A golden wave of light filled the Thruway for a passing second, illuminating all that remained. The crews passed a glass showing window, straight to the core of planet Ares. It was no dense, molten ball. No, Ares was an artificial construct, held together by designs impossible anywhere else in the galaxy. What shone in the core was the Olympia Gold Medal itself. It shed its coveted light on The Terra Eagle and her gunners, Daniel, Galia, Rey, Fogan and Deidra. Then the Medal vanished above them and the Thruway swallowed them in darkness.
When their eyes adjusted, the crew of the Dreamweaver faced the flying forms of the Terra Eagle’s gunners. She strafed and jabbed against Daniel, still, but her crew was too smart to be blindsided. Galia and the others braced seconds before a man and woman in jumpsuits the colors of their captain’s exosuit collided with them. Fogan’s katana met the energy club of the woman. Galia flinched away from the man’s mechanical knuckles, not unlike hers. They grazed the edge of her shoulder. Before she could counter, the man kicked off of her chest to float backward. He spun with the grace of a dolphin and snapped his gauntlet across Fogan’s head. He drifted back, out for the count. Rey descended from above, unheard. He clobbered the man straight down into the oblivion of sleep.
The woman clashed clubs with Rey which knocked her back into the snare of Deidra’s whip. She snatched the woman’s arm which tugged her in. The two collided, baton on club, only to be catapulted back from each other by the kinetic shockwave. Deidra flung back into Rey’s arms, while the woman met Galia’s steel knuckles on the back of her head. Her face snapped down, mind free of the Thruway. Just when the Dreamweaver crew thought they had a breath to take, a black and green blur tore between Rey and Deidra. She took out Daniel, was a fleeting thought they shared.
The Terra Eagle’s jetted speed separated them at once. Galia choked back her urge to charge in. Whether it was Rey, Deidra or anyone else in the Eagle’s eye, she knew better than to try and help from the front. She only hoped Rey could hold out long enough.
The Eagle planted a robotic fist under Rey’s ribs. The strike lifted him with a cough of blood. It also put him in the perfect position to club the top of her helmet. Even glazed with steel multerium, his weapon did little more than jostle the Eagle an inch. She responded with a left hook that spun Rey’s face sideways and set him adrift for the rest of the match. Just enough time, Galia thought. Her piston-loaded gauntlet flung into the back of the Terra Eagle’s helmet. It jerked forward, right into the mechanical punch of Deidra, who’d taken a similar glove from the Eagle’s own gunner. A single crack ran down the side of her visor. The Terra Eagle’s head bucked forward, then back inside her helmet. When Galia and Deidra retreated, she floated right where she was, motionless between them. The two exchanged the briefest smirks of victory before Deidra’s visor picked up activity behind her captain.
“Watch out!” She spun just in time for a bloody-knuckled blow from Daniel. Galia’s cheek rocketed back, her body close to follow, just before her reeling mind. The ever-smirking man was covered in splatters of rosy human paint. Whether it was his was impossible to discern, though his suit had suffered minimal scuffs. Galia straightened up and glided back to Daniel and Deidra.
It took alternating whips and blows from Galia and Deidra just to keep Daniel from striking back. The tips of their weapons grazed his suit, but never got any closer. His eyes darted between Galia and Deidra rapidly, like he was reading a compelling part of a good book. Then, in the middle of the storm of strikes, Daniel’s leg snapped up. It thrust into Galia’s chest hard enough to fling her into her only remaining partner. She tried to bounce back, but Deidra held her firm for a moment.
“Try to grab him. Hold on,” she whispered. Only in the intense battery did the words of Clarabelle surface in her mind. With this, Deidra sent her captain back. Daniel threw his punch. Galia opened the palm of her steel gauntlet to catch it. She felt her bones creak, even through the armor, but held the strike steady. She grasped his shoulder with his other hand.
Deidra flew up from the side. She slammed her energy helmet over Daniel’s head. She turned the knob on its side until the reversed display on the visor read “100%”. Deidra retreated an inch. Waves of translucent yellow radiation behind the visor collided and spiraled around Daniel’s bewildered head. Galia felt his fist loosen in her mechanical grasp. She felt his shoulder behind relax. His body jostled, and his lips opened for the first time. His smirk turned to a grimace of perfect white teeth. He fought through it with clenched fists, to the girls’ horror. Galia cocked back her gauntlet as far as it would go, then farther with Deidra’s help. She put it straight through the visor, into Daniel’s temple. His eyes clamped shut. His body drifted backward. Still, his open mouth looked a bit like a smirk.
“We… we did it,” Deidra whimpered at last. She and Galia plunged freely through Ares, in a cloud of loose bodies. Some of them would wake up on the other side. The others would join the names etched in the crystal towers of the Reverie. Galia’s somber eyes climbed to Demitri and Kostic, their blood scattered in falling rain that would catch up to them at the end of the Thruway. With the Gold Medal as the midpoint, she knew only that they had less than three hundred miles to fall.
“Who’d… have… thought…” Galia panted. She floated idly towards Deidra, only to pause when a voice boomed between them. Through the whole Thruway.
“What a show, what a show, folks. And now, a chance for the Dreamweaver to claim the bonus,” announced Cybil.
“A chance?” Galia echoed, “I thought… if we were the last ones awake…” Deidra’s eyes lit with the irony of understanding something she never could, at long last. A missing piece popped into place. Kayn had loved her father, fool that he was. She knew that. It was what prevented her from ever understanding why she had turned on him in the Thruway. Until now.
“We have to be the last one awake, Galia. Well, one of us,” Deidra realized. She slipped off the gauntlet she’d stolen. She let the whip drift up from her grasp. Deidra let her arms out at her sides, eyes closed. “Let’s get this bonus. Go on. You hit harder.” She cracked an eyelid when Galia snorted, then devolved into downright hilarity.
“Oh man,” Galia laughed while she rifled through her pockets. “You should see yourself right now. The self-sacrificing pose, the closed eyes and everything. That’s sweet, Deidra.” By the end of the sentence, Galia had produced a tiny tin bottle from her pockets. A word Deidra couldn’t make out was engraved on its side. Galia dug a finger down inside it to gather a handful of glossy purple pills. She jammed the cap on the bottle, the bottle in her pocket, and about eight pills down her throat. She swallowed.
“Galia- what are you-”
“See you on the other… side…” Galia’s stomach did its work, and she went to the blackness. The only place she wasn’t in pain.
Chapter Thirteen: Lost Dreams
A moment of silence spread across planet Ares while Galia drifted off to sleep. Never before had an Olympia bonus been won with such peace and grace. It took them a moment to catch up until Cybil announced:
“The bonus goes to the Dreamweaver for last combatant standing!” Spectators erupted into unprecedented applause. Gold Standard workers felt the rumble from it two stories down in service tunnels. Deidra heard its periodic rush as rings of audience booths passed her by. She didn’t have a chance to enjoy it, though. Not with the bodies of her crewmates floating around her. Not with Galia full of enough taxotrol to put down someone three times her weight. There were exactly two things on Deidra’s to-do list just then.
One: swallow the fact that Kayn’s betrayal of her father was hardly as straightforward as she once thought. Two: float over to Galia and hug her. She held on until the Thruway emptied out in the zero-gravity normalization sphere on the other side of Ares.
There was a programmed single-day gap between the
Thruway and the next event in the fifty-sixth Olympia Gold. The Jousting Grounds, Clarabelle told Deidra, after a hearty slap on the back for her ingenuity with the helmet. There, too, followed the shock and horror that Daniel woke up from his radiation nap as if nothing had happened. But that was a matter out of their hands. The Jousting Grounds they could do something about. They could prepare. While most every other surviving combatant in the Olympia cheered and chugged with their biggest fans around Ares, Deidra waited by the side of Galia’s bed.
“She’ll hate that you didn’t come out with us while you had the chance. G doesn’t like being waited on,” Rey warned her before he and Fogan left for the Forge. Deidra waved him off and stayed. She didn’t have a chance to test his prophecy for another three hours, making a solid fourteen since Galia knocked herself out. For the first time in so long, she actually slept. She rested, without nightmares or coughing fits. When her blurry eyes cracked open, the first thing out of her mouth was:
“What the hell… are you doing here?”
“Rey was right,” Deidra chuckled.
“‘Course he was, whatever he told you. Man’s known me longer than anyone. Why didn’t you-”
“Let’s skip the tough captain bit,” Deidra cut in, with just enough gall to stun Galia for a moment. Even bedridden, her eyes glowed with intimidating purpose. But Deidra wouldn’t be scared off. Not anymore. “Want to tell me why you’ve got enough taxotrol to kill a child?”
“That?” Galia laughed, a weak finger rising to the silver bottle on her rocky nightstand. Everything in their latest hotel was made of ornamental stone, to match the theme of their next challenge. “In case there’s something wrong with your eyes… I’m not a child.”
“You’re sick. Really sick. Why didn’t you tell me?” said Deidra.