by Ryan Tang
The cringing man in front of him was of the same type.
"Who are you! What do you want?"
His voice was hoarse and frightened.
Falo stepped towards the ragged man, but Peter put a wide arm in the way and pushed him aside.
"Careful, my Lord!"
The man's clothes were dirty and tattered. His shirt's sleeves had been torn off, and there was a gaping hole in the front that exposed an unhealthily drooping stomach. His hair was dirty and stringy, even worse than Falo's had been. One of his eyes was gone, replaced by a gaping black hole. A straggly mustache ran down across his face, twisting and twining dirtily with the tangled beard at the bottom of his chin.
He flinched away from Peter and stared around Falo's study.
"Where am I? Where am I?"
His eyes widened, and he glanced hard at the books, struggling to make something out with his one good eye.
"Are those books? Is this the Spire?"
He took another wild look around.
"Where are the people?"
His eye caught on Falo, and he let out a high-pitched squeal of surprise.
"That boy! His head is gone!"
Peter ignored him.
"This is a wild man we found on the streets, someone who knows nothing about Plenty's ancestral loyalty to the Truthspeakers."
The man turned towards Peter, leaning his head badly to one side to stare with his working eye.
"You need to help that boy! His head fell off! He's going to die! How is he still breathing?"
The boy king felt a sharp stab of pity for the man. Even though he was in a strange and unfamiliar location, even though he'd been dragged here in a box, his first thought was for someone else.
A good king knew his people, and Falo could tell the one-eyed man was a good person.
It was his duty to protect him.
Falo tried walking forward again, but Peter held him firmly in place.
"Watch."
Peter took the Contract off the table and folded it in half, partially obscuring Falo's bright red and black letters as he lowered it in front of the one-eyed man.
"You are under no physical duress. I'll help him if you sign this paper."
"What?"
Peter repeated himself.
"You are under no physical duress. I'll help the boy if you sign this paper."
The man lunged forward, frantically signing the blank piece of paper without even thinking. He gripped the pen crudely, balling it up in a fist rather than holding it properly. It took him quite a while to make his mark on the page.
"Okay! I signed! Please help –"
The man stopped talking halfway through. A black shadow flickered across his one good eye. He stumbled a little but kept his feet.
"Jump up and down as high as you can."
The one-eyed man began bouncing up and down on his thin legs, which trembled and faltered every time he hit the ground. He bent them hard every time he landed, straining to make the highest jump possible.
All of a sudden, he slipped and fell, banging his head against the corner of the table hard enough to draw blood. Scarlet splashed from his forehead, but he did not cry out in pain.
He turned to Peter, apologized in a lifeless voice, then got back up and started jumping again, straining his thin legs as hard as he could, not stopping even as his blood dripped and splashed onto the ground.
"Take a knee and greet the boy as Lord Falo."
The man bent down onto a knee. His weak legs quivered in place as he turned towards Falo and greeted him.
Peter took the Contract from the table and handed it to Falo.
"He's just a homeless man who stays outside my home. But imagine if somebody of consequence signed this Contract. By using this fine parchment, we can deceive people into signing. Imagine a single page hidden inside a larger contract a thousand pages long. Slowly but steadily, all of Plenty will be yours."
Falo did not answer. He only peered from the table, staring at the thin and ragged man.
The abandoned man wasn't concerned about Falo's missing head anymore. He wasn't concerned about anything.
Peter clasped him kindly by the shoulder.
"War is hard. Billions of people died when your people were usurped. That's thousands of millions. More people than you can fathom. A billion people dying is like if over a thousand Plenties were destroyed."
A thousand Plenties?
That was what it would take for the Lost Lords to return?
Ice seized his heart. He couldn't possibly have heard that correctly.
"A thousand millions? A thousand Plenties?"
Peter nodded grimly.
"Billions of people. Over a thousand Plenties. Right now, nobody would willingly join your cause. You are the rightful ruler, but just a boy. Governor Waters is a reputable leader. The Stock family has brought fame and glory to Plenty. And the noble Lost Lords have been demonized as monsters. This is the only way. Once you are king, you can cancel all the Contracts. A little bit of trickery is better than a whole lot of killing."
Peter turned.
"Brenna! Sam! Get that man a bath and fresh clothes. Bring him back when he's done."
The women left and the man with the missing eye silently followed them out the door.
"He'll be treated better than he ever would have been outside. This is the best way."
Peter pulled out a large metal canteen from his backpack and showed it to Falo.
"The Contracts solve our bonding problem. The Spire's events are open to anyone. Once that old man is dressed and bathed, we'll command him to retrieve your drink. They won't know what he's there for. And even if they find him in the book-corridors, he'll never divulge your secrets."
Peter walked to the shelf and rapped his knuckle on the papers.
"This. This is the equalizer. This will solve all our problems. All you need to do is write the Contracts. The only restriction is that they cannot be under any physical duress. My wealth and power will easily put them into other forms of duress. Before long, I plan to have over a hundred thousand men joined to your cause."
Falo's eyes widened.
A hundred thousand men?
How could he lose with a hundred thousand men?
"We'll sweep across the colony all at once. One battle instead of countless skirmishes. A handful of deaths instead of billions."
Falo nodded uneasily. When put that way, it made sense.
He didn't want to kill enough people to fill a thousand Plenties.
Things might get harder for a while.
But they'd be better for everyone once Falo became king.
On his honor as a Truthspeaker, he'd make sure of that.
CHAPTER 7: EVERY BLUE
JARED'S CONTROLS COULD have been better.
She'd been playing on this pod for months, but Alex never felt fully at home in the ornate chair with its silver knobs and handles.
It was the lost milliseconds when switching weapons.
It was the way her crosshairs always moved just a tad shorter than where she needed them to go.
It was the tiny additional heft in her hand, the slightest whispering nagging that pierced her battle-mind.
Alex reminded herself that silver weighed comparably to Eternium, which helped provide a more realistic experience. Silver was much more durable than plastic. The new handles were the latest in simulator pod design. Most importantly, Jared was letting her use the pod for free. It would be incredibly rude to complain.
And besides, she was so good it usually didn't make a difference. Tonight had passed without a single mishap.
"I've got it! I've got it!"
Duncan barreled past her, wrenching one of his twin swords out of its scabbard. His Peregrine unit was built for high-speed aerial assaults. Indigo fire spewed from his thrusters as he spiraled towards the enemy units.
When Stock announced that the simulator tournament would be fought in teams of three, Jared immediately completed t
heir squad with his closest childhood friend. Jared and Duncan's play had improved by leaps and bounds as the simulator had gone from a fun post-work activity to their whole lives. Their team had steadily climbed up in the ranks, and they were hoping to achieve tournament qualification status soon. The top 64 teams qualified, and they were currently at 87.
But sometimes keeping Duncan alive was a harder challenge than actually winning the fight. He frequently got too aggressive after a few successful maneuvers.
Alex laughed.
"What the fuck is happening? What the hell are you doing?"
Her voice was painfully hoarse. It still hurt to talk, but she was having too much fun to notice.
Duncan let out an excited cry.
"Cover me! Cover me!"
The sights descended at the push of a keystroke. The control stick in her right hand twisted sideways. A side panel of the joystick gently popped open, and then the magical trigger was in her hand. Alex fired and then fired again. She was careful to release the trigger before pressing halfway. The silver bounced instead of snugly clicking. Her finger was tense against the controls. Half-triggering was so much easier on arcade plastic.
The control stick danced between her fingers as she directed her rifle precisely where she wanted it to go. Alex moved her entire arm in a steady arc, compensating for the tight cast around her wrist. Her Paragon's mosaic blue arm slid gracefully across the screen, releasing a dense spray of energy blasts the color of the sky.
It was a risky series of shots. She was firing from directly behind Duncan's streaking machine, so even a single mistake would lead to a comical friendly fire kill. But Alex was feeling it tonight. Her heart was singing; her mind was aflame. Every shot was going exactly where she wanted it to go.
And besides, Duncan was so inexperienced he still charged in a straight line. She might as well use that to her favor.
Her blue gunfire streaked through the air, drawing closer and closer to Duncan's descending Paragon.
And then the shots sailed past, missing the frame of Duncan's machine by inches.
Alex laughed.
Shooting perfectly felt so damn good.
The Paragon beneath Duncan had raised its shield high in preparation for Duncan's overly telegraphed blow. Her blitz of gunfire caught the pilot completely off guard. Both arms exploded, then both legs. The rest of her shots pierced the target completely. The crippled blue and red machine burst into flame then crashed dead onto the ground.
Duncan landed and gave the smoking mechanical corpse a mocking tap on the head.
"I got him! I got him!"
He laughed.
"Holy crap Alex! What a shot!"
Of all her skills as a pilot, Alex was most proud of her draw – how smoothly she went from drawing her guns to firing them. Gunslingers on Old Earth used to pride themselves on the same thing. But humans could train the action of moving their hands to the hip and back up again. Paragons were only as fast as their engineers built them to be. The key wasn't inputting the commands quickly. It was seeing the perfect opportunities. It was knowing exactly where and how she was going to fire when the time came to start shooting.
A long string of censored curse words flew across her screen as the downed pilot raged impotently at their sudden defeat.
****** *** CHEATER **** ******* ******** CHEATER *** *** ****
Alex laughed and dismissed their message. She flew even higher into the sky, further improving her view. There were still two opponents remaining.
Truth be told, she was a little surprised the pilot could start typing that quickly. The tournament qualification matches were played on the SuperAce difficulty setting, the most challenging the simulator pods could offer.
At the SuperAce level, the simulator pod rocked and even heated up to reflect damage to your machine. Her shots had blown off all the enemy's limbs and burned the cockpit to cinders. By the end of it, her opponent was probably hanging upside down in their simmering pod. Typing out all those curses in such a state was an impressive feat in and of itself.
Alex made a mental note to count out the asterisks after the battle was over to try and figure out what they'd said to her. It was the least she could do.
A trio of neon green lights streaked towards her.
Alex instantly recognized the increased cadence of half-triggering. She twisted and turned, avoiding two of them by such a small margin that her cockpit burned with sudden heat. She deflected the last shot with the flat of her sword, hastily yanking it out of her sheath as she fell back on the defensive. The sword jerked, and her mosaic blue arm twisted backward. A tinny sound echoed through her pod, which swirled around in two tight little circles. The simulator couldn't come close to emulating the sound of Eternium in battle, which was supposed to be beautiful and haunting beyond compare.
Alex raised her rifle again.
The sights descended again from the top of her cockpit, whirling into place in front of her eyes. The trigger popped out of the side of her joystick.
And once again, time stood still.
Her right hand squeezed off some more half-trigger shots at the foul-mouthed pilot's teammate, who barely managed to duck back behind a jutting stone.
The half-trigger technique was an exploit that took advantage of a glitch in the simulator to fire at a sharply increased rate. A pilot only needed to press the trigger halfway for the simulator to sense it. The technique allowed skilled pilots to pump out shots quicker than their chosen gun could typically fire. It would never work in a real Paragon.
It made her feel a little dirty, but at their current rank, she didn't have a choice. All the pilots used half-triggering, including the one who'd cursed her out for destroying him with it. It didn't matter how good you were if the other pilot could shoot you down before the fight even started.
The third machine flooded the skies with a round of heavy artillery fire, flawlessly covering his teammate's retreat. Both Paragons were painted in the same bold red and blue color scheme as their defeated ally.
Most teams preferred to keep all their machines the same color. But Alex had spent hours and hours getting the coloring on her machine exactly right. Countless cresting tides and ripples, just like those on a wave of water, ran along every inch of her Paragon from the pointed communications antenna at the top of its head to the crescent moon shaped flight pack that enveloped her machine's torso in lieu of legs. She'd painted each wave a slightly different shade of blue. She included every shade she'd ever seen, from the mysterious darkness of deep water to the light blue of Old Earth's sky.
After all that effort, she couldn't just repaint her machine. She'd fought with those colors since she was a girl. Her screen name was Every Blue. But she’d never ask Jared and Duncan to go through the trouble of copying her, so her friends flew their own colors instead. Jared's Paragon was a heroic yellow with undertones of red and blue. Duncan's proud machine was a sharp indigo and white.
Jared's Ladybug streaked past her, covering the skies with an array of golden particles as he tossed her a spare energy packet. The small gun clutched tightly in his Paragon's hand fired over and over again, but the enemy machines didn't even bother blocking. At this distance, the shots were simply too weak to pierce his thick armor. Their two surviving enemies returned fire but missed badly. The golden shroud scrambled their targeting systems.
Jared had taken the seemingly unglamorous role of supporting their team. Part of the team battle's challenge was correctly allocating weapons between your three teammates. The simulator's strict points system restricted the number of weapons a Paragon could use for game balance purposes. Alex's machine wielded a high-quality sword and rifle along with the missile pods built into her machine's flight pack. As a result, the game didn't allow her to carry a shield.
Jared's machine was armed to the teeth with support tools. The particle shroud was one of the most prized weapons of all. It disabled enemy auto-targeting and radar systems. But in exchange for equipping his inva
luable items, Jared was restricted to a puny gun that could barely destroy an enemy machine even at point-blank range.
Alex released another burst of blue covering fire as Duncan streaked through the golden mist, emerging unscathed on the other side. His bewildered opponent only had time for a single shot. Duncan ducked under the hurried green blast. His twin swords shone in the golden sunlight as he hacked the red and blue machine to pieces.
With three pilots bearing down on a lone enemy, the rest of the match ended quickly.
The panoramic view faded away.
The librarian shifted uncomfortably in her seat as she surfaced from her battle-mind. Her left side was still terribly sore. She was so lucky Jared found her after she'd fallen out of the book-corridors.
The librarian shivered.
She couldn't believe she'd made such a foolish mistake falling out of the shelves. If it wasn't for Jared, Alex didn't know what would have happened.
____
The bustling main lobby re-appeared on their screen. The free-for-all forum was filled with ideas, suggestions, and, most of all, random comments. A few of the messages were even discussing her fight.
"How did they get the bullets to curve around their teammate like that? Every Blue is so good!"
"I wish I could shoot that fast, but my finger gets tired when I try to do that half-trigger."
"Half-triggering is cheating. If you do it, you should be disqualified immediately. Every Blue should go to jail. I'm going to visit him there and spit in his face. His machine looks dumb as hell too. Why the fuck doesn't it have any legs?"
Her heart rate spiked, and her fingers instinctively danced across the keys. The message was typed up before she could help herself.
"I'm a girl, you dumb asshole. And were we even watching the same fight? Everyone is half-triggering. And how can you send someone to jail for what they're doing on the simulator? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!"
She grinned to herself.
"And you don't need legs if you have skills!"
The high-mobility pack was the most unique aspect of her machine. Instead of resting on legs, her machine's head, arms, and torso sprouted out of a crescent moon shaped arc. The speed of the arc's thrusters was perfect for high-speed shooting duels, but forfeiting legs put her machine at a distinct disadvantage when it came to fighting on solid ground or enhanced gravity maps.
