“It was Rupert’s idea,” he said, standing up from his chair. “But I was the one who petitioned the minister for approval, filing a request through Colonel Kersey on your behalf.”
“But why would you do that?”
There was more to the question, but she didn’t need to elaborate. He knew what she meant.
“We put the request in weeks ago.”
“Oh,” she said, deflating a little bit. “Before—”
“Yes.”
“And now?”
He held her gaze with icy clarity. “That’s up to you.”
There was a challenge in his words, and she knew the threat that hid there without him having to say another word. If she made any further effort to sabotage the quadruped, their tenuous friendship would end and he would hand her over to Julian without a second thought.
Rupert nudged her arm, breaking the silence. “So what do you say?”
She held Braith’s stormy gray gaze—one minute as tumultuous as the ocean, the next as hard as solid steel—the unspoken question still lingering in the air.
Finally, he spoke. “As long as you promise to keep yourself out of trouble, I see no reason we shouldn’t go.” His eyes narrowed a fraction of an inch, the tiniest shift in his expression. “But you have to promise me, Petra,” he said. “Promise me you’ll stay out of trouble, and we can forget what happened the other day—on my word as . . . as your friend.”
She swallowed hard and nodded, her throat tight. “I promise.”
And she meant it.
Trying to sabotage the quadruped further was a wasted effort. If playing the part of the compliant, subservient girl was what she needed to do to earn a trip to the mainland for her birthday, so be it. But in the meantime, she would wait. She would watch, and she would listen, learn what she could about the war, about the conspiracy and the politics behind the conflict, and hopefully discover the evidence she needed to bring Julian down from the inside.
If not . . .
Well, she’d rather not think about that.
CHAPTER 11
The recreation hall was full to bursting with students and engineers by the time she arrived for the semifinals. There were only four fighters left now—herself, Fletcher, Morgenstern, and of course Selby—their mechs an impressive display of engineering skill in the center of the room. She took her place among them and awaited the coin flip that would decide which pair of opponents took the first fight of the night.
The energy in the room was palpable as Yancy stepped into the middle of the ring. “All right, lads,” he said, readying the heavy coin. “Heads to Selby and Morgenstern; tails to Wade and Fletcher.”
He flicked the coin into the air and it landed on the floor with a ting.
Tails.
Petra let out a slow breath as Selby and Morgenstern withdrew from the ring, leaving her and Fletcher on either side of the wide circle.
Fletcher had fought against Selby in the finals in the last tournament, and she could see why. The mech standing before her was a towering display of brute force; it had two stocky legs, a cylindrical rotating center, and a terrifying turbine of an engine roaring in the center of its massive chest. Dozens of dents and scratches ornamented the plating where previous opponents had tried to pierce the multiple layers of metal—but to no avail. The machine was an impenetrable vault on legs. Well-armed too.
Sharpened blades augmented its right hand, attached to the arm at twisted angles, and a massive spiked pincer completed the left arm, large enough to crush her mech in half if she got herself caught between its jaws. The jagged barbs glimmered menacingly in the electric spotlight.
There was one peculiarity to the machine: a thick, mechanical tail jutting out of its backside, its use unknown.
Yancy stepped forward, quieting the crowd with a wave of his hand. “Fighters at the ready?” Both Petra and Fletcher nodded, and Yancy raised his fingers to his lips, inhaling a deep breath.
Petra honed her focus to a fine point as across the ring Fletcher’s machine crouched, ready, waiting. Her throat tightened, her heavy pulse drowning out all other sound. Then came the whistle, sharp and clear, and the two mechs launched into battle.
Petra dived to the right, testing Fletcher’s maneuverability as she narrowly ducked beneath the first snap of its lethal pincer, and then weaved around its broad pelvis, activating the supercharged blowlamp in her mech’s arm and scoring a deep mark into the cylindrical waist. But before she could pull out of reach, Fletcher turned on a pin, and the mech’s massive tail whipped around and caught her machine’s legs, blocking her movement as a spinning bladed fist slammed into her from behind.
The sound of crumpling, tearing metal echoed through the room, the attack plastering her mech to the floor. Her machine screeched forward on its face and skidded to a stop, a great dent where its right shoulder used to be. Petra jimmied the controls and forced the machine to stand before Fletcher could mount another attack, but the movement in her right arm was jerky and slow, the joint severely damaged.
Fletcher’s machine roared again, and Petra tensed, an electric rush thrumming through her veins as she readied her mech for another charge. She dodged the first attack and landed a swipe across the mech’s chest with her bladed fist, but the blades only scraped across the fortified plating, showering sparks on the floor. And then her machine was knocked off its feet again, caught off guard by the mechanical tail. She gripped the edges of her control panel, her fingers digging into the hard metal as she thumbed the controls, barely evading being crushed beneath Fletcher’s massive legs before getting to her feet again.
The two machines met blow for blow, landing solid punches and glancing strikes, leaving crumpled dents and jagged gouges in their wake. The smell of scorched metal singed the air, and the heat from the two straining engines roasted the room.
After narrowly dodging another hit from Fletcher’s bladed drill, Petra withdrew and assessed the damage to their machines. The two mechs stood on either side of the ring, both of them scored and scratched, spouting thick black smoke and leaking traces of oil and petrol onto the scuffed floor—wounded but not yet beaten.
Fletcher’s mech looked worse for wear. Half its tail hung at an odd angle, nearly sliced in half by its own pincer. Sparks crackled from torn wires as it dangled behind the machine. A swath of plating had been carved from its torso where she had landed a swipe of her bladed fist, and deep gouges marked the mech’s central cylinder from her efforts to weaken its structure—but she had paid for it dearly. Her mech’s right arm was wrecked, the shoulder joint busted to hell and the connecting linkages and gears pummeled to scrap—the protractible saw, bladed claw, and blowlamp brutally damaged.
She needed a better strategy. Brute force wasn’t going to win this fight.
A spark from the mech’s broken tail caught her eye, and she had an idea—one that might win her the match. But if she failed . . . she wouldn’t get a second chance. This was it.
Pressing her fingers to the controls, she darted forward, feinting right as if to aim another attack against the mech’s narrow waist, but as Fletcher braced for the attack, she veered left, utilizing the wheels on the bottom of her mech’s feet to change direction quickly. Taking him by surprise, she wheeled under the bladed arm and readied the electrified prong with a flip of a switch, diverting all mechanical power into a violent punch, right into the center of the machine’s body.
The hooked prongs pierced the plating, and, activating another switch, she emptied the maximum voltage her portable battery could hold, straight into Fletcher’s machine. The plating sizzled, and the acrid tang of scorched metal burned the air as smoke filtered out of the cracks in the machine’s armor. The mech shuddered and twitched, the jagged pincher snapping open and shut. The twisted blades on its right arm spun wildly, both arms swinging wide as its torso twisted out of Fletcher’s
control.
Petra’s mech jerked forward, tethered to the malfunctioning machine by the prongs buried in the plating, unable to break free. The bladed fist whipped across her mech’s already damaged shoulder, the jagged blades scoring through the plating with an earsplitting screech. Linkages and cables snapped. Crumpled gears and shreds of torn metal clattered to the ground.
Across the ring, Fletcher fought to regain control, and the machine’s pincer swiveled around, snapping violently over the heads of the watching crowd. Petra fumbled with her control panel and ducked her machine, avoiding the blow by inches. If she didn’t break loose now, Fletcher’s mech would tear hers to pieces.
Activating another of her hidden weapons, she fired up the supercharged blowlamp in the injured arm and tried aiming the flame at the smoking prongs still buried in Fletcher’s mech. The damaged arm’s jerky movements made it difficult enough without the faulty mech dragging her across the ring. Still, she concentrated on keeping the flame steady, slipping with every halting step of Fletcher’s mech, melting through the tubing and copper wire a fraction of a millimeter at a time, until finally, the blue flame bit through the thick rod and the mech snapped free with a loud crack.
Fletcher’s mech teetered, and the circle of students scrambled backward, shoving each other in an effort to get away from the falling machine before it crashed to the floor. It landed with a shuddering boom, limbs still twitching and groaning from the surge of electricity.
Shaking, Petra eased her mech to its feet. It was broken and beaten and falling to pieces, but still standing.
Someone to the side of the ring started to count, but despite the engineer’s efforts to get the machine back on its feet, Fletcher’s machine remained inert. Smoke poured out of its damaged plating, clouding the room in a gray haze, and fifteen seconds later, the match was over.
She’d won.
Petra lowered her control panel, heart hammering against her ribs as the students cheered her victory. She ran a trembling hand through her sweaty hair, a smile working its way onto her lips.
Yancy stepped forward. “After a thrilling and unexpectedly brutal match, Fletcher is hereby eliminated, and Wade moves on to the finals, her opponent to be decided after our next match: Selby versus Morgenstern.”
Fletcher caught her eye across the ring, and with apparent reluctance, he nodded. “Well fought,” he said, his voice carrying over the excited din of the other students.
She fought back a smile. “You too.”
Students swarmed the ring, congratulating her on her win. She grinned back at them through the handshakes and the pats on the back, buoyed by their adamant praise, but when she saw what was left of her mech, the triumph of her win died in an instant.
Half the mech’s plating had been torn to shreds, scores of gears and linkages twisted and warped, pieces still falling from its gaping wounds. The right arm was a shattered husk, dangling from the flattened shoulder joint, and the left arm, though mostly intact, was now without the electrified prong, sacrificed to escape Fletcher’s flailing machine.
Rupert elbowed through the crowd and wrapped her in a tight hug, his grin faltering at the look on her face. “What’s the matter?”
She gestured hopelessly toward the damaged mech. “There’s no way I’ll be able to repair it before the finals. I might as well have lost.”
“Don’t say that. We’ll have her fighting fit again in no time.”
Petra conceded with a sigh, too exhausted to argue the point after such an intense match. She didn’t even care to stick around and watch the fight between Selby and Morgenstern next, even though she’d be facing one of them in the final round. Assuming she had a mech to fight with. She certainly didn’t share Rupert’s optimism on that account.
As the floor finally started to clear for the next match, Braith helped her and Rupert cart the battered mech out of the ring, pieces still falling from its gaping wounds. Every clink of metal set her teeth on edge, more gears, axles, and linkages lost in this one fight than she could afford to replace before the finals. It would take a miracle to fix it—if it could be fixed at all.
They pushed the mech halfway across the room, when suddenly, the door to the hallway slammed open. Bright light streamed into the room, followed by a squad of men in stark black uniforms.
Coppers.
Petra shrank back from the doorway as none other than Julian’s right-hand man, Mr. Fowler, walked into the room. Braith was at her side in an instant, his body blocking her from view.
“Tell me there’s another way out of here,” he said.
She shook her head, her heart sinking. They were trapped.
“By order of the Guild council,” said Fowler, his voice cutting through the student’s chatter, “this circus of engineering is banned forthwith. These machines are to be confiscated immediately, and—”
A din of outrage followed, drowning out the rest of Fowler’s words, and then Rupert appeared beside her, Yancy with him.
“Yancy knows a way out,” he said, glancing from Petra to Braith. “He’ll show you.”
“What about you?” she asked, grabbing his arm.
“I’ll stay with the mech and make sure they don’t follow you.” He held her gaze a second longer. “Go. I’ll be fine.”
Yancy touched her arm, pulling her away from the crowd, still in an uproar. “Follow me.” He led them to the back of the recreation hall, putting as many students and engineers as possible between them and the Guild coppers. He stopped and crouched beside the stacks of tables the students had pushed against the wall to make room for the mech fights. “It’s just this way,” he said, gesturing toward the far corner. “There’s a loose panel near the window. It’s where we stash our contraband, but if you squeeze in and swing a left, you’ll find a service ladder that will take you down to the maintenance room for the library, two floors down.”
He glanced toward the door, Fowler’s men already combing through the crowd. “I’ll hang back and keep them busy. I expect a few mentions of my father ought to stall them for a while,” he said with a wry grin.
Fowler’s voice cut through the noise. “Where is she?”
The room quieted, and Petra froze, clinging to Braith’s arm beside her. He took her hand and squeezed, the force of his fingers anchoring her to him.
Selby spoke first. “Where is who?”
“The Wade girl,” answered Fowler. “We had word that she was participating in this . . . tournament of yours. Where is she?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” replied Selby.
“Go,” said Yancy, ushering her toward the back wall. “I don’t know who snitched on you, but no one here will give you up. I can promise you that. You’re one of us now,” he said with a wink. “Just don’t get caught.”
Braith squeezed her hand again. “Let’s go.”
The hidden passage was right where Yancy said. Braith found the panel and carefully pried it loose, ushering Petra inside. She crawled in through the square gap, squeezing between half-empty whiskey bottles, cigarette cartons, and tobacco tins. The space was small, and she had to pull herself into an awkward crouch to make room for Braith, standing on tiptoe to avoid knocking any of the students’ contraband over. One wrong move, and the collection of bottles and metal tins would topple, alerting everyone in the next room to their hiding place.
“Careful,” she whispered as Braith slipped in behind her. “There’s a lot of stuff in here.”
Braith pulled the panel shut and stood, bracing his arms against the wall behind her as he found his footing. Petra barely dared to breathe, aware of how warm her skin was, the two of them pressed tightly together in the cramped quarters, close enough that she could feel the rise and fall of his chest. He smelled of tobacco and sweat and something else decidedly masculine, and for a brief moment, she wanted nothing more than to stay there, her body pr
essed against him in the dark, protected in the shelter of his muscled arms.
There, she felt . . . safe.
“We should go,” he whispered, his voice close enough to stir the hair against her cheek. “Before they search the room any further.”
She swallowed against the tightness in her throat and nodded, prying herself away from the solid protection he provided as she inched toward the empty passage. Braith held her steady as she crept over the collected contraband, not releasing her until she reached the vacant safety of the access tunnel, the feel of his hands still burning into her skin long after he had let go. The absence of his touch left her strangely empty.
She rubbed the sensation away and crept down the narrow passage, the back of her throat prickling with a sudden sense of loneliness—of guilt and longing. She’d forgotten what it was like to be held like that, to feel safe in someone’s arms, to forget herself at someone’s touch, and she ached at the memory of Emmerich’s embrace, standing in his arms without a care for anything else in the world. Every day, she felt his absence, wanting to feel that alive again.
For a moment, she had.
On the other side of the wall, a man reported that she wasn’t among the students, and Fowler flew into a rage. “I want her found immediately! Search the rest of the building if you have to. I don’t care if it takes all night. Find her.” He paused a moment, the sound of heavy boot steps trailing away. “As for you lot, if I find out you are lying to me, or that you are hiding her whereabouts from me or my men, you will face severe punishment. The Wade girl is no longer a student here and fraternizing with her outside of her restricted Guild duties is a criminal offense.”
A heavy silence followed his words, and he went on. “So if any of you know something, I advise you speak now.”
She paused midway down the narrow corridor and listened.
But no one spoke.
Not one word.
The tension in her body eased. She was safe, for now.
The Guild Conspiracy Page 16