Salvation

Alexandre smiled tolerantly. The light strips ribbing the arena walls turned gold. Dellian felt the gravity start to reduce further as the arena’s spin slowed. All the boys swayed about like seaweed in a current. As always, falling gravity made him feel bizarrely light-headed. The referees both threw the flagballs upward. All four of the flashing globes soared up toward the axis.

Gravity reached about five percent. Alexandre blew the whistle.

Dellian’s muncs crouched down fast, thrusting their clenched hands into the center of the ring they were forming. Dellian hopped onto the platform of stumpy hands, squatting down. The cohort read his every muscle movement perfectly; he jumped as if he was trying to power himself all the way to the planet below. The muncs flung their arms up in perfect synchronization, slim flower petals bursting open.

He rocketed upward, body turning a half somersault, as he headed for the first polyhedron—and a hexagonal surface that was angled just so. Drawing his knees up almost to his chin. And hit-kick. The power bounce. Soaring toward the polyhedron two up. The air around him full of flying boys. Tracking them and the flagballs, trying to project where they were all going. Then the muncs were rising, from above an impossibly hefty bird flock startled into the air.

Dellian saw which of the Ansaru boys was going defensive on one of their flagballs. “Intercepting a D,” he yelled.

As he thumped down onto the next polyhedron, he altered his angle and bounced on a good interception course.

“Mallot, take Dellian’s D-2,” Tilliana called. “Yi, snatch it.”

The Ansaru defender saw him coming and curled up. Dellian rotated around his center of gravity, drawing his legs up, ready for the kick.

They collided hard. The defender tried to grab Dellian’s feet (technically illegal; you could only bump opponents, not grapple), but Dellian used only one foot, which gave him an unexpected slant. The defender’s hands swung through empty air. He made good contact on the boy’s hip, sending him spinning away to thud into a polyhedron, which whirled him off along a horizontal trajectory.

Yirella zipped past him as Mallot struck the second defender. She bounced accurately off a polyhedron and streaked straight toward the yellow flagball. Dellian’s cohort caught up with him and formed up in a globe cage of tense limbs with him in the center. Together they bounced off a hurdle, four munc legs kicking to give extra velocity. He rose toward Yirella, providing cover.

The arena light strips flashed violet for three seconds. Dellian grunted in dismay. The cohort bundle read his micro-flexing and twisted, legs rigid, arms extended so they spun slowly—ready.

The gyroscopic shells that contained the arena shifted around and spun faster. The centrifugal gravity direction altered sharply. The hurdles suddenly appeared to be moving through the air, like solid clouds in a storm front. A couple of cohort bundles were swatted, flailing away chaotically. Tilliana and Ellici were both yelling instructions, redirecting the team. Dellian saw a hurdle approaching fast, and his cohort bundle shifted their dynamic slightly. Hit and bounce-kicked in roughly the right direction. Not that he’d ever been at sea, but Dellian thought the arena’s irregular shifts must be like being in a ship as it was tossed about by a hurricane.

Yirella had stayed on course. She grabbed the Ansaru flagball and shot through the axis. Her muncs clung to her hips, producing an X shape. They twisted gymnastically, flipping her as they went through the axis—and even Dellian was impressed by the smoothness of the maneuver. Yirella bounced off a hurdle to dive headfirst toward the floor, which now had an apparent tilt of forty-five degrees.

“Yi, incoming three o’clock Z,” Ellici called. “Now! Nownow!”

Dellian bit back his own comments; the girls always got overexcited in the games, he felt. They were supposed to be the calm, analytical ones. He saw the Ansaru defender (number eight shirt) at the center of a cohort star formation, pinwheeling toward Yirella.

“Got him,” he yelled. A hurdle on his right. His awareness and posture had two munc arms shooting out, slapping, which gave the whole bundle a fast roll—putting them on course for the next hurdle. Bounce—and he crashed into number eight’s bundle a couple of seconds before he took Yirella out. The impact was strong enough to break the bundles, and muncs and boys twirled apart like explosion debris riding a blast wave.

Yirella made one more bounce and landed hard on the angled floor, rolling gracefully to absorb the impact. She raced to the Immerle goal hoop and dropped the ball into it.

Dellian smacked painfully into a hurdle and flailed about, trying to stabilize himself. Two of his muncs scrambled over a hurdle and jumped toward him. Light strips started flashing violet.