Fenli snorted. “In what universe do you live?”
Jingin smacked him across the mouth.
“Very right, Drek!” quipped Beardly. “Your words ring true.”
A surge of rage coloured Sket’s face.
Drek’s greasy, grey features shone, his eyes subsided to a gleam of acceptance and a quiet, controlled sigh. He nodded to his twin.
“The Skullrox officials have poisoned us, driven us like cattle through the wastes, into these inhospitable burrows. Birth defects abound, skin diseases, mutations of all horrid sorts. Lepers living in a slum city. Look at me. I too am but a product of this grim degeneracy. The elitist bureaucrats cordoned off the infected, called us ‘Unwanteds’.”
“We build an empire, brother,” murmured Beardly in soft tones. “Remember your vision.”
Drek’s eyes gleamed, and his repulsive, malformed hand reached out to clutch the other’s and he licked his oleaginous lips.
“True, Beardly. You are wise as usual.” He gazed fiercely at the newcomers. “I give you one chance, slaves! You owe us an indenture. Run! Race till your feet bleed and bring down the mesh! And fight, my dear people, slay and destroy these overlords till your hearts drop in my theatre of thrills. The catacombs of Bron lie before you—the gateway to the mesh! Win back my public works—then I grant you your freedom!”
One hairy brute called out: “A party of thirty went out just last bloodmoon on the previous mission. All died.”
Drek shrugged. “Casualties are to be expected.”
“Hardly a token of confidence,” muttered Miko.
Fenli gave a laughing snort. “Nothing that we can’t handle.”
“I’m glad you think so, outlander,” said Drek unpleasantly, “for you’ll get your chance to prove yourselves. But one proviso, we do it the old-fashioned way, no blasters, or laser dirks or techno-flares. Less easy for you to use them on us and my guards should you fail.”
A wave of loud grumbles rose in the back of the hall.
Drek held up a hand. “I stand adamant on this point.”
Fenli muttered, shaking his head. “What’s to keep us from fleeing the moment we are turned loose? Seizing our own freedom?”
“You will find out if you try to renege on your indenture.”
A chief of the outcast tribes, the red-ruffed man called Murlag, piped up: “What, lord-sire, if we come upon Skullrox troopers at the mesh? As Myx said, the last time we raced, we were waylaid and most of us were cut down. Only Dragar, Victus and Myx survived.” He motioned to the latter men who nodded and grumbled, one missing an ear, the other with a patch over his left eye, blinking through his grime.
Dragar snarled, the husky rival chief with the flattened ape face. “Aye, shall we simply yell foul words at Skullrox resistance?”
Drek glared. “I resent the sarcasm.”
Murlag picked up the argument. “The ones who stand before you at the pit are the only savage wretches I could round up from the nomadic colonies fit for this perilous mission. Are they enough?”
“Fail and you die!” thundered Drek. “Either by my hand or the Skullroxers.”
The speaker stepped back, his eyes thin slits of balefire. He traded words with his rival chief, Dragar.
“Win past the barrier into Skullrox and freedom is yours,” said Drek. “You may enter the city and collect your freedom, any of you who wish it. Fail—” he let the words linger “—then you perish, by most painful means. Do not think about skulking and ambushing me—any of you rogues. Hidden cameras lie everywhere, and will pinpoint your location. My guards and electronic snares will make mincemeat of you. You can work together, or in opposition. ’Tis your choice.”
Miko gazed at the grumbling, snarling thugs around him. Drek and his ugly sister-bitch were perhaps not as loved as they thought, despite their showy boar fights and gruesome spectacles. He wondered how Drek and his sister kept any control over these malnourished wretches.
Drek boomed. “The tactics I leave to you. Avail yourself of the weapons’ trays—” he spread a meaty hand. “Some are old-fashioned, others a tad rusty, but as the saying goes, beggars can’t be choosers.”
Jingin unlocked a side gate and pulled back a set of steel-plated doors. Eyes glinted in greedy anticipation at the racks of weapons.
His henchmen trained air rifles on the restless mob. “Wait your turn, greedy guts,” said Jingin. Several prodded the dozen or so prisoners toward stacked weaponry.
There came a mad rush of unwanteds from the pit side to the shelves, on which stood scores of clubs, knives, daggers, truncheons, twisted and beat-up scimitars, every grisly hand weapon imaginable.
Miko elbowed his way through the throng and hefted a short flat sword with a ball-shaped tommyknocker on the end and a heavy handle, good for clubbing. He selected a compact javelin with triangular spearhead, pocketing a light but wicked-edged poniard. Fenli grabbed up a sturdy truncheon and mace and machete. Usk, recognizing his opportunity, snatched two daggers, which were light and easy for him to clutch in his pincer.
Miko saw rapt eyes gleaming in the dimness. How long would these deviants, like those from the prison cell, stay loyal to their cause given new weapons and new parameters in this forced service?
“To make things more interesting,” began Drek, “everything will be recorded, so that my sister and I can revisit hours of entertainment. You will be immortalized. Heroes on film! First one brings down the utility barrier wins.”
Miko cried, “You expect primitive weapons to take on modern tech?” Dragar and Murlag cried in agreement.
“The fish speaks true,” claimed Myx, Dragar’s surly, ugly, bronze-helmed captain.
“Easy as pie,” said Fenli.
Drek sneered and tossed his head in annoyance. “Not that I’m giving you rascals any ideas or strategies. But best to kill your opposition.”
“Bazrad killed eight men before the Torox got him,” roared a two-toothed man with blackened cheeks and a bloody scarf wrapped around his head.
“What’s a
