Crooked
Daniel Ocean
The cockpit was dark; the team wanting to keep the power spending low as much as possible, leaving many things off in their Zoids. Such as lights. Amanda stumbled in, her flashlight jerking around within her hand, partially because she got chills whenever she went into her Zoid, and partially because she was as nervous as hell.
In the last nine days, since Mark had gone out with the "gamblers"-the generic term used by everyone on the team-the plot was in unstoppable motion. And the Thursday before, a week before, when Ed got his cash. All of this was killing her. She didn't know what to do-seeing the deal go through made her instantly want to leave, but there was no way now.
She was born to a German father and French mother. Family reunions were interesting; and even her parents would not get along often. She was her parents only child and a love-baby; they wouldn't have married otherwise.
First she was babied far too much, up until eleven or twelve. Then she went from being another Larissa, as far as she could see it, to being almost abandoned. She had to learn to take care of herself; her parents were unreliable. She had to get a job at a warehouse at fourteen; and she dropped out of high school at sixteen so she could work full time and move out from her house.
She hadn't seen them since. They moved across the world and as she changed- from a worker to a supervisor to a Zoid tryout, moving up the ladder of Zoid battles, from Class E-the very lowest-to a member of the Royal-Cup winning team, Cyclone, in just four years.
That was four years before. But she had sold out Cyclone, going after the money to go to Southern Shore after just two years with the team in Class A. To be with a winner, supposedly. And to be surrounded by variable All- Stars. Ed Colner, the best pilot since the aging Bit Cloud, was there. Lefty Stand, the best young pilot, was also there. The three of them were almost unbeatable. New materials made Zoids tougher and more easily fixed, extending the season to over a hundred to a hundred twenty games over eighteen months. This was the fifth season with the two-year season, and Southern Shore was the best of any team since the change-96 wins, 16 losses. Twenty-two wins in a row, at one point.
The money wasn't making her happy, though. Not just the pay cut-the millions before did nothing, too.
She made her way to the seat, and lit a dim, battery-powered lamp. Looking at herself in the reflection off the glass, she ran her hand through her short, curly tan hair. Short-long caught in machinery. She looked at herself for a second, and then fisted her hair-filled hand, as if to rip the hair out of her scalp.
This wasn't what she has supposed to be headed for. "It just isn't fair," she said softly to herself. The cheerful ten-year-old from twenty years before was gone. Dead. The girl with long hair was dead and replaced by a robot, following orders from a spoiled girl in a place she wanted to run away from. The fix tripled her stress. She had the team to help, her life to put together-and gamblers to please.
Her grip on her hair softened, and she slowly sank to lay her head on the control panel.
Ed looked across to Amanda's Pteros, wondering why it had gone to life, then just started to idle. "I will not work with problems today." The championship's round robin games began later that morning, in front of an audience of millions.
He wasn't too displeased with his life. He came from a middle-class family and seemed to be off to a dull office job until he got old and died, but it was not to be. He grew fascinated with machines, and got experience with them at vocational centers. He could memorize much by hearing something just once; he could, in just a few years, fix everything. He went to college as Zoid teams tried to get him, hearing of him through his teachers and seeing his work with automobiles, and as soon as he got a two-year degree, he left school and they pounced.
He was honestly not a shockingly original pilot, or inspiring. He was aloof and sometimes disagreeable. But he knew everything. He was only wanted as a mechanic, but he taught himself to pilot a liger in just eight months. He just got better and better as he practiced. Nothing inspirational, just factual-he learned, and got to be the great one with time. He filled the power vacuum left by Bit Cloud as the Blitz Team began to recede. But then he had, within a few years, quite a bit of competition. One new pilot was a woman named Supardi. Another was an illiterate miner's son who went by the name of Lefty. And almost as quickly that they had risen, they were all together, united by the dream of being rich and famous.
Well, by then, at least they were famous. Endorsements would supplement their income, to be sure.
The Zoid began to hum to life with just the turn of a key. The front lights turned on, and it slowly lifted its body off of the ground. Through the front windshield, what appeared to be dozens of shooting stars began to fall down, to the ground. The judges were approaching their starting positions; it would be only a couple more hours.
He regretted his decision some; it was not killing him. Fixing the games would be easy. It was under the threat of violence, he knew, even if it was only replied. It was far easier to accept crooked money when you would get killed otherwise.
His Zoid groaned out of the hangar. The wide open skies of the desert near the sand Colony made for some very cold nights, and his Zoid always ran much better and faster when it was warm. "C'mon, kid, easy going," he said to it. "No point in hurting yourself before the matches matter." He rubbed the inside of his jacket for good luck; the place where he had sewn in the money. He began to wonder how he would be able to buy anything big with the money; considering he hadn't earned it through legal avenues. He shrugged it off, figuring it was something to worry about later.
He let his Zoid jog around the hangar for a few laps, slowly at first, and then faster and faster. After a few minutes, the joints had heated up to the point that lubrication oil flowed easily through them. He let it slide to a stop, and started to lead it to the battle field a few miles away, in a slow gait. Directly behind, Amanda was flying very low and slow, to follow. In a slow procession, the team left their hangar, north, to where the falling stars were landing.
Lefty Stand pushed all of the buttons in his Zoid carefully, recalling the sequence for starting it up that he had painstakingly memorized. The words were simple lines and curves, in seeming randomness, all around him, but even without knowing them he was able to work well. Well enough to be the best young pilot in all of the Zoids Federation, in any class.
He wasn't supposed to be there; he was supposed to be on the near moon, a coal-miner, working with a jackhammer for just a few dollars an hour, and not with a Zoid for millions.
Everything went to plan for that destiny for a long time. His father was another miner, one of Edgar Santurce's thousands of employees, and his mother disappeared mysteriously when he was four. He himself had been a miner from when he was fifteen, and stayed down there for three years, long enough for his fragile lungs-he was a sickly child-to develop miner's lung. Not wanting to lose another fresh body, his supervisor moved him from the jackhammer to a transport, a Zoid-like machine with three legs that ran over magnets buried in the ground. The "roads" that these transports could run over was wide, as many times they would crash or would converge in different directions, causing traffic snafus. But, as soon as he got past his illiteracy and was able to pilot the transport, Lefty was able to work well-with just one hand. In fact, he could only use one hand; his right, for some reason, would always push the wrong buttons or pull the wrong levers. "It just gets confused" was his best explanation. Using one hand, he did just fine.
The coal and oil empire of Edgar Santurce was so large, news could be transported from one end to another almost instantly. And Santurce was not reluctant, for the right price, to "sell" one of his workers to a Zoid team. Many of the best pilots were in positions like Lefty's to start with; they were known to be good pilots and toughened from their miner heritage. By the time he was twenty, the Blitz Zoid team was knocking on Santurce's door, and he became an employee of the Taros family.
The first time going down to Zi, he stayed for twenty minutes then, frightened by the big cities, he bolted back on the next transport back home, stowing away in a cargo crate. The scouts went back and tried, almost in vain, to get him to return. He declared he wasn't ready to go down. The only thing to do was to wait, and it paid off: he met his future wife, another miner's child named Katie, and the two of them went down together.
Kate was recognized as almost lefty's brains. She read the contracts that the team would send him and would send letters back explaining whatever situation her husband may be in. There wasn't much controversy between team and pilot, however; Lefty was too good to give up. The team wanted him as their building block after Bit and Leena Cloud retired. Southern Shore had a difficult time in getting him; the Taroses would only let him go if Southern Shore would let them virtually raid their lower clubs in Class C and D, also owned by Larissa Rainier. After much debate, he was let go for five young pilots, two of which left Zoid arenas almost immediately.
The high price was worth it. He, combined with Ed and Amanda, absolutely dominated the season. But the urge to go home was always with Lefty. He took what he said to be a three-day vacation and stayed on the near moon for two weeks. He had no intention to break any rule, but he was unassimilated to the cities on Zi, and he found it harder and harder to leave every time he went back to his old mining buddies. No one knew whether he would get over this and be a mainstay of Class A, or if he would be a two- or three-year burnout, with oodles of promise but not the right stuff between the ears.
Lefty's Gun Sniper eased out of the hangar even more slowly than Ed's Zoid. He hadn't changed the oil in the joints for the while, and the cold air had made it congeal. Both legs had to be flexed as far back as they went before it ran slowly, but normal mechanically.
A few moments later, the class clown, the kid from the rich family, Oscar Freedle, came out easily, in his Shadow Fox. He had been idling well before the others had gotten up. he was excited to do bad things. "C'mon, sleepyheads," he chided them. "It's time to go out and earn some of that money! Wake up and smell the engine grease."
"Happy," said Amanda, softly over the radio, "please, just shut up, would you?"
"Oh, not in a good mood, are you? Well, in few hours you won't be able to sleep behind the wheel, we have battles to do." He emphasized "do" in a way to make it quite clear what he was going to do in doing what was about to be done.
"Happy..." The three other all chorused his name, not in a pleasant way.
"Very well." In a deflated voice, he said his last plea, and the Shadow Fox followed the other three Zoids in their walk toward their first battle.
Daniel Ocean
The cockpit was dark; the team wanting to keep the power spending low as much as possible, leaving many things off in their Zoids. Such as lights. Amanda stumbled in, her flashlight jerking around within her hand, partially because she got chills whenever she went into her Zoid, and partially because she was as nervous as hell.
In the last nine days, since Mark had gone out with the "gamblers"-the generic term used by everyone on the team-the plot was in unstoppable motion. And the Thursday before, a week before, when Ed got his cash. All of this was killing her. She didn't know what to do-seeing the deal go through made her instantly want to leave, but there was no way now.
She was born to a German father and French mother. Family reunions were interesting; and even her parents would not get along often. She was her parents only child and a love-baby; they wouldn't have married otherwise.
First she was babied far too much, up until eleven or twelve. Then she went from being another Larissa, as far as she could see it, to being almost abandoned. She had to learn to take care of herself; her parents were unreliable. She had to get a job at a warehouse at fourteen; and she dropped out of high school at sixteen so she could work full time and move out from her house.
She hadn't seen them since. They moved across the world and as she changed- from a worker to a supervisor to a Zoid tryout, moving up the ladder of Zoid battles, from Class E-the very lowest-to a member of the Royal-Cup winning team, Cyclone, in just four years.
That was four years before. But she had sold out Cyclone, going after the money to go to Southern Shore after just two years with the team in Class A. To be with a winner, supposedly. And to be surrounded by variable All- Stars. Ed Colner, the best pilot since the aging Bit Cloud, was there. Lefty Stand, the best young pilot, was also there. The three of them were almost unbeatable. New materials made Zoids tougher and more easily fixed, extending the season to over a hundred to a hundred twenty games over eighteen months. This was the fifth season with the two-year season, and Southern Shore was the best of any team since the change-96 wins, 16 losses. Twenty-two wins in a row, at one point.
The money wasn't making her happy, though. Not just the pay cut-the millions before did nothing, too.
She made her way to the seat, and lit a dim, battery-powered lamp. Looking at herself in the reflection off the glass, she ran her hand through her short, curly tan hair. Short-long caught in machinery. She looked at herself for a second, and then fisted her hair-filled hand, as if to rip the hair out of her scalp.
This wasn't what she has supposed to be headed for. "It just isn't fair," she said softly to herself. The cheerful ten-year-old from twenty years before was gone. Dead. The girl with long hair was dead and replaced by a robot, following orders from a spoiled girl in a place she wanted to run away from. The fix tripled her stress. She had the team to help, her life to put together-and gamblers to please.
Her grip on her hair softened, and she slowly sank to lay her head on the control panel.
Ed looked across to Amanda's Pteros, wondering why it had gone to life, then just started to idle. "I will not work with problems today." The championship's round robin games began later that morning, in front of an audience of millions.
He wasn't too displeased with his life. He came from a middle-class family and seemed to be off to a dull office job until he got old and died, but it was not to be. He grew fascinated with machines, and got experience with them at vocational centers. He could memorize much by hearing something just once; he could, in just a few years, fix everything. He went to college as Zoid teams tried to get him, hearing of him through his teachers and seeing his work with automobiles, and as soon as he got a two-year degree, he left school and they pounced.
He was honestly not a shockingly original pilot, or inspiring. He was aloof and sometimes disagreeable. But he knew everything. He was only wanted as a mechanic, but he taught himself to pilot a liger in just eight months. He just got better and better as he practiced. Nothing inspirational, just factual-he learned, and got to be the great one with time. He filled the power vacuum left by Bit Cloud as the Blitz Team began to recede. But then he had, within a few years, quite a bit of competition. One new pilot was a woman named Supardi. Another was an illiterate miner's son who went by the name of Lefty. And almost as quickly that they had risen, they were all together, united by the dream of being rich and famous.
Well, by then, at least they were famous. Endorsements would supplement their income, to be sure.
The Zoid began to hum to life with just the turn of a key. The front lights turned on, and it slowly lifted its body off of the ground. Through the front windshield, what appeared to be dozens of shooting stars began to fall down, to the ground. The judges were approaching their starting positions; it would be only a couple more hours.
He regretted his decision some; it was not killing him. Fixing the games would be easy. It was under the threat of violence, he knew, even if it was only replied. It was far easier to accept crooked money when you would get killed otherwise.
His Zoid groaned out of the hangar. The wide open skies of the desert near the sand Colony made for some very cold nights, and his Zoid always ran much better and faster when it was warm. "C'mon, kid, easy going," he said to it. "No point in hurting yourself before the matches matter." He rubbed the inside of his jacket for good luck; the place where he had sewn in the money. He began to wonder how he would be able to buy anything big with the money; considering he hadn't earned it through legal avenues. He shrugged it off, figuring it was something to worry about later.
He let his Zoid jog around the hangar for a few laps, slowly at first, and then faster and faster. After a few minutes, the joints had heated up to the point that lubrication oil flowed easily through them. He let it slide to a stop, and started to lead it to the battle field a few miles away, in a slow gait. Directly behind, Amanda was flying very low and slow, to follow. In a slow procession, the team left their hangar, north, to where the falling stars were landing.
Lefty Stand pushed all of the buttons in his Zoid carefully, recalling the sequence for starting it up that he had painstakingly memorized. The words were simple lines and curves, in seeming randomness, all around him, but even without knowing them he was able to work well. Well enough to be the best young pilot in all of the Zoids Federation, in any class.
He wasn't supposed to be there; he was supposed to be on the near moon, a coal-miner, working with a jackhammer for just a few dollars an hour, and not with a Zoid for millions.
Everything went to plan for that destiny for a long time. His father was another miner, one of Edgar Santurce's thousands of employees, and his mother disappeared mysteriously when he was four. He himself had been a miner from when he was fifteen, and stayed down there for three years, long enough for his fragile lungs-he was a sickly child-to develop miner's lung. Not wanting to lose another fresh body, his supervisor moved him from the jackhammer to a transport, a Zoid-like machine with three legs that ran over magnets buried in the ground. The "roads" that these transports could run over was wide, as many times they would crash or would converge in different directions, causing traffic snafus. But, as soon as he got past his illiteracy and was able to pilot the transport, Lefty was able to work well-with just one hand. In fact, he could only use one hand; his right, for some reason, would always push the wrong buttons or pull the wrong levers. "It just gets confused" was his best explanation. Using one hand, he did just fine.
The coal and oil empire of Edgar Santurce was so large, news could be transported from one end to another almost instantly. And Santurce was not reluctant, for the right price, to "sell" one of his workers to a Zoid team. Many of the best pilots were in positions like Lefty's to start with; they were known to be good pilots and toughened from their miner heritage. By the time he was twenty, the Blitz Zoid team was knocking on Santurce's door, and he became an employee of the Taros family.
The first time going down to Zi, he stayed for twenty minutes then, frightened by the big cities, he bolted back on the next transport back home, stowing away in a cargo crate. The scouts went back and tried, almost in vain, to get him to return. He declared he wasn't ready to go down. The only thing to do was to wait, and it paid off: he met his future wife, another miner's child named Katie, and the two of them went down together.
Kate was recognized as almost lefty's brains. She read the contracts that the team would send him and would send letters back explaining whatever situation her husband may be in. There wasn't much controversy between team and pilot, however; Lefty was too good to give up. The team wanted him as their building block after Bit and Leena Cloud retired. Southern Shore had a difficult time in getting him; the Taroses would only let him go if Southern Shore would let them virtually raid their lower clubs in Class C and D, also owned by Larissa Rainier. After much debate, he was let go for five young pilots, two of which left Zoid arenas almost immediately.
The high price was worth it. He, combined with Ed and Amanda, absolutely dominated the season. But the urge to go home was always with Lefty. He took what he said to be a three-day vacation and stayed on the near moon for two weeks. He had no intention to break any rule, but he was unassimilated to the cities on Zi, and he found it harder and harder to leave every time he went back to his old mining buddies. No one knew whether he would get over this and be a mainstay of Class A, or if he would be a two- or three-year burnout, with oodles of promise but not the right stuff between the ears.
Lefty's Gun Sniper eased out of the hangar even more slowly than Ed's Zoid. He hadn't changed the oil in the joints for the while, and the cold air had made it congeal. Both legs had to be flexed as far back as they went before it ran slowly, but normal mechanically.
A few moments later, the class clown, the kid from the rich family, Oscar Freedle, came out easily, in his Shadow Fox. He had been idling well before the others had gotten up. he was excited to do bad things. "C'mon, sleepyheads," he chided them. "It's time to go out and earn some of that money! Wake up and smell the engine grease."
"Happy," said Amanda, softly over the radio, "please, just shut up, would you?"
"Oh, not in a good mood, are you? Well, in few hours you won't be able to sleep behind the wheel, we have battles to do." He emphasized "do" in a way to make it quite clear what he was going to do in doing what was about to be done.
"Happy..." The three other all chorused his name, not in a pleasant way.
"Very well." In a deflated voice, he said his last plea, and the Shadow Fox followed the other three Zoids in their walk toward their first battle.