“Hold!” Galia shouted to the rest, who lunged to join the fray. All of them but Deidra, who was frozen. They’d end up doing more harm than good, with six sets of fists flying.
She managed to strafe away from the Terra Eagle’s first two mechanical swings. The third doubled Galia over at the waist. Rey slammed his invisible gauntlets into the side of the Eagle’s helmet. His fist reacted more than she did. It bounced back an inch before the Terra Eagle’s arm cracked across his face. It was a blur of motion that ended with Rey facedown in the grass. Galia charged with both fists cocked back. She rocketed them straight into the fluorescent green seam of the Eagle’s waist. Her exosuit lit with a grid of shock absorption. Her knee popped up into Galia’s forehead. She fell back on her hips. Before she could spring again, Deidra stepped between them.
“Why are you h
elping me?” she demanded. The Eagle’s jet black gloves unfolded. Even when Deidra activated her own invisible gauntlets, the exosuit hung relaxed. Even when she threw her first punch, and the second, third and so on. “Do you know me? Do you pity me? What…” Each word was a punch that turned the Terra Eagle’s helmet one way, then the next. “What is it?” Galia propped herself up to charge.
“Your father… had been betting on the Olympia Gold long before I started entering them,” said the Terra Eagle. Deidra’s fists froze, dropped, then opened. Her gauntlets dissolved. The mention of her father, after so many years, from the mouth of a stranger added fifty pounds to each of them. The damnable man.
“You knew him?” muttered Deidra.
“Wait…” Galia grumbled while Kostic helped her up. Her mind did backflips all the way to the Prelude, to a particular rumor she’d never heard before. “It’s true… you enter the Olympia to honor a friend of yours… who died in the games.” She shuddered at the fate that had left Deidra orphaned and in debt. The Eagle’s yellow scanner dot burned into Galia’s amber irises.
“You… Kayn,” Deidra realized. The Terra Eagle turned on her glowing heels. She would have jetted off just then if not for the hand that seized her mechanical wrist. “Is it you?” The Terra Eagle turned her helmet back just slightly enough to be a silent yes. “You lost your friend? That’s what people say about you? I lost my father!”
“He dug his pit with all his gambling,” the Terra Eagle returned in a horrifying robotic roar. “I was fool enough to jump in it with him.”
“And then you killed him!” Deidra screamed. The Eagle ripped her exosuit arm away. She turned fully towards Deidra and Galia for a second, to pop her visor down with a button press. The only human part of what was left beneath were the smoky blue eyes Deidra remembered from when she was a child. The eyes that regarded her with the love of the mother she never knew, before she died. The rest of her face was a mangled mass of scar.
“You have no idea what happened that day,” said Kayn the Terra Eagle. Her true voice was hoarse, like a long wheeze given shape. “Be careful of Daniel.” With that, her boots lit, and launched her to the top of the hill behind her. Deidra fell to her knees. Galia fell to wrap her shoulders in a gentle embrace. The Terra Eagle was gone.
Chapter Twelve: Thruway
“Welcome folks! To our third event: the…” Cybil’s voice sprang through the sickening dark. Eyes shut tight, fists clenched, Deidra was back twenty years in her mind. Then, she’d seen this event from the audience. She’d watched her dad jump down the black mouth of the chute. It was his body that came out the other end, floating loose in the normalization zone, free of soul. The last thing she’d seen on a viewing screen was Kayn turn on her dad before a deceptively kind Gold Standard chaperone guided her away. She’d never seen the woman again. “Thruwaaaaaaay!” Cybil blasted like a high horn note. Spotlights flared on. Deidra was back. APC 56 - it was her turn now. She’d have her eyes open on the other end of that chute if she had to strangle every last person in it with her.
“Gear up, crew,” Galia mumbled to the five comrades she had left. Each of them had their invisible gauntlets as a failsafe, but there was so much more to use from the armory of the Dreamweaver. Galia has saved a lot of it for a challenge like this. Strict melee with one goal: put everyone you can down for a nap, or for good.
Galia cocked back the machinated knuckle plate of her armored glove. It wouldn’t release its pent-up kick until contact with her next target. Rey reformed his multerium club with the press of a switch on its handle. The weapon’s thick neck almost doubled in size, its head stretching wider while its outside coated itself in steel. Kostic and Demitri each had a longer version of Galia’s kinetic batons - they were more like staves. Fogan had something that looked like a wooden katana, though Deidra doubted that was all. As for her, she donned Clarabelle’s gift. She flipped down the motion-tracking visor of her energy helmet. She turned the knob on its side until the sensitivity rating that floated in space before her rose to 40%.
Fifteen human shapes stained the light around the steel hole in the planet; four crews pitted in opposition. The Dreamweaver’s six faced the Torrent’s five, the Terra Eagle’s three, and Daniel. Cybil’s explanation of the event bounced through the bleachers in the grass around them, down the Thruway, into the depths of Ares. The distant cheers of audience booths in the Thruway walls rose up on a breeze that played with the combatants’ hair. Deidra couldn’t care less what Cybil had to say this time. She’d seen this event a thousand times in nightmares. Edged weapons and firearms prohibited. Knock one another bloody. Surviving teams proceed. Last team awake gets the bonus. Deidra was more preoccupied with her breathing, the weapons of others and the clock ticking down.
“Combatants, prepare to jump!” Cybil instructed with sickening glee. In a sweep, Deidra saw shields, energy clubs, beaded whips, handheld cannonballs and a ticking clock. At the buzz of zero, a steel plate scorched under Deidra’s feet. Whether or not she was ready, she jumped. Galia and the rest of the crew shot down like bullets around her, into the near-eternal tunnel.
“Spread wide, like we-”
Galia’s reminder was cut short by the audible crack of an iron ball on Demitri’s skull. Blood spurted once from the sides of the crater it left in his head. His eyes rolled back. The sinister orb popped itself free and zipped away for its next target at the will of the Torrent crew member who’d thrown it.
“Damnit!” Galia screeched. Even she couldn’t hold back the human impulse to reach for him while his arms and legs swung loose in freefall. Galia knew he was gone already. “That’s a seeker’s orb. It tracks movement, so forget going wide. Box up, face out, and watch each other’s backs!” she issued. Her crew formed a perfect shell. Demitri drifted away while the killer orb ricocheted between The Terra Eagle’s crew and Daniel.
It was a sight in itself to see the man glide around like a phantom in his pinstripe suit. The way he matched the Terra Eagle’s every mechanically-enhanced dodge with nothing but his formal humanity rattled the spirits of the other crews in their chests. Galia and hers had only seconds to marvel at it, before the Torrent flew straight at them. Smart, Galia realized, break up the competition. The five bodies of the Torrent blinked through the racing Thruway lights.
The scanners on Deidra’s energy helmet told her just which one of them was coming for her. She leaned back from the studded end of a long, braided silver whip. It snapped back to the wielder while she snapped out the kinetic baton Galia had lent her. She brought it down with two arms, hard enough to blast her opponent straight down. She thought she’d knocked the girl unconscious until the whip lashed around her ankle. Deidra jerked down, out of formation. So simple a crack was just enough for chaos to flood in.
Galia’s enhanced punch bucked her opponent straight back into space. He wouldn’t stir again until after the round. She glanced down at Deidra, wrestling with another woman and her whip. Something whizzed behind Galia’s head. Her head jolted to follow it - the seeker’s orb. She jerked back to look at the Eagle and Daniel, now locked in a stalemate of lightning fists. She couldn’t afford to let the shock in now, with the orb ripping through both her crew and the Torrent. Thankfully she hadn’t seen how the orb changed course, or she wouldn’t have had a choice on when the shock got in. Daniel had caught it with his bare hand and hurled it at them.
The seeker’s orb missed Kostic by inches and struck one of its masters in the Torrent instead. A triumphant second left her open to a following strike by a crewmate. Rey shoved her from the lash of an energy club. He gave the attacker a solid bash across the face, then had to withdraw himself from the seeker’s orb. Kostic paid him back with interest by wailing it directly with her kinetic staff. The release of energy churned the already volatile chemistry of the orb. The second after contact, it exploded. The conscious fray of the Torrent and the Dreamweaver was blasted apart.
Galia saw, when her sight refocused, Kostic’s arms cross
ed over her gut. Red trickle coursed between them. She’d taken the brunt of the shrapnel. Her eyes fluttered more with each second.
“Stay with it! Keep to the edge!” Galia told her. Kostic tried, but her eyes had other plans. They had to shut. “No…” Galia mumbled. “No… no!” Her throat scratched up to a roar. She cocked her gauntlet back again. Galia spotted the nearest of two Torrent members and launched.
Below, Deidra heard her captain scream. It was the first note of pain she’d heard in so calm and cynical a voice. It was the signal for her to flip the switch. To let the rage in. She caught sight of a passing maintenance window, full of servants in a uniform like hers. In an odd, furious clarity, she even recognized some of their faces. Dirty. Haggard. Destitute. Like Devin. Like her. And yet, this woman had opened her door. Let her into her crew. Galia. The name rang through her head in a different key than it had before. Deidra ground her teeth. She read the coming strike with her visor. She put her arm up to the relentless whiplash. This time, she took the strike of its reinforced beads with her forearm. An instant burn raced through her. Then the whip lost tension, just for a second. Deidra coiled it around her arm just as its wielder yanked it back. Deidra went right with it, up at her foe, kinetic baton flying. The collision of its neck and her foe sent the woman sailing backward across the Thruway, unconscious. It also put Deidra level with Galia and the others and left her with the woman’s whip. It was two Torrent members against four Dreamweavers.
One of them went for Galia but was blindsided by Fogan. The swipe of his wooden katana revealed its true nature. It lit with the crimson runic designs of blazing hot thermal tech. With two swipes he left streaks of permanent skin damage across the chest of Galia’s attacker. A third across his neck put the man out. Fogan didn’t see the last Torrent member behind him, but Deidra did. She snapped her new beaded whip around the man’s throat. Deidra’s foot on his chest was enough to turn his face blue, but not enough to stop him from reaching in his belt for a second seeker’s orb.
“Galia!” Deidra screamed. Her captain’s mechanical gauntlet crossed the man’s face, popping his neck from the rest of him.