by GX Knight
METAL DEEP
a series by:
GX KNIGHT
Copyright 2012, 2013, 2014 Kindle Edition
(So if you see this anywhere else in the near future… It’s a fake!)
All rights reserved.
(I have no idea what this means except that I think you can’t steal it.)
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used whatsoever without the express permission of the author except for brief quotation necessary for review.
(If you want to write in my world, with my people, or my places, ask… and then pay… simple.)
All characters in this publication, other than those of public domain, are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
(I made it all up. Except for a few cases of popular reference. There are no evil characters based on Aunt Ruth or my former jackass boss, though there should be.)
Further updates and information can be found at:
www.gxknight.com
Follow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/gxknight or @gxknight
“Like Knight” on FB at www.facebook.com/gxknightwriter
Shoot an Email: [email protected]
Those Who Make This Happen
Story and Concepts: GX Knight
Edits and Critiques: Aaron Salt and Emily Hale
Art and Cover Format: Andre Frattino and GX Knight
Official Music: Drew Hale (Collide)
Technical Support: Joshua Bane of Bane-Tech.com
Publicity: Brian Barber (Author of LYCCYX) and Kathleen Barber
Guerilla Marketing Advisor: Jacob Stokes
Contributions: Libby Ludwig, Michelle Downing, Rachel Avant, and Shery Butler
Moral Support and Inspiration: GX Spartan
Author’s Note
This is a continuously evolving edition of the METAL DEEP series. I have tried my best to create something that everyone can enjoy, while offering the most professional experience this amateur can muster. With that I ask: Please be patient with the formatting. I and my friends have scoured each and every piece to make sure the rules of grammar, punctuation, and spelling have been observed to the best of our limited ability. We will no doubt miss something… Okay, probably a lot of somethings. We all work full-time jobs and my help has graciously volunteered hours of their free time to make this a reality for me and for you. Your patience and understanding is appreciated. Should you find glaring faults, please feel free to visit www.gxknight.com and leave me a message. I would be happy to make necessary applicable changes for future updated editions.
Now that’s out of the way… I hope you enjoy the adventure!!!
THANK YOU
G.X. Knight
PS - If you really like what you read, please help spread the word and leave those 5 Star ratings on Amazon. If you don’t… Ummm… How about we just keep that between us, okay?
What’s Been Happening
Contest Winner
eBookBuilders.com
Favorite New Indie Author Vote – 2012
What they’re saying about METAL DEEP…
“If you are a fan of sci-fi and fantasy then you should definitely check this series out. I laughed, I cried. And I absolutely can't wait for the next installment.” –Ryan
“I really enjoy the pace of the series … like someone's pressing hard on the accelerator.” –Julie
“It's a wonderful read, especially for the price. Highly recommended!” –M.E.
“I'm not gonna lie. I'm not usually a sci-fi reader, but, I heard about it and wanted to check it out … Seriously, it's great!” –Sarah
“Everyone should read this! It is fabulous! I just want more! But isn’t that the point?” –Rachel
“Strong story line, wonderful character development, and a witty sense of humor makes the Metal Deep series a must read.” –Anthony
“Fast paced read, draws you into the story immediately … I AM HOOKED!” –Michelle
“[GX Knight] has two things that every author needs: a story and a voice. Now I'm proud to be a part of the third thing every author needs: the audience.” –Jacob
Metal Deep is an ongoing novelette/novella series. It is not necessary to have read previous episodes to enjoy the current, but it is suggested. All episodes can be found on Amazon by searching “Metal Deep” or “GX Knight,” and they are conveniently linked on the Metal Deep home website: www.gxknight.com.
Episode 1: DAMSELS IN DISTRESS
Episode 2: SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL
Episode 3: INFINITE AND FOREVER
Episode 4: SOUL ON FIRE
Episode 5: METAL WING
METAL DEEP
EPISODE 5: METAL WING
ONE LAST WIN
The crowd’s roar and board-thumping could out-ruckus a herd of angry bansheebeast. The fans had never been that loud, which is saying something considering our last five winning seasons. Electronic banners flashed my name, people flew the black and blue colors of The Boom, and mocking effigies of the Brawlers waved using stuffed dogs hung from nooses. Of course there were the trash talking signs I loved that read: “Sniff This” or “Bad Dog… Bad.” There didn’t seem to be a visiting fan in the entire arena. I’m sure they were there, but I missed them because the only red I was looking for was up beyond the Crag where the Brawler goal waited for me to score the winning goal. Nearly one-hundred-thousand people chanted my name. I felt like I could fly. Appropriate, considering that’s what needed to happen for us to pull out a win. The fans had faith in me. I did too. It was time to rock.
With less than a minute, and moving fast, the holoclock hovered over our head. Today it was being a more brutal nemesis than the other team. Snaps, Checker, and Paste had my back, Feline had the ball, and I had no idea where Brat and Cider where. Knowing them, they were probably getting respawned… again. Between us and the goal all seven Brawlers drooled to be the first to vaporize me. All they needed was to get the ball back and then sit on it until the clock ran down. I was not going to let that happen.
We moved to make our final pass, I yelled to my Boomers, “Alright guys, alley-oop with a twist. Let’s hit it.” The team jumped toward the Brawlers without question. A lot of us had been doing this for five seasons as a team. When we were in sync, we were unbeatable. I could almost feel their pulses and hear their thoughts. I knew we were in the zone, and that we were going to win. As their captain, it was my job to know.
Checker and Paste rolled to their bellies and used laser pistols to lay down cover fire from behind a gapped barrier. Blue beams zipped off two deflection grids and scattered one of the Brawlers from play immediately. Snaps, our shield man, ran to the base of the Brawler Crag and took a knee while allowing what remained of his shield to take the brunt of the laser hits. Feline tossed the ball wildly at the goal and jumped on Snaps’ shoulders in a balancing act that only her cat-like reflexes, for which she was named, could perform. I ran behind her with both laser pistols firing. I took down two guys, while Checker and Paste took out yet another.
There were only two Brawlers left. They retreated for the goal like a couple flailing pigeons. Their fear should have been unwarranted because the ball’s trajectory was not anywhere close to a striking arc, but they knew us. We did things with a laserball that could only be described as “unnatural.” We could do anything we wanted, whenever we wanted. They were right to be afraid.
Feline spun around and cupped her hands to throw me. With every last ounce of strength left in me, I jumped using the ever-stable Snaps to guide me up as he braced to maintain the balancing act Feline did on his broad shoulders. Between her boost that she gave me, and Snaps’ j
ump that tossed Feline, and thusly me as well, I was thrown as if having been sent sailing from a slingshot up to a dangerous height. I was near the top of the Crag.
At the pinnacle of my ascent, it was now or never. I brought my pistols to bear on the remaining Brawlers. They were so mesmerized by the move the three of us had just pulled off that earning a point for an entire team kill was easy as I blasted them into glittering electro-bits. Just before the clock ticked to zero, I double fired a series of blue beams at the still-flying ball, and after the fourth blast, I pummeled it through the goal having used nothing but laser fire. In a shooting range, no wind or distraction, it was a trick shot nobody could pull off. But moving? It was impossible for anyone besides me.
The score buzzer sounded, the final bell rang, the crowd cheered, and I screamed in panic as I fell back toward a very distant ground. Thankfully, someone flipped the switch and everything went quiet. I was safely on my feet in my Performance Pod, and not a pile of de-digitized soup on the arena’s floor. Respawns were never pleasant. Plus, the league made sure the higher up the rankings your team went, the more “intensity” a gameboard “death” inflicted on the players. It was unpleasant, but it did seem to help keep things more even, which made for better games, which made for more ticket sales. When you know you’re going to get a small lightning bolt shoved up your ass, it makes you not so eager to pull off sacrifice plays, even if it gives your team the edge. Thankfully the gamekeeper took pity on me and pulled the plug before I hit.
The crew unhooked me from the Virtual Sensor, the Performance Pod hissed open, and the sounds of the insane crowd flooded into my small sphere. My waving sent sections of girl-filled bleachers into writhing hysterics. How could I not love this sport? It always felt like it was designed just for me… I was going to miss it.
We lined up and gave the five dejected Brawlers a heartfelt “good game” hand clap. It was always so much easier to say that after a win. Especially, after a championship win. The coach, cheerleaders, and half the stadium flooded the field. Celebrations had begun: Championship hats were handed out to everyone, we foamed a few cans of beer, though I wasn’t allowed to drink any because I was not quite at the legal age to drink, and the Boom’s celebration blasted off.
I stood in the middle of the arena and lifted my hands in response to the chorus of my last name, “Rycard,” being chanted over and over. My jersey number was hoisted to the ceiling as the team’s theme song played before the trophy ceremony began. I knew that I would never have a moment like this again. I was leaving it all behind. People said I was crazy, but I was determined not to let my love of the game stop me. It was time to retire and enlist in the military.
“Rayce Rycard, ladies and gentleman,” Galy Gurtan said into the World Web One camera, “His last game as a Boomer. Retiring after five years at an age younger than most Laser Ballers are even allowed entrance into LBPL. They call him “Prodigy” for a reason, folks.
“Mr. Rycard, is it true that your decision to throw away this career that has made you, arguably, one of the most popular men on the planet, is in fact, a courting maneuver to get permission to marry your longtime girlfriend, Starshine Wyld? Rumor has it, her father, notorious militant aggressor, General Josef G. Wyld, will not allow you to be wed until you serve a term as a military officer?”
People were pushing all around, security held back the romping fans, and I moved in as close as I could to Galy’s microphone. She was trying to balance herself amidst the madness while maintaining the composure she so prided herself on. To most people it was innocuous, but I watched her face twitch with every Boom Fan that rubbed against her. She thought she was better than them, and she hated being touched by “the little people.” We had a long history. She spent her days as a talking head trying to discredit my performance at every turn. She often concocted stories about me using Performance Enhancing Drugs, said I bribed my way onto the team, and she had even implicated that I had ties to the mob. She treated her staff like crap, she used my career to springboard her own, and at no time had she ever said anything nice to me when the cameras were off. I had met a lot of two-faced people during my run as a Boomer, but she held the prize as the worst of them.
I wiped a bead of sweat and flicked it from dancing fingers. I laughed as she shuddered when the droplets landed on her tightly braided brown hair. “You know Galy… May I call you Galy?” She nodded discourteously. She preferred “Ms. Gurtan” or nothing. She hated it when people called her by her first name. “We’ve been doing this in the middle of this arena for the past five years. You’ve always had some kind of personal and inappropriate question about my life. You’ve never really seemed interested in the game itself, my performance, or how well I thought my team backed me up. They’ve deserved to be here on your fine station way more than I have. Yet that never seemed to happen.”
She looked worried, but she maintained her faked professionalism, “Your fans want to know about you, and who better than Galy Gurtan the girl who can get you behind the curtain, to inform them?”
“Right you are. And as a starter for the Bathesda Boom my contract dictated that I answer your pointed, invasive, and obnoxious questions.” She balked. My grin widened, “As of the zero there on that countdown clock, I no longer have a contract stating such.” I grabbed an almost emptied bottle filled with water and backwash from a nearby fan, tipped it over, and dumped it on her head. “So I believe my response to your inane line of questioning tonight is: No Comment.”
The crowd surged with cheers as I left her speechless to glare at the fans who were pointing and laughing. Her cameraman chuckled and high-fived me as I walked past him. She ran away screaming as a shower of soda, water, and beer rained down from celebrating onlookers who got in on the pouring-action I had started.
I headed toward the locker room where my girl was waiting to start my last civilian night on the town. Before I left the field, I turned, saluted the still screaming fans, and with a tear welling up in my eye, I left Boom Arena by taking off my “01” jersey. I handed it to a mother and her son waving at me from just above the player’s gate. She thanked me, and wrapped her kid in my shirt.
The crowd erupted once more with the loudest blast yet. Everybody wanted to be me, and honestly, how could I blame them? My life was nothing short of being enchanted.
CAPTAIN AGAIN
Departure day for the newly enlisted was typically a rather public affair involving train stations, crying family members, and soldier-processing that turned a man into just a number. A number to be berated by instructors, tortured with endless waiting, and prodded with painful medical procedures. All of that precedes the really fun process that breaks that man or woman down into the perfect Bathesdan fighting unit in the desert vacation spot we like to call “Bootcamp.”
That is not how my day went.
Star and I had been picked up just before lunch by General Wyld’s limousine. We were escorted to the top of the military spire where we dined in the officer’s lounge with some of the most decorated officers on Bathesda. I got a few nods of recognition, a couple of handshakes, and I was even asked to sign some autographs. Later, Star and I enjoyed a military-guided air tour of the city, before we finally landed at a small outpost just outside the local training complex located at the tip of the West Desert where Bootcamp was located.
The small outpost was well-furnished but without all the frills we enjoyed earlier at the Spire’s OC. Star and I were left alone to wait. We redeemed our dwindling time together to watch the sands of the West Desert blow plumes of sugardust by the window. The dancing sands held her distracted gaze. I was content to hold her hand and daydream about our future.
“You’ve been quiet today,” I said trying to stay in the here and now. “Are you going to be okay?”
She smiled. Her face warmed the cold military-steel décor of the room. “I will be. I’m just looking forward to the end of this. I’ll be so happy when we can finally move on with our lives.”
&nb
sp; “I think about it every day,” I assured her. “I’d retire from a thousand Laser Ball teams if it meant getting to spend every second of the rest of my life with you.”
She tossed her wheat blond hair and gave me a happy smile. I stole a kiss from freshly glossed lips that shimmered in the pink rose lip color she wore. We held each other until the moment was broken by General Wyld’s arrival.
His angled face was cool and hard. He stared at me as I held his daughter. For the first time he had no objection about our PDA. He nodded toward a young sergeant who had stayed in step with the general up until he got “the nod,” whatever that was for. The man scrambled off into the unknown recesses of the installation so that only the three of us remained. We took our cue from the silent stare that it was time to say our goodbyes. Starshine pecked me on the cheek, and I returned the sentiment. We hugged, and then she mouthed, “Good Luck.” A posted guard outside the room opened the door and ushered her out to the landing pad where the VTOL was waiting to take her back home.
