Special thanks to Aren Riszk
Run, human!
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"Run, human!"
And run the human did. But not in fear. They were never afraid when the match began. They kept stories and their own viewings of the champion's matches in their heads, running around, picking up a weapon or two, thinking they'd outsmart him.
Xan Kriegor wasn't outsmarted. Not by anyone, not Liandri, not the company's true CEO that everyone thought was him, and not by the competitors who made it to his championship match.
But this one was smarter then most. He couldn't remember her name, in fact he'd probably never bothered to find it out. Names were usually meaningless to him, the logic circuits of his computerized brain not able to comprehend how something given by someone else could have any meaning to the individual. So he'd named himself not long after he was activated.
He DID remember the possible reason for her cleverness. The woman had been a crewmember of the ISV Kran when it went down on Na Pali, among the hundreds on the ship she alone managed to survive the Skarrj warriors that murdered everyone else. It made Xan enjoy the match all that more when he thought about it, he could remember wanting badly to face off against one of the two survivors of Na Pali. Maybe one day he'd go to the planet and see what the Skarrj were like himself.
And then, of course, he'd kill them all. The unstoppable champion of the tournament was far more then a match for the reptilian creatures, especially if single, injured humans could fight through them. But then, he had to remember; the humans had been motivated by desperation. The humans who'd fought the Skarrj in the war had families to protect.
Which was why the battle-hardened human would fight a good match. Fear no longer had meaning to her, she wasn't afraid of death, she wasn't afraid of HIM, she wouldn't beg for mercy when she couldn't stand, could barely raise her weapon, when the realization came to her that she was going to die, she would APRECIATE her loss.
Xan ran around the rear corridor of his ship, intent on picking up a better weapon on the way to finding her. The small enforcer pistol just wasn't in his taste. He received a shock when the human jumped around the corner and shot a rocket at him. But Xan had reflexes to back up his skill, and he jumped behind the curve of the corridor before the rocket could hit him.
She was good.
But she wasn't good enough.
Taking a chance, Xan ducked into the forward bay of the ship, hoping she would come around here instead of heading into the lower level or outside. He grabbed a mini-gun placed on the floor, aimed it ahead at the other doorway into the room, and fired.
He was right. This time, she was caught rounding the corner. But her reflexes were every bit as good as Xan's and she ducked back into the corridor, winged by a single bullet on her arm.
Xan gave chase. But he was about to get another surprise. Se hadn't run at all, she'd heard him coming, stayed out of sight…
And launched the last of her rocket ammo in a salvo as grenades into the wall, which promptly bounced towards the champion.
Xan didn't think. He could beat himself up for being so damn stupid later. He didn't try to stop his run, that would take to long. Instead, he pushed back on his leg as it came down and tossed himself back as hard as possible, avoiding the first two grenades.
The next two hit him in the legs; the last hit him squarely in the chest. The blasts threw him back into a wall, and the robot slumped down. His armor wasn't strong enough to take head-on blasts like that; it would have been illegal if it were, anyway. Xan Kriegor was, in the quickest championship match ever, reduced to a simple, smoldering machine with half-blown off legs and a hole in his chest plate.
The human looked at her adversary, disbelief in her eyes. It was less then two minutes since the match started, they'd probably accuse her of cheating before anything else. She turned around to walk away.
"Run… human…"
The words were scratchy; Xan's mechanical voice box had taken damage. She had forgotten that robots could take a pounding. And here she was, her spent weapon long tossed away, with her back to the champion. She turned.
The disabled thing had it's armed raised. And the arm was holding a sniper rifle pointed right at her head. Xan didn't want to win because a worthy opponent made the blunder of thinking him dead.
But she didn't run. He realized that she felt she'd run enough. He didn't want to win this way. But she really didn't want to win period.
A single bang from the rifle's high-caliber shot echoed all through the ship.