The sucker ambush — that's your style, Bhodi thought. As Mordred tried to zero in on the running Red, Bhodi Li raised up from behind the wall and zapped him. Then, before Mordred could even look up to see who had made the speakers in his helmet buzz angrily, before his intended victim could see to whom he owed thanks, Bhodi Li was gone, on the move again.
Already he was attuned to the flow of the match and moved through the arena almost without thinking. Prowling the tunnels and ramps, pouncing from unexpected vantages, he ran up his score as he ran through the ranks of the Green team. Oz, Gor, even Black Eagle joined Mordred among his victims.
But at no point did he pause to gloat or savor his success. In Bhodi Li's concept of the game, his real opponent was time, the real objective to run up the score being credited to his name by the microcomputers monitoring the game. It was why he fought almost exclusively as a loner, even to sacrificing teammates for a few more hits, a few more tens of points. His entire defense was his relentless offense.
For Bhodi had a mountain to climb: the arena record of 2500 points. The record had been set by his friend Evan Kyley, a rangy teen a year older than Bhodi. Bhodi had been there when it happened, waiting for his own match and watching from the visitors gallery high above the arena. It had been an astonishing performance. It had also been Kyley's last match; a week later he left on a crosscountry backpacking trip, and Bhodi had not heard from him since.
In perhaps a hundred matches since, Bhodi had scored more than 2000 points just five times, all in the last six weeks. The record was in reach, and that knowledge made him drive himself even harder. Almost as though there were tumblers spinning inside his head, he knew a good run from an average one. They had a feel all their own, his gambles paying off, his anticipations proving true.
This was a good run. But there was no way to crack the record without at least one successful assault on the Red goal and the two hundred points that came with it. Busy preying on the Red warriors, he had neglected that objective far too long. The final minute of the match was slipping away.
But there might still be enough time, though not enough for stealth. More directly than was his habit, Bhodi closed on the far end of the arena: down a ramp, along a narrow corridor past the bunker, left through a tunnel, then a dash across an open area to hide in a foxhole just twenty feet from the goal.
There were three Greens protecting the goal, Oz among them. He would have to take out all three to have a chance to deliver the required three consecutive shots into the heart of the goal. There was no more cover. He would simply have to shoot faster and more accurately than his opponents.
But just as he was about to make his charge, the speakers in his helmet buzzed angrily in his ears, signifying that he himself had been hit. His phaser momentarily disabled by the hit, he crouched and turned quickly to see who had gotten him.
It was David, standing not ten feet away and wearing a self-satisfied smile. Touching the barrel of his phaser to his temple, David returned the salute Bhodi had given him at the start. Then he slipped away before Bhodi's phaser returned to life.
Irritated at having been thwarted, Bhodi took one step to pursue David, then stopped and looked up as the overhead lights went to full white and the endgame signal sounded.
Not today, Bhodi Li thought resignedly, pushing his visor up. Not today -
"Thanks a lot, pal," Bhodi said, falling in step beside David as they left the arena for the changing area. "That's the first time I've been zapped in three weeks."
"I know. Took a little extra pleasure in it for that."
"Where were you the whole time, anyway? I don't think I saw you the whole match."
"Stalking you," David said brightly. "I knew you almost never look back. I wanted to see if I could pick you off without you ever getting me."
"Well, you did, damn your eyes."
"I didn't think I was ever going to catch up to you," David confessed. "You spent an awful long time standing in the foxhole. A long time for you, that is."
"The best cover is the kind you don't depend on for long."
"It's a shame you forgot that there at the end," David jibed.
Inside the changing area, they stopped in front of the wide-screen television suspended from the ceiling on which the match and individual player's scores were displayed. The Red team had won a slight victory, with most of the points beside the name BHODI LI. The more balanced Green team had five warriors over six hundred. Beside the name KUDA LAMBDA was the number 110.
"That's pathetic," Jarvis said, elbowing his friend as they turned away from the screen. "A hundred and ten?"
"Hey, I already told you, I did what I set out to. I wouldn't have cared if it was minus ten, as long as I didn't lose the ten points at your hands."
"Gee, thanks. What a buddy."
"Take it as a compliment."
"I'm trying."
"Your problem is you're too single-minded. There's more to this game than racking up high scores."
"No, there isn't," Bhodi said, unbuckling his battery belt and surrendering it to the attendant. "And you'll be glad of my two thousand points tomorrow in the tournament."
"You won't get two thousand points tomorrow," Reynolds said pointedly. "Not against the Shrike's team."
"Sure I will," Jarvis said cheerfully. "You can do what you did today, only turn around and protect my back instead of shooting me in it."
"I don't know," Reynolds said, rubbing his chin in an exaggerated caricature of indecision. "You'd do the same for me, right?"
"Sure. As soon as you're as good as I am."
"Today I was better."
"Is that what this is all about? Bragging rights?"
"Damn straight. And I've got 'em."
"But who knows it, except me and you?" Jarvis gestured toward the scoring screen. "They look at that and see something else."
Reynolds grinned crookedly. "You'll never understand, but nobody else has to know. You and me is enough."
"You're right," Jarvis said soberly. "I don't understand." He jerked his head toward the door. "Come on. Denise will be at the drive-in by now. Let's swing by for a shake."
"She's a lost cause," Reynolds warned, idly spinning the car keys on his forefinger.
Jarvis shook his head. "There's no such thing."
CHAPTER TWO
Martin's Drive-In made a serviceable archetype for that species of home-grown fast-food restaurant that seems to exist in the shadow of every high school. Hand-lettered signs promoting permanent Specials shared the windows of the tiny square building with generic photographs of burger platters and pizza slices. The unpaved parking lot that surrounded it made a perfect showcase for new Firebirds and old but lovingly maintained Darts and Malibus alike.
Inside Martin's, freezers, fryers and grills crowded a kitchen no larger than a summer porch, and teenaged girls in tan smocks and paper caps ferried shake cups and plastic baskets of fries through the narrow aisles to the order window. The most popular item on the menu was the half-pound Raider Burger, which was named after the school's athletic teams and in most years was considerably more imposing.
It was nearly five when Reynolds and Jarvis reached the drive-in. The after-school drop-ins were thinning out, and the early-evening cruisers had yet to gather. Even so, a dozen vehicles were scattered around the lot, the same music blasting from high-power radios in three of them.
Reynolds slid his Skylark neatly between a black-glassed van and Denise Barrows's rusting Volkswagen Beetle, and he and Jarvis vaulted out.
"Hey, Chris," someone called as they were spotted. "Martini give you a hard time?"
Jarvis grinned in the direction the voice had come from and raised a hand in greeting. "Nah," he called back. "No blood."