Chapter One: The Tale of Jonas
It started with the faintest buzz - only a second long, but the most vivid sound tangible for one so on edge as Jonas Benier. To him, it was a low horn note, signaling violence unspeakable. In reality, it was the lights. They flicked on. What had been absolute darkness a second ago blazed with the heat of a thousand tiny spotlight suns. Eleven other silhouettes blinked to life around him. They were the survivors - four crews of three. The ones on either side of him were his friends. The rest would just as soon jostle his brain inside his skull as look at him. Not quite yet though. At the moment they were all frozen in place by awe of what lay in front of them. In the center of the gathering was a vast pit, through crust into bedrock and beyond. Faint bulbs shimmered all the way down its boundless steel throat. Jonas’ heart stopped. He wasn’t sure it ever started again.
“Ladies, gentlemen, warlords and stowaways… welcome back to the thirty-sixth Olympia Gold! This,” the announcer let his sharp note slice deep in the ensuing silence. “Is the Thruway!” Speakers around them shook the very pebbles from the soil around Jonas and the others’ feet. The outcry of applause that fell on them from the floating bleachers above stung their eardrums. Most stood tall under its weight - cheers for their blood and even death - but not Jonas. He was more accustomed to the betting side of matches like this. But then, that’s what had plunged him into this nightmare. The Olympia Gold.
“Hey,” a single, soft note called Jonas’ wild face to his left. He found the smoky blue eyes of Kayn, one of two women crazy enough to follow him into the ring. Those perfect irises, almost gray, were an instant shot of dopamine to his brain in crisis. “We keep it tight, we’ll get through this.” Jonas’ lip quivered in an attempt to respond, but he couldn’t even whimper. All of his wind was reserved for the formidable task of breathing.
“You’re going to get back to that beautiful little girl of yours,” said his other companion. Jonas’ head jerked to the right. There was DeLuce, faithful always. No matter how Jonas had assured her that she didn’t have to follow him into this just because his parents had taken her in, here she was. “And then you’re leaving this place. For good.” How a man like Jonas has earned the love of two good women, he would forever wonder. Some days he figured it was nature’s way of balancing his luck in the bettings.
“Right,” Jonas spat out at last. His head shook into a nod. My little girl. One thought of her was all it took to calm his nerves. He steadied his breath. He was ready. She was watching - he had to be. “No looking back.”
“In this round, combatants will plummet from one side of Ares to the other! Artificial gravity will propel them six hundred miles through the planet, to a stabilization field on the other side! This is the longest freefall in the galaxy, folks. Combatants are forbidden any blades or firearms. Surviving teams move to the next round. The team with the last combatant conscious wins a bonus!” the announcer roared over the ravenous audience. A ticking timer on a screen overhead quieted them for the countdown. It started at seven, the number of rounds in the legendary games of Olympia Gold. “Combatants! Prepare to jump!” By the end of the announcer’s decree, three seconds remained on the clock. Two… one.
Jonas didn’t have a chance to hesitate. Heat seared through the soles of his shoes. Another second, and they’d melt to his feet. He jumped after the shadows of Kayn, DeLuce and nine others. Jonas’ brain had been trained well in his twenty-eight years to always expect the ground after a jump, never more than a second later. When that second passed, then the next, and another, his brain naturally froze. Jonas felt like it had stayed behind while the rest of him plummeted further, deeper down the glowing chute. In its place at the center of his hollow skull, was born a potent tingle. It spread down to the tips of his fingers and toes. Jonas screeched down the Thruway, limp.
“Jonas!” Kayn’s scream rattled his bones. He found her smoky blue eyes in the flashing dark. Even tied up, strands of her hair flicked wild around her. Her clothes furled up while she leaned away from the swinging chrome bat of an opponent. She slapped the backside of the weapon from her foe’s hand, into the racing wall. It bounced away while Kayn snapped a kick up into the enemy’s head. Her struggle reminded Jonas: my little girl.
He tensed up just in time for a strike at his head. Jonas didn’t think, he only lifted his hand to snatch the fist before it could connect. It didn’t matter as the fist was inside a mechanical gauntlet. Jonas screamed. He felt as though every bone in his right hand had just splintered. His foe clicked a button inside the gauntlet to administer it’s true sting: a jolt of high-voltage electricity. Jonas seized and clenched. He fell in tremors until an armored boot cracked the side of his adversary’s skull. The man bounced away from DeLuce’s heel; his body limp as it collided with the wall of the Thruway cascading past.
“Th-th-th-Thanks,” Jonas managed through the electric aftershocks. DeLuce’s response was an instant, adrenaline driven:
“Get that, and get your head in the game!” Her nose pointed to the flailing shape of the man she’d just clocked. His fingers still clenched inside his volt-gauntlet. Keeping it tight was out of the question in this maelstrom of bodies. The fleeting thought that he was still falling froze Jonas up for another second. Then his brain adjusted at last. Slowly, painfully, Jonas flexed his right hand and arm. It hurt like the devil - but thankfully, nothing was actually broken. Finally, he was able to marshal his thoughts. Get the gauntlet, took form amidst the chaos inside him.
Jonas leaned forward, arms out, but it wasn’t enough to get him moving. His legs stretched out behind him instinctually, until his toe tapped the edge of the pit. It wrenched upwards. While Jonas struggled to claim his bearings, a shape tore across his periphery. A rival body flew up at him. The woman snapped out a telescoping rod in both hands. Jonas kicked with both legs and all of his untrained strength. The rod clicked off of the wall inches behind Jonas’ toes. He soared across the Thruway in a sort of accidental grace.
A brief second of lucidity overtook him. Everything unfolded at half-speed. Column lights glinted off the volt-gauntlet on Jonas’ lifeless target. Applause roared up like a sacrificial wind as a ring of spectator booths passed by in the walls. Beads of sweat slipped up and away from his skin. The moment passed, with Jonas’ clarity, whe
n his hands found the gauntlet. Time kicked up to its regular pace. It seemed to quicken even more while Jonas tugged and yanked. Every second he worked on it, he was sure a rod or club was just about to bash him from behind. He gasped when the gauntlet popped free. Jonas floated backward. He fumbled with it while a pair of brass knuckles swung just over his head. Jonas spun to find a body winding up for a second strike.
“Hey!” DeLuce called, gaining his assailant’s attention with a quick bark. The woman turned and managed to just duck DeLuce’s swing of the telescoping staff. Jonas saw at a glance that its previous owner had been battered. Their foe ducked under the staff and countered with a fistful of metal. The uppercut clicked DeLuce’s jaw out of place. She floated up, loose.
“Over here!” Jonas bellowed. By the time the woman with the brass knuckles had turned, Jonas threw his first punch, charged with enough electricity to jump-start a hovercar. A burst of lightning lit the Thruway on impact. The shock to her temple launched the woman across the Thruway - out cold. Jonas screamed in pain as the impact jarred his injured arm. Panting slightly, he turned to look for DeLuce, but she was out too.
“Jonas,” Kayn called him. He jerked towards her, paralyzed by the view. Light columns on moving walls. Bodies strung out like lifeless puppets. Weapons adrift in the emptiness. In the middle of it all was Kayn. She glided like she was born for this; one leg pointed down, the other bent up. She was armed with a wide steel club and a rectangular sheet shield. The sight of her restored just a hint of Jonas’ sanity. He glanced from one lifeless shadow to the next, scattered around the Thruway. “How many are left?”
“Just us,” Kayn smiled. Her lips bent wide and warm, enough to reopen a cut from a previous round. A drop of her own blood rolled down through the splatter of a foe’s. She drifted close to Jonas. Only wind separated their tired bodies. Three rounds in the Olympia Gold, and this is what was left of their crew. “I’ll take it from here,” she said. The genuine calm in her smirk made Kayn’s words doubly as haunting.
“Wha-what?” Jonas sputtered. So in shock, he hardly noticed the shadow behind her.
“See you on the other side, love.” Kayn’s club snapped across his face. Everything became blackness for Jonas. He never made it to the other side. The last thing he saw was Kayn’s smokey blue eyes, wrinkled with her smile.
Chapter Two: A Gray Afternoon
“Get your application here! Anyone can compete! You there, sir, you’ve got the beard of a Gold Medalist!” Devin belted out in sharp accents and quick rants. Deidra couldn’t help but chuckle. He sounded more like a trainee in the announcer program than facilities. But then, neither of them were trainees at all... This wasn’t their job. It was their sentence.
“Remember what Clarabelle said,” Deidra whispered when she saw the crooked eye the bearded man gave him. He regarded Devin the way one might their next handful of potato chips. Then the man phased back into the flowing crowds around them. The Skyport was the highest traffic area on Greymoor, but most of that traffic was only interested in rushing by a couple of hasslers like Deidra and Devin. “Don’t address people so specifically. They find it threatening.”
“People love threatening! That’s why they come to this thing,” Devin answered, heedless of who might hear around them. Deidra tensed. She hated when he got like this. Entitlement is a disease. It infects you, the Chairman had said at a rare speech over his servant staff. If you feel above your station, you will act outside of it. Make no mistake, there is always a lower place, a deeper cave, that could use you. Handing out flyers and entrance applications - that was Deidra’s station. Despite being partnered on the job, Devin still had other ideas. “Isn’t that right, miss? The threat, the risk, is what makes it so thrilling! Experience it all like never before by entering the fifty-sixth Olympia Gold, yourself!”
“They love watching others get threatened. You know that,” Deidra hissed.
“And for some of these psychos, the line gets a little blurry,” Devin countered, quieter this time.
“If you don’t tone it down, you’re going to get us in the Cram again,” Deidra huffed. Devin spun to hold out his stack of applications to the crowd as he made his way through it. He stopped a foot from Deidra.
“The only one who’s going to get us in the Cram is you, DD,” Devin whispered, “Have you shelled out any tickets?”
“Don’t get cute with me,” Deidra snapped. Devin only ever called her that, like he used to when “Deidra” was too hard for him at five years old when he wanted to get under her skin. “I sold… five.” She counted twenty left in her quota for the day. The date 56 APC, After Planetary Crack, was printed on the top of them. That marked fifty-six years since the first time the man-made satellite planet Ares was destroyed and remade for the greatest competition of human extravagance. The Olympia Gold. “How many combatants have you nailed today?” Deidra added for good measure. She was damn tired of spending days in cramped darkness because of Devin’s attitude. “How many, Devin?”
“Well… I got that crew yesterday. The Hammer,” Devin pouted, “Besides, it’s way easier to sell spectators than competitors. You know that.”
“I do,” Deidra smirked, knowing she had him now, “Thought you did, too. But you keep poking at people. That’s going to chase them away, not reel them in!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Devin shook his head, never one for admitting when he was beat. It took a deep breath and several seconds for him to admit, “Fine. I’ll turn it around. I bet I get more crews today than you get spectators.” Deidra couldn’t contain a snort.
“Game on,” she challenged.
With this, she and Devin separated to opposite sides of the cement-block walkway. It led across the colorless clay of Greymoor’s crust, to the lunar city of Ganera. Most people kept their eyes fixed on its rising lights, its multicolor towers in the darkness of space. They had no time or patience for sales pitches from a pair of kids.
Deidra read once that humans her age were once considered adults, at twenty-five. That was well before nanotech organ reconstruction. With the average life expectancy of a Homeworld human now estimated at one-hundred-seventy-five, Deidra was a mere pup to these passing star-travelers. Those same books referred to Greymoor as ‘the Moon’ and the color-splotched Homeworld behind it as “Earth”. Back when they were written, these were the limits of human expansion. For Deidra, it would be more accurate to call Ares or Greymoor home. She’d hardly spent a quarter of her life on the planet she was born on, Homeworld - she remembered nothing of it. Koslav’s library was filled with books from that era, books that Deidra spent her one day off a year perusing. Her birthday. But that was a few months off. Now, her only concern was selling tickets to the Olympia Gold. That, and staying out of the damn Cram.
“Read please, read sir! This is your chance,” Devin chimed in a sickly sweet tone. Deidra sighed instantly at the sight of his target. It was a man twice Devin’s size, muscles swelling through a lacy, torn-up jacket. His yellow, snake-like eyes narrowed on the boy and his handful of applications.
“Chance fer what?” the man slurred. In a single breath, he released a fog of scotch strong enough to curl Devin’s nosehairs. He knew at these three words it was going to be a fight. It was in the sneering lines of the man’s face. Deidra knew, even from across the crowd, that there was nothing either of them could do about it. “Go on, boy. Read me cards. What’re me chances?” Devin’s eyes darted to his distant friend. Experience told him lying was about the worst thing he could do now.
“To win the Olympia Gold Medal, of… course…” Devin rumbled down well below his usual zeal. The man had balled up his knuckles already.
“Bunch o kids… sellin a bloodbath…” the man rambled. He couldn’t even keep both eyes focused on Devin. “Wha… you take one look at me an think: tha guy’s a loose cannon? Didn’ yer mama ever teach ya what happens when you assume?”
“Afraid she didn’t, before she sold me off,” Devin tried to divert. It at least bought
him enough time for Deidra to make her way over.
“Givin me lip now, now, boy?” the man wheezed.
“So, so sorry sir,” Deidra wiggled her way between him and Devin. She put on her best, most innocent smile. “I have some free merchandise vouchers for you, if you would just-”
“Another one! The gall on you two!” the man guffawed. His lunch nearly came up with the laugh. Deidra did have a handful of vouchers for displeased customers, and The Gold Standard produced far more than just the Koslav Gold’s grand tournament. If this man had his wits about him, he might have walked away with some free assistive technology - a sight-enhancing contact or bulletproof undershirt. As it stood, he wound back his coiled fist. “You… you’re property!”