She was just about to begin strapping on the suit when Daxton placed a hand on her arm. “Tesla, you can’t go in there. This is way too dangerous. I’ve only heard about botFights, but I’ve never actually seen one until now. If I had known it would be like this, I would never have agreed to put you in harm’s way. The deal is off, okay? I’ll get you down to Earth and you won’t owe me anything. Just please don’t get in that ring tonight.”
Tesla’s skin felt warm from his touch, her stomach flipping at his nearness. He looked terrified, but not at the grandeur of the arena. No, his eyes were entirely focused on her face. He’s afraid of losing me. The realization made her lungs press against her ribcage.
She didn’t know what to do, so she settled for what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “Look, I’m sure you’re good at being a pilot and being a prince, but this is something I’m good at. Besides, we can’t leave now. Minko and the Red Ashes would make sure I never made it off the station alive. I’d be lucky to cross the deimark before they gutted me. I have to fight, and you have to go with Jasmeen and question any smugglers who might have helped Chen Yao get his hands on a weapon.”
Daxton swore softly. “Promise me you won’t do anything reckless, okay? Just be smart and be safe.”
“Sure thing. I will be smart and as safe as I can possibly be in a giant robot cage of death.”
“I’m not kidding,” said Daxton, his eyes narrowing.
Tesla winked, grabbing her helmet as the holovisions began the final countdown before the fight. “Trust me, I can do this.” And with that, she entered the ring, palms slick with moisture—repeating the words to herself over and over until she almost believed them.
SEVENTEEN
JASMEEN'S VOICE SOUNDED MUFFLED through the speakers on Daxton’s wristcomm. “Target has spotted us and is on the move. Brown coat with fur trimming. He's about two rows down from your current location and headed for the doors.”
Daxton’s head whipped around until he spied a dusty leather jacket and disheveled green hair. Both belonged to Eamon Faraday, the final smuggler on Jasmeen’s list of suspects. He was younger than the others they’d already interrogated—eighteen, at Daxton’s guess—and tall. Very tall. The boy’s long legs, one of which appeared to be modded with some sort of metal plating, were moving swiftly toward the exits, taking him farther and farther from the prince with every step.
Daxton ran, darting between spectators as he made his way to intercept the smuggler. He crouched, gauging the boy’s exact distance and speed, before leaping, crashing into Faraday’s shoulder and propelling him off-balance.
Faraday grunted, sending one long mechanical leg to sweep Daxton to the ground. The prince landed solidly on his backside, thankful Tesla was too busy calibrating the suit before the fight to see him fall. Before he could scramble to his feet, an electric spark crackled loudly from just behind his shoulder.
“Touch him again and you’ll need body mods from the knees down,” Jasmeen growled. “Up against the wall.”
Faraday complied with a grin, hoisting his hands above his head as he leaned against the bulkhead. “If you wanted to frisk me, you didn’t need to go to all this trouble. You could have just asked nicely, beautiful.”
Jasmeen rolled her eyes, roughly searching the smuggler's pockets for weapons. She hit a button on his mechanical leg, opened a hatch, and retrieved a small shock-stick. "Why am I not surprised that even your body mods are illegal?" she said, tossing the device to the side. Eamon responded with a sheepish grin.
Daxton finally stood, dusting himself off. To his surprise, no one in the stands seemed remotely concerned he’d just tackled Faraday in plain view. Tough crowd. Below, he could still see Tesla, Blitz, and Sav working on last-minute patches to the suit. The fight was only minutes away. He pushed the worry from his mind, instead concentrating on the back of Faraday’s head.
“What do you know about recent weapon transactions to high-profile clients?” barked Jasmeen. “And if you lie to me, you’ll be running on more volts than a draadhart.” She tapped her finger against the electro-taser’s trigger, sending an arc of current through its tip.
The boy held up his hands, slowly turning around. “I don’t do weapons anymore. Not since I had a brush with the law when I bought my cargo ship in Tokyo. Selling pulse blasters is messy business and, believe it or not, I have a conscience. I don’t like the thought of my goods harming others.”
Jasmeen lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “A squeamish smuggler. You expect me to believe that?”
“Believe what you want, gorgeous, but it’s the truth—I’m respectable now. You’re barking up the wrong smuggler.”
“Respectable? I’ve read your file. You supply ampli-powder to anyone with enough corpCredits. You’re nothing but a criminal for hire. Now, tell me how someone with diplomatic clearance could buy a weapon onboard the Atlas.”
“Look Miss—” when Jasmeen didn’t give her name, Faraday continued, waving at the packed stands, “—half the people in this entire arena are criminals. It doesn’t mean we’re all arms dealers slinging tact-rifles to every psycho that comes along.” He shrugged. “What I can tell you is that if some diplomat wanted to buy a gun on this station, he wouldn’t trust just any low-level dealer. No, they’d seek out a criminal with just as much to lose—someone who won’t go snitching to security forces. If you want to find your buyer,” his eyes flickered toward Minko’s hover cart drifting near the fight cage, “you need to look at the big fish.”
A headache throbbed against Daxton’s temples. As much as he hated to admit it, the smuggler had a point. They had already questioned the illegal arms dealer, Ultana Uro, who had said something very similar—she only dealt in bulk weapon transactions, not single-purchase handguns. Daxton’s gut told him he and Jasmeen were missing something important, a key to solving Freiter’s mysterious message. He clenched his fists and swore aloud.
“Look,” Faraday said, rubbing his chin. “I don’t know how to help you locate your arms dealer, but I can tell you this—my contacts are spooked. Whenever a ship is going down, you always follow the rats. If you were smart, you'd catch the first starcraft off this heap of metal. Something big is going down, and soon. ”
“Big like what?” pressed Daxton.
Eamon narrowed his eyes. “Do I know you? I feel like you look so familiar.” The smuggler pulled out a bit of ground skirri and fed it into a glowing electropipe he retrieved from his coat pocket. He puffed a few times and tilted the device at the prince. “Garment district of Tokyo? Maybe we met at the ship auction when I bought the Rumbler?”
It’s time to leave, screamed the voice inside Daxton’s head. If this criminal recognized him through the disguise, and his father got wind of it, finding evidence against Yao would become impossible. Daxton signaled to Jasmeen, who, in a flash of motion, twisted Faraday’s arm behind his back and pressed him into the hull once more as she said, “If you tell anyone about this conversation, I’ll hunt you down and make you a space eunuch. Are we clear?”
Faraday gazed admiringly at the girl through the corner of his eye. “Other than all that ‘I’ll neuter you’ stuff, you really are quite charming, ya know?”
“And you’re disgusting,” Jasmeen snarled, releasing the smuggler. With a flip of her wrist, the electro-taser retracted, and she tucked it away into her vest. “Get lost, space worm. You’re a stain on the First World Union.”
The boy let loose a deep, throaty laugh. “If you only knew.” With a final tug on his leather jacket and a quick smoothing of his immaculate blonde hair, he touched his fingers to his forehead in mock salute. “May the stars guide you home.” Before Jasmeen’s scowl could furrow further, Faraday turned and disappeared into the crowd.
EIGHTEEN
TESLA GAVE THE CONTROL PANEL a hard kick and shouted, “How about now?" Blitz's response was drowned out by the sound of ancient gears and mechanisms grinding together, only for the machine to lose power once more. The controls would
help the others communicate with her during the match—without them, the Skinners would have the advantage.
Her nimble fingers connected a thick wire to an output receptor on the calibration equipment. Still, nothing happened. She pounded twice on its metal siding, making Blitz wince, but the soft whir of data processing echoed deep within the panel.
Blue halogen lights blinked on just as Sav’s hand lowered beneath the console to give her a thumbs up. “Looks like we’re fully operational,” she heard him say.
Tesla crawled out from under the table. She hopped through the bars of the cage and pressed a button on the side of the suit. The chestplate opened outward from the center like a strange steel mouth ready to swallow her whole. Using the suit’s massive foot units, she propelled herself upward and strapped in. The fightBot sensed her, sending a shield of metal to surround her body. Tesla flexed her hands against the mech controls and the suit responded, its bulky body responding to her commands.
“Activating bioNexus in ten seconds,” Blitz called to her from the crew pit. “Remember, stay alive for at least two minutes so I can analyze his motions, but try to engage as little as possible so you don’t disrupt my calculations. After that, I’ll be able to send the information through your bioNexus and you should be able to anticipate his movements. Three. Two. One—”
She braced her mind, flinching slightly as a cold spike of metal snaked outward from the suit, curled like a scorpion’s tail, and gently slid into the port at the top of her spine. Stars exploded at the corners of her vision. Tesla felt the familiar wave of dizziness as her nervous system synced to the fightBot’s electronics. She fought the nausea, shaking her head clear. Push through it, her mind screamed. Seconds later, her body relaxed and the link was complete.
Visual readouts sprang to life, scrolling across the inside of her viewscreen to display her power levels and biometric health. Using the bioNexus, she was able to dismiss the information just by wishing it away—yet another advantage the mod gave her during Minko’s fights.
Blitz’s voice filled the mech suit’s cockpit. “Ready to make final calibrations?”
Tesla used the bioNexus to activate her comm systems. “Calibrating now.” She took her hands off the small controls and relied solely on her mind. With a running start, she crouched, jumped, and jogged a lap around the cage. “How’s that?”
She could hear the frown in Blitz’s voice. “It’s not perfect, but I don’t think we’ll be able to sync your bioNexus and the suit any better without having more time. How does it feel?”
“Heavier than my last fightBot, but the response is smooth.” Tesla grinned from behind the thick viewscreen. “Maybe I should hire you to build all my stuff.” She stretched her neck, careful not to dislodge the link connection, and used the mech’s magnified vision to scan the crowd.
Jasmeen and Daxton had been gone for what seemed like an hour. The fight would start soon, and she couldn’t decide if she wanted the prince nearby where she could ensure he was safe, or far away in case anyone recognized him.
A holographic icon of a skull blinked at the bottom right of her readout. “Blitz, what’s that creepy button for?”
Silence dragged on inside her helmet before the boy responded. “An emergency.”
Tesla turned the suit toward the crew pit. “I hate surprises. What is it? Some kind of safety mod?”
He grinned. “Something like that. Just call it an insurance policy. But it will only work once, so like I said... an emergency.”
Sav reached for a comm helmet, and seconds later his musical voice came through the suit’s speakers. “How is the fight scored, anyhow? Total annihilation, or is there a point system?”
Tesla shrugged and felt the suit’s heavy arms lift as it mimed her motions. “It’s fairly straightforward. You earn a point for each time you force your opponent to touch the cage. Best of three points wins.”
“What happens if you destroy the other bot?” asked Blitz.
“We call that a Total Reboot Kill. If I managed to completely disable the power to Radek’s fightBot, we automatically win.” Tesla pointed the mech toward a trio of raised seats overlooking the cage. Two judges sat on the lower seats, but on the highest sat a striking woman with skin that almost appeared translucent, her hair a soft shade of lavender. “Toop keeps score, since her mods prevent her from lying.”
Sav’s eyes lit up in wonder at the woman. “I thought becoming a Puyliorn was outlawed during the Great War. My dad said they were hunted down by both sides because they shared so many state secrets under questioning.” As if she could hear him, the woman named Toop’s head swiveled to stare at Blitz, her skin shimmering blue and green in the arena lights.
“What kind of mod?” Blitz asked.
“Puyliorns are people who have had their dorsolateral prefrontal cortex removed, taking away their biological ability to speak or understand untruths,” Sav explained. He stared in awe. “Impoverished people would volunteer for the procedure because Puyliorns were in such high demand. Wealthy families paid a fortune to have advisors who couldn’t lie. But then the Great War broke out, and both sides realized they could also become weapons. Toop has to be one of very few who have received the mod in the last hundred years.”
The Puyliorn’s gaze drifted to the opposite side of the cage as an explosion of applause shook the stadium.
Their competition had arrived.
If it was loud before, the crowd’s cheering rose now to a nearly unbearable volume. Dressed in deep hues of red and orange, Yosef’s team marched through a large doorway, striking photon light sticks against the floor in a shower of neon-colored sparks. Companion girls wearing transparent lingerie danced seductively to a sudden burst of electro-music blasting over the loudspeakers. Tesla watched as the group parted, revealing the short, balding figure of Yosef and a heavily tattooed Radek. The arena chanted their names, and Yosef sneered, slapping his fighter on the back in rhythm with the cries of the crowd.
Tesla felt moisture collect against her hands, making the controls at her fingertips slick. Radek look confident, like a man who had already won before stepping in the ring. Did he know something she didn’t? Had Minko rigged the fight to exact his revenge against her?
A new voice crackled over the comm, causing Tesla’s breathing to hitch. “That’s the guy who beat you last time?” Daxton asked. She turned to find him standing beside Jasmeen in the crew pit, surveying Radek from his position near the cage. Just then, the other fighter threw his head back and roared. “He looks... intense.”
“He’s also cocky. He fights with his anger instead of his head,” said Tesla, trying to sound calm. She jogged a short distance away to finish warming up before coming to a halt by her team. With a few more calculated maneuvers and help from Blitz, they calibrated the fightBot one last time. “Let’s just hope boy genius’ scrambler will prevent Radek from hacking my bioNexus, otherwise it will be a very, very short match.”
Blitz placed a hand to his chest and feigned offense. “The lady doubts me.”
“She’s not the first,” Daxton teased.
Jasmeen gave an exasperated sigh. “Enough already. Tesla, do you need anything? What do we do now?”
Before she could answer, Toop stood and pressed a button to activate the announcing microphone on her wristcomm. Through her viewscreen, Tesla spied worry etched on Daxton’s face. She looked away, determined to ignore the knot of anxiety crawling through her stomach. Was she more concerned about the fight? Or about the way Daxton seemed to care?
Focus, Tesla, before you glitch out.
“Greetings, Atlas Station and honored guests!” Toop shouted. Cheers became thunder as thousands of feet began stomping with excitement. The Puyliorn lowered her elongated fingers, prompting the noise to abate. “All bets are now final.” She glanced to each side of the ring and clapped her hands twice. “Fighters, take your marks.”
The arena once again burst into chants of Radek’s name as he entered the cage, and T
esla turned to face his robotic suit. Any hope she’d had of winning immediately vanished. Gone was his former fightBot, pieced together, like Tesla’s, from salvaged scrap metal and draadhart parts—replaced by a sleek, menacing mech that resembled a bird of prey. Curved blades held up the torso like talons, and the slight bounce to the mods proved they were both agile and deadly. This bot was built for speed and destruction.
No, Tesla correct herself. For killing.
Above her head, a large electronic screen flashed images of both fighters. A triangular feed opened in the upper left of her vision, transmitting video directly from inside Radek’s fightBot. The man sneered into the camera, his stubbled face contorting in a look bordering on ecstasy. Clearly, having Yosef for a sponsor paid well, and Radek knew his machine held the upper hand.
Tesla tuned out the roar of the arena crowd calling for her blood. The bioNexus hummed, uploading data directly to her brain as she paced the fightBot back and forth like a feral creature. Despite the din coming from the stands, she shifted her focus within—to a place of reflex and instinct, brutality and survival.
The digitron above the cage revealed most of the station had bet against her. Tesla ignored the odds, instead blurring the line between where her body ended and the mechanical suit began. Though Daxton stood just beyond the cage, he could do nothing to help her now; if she lost, Minko would slaughter them all.
Her lungs shuddered as she inhaled deeply, her fingers pulsing, itching to dance against the controls. With a curve of her metal spine, Tesla bowed ceremoniously to Radek.
A bell chimed, and the fight began.
NINETEEN
TESLA'S VIEWSCREEN SIZZLED as white-hot current electrified the cage. She knew all too well the danger of getting too close to the bars; even the slightest contact could send a shockwave through her body and risk damaging the bioNexus—or worse. She circled Radek, careful to stay a safe distance within the ring.
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