Free Raiders by Stephan Malone Page A

flank and into her core. She quickly stood up on reflex before her mind consciously registered the event she was on her feet once again. Can't believe I fell for that , Aurelia thought.
    Kama yelled, “Come on!” Aurelia felt paralyzed. “COME ON!!” Kama roared, and provokingly jutted her polearm back and forth at Aurelia.
    What happened next was a flash, white. As if someone marionetted her from a world unseen she sprinted straight at Kama and struck her again and again. From the top, from the sides, straight in. Bleep! Bleep! Critical! Critical! She jammed the pole right into Kama’s left knee which cause her to buckle in and fall. Kama was down! How did I do that? Aurelia did not know. The motions came as one continuous flow,like a singular motion, all. She wailed and smashed at the exotic alien. She screamed and didn’t even stop when Kama tried to instinctively shield her face from Aurelia's sustained onslaught.
    Blood sponged out of Kama from her arms and her head in small places. Aurelia straddled her and pinned her down, her sheer motions resignedly out of her control. Aurelia dropped her polearm and then she simply punched and jabbed at Kama, over and over and over.
    “Stop! STOP IT! Jesus Christ you’re going to kill her!” Professor Palmer screamed into his microphone uplink. “Shit she can’t hear me,” he said.
    Which was true. Aurelia could not hear him because her senses were tunneled down so far and she was in that special spiritual place that envelopes one when they exercises for a long time or engage in extreme combat,or find themselves in a fight for their very life. After what seemed to be ten minutes even though only about thirty seconds passed Aurelia rolled off Kama. Aurelia was out of breath and covered in blood which was everywhere. The Arena door whizzed and whirled, a metallic bolt sounded through and with a ker-klunk the door swung open. A stream of Officers and guards filed into the room. Aurelia held up her right hand. “Its..” She couldn’t even catch her breath for more than two words and waved some more at the guards. “Okay. Okay. Okay...” She said with an diminished volume for each word.
    The guards stood around the two combatants in a semicircle, all silent while they lay there together on the matted floor. They stared at the light arrays above them, a soft glow of gold-white in six lines cross. Kama had landed right next to her leather battlesuit. A small rivulet of blood flowed toward the resting armor from the ever-growing pool that surrounded Kama’s upper body. Kama extended her right arm out and weakly plopped it onto her heap of leather and metal. She stared down her arm, down the road of symbols and skin and congealed hemoglobin veins with a faraway, melancholic stare. All those years of great and absolute power. All the days where she feared nothing and nobody, never in want of anything in a world of complete need and desperation. Those days were gone now and all that remained was this thirty-one year old arm and a mind full of mysteries known to very few alive and dead alike. What remained was the pain and the hazy, defocused memories of control, of endless and loveless sex with men and women and an untouchable, immeasurable distance from anything that resembled intimacy, gentleness or care.
    It was at that moment she realized the truth. She was lost .
    Then, after about twenty seconds of diffused silence as everyone in the Arena, the guards, Kama, Aurelia and even Julian and the doctor in the office room could find no reason to speak, Kama cried aloud. Through the venations of blood that veiled her face, she cried. The guards looked in silent confusion one to another, unsure of what to do. Aurelia, who continued to breathe heavily from the fight turned her head away from the lights to face Kama who lay three meters away. She said nothing at all and simply stared at Kama along with the others.
    Kama said through the sobs in perfect Mandarin, “When I was nine,