TITLE FIGHT (The Galactic Football League Novellas)

  Since Chai was no longer in the GFA, this fight wouldn’t technically create a unified title, but fight fans didn’t care. As far as they were concerned, it was the GFA champ up against the IFA champ, and the winner would be the undisputed heavyweight champion of the entire universe.

  The PR blitz reduced the unfortunate death of GFA Council member Cole Draba to a footnote in the news. No sports journalist connected it with Chai jumping ship to the IFA. Maybe they didn’t because if they did start to piece it together, it was made clear that accidents like the one that befell Draba might coincidentally happen again.

  The announcement had been three weeks earlier, enough time for the promoters to gouge networks for exclusive coverage rights and enough time for the networks to gouge advertisers for ad slots. Not that any of it mattered to Chai. He trained. Trained alone, it turned out. Marcus Diablo refused to train him. The old man knew about the deal Chaiyal had cut with Gredok the Splithead, and Marcus wasn’t one to offer silent assent. He’d made it clear that if Chai wanted to be in some hairy sack of a gangster’s pocket, he’d go it alone.

  As he had five years earlier, Chai traveled to Buddha City Station alone. He hadn’t been back since the night he became Crusaders champion, the night he’d nearly died in a post-fight barroom brawl with Brocka the Razor-Barbed, the night he’d been reborn in a tidal wave of blood and realization as The Heretic.

  The station still looked like the High One’s billy club. The pride of the Purist Nation’s “outreach” efforts to create interaction with the sub-species. As long as they didn’t set foot on the holy planets, of course. Fifty-seven decks in various stages of repair and crawling with the all-Human police in their emerald-colored uniforms. The Buddha “Greens” mostly did what they wanted to do, and if that mean beating the crap out of the satanic races, well, that’s the way it was. Unless you were in a strong gang or had the money for bodyguards, best to allocate about half your pay for the Greens.

  The weigh-in alone was a bigger event than most actual fights. It took over Buddha City’s entire main drag. Outside the station fireworks exploded in space, blazing in time with sonic eruptions inside the station that shook the very air molecules. Thousands of sentients, all races and nationalities, were crammed shoulder-to-shoulder, pulpy flesh to hard exoskeleton. Word was hotels rooms on Buddha City Station were going for a hundred times their normal rates. Hotel ships still were coming in from all over the galaxy, even though the fight’s 15,000 tickets sold out in a record thirty-seven seconds.

  They lowered Chai in on a hoversled. He was flanked by two Amazons almost as tall as he was, gorgeous and bikini-clad with the finest, shapeliest curves money could buy. They presented him like the grand prize on a game show or the hottest new model conveyance at transport expo. Chai wore a kimono-style robe embossed with his inverted crucifix logo. He’d grown his hair out and wore it styled in the ancient samurai fashion, even braiding a thin beard from his chin.

  The crowd was deafening, the lights blinding. He and Korak were separated by waves of reporters, managers, trainers and IFA officials. Chai could barely see the legendary Quyth Warrior champion through the thicket of bodies and the holocamera glares.

  Tonight, the weigh-in. Tomorrow, the fight.

  They weighed Korak first. Low One, but he was big for a Quyth Warrior. So many fused cracks in his chitin he looked like a hard-boiled egg dropped from 50 feet up, then reconstructed into something unbreakable, something bulletproof. Easily the biggest pedipalps Chai had ever seen, and the middle arms? Chai would have to stay the hell away from those. That, or just break them. Chai knew, though, that he really had to watch out for Korak’s legs. The Cutter wasn’t as fast as he’d been in his prime, and kicks could be easily dodged or countered, but each time those big feet lashed out, they carried pure knockout power.

  When it was Chaiyal’s turn, he disrobed and flexed for the crowd, then formed the upside-down cross with his forearms that was one of his trademarks. The fans nearly cannibalized each other. Someone handed him a Buddha City Beer. It came in a pressurized metal tube guaranteed to keep it fresh, even in the vacuum of space. Buddha City Beer was sponsoring the event.

  Chai played his role, holding it label-first at the holocameras before stabbing its center with the point of his elbow. He held the tube aloft and guzzled the lager that sprang forth, shaking his head and letting it froth on him as the crowd cheered. Finally, for good measure, he sprayed the excess on his scantily clad escorts, who tittered and writhed on cue.

  Everyone ate it up. It was exactly what the promoters wanted.

  Chai never looked over at Korak the Cutter to see how the legendary fighter reacted to the antics. Chai would’ve said he didn’t care, but there was also a part of Chai that didn’t want to know what Korak really thought of him as a fighter, as a sentient.

  Chai returned to the green room the organizers had quartered off for him. It was filled with gifts, food and drink, free samples from companies seeking his services as a spokesman. Most of these Chaiyal had ignored before the weigh-in, and they didn’t interest him any more now.

  However, a new delivery had arrived while Chaiyal was playing to the crowd: a small, furry Quyth Leader and his two battle-hardened bodyguards.

  “Greetings, Chaiyal.”

  Gredok the Splithead was seated on the plush couch. He looked like a doll to Chai.

  Virak the Mean stood stoically by his master’s side. Choto the Bright was there as well, examining a life-size rendering of Chai holding an energy drink that one of the corporations had mocked up as an enticement. It had been six weeks since Chai had shredded Choto’s leg — the leg looked completely healed. Gredok’s money, apparently, could pay for a top-notch surgeon.

  “Gredok,” Chai said. “You didn’t have to come in person. A gift basket would have been fine.”

  “Ah, but I am here to do more than congratulate you,” Gredok said, and that’s when Chai felt the other shoe drop, directly down his gullet. “I am here to discuss the outcome of the fight.”

  “Catch me after it’s over,” Chai said, although he already knew where this was going. “We can crack open a beer and watch the replay. I’ve got twelve cases in the corner over there.”

  Choto inspected these with interest. Gredok’s one-eyed cranium seemed to bob slightly. Chai couldn’t tell whether the Quyth was nodding or laughing or both.

  “Let us speak plainly, Mister North. There is not a sentient in the known universe who would bet on Korak the Cutter defeating you. Even the Quyth who praise Korak’s name won’t speak it to their book-makers when it is time to lay down their wagers on this epic battle.”

  “Sounds like a big problem for the guy running illegal sports betting. I’m glad I’m not him.”

  “No, you are not him, but you do owe him a great deal. I restored your career, and I require repayment. No one is saying you cannot or will not be champion; you simply cannot and will not take the title from the hero of my people. Am I understood?”

  Chai nodded. “That’s why you booked the fight here, isn’t it? On Buddha City Station. So that the hero of your people could see him beat the Purist Nation’s best right on Purist Nation territory. Korak flies home a hero, never fights again. Am I right?”

  “Partially,” Gredok said. “Buddha City Station also has a certain ... flexibility ... with the law that I don’t have even in a city I control. I put you in the IFA, you will get your title shot, and you owe me.”

  “I said I’d owe you. I didn’t say how much.”

  “The time for semantics is gone, Mister North. This is not a request.”

  “No, but this is still a refusal.”

  “You are in no position to offer a refusal. You will lose this fight in the third round. How you lose I leave entirely up to you.”

  “Shuck you, Shamakath.”

  Chai stormed out of the green room without waiting for a reaction. Gredok’s warriors didn’t follow him. Even in his rage, Chai knew that was only because Gredok must
have ordered them not to.

  • • •

  The bartender remembered him.

  Chai sat in what might’ve been the same bar stool he’d occupied the night Brocka the Razor-Barbed opened his skull and, by proxy, a larger universe to Chaiyal.

  “I tell that story at least twice a night,” the gruff Human told Chai. “Most of the tourists don’t believe it, that The Heretic himself sat right there and took the worst beat-down I ever seen in my life. Say, Champ, do you think you could sign the bar top here, maybe with a li’l joke about it so I got some confirmation?”

  Chai tuned him out. He wasn’t in the mood. He wanted to kill Gredok but was content to murder several bottles of hard liquor in the Quyth crime boss’s place. He was well on his way to committing that massacre, too.

  “Prodigal son returns,” a deep voice spoke over Chai’s right shoulder.

  Chaiyal might’ve ignored that one, too, except it sparked some vague recognition. More than that, it commanded his attention. He swerved around in his stool.

  It was Malachi “Ides of March” McMasters, the greatest fighter in the history of the Purist Nation. Before Chai, of course. Chai had only met him once before, that same night he’d been in this bar, that same night he’d been thrashed by Brocka the Razor-Barbed. McMasters sat in the front row as a special guest during all the Crusaders title bouts.

  “Whose son?” Chai asked darkly.

  The older man settled into the bar stool next to him. He didn’t have the face of a retired fighter, despite the scars. It was more like the face of a Roman general from the time period in Earth’s history that gave him his nickname.

  “When you’re the champ you belong to the universe. You’re everyone’s son.”

  “That’s deep for bangers like us.”

  “Do you prefer to drink alone?”

  “I can drink alone with you sitting there.”

  It was as close to an invitation as Chaiyal ever extended, and even that was rare.

  McMasters ordered the same acid-strong swill Chai was drinking. For a while they didn’t talk.

  Finally, after draining his second glass, McMasters said: “You know the Holy Men put a hit out on you when you bolted.”

  Chaiyal only nodded.

  “They came to me with the contract, as a matter of fact. They figured I could get close to you and I was maybe the one guy in the Purist Nation who could take you out.”

  Chaiyal snorted into his drink. “What was the offer?”

  “Oh, they’d make me an archbishop. Wealth beyond my wildest dreams. Power to match it. Pretty much what you’d expect.”

  “And you said no.”

  “I said no.”

  They drank. Chaiyal soon realized that McMasters wouldn’t just offer the next part, he had to be asked.

  “All right,” Chai relented. “Why did you say no?”

  “Because after you busted your contract to bang with the ‘satanic’ species, I started thinking a lot more about words. Like ‘champion’ and ‘gladiator’ and ‘warrior.’ Champions can be manufactured. Gladiators can be all hype. Warriors are just products of someone else’s training. They’re all just words, kid. The only one that actually means something ... is ‘fighter.’ That’s all I ever wanted to be. I ended up being a gladiator instead.”

  “I’ve seen your fights,” Chai said. “You were the real deal.”

  McMasters smiled a sad smile. “Thanks, kid. That means ... well, it matters, anyway. But I never had to fight you.”

  “No. You didn’t.”

  Chaiyal was silent for a long time. He didn’t believe in fate, in destiny. He didn’t believe an aging mixed martial artist just turned up in moments like these spouting philosophy.

  “The real reason I didn’t come after you? I hoped that ... well, I hoped you were different. That you were the one they couldn’t reach, that there really could be a man who was a pure fighter, nothing else.”

  Chai looked up at the older man. “You know, don’t you?”

  “I’m not the only one,” McMasters said. “Line is drawing back to even odds. Considering your skill and Korak’s age, that means people think you’re gonna take a dive. That true?”

  Chai shook his head. “No shucking way. I can’t ... I wouldn’t know how to throw a fight.”

  “Well, if your life matters to you, you better learn. I know you’re in the wheel now. I’ve been there. I’m still there, in a way. And when my time came, I made like a spoke and moved the wheel where they told me to. I wasn’t strong enough to break the damn thing apart and roll my own way. I wanted to be a champion. I forgot it was just a word. I forgot all that matters is being a fighter. And I stopped fighting. The battles that mattered, anyway. But those are the ones you’ve been taking up. I don’t want to see you stop fighting, even if you still get in the ring.”

  McMasters finished his drink and stood up.

  “So that’s the whole thing?” Chaiyal asked.

  McMasters stared at him. “It’s more than I thought I’d say when I saw you sitting there.”

  “I’ll tell you something,” Chai said quietly. “My life doesn’t really matter to me all that much. Fighting does.”

  The old man smiled, then walked away. Chaiyal watched him go, watched him until he disappeared from Chai’s sight line.

  “You want another one, Champ?” the bartender asked.

  “No,” Chai said. “I’m all done.”

  • • •

  The gym was empty. It was no coincidence; Chaiyal had rented out the facility for the entire weekend he was to be on the station.

  His every molecule felt soaked with alcohol, and he preferred to sweat his drunk off rather than conveniently dismiss it with a pill or a shot. Chai loaded 800 pounds onto the horizontal bar, slipping four 100-pound plates onto each end, and reclined against the ergonomic bench. He’d already forgotten most of McMasters’s words, but what Chai couldn’t shake was the image of the look on the man’s face as he spoke.

  Five hundred reps in, Chai’s eyes were closed and the bar suddenly crushed down against his chest as if someone had added another 800 pounds to each end. He choked on his own breath and looked up.

  Chai found himself staring into the single glaring eye of Virak the Mean.

  “I said I hoped to be able to give you an honorable death, Human,” the Quyth Warrior said, dribbling yellowish bile onto Chai’s face with each word.

  Choto the Bright was looming at the other end of the bench.

  “You’ll decide if tonight is the night that comes to pass. My master requires two things: the correct response to his command of you and that you answer for your insult.”

  In one deft, blinding motion, Chai’s hands shot outward, to the end of the weight bar where he slipped a hundred-pound plate off each side, then clapped them together like cymbals. The only thing that kept Virak’s brain from becoming a pancake was the Quyth’s natural armor. Chai brought the plates down and up again fast, trying to finish the job, but even badly stunned Virak was able to catch Chaiyal’s wrists with his strong pedipalps.

  Chai dropped the plates and curled his body up, the remaining 600 pounds pressing down on his chest and throat, his thick abdominal muscles bringing his knees up until he snapped out his left leg, driving his shin into Virak’s cranium. The kick staggered Virak backward, and as it did Chai extended out again, kicking like an enraged mule and driving both feet into Choto the Bright with enough force to knock the enforcer off balance.

  Chaiyal rolled off the bench, pulling the weight bar with him, dipping one end, then the other. Hundred-pound plates dropped hard to the floor, bam-bam-bam, bam-bam-bam. Chai stood tall and alert, gaining his bearings, the 45-pound weight bar held in both hands like the weapon it now was.

  Virak and Choto weren’t alone.

  They’d learned their lesson, or Gredok had learned it for them. There were four other Quyth Warriors surrounding Chai, as well as a hulking Ki Gredok had no doubt hired out of Buddha City as backup.


  Virak and Choto moved to the background, allowing their fellow warriors to begin closing in.

  “All right,” Chai said. “Which one of you ugly shuckers gets to die first?”

  There was a moment’s hesitation that touched all four Quyth Warriors surrounding him. The sight of Chaiyal North, nearly seven feet tall and holding a meter-long bar of solid steel as if it were a battle axe, was enough to give even a battalion pause.

  One-on-one or five on one, Chai never missed a chance to strike first. He stepped right and thrust out, the extra meter of reach resulting in the end of the weight bar driving into the cyclops face of the Warrior standing there. Before that one ever fell, Chai had pushed off his right foot, driving left, driving that end of the bar into a Quyth Warrior chest. The one in front of him rushed in, smartly watching for the bar but dumbly forgetting that Chai’s feet had killed trained martial artists. Chai’s foot swept his knee, and the Warrior went down hard.

  The fourth Quyth Warrior, the one at Chai’s back, locked his lower limbs around Chai’s waist while his pedipalps extended over Chai’s shoulder and clamped down on the weight bar, drawing it tight across his throat.

  Chai had been choked more times than he could count. He knew exactly how long he had before he started to black out, and you could do a lot of damage in seven seconds.

  The hired Ki muscle closed in. Four arms and four fists of granite began trying to bust Chai apart. Several punches landed, hard punches, and Chai couldn’t roll with the blows, not with this jerk choking him from behind.

  Gritsak eass chodolok, the creature said. Chai didn’t know what he’d said; he just knew no one talked to The Heretic like that.

  Chai reached out, grabbed two handfuls of the fleshy vocal tubes sticking out of the Ki’s head and yanked. Flesh tore free, black blood flew, and the 12-foot-long creature made a High One awful noise.

  Three seconds before he passed out, maybe two.

  With the monstrous alien distracted for the moment, Chai twisted his head hard to the left and bit down on the alien fingers pulling the weight bar tight across his throat. It was like digging his teeth into several layers of moistened leather, but Chai clamped his jaws and thrashed his head until something solid and wet tore free. At the same time he drove his elbows down on the lower appendages clasped around his waist, the hard bone breaking the grip of his enemy.