“Let’s go,” she said. She tugged the curtains away from their window. Light flooded Deidra ’s eyes like two fishbowls as she rolled over. The black dots of her pupils honed in on Galia.
The lines of the older woman’s lacy green bra cups danced along the top edge of her nipples. Her breasts were pinched in tight hills by the band. Her hips stretched the rim of her underwear out from the di
mples of her thighs. What am I doing? Deidra realized. Heat flushed her cheeks at just how long she had stared. She chalked it up to the early hour of the morning and sat up to get dressed herself. She hesitated with the sheets over her scant nightclothes.
“Would you mind…” Deidra muttered.
“Oh, sorry, your highness,” Galia chuckled her way into a bow. At the low end of it, she grabbed the waistband of her gray fatigues. Galia tugged them up over her muscle and bony curves, wiggling her way into them. The only thing that tugged Deidra’s eyes away from the bounce of Galia’s chest was the device that flew up at her face. “So long as you wear this,” said Galia, after she tossed it. Deidra caught it deftly, one-handed and found herself looking down at a steel band with a thin holo-panel on it.
“What is it?” asked Deidra.
“Emergency blast shield,” Galia said into the corner of the room, averting her eyes, as requested. “Only protects the front, so be careful.”
“Thanks…” said Deidra. She latched it around her wrist, then slid out of bed. By the mighty force of habit, she was in her Gold Standard uniform in seconds. The flutters in her chest chased something from her - whether it was a true attempt to connect, or just an expression of nerves. “An-any word on the challenge for today?”
“It’s a maze called the Bangbox,” Galia told her. She threw a rough, dark synthetic jacket over her shoulders.
“Ships?” asked Deidra. She pulled her frizzy tails of hair back in a ponytail.
“No. We’re on foot this time,” said Galia, “Listen, I don’t know if you’re a fighter or not-”
“I’m not,” said Deidra. Galia’s eyes roved over Deidra’s body for a moment and a frown creased her forehead, but she didn’t challenge the younger woman’s stance.
“Alright. Glad I gave you that shield, then. You’re a defender. Stay close to me. We’re getting the bonus this round,” Galia grinned. She zipped her jacket up midway over her shirt. Deidra had no idea it was as flame retardant as it was stylish.
“How?” Galia’s response came with the flick of a wrist. Between her index and middle fingers, she pinched a folded square of paper.
“Spent last night sketching the maze from above. Couldn’t get the whole thing, but from the roof of the hotel, at the right angles, I got glimpses of the Bangbox. It’s in the valley on the backside of town,” Galia smirked.
“We’re not allowed on the…” Deidra stopped herself at the lack of regard for what was allowed in Galia’s burning eyes.
“We’re not supposed to look gift horses in the mouth, either. Come on,” she gave Deidra’s shoulder a gentle pat.
“Welcome back, folks! To the second round of the Olympia Gold: the… Bangbox!” Cybil ignited the flame of the audience. Their revelrous screams shook climbing rows of seats above the high walls of the Bangbox. Galia’s boot soles trembled with their energy. “This is a maze of explosive proportions!” On this cue, a colossal floor panel of sheet iron glowed bright. Flaming tongues jumped through finger-sized pores and surged together as a single firestorm, then vanished. Galia glanced over at Deidra, a few feet from her in the starting line of combatants. Her skin was paler than the looming surface of Greymoor overhead. “That’s right, folks! Every floor and wall panel of this iron maze can and will be remotely detonated at the will of a few lucky audience members. Contestants will be without their ships. Blunt and edged weapons are permitted. Whichever team reaches the center of the maze first will be awarded the bonus for this round, at which time it will end. Surviving crews proceed.”
Cybil gave the crews the good grace of ten long seconds to take in a potential last breath. Their heels dug in. Weapons braced in hands. Galia had the handle of a retractable baton in each. Deidra clutched a shock-knife in both. You owe it to him to see it through, Clarabelle’s words bounced around her skull. Whether that meant the center of the Bangbox or a pile of ash, she owed it to Devin. Deidra wouldn’t admit just yet that her intrigue in a certain unorthodox captain grounded her, too, to life.
“Begin!” Cybil cried. Galia felt the heat beneath her instantly. She sprung forward with the rest of the combatants. The iron panel beneath them shone with orange light. Most of them outran the flame by seconds. A few combatants, even in the beginning snap of the round, saw how great an opportunity this was to thin the running. They lashed out blows to chests and slices to ankles. Anyone stricken was consumed by heat before they could scream. When the flame retreated below the Bangbox behind the survivors, all that was left of their crewmates was gray dust.
Galia held her breath until she saw Deidra. In the thick of the chaos, there was the girl in The Gold Standard uniform. She turned her back to every direction with a shock-knife pointed out at any who wandered near. The Hammer looked to have lost the most in the initial blast, at three. The Torrent lost one. Galia counted Rey and the rest of her crew - they’d all made it. Perhaps that, along with the loss of his own three, is what inspired Rex to charge.
The captain of the Hammer bounded straight through the scrambled crowd, for Deidra. He was intercepted about halfway by Rey. He lugged a multerium club at Rex’s side. It glossed over with a silver coating at the moment before impact. Rex flashed up a short blade from his belt. He met Rey’s strike, then bounced away. Rex sidestepped a counterstrike, and launched for Deidra again.
Galia struck out with her kinetic batons to knock anyone from her way, to beat him there. Her strike launched one of Rex’s men with a shockwave that bucked her arm right back at her. The man slid across an iron panel forty feet away. He hardly had a chance to glance up in terror. A particularly malicious audience member with a Bangbox controller incinerated him. Rex froze with his blade in the air. In seconds, he’d gone from a crew of ten to six. He was a statue when Galia fell on him, a statue that snapped into motion. The moments they’d shared in laughter before the Olympia vanished in the smoggy wind that scattered his friends’ ashes. I couldn’t hope more that you and your crew get into the games, he’d said. But this was no legend, they were in. It was a bloodbath, with both Rex and Galia poised to add to the pool.
Rex ducked under her baton. He knew better than to meet it directly. He wove his way around each swing and slice. Galia switched arms and stepped closer, then back, anything to set him off balance. She felt the hand of heat on the side of her face. Galia and Rex threw themselves sideways together just before the wall beside them spat out an inferno.
“Galia!” Deidra shouted when the woman slid down beside her heels. She knelt to get her new captain up on her feet. Rex was on his the next second. He lunged for Deidra. She leaned back from the tip of his blade edge, which nicked her collar. A bead of red flicked into the sizzling iron of the Bangbox wall. Galia sprung, She slammed a baton into the ground where Rex had been a second earlier. The kinetic tremor launched him, Galia, and Deidra away and off their feet. All three of them were up again in seconds.
“That’s enough!” Deidra heaved. Both Galia and Rex stiffened in their respective spots. Both took the moment to suck down hot, earthy breaths. Clangs, screams, cheers and quick hisses of flame filled the odd quiet in which they tried to figure out who Deidra had yelled at. She turned to Galia. “Quit wasting time trying to save me! If you want to get us out of here, get to the center!” she said. Galia hung both batons ready to swing. The words had hit her skull and trickled right off. “Galia! Go!” Galia’s amber eyes found the girl, at last, full of drive. Not a fighter, eh? What could she do, but turn to run? Galia joined Rey and the rest of the crew in their mad dash through the injured, fighting, and fire bursts. She unfolded her sketch of the maze for all of them to see while Deidra held Rex at bay with the sparking tip of her own short blade.
“Gotta respect your cajones,” Rex chuckled, as if a single thing about this was funny. A man and a woman. Two blades, fire and murder.
“Which is more than I could say for you,” Deidra prodded, hoping to put him off balance. The twinge of his forehead had betrayed him. What she said affected him, just for a second, which was long enough for her to leap.
Deidra’s knife tip slit Rex’s turning cheek. A jolt pulsed through the side of his face. Even as his muscles tightened and spasmed, he managed to swing his blade. From somewhere deep in the pit of her back-alley survival instincts, a reflex snapped up Deidra’s hands. She met Rex’s strike with her own shock-knife. Its insulated handle protected her from the pulse of electricity that shot through her foe’s weapon into his bones. Rex tightened. His teeth clenched hard enough to audibly grind away. Through them escaped a guttural roar, a sound just as primeval as Deidra’s instinct to block with her knife. It gave him the rage he needed to pry his fingers from the handle of his blade. It also gave Galia reason to turn back and witness the destruction about to unfold. Rex dropped his weapon. He tackled Deidra, flattened her against a searing orange floor panel. Twice he slammed the back of her head against it. Galia gasped. The panel detonated.
What Galia couldn’t see in the rising flame was Deidra deploying her blast shield. The very second the fire jumped from beneath them, she popped it open, between her and Rex. Deidra rolled to the side, which rolled her foe off of her. When hellfire fled back to whence it came, Rex went with it. It took Galia’s eyes a second to track Deidra down, several panels away. She leaned against the wall she’d been flung into, her shield still glowing orange from the heat. Galia let herself breathe again.