Just One More Fight Read online

  His opponent was disappointed, clearly hoping for a bull rush. The neck. He was looking at Aspen’s neck. I have you now, showboat.

  Aspen surged forward head lowered as if giving the other what he wanted, but as he entered his opponent’s reach, he flexed his muscles and jumped upward. It wasn’t far, but the move caught the other unaware. He was surprised with his paws wide, ready to slash into the unprotected neck. Instead, they dug into Aspen’s haunches, where his back claws had already driven into the other beast’s chest.

  Aspen hammered his opponent with one claw across his face, blinding him, while the other claw dug deeply, just below the creature’s jaw. Aspen pulled hard, tearing open the side of his opponent’s neck. Aspen’s overhead slash carried across the beast’s face and around to the neck on the other side. He dug the claws in, trying to maintain his hold as the other started to collapse, twisting sideways, trying to roll, hoping to throw Aspen off. He wasn’t having it. He readied a back leg and when they hit, he braced himself against the ground, pinning the other tightly. With a final roar, he ripped through his opponent’s neck, nearly taking the beast’s head off.

  He knew that somewhere in a VR case, an Insectoid bled out, black ichor filling the case, making it unusable for anyone else. Once the medical staff saw the readings, they’d unhook the case and bury the fighter in it.

  Aspen walked away, but his hips hurt. They tightened and locked as he tried to keep moving. The lights showed the red of the brute’s hot-blood. He stopped trying to walk and sat down, caking moon dust into it, letting it coagulate and harden. It hurt, but he stood afresh and looked for her. The inside of the dome was lined with creatures that looked like his replicant, beasts all. Hot-bloods well out of their element.

  Her eyes were unmistakable. She watched but was never seen, until after the fight. Maybe she was worried he’d be killed, or maybe she relished the thought. He didn’t think the latter, although it stayed there, in his mind, tormenting him.

  “Aletha,” he stammered, letting the VR translate the language from his own through the beast, knowing that he’d understand when Aletha spoke as the VR reversed the process.

  “You’ve won. Again,” she said flatly.

  “For you. All my fights are for you,” he pleaded.

  “It’s deplorable,” she countered, yet she wouldn’t take her eyes from him. She reached out a paw to touch his hip. It had started leaking again, the creature’s life blood, as his own was inevitably dripping within his case. He wouldn’t let it go, wouldn’t log out and let the medical staff work on him. He had to talk with her.

  “How can I find you?” he asked in a hushed voice.

  She looked around quickly, seeing if anyone nearby had noted the words. “Don’t ask such things, you fool!” she countered. “It’s illegal and you know it. Maybe I look different out there and you wouldn’t like what you see.”

  Aspen shook his head, bringing a new level of pain to the wounds in his side. He grimaced and doubled over.

  “Take care of yourself, Chitters.” He struggled to straighten his beast’s body, finding that she was gone. He moaned, fell to his knees and passed out.

  Chapter 4

  The Pain

  Aspen awoke to a medical staff fully engrossed in putting his shattered body back together. The carapace over his secondary mind was completely gone. He wondered why they would remove it from the second most important segment of his Insectoid body. A nurse puffed something into his face that helped him not care about the other work happening.

  Chitters, she said, he thought to himself as he drifted on a cloud across a morning sky. I’ve never been called that before. A hint. She’s trying to tell me something. She’s afraid they’re watching, the promoters, his handlers. Of course, they saw everything through his eyes as he did. They wouldn’t know that Chitters meant nothing to him. If they had known, then she would probably already be gone.

  He’d only heard stories, but he’d never crossed the promoters. They’d always been supportive.

  Because he won. If he lost, then, well, then it wouldn’t matter. At this level, he’d be dead, buried in his case in a cemetery that no one visited. Or maybe they would put him beside Dhanesh. That would be a great honor! It was the landmark hated by the local people, but the one that any visitor to the area wanted to see.

  Chitters.

  Where are you? he asked the crystal clarity of his mind’s eye. When he looked, he saw her in human form. He saw himself as his replicant, a human male with a rough face, scarred from fighting. She glowed, blond curls framed a round face, from which peered those hazel eyes. Her eyes. The same unmistakable ones he’d seen within the moon’s dome.

  When he came to again, pain washed over him, threatening to take over all his senses. He howled in anguish, his voice box struggling to keep up. Someone touched their rough arms against his body, trying to keep him from fighting against the restraints. Aspen glared at the intruder, and that Insectoid backed away, fear in his eyes.

  You should be afraid! I kill people for a living, he raged, trying to fight against the pain, the restraints, and that look of fear. He arched his segments and screamed again. Anguish took him, he breathed heavily, taking in as much air as his lungs would allow. His secondary mind yelled at him to get a grip. The profanity-laced tirade caught his attention. His secondary mind was a mean bastard, but never foul-mouthed. He panted as he regained control, let the restraints hold him without straining against them. He calmed his breathing.

  He started to feel like the meditation training was working. He isolated each segment, whisking away the pain, then moved to the next. When he returned to his head, he felt like himself. His secondary mind congratulated him before retreating back where it belonged below his sub-conscious.

  He looked at the nurse and nodded. He walked quickly away, summoning the doctor who looked him over closely. She wasn’t pleased with Aspen’s outburst, but was satisfied with his ability to recover his composure. She directed that the restraints be removed. The nurse followed her orders, but did so at arm’s length, using the three on one side of his body to keep as much distance as possible from the fighter.

  Aspen was ashamed. No wonder Aletha said she found his profession deplorable. It’s how everyone reacted to a fighter. Worshipped in the ring, shunned in real life. How much had he made in that last bout? The numbers were starting to mean something. Maybe he did have enough to retire, he dreamed. He looked at his broken body. A titanium carapace had been constructed over his third segment. It looked like the original in shape, but the colors were that of an Insectoid’s iridescent eyes, and there, the cerulean blue sky where his Aletha lived.

  Chitters.

  He had to get out of the hospital so he could start searching. He didn’t know anyone he could trust to ask for help. On his own again. Aspen had never talked with anyone in the real world about her. That was between him and the VR audience. Maybe his promoters, too, but he had little interaction with them, as long as he kept winning.

  He asked humbly for what he wanted, and his promoter either granted it, or she didn’t. It was as simple as that. He fought where she told him to in the form the promoters selected. He hoped he’d be back on earth for the next one. That last one was putting him through hell.

  Aspen started to think about losing. Not since those early days in camp had he lost a bout. The thoughts crept into his head where his secondary mind started screaming again. He forced them both deep down into his sub-conscious, where he couldn’t hear. Losing could never be an option. He won. It’s all he knew. It’s what he was good at.

  He perked up. A loser could never have Aletha. She wouldn’t have given the clue if he’d lost.

  Chitters.

  He’d win. The next bout and the one after that. Until he found what Chitters meant and how that related to Aletha and the real world. He wondered what her Insectoid name was. Maybe it was that. He went by Aspen, no matter the replicant body he possessed, so the fans would know and could chant
his name with each new victory.

  He sat up, gingerly, clenching his mouth to keep from screaming. His arms seemed to flail of their own accord. He looked at them as if he was watching someone else’s limbs.

  Isn’t that interesting, he said to himself. He looked at the doctor questioningly. She shrugged, watching until the movements stopped, then directed him to the floor. He rolled to the front of his segments and slid down, stopping when his back leg hit as a fresh wave of pain threatened to engulf him.

  Stop it, he commanded. To leave, he had to demonstrate that he was in control. He stood up straight and rubbed each pair of legs together in front of him, listening as his tones were off. It was soothing to him, although he saw the nurse wince. That gave him something to smile about. He flexed his joints and shifted left, right, forward, and back. The pain lessened enough that he could claim his good health.

  At which the doctor laughed and sawed her uppermost pair of legs in a sign of great mirth. The nurse timidly joined in, hoping for approval from the doctor.

  The doctor cautioned Aspen on overdoing anything. She also noted that his next fight was months away. At this level, every fighter was damaged to a great degree, requiring significant time to heal. The doctor assured him that with the new carapace, he would recover more quickly than last time. She hoped that he would take the extra time to train and be more prepared. He was pleased that she was a fan. He talked with very few of them. They generally avoided him in the real world, maybe because he didn’t advertise who he was. The beast that he killed on the moon struck him as one of the flamboyant fighters, who probably let his pride and ego show through in his real life.

  Aspen loved the adulation when he was in the ring, but avoided it here. He thought that was what he wanted until the fans made him relive the fight as they described their favorite moments, usually the goriest parts, the most violent acts. He was horrified at how they reveled in the violence.

  He did, too, but not after the match. It was a lifetime of struggle in seconds, maybe a minute of unmitigated combat. That quickly, it was over. His mind blossomed during the time in the ring. He was pure power, yet vulnerable. The fight was the euphemism for life. You could make mistakes, and they’d hurt you, but if you made too big of one, they’d kill you. And your opponent made mistakes, too. Could you react to his mistakes more quickly than he could react to yours? And that’s why he fought, to test himself each time, to show that he could loop through the thought process an instant quicker than his opponent.

  Each and every time.

  The first step hurt a great deal, but he kept walking, not wanting the doctor to call him back. The only thing she said was to stop by daily for a checkup. She didn’t want him overdoing it, she’d said, along with the usual blather doctors gave a person falsely trying to make themselves obsolete. They counted on patients returning. It’s how they made a living.

  No one listened. Doctors would always have work saving people from themselves. Even if the people were hearty Insectoids.

  Aspen waved an arm and kept walking. He was pleased that it responded to his direction. He turned right when he entered the street, which elicited a new round of cries from his secondary mind. He should have turned left if he was headed home.

  Not yet, he replied, trying to soothe his upset counterpart now safely ensconced in titanium. He added an apology to getting the carapace shredded in the last fight. He hadn’t realized how close he’d come to killing his secondary mind, his trainer. When the other beast had his claws buried in the hips of his replicant, the case interpreted that as the third segment, shredding it and crushing it. Packing the moon dust into the wounds saved the life of his secondary mind, before risking it all once again as he moved on, looking for Aletha.

  Aspen continued down the street, nodding politely as he passed others going about their business. He didn’t make eye contact as he didn’t want to see them staring at his injuries. He had more important things to think about. He went to the library and perused the old-fashioned card file, but gave up quickly when he realized that the old human knowledge wouldn’t give him his answer. Chitters was an Insectoid word without being a word. He looked briefly through the library’s new section, the Insectoid materials, half of which existed on a clear, fibrous cellophane. The other half existed as sound, the leg sawing that told whole stories. He listened to some, then searched more. He couldn’t ask for help. Someone would report him, so he searched until he was too sore to continue.

  And he was tired of listening to the persistent voice of his secondary mind, yelling at him to go home and rest.

  Chitters. He saw one reference to it. A place in the imagination of an Insectoid storyteller. There were no directions to it. Chitters didn’t exist in the real world.

  Maybe that was the clue she was trying to give him.

  With his head hung low, he walked slowly, deliberately, toward his home. He hadn’t eaten and should have been hungry, but when he tried to choke something down, he couldn’t. Aspen gave up and dropped heavily into his bed, gasping from the impact on his injuries. He didn’t move as the pain rose, then fell to a tolerable level. So he slept, unmoving, exhausted from his efforts of the past two days.

  But he’d won the fight and he’d fight again. In between, he’d train, and keep searching. Chitters had to mean something other than she never wanted to see him again. She could have said that openly, with no recourse.

  He dreamed of a better place. Her eyes held him and he smiled, his human smile, on the other side of the pain, where he could see her and touch her face with those wonderful hands that the humans had. Feel the soft flesh with his own. He felt his heart pounding within his human chest, longing for her company, holding her human hand in his. Aletha, where are you? he asked the empty room.

  He didn’t go to the hospital the next day. He didn’t go anywhere since he found that he couldn’t get out of bed. He was too stiff. The nurse stopped by his home, which he considered an unwarranted intrusion. He had to yell from the bedroom to stop the nurse’s senseless pounding on his door. It made his ears hurt.

  He’d never been in such pain before, but he wouldn’t give the nurse the opportunity to laugh at him, so he tried to force himself to the floor, where he could stand and greet his visitor properly, like a man.

  But he couldn’t. He’d have to tolerate the nurse’s mirth. The other entered, but wouldn’t go beyond the door to Aspen’s bedroom, telling him it was perfectly normal to be so stiff. At least the nurse didn’t laugh. Aspen glowered at him until he went away, closing the door softly on his way out.

  At least the next day he was able to get out of bed, and he had no visitors. The third day, he left his house and returned to the hospital. They welcomed him and immediately assigned him to a room where they could feed him through a tube. He hadn’t eaten since before the fight, and his body was using itself for nourishment as it worked to heal the injuries. He joked that he was never a fan of the fifth segment, so it would be okay heading back out with only four. The doctor didn’t see the humor in it.

  They kept him overnight and he had to admit that comparatively, he felt like a new Insectoid, a whole new person. After that, he walked out of the hospital with a spring in his step. He turned sharply right at the street and headed for the library. The doctor watched him go, wondering what he was doing, knowing that he’d soon be tired and sore again.

  Chapter 5

  The Landmark

  The library was once again as befuddling as it had been before. The place that existed in some storyteller’s mind wasn’t his answer, although Aspen searched all of that one particular Insectoid poet’s works, looking for more clues.

  He found none. He left, starting to feel tired, but nothing like the previous days. His legs seemed to take him east, out of the city and toward the old camp where he trained. As he approached, he saw the sign to the cemetery and the landmark that locals shunned. He watched a couple with their twelve hatchlings, still too young to have segments, as they squirmed
around their parent's legs. Aspen nodded as they passed. They were polite but hurried the little ones away.

  Aspen continued to the cemetery and the landmark that dominated it, the final dedication to a fighter’s life, to Dhanesh who’d not only reached the pinnacle of success, but stayed there for years. He turned into the wealthiest of all Insectoids. The visitors envied his wealth and the appearance of power that presented, but they had no idea the work he suffered to get there. The pain he endured to stay on top. The promoters who managed to keep others from killing him.

  Their envy was deadly and in the end, that’s what killed him. The medical staff was a little too slow treating his wounds from a fight that he’d won. At least he wasn’t buried in his case like his opponents, although his cases were usually heavily stained by his blood.

  At least he got out, Aspen thought as he looked at the monument to his former idol. After fighting and experiencing the pain, Aspen’s idol was the person who lived pain free, with a spouse and their hatchlings. His idols looked like the young couple walking away from the cemetery.

  Why would they bring their children to this place? Visitors are stupid. Do they really want their children to be fighters? Take a good look at me because this is it. This is what you condemn them to when you send them to fighter camp, and they win. That’s right, this is the body of a winner! he taunted the young couple in his own mind, looking after them and their hatchlings as they continued their stroll back toward town.

  Aspen rocked back into position to make the music of his people. He sawed his lowest legs, looking for a sound he’d find soothing. The bass resonated well. He tried an accompaniment with the higher pitch of his upper legs, but it sounded off. He’d never gotten into music, although he appreciated listening to those who were good at it, which was every other Insectoid besides him.

  He continued anyway. He had months to practice it seemed. It sounded off, but he enjoyed himself, while also serving to clear the other visitors from the area around the landmark. He continued until nightfall, then stiffly stood and found his way home. He ate, happy to be hungry.