James Axler – The Mars Arena

“You got a mean way of putting things,” Bobby Handley said.

“Mean world,” Louis replied.

“Best way is like Louis said,” Dean spoke up. “Chill anybody we have to, but keep an eye out for a chance to get out of this place.”

Louis nodded. “Anybody want to do it another way, they’re welcome to pick up and leave.”

No one said anything, but most of them shuffled nervously, flinching when they heard a sudden spurt of gunfire to the east of them. For a moment Dean almost thought it was his dad’s SIG-Sauer blaster. Then he shoved the idea away. It was just a hope that he had no business nursing along. His dad was a long way from this place.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Hayden LeMarck stood behind Baron Hardcoe’s chair and stared out the bulletproof window. His hand rested on his Glock blaster, the restraining strap already popped open enough that a yank would have it in his hand. Wallis Thoroughgood stood at his side, eating a turkey drumstick from the kitchen that had been set up outside the room.

The other barons sat in chairs in front of the window, as well, two sec men allowed in with each of them.

The window gave a view of the pit that had been created of the quake-stricken area. LeMarck watched the sporadic gunfire dispassionately, making himself breathe regular enough to appear calm. For the past handful of years, he’d remained on watch in the room during the Big Game. No experience was ever the same as a previous one.

“Boys?” Baron Dettwyler drawled, pausing to glance at Vinge Connrad, who was safely out of arm’s reach. “You sent boys into that pit, Vinge? Were you addled when you made that decision?”

Connrad hoisted a glass filled with a native beer Hardcoe had brought from the seven villes in weather-beaten casks. Though the barons had separate views on how rulership of the villes should be managed, they all kept the beer makers and wine presses moving right along, no matter in whose hands the villes were.

Taking a long drink, Connrad wiped the foam from his beard with the back of his hand and belched loudly. “You haven’t seen those boys in action. Trying to get them out into the pit, they chilled four of my men in that room, injured seven others before we chased them out with burning gasoline.”

“They shot bullets through the plas sheets?” Dettwyler asked. He was a huge, fat man with a bald head, and many people, LeMarck knew, made the mistake of thinking Dettwyler soft or simple. Neither was the truth. The fat disguised hard bands of muscle, and Dettwyler had a preference for biting out the throat of anyone he fought in hand-to-hand combat. A black silk half mask covered the right side of his face. Years back the baron’s head had been forced up against a boiling-water container in a mutie encampment. The metal had contained some dangerous rad, hanging on from the nukecaust. The burn had opened Dettwyler’s face, and the rad that seeped into it caused chronic cancers that had to be cut out, leaving a raw, bleeding area that never healed properly.

“Not through the plas,” Connrad corrected. “Little bastards bounced bullets off the wall.”

“I’ve never seen or heard of that being done.” Francis Giskard’s youthful face broke into a delighted smile. He raised his glass. “I must compliment you on your choice of champions this year. They appear to be most industrious.”

Connrad lifted his glass and drank the rest of its contents.

“Where did you get them?” Giskard asked.

LeMarck kept track of the conversations, but his eyes remained focused on the pit area. One of the wall sec men near the old Las Vegas Convention Center raised a flash with a purple lens cover, signaling twice. They had thermo-graphic binoculars and could see a person’s body heat through the walls of buildings. Special rad buttons inside the body armor, treated so they reflected different levels of light, announced the color of the person they looked at.

“It appears that you’ve lost a couple more men, Giskard,” Deke Ramsey, the remaining baron, said. He was tall and ruddy, his rust red hair shot through with gray and thinning on the top. “That brings your total lost to what? Five?”