The Guild Conspiracy (11 page)

“Are you any good?” Braith asked.

“She's the best,” said Rupert, passing her the spanner. “But not if we don't get this repaired before the next fight.”

“When's that?” asked Braith.

“Saturday,” she answered, tightening the bolt “We don't have a lot of time.” She set the spanner aside and wiped her hands on a grease rag as she peered into the metal carcass, noting the bent rods and warped gears that would need to be replaced before the next fight.

Braith watched her work. “And the rules?”

“No projectile weapons or use of steel in construction,” she said, returning to her work. She carefully removed one of the damaged gear trains and set it aside. “But once you're in the ring, anything goes. If your mech goes down—­stalls out, keels over, whatever—­you have fifteen seconds to resume the fight or the match is lost. Last mech standing is the winner.”

The soldier nodded. “And how many fights have you done?”

“Just one,” she said, digging back into the mech's inner mechanisms. “My next match is against Darrow. He's the third top contender in the tournament—­lost to Selby in the semifinals last tournament. He's known to fight dirty.” She dismantled another warped linkage and removed it from the machine. “I'll need everything I've got when I go against him in the ring.”

And she still didn't have a strategy.

She had relied on the element of surprise for the first fight, but no one was going to underestimate her again, which filled her with a measure of pride. She had already shown that she could stand toe to toe with the best of them. Now she just needed to prove it a second time.

Braith stopped his pacing, drumming his fingers against his arm. “You know what will happen if you're caught with this, don't you? This is a weapon. A very dangerous and very illegal one.”

“Yep.” She turned another bolt and motioned for Rupert to hand her a different spanner, glancing up from her work to meet the soldier's eyes. “So let's make sure I don't get caught.”

A slow grin broke across his face. “What can I do to help?”

 

CHAPTER 8

T
he night of the second mech battle arrived, and Petra sat in her dormitory, impatiently counting the minutes until she and Braith could escape to the subcity office unnoticed. Rupert would be waiting for them there, running the final checks on her mech before the fight. They had finished the repairs only that morning, working through the night.

It was almost ten o'clock when Braith finally knocked. “You ready?”

Petra launched off her mattress and joined him in the hall, already wearing her boyish disguise. Braith was dressed down in a shirt and trousers, his hair tousled and face scruffy after a few days without shaving. Out of uniform, he looked like any other student at the University, and she could almost forget what he really was. Still, he had kept his word so far. He hadn't mentioned the mech or her secret subcity rendezvous with Rupert in any of his reports, and she was starting to suspect that he enjoyed it, sneaking around, skirting the rules. He had that sort of anti-­authoritarian air about him, an odd quality for a soldier, but perfect for Petra. In a different life, they might have been friends.

They reached the subcity office half an hour later. Rupert was waiting for them, the repaired mech ready for transport.

“You checked all its systems?” Petra asked him.

“Twice. Everything is in order.” He glanced at Braith with a frown and leaned close, lowering his voice. “You sure we can't ditch him? The other engineers won't be happy about an outsider attending the fights—­especially if they realize who he is.”

“He promised not to tell anyone,” she whispered, examining the repaired arm. The plating rippled under the light, dented by the many hammer strokes that had reformed its shape. She tested the manual release on the newly added claw, and four sharpened metal fingers unfolded from the mech's fist. “Besides,” she said, retracting the claw. “I don't have much of a choice. Either he goes with us, or I can't fight. That was the deal.”

“I still don't get why the Guild put you under watch like this. Taking you out of your classes to focus on the project, I can understand, but a military guard? What are they afraid you'll do?”

She shrugged, the truth burning behind her teeth. She couldn't tell Rupert what was really going on—­not about the quadruped or her hidden sabotage, not Julian's suspicions or his threats. The truth was far too dangerous, and she wasn't about to drag him into it too. Rupert was her best friend. She wouldn't condemn him to that fate.

“I know that look,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “What aren't you telling me?”

She tried to maintain a straight face, but Rupert knew her too well. “I'm sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “But I can't. Not this time.”

“Why not?”

She pressed her lips into a firm line and glanced over her shoulder at Braith, leaning against the desk with his arms crossed. “I just can't.”

“Petra—­”

“Is everything ready?” asked Braith, stepping away from the desk.

“Looks to be,” she said, swallowing against the feeling of guilt in her chest as she turned away from Rupert. “We should make our way to the recreation hall. I don't want to be late.”

She moved aside and Rupert met her eyes over the mech, the tightness in his brow suggesting that the conversation was far from over. She hated to keep secrets from him, but she had no choice. The truth would only make him an accomplice in her sabotage, and she refused to drag him into this, knowing what would happen if she was caught.

Braith and Rupert wheeled the mech to the dumbwaiter chute and hefted it onto the platform, pushing the machine into the far corner.

“There,” said Rupert, wiping his hands clean. “We should all fit now.”

“Can the lift hold this much weight?” asked Braith.

“You could always take the stairs,” suggested Rupert.

Petra rolled her eyes. “We'll fit.”

The three of them squeezed around the mech, huddled together shoulder to shoulder. Rupert pulled the lever, and the dumbwaiter inched upward, the additional weight putting a strain on the drive motor. Petra could feel the tension in the pulley cables as they climbed. The gears groaned and whined, the lift creaking and vibrating as they ascended, but the cables held, and after a slow, stifling crawl, they reached the top of the chute and climbed out onto the sixth floor, mech in tow. Then they piled into the next lift and ascended two more floors before emptying out again.

Petra stopped outside the door and laid a trembling hand on the arm of her mech, her heart thumping heavily in her throat. Facing Darrow in the ring wouldn't be easy. He was one of the best engineers in the school and not afraid to fight dirty; the carnage of his last match was ripe in her mind. She would have to be smarter, faster, and a hell of a lot luckier to win. The slightest mistake could lose her both the match and what little respect she had earned since winning the first fight.

She exhaled slowly, letting go of her uncertainties. She could win this. She had to. After what had happened with the quadruped, the mech fights were all she had left. She could not lose, not now.

Rupert took her hand, bolstering her confidence with a tight squeeze. “You ready?”

She nodded. “As ready as I'll ever be.”

“D
ammit!” Petra gritted her teeth, desperately flipping switches across the control panel. “Get up, you stupid thing!”

Darrow's heavy block of a machine had hers pinned, its long, prong-­ended arms holding her to the floor. His mech was a hunkered down contraption, a trapezoidal mass of metal on tracked wheels, with three layers of reinforced plating around the engine and a fully rotational swiveling cabin.

While she uselessly tried to wrest her mech free from Darrow's grasp, a pair of panels slid open in the front of his mech, revealing a hefty straight-­pane sledgehammer fastened to a pulley drive. Petra heard the grinding lock of a gearbox from inside the machine, and the hammer slowly began to spin. Faster and faster it went as Darrow increased the power output to the drive, until it was nothing more than a circular blur of metal aimed at Petra's mech.

“Petra, move!” shouted Rupert, standing off to the side of the ring.

“I'm trying,” she growled, pushing the controls back and forth, trying to break free of the grapple.

The spinning hammer edged closer to her mech's hull, dangerously close to pounding the outer plating of her main fuel tank. If the hammer broke through . . . at best, she would have a fuel leak to deal with; at worst, an explosion. She pressed her lips together and tried to think through the chaos of noise all around her. If she could push his mech off balance, give herself enough of an opening to maneuver her machine into a better position . . .

“Use your legs,” she heard Braith shout, his voice cutting through the excited cheers of the gathered students. “Break his stance.”

The hammer struck the plating with a cracking blow, sparks shooting off between the two mechs. Petra cringed against the sound, the rat-­a-­tat-­tat of hammer blows shuddering through her bones as she focused her attention on her mech's lower half. The mech's legs were tangled beneath the front of Darrow's machine, but not pinned. Sending a silent thank you to Braith, she rerouted power to the lower half of the machine, her thumbs dancing across the switches of her control panel.

With a deep breath, she planted her mech's feet at the base of Darrow's machine and kicked. Engines strained and tires spun, and with a wrenching scrape of metal, the sharp prongs holding her mech to the floor broke away, and the spinning sledgehammer veered off target, striking nothing but air.

And Petra was ready for it.

Flipping a switch, she extended the mech's newly added claw—­four thick blades crafted to withstand well over a hundred pounds of force—­and forced the arm into the open panel in the mech's body. Sparks flew as the spinning hammer glanced off the arm's plating, but she held fast, using the edges of her sharpened claw to cut through the hammer's pulley belt, shredding the rubber into paper-­thin strips. The sledgehammer fell slack and crashed against her mech's freshly plated arm, crumpling the metal.

That she could deal with. The leaking fuel tank was another problem.

She pulled back, and Darrow recovered, folding his mech's prong-­ended arms across the gaping hole left in the center of its body. The sledgehammer dangled uselessly, but it had done its damage. A trickle of petrol leaked from her mech's body, the dark liquid dripping steadily onto the floor. The plating across its chest had buckled and split. Another hit, and she would lose.

She needed to finish the fight—­and quickly.

Her best point of attack was the open sledgehammer panel, but she would never avoid Darrow's prongs long enough to do any substantial damage. He'd trapped her twice already, and with her fuel tank leaking, she couldn't survive a third grapple. But if she could jam the mech's arms, prevent him from pinning her again, she might be able to break through the maintenance panel at the rear of its base and disable the mech with an electric shock.

It was the best plan she had.

Before Darrow could prepare a defense, she launched across the ring, reinforced claw at the ready. She slammed into the trapezoidal frame and shoved the claw into the machine's shoulder joint, tearing through the mess of gears and wire beneath. Darrow tried to maneuver out of range, his rubber treads squealing, but Petra had the advantage. She curled her mech's arm around the damaged joint, the harsh grating of metal and gears splintering the air. Then, with a crack like a gunshot, the prong-­ended arm snapped free, tumbling to the ground with a clatter of gears.

Rupert let out a cheer, and Petra allowed herself a grin. She hadn't expected that.

Darrow's machine careened toward the edge of the ring, its remaining arm swinging dangerously off balance. Darrow fought for control, rubber treads spinning uncontrollably across the petrol-­soaked floor as he aimed the machine toward hers. Petra sidestepped the reckless charge, but Darrow twisted around at the last second, swinging wildly with the one good arm. Not enough time to dodge, she flicked the mech's controls to brace for impact, but her mech wouldn't move.

She pressed harder on the switch, but no use.

Metal crunched against metal, sending her machine sprawling across the ring. It crashed hard against the floor and skidded to a screeching, sputtering halt at her feet, smoke rising from the hot metal. A heartbeat passed in tense silence, and behind her, Rupert cursed.

Petra jiggled the controls, pressing the switches to their limit, but nothing. Not even a twitch. She kicked the machine, and a flare of pain throbbed through her foot. “Come on, dammit, get up!”

But the engine only spluttered and wheezed, choking on fumes. The air was thick with it, the smell of leaked petrol and exhaust clouding the room. And then nothing. Just dead silence.

Then someone started to count.

“Shit.”

She had fifteen seconds.

Fifteen seconds to get back on her feet.

Fifteen seconds to stay in the fight.

Petra dropped to her knees and grabbed the start cable from its holster, quickly threading the cord around the crankshaft. Sweat dripped from her brow and sizzled on the hot metal plating, her blood thick in her throat, fingers stiff and clumsy as she fed the cable through.

Ten seconds.

Bracing her foot on the mech, she yanked hard on the cable, praying she still had some fuel left. The cord ripped free, and a faint guttering answered, but not enough.
Blast
. She threaded the cable again, exhaling a slow, steady breath as she looped it through, careful to wind it tight. She clutched the cord with both hands and breathed, her rapid pulse outpacing the dwindling countdown.

Three . . .

Two . . .

She pulled, yanking as hard as she could.

The cable ripped free with a metallic whirr, and she stumbled backward into the ring of spectators, falling hard to the floor. Strong arms dragged her to her feet, and the count dropped to zero, the whistle at Yancy's lips. But then the engine rumbled musically, and the sound breathed life back into her bones.

She was still in the fight.

Someone thrust the control box back into her hands, and a familiar voice whispered in her ear. “He'll strike hard and fast to catch you off guard. Be ready.” She felt a breath of warmth touch her cheek and then a gentle shove at her back, forcing her back into the ring.

She had less than a heartbeat to prepare before Darrow pressed his mech forward again, not waiting for her to regain her bearings. Reacting almost instinctively, she drew her mech to its feet, fingers flying across the controls as she narrowly dodged the first attack and pivoted hard, targeting a quick jab to the maintenance panel at the rear of his machine. The craggy, damaged claws of her mech's right fist swiped across the plating and ripped the panel free. The square of metal clattered to the floor, exposing a number of wires and glinting metal within the machine's base.

Darrow countered, lashing out with his remaining arm, but she was ready this time. She braced and absorbed the force of the attack, plating crumpling like a metal bruise as she locked her mech's arm around his shoulder, applying maximum pressure to the weak linkage joint.

The two machines skidded across the floor, treads squealing and metal screeching. Petra pressed her machine to the brink, engine whining, praying it would hold on just a little longer, and then, with a twist of the controls, the arm snapped loose, dangling by nothing but a bent rod.

Petra didn't hesitate. His last defense compromised, she moved her mech into position and dug her bladed fist into the machine's base, not daring to electrocute the systems lest a fire ignite all the leaked petrol in the ring. Darrow tried to escape, but he couldn't gain traction on the petrol-­slicked floor as she ripped through gears and wires with brute force, tearing his carefully crafted machine to pieces, not relenting until the telltale sound of engine failure brought the match to its end. She withdrew victorious, warped gears and bowed linkage rods littering the floor at her feet, soaked in petrol and glimmering iridescent in the electric light.