Raiders (8 page)

“Great so I have a tell. Well aren’t you just the fucking savant.” Aurelia backpedalled three steps and then continued to pace back and forth. “You should be in the Polar City poker tournament.”

Kama looked up to the the camera in the upper corner and said, “I don’t know what poker is.” She looked back at Aurelia.

“Yeah of course.” And then Aurelia charged at Kama in a flash. AShe rotated her polearm from a defensive position to strike. Aurelia could feel her pulses bang in her neck.Her feet were moist from the sweat that magnified inside her shoes. “Ahhhh! YA!” Aurelia yelled out and then pulled her polearm straight down. Kama twisted to meet it and again a
crack
resounded, softer this time as Kama pulled her weapon back into her. She guided Aurelia’s polearm down and away to herright side.

Bleep!
“AHHH..YA!” Aurelia yelled and jabbed furiously at Kama who ducked just as the end of the thing slithered by her head. Kama grabbed the pole with her left hand and pushed Aurelia back. Aurelia almost lost her balance from the sudden insult but scrambled her legs beneath her. “Eee..YAA!” She swept low at Kama’s right leg. Kama deflected her attempt once more. “FUCCK!” Aurelia yelled

Aurelia pulled her polearm back and then tried another forward jab. Kama rolled away. She let Aurelia fall straight down and right onto her face. Aurelia rebounded into a standas if she were assembled from springs and then
SMACK SMACK!
Aurelia pulled the polearm left and right, a two-sided narrow sweep attack.

It was a powerful move but it also left Aurelia’s entire front utterly vulnerable and exposed. Kama let the two strikes land on her shoulders and barely even winced despite the incredible pain felt from the twin blows to her upperarms.
Bleep-BLOOP! BLOOP!
Aurelia’s polearm signaled two good solid hits on Kama.

Kama decided that she was done playing around with the lesser creature.I It was time to accomplish what she actually wanted to and that was to regain her honor. Kama had already guessed that they were going to either kill her here in this City prison or turn her loose. For the latter she would have to go back home again, back to Reso. They would probably not even let her in and she would be lost forever, banished to the Great Wastes beyond. If I am going to die,
I die with honor as a Chosen,
she thought. Kama paced forward straight at Aurelia. She looked up to the camera once more and said, “He’s watching us, isn’t he.”

“Shut up,” Aurelia said.

“He is though,.” Kama broke out into a near run and
thwoosh thwoosh thwoosh thwoosh
her polearm turned round and round so fast it became out of focus and grey to all in witness, even on the one hundred frames per second 8K video display in Professor Palmer’s room. Aurelia tried her best to anticipate what Kama was going to do next. She shifted her weight forward and held up her pole in a fully defensive posture. But it was no use.

Kama struck a false blow and then snapped her weapon back. As Aurelia tried to deflect Kama's baited faux attack. Kama quickly reversed her motion in full swing and hit Aurelia's opposing exposed flank. Her polearm landed with a dulled and drumlike
thwump
against Aurelia’s undefended body armor.
Bleep! Critical!
The polearm announced.

Aurelia reeled onto her right side and landed halfway down as her right hand met the floor. Even with her tactical armor a magma hot wave of pain traveled through her flank and into her core. She quickly stood up on reflex before her mind consciously registered the event she was on her feet once again.
Can't believe I fell for that
, Aurelia thought.

Kama yelled, “Come on!” Aurelia felt paralyzed. “COME ON!!” Kama roared, and provokingly jutted her polearm back and forth at Aurelia.

What happened next was a flash, white. As if someone marionetted her from a world unseen she sprinted straight at Kama and struck her again and again. From the top, from the sides, straight in.
Bleep! Bleep! Critical! Critical!
She jammed the pole right into Kama’s left knee which cause her to buckle in and fall. Kama was down!
How did I do that?
Aurelia did not know. The motions came as one continuous flow,like a singular motion, all. She wailed and smashed at the exotic alien. She screamed and didn’t even stop when Kama tried to instinctively shield her face from Aurelia's sustained onslaught.

Blood sponged out of Kama from her arms and her head in small places. Aurelia straddled her and pinned her down, her sheer motions resignedly out of her control. Aurelia dropped her polearm and then she simply punched and jabbed at Kama, over and over and over.

“Stop! STOP IT! Jesus Christ you’re going to kill her!” Professor Palmer screamed into his microphone uplink. “Shit she can’t hear me,” he said.

Which was true. Aurelia could not hear him because her senses were tunneled down so far and she was in that special spiritual place that envelopes one when they exercises for a long time or engage in extreme combat,or find themselves in a fight for their very life. After what seemed to be ten minutes even though only about thirty seconds passed Aurelia rolled off Kama. Aurelia was out of breath and covered in blood which was everywhere. The Arena door whizzed and whirled, a metallic bolt sounded through and with a
ker-klunk
the door swung open. A stream of Officers and guards filed into the room. Aurelia held up her right hand. “Its..” She couldn’t even catch her breath for more than two words and waved some more at the guards. “Okay. Okay. Okay...” She said with an diminished volume for each word.

The guards stood around the two combatants in a semicircle, all silent while they lay there together on the matted floor. They stared at the light arrays above them, a soft glow of gold-white in six lines cross. Kama had landed right next to her leather battlesuit. A small rivulet of blood flowed toward the resting armor from the ever-growing pool that surrounded Kama’s upper body. Kama extended her right arm out and weakly plopped it onto her heap of leather and metal. She stared down her arm, down the road of symbols and skin and congealed hemoglobin veins with a faraway, melancholic stare. All those years of great and absolute power. All the days where she feared nothing and nobody, never in want of anything in a world of complete need and desperation. Those days were gone now and all that remained was this thirty-one year old arm and a mind full of mysteries known to very few alive and dead alike. What remained was the pain and the hazy, defocused memories of control, of endless and loveless sex with men and women and an untouchable, immeasurable distance from anything that resembled intimacy, gentleness or care.

It was at that moment she realized the truth.
She was lost
.

Then, after about twenty seconds of diffused silence as everyone in the Arena, the guards, Kama, Aurelia and even Julian and the doctor in the office room could find no reason to speak, Kama cried aloud. Through the venations of blood that veiled her face, she cried. The guards looked in silent confusion one to another, unsure of what to do. Aurelia, who continued to breathe heavily from the fight turned her head away from the lights to face Kama who lay three meters away. She said nothing at all and simply stared at Kama along with the others.

Kama said through the sobs in perfect Mandarin, “When I was nine, they took me away from my mom to be a
Chosen
.” She choked a little from the blood which ran into her mouth and spit it out. “When I was twelve, they made me be with an Elder.” She covered her eyes. “I didn’t know what was happening to me.” She paused and cried for a few seconds, more subdued now. “When I was fifteen, sex always, three at once sometimes. This was how they broke us. But in return we have anything we wanted. It was like, like being a god.”

“So they got tired of you.” Aurelia quietly offered. The guards could not understand what Kama said for none of them wore a set of the bone phones. Aurelia, however, heard the translation perfectly through hers.

Kama turned her head to Aurelia and stared at her for seven seconds although to Aurelia it seemed much longer than that. Without a single word she then turned back toward her leather battlesuit and reached inside. She briefly fumbled through the strips, produced a long thread and held it above her head. The thread glistened and sparkled with a subtle shimmer as she turned it round.

“What the hell is that doc? A thread?” Julian squinted closely at the video display.

“Holy shit it’s..Oh Christ...” Palmer slammed his hand on a five sided button on the console and it lit up. He yelled into the microphone, “Guys secure the prisoner NOW! Do it!”

The guards reflexed into action and scrambled for Kama in order to pin her arms down. One of the guards carelessly slipped in Kama’s blood pool and comically slapped butt-first onto the floormat. The other two guards grabbed onto her arms and legs but it was no use. Even against their opposed force she closed her eyes and pulled the suicide wire across her neck. The wire bit in deep and appeared to disappear into her skin as if it were a magic trick only to be replaced with an incomprehensible flow of blood. And then Kama released her arms. As she did so the guards managed to wrestle the wire away even though she offered no real resistance. The guard leader, who stood above them belted into his arm-worn personal assistant, “Code Six! We gotta Code Six here! Medical stat!!!”

Three weeks passed after the events in Arena Five. To everyone’s amazement Kama survived but only after an extreme, aggressive medical intervention. She was clinically dead by the time they got her over to Medical. They tried to stabilize her enroute but there was only so much they could do along the way. The medical specialists used the same Circulator machine that saved Aurelia a few weeks earlier. The City only had two surgeons who were skilled enough to patch Kama’s vessels back together. The doctors used a robotic assisted laser device that was able to fuse the thin cell membranes. The repair process was tedious and slow. Had Kama been born a century before she would have never survived for the technology simply did not exist before 2410. The damage to her neck was repaired one painstaking cell at a time.

Kama’s neck fascia was exposed for five days while the repairs were made. such a prolonged exposure was possible thanks to high power UVA lights, the Circulator and the Silvermist System.. The procedure was a success but at the cost of the nearly the City's whole supply of synthetic blood made from a DNA recombination process.

Kama roused from her comatose state only two days after the procedure was completed. Another six and her body could function without the Circulator's assistance. She would, however, have a raised scar that would forever transverse her neck.

Colonel Eiger pulled over a stool and sat next to her bed. He asked Kama in English, “So it’s good to see you, well, not dead Kama. How are you feeling?”

Kama looked at the Colonel who wore his full dress uniform. She said in pure Mandarin, “Who are you?”

The Colonel responded in equally fluent Mandarin, “Oh yeah.” He waved his hand to his chest. “Colonel Eiger, you can call me Nelson, it’s my first name.”

“Should have let me go.”

The Colonel placed his hand on her left arm and said, “But you do. You know Kama I watched the video archive from the Arena. Really impressive. You are really an amazing fighter, did you know that? I have never seen anyone move like that in all my years in military.”

“So, I am entertainment for you,” Kama said and then rolled her head away.

Colonel Eiger said, “No that’s not, look. Don’t you see what happened to you Kama? Do you? Those Elders of yours, well. They just used you up and chucked you out like yesterday’s trash. They threw you away Kama. And here you are. Now you’re with us,a Polar City citizen now.”

“I’m not with
anybody.
I'm just dead. And they didn’t throw me out, they re-assigned me for reconaissance,” Kama said, her head still turned.

Colonel Eiger lowered his eyelids slightly and said, “Listen to me. I’ve been at this game for a long, long time and I’m telling you it's true. You may not believe me and that’s fine and all. But that's what they did.”

Kama turned her head up toward the ceiling, gazed and said, “That’s great that you are so full of wisdom,” her voice switched to a sarcastic tone, “Nelson,” back to a normal voice, “But what am I supposed to do? What are you to do with me now? You should have let me die. You are a fool. All of you are fools.
This City
.”

Colonel Eiger said, “Everyone in this City was pulling for you though. Citizens organized fundraisers to pay for your surgery. They even donated clothes and food and a bunch of other stuff, even a Pod. It’s yours, that is if you decide not to go with suicide again.”

“Pod. I don’t know what a Pod is,” Kama said.

“A house, Kama. It’s a living unit here in the City. A nice one no less. Saw it myself, it’s right by Centre Link, the downtown district if you will.”

“Down town? I don’t know what that means.” She turned her head to face him and appeared to stare right through as if he were a transparent apparition. “I don’t know anything about living as a common. I can barely speak the main language here.” Kama closed her eyes and rubbed her left hand over her scalp. Hair had grown about a half-inch in all the places around her patch of long braid. Usually she shaved it all away once a week or so. Usually.

Colonel Eiger stood up from his stool and said, “Kama, I am happy I finally got to talk to you in person. If you want to kill yourself, fine, so be it. If not,” he waved his hand abstractly outward, “There’s a whole new life waiting for you here. With us. A fresh start.”

Kama let out a quick harrumph sound and said, “But I killed one of your soldiers and wounded two. I should be put to death or made prisoner.”

The Colonel had started to walk away but then swung around. “Remember you promised to tell us about your group? The Raiders? You never got the chance to deliver on that promise but if you do, we will forgive your actions in combat. If not, then yes you will be held in lockup until you do. It’s your choice Kama.”