Pit King by Graeme Stevenson (bad_badger)

Vix is one of the finest pit fighters on Arekkha, but can he survive the ambitions of his owner? Truly superb stuff, with stellar fight sequences, atmosphere and attention to detail, make Pit King a must-read. This is from Graeme Stevenson (aka bad_badger), one of the great writers at the Black Library forums. 15,600 words Go straight to:- Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Writing time : unknown Finished : unknown Download as Word file

PART 1

Vix did a quick mental calculation, evaluating his opponent. The other man had a similar build to himself, perhaps a shade heavier across the shoulders. His impact armour was in good condition and multi-layered around the limb joints and other vulnerable areas, but that additional protection came at the cost of speed and flexibility. Vix himself preferred to fight in just a groin box and boots, with rigid greaves and knee pads.

His opponent had long, unwashed hair tied back in a braid – Vix shaved his skull and body religiously and taped over the joints of his sparse armour before each fight. Having clean lines meant no snags, and few successful grapples.

As he got closer to the other pit fighter, his sharp eye took in more subtle details. It paid to be observant in this profession – you lived longer.

Dilated pupils, trembling swords, vacant grin; this guy’s back teeth were floating in combat stimulants. Vix never touched them himself; they negated pain and fear, they boosted reflexes and strength, but they wound you up tighter than a spring. So much adrenalin burned your energy reserves and frayed your nerves to the bone. He’d be quick, but he’d tire just as quick.

This would be easier than he’d first thought, and more lucrative.

‘What do you think?’ asked a voice in his ear. He worked his shoulders, swinging both heavy cutting blades in the manner of a limbering athlete, slapping the flat of one blade against his thigh three times in quick succession.

‘Three thousand?’ The voice sounded unconvinced. ‘Well, it’s your money, Vix.’

His opponent was twenty paces away, grinning like a chimpanzee and vibrating visibly. His two swords were a little long for close-quarter fighting and the metal had a lack-lustre shine to it – probably low-grade alloy. It’d hold an edge fine, but deformed easily. Vix was more comfortable with a pair of short falchions; thick, single-edged cleavers with hooked tips. Heavy, robust and reliable – if the edges dulled you could always use them to break bones.

A horn sounded somewhere overhead and the roar of the crowd climbed another decibel. It was busy in the arena this afternoon; it was always busy when Vix fought these days, because he knew what they came for. They wanted gore and mayhem and he did his best to provide it.

Two-Swords lurched forward at the signal, his blades upraised. Vix let him come, circling carefully to see how agile his foe was. Two-swords anticipated the movement and cut him off, letting fly a simple one-two slash to prevent the blatant flank. As Vix had suspected, the movements were fast, but lacked coordination through the heightened adrenalin.

The combat junkie came after him again, perspiration already beginning to sparkle on his brow. Vix parried the attacks, getting a feel for his opponent’s weaponry – they had a good reach, but each hard spangg of contact left a deep notch in the sword’s edge. Low-grade alloy, sure enough.

Vix was careful not to let this assessment carry on too long – some of the lower tiers were already hollering for a meatier engagement. He put the first stage of his plan into action.

As Two-Swords came after him with the same double attack, he parried both swords with his left falchion; on the second parry, though the stroke wasn’t particularly forceful, he relaxed his fingers and let the weapon spin out of his hand. The crowd gasped in shock and excitement to see Vix Velnox partially disarmed so early into the fight.

Apparently, Two-Swords bought the deception too – he embarked on a sustained attack with both blades; hacking and chopping at the back-pedalling pit fighter, somehow not quite able to get through that remaining falchion defence. Sparks cracked and spit as the weapons came together again and again; the zingg and chonkk of combat echoing around their circular enclosure.

‘What the hell are you doing, Vix?’ the voice asked.

Two-Swords backed off for a second, changing his footing. Vix made an obvious attempt to circle towards his lost falchion and let the other pit fighter cut him off again. The crowds were baying for blood and he knew why. At every opportunity, Vix portrayed himself as an arrogant egotist, scoffing at the efforts of his fallen opponents. He was the fighter everybody loved to hate; they came in their droves just for the chance to be there when he finally got his comeuppance. And they paid for the privilege.

Vix rushed in briefly to try and force Two-Swords back and away from his lost weapon, but he didn’t try too hard. There was some more swordplay and he backed off again, apparently defeated by the other man’s defences.

‘Vix?’ the voice asked again.

Vix’s runner was a skinny adolescent called Thom the Skink. Exactly why he was called that, he’d declined to ask. He did his job well, though, and Vix trusted him as much as he trusted anybody in this business. It was a simple operation – Vix checked out his opponent in the pit and signalled how much money Thom should bet on him to win, then set about making himself look as outclassed as possible. This wasn’t as easy a task as one might think – it had to be done carefully so as not to make the fight look staged, and one couldn’t afford to be too lax because the other guy was doing his best to kill you.

When the odds were about as ripe as they were going to get, Vix would give a pre-arranged signal and the Skink would place the bet. Once he got confirmation, Vix would immediately get his ‘second wind’ and cut his hapless adversary to pieces.

The routine had worked for six months and no one had caught on yet. A few more big wins and Vix would have enough money to buy his freedom.

Two-swords came at him again, a grunt of effort behind each swing. Vix parried some, dodged the rest and continued in his back-pedalling; careful to look slightly off-balance and disorganised. There were a few boos starting to filtrate into the crowd noise now; he’d have to give them a little taste of what they wanted most. These were the moments when he questioned the sanity of his scam.

As Two-swords closed again, Vix allowed his guard to drop slightly. He parried the incoming sword, but not hard enough to completely halt its trajectory; the badly notched sword thudded against his wrist greave, bounced, then scored a shallow trench in his right shoulder.

He staggered back, getting out of sword range before a follow-up blow could be delivered, letting his right arm hang low, blood streaming down to the elbow.

The crowd were on their feet, screaming for Two-Swords to finish the job; he rushed forward only too happy to oblige. Vix swapped his remaining falchion to his left hand to meet the rush, continuing to back-pedal while he fended off a rain of clumsy, over-eager slashes.

Two-Swords was tiring visibly; Vix had let him do all the work, expending his energy with great lusty swings designed to chop the pit fighter in half. Both swords were notched and battered looking, beginning to warp slightly from the constant battery.

‘You’re a crazy bastard,’ said Thom. ‘It worked, though – you’re 5 to 1 against.’

Vix lunged through his opponent’s swinging arms and shouldered him hard, knocking the other man into the dirt with much of his precious wind gone from the impact. It would have been easy to finish it there, but the odds weren’t quite what he wanted. Instead he turned away and made for his lost falchion at an ‘exhausted’ run.

The crowd booed and threw coins as Two-Swords clambered to his feet, his chest heaving under the chunky impact armour. In a second, he was chasing Vix across the enclosure and squandering more of his precious energy reserves.

Vix got the second falchion and turned to face his charging foe; they came together in another flurry of blows. Kaangg! Spengg! Two-Swords worked like a madman, his mouth hanging open to suck in air while he piled blow upon blow on Vix’s defences. The crowd could see the star fighter’s right flank was crumbling due to the shoulder wound and held their collective breath while the falchions became more and more sluggish.

‘7 to 1 against,’ the micro-bead in his ear said, sounding worried. Thom knew that if Vix put a foot wrong here, his percentage-shaving days were over.

Vix staggered, playing his lame-duck ruse to the hilt; he went down on one knee, his face a mask of pain, blood droplets flying each time the blades crashed together. Two-Swords hacked at him again and again, his chemically-enhanced bloodlust washing away the suspicion that he was doing anything other than winning spectacularly.

‘Emperor’s Teeth, Vix,’ Thom blurted, his panic evident. ‘8 to 1 against! Enough, already!’

As Two-Swords levelled a shoulder-height stroke to cleave off his head, Vix rolled under it, bowling the other fighter’s legs out from under him. He backed off a few paces and deliberately drew his wrist greave across his forehead as though clearing sweat from his eyes.

‘Bet’s on!’ Thom said. ‘Bet’s on! Now get out of there!’

Vix watched Two-Swords lurch to his feet, spitting dust and turning on his elusive foe. It was clear from every step he took and how low his buckled swords hung that he was exhausted. Now to go to work – the crowds had paid for a show, after all.

With incredible carelessness, Two-Swords went straight for his ‘wounded’ right shoulder and the easier target. Vix caught the blade in mid-arc and twisted it around and down with all his strength – the tip of the sword thudded into the hard-packed earth. Without pause, Vix stamped hard on the flat of the blade – as expected, it bent comically under the lateral force, looking now like a huge bladed boomerang.

Before Two-Swords could react, he head-butted the startled fighter back a dozen paces, leaving his bent sword sticking out of the ground. The combat drugs negated the pain and concussion, but not the bemusement when Two-Swords slashed with his remaining sword and watched it and the attached arm all the way to the elbow spin away across the enclosure in a fan of blood.

Vix swung the other falchion and cut through Two-Sword’s impact armour in mid-bicep. The tough armour prevented another amputation but the bone snapped cleanly and his remaining arm started flapping around like an empty sleeve.

Still he had trouble comprehending this new turn of events; his body couldn’t confirm what his eyes were telling him – it looked like he’d lost a hand and his other arm was half cut off, but he felt nothing. Vix used this bovine pondering to drive the hooked point of both falchions into Two-Swords’ belly and twist.

The crowd ‘oooohhhh’d with glee and revulsion as the faltering pit fighter stumbled and slithered through a growing pile of his own intestines, his face still wearing that same idiot gawp. Vix lopped his head off almost in contempt and kicked the still-twitching body backwards into the dust.

The crowd were screaming now in a mixture of outrage and ecstasy – they’d seen carnage and brutality and were only mildly put out that it'd been the other guy who'd got it in the neck. Vix picked up Two-Swords’ head by the rope of hair, swung it around his head to gather momentum and threw it into the surging crowd.

The entire area rumbled with twenty thousand voices and forty thousand feet – they hated him; they loved him. They wanted him dead. They wanted him alive. They just wanted him.

Vix bowed.

PART 2

It wasn’t something he would admit to his business partner, but standing in the shadow of the pit wall of Arekkha’s premier arena waiting on the arrival of the most notorious fighter in the sector while countless thousands of bloodthirsty peons streamed into the seats, Vix was nervous.

He didn’t usually get nervous before a fight – he had six hundred and eight pit fights under his belt, one hundred and thirty-nine to the Death, and there were few things this galaxy had left to throw at him. Today was one of those days. Today he fought the Maul.

Eighty percent of a fighter’s reputation was usually hot air – Chinese whispers moving from one hive world to the next, gathering weight and momentum as it went. You could be forgiven for dismissing the Maul’s reputation as one of these bloated exaggerations. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

When Sirius, his Pit Master, had warned him that the Maul’s retinue had arrived on-planet, a match between them was inevitable. Vix was a veteran fighter and something of an economical force when it came to making money, being undefeated for nine years. In fact his sixteen career losses could all be traced back to the first year of his incarceration as a fighter. Whether through good fortune or business sense on Sirius’s part, those sixteen fights had only been to First Blood or Submission. It was just a matter of time before the Maul’s Master sought a deal.

There was big money riding on this one, judging from the amount of perspiration soaking through Sirius’s toga. The fact that they were fighting in the Imperial Court was another clue. It wasn’t a genuine court as such, rather a fighting arena with an overdeveloped sense of pomp. Faux marble archways and pillars adorned every section of the massive coliseum – at capacity, the structure could hold three hundred thousand. By the way the faceless masses were still pouring into the stalls it could well be filled on this occasion.

There would be no slice of the pie for Vix on this fight – the Imperial Court had its own private security force that searched and scanned the fighters and only allowed pre-sanctioned pit gear into the arena. His micro-bead would have been confiscated.

Curiosity and a morbid sense of his own mortality had drawn Vix to the Court as a spectator to watch the Maul fight another seasoned veteran of the Arekkha circuit, weeks before; a Colemitian called Broke John. Vix had fought John twice before; once to Submission and once to First Blood. Both matches had been hard, the Submission bout especially so – with no weaponry allowed the match was resolved with basic martial prowess. Broke John turned out to have a granite jaw and Vix broke two ribs and seven knuckles before he bested his pugnacious opponent.

What he hadn’t expected was for the Maul to be brought into the arena in a huge iron maiden. It looked like a publicity stunt at first, until he noticed two marksmen on the lower lip of the arena wall with rifles. With Broke John looking on bemused, an attendant released the heavy locking mechanism on the front of the metal coffin and ran for the enclosure.

The iron maiden was shoved open and the Maul clambered out onto the sand. Even from his position high in the stalls, Vix could see he was big. No, he was big. Probably over two and a half metres tall and what looked like three hundred kilos of muscle and scar tissue. The attendant had dragged a huge curved cutlass out in front of the maiden, too heavy and unwieldy for him to lift. The Maul scooped it up in one hand and went straight for Broke John like a hungry man heading for the dinner table.

The fight was short; the outcome as inevitable as night following day. Broke John was buffeted and battered from one side of the arena to the other with murderous blows of that huge cutlass; his trademark gaffe hook and target shield were shattered and discarded. The Maul virtually cut him in half with a single stroke, continuing to hack at the twitching cadaver long after the victory horn had sounded.

There was a mindless, bovine quality about his attack; a focus of intent that was terrifying to behold. The few scores and slashes Broke John had inflicted went completely unnoticed; the bigger man seemed oblivious to them.

What worried Vix was that the Maul hadn’t just demonstrated unnatural strength in his assault; he was much quicker than the other man. He had the speed and balance of an athlete half his size. Neither were there any signs of combat drugs – his movements were clean, precise and fluid. He looked like an extremely efficient killer, and Vix genuinely didn’t know if he could stop him.

Perhaps the most unnerving part of the entire spectacle was the Maul’s persistent hacking of his fallen opponent’s corpse. He went at the body with vigour and determination, hacking it into unidentifiable meat with that massive cutlass until the marksmen shot two darts into the back of his neck, just above the ridge of armour.He staggered, but resumed his stubborn mutilation of Broke John; in all, it took six tranquiliser darts to bring the monstrous man down. Vix watched as the attendants manacled the slumbering giant and hauled him back into his iron coffin. The stipulation that the Maul only fought to the Death suddenly made sense – the man was uncontrollable.

And now he stood at one end of the circular sand arena with Sirius fretting at his elbow, watching the enclosure doors sixty metres away on the other side.

‘You are feeling strong, yes?’ Sirius asked, mopping uncomfortably at his neck. He was a gaunt man, used to the fierce heat of Arekkha summers. Clearly, he was thinking the same thing as Vix – that they might be in over their heads on this one.

‘Worried about your money, soh?

The Pit Master switched his damp handkerchief, driving the impertinent question away like a fly. Sirius liked to maintain an aura of fatherly concern around his employees and would avoid issues of financial gain. Utterly false, but no doubt it helped him sleep at night.

‘I worry about you, child,’ he said. ‘I should forfeit the match. My ego has brought us to this.’

Vix smiled. Sirius frequently indulged in moments of self-degradation before big matches – perhaps he thought it infused his fighters with a sense of worth. Vix saw with better eyes than that; the Pit Master would have sold his own grandmother if it made him a tidy profit.

The enclosure doors at the other side of the arena ground open and he watched attendants wheel the heavy, pitted iron coffin out onto the sand. The crowd, still swelling with late arrivals, murmured with interest.

‘Come back to me,’ Sirius said, touching the pit fighter awkwardly on the shoulder. ‘We will celebrate your victory tonight.’

Vix worked his wrists to loosen them, swinging his falchions in small circles, ignoring the retreating Pit Master. Sirius would watch the battle under a shaded canopy while he drank wine and ate fresh fruit. His token comradeship fell on deaf ears.

The sun had reached its zenith and heat distortion caused the distant iron maiden to ripple like a fish. Vix had requested the midday time slot for the match; Arekkha was a desert world and the Imperial Court had no screens over the arena floor. Those not acclimatised to the ferocious heat quickly found their stamina flagging. Vix had deliberately over-hydrated before the fight and sweat streamed freely from his corded body.

The marksmen were invisible through the furnace haze coming from the baking sand, but Vix found himself hoping they were there, all the same.

He watched the brutal cutlass being dragged out into the sand and dumped a few feet in front of the coffin and tried to ignore his fluttering stomach. The Maul had some sixty fights behind him against Vix’s eight hundred – experience was on his side. He only wished he could say the same for speed and strength.

And then the attendant pulled back the massive bolt holding the iron maiden doors in place and raced away across the sand. The doors were thrown open and a huge, shimmering silhouette clambered out.

Overhead, the crowd gave voice to the anxiety clawing at his belly. Vix raised his falchions and walked out onto the baking sand.

PART 3

The Maul seemed to be growing the closer he got to Vix. No normal man had any right to be so large – solidifying through the heat haze of the arena, he was freakishly large. Proportionate, but solid as a granite statue; thick at ankle and wrist, his hands and feet huge and every inch of him striated with tendon and muscle.

Reaching the centre of the arena, Vix slowed his pace. He had no inclination to get any closer to this advancing monster – not even a lumbering monster, which might have signified an exploitable weakness, but a quick and agile monster than came on inexorably with long determined strides.

The sea of faces overhead were screaming with blood lust already; for the first time he was going toe-to-toe with someone that would almost certainly kill him. And of course his adoring fans would just hate that.

The Maul came at him with unbelievable speed, his first attack with that cutlass designed to cleave his head off at the neck. Vix ducked under it and rolled, letting the Maul’s forward momentum carry him straight past. It would take the oversized man a second to re-position himself and…

But the Maul had turned before him and was already bringing the cutlass down in a diagonal slash. Vix got his twin falchions up, crossed and locked at the hilt an instant before the giant curved blade bit into his chest.

It felt like the hammer of some ancient God had struck him from the heavens; the force of the blow drove him ankle-deep into the sand and almost broke both arms. As he staggered backwards with his fingers going numb, he resolved not to parry any more of the Maul’s strikes.

That cursed blade went for him again, then again and again. Though he twisted and jinked and feinted, the cutlass was never more than a millisecond behind, flashing and slicing at him through the hot, arid air. Even over the thunder of excited patrons, he could hear every viiiinggg and slisshhhh of that razor edge.

The Maul swung the metre-long scimitar like a child’s toy; on and on he came, his face set in a purposeful frown while Vix stretched and coiled like a cat, constantly retreating, constantly off-balance.

He was running out of options and out of breath – the oppressive desert heat was having no effect on his opponent, but already he could feel the first trembles of fatigue settling in his legs and back – he wasn’t used to this sort of aerobics. Not being able to parry coupled with the work rate the Maul was setting would burn him out in less than a minute. He needed a distraction.

How fortunate it was that the Imperial Court’s arbites hadn’t detected everything he’d brought.

Ducking inside a murderous back-swing, Vix activated the dermal needle implant under his thumbnail and butted it hard into the Maul’s huge tree-trunk thigh. The impact shot virulent nerve toxins into the giant’s blood stream – not enough to kill him, but certainly enough to hamper his coordination and reaction time.

Leaping out of the way, Vix prepared for a counter-attack. He couldn’t waste any time, a strike to the vitals was called for to cement his…

Unbelievably, the Maul came at him again. It didn’t look like he’d even noticed; his attacks were every bit as vigorous and coordinated as before. Something was seriously wrong here – that nerve toxin was military grade technology. No way could he have shrugged off the effects so easily – nothing short of a…

A very sick feeling settled in the pit of Vix’s stomach. Things were beginning to fall into place.

He felt the tip of the whirling scimitar nick his chin and knew what it meant; he was slowing down. This defensive work was getting him nowhere and it was only a matter of seconds before that sword did more than scar his chin. The Maul was bigger, stronger and faster, but Vix still had one edge over him.

He went under yet another of the Maul’s swings and dug both falchions into the sand; as the cutlass reached the zenith of its back-swing, Vix threw the double-load of sand from his shovel-shaped weapons into his enemy’s face. Even as the Maul flinched, trying to blink the abrasive grit from his eyes, Vix went in with a vicious double blow, thunkking one falchion after the other into the root of the Maul’s thigh.

A spray of dark blood fired against his legs – as he’d hoped, the heavy cleavers had cut right into the Maul’s femoral artery; he’d be unconscious in seconds and dead in under a minute. The crowd screamed in fury and denial.

Vix had seen men take this sort of injury and still get a few swings in before they faded, men smaller than the Maul, and so he danced back out of range intent on getting his breath back.

The Maul wiped angrily at his eyes while blood gushed and spurted in hard jets from his crotch into the sand. And then the blood flow started to sputter. Vix watched in disbelief as the arterial spray turned to a trickle, then to a clotted black jelly that sealed the deep wound.

He felt a compulsion to laugh with exasperation.

Spitting sand from his mouth, the Maul glowered at him from pink eyes and came forward again. He didn’t even have a limp.

That second of respite had given Vix a chance to re-evaluate his opponent, and more specifically that twist of scar tissue along one side of the huge man’s head. The pit fighter had been around violence long enough to recognise wounds from ballistic weapons when he saw them and it looked as though the Maul had caught a heavy calibre bullet in the side of his skull that would have certainly penetrated his brain.

And then there was no more time for reflection and he was twisting backwards out of the way of that damned scimitar.

What was he to do against this man-machine that ignored pain and fatigue, shrugged off nerve toxins and clogged mortal injuries with his own blood? Vix didn’t need to see the regimental tattoo under the Maul’s armour to know exactly what he was fighting.

Nor did he need to now what world his Pit Master had got him from; war provided casualties across the entire span of the galaxy and he’d heard of this happening before. Brain damaged and reduced to a mindless fighting machine, this sorry battlefield relic had been put to use in the only way he knew how – killing people.

He was the perfect pit fighter, silent, undemanding and utterly dedicated. The steel coffin and the tranquiliser darts all made sense now; it was the only way to stop him. The Maul no longer recognised friend from foe; he was trapped in his own private war.

He was astartes.

The Maul was a Space Marine.

PART 4

This was a tricky one. How to kill a Space Marine in hand-to-hand combat? Blood loss was out, but there were other ways to weaken a man.

He circled to the Maul’s left, trying to keep away from that lethal scimitar while manoeuvring the huge man into position – if this didn’t work he was dead. The Maul followed with dogged single-mindedness, turning to close with the pit fighter again.

Right on cue, he raised the cutlass and Vix tilted his polished falchion, catching the intense midday sun and reflecting it directly into the Marine’s raw sand-filled eyes.

The glare blinded the Maul for an instant and Vix used that instant to slam his falchion into the giant’s wrist with all his strength. The blow should have cut the hand clean off – would have beheaded an ox – but the sub-dermal armour took much of the blow. It was like trying to lop the limb off a tree with a bread-knife.

The weight of the falchion made the difference, driving the keen edge deep enough into the Marine’s flesh to slice through tendons; the Maul’s hand jerked as though with palsy and his scimitar tumbled from dead fingers, sticking tip-first into the sand.

There was no time for self-congratulation; Vix hit the huge man behind the knee and then the ankle, cutting through taut ligaments as resilient as steel cable. Even as he toppled over sideways, the Maul was reaching for his enemy; fingers brushed Vix’s throat and only an arm getting in the way saved the pit fighter from a crushed larynx.

The huge Marine hauled on Vix’s arm as he went down, twisting it brutally. People in the top tiers of the arena over a hundred metres away heard the cracking of bone, brittle splintering wood sounds muted by layers of blood and muscle. Vix hissed through his teeth and lashed out with his free arm; thick fingers tumbled into the sand and he was free.

His right arm hung at an unnatural angle; something had broken at the shoulder and the wet gleam of bone jutted through the hard pad of his elbow.

The Maul was trying to get up, but the severed tendons in his leg refused to take his weight, the unmoored muscles bunching and tearing under the skin. His right hand was limp and rubbery, his left missing three fingers, but he glared up at Vix and started to crawl forward, dragging his dead leg behind him.

Feeling slightly sick, Vix went for the back of the neck, hoping to break the spine and end this madness; the blade came down with a loud chunkk! and the Marine grunted with the impact, but his augmented spine refused to break. A powerful arm swept Vix’s legs out from under him and an instant later, a fingerless fist slammed into his solar plexus. Air exploded out of his chest – it was like being stood on by a horse.

The Maul clubbed him again, slamming his huge arm down across Vix’s head, driving it back into the sand amid explosions of stars and nausea.

Alarm bells were ringing in his head – he had to get away from this monster or he’d be beaten to a pulp. He tried to get his legs up against the Marine’s chest to propel him away, but the weight was incredible. The Maul hit him again and again, each blow accompanied by an exultant cry from the audience; something in his face cracked and he felt his teeth deform inside his mouth.

Spitting blood, he lashed blindly with the falchion – it struck meat and something hot gushed across his chest. He swung again, landing another blow. The second impact was enough to dislodge the hulking Marine and with a scream of exertion Vix managed to shove him backwards.

The arena was spinning around his head and teeth were falling from his mouth, but he knew he couldn’t give up. Crawling backwards, his broken arm a fiery agony, Vix managed to get to his knees.

The Maul was crawling after him again. The last two blows had cut through the flesh of his abdomen and long purple tubes were snaking out behind, but he was coming again. Lame, half-blind, disembowelled, his hands useless hunks of meat, he was coming after Vix, churning his way painfully through the sand.

Still on his knees, Vix swung at the huge man’s face, crakking something that crammed in the side of his face. He swung again and again, the heavy steel cleaver battering the Marine’s head back and forth. An eye came loose from its broken socket and a rain of teeth and bone fragments fell to the crimson sand between them, but the Maul would not be stopped.

Sobbing with exertion and desperation, Vix struck him again and again and again and again. Slowly, like a felled redwood, the Marine tumbled sideways to the ground, still trying to hook his remaining fingers around Vix’s throat. Blood bubbled from what was left of his mouth, but he still seemed ignorant to the pain, ignorant to the trauma.

‘Die!’ Vix was screaming, froth flying from his lips. ‘Die!’

He hacked at the ruined Marine while flopping dead hands tried to grip him. He chopped and hacked though his arm was heavier than stone. Blood flew in huge fans with every blow of the falchion, ringing dully each time it struck augmented bone.

The crowd had fallen silent; a queasy, repulsed silence where only a few watched this final butchery.

For Vix, it was almost an act of mercy. The Maul stared up at him with one eye, inscrutable, unfathomable.

And then his huge head rolled away across the sand and it was over. Vix dropped his bent, notched cleaver and left it beside the body, stumbling slowly away from the carnage – red to the shoulder and coated in a fine crimson spray.

He could see the face of Sirius; his Master was standing at the overhanging lip of the arena wall, pale as milk. He had never hated a man more than he did at that moment.

Vix walked under the shadow of the arena wall and into the darkness beyond with no fanfare but the keening wind that was already blowing a fine blanket of sand over the huge body behind him.

PART 5

It was dark other than the oil lamps in his cell. Vix had specified oil burners rather than conventional low lighters; the smell of cinnamon was infinitely preferable to hot plastic.

He kept forgetting about the creature feeding on his chest; a great black cockroach thing that ticked incessantly and brushed needle-sharp feelers across the bare skin. Every so often, it would lightly prick him and lap at the beading blood with feathered proboscis. Vix thought it a fair trade for the tiny injections of anti-coagulants, antibiotics and pain relief that came with every delicate insertion.

There were other ways to repair the damage to his mangled arm; quicker and more cost effective ways. The use of Bleeder Scuttles was an extravagance reserved only for dignitaries and those others that occupied the hallowed pinnacles of the city. Genetically modified and bred through countless generations to produce a mindless wonder of insectile medicine, Scuttle secretions stimulated the patient’s healing processes without any of the trademark bone or muscle weakness that came with gamma surgery or pharma-glycemic treatments.

Vix’s arm would be healed in days and be stronger than it was before the break.

Another three Scuttles shifted along the length of his arm from shoulder to wrist, clinging determinedly with their multi-segmented legs. The needle feelers were so fine that he barely noticed them; more like subtle itching than pain.

This was another gift from Sirius. Vix knew why. With the defeat of the Maul, Vix had pushed himself further up the gladiatorial ratings than ever before. Although no official confirmation had yet reached them, the word in the stalls was that he had launched himself into the top dozen Pit Fighters in the galaxy.

In the galaxy. That was a big place.

He should have been pleased – Arekkha was comparatively backwater to many of the pit fighting circuits near the galactic core and to have a celebrity this far from the hub of humanity would make a lot of people very rich.

And that’s what vexed him – making other people rich. Vix had fought hard for over a decade to get where he was; skill and nerve and determination had taken him to this height, not the machinations of Sirius. He’d climbed that lethal ladder and never once put a foot wrong, and still it was other people who benefited.

Defeating the Maul should have filled him with elation and relief; elation that he had bested such a monstrous opponent, relief that he had come through alive. Yet, all he felt was sick – a heavy, guilty nausea. The Maul had been little better than a meat machine, an empty vessel whose consciousness was taken from him on some alien battlefield, leaving nothing but instinct and training. Vix felt like he had killed a child.

He felt used. For the first time in his career, he felt genuinely abused. And he didn’t like it.

The curtain to his cell slid aside and a veiled female entered. She took her time closing the curtain again and moved to his bunk with the supple grace of a predatory animal. Affecting a demure poise, she perched herself near his feet and removed her face veil.

Vix thought she looked vaguely familiar, but it was only when she smiled at him that he recognised her. Though her name was a mystery, he knew she was from Sirius’s personal harem. An honour indeed – scraps from his master’s table.

‘You look tense, soh. A massage will help,’ she said with the assurance of youth.

Vix had never refused anything in his life, and on any other day would have taken her without a second thought, broken arm or otherwise. That evening, he found preference in the company of bugs.

‘Not tonight,’ he said.

The girl smiled in that we both know you don’t mean it way, and started to slide off another layer of veils. He put his heel into her soft thigh and shoved her off the cot.

‘I said get out.’

She struggled to her feet, veils in disarray, her pretty face a twist of outrage.

When Sirius appeared some minutes later, Vix saw the shadow of bodyguards in the corridor outside. His Master clearly wasn’t blind to the tension that hung in the scented air.

‘Ini tells me you are unhappy, child,’ he said, hovering in the doorway. ‘This makes me sad.’

Vix just watched him through slit eyes while the Scuttles clicked and shifted.

‘It was the girl, yes? You would prefer another?’ Sirius was a fount of generosity. ‘You have but to ask, favourite child, and she is yours. I shall have my entire harem parade for you. Every woman on Arekkha I shall have wait at your door.’

‘I don’t want a girl,’ he said.

‘But there is a hunger, just the same,’ the Pit Master said, nodding. ‘I see it in your eyes. You are desirous of something...perhaps something beyond the power of Sirius to bestow.’

They both knew what Vix wanted. They both knew he would never get it, so long as Sirius continued to profit from him. Vix understood what his freedom would mean to the Pit Master – his fighter stable had quintupled in size and gained intergalactic renown since the angry young man was purchased from the penitentorium.

So far from the bright light of Terra, the Arekkhian government had developed an ‘eye for an eye’ mentality when it came to crime and punishment. Convicted murderers had their human rights rescinded and were sold into slavery. A lucky few with skills were put to work as servants in the palatial homes of the elite, many more were shipped off-world to spend the short remainder of their lives mining asteroids.

The only thing Vix had ever done well was kill people and it was perhaps a judicial irony that he was sentenced to continue that specialist career in one of the many fighter academies licensed by the Arekkhian government to entertain the populace.

Without him, Sirius would be just another flesh trader feeding from the government trough. Not that Vix gave a damn what happened to the bony Pit Master – he just wanted his freedom.

‘I think you would see me ruined,’ Sirius lamented. ‘You would see the clothes torn from my back and my children beaten into the streets.’

‘If that’s what it takes,’ Vix said.

‘I have loved you like my own child,’ said the Pit Master. ‘Was it not I who rescued you from the penitentorium? Was that some other lost soul whose flame was on the verge of being extinguished?’

Vix remembered his cell and the brutal discipline. Not much had changed.

‘It has been ten years,’ he said. ‘Most fighters last one year – perhaps two if you favour them. Have I not earned my pardon? What more do I owe you?’

‘Do I not provide for you? You are fed and clothed.’ Sirius indicated the ticking Scuttles. ‘Are you not given the best of care?’

‘Give me my freedom, Sirius,’ Vix said. ‘I have paid my debt, a hundred times over.’

‘That decision lies upon my shoulders, child,’ the Pit Master said. ‘Appointed to me by the judge; a decision that bears great responsibility. Is the debt repaid, I wonder?’

Vix said nothing. He could no longer see the faces of the people he had killed all those years ago; there was so much blood between them now. He did know that he was not a good man, and he was content with that. It was debatable whether he deserved a pardon for his crimes and a more moral man than Sirius would doubtless be just as reticent to let him go, but even caged animals dreamed of liberty.

‘There are families, a great many families for whom those ten years have not healed the wounds you inflicted,’ Sirius was saying. ‘I think sometimes that I hear them screaming above the crowds in the arena – screaming for justice. I think that you do, too.’

Vix watched the mammoth insect on his chest. He wondered idly if there was a taint to his blood, wondered if the Scuttle noticed a difference in the taste between a free man and a murderer.

‘Rest, child,’ his Master told him. ‘You will heal, and you will fight for me again. And you will win.’

The lean Arakkhan went to the doorway and smiled over his shoulder.

‘These years have not been so harsh on you, I think. There have been times for us both when we have had pleasure. When we have had hope.’

Vix watched the busy bug, but he was listening.

‘I will send the girl for you again,’ Sirius said as he let the curtain drop into place. ‘You fought well, today.’

Vix knew in that moment that Sirius would never let him go – he would live out the rest of his days between this cell and the hot sands of the arena. His reputation would bring challengers from the whole of the Imperium and Sirius would have him fight every one for a lucrative purse that he would never see. And at the last, when he was broken and battered, Sirius would give the crowds what they desired most.

The solution was so simple he wondered why he had never seen it until now. If Sirius would not give him his freedom, then he would just have to take it.

Ini returned some minutes later, smiling coyly.

He smiled back.

PART 6

The arena was turning to mud. He stood under the shelter of the pit wall while the rain came down with unnatural ferocity and thick rivers of almond-coloured water streamed between his boots.

A crack of thunder blotted out the noise of the crowd overhead, swamping everything with its elemental voice. The lightning followed soon after, scribing the shape of the fighting pit and the countless faces above in sharp relief. Massive sun screens protected most of the spectators from the elements and the lower tiers glistened with waterproof clothing, but the arena itself was completely exposed.

Vix hated fighting during monsoon season; less than a week of the year when potbellied storm clouds swept across the continent, deluging everything. The ground underfoot became treacherous and visibility fell to almost zero; skill was superseded by fortune in such conditions and he abhorred losing his edge.

Sirius had been unreachable for days but Thom the Skink had caught some titbit of information regarding a lucrative deal in the making. It seemed that a nomadic Pit Master of some reputation was in the vicinity, bringing with him a travelling caravan of fighters and, it was said, a taste for the exotic.

Exotics; rancid alien monstrosities captured from Death Worlds and simply released into the pit to kill or be killed. There was no skill or panache, just a clawed and venomous thing driven mad by hunger and stun staves, and a grisly end for any unwary fighter.

Not being told of his opponent before a fight was unusual and Vix had learned to be wary of changes in routine. Something was afoot, here.

The pit guards came up the ramp behind him, stopping on the other side of the grate. Vix watched them slide a long bladed metal halberd through the bars and drop it into the swirling mud. It was a safety protocol that fighters be issued and relinquish their weapons through the grille and hence never be in a position to use them on anyone other than their arena opponents.

‘Where are my falchions?’

The guards grinned at each other and tramped back down the ramp, making room for Sirius.

‘What’s going on?’ Vix asked.

‘You worry so, child,’ the Pit Master said dismissively. ‘Have faith in me, for I have faith in you.’

‘I don’t like pole arms. You know that.’

‘This way is better,’ Sirius said. ‘You will thank me, later.’

The pit fighter hefted the halberd; two metres long and heavy, much heavier than he was used to. The blade alone must have weighed ten kilos, shaped like a broad razor-sharp fan. Sirius seemed to read his stormy face.

‘A clumsy weapon, I agree, but you will be glad of the reach.’

Vix swore under his breath.

‘What have you done?’

The arena horn blared overhead, muted by the hissing of rain.

‘You are a great man now, in the eyes of Arakkha,’ Sirius said. ‘It is my thankless task to find you a challenge worthy of that greatness.’

‘What have you done, Sirius?’ Vix repeated with a warning tone in his voice.

The horn blared again, calling out the fighters.

‘Go now and reign, my wondrous child,’ the Pit Master said as he turned away. ‘All of Arakkha is watching.’

Vix was seized with a powerful impulse to ram the halberd through the metal gate and into the back of Sirius to see if his conniving Master was equally ‘glad of the reach’. Instead, he spat on the grille and walked out into the downpour with the cumbersome weapon balanced over his shoulder.

The rain was cold enough to make him draw breath – even a world as humid as Arakkha grew chilly in such damp, gloomy conditions. His skin-suit was monofibre; virtually molecule thin and completely water permeable. It would retain no more liquid than his skin, but still afford some slight thermal insulation. His days of fighting in heavy, sodden synthetic fibres and armour were long gone.

As he had suspected, he could see next to nothing. The torrential rain masked the other side of the arena behind a shimmering grey wall. He couldn’t even hear the crowd, only the ceaseless rushing of water and the tinny pinking of rainwater hitting the blade of his halberd.

He stopped perhaps a quarter of the way into the arena, looking around him with wary expectancy. Absolutely anything could be out here with him and the one thing he didn’t want was to be ambushed.

And then there was a shape on his left; a hazy human outline moving with similar caution towards the centre of the pit. That was strange – fighters traditionally deployed from opposite ends of the arena in order to meet near the middle. A sudden suspicion gripped him and he turned to his right, squinting into the downpour.

Sure enough, a shape was forming through the rain opposite the newcomer – two fighters, approaching from either side. Vix cursed and swung the halberd down into both hands. He’d fought multiple opponents before, but this still didn’t explain why he was carrying a pole arm and not his preferred falchions.

Both of the other fighters were also carrying lengthy blades of similar design, and neither seemed especially comfortable wielding them.

Something buzzed past his head and he flinched, almost swinging for it. The grav-cam hovered in his face for a second, dazzled him with a tiny array of halogen lights then zipped away into the rain.

They were using remote camera units – probably because of the poor visibility. Choice camera angles would be displayed on huge screens for those too far from the action to see it first hand. Another distraction to try and channel out, he thought.

A fourth figure was now visible on the far side of the pit, paused as he was at the sight of three enemies. Again, a pole arm was evident. There was an unpleasant symmetry forming here in both the deployment of the fighters and the weapons they had been given.

Vix was watching the centre of the arena floor long before massive subterranean motors rumbled into life and a ring some ten metres across began to sink into the depths. A great deluge of muddy water poured into the depression, forming a shallow sinkhole in the centre of the arena.

He watched with mounting concern as something began to rise out of that hole; some sort of archway or canopy reduced to a glossy black silhouette in the rain. Except that the archway was moving.

A segmented titan rose slowly through the arena floor while the noise of the crowds became audible over the rain for the first time. Water poured down its huge curved form, between rows of chitin spines and hooks and broad plates of armour. Other shapes moved in the shadows beneath its bulk; cutting implements and long barbed appendages that flickered and worked with inhuman speed.

Up and up it rose, towering over them, roiling and arching against the restraints that were now becoming visible – heavy metal chains clamped around its thorax and upper limbs. The monster raised its long, diamond-shaped head and let out a piercing call like a Herculean falcon; the lower hemisphere of its skull split open into a fan of cutting edges and feeder limbs.

‘Emperor protect me,’ Vix whispered involuntarily.

There was a stink that came off the creature, subdued by the rain but still recognisable to someone who had spent as much time around death as he had – the smell of rotten meat and dried blood. Whatever this horror was, it was a carnivore.

The riser plate crunched into place and the upward motion finally stopped – their opponent curled into a tight armoured ball around its restraints, emitting painfully intense howls. Vix could hear the screech of metal as it gnawed at the chains around its upper body, shaving off thin curls of hardened alloy with its jagged maw.

And then explosive bolts fired all along the length of the thing’s hideous body, throwing off the heavy moorings. The invisible crowd roared with excitement and Vix backed hastily as the thing boiled off the platform and into the wet mud in a blur of knifing limbs and thrashing tail; clattering and screeching straight towards him.

PART 7

It almost ended right there. As the shadow of his adversary fell over him, Vix did something he’d never done before in over a decade of battle.

He froze.

The thing almost seemed to be grinning as it came for him; multi-segmented jaws snapping with anticipation. It was too big – too fast, throwing out ropes of drool and rainwater as it surged forward on countless jointed legs. The noise of its charge was like a wooden avalanche; creaking and rasping and scraping, a deluge of bark and splintered limbs.

It should have killed him; should have snapped his upper torso off in one massive bite like a hungry guardsman with a ration biscuit. Instead it twisted back on itself with a sound like glass being dragged over armour plating; its vast bulk juddered in sudden deceleration.

The spray of water thrown from its swerving carapace hit Vix full in the face and the muddy tide of its passing washed over his legs a second later. The realisation of how close he’d come to death was enough to slap him back into motion and he hoisted the clumsy halberd, running around the giant horror in the opposite direction of its questing head.

There was no way to know which of the other pit fighters had struck the creature’s exposed flank at the last moment, but Vix was grateful all the same. It spun this way and that on its forest of hind limbs, snapping at jabbing halberds and churning the arena floor to mulch. Whether intended by their Masters or not an unspoken truce had been declared between the fighters and they had formed a half-circle around the creature.

Vix saw an opportunity and slammed his heavy blade down on one of its legs, crunching through armour. A clear jelly bubbled from the wedge-shaped wound and the thing jerked away from the attack. He barely managed to flinch back from its retaliatory snap; saliva hit his face in a gust of carrion breath.

The creature was relentless in its efforts to get past the stabbing ring of halberds to the juicy morsels wielding them – clearly it was ravenous. The fighter closest to Vix, a burly man in a spiked helmet, scored a hit along the side of its throat, where the plates of armour receded into pebbly dough flesh. Although the blade split open a deep trench there was no blood, only a gelatinous translucence that bulged from the wound.

However they were going to kill this thing, it wouldn’t be from blood loss.

It swayed back and forth, the long upper body snaking and weaving while it hunted for a way through their defences. Limbs like chitin swords tried to skewer them while twin tails swatted and lashed, each armed with a scythe like protrusion.

Buoyed up by the roar of the crowd, the helmeted fighter ran his halberd right into the creature’s upper chest, pushing forward with all his strength. It screamed at him, perhaps more in outrage than pain even though the pike had sunk right to the haft in its knuckled underside. If he thought he could force it backwards in this manner, he was greatly mistaken.

The thing twisted itself free of the sheer metal edge and came down on the overbalanced fighter as he stumbled forward through the mud and rain. Massive armoured jaws closed around him before Vix or the others could react and he was lifted screaming into the air.

Vix had seen blood sports before; pit canines full of combat drugs savaging each other with primal fury, ripping each other to pieces for the howling crowds. But he’d never seen anything like this.

The creature worried the shrieking pit fighter so viciously that when it bit down his sheared-off legs were thrown high into the air, landing among the crowd in the stalls of the arena. They replaced the bubbling death-throws of the helmeted fighter with their own screams of horror and laughter.

The fighters were down to three and there was no end in sight. Their foe crunched enthusiastically on the gurgling morsel, trying to swallow it whole while pallid guts uncoiled in long ropes to the arena floor and blood turned the rain pink around them.

The fighter to Vix’s right reacted badly – he ran at the thing with his halberd raised like a lance. It was an exercise in futility; the blade skidded off armour plating and he staggered and fell full-length in the mud. Before he could rise, the creature trampled him – knife-like limbs punched through his back, thighs and skull.

He was still shivering when it curled under itself to eat what was left.

Vix watched the monstrosity rear up, its lamprey mouth guzzling down severed chunks of the pit fighter. It was huge, easily five times his height. He...

An idea came to him. It was so absurd, he grinned in the pouring rain.

‘We need to divide its attention!’ he shouted to the other fighter, a stocky figure in a wicker face mask whose eyes stared from behind it, wide and terrified.

‘We’re too close together!’ he continued. ‘Get to the wall and I’ll flank it! I’ve got a plan!’

The thing had swallowed the last of the fighter and looked down on them, sheets of water pouring from its hooked mouth, still decorated with lengths of intestine.

‘Go!’ he roared. Wicker Mask took off at a run; Vix thought he could hear the other man sobbing over the hiss of rain.

The creature reacted instantly, as all predators do when confronted with the image of a moving target. It surged through the mud after him, jaws agape. Vix moved as soon as its attention was diverted, running behind it just outside the reach of the switching scythe tail.

Wicker Mask did better than Vix could have hoped. He made it all the way to the pit wall before the creature caught him; shrieking in terror when its armoured maw snapped around his legs and threw him skyward like a terrier with a rat.

This was it – he had one chance. Hoisting the useless halberd, Vix ran straight at the back of the monster. Ramming the haft of the weapon into the muck of the arena floor, he leapt as high as he could, pole-vaulting up and over the slashing twin tails and landing on the thing’s back.

The armour was treacherous in the rain – he skidded and almost fell. The thing was too busy with its prize, chewing and gnawing the struggling fighter into more manageable pieces. Vix saw the wicker mask fall with a splash into the mud, the head still attached.

He had precious seconds left. In a shambling simian rush, he half-scrambled, half-climbed up the horror’s writhing back, using barbs and spines for purchase. It still hadn’t noticed him, although the crowd had; the volume of their excitement was building like a tidal wave over the pit wall.

The wall. He was so close now, almost level with its overhanging edge. He reached the back of the thing’s neck, digging his boots into the shelf of armour and heaving himself up and onto the broad, spiny skull.

Finally, the creature sensed the stowaway. He saw dozens of tiny sunken eyes underfoot swivelling in his direction; shiny black blisters that glowered at him with unreasoning bestial rage. It would buck and writhe until he could hold on no longer and be thrown into the mud, where it would tear him to pieces.

If he gave it the chance, that was.

It was now or never. He activated his sub-dermal needle and stabbed it with all his might into the closest of the glaring eyes. The fragile organ burst like a grape when he rammed his thumb into the socket up to the last knuckle.

The creature convulsed in agony, throwing its head back. Vix launched into the air like a diver from an armoured springboard. He executed a clumsy somersault, clearing the razor-wire lip of the pit wall by a half-metre and crash-landed onto the third row of the astonished audience, knocking them everywhere like fat waterproof skittles.

The crowd roared like the ocean.

Vix had escaped.

PART 8

Vix was too stunned that the plan had actually worked to think about what came next. He’d come down on a fat merchant hard enough to break the chair he sat in and now there was no movement from the corpulent body supporting his weight.

He propped himself up on an elbow and looked. The merchant’s open eyes were as expressionless as a fish and blood was drooling from the corner of his mouth. Clearly dead, but Vix felt no sympathy. This man, and hundreds of thousands like him, had watched the pit fighter bleed for them often enough.

The terrace underfoot trembled, toppling many of the goggling spectators around him. There was a roar of frustration from the arena and another titanic impact that rattled the chairs in their stands. It seemed that the beast was reluctant to let its quarry escape so easily.

Vix saw barbed limbs ripping chunks of plas-crete from the lip of the arena wall. Another thunderous impact and the floor moved again – deep cracks appeared in the crumbling wall.

He got up, wincing at the stiffness in his back. The rain was still coming down in torrents, masking him from arbites sharpshooters high overhead in surveillance pods, but it would only take seconds for the remote cameras to track him down.

The thing in the pit bellowed again, smashing itself against the arena wall and breaking off a jagged section. People were fleeing in open panic now, shouldering each other aside to escape the creature – the arbites would have to respond quickly to suppress the crazed monster. His best bet was to slip out with the crowd during the confusion.

Pulling a waterproof poncho off the fat corpse at his feet, he threw the slick material over his head and tightened the hood around his face. There was a knot of anxious spectators trying to crush their way down an exit staircase and Vix joined the queue, pushing as urgently as the rest.

Chattering gunfire started up in the pit behind him, along with shrieks of anger and pain from the monster. It sounded like security had their hands full.

A grav-cam zipped past, panning its spotlights across the shiny wet decking and the backs of heads. He drew the poncho lower over his eyes and forced his way through the rabble, finally getting to the staircase.

He had never been in this part of the arena. At the foot of the staircase was a tall archway that led through to a cavernous assembly chamber. The crowd sprayed out of the stairwell and across the huge stone hallway, Vix among them. Their cries and sobs and the rustling of a thousand waterproof gowns bounced and echoed around the huge expanse until it sounded like the rushing of a river, which wasn’t far from the truth.

Vix passed a gigantic statue of some saint or other; an Olympian figure standing on a plinth twice the height of a man, carved from the same pale stone as the walls around him. He could still hear the fading roars of the pit creature, distorted by distance and reverberation – that was good. The arbites still had something more immediate to worry about than an escaped pit fighter.

Ahead, he could see the chamber brachiating into three entrance vestibules, each one replete with stone pillars and a wide staircase. The closer the crowd took him the further down the stairs he saw, until ten metres in front of him was streaming rain and open space and the world and an end to captivity.

And then he saw the two arbites filtering the panicking spectators, pulling out anyone of sizeable build and checking the identity cards. Vix continued to press forward with the rest, reckoning that if he crouched low enough, they might not even notice him.

A gauntleted hand on his chest stopped him in his tracks and the rain-streaked visor of an arbiter came through the crush of bodies.

‘Let’s see some…’

Vix never hesitated. He twisted the officer’s arm around in a quick and practiced move, breaking it at wrist and elbow. His left foot was already hooked behind the arbiter’s legs, his right hand clamped across the back of his helmet; he threw the enforcer over his hip, ramming him head-first into the flagstones. The panicking crowds masked the noise of his shattering visor and Vix was already walking with the rest, people stumbling and staggering over the motionless officer as the crush increased.

From the corner of his eye, he saw the other arbiter looking around for his comrade, apparently swallowed up by the throng of people. By the time he discovered what had happened, Vix would be...

...out from under the high archway and into the open, stepping into the wall of rain. It felt like being baptised. He was nowhere near being free, but couldn’t help laughing with the weight he felt leaving his chest.

Splitting away from the rush of people, Vix slipped down a narrow alley and started to thread his way out of the vicinity of the arena, keeping clear of the main streets. As he moved, he turned his options over in his head. He had to get out of the Arekkha system as quickly as possible; a legal charter was impossible with no citizen status, but there were always other avenues.

It had been a long time since he had moved in those circles and his street muscles felt stiff with disuse, but he had a few ideas on where to start looking.

‘Vix?’ A familiar voice broke his concentration. ‘Vix? Are you receiving?’

He’d forgotten about his micro-bead.

‘Thom?’

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were going to run?’ the disembodied voice asked. ‘I think your boss is going to have a coronary.’

Vix slipped into a derelict doorway, watching the street through a haze of rain.

‘It was a spur of the moment thing, Thom,’ he said. ‘Listen - how much of my money can you get your hands on right away?’

‘Leaving so soon?’ Thom’s voice sounded odd. ‘You just got out. I thought you’d want to celebrate.’

‘I need to get off-planet in the next few hours, or I’m a dead man. How much can you get together in an hour?’

‘More than you’ll need. I keep it stashed nearby. You could meet me.’

‘At your place?’

‘No,’ Thom’s answer was quick; a little too quick. ‘I don’t want the arbites knocking on my door. Meet me under the mono-bridge at Columni Station. Twenty minutes.’

‘Twenty minutes,’ Vix agreed.

It took him fifteen minutes to get there, keeping clear of the main thoroughfares. Rather than stand where he could be seen, Vix waited behind one of the rusted black rail supports, watching through the iron lattice for a sign of his rendezvous.

Thom arrived a few minutes late. He was half-swallowed by the raincoat he was wearing and struggling with the weight of a carry-all. The bag looked very full and Vix wondered with a glint of avarice just how much profit he’d made in ten years of illegal betting. Ever cautious, he waited a full five minutes longer, ignoring Thom’s repeated queries over the micro-bead. If the runner had tipped off the arbites, something in his behaviour would betray him.

He did look nervous, but then Thom had always seemed the fragile sort; even this clandestine meeting probably had his pulse racing. Satisfied they were alone, Vix moved from his cover.

‘Is that everything?’ he asked, nodding at the bag.

Thom seemed tenser than ever and, had Vix been less preoccupied with the satchel of currency, he might have reconsidered the seclusion of their meeting place. As it was, his eyes followed the heavy bag as it was kicked across the wet stone towards him – just as he was supposed to.

‘Like I said,’ the runner told him. ‘More than you’ll need.’

Vix crouched over the bag and released the mag-zip. There was a lot of money in there; bundles and bundles of crumpled and dirty plastic notes – low denomination and untraceable. Exactly what he needed.

In retrospect, he shouldn’t have been surprised to see Thom pointing a pistol at him when he looked up again; the signs had all been there. Perhaps he had gotten soft after all those years in captivity.

‘I never thought this day would come,’ Thom said.

‘It’s not the money you want,’ Vix replied, half to himself. ‘You could have taken it a hundred times over. It’s me you’re after.’

The pistol was clunky looking; a crude slug-thrower. At this proximity, the heavy-calibre rounds would probably blow him in half.

‘You killed a lot of people before you were put away,’ Thom said. ‘I was only nine when you broke into that apartment in Shellis – I doubt you remember it after all these years. You would probably have killed me too, but I hid under the bed.’

Vix said nothing. The distance was too much between them to rush the boy; from a crouched position he’d barely have time to stand before catching a bullet.

‘I never even saw your face,’ Thom was saying. ‘It was only at the trial that I finally saw the man who murdered my family. I made a promise to avenge them. It was the only thing I had left to remind me they ever existed.’

Vix considered throwing the bag, but if it was as heavy as it looked, again, he’d be too slow. The boy was still droning on about his troubles.

‘It’s hard growing up on the streets. Hard to…’

‘Enough,’ Vix interrupted, waving a hand. ‘I get the picture. Spare me the sob story. I really couldn’t care less.’

Thom started to vibrate, the pistol shaking in his grasp.

‘You monster,’ he hissed.

‘What did you expect?’ Vix took out a bundle of notes and fanned them wistfully. ‘An apology?’ He threw the bundle back into the bag and got to his feet.

Thom drew back the pistol’s hammer at the movement.

‘I’ve always known exactly who and what I am,’ Vix said. ‘I don’t remember your parents but I’d kill them again without a thought if they were between me and what I wanted.’ He pointed at the bag. ‘That’s all I’ve ever cared about; that and my freedom.’

Thom wiped away snot and tears with the sleeve of his coat. The gun was trembling more violently.

‘You caught me with my guard down. That’s the way of it out here; you’re quick or you’re dead. But I’m not looking for redemption, so do us both a favour and get on with it.’

The boy’s face contorted with fury and he squeezed the trigger.

Vix had never been shot before and was surprised at the lack of sensation – he had expected to be thrown backwards or at least have the wind driven from him.

In the seconds that followed, his puzzled brain started to compute the circumstantial evidence; the lack of muzzle flash from Thom’s pistol, the distant nature of the gunshot report, the fist-sized exit hole in Thom’s stomach that vented a bloody slurry. He watched the boy crumple to the ground wearing an uncomprehending expression and realised two things at the same time. There was another gunman and Thom was still holding his pistol.

He lunged forward, intent on wrestling the handgun from the dying boy’s grasp. It was only a cluster of glowing red dots on his chest that convinced him standing still with his arms in the air was a more sensible alternative.

The arbites couldn’t have been there all that time; he’d have seen them. Surely he’d have seen them. Watching the black shapes rappel down from the elevated railway, he realised just how atrophied his street muscles had become. Their targeting lasers never strayed far from his chest, even when they hit the wet street and surrounded him with rifles raised.

It occurred to him as they snapped restraints on his wrists that Thom wouldn’t have tipped them off – someone else was responsible for this treachery. When Sirius stepped from the shadows in an elaborate raincoat followed by a servant with a parasol, Vix had to fight an exasperated smile.

‘Rebellious child,’ said the Pit Master. ‘Such an effort to find you and bring you home to those who love you.’

‘You needn’t have tried so hard.’

‘I am hurt,’ Sirius said. ‘While your father fretted for your safety, your only thought was of escape.’

‘How did you find me?’

Sirius gestured at Thom’s corpse, bleeding into the rain.

‘You see what you drive me to? An innocent life.’

‘I killed his parents.’

Sirius sniffed at something in his handkerchief, some exclusive fragrance.

‘Death surrounds you, child,’ he said. ‘It courts you like a lover.’

‘I won’t fight for you again,’ Vix said after a moment. ‘I’m done with the pit.’

His Master nodded graciously, but there was an indulgent quality to it. ‘So says the alcoholic to the bottle,’ he said.

Vix watched one of the arbiters pick up the heavy money bag and turn his visor to face Sirius.

‘He’s all yours, sir,’ the enforcer said.

‘I am indebted to your services, sergeant. I hope this small token goes some way to show my appreciation.’

The arbiters stepped back, the sergeant touching his visor with a finger. And just like that, Vix was reduced from a wealthy freeman to a penniless convict.

‘It is wet, and the day grows late,’ Sirius said, returning his attention to the stoic pit fighter. ‘Come home.’

‘I won’t fight for you again, Sirius,’ Vix reaffirmed.

The Pit Master giggled into his kerchief. To someone that didn’t know him, it would have been an endearing image.

‘To deny your skill is to deny the breath in your lungs,’ he said. ‘You are a killer, child; the best I have ever known.’

Vix examined his restraints; hardened alloy cuffs around both wrists, joined by a short inflexible bar. He couldn’t break them, but there was another option.

‘This world punished you for your abilities,’ Sirius was reminding him. ‘Ostracised and reviled you. In the pit, they worship you.’

‘How did you find me?’ Vix tried again, twisting his wrists experimentally.

‘A good Pit Master is always watching,’ Sirius said, absently touching his ear. ‘Always listening.’

The micro-bead frequency. How long had Sirius been aware of Vix’s dealings with Thom? He could have spat with frustration – undone by his own greed and a ghost from his past. Thom had just been a pawn after all; a hapless fool who thought his chance for vengeance had come. Vix’s avarice had cost him dearly.

Perhaps Thom would have approved.

‘Come, child,’ Sirius interrupted the thought. ‘It is time to go.’

‘And things are just like before, soh?’ Vix snorted. ‘One big happy family?’

The Pit Master gave him a delighted smile.

‘As you say,’ he agreed. ‘Back to where you are valued and loved. Back to where you belong.’

Vix was watching the arbites from the corner of his eye. They had retreated a respectful distance, but no doubt Sirius had insisted they wait until he was loaded into the transport before leaving. The Pit Master knew better than to assume Vix would stay captured voluntarily.

‘Your world is the arena, child,’ Sirius was saying. ‘There, you are a king. This place,’ he waved his hand around them, ‘has forsaken you. There is nothing for you here.’

He made a grandiose gesture and a heavily armoured transport rolled through the curtain of rain and into the shelter of the elevated railway; an eight-wheeled monstrosity that looked more like military logistics than a civilian vehicle. The side door slid open, throwing off a sheet of water and Vix watched four heavy goons clamber out. He recognised the type instantly; huge men carrying kilos of excess muscle – very strong, but inflexible and more importantly slow. Vix smiled charmingly at them.

‘You had forgotten that, I think.’ Sirius was still talking, watching the four Golaiths surrounded Vix, each man gripping the pit fighter with his ham fists. ‘As a dutiful father, I must teach it to you again.’

Vix let them march him as far as the cargo door to the transport then planted a boot against the lip, jerking the clumsy procession to a halt. He twisted around until he could see Sirius.

‘You keep talking when you should be listening, soh,’ he told the Pit Master. ‘This is your last warning. I’m not going back to the pit.’

Vix saw impatience pass across the face of his Pit Master, probably the first genuine emotion he had ever witnessed from the disingenuous man.

‘Put him in,’ Sirius snapped, flicking his kerchief.

PART 9

Vix was heaved bodily into the transport and slammed against the far wall. The four goons squeezed in after him, no doubt to baby-sit him all the way back to the arena. He took a moment to familiarise himself with the layout while the heavy outer door was hauled shut.

It was a small enclosure with a bench seat at front and back; the walls were bare metal and unblemished other than humidity switches and a few other minimal comforts. No viewing ports, no communication devices and no locking mechanism on the sliding door. The four Goliaths sat two abreast on either side of him, watching with small suspicious eyes.

A powerful engine throttled up somewhere behind him and the land cruiser began to move forward, rocking slightly as it negotiated the uneven road surface. Vix settled to his haunches on the deck of the transport, folding his hands together over the manacles to conceal what was to follow.

The two Goliaths across from him were glowering.

‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ he told them, secretly bending his left thumb further and further backwards with his right hand. When the bone snapped with a muffled click, neither of the goons noticed any change in his face. ‘You’re thinking that I’m trapped in here with the four of you.’

Ignoring the pain of grating bone, Vix began to work his compressed hand through the manacle cuff. ‘The way I see it,’ he continued as he squeezed the knuckles free, ‘is the four of you are trapped in here with me.’

The left-hand goon sneered at him, eager to show his indifference.

‘Maybe we sh…’

Vix blasted his right fist into the goon’s face with a straight-arm punch that slammed the man’s head against the metal bulkhead. Before the duunggg of impact had faded he reared up and stamped the dazed Goliath’s skull against the wall a second time with his boot, using the kick to propel himself backwards into the two goons on the bench behind him. The back of his head smacked against someone’s face and he felt cartilage crumple.

Bulging arms wrapped around his upper chest in an attempt to pin him down, but his wounded left hand burrowed between their squirming bodies like a vindictive weasel, locating the other man’s scrotum. Vix twisted with all the vigour four fingers would allow and was rewarded with a feminine scream. The slow-witted goon to his right finally reacted with a lunge from the bench seat but took a kick in the throat that threw him back in place, gurgling.

The fourth Goliath drove his massive fist into Vix’s exposed midriff but the blow was poorly placed and hit a hard shelf of abdominal muscle, too low to compress his lungs. Vix twisted free of the emasculated goon he was lying on and kicked his attacker in the balls. The Goliath trapped his foot between two meaty thighs, a reflex action accredited more to defensive evolution than combat skill, but it caused the big man to flinch low enough for Vix to grip his face with a free hand.

He sank his thumb into the eye socket and hooked fingers into his ear and upper lip, using the painful anchorage to slam the goon’s head against the armoured wall – daang! He did it again – daaangg! Hands closed around his throat and left arm as they tried to pry him off, but he did it again – daaangg!. He saw a starfish of blood on the wall just before a fist smacked him across the jaw, but he did it again – kruuuk! – and again – kruuuchh! – and again – kraaattchh!. A second sledgehammer punch snapped a tooth from his mouth, but he could see brain matter on the wall now and the thug’s eyes were rolling up in his head, so he did it one last time – splaaaattchh!

Dropping the broken skull, Vix twisted in place to see the Goliath with a boot-print on his face launching another huge punch. Rather than try to flinch aside, Vix lunged forwards and head-butted the incoming fist – the impact momentarily stunned him, but the crakk of broken knuckles was worth it.

A brawny arm wrapped around his neck and the other pressed against the back of his head; the bear-hug Goliath trying to get a strangle-hold. This guy doesn’t learn, Vix thought, grabbing the big man’s crotch with both hands this time. He kept twisting even after the goon vomited explosively over his back.

The broken-knuckle Goliath tried to get him off his associate with a clumsy hay-maker blow from his remaining hand. Vix released his victim’s burst scrotum and stepped inside the arc of the inexpert punch in a single motion. With a quick double-jab, he used the stiff fingers of his left hand to break the man’s larynx then stab him in the eyes with index and middle finger just to make sure he went down quickly. His fingers came away wet.

From nowhere, he was hit side-on by a fleshy locomotive and rammed against the far wall of the cabin in an explosion of breath. The goon recoiled and charged him again before he could regain his balance, using his superior weight to crush the wind from the pit-fighter. There would have been a third body-slam that might have taken ribs with it had Vix not managed to get a leg up against the wall and shove back. The goon tripped over the tangle of bodies in the narrow foot-well and they came down in a heap.

Sirius had made a serious mistake with his hired help, it seemed. These Goliaths were all image and upper body strength – they had no technique. Vix had the screaming man’s arm twisted around behind him in seconds, snapping fingers as fast as he could grab them while he nailed his struggling opponent’s face to the deck with his knee.

It took four hard wrenches to dislocate the shoulder then Vix beat the man’s head against the deck plate until he stopped sobbing.

Reeling to his feet, the pit fighter took stock. Two were dead, a third unconscious and the fourth would probably never walk again, never mind father a child. Cheap muscle; he spat crimson onto the closest body in contempt.

The floor shifted under him and he staggered – the transport was swerving violently. There might not be a communication link to the cab, but all that thumping and screaming hadn’t exactly been subtle. He heard the screech of oversized tyres and was thrown to his knees as the heavy vehicle shuddered to a stop.

Banging of exterior doors alerted him to what was coming; he gripped the collar and belt of the closest inert form and hauled it upright. Boots splashed around the side of the vehicle to the cargo door and Vix tensed himself, preparing to throw the inert hulk.

The door rattled open and he got a glimpse of another low-brow thug before he launched the corpse, sprawling the new arrival backwards into the teeming rain. Vix leapt out before the Goliath had a chance to recover and landed with both boots on the man’s head. He felt the face crunch in with the impact and the goon’s legs began to twitch spastically.

He spun around with rain soaking into his clothes, ready for all comers. Other than the ticking casualty at his feet, the grey street was deserted – the maddening elation of combat seemed to cool in the torrential downpour, its heat seeping from his muscles. Slowly, he became aware of an aching jaw and a broken thumb; his ribs felt like someone had sledge-hammered them.

He was about to go through the pockets of the goons for currency and identity cards when a furtive motion caught his eye. Standing in the shelter of the transport, clutching his parasol and looking as though he had just aged ten years, was Sirius.

‘Errant child,’ the Pit Master whispered. Confusion and horror battled for supremacy on his face.

Vix stared at him for a good ten seconds before a nasty grin spread across his face. He hadn’t expected the Pit Master to be so incautious as to take the same transport as his disgruntled charge. He must have looked like some primal beast, hunched against the rain while it washed the blood of conflict from him.

‘Hello, soh,’ he said.

‘I...we...should talk,’ Sirius managed awkwardly.

Vix closed the distance between them in five quick strides, each step matched by a widening of his former master’s eyes. When Sirius opened his mouth in defence, Vix knocked him out with a single hard blow to the chin. It wouldn’t be long before those arbites-for-hire were alerted that Sirius’s transport hadn’t returned – if there was revenge to be had, it wasn’t going to be done here. He hoisted the unconscious Sirius over his shoulder and walked from the scene without a backwards glance.

Some time later, he was beginning to wonder if he’d hit the frail Pit Master a little too hard. It would have been a shame for his former controller to miss the surprise he’d prepared, especially after all the work he’d put in to arrange it.

Fortunately, it took only a few persuasive slaps before Sirius mumbled something incoherent and his eyes fluttered open.

‘Wh...’ His eyes found Vix. ‘Child...you...I thought you had killed me.’

The pit fighter shrugged.

‘There’s no profit in death for its own sake, Sirius,’ he said. ‘You taught me that.’

A frail smile touched the Pit Master’s lips. ‘It warms my heart to hear it,’ he said, but the smile lost its lustre when his eyes focused on their shadowy surroundings.

The abandoned manufactorum hadn’t been hard to find, nor had the short length of chain stretching between Sirius’s neck and its cast-iron valve wheel anchor. The contents of the crate behind him had taken a little longer – it was fortunate that the Pit Master had a penchant for expensive jewellery.

‘What...what is this?’ Sirius asked, touching the rusty metal links around his neck.

Vix walked to the crate and gave it a kick. The creature inside snarled and tore at the metal container, shaking the heavy box violently. Sirius stared at it, his face grey and drawn. The bruise on his chin was a rich purple in contrast.

‘Wh...what..?’ he babbled.

Vix kicked the box again, grinning when it started to rattle back and forward on the refuse-strewn concrete, muffled snapping and growling coming from inside.

‘You’ve got about three metres of slack on that chain, soh,’ he said. ‘Not quite as much space as you gave me, but it’ll serve.’

‘I...I don’t...’

‘Here.’ Vix threw the Pit Master a length of corroded pipe, nearly two metres in length with one end flattened into a point of sorts. ‘A clumsy weapon, but you’ll be glad of the reach.’

Realisation was dawning; Sirius’s face went through a variety of shades and settled with the colour of wet ash.

‘What have you done?’ he whispered, his voice full of dread.

‘You don’t know?’ Vix replied. ‘You’ve done it to me often enough.’

‘Please, child,’ the thin man pleaded. ‘What have you done?’

The pit fighter curled a finger around the bolt on the front of the crate, still rattling vigorously.

‘For those about to die,’ intoned Vix, ‘good riddance.’

‘Wait!’ spluttered the Pit Master, crawling backwards until his back hit the valve wheel. ‘This is not the way! Allow me at least to speak, to offer...’

‘No more words, you sanctimonious bastard,’ Vix snapped, suddenly tired of the game and surprised at the fury welling inside him. ‘You’ve had ten years to talk. You’re in the arena now, and if you want to live you have to fight. Welcome to my world.’ He drew back the bolt with a loud clack.

The spine devil exploded out of the crate; a slavering array of razor claws and spikes and a snapping beak in the shape of a scythe. Sirius screamed like a woman and tried to crawl away from the bounding horror, but came up short with a gag when his chain went taut.

The thing landed on him with blades extended, stabbing deep into cadaverous flesh and the Pit Master’s screams went up another notch. Vix couldn’t be sure how much of the ripping was fabric and how much was meat, but there was certainly a lot of blood. He watched his former master beating feebly at the voracious pit-beast while it eviscerated him, his screeches taking on a thick, liquid quality when his punctured lungs began to fill.

Soon, much too soon, his wails dissolved into staccato hukk sounds as he went into shock and the creature settled down to eat the soft tissues of his crotch and lower belly. Vix wasn’t sure how long it took the Pit Master to die, but it was a good ten minutes before his staring eyes glazed over.

As grisly as the Pit Master’s end had been, Vix felt unappeased – just one death was more than Sirius deserved. He knew that vengeance was ultimately unproductive and if he wanted any sort of life for himself, he would take the remaining trinkets he had liberated from his former master and trade them for the first unsanctioned transport out of the Arekkhan system.

And he would – just as soon as he’d taken care of one last piece of business.

______________________________ooOOoo__________________________________

Sergeant Eruller groaned with pleasure as he forked his boot off. This new uniform was all well and good, but the administratum had screwed up his sizes again; the boots were a size too small.

Not that it really mattered now. He grinned to himself as he shoved his helmet into the back of the locker, past the heavy carryall. The rest of his team had already taken their cut and the bag was still more than three-quarters full. He hadn’t stopped to count it – his heart pounded too much each time he contemplated it.

That fool Sirius hadn’t even looked in the container to see just how much money he was giving away, a fact Eruller was more than grateful for. He had a suspicion that if his cut was anywhere near as lucrative as he suspected, he wouldn’t be returning from the seven-day leave period he’d arranged with Justicar O’Brennon.

He was whistling by the time he’d changed into civilian clothing, hauling out the heavy carryall and slamming the locker with an elbow.

There was a figure standing right beside him.

He started, almost dropping the bag. When he saw it was an arbiter he smiled sheepishly, not having noticed the other man behind the locker door.

‘Long shift,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘Jumping at shadows.’

The opaque visor just watched him.

‘You signing off?’ Eruller asked to break the growing silence. He was subtly aware that the arbiter was standing between him and the exit. He was also holding his stun baton in his fist.

‘Nice bag,’ was all he said.

The sergeant swallowed. He made sure the team knew to keep their mouths shut about jobs for Sirius – it was a little extra money in their pocket at the end of the week, no questions asked. Only, it looked like someone wasn’t happy with their cut this time.

‘Are you with Lower South?’ he ventured.

The arbiter just chuckled and clubbed him across the head.An hour later when Metro West came off patrol, they found the sergeant face-down on the locker room floor, vibrating and drooling while the stun baton wedged up his rectum fired off continuously.

The next day, a discarded arbiter uniform was found in a resyc-unit a kilometre from the station house – its unfortunate owner was traced back to his locker, into which he had been stuffed in apparent defiance of spatial physics.

Justicar O’Brennon never did solve the case and Eruller’s vegetative state prevented him from ever mentioning the carryall full of money that went missing that same night.

The remains of Pit Master Sirius were found but nothing the arbites could decipher from the scene provided a clue to where the renegade pit fighter had gone. Vix was declared a public enemy and for several weeks the populace locked their doors while the enforcers went through the motions of searching the city.

Time passed and eventually even the law came to the same conclusion as the Arekkhans – that Vix was long gone.

Gone, but not completely forgotten. Across the hive worlds in the vicinity of Arekkha, it became commonplace for Goliath gangers to refer to the savage beating they had just administered to their rivals as ‘a proper Vixing’.

The King would probably have been pleased.

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