“I’ll protect it with my life,” the recruiter said, holding it to his chest. When he pulled his hand away and offered it to Kest to shake, the opal was gone.
She took his hand and bowed over it.
Biggerstaff did the same. “Welcome aboard the Eight-Legged Dragons, Mistress Artificer.”
Don’t Get Hit
AS SOON AS BIGGERSTAFF took back his silencer and left, Warcry and I both started in on Kest, but she shut us both up.
“Don’t say anything unless you want me shot on sight,” she said, pointing significantly to her HUD. Meaning The Technols are listening to everything we say.
I wanted to be relieved that Kest was going to join the Dragons and we’d get to keep seeing each other, but the spying thing was insane, and she was going to be doing it alone. I couldn’t even tell her to be careful without giving her away.
I blew out a breath. “This sucks.”
“Not for me,” Kest said. “I get to leave this trash heap planet for a while, and I get a Big Five affiliation, all in one swoop.”
“Bleedin’ bully for you,” Warcry sneered, which was kind of how I was feeling.
The Coffee Drank angst was going nuts by then, so I shut down my original plan of a second can and shoveled down some more hash to counteract the caffeine.
My HUD buzzed. Your match is scheduled for thirty minutes from now. Absence will be recorded as a forfeit loss. Your current record is 0 W-1 L.
I hurried up and opened the Heartchamber’s fight schedule for the day.
“I’ve got an opponent,” I told Kest and Warcry as I followed the link to the guy’s Spirit ranking. “A Stone Spirit.”
Warcry sucked his teeth. “Don’t get hit, yeah?”
“Yeah, I kind of figured.” I thought about making a “clobberin’ time” joke, but neither of them would get it, so I said, “His Spirit reserve’s not majorly high. Only about eighteen thousand.”
Which was high compared to me, but didn’t come close to someone like Warcry. Last time I’d checked Warcry’s ranking, he’d had almost half a million Spirit on reserve.
“He doesn’t need to store much in reserve,” Kest said. She waved her stick hand at the walls and floor. “He’s got a huge supply here to draw on.”
“I’ve got Hungry Ghost,” I said. “That has to even the odds some.”
“Oi, grav, I was serious,” Warcry said, stabbing his chopsticks at me. “You eat too many shots when you fight. Even if you were well fit, all a Stone affinity needs to land is one solid punch, and you’re out.”
That pit in my stomach yawned wider as I nodded. Extra-strength Dead Reckoning, extra Ki-level enhancements to speed and skin-toughening, remember to cloak my Spirit beforehand, don’t lose, don’t kill him... I bounced my leg under the table to try to let off some of the anxiety building up.
“Also, you should wear your Parasitic pendant,” Kest said.
“Got it.” I dug the mosquito necklace out of my shirt and held it up.
She nodded, satisfied. “An offense where you break the skin would be good. Based on our experiments, I’d say blood is the trigger for the script.”
“Won’t be possible,” Warcry said. “I’ve beat Stone affinities six ways from the day suns. They don’t bleed, do they. Every one of the bleeders has got Stone Flesh.”
“You’ve fought them before,” I said to him. “What do you think I ought to try?”
Warcry blinked and jerked his head back a little like he was surprised I’d asked, then he glared down at his emptied rice bowl, tapping his chopsticks on the rim.
“Stones are heavy, slow,” he said. “Strong as bleed all. Stone Flesh runs down their Spirit fast, but like she said, they can refill on anything made of rock. Still, I’d stay back and force him to come to you.”
“What about a ranged submission attack?” I wondered. “Something they can’t defend against.”
“Yer murder grab?” He nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, ya might do.”
“All right, then that’s my plan.” Cloak my Spirit, use enhanced speed to stay out of reach, grab the life point, and try to get it over with as fast as possible.
I took a shaky breath and checked my HUD. Still twenty-seven minutes until the fight. I couldn’t sit there waiting the whole time with Coffee Drank charging through my veins; I’d explode. I glanced up at one of the holoscreens. The first fights of the day had already started.
When I got up, it seemed like my chair scraped extra loud on the tiles. “I’m going to head in and watch the early bouts.”
“I’ll come with you,” Kest said.
“Reel it in, netskin,” Warcry muttered. “Nobody likes a saloon gal who oversells it.”
Black lace rippled down her cheeks, and her eyes turned dark with anger.
“Do you want to know what the real sound of one hand clapping is?” she growled in an icy voice.
“Try it.” Warcry smirked and turned his jaw toward her, pointing at the five-o’clock shadow growing on his cheek. “I ain’t afraid to hit a girl back.”
Kest scowled at him, then spun on her heel and stalked off toward the arena.
“Well, you weren’t a douche for as long as you could stand it,” I said before turning to follow her.
“Don’t kill anybody today, yeah?” Warcry called after me.
I shot him the finger over my shoulder, forgetting that it didn’t mean anything in this universe.
Kest was just inside the arena doors, leaning her elbows on the top level’s railing. I went over and leaned next to her.
“How’s it going?”
She blew the fine hairs out of her face. “That was a completely irrational reaction.”
“You don’t always have to be rational.”
“A Metal head who could make it to Ten would be,” she said. “They would’ve specialized their kishotenketsu by now, too.”
“And what, found somebody to resonant cultivate with them?” I said. “Sounds like a party.”
She snorted and leaned into my shoulder.
I froze, not wanting to do anything that might make her move away. That close, Kest smelled like hot metal and something sweet I couldn’t put my finger on.
We
