Copper Rain

Copper Rain Part 3

The Past

The bruising healed, and the bleeding stopped, but the embarrassment stuck around. I'd had a reputation in the quadrant I grew up in, and it warned everyone that I was not to be fucked with. Now here I was getting taken down by a hairdresser. Part of me was glad I was with the military, as the shit I would've received from my gang mates would've made me think about throwing myself from the nearest high place. And no amount of med-tech can save a person from a skull splattering heavy-gee fall on Heladon.

So I thought about where I'd ended up. I needed to adapt to get the most out of this. I needed to reprioritize to survive and flourish. Some of the people here I knew, but most I didn't. All of us pretty much looked the same—tough, muscle-bound fuckups with bleeding scalps, battered bodies and overdeveloped attitudes. We came from similar backgrounds—we were the corridor kids who had the run of the lower decks. We weren't the lowest of the low, at least we had legit IDs and access to basic amenities. But we couldn't legally get into the upper levels, to the places where the Enshrined lived and cavorted. The Enshri and their augmented existences were way beyond us Skulkers.

I now had more shit to prove. My Mothers had served hard, and their records were exemplary, but they still couldn't break the cycle, and they'd finished up back where they started with the Skulkers. And the military augmentations that made them so effective had come at a cost, and it was now up to me to pay. So here I was, with a bunch of other down and out freaks, trying to pretend that we knew what the hell was going on. Not so different from growing up in the corridors, then.

I sized up the folks around me. Dali and Ines I knew from the corridors. Both were hard cases, but we ran in different gangs. We'd had a little history, but nothing that couldn't be thrashed out on the combat floor, so that's what we did—not that we had a choice.

The training officer handed us off to the drill sergeant who, surprise, surprise, had also doubled as the barber. I hated him on second sight, and he soooo fucking loved that I hated him. He'd been training shits like us for the best part of a decade and liked nothing better than to cut us down to size. So the first thing he did was have us fight each other.

"Hand-to-hand," said the sergeant. "No weapons. Last one standing gets a prize."

The combat mats were thin pads of tightly coiled wire. Take a tumble on one of these, and they'd be picking slices of your flesh out of the mesh for a week. I did a quick head count. There were about twenty of us. I needed to reduce the odds. I glanced across at Ines and Dali. Different gangs, but same quadrant—as natural a fit as I was going to get in the circumstances. Dali was whip thin with corded muscle and fast. He could dish it out, but I guessed taking a hit would hurt him. Ines was magnificent, all tough muscle and scarred skin. I'd seen her in action, and I remembered what had happened to our guy. We could make this work. I flicked a couple of generic gang hand signals. They didn't hesitate. We'd sort out the broad brush strokes of combat in the initial clash, then work on the finer points when the punches started flying. So what the fuck was I waiting for?

I strode into the center of the mat and coldcocked the first person I came across. She went down hard and stayed there. I ducked as I sensed someone trying to return the favor. The blow whistled over my head leaving him exposed to a thumping blow to the gut from Ines followed up by a knee to the face from Dali. Two down. Two more steps from me and I slipped my arms up and under the shoulders of a muscle-bound kid who was wildly swing around, looking for someone to hurt. I hoisted him high above my head, dropped to my knee, gasped as I felt the wire shred my flesh and wrenched him down. The extra heavy-gee environment smashed him straight across my thigh, and I felt something give in the small of his back. He screamed as he writhed around, the coiled wire floor slicing streamers of flesh from his damaged torso.

By now the three of us had formed a tight triangle, each of us facing out, looking for threats and opportunities. I knew this was a business we were a part of and maximizing our strengths and minimizing our weaknesses was going to be the best way to get the job done.

"On me," muttered Ines.

A knot of bodies had formed in a corner of the mat. They were desperately trying to organize, but everyone wanted to be in charge. Rule number one in a fight like this. No one's in charge. Trust the people you're with, or you're going down hard. Ines had a plan, so it was her lead. We shuffled towards the group who further compacted like the human sheep they were. But it wasn't bad move, as it made it difficult for us to single anyone out.

"Shit," Ines complained.

Now I had an idea.

"Ines," I whispered. "You've got point, cover us."

She nodded. "Dali," I continued. "Up and over. You good for this? Because it's going to hurt."

"It was always going to hurt," he told me. "And now you owe me."

"Owe it is," I confirm.

Ines had dragged our little triangle to within two yards of the milling herd. A couple of wannabe alphas lunged but stopped when they saw she wasn't buying the bluff. I turned my back to her, scrunched to a bleeding knee and linked my hands together forming a stirrup.

"Dali," I said, motioning upwards with my chin.

The fucker smiled, took two enormous steps, planted his right foot into my linked hands, and I heaved. He spiked up over Ines and executed a double midair roll, all while screaming like the hounds of hell were chewing on his scrawny ass. He then straightened and arrowed straight into the mass and shit began to unravel.

When I said Dali was quick, I had no fucking idea. But the numbers were against him. He slashed and kicked and punched as Ines and I waded into the maelstrom. The mob that wasn't involved sensed an opportunity and came hammering in. But they lost. And so kind of did we. Dali went down under weight of numbers before we could get to him. But he went down in style. Ines and I carved the rest of the fuckers down, but it was a team of two not three that prevailed.

Once the pack was a groaning mess on the wire mat I stopped, wiped a hand across a bloodied mouth and smiled. Job done. I turned to face the sarge. Fuck him. Then I heard Ines.

"I hate coming second."

I turned and thud, got a fist the size of a dinner plate across the chops. Ines looked over me as I collapsed, and, just before I passed out, I had a thought.

I wonder what the prize is.

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