But he couldn’t figure out a way he was going to manage any of it.
* * *
________
Stomping feet and ethyl grins. Rolling chants and clapping hands. Electric butterflies rolling in the place his belly might have been.
“Gamblers and raaaaaamblers!” cried the EmCee. “The final bout of tonight’s Dome is about to begin! In the blue corner, fresh from New Bethlehem and weighing in at seventy-one tons, give it up for…Paaaaaaaladinnnn!”
Cricket bowed his head as the platform beneath him shifted, the roof above yawned wide. Two hours in the work pit had passed in silence, and now Dome festivities were drawing to a close—all that remained was the heavyweight bout.
With a hiss of old hydraulics, Crick was lifted through the widening gap, and up onto the killing floor. The Dome bars stretched overhead, open to the night sky beyond. He could see the fritzing neon of Casar’s Place, a legion of people clustered like barnacles on the Dome bars. Sister Dee and her retinue were gathered in a VIP box, Abraham among them.
The EmCee crouched on a mesh platform overhead, dressed like a joker from a deck of playing cards. His face was ghost-white, his lips blood-red.
“In the red corner!” he cried. “Weighing in at seventy-nine tons, winner of last year’s regional throwdown and victor of six heavyweight Megopolis bouts, Jugartown’s champion, the Aaaaaaaace of Spaaaaaades!”
Cricket watched his opponent rise up from its pit in the Dome floor as the crowd went berserk. The Ace was a monster of a bot—bipedal, broad-shouldered and heavily armored. It looked like it might’ve been Titan class once, but it was so hardcore modified, Crick found it hard to tell. Whoever had put it together knew their business. And that business was bot-killing. His circuits flooded with self-preservation impulse, crackling awareness, cold trepidation. He wondered if this was how humans felt when they were afraid.
“You have thirty seconds to place your bets!” the EmCee called. “Tonight’s bouts were brought to you through the generosity of our fearless leader, the master of disaster, undisputed crown of the Jugartown beatdown, the mighty Casaaaaaar!”
A grizzled, heavyset man in the grand box stood to the rapturous applause of his citizens, raising a rusty cyberarm in salute. But Cricket’s eyes were fixed on the neon countdown above his head. Twenty-six seconds until the buzzer sounded. Twenty-three seconds until he was forced to fight at Abraham’s command. Twenty-one seconds until this whole grift went belly-up.
Nineteen seconds.
Sixteen.
He fixed his optics on his opponent. A 360-degree rendering of the Jugartown WarDome flickered in his head, a TARGET ACQUIRED message flashing around his opponent. The Ace glowered back at him, hands in fists, motors thrumming. Cricket could feel electric tension coursing through his circuits as he desperately scanned the arena around him, the combat data in his head. Looking for some kind of edge. The countdown hit ten, and he heard a grinding roar as great, rusty circular saw blades buzzed up out of the killing floor. A series of wrecking balls were released from the ceiling, whooshing across the Dome.
The crowd raised their voices, joining in with the countdown.
“Five!”
Cricket forced his fingers into fists.
“Four!”
Pinned in the spotlights.
“Three!”
No way out.
“Two!”
I’m going to die here, he realized.
And then, as if by some miracle…the spotlights died instead.
The countdown flickered and went dark. The spinning saw blades ground to a halt. The crowd groaned in disappointment as power across the whole settlement perished, the PA fell silent, the neon above CASAR’S PLACE dropped into black.
“THANK YOU, BABY ROBOT JESUS,” Cricket murmured.
He heard a distant explosion. The crowd gasped as the night sky was lit up by a blossom of flame. And as Casar climbed to his feet and roared for calm, Jugartown’s sirens began to wail.
The mob was momentarily bewildered, blinking in the dark. The Ace of Spades stood poised for battle, optics still fixed on its foe. Cricket heard a roaring engine. Squealing tires. The crowd on the northern side of the Dome screamed, scrambling aside or dropping off the bars. And as Cricket watched, a truck hauling a loaded tanker trailer collided with the Dome, bursting clean through the bars with the squeal of tearing metal.
The tanker exploded in a massive fireball. Cricket instinctively crouched low, blistering heat and white flame rolling over his hull. He heard screams of agony, rage, fear. The killing floor was on fire, the citizens in a frothing panic.
Jugartown was under attack.
A message flashed up on Cricket’s displays—INCENDIARY COUNTER MEASURES ENGAGED. He heard a series of clunks in his wrists, astonished as a burst of flame-retardant chemicals began gushing from his palms. It looked like whoever made his body figured it might set something on fire one day….
The big bot strode into the blaze, aimed the spray at the rising inferno. The chemicals swirled and eddied in the burning air, like the insides of some old 20C snow globe. The spray was heavy, white, suffocating, and the fire sputtered and died, black smoke rose off the ruined tanker and into the night above. But there was no time for celebrations. Cricket heard engines and panicked cries as a flex-wing roared over the Dome bars and began spraying bullets into the mob. Casar roared for retaliation, his bullyboys returning fire as the craft wheeled overhead. But the crowd was in full-throttle panic now, screaming and stampeding. Cricket saw more buildings were ablaze, fire and smoke illuminating the Jugartown sky.
His optics locked onto the flex-wing as it swooped in for another pass, its autocannons cutting a bloody swath through Casar’s men. A thrill of recognition coursed through his systems as he saw a GnosisLabs logo on the tail fins. A pretty young woman with jagged black bangs behind the stick.
“FAITH…,” he whispered.
The Dome bout was utterly forgotten. The Ace of Spades was acting under the impulse of the First Law, helping wounded people away from the smoldering truck, the twisted ruins of the Dome bars. But Cricket knew the math, knew the threat a lifelike presented. The biggest danger to the people in the city was Faith, not the fire.
The flex-wing came in for a hot landing on the street outside the WarDome. A woman Cricket didn’t recognize leapt out of the cockpit with an assault rifle, unloading a spray of bullets into the fleeing crowd. She had long black hair, hooded eyes, a face too beautiful to be anything but artificial.
“Run, roaches!” she roared, emptying her clip. “RUN!”
Another lifelike.
What the hells were they doing here?