“Fuck,” Aokan says. “That’s a good one. Oh fuck, fuck this, fuck you, let’s fuck. It’s versatile.”
“Fuck,” Maqnimuq says. “Is mean, uh, sex, yeah?”
“Yep. But like it also means sex as, like, a bad thing.”
“Bad sex.” Maq lugs a turbine up to his shoulder and presses it into place on the stack without even bothering to attach it to the stack crane. “Huh.”
“Fuck me, you’re strong,” Tarro says.
“Fuck me,” Maq recites.
“You should try saying that one to Luvavi next time she’s drooling all over your arm,” Boraido says.
“Luvavi is the purple one with the, uh—zig-zaggy head hair?”
“The braid, yeah.” Boraido clips onto the stack crane and tightens his belt. “Braced?”
Maq plants his shoulder on the side of the stack. “Braced.”
“Mounting.” Boraido hits a button and the crane buzzes to life, yanking him from the ground and depositing him five meters up atop the stack. “All set.”
“Hmm.” Maq puts his hands on his hips. He sounds contemplative under his opaque visor. “Luvavi.”
“She’s desperate for an Eqtoran. It’s funny.” Borraido sets about navigating the maze of connectors and tethers that’ll sync the condensers to the turbines. “You been compelled yet?”
“Orientation says compel is, uh—this word.” Maq cuts a thumb across his neck.
“Dangerous?” Royak offers.
Maq nods.
“All the best things in life are,” Aokan says.
“If Luvavi’d been my first compulsion I’d have ended up a flash-fiend,” Boraido says. “That shit is nice. Smooth as butter.”
Privately, Aokan prefers a more rugged compulsion than Luvavi gives. Some guys talk about compulsion like all that matters is that the ride is smooth and warm. He likes it spiky, when it’s recreational. A reminder that someone’s tugging his leash.
“We could invite her tonight,” Boraido says. “She keeps trying to get us to introduce you.”
“Maybe.” Maq interlocks his fingers and stretches his forearms out. “Maybe.”
“How about this one.” Tarro looks up from his spot welds. “Fuck your father, shitbreath.”
“Fuck your father, shitwind.”
“Shit breath.”
“Shut up, shitbreath,” Maq says, to a chorus of mirth on the line. “Is easy make Taiikari laugh.”
“Okay.” Boraido waves down from the top of the stack. “Double-check the clamps, outlaw. Should have three connector rivets on the top.”
The first time Boraido called Aokan that, it was two Eqtoran beers into the night, which is thrice as many Taiikari ones. Aokan introduced his fist to the other man’s face over it. By the blue Qarnak dawn, the two of them were brothers.
Aokan takes a knee and inspects the clamps that hold the stack to the ring, each the size of his head. “Three rivets.” He straightens up and slaps the activator on the drone. It buzzes into the air; its optic laser shines teal in the heavy particulate wind of Qarnaq II as it scans the labels.
Boraido rides the crane back down to the ring. “Get ready to hook ‘er up, boys.”
“Yo, Maq.” Royak gives the drone’s cable an experimental tug and winches extra tension into it. Everyone’s skittish from the collapse last cycle and doing double the minimum safety regs. “We’ve been giving you the whole tutorial. How about an Eqtoran one?”
Maq tightens the shoulder strap on his exo suit while he considers this. He’s standing apart from the drone; hasn’t been trained on it yet, and it benefits from smaller Taiikari hands anyway. “Kuteq Eqt.”
“Kuteq Eqt,” they chorus.
“Is, uh. Chest of Eqt. These.” Maq’s hydraulics hiss as he curves his hands in front of his chest.
“Eqt’s boobs?”
“Yeah. Eqt’s boobs. Big trouble, you say that.”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“My girl keeps calling me nuqanmik rmvik,” Royak says. He’s been seeing a keeper and won’t shut the fuck up about it. “She won’t tell me what it means.”
A crackling sound from Maq’s mic of rushing inhaled air. Aokan looks with a rigger’s alertness toward the huge vacsuit on the scaffold. Maq has one huge glove on his chest and for a heartbeat Aokan’s ready to throw down his riveter and rush to the man. Then he realizes the guy’s laughing his ass off.
“What’s it mean?” Royak asks, his consternation clear.
“Is means, uh—how to say—we have horned beasts who pull the nuqan in groups. Nuqan is a sledge like, uh, small.” Maq brings his palms close. “Only one can ride. Four rmik pull. Yes? Nuqanmik rmvik is the runty beast who drops first on the long ride.”
“Oh,” Royak says.
“Is a name like cute,” Maq says, over another peal of laughter from the rest of the guys. “Is cute. You say after big fuck.”
“This is some real motherfuckin’ cultural exchange. They should give us a grant for this.” Aokan steps away from his side of the drone. “Clear.”
“Clear.”
“All clear.”
Boraido hits the button on his boxy controller. “Away she goes.”
The men watch the stack sail to the side of the ring and sink halfway down it. The drone shifts it into the awaiting berth; a rumbling roar beneath their feet accompanies its placement.
They jog to the berth and chatter and joke and finish the connection on the topside; the drone buzzes about beneath the ring sealing off each docking clamp as they work.
“All right, runty beasts.” Shift Manager Prolia’s in their headsets. “Good install. Don’t get going on the next one, yet. There’s a break in fifteen minutes.”
“Already?” Aokan wipes the gray dust from his timepiece. “Break’s after lunch for the afternoon shift, isn’t it?”
“This is a bonus break,” Prolia said. “Don’t tug its tail off. The Countess has called a little assembly for 1100. We have some visitors.”
Royak sighs and slaps his rivet gun into its holster. “We’re never gonna beat shift 5 with these fuckin’ breaks, man. First they drag Aokan in for a spanking, and now an assembly?”
“Shut your mouth, Royak,” Boraido says, chummily. “This assembly’s on paid time, right?”
Maq chimes in: “What is spanking mean?”
“Hello, boys.” A familiar raspy voice comes over the line and knocks Aokan’s heart into a backspin. “Still on the clock, yes.”
“Representative.” Boraido bows on pure reflex—it’s not like she’s watching them. “We’re already on our way.”
“Four installs down and it ain’t even lunch.” Royak stretches his tail out as they wander toward the convocation hall. “We’re taking it from the fivers, boys. Mark me.”
“Not likely,” Boraido says. “The fivers picked up an extra shift this sixthday.”
Tarro scoffs. “What the fuck? On time-and-a-half?”
Boraido nods as he swaps the leftside filter on his breather mask.
“Why?”
“Why’d you think?”
Maq has slowed in his steps. Aokan gives him a look and another meter of space. They’ve all talked about the work stoppages, of course. They try not to around their Eqtoran.
“Stupid,” the Eqtoran rumbles.
“Who’s stupid?” Aokan asks. “The other Eqtorans?”
Maq nods.
“You not into religion?” Royak asks, which seems like a dumb question to Aokan—as far as he understands the Eqtorans they’re all into religion.
“Religion.” Maq sounds it out. “What does this mean?”
“Stuff about the Gods,” Royak says. “Like temple and such.”
Maq hums pensively. “Like sacred?”
“Sure.”
Maq shakes his head. “They think it is sacred,” he says. “But they are so afraid of letting the Taiikari take their myaiuq away, they give the walking of it to another. This is, uh, vmuiaq nuq moniuq. Cutting bait before the bite. Stupid.”
There’s a melancholy to his voice. Aokan clears his throat. “Well, we’re glad you’re still here, man.”
“Is good,” Maq intones. “Less Eqtoran guys, more Luvavi for me.”
“Good afternoon, everyone.”
Countess Wenzai is first up on the dais, standing before two clerics Aokan doesn’t recognize from the little chapel on-ring and the Prince of the entire fucking sector, so Prolia’s little was a spoonful of bullshit. The Countess cranes her neck to look out over the dusty, dayworn crowd of refinery workers and builders and aerostat drivers who have assembled in the prefab convocation hall. Interlocking steel girders and wall panels, banners hung in alternating red and black. Behind her, the twin portraits of the Empress and the Princess. Blown-up versions of the stern pictures that gazed down at Aokan every morning at the re-ed facility.
“First off,” Wenzai says. “I know there have been some labor shortages lately with the furlough thing. A lot of you have been picking up extra shifts and filling in on odd teams. And thanks to that we are on track to finish our refinery buildout by the end of this tenday.”
Applause; stomps and whistling.
Wenzai grins. She’s all right, everyone says. Aokan’s not so sure. He hears a buzz that she was the one who dragged him in the other cycle.
“Now once we’ve finished building the damn thing I know some of you need training on the particulars of actually running the machinery. The good news is that we have plenty of room in the apprenticeship cadres for that, because, uh…”
She looks to the empty seats. The Eqtorans who have put down their tools.
“Which brings us to our next piece of business,” Wenzai says, and steps aside.
From the far corner of the stage, the dark-haired cleric steps to the dais and adjusts the microphone upward. “Hello. I’m the next piece of business. My name is Brother Tymar of Indrik, and this is my partner Brother Cerik.”
He indicates his fellow cleric, whose serene smile remains unchanged as he bows.
“I understand there are workers among you with questions of faith, and its intersection with the friendships you are forming across the divide of species,” Tymar continues. “I’m here to answer what I can, and learn what I can, and, I hope, prove even a fraction as useful to the health of the Korak project as you all have been. Whatever rift has opened, I want to do my part in patching it. In the next few days, I hope to speak to each of you about the interfaiths you’ve seen at play on the ring—or each of you who has the patience to talk to a fiddly little man of faith, anyway.”
He steps out from the dais, raising his voice to make up for the unamplified difference.
“I’m now going to speak specifically to the Eqtorans among you,” he calls, in the loud and carrying voice of a preacher, “and adjourn to a different conference room.”
He clears his throat, dislodging not a small amount of mucus.
“Unamiq iak miuk. Naqva ia Brother Tymar-nek-Indrik…”
He continues in Eqtorish. The twoscore or so fishfaces still working at Korak (Aokan’s gotta stop calling them that, he knows) shuffle their feet or shift their seats to crowd around him.
Maq extends his fist with solemnity. “See you on the ring, shitbreaths.”
They fistbump him, and he goes to join his people. Murmuring conversations spark in the wake of the Eqtoran departure, then cease just as quickly, drawing into a universally held breath:
The Prince of the Black Pike has stepped to the microphone.
Invictus Shakes: A Gladiator Slice of Life
by Mila Anemoia
To taste glory, gladiators must bring a whole new flavor to the arena or die trying.
Salve! Welcome to the Imperium Aeterna, where the gods decided to cut out a piece of ancient Rome and keep it to themselves. I'm Maximilia, owner of Invictus Shakes. You'll find my smoothie bar across from the realm's best gladiator school—the one started by the champion, who, funny story, also adopted me.
Whatever the occasion, I've got the drink for you. Training hard? Fuel with the Fortis Aqua. Partying harder? Recharge and recover with the Raucous Bacchus! Won big betting on who died? Well, you can live it up like a god with real gold flakes. And I've also got the latest rumors to go with it.
So, get this. People think the mysterious territories appearing are from the world we left behind. But what I want to know is what kind of warriors they'll have fighting in the next games. Because I'm already praying to the gods I don't end up handing them their last drink. There's a lot more to these gladiators than guts, glory, and good looks.
Alright, stop staring at their muscles and...hey, eyes up here! So, what can I get you?
Ingredients to expect:
- Slice of Life, drama & action
- Found family
- Gladiators vs other cultures
- Complex characters & relationships
- Flirting & romance/slow-burn
- Humor & tragedy