The Great Destroyers

by Caroline Tung Richmond

  “Absolutely not.” He starts patting down his pockets, searching for his gum again, which he has taken to chewing because it’s cheaper than smoking. “Don’t trouble her with that.”

  His stubbornness can sure be a pain in the butt. Here we are, a month or two before we get evicted, and he can’t own up that he needs help. I sigh. “I’ll figure something out.”

  “What you need to do is focus on the Games, and be careful about the Reds. Watch your back both in and out of the pit,” Dad says. His voice cracks a little when he adds, “You take care of yourself, Joey.” And since he isn’t the hugging type, we shake hands instead.

  Peter tries to shake my hand too, but I won’t let him off so easily. I wrap him tight in my arms like he’s five years old all over again. He smells like soap and pencil shavings, and I don’t want to let go.

  He finally manages to wriggle free. “You’ll call, won’t you? After you land?”

  “Sure, I will. I’ll call every day if you want.”

  “You better,” he says, grinning. “I want updates.”

  Despite my best efforts, my eyes prick with tears. I can’t remember the last time I spent a night away from him, probably a few years ago when I got invited to Sue Baker’s sleepover party, but aside from that we’ve rarely slept more than ten feet away from each other.

  “Go and show those Commies what you’re made of. You can beat them. You can win this,” he tells me.

  And I have to for him. It isn’t just the title—as much as I’ve dreamed about it—but the money too. If we can’t pay off our debts soon, we’ll have nowhere to go except our father’s old Crosley station wagon. I know that Dad and I could grit our teeth through it until we figured something out. Peter though? I really don’t know. I’m sure he wouldn’t complain about living out of a powder-blue box on wheels, but he would start worrying and giving himself headaches and who knows what else.

  “I’m going to buy us a steak dinner with the prize money, and you can order all the root beer you want,” I tell my baby brother before I give him another hug.

  It’s time to head to Washington.

  It’s time to bring that title home.

  When my flight lands in Washington at half past seven in the morning, I have every reason to be a bleary-eyed grump. Before we took off from San Francisco, the plane had air-conditioning troubles, so we had to sweat it out on the tarmac while the repairmen took a look at it. Then, after we’d been flying for a while, we hit a patch of turbulence so bad over Salt Lake City that I honestly believed we might drop out of the sky like a giant boulder. I gripped on to the armrests and wondered if there’d be anything left of me for Dad and Peter to bury after the inevitable crash. With that heartwarming thought occupying my mind, let’s say that I didn’t get much sleep east of the Rockies.

  As soon as we de-plane though, I’m wide-awake and the first one out the door, not only because I’m ready to get out of this tin can but because there’s something I’ve gotta see. I race into the terminal only to plow into a white man in a black suit, who turns out to be my driver.

  “Right this way, Miss Linden,” he says after he has grabbed my bag. “This all you got?”

  I nod, but I’m not really paying attention. “Where are the newspaper stands?”

  “Out front, but I’ve got a copy of the Washington Post waiting in the car.”

  “Great. Where are you parked?” I say, resisting the urge to prod him along because he’s moving a little too slowly for my liking.

  While the driver places my bag into the trunk, I fling myself into the back seat and start thumbing to the real meat of the newspaper: the sports section. My heartbeat skyrockets, but I don’t have to search long before I find what I’m looking for.

  “Team USA Selects Unknown Female Fighter for the Pax Games,” the headline reads.

  My eyes skid to a stop there. “Unknown Female Fighter”? You’d think they could’ve used my name, but at least I find it in the first sentence.

  The American Mecha Fighting Association has named San Franciscan fighter Josephine Linden to Team USA, replacing Edward Rochester who was injured during a training session. This marks the first time since 1935 that the US has sent a female fighter to the Games.

  “Jo Linden will make an excellent addition to the team. She’s one of the most talented fighters in the country, boy or girl,” said US Senator June Appleby of California, who recently replaced her deceased husband on the Association’s selection committee.

  But the committee’s decision was not unanimous. “The final vote was 4–4, with the senator breaking the tie. Miss Linden might be a successful athlete in her local division, but is she really ready for the Games?” says a source close to the committee speaking on background.

  I realize that I’m gripping the sides of the paper so hard that I’m starting to rip it. It’s like waking up to a bucket of ice water poured over my head. Senator Appleby had been so enthusiastic about having me join the team that I hadn’t given much thought to what the other committee members might’ve said about me. I don’t even know who they are, but I’m guessing they’re a bunch of stuffy old white men who’ve never stepped foot inside a mecha themselves.

  As my feelings start to sour, I can hear Peter’s voice in my head, pointing out that I still got five votes and that’s what counts, right? Always the optimist. He could be dying of thirst but still see the glass as half full. Classic Peter. But I’m not my brother.

  I reread the quote again, especially the part that says: Is she really ready for the Games?

  I’ll be more than happy to show them.

  I keep my eyes on the sports section because we’re still miles away from the city. There’s a piece about the French team and how they might have a shot at winning this year. There’s another about the underdogs that could cause an upset, like Canada or Yugoslavia. I shake my head at what these reporters are thinking. France should be out before Round 3, and Yugoslavia? Even sooner. But these articles are all appetizers leading up to the main course—a feature story about the Federova sisters.

  There’s a photo of them on page two. They look about six and seven years old respectively, with the baby fat still thick on their cheeks, and they’re holding hands. Apparently they used to be quite fond of each other, training together and sharing a room at the Moscow fighting school where they lived year-round.

  But then they started growing up and growing apart. Lidiya, the older sister by eleven months, saw her career trajectory take off as soon as she entered international competition at age ten. Three years later, she had won nearly every tournament in the junior division, more than any fighter before her. By age fifteen, there was talk that she would likely stand at the top podium at the next Pax Games, which was two years off at that point.

  And that was when Zoya came knocking. She hit a growth spurt and swiftly scaled the rankings, jumping from number 133 to number 51 in her first year at the senior level, and then all the way up to number 9 after she turned sixteen. These days Zoya routinely ranks between number 5 and number 3, and it’s clear she’s knocking down her sister’s door for that number 1 slot, which is likely why Lidiya asked to be coached separately.

  But I don’t think Lidiya should worry too much about her younger sister. Yes, Zoya is strong and fast and talented, but Lidiya has the edge.

  She’s sly.

  Take what happened back at the World Championships in 1959, where Lidiya faced off against Johannes Lange of West Germany in the playoffs. Lange had a lot more experience than her going in, and twenty minutes into the match, it looked like he was going to win, especially since Lidiya’s mecha had seemingly lost use of its left arm. So he kept focusing his hits on Lidiya’s right side, figuring he only had to deal a couple more blows before he could pull her down for the KO. Turns out though that Lidiya had been bluffing. There was nothing wrong at all with her mecha’s left arm. She’d merely let Lange believe that—and the rest of us watching too—to make him let his guard down. And as soo
n as he did, that’s exactly when she clocked him on the side of his head with a mean cross and dragged him onto the pit floor for the victory.

  She had just turned fourteen.

  “Here we are,” the driver says, pulling the car up to a sidewalk.

  I step out of the vehicle and take a deep breath of fresh air, only to cough it right back out because it’s thick as soup. The East Coast humidity will sure take some getting used to, but I certainly won’t need any time adjusting to the views. Straight ahead of me I see the glowing white dome of the Capitol Building, and when I swing my head around, I spot the Washington Monument, like a great big pencil pointing up into the lightening sky. It’s a postcard-worthy snapshot.

  I’m not going to complain about getting my first real glimpse of our nation’s capital, but I do have to wonder if we’ve taken a detour.

  “Which way is the dormitory?” I ask.

  The driver looks confused as he reads over his notes. “They told me to drop you off here since your flight was delayed,” he says, plunking my bag next to me.

  “Who’s they?”

  “The Association. Someone was supposed to meet you here.” He glances around and then at his watch and mumbles to himself about needing to head to his next appointment. “You better come back with me to the office. They’ll have to pick you up from there.”

  I balk at that. The last thing I want to do is to get shuttled off to some office building. “Look, there’s a pay phone up the block. Give me the Association’s number, and I’ll call and work this all out.”

  “But, miss—”

  “Didn’t you say you were late for your next pickup?” I say as I grab my bag and get moving before he can stop me. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell the Association that this was my idea.”

  I walk about twenty yards toward the pay phone before slowing down. Up ahead I see a line of Goliaths, enclosed by a shoulder-high metal fence. It’s an exhibition of some sort, probably set up by the Association for the tourists pouring into the city ahead of the Games.

  It’s like looking back in time. The mecha closest to me is one of the earliest developed, a dented old thing that dates back to World War I. Its neighbor, on the other hand, is a 1920s-era Goliath, taller yet more trim, like the ones used during the early Pax Games, complete with the heavy gasoline tanks strapped to its back. I walk alongside the fence and let my eyes roam over the next mecha, this one from World War II, which stormed across Germany to Hitler’s own backyard and that finally forced Japan’s surrender in ’45.

  As I walk, the Goliaths continue to advance technologically, from the exact 1947 model that Malcolm Maines used to win the Games to the 1959 rollout that swapped out the steel frame for titanium and then to a few specialized designs. There’s a deep-dive model employed by the Navy SEALs and there’s also a prototype developed by the US Air Force that may one day soar through the sky like a fighter jet. My eyes skip down the line until they come to a halt on the last two Goliaths, standing on pedestals.

  I don’t consider myself the religious sort, but it feels like I’m approaching something holy. They’re beautiful. I search for their model number, but I don’t see any in the usual location, a small grouping of numbers on the mecha’s right calf. Instead I see letters running down each leg, alternating in red, white, and blue: Team USA. Even though there’s a sign posted nearby that reads in a bolded font, For Display Only—Do Not Touch, I ignore the instruction and scale the fence.

  I circle around the Goliath slowly, letting my eyes drink it in. I raise my hand and rest my palm on its knee, shivering at the smoothness of the metal that has been so carefully polished I can see my reflection. It must’ve cost at least a million bucks. Only the best for Team USA, and soon enough I’ll get to take this out for a test drive.

  “Trespassing is a crime, you know,” someone says behind me.

  My back goes straight. “I didn’t mean—” But then I see who’s addressing me, and the rest of my reply promptly dries up in my mouth. It isn’t the park police standing there, ready to slap me with a fine. It’s much worse.

  “Kealey,” I say flatly. I thought I was prepared to face him again. I’d told myself to let bygones be bygones, but soon enough all the bitter old feelings come rushing back.

  Sam shines his easy grin on me. “Why so formal? I thought we’d be on a first-name basis by now. We’ve known each other for how long? A year?”

  That’s a year too long in my book, but he’s right. We met for the first time last March at the tristate tournament in Oregon, right before the final match where we battled it out for the winner’s trophy. As soon as the ref blew the whistle, we went at each other’s throats.

  Sam juts his hand at me through the fence to shake. “Aw, come on. No hard feelings. How about we clear the slate and start fresh?”

  I glare at his palm for several seconds too long, but Sam doesn’t let his arm drop. With a noisy sigh I give it a shake so that he’ll stop bothering me about it.

  “Want a boost to climb back over?” he says, motioning toward me. “How did you get in there anyway?”

  In reply, I show him. I grab the top of the fence and hoist myself over it in one easy motion. “Thanks anyway,” I say breezily.

  He’s shaking his head and laughing to himself. “Same old Jo. You never need anyone’s help, huh?”

  I frown because I’ve never said that to him and because I certainly don’t need his help, especially none of his unsolicited advice that he loves to give out like candy. I pick up my bag and start walking down the pebbled path, before Sam calls out to me.

  “You’ll march yourself right into the Potomac River if you keep going that way,” he says.

  Gritting my teeth, I turn around. “Well?” I say, hand on hip and waiting for him to point me in the right direction.

  “We’re on the same team now, kiddo. All you had to do was ask,” he said, gesturing the opposite way from where I was headed and smiling that smile of his again, exuding the type of charisma that only a handsome rich boy can possess because his whole life has been charmed. The private coaches. The new Goliaths every season. The wealthy father who bankrolls all of that and the adoring fan club that only strokes Sam’s ego higher.

  Sam and I might be teammates, but I won’t count him as an ally and I’d never call him a friend.

  Not when only one of us can win the Games, and not when he’s standing in my way to get the title.

  My reasons for disliking Sam Kealey are many and varied, starting with minor irritations like how he calls me kiddo even though we’re only a year and a half apart in age and moving up to hair-pulling frustrations like how he has beaten me twice in a row at the aforementioned tristate tournament that caps off our varsity seasons. He’s the best I’ve ever faced in the pit, although that’s not why I consider him an arrogant dipstick. He’s an arrogant dipstick because he knows precisely how good he is and he likes to show it off.

  Sam offers to take my bag for me. “Let me help,” he says, probably because he relishes the opportunity to flex his biceps. I remember how he peacocks around the stadium whenever his name is announced before a match, blowing kisses and urging the fans to scream louder. None of that is against the rules, but it cheapens the game. We’re there to fight, not preen.

  Sam ends up grabbing the bag out of my hand. “Come on. We’re teammates.”

  I don’t need to point out to him that we’ll be teammates on paper only for the most part. The Games consist of five rounds and fifty competitors, and everything kicks off with a bang during the first round. That’s when every single fighter gets tossed into a gigantic pit in a free-for-all brawl, a match of sheer mayhem until only sixteen remain. There’s a reason why the fighters nicknamed it Purgatory, but the fans love it. After that, the Games return to a traditional-style bracket, pairing off fighter against fighter until sixteen shrinks into eight, then four, then two, and then one single winner. So there’s not much teamwork involved at all, but I keep that to myself and decide to let
Sam carry my things because why not? Let him put those muscles that he loves so much to use.

  “We better pick up the pace,” Sam says. “Everyone’s been waiting for you to arrive so that we can get started.”

  “Started on what? And who’s everyone?” I ask, trying to keep up with him because his legs must be nearly double the length of mine.

  “The photographers. Hairdressers. Wardrobe folks,” he fires off. “Not to mention the Association people with their pocket protectors. They were waiting for you over at Fourth and Independence, where you were supposed to get dropped off. Good thing I noticed your driver rounding the corner over here.”

  “My knight in shining armor,” I say.

  Despite my sarcasm, Sam laughs, looking very much like a dashing knight with his windswept brown hair and eyes to match, and not to mention his classic build that fits the perfect definition of what the Association looks for in a mecha fighter: tall, muscled, male, white. Sam ticks off all their boxes, and he has only one more to check—winner of the Games. Some people really are born lucky. Not that I’m complaining. Well, maybe a little.

  Straight ahead of us, I spot a small tent that has been set up in the middle of the grassy lawn. I see more than a dozen people gathered there, buzzing around what looks like a photography shoot.

  “Are we getting our pictures taken or something?” I ask.

  “Didn’t you read the itinerary on the way over from the airport? In your folder?”

  “What folder?”

  “The driver was supposed to give you a folder.”

  “This is the first time I’ve heard about that,” I say grumpily because I thought I’d get a chance to shower after I landed. “What’re they going to do with these photos anyway?”

  “Make a calendar of the two of us. We could alternate months. I’ve got dibs on July.” He must notice that I’ve stopped walking completely because he adds, “I’m joking. They’re taking our official portraits for the Games. Now that the announcement is out, people are chomping at the bit to see Ted’s replacement.”