PART 1 - THE STAR ARK

CHAPTER 01 — AIRLOCK

Austin Flint steered his wheelchair through the cargo hold in search of the mafia bar called The Airlock.

“Miserable shithole,” he muttered, wiping sweat from his forehead. It was damn hot down here. No surprise, given the ark’s nuclear reactor underfoot.

The Lowers had transformed the Star Ark’s cargo hold into a stadium-sized shantytown. Stacks of metal crates, carrier platforms, and storage drums lined the massive compartment. A walkway of interconnected planks zigzagged through and around metal shacks. Animated kiosks sprung up every few feet, illuminating the high-tech trash dump where the poorest and most destitute passengers of the generation ship called home.

He maneuvered the chair up a flimsy metal walkway. As he turned a bend, the wheel slammed against something, nearly launching him out of the seat and making the nearby shack vibrate.

“Shit,” he gasped. That was sure to wake up some rotten-toothed asshole.

He jerked the joystick and backed up, examining the left wheel. A piece of rebar stuck out of the edge of the walkway.

He scowled. Damn place was a minefield of sharp hazards. Very far from the handicap accessible config of the upper compartments. But then, those areas of the ship were actually meant to be inhabited.

Clanking footsteps drew his gaze upward. A gaunt man in a stained wife beater appeared on a balcony of rusty planks. Like many Lowers, his eyes were yellow hewn, likely from the liver cancer so common in his kind. “Hey! We’re tryin’ to sleep here, ya crippled asshole!”

Flint jammed the joystick forward. He didn’t relish getting stabbed in this metal ghetto. “Sorry,” he said over his shoulder.

The Lower did a double-take. “Hey, I know you.”

Flint turned to reply just as a billboard thirty feet behind the guy’s shack flashed to life. “No, I don’t think you do,” he said, catching a life-size glimpse of himself in a VR headset.

BATTLE SMITE

PRO CIRCUIT SEASON 18 CHAMPIONSHIP

Austin “Flintlock” Flint versus Dexter “Vardock_da_King” Vardock

Broadcast Live on FleetRec.TV TONIGHT!

The Lower spun around and pointed at the image. “Hey, that’s you!” the man yelled with annoying excitement. “I bet five-hundred Scrip on you tonight.”

But Flint was already well enough away by now. “Waste of money for you then,” he mumbled well out of earshot.

The trail tapered into a corridor shielding him from the bright lights of the shantytown. Stacks of metal crates with the faded symbol of the Star Ark Project on their corrugated sides appeared in long rows on either side of him. The light became sparser the deeper he went. Soon even the noise faded, replaced by the mechanical whirring of the wheelchair. A few minutes into near-total darkness, a dimly-lit clearing came into view. And there it was.

The bar—if you could call it that—sat under a high alcove lit with emergency lights. Rows of seats positioned around a misshapen slab of wood that looked like pasted together ends of loading ramps. It was positioned on a platform in front of a velvet curtain held in place by two lever arms of a giant loading drone. The sign under the alcove read, CAUTION: AIRLOCK.

He snorted. Seemed the name of the place was taken from its literal location—right in front of the exit to the ship. That should have been obvious, in retrospect. But when you spend your life on a spaceship, the idea an exit is inconceivable.

A single lower woman was behind the bar wiping a glass with a towel. She glanced up at him, her sickly eyes almost glowing. “Help you?”

“Looking for McCormick.”

“And you are?”

“Austin Flint.”

She treated him to a grin full of necrotic looking teeth. “Ah, yes. The Battle Smite player.”

“Yes.”

“Just a sec.”

She moved behind the curtain, and he again looked at the alcove over the bar. Interesting people, these lowers. They build houses out of storage crates and saloons out of loading drones. Not the safest locations, but it’s not like better real estate was available.

After a minute, three men emerged from the curtain. Two were in black pressure suits, wearing partial VR goggles concealing one eye. Small submachine guns were holstered on belts. The third man didn’t appear in person. Likely due to his status as the most wanted man on the Star Ark, his life-size image was cast in pixels from a rolling holographic projector. He was tall and thin, with a well-trimmed goatee and a lace up red tunic. The medieval look was completed by strapped leather boots and a sheathed sword at his right hip.

Flint suppressed a frown. Seemed he caught the leader of the star Ark’s criminal underworld in the middle of a virtual Dungeons and Dragons game. Not unusual, of course. Such forms of recreation were common on a close-confined ship traveling through deep space, where traditional forms of recreation weren’t possible. But if he was going to appear virtually, Flint might as well have stayed home and did this through FleetNet.

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“Mr. Flint,” Dorn McCormick said. “A pleasure to finally meet you.”

“Likewise,” he mumbled.

The mob boss popped a squat on the nearest stool. Or at least his hologram did. The projector whirred sideways and cast his shimmering pixels onto the stool like he was really in the room. “Your brother is ill.”

Flint blinked. “Excuse me?”

“That’s why you need the money. Your brother Ezekiel has terminal cancer, and you cannot afford the immunotherapy drugs.”

Flint hesitated. Zeeke’s illness wasn’t public knowledge. And it was hardly anyone else’s business. Even so, lying to a man with McCormick’s reputation seemed like a bad idea. “Yes. The Fleet pharmacy is almost out, and they’re charging exorbitant prices.”

McCormick’s face soured. “It’s a sad state of affairs when essential medications become so expensive even an extremely wealthy gamer has trouble getting them. Can’t imagine the average Lower has any access. But then medical care for the people down here, where most of the disease burden on the ship exists, has always been abominable.”

Flint had no reply to that. Whether he was supposed to feel guilty, he wasn’t sure. He’d been crippled most of his life and owned little sympathy for anyone but himself and his brother.

“So, will these drugs cure your brother?” McCormick asked.

“No. They halt progression of the disease.”

“For how long?”

“For as long as necessary,” Flint said. “Or until we land on New World. They have all kinds of cancer cures there. He just has to survive till then.”

McCormick nodded thoughtfully. “I see. And how does your brother feel about this?”

Flint frowned. Did this murdering thief care about his brother’s feelings? “About what?”

“The treatment.”

“Doesn’t matter how he feels. He’ll die without it, and that’s not happening.”

“I mean, I personally wouldn’t take the treatment. Not when there’s so little supply. When so many sick children and babies go without it.”

Flint scowled. “I didn’t come here to chat about my brother. I came here to make a deal. We gunna do that or what?”

The goons exchanged a glance. Probably not used to hearing someone talk to the boss like that.

McCormick stared at him a beat, and Flint held his gaze. Finally, the mobster shrugged. “The latest odds have you beating Vardock tonight, but only slightly. They’re giving you plus-two as of ten minutes ago.”

“Plus-two is a joke. Vardock hasn’t taken a single round from me all season.”

“You lost to him in the playoffs last year. Under very similar odds.”

Flint gritted his teeth. He pictured his Centaurion swinging a great sword through the air to finish Vardock’s Death Fairy in round five of the semifinals. Back then, before the more recent balancing patches, each finishing move against that overpowered-as-shit character had a 1-in-5 chance of reflecting damage back onto the dealer. Remembering his half-man, half-horse champion bursting into a thousand pieces brought the feeling of sheer rage flooding back. “I had that match in the bag. He got lucky playing a character everyone knew was fucking broken, and everyone except him refused to play out of simple sportsmanship.”

“Maybe,” McCormick said, nodding as though he wasn’t sure if he agreed. “But the fact remains. The lower the odds, the less I stand make.”

This didn’t sound good. “What do you mean?”

“I’ll give you five million Scrip to lose,” McCormick said. “I don’t think any higher is reasonable.”

Flint’s jaw clenched. Five million might buy only three months’ worth of medicine. “We agreed on twenty.”

“You have to understand, if I bet ten million on the match, I stand to win only six at current odds.”

“That’s six more than you have now.”

“Maybe. But I like doubling my investment on risky plays like this.”

“I’m going to lose the fucker on purpose. There’s zero risk.”

“You aren’t the only one strapped for cash,” McCormick said. “Might be someone made Vardock a similar offer. Can you imagine both of you trying to throw the match?”

Flint’s grip on the arm of his wheelchair tightened. He didn’t have time for this nonsense. Zeeke’s life was on the line. “This is bullshit.”

The mob boss crossed his arms and leaned back, making the scabbard on his hip sway. “I get the feeling you’re upset.”

“We agreed to twenty,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Agreements change.”

Flint’s vision danced in front of him. He was almost trembling with rage. “How about I give the police my hand terminal logs? Maybe the one where you first offered me twenty million Scrip to throw tonight’s match?”

McCormick’s smile vanished, and Flint instantly regretted the words. The two armed goons stared intently at their boss who was glaring daggers at him. Flint felt his rage give way to profound anxiety. “I mean—“ he hesitated. “Well, I just want—”

“Show this fool boy what an airlock looks like,” McCormick said, cutting him off.

His eyes widened as the goons rushed at lightning speed to yank his crippled form from the wheelchair. “What are you doing? Let go of me!” he screamed.

They dragged him past their bosses hologram and through the curtain. “Threaten me, kid? No one threatens me and lives.”

His breathing went ragged as he struggled against their hold. His feet dragged over a metal platform toward an enormous steel door. One goon smacked a red button on the wall, making red alarm lights flash madly overhead. “WARNING: DEPRESSURIZING,” a soulless mechanical voice said.

“Let me go!” Flint screamed. “Please! I didn’t mean it!”

The door opened to the sound of hot iron dropped into water. An empty platform appeared in front of another giant door. The door, he knew, leading into the cold, dark of interstellar space.

“No!” he screeched again.

He was thrown into the middle of the airlock, landing with a thud on his right hip. He tried to scramble forward on his hands. “I’m sorry,” he pleaded, trying in vain to escape. “Don’t do this…”

The red button was slapped again, and the giant door sealed with an echoing slam.

Fresh panic washed over him. This was it. His damn temper had ruined him, just like Uncle Geb always said it would.

A machine voice counted-down the seconds to his death. “THIRTY... TWENTY-NINE…”

Tears streamed across his face. He wasn’t ready to die. Wasn’t ready to let Zeeke die, either. “Please!” he screamed. “I didn’t mean it!”

“NINETEEN… EIGHTEEN…”

In the window port, McCormick’s face appeared. The mobster stared at him with a neutral expression. Almost like someone watching the garbage disposal cycle.

“ELEVEN… TEN…”

He squeezed his eyes shut and let the terror overwhelm him. Would he die instantly? Would he float into space and suffocate? Or was the ship moving so fast he would simply get crushed against the hull?

“FIVE… FOUR…”

He was about to die. And without the Excel infusions, Zeeke was going to die too. That knowledge more than anything filled him with hopeless despair. “I’m sorry, Zeeke. I’m so sorry…”

“THREE… TWO…”

The siren stopped.

“AIRLOCK OPENING ABORTED.”

The doors funneled open.

Flint opened his eyes a crack, squinting against the light, heart chattering in his teeth. The two goons stepped forward and grabbed him, much like the first time. His useless legs dragged as they pulled him from the airlock.

“Changed my mind,” McCormick said. “We’ll do it for twenty million.”

“Thank you,” Flint wheezed.

The mob boss considered that a moment. “Oh but it is I who should thank you.”

Flint tried to catch his breath. He didn’t have the slightest clue why the man let him live, but this wasn’t the time to ask.

They dragged him through the curtain and dropped him back in the wheelchair. Before disappearing, the mobster flashed him one final grin. “I’ll be seeing you soon, kid.”