“I had to make decisions for my sanity. You understand, right? I gave up everything. My birth right and those I loved, to protect them.”
Codi nodded, then shook his head.
“Glaw, I wish I was big and strong like you. I could smash all my enemies whenever I please.”
“Beware of what you wish for, kid.”
“Huh?”
“Big and strong comes with some major disadvantages.”
“Like what?”
“The bigger you are, the bigger the target on your back,” Glaw said. “You think I can go unnoticed like you and just sneak out of here anytime I like? No way. I’m a walking target, dude. When I die, I want to come back as a hundred pound short ass like my new favorite buddy.”
“I couldn’t leave... you.”
“Sure you can. I’m your decoy. Your ticket out of here. Use me.”
“But I don’t want to lose everybody I--”
“You’re an honorary Ursu. An Ursu does whatever he must. And if that means sneaking out of here, I say go for it.”
“You ain’t met my sister, Bron. She spies on me like a hawk.”
“So take her with you.”
“Bron’s a major downer. Hates my guts.”
“How come?”
Codi avoided Glaw’s eyes and sighed.
“Better out than in, kid...”
Codi’s eyes filled with angry tears. “I... killed... my parents.”
Glaw blinked hard.
“OK, kid, and here I was thinking she caught you wearing her heels,” Glaw said, “or eating her makeup... not that I’ve ever actually... anyway, I guess you had your reasons.”
“I didn’t mean to kill them, but it’s all my fault they’re dead and Bron hates me for it.”
Glaw patted a paw against Codi’s shoulder.
“She’ll come around, Codi.”
Codi shrugged off Glaw’s paw. “Like your family did?”
“Huh?”
“Well, it’s obvious all the other Ursu hate you. So, I guess you did something major to piss them off.”
“For a human you’re not as dumb as you look, are you?”
“So?”
“Maybe me and my people got some issues to work through,” Glaw said and looked up through the closing roof at the setting suns. “But where there’s sunshine, there’s hope.”
“Sure, Glaw, when I’m dead.”
“Looks like we won’t have long to wait, kid.”
The eye of the roof finally shut tight, plunging them into darkness. A howling rose up from the cages beneath the arena floor. Dax imagined the sounds were the ghosts of the dead calling his name.
Spotlights picked out each of the prisoners.
Dax felt a rush of adrenalin through his blood stream. His breathing quickened. He suddenly felt more alert. At last, a chance to do something. Maybe even find redemption.
When finally, Dax and Fyre were alone, he turned to her. “What did you do to me?”
“When?”
“Back in the life-pod,” he said. “I was drowning and you... did something.”
“I saved your life, Zen Dax.”
He shrugged. “You may have saved me from drowning.” He pulled back the sleeve of his body suit and held up the pulsing web-like blue patchwork of tiny veins in a star pattern. “But what else did you do to me?”
She sighed.
“We call it Macula Sanguinis,” she said. “Blood Mark.”
“Does this explain why I can hear?” He instantly flt ashamed of the rising madness within. “Things.”
“What things?”
A violent piercing trumpet note cut through the crowd’s chatter. Dax felt a hundred thousand heart beats quicken.
“Dax, it’s important you tell me what you are experiencing,” Fyre said.
Her pupils dilated. Her tongue flickered over her lower lip. He sensed her heart beat quicken.
“You know exactly what I’m feeling.”
He turned away in disgust and watched the spotlights cross to a box balcony jutting out from the upper lip of the perimeter wall. Spotlights criss-crossed and revealed the Vanguard justices.
Chief Justice Meuric stood. She cleared her throat. Her voice resounded around the arena.
“The accused are divided into factions,” Chief Justice Meuric said. “Each faction shall nominate a champion.”
“A champion for what?” Dax shouted out.
“A duel to the death.”
“And what if we refuse to play your sick games?”
“Commander Iago, step forward?”
At the entrance of the main tunnel, a Vanguard Legionnaire commander in crimson and black armor walked to the center of the arena, flanked by two dozen legionnaires.
The commander bowed before the Justices.
A group of Delta marines jeered.
Dax felt a sense of relief that some had survived. He recognized Private Clarence Thor laughing with another private, Buck Yale.
“Nice cape, my man,” Thor said to the Vanguard commander. “Did your mother make it for you?”
“Did you make it out of one of your skirts?” Yale shouted.
The Commander and his Legionnaires ignored the Delta bravado.
Dax understood the bravado of their fear and frustration, but it wasn’t helping matters.
Chief Justice Meuric glanced at the Legionnaire’s commander. “Make an example, Commander Iago.”
“As you wish, Chief Justice.”
Commander Iago reached under his cloak and spun around. His outstretched arm lifted above his head and with sudden force dropped. The flaming tentacles of a Cat o’light tails whipped through the air and spun around the neck of Delta marine, Yale.
With one sudden jerk of Iago’s arm, the Cat o’light tails severed Yale’s head.
The head rolled to Dax’s feet.
Yale’s seared open, wide eyes stared up at Dax. Dax looked away, but felt Yale’s eyes follow him.
How many more before this is over?
“Is there a need to make a further example?” Chief Justice Meuric said.
Dax felt thousands of eyes burning into his mind. He lowered his head and slowly shook it from side to side.
CHAPTER 62 - RIVAL FACTIONS
Even as Dax watched the others grapple with comprehension, his eyes met Blaidd and he knew this was what the days of his life without his wife and son had been leading to. Dax imagined what all those back on Mars he’d left behind, tortured and murdered by Blaidd, would say to him now. They burn with desire for vengeance.
“A duel to the death strategically undermines our chances of uniting,” Blok said, “and getting out of here, Commander.”
He nodded.
“Is this the Vanguard idea of civilization?” Dax shouted at the audience. “To revert back to early Earth history of barbaric ritual slaughter?”
The crowded jeered him.
Chief Justice Meuric ignored Dax.
“What if we refuse,” Dax shouted.
“Then all prisoners shall be executed,” Chief Justice Meuric said.
Blaidd came over and shook his head with disgust. “What a waste.”
Dax blinked. “Blaidd, are we actually in agreement about something?”
Blaidd seemed repulsed at the idea. “I think not, human,” Blaidd said.
Fyre smiled at Dax as if she were pitying a child struggling with the lessons of history.
“You would rather play toy soldier, like all humans,” she said. “All Vanguard accept this method.”
“Even you? What happened to the practice of reasoned debate?” asked Dax.
“What happens when your debates are exhausted?” Fyre asked. “In your society war is the only remaining option. Here, it is more sophisticated. Better to judge conflicts that hold the balance of billions of lives, with the sacrifice of a few. This way we avoid the slaughter of billions.”
Glaw nodded. “Back home we use a similar set up. We use it for sport. I miss the Monday
night games on local Q-NET. Never considered it would be used to avoid war. Where’s the fun in that? What a waste!”
“I agree,” said Blaidd.
“Oh, man,” Glaw said, “never thought I’d live to see the day I’d be agreeing with a Lupos on anything.”
“Fyre, your version of civilization denies the victor,” Blaidd said. “The spoils of the scavenger hunt bring cohesion to Lupos society. This Colosseum of Death denies us our birth right! Denying us the spoils of war is a crime. Most unsatisfactory!”
Glaw wrapped a giant arm of fur and muscle around Dax.
“Buddy,” Glaw said, “all this noble talk makes the fur stand up on the back of my neck. It’s time to let the grownups do the bear talk.”
“What did you have in mind, Glaw?” Dax asked.
“You ever heard the second best joke in the galaxy?” Glaw asked.
“Jokes?” Myf said. “Is that all you can come up with?”
“Time is up,” Chief Justice Meuric said. “Humans and Lupos shall announce their champions.”
Blaidd stepped forward. “I shall fight for Lupos honor.”
Sergeant Van Cleef stepped forward. He caught Dax’s eye. “With your permission, Commander, I’d like to give them Lupos long overdue payback.”
“Negative, Sergeant,” Dax said. “If anyone fights, I will.”
CHAPTER 63 - DUEL OF DEATH
Like a needle stabbing at the eye of the roof, a white marble pillar with long blood-red veins, rose up from the center of the Colosseum.
It towered above one and all. Chief Justice Meuric stood.
“It is time,” she shouted and her voice carried to the farthest seats.
She raised her arms above her head and clapped once. The force of her hands seemed to resonate like distant approaching thunder rolling across the sky and into the Colosseum.
“Neat trick,” Dax whispered to himself.
Flood lights illuminated the circumference of the Colosseum and high up on the rampart where a thousand Vanguard archers dipped arrow heads in bowls of liquid fire. They fitted the burning arrows to their bows and aimed at the pillar. They turned their heads to Chief Justice Meuric.
She clapped her hands once more. And once more the sound of thunder rolled around the vast Colosseum like a wave through the spectators.
The crown of the pillar split open. A giant steel wheel rose up from the crown. Its steel spokes, sharpened to a point, glinted in the dusty orange light of the bowls of fire.
The wheel straddled a vast iron ‘V’ shape. It supported an array of iron circles within circles. And at the center of the smallest circle a huge dented, scratched, rusting iron armor head stared out across the Colosseum. The upper and lower jaws parted.
For Dax, the empty eye sockets, scarred and preserved in dried blood, reflected the emptiness of the abyss swirling in his soul. His eyes fixated on the giant iron horn fixed to the center of the forehead. He pulled back his gaze, but eventually yielded to his fascination for the creature.
What is it? Then he realized its shape was that of a Tyrannosaurus Rex’s head.
“Behold the Wheel of Vanguard,” Meuric said. “As it turns, death conquers life, and life is reborn through death. On and on the wheel spins. Nothing, and no one can stop it. Let the Vanguard Games begin.”
The Wheel of Vanguard slowly turned in the air.
A thousand flaming arrows sailed through the air. They hit their target. Puncturing the eyes of the armor head.
They pierced the iron eye sockets, clattered against the iron ‘V’, and set the circles of iron alight with ravenous flames.
Dax felt those arrows ram hard and deep into his soul. He felt the flames incinerating his mind. His shaking hands seemed to burn with regret, rage, and revulsion.
The spectators erupted into roars of ecstasy. Their howls seemed like hell-hounds in the night, hungry for his blood and hunting his soul.
A sea of tiny lights flickered to life inside each of the dozens of dark tunnels. They grew larger as hundreds of Vanguard legionnaires appeared at the entrances holding flaming Makhairas. They surrounded the factions and herded them away from Dax and Blaidd. Forcing them into small circles.
Another group of legionnaires shoved Dax and Blaidd into the center of the arena.
The ground about them jolted and trembled. Dax stumbled backwards from the shock as a circular platform lifted up from beneath their feet.
“You have until completion of full turn of the Wheel of Vanguard,” Meuric said to Dax and Blaidd. “If one of you has not died by then, both of you shall die.”
Blaidd leapt at Dax. Knocking him onto his back. Dax felt Blaidd’s claws dig deep into his neck. Blaidd’s snarling jaws pressed forward. His claws squeezed tight around Dax’s throat.
As Dax began to choke he pummeled his fists into Blaidd’s ribs. The Lupos smiled and squeezed harder.
“Your human breath stinks with the treachery of your people, Dax. Rotten to the core of your soul. I soil my hands on the filth that is your race,” Blaidd growled. “The stench of humanity taints my claws. You are vermin. I am your eradicator. I am your pest controller, Zen Dax.”
Dax felt his head snap back over the edge of the rising platform. They seemed to be more than fifty feet in the air now. Dax felt his vision cloud over. His eyes began to roll back into his head. He felt his fists fall away.
“Not yet,” Blaidd growled. “I owe you for Mars. I’ve waited an eternity to seek vengeance against the humiliation you brought on me. Your death will not be quick. I want you to look into my eyes and see your life crushed by hopelessness before you die.”
Dax felt the claws ease off slightly. He felt a level of pain just below unbearable. Not enough to force him to black out. He opened his eyes and spat in Blaidd’s face.
“The vermin’s last animal instinct of defiance before death,” Blaidd said. “Was it all worth it? Your pathetic attempt to save an empty pleasure vessel? Your fruitless alliance with the Vanguard woman? What does it all mean now, Zen Dax?”
As the pressure inside Dax’s head grew immense, a stream of blood gushed from his nostrils and onto his lips.
“My spies tell me you’re a loner,” Blaidd snarled. “An oddball. A ghost of a man since the Vanguard killed your family. All you have is your career and self-respect. Before you die, tell me why you risk it all for an alliance with the Vanguard rebel woman.”
Dax tasted his own blood. He felt a rush of energy flooding into his brain. A feeling of growing clarity. He stared up into the overwhelming strength and dominance of the Lupos. Dax stared back with defiance.
“I know that look,” Blaidd said. “The same one as your interrogation back on Mars.”
Dax felt drawn deeper into Blaidd’s eyes. He felt himself searching. But he wasn’t yet sure for what.
“My spies tell me you sacrificed the crew of the Defiant to search the ashes of Fort Armstrong for your family,” Blaidd said. “Can you not accept their deaths? Is that it?”
Blaidd’s eyes widened.
“Yes, that’s it,” Blaidd said. “You think they’re alive. The Vanguard woman is helping you. That’s it, isn’t it? But why is she helping you?”
Dax couldn’t speak, even if he wanted to.
“When I’m done with you,” Blaidd snarled, “I’ll skin Fyre Von Rha alive until she bleeds the truth.”
Dax felt himself slip and fall from Blaidd’s eyes. His vision clung to the necklace of skulls.
Blaidd laughed. He followed Dax’s eyes.
“Do you remember what I told you on Mars?” Blaidd said. “No? I told you I’d build a wall around Mars. A wall made of the skulls of those who defied Lupos. I told you I’d find your family, gut them and mount them on my trophy wall. Do you remember? Die knowing I shall find your family.”
Dax felt a connection to the skulls. The heads of those butchered by Blaidd. Dax felt as if he could reach out and touch their torment and terror. Not with his hands. But with his mind.
Dax could feel their last moments of life. Their rage. Giving him energy. Strength.
Blaidd opened his jaws. “A death bite is too good for vermin,” Blaidd roared. “I shall tear out your throat and watch the Vanguard scum fall to their knees as they drink your blood.”
Dax felt Blaidd’s jaws close over his throat.
CHAPTER 64 - DEATH BITE
Blaidd’s fangs tore at Dax’s throat. He pulled back a moment. Blood dripped from his jaws. His eyes gloated with victory.
He turned to the crowd. “Feast, you Vanguard scum,” Blaidd roared. “Do not deny your blood lust. Feast.”
He locked his gaze with Chief Justice Meuric.
The justice signaled to her Legionnaires. Commander Iago stood behind her.
Iago raised a hand and a thousand Vanguard legionnaires appeared on the top of the wall’s balustrade. They were archers. They drew arrows that instantly ignited on the bow.
Iago leapt from the balcony and landed on the platform. He drew his Falcata and ignited it.
“Deliver the death bite, Lupos,” Iago said. “Or you and your people shall die.”
Blaidd nodded. He turned to Dax.
Dax looked into Blaidd’s eyes once more. This time his mind shot through Blaidd’s wall of dominance like an indestructible, unstoppable arrow. He pierced Blaidd’s mind and saw for the first time, the truth of his nemesis.
Dax heard the ghosts of the slain. Howling, mournful cries trapped behind a high wall in Blaidd’s mind. With his mind, Dax reached out and thrust deep at the wall. It shook and crumbled.
Blaidd pulled away. Still holding Dax by the neck with trembling hands, he stared at the human. He shook his head in what seemed confusion.
“What did you do to me?” Blaidd said.
Dax smiled. His mind thrust out once again. This time he slammed into that wall inside Blaidd’s mind like a missile.
Punching a huge hole. Unleashing the forgotten. The suppressed. The denied. The butchered. The fallen.
They swept through the hole in the wall of Blaidd’s mind.
Blaidd jerked upright. His grip on Dax faltered.
Dax broke the hold on his neck.
Blaidd clawed at his own head and roared with pain. Dax kicked out at Blaidd and drove a boot into his chest.
Valiant (Jurassic War Universe Book 1) Page 30
