“Says the young man who has never been in battle before,” Hansen replied. She held up her hands in defense, then pressed her palms to her chest. “I know, I know, I am too young to have seen battle in the Bloody Conflict, as well. True, true. But I have been attending the tournament my entire life. My father established the practice with the Mister decades ago.”

  “Decades?” Clay asked.

  “Decades,” Hansen responded.

  “Then you should be a pro at this,” Clay said. “What do you need me for?”

  “The Mister has won the past five years running,” Hansen said. “The first four years he took a quarter of my hemp, a quarter of my cattle, and a quarter of my grey. Frustrating numbers, but livable.”

  “And last year?” Clay asked. “Let me guess. He asked for more than that?”

  “He did,” Hansen said. “Half of everything. Even took half my men. Then had them hanged.”

  “Hanged?” Clay coughed. “Did you say hanged? I thought the tournament was to settle disagreements. Hanging your men isn’t exactly settling anything.”

  “The prize of the tournament is set before the fights begin,” Hansen said. “I made the mistake of agreeing to the Mister’s terms, believing I had the winning pilots last year. I would have too. But his star pilot is just too good. I even hired a ringer, but he went down in the final bracket. Son of a bitch.”

  “A ringer? What’s that?” Clay asked.

  “You’ve never heard the term?” Hansen laughed. “You have been living all alone for a long time. A ringer is a sure bet. A winner. I found myself an experienced pilot. An old, scarred cuss of a man who said he fought in the Bloody Conflict when he was barely a teenager. Said he fought in the Battle of Carlsbad Mansion.”

  Clay’s blood ran cold. Hansen’s eyes narrowed and she shook her head.

  “You’ve heard of it,” she said. “Of course you have. The most brutal mech battle ever fought. Less than one percent of the mechs that day were able to shamble off the field of battle under their own power. Both sides took horrendous casualties.”

  Clay nodded. He knew of the battle. He’d studied it his entire life. Watched the vids over and over again to pass the time as his mech lumbered across the land.

  “Whether it’s true or not,” Hansen continued, “this ringer demolished the other pilots like they were a bunch of hemp farmers who had only operated tractors and hover tillers. One after the other, he put them down until he was the last mech standing. Then she came in and ended it all, like always, and the Mister had his half of everything.”

  “What’s the pilot’s name?” Clay asked. “Your ringer?”

  “Don’t know,” Hansen said. “Never got a look at him. Wore a masked helmet while he fought. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t a masked pilot in the Battle of Carlsbad Mansion. The man was under no obligation to reveal his identity. I had his mech inspected thoroughly. Every system checked and double-checked. No clue as to his identity. No hidden weapons. No illegal enhancements. He beat my pilots fair and square when I tested him. Barely had to take two steps to do it. But in the end he wasn’t enough, and I have been handing the Mister half of everything since last October.”

  “It’s September,” Clay said. “Not much time left before the next tournament. I can see why you need me if the pilots you’re training are all you have.”

  “Yes, very true,” Hansen said. “So, to formally ask and extend the respect you deserve as a mech pilot, will you sign on and fight for me in the tournament against the Mister so I no longer have to give him half of anything?”

  “You want to hire me as this year’s ringer?” Clay asked.

  “Precisely,” Hansen replied. “The man last year was good, but he didn’t have a watch like yours. I’ve got a gut feeling you are exactly what I’ve been needing. In many ways.” She gave him a smile. “Well, will you?”

  “No,” Clay said.

  “I’m sorry?” Hansen sputtered. The answer had thrown her. Her eyes went wide and she sat up ramrod straight in her chair. “Did you say no?”

  “I said no,” Clay replied. “I don’t fight. My mech is strictly for transportation. All I want to do is continue on to NorthAm. Just be on my way. I have no desire to die for yet again some never-ending local range squabble that has nothing to do with me.”

  “You wouldn’t die if you win,” Hansen said. She sighed and shook her head. “There is nothing I can do to change your mind?”

  “I’m sure you’ll try,” Clay said. “You’ll probably torture me or kill me or whatever. I can live, and die, with that. I don’t want to, but I made a promise a long time ago that my mech is mine and mine only. I aim to keep that promise.”

  Clay leaned forward, closing the distance between himself and Hansen. The woman didn’t shrink back an inch. Clay could smell her as the breeze shifted. The light scent of simple soap, a hint of jasmine, the musk of a woman who works hard out on the land. His stomach clenched and tumbled at the same time.

  “I need to keep my promise,” Clay said, dead serious. “Without it there’s no point to living.”

  Hansen eyed him, her body shifting forward, closing the distance between them even more. The scent of soap and jasmine and sweat became stronger, but Clay didn’t pull back despite the somersaults his stomach was doing. Her blue eyes held his. She reached out, and Clay fought the urge to flinch as she touched his cheek.

  “That is the most honest thing you have said all day,” Hansen replied. “I deeply respect that. This promise you made, it wasn’t just to you, was it? It was to someone you loved. Someone who meant more to you than your own life. I respect that as well.”

  “So where does that leave us?” Clay asked. “Is this my last meal, or will I get a dinner?”

  Hansen laughed and pulled back. She slapped her thighs and stood up.

  “You will get dinner and even breakfast, Mr. MacAulay,” Hansen said. “That’s how long it will take my people to find your mech and bring it here. That will give you time to reconsider. You’ll be my guest until they arrive tomorrow. Once I have your final answer, then I’ll decide if tomorrow’s breakfast is to be your last meal or not.”

  Clay stood as well. His instinct was to sock the woman. Just lay her out on the ground of the veranda and make a break for it. But he wasn’t an idiot. They had eaten alone, but they were far from being unobserved. His guess was at least two shooters, maybe even three or four, had their sights set on his chest and head at that very moment.

  “You don’t know where my mech is,” Clay asked.

  “Yes, I do,” Hansen said and smiled. “You told me exactly where it is.”

  Clay started to argue, then let the words fall away. She was right. Of course he had. The watch. When he’d opened it, the watch automatically sent a sub-channel signal back to the mech. He didn’t know how, since it shouldn’t have been possible, but Hansen had tracked that signal. While he’d been eating beef and greens and sipping iced tea, her people had been rolling out across the range right to wherever Gibbons had gone to hide.

  “Shit,” Clay said.

  “Yes,” Hansen said, her smile even bigger. “Shit indeed.”

  8

  The long-range scanners had been shut down. Had to be, or they would have alerted half the countryside to the mech’s presence. The short-range sensors were set to low power, dialed to detect only hostile movement. It was why Gibbons missed the half dozen heavy rollers that had parked themselves two ravines away.

  And why he missed the two dozen men and women who slowly spread out into a circle, cutting off all routes of escape.

  Gibbons was busy singing a song to himself, a long-forgotten hit from several centuries before. It was a bouncy tune about a man and a woman who fell in love against all odds. Most tunes were. He was into the second verse, about to dive into the chorus with full enthusiasm, anticipating the tricky change up the bridge presented, and had the cockpit speakers turned up to full blast.

  That was why external microphones didn’t pick up the crunch of gravel and the slip of shale as the men and women closed in on the mech.

  Gibbons was a capable co-pilot. Probably the best in the land. Mostly because Gibbons was the last in the land. As far as he knew at least. In all the travels he and Clay had been through, neither of them had come across another mech that had a co-pilot like him. Every mech had just a single pilot, usually a washed-out drunk or poppy junkie. But no co-pilot.

  Being the last, being the only, had given Gibbons an inflated sense of self-importance. He had grown cocky in his uniqueness. Just one more reason the men and women were able to creep closer, meter by slow meter, and prepare themselves to take down the fifty-foot-tall battle mech.

  Gibbons flat out never saw them coming.

  Not until they were right on him.

  “Oh, crap,” he exclaimed, killing the music and bringing up the weapons system. “Crap, crap, crap.”

  He hadn’t seen Clay since the night before. Not since the man had climbed down and gone scouting. The first couple of hours, Gibbons hadn’t worried at all. The middle few hours he began to get nervous, but it wasn’t the first time Clay had left and taken his sweet ass time getting back to the mech. It was the last few hours that had Gibbons sweating.

  Until he received a ping from Clay’s watch. Biometrics said Clay was alive, healthy, and not experiencing any distress. His heart rate was elevated and brainwaves showed slight stress, but that was normal for being out in the barren landscape. Sun was hot, people get thirsty, heart rate goes up, head starts to hurt, brain waves get all wiggly.

  Gibbons had relaxed when he received the ping and the reassuring data. He’d kicked back and settled in for however long of a wait it would be for Clay to return. If the man was on foot, then it would be a full day before he returned. The ping had put him at about forty kilometers away.

  So, Gibbons had found a nice ravine to hide the mech in, cranked up his favorite playlist, and waited. He had enough juice left for basic functions, which included his tunes. No hurries, no worries.

  Until the men and women with heavy bolt rifles arrived, their barrels pointed right at him.

  “Halt!” Gibbons called out over the external loudspeakers. “Unidentified peoples! You will remove yourself from the immediate area at once! And take those ugly bolt shooters with you! Not liking those things at all! Go away, peoples! Go away!”

  The men and women paused. They looked to each other, puzzled by the request coming from the mech. Gibbons sighed, well used to folks not understanding what was going on when he spoke. He cleared his voice, which produced an unpleasant squawk of feedback from the loudspeakers.

  “Here’s how it’s going to go, peoples,” Gibbons continued. “You’re going to either comply, which means you get to walk away without any harm coming to you, or you are going to be stupid and keep coming at me with those dag-burned bolt shooters and I’m going to be forced to unload some seriously heavy firepower on your asses. Your choice, unidentified peoples. Your choice.”

  The two belt guns on the mech’s hips came to life and started to track the nearest of the strangers. Those men and women froze in place.

  “I am not kidding around, peoples,” Gibbons said. “You are looking at twin guns of death right there. Fifty calibers of blood- and gut-spilling lead. You ever watched a belt gun rip through a human being? Not pretty. These slugs are soft. Specially made to do as much damage as possible.”

  The rocket launchers on the mech’s shoulders whirred to life as well. They spun about and tracked the men and women approaching from behind. Gibbons shifted the mech’s weight, and heavy steel groaned as he put some space in the mech’s stance. He activated the heavy cannons and two long barrels popped from their recessed positions in each forearm of the battle machine.

  “Come on, peoples,” Gibbons said. “Look at this shit! I am locked, loaded, and ready to make you all into bits and pieces of flesh and bone. If you do not leave within thirty seconds, you will be bite-sized morsels for the coyotes. You won’t have time to even say a prayer to whatever god or gods you pray to. Triggers get pulled, bullets, rockets, and plasma goes a flying.”

  The men and women froze but didn’t retreat. Then one of them lifted his bolt rifle to his shoulder.

  “You see, that right there, that is the opposite of what I am asking you to do,” Gibbons said.

  “It’s a bluff,” the man with the raised bolt rifle said. “Prerecorded message that runs when the scanners pick up something. We know the pilot is gone.”

  Gibbons muttered to himself more than a few curses about being the last co-pilot in existence. Of course they wouldn’t believe he was inside and ready to rip them all apart. If they saw Clay leave, then they’d assume the mech was abandoned. His uniqueness was putting a damper on his intimidation attempts.

  “Wrong, buckaroo,” Gibbons said. “This is not a prerecorded message.”

  “It’s set to say that,” the man said.

  “Oh, come on!” Gibbons snapped. “Okay, okay, how about this? That woman there, the one with the turquoise earrings and yellow bandana. She’s pregnant. That little fetus is lighting up my sensors like a pocket of geothermal on a winter’s day.”

  The man turned and looked to his left. He squinted at the woman with the turquoise earrings and yellow bandana.

  “That true, Elise? You with child?” he asked.

  The woman shrugged. “Could be true. My time ain’t come yet this month. Couple days late. But that don’t mean I’m pregnant.”

  “Damn thing must be set to improvise,” the man shouted. “Some software that takes sensor data and uses it against enemies.”

  “Never heard of a mech doing that,” a second man said. “Maybe there’s someone else in there? Pilot could have a friend, Able.”

  “Just because you haven’t heard of it, Lincoln, don’t make it untrue,” the man, Able, said. “We scanned the damn thing. Scanned the whole area. Nothing but jackrabbits and rattlesnakes for miles.”

  “What’s a mile again?” a third man asked.

  “It’s like a kilometer, just longer,” a fourth man said.

  “Old saying,” a second woman said. “My grandpappy used to say it now and again. Where’d you hear it from, Able?”

  “My grandpappy too,” Able replied. “But that don’t matter. What does matter is there ain’t no one up in that mech. It’s empty, and all we have to do is take it down with some bolts, then bring the crawler in and off we go.”

  “Oh, is that all you have to do?” Gibbons said. He started up the belt guns and their heavy barrels began to whir in the hot air. “You have ten seconds to leave, or what you’ll have to do is die.”

  “That don’t sound prerecorded,” Lincoln said. “Don’t sound like software. Sounds like the pilot got hisself a friend that stayed behind.”

  “Maybe he got a lover,” the second woman suggested. “Could be a queer boy.”

  “Hey, I’m queer,” Lincoln said. “Ain’t nothing wrong with that, Kirsti.”

  “Didn’t say there was, Lincoln,” Kirsti replied. “Just pointing out that maybe the pilot is queer and that’s his boyfriend up there.”

  “I’m not the pilot’s boyfriend,” Gibbons responded. “I’m not anyone’s boyfriend.”

  “See!” Lincoln exclaimed. “Ain’t no way that’s software!”

  “Okay, time is up, peoples!” Gibbons shouted. “Better start running or you all die! All of you! I am not messing around here!”

  The belt guns kept whirring. The plasma cannons on the mech’s forearms started glowing blue at the ends of their barrels. The rocket launchers locked onto their targets.

  But not one of the men or women moved.

  “Crap,” Gibbons said. The word echoed throughout the ravine. He’d forgotten to turn the loudspeakers off. “Double crap.”

  “See,” Able said, a wide grin on his face. “Told y’all that the scanners didn’t pick up any ammunition. Ain’t no rockets, ain’t no bullets, ain’t barely enough energy in those cannons to make them glow.”

  Gibbons cut the loudspeakers and started shouting as many curse words as he knew. Which was an extensive list. Scanners picking up the mech’s lack of ammunition was not good. Who the hell had that kind of tech? Gibbons studied the people’s formation and paid closer attention to the power levels in the bolt rifles. Fully charged. Only half of the men and women would need to fire the stun bolts at him and he’d be down. They knew that. They’d done their groundwork before even coming within arm’s reach of him.

  Gibbons’ realized the men and women knew perfectly well he barely had enough power to play his music, let alone defend the mech. He wasn’t even sure he could stomp a few of them to death before they took him down. Not good. So not good.

  “Okay, okay, listen up, peoples!” Gibbons called out. Then remembered he’d switched the loudspeakers off. He turned them back on and continued. “This is how it’s going to go. I’m going to—”

  He never got a chance to finish. Two dozen bolt rifles shot streams of condensed static electricity at the mech’s midsection. In the brief millisecond Gibbons had to think before every system in the mech went ass up, he realized the mech wasn’t the first these folks had taken down. Their bolt placement was too concentrated. Too educated. They knew how to disable a mech that didn’t have energy shields. Not that any mechs had energy shields anymore. Those days were long gone.

  Gibbons retreated fast. Locked himself away in the stealth decks just as Clay had told him to. They could search the mech for the rest of their lives and they’d never find him. Even if they found the stealth decks themselves, they’d still never get to him. Those babies were impenetrable marvels of modern technology.

  As Gibbons executed his retreat protocols, the mech wobbled on its legs for a few seconds, then listed to the right and fell against the ravine’s wall. The weight of the battle machine drew it to the ground, and it ended up in a straight-legged heap nestled between two stacks of boulders.