Scene 1
FOOM
Gorn dove through the portal, the muted thunder of Ivana's shock combo suddenly fading as he was instantly transported to a new, yet familiar location. He shook off the disoriented feeling that always accompanied translocation movement as quickly as possible and ducked to the right of the shimmering portal exit, flak cannon held at the ready, reflexes standing on a hard edge, waiting to trigger if Ivana followed him through. He knew she was too clever to make the mistake of following an opponent immediately through a portal and into an ambush, but a smart fighter would do it occasionally anyways in hopes that their prey would begin to make the assumption that they would never be tailed through a portal. Ivana was a very smart fighter. That was why she was the current leader of his team, the Dark Phalanx, despite Gorn's veteran status. Her tactical aptitude was alarming. Gorn didn't mind at all. He had been in the armed forces for many years and was as used to taking orders as giving them. Besides, they were winning more than ever with her at the helm. He crouched patiently, listening, trying to ignore the bullets embedded in his thigh for just a little longer.
Ivana stood on a ledge near the top of the elevator shaft in the large middle room of Liandri Central Core, watching from her vantage point the portal below, which Gorn had entered a few moments earlier. There were four routes to the minigun and shield belt room, where the portal led and where Gorn was probably still waiting. All of them were narrow and easily defendable from his position. Going directly after him would be unwise, yet if she did nothing he would get the shield belt when it materialized in about twenty seconds. The upper hand in a 1 vs 1 battle such as this usually went to the fighter who could absorb more punishment, and the shield belt gave one the ability to absorb quite a bit of it. Gorn was an armor-centered player - he liked having the best odds possible going into a fight. He could pick up the minigun that sat underneath the shield belt and just whittle her down before she could manage to kill him in any open fight. Gorn might no longer be the acting leader of the Dark Phalanx, but he was their most experienced and skilled warrior, and his strength made him especially lethal with the minigun. Ivana preferred lighter weapons and finesse to take full advantage of her lithe frame and speed, but Gorn just waded in with that big ugly metal stick and chewed his opponents apart.
Still, she had some armor left and no intention of engaging his minigun under any circumstances. Instead, she darted around the elevator shaft and ran towards the other portal, across the room from the one Gorn had taken. She passed it by, grabbing the pulse rifle on the way just for the heck of it and instead making for the stairs that led up to a ledge which had an excellent viewpoint of all four routes Gorn could take back into the main room, as well as a sniper rifle. The shield belt would appear in ten seconds, and Gorn would probably appear soon afterwards. She flicked on her holographic heads-up display, or HUD, eyeing the score and time remaining. 7-6 in Gorn's favor, with 2 minutes left. This had to work.
Gorn heard the faint sound of the pulse rifle being picked up and rose. That was his cue. The arena speakers added synthesized sounds for certain actions, such as using a health pack or picking up a weapon, to add strategic depth to the game and discourage sneaky tactics, which crowds found boring. Ivana was most likely going to head through the portal on the other side of the map to get some armor, then wait in the central room to ambush him after he got the shield belt. Time to resupply.
He loped painfully over to the health packs sitting on the floor near the portal and stepped through them. There was a synthesized chime, and he sighed in relief, savoring the sensation as the burning pain in his thigh cooled and faded. When a health pack was touched, the effect was immediate - wounds disappeared, bones realigned, pain was dulled. It wasn't actually the health packs themselves that did it - they were holographic, and disappeared when touched. The arena did it. Tournament arenas, inside their plain-looking walls and floors, were fitted with little machines that could physically repair injuries in seconds, rebuilding tissue with the basic building blocks of life such as carbon and oxygen and then translocating it precisely into the wound, simultaneously removing damaged regions. When you were injured to an imminently critical point, they would just translocate your entire body to a different part of the arena, remove all your weapons, and add a point to your opponent's score before healing you up again. It wasn't like dying exactly, just a few seconds of agonizing pain. Both technologies - translocation and matter reconstruction - were of alien origin and had been discovered after the Skaarj war, during the massive ensuing expansion into space. Primitive forms were discovered in some far-off planet and adapted as proprietary technology by the New Earth Government. But nobody had figured out yet why your mind wasn't harmed if your brain was damaged... as long as it was rebuilt right away. It was amazing, the capacity of human scientists to make things work without even fully understanding the underlying concepts of what they were doing. Somehow, it just worked... so a new sport had been born.
Restored, Gorn jogged away from the portal, across a glass walkway over a small room. Through the glass below his feet was a sight for sore eyes - his favorite weapon, the minigun. He hopped off the walkway, landing with a fluid grace that belied his size and strength, and picked up the minigun along with some nearby ammo. Wasting no time, he ran into a side corridor and up a ramp that led back to the end of the glass ledge he was on earlier. He arrived just in time to see the air shimmer briefly as the matter reconstructors did their work and a rather innocuous-looking belt appeared. He stepped over it, and it appeared on his waist. A shimmering yellow field of energy immediately surrounded his body. He grinned and ran down the walkway towards the portal, minigun slung easily at his side. Time to take back the central room.
Ivana heard a faint zip as Gorn picked up the shield belt. She crouched on the ledge, looking intently through the rifle's scope at the portal exit. The air shimmered and he appeared. There was no thinking involved as she swept the crosshairs to his head, just the flow of trained muscle-memory and reflexes punctuated by the crack of the rifle as she pulled the trigger. The yellow shield of energy was gone immediately, all its power diverted to stop the high-velocity bullet from putting a hole in Gorn's face. He rolled instinctively to the side, but she kept him in the scope, hearing the click of the gun as it automatically reloaded.
Gorn knew immediately what had happened. A sniper shot to the head typically cancelled the amount of energy stored in a shield belt - in fact; the bullet had actually bounced off his nose, slowed to a nonlethal velocity. There wasn't enough time before that goddamn rifle reloaded to survey the room and find out where she was, but she was probably still on its ledge so he flung himself towards the center of the room, putting the elevator shaft between himself and her location. Another bullet pinged off the cement floor next to his foot, kicking up a tiny cloud of pulverized rock dust, as he dove.
Ivana swore under her breath and put away the sniper rifle, wasting no time. She slipped down off the ledge onto a wide ramp and headed towards a portal, passing by the pulse rifle this time and making a left turn through the portal to the body armor pickup. She ignored the disorientation and walked through the armor, wincing at the loud synthesized clank as it appeared on her body. Gorn surely knew her location now. The tables had turned - she was trapped in a side corridor with only three routes back into the main room, and she had no time to waste - there was less than a minute left. She ran straight back through the portal, grabbing the shock rifle from her pack as she went.
Gorn heard the armor pickup sound and ran straight for the elevator entrance. From the top of the elevator, he would have a clear shot at the portal exit if she tried to go right back through it again. As soon as his feet touched the floor of the lift, it automatically began to rise with a low hiss. He swung his minigun in the direction of the portal and prepared to step out when it reached the top.
The hiss of the elevator reached Ivana's ears just as she cleared the portal, and she shot a ball of energy with the shock rifle's secondary fire to where she knew Gorn would appear, hoping to get a combo off in his face as he exited the lift. But he arrived a moment too soon and saw the slow-moving ball. He flung himself to the right onto the ramp down towards her, and she saw the muzzle of his minigun flash. Bullets sprayed the ledge Ivana stood on, but she held steady and prepared to fire another shock ball.
Gorn saw that Ivana's combo would miss him, so he immediately started firing and got to his feet, correcting his stream of fire and beginning to close on his target. She would be a sieve in a few seconds if she didn't run.
Bullets tore into Ivana's armor, but she held her position and shot another shock ball in front of Gorn. Time slowed to a crawl as she watched their trajectories converge, feeling hot metal tear into her skin but waiting for the right moment. One of her fingers gripping the shock rifle disappeared. A moment later, Gorn finally realized (too late) that he couldn't avoid the combo this time. Ivana caught a glimpse of surprise on his face before she fired a shock primary beam into the ball. It detonated with a bright blue flash and the familiar bone-shaking FOOM, and the shockwave flung Gorn´s body sideways into a wall. It disappeared before hitting the floor. Ivana dropped off the pulse rifle ledge to the bottom of the room like a bag of wet cement and dragged herself as quickly as possible over to the health packs near the elevator. She had about three seconds before the matter reconstructors finished with Gorn and he 'respawned'.
There was the usual mind-bending flash of pain as he regained consciousness, and Gorn didn't even stop to survey his surroundings before he started running again. After a step or two he was oriented enough to realize he had spawned in the central room not far from where Ivana fragged him, which often would be terrible luck and lead to losing another point. This time, however, he knew she was seriously injured. He unsheathed his Enforcer pistol and ran towards the health packs that were behind the lift from him, checking his heads-up display as he went. Seven seconds left.
Ivana heard Gorn's footsteps too late. She pivoted and fired a shock ball to the side of the lift, but he was already too close for a combo. He snapped off two quick shots with his Enforcer which slammed into her chest, and the world went black.
Ivana respawned in the minigun room, just in time to hear a voice in her comm equipment say "two... one... zero. You have lost the match!" She smacked her forehead with the heel of her palm and trudged towards the portal. Gorn was on the other side, standing nonchalantly, hands on his hips. "You should have had me with that last combo."
"I didn't hear you respawn."
"You should have anticipated it, that's a common spawn point."
"Gorn, I was in a lot of pain and losing blood rather quickly. It was sort of hard to concentrate on other things."
He slapped her on the shoulder. "But you did great! I never thought you would come that close to beating me in a duel so quickly. That move with the sniper... Excellent unpredictability." He grinned. The gesture, combined with the fact that half his face was built from metal parts and no longer moved when he showed emotion, gave him an unsettling jack-o-lantern appearance. After a few years of knowing him, Ivana had gotten used to it. "Thanks, Gorn. I'm gonna get you one of these days."
He chuckled and shook his head ruefully. "Of that, I have little doubt. It might have been today if we trained someplace less favorable to a brainless minigun turret like myself. But whatever. Wanna get a drink?"
"Already promised Anna I'd go on a run with her tonight. Shouldn't you do some research on your opponent for the exhibition duel tomorrow?"
Gorn's serious demeanor returned. "You're right, I should. I have no intention of losing to a worthless chem-boosted grandstander who doesn't know the meaning of true combat. I'm looking forward to it, actually... Malcom is going to regret taking me on." The grin crept back onto his face. On a normal person, it would have been quite an attractive smile. On Gorn, the proper description would be 'chilling'.