Jack Steel: The Walls

Every night they shut down the tournament for an hour.

No Lights, barely air to breath, nothing to do but sit and wait. They did maintenance then, or so we thought.

In the maze everyone felt lost, except Jack. I never knew how he stayed so sure, even when backtracking into dead ends, till he told me.

The walls, they moved them in the night. All of them except the ones too close to shooters. Jack knew the ways so well he knew how the walls would move, which way they swung. Could do all but move them himself.

He took us to the edge of the maze. Waited till dark so he could set to work.

Waiting for dark terrified us all. We never stayed still before then. You couldn't know what would come down a tunnel at you. Every time we hunted, if the prey were still we won. Yet that time we waited. No clock to tell us how long it could be. Even Jack won't speak of the waiting, drove us halfway round the bend.

But the lights slammed off eventually and we went to work. Moving in pitch black, lungs burning for more air, we heard the walls moving. Strained our eyes to find a wall that would open up an exit from the maze. We searched blindly, knew time was against us, till suddenly it all happened and we stood outside the maze.

A man met us. Pale and diseased thing. Said he tried to escape too. But the maze was sealed off here. He could see the way out but couldn't reach it. Nothing to eat but the slime on the walls and the rats on the floor. Nothing to drink but boiled sewer water.

We saw the exit from there. A raising bridge that could move to any position on the mazes edge. We watched as the bridge went down to allow new shooters over a huge cavern and into the maze. It was too far away for us to reach in time, and we could never predict where it'd land next. Each of us stared longingly as it raised back up, closing any chance of escape.

Jack didn't even watch. His eyes just fixated on the ground. The kid looked crushed. The plan didn't work.

Jack Steel: The Tournament

When the Sky Men came back they brought weapons we'd never dreamed of. We had no answers. Lucky they wanted hostages, not corpses. The first attack, we found out, was just a test. They wanted to know how The Hub stood up to a fight.

Jack and our boys stood just fine.

Soon the place was up and running again. Jack worked showing the money through the tunnels beneath the boilers.

Sky Men took to constructing more tunnels, more boilers, more foundries, and all we built was more weapons.

It didn't feel like we were conquered. Sky Men treated us better than the founding leader of The Hub, for a while at least.

But then the new people came. Mercenaries, hard men, the best gun slingers in the galaxy. They all came for the tournament. We were each given a primitive rifle, they were going to hunt us like game birds. But we were armed to raise the stakes, and give us hope.

Some of the locals split up, I stayed with Jack.

We were stalked for days by two commandos from Kralliss, but Jack Steel knew the tunnels too well and led them into a trap. For one so young Jack had the patience of a chess master.

Soon we'd taken more than our fair share of scalps, and Jack was on top of the tournament's leader-board.
We based ourselves near the boilers, so that's where the best shots in the world wanted to come.

Sometimes it felt like we were dancing puppets though. It was time to escape, because we'd never be released, not from there.

Jack Steel: The Hub

Jack Steel was born in The Hub, main colony on the factory world of Clabrius. Jack worked in the boilers, a rough part of town, the power nexus for The Hub. Lived in a dormitory for other lost souls. Didn't school, school was just for the lucky ones.

In the boilers you don't care about the noises above. When the sky opened he didn't even flinch, just kept working. Wasn't till warning told them he took up arms. Fought the Skymen in the boilers, but it wasn't enough, they had to fight back.

Jack was a leader, commanded the resistance. The boilers never fell and they won back the foundry and part of the forge, nearly half the whole Hub.

But they were outmatched. The Skymen came harder. It was a slaughter. Only the most skilled survived. Sure enough one was Jack Steel.

But the Skymen never finished them. Holed up in the boilers we all wondered why. Was it mercy, or something else, that stayed their hand.

We waited, day after day. Boilers ran dry, air would soon be unfit to breathe. Jack went out alone. The Hub was deserted, expect for the dead. Skymen couldn't live without the boilers running.

Now there's water in the boilers and the ventilator works again. We try to rebuild but so much has been lost. We would have lost everything if not for Jack Steel.