pen the explosive petals from the skewering needle in the center of the blossom. Galia launched it at the biggest target - the Eagle’s ship itself. It stuck in the steel between the two gunners. The light burst blinded her. Through the smoke came two bodies, leaping with the added kick of jet-disk boots. Galia tapped her earpiece to send her voice through the Dreamweaver.
“Deidra. Ram us sideways into the rock wall,” she said. Her heart waited on its next beat until her voice came back.
“On it!” The Eagle’s gunners landed on either side of Galia. The deck of the Dreamweaver creaked beneath them, as Deidra fought with the navigation bars. Galia took her shock-blade in both hands.
She unleashed a lightning flurry of slashes on one of the gunners while he struggled to find his balance. He sidestepped four swipes before she landed one, right across his cheek. Sparks infiltrated the wound which froze him up for a trembling second. Galia heard the movement of the other gunner behind her. She also knew not to turn and face her, from another sound. The sound of air rushing out from between the Dreamweaver and the wall of the canyon. Galia slung her flower-launcher over her shoulder, hard enough to crack the gunner behind her in the head. She charged two steps and leaped from the deck of her ship. Deidra brought both the Dreamweaver and the Terra Eagle into the rock.
Galia’s boots crashed down on steel, but not the same she’d left from. She clamored to find a solid hold on the Terra Eagle’s iron feathers, but they flickered too rapidly. It was the perfect problem for Galia’s blade to solve. She impaled it in the framework of the wing which flooded it with a high-powered shock. The feathers laid flat. The Terra Eagle turned her helmet to watch Galia sprint down the wing, even while she pulled her ship’s beak back for another peck. A rain of pebbles plunked down on Galia’s head from the cut of the ships into the stone.
“Galia! Her gunners are trying to break in!” Rey cried through her earpiece. But Galia had her destination planned and she was almost there. She planted a knee on the back edge of the Eagle’s wing. She pulled down her flowed launcher to her eye. Galia spiked a blossom straight down into the jets on the back of the Eagle’s ship.
“Hey, Eagle!” Galia screamed. The ships stilled to a neutral hover. The Terra Eagle’s gunners stopped jostling the doors to the Dreamweaver’s bridge. The bevelworms calmed at the decrease in activity. Even the audience withheld their monstrous cries to listen. “Proposition for you! We both go on, or neither of us do!” The Terra Eagle made no response, but neither did she stand down. Her beak hung, ready to peck through the last of the Dreamweaver’s cracked shields. Galia could tell, even from a flat yellow line, when her bluff was being called. The Eagle’s mistake was that there was a bluff. “Alright,” Galia’s steel flower blossomed in fire. The Eagle tilted down. Galia had another flower in the other jet before the smoke cleared.
“I yield,” said the Terra Eagle, for the first time. Her gunners loosened on the Dreamweaver’s doors. Deidra relaxed her blistering grip from the navigation bars. The only thing louder than the audience’s screams was Cybil’s.
“Ladies and gentlemen! We’re down to three! The Dreamweaver and Terra Eagle move on in the least eventful tie I’ve ever seen in a one-on-one! Daniel will also move on, with the award of a bonus. That’s two for the Dreamweaver and two for Daniel, folks! May the Torrent rest in peace… in the bellies of the bevelworms.”
Chapter Fifteen: Uncoiling the Rope
“To my pants, which I rightfully soiled a few hours ago,” Ray offered a toast, his glass of rippling gold liquor over his head like a torch, “Never thought we’d make it out of a one-on-one with the Terra Eagle.” It was a sentiment all present could agree on. They all shared the disbelief it was only a few hours ago.
“To your pants!” Galia chimed.
“To your… pants,” Deidra joined in, not half as confident. She knew that after the clink, she’d have to down what was in her glass. Her first sip of liquor, something entirely forbidden to Gold Standard servants. This was precisely why Galia had ordered the top-shelf “Glass of Gold”. Her deepening tab meant nothing between the three left in the Dreamweaver’s crew. If they won the Olympia, it’d be pocket change. If they lost, they were all dead anyway.
Galia, Deidra, and Rey clacked their glasses together. All three of them flinched at the thunderous hurrah! that shook the Forge after the ting. After such a round, everyone had their eyes on the Dreamweaver now. The three tipped back their glasses and enjoyed the hard-fought juice of victory. Well, Galia and Rey did. Deidra, nervous about the audience around her, chugged her whole Glass of Gold. Fire flooded her lungs, and everything attached to them.
“Woah, Deidra, slow-”
Deidra beat her to the bottom of the glass, then slammed it down on the counter. Her hoarse cough was drowned out by a second rumble of “hurrah!” from the spectators that packed the bar wall-to-wall. Galia tried not to laugh too hard and patted the girl on the back.
“Enjoy it while you can. You know what’s coming next,” Clarabelle told her and meant it. Everyone knew. The only consistency between all Olympia Golds: the second to last round, the Reverie. As she passed by, she dropped another round on a platter. At first, Deidra wondered why Clarabelle was torturing her. Then the old barkeep said, “This is from a certain avian friend of yours.” Galia glanced around for the Eagle, though she didn’t expect to find her here, mingling with the masses. She flinched when someone flopped down at the bar beside her.
“What are you doing here?” Deidra flared instantly, fueled in no small part by the Glass of Gold churning inside her. The Terra Eagle let it roll off her mechanically enhanced shoulders. She leaned back on the bar, exosuit arms shimmering green.
“Same as you, I’d wager. Actually, I never bet on anything, after what happened to a certain friend of mine. I’m blowing off steam before the Reverie tomorrow,” the Terra Eagle told her. It was ghastly, to hear a half-computerized voice say something so remarkably human. “There are quite a few teams on the losing side already this year.” Galia counted them behind her closed eyelids. The Torrent, the Hammer, Scorch… the Brazen.... of course, the last team wouldn’t be participating. Their last survivor was still in the games, against all odds. The others, however, were probably at a Gold Standard armory right now, choosing the tools of their revenge for tomorrow.
“You still have the balls to come in here and call my father your friend?” Deidra steamed. She leaned forward in her stool, only to be corralled by the hand of her captain on her chest. The Terra Eagle sighed; a long, uncomfortable digitized note.
“Twenty years is a long time to be confused about what you saw… you were five years old back then. But now, you must know why I knocked Jonas out,” she said. Deidra’s eyes skimmed the bar, for any misplaced booze she could swipe and swallow to escape this situation. After twenty years… did she want to know what she’d missed? Did she care? There was, however, no more liquid confidence available to her. Deidra would have to rely on her own.
“You wanted the bonus for your team. So what happened? Why did the Gold Standard come collect on his debt right then? Why didn’t he make it out of the Thruway? Did you just… hit him too hard?” Deidra unleashed her flood of questions at last. All of the things that haunted nightmares she chose to forget. The Terra Eagle lowered her helmet. Her visor came down. She eyed Deidra sideways with two smoky blue portals through a wasteland of a face. She spoke with her true, raspy voice.
“I wish I knew, Deidra… I went out almost as soon as your dad. When I woke up… I was like this. This exosuit gives me an edge in the Olympia, but that’s secondary to its function as a life support system,” the Eagle told her.
“Oh come on, Kayn,” all heads turned back to face Clarabelle, when she jutted in. Before the Eagle could answer she howled, “Donny! Man the bar a few minutes.” Donny hefted himself from a table in the corner, where he’d drank himself stupid with a few Dreamweaver fans. He freed Clarabelle up to cross her arms and deliver a killing look to the back of the Terra Eagle’s helmet. “You act like you have no idea.”
“If you’re so sure, why don’t you tell them, DeLuce?” the Eagle snapped. She flipped her visor back down. “See you tomorrow.” With this, the Eagle marched from the Forge. Deidra wheeled her barstool around to find Clarabelle with eyes the size of Greymoor.
“DeLuce?” she hissed. It was a name she’d heard more than once, when it crossed her father’s lips. If anything happens to daddy, you’ll stay with DeLuce. She’s like daddy’s sister, so you call her auntie DeLuce, understand? The words ricocheted through Deidra’s mind.
“Don’t look at me like that. Like you don’t know me all of a sudden ‘cause you found out I got a last name, too,” Clarabelle scolded her, “I was supposed to look after you, but… your dad was no fighter, Deidra. I wasn’t about to watch him die from the bleachers after his parents fed me, bathed me, dressed me, like I was his sister. I entered the Olympia with him instead. ”
“So…” Deidra did her best to swallow the fistful of truth Clarabelle had just dumped on her, like it was nothing. “You were there?”
“I was. I… withdrew after the Thruway. Me, Kayn and Jonas were all that was left of our crew. When I saw what happened to Jonas and Kayn, I knew there was only one person left who was gonna do anything to keep you alive. So I withdrew,” Clarabelle told her. Galia, who’d hung on every traded word, slipped her fingers between Deidra’s under the bar without a word.
“You… all these years… you’d known…” Deidra choked.