Raiders (7 page)

The polearm bleeped twice and responded in synchronicity to her strikes with a synthetic voice effect, “Critical!
Bleep!
Critical!
Bleep
!”

Aurelia gave a satisfied smirk and said, “Yeah.” And then she rested the polearm's end onto her right foot and said, “Okay let’s get this shit over with.”

“Great. Remember that Julian and the Doc will be able to talk to you and vice verse. Those bone phones are full duplex. They work both ways.”

“Lead the way.” Aurelia followed Specialist Noonan after he handed Julian a headband. They walked down the Pit’s corridor and stood just outside the door of Arena Five.

Noonan said to Aurelia, “Julian and the Doc will be watching from the Doc’s office.” He jerked his thumb at the doorway. “We got an eight-K dome camera installed in the Arena there. Doc has a curved organic display in his office. Camera takes sharp pictures even though the technology is really old. They will see everything.”

Aurelia remained silent and nodded while they stood at the Arena door. Noonan pressed his thumb and ring finger onto a two-finger scanner-lock and the door clicked with a resonant mechanical
ker-klunk
. He opened the door about quarter ways and said to Aurelia, “Now my orders are if anyone actually gets hurt we're gonna shut this party down right then and there. Okay?”

“Okay.” Aurelia stepped into Arena 5 and the door closed behind her, again with a respondent
ker-klunk
followed by something internal to the door lock that reminded Aurelia of a small whirling motor or perhaps a tiny hand drill.

She looked across to the room’s opposing side and there she was. Kama, the one and only, fully wrapped in her leather Raider battlegear, headdress and all. The headdress caused Aurelia to pause momentarily since she had not seen this piece before when they last met. Kama’s headdress nearly covered her entire head, even her nose and ears. The headpiece made Kama look like she crawled out of some long lost dungeon from the early Middle Ages. The edges tapered away from the top to allow for head movement and draped over her shoulders in the front and backside too. Metal inlays protected Kama’s critical head areas, her temples and the sides of her neck. Kama looked up to stare at the motionless observation camera. The camera was bolted firmly into the Arena’s corner, directly above and to the right of where Aurelia stood.

Aurelia remained motionless for a moment and said, “I just want you to know there um, Kama that you
really are
out of your fucking mind.” She twisted her polearm once round to no particular end. “You really are.”

Kama returned her eyes back to Aurelia from the camera above. As she did so she said something in Mandarin Chinese, utterly indecipherable to Aurelia. About a half second later the translation came through Aurelia’s bone phones. “Restore honor and I will tell you what you want. We do this first!”

Aurelia noticed that Kama did not wait for her translator from her end for she responded way too fast. “She can understand me fine. Hey Doc I know you can hear me. Why the hell are we using these stupid headphones?”

Kama said nothing and stood in place as if she were a statue of flesh and leather and metal. The Professor sat in his office and observed the arena with Julian. The curved monitor arced around them both.

The Professor responded to her through the headphone downlink. “She can only understand a word or two here and there. Don’t worry about that now. Just deal with it.”

Kama shifted her weight against her polearm and spoke again in Mandarin. Translation, “I understood enough of what you said to know you called me a crazy.”

“You are.”

“I know. But I am so much more,” Kama said.

Aurelia decided that talking time was over and initiated a defensive walk. She recalled her training in Basic. Her instructors drilled into her that all hand to hand combat is ninety-five percent defense and five percent strike, the precise opposite of what they used to show in most of the old movies made in Hollywood, back when there was an actual California. Great warriors knew this truth. The Vikings, the Romans, the Huns. Such lessons were not lost, not even in 2511.

Aurelia cautiously paced sideways, always focused forward straight at Kama. She maintained a continual situational awareness of the Arena’s physical limitations: The walls, the floor and even the variations of light and shadow. She recited her lessons in her head over and over.
Assess your target. Anticipate their moves before they execute them. Defend. Defend. Defend. Only strike when there is no chance of your enemy taking advantage of your loss of defense post-attack. Feel your weak zones, always. When in doubt, Shield them out.

J
Jesus, all I want to do is smack her in the freaking head
, Aurelia thought.

With an almost casual flow Kama started to move from her standstill. She matched Aurelia’s position keeping herself about half a meter shy of what she believed was Aurelia’s maximum reach with her weapon. She watched, observed and paced in step. Then, she stopped.

Aurelia stopped too. She felt her own nervousness now and was somewhat unsure of herself but tried her best to mask it. She balanced the polearm in front of her and stood and focused on the enemy Raider.

“..Doc no let me say something. Don’t let her get to you. She’s just screwing with you baby..” It was Julian’s voice.

Aurelia made no indication that she heard him and remained still. For a few seconds more Kama remained still too She said nothing and then suddenly twisted her left hand round and
swooshed
her polearm into a circle. She twisted the thing behind her back and as she did so the weapon windmilled in the free air behind her. The weapon landed firmly onto her right palm which she positioned perfectly to receive it’s momentum. The whole room resonated with a definitive
smack
. Kama smiled and then tapped the polearm in front of her, left to right as if she were a blind person tapping a feeling cane to find her way home. Her weapon bleeped subtly with each tap, slowly and rhythmically.
Tap, bleep. Tap, bleep.

“Still messing with you hun, just stand your ground like you learned. You’re doing great.” Again, Julian spoke but this time his voice hinted of nervous undercurrents that only Aurelia could detect.

Kama shrugged her shoulders and as she did her battlesuit creaked with the now familiar sound of distressed, well-worn leather. She jerked her head to the side and suggested to Aurelia,
come now child, come hit me if you can.

A rushed windblown sound that sounded like a whiffle ball only deeper and louder reverberated across the Arena. Aurelia charged her with a full frontal defensive position and then in about a quarter second her polearm was in a full windup top to bottom and slightly offset to the right.
Whoosh
and then an immediate teeth jarring
ka-crack
followed through. Aurelia rebounded from her attack and stepped back. To her surprise Aurelia was stunned as Kama simply raised her polearm with her right arm alone, her
weak
arm to meet Aurelia’s offensive strike. Kama did not even change her position at all excepting the singular motion. Kama kept her polearm raised as a bored affect visaged across her face, like she had just shooed away a pesky mosquito on a lazy, orange summer day.

Aurelia couldn’t believe it.
How was this even possible?
She never saw anything like this in her life, never even heard of anyone like this, not in Military training nor any other time for that matter.
How could Kama move so fast like that? Nobody can do that. Nobody. Who the hell was this freak of nature, anyways?
Aurelia thought.

Kama slowly lowered her polearm and vertically rested it down. She lightly held it as a trail walker would hold a homeaway walking stick. Aurelia continued her frantic pace and made small semicircles back and forth again. Kama dropped her polearm and then to Aurelia’s amazement she removed her headgear. As she did so Kama repositioned her bone phones which had temporarily dislodged a little when she removed her leather helmet from her head.

“What the hell are you doing?” Aurelia asked Kama as she lowered her polearm. Her voice was pressured and cholerically charged. “Hey. What. The. Fuck. Are. You. Doing.”

Kama said nothing at all but continued the odd behaviour. She removed the wraps from her right arm first, which revealed a series of snaps strategically installed on their underside. Then she removed the left wraps and let the now unraveled strips of metal lined leather drop to the floor. Kama reached under the shoulder flaps right to left and released a series of four previously unseen snaps from them. Finally, three snaps that ran from under her armpits down to her waist, released. Then, the other side, six altogether. The entire assemblage fell to her feet. Her battlesuit was a single piece of continuous leather not including the headpiece. “I won’t need it for this,” Kama said.

Aurelia just stood there and stared and did not know what to really do.

Presently Kama wore a grey undershirt and what looked like boxer shorts, also grey. The seams were severely frayed, ripped here and there and overall quite threadbare. She removed these as well. Kama did not look at Aurelia and appeared as anyone would when they remove their clothes for bedtime, slowly and without any sense of rush.

As she peeled them from her Aurelia said, “Ummm, hell-oo? Earth to Kama! I hate to break it to you but I am not a homosexual!”

Without raising her head Kama continued the strange, out of place ritual and said, “Neither am I. But they made me sometimes. Be with some of the other women. But they liked it though. I had no choice.” Kama straightened herself up and then rotated her shoulders around as if to loosen them away. She rotated her neck to stretch and said, “You aren’t worth getting any marks on my armor. I save that for
real fights
.”

“Say what? What the hell are you talking about? Who are
they
? What do you mean
them?
” Aurelia screwed up her face into a confused, puzzled look.

“Wow, good question Aurelia! Maybe she’ll elaborate on that.” Professor Palmer’s voice said across Aurelia’s bone phones.

Kama responded, “Elders. Not important.” At this moment only a Military issue bra and underwear, and socks remained. Aurelia stared at the many tattoos that covered Kama’s upper chest and arms.

Not your everyday body art
, Aurelia thought. On Kama’s skin there were symbols, a lot of symbols and none of them made any sense to Aurelia as she looked at the tattoos then back to Kama’s face and then back to the esoteric symbols. There were circles and triangles and shapes within squares, mostly intricate linework and some interconnecting one to another. Inside the shapes were Hebrew letters and maybe some numbers but Aurelia really didn’t know. On her right upper chest over her clavicle there was a grand depiction of the Sun and on her left clavicle, a moon. Connecting the two symbols was a large winged iconograph that traversed her neckline. The wings looked like something that was lifted from walls of the Valley Of The Kings in Egypt. There were serpents and there were dragons. There was an eagle’s talon clutching a human heart. There was a simple maze on her left upper arm with two elaborate arrows, heavily scrolled and flourished that appeared to point both up and down from within the maze when her arm rested by her side. On her right lower arm there were three pyramid shapes and a series of five ovals each one slightly bigger than the last that crossed over the pyramids. A lion, another snake, some flames and more fine-lined scrollwork that wrapped around her arms from her wrist all the way up to her shoulders, front and back alike.

Kama’s legs were not spared from the mysterious inkwork. There were five pointed stars, lines that appeared to be sine waves, twisted lines, spiked abstractions and crosses, something that looked like a demon, more Hebrew letters, some Mandarin pictograms, a few Sumerian cuneiform bits and other symbols, marks that looked like no known language spoken by anyone anywhere, ever.

Aurelia waved her hand up and down in front of her body. “See this suit I’m wearing?” She said. “I’m about to ruin you down but hey, you asked for it. So here it comes! Nice ink by the way,” she sarcastically announced. Aurelia knew from her Military training that you can overcome a more powerful opponent if you know where to strike, and when. Kama left herself without any armor and Aurelia doubted that her mystic body art menagerie was going to help her any. She resumed her tactful pace around Kama, who continued to appear relaxed, unstressed.

“Screw this shit,” Aurelia thought to herself and then a half second later she pushed her polearm quickly forward and to the side and then executed a sideways power stroke. She pushed the polearm with a sweep and simultaneously pulled with her left hand for extra power and speed.
Whoosh. Ke-crack! Bleep!
Kama met her swing with her polearm, a blurred single arm connected with the oncoming weapon. Kama only had to scuffle her left foot a little wider out to purchase base support, but nothing more.

“I knew that you were going to do that,” Kama said. She did not lower her polearm as they both remained in the air, one against the other. Aurelia pulled her weapon down just as Kama attempted a twisted her s which would have otherwise disarmed Aurelia.

Angry and red-faced, Aurelia swung herself around in a full-pivot. She tried to hit Kama from her fully exposed left flank and then aimed for her ribcage to the side.

Another
whoosh
followed. Aurelia's polearm drew a deeper since her weapon was fully extended outward. And then a
ketta-ketta-crack!
as the polearms vibrated against one another.
Bleep
!

Kama reposed her polearm down and to the left to meet Aurelia's strike, as if she could see through time and she knew long before that Aurelia was going fora full lateral windmill sweep. Had she struck it through Aurelia would have fractured at least one of Kama’s ribs, perhaps more but instead Aurelia's hands went numb from Kama's deflection and the subsequent resonance against her. Kama said, “Before you strike you squint your eyes a little and tense the side you are going to use.”