Galileo (Battle of the Species) (18 page)

Renn suddenly heard his name projected into his head and turned around to find Professor Paro walking up.

Yes?
Renn projected in response. “Dylan, wait up.”

“I see you signed up for tomorrow’s BOTS game,” Professor Paro said.

“Yeah, I thought I’d give it a try,” Renn replied with a nervous smile.

“As much as I’d like to encourage you to participate, it might be better to get a little more practice in before you put yourself to the test,” Paro said.

“You don’t think I can’t do it?” Renn asked, feeling crushed.

“I strongly believe you can, but not without more practice. It’s up to you. Just remember that though BOTS is just a simulation, the pain Ava creates is real. You don’t get extra points for going in before you’re prepared.”

Renn looked down at his feet, utterly mortified. “Understood.”

“Have a good day, boys,” Paro said before walking away.

“Wow, that was a bit cold,” Dylan said, watching the professor walk down the hall. “Man, you can still do it. He can’t keep you from competing just because he doesn’t think you’re ready.”

“He’s our defense instructor, Dylan. If he thinks I’m not ready, then I’m not ready,” Renn said.

“Okay. Well, then we got one month to get you ready. We’ll do target practice until our pointer fingers go numb and you can practice that lightning thing you do until this place lights up like a Christmas tree. Then next month, we’ll kill it. Okay?”

Renn forced a smile and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

***

The next day, Desh walked into the BOTS fighter’s tank and looked up to the list of fighters who would be competing that day. He scanned the names, noticing a certain blond Mindeerian wasn’t on the list. He was grateful Professor Paro had taken his advice to discourage the young Mindeerian from fighting, since neither wanted to see their race disgraced by a Mindeerian who didn’t know how to be Mindeerian.

Desh and Kia were announced in the next BOTS game, opposite two Zeanups, Argo 17 and Tegmen 34. The four fighters took to the arena floor while the crowd cheered encouragement.

They waited till the lights dimmed and Ava announced, “The planet is Zaron.”

A thick jungle surrounded them with green and yellow foliage and gnarly vines draped over thriving trees that reached towards a rich blue sky.

“Fighters, prepare,” Ava announced, when she was finished building the jungle.

The fighters walked around their new battlefield, either whispering or projecting strategies.

“The game will begin in five, four, three, two, one.”

On “one,”
birds
chirped and the trees began to sway.

Desh and Kia continued to walk around, staring at the ground.

What color’s the flower?
Kia thought.

Blue
, Desh projected. He looked up through the trees, hearing the fluttering of tiny wings.
Wait, you hear that?

Kia paused for a moment, listening, and then slyly followed Desh behind a tree.

A thin, yellow, female creature, only ten inches in length, came flying towards the Zeanups with semi-transparent wings and a doe-eyed face.

“Awww, aren’t you cute,” Argo said with a wave.

The pixie-like creature smiled and Tegmen looked up to see Ava deduct points. He whirled back around in time to see the creature open her mouth, wide enough to take off half of his face.

She roared loud enough to shake the jungle, lunging for Argo, before Tegmen punched her, sending her flying into a tree.

Desh and Kia, luckily, had found what they had been searching for and stood ready with vines, crudely tied together out of haste, and covered in blue pollen. The Zeanups ran towards them with an angry swarm followed close behind.

Desh motioned to the Zeanups with his head, and Argo and Tegmen got on opposite ends of the vines to help them.

The yellow swarm collided into the makeshift net, coughing and wheezing from the blue pollen. The creatures tried to untangle themselves from the vines, but the pollen stung their eyes, making everything blurry. The more they kicked and fought back, the more pollen they kicked up, making them sicker the more they resisted.

A cloud of blue pollen surrounded the fighters, who were impervious to the disorienting effect, and were able to keep the remaining flying creatures away until the level was over.

“Players have advanced to level two,” Ava announced, while the jungle disappeared into the ground.

After a Federation minute, Ava’s voice once again filled the arena.

“The planet is Vardan,” Ava declared.

White and gray rock walls surrounded the fighters, leaving them deep within a cave and unable to see the board. There were holes in the ceiling, allowing rays of light to illuminate sparkling blue ponds scattered around the grotto and patches of silver angel hair draping the walls, glimmering softly from the light.

“Fighters, prepare,” Ava announced, counting down the seventy seconds
while the fighters chose their weapons and looked around.

“Do you know this planet?” Desh asked Kia.

“I know the planets you know, Brother,” he replied.

“Yeah, I was afraid of that,” Desh said, walking around, contemplating what to expect.

Desh and Kia exchanged looks when they heard the Zeanups in the next room of the cave choose automatic fire torches. Kia chose a torch, while Desh stayed with his electricity blasts, in case the Zeanups were wrong about whatever they thought they knew about the planet.

“The game will begin in five, four, three, two, one,” Ava counted down. On “one,” the silver angel hair along the cave walls seemed to flutter in the breeze.

Breeze? There is no breeze
, Kia thought, looking around the cave. He walked up to the angel hair, pulling one from the others. The rest of them seemed to lean towards his hand, as if drawn to his presence. Kia stepped back and Desh stepped forward, both looking at the single hair.

The hair stood up in Kia’s fingers, looking at him, then bowed and slithered into Kia’s sleeve.

           “Oh! Not good, not good…” Kia said, trying to get the silver string back. His gloves hindered him from getting a good grip, while it slithered further up his arm.

Desh took off one of his gloves and pulled it out with his fingertips.

           “Uh, why’s it red now?”  Kia asked.

           “Because your blood’s red,” Desh replied, throwing it back at the wall.

Kia ignited the wall with his torch, causing the angel hair to whine and moan as they burned.

           “We need to get out of the cave,” Kia said, turning around and seeing all of the angel hair along the walls and floor, creeping towards them.

They heard torches igniting further into the cave, and not wanting to go deeper into the mountain, they made their way towards the other end, before realizing the angel hair was unifying and blocking their path.

Kia looked up to the holes in the ceiling and the blue sky far above it. “I can fly up there. You think you could jump?”

Desh looked up. “There’s no way. You’d have to carry me half the way and your wings aren’t strong enough.”

“Yet,” Kia added, sounding hurt.

“Yet, Brother. Calm down,” Desh replied, looking around for another idea.

There were jagged pillars, leading up to the ceiling, which Desh continued to study until he chose one, running straight for it.

Kia watched with a confused look on his face.

Desh jumped up, twenty feet in the air. The second his foot made contact, he kicked off, jumping another ten feet to another pillar, then another, using momentum and energy to ascend.

He got to the hole in the ceiling, grasped it with one hand, and started to slip. Kia looked up smiling, spread his wings and flew up, helping Desh the rest of the way.

They finished crawling through the hole and stood up, when they heard Tegmen yell. They ran to another hole and looked down into the cave, finding Argo looking up at them with wide eyes.

“Where’s Tegmen?” Desh yelled, watching the angel hair surround Argo.

“I don’t know. We got separated!” he yelled back, as the angel hair crawled up his legs. “Help! I dropped my torch!”

Kia looked at Desh.

“Do it,” Desh said. “We’re only on level two.”

Kia dropped his torch through the cave’s opening, while the angel hair that was covering Argo turned red. Argo ran to catch the torch, but became tangled in the hair wrapped around his feet and fell. The angel hair covered him, turning a darker shade of red. He screamed, until he stopped moving, and “Terminated” displayed on his photo on the scoreboard.

“Damn it,” Desh said. “The next level’s going to be hell.” He looked over at Kia, and his face went blank.

“What?” Kia asked, not noticing all of the angel hair crawling up his back and wings.

Desh looked behind them and saw millions of them had been making their way towards them while they were trying to help Argo.

“Great, and now we have no torch,” Desh grumbled. He pulled all of the hair off of him and Kia telekinetically, throwing them into the air, but with their light weight, the angel hair drifted back in the breeze.

Kia grabbed Desh and stood up. They ran down the small hill, over layers of angel hair that continued to grab for them.

Desh tried to move the angel hair, using different techniques, only to have the hair blow back towards their faces.

“Stop doing that, Brother. It’s making it worse,” Kia said, as they ran around another hill.

“This is a Class Two planet; it shouldn’t be this difficult to stay alive,” Desh said.

“There’s got to be an end to this. Like we’re just standing in the middle of a nest or something,” Kia said.

“Kia, go up!” Desh said, and with that Kia flew straight into the air.

Desh telekinetically pulled the remaining hair from the Toran, igniting it with electricity before it made its way back to the ground.

Kia looked around and pointed to his right. “There!” he yelled.

Desh ran to the right, firing blasts ahead of him and burning a path through the silver hair that crawled to close in. He ran over a hill and saw that he was approaching grass as far as the eye could see, devoid of silver strings.

The angel hair wrapped around his legs, tripping him into the grass when he reached it, and tried to pull him back away from it. 

Kia landed, pulling Desh the rest of the way as the silver hair remaining on Desh’s legs sizzled when it touched the greenery.

Desh got up, brushing the dead hair off, and the two walked onto the grass. They continued looking around, just in case Ava sent anything else their way during the remaining thirty seconds of the level, but all remained quiet.

When the planet disappeared into the ground, Desh saw that Tegmen remained on the battlefield, continuing on to level three with them.

“The planet is Bynart,” Ava announced.

The ceiling turned to a bright blue sky with streaks of white clouds running across it. Red ripples ascended beneath their feet and they found themselves surrounded by enormous skeletons, as if in an exposed graveyard.

“Fighters, prepare,” Ava forewarned.

All three fighters stared at the ground, trying to figure out whether or not they were standing on red water, with the danger of sinking the second the level began. Desh walked over to a large skeleton and stood inside its ribcage.
Just in case,
Desh projected.

Kia nodded and joined him.

Desh and Kia stuck to their weapons of choice: Mindeerian fire and Baylorblood-soaked arrows. Tegmen, however, requested an oxygen tank as an accessory, as if anticipating the ground to be water.

“The game will begin in five, four, three, two, one,” Ava announced. On “one,” the fighters grabbed onto the skeletal frame, while it sank a few inches into the ground and then stopped.

Desh cautiously tapped the tip of his boot on the red ripples, creating sloshing sounds in the mud.

Tegmen cursed under his breath and threw off his air tank in disappointment.

Desh walked through the skeletons, hoping they wouldn’t have to fight a live one, whatever it was.

I can hear them,
Desh projected, hearing thoughts scattered about.

How many
?  Kia thought.

Six maybe…oh, and Tegmen’s thinking about killing us
.

We can handle six
, Kia replied, then turned to Tegmen and sent an arrow through his chest.

Tegmen barely had enough time to mumble, “Bastard,” before falling to the ground, dead.

Kia looked up into the empty space above Tegmen’s body, where the real Tegmen would be standing behind the hologram. “Don’t whine just because I acted first,” Kia said, then looked back at Desh.

“They’re coming from all directions,” Desh observed. “Do you want to fly?”

“Not yet,” Kia replied. “We still don’t know if they have weapons.”

They looked into the distance when they heard the faint yelling from the audience. They stepped closer together, back-to-back, readying themselves.

Desh thought his eyes were playing tricks on him when he saw dark shadows move from skeleton to skeleton. When the shadows got closer, he could see some of the creatures peeking behind rib cages, resting their red eyes on the fighters. Desh squinted, trying to focus on the dark red figures that blended a little too well with the mud.
Whoa, did you see that?
Desh projected.

The blurs?
Kia replied.

Yeah. Maybe we should have kept Tegmen alive as bait. Those things are moving really fast.

Too late now, Brother,
Kia replied.

Desh fired blasts at the skeletons, shattering the bones, as his body shifted in anticipation. He blasted a skeleton a few yards ahead of him, angering the large beast that had been hiding behind it. Its red eyes fixated on Desh and it stood up erect, revealing a height greater than the fighters’.

Desh stumbled back in shock. “They’re Styrs!” he yelled, putting up his hands to fire, but was tackled from the side by another one.

Kia whipped around, firing his arrow into Desh’s attacker, while the first Styr charged Kia. The creature jumped over Desh and caught Kia in the chest, slamming him into the mud. It snapped its teeth towards Kia’s face and dug its claws into his arms.