by Bear Ross
“Arkathan circuitry very tough,” Kitos said from the front of the cramped vehicle. “I-I did not expect pilot to use all cylinders from personal weapon, either.”
“What?” Prath called to Kitos.
“I-I said, Arkathan circuitry very—” the Niff said, louder.
“What?” Prath said again, louder as well, all the while smiling at Jessica.
“He heard you, Kitos,” Jessica said, the veil of her misery lifting slightly. “Very funny, ape. Look, I'm sorry. I just... I just made a decision. I wanted it behind me. I wanted it over.”
“Little human,” Prath said, his smile fading, “if you go into the arena against Masamune with the Judah module missing thirteen percent of its performance, it will be over, all right.”
Jessica crossed her arms again, looking away.
“We here,” Kitos said, settling the utility craft in its small landing pad by the shop’s cargo door. “Does not look like we only ones, though.”
“What the void is this?” Jessica said, trying to crane her neck to see through the cramped vehicle’s front windscreen.
“It appears Master Vervor has visitors,” Prath said as he and Jessica extracted themselves from the back of the van. A long, sleek grav-craft filled the alley.
Mikralos, she thought, her lip curling into a sneer of disgust.
“What's the matter, Mikralos?” Jessica said as she entered through the shop’s cargo doors. “Come to haggle over the hospital bills? And why is he here, anyway?”
“Ah, Mech Pilot Jessica Kramer,” Mikralos said, his running lights pulsing blue and green. “We see you failed to encounter any fresh supplies of manners on your expedition to the Fourth Gate Zone. Master Mech Pilot Masamune Kyuzo is here at our invitation, Kramer. We understand this is not your first encounter with each other.”
Masamune kept his hands behind his back, his body language rigid. He gave curt nods to them, but made only the briefest of eye contact with Prath or Jessica.
“We greet you in the Ways of the Old Code, Honored Mikralos,” Prath said, smoothing out his tool vest and putting his palm out in deference.
“And we salute your admirable adherence to our code, Master Prath,” the Gatekeeper said. “Imagine if your pilot emulated your constant professionalism.”
“We all have our projects,” Prath said. “She will surprise you, someday, we hope.”
Jessica scoffed, then mumbled something under her breath.
“We did not quite catch that pilot,” Mikralos said. “Would you mind, terribly, enunciating more clearly?”
“I said, 'it won't be manners I surprise you with,' Honored Mikralos,” Jessica said.
Masamune smirked and lowered his gaze. Master Vervor clicked his fangs in disgust at Jessica’s snide, sardonic remark.
Mikralos held his gaze on her, small bubbles rising in his transparent armored chamber. His running lights pulsed like flowing magma.
“This... undertaking is nearly at an end, Pilot,” Mikralos said slowly. “We are looking forward, very much so, to the final result.”
“So, how'd you know we went to the Fourth Gate Zone, Mikralos?” Jessica said. “I told you we were being followed, ape.”
Prath shrugged.
“We have our ways, Kramer,” the Gatekeeper said. “This is our realm, after all. Nothing happens without our knowledge.”
“Nothing, huh? Explain that to Vervor's rib cage,” Jessica said, barely masking her contempt. “Like the new flooring? It does a fine job of covering up the bloodstains.”
“We said our knowledge, Pilot,” Mikralos said, “not our involvement. An unfortunate criminal happenstance, no more. Incidentally, we understand the responsible parties have shuffled off this mortal coil. Thus, the matter is considered resolved. We have more pressing matters, namely, the reason we find ourselves here. We wished for one last conference before the final match. Observe.” A thin manipulator claw from the Gatekeeper’s chassis held out a data-chip to both mech gladiator pilots.
“What's this?” Jessica asked, taking the object while avoiding contact with the claw. It was the same one that had been around her neck, a few weeks ago.
“Contractual obligations, media residuals,” Mikralos said in a bored, business-like tone. “Also, required equipment loadouts, parameters for the final match, and field conditions to be encountered. And our favorite part: next-of-kin notification forms, to be filled out by yourselves. No black box gimmickry. You shall both know each other’s configuration ahead of time, as well as the terrain on the arena floor, and given adequate time to prepare.”
“The only variable left unresolved,” the Gatekeeper said, flourishing a flipper-like appendage inside his armored bubble, “is the close combat weapon to be used by our precocious Pilot Kramer. What have you decided to bear into the arena, Pilot?”
“Vervor, is the hammer back up and functional, yet?” she asked the Myoshan shop owner, her eyes locked with the Gatekeeper’s.
“Negative, Pilot,” Vervor answered. “The plasma lines were slashed and crushed during the four-way match. You and your computer are fortunate it didn't detonate in your hands. I'd have to rework the design and machine another one, from scratch. It wouldn't be ready in time.”
“Okay. That makes it easy, then,” Jessica said without missing a beat. “The chainsword, Mikralos.”
“Your brother's? From Judah?” Prath said, surprised.
“Yup,” she said, continuing to glower at Mikralos.
“Excellent,” Mikralos said, turning to the silent figure of Masamune beside him. “There, you see, Master Pilot, there will be an added portion of poetry to the match.”
Masamune stood mute, his eye looking straight ahead.
“Is he doing all the talking for you, this time, Masamune?” Jessica said, moving her head to meet his fixed gaze. “Not much use for a puppet if the puppet master does all the yapping.”
Masamune's expression remain unchanged; sphinxlike, even.
“Oh, the Master Pilot is probably not in the mood for your usual disparaging banter, Pilot,” Mikralos said. “Our associate, Dionoles, was recently forced to deliver the unfortunate news of the canceled match and rescheduled final confrontation at the Master Pilot’s habitation pod.”
“Master Pilot Masamune was disappointed by the inability to exercise his talents and abilities,” Mikralos continued, “and made his feelings known concerning the adjusted schedule. Certain... reminders had to be made during the course of that conversation with our casino-managing associate. As you may know, Honored Dionoles does not possess our own gifts of charm and persuasion.”
Masamune's eyes narrowed, his gaze now finding hers. She could tell there was pain there. Good, I can use that, she thought.
“Put you in your place, right inside your own pod, huh? That sucks,” she said, feigning an exaggerated pout. Masamune remained unmoved.
“I read your father's book,” Masamune Kyuzo said, his tone even and cold. “'Sometimes we do what we must, to preserve that which we love most.' That line has always stuck with me, Pilot.”
“Yeah, well, that's a nice quote,” Jessica replied, “but let's just say Dad's priorities were a little off, Kyuzo. He was more interested in the family name than the family itself, and my brother paid the price. It doesn't matter. He's gone. Just like Jered's gone. It's up to me, now. You're just a pawn in this game.”
“This is not a game, and I have far more at stake than you know,” Masamune Kyuzo said.
“Whatever. I'll see you in the arena, Masamune,” she said.
“Yes, you will, Pilot,” Masamune said, turning away.
The Gatekeeper and the master mech pilot boarded the gleaming transport and departed. The grav yacht boosted in the direction of Berva Proxima, a short distance away.
Jessica gave a sarcastic wave good-bye as it left.
Chapter Forty-Four
SIXTH GATE ZONE
BERVA PROXIMA ARENA
Mikralos contemplated on the implementatio
n of the plan, how it was constantly on the edge of falling apart.
Damnation, that Kramer whelp is the living embodiment of vexation, he thought to himself. There are times when we wish the Code did not prevent us from simply dropping a pressure nuke on her.
“Honored Mikralos, what did Kramer mean,” Masamune Kyuzo said to him from the grav-yacht’s passenger seats, “about her brother paying the price for her father's priorities?”
“Who can fathom the derangement of humans, Master Pilot?” the Gatekeeper said, dismissing the question with a claw flip. “You beings are a textbook study in random incoherence.”
They spent the rest of the short journey back to the Berva Proxima in silence.
Upon landing, Mikralos watched the scowling Masamune leave in his own personal transport, bound back for his home in the First Gate Zone. The Gatekeeper turned to his Ninety-Nine bodyguards.
“Take our transport,” he said to the two biotroopers, “and bring that moron, Beliphres, back here. He will be huddled up at these coordinates, waiting for you. Also, do try not to have our grav-yacht shot down by that thrice-damned renegade Centurion.”
Chapter Forty-Five
SIXTH GATE ZONE
VERVOR’S FABRICATION WORKS
Jessica Kramer watched Kitos unload the hover-van after Mikralos and Masamune departed. The Niff rubbed his ears with one set of hands while he carried a tangled bundle of feral Arkathan circuitry with the other pair. After the four-armed being closed the door to the shop’s mop closet, she turned to Prath.
“What the void did Masamune mean,” she said, attempting her best stone-faced imitation of the departed master mech pilot, “by that burdenbeast-dung? You know, about 'doing what he had to, to save what he loved the most?'”
“Well, little human,” Prath said, “I imagine Masamune had the same choice put in front of him that the Gatekeepers put in front of your father. Fight, or your family pays the price. Dionoles and Mikralos must be applying pressure on him to see the job through.”
“Does he have kids?” Jessica asked.
“A pair, I believe,” Vervor answered. “Male and female offspring. A lifemate, too.”
“And the blobs leaned on him?” Jessica said. “Went to his habitat and laid down the law?”
“Apparently, love,” Prath said. “Sound familiar?”
Jessica recalled when the Gatekeepers visited her own home, right before Jered's death match. They must have done something similar to Masamune.
“Gates,” she said in disgust. “The wheel just keeps going round and round. This really is just some sick game to them, isn't it?”
Master Vervor snorted.
“Yes and no, human,” the short shop proprietor said. “To the Gatekeepers, credits are nice, but power is the true coin of the realm. They are maintaining their balance of power, and dealing with emerging threats to it. You're the last vestige of one threat, the Kramers. Perhaps they see Masamune's little clan as another potential threat. Little Masamune Kenji is reputed to be a natural talent, from what I'm told. Maybe they're just nipping the next generations of upstarts in the bud. It makes sense.”
“That's a little cold, spu-, er, Myoshan,” Jessica said, correcting herself.
“Don’t be naive. I'm clinical, not cold, human,” Vervor said. “Silly questions sometimes require harsh answers.”
“Basically, they're smashing you into each other,” Prath said, “using one of you to cancel out the other, and then they'll deal with the survivor in their own time. I believe it’s one of the commandments or edicts from their Old Code.”
“Yes, from the section ‘On Target Selection,’ if I recall,” Vervor said. “They neutralize the threat, and still get to adhere to their twisted Old Code the whole time. Thus, they win, and still get to keep their little flippers clean. It's a masterful exercise in ruthlessness, one they're very good at. It's admirable, really.”
Prath and Jessica looked at Vervor, his forward eyes staring in the distance. He noticed their gaze, clicked his fangs, and shrugged.
“Again, I am being objective,” the Myoshan said, grinning with sharp teeth. “You're both involved. I'm not. I have the luxury of seeing this from the outside. Either way, I get to fix the survivor's mech, and get paid.”
“Such compassion for the struggles of your fellow beings,” Jessica said, a wry smirk on her face at Vervor’s frankness.
“What's the going rate on compassion, pilot?” Vervor said, returning a Myoshan version of her smirk.
“He's right, you know, little human,” Prath said, sighing.
“Yeah, sure,” Jessica said. “Alright, ape, let's get this patchwork mech humming. We have some ruthlessness of our own to dish out.”
Chapter Forty-Six
SIXTH GATE ZONE
VERVOR’S FABRICATION WORKS
It was the old way of doing it, but Prath wanted it done right. The drone welderbots just couldn't get the correct bead, the ideal angle or penetration, so he clambered up the hull and did it himself, his ancient stick welder carried aloft by a hovering labor drone.
Prath nodded his head, dropping his welding hood over his face, and struck the arc. When the sound of sizzling metal hit the right note, he laid the bead of weld down the valley formed by the two angled armor plates. He could feel the deep heat of the weld, through his thick foot-gloves, but he put the burning pain to the back of his mind.
All that mattered was the right pace, the right angle. The welding electrode, or stick, shortened in length as it melted and fused with the metal, the puddle leaving a dim slug track in his welding mask's darkened viewport.
He finished with the final pass. Lifting his hood, he smiled as the top coat of welding slag peeled off in thick curls, the deep red of the joined metal cooling underneath to a dull gray. Perfect, he thought. Just task one of the help-bots to hit it with a wire wheel attachment, and it would be ready for paint.
“Kitos, how are the new command pathways coming along?” Prath asked, shaking the heat out of his prehensile feet as he shifted to another, cooler section of the hull. “Do we have enough of that Arkathan webbing to run to all the major systems?”
“I-I believe so, Master Prath,” the Niff replied. “Weapons, sensors, and thrusters are priorities, as directed. I-I will patch into main control panel after bundled.”
Kitos’ harness shimmered, covered in random lengths of the silvery threads of advanced alien nanocircuitry recovered from the old hangar in the Fourth Gate Zone.
“Good,” Prath said. “That was an excellent idea, splicing those feral lines into the system. Reaction time should be improved, immensely.”
“Yeah, great,” Jessica said, her feet up on a bench. “Let's just completely rewire the whole system, right before the match,”
“It's not a rewire, love,” Prath said. “It's a control system enhancement. If the new lines are cut, you'll revert to the normal circuitry. Now, put on a grav-harness and help him out, little human. I'm sure your expertise can be put to use.”
She sighed. Prath saw her waver between giving him a snarky response and getting to work. She clicked the harness around her shoulders and floated up to Kitos, who was perched on the left shoulder of the mech. The Niff was busy feeding a new line of Arkathan wire to the mech's heavy cannon.
“Alright, Niff, let's get it done,” she said. “The sooner we're finished, the sooner we can circuit-dive.”
Prath smiled as Jessica began assisting Kitos. It was good to see the change in her, even if that came at the cost of all she had been through in the last few days.
The crew chief shook off any negative thoughts of his friend Solomon’s past mistakes before they could distract him. Instead, he concentrated on the good, looking down on his dead comrade’s daughter, grudgingly hard at work.
Satisfied that Jessica was pulling her weight, he dropped his welding hood with a flick of his head. Prath fed another electrode into his welder, and struck another bead.
Chapter Forty-Seven
&n
bsp; SIXTH GATE ZONE
BERVA PROXIMA ARENA
Mikralos regretted summoning his two companions, Dionoles and Beliphres, within minutes of their arrival. The initial formal greetings almost immediately dissolved into acrimonious squabbling.
“What is this whispering that reaches our audio sensors, Mikralos?” Beliphres demanded. “Did you actually entrust this... this spineless bloatfish to act in a manner to which he is completely unsuited in character and demeanor? Is there cause for alarm? What is the cause of this sudden reduction in his normal levels of cowardice?”
“Whom do you presume to slander, Beliphres?” Dionoles asked in his high voice, subtly altering his tone to show he was now made of sterner stuff. “Ourselves? We tire of your bluster and bombast. We know how to make these underbeings submit to our will. Are we not the master of the Celestial Kingdom establishment?”
“Your Nines help you threaten one insignificant human's family,” Beliphres said, scoffing, “and suddenly you believe yourself to be some streetwise crime lord? Some swaggering tower of strength? It is cause for laughter, Dionoles.”
“Honored Beliphres, Honored Dionoles, please,” Mikralos said, trying to soothe both of his irate combat-mates, “we ask you drop this unseemly matter that continues to divide you and distract from our efforts. You are both guests, here, and should conduct yourselves accordingly. Our companion, Dionoles, acted in the manner he saw best, at the time. The Master Mech Pilot is now agreeable to the task in the arena, and no longer suffers from a mild case of doubt. Dionoles was able to convince him that adherence to plan was the optimum route. Beliphres, is your own area of operations secured?”