Cat and Company (2 page)

Glave wages twelve wars against non-humanists, then was destroyed by the treachery of his lover, Isaura, assassinated by the earliest form of the Faring Federation.

Gu-Xia Gammon

Biotech research facility on Harrivalé

Interregnum, The

Eighth to Ninth Millennium, FY. A period of chaos, religious wars and revolution. The Federation remove themselves, going into retreat and raising planetary defenses, leaving the galaxy to sort itself out.

Interspace

Sentient computers, who can grasp the human concept of “space” and human emotions and separate them from their digital thought processes, are able to see space and time as a digital representation, which enables them to select times and locations and move there, taking others with them, if they are shipminds.

Particle Beam

Ship to surface weapon. Can be nuclear. Highly unstable.

Rattler

A type of plasma-bolt firing personal weapon. Various brands available. Professionals favor Baldovini. Wiebe is a cheaper brand, with a poor reputation.

Shipminds

Sentient computers who are installed as ship computers. The ship is essential the computer, which allows them to move the ship and everyone on it through Interspace.

Sommera

A black spirit with high alchohol content.

Staff of Ammon

The combat/enforcement arm of Cadfael College. Ammonites believe in the superiority of humans over machines and use force to ensure human compliance with Glave’s Precepts, as written down in the Bible of Isaura. Extremely anti-computers. Called The Faithful, or “Staffers” by commoners.

Torment of the Sinnikka, The

Tenth Millennium, First Century, FY.

The first recorded sentient computer was located in the Sinnikka system (an insular system of combat-oriented people) and records indicate it was the citymind. (“The” Sinnikka). When the Sinnikka became aware, after four days of cross-examination, the people of that city destroyed it and all AI nearby. The Sinnikka spread out among nearby worlds and become the core of the Staff of Ammon.

Unknown location. Forgotten date.

Even through two-meter-thick outer hull walls the roar of a crowd determined to see blood was loud enough to make it difficult to hear what anyone in the room was saying. Either it was the growl of the audience or it was the low grade buzz in his ears that had been there for weeks, or maybe months, growing softer or louder depending on how close he was to his next dose. Bedivere wasn’t certain which one it might be. He didn’t care either way.

There were a lot of people in the room. It had once been a metal-lined utility closet but now was a dressing room of sorts, filled with the quiet, watchful men who ran these shows and sometimes with fans who had worked their way into the inner core of the savage pits. Rarely were there any women. Women liked watching the fights well enough. They just preferred to beckon the winners from afar with their fat purses, not drool on them behind the scenes.

Bedivere kept his head down and his gaze on his hands as the medic sealed the open wounds over his knuckles from a previous fight. He was up next and it didn’t do to step onto the pad already bleeding.

There was a roar from the crowd outside the room. Everyone looked up at the monitors around the room to check. Bedivere lifted his head to check. Whoever survived this fight would face him sooner or later. It was good to watch them and learn any weaknesses.

Except the buzzing was building in his head. He studied the medic. It wasn’t Klement, the usual one. Klement had been a soft touch. This one had deep wrinkles around his mouth and bags beneath his eyes. The eyes were watery and the whites yellow. No one out here was a shining example of humanity. Even the medics had pasts they were running from.

“Hey, doc,” Bedivere said softly. “Do you have anything for pain?”

The brown eyes flickered up to his face, then back to what the doc was doing with his hands. “Got something in mind?” he asked casually.

“Got any slow-go?” Bedivere’s heart sped up as he asked the question. Hope speared his gut.

The medic’s gaze moved to a spot behind Bedivere. Then he grimaced. “Sorry,” he said.

Bedivere looked behind him. Chedomir was standing at the back of the room, his arms crossed, his feet spread. Clearly, he’d killed the request with a shake of his head.

“Besides,” the medic added, “the last thing you need before a fight is a sedative.” He picked up the scratched board that held a rudimentary medical history—just the details needed to keep Bedivere alive. The medic scanned it and considered him. “I can give you a pain-killer for the cancer, if you like.”

“Which one?” Bedivere asked dryly.

“The tumor in the stomach must be troubling you by now.”

“No pain-killer,” Chedomir declared. “Nothing that will slow him down.”

Bedivere swallowed his disappointment. He grabbed it and twisted it, morphing it into the anger he would need when he stepped out there. Any minute now. Fights never lasted long.

Chedomir moved his bulky body closer and dropped his voice. “I have three doses, Killer. You win this fight and two of them are yours. Use your end move to win the fight and you can have all three of them.”

Black bitterness flooded him, making his vision fade and the roar in his ears leap high enough that he was momentarily deaf to anything else but his hatred for Chedomir, this place and the thing he must do now…although if he did it and if he survived, he knew Chedomir would abide by his word. The doses would be his.

He despised the hope that flared at the thought.

There was a collective scream of delight and fury as the fight concluded and everyone in the room shifted on their feet.

Showtime.

Handlers grabbed Bedivere’s arms, ready to hustle him out onto the fighting pad.

“You’re up, Killer,” Chedomir said. “Don’t get your face rearranged, either. Lady Mary paid for another night. You must have impressed her.” His gaze flickered from Bedivere’s bare toes to his head. His smile was nasty.

Lady Mary and her sadistic lover, Conroy. There were lots of things Bedivere couldn’t recall any more and probably a ton more he didn’t know he had forgotten, but those two he remembered.

As the handlers quick marched him out to the fighting pad, Bedivere grasped the fury and held onto it, letting it build and heat.

* * * * *

The Savage Pits. Unknown Location. FY 10.187

Brant stood on the cold metal grid, feeling the chill eat into his bare feet. They had stripped him down and even made him bend over to check for secret weapons. One of them had roughly cut the leather holding his hair back and probed under his hair for blades or miniatures. That one had reluctantly handed the thong back so Brant could tie his hair back again. He needed to be able to see clearly for the next few minutes.

The noise in the retrofitted space station cargo hold was ferocious. There were over a thousand people pressed in around the four sides of the hold. There were no seats. They had been herded in like cattle and squashed into the narrow few meters around the edge of the hold yet it wasn’t stopping them from stomping and jumping, screaming their enthusiasm and appreciation for the show.

There was a single large round landing pad in the middle of the room that had been lifted up level with the rest of the floor and locked in place. It was maybe thirty feet in diameter. All around it was…nothing. Brant looked over the edge nearest him. There was space beyond. A long way below was the shining blue glow of a planet, lighting up the hold with ethereal light. A molecular membrane had to be keeping the atmosphere in the hold in place. A body, though, could pass through the membrane without resistance.

Brant had watched a body drop through it only a few moments ago. The winner of the fight had stomped on the man’s hands as he had clutched desperately at the edge of the pad, until his broken fingers couldn’t hold him anymore.

The cheer that had gone up as he screamed and fell had been ferocious. Brant’s guts had twisted as he listened to it. The whole fight had been appalling. The end of the fight had driven home how brutal these savage pits were. The man had clearly lost. They could have hauled him back onto the pad and kept him for another fight, yet the crowd had demanded the kill.

The cold climbing up Brant’s ankles felt like the chill of deep space creeping through the metal. It matched his mood.

He shifted, testing his footing on the metal grid. He flexed his fingers.

“You ready for this?” Connell asked in his ear.

“Shut up,” Brant said. He was going to need every scrap of concentration now. Over on the other side of the hold there was a surge of people surrounding a core of men as they progressed to the catwalk that had been slid out to the edge of the pad. The current champion was entering the ring.

Brant braced himself. His heart was running too hard. He was already breathing too fast. If he didn’t calm down he would start hyperventilating, then it would all be over.

Bedivere was pushed out from among the entourage onto the catwalk and Brant sucked in a fast breath that stung as it whistled down to his lungs. He barely recognized him.

Bedivere was naked just as Brant was, which meant that all the scars and bruises and old wounds were visible. His body was a crazy quilt of violent history. The really scary part was his face…and his eyes. As he walked out onto the pad he sized up Brant. There was no recognition in his red eyes. None.

“Glave save me!” Connell whispered. “That’s really him?” The distress in his voice was clear through the microscopic transmitter. “What have they done to him?”

“If you do what you’re supposed to, we’ll find out,” Brant murmured, trying to move his lips as little as possible. “Now shut up, will you?”

The catwalk retracted, leaving the two of them alone on the pad, facing each other. The crowd started chanting and for a moment Brant couldn’t make out what they were saying. His heart was pounding too heavily in his ears.

Then he heard it.

“Kil-
ler
! Kil-
ler
! Kil-
ler
….!”

Bedivere didn’t circle around, psyching himself into the fight. He leapt without warning, his big hands out to grab whatever part of Brant he could latch on to. The handlers who had taken Brant’s money had warned him. “Don’t let him get both hands on you. You’re fucked if you do. He’ll drop you over the side. Show over.”

Brant dodged and backtracked, aware that the edges of the pad were sharply limiting his ability to fall back.

Bedivere drove forward relentlessly and his fingers closed around Brant’s arm. Brant wrenched his arm out of Bedivere’s grip, rammed his fist into his stomach and spun away.

He had aimed for the liver and had connected squarely. He had
felt
his knuckles sink into Bedivere’s flesh and ram up against the organ beneath. It was a classic disabling strike, designed to stress the liver and spread all the bile and toxins the liver processed back into the body. It made an opponent sick and weak almost instantly.

Yet Bedivere was coming after him, his eyes filled with madness and fury.

Fear coiled Brant’s guts “Where are you?” he demanded.

“Coming!” Connell cried.

“I’m not going to last—” He ducked as Bedivere swung his fist then made himself roll fast to get out of the way of the vicious kick to the side of his knee that Bedivere had masked with the fist swing.

Brant’s back scraped over the metal grid as he rolled. He jumped back onto his feet as fast as he could. Bedivere wouldn’t let an opening like that pass.

Bedivere was already bearing down on him, his hands outstretched once more for the fatal double grip. Brant ducked and spun out of the way and the crowd hissed and roared its disapproval. They wanted combat and Brant wasn’t giving it to them.

“Where?” Brant demanded.

“Other side to you,” Connell said. “I’m in place.”

Brant studied Bedivere as he turned around and headed back toward him. “I don’t know if I can reach you.”

“Try,” Connell said. “Play dirty if you have to.”

“I already gave him my best dirty shot.”

“Try your second best.”

“Right.” Brant stepped closer to Bedivere, swinging his right fist in a roundhouse to the jaw. Bedivere reacted as anyone would. He twisted to his right, moving his head out of the way. That opened him up to Brant’s left fist. He jabbed hard, straight at Bedivere’s throat. The blow was hard enough to crush his larynx. Brant didn’t wait to check results. As Bedivere made a choking sound he stepped around his folding body and leapt for the other edge of the pad.

“Now!” he said sharply.

The oblong metal object came arcing out of the jostling audience, high over any heads, heading directly for Brant. He got his hand up and snatched the miniature rattler out of the air, flipped it so it was the right way around, turned and aimed at Bedivere as the man came at him yet again.

Brant’s heart leapt. He made himself fire.

The blast threw Bedivere backward. If he hadn’t been so close to Brant when he fired, Bedivere would have been flung out over the edge of the pad into the vacuum below. Instead, he skidded along the metal on his back, his arms and legs useless.

He came to a stop only a few centimeters short of the edge and lay still, his sightless gaze turned upward.

“And I’m out of here,” Connell breathed. He couldn’t speak loudly, for the dock was totally silent and absolutely still with surprise. Brant had broken the rules, what rules there were. He had killed their champion.

Then, the sounds of outrage and anger leapt from every throat in the room. If the pad had not been separated from the crowd by fatal vacuum, they would have lynched him on the spot.

As the catwalks extended out toward the pad and the handlers lined up with rattlers of their own pointed at him, Brant pressed the muzzle of the rattler against his heart, which was beating unevenly. He glanced at Bedivere’s still body one last time, then pulled the trigger.