Love of Olympia (Olympia Gold)

though. If not for the bodies rushing all around the arena town, Deidra would have believed it was an ancient ruin. Smokestacks spewed gray imitations of the greenhouse gasses that had once ravaged the Homeworld’s atmosphere. Neon signs in store windows flickered and buzzed, as if about to pop. None of it was of concern to Deidra. She jabbed her index finger into the speaker switch on her Gold Standard collar.

“Show me the Forge,” she whimpered. A tiny lens projected a three-dimensional map of the Blasting Zone before her. A golden dot blinked out the location of the closest thing Deidra had to a home.

Eight miles outside the fringe of the Blasting Zone, the Forge jutted up from a hill of overgrown grass. A web of streets converged in a gigantic paved lot around it. Hovercabs filled almost every parking dock. Deidra burst through the front doors. A hundred faces turned from their tankards. Lips hung agape, and a few whispers even swept the crowd at the sight of the dark-skinned girl in The Gold Standard uniform. She shuddered at the first crack. Then another jumped out from the other side of the room. Deidra didn’t have a chance to figure out what it was before the whole Forge raged with claps and cheers. Her feet dragged forward on instinct. Her eyes fixed on the familiar woman at the bar. The screen behind her switched from the eliminated teams, Scorch and the Brazen, to the Dreamweaver. Their survival rating had dropped by five points after the risk of an unnecessary rescue.

“What in the hell are you doing here, girl?” Clarabelle hissed. Deidra didn’t even realize she’d drifted all the way to the bar.

“I don’t know,” muttered Deidra under the applause she couldn’t quite fathom was for her. “I just had to go somewhere. I… I came here.” She stared at Clarabelle the same absent way she had that rivet in the hotel. The old barkeep turned her head, to scream:

“Donny!” Her rarely needed assistant popped up beside her instantly. “Watch the bar for a few.” Clarabelle left him without a chance to answer. She dragged Deidra to the very back of the kitchen by the arm, out of sight from even the nosiest customer. Clarabelle knew better than to trust words to get across what she had to say to Deidra. Her two strong arms around the girl said I’m sorry, I’m here and I love you, better than her mouth ever could. Clarabelle squeezed the tears from Deidra into her collar. “Get it all out. Be sure you’re done before you let go. Because then, you have to let it go.”

“A-al-al-alright,” Deidra heaved. She wheezed and whimpered and emptied every last drop of water from inside her. Devin’s dead, she forced in, to force out the cries. Her partner for twenty years, her oldest friend, her brother in all but blood. He’s dead. Deidra’s shoulders trembled without the weight of emotion to hold them up. She was spent.

“That’s it,” Clarabelle said, when the girl finally drew back from her. She hardly cared that her blouse was wet enough to have gone through the shower. “Now you’ve got to get back to the Blasting Zone.”

“Wha-ha-what?”

“They’re going to count you as withdrawn if you don’t get back to the hotel before the next challenge,” said Clarabelle. Deidra drew back, but could go no further than the bartender’s grasp on her shoulders.

“Clarabelle,” the name sounded alien on Deidra’s lips. Clarabelle had always been ma’am to her and Devin. But one of them was gone now, the other a survivor by the skin of her teeth. Had that shell not ripped a hole through the bridge screen and Tygon first, she might not have been thrown from the wreck. Deidra had slipped just past the bony fingertips of Death herself. “I am withdrawn. I ran. I’m here. Here in the Forge, working with you. That’s where I belong, not in the goddamn Olympia Gold! If Devin had just accepted that, he might still…”

“Ah!” Clarabelle stopped her from devolving into hysteria by jostling Deidra’s shoulders. “That’s enough of that. Devin gave everything so you could break free of this. No matter where you think you belonged before, you owe it to him to see this through.”

“I owe it to him to die in these stupid games?” Deidra shouted at Clarabelle, something she would never have dreamed of before just then.

“You’ll die if you withdraw,” said Clarabelle in such a way that grounded Deidra. Her tone was absolute.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think happened to the loans the others took out to buy the Brazen? You think The Gold Standard forgave them because the rest of the crew didn’t make it? They’re down a ship, and they’ll exact that fee on whoever they can,” Clarabelle told her.

“There go my glory years,” Deidra shuddered, “Sorry Clarabelle, but life in chains is better than burial in a rusty coffin.”

“Deidra. You won’t have a life in chains. Your head was barely above water before, with your daddy’s debt alone. I’ve seen what they do to people with this much,” Clarabelle told her, again in so deep a voice it could only be the truth. The rumors are true, then, Deidra realized, about how long she’s worked for Koslav.

“What do you mean?” she blurted.

“They’ll say you’ve got the debt of six people. They’ll work you like you are six people. Back to back to back shifts. Every day. They’ll pump you with drugs to keep you from sleeping. They’ll work you to injury, then medicate you, then work you some more. Rinse and repeat until you end it yourself,” Clarabelle told her. Deidra raised a mortified eyebrow. “Trust me, you will, before they let you die.”

“Clarabelle, I can’t…” Deidra whimpered. Clarabelle squeezed her shoulders again.

“Ah! You have to. Not another word, but that you’ll go. Go back,” she said. Deidra forced herself to look Clarabelle in the eye. She found two dams filled with water, about to burst. “You go back to that captain that rescued you. You join her crew, and you finish this.” Deidra sniffled up the last of her hesitation.

“Yes, ma’am.”

When three hard knocks rattled her wrought iron door so late in the evening, Galia figured it was Rey. She opened her door, instead, to a disheveled, dark, freckled girl in a Gold Standard uniform.

Chapter Nine: Rust and Fire

Their night in the Blasting Zone hotel was one of the worst nights’ sleep Galia and Deidra had ever had. At first, it was the noise of the cars and intoxicated spectators outside. Gradually, as she drifted away, it was Galia’s snores, for Deidra. After three hours of forcing her eyelids shut, she finally managed to catch the rest she’d been chasing. Then it was the nightmares, for both of them.

Deidra saw Devin. Time after time, she saw him crunch to nothing inside steel and fire. She saw him sitting up in the Brazen, dead before he knew it. Before she could say goodbye. She saw it a thousand times on repeat, until the sun rose.

Galia saw herself in the reflection of a taxotrol bottle. She looked younger then. There weren’t half the stress lines she had now. The permanent bags she hid with makeup hadn’t been painted under her eyes yet. It was the first time her cough knocked her off her feet. The first time she considered popping an extra pill to chase it away. Part of her still thought, back then, that she could pass the tests she needed to. She just had to stop coughing long enough to impress her supervisor. She just needed one more purple pill. Galia’s nightmare was the moment she finally let herself believe that. When she twisted the taxotrol cap back off instead of shoving it in her drawer, or calling for Elaine.

“Morning,” Galia moaned, when a sunbeam finally crept across the iron floor of their room.

“Mm…” Deidra grunted. She turned her face away from the light. She coiled herself in the sheets, wrapping herself in hesitation, to pretend for five more minutes that her life wasn’t on the rusty, iron line. Galia had other designs.