Arena: Death Space (Book 1) by Daniel Young

Author:Daniel Young [Young, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2025-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

Richmond woke up jumpy again. He’d survived yesterday. Did he dare to hope he could do the same thing today?

He paced around for a while, thinking everything over. His only chance at survival was to recruit some of the other prisoners. If they couldn’t escape, they at least had to work together to protect each other. They could take safety in numbers. It was the only advantage.

He had one other advantage: he knew the course now.

He made up his mind to study the course as much as possible every time he went out there. He needed to learn all its weaknesses. He’d found one already: a person could take manual control of those robotic guns.

Richmond went over every detail of the course that he could remember from yesterday, including all the gun positions and any other features of the course that would allow him to climb up and take control of them. If he lost his ship or got shot down, he didn’t have to run around on the ground completely defenseless. He didn’t plan to let that happen again, because he would try to get himself a better ship today.

The Lilri—or the Vasyke or whoever—would have to replace most or all of the aircraft that had been destroyed yesterday. All the ships that had survived until the final siren had taken extensive damage. Some had barely been airborne when the siren sounded to end the bout.

What would the Vasyke give the prisoners this time? They’d almost certainly send another brand-new, state-of-the-art fighter craft. They were too vindictive not to.

Richmond couldn’t go for that one. Everyone else would want it. He decided to go for something more solid and better armed, even if it showed external damage.

That was the trap. External damage didn’t make any difference on the course because none of these ships ever had to leave the atmosphere. Hull breaches would be the least consequential. Engine and weapons damage would be the worst. He also needed something faster this time, not some tub that crawled along at one-eighth speed.

Richmond racked his brain to remember every detail of every ship he saw yesterday. He’d have to avoid the shuttles, transport craft, and freighters, too. They were either too flimsy, too slow, or insufficiently armed.

One thing he knew for certain. The Vasyke wouldn’t send the same combination of aircraft every time. They’d mix it up to make sure the prisoners didn’t get familiar with any particular kind of craft. They wouldn’t want the prisoners to become proficient at flying anything. That would leave the inmates untrained and less able to defend themselves.

For all he knew, the Vasyke might be deliberately damaging these ships before the prisoners ever laid eyes on them. He wouldn’t have been in the least surprised.

His nerves started to get the better of him as the day wore on. He had to force himself to eat the rest of his food and drink the rest of his water. He did it systematically. He was a prisoner. He had to take advantage of every resource the Vasyke gave him, including the other prisoners.

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