Solo missions

[Manuk Gagak]

The spasms stopped, and Manuk stepped back, releasing the body, allowing it to collapse at her feet.

She blinked and narrowed her own still-burning eyes, clutching her tooth in her hand. Her vision was already starting to come back in murky shades of gun-metal grey and metallic blue. The process was infuriatingly slow, but it was happening. There was no reason not to assume that within a few hours, she would be fully recovered, and when–

The floor began to shake.

Manuk whipped around, scanning the depths of her cell for the vibration’s source. From all around her, a ratcheting cacophony had taken hold of the cell, the sound of massive chains being dragged through the sprockets and pulleys of some vast piece of clockwork. It filled the entire chamber, rising to a deafening roar. Everything around her had begun to shift and tilt. Manuk reached out, fingertips confirming what she’d already begun to suspect.

The walls were closing in.

 

[Manuk Gagak]

This was no illusion, no side effect of crippled vision. The cell itself was literally changing shape – the individual steel plates that formed the walls and floors and ceiling all overlapping and sliding together like great mechanical scales, curving inward as the slant of its floor became steeper, transforming into a kind of bowl, opening in the middle to create a funnel.

Reaching backward, Manuk grabbed the handhold bolted into the bench behind her, clutching it for balance and holding on tight. All around her, the grating howl and shriek of metal got louder as a hole opened in the middle of the floor.

She furrowed her brow, squinting down into it. Her vision had become clear enough now that she could make out the lifeless corpse of her former attacker, the thing in its broken and now utterly useless organic armour sliding downward toward the centre of the cell. It sagged forward on a streaking smear of its own black blood, a slave to simple physics, its passage into oblivion followed in short order by the limp, decapitated body of the snake-staff.

 

[Manuk Gagak]

Manuk watched as warrior and staff both slipped through the hole and out of sight into a bath of darkness almost as deep as the one from which she herself had just emerged. For an instant – was it real? – she thought she saw something pale and eyeless reaching up to suck the bodies down.

The hole closed again and the floor shifted itself, smoothing out and becoming flat once more. The clanking and shaking stopped. The cell around her had resumed its previous rectilinear shape.

Somewhere in front of her, a panel of red lights blinked and went green.

She waited as the cell began to carry her upward.

 

[Manuk Gagak]

Stepping inside his office, the prison warden flicked his gaze up at the bank of holoscreens that ran the length of the wall like a jury of accusatory eyes. A few of the screens were dedicated surveillance feeds, displaying different areas of the prison – the mess hall, the med-bay, the warren of concourses, tunnels, and catwalks that branched like spokes off the vast open gallery area where inmates milled about before and after matches.

The majority of the screens, however, represented incoming calls waiting for him, a queue of holonet conversations with bookies, bureaucrats, and the heads of various gambling combines, all no doubt in response to last night’s bout.

“Good morning, warden,” his admin droid announced cheerily as he crossed the office. “And how are we feeling this morning?”

 

[Manuk Gagak]

“Living the dream.” The warden settled in behind the central console, where his morning coffee was already waiting. Leaning forward, he fingerprinted in the biometric code to bring up his morning schedule, watching the vivid swaths of data-wash scrolling over the tablets in front of him. “Pull up the holovid of last night’s match, would you?”

“Of course,” the droid responded, and turned its head to the row of waiting calls. “However, as you can imagine, we already have several representatives from the casinos and–”

“They can wait. Is the holovid ready?”

“Certainly,” the droid said crisply. It chirped and swivelled, and its dedicated holoprojector fluttered to life. Behind his desk, the warden sat back, put his feet up, and took a sip of coffee as the entire wall of his office filled with the footage of last night’s fight.

This would be the third time he’d watched it.

 

[Manuk Gagak]

He made it a habit to view every match at least twice – once live, as it was happening, and then later, with a more analytical eye for the strengths and weaknesses of the individual fighters. What he’d discovered over hundreds of fights was that sometimes, upon repeated viewings, the fight itself would come alive, to become something bigger than either of the combatants, a kind of composite presence knitted together of sweat, desperation, and perhaps unexpected elegance, and with a personality all its own.

Last night’s former champion had been a particularly monstrous species. Two metres tall and covered with ritualistic scars, brandishing some kind of living staff and little else, the inmate had arrived here six months earlier with a shipment of other convicts, two of whom it had already dispatched in transit. Since that time the thing had defied all attempts at classification. It had screeched and chattered a language none of them recognised, and systematically slaughtered everything pitted against it.

On the other side was the newly arrived inmate - a petite yet athletic human, blonde and quite pretty. Even now, after repeated viewings, the warden couldn’t take his eyes off her. In the final moments, when the challenger destroyed the serpent-staff, literally ripping off its head and feeding it to her opponent, she’d felt a dark tremor of excitement that she hadn’t experienced in ages. It was, she supposed, the same primal fascination that kept the gamblers across the galaxy betting millions of credits as they gathered to watch live holofeeds of the contests.

 

[Manuk Gagak]

When the fight was over, he froze the holo on the face of the new champion, her pale skin and lilac eyes glaring back at her. Gazing at it, he took a thoughtful sip of his coffee.

“She took back her tooth,” he said finally.

The droid’s head swivelled back toward her. “I beg your pardon?”

“Our new champion. Before she killed her opponent, she took back her tooth.”

“Perhaps it is customary for her species to–”

“What’s her name?” he asked. “The new inmate?”

“Prisoner OK-310371,” the droid answered back. “I’ve already taken the liberty of uploading all relevant data onto your tablet.”

The warden punched the code into the console in front of him, watching his new champion’s file scroll across the screen. It read:

Inmate: OK-310371

Name: Unknown

Species: Human

Gender: Female

Height: 1.75 meters

Mass: 70 kg

Eyes: Lilac

Prior Occupation: Unknown

Charged With: Murder

“That’s it?” the warden stabbed the cursor down, but the screen was blank. “Where’s the rest of it?”

“There is no more.”

 

[Manuk Gagak]

“Where did she come from? Can somebody at least tell me that?”

“She was apprehended on a routine sweep on Lothal, where local authorities identified her from an outstanding murder charge. Initial lab cultures and blood work are still pending.” The droid clicked and whirred toward him, photoreceptors brightening. “So far she has eluded any more detailed classification. Would you like me to order a full psychiatric workup?”

The warden considered before shaking his head. “No. Not yet. For now let’s see how long she lasts. She wouldn’t be the first big noise to come through here, get lucky and pull a quick fade.”

“Of course,” the droid said. “If there’s nothing else, I have the Gambling Commissioner for you.”

The warden found himself reaching up instinctively to check his reflection in the nearest screen, sweeping his fingers through his hair. “Put her through.”

 

[Manuk Gagak]

“Very good.”

The holovid switched over to a life-sized image of a silver-haired, distinguished-looking woman in a double-faced silk greatcoat that tapered smoothly down to her ankles. She may have been approaching sixty, but her olive-eyed, almost tropically tanned face appeared twenty years younger, even furrowed with the lines of impatience that she wore now.

“Commissioner,” the warden said, raising his cup in mock salute. “You’re looking wonderful as always. One day you’ll have to tell me your secret for never aging a day. Is it dietary?”

“Yes,” the commissioner said dryly. “I’ve eliminated all gratuitous flattery from my diet.” That famous scowl deepened, drawing deep brackets along either side of her mouth. “Now, I trust that takes care of the pleasantries between us?”

“Mm.” The warden sipped coffee and nodded. “Apparently so.”

“Good. You’ve kept me waiting quite long enough, warden, and regardless of what you might have heard, the galaxy does not revolve around you.”

“Sadly, no.” the warden smiled. “Well, give me a moment to put on my penitent cap, and then you can tell me what I’ve done today to offend the delicate sensibilities of the Gambling Commission.”

“This isn’t an occasion for levity, warden. Exactly what sort of operation are you running out there?”

 

[Manuk Gagak]

The warden’s eyebrows spiked. “My goodness, we are formal this morning.” And then, folding his hands on his desk, “All right. Well, as you know, commissioner, this establishment embodies a profitable gaming industry while providing a valuable service to millions of–”

“I think we can bypass the investment propaganda. I want to know about that new inmate from last night’s bout. And I want to know exactly how many credits you won when she tore her opponent apart.”

“Me personally?”

“Don’t play coy with me,” the commissioner snapped. “You’ll discover that I have neither the time nor the temperament for it.”

“Oh dear. And I liked to think that I’d already discovered everything there was to know about you. I take it that your constituents weren’t satisfied with the outcome of the match?”

“To say the least,” the commissioner said. “And this morning you’ve got odds-makers and casinos from every planet yanking their hair out over this business. Frankly, I don’t blame them. Your reigning champion, whatever that thing was, was favoured by an outlandishly large advantage. It had won so many straight fights in a row and swiftly. But that human girl beat her handily.”