Just Business

It starts with a gentle hum, the engine of my Triphammer. It’s low, rumbling, like a beast wakening from one long hibernation. Dormant power grows under layers of scuffed metal. Fuel ignites, backfire kicking against my back. Pistons slam. Whispers of smoke trail from the console tinged with oil and burnt iron. Shudders wrack the machine, tremors growing until the noise runs together and becomes something like a roar. 

All systems green. Welcome back, PEBCAK. 

Twin holopanes spread over my lens, obscuring the hanging wires and iron ridges of the cockpit interior with loading wheels and firmware updates. Unlike the stranglehold seats the refurbished military TAGs back home use, my Rockeater’s got some space. Not much. Cramped. Hot. It’s got to be close to what Jonah felt, if the whale were only fifteen feet long. But my arms aren’t stuck out for some jackass to cut off or shoot at, and I’ll take a cramp over that any day. 

Both panes clear out at the same time. Vitals, engine specs, reactive armor plating sectors, and ammo counts ring a visual of hangar doors creaking open. Beyond lies the dome and the arena proper. I visualize the feeling of taking a step, and attempt to do so despite the knowledge that the straps and braces keep my lower half from moving—nevermind the cramped space, or the fact I’m sitting down. As the visualization solidifies and the electric pulse of my nervous system is redirected by the myriad jacks in my spine, the Rockeater begins to move. 

My legs stay still; the TAG lifts its knee and begins plodding forward. 

As I clear the hangar doors, I clock the other competitors entering the ring—three other Triphammers. I’m zapped for all of a second, then relieved. Their TAGs are second-hand zef shitcans just like mine. Best of the three is a kif Landslide, native name a Gāng Tie Tāfāng. That one’s ex-military grade, arms all stuck out. The other two are a PanO deep diver, a Stonebreaker, with a bobblehead like a disco ball. An Ariadnan junker waddles up the flank, this Mekhanikazak Cavecrawler, a brick of metal and treads that’s more crab than walker. 

Easy marks. I play this right, the Landslide ends up ganged down in seconds and that’s an easy second place—first, if I want to sweat. Still not sure yet. Still not sure if there’s a brothel on this asteroid that’s worth my time, my attention, or my Skënder. 

On my left lens, a message request appears, ferried by my geist. It’s from the Landslide pilot. Jinpa, her name is. Yujingyu. Black hair. Short. Sporty. I scan their socials briefly before tentatively accepting the call and don’t offer access to my own socials when I do. “Yell,” I say. “Who’s this?”

My lens is filled with a still image of a winking cat. A woman’s voice cuts in, shrill, speaking in Chinese, and my geist translates with active subtitles as she speaks: “South seventy-two point twenty-eight ninety, east sixty-nine point thirty-four two,” she says. It’s coordinates. My geist is already multitasking, running the numbers with lightning precision. “’Member me?”

“Tanis, on the Teseum fields,” I respond, staring down an X on my geist’s proffered map. “Sorry, bokkie love. I shoot you too hard or something? Scuff your little Taggie’s shin?”

“Shoot me? Scuff me? Bitch, you blew my fokking arm off!”

I shrug, and the appropriate emoji wafts over the mutual stream. “Ay, no need for names. Was just business.”

“No,” she spits, voice dark in the hell-hath-no-fury kind of way all women get to only once you’re well and truly cooked, “business is business. Breaking your jaw tonight? That’s pleasure.”

“It’s important to note I ain’t got any enemies. An apology and a drink, could that work us out?”

“Work out your fokkin’ intestines,” she growls. 

I close the call. Some birds can’t be reasoned with; no point in letting them sing. 

At this point, the three other Triphammers have left their hangars and are squared off in a triangle along the arena’s outer ring. The hangar doors close behind them—and me—with a hydraulic squeal. But something’s off. I zoom in on the seats through my visual feed, straining to see through the flickering strobe lights and rotating holoads. There’s no motion. No motion, because no one’s there. The stands of the FZX are empty—the only audience members are a series of drones, cameras mounted front and center in lieu of flash pulse boxes. 

In the middle of the arena, the floor unscrews and opens up. A hexagonal steel crate raises up on an elevator between the Triphammers. Its individual sides are taller and wider than each of the TAGS on the stage, rusted and beat up and raked with long scratches along its surface—not scratches, but dents. 

Whatever impact caused those marks came from within.

A call brute-forces itself open on my visual feed. It’s some dwankie curly hair twig-body bird in a turtleneck, expression inscrutable enough to be inhuman. Her smile’s like a kicked dog’s, and her tone’s as authentic as her button nose: “Welcome, competitors, to our main event! My name is Samantha Ether Moneylady-Harboil, CEO, CFO, and FEO of the Financial Zenith Exchange—bringing you to the top and keeping you there! The arena tonight has been cleared out for our patron’s safety, but for all our viewers watching from home and our attendants behind our patented Safe-T Shields, excitement has never been higher!!”

I would rather the Jinpa bird have killed me than watch this safety-training-seminar level bullshit. ’Least back on the Corregidor it was funny watching idiots slip and merk out—doubtful this one’d end with the dull-eyed broad getting spaced thanks to a loose bolt, but high hopes carry me.

The torture continues: “In the west corner, hailing from the rolling hills of Springfield, USAriadna—Roger Smith, representing AKNovy! To the north, coming to us from the islands of Varuna, Bayu Adiputra!” 

As the two Triphammers peacocked, my geist yanked at the threads of my attention. Something had changed about the crate. I try to request a scan, but the live feed erupts with cheers piped in fresh from the audience and drown me out. 

By the time the sound faded enough for me to hear my own thoughts, the bird and her empty grin dominate my lens center once again. “From the hard-fought hangars of the Corregidor all the way to our south corner, we have PEBCAK! And while the arctic fields of Niflheim Huangdi on Svalarheima are her home, she’s no stranger to wandering: in the eastern corner, Cheng Jinpa!”

The Landslide revs its rock grinder. I didn’t need my geist’s warning to note how its shift in stance changed its trajectory from arena center to me, instead. A cursory glance confirmed the Mekhanikazak’s clumsy shoulder-mounted nonsense had followed suit. By now they must’ve done the math and guessed my junker was the most tuned, most zef one out of all. So much for ganging up—if the PanO had any sense, they’d be thinking the same. 

The lights dropped low, obscuring all but the periphery of the Triphammers on the arena’s edge. Camera drones linking in a circle above cast a spotlight down on the crate. “And now that I’ve introduced Team Red,” Moneylady says, “it is with great pleasure that I introduce Team Blue!”

There’s a pause that might as well be audible. The Landslide’s autocannon lingers, but both the PanO and the brick drop me from their sights. This isn’t a death match. No PvP tonight. If the pit in my gut’s reading her right, the crate’s got an occupant—and they’re our target. 

Moneylady sticks out her twig arm at the same time as warning lights start spinning on the hexagon crate’s corners. “Hailing from the rugged crags of windblown Khurland: weighing in at over nine tons with a bite force to match: with scales that can withstand direct hits from explosive ordnance that shred Teseum-alloyed armor: the one, the only—!”

There’s this great, terrible grinding that lasts all of three seconds before the crate walls drop—and there in the center of the whole motherfucker is a colossal winged reptile the colors of blood and bone marrow. Steindrage. A dragon. 

It’s then I know we’re well and truly fucked.

“Stein,” is about as far as Moneylady gets before the Steindrage kips up, eight eyes flashing, and shrieks loud enough to stun me without the hangover. Its mandible splits, tongue flailing. Both wings go up. Down. And it’s in the air before the PanO’s itchy trigger finger takes the first shot. 

There’s no bell. It’s on. A hundred hatches along the Mekhanikazak’s back flip and an Itano circus of missiles emerge, smoke trails swirling like the legs of a jellyfish. The Steindrage hits the arena ceiling, stalls. The missiles hit the Steindrage. Fire envelops it, followed by a belch of black smoke.

I’m not dumb enough to think that’s it. 

 For a heartbeat, nothing happens. Then, trailing smoke from its wings, the Steindrage drops like an axe onto the Mekhanikazak and splits the brick in two. All we get is a garbled, “Get them off me—” and the pilot’s done in. Not often you see a manned TAG cracked like a creme egg. Not often you see a fokkin’ dragon do it, either. 

I know that Moneylady can’t hear all the names I call her, but I call ’em anyway. Shout em, even. The Mk12 on my baby’s left arm primes while the coil on my right superheats. No way the Steindrage’s dropping on me without losing a leg. No way I’m taking that chance, either. Weapons hot, I do the smart thing and about face. 

No way we’re surviving. No way I’m getting stuck in an lhost out of my birthday suit by anything ain’t AnyRez. Out here, they’ll dip my Cube data in the ALEPH soup and I’ll come out the other side with a squeaky clean brain, no wrinkles, just like Big Brother wants. So I run.

You’d run too.

Hangar door’s shut. Knew that. “Need an exit,” I tell my geist, and it chirps that there ain’t one. So, palm flat on the hangar door, I ply that superheated coil to the metal and it sinks through. And that’s when the dead PanO hits me from behind. 

On Myrmidon Wars, you see TAGs getting at it in the fricasse with Ajax and Achilles every episode. Made sense—plenty of precedence, see: David v. Goliath, 11th century BCE. It’s when TAGs got on TAGs that my disbelief gets strained. See, big things like that, they don’t move the same, don’t got the same supple insides that makes impacts not so impactful when you’re doing the impacting. Physics ain’t physicking right when you’re larger than life. That’s why the JSA one’s got a sword—no joints to snap on impact.

So when two TAGs hit each other like a bowling ball and an appropriate pin, well. That’s it. I crumple. Lights out.

PanO’s down and out too, of course. Not a manned TAG so there’s no cherry filling but the hydraulic fluid’s red so I guess it’s strawberry instead. I’m prone, weighed down, and my coil’s dragged a big line through the door but that’s it. I consider dismounting before I remember I’m not a fokkin’ idiot and that’s when it touches down in front of me. The ’Drage.

My visual feed is nothing but wings and claws. Nothing but teeth, eight eyes overfull with exotic hate. Its mandibles spread and it leans down, close enough now that my geist is trying to read its scale pattern like a QR code, and takes a bite.

Steel screams. Sparks rain over my shoulders. Fill my lap. The interior lights flicker red and die, and a rush of cold air follows. To my left, the cockpit wall peels away and there’s big ugly point-blank without a feed between. Whatever audio came before is like a whisper in comparison now that the aural dampeners are offline, and it’s loud and close and the Steindrage’s breath smells like Satan’s asshole and I’m probably dead so I make peace with it the good ol’ Nomad way—screaming ‘fuck you’ as loud as I goddamn can.

That’s when Jinpa and the Landslide come in. She tackles it from behind, arm looping its neck, and jams that rock grinder up into its face. One mandible sucks into the teeth and shreds. Hot blood splatters me head to toe, fills my mouth, runs up my nose. I kvotch up my lunch.

But the hurt only makes the Steindrage madder.

What happens next, I don’t see. Just hear. Metal clanging. Roars. Jinpa’s grunting, transmit over comms. Screaming. The beating of wings. Twin impacts, one clearer than the other, and the Landslide falling head-first into the arena seating clear on the other side of the field. 

For an instant, the shadow of the Steindrage falls over me again. But only an instant. Its stony head bashes into the door, cracking through what my Rockeater had started. The door jerks open, and a cacophony of human voices and gunfire echoes out from beyond, fading fast. 

I’m content. Liability waiver aside, insurance payout aside—the sound of its retreating wings mean that this monster isn’t my problem anymore. Instead, I stay focused. No more camera drones. They’ve all followed the action, so I have a slim window of opportunity. Grabbing my heavy pistol, I shimmy through the gap onto the arena floor and make for the Landslide.

Like I said, I ain’t got any enemies. 

It’s just business.