Chaos Orbit

Eris couldn't say which was going to kill her first; the hangover, or the hired killers.

“Don’t move,” said the first one.

“Turn around,” said the other.

“You guys are professionals, I can tell.” Eris would’ve rolled her eyes but the way she felt she worried they’d flop out and roll away, disgusted with her.

“What’s that?” asked the first voice.

“Don’t move, or turn around? Gotta pick one. Can’t have both.” The gun pressed harder into the back of Eris’s neck, its muzzle chinking against her necklace.

“Turn,” said a voice. She wasn’t sure which, but she obeyed.

Two guys. Big, nasty specimens. Eris squinted past the gun now jabbing her in the throat, to the man behind it. Gorilla One, she thought.

“Look, either of you got a pain patch? Or a mint? For me, not for you.” Gorilla One scowled impressively.

“You talk a lot,” he said, “for someone about to die.”

——

Magskating was both illegal, and something all children below the Midway learned to do before their fifth birthday. So, woken by a throbbing head, the need to sweat out last night’s celebration had driven Eris off her bunk and up through the scythe to the observation deck before first light.

Obs was deserted, still shrouded in eclipse night, and muscle memory guided Eris’s hands as she first activated the safety magnets on her boots, then reversed their polarity. Her body instinctively balanced, used to the shift, as repulsive magnetic forces lifted her off the metal floor.

Overhead, invisible in the dark, loomed the weight of Citadel. Her heart danced at the thought of it.

“Soon,” she heard herself whisper. Soon she would do what almost no one born below the sphere lived to do. She’d walk the streets of Citadel. One step closer to her dream.

She leaned into the glass wall, smooth and chill against her aching head, and looked down into blackness so complete she half doubted her eyes were open. Listening to the music of her pulse, she waited.

Her world filled with light. Pure, white light that burned all thought away to peaceful silence. She watched as, countless miles below, deep black gave way to swathes of cloud, marbled swirls of blue and green. Jagged spines of rocky grey. Slashes of bold yellow and sun-burned brown. She let the names drift through her mind; forest, ocean, mountain, desert.

Sunrise framed the planet of her ancient ancestors in a crooked halo, and her hungry eyes searched for details. Snow-capped mountains, the specks and dots of islands. Vast stretches of rainforest a shade of green that barely existed on Harbour Omega station. Nowhere outside the Fifth Ring agricurve, where their food was gown, or Citadel, where rumour said the streets were lined with trees.

Soon. Eris shivered. Her hand drifted to the necklace at her throat.

She shook herself, eager now to feel the rush of air against her skin. Standard daybreak was still hours away. The booths and stalls, already set up for the Bloodlight festival, were deserted. Tearing her eyes from the Earth, she didn’t bother to check her surroundings.

Which was how the gun at her back took her so completely by surprise.

——

“You know what I do for a living, right mate?” Eris asked Gorilla One. She was deeply wishing she’d got the chance to work off the headache now building in strength at her temples.

“SkelWar ain’t to the death,” Gorilla One said. So he did know who she was, she thought. She snorted.

“Please, you and I both know that’s a technicality. How many deaths this season alone?” A lot. And that wasn’t including the maiming, general mutilation. An occasional mangling. That was the appeal.

“I saw you once,” the other guy piped up. Gorilla Two, Eris decided, not in the mood to be any cleverer than that. He moved closer, inadvertently nudging Gorilla One and pressing the gun deeper into Eris’s windpipe. She looked down at the weapon, ignoring a stab of pain behind her eyes, and saw it was an electromag plasma pistol. She lingered over it, the engineer in her unable to resist quality tech. No matter how she discovered it.

“Watch it, Lok,” Gorilla One said. “I don’t want to blow her away before I’m good and ready.”

“When you came through the Six.” Gorilla Two, real name apparently Lok, wasn’t listening. He was still goggling at Eris, damp eyed. “You destroyed that Sixer. I hate greycoats. What was his name? Cataclysm?”

“Ravager,” Eris grinned. “And thank you, Lok. That’s mighty kind.”

“Can’t imagine you were welcome in the Wolf Den after that. You demolished him.” Lok looked a little drunk on the memory of it. Eris widened her eyes and gave a theatrical shiver.

“You’re not wrong.” Her time in Omega’s prison and security ring had indeed become less comfortable immediately after she beat their favourite in his home arena.

“Stop that.” Gorilla One glared at his friend. No, Eris realised, his brother. Same mountainous shape, same pale eyes above broken noses planted in reddish complexions.

“What?” Lok asked, defensive.

“Flirting with the target. I came to shoot her and toss her body out an airlock, not listen to you fall in love. I won’t spend a whole rotation listening to you complain she was nice to you.”

“She does seem nice,” Lok said.

“Lok,” Eris said. “I couldn’t trouble you for that patch could I? Splitting headache. Up late over last night. My medic, if you can believe that, has this gin still he built out of a dead O2 recycler. His ex is a Green, sells him spices straight out of the Agricurve. Smoothest hit you’ll ev—”

“Do you ever shut up?” asked Gorilla One.

“That was some show last night,” Lok said, as if his brother hadn’t spoken. “That move with the heel knife, when did you add that? Never seen anything like it. The look on that guy’s face. Viper? Ha! More like Whimper.” They shared a grin at the defeated gladiator’s expense. Until Gorilla One audibly ground his teeth and Lok straightened his face. Eris winked at him, and caught him shooting her a cheeky smile under lowered eyebrows.

“I’m sorry…” She left Gorilla One to fill the silence, and he did.

“Striker.”

“I’m sorry, Striker. Please, continue. You were about to shoot me in the throat.”

“That’s right,” Striker said, baring his teeth at her. Crooked teeth, grey as tombstones. The gums mottled black like a dog’s. Signs of Demonik addiction, Eris noted absently.

“Well, it seems there’s nothing left to do but pull the trigger. Unless you’d like to tell me who hired you? It’d be nice to know who’s killing me before I die.”

Striker growled.

“Nice try, but that’s not going to happen. Now, normally I’d ask if you have any last words, but I don’t want to still be standing here when the sun gasps its last breath.” He grinned, nastily. “Only when you do.”

“Good one,” Eris said. Striker chuckled. And pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

——

“When I ask where you got this, are you going to lie?” Aishi asked, frowning at Eris.

“If a liar tells you they’re not going to lie, can you believe them?” Eris asked, aiming wide eyes at the older woman.

“Don’t you look at me like that. It doesn’t work on me like it did your mother.” Eris leaned up to kiss her cheek, but she was busy pulling back her hair with a twist of copper wire. Or pretending to be.

“Truth, Eris. Now,” Aishi said. Eris cracked a mint between her molars, considering before she spoke. She shrugged.

“From a gun I came across.”

“And where was this gun?” Aishi asked, looking up to spear Eris with a dark brown gaze. Eris sighed.

“Fine, but you’re not allowed to make a thing out of it. Ok?” Eris threw her arms in the air, but Aishi only frowned harder.

“It was trying to kill me,” Eris said. “Happy now?”

“Thrilled.”

“Who was trying to kill you?” asked a voice above their heads, making them jump.

“G.D. Get down from there,” Eris said. A small girl half floated, half fell from a roost of pipes in the ceiling. Eris mussed her head, causing a pair of ancient-style aviator goggles to flop over the small face, and G.D. to mime biting her hand. A bulldog snorted into action from the corner, grouching over to defend G.D’s honour. She kissed his nose and smooshed his wrinkles.

“Good boy, Ballistix,” she said, and Eris thought she’d forgotten the subject until she asked again.

“So, who was trying to kill you?”

“No one,” Eris said. “Nothing a little sleight of hand couldn’t deal with.” She produced a dog treat from behind G.D’s ear. G.D. giggled, took the treat and asked Ballistix to roll over. The dog gazed at her until she gave in and handed over the biscuit anyway. Eris shook her head, smiling.

“So that’s where this came from,” Aishi said, palming the solenoid. “An electromag pistol.” Eris sighed again.

“He didn’t deserve a weapon like that anyway,” she muttered. “Amateur couldn’t even figure why it wouldn’t fire after I pulled the solenoid.”

“He shot at you?! Eris…” Aishi looked serious now. Serious and angry. Eris waved her hands like a pair of white flags.

“It was nothing, Ai. He was a blown circuit. Pure meatware and no plug-ins.”

“Still. You should have alerted Sentinel,” Aishi said. Eris rolled her eyes, then regretted it as her head throbbed. She pressed a hand to the patch on her upper arm, willing it to work faster.

“I think we’ve had enough of Sixers for a while, don’t you? They’re still sore over Ravager.”

“And what if the owner of this comes back for you?” Aishi hefted the solenoid at Eris, who snatched it out of the air.

“Since when have I needed greycoat help in a fight? The only reason I didn’t take these jokers head on was I want to be pretty for Bloodlight.”

“Jokers, plural?” Aishi said, an ominous tone entering her voice.

“I… yes, there were two of them.”

“You are not invincible, Eris. Especially not outside the arena.” It was Aishi’s turn to sigh. “I suppose I don’t need to ask what you were doing on obs before first light.”

“Walking off last night,” Eris shrugged.

“Illegal magskating. Ogling Elysian Earth, obsessing about the Wish. The usual.” A new voice, and everyone turned to find a lean, bare-chested boy slumped against the door frame. He held a t-shirt full of ice pressed to his head.

“Ouch,” G.D. whispered.

“I’ve seen algae filter ponds better looking than you,” Eris said.

“Don’t talk about eukaryotes right now, E. Unless you want the forge to get a sudden paint job.”

“Well, that’s revolting. Pull yourself together, Fix.” Eris held out the solenoid the way G.D. had held out the dog biscuit. Fix perked up, pushing off the wall.

“It fits?”

“It’s perfect,” Eris said.

“So she’s really finished. Phoenix is finished?”

“No,” Aishi said, pausing to light a cigar from the glowing index fingertip of her welding glove. “She needs testing, once we place that thing. And even then, once she’s complete you’ll need practice before taking her in the arena. She’s dangerous.” Aishi fielded Eris’s glare with ease, and a single raised eyebrow.

“So am I,” Eris said.

——

Moving day crashed down on their heads for the next few hours, and Eris lost herself in the work of tidying her bunk and securing the forge. She was daring to hope the subject of assassination had been dropped, when a shadow fell over her and the gutted ion flux drive she was trying to pack away.

“There’s this crazy rumour going round someone tried to riddle you with holes this morning.”

Eris looked up.

“Green today, I like the green.” She smiled at the girl’s emerald hair. As usual, it matched the iris of her prosthetic left eye. Twin scars, slicing through the left side of her face, shone pearl white in the forge’s cold light.

“It makes Fix nauseous when he’s hungover, which brings me joy. Don’t change the subject.” The girl fisted her hands on her hips and settled into a battle stance Eris knew she’d picked up watching her in the arena. She hid a grin.

“Easy, Shade. Everyone’s being a little sensitive, don’t you think? Violent combat is just another rotation for me. For all of us.”

“That’s inside the arena, E.” Shade wasn’t budging. Eris climbed to her feet.

“Feast your eyes,” she said, turning in a slow circle. Posing, flexing her arms and tilting her hips. “Not. A. Scratch.” When she looked back she saw it had worked, Shade was surpassing a smile.

“Did you even find out who hired them?” she asked.

“Too busy stealing their stuff and running away,” Fix chimed in from across the forge. “That’s our Chaos.” He only used her Warname when he was teasing her. They’d picked it together years ago, when he was her only forge crew. Because her mother had named both her and her sister after ancient Goddesses of Dead Earth mythology, and because it had turned out to suit her in ways her mother couldn’t have predicted. The love-child of a change engine and a wrecking ball, so Fix was fond of saying.

Eris tried to locate him in the forest of engine parts, old armour moulds, the standing trunks of hydraulic floor jacks and hanging limbs of ceiling-mounted cranes.

“Where in the—” a hand appeared between the stacked bins of bolts and valves and rolls of wire, and the curving end of Shade’s computing bay.

“Don’t touch my stuff,” Shade said, frowning at the waving fingers.

“Change your hair and I’ll leave your wires alone,” Fix said. Eris snorted, covering it with her hand when Shade scowled at her.

“How is it that such a gifted medic can’t cure his own hangover?” Shade asked. But her fingers drifted over the interface grafted to the inside of her forearm.

“I have a delicate system,” Fix said. It was Shade’s turn to snort. But fondly, Eris noticed.

“Meaning that girl who gives you that tea she gets from the Green broke up with you?” Shade asked. There was a silence from behind the storage bins. She smirked, but her hair brightened to sunflower yellow, her left eye changing to match.

“Don’t think you can get out of answering the question,” Fix said, rising from amid the ordered madness, and frowning at Eris.

“I got their first names, I’m not a total black hole.” They both stared at her, waiting. “Lok and Striker,” she said. “There, can we let it go now. I keep telling you it was—”

“The Sankari twins,” said a voice overhead. Everyone jumped, then searched the high corners of the room.

“G.D.” Eris said, spotting her wedged into a shelf above a tool rack. The girl was curled around Ballistix, asleep in the curve of her body. Eris wondered how she’d got the dog up there.

“Get down from there,” they all three said at once. But G.D. only grinned down on them.

“The Sankari twins are hired killers,” she. said. “They were born on the Six. Grew up to be work camp guards, until they got caught dealing Demonik to the prisoners. The greycoats think someone in the First has been sponsoring them; they get out of everything pinned on them.” She settled back on her shelf, looking as if the secrets tasted like sherbet.

“Do I want to know how you know that?” Eris asked.

“Heard some greycoats bitching about it when we were in the Wolf Den. Don’t worry,” she said as Fix opened his mouth, “they didn’t see me.” Eris eyed the height of the shelf.

“I bet they didn’t.”

“Who do they work for, these…” Fix began.

“Sankari twins,” G.D. finished with relish. “No one knows who’s backing them. But they work for anyone who can pay the taps. They’re not picky.”

“And the greycoats can’t do anything about it?” Shade asked. G.D. shrugged, almost rolling off the shelf. All three of the others lunged toward her, but she caught herself and settled deeper into her hiding place. Ballistix opened one eye, saw the girl was fine, snorted, and went back to sleep.

“So,” Fix said, digging his thumbs into his temples. “Hired murderers backed by a First tried to kill you, and they’re too slutty for us to know who hired them.”

“Don’t be like that,” Eris said. “Everything’s fine. Better than fine, we got the last part we needed for Phoenix out of it.”

“At least we know why, even it we don’t know who,” Shade said. Fix and Eris both stared. G.D’s wide eyes shone from the shadows of her shelf.

“Well,” Shade said, rolling her mismatched eyes. “Do we think it’s a coincidence this happens the day after Eris makes it to the finals? The first gladiator from the Ninth Ring in the history of SkelWar to get this far. They’re trying to wipe her out before Bloodlight puts her name on the wall.”

Fix cursed, long and creatively. But Eris couldn’t think of anything smart to say. Shade was right. Come Bloodlight, the whole station would be watching her. Watching all the qualified gladiators. If someone wanted her vanished, wanted it to look like she’d bailed out of the finals, they’d missed their chance.

Which meant, what? That it was over? Eris doubted it.

She had to face the truth.

Someone badly wanted her dead. And she was about to go head-to-head with every one of the deadliest fighters on the station.

This was only the beginning.