The Mechaneer

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 10: Private Box

"When was the last time you saw a tournament in person?"

Jack didn't answer Otto's question.

He sat beside the Oligarch of Algreil Aerospace in a shaded booth that showed all the signs of having been built to some other executive's specifications. Jack knew the thick carpet and plush chairs hadn't been his former commander's idea. The view of the arena and the Wellach Cup could've been better, too.

"I don't appreciate your attitude, Jack," Otto said. "You still seem to be operating under the idea that I've done you some kind of wrong."

"I saw the damn footage," Jack said. "Doesn't mean I have to believe it. Why'd the Feds want to drop a whole destroyer on us, anyway?"

Otto sighed. "It's too bad I can't introduce you to Admiral Avalon. Maybe then you'd believe me."

"Maybe."

"What do I have to do to convince you, old buddy?"

"Let me and my wife go back to the Mother Goose and never come after us again."

"I'd love to – believe me, if I'd had any intention of keeping you around to catch up on old times, the inclination has rapidly faded."

"Then do it," Jack said. He didn't bother fast-talking Otto. The Oligarch would've seen through it at fifteen, when he took over Devil Ray squadron as one of the greatest mechaneers ever to suit up. He'd sure as hell see through it with another twenty years experience.

"Can't," Otto said. "Even if your ship weren't impounded in one of the Reformer's shuttle bays, you'd be food for the Feds before you could blink."

"I'll take my chances."

"But I won't."

Obviously, or Jack wouldn't have been sitting in the Algreil Aerospace booth. "At least let me see Ellie."

"Your pet felid?"

"My wife," Jack growled.

He could see the scowl on Otto's face. No surprise there. Algreil Aerospace hadn't been involved in the hybrid trade before the Civil War, but they hadn't condemned it, either. And during the war...

Well, Jack had resigned before the battle of Etemenos for a reason. A damn good reason.

Besides, if half what Jack read in the gossip columns was true, Otto didn't treat his own wife – Alarie Wein Marchess-Algreil, heiress to the United Shipping Magnate – much better than he would have a hybrid slave.

Nonetheless, the oligarch said, "Very well. I'll have her brought up to watch the show with us."

Jack's eyes widened. "Ellie's in this building?"

"You think I'd let such a valuable commodity out of my immediate vicinity, Colonel Hughes? You wound me. Of course she's here."

Then they had a chance to escape, Jack thought. Mecha tournaments could get pretty hectic. If he got even a slight opening…

"I can see your mind working," Otto said.

Jack's gaze snapped back into focus.

"Don't even think about trying to escape. This place is crawling with navy men. They're all looking for you, in between watching the tournament, anyway."

"Unless you're lying," Jack said.

Otto nodded. "Let's say I am. Then you have a situation where I just have to ask for their cooperation in apprehending an industrial espionage suspect. Or maybe I should just tell them to secure a rogue hybrid, hm?"

Jack wanted to punch the grin from the Oligarch's face. Trouble was, he knew he'd fail if he tried, and make things worse for Ellie in the process.

"I'm trying to make this as easy as possible for you, Jack," Otto said. "You can keep believing otherwise, but at the moment I really do have your best interests at heart. Yours, and your curious little family's."

"The hell you do. You never got into anything if it wasn't for profit."

"Of course it's for profit!" Otto looked genuinely offended. "Don't be stupid. I'm not a noble, you know. I don't do favors. That doesn't mean it's a zero-sum game where my profit has to be your loss."

He jerked a thumb at the screens depicting Federal Navy sailors mingling with the civilian crowd. "It can be their loss, instead."

"I'd rather help out the Federal Senate than an Oligarch," Jack said.

"Your little wifey hasn't cured your idealism yet, eh? Too bad the Feds wouldn't rather help you. I'm here because my people intercepted an Animus Hunter's contact with you. Not just any Animus Hunter, either. Perhaps you'd rather deal with the Senate's own Errard Zelph?"

"What's so special about Zelph?"

"That's right, you quit before the Battle of Etemenos." Otto's scowl said volumes about his opinion of Jack's resignation, never mind he'd signed off on it at the time. "Zelph isn't just another errant. He was a nob once, maybe even an Imperial bastard a few generations back. He's not just an Animus Hunter, he's their boss, and their founder.

"Oh, and he's the guy who finally killed the Emperor."

Jack stared.

"So..." Otto cocked an eyebrow. "Still want to take your chances with the Feds?"

Jack kept staring.

Otto nodded. "Thought so."

The guy who killed the Emperor.

Holy.

Crap.

And Jack had thought about taking Zelph on? Yeah, sure, and maybe he could solo the Federal Navy while he was at it.

Assuming Otto was telling the truth – and it seemed like something too easy to check up on for him to bother lying about it – escaping Algreil Aerospace was by far the least of Jack's worries.

For lack of any better option, Jack leaned back in the plush chair and watched the preliminaries clang away. After a few minutes, he found himself actually paying attention.

He didn't like what he saw.

None of the mechaneers impressed him. Hell, none of them looked half as good as raw recruits from the Civil War. Even those who, from the looks of their machines, were test pilots or military mechaneers looked like they were taking advantage of the weak field to coast rather than to practice.

He said as much.

"Depressing, isn't it?" Otto rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Most of these losers are just salvagers and port workers and pirates, but the job doesn't matter. They're amateurs."

"What's wrong with 'em?"

"They see it as just a game. None of them have any real killer instinct, none of them train like it's life or death."

"Even the soldiers?"

"The soldiers are the worst. Weekend warriors! They think capital ships can fight their battles for them. Our Devil Rays could rip through a thousand of these imbeciles."

Like the nobles used to rip through us, Jack thought. The current crop looked as far removed from the Oligarchy's elites as those elites had from the psychic aristocrats they fought.

He wondered what that would mean if the surviving nobs ever decided to rouse themselves from the Periphery.

Were the Animus Hunters the only thing the Senate had to throw at the nobs? Sure as hell couldn't be as many of 'em, no matter how powerful they were.

Before he could ponder the question further, the doors to the booth's elevator slid open. A pair of corporate security officers who Jack recognized as ex-Devil Rays stepped through.

Ellie followed.

He sprang from his chair and folded her into his arms. For a wonder, she actually responded in kind. They'd apparently stopped pumping her full of Limiters. Jack heard the clomp of two pairs of boots on a metal floor, then doors sliding shut and an elevator zooming downwards. He didn't really register the sounds.

When he broke the embrace, he met Ellie's eyes. Her ears twitched happily.

He whispered, "You okay, Hon?"

"I am now."

Otto's sarcastic applause shattered the moment.

Jack spun on him.

The Oligarch had stood to face them. His face was twisted with disgust. He didn't even manage his usual fakey grin. "Are you finished fussing over your cat there? As you can see, she's unharmed."

Jack didn't think about throwing the punch. It just came. He put everything he had behind it, consequences be damned.

Otto's head barely twitched to the side. His hand snaked up and stung Jack on the shoulder he'd led with.

Jack stumbled. If Ellie hadn't caught him, he would have cracked his head against the elevator doors. His left arm felt like it had been severed by a laser cutter.

"I don't understand your preferences," Otto said, "and it pisses me off that I lost an excellent mechaneer because of them."

That explained a lot. Jack didn't remember Otto being such a virulent hybrid-hater during the war.

"But," the oligarch continued, "for old time's sake, I won't bring the matter up again. Deal."

He didn't mean it as a question.

As the agony in his shoulder faded, Jack forced himself to his feet. Ellie tried to steady him, but he patted her hand and gently pushed her away.

He reached out and clasped Otto's outstretched hand.

"Deal," he said.

Somehow, it almost felt like winning.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 11: Rocket God

Rudy claimed he hated first rounds. As a former finalist at tournaments considerably more distinguished than the Wellach Cup, he had a bye in the preliminaries. For him, and for the other mechaneers whose previous achievements made tournament success likely, the first round was the preliminary. It was a slap in the face to make him face off against the local color, a waste of time and fuel. What had Rocket God Gil done at the big show on Etemenos?

When Rudy was in the mecha bay bitching to Chloe and his pit crew, he even believed it.

But he didn't hate first rounds. If he'd gotten stuck fighting in the preliminaries, he would have ranted for an hour about the indignity –

And loved every minute of every match.

Epiphany in sixteen meters of composite and nanomachines, bliss in the announcer's half-shout, half-scream "The Criiiiiimson Phoenix," heaven in the first few seconds of slipping into the dance.

Sometimes, Rudy hummed while he fought. Sometimes, he outright sang.

It was goofy, and he'd never, ever admit it to a soul. Sure as hell never to a girl, or Otto – although Otto could review the recordings and see for his own damned self. But sometimes, Rudy sang. He had felt so alive only twice outside a mecha: the first time he slept with a girl, and the few times he slept with one he halfway respected.

The former only happened once, the latter only once in a blue moon.

But hopping in a mecha, firing up its thruster-wings, flexing its fingers for a fight?

That happened just about as often as he liked.

Rudy grinned through the hemisphere of information spread before his eyes.

His main screen showed the Wellach Cup arena in front of him.

He swept his gaze to the darkened windows of the Algreil Aerospace booth. He could just imagine Otto's disgust at the field. Otto considered even elite mechaneers like Rudy inferior to his old Devil Rays. Rudy wanted to prove his brother wrong, but without a full-scale war, how could he? The Devil Rays had been good enough to hang with the nobs, or almost.

He turned his gaze to the pit, where his crew, Chloe among them, waited to refuel, rearm and repair the Epee – not that Rudy expected to need the last service, at least until he went up against Marcel Avalon. Since all his screens showed his mecha ready for action, he instructed it to give them a thumbs-up.

He felt more than heard the hum of electromagnetic field generators springing to life. Air howled around him as it was siphoned out of the invisible chambers of the arena.

The Etemenos Cup took place in the vacuum of the capital world-city's heart, with individual battlefields easily a hundred times as big as this entire arena. Wellach obviously wanted to make its tournament accessible to the common paying customer, so they created artificial "space" here on the planet.

A shame, in Rudy's opinion. He liked more room to operate, especially with a nimble mecha like the Epee.

He tuned out the announcer's drone. Rocket God Gil, Divine Auric Drake, Crimson Phoenix – only the third seed, Rudy thought with a scowl –, Weapon King, Quicksilver Angel, Death Ray Titan, Red Star Mantis, Black Rook. He was somewhat disappointed the local who called himself the Titanian Lighting Battler, the closest present to Chloe's imaginary mechaneer name, hadn't made it out of the preliminaries. No great surprise; the guy hadn't even claimed invincibility.

Despite his wandering thoughts, Rudy was more than ready when some idol-orchestra he'd never heard blared the arena's fanfare over his comlink.

The gravity in Rudy's section of the spherical arena vanished. Green lights blinked above his maneuvering thrusters to tell him they were now functioning properly.

He stretched his arms, already a little stiff from sitting motionless in the cockpit, and waited.

Rocket God Gil's mecha filled the center of Rudy's screen. An immense, ugly, white-and-red custom job with a cigar-shaped ship's thruster for a torso, it hovered with stubby arms crossed over its chest and its crested head thrown back like it was laughing. Somebody had painted sponsors' screens onto its sides; as a private owner-pilot, Gil needed big money backing to keep his "Rocket God" in fighting trim.

An insistent window on his right flashed the red and electric blue logo of Algreil Aerospace, trying to call Rudy's attention to the wealth of performance data, recorded matches, notes on tendencies and capabilities his crew had prepared on Rocket God Gil. If Rudy had been serious about showing Algreil Aerospace's products to best effect, he would have paid careful attention to those notes. He also would have read them in the weeks he'd spent hanging out with Chloe, tinkering with the Epee, looking into the mystery of Chloe's captured parents, and playing the toughest random challenges he could program the company simulators for.

Gil's grinning, jowly face filled the little screen on Rudy's left. "You got your wish, Crimson Phoenix. You're all mine."

Rudy laughed. "Something like that."

"I don't get you, birdy," Gil continued. "What makes a man so eager to get his scrawny ass beat down he challenges me in the first round?"

"Somebody told me that you're mean to little girls."

"The hell are you talking about?" Gil apparently didn't catch the reference to his conversation with Chloe three weeks before.

"Look at it this way: I like a nice, easy warm-up before I take on somebody like Marcel Avalon."

"Why you –!"

As he'd expected, Rocket God Gil took the offensive, jetting forward at top speed. The massive mecha looked built for grappling. Rudy figured it weighed about four or five times as much as his Epee. If he allowed it to get a hold, it could probably crush critical systems.

Gil came on fast. In an artificial anti-gravity environment, a lot of mass generally meant a lot of fuel, and so a lot of acceleration – but not a lot of maneuverability.

Rudy slow-burned left, firing off barely enough to begin the acceleration process. His initial motion would be almost imperceptible, but it got him going in the right direction.

Abruptly, he willed his thrusters up to full power.

He juked left.

As Rocket God Gil soared past, Rudy snagged the bigger mecha by one massive arm and gave it a hard wrench. It shuddered from the impact and started skewing toward him, until Gil fired his gargantuan main thruster and reversed their course.

A boxy free hand swung toward Rudy, palm open for a grab.

He relinquished his hold and pushed off from the arm he'd damaged. As he sailed backwards, he fired off a couple of missiles. They were mostly for clearing out marines, unlikely to harm a mecha's exterior – hell, they weren't likely to do a lot of harm to its inner workings – but the force of their launch gave Rudy a little extra acceleration.

Rocket God Gil reversed his course.

Predictable, Rudy thought.

As he'd expected, even the cream of the local crop wasn't much to write home about.

The bigger mecha lunged.

Rudy let himself drift left again.

He watched his opponent adjusting, prepared to receive the same kind of attack. It didn't seem much the worse for wear from his opening move. Most of the dents and bangs on its surface came from the preliminaries.

Rudy figured it was more of an endurance design. A good choice for an inferior pilot who expected to face even more inferior pilots.

Rather than repeat his previous maneuver, Rudy abruptly reversed the flow of his thrusters and threw the shifting momentum into a kick. It smacked just underneath Rocket God Gil's chest plate, sending a webwork of cracks through the weaker armor.

Both mecha hurtled away from the impact. Rudy would have been content to let it carry him to a good position from which to survey the action.

He was equally content to let Rocket God Gil blast back toward him.

Rudy slammed away two flailing grabs and loosed the Epee's claws. He launched a slash at the bigger mecha's right shoulder and was rewarded with the sight of shredding metal. He twisted.

One of Rocket God Gil's arms hurtled toward the magnetic field separating Rudy's match from his neighbors.

The other clamped around the back of Rudy's Epee.

He grunted as the bigger mecha, obviously designed to kill in just such a manner, hauled him closer. Even with its inferior technology and but a single arm, it managed to smash him against its chest plate.

He'd expected as much.

What he hadn't expected was the brace of rockets exploding from launchers in Gil's chestplate.

Armor integrity dropping, the message on his HUD read, estimated seventy two seconds to dangerous breach.

Clever. Gil's armor was, if not stronger, at least a hell of a lot thicker than Rudy's. Exploding dumb-fire rockets into the space between them would crack the Epee open before it did the Rocket God, to say nothing of the less advanced machines Gil usually beat up on. If both the bigger mecha's arms had held Rudy in a death grip –

But they didn't. Just one couldn't pin him, and rockets, even a lot of them, took time to bust through mecha armor. Rudy would dispense with Rocket God Gil long before his arsenal did more than heat up their hulls.

Wait, what?

Exploding rockets shouldn't be imparting so much heat.

The Epee's cockpit flashed the same lurid red as its paint job. For one horrible moment, Rudy thought the coolant had failed again.

Gil's grinning face filled his communication window. "How do you like them incendiaries my boys dug up? I loaded 'em special for you, birdy."

Shit! So much for the big dumb Rocket God.

Rudy supposed he should have watched some of his opponent's matches, after all.

The HUD just had to add, Estimated five seconds to forfeit due to overheating.

Crap.

Four seconds.

Only one arm held him, so he had, if not options, at least a chance. Three seconds. With his free hand, he dug his claws into the crack he'd already made in the opposing mecha's stomach armor. Two seconds. They passed through the damaged composite plating as easily as through paper.

He wrenched the chestplate upwards, simultaneously firing all his thrusters.

Gil's grin slipped. He flicked a panicked glance at his instruments.

"I like 'them incendiaries' just fine, Gil," Rudy said. "Hope you do, too."

An explosion of incendiary jelly erupted from Rocket God Gil's missile stores.

Rudy's Epee cartwheeled backwards. He stabilized himself in a crouch and killed the thrusters. In vacuum, even the incendiary jelly only burned for an instant. The Epee's coolant system stabilized with a second to spare.

Rocket God Gil careened upwards from the explosion. His mecha thudded against the upper limits of the magnetic field and hung there. Only the curses streaming through Rudy's communications suite told him the Wellach Cup Champion was still alive. His machine sure as hell wasn't.

Rudy allowed himself a breath, and a glance at his systems.

He'd underestimated, if not the skill, at least the cleverness of his opening bout opponent. Otto would be shaking his head in disgust.

He'd be right.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 12: Rival Battle

Ellie never took great pleasure in her husband's collection of mecha tournament recordings. She usually napped through them. Seeing such an event in person might have done wonders for her opinion of the sport.

Seeing it from the private booth of Otto Aber Algreil cemented her dislike.

She wished she could speak openly to Jack about the conditions of their captivity, or about Chloe's fate.

Any time she opened her mouth to speak, she felt electric blue eyes on her and fell silent.

After the shock of the initial attack, Ellie had been injected with powerful Limiters. She'd hardly had time to think before her entire nervous system was overwhelmed with numbing waves of endorphins. She'd woken from her stupor the next day in a plain, unmarked cell. Outside the gravity field holding her in, she'd seen the Algreil Aerospace logo. She'd called out, but no one had answered.

For days, the Algreil corporate security men had asked her about Chloe. Then they injected her with what she at first took for more limiters, but soon discovered were simple indicators. When her brainwaves indicated the kind of thought that went into a lie, they flashed red.

Ellie insisted she didn't know where Chloe was. True. She claimed she had no idea. False. She eventually admitted Chloe had left the Mother Goose to look for a memorabilia shop. True. And, perhaps, for other employ so what had happened to she and Jack wouldn't happen. True.

"For all I know," Ellie had said, "she's already off this horrible planet."

That came up false. Ellie supposed, deep down, she didn't really think Chloe would leave without finding out what had happened to her and Jack.

She glanced at him.

He looked more tense and angry than worried.

He also, she noticed with a flash of anger, looked like he was watching the matches below as intently as his former commander.

She gripped his hand and hissed, "How can you pay attention to that nonsense at a time like this?"

He sighed. "What else are we supposed to do?"

"Jack…"

"Colonel Hughes has a good eye for mechaneering," Otto Algreil said. "Since none of us can effect any change in our status at the moment, he's spending his time in the most productive manner available – observing potential competitors."

Ellie glared daggers at the Oligarch.

He shrugged.

"Otto's right, Ellie," Jack said, sighing. "You and me may as well enjoy the show, 'cause we're not going anywhere."

Ellie recalled how nonchalantly Otto had turned Jack's punch and sent him reeling. Jack knew his way around a fight, with or without a mecha, but the Oligarch made him look helpless.

She supposed both men had a point.

It didn't mean she could relax, though.

"Why does Mr. Algreil include himself in the category of those who can't change their status," she asked. "I would think with his great influence he could do whatever he wanted."

"You'd think so, eh?"

"Otto can't do anything but wait for Chloe," Jack said.

Ellie stiffened. "You don't intend to let him –"

"Not a chance in hell."

She was surprised at how little the Oligarch reacted. He seemed to have lost all interest in their conversation.

"There're no secrets we could keep from him and not a damn thing we can do to him," Jack said. "Might as well speak freely."

"I can't speak at all with him watching us," Ellie spat.

"I have no intention of watching you," Otto said, his attention fixed on the arena. "With a rematch between the Divine Auric Drake and the Crimson Phoenix coming up, this tournament actually looks something more than pathetic. Besides, I'm interested in that Black Rook. Takes a hell of a mechaneer to make it this far in a Civil War line mecha."

"You've never heard of him either?" Jack asked.

"Not a word."

Ellie spared a glance at the four mecha still in the tournament. Three of the losers had departed under their own power, and the last had been hauled out by a pair of civilian machines that looked painfully similar to Goslings Two and Three.

Of the four remaining, the resplendent black and gold military mecha looked the most impressive. Two of the others were considerably smaller, one black, one sleek silver. The last, a tall, somewhat ungainly machine, struck her as absurd with its garish red paint.

She said as much.

"The machine's good," Otto said, "but the pilot is embarrassing his family."

Ellie looked to Jack.

"His little brother," Jack said.

Ellie, recalling girlhood with seven siblings, understood immediately.

Then she cocked her head and pointed to the black-and-gold standout. "Why is such an advanced-looking military mecha here?"

"The same reason all Otto can do is wait," Jack said. "'Cause the Feds came in about fifteen seconds behind him and scooped up the Goose with a goddamn destroyer, that's why."

"A destroyer!"

"Yeah, the Reformer. That's Second Admiral Marcel Avalon out there, calls himself the 'Divine Auric Drake.' Otto claims the Feds are after Chloe, too. I figure it's probably true, what with that damn Animus Hunter."

"As you can see," Otto said, "all I want is for you to help me help you."

Somehow, Ellie didn't feel convinced. "Why did you drug me into a stupor, then? Why don't you let us stay together? Why am I kept under lock and key like –"

He raised an eyebrow. "Like an animal?"

Ellie's hands shook. She fought the urge to lunge over and rip at the oligarch's throat – she resisted only because she knew she'd never succeed.

Jack lay a hand on her shoulder and guided her into her chair. "Take it easy, Ellie," he said. "Don't give the son of a bitch the satisfaction of provoking us."

"I'm merely expressing my views on a matter of public debate," Otto said. "Ain't democracy grand?"

Ellie slumped back in the chair and hung her head.

Jack's big fingers massaged the tension in her back, but for once they didn't help. Desperate for something to take her mind off the oligarch's presence, she turned her attention to the match.

The two smaller mecha had paired off, which, to Ellie's eyes, made this second round a virtual lock to produce the actual champion. She couldn't imagine anyone beating the gilded mecha. She prayed Otto Algreil's brother wouldn't do so. She couldn't wish anything good on the oligarch or his house.

The arena's idol-orchestra fanfare announced the commencement of the second round.

Since she didn't see any hope for the smaller pair, Ellie concentrated on the real fight.

The two mecha approached each other warily, their demeanor entirely without the aggression she'd seen in the first round. The Algreil mecha – the Crimson Phoenix, according to the program projected on the box's windows – assumed a stance she recognized as part of the Devil Ray martial disciplines; Jack used it on those rare occasions he'd had to use Gosling One to fend off pirates. The navy admiral jetted forward with his spear-like monomolecular blade held crosswise before him.

With a sudden burst of acceleration, the Crimson Phoenix shot forward. Ellie didn't even see him break his stance. Somehow, he managed to swing his mecha's spindly, thick-wristed arms into a parry to the Divine Auric Drake's thrust and then to strike the black and gold mecha's chest before it could recover.

They spun about, both resuming their stances almost before Ellie could see them.

"What a waste," Jack said. "He shoulda tried for a head shot, gotten a quick kill."

Otto nodded. "I wish I could say he's only doing it to give the company's new model a better showing, but truth is, he's just a cocky little prick."

Ellie stared at the men. She'd never seen better piloting, and they were calling it trash!

She looked back to the battle.

The mecha had circled, the black and gold machine spinning its weapon behind it. In the anti-gravity sphere in which they fought, they moved without even using their legs, like men duelling in water.

"He's weak from the above-left with that stance," Jack said.

"You expect someone with a moniker like Crimson Phoenix to, you know, actually use the vertical axis? You obviously don't know my brother."

"How the hell did he place on Etemenos?"

"This is what we're reduced to," Otto said, sighing.

The mecha passed, out of reach for the Algreil machine but close enough for the Divine Auric Drake to lash out with his long-hafted weapon.

He must have missed, because they slid to opposite sides of the field and righted their courses.

The next exchange came more quickly. Contrary to Jack and Otto's assessment, at least one of the pair actually employed his machine's ability to fly up and down. The Divine Auric Drake rolled upwards and banked in for a downward cut.

Though she wanted the Fed to win, Ellie winced when his blade cut home. Surely it had bisected the cockpit, and anyone inside it.

The Crimson Phoenix didn't crumple.

The Divine Auric Drake shuddered.

Ellie's ear twitched in confusion.

She spared Jack a glance. He was nodding, apparently satisfied with something.

She whispered, "What happened?"

"Watch, Hon," Jack said.

Watch she did.

Slowly, inexorably, the blade lifted. A pair of red mecha hands clasped it from both sides. Its deadly monomolecular edge, the reason it could cut through a mecha's superdense composite plates, was cupped harmlessly between the Crimson Phoenix's palms.

"That's some kinda reflexes your brother's got," Jack said.

"He's got potential," Otto allowed. "Wasted potential, but potential all the same."

The monomolecular blade wrenched from its haft. When the Crimson Phoenix released it, it drifted harmlessly toward one of the magnetic fields partitioning the arena.

Ellie asked, "Is it over?"

"Depends on how Admiral Avalon takes it," Jack said. "Otto?"

"He's not the type to back down, even if he is sloppy. Besides, he's got a score to settle with Rudy."

As predicted, the Divine Auric Drake launched a series of snap kicks at the Crimson Phoenix. His thrusters flared to keep him in reach as each blow sent shudders down both mecha.

Ellie didn't see how any machine could survive such a pounding, but the Crimson Phoenix rolled with the blows as deftly as any man on foot. After the fifth strike, he jetted left. The sixth blow crashed home without the almost palatable force of its predecessor, and rather than simply roll with it, the Crimson Phoenix launched his counterattack.

The Divine Auric Drake's leg wrenched at an odd angle. Ellie winced, wondering if Admiral Avalon used a direct neural interface and, as such, felt injuries to his machine as to himself.

If he did, he didn't show it. His fist shot out and caught the small of the Crimson Phoenix's elbow, driving the vulnerable point against his own unnaturally extended leg. Before the punch could even show its effects, he reversed it and thrust a slap into the red mecha's face.

The Crimson Phoenix reeled. His left arm hung useless from the elbow down, and he stumbled backwards, apparently dazed.

The Divine Auric Drake gave him no time to recover. He pounced, his thrusters firing at full power, his hands outstretched.

They collided.

Ellie looked away.

"Heh," said Otto.

Ellie risked a glance.

The Divine Auric Drake's chestplate had crumpled beneath a perfectly timed right jab and his own momentum.

Slowly, he drifted back and sank to a kneeling position.

The Crimson Phoenix reached out and gripped the black and gold mecha's head. His fingers tightened. Claws slid from them, slicing flakes of armor away.

Ellie gulped. Did he mean to kill the admiral? From what she'd seen of Otto Algreil, she could well imagine a member of his family killing an opponent in cold blood.

Then a buzzer sounded.

The Crimson Phoenix stepped back and nodded.

The Divine Auric Drake straightened up and returned the nod.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 13: No-Name

"Fifteen minutes," shouted the pit boss, a short, grizzled engineer in Algreil Aerospace overalls. If he had a name other than 'Boss,' Chloe hadn't heard anyone, even Rudy, use it.

The cockpit of the Epee hissed open. Chloe, positioned near the machine's shoulders so she could rush in and direct the coolant flow, watched Rudy stumble out of the cockpit and grip the edges.

"Are you all right?" she called.

He gulped down a breath before he could nod. "Hell of a neural feedback, though. I feel like I got the shit kicked out of me."

"Admiral Avalon's quite a mechaneer," Chloe said. "I'm amazed you won. That move where you grabbed the blade –"

"Risky and stupid," Rudy said. "Bastard would've killed me if I'd mistimed it by half a second."

Chloe bit back the rest of her commentary.

The Epee looked as bad as Rudy claimed to feel – though the neural feedback from each blow should have numbed after a single warning burst to his pain receptors, and vanished entirely once he was out of the cockpit. The mecha's chest armor was a mess, badly dented from Avalon's kicks. Its left arm hung askew, and Chloe could see places where the joint actuators had blown entirely.

Still, under the circumstances, she thought the machine had held up pretty well. The pit crew swarmed over the broken arm. Even if they couldn't get it operational again, they should be able to restore enough movement for Rudy to use it as a club. The chest armor wouldn't stand up to another barrage like Avalon's, but she figured Rudy could compensate against an inferior opponent.

Rudy seemed less enthused. He sat at the edge of his cockpit, panting and scowling at some perceived failure.

He seemed to be on track to winning. Wasn't that what he wanted?

Chloe saw no way to raise his spirits. At least she could do something for his machine.

She'd pressed the remote for the fuel and coolant assembly almost without thinking about it. Quickly, she fitted a vibrating release to the intake valve. It hissed, so she replaced the release and pulled out an automatic wrench to slide the cap off. By then, the nozzle for the coolant – she quickly checked the color-coded band – dangled within reach, so she clasped it and attached it to the open valve.

The tube jerked, and coolant began to pump. Chloe watched the flow carefully. After what she'd seen from the first two rounds, she was even more convinced the Epee's coolant system had a tendency to overextend. She hardly tapped the nozzle before shutting it off and releasing it again.

She felt Rudy's eyes on her and mouthed, "Trust me."

He didn't look like he did, but he managed a shrug – and kept his complaints to himself.

The liquid fuel for his thrusters took longer to top off, but Chloe understood why the pit crew took the time to fill them. Rudy hadn't used extreme amounts of fuel, but only because his fighting style discouraged doing so. If pressed, he might need every last drop as he maneuvered for an advantage.

Personally, Chloe didn't much care for the Epee. She had no doubt Rudy's first two matches would look good in promotional films for the machine. They wouldn't show its tendency to run hot or the hefty fuel requirements of its six thruster-wings.

She supposed it was meant to operate as a carrier mecha, with almost as much fuel and coolant in combat as it would have in the arena, but to her transport-trained sensibilities, it seemed like a great waste – and a great danger.

Since everyone around her worked for Algreil Aerospace, she kept her opinions to herself. The rest of the pit crew disliked her enough without hearing condemnations of their company's product.

She gave Rudy a thumbs-up. When she despaired of his returning the gesture, she descended the access ladder and watched the final preparations from an adjacent catwalk.

Rudy slid back into the cockpit. It closed over him.

The Epee hummed to life.

It made a ponderous turn, barely keeping its feet within a normal gravity environment, and braced itself as the platform it stood on rose toward the arena's circular gateway.

As soon as Rudy stepped off the platform, whatever air had leaked in when he entered was suctioned out. With the gravity already artificially suppressed, the interior of the arena was a reasonable approximation of the void of space.

Considering how much of space Chloe had seen, she had to wonder at the lengths the Wellach Cup's backers went to to reproduce it on the ground – or over the water, as the case might be.

She didn't need another glance at the stands to know how they managed to turn a profit, whatever their costs might be. Almost a complete sphere of seats engulfed the arena, those above with their gravity artificially set so they were looking 'up' at the action. Chloe figured the Wellach Cup could seat two or three hundred thousand, and the seats, which couldn't be cheap, were packed. She couldn't begin to fathom how much the space-station-like ring of logo-adorned sponsor's boxes, each with a private dock for boats or aerospace craft, cost.

She doubted the crowd would get their marks' worth from the final bout of the tournament, but in truth a boring finale bothered her less than a dramatic one would have. Since she'd committed to rooting for Rudy, she wanted nothing more than a rapid and successful conclusion to his matches. Every time he got hit, she winced.

The Black Rook, his final opponent, piloted a thirteen-meter mecha that looked like a cross between a wasp and a suit of archaic plate armor. Chloe had seen two others of the same design lose earlier bouts, and neither had struck her as very impressive. Like most of the production model Civil War-era military machines, its equipment took the form of a mono-edged sword and an electromagnetic shield: sword and board, in mechaneer parlance.

Chloe turned to the pit boss. "Do you know anything about that pilot, Boss? He must be pretty good to have made it this far with an ordinary machine like that."

"Never heard of him." Four more words than the rest of the crew had deigned to say to her. She wondered, only half ironically, if they were warming to her.

At a thought, her goggles played back recordings of the previous rounds. In both, the Black Rook seemed only just competent enough to overcome. The second battle in particular showed nothing impressive.

Back in the moment, he bowed low to Rudy, a posture no mecha could manage except in the null gravity of space or faux-space.

Rudy gave only a slight nod in return.

Chloe supposed he'd earned the right to condescend. After all, he'd placed highly in the Etemenos Cup. Still, she wondered why he felt the need to antagonize his opponents.

She called up a different angle of the Black Rook's second-round battle with another Oligarchical test pilot, the Quicksilver Angel. Chloe felt spoiled for choice. The arena recorded from literally thousands of cameras so its editors could sell the best footage possible. Chloe – not even a fan, the pit crew had said, and she couldn't call them liars – was a lot more glad of it than she usually would have been: something about the Black Rook's fighting style struck her as odd.

She watched him barely avoid what would surely have been a killing blow from the Quicksilver Angel's bladed wings. The attack still scraped the side of the Black Rook's mecha. Then he lashed out with his sword. The strike didn't look sound, but when the mecha parted, the Angel seemed to have gotten the worst of it.

Chloe frowned.

How had a glancing blow from a smaller machine done such damage?

The fanfare sounded, but Chloe hardly spared the present battle a glance. Her curiosity compelled her to look at the Black Rook footage from a third angle, this time directly above.

Her vision flashed from past to present.

Rudy had just missed with a pair of punches, claws retracted. He stumbled left from a well-placed shield bash to the chest, but recovered as quickly.

Nonetheless, a few seconds told Chloe what she'd feared.

Somehow, despite the differences in their equipment, the Black Rook had put the Crimson Phoenix on the defensive.

She looked to her recording again.

This time, she clearly saw a glossy black blade merely graze the Quicksilver Angel's side armor – and saw the armor crumple as though it had been smashed by a destroyer's anti-mecha cannon.

Rudy snapped a kick at the Black Rook, spun in the air and brought his other leg around.

He missed.

The Rook's blade shot toward the weaker joint armor at the Epee's leg.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 14: Black Rook

Rudy spun away from a slash that might have cost him a leg, cursing viciously. He didn't so much mind the unexpected challenge – if anything, the prospect of a disappointing final bout had annoyed him.

He minded the feeling the Black Rook was merely toying with him.

His sentiment redoubled when he heard a beep from his communications gear. He risked a glance – private channel, direct beam.

Not now, he thought.

He looked back to the Black Rook. The black mecha had taken advantage of his distraction to withdraw almost to the far end of the arena, sword and board crossed over its chest. Like it was waiting for something.

Rudy willed his communications array on.

No image appeared, just a looming raven logo and a voice.

"You're very good." The Black Rook sported a strange accent, cultured, crisp and condescending.

Rudy could picture him as a military academy instructor. He scowled.

"I'm also impressed by the synchronization between you and your machine. One of the new Algreil Aerospace Epees? By all accounts their neural interface is the most sophisticated in the Federated Stars. Derived from an Imperial design, isn't it?"

"It has its moments," Rudy snapped. "Now quit screwing around."

"I'm afraid," the Black Rook said, "I can't oblige."

His machine shot forward.

Talk about synchronization, Rudy thought. He didn't know how the guy managed to squeeze so much out of a Civil War relic. Its neural interface had to be a full replacement job.

Rudy didn't bother with the old slow burn trick, knowing it wouldn't work against this opponent. Instead, he adjusted his position back a dozen meters, then abruptly reversed course.

He hoped to catch the Black Rook off guard.

No such luck.

The Epee crashed into its opponent and rebounded off his shield. Rudy tried to grab the invisible barrier to get a better feel for its size, but his mecha's hands closed over empty vacuum. He tumbled past, firing his thrusters to right his course before he suffered the indignity of striking the edge of the arena.

The Black Rook hadn't even tried to press his advantage.

"Stop playing with me," Rudy said. "This is a tournament, not a martial arts demonstration. You're good enough to win, so win, damn you."

"Not at all. You'll find me more adept defensively than offensively," the Black Rook said. He maneuvered closer, shield held before him. "Until you can prove my tactics are ineffective against you, why should I change?"

Rudy lunged for him.

He dodged.

Dammit!

Rather than pull back for another run, Rudy reversed momentum, gritting his teeth at the gees his cockpit's inertial dampeners failed to suppress. He managed to snag the Black Rook by the arm.

The Epee's claws slid out.

They didn't sink into composite armor.

Rudy's eyes widened.

Had something gone wrong with the claw mechanism?

Before he could test his other hand, the Black Rook twisted from his grasp.

"Just who the hell are you?"

"Consider me a… concerned party."

"A what?"

Rudy didn't care about the guy's looks, but he sure wished he could read his expressions. Damn that bastard for not switching to visual feed! His words betrayed no hint of emotion.

Whatever Rudy wished, he wasn't going to get it.

He glanced at the Epee's readings. He'd expended more thruster fuel than he liked, but at least the coolant seemed to be working fine. Of course, he hadn't exactly put it through his paces the way he had in his battle with Avalon.

"You seem so impatient, Crimson Phoenix," the Black Rook said, "and your mecha must expend a great deal of fuel. Hadn't you better attack?"

"Maybe I don't want to play your game anymore."

"The thought had occurred to me."

The Black Rook shot forward, faster than Rudy imagined possible on such minimal thrusters. He must've changed the fuel for something faster-burning, although the Epee's sensors didn't seem to think so. Rudy was starting to wonder if someone on his pit crew hadn't compromised his mecha's main computer.

He just managed to slap aside the Rook's plunging sword. He punched, claws-out, but his blow must've missed; he didn't feel the jarring impact that would have come from contact, whether the blades worked or not.

"As you can see, I'm less accomplished on the attack," the Black Rook said. "In fact, I may have to forfeit rather than risk another assault."

Rudy gritted his teeth. Even losing wasn't as embarrassing as having an obviously superior opponent forfeit. Right now, it would look like some kind of setup.

Otto would bust a gasket over that.

The Black Rook apparently wasn't ready to throw in the towel, because he kept jawing. "By the way, your stance interests me. It's the style of the Algreil Devil Rays, under Otto Aber Algreil, yes?"

"What's it to you," Rudy said.

"I simply wanted to compliment your form. The style has lost none of its potency in the years since I last saw it."

"Watch more tournaments, then. The Etemenos Cup, for starters."

"Ah, of course. The Crimson Phoenix is noted for always finishing second at that tournament."

Technically, Rudy couldn't see the other man's smarmy smile, but he could sure as hell imagine it. He'd seen its like often enough.

He shot forward.

A millisecond away from impacting on the Black Rook's shield, he throttled back and launched a volley of rockets from the Epee's wrists. They overshot – of course – before their radar guidance systems cut in and curled them into the Rook's exposed back.

For once, Rudy seemed to have caught his opponent by surprise. The Black Rook slammed forward into his fists with an impact that sent shudders down both of them. He pistoned another punch into the black mecha, spun into a kick that sent it reeling, rocketed forward –

And, somehow, managed to miss.

He gasped in pain and shock. It passed after a fraction of a second, but the memory lingered. Rudy fought the urge to grab at his shoulder – where, he'd felt, his arm had been cleanly sliced away.

Rudy's arm remained, of course. The Epee's on the other hand... The mecha's severed limb cartwheeled toward the edge of the arena.

"Bastard!" Rudy lunged at the black mecha, filling the vacuum with missiles, busting chaff capsules to cloud his opponent's sensors. He moved on pure feel now, feel and fury and the memory of pain. His eyes clouded as red as his battered armor.

He snagged the Black Rook and yanked forward.

Metal flashed in the Wellach sun.

A third of the Epee's left leg spiraled away.

More pain.

Rudy didn't give a damn.

He locked his remaining fist on the back of the Black Rook's head and slammed the mechas' impassive faces together. Twice. Three times. Rudy felt as dizzy as if he'd smashed his own skull against a mecha's, but he kept it up.

Rudy bared his teeth, halfway between grin and snarl. He felt blood oozing from his lip. Must've bit it. Bad.

He didn't give a damn about that either.

The Epee's upper legs, one of them trailing sparks and coolant, pinned the smaller mecha. He gave it another smack, head to head. Then he pulled.

This time, it was the Black Rook's sword arm that went flying, wrenched clean off by the Epee's more advanced artificial muscles. If the pilot had a neural interface hooked up, he had to be in screaming agony.

Sucks to be him, Rudy thought.

He gripped the black mecha's throat.

The Black Rook reached up its remaining arm, haltingly.

"Surrender, you cocky bastard," Rudy growled. He wasn't sure if the comlink was even still working. He wasn't sure he cared.

The Black Rook's hand shook as he extended it, palm out, as though to stave off Rudy's finishing blow.

Then Rudy's world went haywire.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 15: Collapse

"The hell –!" Jack and Otto shouted at the same time. They leaped from their chairs.

The Crimson Phoenix rammed into the arena's magnetic field without so much as a twitch from the Black Rook. Two of the Epee's wings crumpled; a third exploded when its fuel touched off.

"Nob," Otto hissed.

"He wouldn't dare –"

"He damn well did," the Oligarch said. He slammed his hand on the emergency comlink on the railing. "Boss, get Rudy the hell out of there. Yesterday." His hand flew to another comlink. "Garcia, Albrecht, get your mecha over the arena. And prep my machine!"

It had all happened so fast, Ellie only now joined Jack at the railing. Her eyes were huge, fixed on the arena. "Jack, what's going on?"

"The 'Black Rook' is a damned nob," Jack said. "Looks like he's planning on killing Otto's little brother – and probably us, too."

Ellie gasped.

"Speaking of which, Jack," Otto said, "you and… and your wife had better evac." But for a moment's hesitation, he didn't even sound sarcastic.

Jack spared his former boss a glance. That was the Otto he knew and… well, respected as much as he hated. Pragmatism before philosophy. The Oligarch knew they didn't have time for an argument about Ellie's status.

Admittedly, Jack wouldn't have been dumb enough to start one with a nob on the rampage.

"But, Jack –"

"No time for argument, Hon. This place is gonna be a war zone once backup gets here."

"I think it already is."

Jack followed Ellie's pointing finger.

The Crimson Phoenix, minus an arm, half his thrusters and a third of a leg, was living up to his name.

Spinning like a top as he perfectly timed shots from his unbalanced thrusters, he rolled to where the Black Rook's sword arm drifted. He pried the monomolecular blade loose in one pass, bounced against the edge of the arena, leaped back in on pure momentum so he didn't need the thrusters.

The Black Rook's outstretched palm swung around.

"Goddamn fool kid," Otto whispered, unaware or uncaring that his brother couldn't hear him, "get out of there."

The blast of telekinetic energy shook the arena. Ellie grabbed Jack. Jack grabbed the railing. Otto nearly fell trying to roll with it, apparently unable to tear his eyes from the scene.

The Crimson Phoenix juked left and used the wave's wake to roll him further forward.

His slash took off the Black Rook's left leg.

The impact whirled him around. He helped the spin with a short thruster blast, sped it up by another brace of missiles –

Hit a solid plane of force.

The Black Rook extended one finger and tapped the chestplate of the Crimson Phoenix.

The Epee shuddered. Its remaining arm and legs shot straight out, pinned by invisible forces.

Missiles shot from the Crimson Phoenix's wrists, exploded harmlessly on the Black Rook's telekinetic shield.

Sound couldn't travel through the artificial vacuum of the arena, but Jack could hear in his mind the Epee's limbs wrenching away under pure mental force.

Ellie buried her face in Jack's chest.

Jack wanted to look away, but this sight he'd hoped never to see again, kept his gaze riveted.

That's enough.

For a minute, Jack thought the voice came from the booth, even spared a glance behind him. Empty. Of course, he thought. Telepathy.

Expecting attack, he tried to summon the mental disciplines he'd learned in the Devil Rays.

You should not have come back, the voice boomed. Jack shuddered. He recognized that voice. Not as a noble's, either.

"Aw, hell," he whispered.

Ellie looked up. He caught her eye, saw she also recognized the voice.

The electromagnetic field above the arena rippled, the air outside weirdly compressed as artificial electrons struggled against purely natural psions. The electrons lost. Only the rush of air was visible at first.

At first.

A second black mecha unfolded the web of light-bending psions comprising its 'cloak.'

This one was larger than the Black Rook, eighteen meters from spiked feet to horned helmet, matte black as the dark between the stars rather than shining like crow's feathers. Its flaring shoulderblades seemed to absorb the light from Wellach's sun.

Your appearance here is very foolish, Inspector – Animus Hunter – Errard Zelph's measured mental voice repeated, apparently directing the thoughts at the Black Rook but not caring if they spilled over into the crowd. But I must confess I am glad of the exercise.

The Black Rook's mind answered. Then you're a bigger fool than I thought, traitor.

I am not the one who let that child cost me an arm and a leg.

Zelph waved his mecha's hand. The psions gathering in his grip absorbed the light, forming a spear of solid darkness. He hurled it at the Black Rook – on a path straight through the Crimson Phoenix.

With a gesture, the Rook tore an arm from the ruined Epee and interposed it between the two damaged mecha and Zelph's. The weapon's remnants faded before it fully penetrated the limb.

Black Rook's turn. With a wave of his one good hand, he sent another shudder through the arena's gravity field. Jack didn't get what he was doing –

– until the Algreil box's window imploded.

In a fraction of a second, a billion shards of reinforced one-way glass shot unhindered through the gravity field, carried by telekinesis and the air the broken artificial vacuum sucked in after them, to coil into a whirlwind around all three mecha. Jack could hardly see them for the storm of shards.

No problem. He'd seen enough already. Animus Hunters against nobles in a confined space sounded like a recipe for collateral damage. He didn't plan on letting Ellie be part of the tally. "Come on, Hon. We gotta run."

"But, that pilot, Otto's brother –"

"Had better be crazy lucky." Jack gripped his wife's shoulders. "Ellie, I'm only gonna say this once, and you're only gonna have to hear it once – run."

Ellie took a step toward the suite doors – and said the one word that could bring him up short: "Where?"

Jack whirled on Otto. "You heard the lady. How the hell do we get out of here?"

Otto didn't respond. He stared at the ruin of his brother's mecha, tumbling toward the bottom of the arena as the anti-gravity sphere lost containment on Wellach's natural forces.

Instinctive defenses be damned, Jack grabbed the Oligarch's shoulder.

That snapped Otto out of his funk, all right. He checked his spin just in time to keep from wrenching Jack's arm from its socket. Oligarch and former subordinate locked gazes.

"If you wanna die here 'cause you think you sent your little bro into a deathtrap, I ain't gonna stop you, old buddy," Jack said. "But me and Ellie aren't sticking around to watch the fireworks."

Otto glared. His gaze started to shift back to the arena.

Jack tried to slap him. He failed, of course, and got his arm batted painfully away by a casual flick that would likely turn into a purple bruise by morning, but he kept the Oligarch's attention.

"How," Jack said, low and slow, "do we get out of here?"

Otto said, "Follow me."

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 16: Emergency Service

Chloe screamed. Because Rudy's dismembered mecha was tumbling toward her? Because it had been dismembered? Because the latest black mecha assaulting the arena could only belong to an Animus Hunter?

'All of the above' seemed as good a choice as any.

"Get that platform up," Boss snarled. "If – hell, when the field goes, we don't want Mr. Algreil falling farther than he has to. Move, you wretches!"

The rest of the crew moved, all right – toward the smaller personnel lifts to the arena exits. Their fear of being crushed by the falling mecha or in the ensuing clash of titans apparently overwhelmed their fear of Boss's snarls.

None of them stayed with the elevator platform.

Chloe slid down the ladder she'd been sitting on, leaped the last ten rungs, hit the ground running. She sprinted to the platform control console. Her hands flew across it, so fast it seemed to her it started moving even before she got there.

Her thoughts caught up with her about the time the platform started its terribly slow rise to the arena. She spared a glance at the distance she'd jumped. Principle! She was lucky she hadn't broken a leg.

"You got plenty of guts, girl," Boss said between gasps. He'd been closer to the console and made the same run for it, but he was almost three times her age and almost as overweight as he was muscular. "Or plenty of stupid."

"Definitely stupid," Chloe said.

He barked a laugh.

Swallowed it as the electromagnetic field above them shuddered again.

"What happens if he falls?"

"You won't have time to worry about it," Boss said. "So don't. Plenty to worry about if he doesn't."

"Emergency releases," Chloe said.

"And coolant. Spray the whole monster with it when it comes down. I told the eggheads it ran hot. But they don't have to deal with it coming in damaged, now do they?"

Chloe felt gratified to hear the senior mechanic agree with her unspoken conclusions about the Epee. She suspected he'd have kept his opinion to himself if he'd known she shared it. "I'll get the coolant." She'd already seen which of them could move faster, and she already knew how to work the hose.

She didn't ask what Rudy's chances were.

She didn't ask what hers' and Boss's were, either.

She suspected both answers would be along the lines of 'slim to none.'

The field above buckled again as noble and Animus Hunter bombarded each other with telekinetic force. The arena, what little Chloe could see past the Epee's wreckage, blurred with dark shapes and shimmering glass.

She wondered how long the structure itself would hold, wished she hadn't.

She tried to focus on prepping the coolant tube. Failed. Her thoughts kept drifting to the packed stands. So many people –! Why would a noble come here? Why would an Animus Hunter?

For the same reason?

For her?

She shuddered.

So did the arena.

So much for the electromagnetic field.

The Epee, exposed to a full gee it was never meant to operate in, tumbled almost half the shaft to the still-rising platform, crunching horribly. If the mecha had been a person, it would have been dead a dozen times over, but the stumps of its limbs still twitched with artificial muscle.

Could Rudy survive that?

Would it be kinder if he hadn't?

"Boss," Chloe cried.

"Coming down," the pit boss said. His hands didn't fly across the controls, but he wasted a lot less time fussing with things he didn't need. The platform shook again, started to lower toward them.

Chloe had to fight the urge to look away from the mecha's remains as it came into view. Its red armor looked too much like Rudy's flight suit. In her mind's eye, she saw the mechaneer lying broken and dead like his machine.

Which would happen for sure, she reminded herself, if she and Boss couldn't get him out of the Epee before its shattered engines overheated.

She yanked the coolant tube up and shoved its control gauge to full. The force of the superconductive fluid erupting from the nozzle almost pushed her from the gangplank. She clung to the hose for dear life, guiding it more with her legs than her arms.

Coolant splashed and sizzled. The hiss of smoke joined the cacophony from above.

Chloe angled the coolant along a path from the gangplank to the cockpit. For a wonder, the piloting compartment seemed untouched by the structural damage wracking the rest of the mecha.

The fluid stopped roaring through the tube.

Chloe and Boss exchanged glances.

If they'd run out of coolant, either the tank leaked –

– or arena security had drawn it to fight fires up above.

All those people, Chloe thought again. Merciful Principle, don't let that be the pattern of their days!

She couldn't do anything for them, though. She still might be able to for Rudy.

She grasped the useless coolant tube as tightly as she could, sucked in a deep breath –

Jumped off the railing.

The tube swung around on its gurney, like an acrobat's rope on a carnival ship. Except for the absence of an anti-gravity safety field, anyway. Or anything like a decent handhold.

For once, Chloe's worries proved unfounded. She slid off just where she wanted to be, almost to the Epee's cockpit.

Despite the coolant spray, the heat sizzling through her boots and wafting from the mecha's chest made her wince. Gingerly, she sprinted across it.

She realized she'd come unarmed – useless. "Boss," she shouted – even raising her voice, she could hardly hear over the maelstrom above – "toss me an emergency release!"

"Too far, girl," Boss shouted back.

"Just trust me!" She had a hunch.

He muttered something impolite, and he kept clambering toward her with a second release tucked into his vest – but he threw.

Boss hung from the side of the Epee, wore thick thermal gloves, and, if his form was any indication, hadn't been much of a grenadier in the Civil War.

The emergency release landed perfectly in Chloe's outstretched hand.

She shouted her thanks and crouched over the cockpit. Sweat ran down her arms and face as she worked the vibrating release. Absurdly, she realized she was whispering thanks to Rudy for getting her hair done; with her old style, she'd have been blinded by sweat-soaked bangs.

The cockpit's hydraulics hissed.

Chloe stumbled back, singeing her hands on the hull when she landed. She hardly noticed. She sprang forward and looked in, terrified of what she'd see, knowing she didn't have time for terror.

Rudy lay in the cockpit.

He looked unhurt.

He wasn't moving.

Chloe jumped down. She tore at the safety belts holding him into his pilot's chair and the neural links running from his crimson flight suit. She grabbed his shoulders.

She worked up the courage to listen for his heartbeat. Breathed a sigh of relief.

Not that his being alive meant he would stay that way, if she couldn't get him out. The cockpit temperature climbed every second she crouched in it; if she took too long, it would sear her hands to useless if she tried to climb out and they would both burn alive.

Her grip tightened. Gingerly, she bent forward and hefted Rudy over her shoulder as best she could.

His weight pushed her against the mecha's screens. She hissed when her back, sans a temperature-controlling flight suit, brushed the hot metal.

"Wake up, Rudy," she pleaded. "I don't know if I can lift you."

Whatever had knocked him out – a blow to the head or overloaded synapses, she figured, and prayed it was the latter – had done a number on him. He didn't so much as twitch.

Chloe gulped down a breath. The air was getting hot now, too. Breathing hurt. Bracing Rudy between herself and the wall, she started to scissor her way up the emergency ladder, silently thanking whatever designer had decided to pad it with nonconductive foam. She locked her legs on the middle, hooked one arm, braced, and heaved.

Somehow, she managed to jerk Rudy up to the ladder.

Now she could get her shoulder under him, use his own dead weight to keep him from sliding. It kept her from climbing, too, forcing muscles used to guiding a mecha to heft nearly twice her weight. Chloe winced as her arm caught against the ladder.

Better not have been a blow to the head that knocked him out, she thought, or I could be killing him by doing this.

She figured he'd rather have his brain shaken loose while he was unconscious than be left to bake alive. Besides, if a neural overload had knocked him out, he might actually survive the escape.

Provided, of course, she could drag him the rest of the way out of the cockpit.

It hadn't seemed very deep coming down: a meter, tops. Lifting Rudy's body that far when her arms were so sweat-slicked she could barely lift herself gave her new appreciation for the distance.

She counted down in her mind. One, two, three –

Heave!

She kicked upwards and swung Rudy toward the cockpit's opening. He sprawled half out.

He started to slip.

"No," Chloe screamed. She made a wild grab and managed only to pull at her already aching shoulder.

Rudy's slide stopped.

"You alive there, girl?" Boss asked. "I've got Mr. Algreil."

"I'm fine," Chloe lied. "Get Rudy out." Her breath sounded more like a gasp. She started to climb. The arm she'd had hooked couldn't support her weight. Broken? Or just sprained? She'd never broken an arm before, but it sure hurt as bad as she imagined it would. Gingerly, she switched to her good arm and levered herself out.

She wanted to drag herself off the Epee, but its hull scorched her hands. She forced herself to her knees, then her feet.

For a wonder, she actually managed to stand.

Boss was dragging Rudy toward the edge of the platform. Chloe, gulping in a breath of blissfully cool air, sprinted after them. She hooked her good arm under Rudy's and nodded to Boss. He returned the nod and grinned. Neither of them wasted energy speaking.

They lowered Rudy from the mecha and jumped to the platform after him. Chloe rolled, cried out as she banged her bad arm. She gritted her teeth and stumbled to her feet. "I'm okay," she whispered. "Okay."

"Doubt that," Boss said, "but if you can manage it, we've got to get Mr. Algreil out of here. The whole damned place looks liable to collapse, and for all the eggheads claim it 'can't happen,' I wouldn't bet my arse on the Epee not blowing."

Chloe forced herself to nod. Boss picked Rudy up and draped one of the unconscious mechaneer's arms gingerly over Chloe's good shoulder. They walked, stumbled and crawled for the exit the rest of the pit crew had fled through. The elevators had automatically returned, at least. Chloe lowered Rudy to the floor of the nearest and collapsed beside him while Boss worked the controls.

Above them, the psychic battle still raged, howling wind and screeching metal. Chloe shuddered.

Boss's hand closed on her shoulder – her good shoulder, thank the Principle.

She forced herself to look up.

The grizzled mechanic grinned down at her. "You done good, girl," he said. "Guess Mr. Algreil picked better'n I figured, after all."

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 17: Failure

"Failure." Otto Abeir Algreil.

"Disqualified," Commandant Efrem, Etemenos Military Academy.

"Conduct unbecoming an officer." Instructor Borel, Federal Mechaneer Training Station.

"Striking a superior officer." Professor Slade, Fort Raypoint Academy.

"Second Place." Etemenos Cup announcer.

"Crimson Chicken." Some wise-ass covering the Etemenos Cup.

"Second, third… top ten." Chloe Hughes. Not even a fan.

"Failure."

Rudy swam through a thick morass of voices and images. He tried not to breathe, fearing they would drown him. He knew he was dreaming. At least, he hoped he was dreaming. If death was an endless parade of wise-asses dissing his performance, he had some serious shit to sort out with the Almighty Principle.

He saw the Epee, emblazoned with the flaming bird insignia of the Crimson Phoenix. The mecha's featureless red visor lit with a cyclopean light, as though it were staring at him. As he watched, its metallic lines curled and twisted into sleeker, smoother curves, almost like the carapace of some gargantuan red arthropod. Its visor split as if to admit him to its cockpit, but it opened like a pair of mandibles.

He tried to swim away from it, but the sludge of memory and impression pulled him in.

He thrust up his hand to ward it away – but he didn't have a hand.

He tried to kick – but he didn't have a leg.

He looked down at himself. At the ruin of his lean, lanky frame, twisted and mauled beyond recognition.

He tried to scream.

The sea of thoughts filled his mouth, choking down the sound, choking him.

Failure! The thought rebounded through him, Otto's voice, the voice of every instructor he'd ever had, even Chloe's. He tried to grab at the impression of Chloe. At least she sounded sympathetic.

But when the image of her formed before him, hovering in front of the monstrous Epee, it was with her hair long and curly, unbound and undyed, noble's hair, an ocean of billowing raven curls offset by sickly pale skin. Her face curled into a sneer. She looked down her nose at his outstretched remaining hand and laughed in his face.

Rudy's hand fell away.

He tumbled toward the Epee, looking back at the noble girl who watched, cruel amusement twisting her mouth into a mock smile.

"Failure," she said.

The cockpit-mandibles slammed shut around him.

Rudy found himself seated, but the chair wasn't the impact chair of his mecha, and he was not himself. Not as he was now, anyway. He felt dwarfed by the gargantuan throne, red with blue trim. He wanted to leave. He wanted to go home, but home was here!

When he tried to sit up, he discovered the straps holding him to the chair.

He cried for his parents – but they were dead, so after a moment, he cried for his brother.

Otto was there, standing beside him, grinning down and patting his arm.

"This isn't going to hurt," Otto said, "so just sit back and quit your whining."

"But –"

"Listen, kiddo, you should be thanking me." Otto's grin widened. "We're gonna make you –"

The lights went out. Lightning flashed. Rudy caught glimpses of strange machines and bubbling tubes of stranger fluids, of Otto's face and a dozen other, older faces, weirdly illuminated by the crackling light.

Then…

"Failure," Otto spat. The word echoed through the room, either repeated by the other figures hidden in the shadows or echoing from the curving walls.

Rudy, himself again, whole again, surged toward the image of his scowling brother.

For a fraction of a second, he saw Otto, not framed by strange devices, but by a tall, muscular blond man, a felid redhead who clung to the man, and the shattered window of the Algreil Aerospace box at the Wellach Cup arena.

Then Rudy's eyes opened and he realized it was Chloe leaning over him, and that he'd been about ready to throttle her.

He dropped his hands to his sides.

"You're awake," she said. Her voice sounded shaky. Maybe she didn't want him awake, at least after the greeting he'd almost given.

Rudy peeled himself from the soft, welcoming gel of the couch. He looked around his suite, confirming the walls and the boring-as-hell screens on them and the fish swimming outside – and, thank the Principle, his alcohol globes. Unless he missed his count, Chloe had broken down and popped a few.

"What am I doing here?" he asked.

"Boss and I got you to a cab," Chloe said. She rubbed the back of her neck. "He said you'd just gone into feedback shock and needed to rest, so we brought you here."

"Boss…?" Rudy shook his head. It felt no clearer, but he did manage to send a shooting pain across his cerebellum. "Oh. The tournament."

The tournament he'd lost.

Again.

"When we left, the arena was still holding," Chloe said, apparently misunderstanding his frown. "The Reformer was overhead. It looked like its shields were propping the place up."

"Marcel spread his shields with a nob on the loose?" Rudy shook his head again, gingerly this time. "He's even dumber than I thought."

"He did it to save people, Rudy," Chloe snapped. "The news said the arena would have collapsed otherwise. There were two hundred thousand people in there!"

"You sound like a regular little recruiting poster," Rudy said. He swung off the couch; the gel sloughed from his body to return to its inert form. "I can see it now: you posed in a slinky little green-and-gold number, a big 'I Want You – for the Federal Navy' scrawled overhead. All they'd have to do is dub your voice so you didn't sound like such a nag."

"So what would you have done? Let them die?"

"Same thing Marcel did," Rudy said. "Except I would have gotten drummed out for 'risking my ship.'"

"You've got a lot of nerve, Rudy Kaine Algreil," Chloe said.

"You just noticed?" He scooped up a globe of wine and popped it in his mouth. "Anyway, I'm not the one snapping at a guy who just regained consciousness. In his own suite, no less."

Chloe's mouth dropped. She stared at him.

She looked like she'd have slapped him right back into unconsciousness but for the cast of hardened medical nanopaste on her arm. Instead, she spun, fixing her gaze on one of the Wellachan plated fish drifting past.

Rudy blinked. Cast on her arm?

Oh, hell. She'd probably hurt herself getting him out. Suddenly, he felt guilty for snapping at her about Avalon – and he hated feeling guilty. Felt too much like obligation. "What happened to your arm?"

"Nothing."

"Chloe, I didn't mean to snap at you."

She did a great impression of someone who hadn't heard him. Stiffly, she said, "Before he went to check on your brother, Boss asked me to tell you to call in when you woke. Do you remember the channel?"

"I'll call when I'm good and ready," Rudy said. "Right now, I want to –"

To apologize, he thought.

He wasn't good at 'sorry.'

Chloe waited, head cocked expectantly, her eyes still on the fish but her thoughts obviously not.

Rudy opened his mouth. Shut it again.

Probably just end up with his foot in it if he said anything else, anyway.

He spun and stalked into the bedroom and pulled his mask up. At a thought, his flight suit placed a call to the Algreil Aerospace arcology on Wellach.

He heard Chloe moving around in the entertainment room. He took a step toward the bedroom door.

"Mr. Rudolf?"

Suppressing a curse, he focused on the semi-transparent screen his mask's eyepieces had become. A clerk in an Algreil Aerospace jumpsuit nodded a greeting.

"Speaking," Rudy growled. He cocked his ear. Chloe was still on the move. Hopefully, she wouldn't do anything stupid. "What do you want?"

"Um, you contacted us, Mr. Rudolf," the clerk said. "I assumed you wished to apprise the company of your health. Which appears good."

"A little feedback shock never hurt anybody," Rudy said.

"I'm sure you're right, sir. Did you want to be put through to Mr. Algreil?" 'Mr. Algreil,' of course, being the Algreil, the elder Algreil.

"He's back?"

"I'm afraid not, sir," the clerk said.

Something else to worry about, Rudy thought. Just like Otto to get himself killed and dump the company in his little brother's lap. "Have you heard from him since the mess at the arena?"

"He is currently assisting Admiral Avalon's efforts to stabilize the Wellach Cup Arena."

Making his time and fuel tax deductible, no doubt. "Call me back when he shows," Rudy said, and killed the connection before the fussy bureaucrat started unloading responsibilities on Algreil the younger.

He strode back into the hallway.

Chloe stood at the door. She had a bag braced on her good arm. She had to stretch her fingers around it to the door controls.

Rudy slid between her and the door. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Out," she said. She sidestepped him and leaned closer to the controls. The door slid open.

Rudy wished he hadn't gotten her imprinted to work the suite. Of course, if he hadn't, he'd have woken up in the hallway. He spread his arms across the doorway. "No you're not."

She set her jaw. "Don't make me push you out of the way. You're a feedback shock patient and my arm's broken. One of us is liable to get hurt."

"Chloe, I'm…" Rudy heaved a sigh, clenched his fists. "Dammit, I'm sorry about what I said earlier, okay?"

"If you think you made me mad," she said, "well, you're right, actually, but that's not why I'm leaving."

"Oh, you just up and decided to, huh?"

"I only stayed till you woke up."

Rudy blinked. "What?"

"After all the trouble of saving you, it seemed wasteful to let you die because nobody watched you."

"Doesn't explain why you're leaving."

"Because I caused this," she said.

"You lost me."

"Nobles, Rudy!" She pinched a strand of her straightened, blue-dyed hair and twisted it into its natural curl. "You know why the Black Rook was there, and the Animus Hunter, too. If not for me, none of this would have happened. Nobody would have gotten hurt, Mom and Dad would be safe back on the Goose – heck, you would have won your stupid tournament!"

"You blame yourself for what happened back there? Bull. For all you know, that damn nob just wanted to smack down some 'garch trash and show how great he was."

"You know better!"

"I don't know a damn thing," Rudy said. "You ask me, nobs are all a bunch of crazies."

"I'm a 'nob,' as you put it."

"I rest my case."

"Then why don't you let me leave?"

"Because you took care of me and you're in no condition to do the same for yourself," Rudy said. "Also, because even if you're right about why those guys decided to make Wellach ground zero for an old fashioned Civil War-style monster mash, you still shouldn't blame yourself."

"Never said I did," Chloe said. "Principle knows I didn't ask for any of this, noble blood and the powers supposed to go with it very much included. The people who are fighting over me are to blame – but it still wouldn't happen if I weren't the cause of it. Whoever is around me will get hurt –"

"That settles it," Rudy said. "I want a rematch with the Black Rook, so I'm sticking with you."

"You can't fight a noble, Rudy!"

"Wanna bet? If I'd known what to expect, I'd have smacked that stuck-up Rook back down to earth. Or water, anyway."

"Bully for you," Chloe said. "Now get out of my way."

"No chance, sweetness. You're going nowhere."

"If you keep me here, Rudy, so help me, I'll call it kidnapping. Bring scandal to your house or whatever they call it in the Oligarchy."

Rudy laughed. "In Algreil Aerospace, that wouldn't even be much of a scandal. Besides, who're you gonna call? The Feds?"

"Yes."

"See, that's what I'm talking about. You're obviously in no condition to go out on your own."

"I'm going to turn myself in, Rudy," Chloe said.

"You're what?"

"Admiral Avalon seems like an honorable gentleman. He'll let my parents go once he has no reason to hold them. They'll be free, and nobody else will get hurt."

"Marcel!" Rudy's face darkened. "So help me, Chloe, I ought to let you go. It would serve you right."

"Good." She took a step forward.

Rudy deftly avoided jostling her injured arm as he angled her back into the suite. "I ought to. For Principle knows what reason, though, I'm not gonna. That 'honorable gentleman' will break your heart – right before, in your case, he breaks your skull open so you don't threaten 'the peace and equality of the galaxy.'"

"You're wrong –"

"Principle, Clo, didn't your parents warn you about slick operators like Marcel?"

"Not half as often as they warned me about wanna-be rebels always ready to throw a grin or a punch and so hot-headed they'd jump at a hint they weren't patterned to be the greatest thing since gravitic drive." She huffed. Then, quickly, she added, "Also, you're wrong about why I trust the admiral. Risking his ship to save a bunch of civilians goes a long way toward convincing me of his good intentions."

"Listen, Clo," Rudy said. "Say you're right about Marcel – which you aren't, by the way, 'cause he only does crap like that to sucker innocent young women into thinking he's some kind of hero. Even so, you'll be putting some people in plenty of danger."

"Like who?"

"Like yours truly." Rudy jerked a thumb at his chest. "I stuck my neck out hiding you. With all the heat the Feds brought down here, especially with a nob after you, too, that's probably treason."

"I'll say… um…"

"That you seduced me?"

"Well, something –" She blushed. "Rudy!"

"They might actually buy that one…"

"I'm not going to say that!"

"Fine. Say whatever you want. It won't change the fact that you'll be so pumped full of Indicators you won't be able to lie about your weight, much less who helped you out."

"You really think so?"

"I know so. The Feds use 'em to check you for cheating on tests, for Principle's sake."

"Did you?"

"Cheat? Of course, but that's not the point. What is, is this: they'll find out who helped you, and they'll use that as an excuse to nail all of Algreil Aerospace. You'll get me killed, probably my brother, too, and the whole company nationalized."

"They wouldn't do that," Chloe said.

"Wanna bet?" Rudy tapped the sceen beside him. At a thought, it displayed an internal company report from four years earlier. Everything Algreil Aerospace had on the fall of Kalder-Black. "You seem to like watching the news. Maybe you should sit down and soak this up instead. You can get back to me on what the Feds 'wouldn't do.'"

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 18: Take You For A Ride

"Cast came off, huh?"

"Finally," Chloe said. She didn't shift her gaze from the news feed playing across her flight suit's eyepieces. She watched various news crews pick their way through the ruin of the arena. Once the Reformer withdrew its powerful gravitic drive, the entire upper hemisphere collapsed onto the lower. Thank the Principle – and Second Admiral Marcel Avalon –, there had been only a dozen deaths. Not counting the Black Rook and the Animus Hunter, because nobody seemed to know what had happened to either of them. According to the footage Chloe had seen, they'd disappeared beneath the waves.

The waves had frozen behind them.

She could still hardly believe it. Wellach had only the tiniest of polar caps; the ice beneath the arena had, for a few hours at least, been the thickest on the planet.

Had the Black Rook created it to cover his escape?

Had the Animus Hunter created it to capture his noble prey?

Or was Chloe wrong about who was hunting whom?

She shook her head. All she knew was, despite Avalon's heroics, she was glad she hadn't gone through with her plan to turn herself in. The admiral himself might be an honorable man, but if even a tenth of the things Algreil Aerospace unearthed about the fall of its rival corporation were true, plenty of the admiral's bosses in the Senate and colleagues in the Federal Navy enjoyed at best a cool relationship with 'honor.' To say nothing of 'law' and 'basic human decency.'

"Never wear the things myself," Rudy said. It took Chloe a minute to realize he was still talking about the cast. He flopped onto the couch across from her. "Being mothered by semi-sentient nanopaste just isn't my style."

"That's what my dad always says," Chloe said. She rubbed her formerly cracked arm. It felt good as new after a week of being set, held and soothed by the medical nanopaste. "He also ends up taking months to heal injuries nanopaste could have patched up in a week, though."

Rudy chuckled. "Anybody ever tell you you're 'nice,' Clo?"

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

"With good reason." He popped an alcohol globe into his mouth. "Fortunately, I can cure nicety in three easy steps."

"Do any of them involve finding my parents?" She met his eyes at last.

His cocky grin wavered for a fraction of a second. When she first met him, she never would have caught it, but weeks in close proximity had alerted her to his subtle cues.

She said, "I'll take that as a no."

"Actually," he said, "I do have a lead."

"You do?" She shot from the couch. "What? Where?"

"I'm heading north to see a guy who might be able to help. Old pal of your dad's, from what I gather."

"Dad never mentioned having friends on Wellach."

"Maybe he didn't know the guy was in-system," Rudy said. "He's a former Devil Ray, who, according to company records, retired here. Trouble is, he probably won't respond well to me. The old Devil Rays seem to have it in their heads that anybody other than them who straps on a tournament mecha for the company is a 'punk kid.'"

"I wonder where they get that idea."

"Can't imagine," Rudy said, perfectly deadpan. "Anyway, since you're officially hale and hearty, you can come with me. Nothing like a damsel in distress to soften up these old soldiers, if you ask me."

"I'll come, of course, but... can this guy really help find my parents?"

"You better believe it. He's got hella good connections, both in the oligarchy and in the navy. Even if he doesn't have the info we need, it's a sure bet he'll know who we can bribe to get it."

"You'd risk bribing someone for me?"

"What was it Marcel smarted off about? He could 'see why I conformed to the whims of yon capricious nymph' or some such crap?"

Chloe fought a blush, lost. "Rudy...! Be serious."

"Never." He waited, head cocked. Apparently disappointed when Chloe didn't relent, he went back on his word: his voice turned grave. "Fine, Clo. I'll be honest: You raised the stakes when you pulled me out of that Epee. Boss told me the whole story and, uh… I didn't ever really thank you."

"You don't have to risk yourself and your company because of it. Those recordings you showed me..." She hugged her arms.

"Hey, anything to tweak the Feds."

"That's too risky even for you."

"Wanna bet?"

"It sure is for me!" Chloe turned and stalked to the window. An armored Wellachan fish almost as big as the suite drifted by, its plate-sized goggle-eye shifting to track her motion. "If you get hurt on my account, what was the point of pulling you out in the first place?"

Rudy's reflection appeared beside hers. He reached around and took her hand.

She figured she should pull away.

"Chloe," he said. "Look at me."

"No."

"What are you afraid of?"

"Lots of things." She laughed because it seemed better than the alternative. "At the moment, me. Being on my own, or with you, anyway, which is even worse. I've lived on the Mother Goose since I was a kid, and Dad was always around when I was an old enough kid for him to have to worry about."

"You're worried I'll take advantage of your naiveté," Rudy said.

"Won't you?"

"What do you think I've been trying to do since we met?"

"You said I wasn't your type." She risked a glance at him, or at least his reflection. She could see him clearly against the backdrop of the water; the fish, bored when potential prey stopped moving, had wandered off. "You weren't lying about that, were you?"

"Nothing but the truth, sweet thing," Rudy said. He leaned his head over her shoulder. "I just neglected to mention that I'm not picky."

She tried so very hard to glare. Failed.

He reached around to cup her chin. He tilted her lips toward his broad grin.

"Rudy, I don't want to..." She gulped.

"You sure? Because from where I'm standing, it sure seems to be on your mind. After all, I didn't ask."

"You implied."

"Semantic nonsense."

Chloe pulled away from him. "Semantic nonsense is the best defense I've got."

"Actually," he said, "the best defense you've got is that we're gonna be late for our meeting with your dad's old pal if we don't get a move on."

Thank the Principle for small favors, Chloe thought.

She took it back when Rudy led her to the hotel's garage and their ride.

Gleaming neon red to match Rudy's flight suit, save where a phoenix spread garishly painted wings on its broad opaque windshield, the motorcycle looked like it was doing a hundred clicks just sitting there with the engine off. Chloe understood how such devices worked – powerful internal combustion engines propelled their wheels, electromagnetic stabilizers kept them from tipping over or, at high enough speeds, taking flight.

She also understood that riding one meant traveling at very high speeds, off rails, without so much as a thin layer of composite armor between her and the ground.

"Ever ride one of these babies, Clo?" Rudy asked, hopping aboard. "A mag-cycle, I mean – I know you've never ridden one like this."

"No," she said.

"Great! You'll never forget your first time." He grinned and patted the seat behind him.

I'm doing this for Mom and Dad, Chloe thought. Objectively, it couldn't be as dangerous as running across an overheating mecha, and that was just for Rudy – who, she decided, owed her several years of peace and quiet even apart from saving his sorry self.

"Time's a wasting," he said.

Chloe joined him on the bike. She couldn't help but notice they fit snugly on it, and wondered if he'd chosen it for that purpose. Too late to complain now, though.

She managed to keep from starting when the reactive gel of the bike's seat melded to her flight suit as a safety belt. At least with it, she'd only be scraped to a bloody pulp by the pavement if the bike wiped out, rather than being thrown to her death in a tight turn.

"Hold on anyway," Rudy said. "The belt keeps you in place, but it's no kind of fun being jerked around at the waist, especially when you're not used to it."

Chloe wrapped her arms around his chest. "Are you sure this is necessary?"

"Don't know about that, but it's hella pleasant."

Before she could consider unentangling herself, he floored the accelerator. The bike darted through a mostly-empty garage; most visitors to Wellach used public transportation, like civilized people.

Somehow, Rudy managed to swerve nerve-wrackingly close to what few ground vessels other patrons had brought.

Chloe clung tighter and closed her eyes. Which, she supposed, was probably the point.

She opened them again when a warm sea breeze whipped at her hair.

Wellach's highways stretched before them. Chloe had barely noticed the road running alongside the gravlev train when Rudy had brought her to Wellach City – she'd been so stunned by the loss of her parents, she'd hardly noticed the train. She saw the highways as if for the first time: half-pipes, twenty-five meters in diameter, metal on the bottom, reinforced plastic on the sides.

The roads themselves were tourist attractions – a monumental network spanning the entirety of waterlogged Wellach. They rode low enough in the water to show off the waves through their vast windows.

Chloe would have liked them better if they hadn't swayed with the current. She gulped, wondering how to avoid throwing up on Rudy's back. "How long will we be on the road?"

"Couple hours," he said.

Chloe suppressed a groan. She tried to remember the Wellachan geography the planetary government had beamed to the Mother Goose as it came in. Wellach City, near the equator, was the hub. It maintained space elevators for bulk cargo, as did four other equatorial arcologies. Wellach exported… what? Fossil fuels from below its world-ocean? That and its galaxy-famous fish. She shook her head. Irrelevant details, and she didn't want to get hungry. It would only make her queasier.

Rudy turned north. What lay a couple hours north of Wellach City?

She asked.

"It's a small arcology. Exclusive. Business class, you might say."

"Business class?"

"You know, like on a starliner? Gel seats and beds and your own suite, but don't expect decent catering?"

"Ah," said Chloe, who didn't 'know' at all. The only interstellar ship she remembered was the Mother Goose, and her bed there had been an old-fashioned mattress. The bodyforming gel of the bed and couches in Rudy's suite was the first she'd ever experienced. The food on the Goose, on the other hand, had been impeccable. Her stomach growled at the thought of her mother's cooking, then grumbled at the swaying of the highway.

"The seasickness gets better after a while," Rudy said.

'A while,' in Chloe's case, meant nearly the whole trip. Her stomach didn't finish settling until just before they dipped into a covered span of tube that, Rudy promised, led straight to their destination.

"Why the tunnel?" she asked.

"It branches off to some submarine colonies," Rudy said. "This close to the equator, just touristy crap, but as you get further north you run into big refineries and fisheries. Also, Wellach has two moons in irregular orbits, so the tides get choppier the closer you get to the poles."

"How do you know all this stuff, Rudy?"

"When I'm not seducing glamorous noblewomen, fighting for my life in contests of raw mechaneering skill and living dangerously on illegally modded bikes, I entertain myself moonlighting as a tour guide."

"Really."

He grinned back at her. "Nah, I called it up on my suit's computer when you asked."

Chloe suppressed a sigh. "Wait… what do you mean, 'illegally modded?'"

"The Feds slap a speed cap on these suckers. For 'safety.'" Rudy spat the last word like the foulest curse in the galaxy. "Good thing I figured out how to take it off, eh?"

"Wonderful."

"If it makes you feel any better, I had Boss check the circuits after I fooled with them."

"It does."

"You really ought to trust me," he said.

He shot around a slower-moving vehicle. The driver leaned on his horn. The sound echoed in the water-shrouded tunnel. For a second, Chloe thought she saw a recognizable logo on the vehicle, but it vanished behind them too quickly.

"See? I'm a great driver."

She didn't grace him with a response.

Before he settled on another quip, they shot from the tunnel, and the sight overhead struck him as dumb as it did Chloe.

They were indeed at a small private arcology. An office spire poked from the center of the circular platform, no doubt repeated below in typical Wellachan fashion. Smaller outbuildings and hangars sized for everything from mecha to shuttles to full-sized transports ringed the spire. The Algreil Aerospace logo glowed from its gates.

And the Federal Navy destroyer Reformer hovered overhead.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 19: Ultimatum

Ellie stared at the officer displayed by the semi-transparent screen. For one, he was the handsomest man she'd ever seen. She felt something like Jack must have, seeing Chloe's birth mother all those years ago.

For another, he was familiar.

She knew she'd never met him before, but the sense of familiarity remained. She knew, or almost knew, the lines of his tanned jaw, the angle of his aquiline nose, the curve of his wavy platinum hair. Even his remarkable amber eyes, which she knew she'd never seen on a pure human before, struck a chord.

Maybe she'd met his parents, though where, she couldn't begin to guess. Second Admiral Marcel Avalon undoubtedly hailed from the core worlds of the Federated Stars, if not Etemenos itself.

"You okay, Hon?" Jack whispered.

Ellie forced herself to nod.

She and Jack had been called into Otto Algreil's office and stationed away from the camera broadcasting the Oligarch's image to the man displayed over the desk. They saw the admiral through the screen as he addressed Otto, but, the Oligarch assured them, Avalon could not see them.

Ellie wondered, and worried, why Otto had called them in for the meeting.

Did the Feds have Chloe? Or did the Oligarch, for all his anti-Federal rhetoric, plan to acquire something for his company by selling the Hugheses to them?

She could see his calm, cool smile through the semi-transparent projection of Admiral Avalon, but read him? Not a chance. Otto used facial expressions and body language as deftly as most people used words.

"To what do we owe the pleasure, Divine Auric Drake," he asked. Ellie recognized Avalon's mechaneer name from the Wellach Cup, and assumed using it represented an attempt at informality.

"I think you know why I'm here, Mr. Algreil," Avalon said. His rich tenor at once soothed and commanded. It almost drowned out his hard words. "And I fear my approach will bring you no pleasure. In short: surrender the girl Chloe Hughes and her parents. Now."

"Excuse me?" Otto cocked an eyebrow slightly, looked down the bridge of his nose. If she hadn't known better, Ellie would have sworn he had no idea what the admiral was talking about. "Are these people supposed to be employees of mine or something? What's this about?"

"Don't play the fool, Mr. Algreil," Avalon said. "I do not want to be forced to destroy you."

"Destroy –! Now wait just a damned minute!" Otto surged over the desk. "Before you start blowing holes in every treaty, law and constitutional right of the Oligarchy, Marcel, you'd better show me some kind of a warrant. And explain what in the hell it's for."

"If you insist on your ignorance, I will enlighten you. Analysis of footage taken during the Wellach Cup Arena tragedy clearly shows you in the company of one Jack Hughes, free trader, late of the salvage ship Mother Goose, and a former Colonel in the Algreil Aerospace Devil Rays under your command. Also present was one Ellie Hughes, a hybrid of the felid breed, wed to Colonel Hughes under transitional law."

"Jack and Ellie Hughes," Otto said. He tossed a slight wink to them. Ellie wondered if she'd have noticed it without a felid's enhanced senses. "Yeah, Jack's an old pal of mine. They're here, all right. Hoped I could help find their runaway daughter. That's this Chloe, right?"

Ellie tensed.

Jack squeezed her arm. She glanced at him. He gave an urgent shake of his head.

Avalon's voice rolled from the screen. "You are not providing them with a great deal of help, then, since the daughter is also in your possession."

"Hell of a leap of logic you've got there, Marcel," Otto said.

"You may drop the audacity, Mr. Algreil. You cannot surpass parading her right under my nose, even giving her name! I confess, but for the Black Rook's denuding the arena of its one-way glass, I would never have guessed even you and the Crimson Phoenix so bold as to hide her in such plain sight."

"Rudy? The hell?" Otto looked confused again, and annoyed, and perhaps a touch worried; Ellie couldn't begin to guess if he really was any of the above. "If you think I'd let an old friend's daughter within five kilometers of my kid brother, much less a girl valuable enough you seem to think I'd risk my company to hide her from the Federal Navy, you obviously don't know Rudy as well as you think you do – or me, for that matter."

"Precisely what I did think, when he introduced me to his lovely new 'mechanic.' Once I had seen the parents, however, it seemed only natural to compare security footage of 'Chloe Derringer' to the images we have on file for the Hughes daughter."

"Care to share that data, Marcel?"

"Anything to persuade you to cooperate without bloodshed," Avalon said. "Lieutenant Thibaut," he called to someone offscreen, "splice the comparative analysis of the Hughes daughter into my transmission."

Ellie bit back a gasp.

On her left was the image Zelph had shown Jack: how the Feds' best predicative computers expected Chloe to look.

On her right, the screen showed Chloe in mechanic's gear, an Algreil Aerospace logo on the right breast of her vest, a young, blue-eyed redhead in a crimson flight suit walking with his arm around her waist.

"Chloe," Jack whispered. "What's she doing with Otto's kid brother?"

"What's she doing with those clothes," Ellie hissed, eyeing the short shorts and the bared midrif.

"That son of a bitch," Otto snarled.

"You acknowledge your guilt," Avalon said.

"The hell I do!" Otto slammed his fist on the desk, buzzing the executive assistant Ellie knew waited in the room beyond his office. "Where is that little bastard?"

"Mr. Rudolf's transponder is off, Sir," the assistant said. She neither hesitated nor remarked on the form of address; Ellie figured it was how Otto usually called for his brother. The assistant asked, "Would you like to place a call?"

"I'd like to rip his goddamned throat out," the Oligarch snarled. "But yes. Get him on the line yesterday."

"An impressive performance, Mr. Algreil," Avalon said. "If unconvincing. You cannot expect me to believe your brother acted alone in bringing Miss Hughes in when you admit her parents are in your custody."

"Believe what you want, Avalon," Otto said, "but it's true."

"I'm afraid that's not good enough. Surrender the Hughes family immediately – all of them – or I will take them by force."

Before Otto could answer, Jack stepped around the desk to face Avalon. "Look, Admiral," he began.

"Colonel Hughes," Avalon said, nodding a greeting. "I recall reading of your exploits during the War. It is a great tragedy that you and your wife have fallen under suspicion of treason. You may rest assured I will make every effort to disprove these charges, and that the Federal Senate intends no harm toward the young woman you call your daughter."

"Chloe is our daughter, Sir," Jack said. "And much as I appreciate the help – and don't get me wrong, it tugs the old heart strings, right down deep – I'm tellin' you, Otto doesn't have her. We've been tearing our hair out looking for her ever since she disappeared."

"Your reputation as a fast-talker proceeds you as well," Avalon said. "A certain Animus Hunter vouches for it."

Jack shrugged. "Can't help it if I've got a tongue as quick as my fist, Sir. Pattern of my days."

"Those days are reaching their end, Colonel Hughes, if you cannot persuade Mr. Algreil to surrender your family – your entire family – to the Federal Navy. Surely the mere presence of an Animus Hunter lends gravity to this affair?"

"We can't surrender what we don't have," Otto said. "Jack, if you're willing, I'll turn you over to the magnificent one-track here. Maybe in person, you can talk some sense into him."

"I'll sure as hell try," Jack said.

Ellie wondered at Otto's sudden solicitousness of their feelings. An act for Avalon's benefit, no doubt, since he'd portrayed himself as practically a friend of the family.

"And Chloe Hughes?" Avalon asked.

"I already told you, we don't have her," Otto said. "Let me talk to Rudy –"

"And how long will that take?"

"An hour, tops."

"Very well," Avalon said. "Stand down whatever defenses your arcology possesses. The Reformer will land an inspection team, whose work will require at least an hour. You may use this time to contact the Crimson Phoenix.

"And Mr. Algreil," he added, "I trust you will not attempt something foolish."

"Fight a destroyer?" Otto laughed. "I'd have to be crazy."

"Indeed you would. Avalon out."

The holograph disappeared.

Jack and Ellie exchanged glances.

Ellie said, "Chloe and your brother?"

Otto shook his head. "Hell if I know."

"Don't lie to us, Otto," Jack said.

"Goddamn it, I'm not. I wouldn't let her within five clicks of Rudy! He's got the responsibility of a five year old and the testosterone of a fifteen year old! He's the last person in the galaxy I'd trust with something important, and that goes double if that something happened to be packaged as a cute girl."

Ellie's frown deepened. "Chloe's responsible, though. She's a good girl."

"Damn straight," Jack said. He sounded nervous.

"Here's hoping," Otto said. "I don't even want to think about the problems that could cause. Assuming we live to worry about them."

"Speaking of which, what are you gonna do about your pal Marcel?" Jack jerked a thumb toward the office roof, and the destroyer presumably hovering somewhere overhead.

Otto grinned. "I'm gonna fight a destroyer, of course."