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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 2: Slade 251
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Kondor 256
Happily back to his rooms in the swamp, Slade found that the Brown’s apartment had reverted to empty once he stated that the man was ‘dead’. Deciding against reequipping it to the specs it had before as a waste of time because Derek was not going to be back, Slade had it outfitted as a practice center.
With his decision to make it a ‘full attack possible’ combat testing center, he found that it took a much larger chunk of his resources in factory seconds than he expected, almost half a percent. This also made the combat center permanent, fully furnished. If sold, the equipment inside would stay with the apartment, which he gathered was not the usual way. But with Derek’s money, including his winnings, plus his own, they were not hurting. Rather, they really had more money than they knew what to do with. He wondered if that were the Emperor’s aim, to set Slade and the other warriors up as new power centers in society without seeming to do it on purpose. The newly created Warrior Clique would then offset other power groups in the imperial society who were more decadent. Was he but a marionette dancing on strings held by the ruler of hundreds of billions?
He mentioned to his wife one night that their apartment suites were going to be here for who knew how long, available to any other verser who came through. She liked that, and suggested he put some of the factory seconds to a fund for them as well. After some discussion they put all the rest of Derek’s and half of theirs which meant they had about half of what he had before building the combat center. It was enough for him to live on for several decades as long as they did not do anything too outrageous. In that time, he figured he could find a new job, or perhaps enter another tournament.
The next day, after setting up the investment fund with their seaweed friends, he and Shella went over to the combat center. After stretching, he attempted and failed to jump from the ground to his feet. Laughing, he shifted to diving forward and rolling on the mats. A dozen dives later, and a bit woozy, he went to a pull up bar. He did fifty pullups, and then had her wrap her arms about his waist and lifted both of them for another twenty. After that, he walked a circuit of the room on high balance beams. She joined him for this.
Smiling slyly at her, he dove off the beam to the matted floor, and came up in a roll. She in turn jumped down, landing on her feet but allowing herself to fall forward into a roll that brought her back to her feet with a smooth grace. He finished with lifting weights. It was a refreshing change from gladiatorial games.
Days passed, and he added more and longer exercises to the light routine. He learned to leap from the ground to his feet most of the time. Also, the targets got a beating from his sword and his blaster. But the room was rated for this much damage, and handled it.
The next day, a fortnight after Derek left them, he received an invite from non-Imperial messengers via the Blue aliens, a quad again, who said ‘Eleven ranked contestants in the previous challenge invite you to sponsor an area wide tournament.” “Area” meant one of the hundreds of subsectors on the goliath planet. The closest comparison to back on Earth would be if he and some other pro athletes sponsored an All-City Tournament in some large metropolis. This would be in his home subsector.
“Interesting.”
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #524: Twisting Worlds. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
