Chapter 94: Yield

  Rudy's head swam. His nerves cried out in imagined, or at least sympathetic, agony. Not just sympathetic. One of Zelph's blows had smashed Rudy's head against his cockpit, and despite his mecha and his suit both trying to adapt to cushion the blow, it had left him reeling.

  But, for reasons he couldn't presently begin to guess, he was still alive.

  He blinked away the blood pooling in his flight suit's eyepiece. Couldn't pilot that way. With a thought, the suit's mask folded backwards with a small crimson splash. He was bleeding bad and he felt like crap, but none of it was life threatening. Blows to the temple just bled like crazy.

  Sweat mingled with his blood. The Epee, true to form, ran damned hot. Rudy wondered if its coolant system had survived the pounding Zelph had given him. He smelled something acrid that could have been whatever the mecha's fire suppression systems left of a blaze in the wiring.

  Or, he thought, it could be the smell of burning wiring the damaged fire suppression systems had not put out, which would probably burn him alive before he reached the mecha bay. Always look on the bright side, right?

  He had to get control. Of himself, and his machine.

  Otherwise, all the internal damage in the world wouldn't mean squat. He didn't know why the Hand of the People hadn't closed on him yet, but he couldn't expect more than a temporary respite.

  He forced his unsteady gaze on the mecha's main screen.

  Bizarrely, Zelph's fists were raised for what looked like a killing blow. They descended, but painfully slowly.

  Rudy had no trouble smashing his good arm into Zelph's chest and shoving the Animus Hunter back.

  The hell...?

  Suddenly, Rudy's eyes shot to the Algreil Aerospace booth. He couldn't even pick it out of the crowd at this distance, of course, but...

  He slapped the button to activate the Epee's communications system.

  It displayed the booth.

  Algreil Aerospace's booth. His booth. Where his fiancé, her mother and their friend were supposed to be watching a friendly match.

  Where five Animus Hunters apiece held Chloe and Milissa at spear-point, and Ellie lay unmoving on the floor.

  Rudy stared at the scene, unable to move, unable to think.

  Then, suddenly, wordlessly, he screamed.

  He kept screaming as he smashed the Epee's dangling arm upwards and triggered its claws, not caring when they scoured his own armor. With his fully actuated arm, he plunged a blow into Errard Zelph's chestplate. He wasn't trying to cut. He wasn't even trying to tear.

  Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

  He was digging.

  Chunks of metal and weirdly organic-looking sinew ripped from the Animus Hunter's mecha. As suddenly as his attack had slowed, it redoubled now –

  But Rudy was past caring when Zelph's elbow dug into his exposed shoulder. It hurt, yeah – but it was nothing.

  He didn't care when Zelph's machine gripped his and ripped it nearly in half down the back. It was agony like nothing he'd ever experienced, yeah – but it was nothing.

  He didn't care when the Animus Hunter's hellishly powerful hands clapped around his mecha's head and squeezed.

  Because by then, his claws had torn into the black mecha's innards. He wrenched its engine clean from its moorings, tore it free as if he gripped Zelph's own heart. He hurled the burning, overheating core away. It exploded before it had traveled a kilometer.

  Rudy's one good clawed hand closed around the neck of Zelph's mecha.

  He was still screaming.

  The Epee was still digging.

  And somewhere – there, at the center of his vision – a bright red light flashed in his eyes, repeated, insistent.

  Rudy screamed at the light, spat blood on the screen.

  Stopped.

  Tournament mechaneer's instincts so ingrained into him they even pierced his rage told him he must stop.

  Zelph had yielded.

  Damn him to hell, he had yielded.

  Rudy drifted away from Zelph's eviscerated machine. He hung suspended in the middle of the arena, his surviving thrusters sending out tiny burns to keep him a constant distance from his foe.

  His communications suite beeped.

  He slapped it with a rapidly numbing hand. Shit, it was cold. So why was he sweating like a pig?

  It must actually be hot. He'd just lost a lot of blood.

  He wondered, but didn't much care, if he'd make it back to the mecha bay alive.

  He'd been wrong.

  Principle, Chloe, so, so, wrong, baby, so sorry –

  But she couldn't hear him. Couldn't sense him.

  “Congratulations, Mr. Algreil,” Errard Zelph said, momentarily drawing Rudy's attention to the communications screen. The Animus Hunter's helm was cracked and oozing blood, but through the crack, Rudy could see his damnable bland smile. “I yield.”

  “Could've killed me,” Rudy said. He wasn't sure if his words were slurring because he was hurt and exhausted and overheating – or because of what he'd seen in the Algreil Aerospace box. “Why? Why... give up?”

  “Because I bear you no ill will,” Zelph said. “I have already accomplished everything I needed to in this tournament.”

  “Bastard,” Rudy slurred. “Clo...? Where'd you... What're you doing?”

  “I am afraid your Imperial girlfriend's intervention means she is guilty of an actual crime, Mr. Algreil,” Zelph said. His smile widened, sending another rivulet of blood to drip onto the chest of his armored suit. “There is no longer any need to fabricate charges against her, nor any need to stay the justice her father earned for himself when he sided with your brother.

  “Nor any need,” the Animus Hunter concluded, “to stay the justice she has earned.”

  Rudy would have killed him then, rules be damned, instincts be damned. Bad enough that he'd tricked Chloe, hurt Chloe – but to be happy about it? Death was too good for Errard Zelph, but Rudy Kaine Algreil was not too good to give it.

  He would have, if he hadn't blacked out.