His grandfather really would beproud, she decided wistfully. And maybe yours would too.Maybe you’ve finally done something right. Even though Mom wouldprobably roll over in her grave if she knew you were withinspitting distance of Aengus Stone’s son. But Rem isn’t anythinglike his father. If he were, you wouldn’t have such a good feelingabout him, right?
Of course, it was possible that “goodfeeling” was a response to his sexy blue eyes and great build, buthe had also proven his worth by winning three Exemplarmedals, so how bad could he be?
“Let me get right to the heart of thematter,” Humber began. “Malara is under attack.”
Zia gasped. “By whom? Who would dare?”
“The Alluvans,” he replied simply.
“What? I thought we crushed them.”
Humber gave a sad smile. “They were defeated.Not crushed. Never crushed.”
Rem turned his attention to Zia. “Earth kidsare taught that we decimated Alluva. But that’s only in the contextof their culture. So yes, the Earth-Malara alliance destroyed mostof Alluva’s mechs and took ten percent of their wealth andresources as the price for defeating them. But Alluva still had itsexperts, its factories, and the rest of its capabilities. We knewthey’d rebuild their robot army. We just never thought—” He gaveHumber a sheepish glance. “Given their technology, we never thoughtthey could catch up to Malara. So the threat seemed distant. Almostnonexistent.”
“Exactly.” Humber nodded. “When the Earthconflict ended, Alluva was allowed to keep a modest fleet. Fordefense purposes. But we destroyed all of their giant mechs.And it takes so long—so many resources—to build even one colossus,we were certain they could never again be a threat to us in thiscentury, and probably not in the next. We were wrong. It seemstheir technology has advanced at a rate greater than ours.”
“When did they issue the challenge?” Remasked, leaning forward, his concentration now totally focused onthe ambassador.
“Last week. I received word this afternoon.Needless to say, I must return home immediately.”
“When will the first battle take place?”
“Tradition dictates that we have one Malaranmonth to prepare.” Humber eyed Zia closely. “How much do you knowabout challenge warfare, Zee?”
She could see from their expressions that themales—all of them—thought she was a complete foghead aboutsuch matters, and she was tempted to oblige them by babbling aboutthe scary robots and big, strong pilots.
But Humber’s opinion mattered. Plus, she hadpromised to behave. So she decided to surprise them all byshowcasing her knowledge.
“I know a little about robot warfare ingeneral, and a lot about Earth’s history with it,” sheassured them. Then she coolly described that amazingly awful day,fifty years earlier, when the Alluvans had appeared out of nowhereand highjacked Earth’s communication systems. Every vid set in theworld had broadcast their message—that they were challenging theplanet. In one month, at a place of Earth’s choosing, the twocultures would face off with a maximum of three armored fightingunits—a.k.a. mechs—on each side.
Humber nodded. “It is always that way. Thechallenger must give the target a reasonable time to strategize.And the target chooses how many combatants—up to three each.”
“But in our case, we didn’t have anyfighting robots. So it was totally unfair,” Zia interrupted. “TheAlluvans didn’t care. They still only gave us one month. And theyplaced giant robots in the hearts of ten major Earth cities,including Washington, D.C. Supposedly so we could design somethingsimilar, but really to scare us so we’d just surrender without afight.”
“They were in for a surprise,” Remmurmured.
She smiled. Rem’s grandfather Finn had beenthe U.S. president then, and he hadn’t panicked. Instead, he hadassembled advisors from around the world to brainstorm a response.Meanwhile, Zia’s grandfather had been busy too, adapting an assaultvehicle so that it had extra armor and a variety of weapons.
“Then Grandpa went to Finn Stone with hisplan. And against the advice of his task force, the president gaveDaniel Quito command of the first challenge.”
She could see that the males were hanging onher every word, like little boys listening to a bedtime story, soshe continued softly. “They met in the desert. The Alluvans wererequired by the rules to pick a robot of comparable size andequipment to the Earth vehicle, so they used the closest thing theyhad. Not a skirmisher, though. It was called—what? A jumper?”
“A prowler,” Rem reminded her.
“Right, a prowler. Thank God they weren’tallowed to use a giant, or we would have been obliterated. Instead,the fight ended in a draw because neither vehicle was usable whenthe dust settled. So the second challenge was issued by theAlluvans.”
Zia paused, imagining the bittersweet joy hergrandfather must have felt at that moment. He had done theimpossible, but now what?
Sighing, she continued. “We knew we were introuble. The Alluvans had a huge fleet of robots and a bunch oftrained pilots. It was only a matter of time before we’d lose, andthey would occupy Earth and plunder our resources.” Turing to theambassador, she said gratefully, “Then—just when we thought we weredoomed—you arrived.”
“Not me personally,” he said, laughing. “Butyes. We had heard that our old enemy had found a mineral-rich,underdeveloped world to terrorize. It was in our interest to assistEarth, although there are some in my world who still debatethat.”
“You brought your own fleet of robots—giants,skirmishers, prowlers,” Rem interrupted, his tone filled with awe.“And you brought pilots too. You would have done all the fightingfor us, but Daniel Quito insisted on helping. So you trained him ona skirmisher, and your generals admitted he was a natural.”
Zia felt a surge of pride as she recalled therest of the tale. “Finn Stone and the Malarans decided that thenext challenge would feature one giant and two skirmishers on eachside, right? That’s the battle where Grandpa made history bytoppling a giant with a skirmisher. It had never been donebefore.”
“And to this day, no one else has done it,”Humber assured her.
“Unbelievable,” Rem said reverently.
“It gives me goose bumps,” Zia admitted. Thenshe decided to wrap up the story. “That battle ended in a draw too,but for the next one, we went one-on-one—skirmisher againstskirmisher—with Grandpa as our pilot. He destroyed the Alluvan mechand saved our planet.”
Humber reached over to pat her arm. “You tellit well, Zia. And it leads us to
