Slingers (3 page)

Pondy works on him in silence for several minutes.

Kem is thankful for the silence.

Then Pondy says: “The retrieval team has Nico. All of him.”

“Not now, Pondy.”

“You’re going to have to go down planet-side and bring back a rel for the city. You and Xen both. Day after tomorrow. Better start getting used to the idea. Has to be done.”

Kem stuffs the tears, although it takes more effort than hurling an unwilling body from an arena deadway.

“Fine,” he says.

“Good. Stay still.”

“I need you to do something for me.”

“I’m already doing something for you.”

“I need you talk to the rest of the team,” Kem confides to him quietly. “To tell them.”

“Tell them what?” Pondy asks, not really listening, focused solely on rehabbing Kem’s body.

“After I leave. I need you tell them I’m not coming back from Earth. I’m leaving the team. I’m retiring.”

Pondy ceases his ministrations.

Kem doesn’t want to look at him. The older man steps back from the med bed, hands on his mountainous hip, staring down at Kem with an elder’s lament in his small eyes.

“Goddammit, boy,” is all he can manage in the end.

Kem closes his eyes, but all that’s waiting for him there in the darkness is the image of Nico falling.

Always falling.

Forever.

THE LAMB & THE HERALD

Jeremy goes to take his second bite of the candy apple Mister Galeel bought him at a stand in Roll Call and stops when he sees its caramel coating is now sprinkled red.

When the red begins to drip down the apple Jeremy knows instantly it’s blood.

He’s only ten years old, but he’s seen a lot of blood.

Mister Galeel is a journalist. Years ago he wrote a story about Jeremy after Jeremy was born because he was the first baby ever born in Sling City. His parents weren’t VIP’s or bleacher bums or perma-fans, though. They weren’t city workers or part of the games. They certainly weren’t slingers.

No, his mother was a squatter living in G-Ring. She didn’t know who his father was.

Jeremy was born in steel squalor and when word got around it made everybody interested in the squatters and G-Ring again and Mister Galeel won a big prize for his story, and his story was picked up by media outlets all over the world and for a moment everyone knew baby Jeremy’s name.

Oh, it was a big deal for a goodly while. Jeremy’s mother was given gifts, money, offers to leave the station and return to Earth.

And she might have, maybe, if all the gifts and all the money she received hadn’t bought her enough of her special medicine to kill her.

That story never got written for some reason.

After she died people just kind of lost interest in Jeremy, and in the squatters again, and in G-Ring.

So Jeremy grew up there, raised by the village as they say.

Now Mister Galeel is back and he’s writing a new story about the squatters, about G-Ring, and about the things the shock cops have been doing there in the past few months. He wanted to begin with Jeremy, he said, as a way to say sorry for leaving him years ago.

Or rather, Mister Galeel
was
going to write that story.

Jeremy looks up from his soiled apple at Mister Galeel, and the man had been typing something on his little pad a second before and now he’s stopped. He’s still holding the pad. In fact, his hands are holding it so tight his brown skin is turning white around it. And his eyes are wide open, except he’s not really looking at anything.

That’s because there’s a shiny blade poking through his chest and a very big, very ugly shock cop standing behind him.

He’s not the first person Jeremy has seen stabbed. He’s not the first person Jeremy has seen die.

He is the first person Jeremy has seen murdered in cold blood.

Mister Galeel bought him the apple and then they’d gone somewhere quiet away from Roll Call to talk. Jeremy asked if they were going back to G-Ring and Mister Galeel said no, that it wasn’t safe.

It turns out the secluded spot he chose wasn’t any safer.

Now there’s another shock cop with his gloved hands on Jeremy’s shoulders and it’s not the first time he’s been grabbed, either. He’s not afraid, because his hero Kem Carbassa is never afraid, and Jeremy always thinks what would Kem Carbassa do when someone grabs him.

It’s a big apple held on that little stick. It hurts when Jeremy swings it into the shock cop’s noise, at least enough to make him mad and confused and to let up his grip just enough for Jeremy to wriggle free.

He drops his blood-stained apple and now he’s running, and if they had guns like the cops Jeremy’s seen on the screens in shops and squares in Roll Call he’d be dead, but shock cops don’t have guns and he’s light and fast and in seconds he’s out of range of their whips.

He runs, and he doesn’t run towards Roll Call. That’s where the shock cops live and the people call them whenever they see a squatter and a lot of times you never see that squatter again.

So instead Jeremy runs to G-Ring.

Where it’s safe.

SLINGER BAR

Kem knows as soon as he steps through the door that he doesn’t want to be here.

The Slingback is
the
bar. Every team drinks here, but tonight belongs to The Reapers, who are sending off the soul of a fallen slinger. Their banner hangs high and singular above the opulent bar (stocked with nothing but top-shelf, not to mention the finest cigars ever rolled by human or machine hands). A blown-up action shot of Nico hangs beside the banner, black banded for the occasion.

Kem, it seems, is the last one to arrive, and he is only there because Benny London, coach and surrogate father figure to every member of The Reapers, practically yanked him out of his apartment by the ear.

The entire team is spread out among the many tables and booths, from the starting line-up to the back-up snares and wedges to Pondy and his flesh tech team.

Xenia stands alone at the bar, clearly waiting for him.

Kem should’ve started drinking long before he arrived.

At the best of times he merely tolerated this place. He wouldn’t mind the team so much, but members of a dozen other teams are there, as well. And then there are the prying eyes. The far wall of the saloon is composed entirely of glass. There’s an even bigger sports bar on the other side, twice the size of The Slingback, one populated entirely by the fans. They pay four times what any meal or drink is worth to be afforded the opportunity to watch their heroes laugh and pound booze.

For Kem it’s like drinking in a human aquarium.

“Cap’n!” Jackie greets him from where she sits, raising a beer stein the size of a washtub.

The rest of the team joins in the toast and the welcome.

All except Xenia, who still seems to be waiting.

Kem examines his options. He figures he can either have whatever talk Xen wants to have, or he can drown himself in alcohol.

“Options” isn’t really the right word.

So Kem forces a smile and puts up his guard and lets the people who genuinely love and follow him ply him with booze.

And for a few moments he actually begins to feel like the world didn’t end in the arena just last night.

The nightmare begins some time after his fifth drink.

At least it has to be a dark dream.

It can’t be really happening.

Vasile and Vinson, both resplendent in their Gravity running suits, have just walked into The Slingback.

It’s not unheard of for the opposing team in the contest that resulted in the memorialized slinger’s fall to join the revelry.

But it is extremely fucking awkward.

Kem feels nothing upon spotting Vinson, the man who wanted so badly to crush Kem’s fingers and end his life on the deadway.

When he sees Tondo Vasile, however, Kem wants to break the rim off his glass and grind it into the man’s neck until the light leaves his eyes.

He has never wanted to kill anything or anyone so much, and so far outside the arena.

Vasile walks to the center of The Slingback, Vinson at his heels. He’s holding a very expensive bottle of champagne by its neck.

He spills fifty dollars’ worth on the barroom floor.

“To the fallen!” he announces in his Dracula accent.

Most of the bar echoes the toast and drinks, even several members of The Reapers.

The newbies who don’t know any better.

For a single moment Vasile’s eyes lock on Kem’s, the two captains staring at each other across the bar.

The fans beyond eat it up.

Kem feels as though he may throw up.

“Let me put him through the glass,” Wade practically begs. “Let the hoards stomp him to death in excitement.”

“Easy, mate,” Alasdair intones through clenched teeth. The image of Vasile smiling at him on the deadway hasn’t yet finished repeating for him.

Kem doesn’t want to hear any more threats or reproaches or violent fantasies.

He doesn’t want to be here anymore.

“Kem!” Xenia calls after him as he bolts for the door.

He doesn’t stop.

He’s done.

SHOCK BAR

Shock cops hate slingers.

Everyone knows that.

Kem has never cared for them as a group. He would actually prefer a battalion of fresh-faced post-teen soldiers carrying assault rifles to the psychotic mongoloids they put in the shock cops’ black tactical gear and turn loose on Sling City. The latter groups, in Kem’s experience, are just guys and girls of even temperament who trust their weapons to deter most threats.

The shock cops, on the other hand, are all trained and tested hand-to-hand killers. They have to be. Firearms are absolutely forbidden on the station. They won’t even let the shock cops carry tasers (the nickname stemming from their shock trooper appearance alone). The Games Authority doesn’t allow any weapon that might pierce a hull or damage station systems.

They are in space, after all.

The shockers have their batons that blast painful jets of air. They have their military whips held as last resort crowd control.

They aren’t supposed to carry blades, but they all do.

Everyone knows that, too.

Because they’ve been recruited from the worst quarters of Earth, because they all at one time stood knee-deep in blood they spilled, and because they did it while staring directly into their enemy’s soul, shock cops views slingers as hyped-up corporate sissies.

Taking all this into account it makes little sense why Kem would wander drunkenly into C-wing and willingly walk into a shock cop bar.

Maybe he wanted to be somewhere the people hated him as much as he hated himself.

It’s an Old West tableau as every head turns and all eyes focus on Kem after he makes the scene.

The place is exactly what you’d expect compared to a slingers bar. The décor is ugly, the liquor is harder, and so are the faces.

A group of shockers is taking turns throwing knives at an oversized dartboard in one corner. In another corner they’re whipping cigarettes out of each other’s mouths and betting on how close they can crack the tips. There are several games of five-finger filet playing out among the many tables.

Weapons and booze.

It’s like a theme.

Shock cops love their lethal toys more than they love their genitals-of-choice.

That’s another thing everyone knows.

You might consider making a list.

Kem makes his way to the bar. After the initial once-over they all ignore him, giving him a wide berth.

He orders a drink from the indifferent bartender and slams it down, ordering another before the man turns away.

It’s a full ten minutes before one of the shocker’s head bulls finally approaches him.

“Are you lost, sir?” she asks Kem.

She’s tall, but not an Amazon. Her hair is close-cropped; face hard but not unattractive, non-specifically Asiatic. Although at some point long ago she obviously took the edge a knife in her mouth. The scars make her lips look permanently puckered.

“Not yet,” Kem says, raising his glass. “But I’m working on it.”

“I don’t mean to be rude. We all know who you are. But my people come here to unwind, relax, that whole bit. They walk a stressful line. They need their downtime.”

“Don’t we all?”

“The thing is...they can’t relax with a famous asshole like you in here. It’s kind of like asking a soldier to fart in front of the King.”

“I’m not a king.”

“Oh, we all know that.”

Laughter, every decibel dipped in malice and contempt.

Kem looks at the insignia on her tactical gear.

“You a captain, or something?”

“Major. Major Risa Van, Interim Peacekeeping Officer Corps.”

“Great. Kem Carbassa, Captain of The Reapers. Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise. Could I ask you to repair yourself back to your own ring now? Your own bar?”

“You could ask.”

She inhales, long and slow and deep.

She leans in close.

Kem can feel her breath on his ear.

“Listen, I don’t want to embarrass you and I don’t want to hear about it from...whoever. But you need to leave. Now.”

Kem turns his head. Their eyes are locked. If he tries hard enough he can transform her face into Vasile’s with his mind’s eye.

“I need another drink,” he whispers back. “Now. And you need to get the fuck out of my face, you cleft cunt.”

She’s fast. Her arm is around his neck before he sees her move (although he is more than a little drunk). She’s also stronger than he expected, surprisingly so. In fact, she’s so strong and he’s so surprised he doesn’t react as she drags him from his stool and halfway across the barroom floor.

The rest of the shockers are applauding, hooting and hollering.

They stop when Kem grabs two pieces of her tactical gear and executes a picture-perfect shoulder throw, slamming her body to the ground in front of him.

Now he’ll get what he came for.

Whatever shock cops think of slingers, they don’t credit the level on which slingers operate. They haven’t been through the fire of Burning Tree, the slingers’ earthly training camp. They haven’t forced their bodies to the absolutely peak of conditioning and lethality.

They haven’t had to fight one-on-one to the death for the entertainment of the masses.

Kem drops the first two who rush him on their heads without even thinking about it. A third shock cop has their legs kicked out from under them and a fulcrum elbow sledgehammers them to the barroom floor.

He’s turning to face the next wave when the sting hits and his body locks momentarily.

The end of a whip is fastened around his neck.

“No blades!” he hears Major Risa Van growl from the floor.

Kem grabs the length of the whip tethering him and yanks with everything he’s got.

Which is a lot.

The whip’s owner face-plants hard. His lower half cranes at a sickeningly awkward angle over the rest of him.

The dogpile comes then, as it inevitably had to. Shock cops are falling over him like lobsters in a tank, he’s buried under bodies, and there are feet and fists taking pieces of him.

Kem is welcoming it, welcoming the premature oblivion he’s manufactured in this shock cop bar, when the strangest thing happens.

A bellowing war cry.

A familiar war cry.

The fists and feet stop. There’s the sound of scrambling. The crush of bodies leaves his.

Kem blinks away blood and untangles himself on the floor and looks around at the melee that has erupted.

It’s his team.

It’s The Reapers.

A dominating shadow eclipses him and he turns just in time to see Jackie scoop up two shock cops, jamming an arm between each pair of legs and hoisting them off the ground. She rams them into the bar counter and their bodies go spinning over it and out of sight.

Whipping his head around Kem watches Wade clothesline another shock cop literally out of one of his boots. Two more of them jump on him, trying to accomplish what entire defensive lines couldn’t back on Earth.

Behind Wade, Alasdair and Marguerite are standing back-to-back, armed with their shepherd’s poles, trading thrusts and parries with baton-wielding black-clad cops.

Only a few feet away Xen sweeps the legs of a bullfrog-looking shocker and the backs of his shoulders obliterate a small tavern table on his way down.

Kem doesn’t realize it, but he is laughing hysterically.

How could you not?

The laugh of which he isn’t aware is cut short by a sudden impact followed by the taste of leather and blood.

A boot.

A boot belonging to Major Risa Van.

Kem is on his back, stunned, and then she’s on top of him. She’s holding her baton, the butt aimed at his skull.

“How about I send you to Hell with your boyfriend, you fuck?” she snarls, ready to implode his cranium.

Before she can complete her thought the Major is blasted off of Kem by some invisible force that sends her body flying ten feet across the bar into the nearest wall.

“Games Authority!” a voice filtered heavily through electronics booms throughout the shock bar. “Cease and desist! All of you! The next one to raise a hand to a member of The Reapers will have their card pulled!”

Half-a-dozen GA enforcers have filled the space. They’re all twice as big as the most mammoth shock cop, decked out head-to-toe in composite armor that obscures any human feature, and each right arm has a sonic cannon affixed to it the size of a small child.

It’s the first time Kem has ever seen them outside the arena itself. While the shockers keep the fans and residents of Sling City in-line, the Games Authority’s only concern is protecting the commodities that keep the station profitable.

The enforcers proceed to blast everyone who doesn’t obey immediately, and by “everyone” they only seem to include the shock cops. No Reaper feels the force of a sonic cannon.

Thank Christ we’re the good guys
, Kem thinks before passing out.