Scene 6
Anna sipped her Nali fruit tea serenely, savoring the energizing tickle through her body as the hyper-enzymes shot a pleasurable boost of metabolic activity into her system. The plant from which her tea was made was discovered on an occupied planet many years ago, when preliminary exploratory missions had first come into contact with the civilization known as the Skaarj, a race that would become the most fearsome enemy humankind had ever known. The Nali fruit contained some truly amazing compounds, which were less chemical enzymes than semi-living entities, similar in complexity and function to RNA viruses - except rather than attaching themselves to and destroying healthy cells in order to multiply, they sought out damaged and energetically-depleted areas and injected proteins that almost any living thing could use to repair itself or utilize for energy. The tea Anna was drinking actually contained a highly diluted version of the enzymes found in a living Nali fruit. Eating one fresh delivered such a powerful effect that it could save the life of a wounded person, or speed the healing of minor injuries by a substantial amount. However, the physical sensation was much less pleasant; kind of like being subjected to a prolonged mild electric shock. Hence the making of tea as a favored form of consumption.
Anna enjoyed its salient influence now as she sat in the bustling eastern European café, waiting for Gorn to show up. Supposedly he wanted to talk strategy, but Anna knew better. They did that weekly with the whole team present. Plus there was the location - CaféBibiana, in the military-political district of Warsaw, an innocuous-looking place from the outside with electromagnetic wave detectors inside and some truly frightening-looking male waiters who reportedly chucked people out for coming in with anything more technologically advanced than a ballpoint pen. It was clearly a place where people went to discuss things away from prying ears and eyes - and bugs. Anna felt almost unbearably curious about what it was that Gorn wanted to talk about, but she sipped her tea and waited.
He appeared in the landing about five minutes late, surrendered his translocation apparatus, and waited patiently as the rest of his person was searched. The door guards, imposing as they were, looked almost slight next to his ridiculously wide frame. He spotted Anna while being searched, and walked unhurriedly over to her table once the goons nodded at him to pass.
¨So Gorn,¨ she said before he could get a word out, ¨I trust we're talking strategy away from the rest of the team because you've got a special assignment for me? Something very… personal… that only I can help you with?¨ She gave him her best smoldering look, making good use of her wavy black hair and dark mediterranean features.
¨I…uh…¨ he stammered, ¨actually, we're… uh… not here to talk strat. Why are you looking at me like that?¨
¨I know we're not here to strategize, and relax; I'm just fucking with you. C'mon Gorn, I'm not grotesquely stupid. I mean, look at this place.¨ She thought the living sections of his face showed a hint of embarrassment. ¨But, I am very curious. So what's the story, chief?¨
¨You watch a certain duel yesterday in Deck 16?¨
¨Would that be the one where a certain Dark Phalanx founder smacked down a certain hot-shot CTF rookie with great aim and no brains?¨
He grinned. ¨Yeah, that one. Anything about it strike you as odd?¨
¨Not really, I mean you both made some pretty dumb moves, but other than that it went pretty much as I expected. Why? Am I missing something?¨
Gorn frowned. Anna was not a dueler, so she might not be expected to notice the subtleties. ¨My mistake was due to overconfidence and not predicting his moves correctly, and I didn't do it again. He made almost the same dumb error three times in the match due to apparently not knowing where I was. But did you notice his prediction the rest of the match?¨
¨Now that you mention it, he did seem to catch you by surprise more than most people - but I just thought you were having a bad day, especially after stepping into his goo like that.¨
Gorn shook his head emphatically. ¨I was throwing every trick I know at him to retake control for awhile there. I've dueled people who predict as well as that, but they were all experts. Want to know how many real matches Malcom had played on Deck 16 before facing me?¨
Anna shrugged. ¨A few? He obviously learned something along the way.¨
¨One, Anna. He destroyed some CTF-playing newb in a post-match grudge duel. It's goddamn weird. I could accept it if he was just clearly a prodigy, but why the gaps in judgment? Why did he play so inconsistently?¨
Anna shrugged again, but spoke with more interest than before, considering Gorn's question. ¨Interesting. Well, maybe he was just pissed. Guy obviously thinks so much of himself; it wouldn't surprise me if he had a hard time dealing with defeat or setbacks. He did seem pretty steamed in the post-match interview, too.¨
Gorn shook his head yet again. ¨I don't think so. I hate giving him this much credit, but he doesn't seem like the type to let his emotions affect his game that easily. And there's something else, too. After the match but before the interview ´cams came, I commented on his mistakes and he honestly seemed confused about what I was saying. No I think maybe his irregularity had something to do with his stims. HAL thinks they might have him on some kind of secret regimen.¨
Anna knew all about the program halcyon and its capabilities, as the Dark Phalanx was probably the most strategically thorough team in the Tournament and they constantly used HAL to research their opponents. ¨Was HAL any more specific?¨ she asked Gorn. ¨And why do you care, honestly?¨
¨His errors weren't random. They're related to some defect, I'm sure of it. If we can figure out what it is, we can use it to destabilize him in the TDM finals, and the CTF finals too, if we make it that far. He's a youngster and a hothead, but he's a born leader. If Malcom fails, so does the Thunder Crash.
Anna laughed out loud. ¨You're obsessed, you know that? OK, I can see why winning the Tournament is a big deal. But why all the trouble for secrecy? And why me? What do you mean to…. Oh, wait a minute,¨ she said, her eyes widening with understanding. ¨You can't seriously want me to…?¨
Gorn gave her a hint of his ghoulish smile. ¨You have the contacts to get this thing started. Nobody on the team knows anything about FenTech. And while it's only a guess, I'd put money on you knowing someone who might have access to inside info at FenTech.¨
¨Gorn, I can't do this. You don't know those people like I do. I mean, they have more connections than the internet. It isn't healthy to pry into their private affairs, and I would know.¨
¨Yes, you would. But consider this: How much of a blow to FenTech would it be to take out their poster boy? We might even be able to prove some kind of malpractice on their part. I know how much you like that company.¨
¨I. Fucking. Hate them.¨ Gorn could hear her teeth grinding. He'd held that card in reserve, knowing that the argument would be over when he played it. Anna had personal reasons to wish bad fortune on FenTech that dated back to her days as a Black Ops specialist; the company was, in a way, responsible for her defection.
------
Anna was never completely the Black Ops type. Raised in a military family in Athens, her patriarchal father had insisted on her brother's pursuit of a career in the armed forces, but stressed to young Anna that such careers were for men. There were lots of other interesting and useful things a woman could do, like cook and bear children.
Anna dreamed of participating in the fledgling Global Defense Force, recently formed by the New Earth Government in response to increasing awareness of threats from elsewhere in the Universe. She had no money to enroll in a military academy, which her father of course would not supply. She also had no desire to enter as a grunt in the army, and so opted instead to study intelligence and martial arts with the local volunteer defense brigade. She learned very quickly, and at the same time made some incidental contacts with officers in the GDF through her brother, who had gone to military academy and was already a colonel.
Possessing keen political instinct, Anna perceived that her brother's quick rise through the ranks without having seen actual combat might have created jealousy, and inadvertently, enemies within the GDF along the way. Secretly she resolved to keep an eye on him from the outside while she was looking for a way into the military.
She was right to do so. One hot summer night, Anna just happened to be testing a cell phone/radio signal collecting apparatus on top of a building next door to the location of a bash for the GDF higher-ups at which her brother was in attendance. It was, as she was prepared to tell anyone who might discover her and ask, a rather remarkable coincidence. Obviously she never intended to listen to the personal communications of world military leaders illicitly!
While fiddling with her battery settings, Anna happened to grab a few words from a 2-way keychain radio connection that chilled her. ¨…Colonel Zambaras…heading upstairs….two minutes…do it quickly and leave the body….paid next week.¨ There was no time to tell anyone. Already dressed in sleek black clothes for quick escapes should anyone discover her, Anna sprinted across the rooftop and flung herself into a tree between the buildings, breaking several branches and a finger before arresting her fall, then ignoring the pain and scrambling up to a long, thick branch that extended to a window on the second floor. She gained entry easily; someone had already cut a little hole through the window glass with a mini-cutter and unlocked it. Guessing the assassin had entered the same way, she proceeded cautiously through the room and into a hallway, where she encountered a man standing at the top of a flight of stairs, apparently smoking a cigarette, his back to her. Anna could see the gleam of garrote wire coiled in the hand he held behind his back. She padded up silently and strangled him with his own wire, broken finger and all, before he could cry out.
When her incredulous brother arrived, she told him to go back downstairs to the party and look for the next man to answer a call on his keychain radio because she was going to be calling him with the one the assassin carried. In this way they caught the conspirator, with sufficient evidence on his person to ensure his conviction. After the ensuing publicity, Anna was approached by a recruiter who asked if she would like to avoid a jail sentence for vigilantism and begin training for a position in the Black Ops, which she first accepted with joy and pride. But when the real missions began, things eventually went sour.
Black Ops meant secrecy. It meant doing things that Joe Bagodonuts was never supposed to know about. It meant being a political assassin and various other unsavory things that Anna tolerated until the order came to take ¨swift, decisive, and lethal¨ action against a commune of new-age naturalists that were protesting against FenTech and were rumored to have bombed one of its facilities. Anna understood and appreciated the necessity for moving against organizations that plotted secretly against the New Earth Government, but FenTech was a private entity. This was a police matter; what business did the NEG have secretly defending FenTech with the Black Ops?
Tortured by her conscience, Anna went rogue in the middle of a hit against several well-known leaders of the commune, managing to disrupt the mission and kill a couple of squad mates in the process. To avoid the wrath of the Black Ops' retribution, she joined the Tournament and escaped into a kind of quasi-autonomous world that existed with very little if any regulation by the NEG. As much clout as FenTech apparently had in the New Earth Government, it was nothing compared to Liandri Corporation. The corporate and mining mega-giant owned and managed the Tournament, and, it was half-joked, the NEG as well. Nobody messed with their assets.
So, Anna had escaped relatively unscathed from her employment in the most secretive and dangerous line of work officially sponsored by the NEG. What, if anything, she might known about FenTech had never been discussed within the Dark Phalanx. There was an unspoken rule among gladiators that your past died when you entered the Tournament. Gorn was knowingly violating that rule, and he knew Anna would be pissed. She was.
------
¨You're an asshole Gorn, you know that? People could die if we're caught prying too closely.¨
He snorted. ¨Funny lack of resolve from someone that betrayed her nation and squad just to save a few hippies.¨
She looked at him with as much calm as she could muster, but her eyes glittered with fury and her voice was strained. ¨You wouldn't get it, soldier boy. You took orders for too long. They never brainwashed away MY ability to think for myself.¨
¨They never did that to me, either. I simply have enough sense to know that my own interests come second to those of my team and nation when they are depending on me. If all my soldiers in the GDF had been like you, I'd probably be dead instead of having this,¨ he indicated his face, ¨and we'd probably have crumbled during the Siege.¨
------
He meant the Seven-Day Siege, Earth's darkest moment during the Skaarj Wars when the GDF was pinned down on the planet's surface for a week due to a daring move by the Skaarj in throwing their largest mothership and the bulk of their forces directly at the center of human civilization. A desperate strike team, aided by other ragtag forces that were finally starting to arrive from the mining colonies, managed to exploit a weakness in the mothership to destroy it and end the siege. Gorn, an unknown GDF captain before the battle, proved himself unquestionably in the ground fighting and left half-alive, but a war hero.
He also had started life an unlikely candidate for a destiny in the Tournament. Raised in farmland Russia, Gorn was a simple manual laborer for almost ten years before being drafted to serve in the GDF at the beginning of the Skaarj wars. He excelled in learning the Global Standard Dialect, and so was given command of a small squadron of Russians that would eventually serve in the defense of Warsaw during the Siege. Gorn was only a decent commander, but when the Skaarj troopers made it to the planet's surface on the fourth day, he killed as many as the rest of his squad put together. They held out in the most intense fighting until the end of the sixth day, when Gorn took a shot in the helmet from a Skaarj heavy trooper's energy gun, wrapping melted Kevlar and carbonium around his face. It had to be cut away with lasers and he lost his sight, smell, and hearing as a result. The GDF obligingly paid to replace these with the very best optic, audio and chemical sensors available in ¨recognition of outstanding services rendered¨.
The whole thing was a big publicity stunt. They'd actually drained all of Gorn's pension funds to pay for the surgery, and Anna suspected that he joined the Tournament as a way to avoid having to go back to hauling around grain sacks and hydrogen fuel tanks. His unshakable loyalty to the NEG, even after they'd pulled a stunt like that, never failed to amaze her.
She looked at Gorn levelly. They had both been sipping their tea in silence for awhile now. ¨I know a guy.¨
¨Figured you'd come around.¨
¨Piss off. I'm doing this for me, not you. But I have a condition, Mr. morally righteous war hero.¨ She leaned close, her voice fierce. ¨When I need help, and I will, you're going to help me. This was your idiot idea. You have to get your hands dirty.¨
He sighed. ¨I know. You going to start on this right away?¨
¨Yep. Got nothing else interesting planned ´til our TDM training in a coupla days. I'll talk to you then.¨
He simply nodded. ¨Thanks.¨ They got up and left simultaneously, walking out the door and diverging in opposite directions, never looking at each other.