Mech pilot Kira's Arc

Chapter 8 of 8

The summons came the morning after the bay fight. A tournament runner slipped a note under Kira's door at the Brassgear Hotel. Warhorn wanted her in his office before noon. Kira read it twice. He had watched her father's black mech tear through his arena on live feed. Now he wanted something. Warhorn did not waste words. "That black machine," he said. "I want it fighting in my pit. You're going to give it to me." "It isn't mine to give," Kira said. He smiled and turned a screen toward her. It showed the hunter records, the stolen core, her face. "I've kept the authorities off you. One call ends that. Bring me the black mech, or I hand you over." He tapped the desk. "You have one day." Kira went straight to the workshop bay. Her father crouched under his black mech, welding a cracked joint from last night's fight. Grease streaked his coveralls. He looked up over his goggles, tired the way he always looked tired around her. "Warhorn wants your mech in the pit," Kira said. "He'll turn me in if he doesn't get it." Scotty set down the torch. "He can want." He wiped his hands on a rag. "That machine follows me. It won't fight for him." "Then he burns me." Her father studied her a long moment. "No," he said. "We don't give him the mech. We give him a reason he can't argue with." They worked through the night. Scotty pulled a cluster of his metal rodents from a crate, their eyes blinking green, oil dripping from their jaws. He tuned each one to carry the black mech's power signature. Kira understood at once. It was her old trick, turned bigger. At dawn she walked into Warhorn's office alone. "The black mech is gone," she said. "My father took it off-world. But I left you something better." Warhorn's face darkened. "You think I—" She set a tablet on his desk. It showed the hunter network lighting up across the sector, five signatures matching the black mech, scattered to five worlds. The metal rodents, running. "Every hunter and every facility thinks that mech is in five places at once," Kira said. "They'll chase ghosts for weeks. That's your storyline, Warhorn. The unstoppable mech nobody can catch. The crowds already saw it fight. Sell the legend. You don't need the machine." Warhorn stared at the screen. Then he laughed, low and pleased. "A phantom. People pay more for what they can't have." He waved her off. "Fight your matches. We're square." Kira walked out with the debt cleared. Her father's mech was safe. But she had spent his ghost to buy her freedom. The Mech Research Facility would see those five signatures too, and they would come harder than ever to reclaim their core. She had bought time, not peace.