by Rick Scott
Behind her, a tall, muscular fighter with an eyepatch and a body made completely of polished chrome steps forward.
Name: De-Synch
Sex: Male
Race: Android
Class: Brawler
Level: 85
Guild: New London
Just the sight of him reminds me of Kurgan and I again check to see if he’s here, but the Ronin pen remains empty. Someone else then speaks in a soft and gentle tone.
“I, King Urlok, of House New Meridian, shall abstain.”
The crowd hushes as the small, Halfling-sized man takes a seat within his bull pen. I catch him glance over at Rembrandt, who acknowledges him with a nod.
A green-haired guy wearing red racing leathers stands next. “I, King Blitz, of House Shardrunner shall also abstain.”
“Bloody cowards!” someone shouts. “Go race your tricycles!”
“Order…” Najur says calmly.
A short woman with pink hair, wearing a black catgirl outfit bounces forward, all smiles. “I, Queen LeChat of House Sipian will stand!”
The small entourage of people with her clap and cheer as she does a curtsey.
She seems so excited and confident that I have to give her character a second look.
Name: LeChat
Sex: Female
Race: Cyborg
Class: Tech-Mage
Level: 85
Guild: New London
A Tech-mage?…I’m not liking the prospects of that.
Someone bumps into me from behind and my heart nearly jumps out my throat when I see King Axel stepping into the bull pen. The biker shoves past me with a nasty grin on his face. “Out of the way, ninja boy.”
“What are you doing here?” Lance says, eyeing him. Angela glances at him as well, but doesn’t say anything.
“What do you think?” he says and then steps forward. “I, King Axel of House Bosozoku will stand.”
Half the crowd in the stands goes into an uproar of hisses and boos.
“You are of a minor house, King Axel,” Najur says. “The right to claim—”
“He killed my King too!” Axel shouts back. “I have a right just like the others.”
Najur pauses and then confers with the two other Council members on the dais before finally turning back to him. “My apologies, King Axel. The Council recognizes the right of House Bosozoku to exact judgment. You shall be allowed to stand.”
Lance shakes his head at him with a frown. “He did you a favor, you idiot, same as us.”
The biker shrugs. “Don’t mean nothing to me, mate. Cause when he loses, and you all go belly up, your people and your territory become mine.” He stalks off then, pushing into me as he leaves the pen. “I haven’t forgotten about you either, punter. I’ll deal with you when the time comes.”
Fury ignites within me as we lock eyes. I’m not sure what his deal is, but I’m not about to back down. “I’ll be waiting, mohawk.”
He laughs and finally leaves. “We’ll see.”
“Man, what a Bozo for real,” Maxis says, clenching his fists.
“Forget about him,” Angela says. “An opportunist at best.”
The final man to stand is dressed in tight black leathers with a long flowing cape. His dark hair is slicked back and a pair of mirror shades conceal his eyes. He steps forward slowly and then says in a deep and resounding voice, “I, King Deathlock of House Hellion…will stand.”
The crowd from the major houses goes wild again with whistles and cheers.
King Deathlock points across the arena to Rembrandt and then draws a thumb across his throat in a decapitation gesture. The crowd gets even more excited.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“One of the twits who started all this,” Rembrandt says and for the first time I sense fury coming from him, his hands clenching into fists. “I imagine he thinks he’ll end it.”
I still don’t know the history surrounding all this, but by the sheer number of people involved, it must have been huge. As the crowd settles down, High Council Najur speaks again.
“As there appears to be no other participants,” Najur says, “the tournament is now adjoined. The Council will now set a date for the event.”
“I wish to request two weeks for preparation,” Angela says.
Najur pauses and raises a brow. “That time is excessive, Queen Angela.”
“Your Council, Lord Rembrandt has returned to the Shards since his absence here and needs time to readjust and train. Considering the consequences, I hope you will be lenient in this regard.”
Najur confers with his buddies again and then turns back around.
“A two-week preparation period has been granted,” he says. “Until such time, a general amnesty is now declared for all houses and participants. No conflict or attacks will be permitted until the outcome of the tournament.”
I look to the House of Lords and see it still ominously empty. I’m not sure what that means. Will Kurgan still attack us despite the amnesty? Or did he simply not get the memo?
“As the crime is regicide via True Death,” Najur continues. “True Death shall be the outcome for failure, whether by combat or formal execution thereafter.”
Holy crap…
“Victory shall be complete absolution of his crimes. What say, ye?”
“Hear, hear!” someone shouts.
“Hear, hear!”
“Wait,” Angela cries and silence falls again. “There is one more condition for victory that must be upheld.”
Najur looks down at her quizzically. “I’m sorry?”
“As the majority of the seven great houses are represented, if victory is obtained, then Lord Rembrandt, by common law, shall have the right to declare himself High King.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Queen Vivika shouts.
“Bugger off with that nonsense!”
“Will never happen! No sniper shots here, mate!”
Rembrandt hangs his head and sighs. “Angela…”
“Might I remind you—!” Angela’s strong voice cuts through the uproar. “—that Lord Rembrandt could have already claimed the title for himself months ago when he slew every one of your kings.” Her face then darkens and her tone becomes grave. “Do not forget, dear kings and queens, that we are a society built upon violence. Might still makes right in the eyes of this council. It is how we choose our kings. If you are bested, then he who does, claims the right to be your king as well.”
A very uneasy murmur fills the crowd, but from the bleachers of the minor houses, cries of cheers rise up. Queen Angela raises her arms pumping the cheers even more. When they finally die down, Najur speaks again.
“There is no law precluding that outcome,” Najur says. “What Queen Angela says is correct. Any who can best or force to submit the majority of the Kings of each Major house can claim dominance as High King.”
“Thank you, High Council,” Queen Angela says with a satisfied smile. “We shall see you all in two weeks.”
* * *
The crowd disperses slowly, the throngs of minor and major house supporters exiting the stadium through the tunnel while the various kings and queens leave in the company of their respective entourages. Queen Angela is no exception.
Lexi smiles cheerily as we head back towards her buggy. “I’d say that went fairly well.”
“It went as planned,” Angela says matter-of-factly. “Nothing more.”
Her tone leaves a chill to the conversation, which only reinforces my uneasiness about the whole deal.
“I didn’t see Kurgan,” I say. “What does that mean for us?”
Lance opens his mouth to say something but Angela quickly speaks ahead of him.
“It means nothing,” she says. “I doubted he would show up to this. He loathes pomp and circumstance. But he’ll be here for the tournament. You can count on that.”
“What about the amnesty?” I ask. “Will he respect it?”
She stops short and we all h
alt as a group. “An android like Kurgan does not rise to such levels of power without discipline and patience. Do not mistake his aggression for impulse. As I said, he will gladly wait for his meal to be prepared and served up before him than spoil it prematurely with a snack.”
I shiver at the thought of that.
“Well, I hope you’re right,” Maxis says. “Because we can’t kill the Gun Queen and that guy at the same time.”
Just the idea of Kurgan showing up in the middle of that fight has my stomach turning. We start off again and Queen Angela catches me by the arm.
“A word with you, please,” she says. Maxis and Rembrandt stop short looking back at me, but Queen Angela gives them the eye. “…alone.”
Rembrandt nods while Maxis shrugs, but they both turn and head off to sit in the buggy along with Lexi. Lance leaves us as well, hopping into the passenger side of the oversized convertible.
“Lexi mentioned that you questioned why I brought you along.”
I stiffen at that, suddenly caught off-guard by the towering cyborg. I never saw the two of them conversing, but I guess Lexi might have sent her a PM or something. I certainly don’t want it to seem like I’m questioning her authority or anything. “Yeah… I ah, just—”
“It’s because you needed to see all this,” she says, cutting me off and an intensity fills her chrome eyes. “I need you, as the leader of your group, to understand what’s at stake here. You need to know, because it’s you who needs to deliver. Do you understand?”
I stare back at her, perplexed. “But…I’m not the leader.”
“Then who is?”
I think for a moment. “Max, I guess…we’re all sorta out here because of the mission he’s on.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” she says curtly. “Your brother is a great fighter, but he’s no leader. Rembrandt, the same. Val Helena perhaps fancies herself a leader, but she’s a tactician at best. I’ve seen her type before: good raid leaders but nothing more. Becky and Gilly are your thinkers and I won’t even waste my time on Aiko.”
I’m once again taken aback. I didn’t even think she knew all of our names, much less enough about us to draw such conclusions. And I can’t really argue with her assessments thus far either. I gain a whole new respect for her. Queen Angela is one smart lady. But I still don’t think she’s right about me being the leader of our team.
“We’re sort of democratic,” I say. “We decide things together, as a group.”
She smiles then and stoops a bit to see me eye to eye. “You’re young like Lexi, aren’t you? You probably can’t even see it for yourself.”
“See what?”
“The way they listen to you, take in what you say with keen interest. Follow your lead when you make a decision. Tell me, who calls these democratic meetings of yours? Who ensures that everyone’s voice is heard? Isn’t it you?”
I’m not quite sure what to say to that. I do kind of think that way: inclusively. And I suppose I am the one who makes sure we stay on track and keeps everyone involved. I shrug. “I guess.”
She smirks at me. “You are the leader, Reece, whether you think so or not. And as one leader to another, you’d better start acting like one. Because it matters. It matters far more than you think.”
My heart beats faster as her eyes become intense again.
“Now listen clearly,” she says, laying a chrome hand firmly on my shoulder. “I don’t know what you and your friends came here to do and honestly, I don’t care. The only thing that matters to me is that you kill the Gun Queen before the tournament. Do you understand?”
I nod. “Yes, I under—”
“Do you understand?!” she shouts in my face and I flinch away from her. “I said—!”
“Yes!” I fire back, throwing her hand off my shoulder. “I understand! Geez!”
She leans back, looking somewhat impressed, or bemused perhaps. “Good. That’s the determination I needed to see. Perhaps you can do this after all.”
I glower inwardly. What the heck was that about? I’m not sure I’m liking what’s going on here.
“You have two weeks, Reece,” she says. “Get your team together and get me what I need.” She then turns on her high heels and begins walking toward her car. “There’s far more riding on this than you know.”
Chapter 24: New Recruit
Bruce rapped lightly on the habitat door and took a step back.
A few minutes passed before a ragged cough preceded the door slowly opening and Gina Roberts peeked through the crack at him. She smiled as she swung it fully open, her face looking thin and haggard, but her eyes bright and warm—sparking blue as usual.
“You got here quicker than I thought,” she said. “Come on in, Bruce.”
“It’s good to see you,” he said and offered her a quick hug in greeting.
“I’ll make us some tea,” she said. “Have a seat.”
Bruce sat on the couch as Gina busied herself with the nano-processor. He went over in his mind how best to broach the latest topic with her. He’d called her earlier to take her up on her offer to finish their chat, but the thing he truly needed her for now, was her knowledge.
“I’ve been monitoring the system,” Gina said, returning from the kitchen with two steaming mugs in her hands. “All looks well.”
Bruce nodded and sampled the tea as he took the mug from her—a warm, spicy brew hinted with notes of peppermint and vanilla.
“Very,” he said. “Thankfully we can put all that behind us now.”
“I pray so,” she said, sitting across from him in an easy chair. “It can’t happen again, can it?”
He honestly wasn’t sure. “Let’s hope not.”
“So…” she said. “It’s nice of you to come by.”
Bruce smiled and once again thought how best to pull her into all this. But there was no sense beating around the bush. He owed her more respect than that. “To be honest, Gina, I’m here to pick your brain.”
Her eyes shifted inquisitively at that. “Oh?”
He had to gauge just how much he could share with her, or should share rather. He almost wanted to tell her everything. Perhaps it was the ordeal they’d gone through together, or the common bond of their children being stuck in stasis and trapped on the surface. But he felt as if he could share anything with her, even more so than his wife. He felt he could trust Gina as much as Carl.
But he wasn’t sure if that would be fair to her.
Don’t mention anything about Dennis, he warned himself. Stick to the gun for now.
“Two days ago, one of the kingpins down in the Hub—a piece of garbage called Novak—paid me a visit.”
Gina squinted her eyes. “I’ve heard of him. What did he want? Nothing bad, I hope.”
“He came to show me a gun.”
Her crystal-blue eyes widened. “A gun?”
“A real live one,” he said, setting down his tea. “Someone printed it somehow.”
Her eyebrows bunched together. “I thought that was impossible.”
“Supposed to be.”
“This sounds serious then.”
“Very,” he said, releasing a sigh. “I’ve been working with one of my guys to trace its origins and we came to a very odd source. One I’m hoping you might be able to help with.”
The sparkle of curiosity returned. “Oh?”
“Let me show you,” he said, pulling his comm from his pocket. He set it on the coffee table and displayed the same information Carl had given him from the search, the image appearing on a flat translucent panel above the device.
Subroutine “Trace Results” complete.
Elapsed time 19:25:45
One (1) match found in 2.57345 E 21 Transactions
Transaction ID 3D5001DDFF
Location: Public Terminal L100Z7T-16
User: Guest457
Time Stamp: 9/16/2218 02:15:21
Item_ID: @786_GG742_LL7R => Force_Send(225.123.135.47:407)
Gina studied the image for a
second. “The blueprint was sent to the trunk address for the air scrubbing system…”
Bruce smiled. “I knew I came to the right person. Any ideas on how someone could make a gun from doing this?”
She stared off into the distance, her brow still furrowed in thought. She tapped her chin with her fist and then nodded. “I can see one way. But it’s one heck of a leap in parallel thinking.”
“How so?” Bruce asked. “Did they rig a nano-processor to the system?”
“No need,” she said. “The air scrubbers are essentially all nano-processor at their core, but they are single function, one output only—perfectly balanced clean air. But if you had access to enough of them, and could overwrite the output programming, you could replicate the materials you needed for that gun separately from one another.”
“So you think they reproduced the gun out of component parts?”
“That’d be my best guess, yes.”
Bruce leaned back into the couch. This could be worse than he thought. If someone had rigged a bunch of air scrubbers to produce component parts derived from a single blueprint, then they didn’t just print a gun.
“They created a factory,” he said the words aloud, still in disbelief himself.
A silence fell between them as the implications took root in his mind. Dear Lord…it could be as bad as Novak said…worse even.
“How do we stop this?” Bruce looked back to Gina, his mind nearly in a panic. “How do we track it, is there a way? And who’d be capable of something like this?”
Gina shook her head. “You’d need a lot of hardware knowledge, specifically knowledge about the scrubbers and the trunk network. You’d need programing knowledge as well. To recode the machines and interpret the encoding of each part.”
“Like Shard programming?”
“No,” she said. “Binary.”
A void opened up the in pit of his stomach.
Two distinct outcomes shot into his mind: One, that Dennis was not involved with this at all and that they were dealing with someone else here, someone new. But the alternative was even more terrifying. That Dennis did know binary and just didn’t let on. The one leg up they thought they had over him. The only thing that concealed their surveillance from him—could be no concealment at all.
