As he stared up into the empty sky, he could feel the sweat starting to bead on his skin. Immerle’s estate was in the planet’s semi-tropical zone, and this close to the coast the air was permanently hot and humid. With his red hair and pale skin, Dellian always used to slather himself in sunblock for the five afternoons a week when the kids played games on the estate’s sports fields. But since he and his yearmates reached their tenth birthday, they’d moved on to more combative games in the orbital arena.
“I wonder where they’ve gone?” he asked.
Yirella pushed her shaggy ebony hair aside and smiled down at him. Dellian liked that smile; her rich black skin always made a flash of white teeth seem quite dazzling—especially when it was directed at him.
“We’ll never know now,” she said. “That’s the point of dispersal, Del. The enemy will find Juloss eventually, and when they do they’ll burn its continents down to the magma. But when that day comes, the generation ships will be hundreds of light-years away. Safe.”
Dellian answered with a grin of his own, acting as if it didn’t matter to him, and looked around at his muncs to check they were paying attention. All the clan’s children were assigned a group of six homunculi on their third birthday to act as permanent companions and playmates. It was Alexandre who had told the breathless and excited children that the stocky human-shaped creatures were “homunculi”—a word that Dellian and his clanmates shortened to muncs within a minute, and it had stuck ever since.
The muncs were genderless, 140 centimeters tall, with thick arms and legs that were slightly bowed, alluding to a terrestrial ape heritage somewhere in their DNA. Their skin had a glossy gray and chestnut pelt, with thicker, darker fur on their scalps. They were also extremely affectionate and always eager to please. Their creators hadn’t given them many words, but they had instilled a strong sense of loyalty and empathy.
Around his ninth birthday Dellian had finally grown taller than his cohort. It had been a thrilling moment when he realized he’d gained that advantage, after which their play tumbling took on a different aspect, becoming more serious somehow as they all squirmed around on the dormitory floor laughing and shouting. He still adored them—a feeling now mingling with pride as they read his intent, providing an instinct-driven extension of his body during games. The years spent with him during childhood allowed them to learn his moods and identify his body language perfectly, which would pay dividends later in his life when he began his military service. The best integration in his yeargroup, Alexandre had acknowledged approvingly. And Alexandre’s approval meant a great deal to him.
Dellian and Yirella shuddered in unison as they heard the distinctive drawn-out ululation of a lokak’s menacing hunting cry coming from beyond the estate’s perimeter fence. Thankfully, they rarely saw the agile, serpentine beasts slipping through the snarled-up forest outside. The animals had learned not to stray too close to the estate; but the fence and the sentry remotes that patrolled in endless circles were a constant reminder of how hostile Juloss could be to anyone who let their guard down.
The arena’s portal was on the edge of the sports field, sheltering under a small Hellenic roof. Dellian shook off his chill as he walked through. He and Yirella stepped directly into the arena, a simple cylinder with a diameter of a hundred meters, and seventy wide, with every surface padded. He breathed in happily, feeling his heartbeat rise. This was what he lived for, to show off his prowess in the tournaments and matches, for with that came the prospect of beating the opposing team, of winning. And nothing on Juloss was more important than winning.
The arena was in neutral mode, which was spinning about its axis to produce a twenty percent Coriolis gravity around the curving floor. Dellian always wished there was a window—the arena was attached to a skyfort’s assembly grid, orbiting 150,000 kilometers above Juloss, and the view would have been fabulous.
Instead he did what he always did when he came in, and studied the arena’s interior to see if the stewards had made any changes. Floating above him were thirty bright hazard-orange hurdles: polyhedrons of various sizes, also padded.
“They’ve bigged them up, look,” Dellian said enthusiastically, as he took in the hurdles, committing the positioning to memory. Alexandre had promised the senior yeargroup they would receive their databuds in another couple of months, uniting them directly with personal processors and memory cores that would handle all the mundane mental chores Dellian had to labor away at right now. He considered it monumentally unfair that all the clan’s adults had them.
“You mean they have enlarged the hurdles,” Yirella said primly.
“Saints, you’ve gone and joined the grammar police,” he moaned. At the same time he saw how intently she was studying the new layout and smiled to himself. They started to walk along the floor, necks craning up, his cohort studying the hurdle layout as attentively as he was.
The rest of Dellian’s yearmates started to show up. He saw the boys grinning at the larger hurdles suspended above them, relishing the extra bounce the wider pentagonal and hexagonal surfaces would give them—if they landed true, of course.
“Saints, we’ll reach the axis like lightning,” Janc said.
“Going to ace this,” Uret agreed.
“Is it going to be a capture the flag, do you think?” Orellt asked.
“I want to play straight takedown,” Rello said wistfully. “Just hit them and knock them out of the arena.”
“Inter-clan matches are flag captures,” Tilliana said loftily. “They allow a greater range of strategy options and cooperative maneuvers. That’s what we train for, after all.”
Dellian and Falar exchanged a martyred grin behind Tilliana’s back; the girl was always dismissive of any enthusiasm the boys showed to expand the tournament. Even so, she and her pair of muncs were reviewing the new arrangement keenly.
“Where are they?” Xante exclaimed impatiently.
They didn’t have long to wait. The visiting team from the Ansaru clan, whose estate was on the other side of the eastern mountains, came jogging into the arena in a single regimented line, their munc cohorts forming columns on either side. Dellian scowled at that; the Ansaru boys had discipline. With his own yearmates spread halfway around the curving floor, joking around, their cohorts scattered and jostling spiritedly, it already put the Ansaru team ahead on style. We should organize like that.
Alexandre and the Ansaru referee came in, talking together cheerfully. Dellian was grateful he had Alexandre as his year mentor; some of the other adults who looked after the clan children didn’t have hir empathy. He could still remember the day, six years ago, when he and his yearmates had it gently explained to them that they weren’t omnia like the adults, that their gender was binary, fixed—like people on Earth millennia ago.
“Why?” they’d all asked.
“Because you need to be what you are,” Alexandre had explained kindly. “It is you who will be going out to face the enemy in combat, and what you are will give you the greatest advantage in battle.”
Dellian still didn’t quite believe that. After all, Alexandre, like most of the adults, was nearly two meters tall. Surely soldiers needed that size and strength, and sie’d also told the boys they were unlikely to reach that height.
“But you will be strong,” sie’d promised. Only that was a poor consolation for Dellian.
He always felt mildly guilty whenever he studied their mentor too closely nowadays, drawing comparisons in his head. Despite hir considerable height, Dellian could never consider hir as strong as a body that size could (or should) be. Of course age played a part in that.
Out in the middle of the zone floor, Alexandre remained reasonably robust looking; though Dellian did wonder if the black V-neck referee’s shirt sie wore revealed maybe too much cleavage for someone with so many years behind hir. (Dorm rumor put hir at 180.) But Alexandre’s cinnamon-shaded skin wa
s practically wrinkle-free, contrasting nicely with hir thick honey-blond hair, which was always cut in a severe bob ending level with hir chin. Wide gray eyes could express a great deal of sympathy, yet as Dellian had found on the many occasions his misbehavior had been discovered, they could also be stern. And this year Alexandre had decided to grow a thin beard. “Because it’s stylish,” sie told the kids, slightly defensively, when they asked and snickered. Dellian still wasn’t sure about that.
Alexandre caught his eye and gestured: Get into position.
The teams started to line up along the center of the floor, spacing themselves evenly, each taking a half, with the referees between them. Dellian and his cohort claimed his customary place in the middle of the Immerle team’s semicircle. Yirella was at his side, her two muncs flanking her. Girls only had two muncs each—why would they need more? Dellian craned his neck, giving the visiting team a fast appraisal, seeing which player’s cohort seemed tightest and most responsive.
“Their number eight,” Yirella said. “I remember him from last year. He’s good. Watch him.”
“Yeah,” Dellian muttered absently. He remembered number eight as well—remembered spinning tackles that sent him cartwheeling away from the hurdles, cursing as his opponent streaked away with the flagball.
Number eight was a thickset boy with brown hair oiled back over his skull. From a quarter of the way around the arena floor he gave Dellian a fast, dismissive look, calculated to insult; his munc cohort copied it perfectly.
Dellian’s fists closed in reflex.
“Mistake,” Yirella chided. “He’s goading you.”
A quick flush rose to Dellian’s cheeks. She was right, and he knew it. Too late to try to return an insult; number eight was no longer looking in his direction.
The Ansaru team’s three girls took their places in the command pens around the rim, walking across the floor with a grace Dellian envied; his own gait resembled a boulder leading an avalanche—no style, but it did get him places. However, he enjoyed their obvious disapproval as they registered Yirella remaining in the arena, wearing her protective bodysuit and an easy forty-five centimeters higher than the tallest boy. Teams were restricted to thirteen members, including tacticians, but there was nothing in the rules about one of the tacticians actually taking part. Yirella had won that argument a long time ago.
With a theatrical flourish, Alexandre and the Ansaru referee produced two flagballs each, holding them up high; the Immerle pair started flashing with a red light, while Ansaru’s were yellow.
Both teams grinned as they saw them.
“Two,” Dellian breathed in delight. Now that’s more like it. Until now, they’d always played one flagball. This was going to be a real test of skill and teamwork. He and the rest of the team put on their helmets, giving one another slightly nervous looks.
This was both the pain and the joy of being the first generation of binary humans to be birthed on Juloss. There wasn’t an older year to pass down the wisdom, like warning them the arena game rules would change. Dellian and his yearmates were always dropping hints to the younger years about how to handle themselves in games and tournaments. But they were the pioneers; everything they underwent in the estate’s training program was fresh and new. Sometimes it felt like an unfair burden—not that he’d ever admit that to Alexandre.
“A point will only be given when both flagballs are put through the goal,” Alexandre announced. “Winner is first to fifteen points.”
“Janc and Uret, play defense on one flagball,” Ellici’s voice announced in Dellian’s helmet comset. “Rello, you take the second.”
“Gotcha,” Rello announced greedily.
“Hable and Colian, go midblock on Rello’s flagball,” Tilliana said. “Let’s lure them in. Only intercept when they’re on final snatch flight.”
Dellian breathed out in relief. He’d been fearful the girls would assign him defense—again. He knew he was so much better at intercept.
“Ready one,” Alexandre said loudly.
Everyone tensed up. Dellian’s munc cohort clustered around him, holding hands to form a ring.
“Ready two?” the Ansaru referee asked.
Ansaru’s boys yelled: “Yeah!” Dellian and his team let loose their signature call—a hooted warble they’d developed over the last couple of years, which to their ears sounded magnificently savage.
Alexandre smiled tolerantly. The light strips ribbing the arena walls turned gold. Dellian felt the gravity start to reduce further as the arena’s spin slowed. All the boys swayed about like seaweed in a current. As always, falling gravity made him feel bizarrely light-headed. The referees both threw the flagballs upward. All four of the flashing globes soared up toward the axis.
Gravity reached about five percent. Alexandre blew the whistle.
Dellian’s muncs crouched down fast, thrusting their clenched hands into the center of the ring they were forming. Dellian hopped onto the platform of stumpy hands, squatting down. The cohort read his every muscle movement perfectly; he jumped as if he was trying to power himself all the way to the planet below. The muncs flung their arms up in perfect synchronization, slim flower petals bursting open.
He rocketed upward, body turning a half somersault, as he headed for the first polyhedron—and a hexagonal surface that was angled just so. Drawing his knees up almost to his chin. And hit-kick. The power bounce. Soaring toward the polyhedron two up. The air around him full of flying boys. Tracking them and the flagballs, trying to project where they were all going. Then the muncs were rising, from above an impossibly hefty bird flock startled into the air.
Dellian saw which of the Ansaru boys was going defensive on one of their flagballs. “Intercepting a D,” he yelled.
As he thumped down onto the next polyhedron, he altered his angle and bounced on a good interception course.
“Mallot, take Dellian’s D-2,” Tilliana called. “Yi, snatch it.”
The Ansaru defender saw him coming and curled up. Dellian rotated around his center of gravity, drawing his legs up, ready for the kick.
They collided hard. The defender tried to grab Dellian’s feet (technically illegal; you could only bump opponents, not grapple), but Dellian used only one foot, which gave him an unexpected slant. The defender’s hands swung through empty air. He made good contact on the boy’s hip, sending him spinning away to thud into a polyhedron, which whirled him off along a horizontal trajectory.
Yirella zipped past him as Mallot struck the second defender. She bounced accurately off a polyhedron and streaked straight toward the yellow flagball. Dellian’s cohort caught up with him and formed up in a globe cage of tense limbs with him in the center. Together they bounced off a hurdle, four munc legs kicking to give extra velocity. He rose toward Yirella, providing cover.
The arena light strips flashed violet for three seconds. Dellian grunted in dismay. The cohort bundle read his micro-flexing and twisted, legs rigid, arms extended so they spun slowly—ready.
The gyroscopic shells that contained the arena shifted around and spun faster. The centrifugal gravity direction altered sharply. The hurdles suddenly appeared to be moving through the air, like solid clouds in a storm front. A couple of cohort bundles were swatted, flailing away chaotically. Tilliana and Ellici were both yelling instructions, redirecting the team. Dellian saw a hurdle approaching fast, and his cohort bundle shifted their dynamic slightly. Hit and bounce-kicked in roughly the right direction. Not that he’d ever been at sea, but Dellian thought the arena’s irregular shifts must be like being in a ship as it was tossed about by a hurricane.
Yirella had stayed on course. She grabbed the Ansaru flagball and shot through the axis. Her muncs clung to her hips, producing an X shape. They twisted gymnastically, flipping her as they went through the axis—and even Dellian was impressed by the smoothness of the maneuver. Yirella bounced off a hurdle
to dive headfirst toward the floor, which now had an apparent tilt of forty-five degrees.
“Yi, incoming three o’clock Z,” Ellici called. “Now! Nownow!”
Dellian bit back his own comments; the girls always got overexcited in the games, he felt. They were supposed to be the calm, analytical ones. He saw the Ansaru defender (number eight shirt) at the center of a cohort star formation, pinwheeling toward Yirella.
“Got him,” he yelled. A hurdle on his right. His awareness and posture had two munc arms shooting out, slapping, which gave the whole bundle a fast roll—putting them on course for the next hurdle. Bounce—and he crashed into number eight’s bundle a couple of seconds before he took Yirella out. The impact was strong enough to break the bundles, and muncs and boys twirled apart like explosion debris riding a blast wave.
Yirella made one more bounce and landed hard on the angled floor, rolling gracefully to absorb the impact. She raced to the Immerle goal hoop and dropped the ball into it.
Dellian smacked painfully into a hurdle and flailed about, trying to stabilize himself. Two of his muncs scrambled over a hurdle and jumped toward him. Light strips started flashing violet.
“Oh, Saints,” he groaned as the arena shifted again. A hurdle came sweeping through the air at him. A munc caught his ankle. They spun end over end, and he just had time to crouch and bounce.
“Zero on Rello,” Tilliana commanded. “Quick quick!”
Dellian searched around frantically. He saw Rello cartwheeling next to their flashing flagball. Three Ansaru bundles were heading for him. Instinctively Dellian bounced another hurdle and flew, arms outstretched in summoning. In five seconds his cohort had coalesced around him again, and together they flashed across the arena to help Rello.