The Mechaneer

Chapter 24: Breaking Point

Chloe's flight suit sloughed off water as Rudy eased the mag-cycle off the streets of the port village. The leaking, nuclear-ravaged highway had flooded over her head at times. Fortunately, the mag-cycle, and her and Rudy's flight suits, worked underwater. More fortunately, Rudy had been right about the wisdom of the Wellachan founders: the highways flooded, but they did not sink.

Chloe resisted the urge to shake the remnants of Wellach's world-ocean from her. Rudy had cautioned against making noise.

"Hell of a ride, eh, Clo." He sounded tired and sullen and painfully loud. His words echoed off wet metal walls and the open ocean at the far end of the alley and up toward the distant sunlight reflecting off the spires flanking them.

She put a finger to her lips.

He tossed an exhausted wave. "Screw it. We're out of hot water for the moment."

"How can you possibly know that?"

"Same way I could possibly know the bike would work underwater," he said, sighing. "I guessed."

Chloe wanted to argue. She started to speak. She ended up slumping on the steps leading up to one of the buildings, head in her hands, legs splayed. Her whole body ached from the wind resistance she'd endured when they fled the exploding platform. Choice muscles and bones promised extra soreness and bruises where the bike smashed into her during its frantic twists and jumps.

And the Feds had hit Algreil Aerospace over her.

That last hurt worse than all the aches and pains in the world.

She felt Rudy's hand on her shoulder. "You okay, Clo?"

She shook her head.

He sat beside her. His arm snaked around her shoulders. "You gonna be okay?"

"Yeah." She ducked out of his embrace without even thinking about it, shifted to face him. "Will your company? Your brother?"

"I told you, Otto can take care of himself."

"He can't fight the Feds, Rudy," Chloe said. "Not and win."

"Maybe." Rudy sheathed his mask and ran his fingers through his spiky red hair. "Looked to me like he's been planning this for quite a while."

"Because of what happened to Kalder-Black?"

"Among other things."

Chloe cocked her head, but he offered no further explanation.

She said, "Why would the Feds think your brother had me?"

Rudy looked away. "Maybe they didn't," he said. "Maybe they found out about those milspec weapons at the Algreil arcology."

And maybe you believe that, Chloe thought, but if so, why not meet my eyes when you say it?

Had he told Algreil Aerospace about her? Had he planned on revealing her identity to his brother – or, more likely, had he already done it?

If so, why the crazy story about 'going to see an old friend of her dad's?' If Rudy thought he could get his company's considerable resources behind the search, why wouldn't he say so?

Instead, he said, "What now?"

Chloe searched for an answer.

An answer found her.

After almost a month without a strong hunch, this one flooded her mind like none she'd ever had. She could almost see her destination: a deeper darkness looming over the black of deep space, an inactive ship, a hulk, a silvery mecha within, glowing with inner fire –

"I know where I have to go," she said.

"And that is…?"

"A battlecruiser."

Rudy laughed wanly. "You back to 'turning yourself in,' Clo?"

"Not a Federal one," she said. "An Imperial one. A hulk. Where my parents found me."

"What's there for you?"

"Knowledge and power." The answers flooded her brain. She wasn't sure most of the words were hers. The feeling unnerved her more than she wanted to admit.

"Both sound pretty good at this point. When do we leave?"

"I have to go alone," Chloe said. "Too many people have been hurt because of me already."

"Fine."

She looked up, startled from the semi-trance state she'd fallen into.

"Fine," he repeated. He stood, stalked to the bike and started to push it toward the water.

"What are you doing?"

"What does it look like? This sucker is marked. I don't have time to fence it. If we're breaking things off here, I've gotta find my brother and probably prep for a war."

He really meant to leave? Chloe choked back the unjustified anger and the entirely justified fear flooding her. She'd asked him to leave often enough. To follow her hunch, she needed him to leave.

Asking, needing and wanting proved entirely different things.

"Before I do, though," he said, "answer me one question: how?"

"Pardon?"

"How do you plan on getting to this phantom battlecruiser? Let's review what you're working with here." He leaned against the bike and crossed his arms over his chest. "Stop me if I get any of this wrong. You have no ship, no mecha, no legal ID you can use, no marks, no contacts, no influence, no way to get any of the above, no proof of your claim the cruiser is still there – and no chance."

I have a hunch, Chloe thought. It suffices.

"The only thing you've got, Chloe, is yours truly." He pushed off from the bike. It rolled into the water with a spalsh. With its engine off, it immediately plunged beneath the crystalline blue waves. "So maybe you could be a little more grateful."

"How is it gratitude to put you in even more danger? Your whole life may have been destroyed because of me!"

"And leaving now makes that better how?"

"Things won't get worse."

"The hell they won't!" He strode back to her and grabbed her by the shoulders before she even realized he was moving. Chloe winced as his fingers pressed her sore muscles. He didn't seem to notice. "I've gone through hell for you, Chloe Rina Hughes! I lost a tournament – again – because you were here, I lost my bike because you rode it, I got nuked because you were with me, I maybe lost my brother and corporate gravy train because the Feds thought you were with him. I may be out of work and an outlaw besides, so you can kiss tournaments goodbye, and fame and fortune and fangirls – oh, yeah, my whole life is a damned wreck because of you. And what do I have to show for it? Not a single, solitary thing."

Chloe drew herself up. “Except saving your life!”

“So you fixed at least one of the messes you yourself said you caused,” Rudy snapped. “I better fall down on my damned knees and thank you.”

Chloe's shoulders slumped.

He was right, wasn't he?

If she hadn't come to Wellach, neither the Black Rook nor the Animus Hunter would have, either. Rudy had said otherwise once, when he still cared about making her feel better.

“I'm sorry,” Chloe whispered.

"You're sorry?" Rudy barked a laugh. "Sorry doesn't begin to cut it, babe."

"Sorry's all I've got to give! You said yourself there's nothing I can do to get to the battlecruiser. How could you expect some kind of payment?"

Rudy shook his head. "Sorry's all you're willing to give, you mean."

Chloe stared. Then she shoved his hands away. "That's what this is about? Getting me in bed? I am sorry, Mr. Algreil – but not sorry enough to do something I don't think is right."

"Your damned spacer morality means more to you than all the crap I've taken for you?"

"My parents mean more to me," Chloe said. "I will not disappoint them."

"Like they'd ever know –"

"So that's how it is? It starts with sleeping with you. Then it's lying to my parents. Or did you mean giving up on finding them?" Chloe spun away from him. "Either way, it just proves they were right to warn me about guys like you."

She hesitated, tensed, angry and scared and powerfully, inexplicably miserable.

Rudy said nothing.

Slowly, Chloe started for the archway separating them from the street. She concentrated on setting one foot in front of the other.

She almost made it to the arch.

"Wait," he said.

She stopped. Didn't turn. Didn't dare.

Her parents couldn't have warned her enough, she thought.

Rudy asked, "Where do you think you're going?"

"Away," she said.

"No."

"That's not your decision –"

He spun her around and pressed her against the arcology wall, uncomfortably close. "You think so, huh?"

"Rudy, you're hurting me –!"

"And you're killing me, Clo," he said.

"If you touch me," she snapped, "Principle as my witness, I will kill you."

"Touch you?" He shook his head. "Nah, that's not my style. You can keep your spacer morality and die an old maid for all I give a damn. But I am not your nob, your knight in shining armor. I am my father's son and my brother's brother, an oligarch born and raised. Not because we're born with mystical powers. No, Chloe – Miss Hughes – because we are the canniest, toughest, meanest sons of bitches in the galaxy.

"I told you when we first met. I am not helping you because you need help, or because you're cute, or because I get my kicks out of doing good deeds." The blue flame was gone from his eyes. They were hard and cold, matching his mocking twist of a smile. "I am helping you for equivalent exchange."

Chloe shuddered.

"I will have my equivalent exchange, Miss Hughes," Rudy continued, his voice ice, his grip on her shoulder steel. "I appear to have lost my company and my family and my job and my fame to the Feds. You will get them back for me or give me the power to do so."

Chloe managed to squeeze out a "How?"

"Knowledge and power, and knowledge is power," Rudy said. "The Feds seem to think you're more than just an ordinary nob. You seem to think you can figure out how to use that more than ordinary power. Right?"

"R, right," she stammered.

"Bully for you. When you do, you will use it for Algreil Aerospace. You will force the Feds to pardon the company and all involved. Or, if Otto is starting a new Civil War, you will win it for us."

"That's too big for me –"

"The Feds don't seem to think so."

"Then they're wrong!"

"You better hope," Rudy said, "you're the one who's wrong."

He stepped back, giving her room to slump against the wall and suck in a breath. She gazed after him through eyes rapidly clouding with tears.

"You're not gonna be my lover," he said. "Fine. You're no longer my friend, either, because right now I can’t afford one. As of this moment, Miss Hughes, you’re my employee."