Prime Deceptions

by Valerie Valdes

  “Qué coño is a Sump?” Eva asked.

  “I forbid you from going to The Sump,” Mari told Eva, her nose wrinkled like she smelled a fart. She had called for an update on their progress about an hour after La Sirena Negra passed through the Gate to the Ashyke System, where Abelgard was located. Eva had to rush her turn in the sonic shower to take the call, so she sat on the edge of her bed wearing nothing but her underwear and a scowl.

  Eva stuck her tongue out at her sister’s holo image. “You gonna forbid me from other fun stuff, too, like punching people and setting things on fire?”

  “Those things are not fun, you anarchist.”

  “Is anarchy bad now? I’ll update my translator nanites.” Eva was enjoying teasing her sister too much, maybe because it was so easy and familiar. Like falling off a hoverbike.

  Mari closed her eyes and took a visibly deep breath. “Why are you going to Abelgard in the first place? Medoral made sense, but then you went to Charon, and now this?”

  Eva had a ready, and interesting, answer for this one. “Josh went to the university there, and my intel suggests it was one of his stops after leaving Medoral.” Sue had told her as much once Min finally stopped gushing about The Sump, which was a whole other mess Eva was still making up her mind about, despite what she had told Mari.

  “Ay, sí, verdad, he did go to Evident Academy for a few years before returning to Katoru,” Mari said. “But how do you know he went there after he escaped The Fridge?”

  “I have my ways,” Eva said. She wasn’t about to explain that she’d called their mom; she could already hear the lecture now, and she wasn’t in the mood.

  She also didn’t mention that Lashra Damaal had gone to Abelgard as well, because she wasn’t ready to admit to herself that the coincidences surrounding the Garilia connection were piling up to an uncomfortable height.

  “Fine, be evasive. No me importa.” Mari squinted at Eva, as if she could read her sister’s mind if she tried, but Eva just smiled back at her.

  “Speaking of evasive, you didn’t tell me he was traveling with other people,” Eva said. “Do you know who they are? Might help me find him faster.”

  Mari, to Eva’s surprise, froze in the way she always did when she was blindsided. “I wasn’t aware of that, no. How did you find out?”

  Eva wiggled her fingers. “Maaagic!” she replied in a singsongy voice.

  Mari rolled her eyes and sighed. “Whatever. No, I didn’t know, so I can’t help you there.”

  “Bueno. Anything else, before I get back to my, uh, very important preparations?” Eva asked.

  “I suppose not.” Mari sighed again and shook her head slightly. “Send me an update if you find anything.”

  “Claro que sí,” Eva replied. “Hasta luego.”

  “Adiós.” Mari’s image vanished, and almost simultaneously there was a polite knock at the door.

  Eva sent a mental command to open it, but there was no one waiting. Confused, she stood and walked over, poking her head out to see who it might have been.

  “Surprise!” Vakar said, appearing out of nowhere, and Eva shrieked.

  “Qué rayo?” Eva asked, holding a hand to her chest. Her heart was fine, being mechanical, but the gesture was a hard habit to break even after so many years.

  Vakar smelled mildly confused. “Have I done something undesirable?”

  “You scared the shit out of me, yeah. Why did you . . . ?” Eva gestured dismissively at Pink, who had poked her head out of the med bay and was staring at them with her eyebrows all the way up in her hairline.

  “I had inquired of Pink as to ways I might contribute to the ongoing health of our relationship,” he replied, now smelling bashful, like fresh-cut grass.

  “And she told you what, exactly?” Eva asked, towing Vakar into her room and closing the door with a thought.

  “She told me I should surprise you.”

  Eva stared at him, openmouthed, and then erupted into laughter, unable to contain herself.

  “You are,” she gasped between giggles, “too sweet to live.”

  His confusion and embarrassment heightened, so she took pity on him and dragged him over to the bed. They had some time before they got to Abelgard, and she hadn’t taken that shower for nothing.

  “Let me show you what Pink meant,” Eva said, grinning when she was rewarded with the scent of licorice and almonds, among other things.

  Abelgard was affectionately termed a garden world by the humans who had settled there, but it was the kind of garden that was overgrown in some places and muddy in others, and had been otherwise trashed by an unfortunate proximity to intoxicated young people. It featured an exciting mix of densely populated urban nightmares, sprawling city-states, and idyllic country manors maintained by robots for their absent owners. There was also at least one underwater metropolis periodically resettled and eventually wrecked and abandoned by people whose philosophical leanings prized rational egoism.

  Min brought La Sirena Negra down in Tyet-Ruru, one of the city-states, which had been built hundreds of years earlier and then rebuilt as buildings sank or were buried by soft sediment from seasonal flooding. It was split in the center by a winding river whose water looked murky and dense enough to stand on, with one side of the city mostly residential and the other more industrial, including the infamous Sump they were supposed to avoid because it was a bot-fighting hot spot. Looming over the shorter structures was the ivory-painted tower of Evident Academy, their first destination, much to Min’s disappointment.

  “Who builds a skyscraper in the middle of a place like this?” Eva asked, staring at the awkwardly tall building with its holographic time display rotating around the top.

  “Rich people,” Pink answered, curling her lip up. “Come on, girl, that ain’t even a question.”

  Eva shrugged and checked her weapons. She didn’t expect much trouble from students, even assuming some of them were foolish enough to start something, but she had a feeling she and her crew wouldn’t be staying in the parent-approved areas of the city. Especially since Min was so keen to see what the bot fights in The Sump were like.

  After some targeted q-net searches by Min, local law enforcement and college database hacking by Vakar, and old-fashioned snooping around by Eva and Pink, they learned a few important things.

  First, Lashra Damaal had been through the area at the same time as Josh once again. Commwall ads for the Pod Pals were playing all over campus and in local student hangouts, and apparently Sylfe Company had hired a bunch of brand ambassadors to convince their friends how cool the little robots were. Worse, Damaal and Josh had gone to Evident Academy at the same time, and had apparently run in the same circles dealing with engineering and robotics and, to a lesser extent, venture capitalism.

  Second, and infinitely more appealing to Eva since it didn’t involve Garilia, a mysterious bot-fighting champion in The Sump had been trashing all their opponents with an unreasonably overpowered bot, and they claimed to have connections to The Fridge, having escaped a huge firefight at a secret facility thanks to their own skill and ingenuity.

  “That could be Josh!” Sue said, clapping her hands in excitement when she found out.

  “It could be,” Eva agreed, but she wasn’t so sure. If it was, and if he was being so vocal about escaping from The Fridge, how had no one found him already? Surely that would have been easy enough for Mari to track, and she hadn’t mentioned it when Abelgard came up in their conversation. So either this person was lying, they had gotten very lucky, or The Fridge had found them already and gave no shits about getting them back.

  At the very least, Eva was hoping it might be one of Josh’s mystery companions, who could give them more information about what Josh was up to and where he might have gone next.

  If Sue was excited about the prospect of exploring The Sump, Min’s eyes practically sparkled.

  “Jackpot!” she shouted through the speakers of La Sirena Negra, so loud Eva’s ears rang. “This is gonna
be great. I had friends who started fighting here, and they always said it was the most fun, because you had all these rich college kids who thought they were literally the best, and the looks on their faces when you trashed their fancy bots were like, ahhh. So good.” She rushed around getting dressed and brushing her wild blue hair and making Pink plait it into a braid while Mala and a handful of other cats watched, their tails lashing back and forth unhappily.

  “No fighting,” Eva said. “You know that, right?” She stood in the mess munching on one last snack before departure.

  Min wagged her finger at Eva. “Come on, Cap, I don’t even have a bot. How would I fight without a bot?”

  Sue choked on the tea she had been nursing, coughing profusely. Min rubbed her back absently.

  “Take it down a level, Number One,” Pink teased. She had splurged on a few snacks at Evercon and was happily demolishing a container of something similar to chicharrones.

  “I’m not Number One anymore,” Min replied. She smiled wistfully and reached up to fiddle with her braid. “I’m sure nobody remembers me. It was so long ago.”

  Eva witnessed Min’s skills back when she first poached the pilot from the bot pits to come fly La Sirena Negra instead. “Number One” earned her name along with her reputation by wrecking every opponent who faced her, with whatever bot she could sync her neural implants with. It had been quite the sight: two hulking metal monstrosities facing off in an area the size of a cargo bay, punching and kicking each other before ramping up to more esoteric weapons like flamethrowers and nanoswords and even a last-ditch energy weapon that Min had rendered utterly useless by the simple act of dodging its beam.

  And then the loser tried to kill Min, so Eva stomped his arm to jelly with her gravboot. Unfortunately, he had friends—or, rather, like-minded fighters who were tired of not winning. Eva had already planned to offer Min a temporary job, and Min was genuinely delighted to take it.

  Ah, the good old days, for loose definitions of good.

  Eva suppressed the urge to tousle Min’s carefully arranged hair. “Plenty of people remember you. Especially the ones whose asses you kicked.”

  “Maybe.” Min’s expression brightened. “My friend Yeon-ha will be there. They said they could show us around. We used to call ourselves Team Diva, the times we played in doubles matches.”

  “No fighting,” Eva repeated, with substantially less conviction than before. “We don’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves. We get in, we find this mystery champion, and we get out.”

  Sue nodded, but her thoughtful expression remained, and she kept glancing back toward the cargo bay in a way that made Eva’s teeth itch.

  The Sump was about what Eva expected for a place named after a nasty waste-collecting pit: dirty and overrated. The streets were littered with trash being slowly corralled by ancient sweeper bots, despite the presence of standard waste recyclers at every intersection. The buildings were clustered together without enough room between them for a rat to squeeze through, and their cheap holosigns flickered when they worked at all. It smelled like body-scenting nanites and hormones and the stale ozone tang of single-user transit pods. There were bars and brothels and, of course, places to buy incredibly cheap dorm furniture that would last longer than you would expect, unless someone decided to go on a bender and start throwing chairs.

  It reminded Eva of flight school. But instead of jacked-up people with ships for brains, these were the best and brightest minds the universe had to offer, coming together to solve vital, complex problems like how many orifices could intoxicants be pumped into before medical intervention became necessary.

  Not everyone was like that. Some of them built robots to beat the shit out of each other for fun.

  Their destination was Medsammensvoren, a massive warehouse with a line of wannabe patrons that extended down the street for at least a block. It looked typical enough from the outside, about three stories tall and painted a bland gray covered in layers of graffiti and various unpleasantly smelly bodily fluids. The walls, however, were insulated to absorb all but the slightest whisper of whatever noise was happening inside, and the bouncer was a todyk nearly as tall as the building, her feathers glossy and her teeth each as big as Eva’s hand.

  Eva knew how these places worked. The line was for appearances, and no one who was ever going to get in would be standing around waiting. She led her crew straight up to the door, ignoring the protests of the people who had probably been there for ages hoping to get noticed.

  “Her friend is inside,” Eva said, jerking a thumb at Min.

  “Naturally,” the todyk said, peering down at Eva with her enormous black eyes. “All of these fine personages also have friends inside.” Her small arm waved at the line, making the bystanders laugh.

  “Their name is Yeon-ha,” Min said, clutching Sue’s hand and grinning. “They’re a fighter. Their bot is Moonbear.”

  “How absolutely charming that you’re still speaking,” the todyk replied, then proceeded to ignore them entirely.

  Eva rolled her eyes and leaned closer to Min. “Could you just ping your friend, please?” she asked.

  A few minutes later, a person about Min’s age came zipping around the side of the building in a green hoverchair. Their black hair was chin-length and straight, their eyeliner was fierce, and they wore the kind of red-and-white cat suit that loosened and tightened with a commlink command for ease of removal.

  “Min-jung!” they squealed.

  “Yeon-ha!” Min shrieked.

  They proceeded to do a wild hand-waving dance at each other while making high-pitched noises. Eva grinned at seeing Min so happy, despite the circumstances. Sue looked confused, and maybe a little sad, though Eva wasn’t sure why.

  “Come on, let’s go, I have to show you my bot,” Yeon-ha said, spinning their chair around and taking off as quickly as they had appeared. Min raced after them, and after a moment of surprise, Eva followed, making sure the rest of the crew was close behind her.

  Where the line was full of rowdy college students, the alleyway they now moved through was peopled with the types who gave The Sump its reputation. A variety of humanoids loitered about, many in privacy bubbles that left the area eerily silent except for the rustling of clothes or shuffling of feet and other mobility-related appendages. Sometimes items exchanged hands, or threatening gestures were made, but none of it was Eva’s business so she didn’t look too closely except to gauge whether she needed to be worried. It smelled like inhaled stimulants and synthetic lubricants, with an uncomfortably chewy hint of what Eva assumed was the nearby river. There was less graffiti here, and less garbage, and Eva moved a few centimeters closer to Sue just in case.

  The back door to Medsammensvoren was the huge roll-up variety, to allow for bots to get in and out, as well as any todyk bouncers. There was also a smaller entrance, and Yeon-ha led them through it, past clusters of people watching holovids of bot fights projected in front of multiple walls, occasionally shouting with joy or anger at the results. Probably because gambling was involved; Min earned plenty of credits betting on herself back in the day, and so did her boss, which made him cranky when she tried to leave.

  Not that Eva had cared, since he’d done nothing to keep Min safe in the first place.

  Past the remote gambling matches were various other gaming tables, physical and holographic versions of dice and cards and tiles, and all the other exciting methods a whole universe of people addicted to winning had come up with. Lights flashed, wheels clacked, dealers barked orders, and machines played annoying trills and jangled and otherwise made nuisances of themselves. Sue kept pausing to watch, so Eva grabbed her by the arm and dragged her along so they didn’t get lost. Vakar, as always, moved through the crowds and machines with easy grace, and Pink brought up the rear like a jaded teacher taking her kids on a field trip. The smell of stims was stronger, coupled with alcohol and cologne and the usual pheromones from whichever species used them to communicate.

 
; Yeon-ha finally came to a halt in front of another small door, clapping their hands in excitement. “Bots are through here!” they said. “Things are getting set up now, but they should be starting soon.”

  “When are you fighting?” Min asked, her eyes wide.

  “Not until later,” Yeon-ha replied. “First it’s the little bots, you know, and then the students who think they know what they’re doing.” They giggled, and Min joined them.

  Eva stepped up next to Min and put on her friendliest smile. “This is great, definitely,” she said. “But do you know where we can find the infamous champion? We need to talk to them as soon as possible.”

  Yeon-ha nodded, their lips pressed into a serious pout. “Yes, Min-jung told me. He’s very, what is the word . . .”

  “Secretive?” Eva supplied. “Intimidating?”

  “Irritating,” Yeon-ha said. “I want to punch him so much, in his face, as many times as I can until my knuckles hurt.” They scowled. “But he’s the champion, and Rubin Hjerte likes winning, so nobody can bother him.”

  “Rubin Hjerte is in charge, I presume,” Eva said.

  Yeon-ha nodded. “She oversees the fights. It’s best not to talk to her. She seems very nice, until she pulls someone’s teeth out. She has a large chest of teeth on her desk.”

  “Qué cosa.” Eva blinked, suddenly very aware of her own dental situation. “So let’s avoid Rubin Hjerte and go straight for the champion, then. Where would he be?”

  “He has his own booth in the back, where he sits with his fans and waits for his turn.” Yeon-ha shifted their chair to face Eva directly. “Be careful. You cannot harm him, no matter how much you want to, or you will get hurt. Or lose your teeth.”

  “Thanks for the warning, but we’re tougher than we look.” Eva smiled in what she hoped was a reassuring way. “And I can be very polite when I want to be. How hard can it be not to hit one guy?”

  The door opened, and Yeon-ha led them into the bot-fighting room. It was huge, encompassing about half the total warehouse space, with a fenced-off area in the middle where the actual fights took place. On the far wall was a stage with a small band fronted by a purple-skinned kloshian, flanked by a white-furred kyatto and an annae that looked more like a walking cactus than a Venus flytrap. They blasted out a high-energy song that the assembled audience generally ignored. A second wall featured a bar, where a many-tentacled bartender with a giant eye was serving up whatever unholy combinations their mass of customers requested, as well as multiple levels of tables and booths that would double as prime seating when the fights started. Along the third wall, another massive door allowed bots to come and go, some walking or rolling or hovering under their owners’ control, others waiting on floating pallets until it came time to activate them and put them into service. The fourth wall had apparently been broken recently, huge cracks in its surface patched with long strips of Everseal and painted over quickly and inexpertly.