Funneling tens of thousands of people through only two entrances made for some aggravation among the spectators, to say the least. The frustration was worth it to vaccinate thousands all at once. The frightened looks some of them threw at his face reminded him that most of them had never seen an off-worlder.
“We could now watch the ceremonies start,” Odalis said to him. He jumped slightly at Odalis’ voice, realizing he’d tuned out for a moment.
“Yes, I’ll just wash this--”
“Otars wash, Captain, you not. You come sees. Sitting with me. I am good place to watch.” Odalis put his arm against Jackson’s back and herded him alongside and down a short hall.
“Odalis, I need to find Dr. Gregory and Mr. Wagner.”
“Games start, we not miss ceremony. Your friend find us.”
Odalis indeed possessed visible capital in the crowd as most people gave him extra space for traversing the aisles. He didn’t know if it was Yee Odalis personally or any yee would have the same respect. They arrived quickly at center position seating near the field. Jackson might have called it the fifty yard line if the dusty ground had been covered in turf and painted with white lines.
He looked around for his friend and security officer but didn’t see them. They both would be easy to find in a crowd of white haired people if, perhaps, they weren’t such tall white haired people. Odalis almost glowed with excitement and Jackson decided he’d try to get into the spirit since he had no other choice. Perhaps he could sneak off after things were underway by feigning an illness or an interplanetary com.
The bright stadium lights cut out in an instant and the spectators roared in the dark. Jackson wished he’d had a program but for all the good it would do him written in their language. The crowd began to act as one, like a school of fish, all swaying and stomping in unison while something happened on the field. Jackson covered his ears to block the intense clamor resounding and echoing in the enclosed oval dome.
Tom tried to fathom these laid back people putting together something as incredible as the amphitheater surrounding him. Their population didn’t seem to support a stadium such as this. Even on Earth no building was so immense as this, at least not horizontally, for the sole purpose of entertainment.
“It happen soon Captain!” Odalis shouted at him. “Opens first, then lower people, then higher, then top person,” he explained. “Local, provincial, nation, planet,” he added, or perhaps clarified. This was an election by contest but not a contest of brains or policies, but of brawn and combat.
BOOM! In the center of the field a fireball erupted like a miniature, red and black nuclear bomb. The lights came up again, and Jackson distinguished the other half of the stadium was dressed mostly in a vivid green, and those around him in a vivid orange. The battle of the green and orange; had it not been so deafening he might have chuckled at the centuries old Irish battle of the green Catholics and the orange Protestants, on Earth.
A white Cinconian dressed in long robes of black stood on stage in the center where the bomb had gone off. Using a microphone, his voice bellowed in the stadium. Jackson only heard a few words he recognized here and there above the racket of the crowd. Shortly, dozens of Cinconians ran out onto the field wearing gaudy bright ponchos in neon orange and green.
A musical anthem began to play that reminded Jackson of the Indian nation, with deformed sitars, cymbals, and disharmonized notes that seemed to wiggle up and down the scale at a furious tempo. Cinconians around him stood up as if hypnotized by the crazy sounds, swaying and shouting. Even Yee Odalis stood and began to lose himself in the herd.
The music broke and a few dozen Cinconians raced out of the tunnels on each side of the field. In one hand each carried something like a machete, and in the other a round metal shield that was barely large enough to protect the user’s face. They lined up, the green against the orange, facing each other, and the sound blared again starting the stampede of weapons. Blades swung wildly, swiftly, cracking against shields and glinting in the bright lights.
Screams and cheers erupted around him, and Jackson wanted to close his eyes against the brutality but he was compelled to keep watching. In a few moments, the first blood spilled in the dirt. A unified roar intensified on both sides of the arena. He cringed at the anarchy rampant around him.
Jackson had been in a war zone. He hadn’t enjoyed it then, and didn’t now. The few times he’d had to take aim at his enemy were sterile, precision strikes aimed to destroy property, not lives. Once or twice he had been responsible when humans in the vicinity of his targets were killed. The memory briefly drowned out the sounds of war in the dirt arena below.
“Odalis!” he shouted, thumping on the yee’s shoulder. Shrieks abruptly amplified and Jackson shook over the slam to his ear drums, snapping his attention to the field. Another Cinconian lay prostrate on the ground, apparently gored before his opponent brought the machete to his neck with the strength of a grizzly bear. Now two wearing green lay dead on the field in their own blood. No others came to rescue them; no time out was called to remove the bodies from the fray. The remaining combatants simply jumped, or marched, over them.
“Odalis!” he yelled again, grabbing his arm and shaking him. The yee finally turned, his dark eyes wide and abnormally quivering. “I can’t stay, I need to go!”
“You go?! We win, not go!” the yee shouted back, turning his attention back to the carnage giving a high pitched scream for his team, or candidate, or something.
“I go!” Jackson was sweating, fuming at the reprehensible demonstration of battles. Ten minutes was more than enough. He shouted and shoved a few Cinconians out of his way, pushing past them toward the exit. They ignored him as if he didn’t exist, opening and closing like a wall of gel that he had to escape before he was swallowed, consumed, and devoured by the psychosis.
Something flew above his head, and a shower of pebbles came at him from behind. Jackson was drowning, suffocating as he parted the mob without regard and landed face down on a hard concrete walkway. Only marginally less obstructed than the seats, he clamored to his feet and plowed his way forward.
The exit to the outside was in sight! He sped his pace to reach the door and flew through it. More Cinconians crowded the plaza area but their focus was on the box office. He jogged at least twenty meters away before he stopped to breathe. He’d torn one sleeve of his heavy jacket, somehow.
“Geezezesmutherofholyfuck!” Jackson shouted to no one. He’d seen a lot of war and fighting in his years, all of it filled with death, screaming, weapons, destruction, and his least favorite of all wartime inevitabilities, blood, but this took conflict to the level of sport and carnage, for the spectacle. It just wasn’t possible that a society with indoor plumbing could revert to such savagery, yet here it was in front of him. It was akin to bull fighting, throwing Christians to lions, savage chariot races, or the Cossack uprising of 2020.
His med team was being subjected to the same madness in different Super Stadiums of Doom all over the planet. He took a few more breaths and cleared his head. He dug a small com unit from his pocket.
“Jackson to landing party, calling anyone, this is Captain Jackson. Please respond.” Despite knowing the components in the device were in no way mechanical, he banged the thing in the palm of one hand when he’d decided it’d been quiet long enough. “This is Jackson, anyone receiving? Please signal.”
He needed a drink of water or scotch, either one would do at the moment. He had another two, long kilometers to reach the New Hope building, taking his time, looking down at the silent com button. He dodged a few young Cinconians not in school, not at the festival. He stopped at an intersection and wondered where all the people had disappeared to.
“Jackson to Maria Mitchell,” he called again. A huge hand clamped over his mouth from behind and he dropped his com button in the dust. Before he could turn around an arm grabbed him around the waist and dragged him backwards out of the street. Jackson flailed and tried to squirm away from his captor but whoever it was had an iron grip, and it was green.
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