Warwick: Galactic Arena

by Michael James Ploof

  “Level out!” I urged, and he let out a tortured cry. “Level out or we’re both dead!” I screamed as we got dangerously close to the craggy outcropping of stone on the eastern ridge.

  With a determined squawk, he opened his colorful wings and pumped them furiously. We finally leveled out, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

  If being electrocuted wasn’t enough, gunfire erupted from the ridge.

  “Evasive maneuvers!” I yelled over the howling wind, and I scoured the broken terrain for the shooter.

  Movement below caught my eye as we soared past tall stone formations. I shifted on his back so I could see over his right side and spotted a long-limbed purple creature on all fours, vaulting across the rocks with the speed of a jaguar.

  “Turn left,” I said to my mount when I saw the sleek purple alien racing toward a ledge above us. The crazy bastard was going to try and jump to get to us, and I had no idea if he could do it.

  Drodog banked left when the purple alien leapt off the cliff, and for a moment I lost sight of it. When I saw it again, I was alarmed at how close the thing actually came. It missed us and fell to the ground as we sailed away, but then it aimed a nano arm at us and fired.

  I expected bullets, maybe bombs or missiles, but I didn’t expect a grappling hook to shoot out of it, and that’s exactly what happened.

  “Higher!” I commanded Drodog, but we were too slow, and a moment later he let out a howl of pain.

  The grappling hook was embedded in his left thigh. At the end of the long line was the purple alien, and he was reeling himself in with the nano arm.

  I didn’t even have a chance to instruct Drodog to take evasive maneuvers before the purple bastard was on the beast’s back. Big hooked claws protruded from his three-toed feet, and they dug into Drodog’s back like clamps.

  He had long legs and knees that bent backward like a grasshopper’s, and his exoskeleton had a hard, shiny carapace. The alien had big bug eyes and a face that only a science teacher could love. A nano arm cylinder was strapped to his belt, which was the only thing he wore.

  “Tell your gods that Crik’Shaw’Eeek sent you,” he said in a voice that sounded like a thousand crickets.

  I pulled my sidearm and turned in my seat, and he switched out his nano arm for the one on his belt in about two seconds flat. I fired two rounds, but Drodog wasn’t flying steady.

  The alien’s mouth twisted in a rictus that suggested he was grinning as a gun barrel grew out of his nano arm.

  “Barrel-roll right!” I screamed as bullets shrieked with a metallic hiss.

  Drodog heeded my command, and I held on for dear life, hugging and squeezing the beast’s back with all my strength. We went around in a tight barrel-roll as bullets chattered out of the alien’s gun arm.

  Hot pain shot through my left thigh, and a bullet ricocheted off my nano arm. Three loud thuds hit Drodog, and he screeched in agony as he rolled again.

  “Get the fuck off my mount!” I screamed and fired five more rounds.

  Three of my bullets punched holes in the alien’s carapace, and one of his red hot rounds cut across my cheekbone, barely missing my eye.

  Drodog was flailing so badly that neither of us could get off a clear shot, but more than one of the alien’s stray bullets hit the drogan, and my fury grew with every shot that struck his body.

  “Land, Drodog! Land in the meadow.”

  The drogan leveled out, and I took aim at the purple alien again as he leapt at me across Drodog’s back. I fired a shot that took the corner of his head off, and he landed behind me, dead.

  Congratulations, Warrio—

  I swiped the notification aside. I’d learn what my reward for killing purple dude was later.

  If I survived the landing.

  Drodog was barely keeping his shit together as we glided toward the forest. We weren’t going to make it to the meadow, and I realized my mount was going to lose consciousness at any minute.

  Once that happened, I was screwed.

  I balanced the dead alien behind me and hurriedly detached my mind control nano arm, then grabbed the cylinder on his belt and popped it on my stump.

  Congratulations, Warrior!

  You have discovered grappling hook nano arm!

  Activate with a thought.

  Yeah yeah, I know!

  I snatched the dead alien’s other nano cylinder moments before we crashed through the canopy. A big tree branch slapped the corpse right off the back of Drodog. My mount let out a mewling cry and went limp, and we swerved toward a huge tree with wicked looking thorns on it the size of swords.

  I pointed the new nano arm at the tallest branches of a nearby tree, fired, and prayed to Lady Luck. Then I hopped off Drodog’s back as he slammed into the spiked tree.

  I didn’t look. I couldn’t have even if I’d wanted to.

  The line became taut, and I was snapped to the side. Then I was swinging through the trees like a drunken Tarzan, eating a face full of leaves and bugs in the process.

  I hit a tree, but luckily it wasn’t a spiked variety.

  The wind was knocked out of me nonetheless, and I hung from my nano arm thirty feet above the forest floor. I glanced around to see if anything or anyone was around. I was a sitting duck up there, and I felt naked as hell.

  I willed the line to slowly let out, and I was lowered gently to the ground.

  I thought it was going to be tricky reeling in the line without having it fall on my head or take a bunch of branches down with it, so I backed up a good twenty feet and willed it to retract. To my surprise, the thin metal line glowed bright orange and simply disappeared.

  An icon flashed on my interface that told me the hook was ready to deploy again.

  “That’s cool.” I turned my attention to my surroundings.

  That’s when I heard a low growl behind me.

  I broke into a sprint and fired the grappling hook at the treetops. Claws ripped through the back of my shirt as the line yanked me forward, and the next thing I knew, I was flying through the air toward a clump of trees with the terrible cry of an apex predator at my back.

  I disengaged the line before I smashed into the trees, and the loss of an anchor pitched me into a patch of red ferns. Luckily I nailed the landing, rolled, and popped up into a crouch.

  The predator tore across the forest, ricocheting off trees and ripping up big chunks of mossy earth. As calmly and quickly as I could, I disengaged the grappling hook arm and replaced it with my mind control nano arm.

  I fired a single dart, which took the beast right in the snout as it lunged with intent to devour me.

  “Stop!” I screamed, and miraculously it stopped less than six inches away with its mouth wide open.

  “Back up.”

  The apex predator backed up three steps and stared at me. Low in its throat was the sound of a diesel engine from hell.

  “Don’t move,” I said as I rose to my feet.

  I checked my surroundings, never letting the beast out of my sight. It didn’t move a muscle as I walked around it, and I didn’t see anything in the forest. With all the crazy nano arms and other tech out there, however, I knew it wasn’t a good idea to remain idle in a strange place.

  I had landed a few miles from the western ridge, where camp was, and I knew it would be a son of a bitch trying to hike there. If I ran into someone else’s camp, I would be in a bad way. Besides, I was injured. My cheek burned like a bastard, and the wound was bleeding pretty bad. The other bullet had gone straight through the leg muscle, sparing the bone, but it hurt about a hundred times worse than my cheek. Surprisingly, it wasn’t bleeding. It seemed the red hot rounds had cauterized the wound.

  But I was hurting, I needed to get back to camp, and I had to do it fast.

  I was about to climb on the predator’s back when I remembered the notification I had ignored after killing the purple dude. With a few taps and a swipe, I found it in my interface.

  Congratulations, Warrior!

 
You have defeated another opponent!

  Nanobot Bonus: Enhanced Strength

  Duration: 1 Earth Hour

  Would you like to use NOW or LATER?

  Enhanced strength would most definitely come in handy.

  I tapped LATER and climbed up on the back of the apex predator.

  I switched out the mind control nano arm for the purple alien’s gun arm.

  Congratulations, Warrior!

  You’ve discovered a machine gun nano arm!

  Activate with a thought.

  I did just that, and two stubby gun barrels grew between my metal knuckles like Wolverine’s blades.

  Not too shabby.

  I’d lost Drodog, but I’d gained two new nano arms and a new nanobot bonus. Now my team had six nano arms, two for each of us. I’d also learned that if you touched the heavens, you would be electrocuted.

  “All right, you ugly bastard,” I said to the apex predator as I cautiously climbed on its back. “Let’s get moving—that way.”

  I pointed west, and the beast obediently trotted through the forest.

  It was a lot harder to get comfortable on the scaly predator’s back than it had been on Drodog, and I had that scorpion tail behind me the whole time, but it was better than walking.

  We emerged from the forest without incident, and the beast easily scaled the high bluffs and ridges leading to camp.

  “Harry!” Purshia cried when I approached.

  I couldn’t see her, but then a moment later she morphed into existence in the crook of a tree beside our camp.

  “Hey, Purshia,” I said and slid off the beast’s back.

  She ran into my arms and gave me a big hug and a kiss, and Ella appeared a moment later with a big smile on her face. When she saw the blood on my pantleg and the gash across my cheek, she hurried a little faster and her smile became a frown.

  “You’re hurt.” She took my hand.

  “Nothing major.”

  “Let me get you bandaged up,” she said, and the two women helped me to the camp.

  “Keep a lookout!” I commanded the predator. “If anything comes around, eat the bastard.”

  The beast’s eyes widened, and it sniffed the air and growling menacingly at the world.

  The girls sat me down on the blanket and took off my boots. Then they helped me out of my cargo pants.

  “What happened out there?” Ella asked, inspecting my thigh.

  “Where’s Drodog?” Purshia asked hesitantly, like she knew the answer but didn’t want to hear it.

  I told them about the sky being electrified and how the purple alien asshole had caused us to crash and nearly killed me. They were bummed about Drodog but excited to learn I had picked up two more nano arms.

  “So not a complete loss.” I showed them the new cannisters. “We’re just going to have to figure out a way to get a new drogan.”

  “You still want to try to fly out of here?” Purshia asked.

  “As soon as possible. Unless you two have thought up a better way to escape.”

  They shook their heads.

  “It’s going to work,” I said. “It’s got to.”

  “Why haven’t you enabled your enhanced healing nanobot bonus?” Ella asked as Purshia went to the back wall to get the first aid supplies.

  “I might need it for something more serious,” I said. “Just patch me up the old fashioned way for now.”

  “But the leg, won’t it slow you down?”

  “It might, but it’s not worth using it yet.”

  She took the antibacterial spray from Purshia. “But this is going to hurt.”

  “Do you know what that thing does?” I asked Purshia as she inspected a small gun from the first aid kit that looked like it was for piercing ears.

  “More or less,” she said with a feline grin.

  Ella sprayed disinfectant on my gunshot wound, and I nearly hit the roof.

  “Faaauuuck!” I howled. “Warn me next time you are about to do that.”

  “I told you it was going to hurt.”

  Purshia handed her the little gun, and Ella rubbed salve around the edges of my wound.

  Instantly a cool sensation washed over the area, and the pain went away.

  “Holy shit,” I said. “That stuff is amazing. How long does it last?”

  Ella read the side of the tube, which must have appeared to her in her own language. “About an hour.”

  Purshia dabbed the cut across my cheekbone with a soft cloth and then held it there while Ella pinched the gunshot wound and put the piercing gun thing against it.

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” I asked.

  She pulled the trigger.

  There was a small metallic click, then a buzz followed by tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

  She pulled the gun away to reveal a neat little line of stitches, five in all.

  “That was easy enough,” I said.

  “Let me take care of this gash on his cheek before you do the back of his leg, Ella,” said Purshia.

  She cleaned the area, applied the numbing ointment, then pressed the gun against the wound.

  I had no mirror, so I had to trust it looked okay.

  I rolled over so Ella could stitch up the exit wound, and by the time it was all done, it was already midday.

  “I have an idea,” said Purshia while she and Ella were putting away the first aid supplies.

  “What?”

  “You said the sky is electrified, so what if we short it out and try to break through?”

  “That might work, but how in the hell are we going to do that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe we could jab it with a big metal rod or something.”

  “Are you volunteering for that job?”

  “I guess it’s stupid,” she said with a downward glance.

  “A little bit,” Ella told her.

  “It’s a good idea, we just have don’t have the resources,” I said. “And the grays have some crazy tech. They’ve probably thought about that scenario.”

  “Then they would have thought about someone flying out as well,” said Purshia.

  She had a point there.

  “What if there’s a bunch of guns aimed at the door?” Ella added.

  “I don’t know the answer to that,” I said. “But I think the door is our best shot. We’ve got some pretty decent firepower, and we’ll have a small flock of drogans with us if I have my way.”

  We discussed it for a while, but we couldn’t think of anything better than a suicide run through the door in the sky.

  The girls started a fire and boiled three food pouches, which would be the last meal for us until morning. There were only three meals left, and there hadn’t been any supply crates for a while. We would have to stretch the last three as far as we could.

  We spent the rest of the day watching for drogans. My plan depended on us getting another one, but we waited for hours and didn’t see any.

  Strangely, we saw no sign of any of the other players either. No fires, no smoke, no gunshots, and no one was announced dead all afternoon.

  “I think the other players are definitely teaming up,” I said. “There’s what, nine players left, six others besides us? I think they’re lying in wait for us to come to them.”

  “Let them wait,” said Ella.

  It was nearing sundown, and she had that look in her eye.

  “Well,” I said with a sly grin. “I guess we should rest up a bit and be ready for whatever the night brings.”

  “Perhaps the drogans are nocturnal by nature,” Purshia suggested. “If so, we’ll have a better chance at seeing them tonight.”

  We were all thinking the same thing: We were most likely going to die, so why not enjoy another shag first?

  We had an apex predator on lookout, and I still had the four small video feeds floating at the top of my interface. There was no way anyone was going to surprise us.

  I followed the women’s cute asses under the ledge, thinking I was g
oing to score, but then I heard the distinct cry of a drogan.

  We ran out to the ledge and saw the magnificent beast flying through the hills to the south. The drogan had pink and purple feathers, and its beautiful plume of tail feathers streamed behind it, nearly as long as the creature’s body. It let out another cry and flew toward us.

  “It’s so beautiful,” said Purshia.

  “It’s also our ticket out of here.” I watched it fly over the hills and reattached the mind control nano arm.

  “How close does it have to be to hit it with the mind control dart?” Ella asked.

  “The range is like one hundred yards,” I said. “We need to get its attention.”

  We climbed up to the ridge above our camp and ran along it, jumping up and down and waving our arms. I thought the drogan must have been able to see us, but it didn’t change course or try to come closer.

  “Hey, drogan!” I yelled. “Over here!”

  It flew past us, then turned and circled back. I took careful aim with the mind control arm and waited for my targeting system to produce a green circle around the creature, but it didn’t come close enough.

  “Damn it!” I cursed as it continued to circle just out of range.

  “We need to get closer,” said Purshia.

  “It’s flying away!” Ella yelled and pointed.

  The drogan came out of its turn and flew back the way it had come.

  “Predator, come to me!” I yelled toward camp.

  The beast rushed over like an overzealous servant and skidded to a stop beside us.

  “Get on,” I told the girls as I climbed up on the back of the fifteen foot tall dino-monster

  The girls scrambled up behind me, and I ordered it to follow the drogan.

  We held on for dear life as the beast raced along the ridge. Purshia and Ella screamed and laughed when the predator leaped over twenty feet from one boulder to another. Had it not been for our incredibly strong nano arms, I don’t know if we would have been able to hold on.