.”
“Nothing else, right?”
“Right.”
“That’s because the Lakunae didn’t leave me be,” she explained. “They did something to me. That’s why I’m here. This is the finals. I’m competing for my freedom. I’m pretty famous now.”
