“Training others can only be done once you yourself have mastered the basics, and is only advisable once you have progressed past the intermediary.”
Saying of Karkor, the Sixth Pirate King.
“Keep your guards up,” Mat barked. Tim stumbled back, and Mat stepped to avoid a clumsy counter attack. “Balance is important. You fall, they stab you while you’re getting to your feet. Or in the real world, they just shoot you until your phase shield breaks, and then they paint the floor with your brain.”
Tim snarled, an unusual expression for the mild mannered man. “Easy to say for someone with a biomod for balance.”
Mat snorted, kicking out. Tim managed to block the attack, so Mat shoulder checked him. Tim fell, and hard. Mat loomed over him, wondering when that rage would break. It was good for motivation, but only if the man could control himself. Channel it rather than be controlled.
“It doesn’t matter what I have,” Mat lectured, slashing down. Tim blocked, then blocked again, not seeming to notice Mat slowed each blow. “It doesn't matter if I was trained by the world's greatest fighters from the moment I could walk. All that matters is what you have, and how you use it. So far, I’m not impressed.”
Tim kicked out, and Mat danced away, nodding in approval. Tim rose, and the anger seemed to drain out of the man. “You’re trying to make me angry.”
“I was,” Mat allowed. “Rage can be useful, but not if it turns you into a berserker. Those have no place on the battlefield. Enough for now. You have a fight later today, so eat a light lunch, then rest.”
The man nodded, dropping the tranblade to the floor. Mat picked it up, then stepped back when a pair of other bladeslaves all but ran into the ring. Neither looked calm, though with the general clamour of four hundred people living in close proximity, he hadn’t heard.
“Get out,” one of them snapped. Mat raised an eyebrow, considering. Reputation was important here, but so was not looking like a psychopath. So he shrugged, turning to leave while the other man spoke again, clearly not at him. “We’re here, you piss-licking piece of shit. Now what are you gonna do?”
Mat paused, knowing it was better to just leave. He didn’t know them, didn’t know the situations, and involving himself would only make things worse. Then Reg’s face came to mind, and Mat groaned.
“Alright,” Mat said, turning. The pair turned to him, their rage focusing on the outside element. “Look, beat the shit out of each other for all I care, but in my opinion, we do enough of that out there. So, before either of you attack me and I have to hit you very hard with this here sword, let’s talk.”
Big Ear—he had a big ear, Mat wasn’t feeling creative—seemed to very much want to attack, but Mat had somewhat of a reputation these days. Mostly, his name kept appearing on the big screen tagged for death matches, and yet here he was.
“He stole my pencil,” Big Ear finally ground out. Mat blinked, and the man actually seemed somewhat embarrassed. “Look, that sounds stupid, but he’s always stealing my shit. My snacks, my music, now my damn pencil? He’ll take my damn underwear next, the fucking insect.”
Yellow Eye glared at his… friend? Enemy? “I didn’t steal your fucking pencil, dipshit, and why would I ever steal you underwear? I don’t need to steal that if you keep leaving it for me as some kind of present every week.”
Mat was rapidly regretting getting involved in this. He cleared his throat, but Big Ear ignored him, rounding on his lover.
“You asked me to, and I thought it was weird, but if it made you happy, why would I ever—”
“Shut up,” Mat barked. Both of the men paused, rounding on him again. “Look, I’m done here. But if you’ll let me suggest something, then it’s probably this; you’re going to fuck anyway, so how about you get to it and not take up one of the sparring rings for no good reason?”
Yellow Eye glared at him, outraged, while Big Ear narrowed his eyes. Right. Damage control. Mat waved at them with his tranblade, missing them by inches. They reared back, surprised, so he did it again, closer this time. And then again, until they fled the ring. Mat fled himself, because holy hell Tobi could not fucking find out what had just happened.
“Well done,” Reg praised, somehow appearing behind him. Mat glared at the man, not pausing his stride. “Mediation is a more valuable skill than most people realize, even if your technique could use some refinement.”
Despite himself, Mat snorted. “If that taught me anything, it’s to stay out of other people's damn business.”
“It was an unfortunate situation,” Reg said, somehow managing to sound sincere. “But then you could not have known that, and I am proud of you for caring enough to try.”
Mat cleared his throat, not sure how to reply to that. “Speaking of changing the subject, I have another deathmatch later this evening.”
“So I saw. The second one in four days.” Reg didn’t sound concerned, but Mat knew that he was. Because Mat was good—he wasn’t so humble as to deny that—and especially with how much practice he was getting. His perks made him even better, but every fight was a roll of the dice, no matter how stacked the odds were in his favor. “Halfway to your goal of fifty, then?”
Mat nodded, keeping his expression even. Over the last months, ever since he’d been invited to the resistance, he’d told Reg a few more things. And just Reg, for that matter. But the man knew he needed to kill before his solution would work, which he had taken in stride.
Reg was nice like that.
The deathmatch came quickly. After speaking with Reg he had lunch, trained with Yon, had a sparring match with Tobi and Darion in a free for all—fucking ow—then ate dinner. Exercise, a nap, more sparring, and then he was here, arming himself with a simple, plain sword. It didn’t take much longer to get to the arena.
When the door to the arena room opened, Mat froze. He hadn’t done that since his very first fight, not really. It broke after a moment, but his steps were mechanical. Wooden.
Bea looked at him, an uncaring, empty look on her face. He couldn't beat her. Even with all his advantages, all his training, she was something different. Someone with years and years of experience, polishing the kind of raw talent only one in a billion could boast of.
Mat looked at the ceiling, and knew that he was going to die. Funny how quickly that could happen. There he was, knowing this was dangerous but assuming he’d be fine, and then click. Reality changed, the future vanished, and suddenly everything seemed to have happened so very quickly.
Nova was panicking, offering a dozen suggestions that wouldn't work. There was no one to kill for a desperate, doomed attempt at getting to the next perk. There was no way to convince her, or bribe her, or beg for mercy. They were bladeslaves, and this was a deathmatch. He had killed to ensure his own survival, and now Bea would kill him to do the same.
He snorted, offering her a polite bow. There’s always a bigger fish.
Bea looked up, though it wasn’t like the Judge was in the ceiling. “No.”
“This is a deathmatch,” the Judge replied, voice hard and very much present. The two of them had its full attention, it seemed. “Failure to comply will result in both your deaths.”
Mat shook his head. “Don’t be stupid. This is our life now. I made my peace with that.”
“They broke you that quickly?” she asked, sounding curious rather than insulting. She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. The answer is no. I won’t fight him. Do what you have to do.”
The drones hovered closer, lightning arcing between two steel prongs. The Judge’s tone grew harder. “Failure to comply will result in death.”
“I met generals much like you,” she replied, a humorless grin on her face. “All that hardware, all that processing power, and you can’t even begin to understand what it's like to be human. I call your bluff. Kill me.”
The drones turned, but Mat was too busy enduring the mental whiplash to really pay attention. The Judge spoke up a moment later, pivoting to him. “She has refused to fight. Kill her.”
“I don’t think I will,” Mat replied slowly. “Because Obedias is an efficient man, isn’t he? He told you to squeeze every last drop of worth out of me before I can die, and killing either of us now, with nothing to show for it, will earn you nothing.”
The drones shocked him, lightning shooting forth like a taser on steroids. Mat tensed, his mind blanking under the pain, but he didn’t fall. All he did was grunt, and the effect ended after a few long seconds.
“What’s your name?” Mat asked, tone not quite as put together as he would have liked. That had fucking hurt. “Pick one. Anything. Becreative.”
Bea barked out a single, amused laugh, and then she was tased too. But the very facts that it was trying to force them meant the Judge couldn't kill them in the first place. Not without getting something in return.
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For twenty minutes the Judge tortured them, and for twenty minutes it failed. Then it sentenced Bea to three months of isolation, and Mat lost his five steel tokens.
But in the end, Mat sat in his own bed that night, meditating on the day, and decided he rather liked that woman. And also that he was getting too used to pain, because the torture seemed to have barely left a mark.
Mostly Bea, though.
It happened fast. Mat had always known that Obedias would lose his patience eventually. That the risk would start to outweigh the benefits, especially since that stunt with Bea last month. He had ideas on how the man would move against him. An ambush in the night, or a trap under the guise of a sanctioned fight.
But what he hadn’t expected was for the man to just… take him.
He had been sparring with Tim, trying to get the man to understand the importance of aggression and momentum, and then someone shot him in the neck. A tranq dart, clearly, or he wouldn't be pretending to still be asleep in this small room they had dragged him to, but he was isolated and alone.
Obedias, it seems, hadn’t treated Mat like an adversary, or even a threat. Mat supposed that made sense. To him, Obedias was the enemy, at least for now. To Obedias, Mat was just one bladeslave amongst sixteen hundred, and not even his most dangerous.
How much more energy, Nova?
“Three, maybe four kills?” the AI replied, sounding uncertain. “Depends on how tough they are to kill. How much being outnumbered increases the risk. The perk is almost done, and it’ll work fast. But I don’t know why they brought us here.”
Neither did Mat. There were five guards in the room with him, and two droids on top of that, which seemed like massive overkill if they could have just shot him in the face. But no, that assumed Obedias saw him as a threat. So what was he to the man? Employee? Slave?
An investment. Food, housing, healing, all in exchange for capturing his desperate, nail biting attempts to stay alive. But Obedias had clearly grown tired of waiting for him to die in a deathmatch, so this was… this was repossession.
They were going to carve his biomod out of him, somehow. Of course. If he couldn't die in the arena, he was going to die after all his organs had been harvested.
So why the guards? They had knocked him out easily enough before, yet now they didn’t seem to know that he was awake? Nova answered, sounding surprisingly cold.
“Two separate teams. Obedias doesn’t keep that many true professionals on payroll. Too expensive. Once you were out, they handed you over to the B-team, with droid support just in case. What’s the—”
One of the guards moved closer and into the range of local omniscience. Mat moved the moment he registered that she was holding a needle, one hand closing around her wrist and the other snaking to her hip. She jerked back, surprised, and he could see the machines enhancing her strength. Like a second layer of bones on top of her skin.
He plucked the moleblade from her belt, and before she could recover, sliced up. Her armor gave only a moment of resistance, and her skull far less than that.
Mat twisted, throwing himself back and off the operating table. A hail of gunfire tore it to shreds, but Mat was already moving, acting on instinct more than thought. There, one of the droids had moved forward, and Mat took the leg, pushing hard. The droid stumbled, providing a shield.
Just for a second, he was clear. Then he wasn’t, the droid grasping for him with its other hand. Mat stepped to the side, avoiding a grip that would break bone, and a beam of tight, superheated light raked a line across his shoulder.
Mat barely felt it. He surged closer to the mercenaries, only one of which had a clear line of fire. The woman dropped her weapon in favor of a knife, but Mat had reach, and she died in moments. Then he was inside their ranks, and they took too long to clear their lines of fire.
It was so… easy. His Moleblade cut through what little armor they wore like butter, and none managed to put up a fight. There he nicked a foot, severing the achilles tendon while dodging an errant shot. Another woman came up behind him, pushing out with fist of steel, but local omniscience gave him enough time to jerk aside, and she failed to avoid his retaliatory swipe.
The last man dropped his weapon all together, and Mat moved to take his head anyway, having no time to accept surrender. Which was good, because the man’s hand flashed to a device on his wrist, and Mat cut off the limb with only a split second to spare. A confirmation request blinked on the device, and Mat felt a shiver crawl down his spine.
One second later, and his brain would be smeared across the walls.
Without fleshy allies to worry about, the droids advanced, perfectly coordinated. It was all so textbook. He stepped to the right, which saw the only hale droid move to block off his escape, and twisted to the left instead, not giving the machine enough time to react to the feint.
One severed leg was joined by another, and though so much metal made even the moleblade hesitate, Mat was used to putting proper strength behind his blows. The droid fell, movement slowing, and then it was one unimaginative droid against himself.
Five seconds later, Mat straightened, inspecting the burn on his leg. He hadn’t even felt it, but now the pain came, and worse, it had taken muscle with it. His mobility would be limited, though that wasn’t the main problem. No, that was the lack of phase shields.
“Done,” Nova said. “Press the button.”
Mat pressed the big mental button that Nova presented, and his fifth perk came alive.
Medibots. I’ll keep this brief. Those nanobots you’re not using anyway? This specializes them into medical machines of utter wonder, though don’t expect them to regrow your brain. A miniature bomb, though, or a globeleash? Those they will chomp on like hungry little fish. Hell, they’ll even patch you up after a fight, though that will take a few minutes. Or hours, depending on the damage. This perk locks nanobots down a set path.
He could almost feel the nanobots disable and remove the kill switches in his body, impossible as that was. For long, unnerving seconds, he wondered if they would be too slow. If he was going to die anyway because someone had been watching, and that person would flip a little switch on a console.
If they were watching, they were either too slow, or needed authorization they didn’t get in time. Either way, Mat exhaled when both of the slaving tools dissolved, moving over to a panel on the wall. He had seen the doctors connect their dataslads to them before, and now he pressed his hand against it.
“We didn’t even use those conditions I teased out of them,” Nova complained, dutifully extending a connection between himself and the panel. A thin line of black blood connected Nova to the panel, and it broke after a moment. “I’m in. Always wanted to say that. Anyway, Obedias is a paranoid bastard, using a closed system like this. I can keep you hidden for a while, but eventually the ship’s AI is going to notice what happened here. And good news, the camera keeping watch over this room doesn’t connect to a person. I’m already extending a polite query to delete all relevant footage, and then apologizing for the mistaken info.”
Nova conjured the sound of a meaty snap, and Mat moved to the door, taking a breath. He could feel his injuries knitting closed, a profoundly unsettling feeling, but he pushed past it. Now was the time for focus. Obedias wouldn't just kill everyone, not at first, but this was a risky plan to begin with.
He opened the door, finding no one outside. Sloppy.
“I’m scrubbing you from the cameras, and I’ll guide you to avoid patrols,” Nova muttered, clearly distracted. “Man, this is a lot harder than the simulations I set up to train. Uhhmn, yeah, take a left. Quickly. And close the door.”
Mat followed directions, closing the door and turning left. The hallways were a twisting, winding mess on purpose, but now he actually had a guide, and much of it overlapped. Nova kept whispering instructions, and so Mat avoided most of the patrols, ducking into empty rooms when needed.
An arena filled with water coming to knee high, another room with a large bed and… things he wasn’t going to look at too closely, then a supply closet—which looked decidedly mundane—and then another arena. It was, to his surprise, more fun than nervewrecking.
“Speak for yourself,” Nova grumbled. “Your twisted monkey brain got used to all this adrenaline and fear, but mine is made of dead people's energy. Fuck, uuhm, two patrols are colliding, and you’ll need to go through to get were you need to go.”
I need a pair of phase shields anyway, and another weapon. Let me know when they pass the door.
“I still think this is a stupid idea. Reg said he didn’t know if she was part of the resistance.”
If she can be convinced, she’ll be an incredible boon.
Nova didn’t reply, his attention fading. That was fine. Mat took a moment to breathe, and to celebrate the removal of his leash. No more bomb in his spine, and no more globeleash in his blood. The latter of which hadn’t really come into play, thankfully.
It would have been really unfortunate if that had killed him the moment he attacked a guard. Not that there was a high chance of that. A globeleash was powerful, but it could hardly account for everything, or there would be no need for guards in the first place.
Thirty seconds later, Nova piped up again. “They’re here. Five, four, three…”
Mat counted with, then threw the door open, shifting back when he felt someone to both his left and right. Right in the middle of the group. Perfect.
What was less than perfect was their response. The man whose head he had been about to decapitate ducked, moving far too quickly and responding far too smoothly. Behind, two stepped back, weapons raised before they vanished from local omniscience.
Mat stepped past one of the women, one who actually startled with shock, and cut her throat in passing. She collapsed, grabbing desperately for something at her waist. Mat stopped her without looking, taking her arm when she moved to lash out.
The man who had ducked twisted out of the way, clearing space for his friends to open fire, and Mat’s instinct screamed at him to run. These people were too fast, too calm, too organized. He snatched the woman’s phase shield from her belt, clipping it without looking.
Mat ran, ducking and weaving as best he could. But the hallways weren’t broad, and the soldiers' aim was sharp. His phase shield flickered just before he reached a bend, and four energy bolts slammed into his back, weakened but not stopped.
He stumbled, which he smoothed out into a roll thanks to his enhanced balance. Mat hissed in pain, forcing himself upright a moment later. Already he could feel his medibots repair the damage, though they hadn’t finished with his old wounds.
Time was ticking, now, but he was also closer. Nova guided his way, and he hunted through the ship. Minutes passed as he ran, his gait smooth and his breathing even despite the pain. For a moment, he relished in the feeling. A year ago, almost precisely now, he couldn't have sprinted through even one of these hallways, let alone dozens.
Finally, and after avoiding yet another patrol, he slowed. The door opened to reveal a set of holding cells, dozens this time, and guarded by a pair of bored looking men. That boredom evaporated the moment he arrived, but Mat was already closing the distance. The first man went for his gun rather than his sword, a mistake he could only regret for mere moments. The second did go for a sword.
Mat stepped to the side, avoiding a stab, and took the limb. The guard screamed where he should have created distance, and then he was dead.
Bladeslaves these people were not.
He turned to the cells, and unlike in the domus, these possessed locked doors. Doors thick enough a moleblade would need time to cut through. The second last clicked open thanks to Nova, and Mat turned to it. Inside was a small, dark, cramped space, without a bed or even a single piece of padding.
Bea looked at him, her face gaunt but eyes calm. Mat tilted his head, wondering if words needed to be exchanged. Then her eyes flickered to the dead guards, and she smiled.
Mat extended a hand, and after a long moment, Bea took it.
Afterword
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