“ ’Course she is,” said Cassica. “You built her.”
Then she slipped Maisie into gear and drove away.
The way back up the slope was slow, and Maisie slipped alarmingly and often, but with steady determination they crawled over the lip of the great crystalline scar in the earth and back onto level ground.
“How are we still alive?” Shiara asked in disbelief.
“Boondock girls,” said Cassica. “We’re like roaches. Can’t get rid of us.”
She put her foot down, and Maisie responded, none the worse for wear after her crash. Cassica exchanged a glance with Shiara; it was all she needed to show her approval of Shiara’s engineering job. Shiara grinned back at her.
“You reckon they think they got us?” Shiara asked.
“Reckon so,” said Cassica. “And no television feed to tell ’em different.”
“So let’s get out of here,” said Shiara. “Stick close to the chasm where there ain’t no guns, we can—”
“Uh-uh. With the Ghost still running about? It’s open ground past the battlefield; you think we’ll see him coming next time?”
“So what are we gonna do?”
“He thinks we’re gone. We got the advantage now,” said Cassica. Her gaze hardened. “We’re gonna take him out.”
She saw the hesitation on Shiara’s face. “This ain’t like before, Cassica,” she said. “Ain’t like when I brained that freak that was tryin’ to kill you, or when you did that Howler. That was self-defense.”
“This is self-defense,” said Cassica. “We don’t deal with him now, he’s gonna keep after us till we’re dead.”
Shiara was unconvinced. She was thinking of Linty Maxxon, Cassica could tell. But sometimes she needed Cassica to make the hard choices so she didn’t have to; sometimes Shiara needed that push. In days gone by, Cassica would have done it anyway, with or without Shiara’s okay. But she needed her on board with this now. If they were in this together, they made their choices together and took responsibility together.
“This ain’t no movie,” Cassica said, more gently. “In real life, you give the bad guys a second chance, they’re gonna kill you. That ain’t doing the right thing, it’s being stupid. He’s a professional killer. It’s him or us.”
“You’re right,” Shiara said at last.
“We doin’ this, then?”
Shiara nodded, more firmly. “Do it.”
Cassica pressed on the turbos, pushing them to reckless speeds. The Ghost probably had the same idea as Shiara: he’d travel along the narrow alley of safer ground between the scar and the junk graveyard where there were no mechs to shoot at him. After that, he’d have a short, straight run to the edge of the battlefield.
But if he thought Cassica and Shiara were dead, there was no reason he’d rush and risk a crash. They’d lost time on him, but the turbos would eat that up. And Cassica was determined to catch him.
“Turbos,” Shiara reminded her, watching the temperature.
“Few seconds more.”
Shiara gave her those seconds, then said, “Kill ’em.”
It didn’t seem nearly enough. Cassica clicked her tongue in annoyance, but she did what she was told.
The scar was pinching closed to their right. Cassica listened to the gunfire and spotted explosions up ahead. There they’d find the Ghost.
“Least he’s sucking up their ammo for us,” Shiara said with cautious optimism.
Cassica laughed. She was beginning to feel invincible. The shock of the crash had jolted something loose inside her, detaching her from care. She’d scraped by death so many times this past month that its threat seemed hollow now.
They were going to win. She believed that now. It couldn’t be otherwise. It was fated.
They peeled away from the scar and headed back into the battlefield, past the scattered remnants of the mechanical dead. Immediately they began to draw fire, but it wasn’t as intense as before; Shiara’s hope hadn’t been misplaced.
Cassica threaded her way through projectiles and obstacles, leaving explosions in her wake. It seemed as if nothing could touch her. She felt at one with Maisie, the two of them in perfect sync. It was like a ride on a ghost train she’d taken once at a traveling carnival, like they were on rails that would take them through the terror, and all the noise and fury was just the bluster of harmless things. Metal soldiers from the distant past reached out, wheeled monsters stirred and groaned, old barrels coughed their deadly payloads, but she was in the zone, and nothing could touch her.
It was Shiara who spotted the Ghost. She sprang forward in her seat and pointed. Cassica saw a gray movement through the dust. His car was blank and smooth without its camouflage engaged. The Ghost could only enter stealth mode for a few minutes at a time—it took too much power to use for long periods—and it was probably of limited use against the mechs’ targeting systems anyway.
“You’re mine,” she muttered and gave chase. The Ghost had his hands full keeping himself alive. With the bulk of the artillery focused on him, he didn’t see Cassica darting through the wrecks behind him, closing the gap steadily.
“Use the bumper,” said Shiara. “Anythin’ else, you’ll hurt Maisie worse than him.”
“Just gonna give him a little love tap,” said Cassica. She glanced at the temperature gauge for the turbos.
“You’re good,” said Shiara. “Do it.”
They surged forward, roaring up behind the Ghost. At the last moment he heard them over the explosions, tried to swerve away, but Cassica had counted on that, and had guessed which way he’d go.
Maisie clipped his fender, jolting them hard in their seats. The Ghost’s back end skidded out, and his momentum took care of the rest. The car tipped onto its side and plowed several dozen meters through the dirt before crashing into the flank of an armored transport.
Cassica got control of Maisie again, riding out the impact, and sped past as a half-dozen mechs aimed their cannons at the Ghost’s now-stationary car. There was a shriek of weaponry and a blast of flame.
“Guess he’s a real ghost now,” Cassica said. Shiara gave her a look but said nothing.
They swerved round the blasted husk of a tank with many turrets, and Cassica’s heart jumped as she came face-to-towering-face with a Titan, the most colossal of the ancient war mechs: an armored monster, vast and insectile. It was slumped and partly buried, but as she drove into view, one huge mechanical eye fixed on her, glowing green in its depths.
She was made small by its regard; her sense of invulnerability wavered. She quailed under the gaze of a half-dead god from the old times.
Then she was past it, and beyond there was only the empty plain, the scorched expanse of the Blight Lands stretching out under an envenomed sky.
“We made it?” Shiara asked as they raced away from the battlefield and the Titan that lay at its edge.
“We made it,” Cassica said. “But so did she.”
In the cracked pane of her rearview mirror, Lady Scorpion slid into view.
Her car was a dirty black. Mounted on the roof was her stinger, a cannon holding a metal spear that carried a thousand volts. Cassica saw again the moment from last year’s Widowmaker, Chabley Pott in the Devil’s Basin, Lady Scorpion nailing him. Saw again the charred bodies inside the flaming wreck.
They said it took an hour for the stinger to recharge after she used it. If she missed, you had the chance to get away. It was just that she never missed.
Cassica reached for the turbos. Shiara stopped her. She gestured at the plain ahead of them. “Where we gonna go?”
Lady Scorpion’s car swelled in their mirrors. She wasn’t using her turbos. She didn’t need to: her car was already far faster. Like Shiara said, there was no escape here. It would all come down to one shot.
“What’s the range on her stinger?”
“Twenty meters,” Shiara replied. She’d twisted in her seat and was looking behind.
“Count it.”
“She?
??s at seventy meters,” said Shiara. “Roughly.”
Cassica looked in her mirror. Behind the Lady, the battlefield of junked warriors was diminishing behind them, the fallen Titan like a mountain in the foreground.
It was still watching them with that enormous green eye. It had moved its head, dragging its beetle-like bulk through the dirt to keep them in sight. From its heat-scarred carapace, a conical device that resembled an elongated satellite dish had emerged and was turning toward them.
“Sixty.”
She narrowed her eyes. What was that? Some kind of weapon?
“Fifty. Get ready to dodge.”
Wait for the right moment. Dodge the stinger. Had that been what Chabley Pott thought, just before he died? Nobody dodged the Stinger. But everybody tried.
“Forty.” Shiara was getting increasingly frantic. “Oh, hell, I might have been wrong about the range. I think she’s gonna fire!”
Cassica ignored her.
“Thirty! Start dodgin’!”
But it was the Titan Cassica was watching, not Lady Scorpion. The device on its back was tracking them now. She fancied, with the strange delirium of the Blight Lands, that she could see it calculating trajectories and plotting angles.
“Maybe you can’t dodge the stinger,” said Cassica.
“So what are we gonna do, if we ain’t gonna dodge?”
“We’re gonna outrun her.”
“I just told you, we can’t outrun her here!” Shiara shrieked. “Twenty-five!”
“You don’t need to be the fastest,” said Cassica. “You just gotta be the last one in the race.”
A bolt of green energy spat silently from the device on the Titan’s back, aimed at them. The Titan’s last, defiant stab at the intruders that had disturbed its rest. The bolt arced through the sky, a second sun, rising into the air and then falling down toward them, growing in intensity and size as it came. Shiara saw it, and her pupils shrank.
“If I dodge, she’ll dodge,” said Cassica.
“Twenty,” Shiara whispered.
The stinger rotated atop the Lady’s car, aiming for their fuel tank. Cassica could see her through the windshield now, a dark shape in the shadows of the car. The green sun above them grew brighter, but she didn’t see it. She was focused entirely on the kill.
Yet still she didn’t fire. Her target couldn’t escape and wasn’t even attempting to dodge. She moved in closer, to be sure of her shot.
“Fifteen.”
And now the brightness in the sky was impossible to ignore, a light that flared so fiercely it was blinding. Lady Scorpion looked up, and in that moment when she was distracted, Cassica hit the turbos.
Maisie roared forward. Lady Scorpion screamed, not knowing why, knowing only that she’d been beaten somehow. The bolt fell upon her like a meteor, dissolving Lady Scorpion, her car, and a good chunk of the ground beneath her into a sparkling quantum froth.
Cassica let off the turbos and watched in her rearview mirror as the cloud of glimmering motes drifted into the sky, winking out of existence one by one. Then she turned her gaze forward and put her foot down.
With the graveyard behind them, they began to believe they’d faced the worst the Blight Lands had to offer. The next few hours were easy riding over flat hardpan, between long mesas of tawny rock that divided the emptiness. The mood in the car lightened. Even the oppressive sun didn’t seem so dreadful anymore.
They talked of Coppermouth as they drove, of the hazy days of childhood: campouts and cookouts, wild escapades when all had seemed bright and new. They remembered friends and enemies, people they’d fought with, loved, or mocked. Home seemed so far away now, and those they’d left behind had been diminished by distance. Old grudges became petty, great triumphs made small by what they’d achieved by leaving. Still they spoke fondly of their shared history.
They talked of batty Miss Elly; Jann, who could roll cigarettes one-handed and always knew what to say to make you feel good; Ab and Chell, who’d been a couple forever but who’d cheated on each other with everyone in town; Boba, who’d looked after his three sisters single-handed after the dust lung got his folks, but who was always ready for a punch-up; Kinty, who hung out when she felt like it but spent most of her time with her dogs.
“It ain’t never gonna be the same, you know,” said Shiara. “Win or lose, them times are past. We always gonna be the girls who left.”
Cassica didn’t say anything to that. She didn’t want to think about the future. Just to win would be enough. Just to throw it in the faces of the people who’d sold them out. Fame, fortune, Olympus: once they’d been things she’d dearly wished for, but she understood them better now. In the end, all she wanted was to be the best.
No, she corrected herself silently and glanced at her friend in the passenger seat. All she wanted was to be on the best team.
“Hoy! Signal’s comin’ back!” exclaimed Shiara. She leaned close to the screen, trying to make out shapes in the static. “Must be we’re gettin’ close to the edge of the Blight Lands!”
She unfolded a map and held it open against the gritty wind blowing through the smashed windshield. “Let’s see … sun’s over there … that mountain must be there … mesa to the north …” She stabbed a finger at the map. “Bear left a little. We ain’t far.” Possibilities sparkled in her eyes. “We’re gonna make it!”
“Reckon we might,” said Cassica with less enthusiasm. After what they’d just been through, making it wasn’t enough. The question was, were they in the lead? There was no telling how long they’d been out here. Time was elastic in the Blight Lands, and Maisie didn’t have the speed of her rivals. Even their ridiculously audacious shortcut may not have been enough.
“Turn up the sound,” she told Shiara. “I wanna hear.”
Phantom voices came through the crackling. She couldn’t make out the words, but she could tell they were excited. She kept her attention on the plain before her. Now wasn’t the time to hit a pothole and break an axle.
Shortly afterward, she spotted three black specks in the sky, rising above a mesa that loomed before them and blocked out the horizon. They grew as they approached.
“Hovercams,” said Shiara, who had the better eyesight. “Looks like we’re back on the grid.”
“Let ’em watch,” said Cassica.
“I wish I could be there when Harlan sees us up on that screen. Or Hasp, or Cleff, or any of that whole corrupt bunch of weasels. Love to see their faces.”
As they neared the mesa, the wavy commentators on the screen found their voices, fading in and out of the static buzz. “… incredible scenes as … finish line … assica Hayle and Shia … yren Bane and Draden Taxt!”
Cassica looked over at the screen. “What’d he say about Kyren?”
Shiara shushed her. The commentators’ voices stabilized as they kept talking.
“You know, I think we all thought Bane and Taxt had this whole thing sewn up! And no one, I mean no one, thought we’d see our plucky boondock girls again. But now it seems we’re in for the closest finish in years! Let me repeat for anyone who’s just tuned in: Hayle and DuCal have come out of the Blight Lands in one piece and ahead of the pack! But Kyren Bane is coming down off the mountain and into the final sprint even as we speak! This could go to the wire! Don’t you dare change the channel!”
“Where is he?” Cassica cried, looking about. She felt something sinking inside her. There was no sign of Kyren anywhere.
Then they rounded the mesa, and they saw.
The finish line was closer than they’d imagined, a mere few miles away; it had been obscured by the mesa till now. Enormous stands rose from the dead earth, packed with cheering spectators watching huge screens. Beneath a pile of scaffold and lights, a makeshift town waited to celebrate the end of the year’s greatest sporting spectacle.
To their left, the crescent-shaped row of mountains that the other racers had been following petered out. There, where the mountain trail met the plain, a rising c
loud of dust could be seen, and at its head was a black-and-red car.
Kyren Bane.
She hit her turbos. So did he.
The ground blurred beneath Maisie as she tore toward the finish line. Kyren was some distance behind them, but it wasn’t enough distance for Cassica’s liking. All they had left was a straight sprint, car versus car, his path converging with theirs. A homemade racer built with spit and ingenuity, against a vehicle built of the best components money could buy.
But she wouldn’t be beaten. Not by him, and not by those who backed him.
Shiara turned the volume off to silence the commentators. “Here’s how it’s gonna go,” she said over the noise of the wind blasting around them. “No way we can turbo all the way to the end. We don’t got the fuel, even if we didn’t explode first. So you cut them when I say and exactly when I say, and we’ll let ’em cool a little, and then we ought to have enough for another burn before the finish. It’ll work out better than just one big burn. You get me?”
Cassica nodded, her jaw tight.
“You trust me?” Shiara prompted her.
“Always did,” said Cassica. Even when she didn’t understand the calculations, the tactics, the things her friend did to help them win.
“Good. Cut ’em!”
It took her by surprise. So soon? But she could hardly refuse now. She let them go.
“You better know what you’re doing,” she said. Kyren was still burning turbos behind them, eating up the distance.
“I know the specs on his car,” Shiara said. “Unless he manages it right, he’ll overheat. The safety limiter’s gonna kill his turbos before he can overtake us. But we’ll get two burns. It’ll be close, but we can beat him.”
“What if he does manage it right?”
“Kyren don’t strike me as the sort that listens to his tech when he’s got the finish line in his sights,” Shiara said pointedly, giving her a hard look.
“I said I trusted you, didn’t I?” said Cassica. “I’ll be good.” But damn, was it difficult to put her faith in patience and mathematics right now, when all she wanted to do was go, go, go!