The Gilded Bowl

The air above New Pittsburgh tasted of coal-smoke and ozone. Below, in the colossal iron bowl of the *Prometheus Arena*, one hundred thousand voices roared as one, a sound that shook rivets loose from the grandstands. This was Super Bowl LXVIII, but not as any 21st-century soul would remember it. This was the Gilded Bowl.

The New London Imperials, clad in brass-plated armor with crimson silk accents, faced the Philadelphia Furnace-Stokers, their gear forged from blackened steel and glowing with heat from their internal boiler-packs. The ball was not pigskin, but a hand-stitched leather sphere containing a volatile, lighter-than-air gas core. It didn’t spiral; it *hovered*.

“Thirty seconds on the Chrono-Gyro!” boomed the announcer’s voice through copper horns. “Imperials, down by four, at the Furnace-Stokers’ twenty-yard line!”

The Imperials’ quarterback, Captain Alistair Vance, adjusted his bronze-rimmed goggles. His throwing arm wasn’t just strong; it was a pneumatically-assisted masterpiece of polished brass and whirring gears. His target, the swift receiver known as “The Sparrow,” had clockwork-enhanced calves that could unleash a burst of dizzying speed.

Across the line, the Stokers’ defense was a wall of hissing steam and formidable machinery. Their star, a mountain of a man called “Iron” Mike O’Malley, vented a jet of superheated steam from the exhaust ports on his massive shoulder-plates. “He won’t fly past us this time, Vance!” he bellowed.

“Hut! Hut! *HISS!*”

The snap was clean. Vance backpedaled, gears in his leg braces whining. The Stokers’ rush was terrifying—a coordinated eruption of piston-driven leaps and steam-powered lunges. Vance dodged a copper-clad tackle, spun, and saw his primary target swarmed. The Sparrow was double-teamed, ensnared in a net of telescoping brass arms deployed by a Stoker’s defensive harness.

Time slowed. Vance’s augmented eyes scanned the field, lenses clicking and focusing. He saw his tight end, a brute of a man called “The Anvil,” chugging toward the end zone, but a Stoker safety was closing in, the copper coils on his boots sparking with electrical potential for a final leap.

Then Vance saw her. Moira, the team’s *aetherial spotter*, leaning out from her suspended brass crow’s-nest high above the end zone. She wasn’t just watching; she was calculating. With a swift movement, she pulled a lever. A series of polished mirrors along the arena’s rim angled, catching the giant, floating “Glo-Gas” lights and focusing a beam of intense light directly onto the safety’s goggles.

The Stoker cursed, blinded momentarily, and stumbled.

It was the window. A tiny, fleeting chance. But the pocket was collapsing. Iron Mike was upon him, his furnace-red faceplate grinning behind a cloud of steam. Vance had no room, no angle. The conventional throw was impossible.

So he didn’t make one.

As Mike O’Malley lunged, Vance slammed a fist against a release valve on his throwing arm. With a sharp *CLANK-PSSHHH*, the entire forearm assembly, from elbow to fingers, detached at a reinforced joint. Propelled by a controlled burst of compressed air from the severed piston, the disembodied mechanical arm, still cradling the aero-ball, shot forward like a bizarre, guided missile.

The crowd gasped. The arm flew in a low, humming arc, gears spinning freely. The Anvil, seeing the brass limb streaking toward him, turned and braced. He wasn’t catching a ball; he was catching a quarterback’s arm. He snatched it from the air, the ball nestled securely in its metallic fingers, and with a grunt of effort, he planted the entire assembly—hand, ball, and all—onto the polished copper plating of the end zone.

**THUD.**

Silence. Then, the shrill blast of the head referee’s steam-whistle.

**TOUCHDOWN.**

The arena erupted. Confetti—not paper, but thousands of spinning, glittering brass gears—fluttered from the ceiling. The Imperials mobbed The Anvil, who held the disembodied arm aloft like a trophy. On the sideline, Vance was already having a fresh forearm attached by frantic engineers with wrench-spanners.

In the luxury box, the League Commissioner, Lord Reginald Thorne, puffed on his cigar, its smoke mingling with the arena’s haze. He nodded to the industrial baron beside him. “See, Phineas? Innovation. That’s what sells tickets and stokes boilers. A quarterback who literally gives his right arm to win.”

On the field, as the extra-point—a tricky kick requiring a precise adjustment of the ball’s internal gas valve to sail through the uprights—was good, Captain Vance flexed his new, still-stiff fingers. He looked at the celebrating Sparrow, at the beaming Moira descending from her perch, and at the gleaming scoreboard that now read: IMPERIALS 24, FURNACE-STOKERS 23.

He smiled, the taste of victory as sharp and metallic as the air itself. It wasn’t just a game. It was the future, won one audacious, mechanical piece at a time. The Gilded Bowl was theirs.

Last Circle on Kesh

 

The storm-lashed ruins of the ancient Sith temple on Kesh had become an open grave. Eighty-three combatants had been dropped from orbit in escape pods exactly seven hours earlier. The orbital platform above had already narrowed the allowable zone three times. Now only a single shrinking circle of violet lightning remained—barely two kilometers across.Vana Torm, former Imperial Shadow Guard, crouched behind a toppled obsidian pillar. Her electrostaff hummed at the lowest setting, just enough to keep the rainwater from shorting the weapon. Across the broken plaza she could see three others still alive:

• A Mandalorian in scorched silver-and-black beskar, rocket boots smoking from overuse.
• A Mirialan Nightsister whose green tattoos glowed faintly whenever she moved her fingers through the air, weaving something dark and patient.
• A young human scavenger boy—no older than seventeen—clutching a cracked purple lightsaber that clearly did not belong to him.

The boy was shaking. Not from cold.Vana’s comm bead crackled once. A synthetic voice from the platform overhead:“Final perimeter established. Ninety seconds until lethal-zone contraction. The last combatant receives freedom and two million Republic credits. Begin.”No fanfare. No music. Just the sudden scream of wind as the lightning wall tightened another fifty meters.The Mandalorian moved first—predictable. A whipcord launcher snapped toward the Nightsister. She didn’t dodge. Instead she raised one hand and the durasteel cable simply stopped mid-flight, writhing like a living thing before snapping back at double speed. It wrapped the Mandalorian’s throat. He triggered his flamethrower in panic; orange fire painted the rain in hissing steam.The Nightsister smiled thinly and yanked.Beskar met obsidian at speed. The helmet cracked like an egg. The body didn’t get up.Now two remained who mattered.The boy looked at Vana across thirty meters of broken statues. His knuckles were white around the stolen saber hilt. The blade flickered erratically—unstable crystal, poor kyber alignment. He was going to die holding someone else’s destiny.Vana stood slowly, letting him see her. No sudden moves. She thumbed her electrostaff off completely.“You’re not a killer,” she called over the storm. “And that blade is already killing you. Feel it? The feedback tremor in your elbows?”The boy’s lip trembled. “I didn’t ask for this.”“None of us did.” Vana took one deliberate step forward. “But only one walks off this rock.”Lightning flashed. For a heartbeat the entire ruined plaza turned violet-white.The boy lunged.He was fast—faster than she expected. The purple blade hissed toward her chest in a sloppy but powerful overhand strike. Vana didn’t ignite her weapon. Instead she stepped inside the arc, left palm slapping the boy’s wrist upward while her right drove a precise knuckle strike into the soft place beneath his sternum.He folded like cheap flimsi. The lightsaber spun out of his hand and skittered across wet stone, still burning.Vana caught him before he hit the ground. She lowered him gently, one knee in the pooling rainwater.“I’m sorry,” the boy gasped. Blood flecked his lips. The stolen saber had bitten him somewhere deep on the way down.“I know,” Vana said.She reached across him and picked up the fallen lightsaber. The moment her fingers closed around the hilt the blade steadied—violet turning clean, angry crimson.Of course. It had been waiting for someone who understood how to carry guilt.Above them the lightning wall hissed inward, now only steps away.Vana pressed two fingers to the boy’s throat. Pulse gone.She stood. Looked up at the invisible judges orbiting far overhead.“I claim the bounty,” she said, voice flat. “And I’m keeping the saber.”Silence for three heartbeats.Then the synthetic voice returned:“Combatant Vana Torm. Victor. Transponder beacon activated. Extraction shuttle inbound. Congratulations.”The lightning wall froze—then reversed, peeling back like burning film.Vana clipped the crimson blade to her belt beside the silent electrostaff. She looked down at the boy one last time.“You lasted longer than most,” she told the body. “That’s something.”Rain continued to fall on the dead temple as the extraction lights finally broke through the storm clouds—cold, white, and indifferent.She walked toward them without looking back.Eighty-three had fallen.
One walked away.
And the galaxy, as always, didn’t care which name was attached to the statistic.