Catastrophe Unlimited

by Michael Stackpole

  Walter pressed his hands flat on the desktop. “Let me make sure I have the full picture. You took money to have me throw the fight. How much of your own money did you put on the fight?”

  “I would never do that. That’s illegal, and the commission would pull my license if I did that.”

  “How much?” Walter held his hands up. “Scratch that. How much do you owe the bookies who took your bets?”

  Traeger’s shoulders shrank a little. “Enough.”

  “I’m going to guess double that.” Walter shrugged. “What if we fix it?”

  “You? How? You don’t have a pot to piss in.”

  “I get you out of this trouble, but it will cost you.”

  The manager’s eyes became slits. “What’s your game?”

  “I got you into trouble, I’ll get you out. I’ll get the bookies to forgive your debts.”

  “And in return, what? I hire you back?”

  “You’d be nuts to do that.” Walter shook his head. “You give me seventy-five percent of the business. The whole business, not the books kept for the tax collectors.”

  “Shocked! I am shocked. And hurt. Very hurt that you think I would cheat and keep two sets of books.”

  Walter smiled. “And yet you were willing to fix a fight.”

  “Well, if you think I’m going to give you seventy-five percent of the business, you’re insane.” Traeger sniffed. “Fifteen percent, not a single point more.”

  “Spurs, you do have a record of Mr. Traeger here relaying an order for me to fix the fight, yes?”

  “Yes, and I’ve distributed copies.”

  Traeger snorted. “You think that worries me? I got people in my pocket. MBC. ComStar. Folks bigger than you two clowns. Your making an accusation against me would just be inside-stable stuff. No one cares. The commission won’t even hear a complaint.”

  “They won’t, Traeger, but Civil Court will.” Aniki slid in next to Spurs and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Your fixing a fight trips the ‘moral turpitude’ clause in the contract you have with Snorri and me. With us gone, with Wallace here gone, you’ve got nothing. So, I think you should bring the percentage up. A lot.”

  Traeger looked from her to Spurs and then to Walter. “The three of you in this? You’re colluding? But, but… Oh, I get it. You are so stupid.”

  Spurs blinked. “How do you figure that?”

  “You think you can run a stable like mine, negotiate all the pitfalls, and make a profit. You don’t have a clue. In ten lifetimes you wouldn’t have a clue.”

  Walter shook his head. “Spurs, want to explain it to him? And include the part as to why he will grant us seventy-five percent.”

  “Sure.” Spurs shifted the tablet around so Traeger could see it. “First off, when you had the two of us fight in the simulators and you said I was bad…”

  “You were horrible. Worst ever.”

  “Right, because my time in that cockpit was spent hacking into your computer network and building myself a back door into the system. I’ve gotten petabytes of useful data, including the second sets of books and your gambling ledger. That ledger revealed a pattern. I monitored it, and when the pattern was setting up again, we took action. You were approached to fix a fight. And, as per your pattern, you backed the fix with your own money. The bookies, when you started betting, offered good odds on Walter to lay off some of the bets you’d placed. A little too much, as it turned out, since they knew the fight was fixed. We bet heavily at those odds on Walter. Everything you lost, and more, we won.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “But we haven’t collected yet, and we will accept your markers with the bookies. Maybe. Provided you part with seventy-five percent of the company.”

  Traeger, his mouth hanging open, simply deflated. “Why not take it all?”

  Walter gave him a nod. “As you said, we don’t know enough about the business to run it. We don’t have a license. We need a face for the business, so we’re letting you keep a twenty-five percent stake to do what you do well. We’ll renegotiate a couple of contracts, and we’ll be paying out the money you chiseled, but it’ll be Windfall Warriors Unlimited on a much sounder footing.”

  “And if I don’t agree, Snorri and Aniki walk, I’ve fired you, and I’ll still owe the bookies.”

  “Well, you will still own the stable. An empty one, but it will be all yours.” Ivan shrugged. “Twenty-five percent of something is better than one hundred percent of nothing.”

  The defeated man glanced at Spurs. “Kid, if you’d just told me how good you were at all this, I’d have cut you in from the beginning. You should have come to me. Hell, I don’t know why I ever fired you.”

  Spurs opened another document on the tablet and scrolled to the last page. “Sign here and your nightmare is over.”

  Traeger signed with a finger, then slid back out of the booth. “You’ll understand if I don’t feel like socializing with you right now. Besides, I have some things to do.”

  Spurs nodded. “By the way, I found the Bank of Luthien accounts and have frozen them. A precaution.”

  The manager raised his hands. “I surrender, kid. You’re good, you’re really good. I’ve always said that about you. Astute. So, I guess, great to be in business with you. Enjoy your night.”

  Aniki waited for the crowd in the bar to swallow Traeger. Then she intertwined her fingers with Spurs’s. “Are you guys ever going to tell him that you’re the ones who offered him the bribe to fix the fight?”

  “As much as I’d like to see the look on his face, I don’t think so. Not right now.” Walter raised his beer stein in a salute. “We have more important matters to address at the moment—chief among them, getting us to Solaris City.”

  Chapter Eight

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  The Maze South, Solaris City

  Solaris VII (The Game World)

  Rahneshire, Lyran Commonwealth

  17 December 3001

  Walter wondered if he’d melt beneath the hot lights on the holostage where they shot the interview portion of The Big Tournament. Most folks in the small studio audience kept their coats on and buttoned up, suggesting that the air conditioners were valiantly trying to flood the studio with cold air. None of it made it onto the stage. Walter wished he had on a cooling vest and fighting togs rather than a suit. But this is show business, so those rules dictate everything.

  Across from him sat James Caine, better known by his fighting nickname of “Lightning Jack.” On the taller side but still with a stocky build, Jack had blond hair and blue eyes, both of which got featured prominently on posters promoting his fights. Even the gray locks at his temples didn’t downgrade his looks. His nose had been broken once, but that only added to his appearance. Those looks, as well as a maternal grandfather who had fought on Solaris, made him a local favorite.

  Allison Tamretsu, the show’s trim hostess, smiled as the director’s disembodied voice counted down to the show’s start. “Welcome to another episode of The Big Tournament, where you do more than watch. Tonight, we have both fighters from our latest live event, from our mercenary division of the tourney. First we have ‘Lightning Jack’ Caine, lately of the Hell Raisers. Jack, after so many years fighting as a mercenary, why did you come to Solaris VII?”

  Smiling, Jack leaned forward, and did so smoothly enough that Walter figured only he could tell that Jack was still stiff from the previous night. “Some of your viewers, Allison, might be aware that my grandfather hailed from Solaris VII, and I spent time here in my younger years—especially when my father was stationed far away. I’ve always considered this world my home.”

  “Your grandfather actually did some fighting here, didn’t he?”

  “He had the bug, yes, but he mostly fought on the circuit. Still, his stories of those days were very thrilling.”

  “Well, let
me turn to our other guest, Wallace Richards, who has worked his way up from those same circuit battles to make it here to The Big Tournament.” Allison’s brown eyes sparkled as she turned toward Walter. “Tell me, Wallace, is fighting in the circuit battles as inspiring as Jack says it is?”

  “I’m not sure I can answer that. The fighters in the circuits are better than I imagined, and I’m not just talking the professionals.” Walter nodded toward Jack. “That Jack’s grandfather fought for a number of years points out how good he was. Talent clearly runs in Jack’s blood.”

  The hostess’s eyes narrowed. “We could be saying the same of you, couldn’t we, Wallace, if you weren’t so coy about your background? How much of the ‘Mystery Mercenary’ thing is hype, and how much is true?”

  Walter widened his eyes to project innocence. “More truth there than not, I’m afraid. I wish I could remember more about my life and my time as a mercenary.”

  “You say that, Wallace, but you clearly remember a lot about being a fighter.” She turned to face the audience again. “We’ll be back with our guests after this brief word from our sponsor, Barringtons—featuring the ‘Future Heroes’ collection in their MechWarrior action figure line. We’ll see the first part of the battle last night, and get our guests’ thoughts on what it was like to be in that fight.”

  Traeger’s enthusiasm over Walter’s invitation to The Big Tournament had been reason enough for Walter to want to refuse to participate. He’d watched a couple of episodes of the show and couldn’t see anything but downsides to the operation. The Big Tournament consisted of sixty-four combatants fighting in one-on-one battles in a single-elimination tournament. The fights were spread out over six weeks, primarily to permit repairs to the venues, and were decided by mid-January. The tournament had four divisions—champions, soldiers, mercenaries, and open—which each sent a single champion to the semifinals. The winner of The Big Tournament would get the last open slot in the Platinum Crown Tournament, cementing its relevance and ramping up enthusiasm for the bigger contest.

  Walter had won his first round in a light ’Mech and moved up to the first of two fights in a medium-weight ’Mech. He didn’t mind having to shift up in weight classes the further he went, though he felt most comfortable in medium ’Mechs. What bothered him was the audience participation angle, in which viewers watching live during pay-per-view events could vote on how the arena would be configured during the battle. With the push of a button, they could move walls within the Maze to trap a fighter, to shield a favorite, or even deploy the Maze’s defensive weaponry against a pilot. Some of them would even be able to aim and fire those weapons.

  While he wanted to refuse to participate, Spurs, Snorri, and Aniki had all convinced him that the visibility he’d get in The Big Tournament would benefit their cause. The Big Tournament got him into Solaris City, which counted for a lot. And while no one expected him to win the tournament, if he did, he’d boost his career and all but guarantee their success.

  The big iron door retracted into the ceiling, releasing his Blackjack into the Maze. He’d opted for a BJ-1DB, which carried large and medium lasers in both forearms. It had enough heat sinks to run cool using both large lasers at longer ranges, or one large and both mediums closer in. Even if he shot with everything he had, the ’Mech would cool off quickly, so having this powerful “alpha strike” capability in tight quarters wouldn’t be a long-term liability if the fight dragged out.

  But almost immediately things began to go badly. Out of the gate, he had a clean run for forty meters. One step into the labyrinth, however, and the walls shifted and small lasers unloaded on him. His display revealed a dozen small targets. Walter returned fire as quickly as he could and sprinted to get past the array of lasers.

  Heat washed up through his cockpit as he triggered everything. More through luck than skill, Walter destroyed a half dozen of the silver weapon pods by the time he raced past. But all the good fortune he’d had shooting was balanced out with bad luck getting shot at. The ’Mech silhouette on his secondary monitor flashed red over his center torso, bright yellow on his left flank, and dull yellow on each shoulder. Center torso armor is below half. Crap. One or two exchanges with Lightning Jack and he could exit the tournament fast. And that’s if there’s no more audience participation.

  Walter’s lip curled into a snarl… As the old saying goes, when you find yourself in the middle of hell, keep marching.

  “So, right from the start, Jack, you had an advantage. What were you thinking at that moment?”

  At least he has the decency to look chagrined. Jack ran his fingers back through his hair. “I was thinking, quite honestly, that I’d gotten lucky. My armor had only gotten chipped and dinged. I didn’t know, of course, that Wallace had gotten chewed up until I saw his Blackjack later. While I like the audience being involved, I’d love to see how Wallace would fare if we were left to our own devices.”

  Damn, he sounds sincere.

  Allison turned to Walter. “And what were you thinking right at that moment, Wallace?”

  “I was thinking about what I’d be doing with the rest of my evening, since it seemed that I’d be punching out of work early.”

  Allison raised a perfect eyebrow. “You weren’t thinking that the outcome was unfair?”

  Walter shook his head. “Out in the field, fights are never fair. What happened there was just the same as being ambushed. Only thing you can do is fight through it. Plus, we all know the rules of the Maze. I can’t complain about what happened.”

  “If I may, Allison…”

  “Of course, Jack.”

  Jack pointed at Walter. “Look, I’m going to say this, and this is what I think. I’m putting words in Wallace’s mouth. We all know that if one of my fans were given a trigger to shoot at me, they might be inclined to let the shots go wide, or might not even pull the trigger. But, you know, I don’t want folks to let me off easy. When you’re given the chance to participate, you should honor that and do your best. The reason we’re out there is to show how well we can function in honorable combat. By not doing what you can, you cheapen the fight, I think.”

  Allison sat back, eyes wide. “Wow, that’s very noble of you, Jack. Please, give it up for Jack.”

  The studio audience applauded on cue, with the back row standing up and cheering with hands held aloft. Even Walter applauded, pausing only when Jack waved the audience to silence.

  “Now, Walter, what do you think of Jack saying he thought he had an unfair advantage in the battle?”

  “He’s very kind to say that, but I don’t think it’s true. Another night, another audience, matters might have been different, and I don’t think Jack would suggest circumstances were unfair.”

  Allison smiled brightly. “I’m sure you’re right. And immediately after these ads, we’ll get back to the battle and see how events turned out.”

  Walter figured that the best way to survive was to move fast and become tough to hit. The problem with that strategy was that the Maze, which was built on grid squares measuring roughly twenty by twenty meters, didn’t provide much in the way of maneuvering room. Combat usually ended up being at close quarters, making it tough to miss a BattleMech.

  The nature of the Maze further complicated things. At randomly timed intervals, fans could alter the Maze’s layout. Based on the initial laser ambush, Walter figured Jack’s fans predominated in the voting, so changes would benefit his enemy. The fact that a long, straight corridor opened up in front of him confirmed this conclusion. If the fight went like others he’d studied, he’d be boxed into an alley, and Jack would have a path open up that would bring him straight in at Walter’s back.

  The only factor that worked in Walter’s favor was a rule that indicated that a wall could not be moved a second time unless the combatants had exchanged fire. If the audience worked quickly enough, they could create an escape route for a fighter they favored, or vector their favorite in on the enemy. Tactically, if
a wall slid in behind him, Walter knew it couldn’t move again until he and Jack had met. So, I can protect my rear armor which, ironically, is in better shape than my proximal armor.

  Walter kicked his speed up as he shot down the corridor. He kept an eye on the holographic display’s rear arc, waiting to see a panel slide down to cut off his retreat. Nothing happened. Which means they’re going to have us battle toe to toe? Walter shifted his shoulders. The replay of that will sell plenty of action figures and beer.

  Then a slab lowered into place behind him, and a legion of them rose forty meters ahead. They defined a small arena, which Lightning Jack’s Vindicator entered from the left. He got up to speed and twisted to level his weapons at Walter, while Walter remained trapped in the alley.

  Damn it, trapped. Walter’s fingers tightened down on his triggers. Here goes nothing.

  “We’ll start with you, Wallace. What were you thinking when you got your first glimpse of Jack’s ’Mech?”

  “I was thinking that his red-and-gold paint job looked very pretty—and that the PPC’s bore looked terribly big.”

  “So you noticed that he’d gotten off to a good start?”

  Walter shrugged. “I’m not sure, Allison, that I ever really formed that sentence in my mind. What I did know was that the fight was going to get nasty fast, and I was hoping that I’d get the better of the coming exchange.”

  “And you, Jack?”

  “I had a general sense of the damage to Wallace’s Blackjack, but I realized that none of his weapons had been taken off-line. I knew I had an advantage, because the audience had set up a lollipop arena. I’d have one shot at Wallace while he was in the stick. Once he got into the round with me, it would be anybody’s fight.”

  Allison nodded curtly. “And with that, we’ll take a visit with our presenting sponsor, Barringtons, then bring you back for the exciting conclusion to this round two fight in The Big Tournament.”