“If you want to see me, keep one eye on a viewing screen. If you want to talk, cheer loud,” Galia smiled at her sister, pushing her. Elaine stumbled back against the wall. She grasped for support, while Galia faded into the crowd. “Goodbye, Elaine.”
Every floor of the Prelude quaked. The floating platform and the estate on it plunged straight down, towards the surface of planet Ares.
The massive cylinder beneath the Prelude slid perfectly into a raised metal ring on the planet. Jet-disks on its underside helped it lower gently into place. The same nanotech that had terraformed the planet carried heavy particles up from its surface. A bridge built itself from the massive front doors of the Prelude estate to the surface of Ares. No sooner than the pathway was completed, the cameras started. The combatants emerged onto the ring-shaped dock. Spectators threw open windows throughout the Prelude to scream and cheer.
Power flooded the lines beneath the planet’s newly born mountains, caverns and towns. Lights brightened for all to see what The Gold Standard’s designers had created. So full of rugged beauty, color and life, Ares showed no sign of the death that would stain its every crease.
Chapter Seven: Frozen Free-for-All
The moment she stepped from the french doors of the Prelude, Deidra’s senses were overwhelmed. The untamed planet around her, the constant urge of Gold Standard coordinators and the countless screens of cheering faces were equal parts familiar and unbelievable. As much as she abhorred the violence that filled those screens every year, Deidra found it preferable to being on them herself. Every so often she caught herself gawking at Ares around her, and snapped to attention. With her mind stretched every direction it would go and more, it was no wonder that time slipped away from her.
Deidra let the parade of contestants carry her across the bridge from the Prelude to a light-train station. The fleeting thought of what she’d read on light-trains in Koslav’s library flickered through her mind. Something about how the bond of accelerant particles that raced opposite of the train turned it into a cosmic torpedo. The specifics escaped her as she followed their Gold Standard guide into the tunnel of technicolor light rays. A domed rainbow all around them. Deidra forgot about how it worked - and the cameras - again. Her head cocked back, mouth open, to drink in the wonder.
“Stand back from the rails!” their guide called out. The first words Deidra actually absorbed since they stepped out of the Prelude. She watched the metal rails below their platform glow hot white. Even Galia twitched back from the train when it took shape instantly from a blur of silver down the rainbow chute. Gusts of displaced air twisted through the crowd while its doors slid open. The train swallowed them and zipped off.
The next thing Deidra knew, she had to button up her uniform jacket up to her neck. It was hardly a shield against the frigid winds that whipped outside. The light train let them out at a raised platform over an entire town that hadn’t existed a week ago. A town made of crystal. Strips of light glowed through clear sheets, whether made of glass or ice, Deidra couldn’t quite figure out. All she could tell was what a feat of human ingenuity the place was. Strip malls and cathedrals and restaurants complete with high-arched columns formed a crystalline settlement, divided down the center by a shimmering violet stream. A construction project of this magnitude might have taken months on Homeworld or Greymoor. The very nature of planet Ares, however, lent itself to developments like this in days. Every grain of sand, every drop of water, was all synthetic. Deidra recalled her self-taught lessons from the library and the Game Room.
Ares was really a massive glob of a substance called multerium, formed in a lab and trademarked by The Gold Standard years ago. Construction was ongoing and eternal, with the recycling, replacing and addition of the stuff from Koslav’s designers. Multerium was derived from minerals gathered by his WBO benefactors. Its makeup was loose, malleable. With some molecular tweaking, it could be anything that reflected high ratings. Magnetic. Wet. Rigid. Static. The right treatment crafted the right product - the modge podge of environments called Ares was testament to that. That was about all Deidra could gather in her mind before the crowd of contestants started to move again.
Everything mixed together inside her, a soup of nerves and wonder. Deidra and her crew piled into a hovercab at the base of the light-train station. It carried them over streets of azure ice, through entire shopping districts for the convenience of spectators. The cracked windows of their cab let in the cacophony of human indulgence. After paying their way to the surface of this fantastic place, people still haggled for better prices with street merchants. Said merchants still fought them, tooth and nail. Deidra wanted to open the door, to roll out across the ice and sell something - to do anything but this. She didn’t want to fight. She couldn’t do this. She wanted out.
“Hey. Breathe,” Devin urged her. Deidra’s eyes jumped to his gentle fingers on hers, pale by comparison. She let in a powerful gasp, and the rest of the evening. She narrated each action as a play in her head that flashed by and went. That was the only way she’d make it through this. One play at a time.
Cab ride to icy hotel. Drag self up oddly tractable stairs. Slam translucent door. Flop deep in the mound of cushions on heated mattress. Scream at fate into fluffy oblivion.
Deidra realized, at once, she’d been asleep. Not napping, like she’d briefly considered between screams. Asleep. Her heated bed and the pile of pillows had betrayed her! She snapped up and glanced around through foggy eyes. Deidra hoped more than anything she’d find a window, and find the barrenness outside the Forge on Greymoor. But, when her eyes lined up with the porthole window, they filled with the sprawl of a crystal city.
“No,” she sputtered when she saw the orange sunrise through her perfectly clear window. It was almost evening when they’d stepped off the light-train. Deidra had slept through the night.
“Combatants. Report to the lounge connected to the front lobby for breakfast. Last call. Your first challenge begins in an hour,” Cybil’s v
oice bounced through the ice.
“An hour!” Deidra blurted before his echoes had worked down through the frozen foundation of the hotel. She thought about burying her face in the pillows again, but she didn’t have a voice left to scream. She rushed straight down the icy staircase to the lounge in the uniform she’d slept in. Only a handful of combatants were left, nibbling unnatural fruits that could only exist on a place like Ares. One of them was Devin. He watched his own face in a chrome fountain that spewed violet water from the stream outside. For once, he looked pensive.
“Anything left of the food?” Deidra murmured. Devin’s head shot over to her.
“God, Deidra, there you are! I thought you’d run for it!” he shouted at first, then muffled himself.
“Believe me, I thought about leaving you to stew in this mess,” Deidra lied.
“Food’s over there. The… binioberries - I think they’re called - are really good. The pink ones. Go grab what you want and get back here. I found out a bit about our first challenge and we don’t have much time left to talk,” said Devin. Deidra vanished, only to reappear with a massive bowl of pink berries, granola and yogurt.
“Alright, spill,” she prompted him with the jab of her fork.
“First challenge is called the Ice Bucket,” Devin told her between chomps of binioberries.
“Woah, no way,” Deidra mused. She choked back the urge to spit more sarcasm. There wasn’t time.
“We’ll be on ship, in a system of ice tunnels and caves,” Devin paused long enough to look down at the floor. Deidra followed his eyes there, to the dark pits and ice spikes beneath the crystalline floor. When she’d seen it yesterday, Deidra figured it was ornamental, some sort of illusion. Then she stared at it long enough for a shadow to pass by beneath. It might have been a maintenance ship, or even rival combatants.
“So, how do we make it to the next round?” said Deidra.
“Keep the Brazen from falling apart, pretty much. Round ends when any crew finds the Crystal Ice Core,” Devin explained, “It’s guarded by estro-materi… estereo-madder… I don’t know what their real name is, but everyone’s calling them ice harpies.” Deidra bobbed her head like that didn’t jostle her spine.
“Good. We find some thick ice and hide behind it,” Deidra concluded.
“Or… we go for the Ice Core and get the bonus,” Devin posed. The look on Deidra’s face said are you out of your mind before her lips could catch up. “I know the way.”