Zeroboxer (26 page)

Carr went back to his side. The technician checked his optics and receiver. Scull put in his mouth guard. DK spread gel on his face. Carr said, “Thanks,” and hoped they both understood he meant it to mean more.

DK put his battered face up to Carr's. “Just so you're clear,” he said, “this doesn't mean I like you. As much as I hate to admit it, behind the pretty face and the marketing machine, you really are the best of us. You're the only one who can beat him.” A spark danced in his round brown eyes and his teeth flashed in a wide, cheerfully vengeful smile that made Carr think,
the Captain is going to be just fine
. DK clapped Carr on the back. “Now go to it.”

The hatch flashed red and Carr dove through. The Cube swallowed him, abruptly cutting his perception of everything outside to a distant, blurry presence. He closed his eyes for a second and free-floated, knowing exactly where he was, bounded by the six clear sides that defined his world. Without conscious thought, he reached above his head and landed lightly on the nearest wall. His senses were sharp, his body coiled, but he felt as calm as a deep, still lake.

He had only one thing left to prove. He might have been designed and conceived to serve another man's ambition, raised and trained under a lie, marketed and attached to causes beyond reason, but here, in this prism, he was only himself. There was truth to him—for three rounds of six Martian minutes each, there was nothing else.

Kye Soard came at him with shocking speed. Carr leapt, striking Soard in the air like his namesake, a bird of prey dropping onto a rival, feet and fists hailing down damage like talons and beating wings. Soard braced one leg and one arm to the first surface he reached, and, with the other arm, hurled Carr like a sack of flour. Carr felt his ribs jolt painfully as he struck the Cube, but he tucked his legs in time to use the rebound, powering off the wall and toward the spot where Soard was supposed to be but was no longer. A whip-like sweep to his legs nearly sent him spinning, but he grabbed the Martian fighter's arm, dragging him into the rotation and preventing him from racing up and around the corner.

Mere seconds into the first round, and Carr knew the idea of pacing himself was moot. Soard was too fast, too good, too instinctive. They fought, back and forth, up and down, in the air and on the walls and across the corners. For everything that Carr did, the Samurai had a response. Each strike was answered by a faster strike, each movement by an opposing movement, each change of direction matched and raised. The air sang with the fight. Time and space carved around it. They were escalating, both of them striving to outmaneuver the other with greater strength, speed, and agility. It would look, to a spectator, like a video being sped up.

Soard kicked him with so much force that his body flew backward, and he lost his grip on the surface completely. The breath went out of him as his torso lit with pain, but he grabbed for the wall with both hands and skidded along like a falling climber dragging at the sheer surface of a cliff. With only the strength of his arms and shoulders, he checked his momentum and hurled himself back before Soard could get out of the way. They clinched and landed close-in blows.

“Lock him up! Don't let him go!” Was that Uncle Polly's voice or his own thought? Too late; Soard spun out of his grasp before he could secure a hold and nailed him hard in the side. The man's shin crunched into him like a long, blunt iron blade; Carr felt his insides take the shock like a bowl of jelly. Under gravity, he would have crumpled to his knees. He could barely feel or move anything below his sternum, but he dug in his feet and swung anyways, slipping a fist through Soard's guard and cracking him solidly across the cheek. The bell sounded.

Carr pulled himself back out to the deck. “He's really good,” he conceded, holding his sides.

DK dug out his mouth guard and gave him a squeeze of water. Scull pressed ice to his face and neck. The two of them exchanged a glance of mute astonishment. Scull said, “That was the hardest-fought first round I've ever seen. Coaches are going to make future zeroboxers study it.”

Carr was slicked with sweat and sucking hard breaths that made his head throb. He couldn't remember ever feeling like this after a first round. He could hear the ventilation fans in the Cube working like mad to move out the air heated by their exertion. Uncle Polly bent in front of him and cupped his hands behind Carr's head, pacing several long, deep inhalations until Carr's breaths followed his.

Polly nodded. “You've got his attention all right.” His rapid-fire voice was low and serious. “The two of you are burning like hyper-charged atoms in there. Don't get fired up so hot that you get shoddy with defense, you hear? If he decides he can't wear you down, he'll start taking bigger risks to try to end it quickly. Pare it back, start looking for openings.”

Carr paused just before entering the Cube. Something seemed strange. The mostly Martian crowd, which had been chanting Soard's name nonstop, was nearly silent. It was as if these people, who'd paid good money for the pleasure of watching men fight, had come to some collective realization that they were witnessing something extraordinary. The pinnacle of zeroboxing, the very frontier of what human beings could physically accomplish in a weightless chamber.

The bell rang on the opening of the second round. Carr dove through the hatch and Soard was on him again, right from the start. For all his jovial arrogance outside the Cube, the man was a silent, focused machine inside. He didn't waste time; he didn't waste movement. He started attacking Carr's legs as he'd done with DK. It was a sound strategy—striking required bracing, and that meant legs were often planted, immobile and vulnerable. Soard's own legs were long and bony, the shins tempered to steel, and he could whip them around with astounding swiftness. Carr found himself fighting like a mongoose on a snake, crouching tight to walls, striking, leaping out of the way of the taller man's range, cutting angles, all the time moving and seeking chances to close in.

Something in the first round—probably many things, come to think of it—had made the painful tightness in his left side worse. Every time he twisted his shoulders toward the right, he felt a sharp stab. It was impossible to fight without rotating his torso, so he didn't even bother trying, resolving to ignore the pain outright. Soard, however, sensed the weakness like a shark scenting a single drop of blood. He started aiming for the left side of Carr's rib cage. Gasping, Carr let his arms drift up, opening his bruised body as an irresistible target. Soard went for the ribs again. This time, Carr slid forward, captured the incoming blow, and drove his shoulder forward. His screaming body slammed hard into Soard's chest, stunning him long enough for Carr to wrap arms and legs around his opponent's limbs as they both spun in a free-fall grapple.

He was impressed and dismayed that the man was as swift and competent in his grappling as he was on the walls and in the air. He went for a choke and Soard neutralized it, flowing straight into an armbar attempt. Carr distracted him by punching him in the liver, then tried the choke again, but Soard worked one knee free of Carr's restraining leg and drove it up into his side. Carr felt his grip give but he held on, trying to get his legs up and around the man's waist to take forward control.

He didn't make it. They hit the wall, its magnetics tugging at both their waists. Soard was better positioned to capitalize on the direction of their spin; he rolled along the surface and, in a seamless reversal, trapped Carr's left leg in a submission hold. He began levering the knee at an unnatural angle.

Carr would have to tap out or watch the joint pop from its socket. In a desperate move, he slammed his body back against the wall and the rebound jolted Soard's grip and Carr's spine. Pressure shot up his thigh as he used the split-second of slack to twist his hips hard and force his leg free. He kicked back with the other, catching Soard in the clavicle. They climbed away from each other, both grimacing, and that was how the second round ended.

Out on the deck, Uncle Polly probed his knee and Carr jerked, wincing. Then a chuckle bubbled from his lips and he started grinning like a maniac.

“What's so damn funny?” Uncle Polly asked.

“Nothing.” It was just that, in some truly messed-up way, he was grateful to Kye Soard. He'd finally found an opponent he didn't think he could beat. Every fight he'd ever fought—including his one loss to Jackson, his match against Henri Manon for the title, and the bout against that cheat Macha—he'd known, deep down, that he could beat them. Whether he actually would or not might have been in question, but he'd always felt that the fight was his to lose. Soard, he didn't think he could beat. The Samurai was an outlier even in an engineered race. Carr doubted any Terran could defeat him.

But Carr was not any Terran.

He was pushing against the envelope of his enhancement. His heart rate and breathing were actually slowing, kicking into some hyper-efficient state. He could see the movement of every mote of dust in the spotlight-drenched air. He could hear someone in one of the cubeside seats going
tap-tap
on their cuff. The pain in his side and his knee were receding fast, as if the injuries were being compartmentalized and shunted away.

The doctor came and examined his leg. “Hmmm,” he said, “not good.”

Carr noticed, all of a sudden, that there were police officers on the deck. Not the stadium security guards, but uniformed Surya cops, three of them, standing near the entrance and holding themselves stiffly upright on magnetic-soled boots. He recognized the lieutenant from last night, Jin. She looked across the deck at him, her gaze cold and curious.

“If you can pull him, I'd say do it,” the doctor was telling Uncle Polly. “If that knee blows out, it could end his career.”

Carr shook his head vehemently and tugged his coach down by the front of his shirt. “I don't have a career.”

Uncle Polly's glare was pained and fierce. “No fight is worth seeing you crippled. You can't ask me to do what no trainer—”

Carr cut him off. “What are those cops doing here?”

Polly made a face, like he hadn't wanted Carr to notice. He dropped his voice. “They showed up a few minutes ago. They've found the detective's body. Or what was left of it. Gant says there's a tug-of-war going on now between Genepol, who wants Rhystok extradited to face Terran cri
minal charges, and the Surya authorities, who've charged him with murder in Martian airspace. You're a key witness, and I think they suspect you're more than that too. They're not taking any chances on you rabbiting out of here after the tournament.”

A WCC official came up to them. “I need a decision here.”

Carr stood. He wasn't sure his leg would hold up his weight if gravity were involved. “This can't be the way it ends, coach. Pulling out can't be the last thing I do in the Cube.” DK and Scull were staring, bewildered, between him and Polly, but Carr plowed on. “Like Blake said: sometimes you can't win, but you can decide not to lose.”

He went back into the Cube.

Soard was not smiling now. His mouth was set in hard resolve, and his eyes held a hint of uncertainty. Carr realized, with some irritation, that the Martian champion had never, not for one second, not until now, seriously enter
tained the idea that he might lose to an earth-born Terran.

“All right, have it your way,” Uncle Polly said softly in his ear. “You want to fight, then
fight
. Take it to him. Make it
your
fight.”

Carr sent himself into the air in a tight somersault and uncoiled, springing across the right angle of the Cube with his good leg, and down on Soard from behind and above. The man dropped to the wall and shot out a kick from a crouch, connecting with Carr while he was still in the air and sending him flying. Carr launched off the rebound, but his injured leg altered the angle of his flight and he went sailing past his intended target. The Samurai made a grab for him; Carr swiveled his body away narrowly and landed in a crouch.

Soard flung himself across a steep angle, attacking Carr from the left. Carr felt time elongate. He had to decide: which would it be? He shifted his stance to protect the knee; Soard dropped a blow onto the body. As the punch connected, Carr pushed up onto the toe of his good leg; the impact buckled his midsection and knocked him into the air, but that was better than absorbing the full force with his battered rib cage. As it was, one side of his torso had gone completely numb. He reoriented and found his footing. Soard came after him again and they clinched. He felt the other man's breath, his sweat, the straining of his body. They jammed up each other's attacks, then flung apart again.

They faced each other across a corner. Soard relaxed a little. Carr sensed it in the set of his shoulders, the way they came down just a fraction. It was obvious that Carr couldn't move the way he used to, couldn't rely on his left leg to strike or climb, couldn't get full range of motion from his body. All Soard needed to do was pick him apart for the rest of the round and count on a win from the judges.

Carr's mouth was dry. The fight seemed infinite, yet he was running out of time. His knee throbbed, not with pain but with a kind of frantic, pulsing heat, as if it were trying to repair itself, but not fast enough. With his mobility down, he needed to fight from close in. Minimize the handicap of his slow leg. Grab his opponent and hold him. There was no way Soard would let him do that, not if he was being smart.

His opponent flowed toward and around him like a riptide. They clashed again, and Carr, his breath roaring in his ears, began to feel that it wasn't enough; what he had wasn't enough.

Soard relied on his endurance. He waited until he saw Kabitain start to tire, then just closed in and swarmed him.
That's what Jeroan Culver had said.