“Yes, but…” Koslav started almost as sharply, but softened mid-sentence. He let out a long, shaky breath. “I know, Yuri. I know.” Is that… his real name? Deidra only had time to wonder so far, before a hand grasped her shoulder. She stifled the urge to scream as it dragged her away. She thought it must be Koslav’s assistant, all the way until it took her through the doors of the Forge. The Terra Eagle threw her back in her barstool.
“Learn anything worth your life?” she bit, in her digitized tone.
“Koslav and Daniel have some sort of ar-”
Deidra’s lips sealed at the flick of two fingers. One was Clarabelle’s, over her lips for quiet. The other pointed at Koslav’s assistant within earshot. Deidra nodded her understanding. Clarabelle then relocated the finger from her lips to a piece of electronic paper on the bar. Deidra tried to read it over, but the legal jargon was only bewitched her intoxicated brain.
“What is it?” she surrendered after reading the same line for the fifth time.
“The deed of sale to my ship,” said the Terra Eagle, “I can’t donate you a ship that’s already entered the Olympia under a different crew name. But, if it legally belongs to you, you can re-title it as whatever you want. Even Dreamweaver.” Deidra’s bursting eyes jumped from her to Clarabelle.
“How did you get this so fa-”
Again, Clarabelle silenced her with a finger. She tapped the line at the bottom, where Deidra needed only sign. She rolled a stylus across the bar.
“I’m giving it to you for a fair price,” said the Eagle, “I’m expecting it’ll come back to me for one, when the Olympia’s over.” Deidra’s smile swallowed up her whole face. While she wove out her signature.
Ship Designation: Dreamweaver
Captain: Deidra Benier
Chapter Eighteen: Olympia
Despite the spikes of torture inside her body, Galia shuffled from one foot to the next, like a child about to pee themselves. She stared up into her own, bright-eyed reflection in the armor of a dream come to life.
“You’re sure you don’t want to fly it?” Galia asked for the fifth time, “I mean, you’re the legal captain.” Deidra indulged in a chortle at the first time she’d seen Galia so excitable. Looking at her just then, an outsider never would have guessed there was an alien sickness eating her alive. She never would have guessed Galia was entering the final found of the Olympia Gold. Just then, none of it mattered, because she was about to fly the fully refurbished Terra Eagle. Sure, legally, it was the Dreamweaver now, but there was no contesting with its incredible design.
“Nah, I want to live. You fly it. Besides, I’m more comfortable on the guns now,” Deidra waved her off. “We should… probably get in.” Galia shook from her trance, only to enter another, giddier one.
“Yes, yes, yes,” chimed Galia. She jammed a switch on the side of the Eagle’s mounting gear, it’s talon. A lift pod sunk down to carry them up. Galia and Deidra squeezed in together. “Everyone who thinks about entering the Olympia dreams about just seeing the Terra Eagle. I’m about to fly it!” Galia couldn’t help herself. Her scream echoed through the loading bunker a mile from their hotel. She pressed Deidra into the glass of their pod with her body, before they got into the ship. The two did a dance of lips and tongues until the doors slid open.
Galia skipped down the narrow platform of the Eagle’s innards the second she could. It had low ceilings and no carpet on the floor, but that hardly mattered. This tiny craft was built for speed and maneuverability. Galia planned to do it honor as she slipped into the cockpit, the head of the Eagle. Deidra laughed her way to the shoulder guns beside her. She and Galia grinned to one another, and interlocked fingers while the feathers of the ship flickered alive.
“Ready?” Deidra said, when the sleek frame of the Eagle rumbled alive.
“Let’s fly,” said Galia. The Eagle’s wings flapped down once. A shockwave lifted them from the ground. A pulse of jets launched it to the sky.
Galia hooted and hollered while she had the luxury. Deidra laughed along with her while their ship screamed across the artificial beauty of Ares. Mountains. Ice spikes. The great iron walls of the Bangbox. The pink auroras of the Reverie Lake. The last of their laughs trickled away with the rise of the audience’s blasting cheers. They hovered on what the Gold Standard called “spectator stations”, floating highrises entirely enclosed from the elements by a forcefield filled with artificial atmosphere. From them, they could enjoy the whole show through cameras throughout the planet, then their own eyes. The destruction of planet Ares.
Galia and Deidra held tight to one another as the Eagle floated through the cluster of spectator stations. Galia turned the nose of the ship down towards a black hole in the planet.
The gates
to the most spectacular event of the Olympia Gold was the only part of it that reflected its true nature. It wasn’t glamorous. It was dressed up, or trimmed. It was a cave. Deep. Dark.
The Terra Eagle’s talons chewed into the tough multerium walls of Ares’ core. Daniel’s sleek, long-nosed ship was already there. Deidra and Galia came down through the pod beneath their ship. They stepped out into the cavern, along with their final opponent. The man in the pinstripe suit. Murderer of Deidra’s father, and countless others. Daniel. Yuri. For once, the three were without an audience, in person at least. Only three stood in the faint, warm light. A soft shimmer of gold that hardly licked the cave’s softly rippling walls. All three combatants lifted their eyes to the source. A disk on a ribbon, the object of worship for which gallons of blood were spilled every year.
The Olympia Gold Medal. Any hopeful combatant knew the Gold part of the title meant only its color and the light it emitted. It was made of something far more valuable than gold. It was ten ounces of solid multerium, the only supply of it authorized for sale by The Gold Standard labs. Deidra’s freedom. Galia’s cure.
“Spectators and combatants,” even Cybil’s voice was subdued in the cave, a murmur in place of a boom. “It all comes down to this. Removal of the Olympia Gold Medal, the regulation core of the planet, will cause a chain reaction. Ares will tear itself apart. Whoever escapes the atmosphere with the Medal earns the right to sell it and hold the title of Olympia Gold Medalist.” Cybil’s voice fell away for a few moments of almost somber silence. When he came back on, it was with a jarring note of finality.
“Combatants. Anything is permitted to win this challenge. You may use any weapon. Any channel of transport. All service tunnels, even restricted ones, are open. All arenas are unsealed. Good luck… Begin.”
Galia snapped her flower-launcher from over her shoulder. She leveled it on their opponent’s chest. Deidra stomped once to blast a wave of blue force from the jet-disks in the bottom of her boots. It catapulted her forty feet in the air. She snatched the shimmering Gold Medal from its stabilization orb. Deidra landed a short arc from where she started, next to Galia. The cavern’s semi-solid walls rumbled into crashing waves of multerium. The stabilization orb glowed hot white in the absence of its counterpart. In minutes, its combustion would rival that of a miniaturized star.
“Not interested in the title?” Galia asked, finger ready to launch a flower. The man in the pinstripe suit shrugged.
“Not supposed to win,” he said in a sharp accent. His slightly grinning eyes moved to Deidra, “But you knew that already, didn’t you?”