“Cannons ready!” Tygon declared. His fists tightened on the navigation bars. Deidra’s took the controls of her weapon. When she leveled it at her target, though, her fingers went numb. It was the Dreamweaver. It floated just beneath the Crystal Ice Core. In the overwhelming white light from within the frosty globe, the green ice cove and the silver-trimmed ship shimmered bright. The man Deidra recognized as Rey journeyed out on the Dreamweaver’s prow, to tear the Core from a tangled web of frozen cables.
Deidra’s eyes wandered, just for a second, to the ship’s bridge window. They fixed on Galia, as Galia’s fixed on her. Both grasped their weapons. Both hesitated just long enough to change the course of both their lives. A third ship tore into the cavern from the entrance behind the Dreamweaver. It charged straight past them, pistons kicking out from the flank. That launched Galia and her ship out of its way, into the wall...
“Brace up- it’s the Ham-”
Tygon’s final words were left open-ended. Rex deployed a heavy cannon from the underside of the Hammer’s hull. A single three-foot titanium shell crashed through their bridge. It ripped Tygon’s innards back through his seat, and sprayed them around the room. Devin froze. Jack fled for the escape pods. Olivia screamed:
“I don’t want to di-”
Her wants were of no concern to the next shell that tore through the bridge. It tore Olivia’s turning torso from her hips. Her halves were wrenched to opposite sides of the bridge. Deidra thought to move for the navigation bars only when the nose of the Brazen pointed down. She hopped in the cockpit. Blood smushed out from beneath her fingers when they squeezed the helm. She yanked up on the controls, but couldn’t fight the pull of gravity. Shell after massive shell from the Hammer had severed the weakened front half of the Brazen from the back.
“It’s alright, DD,” Devin told her, when he saw her clench so hard to pull the Brazen up. He knew she couldn’t.
“No, it’s not!” Deidra screamed. She throttled the handles until their leaking fuel lines met flame on the right side of the ship. A great beast of flame roared through the bridge. It swallowed Devin in a single bite. Teeth of smoldering steel sliced in around him. The lack of fear in his instantly dead eyes was the last thing Deidra saw before the blast tossed her from the hole in the bridge window.
“That’s it, folks! The match is over!” Cybil’s voice haunted her darkening vision. Deidra gazed hazily from body to body around her. Some were people she knew. Others were ice harpies. A downpour of flaming wreckage brought her head up from the frozen ground. She saw only small pieces of the Brazen coming down, as the main body of it was behind her. Its impact rattled the Ice Bucket just before Cybil said, “The bonus for this round goes to single combatant, Daniel!”
Deidra found his small, sleek ship just behind the Hammer. He’d slipped in and claimed the Ice Core right from under Rex’s bloodthirsty nose. Deidra’s head thunked against the ice. This time, she didn’t care how long she slept.
“What’re you doing, big G?” questioned Rey, when his tense shoulders relaxed at last, “The round’s over. We made it. Let’s get the hell out of here.” Despite Daniel’s triumphant brush of the Crystal Ice Core against his pinstripe suit jacket, Galia brought the Dreamweaver down to the debris below. She had her eye on a body, flung from its wrecked ship.
“Come on Rey, you saw. I’m not leaving her,” Galia shook her head. Rey had seen, he just wanted to hear her admit it. That under the alcohol and taxotrol, under the harsh mask, there was still a beating heart. Even the dreaded Galia Hattel couldn’t leave Deidra to die.
Chapter Eight: A Chance Worth Hating
“Morning,” a vaguely familiar voice bounced through the lightening shadows. “Well, afternoon. Sit up slow and be warned. You’re not where you were, when you shut your eyes.”
“Thank God,” murmured Deidra, before a concrete thought crossed her mind. Then it all zipped through her brain at once, like an injection. Tygon, Olivia, Jack… Devin. The fire, the blood, the flying titanium. Deidra shot up, only to be stopped by a firm hand on her collar. Galia had stopped her an inch from collision with a rusted iron plate. It was the second bunk underside of an iron-framed bed, Deidra saw when her eyes started to adjust. Everything in the room, the walls included, were that same weathered metal. The designers had perfectly captured the energy of an old, abandoned factory even in the dormitories of this building.“Where am I?”
“The… Blasting Zone? Bombing Zone, maybe? I don’t really remember - some cutesy name for the town around the next arena,” Galia told her. “The Ba-”
“Where’s everyone else?” Deidra blurted. Galia sighed. Her amber eyes sunk to her lap, made to glow even brighter by the orange sunburst of evening outside.
“You know where they are, Deidra,” she forced herself to say. Lying to her now would only draw out the mourning process. Galia knew that better than most. It was an agony still fresh in her own chest.
“No… no… they were in the Brazen. They were there, with me. Right next to me. Then…” Deidra’s voice hid from the truth that her mind had to continue. Tygon’s back emptied all over the bridge. She shook her head to stop it.
“Deidra…” Galia sucked wind to get out, “The Brazen is in two pieces, on top of the recycling heap. Did you… see anything inside the ship?” The last still frames of lifelong friends surged through Deidra ’s brain. Jack running for escape. Olivia ripped in two. Devin swallowed by fire.
“No,” Deidra replied. Her eyes fixed on a particular rivet, driven deep in the metal sheet of the wall. It was as good a spot as any to stare. A crystal pearl pinched from the corner of each eye when she blinked. They burned hot streaks down her clammy cheeks. “Did… did anyone survive? Besides me?” Galia bunched up the knees of her gray fatigues. Her teeth gritted through her twitching lips.
“If anyone did… would you be here, in my room?” asked Galia.
“Why would they give me to… you rescued me?” Deidra realized, streaming eyes still stuck on that nondescript rivet. Galia shrugged. She held back a bit of the urge to dispel the positive implications. Sure, she had an image to maintain, but Deidra was numb. When that numbness wore off, she’d be in pain. Galia could afford to go a little easy.
“I figured we could help one another,” she said. “I’ve got an opening in my crew. You don’t have a ship.” Those last five words brought it all to life. I don’t have a ship. I don’t have a crew. I don’t have any friends left. Deidra’s mind raced away from her. Then she remembered, she did have one left.
“I have to go,” she said. She jammed a palm in both eyes and rubbed them dry, then raw. She pressed on them hard enough to stop up her flooding tear ducts. Deidra moved for the rusted, iron door. A hand snapped around her sore wrist. Galia pinned her in place. “I can’t stay here.”
“Listen to me. You’re in shock,” said Galia. Deidra knew that much. It didn’t change the fact that she had to go. She’d wanted to run from this absurd competition before it had chewed up and swallowed every one of her close friends. Her best friend. Deidra saw Devin’s fearless eyes in the dark every time she closed hers.
“I’m done,” she declared. She ripped her hand away.
“Everybody loses,” Galia said, a fact that hurt her to admit. Deidra’s heels froze in the half-open, steel bolted door. It was far lighter than it looked. It swung without a creak. “Places, things, dreams… people. If not in here, then somewhere else. I lost someone this round... Her name was Carol. Hit her head too hard.” It was enough to ground Deidra for a few seconds. Then she thought about Jack, Olivia, Jeff and Tygon. She thought about Devin.
“I’m sorry,” said Deidra. She pushed her way out into the rustic iron hallway.
The whole hotel and the Blasting Zone, the town around it, was built of the same riveted iron sheets and pillars. Deidra began to suspect, after forcing her way through five or six doorways, that the rust was simply discolored multerium. Everything was too functional for genuine decay. It had the look,