Chapter 11: Rocket God

Rudy claimed he hated first rounds. As a former finalist at tournaments considerably more distinguished than the Wellach Cup, he had a bye in the preliminaries. For him, and for the other mechaneers whose previous achievements made tournament success likely, the first round was the preliminary. It was a slap in the face to make him face off against the local color, a waste of time and fuel. What had Rocket God Gil done at the big show on Etemenos?

When Rudy was in the mecha bay bitching to Chloe and his pit crew, he even believed it.

But he didn't hate first rounds. If he'd gotten stuck fighting in the preliminaries, he would have ranted for an hour about the indignity –

And loved every minute of every match.

Epiphany in sixteen meters of composite and nanomachines, bliss in the announcer's half-shout, half-scream “The Criiiiiimson Phoenix,” heaven in the first few seconds of slipping into the dance.

Sometimes, Rudy hummed while he fought. Sometimes, he outright sang.

It was goofy, and he'd never, ever admit it to a soul. Sure as hell never to a girl, or Otto – although Otto could review the recordings and see for his own damned self. But sometimes, Rudy sang. He had felt so alive only twice outside a mecha: the first time he slept with a girl, and the few times he slept with one he halfway respected.

The former only happened once, the latter only once in a blue moon.

But hopping in a mecha, firing up its thruster-wings, flexing its fingers for a fight?

That happened just about as often as he liked.

Rudy grinned through the hemisphere of information spread before his eyes.

His main screen showed the Wellach Cup arena in front of him.

He swept his gaze to the darkened windows of the Algreil Aerospace booth. He could just imagine Otto’s disgust at the field. Otto considered even elite mechaneers like Rudy inferior to his old Devil Rays. Rudy wanted to prove his brother wrong, but without a full-scale war, how could he? The Devil Rays had been good enough to hang with the nobs, or almost.

He turned his gaze to the pit, where his crew, Chloe among them, waited to refuel, rearm and repair the Epee – not that Rudy expected to need the last service, at least until he went up against Marcel Avalon. Since all his screens showed his mecha ready for action, he instructed it to give them a thumbs-up.

He felt more than heard the hum of electromagnetic field generators springing to life. Air howled around him as it was siphoned out of the invisible chambers of the arena.

The Etemenos Cup took place in the vacuum of the capital world-city's heart, with individual battlefields easily a hundred times as big as this entire arena. Wellach obviously wanted to make its tournament accessible to the common paying customer, so they created artificial “space” here on the planet.

A shame, in Rudy’s opinion. He liked more room to operate, especially with a nimble mecha like the Epee.

He tuned out the announcer’s drone. Rocket God Gil, Divine Auric Drake, Crimson Phoenix – only the third seed, Rudy thought with a scowl –, Weapon King, Quicksilver Angel, Death Ray Titan, Red Star Mantis, Black Rook. He was somewhat disappointed the local who called himself the Titanian Lighting Battler, the closest present to Chloe’s imaginary mechaneer name, hadn’t made it out of the preliminaries. No great surprise; the guy hadn’t even claimed invincibility.

Despite his wandering thoughts, Rudy was more than ready when some idol-orchestra he'd never heard blared the arena's fanfare over his comlink.

The gravity in Rudy’s section of the spherical arena vanished. Green lights blinked above his maneuvering thrusters to tell him they were now functioning properly.

He stretched his arms, already a little stiff from sitting motionless in the cockpit, and waited.

Rocket God Gil's mecha filled the center of Rudy's screen. An immense, ugly, white-and-red custom job with a cigar-shaped ship's thruster for a torso, it hovered with stubby arms crossed over its chest and its crested head thrown back like it was laughing. Somebody had painted sponsors' screens onto its sides; as a private owner-pilot, Gil needed big money backing to keep his “Rocket God” in fighting trim.

An insistent window on his right flashed the red and electric blue logo of Algreil Aerospace, trying to call Rudy's attention to the wealth of performance data, recorded matches, notes on tendencies and capabilities his crew had prepared on Rocket God Gil. If Rudy had been serious about showing Algreil Aerospace's products to best effect, he would have paid careful attention to those notes. He also would have read them in the weeks he'd spent hanging out with Chloe, tinkering with the Epee, looking into the mystery of Chloe's captured parents, and playing the toughest random challenges he could program the company simulators for.

Gil's grinning, jowly face filled the little screen on Rudy's left. “You got your wish, Crimson Phoenix. You're all mine.”

Rudy laughed. “Something like that.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I don't get you, birdy,” Gil continued. “What makes a man so eager to get his scrawny ass beat down he challenges me in the first round?”

“Somebody told me that you're mean to little girls.”

“The hell are you talking about?” Gil apparently didn't catch the reference to his conversation with Chloe three weeks before.

“Look at it this way: I like a nice, easy warm-up before I take on somebody like Marcel Avalon.”

“Why you –!”

As he’d expected, Rocket God Gil took the offensive, jetting forward at top speed. The massive mecha looked built for grappling. Rudy figured it weighed about four or five times as much as his Epee. If he allowed it to get a hold, it could probably crush critical systems.

Gil came on fast. In an artificial anti-gravity environment, a lot of mass generally meant a lot of fuel, and so a lot of acceleration – but not a lot of maneuverability.

Rudy slow-burned left, firing off barely enough to begin the acceleration process. His initial motion would be almost imperceptible, but it got him going in the right direction.

Abruptly, he willed his thrusters up to full power.

He juked left.

As Rocket God Gil soared past, Rudy snagged the bigger mecha by one massive arm and gave it a hard wrench. It shuddered from the impact and started skewing toward him, until Gil fired his gargantuan main thruster and reversed their course.

A boxy free hand swung toward Rudy, palm open for a grab.

He relinquished his hold and pushed off from the arm he’d damaged. As he sailed backwards, he fired off a couple of missiles. They were mostly for clearing out marines, unlikely to harm a mecha’s exterior – hell, they weren’t likely to do a lot of harm to its inner workings – but the force of their launch gave Rudy a little extra acceleration.

Rocket God Gil reversed his course.

Predictable, Rudy thought.

As he’d expected, even the cream of the local crop wasn’t much to write home about.

The bigger mecha lunged.

Rudy let himself drift left again.

He watched his opponent adjusting, prepared to receive the same kind of attack. It didn’t seem much the worse for wear from his opening move. Most of the dents and bangs on its surface came from the preliminaries.

Rudy figured it was more of an endurance design. A good choice for an inferior pilot who expected to face even more inferior pilots.

Rather than repeat his previous maneuver, Rudy abruptly reversed the flow of his thrusters and threw the shifting momentum into a kick. It smacked just underneath Rocket God Gil’s chest plate, sending a webwork of cracks through the weaker armor.

Both mecha hurtled away from the impact. Rudy would have been content to let it carry him to a good position from which to survey the action.

He was equally content to let Rocket God Gil blast back toward him.

Rudy slammed away two flailing grabs and loosed the Epee’s claws. He launched a slash at the bigger mecha’s right shoulder and was rewarded with the sight of shredding metal. He twisted.

One of Rocket God Gil’s arms hurtled toward the magnetic field separating Rudy’s match from his neighbors.

The other clamped around the back of Rudy’s Epee.

He grunted as the bigger mecha, obviously designed to kill in just such a manner, hauled him closer. Even with its inferior technology and but a single arm, it managed to smash him against its chest plate.

He’d expected as much.

What he hadn’t expected was the brace of rockets exploding from launchers in Gil's chestplate.

Armor integrity dropping, the message on his HUD read, estimated seventy two seconds to dangerous breach.

Clever. Gil's armor was, if not stronger, at least a hell of a lot thicker than Rudy's. Exploding dumb-fire rockets into the space between them would crack the Epee open before it did the Rocket God, to say nothing of the less advanced machines Gil usually beat up on. If both the bigger mecha's arms had held Rudy in a death grip –

But they didn't. Just one couldn't pin him, and rockets, even a lot of them, took time to bust through mecha armor. Rudy would dispense with Rocket God Gil long before his arsenal did more than heat up their hulls.

Wait, what?

Exploding rockets shouldn't be imparting so much heat.

The Epee's cockpit flashed the same lurid red as its paint job. For one horrible moment, Rudy thought the coolant had failed again.

Gil's grinning face filled his communication window. “How do you like them incendiaries my boys dug up? I loaded 'em special for you, birdy.”

Shit! So much for the big dumb Rocket God.

Rudy supposed he should have watched some of his opponent's matches, after all.

The HUD just had to add, Estimated five seconds to forfeit due to overheating.

Crap.

Four seconds.

Only one arm held him, so he had, if not options, at least a chance. Three seconds. With his free hand, he dug his claws into the crack he’d already made in the opposing mecha’s stomach armor. Two seconds. They passed through the damaged composite plating as easily as through paper.

He wrenched the chestplate upwards, simultaneously firing all his thrusters.

Gil's grin slipped. He flicked a panicked glance at his instruments.

“I like 'them incendiaries' just fine, Gil,” Rudy said. “Hope you do, too.”

An explosion of incendiary jelly erupted from Rocket God Gil's missile stores.

Rudy's Epee cartwheeled backwards. He stabilized himself in a crouch and killed the thrusters. In vacuum, even the incendiary jelly only burned for an instant. The Epee's coolant system stabilized with a second to spare.

Rocket God Gil careened upwards from the explosion. His mecha thudded against the upper limits of the magnetic field and hung there. Only the curses streaming through Rudy's communications suite told him the Wellach Cup Champion was still alive. His machine sure as hell wasn't.

Rudy allowed himself a breath, and a glance at his systems.

He’d underestimated, if not the skill, at least the cleverness of his opening bout opponent. Otto would be shaking his head in disgust.

He’d be right.