Scene 2
A harsh voice crackled across the Thunder Crash's comm line. "Malcom! Check your six!" Malcom swung around just in time to see a translocator beacon loft over the rim of a ledge behind him. He raised his pulse rifle and trained a searing lance of plasma in the direction of the beacon. A hapless member of the Iron Guard translocated directly into the shaft and was roasted in a second. Malcom turned and continued running towards his base, laughing into his comm. "Thanks Riker. Any more on the way?"
"Two spawners, but Aryss and I got 'em."
"Roger that. Flag coming into base!"
He sprinted up the low hill of cinders and blasted rock towards the dark cement structure of his team's base, ignoring the burning sulfur vapors that seared his lungs. Lava Giant wasn't the most pleasant locale for capture the flag games, but it had a certain apocalyptic ambience that fit well as a backdrop to deadly tournament combat. Liandri polls showed that spectator enjoyment increased when competitors fell into the boiling soup of magma that surrounded the island of crustal rock which comprised the arena and burnt to a screaming crisp before respawning. Sure it was a little less fun for the CTF players, but who were they to argue with statistics?
At any rate, Malcom liked Lava Giant as a tournament arena because its characteristics favored his style of play. Young and relatively inexperienced, he was neither a master tactician nor an outstanding team player. But his control with the sniper rifle in the wide open terrain was unmatched at any range, and his young eyes could spot enemy movement through the swirling fumes long before he was himself seen.
Malcom glanced backwards one more time as he neared the base. Nobody had passed the high rock wall that divided the arena in two; Riker and Aryss, apparently, had done their job. Without cover, the enemy defense - which was allowed to launch translocator beams to move more quickly, while a flag carrier was not - could catch up rapidly. This not being the case, Malcom jogged to the massive cement wall, and jumped. Instead of reaching a height of approximately three feet and smacking into the wall, which would have been the only physically possible outcome under normal circumstances, he sailed over the twenty-foot edifice in an eerily natural-looking leap.
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Hearing Malcolm's ¨Eeeehaw!¨ through his earpiece, Riker snapped his sniper rifle onto his pack and loaded his translocator beam into the compact launching device on his wrist. Obviously Malcom had just cleared the wall. Newbs always got a kick out of using the Jump Boots. Malcom was no freshy, but he still reveled in the experience of Tournament play. It was a game, a sport, an exhilarating competition. He hadn't yet seen the ugly, stinking underbelly of the whole works. Once you learned who was pulling the strings to maximize their own profits while using the gladiators like so much human cattle, once you figured out exactly how ¨negotiable¨ your contract with the tournament board was, it was harder to find any joy in the experience.
Malcom was lucky. He'd entered the Tournament by choice when other alternatives were available. Most competitors were common thugs or court-martialed ex-military who sought to escape the penal mining colonies. Very few ever won their freedom, and Riker no longer held onto such hopes. Here was better than dying slowly of muscular wastage and heart weakening due to the work of mining asteroids full-time in zero gravity, and that was good enough. Malcom could have his damned fun. He deserved it anyhow, as advance compensation for what the Liandri Tournament Board would do to him once his popularity waned. Somewhere in that contract he signed, it said ¨without compensation.¨ It might literally be microscopic (not uncommon these days), but it was there.
¨Riker! The hell you doing?¨
¨Enjoying the lovely afternoon, jackass. Just kidding, I'm killing their defense so you can cap and claim the glory later. You?¨
¨I already capped, newb, and their offense just got the shield belt. Wake up and ventilate Lauren's cute body a little, would you?¨
¨Got it, Red Leader,¨ he replied, and fired his translocator beacon off the central rock wall on which he was positioned. Despite Malcolm's immaturity, Riker liked him. Gladiators with his raw leadership ability were not common.
The beacon bounced on a narrow ridge of tortured black lava rock below - very nicely placed - and Riker punched the ¨translocate¨ button on his wrist launcher, appearing a foot above the rock surface and landing with practiced ease. He quickly translocated twice more up the ridge towards his base, having spotted the shimmering yellow energy field of the shield belt to his left, moving concordantly with a fast, slender figure.
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Lauren saw Riker coming. She ignored him and fired her translocator towards the base. Killing him now would be a big waste, as he would spawn again inside the base (where she was going) with plenty of weapons nearby. A bullet pinged off the ground to her right - there was probably a defender camping in the sniper nest built into the front wall of the base. She pulled out her shock rifle as she arrived at the wall and sailed upwards, aided by the miniature jet power of the Jump Boots. In midair, Lauren fired a shock ball towards the inside parapet of the wall, where the entrance to the sniper's nest lay. Aiming patiently as she fell, she deftly hit the ball with a primary shock beam, detonating a perfectly placed combo in the face of a female figure that was just clearing the entrance. She twisted for the lading in the inner courtyard of the base, and hit softly, aided by an automatic cushioning jet from the jump boots. Sprinting around some cement pillars towards the flag, she tapped a button on her comm device to broadcast to the enemy line and taunted, ¨You like that?¨
¨Nice combo. Bitch.¨
She grinned and ran across the flag stand, the holographic image of a red flag disappearing from the stand and appearing on her pack as she passed. A short siren sounded over the arena speakers.
¨Brock, where you at boy? I need some cover here.¨
¨Busy, sweetcheeks!¨ came the clipped reply.
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Riker threw himself sideways, catching the edge of his opponent's thundering shock combo and tumbling ass over elbows once before righting himself. He sprayed some green plasma balls with the pulse rifle's primary firing mode in Brock's general direction, hoping to distract him long enough to shorten the distance between them and prevent another combo. It appeared to work; no more blue bubbles came flying his direction. He trained a lance of plasma towards his opponent and closed in, dodging and weaving as he came.
Brock felt the searing shaft of plasma cut into his armor, but he calmly shouldered a sniper rifle and aimed back along the shaft; slightly up and to the right.
¨HEADSHOT!¨ boomed the announcer's gleeful yell over the arena.
Riker barely registered the flash of pain before he found himself respawned in his base, just in time to see Lauren go sailing over the wall with their flag.
¨Azure, what happened?¨
¨She combo'd me at the sniper. Get the flag. I'll get her cover.¨
¨Roger.¨
Riker translocated quickly around the base picking up the shock and pulse rifles, then over the wall. He saw Brock waiting for him outside, firing a beacon in his direction, then….. his head disappeared.
¨Headshot! Backatcha, Brock! Nice defensive teamwork there by the Thunder Crash,¨ announced the clownish booming voice. A second later the siren sounded again, indicating that Malcom had the enemy flag. At least Lauren couldn't cap right now - in order to score a point, you had to touch the enemy's flag to your own on its stand. Riker continued translocating quickly towards the fleeing glimmery yellow figure, pausing long enough to tap his comm device and notify his teammates of the situation. ¨Enemy flag carrier leaving at the rocket launcher!¨
Malcom's commanding voice replied ¨OK, Riker, meet me at the belt for cover. Aryss and Othello, take out their FC.¨
¨Roger cap'n.¨ Riker shot his beacon towards the central route where the shield belt spawned. Looking along the corridor that cut through the central cliff, he saw the shield belt appear and Malcom running towards it - but he was being pelted with a hail of minigun bullets. He made a valiant effort, but crumpled a few feet from the belt. His body disappeared; the holographic flag remained. Riker shot a shock ball into the corridor, but it didn't arrive at the flag in time to stop an enemy defender, who translocated in and touched the image, ¨returning¨ it to his base. A moment later, Riker´s combo blew him in half.
Malcom cursed as he respawned, making for the shock rifle and the armor pickup.
¨Man down!¨ yelled Aryss across the comm. Malcom glanced over to see Othello spawning on the other side of their base.
¨Riker, Aryss, get in there!¨ he yelled, knowing their chances of stopping an enemy capture now were slim since their two teammates in any position to catch Lauren faced all five of the Iron Guard. Malcom was translocating out of his base when he saw Aryss spawn on the parapet, and shortly after, the synthesized fanfare indicating that the blue team had scored sounded across the arena.
¨Aaaaand the Iron Guard answers Thunder Crash's first cap with one of their own, tying things up with twenty five minutes to play!¨ crowed the announcer.
Both teams fell back to a more defensive strategy after that, and the match was still tied at the end of regulation play. Sudden-death overtime commenced. The gladiators were tiring, but youthful Malcom, his body energized by the very finest FenTech had to offer - chemical stimulants, synapse enhancers, and endurance proteins - was now in his element.
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After about ten minutes of overtime, the balance shifted. Malcom spawned in the base and started a run on the enemy flag once again. He grabbed the jump boots on the way out, being careful to move by running and translocating so as not to activate a jump and waste their three charges, and arrived at the center passage just in time to pick up the shield belt. He crouched quickly against the wall of the passage and peered through the scope of his sniper rifle into the sniper nest of the enemy base. Through the dancing waves of heat he could see a barrel protruding. He aimed into the cement slot and fired.
¨Headshot! Malcom with a blind snipe from halfway across the island! I tell you folks, this boy's iiiin-human!¨
He wasn't wasting time listening to this garbage, but translocating towards the enemy base as fast as possible. On a hunch he paused and shouldered his sniper rifle, just in time to catch another defender running around the side of the base. Two quick shots in the chest, and he fell. Othello's voice, gruff and deep, crackled in his comm. ¨Right behind you, Malcom. Let's head in with miniguns.¨
¨Agreed.¨
They translocated onto the parapet, unsheathed their big heavy bullet-dispensers, and opened fire into the small cement courtyard below. The two recently-spawned defenders fell quickly again, this time respawning somewhere out of sight but nearby, most likely outside the base (a mechanism designed to discourage the unsavory practice of ¨spawn-camping¨).
Malcom grabbed the flag and boot-jumped over the wall; Othello followed him outside the base but paused on the flat rock patio that surrounded it.
¨Got your back.¨
¨Roger.¨ Communication in matches was generally pretty terse. Wasted words didn't help you win. Malcom headed right, running steadily along the ledge of ropy basalt and trying not to look at the river of lava below. He heard behind him the thunder of shock combos that Othello was laying around the base to stall the defenders' pursuit.
As he neared the passage through the monolithic central bluff, the siren sounded again. Malcom gritted his teeth and urged his legs to move faster, coughing a little as he pulled in larger gulps of hot, rancid air. He grabbed a rocket launcher in the passage and held it loosely, struggling to run now with the weight but churning ahead. His base crept into view from behind a low, ashy hill with two figures engaged in a skirmish in front of it. They weaved back and forth, firing shock bubbles and looking for the opportunity to combo.
Malcom saw the lithe red figure of Aryss fire shock balls to both sides of her opponent. Instinctively, the Iron Guard member dodged away from the first ball, then back towards it to avoid the second one - and was annihilated by a combo as Aryss surgically detonated the first ball with a primary beam.
¨Nice, Aryss. FC?¨
¨In the base, still stacked.¨
¨Incoming!¨ came Riker´s voice. ¨They forced me off the middle with combos. Watch side passages.¨
Malcom was too close to the base for it to matter, as long as they took out the enemy flag carrier pronto. He held down the trigger of his rocket launcher as he ran, hearing a series of clicks and whirs as rockets were loaded one at a time into the six firing chambers. When he released the trigger, however many rockets had been loaded by then would fire simultaneously. When six were loaded, it fired automatically. He expected the enemy flag carrier to appear, but she didn't, and he had to shoot the rockets off into the sky to avoid blowing up himself or a teammate.
A primary shock beam slammed into Malcom's back, knocking him forward and stunning him for a second. He scrambled to his feet, ran a few steps to the edge of his base while holding down the trigger to his rocket launcher, and jumped.
He saw Lauren flying over the wall towards him in midair. She had a rather surprised look on her face, just visible through the shimmering energy armor of the shield belt. Malcom pivoted his torso, quickly visualized the rest of her trajectory, and fired four rockets at the ground outside the base. He landed backwards, catlike, on the wall just in time to see Lauren and the pack of rockets converge on the ground in a beautiful fiery explosion. When the smoke cleared, only the flag and a scorch mark remained.
¨I've got the flag!¨ announced Azure over the comm.
¨Affirmative.¨ He had already dropped down off the wall, and was sprinting the last few steps to the flag stand where he stopped and crouched. The red flag's image appeared through the middle of his body a moment later, and the cheesy automatic fanfare played instantly.
¨Red team has won the match!¨ howled the announcer. ¨Malcom and the Thunder Crash have defeated the Iron Guard, and secured their spot in the CTF semifinals. Let's go have a quick interview with our young star, Mmmmaaaaalcommm!¨ A small camera drone flew out of the sky and circled around him. The voice of some far-off announcer, probably sitting in a comfy starship lounge far above the hellish planet, issued from it.
¨How do you feel about your victory over the Iron Guard today, Malcom? They gave you quite a match.¨
¨I respect them as worthy opponents and am happy for the win. Lauren and Brock are friends of mine, and their relationship inside the arena is just as tight as it is outside - those two can really coordinate.¨ The Iron Guard was almost as popular as his team, the Thunder Crash, so it really wouldn't do to gloat overmuch in this victory. Besides, Lauren and Brock really were friends of his, even though he was obviously superior when it came to the Tournament.
¨After your victory today, how do you feel about the exhibition duel with Gorn tomorrow? And the team deathmatch championship with his squad next week?¨
¨Gorn is old. He's a relic. I'm going to dazzle him with my sniper on Deck 16 tomorrow, and chew apart his team with my minigun on Tempest next week.¨ He flashed a cocky grin. Gorn's team was experienced and dangerous, but not terribly popular. Talking badly about them was good for your ratings. He felt like sort of an asshole, but apparently the specs liked that kind of thing.
¨Anything else you'd like to add?¨
¨As always, I want to thank my sponsor FenTech for their support and terrific products.¨ He faced directly at the camera and smiled big. ¨FenTech: we make you better than other people.¨