Nara and the dark-haired man appeared to have a silent argument, given the way he was staring at her and making faces. Eva wondered about that, and whether she should shut Sue up before something else sensitive slipped out. But this felt like a chance to get Miles to slip up, too, so she let it ride.
“I’ll tell you what,” Miles said, turning his attention back to Eva and steepling his fingers like a caricature of a holovid villain. “Let’s have a little bet, you and me. We’ll have a fight in the pit, and if you win, then I’ll tell you everything I know about Josh.”
Eva was going to punch him. She really, really was, one way or another, and it was going to be better than sex.
“And if you win?” Eva asked.
Miles gestured at Sue. “Then she stays here and upgrades my bot. With my supervision and approval, of course.”
“What?” Sue squeaked. “No!”
“For how long?” Eva asked, and Pink made a disgusted sound behind her.
“A month,” Miles said.
The silent conference between Nara and the other man seemed to intensify. Eva desperately wished she knew what the hell it was all about, but she had more pressing concerns. She couldn’t afford to lose Sue for a month, not when they were trying to find her brother well before that. But could she beat Miles? Was she sure enough to bet Sue on it?
Raising a finger at Miles, Eva turned around to Pink and Sue, leaving Vakar to watch her back. “He is, without a doubt, the biggest sinvergüenza I have ever had to deal with,” Eva said. “But he knows something, and we need to know it, too.”
Pink shook her head. “Min could probably eat him for breakfast, but she’s out of practice and it’s risky as hell. We should figure out another way.”
“Oh, we need a backup plan regardless,” Eva said. “This way we get to beat his ass until he cries like a baby with a dirty diaper.”
“Not worth it.” Pink paused. “Okay, theoretically worth it, but still. Min doesn’t even have a bot.”
“Um, yeah, she does,” Sue said, and both Eva and Pink looked to her simultaneously.
“What are you—oh no,” Eva said, shaking her head. “I know you’re not talking about that mess of parts I’ve been graciously ignoring all over the cargo bay.”
Sue’s pale face flushed pink, but she frowned and jutted her chin out at Eva. “It works fine, I just like tinkering. I can have it ready to fight in under an hour.”
“That wouldn’t give Min much time to learn how to control it,” Pink said. “But she did manage to get qualified for deep-space jaunts faster than a scared rabbit, so I expect she can handle this.”
“And in the meantime, we figure out our contingencies,” Eva said. “Sue, are you sure you want to do this?”
Sue’s face hardened like her features were setting in concrete. “Yes. It’s like you said, he knows something.”
Eva squeezed the girl’s shoulder and leaned in to whisper in her ear. “If he wins, no way are we leaving you here for a month,” she said. “We’ll bust you out, okay?”
Sue nodded, raising a clenched fist. “We won’t lose.”
Pink rolled her eyes but nodded acceptance.
Eva turned back to Miles, unable to conceal her grin. “You have a deal, Erck. Better warn your boss that his champion is about to get spanked by a professional.”
“Well, actually,” Miles said, “I’m going to win, so I don’t have to tell her anything, and also you’re not a professional bot fighter.” He raised his eyebrows and smirked as if he’d just scored a point and leaned back in his seat again.
Before Eva could respond, one of the people in his booth leaned over and said something to him that made him sigh. “I forgot,” Miles said. “Tonight is mixed-team fights. So unless you can find two friends to help you out, the bet is off.”
Eva rolled her eyes and turned back to Sue and Pink. “Maybe Min’s friend would join up?”
Pink shrugged. “We can ask. But we’d still need a third, and a second if they aren’t interested.”
“I can fight in Gustavo,” Sue said. Eva and Pink started to berate her, but she waved them off. “I can do it. You know I can.”
She wasn’t wrong; Sue had been a help during several Fridge raids in the past six months. Mostly she set things on fire or had her little yellow bots rush out to mob her opponents, but it worked, and she’d only been injured badly once when she slipped on one of her own bots while standing up inside Gustavo to shoot at someone with a pistol.
“Fine.” Eva scripted a quick q-mail message to Min, then pinged her to check it in case Min had turned off her notifications.
The response came back quickly: “Yay I will crush him, Yeon-ha won’t fight him sorry” with a crying bunny face picture appended.
“Me cago en diez,” Eva said. “We need a third.”
Miles must have seen her glum expression, because he laughed, and his laughter spread like a farty methane fire to his companions. “Looks like you’ve already lost.” He spread his legs wide under the table and rested his arms on the back of the booth. “It’s too bad. If your bots are anything like your terrible spaceship, they’d fall apart before they even made it to the pit. You probably wouldn’t have enough useful pieces left to fit in a suitcase.”
Eva opened her mouth to reply, then shut it, a slow smile spreading across her face. “Funny you should mention suitcases. I just remembered I have exactly the one I need. See you later, champion.” She flipped off Nara and the black-haired man for good measure before turning around and heading toward the exit.
“What in the blue blazes are you talking about?” Pink asked, once they were far enough away that Miles wouldn’t hear them.
Eva’s smile widened and she sighed happily. “I’m going to get to punch him myself.” She whistled a cheerful tune and held on to that thought for their entire trip back to La Sirena Negra, feeling like she’d found a winning lottery ticket and couldn’t wait to cash it in.
Eva and her crew returned to Medsammensvoren later. Although bots were presumably a regular sight in The Sump, theirs still earned a lot of curious looks from the people milling about in the streets. Sue sat inside Gustavo with a bunch of her tiny yellow creations climbing all over her making nervous squealing noises, the rest either waiting on the ship or tucked away into their own secret compartments in the mech. Min had immediately christened her new bot Goyangi and was using it to carry her human body in its arms like a baby, occasionally shifting position for comfort. Fully assembled, it was almost three and a half meters tall, humanoid and bulky and built like a tank.
Eva strolled along happily next to Vakar, who carried a certain stolen briefcase with its bright-red caution tag still intact. His smell was an unpleasant mix of tar, incense, and farts, and he had made clear that he wished she wouldn’t use the Protean armor because of its inherent dangers, but they agreed it was their only option if they wanted to engage with Miles on his level.
“The odds of it collapsing in the middle of a fight are, what, tiny,” Eva had said.
“Thirteen percent,” Vakar had replied.