Terror at the Tournament

Posted on October 18, 2008 @ 09:38PM

The day of the tournament had come, and I was getting ready for the first of the qualifying sessions. For some reason the tournament heads had changed the order of the events. The first even would be the maneuver trials. This was going to make a pretty amazing spectacle, because it within the Tosadae Zero-G sports stadium. The whole place was renovated, so that the spectator stands could view the FX Fighters, but the force-fields would prevent the audience from getting hurt.

The first kid up wasn’t so great. Kam and I were watching from the stands, and Kam was bagging him out.
“God knows how he got in,” he said. The guy veered off to the side the audience got a hell of a start as the field flashed up beside them.
“Whoa, he’s not going much further,” I said.

I was up next, and I don’t think I’ve been so nervous in my life. I got into the cockpit and fired it up. I rose about fifty feet into the center of the stadium dome and hovered. The first maneuver was to execute a four barrel rolls, strafing to my left, another eight to my right, and then four to the left putting me back in the center. This was the first time I’d ever set foot in a real FX-80 Politia fighter, but the simulators were incredibly accurate. I must have been a few inches away from the side on my first series of rolls, but luckily the fields didn’t flare up. The next move was to drop 40 feet, hover and then angle the nose of the fighter up again, rocket directly upwards to roof of the stadium, and then do a complete circle forwards, around the edges of the stadium and back to the roof of the stadium, then drop back to the center.

I managed to pull off all of the subsequent maneuvers, but I wasn’t as great as I wanted. I got back out and Kam reassured me I did fine. I was just happy to have flown a real fighter.

Kam had to sit through four other competitors, and I could tell he was getting anxious. When he finally got in there, he was psyched. He was a few minutes into his routine and he was going immaculately. Suddenly Miro ran in with Nkiru,and found me.
“Derf!” Nkiru yelled. “You’ve gotta make them stop! Someone’s sabotaged the stadium!” I ran over to the intercom, and smashed on the button to open the connection.
“Kam! You’ve gotta land now!” I yelled
“What!? I’m about to do my ascension!” he replied.
“You can’t! Just land!” I yelled.
Kam descended, just as a deafening bang sounded out through the stadium. An explosion had got off at the top of the dome, and I saw Kam’s wing catch fire. If it was anyone else, they would have crashed straight into the area where the crowd was its densest.

Kam managed to land the thing properly on ground. We ran down to see if he was okay, but we were blocked by paramedics. I don’t think anyone was hurt, but when we finally caught up with him Kam was pissed, not scared.
“Who the hell did that!” Kam yelled. “I’m going to find him, and I’m going to kill him!”

I didn’t like Kam’s chances. This was the biggest problem at Tosadae since the Atlantia transport was attacked. Not only had it endangered hundreds of people, but it would just increase the paranoia going round at the time. Grenci and his colleagues had been getting more and more effective. I had a feeling they’d track this guy down before Kam would. I just hope they can track this individual down before they could hurt anyone else.

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