Wormhole Pirates on Orbis (14 page)

Tinker kept glancing at Ketheria until he finished with the registration. Ceesar thanked him when he was done, and we followed our new friends below the labyrinth. Buzz was wearing long sleeves, and I was unable to get a close look at the tattoo I had seen when he stole the stridling. Ceesar’s arms were bare, but I could not find any pirate markings.

“JT, are you sure about this?” Theodore whispered, pulling me back behind everyone.

“What? I get to play once before I meet Dop, and we’re tracking a thief in the name of Orbis.”

“That’s not funny,” he argued.

“I’m not trying to be. I don’t want to lose against Dop — and aren’t you even the slightest bit interested in Buzz and that Ceesar guy? What if they
are
wormhole pirates?”

“Then I don’t want to be following them anywhere.”

“Everything fine back there?” Ceesar called out.

“Great,” I yelled back, and turned to Theodore. “Come on, Theodore. Nothing’s gonna happen.”

We stopped in front of the staging area for knudniks — the same one Charlie showed me when we went for our swimming lessons.

“We know the rules, but we’ve never played here before,” Max informed him.

“Well, who’s the bait?” he asked her.

“I am,” she replied.

“Then follow Buzz here, and he’ll take you to the goal.”

Max turned to me and whispered, “Are you ready for this?”

“Absolutely,” I told her.

Ceesar scoffed. “Cute.”

Max followed Buzz, and Ceesar asked me, “Are you gonna play in that?”

I looked at my clothes. “What’s wrong with them?”

“No helmet? Your choice,” he said. “Follow the crystal lights along the corridor once you pass the ready area.” Ceesar pointed to the hallway slightly to my left.

“Where do you go?”

Ceesar shook his head. “I go that way,” he said with a frown, pointing to another narrow hallway to my right.

“What about us?” Theodore asked.

“Follow him,” he ordered, pointing to the third alien in their group, a little guy with a lot of teeth. “You can sit with him and watch us beat your friends.”

Theodore looked at me and I shrugged. “Unless
you
want to play,” I said.

“I’ve got him,” Ketheria replied, taking the lead toward a narrow flight of stairs behind us, away from the players’ opening. She stopped and said, “Beat this guy, Johnny.”

Ceesar laughed and slipped down the corridor, leaving me poised at the entrance to the labyrinth.
This is it,
I thought.
This is what I wanted.
While I stood there under the stone arch, I wondered if my father ever stood in this place. Whenever any thoughts of my father came into my head, I had always pushed them away, but standing here made all the rumors seem possible for some reason. Who else could have programmed Mother with a training course for Space Jumpers? Still, it was difficult for me to swallow, even after my long discussions with Toll on Orbis 2. Considering the idea, trying it on for size, always resulted in a feeling of despair — as if a big piece of me suddenly disappeared, and I would feel truly alone. If my father were a Space Jumper, would he even have been human?

Am I not human?

Yet now, waiting to step onto the playing field, I was filled with a warm comfort imagining my father standing in this exact spot. The idea was mind-boggling.

The inside of the ready area was moist with steam. Warm water misted from the walls, and a lot of the stone was covered with a light moss. It felt very organic for such a technological structure. I never would have pictured this from the outside of the arena, but then again, it
was
for the knudniks.

At the far end of the ready room, carved in the stone, was a narrow passageway lined with blue crystal lights. I followed the lights down the hall for more than fifty meters. The crystals were mounted closer and closer to the floor the farther I traveled. At the end of the tunnel, a large pulsing crystal was embedded in the floor, beseeching me to step on it.

I walked onto the crystal, and instantly a semicircular energy shield sprang up in front of me. A pulsing light passed from the stone to the shield, quickening its pace as if it were searching for something.
Is this how they decide who gets the sort first?
It was a detail I had overlooked with Vairocina. But the pulsing stopped with a flash, and three diamonds, stacked above and around the Orbis insignia, appeared in the energy field. In the center of each diamond shape was a word:
SOLID
,
LIQUID
, or
GAS
.

I would choose first in the sort.

I immediately selected
SOLID
, and the shapes spun away. What would Ceesar choose now? What had he chosen when I watched him play? I needed to know these things if I were ever going to be good at this.
How does Dop choose?
I wondered if it was more important to see him play than to play myself.

It was too late now. The diamonds returned to my shield, and this time my choices were
TECHNOLOGICAL
,
INDUSTRIAL
, and
MAGICAL
. I knew this was another weapons parameter. Both the second and third stages of the sort determined the kind of weapons we would use to defend ourselves. If I picked
TECHNOLOGICAL
and Ceesar had already picked
MECHANIC
, I might get plasma rifles. I liked those. I had used them a lot on the
Renaissance.
But what if he’d picked
PSIONIC
? Choosing
TECHNOLOGICAL
might only give me invisibility cubes.
Nothing wrong with that,
I thought.
MAGICAL
forced me into a world of OIO and alien mysticism. I wasn’t too keen on those, but I knew Max might be good at that on the return run.
You’re wasting time!
my mind screamed at me. I needed a strategy. When I had practiced with Vairocina, I saw each stage of the sort and I discussed them at length with Max. This was different, though — very different.

The energy shield began to pulse again, waiting for an answer. Which one? I hesitated and then reached for
TECHNOLOGICAL
, but I was too late. Before my finger touched the screen, the diamonds disappeared and the word
PASS
flashed in front of me.

I didn’t pass!

“Hey!” I shouted. “I didn’t pass! Wait.”

But the energy field turned as solid as the stone floor. The game parameters were selected, and I had let Ceesar choose three out of four stages.

I moved back from the energy shield, worried about what was waiting for me on the other side. The crystal on the floor pulsed three times before the wall disappeared. What I saw shocked me. Not because I didn’t recognize anything, but because I recognized
everything.
It was as if I had stepped back onto the
Renaissance
right into a game of Quest-Nest. Ceesar had chosen in my favor. He had picked my best game.

On the floor to my right was a plasma rifle, a simple weapon that fires a burst of heated yellow gas at anyone who gets in the holder’s way. I even recalled the corridors with their purple lights hidden along the edges of the floor and ceiling. If I remembered correctly, it was a clear run for about twenty meters. But the labyrinth always changed; every time Mother set a game, it was a new course. More important, I needed to remember that Mother wasn’t setting
this
game.

I ran up the ramp to a set of closed doors. I was not sure how much time I was allotted to find the bait before the labyrinth shifted. I looked behind me to grab a mental image of where I had just been so I would remember it on my return. Standing in front of the closed doors, I paused and readied my plasma rifle. The door disappeared and I charged in. Too soon. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a fist coming straight at me. I ducked just in time and then tried to square my shoulders to my attacker. A crazed frontier pilot, his flight suit charred and melted away with most of his skin, was already taking another swing.

As I turned, he cracked me upside my head with a vicious blow.
Holographs aren’t supposed to do that,
I thought as I fell to the floor, dazed, the image of the pilot swimming in front of me. The pilot swung again, and I shielded myself with my right arm. I should have shot, but everything was happening too quickly.
This is exactly why I need to practice,
I thought. The pilot hit my mechanical arm, but it registered no pain. I’d turned off the sensors before I started. At least I’d thought of something ahead of time.

I rolled away from the next blow and blasted the demon pilot. His holograph exploded into a haze of yellow light, and I lay back on the ground.
You’ve got to be smarter than that,
I told myself.
Now, get moving!

I zapped three more pilots waiting around the next bend. No one was going to get the best of me twice. I also found a long-range scoping device to give me the edge on lengthy open hallways. I only hoped my first encounter with the frontier pilot hadn’t cost me the game.

I entered a room with a narrow catwalk and used the scope to search for any challengers lingering below. Through the scope, I caught a glimpse of plasma fire in the far corner. It was Ceesar, and he was moving fast. He took out three pilots with one shot and decked another before he ever saw him coming. Ceesar was good.

I picked up my pace. It was reckless, but if Ceesar was moving that fast, I was already behind. At the end of the catwalk, my only option was a small hole in the ceiling. These were never good. Someone hiding behind a closed door was one thing, but pulling myself blindly through the ceiling was a whole other beating waiting to happen. I took the plasma rifle in my left hand and used my other to grip the ladder. I increased the strength levels in my right arm, hoping to support myself while I fired with my left. I asked the Universe for a little help, too.

I was only halfway out of the tunnel when I saw them. Two pilots charged me from behind. I blasted them both, but the distraction let a third opponent get one shot off, hitting me in the left leg. As I returned fire, I felt my leg go numb. Another stupid mistake. I should have seen it coming; it was a simple trick Mother often used against us. I dragged my bum leg down the corridor and into a clearing. It was like trying to walk when your leg was asleep. It took everything for me not to trip over myself.

Another blast almost took out my good leg. I was caught in the cross fire between the demon pilots and some other alien. Mother only ever gave us one opponent at a time, but I reminded myself this wasn’t Mother’s game. I returned fire, but a deflected shot hit my right arm. I was doomed without my shooting arm. I waited for my mechanical arm to malfunction from the blast, but nothing happened. The synthetic skin and metallic bones seemed to absorb the blast. A fresh wave of confidence swept over me as I realized my newfound advantage.

I fought my way through all fourteen levels of the labyrinth without ever seeing Ceesar again. I had dumped my plasma rifle after it went dead, and now I was dragging around a heavy tedaado blade. Ceesar might have already reached his bait, but I knew the game wasn’t over yet because the labyrinth was still up. When I finally reached the last level, I looked down to the floor below and saw Max locked inside a red energy shield. Four crazed frontier pilots surrounded her, but she was crouched ready to attack them — as soon as I was able to spring her free. I jumped down to Max’s level behind one of the pilots, swinging as I landed. I snatched the rifle from my enemy and tossed it to Max as the shield dropped. The other three pilots were taken care of before the first one hit the ground.

“Buzz is already gone!” she shouted.

“Unbelievable!”

“A while ago, too. We’ve got to hurry!”

After the shield went down, three more corridors opened up and a crew of new enemies charged us. Max took out the first two while I circled wide and got the last ones coming down the corridor. We ran out the way I’d come in. We weren’t on the return for more than a parsec before the lights in the floor and the ceiling began to pulsate.

“The labyrinth is going to shift!” she shouted.

Already?
This was much faster than what I was used to.

“Get ready!” she cried.

As we ran down the corridor, doors that I had previously passed through morphed into walls, and sections of the walls opened into new passageways.

“Watch out!” Max shrieked as the wall beside me shimmered away. A fast-moving creature, no taller than my waist, charged at me. Its long tentacles flung around its head, sparking as they touched each other. Max blasted him squarely on the back, but the monster did not stop.

“He’s got some sort of protection!” she yelled.

“Keep firing,” I told her, and released a charge from the blade into the creature as well. Confused about whom to attack first, the alien finally exploded, covering me in its yellow blood. I felt a tiny bit of numbness over my whole body, but it was nothing that would slow me down.

“Thanks,” I said, but before Max could respond, the labyrinth went black. The game was over.

We had lost.

Ceesar and the wormhole pirate were standing on a gold crystal, and the huge labyrinth was reduced to the area visible from the stands. It was disorienting. I was never going to get used to dimensional displacement.

“Whatever happened to beginner’s luck?” Ceesar boasted from his position on the winner’s mark.

“You’re just too good,” Max told him.

“Yes, I am,” Ceesar agreed.

“We only need some more practice,” I argued.

“You need more than that,” he scoffed.

Buzz, however, was not gloating with his partner. Instead he glanced nervously at the crowd in the stands.

“We need to go, Cap,” Buzz hissed, elbowing his partner.

“Let me enjoy my victory,” Ceesar snapped, but Buzz would not back down.

“Yes, it was a great victory — but we need to deal with
that,
” he said, pointing to a small commotion growing behind the glass.

“What?” Ceesar moaned.