“Caly,” his voice rumbled inside her helmet, twanging her nerves like the strings of a badly-tuned guitar. “Shoot him.”
“Oh shit,” Caly said. “You’re serious.”
Caly sank into her stance, shoved the rifle against her shoulder, and searched for the shot. There was something wrong about the way Olm’s adversary moved—the human never seemed to go in the direction that his body was facing. It was seeing flickers of movement through a thicket overgrown forest, trying to shoot a jungle cat that had learned, somehow, to run backwards. She had to lead him from behind while blinking rapidly to focus her vision, made all the more difficult by Olm’s light show. The arena flickered from daylight to supernova, and back again.
And there it was. The shot.
Her fingers squeezed before she even made the conscious decision to squeeze them. The human spun in mid-air and planted face-first on the sand. A roar surged through the crowd.
Caly watched Olm walk up to the human. Heard him talking. In her head, she was screaming, what are you doing, Olm? Zap him!
The human stretched out an arm. Slapped the sand. Then, it was like a bomb went off under the arena. The hard-packed floor split open and dust erupted upwards. A cloud swallowed Olm and the human both, and it kept rising, becoming a dust mushroom that plumed over the stadium. Flecks of dust made gentle plick-plick sounds on Caly’s helmet and her air filters hummed as they worked overtime.
Caly shielded herself from the explosion, but there was no blast wave, only dust and the roar of the crowd.
“Olm. Olm, can you hear me?”
Something clunked on the watchtower’s roof. Caly rolled over, and stared up at the human, outlined in the dying glow of the sun. His vest was pulled back to reveal the gun still on his hip, and his lips were spread in a cocky grin. He looked couranoid enough, though his skin was all the wrong hues—like he’d been baked out of rough clay, without a hint of blue or black anywhere. Nothing at all like hers. Before she could stop it, some part of her brain registered him as vaguely handsome, maybe even cute—for a xeno—but that grin wasn’t doing him any favors. Not Caly’s type. Absolutely not.
But, as far as she was concerned, he could’ve been Belliphor the mortal himself, Caly never took her aim off his chest.
“You can’t be up here,” Caly said, silently reigning in her unwanted thoughts. “Leaving the arena is cheating.”
“Me?” the human said, “What about you?”
“I’ll shoot if I have to.”
“You already did. At me. Several times. In the middle of my match, which was most definitely not with you. Or don’t you remember?”
“That’s because I had to.”
He pressed his lips together and crooked his mouth to one side, studying her with those dark, flashing eyes. Then, he asked her a question, “You an orphan?”
He could have asked her about the mating habits of gorgon death worms, and gotten the same, bewildered response: “What in the sun-dried shit are you talking about?”
“An orphan. You know, when you were a child, were your parents around?”
“I? No—” she started to say, and choked on a hitch rising in her throat. She swallowed hard. “I’m not an orphan.”
“Hm,” the human said, as if he was heavily pondering this fact. Caly was starting to get the feeling this human-xeno was a few pieces short of a puzzle.
She could feel the rumble of the approaching storm, now. The winds whipped his poncho behind him and blew the dust clouds over the guard tower. His gun was still in his holster. She could end him, right here. If she aimed for his shooting arm, what could he do?
There was a scrap of stiff, rectangular paper clutched in his free hand. A business card? Caly’s visor automatically zoomed in and grabbed the image on the card: a motherly face, whose stern expression was somewhat undercut by the goggles that magnified her eyes to comical proportions.
“Sometimes,” the human said, “I wish I could even the odds for them.”
“For … for the orphans?” Caly tried to keep the confusion out of her voice. She’d dealt with crazies, stars knew she had. But this one—she didn’t know what was wrong with him.
“Exactly!” the human exclaimed so loudly, Caly flinched and almost ended him right there. “For the orphans, and for all the xenos. Give them more than a fighting chance. But I’m only me.” And all his excitement deflated with a sigh. “You know, Old Gran does everything she can for the little ones. She loves them, yes she does, but she’s just one person and there are so many of them, going hungry and all alone-”
“Are you fucking with me right now?”
“What?” He sniffed. And actually wiped a tear from his eye.
“You’re in the middle of a duel,” Caly said, “And you’re crying—to me—about orphans? What is this? How did you even get up here?”
The human snorted mucus back up his nose, and wiped his eyes again (Caly noticed his other hand never strayed from his holster) and he nodded, as if she had just given him some real good advice.
“You’re right,” he said. “Of course you’re right. I’m only me, but I am still me.”
“What?”
“Thanks for the help.”
Caly figured herself a pretty good judge of character, and she decided, right then, that this xeno was an idiot. She lifted her rifle, and was about to call the shot to Olm when the human frowned over her shoulder, at something behind her.
“What is that?” he said.
A trick. Obviously. It only served to piss her off. “Olm, I don’t know why he’s up here, but he is. Get your pistols ready.”
The human cocked his head, eyes still on the horizon. “Are they supposed to be out there?”
“Olm, come in.”
No response. And the harder the human stared, the more her mind itched, until Caly started to wonder if that high-pitched whine was more than the wind. Of course, this alien asshole was only trying to distract her, and the moment she turned her head to look, he’d whip that over-sized pistol out of his holster and shoot her. Why is that they always have to compensate?
“Oh,” The human said, almost breathless. “Look how many there are.”
Below the burbling rumble of the approaching storm, engines whined and wheels hissed on the sand. Barrel still pointed at the human, she turned her head.
Huge, umber clouds of dirt and sand billowed up to the sky, a dark wall that swallowed half the horizon. Static buildup danced atop the storm heads, but Caly’s breath caught at a different sight: an armada of vehicles, wider than the city of Old Ocotiyo, poured out from the storm clouds and thundered down the cliffs. Hovering war bikes, missile trucks with tires as tall as Caly, and a few demolishers propelled by repulsor engines or trundling forward on treads made to crush through stone walls. A sea of technicals—old jallopies, scrap cars, and homemade death traps—bristled with xenos and guns. Lots of guns. There was even a supply hauler dragging a train of those long, chrome tankers, and one custom-made vehicle that looked like a cross between a tank and an armored land yacht.
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She knew that tank. Zyroc? Caly thought. Here?
The missile trucks stopped, letting the rest roll past. Their beds lifted, aiming their cylinders to the sky. White streaks rose up, like the roots of ghostly trees, climbing across the blue sky. Of the hundreds of “roots,” her helmet highlighted one in bright, glowing red. The missile looked so strange from this angle. She saw no rounded tip, nor smoke trail, just sharp fins radiating around a white circle.
This is how I die? She thought. And then, Fuck that.
Caly swung her rifle around—it had the wrong kind of rounds, she had no time to aim, had no idea if a bullet would detonate the warhead or just make a hole in the body—when the human’s arm collided with the neck of her suit, throwing her down. Her helmet thunked on the wooden slat of the roof, jolting her skull. A blast of heat ripped the air where she’d been standing as the blurred missile disappeared into the still-rising dust of the arena. It hit something, making the ground shudder and sending a cloud of fire into the dust.
Dazed, Caly’s senses came back to the ear-raking whine of hundreds of repulsor engines and wheels hissing through sand. Zyroc’s armada crashed against the edge of town, smashing the shanties and ranch houses on the perimeter, and filling the furthest streets with the mad crackle of gunfire.
Then, she remembered the human. She rolled to face him, finger on the trigger.
The human wasn’t looking at her. He was crouched on the edge of the guard tower, watching the armada crash into the city (the wall of dust just behind it) with a thoughtful expression on his face, as though he was only sitting at a card table, trying to figure out if he should play the six of blades or the jack of bullets.
“Looks like an invasion,” the human said.
Caly sat up. The dust was messing with her helmet’s locking sensors, but she didn’t need a full count to see the truth. “It is an invasion. That bastard is breaking the Peace.”
“Huh.” The human scratched at the stubble on his chin.
Caly rolled over, and whispered into her earpiece, “Olm, do you read me? We gotta make tracks.”
A low warning klaxon, too loud and too late, vibrating the slats of the tower’s roof. Others klaxons took up the call, only adding to the frenzied noise. From up here, Old Ocotiyo looked like someone had kicked a hill full of blood ants, some running away from the commotion, but many more running toward it, waving weapons of their own. Caly tore herself away from the scene below, climbed to her feet, and trained her weapon on the human.
“Don’t even think about following m—”
He wasn’t there. Nowhere to be seen, in fact. Only a curl of dust where his boots had just been. How … ?
“Caly,” a rough voice scraped over her earpiece. “What’s going on? I can’t see anything.”
“Zyroc’s here. He used the storm to hide his whole damn armada. They’re blowing up the city.”
“But he was the one who told us to come out here.”
“Yeah,” Caly said, pensively. Thinking the same thing Olm was thinking: he set us up.
“How does he expect us to pay him back if we’re dead?”
“Not sure he cares about the money.”
“Caly. Everyone cares about the money.” Which was true. But it only brought the problem to the forefront: she still needed Zyroc. Which meant they still had to get his money. And, somehow, Caly doubted the tournament would continue in the midst of a full-blown invasion …
“Olm,” she said sharply. “Meet me in the betting house. I’ve got a new plan. We’re going to clear out the vaults before someone else thinks of it, too.”
“Good plan, but, uh, Caly?”
“What?”
“The human. He did something to my armor.”
With all the wind, the dust in the arena was only just starting to settle. Olm was flat on his back. His arms were out wide, and he rocked from side to side. “Uh,” he said, a little embarrassed, “It’s locked up on me. Think you could lend me a hand?”
Chances were, the bursars, the bettors and—void—even the scullery crew would have the same idea: crack open the vaults, and pull out every last bill they could get their hands on. Any time she wasted would cost her dearly.
If Caly had been more like her mother, the choice would’ve been simple. Old Ocotiyo’s betting vaults were flush. The Mayor loved his tournaments. I could pay off my debt, and buy Zyroc’s sponsorship—easy. No more waiting. No more stealing, or cheating, or dragging my ass across the wastes.
I could get off this planet.
Old Ocotiyo was catching fire. A stampede shook the stands as hundreds of onlookers ran for it. All that smoke and dust and the singing of engines and the chain rattle of heavy weaponry. And below it all, the vaults, overflowing with wealth.
But Caly, for better or worse, was not her mother—a fact she had been reminded of every day of her life. She rubbed a hand on the nodules on the forehead of her helmet, where her horns should be.
“I’m coming to get you, partner. Sit tight.”
***
Curtains of smoke and dust blotted out the sun, yet still the ever-present shadow cast by one of the Spirine’s thorny stems cut the arena in half.
Caly stood over Olm’s prone form, his arms spread wide. “What happened to you?”
His armor was frozen. Olm couldn’t even turn his head, so he just looked at her from the corners of his eyes. “I have no idea.”
She kneeled and started clearing the sand out of the armor’s hydraulics. It was an old family heirloom, he always told her, and Caly loved to joke that the thing was older than the Synod itself. It had been rusted and in dire need of repair long before Caly and Olm came to New Nowhere.
“He was fast,” Olm said. “Faster than anything I’ve ever seen. The way he moved … I couldn’t see him. He was in four places at once.”
Olm might be old, but he wasn’t that old, and his eyes were sharper than any xeno Caly had ever met. Sharper than hers, when it came to close combat, at least. There were many reasons the couran unity loved their hrutskuld soldiers. So Caly put her fingers on his neck (one of the few soft spots on a hrutskuld).
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Checking your temperature.”
“I don’t have a fever.”
“Well, you’re talking crazy.”
“I’m telling you, Caly. He was a blur.”
“Uh huh.”
“Get me up. Please.”
Caly tipped Olm’s body, grunting with the effort of lifting his huge bulk, but the armor was so locked up, she couldn’t get a good angle.
“Help me out here,” she said, and Olm obliged by straining his legs and awkwardly twisting inside the rigid joints of his armor. When he was on his side, Caly dug her gloved fingernails under the backplate and jabbed at the manual reset.
“He moved so fast,” Olm said, his voice still filled with disbelieving awe. “Like he wasn’t moving at all.”
She felt the reset button click, and Olm’s armor snapped like a reverse bear trap as all the half-extended plates retracted. Olm grunted as he was finally able to relax. He blinked up at her, like he was still trying to tease out the meaning of some confounding riddle, “It’s not possible to move that fast. Is it?”
“Olm. The vaults.”
“Right,” Olm cleared his head with a shake. “Let’s go.”
***
A fan buzzed in the corner of the ceiling, oscillating back and forth, ruffling sheets of paper on someone’s desk. Big windows overlooking the arena muffled the cry of klaxons, along with the crackle of gunfire and the occasional thud of a ballistic slamming into another brick building. Otherwise, the betting house was eerily quiet.
Anger and defeat flooded her veins. “We’re too late,” Caly said.
“What happened to them?” Olm asked, nudging a guard who was lying on the floor. There were three of them, but Caly didn’t see any bullet wounds or burn marks or anything…
“I think this one’s still breathing. They all are. Something knocked them out.” Olm put a hand over his nose and mouth, as if to ward off any sleeping gas, but Caly’s helmet didn’t register any airborne abnormalities. She searched the registers, all of which were already open. A few low-end coins someone was too hasty to grab, and that was all that was left. Frustration rose like bile in her throat.
Someone had busted the vault door wide open, the huge steel bank doors twisted against the walls. Inside, there was only one chest, but it was a big one. This, too, was open. And empty.
Caly’s nostrils flared. Her hands gripped so tight, she could feel her fingernails digging into her gloves. Her vision went a soft blue, and condensation started to fog the corners of her visor.
There was something rectangular on the floor. Too small and too white to be a Synar, the most common currency, even all the way out here. She bent down to pick it up, and turned it over. It read, “Old Gran’s Orphanarium: the home **every** orphan deserves.” On it, a xeno with goggled eyes frowned back at her.
“The human,” Caly said acidly. “He got here first. He took all of it. Stole it all.”
“And knocked out the guards?” Olm asked, kicking one of them in the gut, just enough to make the guard moan.
Caly was so livid, her visor was almost completely white with frost. She had to think. Had to clear her mind. Had to—
“OK,” Caly announced, “New plan.”
“What’s that?”
“We’re getting our money back. No matter what.”