Clive lowered the rifle, his weathered, thin face unusually serious. When he wasn't putting on the crazed barbarian act, he had the look of an old soldier - even with the tusk piercings and face paint. "You got five minutes, Mister Reaper. Sentient or not, you're just a damn beast. I can have fifty of my men and their Legions here within five minutes."

"You'll be ninered by then. And then I'll kill them all. I’ve maxed my level and have two mandalas, and I can kill all day.” The lie came easily. I sat down like a cat, paws neatly together, tail wrapping loosely across them. "I took out Karkinos first try. You think I'm afraid of your ass?"

"I figured that was you. You and your little girlfriend." A flicker of doubt passed behind Clive's eyes. "And your jaunt into Karkinos' lair might have cost us the war. So what do you want?"

“First, I want to know how much you know about the real politics of the island,” I said. “Like how this place is basically run by the Russian mob, at least on the Centurions side, and the war’s being gamed by a bunch of Russian-speaking Sponsored.”

"Worst kept secret on the island," Clive said. "Go on."

"I have on good authority that Imperator Steele’s actual name is Nicolai Kaban. Ring any bells?"

"Not any I'm willing to discuss. What's your point?"

I slow-blinked at him. "My point depends on whether you're his friend or not."

Clive spat to the side, slouching back into his saddle. "After what those Society fuckers did to me? You've gotta be kidding."

“What DID they do to you?” It was worth a shot.

He scowled. “Other than murder me and send me here over a lousy little debt? Don’t think anything more than is any of your business.”

“Not my business, but I guess that means you were right, back in Vanara’s. Me and you, we aren’t so different.” I lifted my head, and let out a wheezy blast of air through my nostril vents. “Anyway, I’ve got a theory. And that theory is that Kaban and King Pig are the same person, and the situation on Malae is one big casino game where the only winners are the house.”

Clive looked like he wanted to argue. But then his mouth snapped shut. He thought about it.

“Y’know…” he trailed off, screwing his brows together. “That actually makes a whole lot of sense.”

“You ever seen King Pig?” I asked.

“Yeah. Only once. Big bastard, always wears a painted wooden mask.” Clive exhaled thinly through his nose. “Weird accent. Not Russian, but not-not Russian either, you get me? He’s always favored some… particular sorts of people.”

“Sponsoreds,” I said. “Russian-speaking ones who speak English with a British accent, or Brits who sound like they’re from Northern England. They get better gear than the rest of you, along with valor tokens.”

“Now you point it out… they do all fuckin’ sound like Limeys, don’t they?” Clive grimaced, rubbing at his eyes. “Fuck. Why didn’t I see that before?”

“Reapers are unusually observant.”

“Must be. Anyway, you’re right. The Russians and the Limeys get the top gear. Meanwhile, the rest of us get strung along. We were told that if we form a warband, climb the ladder, we get the chance to face the King in single combat if we get all three mandalas. I got two: one by fightin’ and one by fraggin’. But no one’s ever been able to get all three fuckin’ mandalas because the Cents camp Rachini’s spawn like a bunch of fuckin’ assholes.”

“The only way any of us are getting that mandala is if we kill Kaban.” I rumbled agreement. “Which is why I wanted to meet. Because if I can get to him, I can kill him.”

Clive spat a wad of chewing tobacco to the sand. “That so?”

“Sure is. It’s not a boast, because the fact is, I’m not meant to be here on this island. Reapers are from the two upper realms. In one-on-one combat, I outclass every gladiator and every other legion that spawns in Malae. Me and the girls can beat Kaban and his team. That’s a straight-up fact.”

The man made a show of thinking about it while he loaded himself a fresh chew. “Except Kaban’s got exotic legions himself. That, and your partner’s a goddamn Limne, because your girlfriend doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

I growled, and Clive’s nonchalant mask slipped for a moment as the sound filled the amphitheater. “She’s not my girlfriend, and she knows better than most. But my offer is this: we soften up Fortuna while you psych up the Pigs into an army. We start the city burning, and while your team sieges the city, me and my team kill Kaban and clear Rachini. We get our third mandala, and you get to become the next and only King Pig," I said. "But in return, you let the unaffiliated slaves in the city go. All of them. Let them retreat west, and round up the Centurions for the mines. The Sponsoreds are gone, the board is reset.”

Clive’s brows shot up. “You think I’d just let all the slaves go, eh?”

“Think about it. Kaban is supported by the guys on the outside, this Paragon Society. The only worth we have for them is the entertainment value we bring to the audience. You need someone to fight against, strive against, or else the Paragon people will kill you and replace you with another Kaban. So if you cede the west to the freedmen, you set up a new, exciting kind of war. One that’ll net you a ton of viewers, a ton of patrons and loot. Then you can clear Rachini and Ascend whenever you want to. Pass the mantle on to some other poor son of a bitch.”

“Assuming we aren’t all killed trying to crack Fortuna.” Clive sniffed and hawked.

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“You want to get old and die here? Hate to say it, Clive, but you’re already no spring chicken. Someone younger and hungrier will take you down eventually, unless you risk it for the top.”

Clive’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t reply for several long seconds.

“Alright, smart guy. I’ll do it on one condition,” he said, snipping each word at the end. “You and your brats help me and my Legions defeat Rachini. You clear her once, then you support me to clear her.”

"That depends on what my trainer wants. But she might agree to loan me," I lied. No sense throwing one of my aces on the table. "I chewed up Vanara and Karkinos. I'll do the same to Rachini."

“That’s my condition,” he said flatly. "And I want to know what you get out of this."

"Me personally? Revenge. Kaban's people murdered me and put me here in the body of a monster. I want them all dead." I had to suppress the urge to lunge at Clive, at the gleam of greed now lighting his eyes. It was an ugly, unself-conscious expression. "And besides that? This place needs a shakeup. I want to rattle the bars, and of all the people here who have a shot at holding power, I think you're the best horse to bet on."

Clive regarded me suspiciously. "And what makes you think that?"

“Because you aren't Sponsored. You aren't one of the Paragon people. And you’re military.”

“How the fuck you know that?”

“Don’t know it for sure. But I can tell.’

His features flickered. A moment of grief, of shame. "Total War Vet. Nine years in the Marine Corps. I was a Gunny… earned a fucking Purple Heart, for christssake."

"Damn straight. Targent was a mob lawyer, and Kaban is some kind of mafia shithead. You want to know why I'm here, as a sentient? Because I was a cop, and they wanted to try and inflict maximum suffering on me. Well, fuck 'em." I let my tail start lashing, the bladed tip flicking back and forth across the ground. "They earned what's coming to them. And you'll get what you’re owed, if I have my way."

Clive chuckled, then flashed a brown gap-toothed grin. “Heh… you’re not so bad after all, Mister Noodles. So you want the slaves released. All of ‘em replaced with the Cents. I can do that. You got a plan, or did you come here looking for one?"

"Of course I've got a plan. Pull your map out, and let me show you what I’m thinking.”

***

I’d been able to get a good picture of Fortuna from the maps Merc shared with Angel, and by extension, me. Like Eden, Fortuna had been built in the ruins of another, older city, all heavy stone slabs and looming rectangular arches.

There were three gates into Fortuna: south, east and west. The western gate was the main entrance, with a marketplace and crafting district. Rachini’s Temple of the Sun occupied a plaza in the center-north of the city. The terraced hills to the north of that plaza were the ‘nice’ part of town, where the rich people looked down over the rest of the city from their villas.

The main avenue through the city ran from the western gate to the eastern and beyond, all the way to the Ironside Mines four miles outside of the city limit. Inside of the eastern gate were the slums and main military training areas. The largest barracks was just outside the city walls on the eastern side. There also looked to be some kind of camp or prison just outside the mines themselves. All of it kept the bulk of the garrisoned soldiers close to the largest concentration of slaves in the city.

The south gate faced the farmlands that fed Fortuna and, I assumed, the Centurions on expedition. Those farmlands had a wall of their own, meaning that the southern gate was effectively two gates instead of one. All in all, a pretty intimidating setup. But there were weaknesses.

The Western Gate was the most obvious point of entry for an army. The Centurions knew it, too, which was why it was fortified to shit. I figured the towers flanking the western gate housed the soldiers on rotation to the warfront. They’d go out, fight Pigs on the front lines for a while, then return to their housing in West Fortuna and swap out with the fresh troops. A month of rest and cozy guard duty, and then the switcheroo would happen again.

But the southern gate... the double lock system to protect the farmlands was a flaw. Its only benefit was to make the farmers feel safer: not only from external threats, but from their own slaves. The farms were laid out plantation-style, and I figured the workers were almost all enslaved. The masters were just as concerned with them getting out as they were with keeping threats from getting in. For that reason, I was willing to bet the guys guarding southern gates – especially the inner gate - were glorified mall cops. The underachievers, who were used to beating on people who couldn’t defend themselves.

“The South Gate, eh?” Clive squatted next to me with the far-away expression of a man studying his HUD. “You know, I’ve been eying the same point of access since I started thinking about taking down the Centurions.”

“Great minds think alike.” I actually managed not to sound sarcastic. “But here’s my thoughts: an armed uprising in the mines will trigger that barracks near the East Gate to send reinforcements away from the city. They’ll hear the alarms, saddle up, and ride out to Ironside. Meanwhile, the whole clan will rile up. I’m willing to bet my lives a slave uprising will draw units away from the western gate to the center, while the elite units and Sponsoreds mobilize to protect north the city.”

“Hmm…” Clive spat some tobacco juice to the side. “Maybe. Or they’ll start freakin’ about the plantation slaves joining the fracas and shore up the south. Won’t know until we get eyeballs on it, but either way… they have to spread ‘emselves thin trying to fortify all three gates, or focus on the east. But given how much ordnance is built up around the mines, anything that happens there won’t last too long. Not with tools and shit.”

“But let’s say they have guns,” I said. “A lot of guns.”

Clive eyed me. “Then they’ll take the Cents by surprise, at a minimum. And probably give ‘em a hell of an ass-kicking until they catch on and roll out the big guns. Catapults, machine gun turrets, and trebuchets. It’s the trebs that have kept us from making a serious go at Fortuna. All the gates have ‘em, and they can cream a formation out to about three hundred meters.”

“Angel, Lulu and I are good enough to sneak onto the walls and sabotage those trebuchets,” I said. “If we fuck up the slings or the counterweights, they won’t know they’re faulty. They’ll drop rocks on themselves instead of you.”

“You pull all that off, and we can take the southern gate,” Clive replied. “Guarantee it. But you gotta pull it off. So, I’ll tell you what. I’ll raise and bring my army. Then we’ll park our asses on the southern limit of the warfront and see if you and your… girly can overthrow the mines. You take care of those trebs and start the mine off, and we’ll ride right in and attack the city from underneath.”

“AFTER we set off the mines?” I narrowed my eyes. “The attacks will have to be simultaneous to work.”

“We have to ride for a day to reach Fortuna from our territory, because there ain’t anywhere to hide a thousand raiders and there ain’t any airdrops to deliver them with. Doubt the Cents in Fort Paragon down there are gonna put up too much of a fight against the entire fuckin’ Mongol Horde, but we still have to fight our way in,” Clive snipped back. “So you and your pet rebels are gonna have to hold the mines for twelve hours once we get the signal. Sabotage the Southgate trebs, drive the Cents out of the mines, and seal the tunnels or do what else you gotta do to hold ‘em. As soon as the mines are yours, we’ll steamroll in.”

I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the ‘if’s. The edge of the warfront was a long way from Fortuna. But I didn’t have the feeling Clive was trying to screw us – on this account, at least. And I recalled our bold words to Merc. We were forward scouts, the avant-garde. We did what had to be done.

“Alright, gunny,” I said. “You have a deal.”

Clive smiled. We shook on it. All real civilized.

Now I just had to hope he didn’t fuck it all up.