Warwick: Galactic Arena

by Michael James Ploof

  It took a hell of a lot of bullets, and I could feel my stump heating up, but we finally cleared that damned island.

  The drogan landed among the severed tentacles, flippers, mutilated alien fish faces, and other shit that made it look like someone had barfed up space sushi. I jumped off and almost lost my balance in the slop. I helped the girls down, but Val ignored my hand and got off by herself.

  I looked at where the other team had holed up. “They’ve got to get across the lake or they’re toast. It’s going to be a turkey shoot.”

  “What’s that mean?” Purshia looked cute as hell with her gun arm tucked against her cocked hip.

  “It probably means we’ll be able to kill them easily,” said Ella.

  “Exactly, but we need to watch the shore.”

  “Why did we even land?” Purshia asked. “We could have just flown in circles until the other team was killed.”

  “And what exactly happens then?” Val eyed us.

  “We’ll worry about that when it happens,” I said.

  A creature the size of a baby crocodile scampered up on shore, but unlike a crocodile, it wasn’t the least bit cute. I put three rounds in its head, but then three more emerged.

  Ella and Purshia took those out, and I waited for more to come after us. The water was choppy as hell, and the rain was still coming down in buckets. Visibility was getting worse by the second, and I wondered if the grays intended on drowning us all.

  More monsters emerged, and I switched out my gun arm for the mind control arm.

  “Wait!” I said before the girls could fire. I shot the biggest, ugliest son of a bitch I saw. The think looked like a much younger and much smaller version of Jabba the Hutt. But unlike that slovenly toad, this creature was quick and had two enormous pincers on the ends of its long arms.

  When the dart hit it, and my interface informed me the bond had been made, I turned the monster on the others around it. As Jabba tore the crazy alien creatures to pieces, I fired three more darts. They all hit a monster, and my interface flared. Pain shot through my head as I tried to mentally command them all.

  The drogan ripped into the approaching creatures, because I didn’t have the mental capacity to give them all different commands. With a little practice, maybe, but it was all I could do to keep them all from rebelling against us.

  Soon the shoreline had turned into an alien sea monster battle royal, and I wondered about the wisdom of wanting to hold the island.

  Maybe we should have waited the other team out, as Purshia had suggested, and let them die trying to cross to the island.

  When one of my monsters died, the pain in my head flared, and I dropped to a knee. Another died and was down on two knees, wailing.

  “Harry!” Purshia grabbed my shoulder while unloading on the big four-legged shark charging us.

  I helped her reduce his head to regurgitated tuna, then another of my beasts died, and the pain drove me to the ground and kept me there.

  I opened my eyes a moment later and realized I was being lifted to my feet by Val.

  “They are coming,” she said and pointed into the fog hanging over the water like an army of ghosts.

  “What? How?” I tried to make out what she was gesturing at, but between the gunfire from Ella and Purshia, and the roaring of the monsters, not to mention the migraine-like agony that made me want to crawl into a hole, I couldn’t focus on shit.

  “They must have found a nano gun like yours!” Ella said between bursts of gunfire.

  There was movement to my right. I took out a flying gremlin fish. I saw what Ella was talking about. Two players rode on the back of a giant turtle that looked like its mother had banged a porcupine. The thing was huge, at least ten feet wide, and it had mean, beady little eyes tucked deep in a face riddled with long sharp horns.

  One of the aliens aimed its nano arm at us, and a missile screamed out of it.

  I mentally commanded my creatures to leap in front of the projectile. I didn’t have time to choose one, I just told them all to do it.

  Jabba jumped in front of me about eight feet away, and the missile exploded on impact.

  The big slug’s chest exploded, sending gore in every direction, and I was blown back into Val. Ella and Purshia were already firing on the other team, but one of them had a nano shield, and he was using it to cover the missile launcher.

  Another missile was fired, and this time I knew we were doomed. But at the last moment, I was yanked into the air with the girls by the drogan, and the missile sailed under us.

  “Quick thinking,” said Val.

  “I didn’t tell it to do that,” I said in awe.

  The alien opponent with the missile launcher fired again, and I told the drogan to haul ass. Four wings beat as one as we sailed higher. The missile followed our every move, but this time Ella and Purshia were able to hit it, and the thing exploded a safe distance away.

  “What now?” said Val. “The other team is now the king of your hill.” She was next to me in one claw of the drogan, while Ella and Purshia were in the other.

  “We can’t get close enough to do much with those damned missiles.”

  “There’s nowhere else to put down,” she replied. “How long can this drogan fly with us all?”

  In response, the beast made a keening sound as he flew across the water.

  Val was right. The water now covered the entire arena except for the island in the middle. I knew we couldn’t put down on the water, and the island was a nightmare.

  The rain stopped, and the sun came out and sparkled on the lake.

  “What the hell?”

  The creatures were retreating back into the water. The grays were trying to force our hand. They weren’t going to let the sea monsters do our dirty work for us. If we wanted to win, we had to take that damned island. I relayed these thoughts to the women, and they agreed.

  “We should attack now before they get a foothold,” said Val.

  “They’ve got a foothold!” Ella replied.

  I commanded the drogan to fly higher.

  “What are you doing?” Purshia asked from her awkward perch in the clutches of the drogan.

  “We outran a missile once, and we destroyed the second one. We can do it again.”

  We dropped from the sky like fallen angels, our three gun barrels barking. Our red hot bullets left strafing trails all the way down to the island, and only the blue glow of our opponent’s nano shield could be seen far below. The stump on my arm got hot from the action and then it burned, but I kept right on firing. We needed to keep that missile-launching bastard down until we were in position.

  The drogan followed the triple stream of bullets straight down, and when it was time, I finally commanded him to pull up.

  “You ready?” I asked the girls.

  They screamed a combination of phrases, basically slang that meant, “Fuck yeah,” in their different languages.

  The drogan fanned his wings and let us go.

  We came in hot, and I hit at an odd angle, twisted my ankle, and ate dirt. I must have slid three feet on my face, and my legs kicked over my head and left me groaning on my back.

  Ella and Purshia landed more gracefully, because they were already shooting. As predicted, the missile launcher shot his next round at the drogan.

  I sprang up into a crouch, took careful aim with the mind control arm, and hit the dude with the missile launcher in the neck. Fire the next round at your feet! I mentally commanded.

  “Get down!” I told the women.

  I dropped to the ground as the alien aimed at his feet. The other one tried to stop him, but he was too slow.

  The explosion turned them both into writhing balls of flame, and they ran in different directions to the water. I was hit by shrapnel in the chest and left shoulder. Val chopped one of the fleeing aliens in two with her laser sword, and the lake offered the other one death in the form of writhing sea monsters. He was torn apart in seconds.

  Congratulations, War
rior!

  You have contributed to the death of two opponents!

  Nanobot Bonus: Enhanced Strength

  Increases Strength by 50%

  Duration: 1 hour

  Nanobot Bonus #2: Enhanced Speed

  Increases Speed by 50%

  Duration: 1 Hour

  “We did it!” said Purshia.

  “We’re the only ones left.” I struggled to hide the pain of my injuries.

  We glanced at each other nervously. I had my nano arm aimed at the ground, as did Ella and Purshia, and Val’s humming sword stood out straight at her side. We were in a tight circle, each an arm’s length away from each other.

  None of us breathed.

  Whoever got the jump on the others was most likely to live, but no one moved.

  All Val had to do was swing, and she could cut through me and Ella., Purshia could take out Val and Ella with a spray of bullets. I could do the same to her.

  But none of us moved.

  “Okay,” I said calmly. “I’m going to throw my nano arm on the ground, and the rest of you are going to do the same, then we’re going to raise our hands in victory. Got it?”

  They nodded, even Val.

  I raised my gun arm, gave it a twist, then tossed it down.

  To my surprise, Val was the first to take off her nano arm. The other two girls followed suit.

  A big smile inched its way across my face, and I put my good arm in the middle. To my delight, each girl stacked their good hands on mine.

  “On three, we scream Team Warwick. One, two, three!”

  “Team Warwick!” we sang in unison.

  Nothing happened.

  The wind died and the water was like glass.

  I cupped my good hand around my mouth and looked up. “Did you hear that? We won. We’re finished!”

  The drogan landed beside us and looked up, as did the girls.

  The pain in my shoulder was excruciating, and my ankle felt broken. I tapped on the gray skull icon and selected Nanobot Bonuses. I had four available that I hadn’t used: Animal Instinct, Hyper Healing, Enhanced Strength, and Enhanced Speed. I selected Hyper Healing, and a wave swept through me that took the worst of the pain away.

  “The missile-launcher nano arm wasn’t damaged.” Val showed me the cylinder.

  “I’ve got a feeling you’re going to want to hold on to that.”

  After about a minute of us all craning our necks to the sky, the hologram of the gray leader appeared and boy, did he look pissed.

  “Only four players remain. Why are you not fighting?” he demanded sternly.

  “Didn’t you hear? There’s a winner, and it’s Team Warwick, so if you don’t mind beaming us to the winner’s quarters and flying us the hell home, that would be great.”

  While he stared at me, a hand entered the hologram and touched his shoulder. He glanced off-camera, then returned to us with a devious twinkle in his eye.

  “There can be only one winner, and there are no teams. You will obey your masters and fight to the death!”

  “Bor zeck nosh!” Val screamed at Gray.

  “What she said,” I told him. “Which I’m pretty sure meant fuck you.”

  His eyes narrowed, and he raised his arms. “Release the drogans!”

  “Mount up!” I raced to the drogan with the girls close behind me. “Val, you’re in front. Use the missile arm.”

  I climbed on behind Val, and she enabled the new nano arm. Purshia got on behind me, and Ella took the rear.

  The drogan ran across the little island and leaped into the air. I commanded him to fly up, and as we climbed, the sky opened.

  Multicolored drogans dropped into view. Val fired a missile at the door. The explosion hit half a dozen drogans. Our mount roared and beat his powerful wings, and I steered him north so we could get some momentum going. We couldn’t fly directly up into the door with so many drogans filing out, but if we skimmed the dome and came in hot, we just might make it.

  Val focused her missiles on the hole in the sky as we climbed and circled. A few drogans got through and sped toward us. When they were in range, Ella, Purshia, and I unloaded on them with our nano guns. Our bullets tore through them, sending them spiraling into the water. Notifications popped up with every kill, but I ignored them and continued firing.

  We were gliding toward the sky opening. Drogans emerged by the dozens despite Val’s continued bombardment.

  “We’re going to punch a hole through that flock and push through the door!” I bellowed.

  “Glory or death!” Val cried and launched another missile.

  Ella and Purshia let out a war cry, and I steered our drogan into a quick dive. When we had gained maximum speed, I directed the beast upward.

  “The door is closing!” Val yelled back at me.

  “I see it!”

  My gun chattered, missiles exploded, and we were showered in drogan gore.

  I roared as we sped toward the hole, which were slowly closing. Drogans came at us, but they ate lead as we unloaded in their faces. One clipped us, but our mount recovered.

  Val released a final missile, and the drogans clogging the bay doors exploded.

  “Hold on!” I screamed and grabbed our drogan’s feathers with both hands.

  The door were now only ten feet wide.

  The drogan twisted and tucked its wings, and by some miracle, we shot through the opening.

  A gray metal ceiling came out of nowhere, and my drogan swerved right and leveled out.

  We were in a circular loading bay about two hundred feet wide. Cages full of drogans and other winged beasts lined the curved outer walls, and other beasts were being led with glowing chains by tall grays. They stopped and stared at us dumbly.

  Four tunnels led out of the loading bay, but I didn’t go down any of them yet.

  “Shoot the cage locks!” I yelled and steered the drogan in a wide arch that brought us to within twenty feet of the cages.

  Val launched a missile at the grays by the door, and Ella, Purshia, and I blasted the locks as we sped by.

  Cages sprang open, and soon the loading bay was swarming with creatures. They didn’t come after us. They attacked their masters, viciously tearing the grays apart limb by limb.

  An alarm sounded, and warning lights flashed.

  “Now what?” Val asked between missile strikes.

  “Now we find a ship,” said Ella. “Take the next tunnel.”

  It soon branched, but the drogan seemed to know where he was going, because he turned right, then left at the end of the next corridor, flying over the heads of three startled grays.

  The beast continued toward a closed door, and I had a feeling he wasn’t going to stop.

  “Take out the door!” I screamed.

  Val fired a missile, blowing it off its hinges. We flew through fire and smoke, and to my surprise and utter delight, we emerged in a stadium. There was a big dome in the center that depicted a real-time model of the flooded arena we’d just escaped. Dozens of giant screens hung from the ceiling, each offering a different view of the battleground. Hundreds of grays had been sitting in the stadium, watching the show, but now they were screaming and scrambling for the exits.

  Ella and Purshia yelled curses at the grays and unloaded on their fleeing asses. The drogan was out for revenge, and he snatched up the terrified aliens and tore off heads. Dozens of other drogans erupted into the stadium through the door we had blown apart, and soon they were exacting revenge as well.

  Most of the grays were fleeing toward a wide tunnel, and I steered the drogan toward it. We sped down the tunnel, hung a right, and exited into a bay larger than a football field. There were dozens of ships there, and at the end, I saw space beyond a softly glowing energy shield.

  “That one!” Purshia tapped my shoulder urgently and pointed at an arrow-shaped silver ship the size of a 747.

  I landed the drogan beside the ship, and we hopped off and raced toward it.

  “Why this one?” I asked.


  “It’s one of my people’s ships, and I can fly it!” she said excitedly. “The grays must have stolen it.”

  A big bay door opened in back, and a ramp slowly extended. The girls ran up it, but I stopped when I heard a mewling sound behind me. The drogan was looking at me longingly.

  “Do you want to come with us?”

  The drogan excitedly tossed its head like a happy dog, and I swear it smiled.

  “Come on then, but don’t break anything.”

  I ran up the ramp, and the drogan followed. Luckily the bay was huge, and he had plenty of headroom.

  “What’s that thing doing in here?” Val asked.

  “He’s part of Team Warwick.”

  We hurried down a hall, past what looked like a common room, and continued to the bridge. There were seven seats placed in a half circle, facing a big screen. Purshia was already at the helm.

  “Strap in,” she said and tapped on a monitor.

  I took the seat beside her and buckled up. The control panel in front of me was translated by the nanobots in my head, and I realized I was in a gunner chair.

  An explosion rocked the ship, and Purshia cursed. “Bringing up the shields.”

  “What do you need us to do?” I asked.

  “You’re all in gunner chairs, so shoot stuff!”

  I grabbed two joysticks, and the screen directly in front of me activated, offering a view from the back of the ship. Robots marched toward us, and they had big guns.

  I centered the crosshairs on them, pulled the trigger on the right joystick, and laser rounds erupted.

  Purshia got the ship off the floor and steered us toward the glowing shield separating the bay from the vacuum of space. We gained speed quickly and flew down the runway. Robots on both sides fired at us, but the shields held, and we shot out the door like a bullet.

  My gunner camera showed me what we were escaping from, and I let out a low whistle. “Will you look at that thing?”

  The space station was a perfect circle that glowed light blue. Behind it was a massive gas giant that resembled a blue Jupiter. I turned my attention to the big main screen, and the stars took my breath away.