by Bear Ross
“Prath, that's—” she tried to say, before he held up a large hand.
“The name Kramer began showing up again on the winner boards,” he said, “and that drew the attention of beings who hold on to grudges for centuries. You started fighting, with your mish-mash mech, there, and I started to see old wheels begin to turn again, the same players from before starting to exert themselves. The Gatekeepers have their sights on you. It was time to come back.”
“What, so now, you just show up, and drop this all on me, after all the gate-damned—”
“Young lady,” Prath said, frowning.
“—after all this grief, and confusion, and struggle,” she said. “Why come back now, Prath? Something stinks.”
“Yes, something does stink. It's your attitude, and your situational awareness,” Prath said. “Think, girl. Why is Mikralos seeking you out, now, after all these years? How can he, a lower-level owner of a second-rate grindhouse arena, a mere foot soldier in the Gatekeeper hierarchy, offer such a magnificent prize and the ability to use an elite fabrication and repair shop? Why is he waving this juicy morsel under your nose? You're a good pilot, dear, but let's be honest, you're not that good. You're being led to the slaughter, in a public execution that will be a lesson in Junctionworld.”
“Lesson? What lesson, Prath?” Jessica said, scowling. “And, damn it, I am that good!”
“Pilot, think about it,” the Ascended crew chief said, holding up one of his feet in a frustrated clench. “I was here years before your father arrived and started winning. They threw everything they could at the Fourth Gate Kramers. Your father trounced them and their champions, and made money doing so. It disrupted their 'Old Code.' More importantly, it started costing them power over those they held in indentured servitude. There was talk surrounding your father of a 'New Code.' Solomon Kramer was a nail that stuck up, and the Gatekeepers needed him hammered down.”
“So, they wanted Dad to look bad. So, what?” Jessica said. “That doesn't explain Jered, Prath.”
“Your brother, gates rest his soul, was in over his head outside of the arenas,” Prath said. “He was in deep to a number of gambling houses, especially Dionoles over at the Celestial Kingdom. It played right into the manipulator claws of the Gatekeepers.”
“That casino over by the Fourth Gate?”
“The same, love. Jered had a nasty gambling habit, and was atrocious at Pistols and Sevens.”
Jessica winced at the mention of the Gatekeeper casino table game that mixed cards and firearms. Her brother Jered was obsessed with it. His losses were staggering, to the point that he sold himself back into servitude as an obligated fighter. His “borrowing” of Judah, without their father's permission, resulted in a family fight that was still one of her worst memories.
“Oh, so you know how tough that game is?” Prath said, raising his eyebrows in surprise. “Jered stunk at it, but the Gatekeepers kept feeding him cocktails and credit advances. The game demands a great deal of focus and attention, and not just at drinking and gunplay.”
“And? C'mon, bottom line it for me, ape,” she said, feeling herself getting angry and frustrated with all this information suddenly dumped on her.
“And, the Gatekeepers used your brother as a weapon against your father, as a way to reassert their control over the arenas, and Junctionworld as a whole,” Prath said. “They planted rumors in the sports media, vicious, nasty untruths that nearly drove your parents apart. It was insidious, and they weren't subtle about it. I remember, once, when Dionoles and Mikralos both showed up at your father's home.”
“Yeah, I remember that, too.” Jessica said, searching back through her painful memories. “That was right before Jered died.”
“Two Gatekeepers in the house of a freed slave, at the same time? Unheard of!” Prath said. “They met behind closed doors in the front reception hall. There was a huge argument, an epic conflagration, and your father made them both leave at gunpoint. That was right before your brother was murdered,” Prath said, his large canine teeth bared in agitated reflex.
“Wait, Prath, Jered died at Berva Proxima, fair and square,” Jessica protested. “It was a stupid death, but no one 'murdered' him. You make it sound like it was some kind of conspiracy, with all this ‘Old Code Gatekeeper vendetta’ dung.”
“Language. That's exactly what I think it was, little human. What it is, even now,” Prath said. He was still upset, but his fangs were no longer visible.
“Well, then, why did they wait so long to come back for me?” Jessica said. “I've been on my own for years. I mean, why didn't they just take me out, like, with some assassin, or make my death look like an accident?”
“Because it's a long game, Jessica,” Prath answered, “one that results in the utter destruction of everything associated with the House of Kramer, including you. You're no good to them dead in some back alley, an anonymous corpse fed into the void like trash. They want you crushed in the arena, humiliated and beaten down. They want a message sent. That's why we're going to take Mikralos up on his offer. We're going to have an insider's view of how deep this rotten contagion goes.”
Jessica pulled a beer from a small cooler in her tool chest and stared in contemplation. Prath continued to straighten her tools.
“Uh, Prath, what do you mean, we?”
“We, as in you and I, little unorganized human,” Prath said. “We're going to get to the bottom of this.”
As Prath’s statement sunk in, He snatched the beer from her hand. Raising it to his lips, he drank it in one long, slow chug. He looked at the label in disgust and threw the bottle over his shoulder without a look. It landed in a trash receptacle across the repair bay with a crash of glass.
“The GateLords are looking to grind down the last vestiges of your family, and using Mikralos and his arena to get you to agree to the setup,” Prath said, breathing out a small burp. “Mikralos waves Judah and the Hammer Leagues under your nose, and you agree like a drunk reaching for a free beer. Oh, incidentally, your taste in brands is atrocious.”
“It's all Jev has on tap that I like, that little robot snitch,” Jessica said. “Well, that's biocoded for 'human,' anyway.”
“Well, I would say you like it a bit too much, love,” Prath said, trying to rub the taste out of his mouth. “And stick with poisons tailored to your own species, for future reference. You're in training for a vengeance match that's probably rigged, now, Mech Pilot Kramer.”
“So... you’re going to help me?”
He nodded. She beamed at his decision, and reached for another beer.
“That also means you're on the wagon,” Prath continued. “We need you sharp. No more booze for you.”
“No booze? But—”
He raised a calloused brown finger as a warning before she could roll her eyes.
“Ugh... fine,” she said.
Chapter Six
SECOND GATE ZONE
MARO POINT, NEAR JEV’S AUTO-BAR
Jessica walked up the silvery boarding ramp of Mikralos's floating sky-car, or yacht, or whatever the void it was. It was big, bigger than she remembered yesterday, its interior decorated in rich, understated luxury.
A conveyance crewman stood at the top of the ramp waiting for her. It was a bio-print, a synthetic humanoid, and it motioned her to a kidney-shaped couch forward in the craft, up by the pilot and copilot control chairs. The crewman was from the same product line as Mikralos's two bodyguards, but it was a specialty model with features oriented more to a pilot's duties. Enlarged forehead, slender build, and dexterous hands stood out to her as the main differences.
Like most Gatekeepers, Mikralos utilized the classic “Model Nine” line of bioprinted humanoid as soldiers, servants, and technicians. Jessica always found them creepy due to their skewed proportions and features. Something was just off about them, and it gave her the willies. They were everywhere, though, so it was often easier just to tune them out, to see right through them.
She handed the N
ine a printed slip of plastic. He read it, a blank look on his smooth face.
“Data received. Purpose?” the Nine said in that choppy, abbreviated diction they all seemed to use.
“That's the location of my mech, meat-bot,” Jessica said, cocking her head to the side. “Red Iridium Arena, in the maintenance pits. The head honcho down there is a Skevvian named Sgok. Contact Mikralos and have my mech and my tool boxes delivered to our destination. Also, my crew chief will be waiting there, too. He's an Ascended. Big orange ape. Can't miss him. His name's Prath. He comes, too.”
The crewman looked at a blinking wrist computer display, and nodded. Mikralos had them on remote, and answered the crewman's question before it was even asked.
“Good,” she said, smiling.
The craft gained altitude without effort or the feeling of acceleration, and they were soon high above Junctionworld. Jessica looked down through the viewport and saw Jev's bar shrink into obscurity among the clutter and squalor of Maro Point, the lower-class slum where she lived. Used to live, hopefully, if this paid off, she thought.
Maro Point was halfway between the glowing red ring of the Second Gate and the pulsing, spiraling towers of the Third. It was just a place to stay. It wasn't home. Except for Jev's, she wasn't going to miss it in the least.
Jessica watched through the window as freight ground-trains, floating grav-barges, and sleek airborne craft laden with passengers transited through the massive, glowing interdimensional portals. The ripples from the dozens of entry and exit points spread across the vast face of the Worldgates at various altitudes and frequencies like waves of light on an electric sea. They were mile-wide windows into other skies, crackling and pulsing with unknown and terrifying energies.
The vehicles passing through the gates flashed in and out of existence like it was no unusual occurrence, because, beyond the constantly-changing light show, it really wasn't too strange, once you got used to it.
This place, Junctionworld, was an exchange point for travel and trade, no different than a crossroads or harbor. What made Junctionworld unique was its placement as an intersection between worlds and realms of existence, not just cities or towns.
She sniffed as she thought about all the money and commercial goods that passed through the Gatekeepers' flabby little hands, how they skimmed from every transaction between a million worlds, and it still wasn't enough for them.
Money wasn’t enough. They wanted control, too. Their gate-damned 'Ways of the Old Code' were justification for centuries of enslavement, conquest, and exploitation. They were just too polite to use those exact terms.
If what Prath said was true back in the mech pit, there were soon going to be two less silver-podded blobs in existence. She didn't know how, but she was going to make them pay.
She waved off an offered drink from one of the craft's other crew-beings, and continued to stare as the neon grid of Junctionworld scrolled beneath her.
Soaring towers outlined in lights, abject slums framed in darkness, and gray, flickering skies above all of them. Arenas, hovels, and the ever-present glow of the gates. Except for scattered commercial and manufacturing districts, there wasn't much else in between.
She looked into the distance. In the center of Junctionworld’s disk shape was the fortress tower called Central Data, where the GateLords compiled and broadcast their arena entertainments to millions of planets on the other sides of the Worldgates. It was a swooping, cone-shaped structure as imposing as any of the eight gates, its gleaming ebony surface studded with cannon turrets and missile hatches larger than the craft she was in.
The population of Junctionworld might live in the glow of the gates, but they also existed under the guns, nuclear and otherwise, of Central Data. Every square inch of J-world was sighted in, laid out in pre-measured defense zones. Between the tower’s weaponry and the Gatekeepers’ Nine soldiery, rebellion by the populace or invasion through the gates was near-impossible.
The slowly-recovering nuclear wasteland of the Fifth Gate Zone was testament to the blobs’ willingness to sacrifice the civilian population to prevent takeover from beyond the portals. When those giant tentacled things tried to come through a few years ago, the GateLords had nuked the place down to bare Shine, the weird foundation material that was the indestructible bedrock of this place.
The craft skirted past Central Data, and they were now in the Sixth Gate Zone. In the distance, she could see the maddened purple swirl of the Eighth Gate. The vast majority of the pocket dimension was alive and lit with the bustling lights of traffic, civilization, and commerce. Not the Eighth Gate Zone, though.
In stark contrast, the long wedge of Junctionworld dominated by the Eighth Gate was dark and lifeless, its gloom interrupted only by the lights of armored weapon towers and patrolling mechs assigned to the containment zone.
Jessica's brow furrowed as she remembered Prath's mention of Tevren trapped behind the Eighth Gate. Well, there were millions, maybe billions of beings trapped behind the gate when the GateLords shut it down without explanation three years ago. Tevren was the focus of her thoughts, though, at the moment.
Something welled up in her, and she tried to push it back down. Her memory wandered to his eyes, his lips, his hands... and why he could possibly be there with her bitch of an older sister, Hannah.
Jessica Kramer turned from the window, one hand brushing a tear away before it could form, the other tight on her revolver’s pistol grip. Mikralos’s grav-craft was angling in for a landing, sleek and smooth, and not a moment too soon.
Gate damn you, Hannah, she thought.
Chapter Seven
SIXTH GATE ZONE
VERVOR’S FABRICATION WORKS
“You're not bringing that pile of scrap into my facility, mech pilot. I don't care how big your monkey is,” the short, scale-covered Myoshan said to Jessica. She towered over him, Prath even more so, but he appeared unconcerned by that fact. The squat, reptilian being crossed his arms and jutted his fang-filled lower jaw out in a defiant pout. One set of eyes, the pair facing them, were scowling slits. Prath and Jessica could not see the rear pair of eyes that all Myoshans possessed.
Myoshans were stubborn little cusses, as a rule, but they were damn good mechanics and fabricators. Jessica noted that this place had a dozen or so of them scurrying about. This little spud's claws and clothes were clean. That must make him the boss, she thought. She took a look at her old friend, and her own two eyes grew wide. Uh oh...
Prath's large teeth came into view at the Myoshan’s opening statement. The Ascended crew chief’s mottled lips pulled back into a full threat display upon hearing “monkey.” The small shop supervisor took a step back at the sight of Prath’s fanged agitation.
“Try 'Ape,' or 'Ascended,'” Jessica said, placing her hand on the tall orange-and-brown primate’s shoulder. “It'll get you a lot further with him. Trust me.”
“What's he going to do,” the Myoshan retorted, “throw dung at me if I don’t use his preferred forms of self-reference? Hmmm? I think I need to speak to the client. I mean, just look at this wreck you showed up with, human. Is that a tc-400, for gate's sake? A... a gate-blessed cargo loader?”
“We had a match last night at Red Iridium, shopkeep, so, yeah, NoName's a little scuffed up,” Jessica said. “Nothing that a little tape and stickers won't cover. I had to hang a Disable on a rookie's record. You might have seen it on the recap video feeds.”
“I don't watch junior leagues at bottom-tier arenas, mech pilot,” the Myoshan said. “We cater towards a more... select clientele here at Vervor's Foundry Works. As a rule, we service those elite few at the top of their game, not charity cases with their walking junkpiles.”
“Why, you sawed-off little spud,” she said, surging towards the Myoshan, “I ought to—”
It was now Prath's turn to try and hold back Jessica. A bright glow from the direction of the loading dock distracted them from their discord.
“Forgive the interruption and the lack of
physical presence, gentlebeings,” the voice and image of Mikralos said. “As always, we greet you in the Ways of the Old Code.”
A Nine from the Gatekeeper's transport crew held a projector the size of a large medallion. A hologram of Mikralos's fleshy face floated in mid-air, regarding all of them in turn.
“Master Vervor, owner of this fine establishment,” the Gatekeeper said, “are we to understand that there is a complication with the work we have commissioned from you?”
The Myoshan knitted his short, clawed hands together, making his scales rasp.
“No, no complications, Honored Mikralos,” the Myoshan said. “This human and her... ape, seem to have stumbled into the wrong fabrication and training facility, and have brought in a semi-salvaged conglomeration of parts that they seem to call a fighting mech.”
“Ah, then, we see the root of the problem, Master Vervor,” Mikralos said. “These two beings you see before you are indeed the same subjects we notified you earlier to expect. The current appearances of their selves and their machine may be cause for alarm, an understandable condition, but rest assured the remedy to its unsightliness is the reason we commissioned your services. Please extend every courtesy and resource to Mech Pilot Kramer, and itemize the expenses accordingly.”
Vervor nodded at the Gatekeeper’s admonition. The mention of her last name also made him change his orientation.
“I... I had no idea, sentients,” Vervor said, his tone now full of deference. “We are a specialty shop. The majority of our clients are non-bipedal, or different biocodes from standard hominids. Forgive me, mech pilot, did you say 'Kramer?' As in the Fourth Ga—”
“Yeah, one and the same, spud,” Jessica said, narrowing her eyes while putting her hand up. “Don't think you can suddenly be nice to me because of the family handle.”