by J. J. Green
Parthenia partly walked, partly hopped beside him as they made their way through rough scrub to the base of the tower. The building was about as wide as a house but it stood seven or eight stories tall. Parthenia couldn’t see an entrance. Her heart sank, but then she realized she was being stupid. Propping herself up with one hand on the cold, polished stone surface of the tower wall, she hopped around it to the other side, Darius trailing behind her.
There was the entrance. A metal door was flush with the wall, following its curve. A small light shined above the door but otherwise there was no other ornament save a security pad.
Her throat tight, Parthenia pressed the key on the pad. She feared there might be no answer, and yet she also feared who might answer if there was.
Chapter Seven
The mechs strode powerfully into the pit, their steps shaking the floor of the box where Carina sat. She’d never before seen anything even resembling the mechanical fighting machines that were about to do battle.
She could just make out their human operators ensconced in control centers in the mechs’ chests. Thick metal walls protected the chambers, and the windows were narrow slits, allowing the operators limited real life visuals of their surroundings. Carina guessed the control centers held interface screens that relayed data from sensors as well as feedback from the mechs’ systems. The windows were a last resort if the mechs’ sensors were destroyed.
The machines stood roughly two stories tall. If it hadn’t been for their massive size and power, they might almost have been caricatures of the kinds of mechs Carina knew. As a merc, she’d operated the exoskeletons aboard her band’s ship, the Duchess. But their machines had been antiquated and mostly used for handling supplies. Though they were fitted with weapons, no one would have dared to fight in them. That had been one of the disadvantages of fighting for a commercial outfit: making do with outdated equipment.
Remembering her life as a merc, Carina looked forward to the day she never had to fight again. She would be happy if she could only reunite her little family and keep them safe. Yet these two metal monsters interested her. It was easy to see why the crowd was wild with anticipation: the battle would be spectacular. Even Langley was flushed with excitement. Her eyes were bright as she gazed at the mechs.
Langley’s fingers quickly skimmed her interface, placing her bets. Carina wondered how much ill-gotten credit the Dirksen matriarch was frittering away. It was no wonder the clan had decided not to stamp out the Mech Battles. The contest was a gambler’s dream. The chances of winning a bet were probably around fifty percent—it wouldn’t make sense to stage battles where the opponents weren’t evenly matched. Of course, the chances of losing were around fifty percent too, but that part of the equation was rarely considered.
Also, the outcome might not be clear until the final moment. Bets probably continued throughout the battle, odds rising and lowering according to the performance of each mech. Once more, Carina wondered who those barely visible faces inside the great mechanical beasts belonged to. It was possible that a successful fighter could retire on his or her winnings from one battle. Though the arena only seated a few tens of thousands of people, the spectacle was no doubt being broadcast and the betting could be planet-wide.
The mechs were moving their various parts, apparently checking that all their systems were working before the battle commenced. It was all for show, of course. No fighter in their right minds would enter the pit without performing extensive checks. No, the motions were all intended to bring the crowd to a frenzy and prompt them to lay out even more money. The preparations were having their desired effect too. The audience was so loud Carina could barely hear herself think. The stadium seemed to vibrate with the noise of shouting. And the battle hadn’t even begun.
The mechs began to circle the pit.
Carina had been expecting Langley to check on her reaction to the event. Langley probably wanted Carina to appreciate the older woman’s generosity in bringing her. But the matriarch was so intent on the battle, she ignored Carina. Her gaze only switched from her interface to the pit and back again.
Harmon wasn’t equally entranced, however. As he stood at the back of the box in front of its exit, he stared at Carina, his hands folded in front of him, formidable. She scowled at the burly thug. He was definitely going to be the biggest obstacle to her escape. On Carina’s right sat the transport driver, looking bored.
A great metallic crash sounded from the pit. Carina had missed the beginning of the battle. The gigantic mechs were gripping each other with their enormous pincer-like grabbers. They grappled, their massive gears straining with the effort. Hisses and screeches and the noise of bending metal sounded through the stadium, and the crowd roared.
One mech was slowly overpowering the other, forcing it over to one side. Carina guessed that a way to win was to force the opponent to fall over. Then, gravity would confer a big advantage, allowing the still-standing mech to crush the other. A prone position might expose vulnerable areas too.
But in this case, the mech that seemed to be losing didn’t fall. It managed to disengage and twisted away so fast its attacker nearly overbalanced. The mech’s bending to one side had been a feint and it had nearly worked. But the attacking mech pulled back in time to remain upright.
“Oh,” exclaimed Langley. Her fingers moved over her interface. Had she bet on the duped mech? When Carina peered more closely at the machines in the pit, she could make out SPEARCORPS across the faux “head” of the attacking mech. Out of curiosity, she spied out the name of its opponent: PYRECO. It was another name that was meaningless to her. The two were probably major conglomerates on the planet and perhaps the territory.
The Pyreco mech swung its pincer up at the Spearcorps mech’s head and connected with such force it bent backward. The crowd gave a massive Ohhhh! Despite the whirring of gears and sounds of protesting metal the Spearcorps operator couldn’t straighten the head. It wasn’t serious damage, Carina guessed. A mech rarely used its head for fighting. But the effect would be to unbalance the machine. Now the Spearcorps mech was much more vulnerable to toppling over.
The Spearcorps mech responded by immediately grabbing the Pyreco mech in a fierce clinch. At close quarters, it was much more difficult to overbalance your opponent. Spearcorps drove Pyreco against the wall of the stadium. The audience in that section surged in a panic to get away from the gigantic machines, though the pit was beneath their feet.
By this time, Reyes was leaning over the edge of the box and yelling at the top of his voice. If he leaned much farther, Carina thought, he would be in danger of falling out.
A cataclysmic crash came from the pit. Pyreco was down. Spearcorps, its head bent weirdly backward, rained blows on its opponent. Pyreco tried repeatedly to rise, but each time Spearcorps was too fast and beat the mech down again. It was painful to watch the fallen mech’s movements. Though it was just a machine and its operator probably wasn’t in a lot of danger, its desperate efforts to escape were almost pitiful.
“Yes,” exclaimed Langley, clutching her interface in sweaty palms. “Yes! Hit it. Hit it. Hit it.”
“Go Spearcorps,” roared Reyes, now on standing upright, his fists beating the air. “Spearcorps are the best!”
Pyreco didn’t give up even though it was clearly beaten. Carina wondered if there was a cost to losing other than humiliation. The operator might have overextended themselves financially with their bets, she guessed. Another possibility for Pyreco’s tenacity was that the battle was staged and the outcome preordained. If Pyreco was being paid to take a dive, its defeat had to look convincing or the punters would suspect.
Eventually, Spearcorps ceased hitting the prone mech. After a moment’s checking that there really was no more life in its opponent, the mech raised its pincers to the sky. This time, the response from the crowd was so loud, Carina actually covered her ears. The stadium gates opened and Spearcorps strode triumphantly out. Pyreco was in no condition to leave so easily. Trans
ports zoomed through the other gate and hovered around the fallen mech.
People in overalls jumped out of the vehicles onto the massive limbs and torso of the mechanical monster and walked over it, assessing the damage. Carina imagined it would take a while to remove the machine from the pit now that it was immobile. She turned to the Dirksen’s driver next to her and asked, “Do we leave soon?”
“Leave?” the woman replied. “That was only the first match. There’s another four to go yet.”
“Four more?” Carina said. “We’ll be here all night.”
“Exactly.” The driver rolled her eyes and yawned, covering her mouth.
Although the Mech Battle had been somewhat interesting, Carina didn’t relish the idea of sitting through another four. She looked at Harmon, who didn’t seem to have taken his eyes off her the entire time. She sighed. It was going to be a long night.
***
The battles that followed weren’t very much different from the first. Spearcorps fought in two of them. The winner of the first battle had to face newcomers until it lost. From what Carina could understand, if a mech won all five battles, it received an additional pay out. By the time the third engagement arrived, however, Spearcorps was too battered to put up much of a fight. Its unbalanced head proved its undoing when it was toppled within a minute of the battle’s beginning.
Langley looked crestfallen at the result, but she wanted to stay and watch the remaining two battles nevertheless. Reyes quickly switched allegiance to the winning mech as soon as it looked like it was all over for Spearcorps.
To Carina’s relief, the end of the fifth battle finally arrived. The mechanics entered on their transports to see to the removal of the losing mech. Carina expected that Langley would finally be ready to leave, but the Dirksen woman remained in her seat.
Reyes turned around and said, “Can’t we go now, Mother? No one will notice.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Langley snapped. “Of course they’ll notice. When will you ever learn the importance of appearances in these matters?”
“What’s happening?” Carina asked the driver. “What are we waiting for?”
“Urgh, just some stupid Ostillonian ritual,” she replied. “It only takes a few minutes.”
The fallen mech was being dismantled on the field as it couldn’t be repaired sufficiently to make its own way out. Carina watched with mild interest over what the ritual entailed. During the times she’d visited new worlds in her travels as a merc, she only ever spent a brief time planetside. Her band, the Black Dogs, would do their job and leave as quickly as they’d arrived. So Carina had never been allowed time to learn about the worlds and their people. She’d heard of various religions over the years but she’d never gotten to know much about them.
When a young woman wearing ceremonial robes walked out to the center of the pit, Carina stood up for a better view. The woman squatted down and took some items out from a bag. First, she piled up sticks as if to make a fire, and then she took out a metal bowl. After pouring liquid into the bowl from a bottle, she grabbed a little soil from the ground and sprinkled it into the liquid.
Carina frowned, wondering what the woman was doing. Was she going to cook something? Although she was watching from a great height, Carina could swear she was filing something made of metal so the particles also fell into the bowl.
Carina’s heart seemed to stop. Could it be possible? It couldn’t be. She had to be mistaken.
But then the woman took a fragment of dry twig and also filed it over the bowl. She was adding sawdust to the liquid too. It was all Carina could do to remain upright and not allow Langley or Reyes to see her shock as the woman in the pit lit the fire.
She was making elixir. Right there in front of the entire crowd. Was it possible that no one knew what she was doing? Was the woman herself aware?
After making the elixir, the woman lifted the bowl with tongs and held it up to the crowd. They murmured some kind of prayer that Carina couldn’t make out. Langley and Reyes said nothing. Then the woman tipped out the elixir onto the ground of the pit.
Mech Battle was over, and Carina was left with a mystery the likes of which she’d never known.
Chapter Eight
The man said he was a ranger. Parthenia wasn’t exactly sure what a ranger did, but she assumed he worked in the land that lay around the tower. When the man had opened the tower door she’d taken a step back. He was so tall and his hair and beard were so black and shaggy, he looked for a moment like a big, black wild animal. Of course, it had only been the darkness and her exhaustion that made her think so. When he’d spoken, his voice had been gentle after his initial surprise.
When he’d noticed her limping, the ranger offered to carry Parthenia up the stairs that wound around the tower’s interior wall, apologizing for the lack of an elevator. “If I lost power, I’d be stuck,” he’d explained.
Parthenia had declined his offer and made her way up the spiral staircase with Darius’ help. Now, sitting in the round room the ranger had brought them to, she could finally relax. Or could she? It suddenly occurred to Parthenia that the man would want to know why she and Darius were by themselves in the middle of nowhere.
All the time they’d been wandering through the forest, she’d only thought about the danger they were in and wondered what had happened to Carina and the others or what might happen if they didn’t get to safety. She hadn’t thought up a story to explain their presence there if they found someone they could ask for help.
Parthenia had no idea what the clan allegiance of the planet was. If Ostillon were under the hegemony of the Sherrerrs, there was no way she could let it be known she was a member of that family. If she did, their rescuer’s first move would be to return her and Darius to their clan as soon as possible, regardless of anything she said. Although she was nearly an adult, Darius was still a child, but, more pertinently, the ranger would want to avoid upsetting the rulers of that world.
The ranger wasn’t pressing for answers just yet, thankfully. He was bringing them food and water. “I’ll turn on the heating,” he said. “You two look frozen.” The drinks he’d placed in front of them steamed too. When Darius made a grab for his, the ranger cautioned, “Not yet, little one. Let it cool down first.”
“Oh, please,” Darius said, his big brown eyes pleading. “Can I have some water?”
“Of course,” the man replied. “I’ll get you some right away. Just a moment.” He went over to the small kitchen area and poured out a glass of water.
The circular room was multipurpose. Parthenia and Darius sat on a small sofa in the living area. The ranger had put down their food and drinks on a knee-high table in front of them. The rest of the room apart from the kitchenette was taken up with a range of equipment, most of which Parthenia didn’t recognize. She guessed the ranger used it in his work.
While Darius was gulping down his water, the ranger went to a control panel near the staircase. “There,” he said after pressing the screen. “It’ll be toasty in here soon. You would like some water too, I guess?” he asked Parthenia.
“I would, please,” she replied. She’d been thinking of and rejecting one story about their background after another. She had to make up something plausible and wished she had more time. If only she’d used the hours they’d been wandering in the forest more sensibly.
“Are you in pain?” the ranger asked, bringing her some water.
“I am,” Parthenia replied, seizing the opportunity to delay his inevitable questions. “I hurt my ankle.”
“Of course you did,” said the man. “I was forgetting. I don’t get many visitors out here. You two have taken me by surprise. Let me wash your leg then I can take a look.”
Parthenia’s legs and most of the rest of her were covered in mud. Darius also had a thick, brown, smelly coating. They were both disgusting, in fact.
The ranger filled a bowl with warm water and brought it over to the sofa along with a washcloth. He removed Partheni
a’s mud-caked shoe. Her foot was grimy. As he washed away the dirt from her ankle the skin that emerged was puffy and purple. The ranger gently prodded it, causing Parthenia to wince. Now that she could see her injury, it seemed to throb more painfully.
“Can you move your toes?” asked the ranger.
Parthenia did as he asked. She managed to wiggle them all, though it hurt her to do it.
The ranger said, “How about your ankle? Can you move that?”
She gently lifted her foot upward. “Ow!”
“Okay. Don’t try any more. I don’t think it’s broken. I have a treatment cell we can put your foot in overnight while you sleep. It’ll detect any fractures and it’ll speed up the healing process.”
“Are you a splicer?” Darius asked. He was regarding the ranger over the rim of his mug of hot drink.
“No, or I don’t think so,” the man replied. “What’s a splicer?”
Parthenia’s stomach tightened. They were getting into dangerous territory. If Darius used words that weren’t used in Ostillon, the man would know they were from offplanet.
“Someone who helps people when they’re sick,” Darius replied.
“You mean a medic,” said the man.
“No,” said Darius, “I mean a—”
“That’s right,” Parthenia interrupted and turned to Darius. “A medic. That’s what you mean.” She went on, “He’s only six. He gets confused sometimes.”
“No, I don’t,” Darius exclaimed indignantly. “I mean a—”
“Be quiet, Darius,” Parthenia snapped.
“Darius,” the ranger said. “That’s a nice name.”
Dammit. Parthenia cursed herself for making yet another stupid mistake. She should have thought up fake names for both of them. Her clan was probably searching everywhere for them. How many Dariuses traveling with Parthenias could there be? Yet she couldn’t give the ranger a false name for herself now without Darius reacting to it and making it obvious she was lying. To avoid delaying the inevitable she said with a heavy heart, “I’m Parthenia.”