Apex Five: Mech Elite novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Mira's Frame

The heavy falls, Mira begs, and Wynne cuts her frame anyway. Pryce guards move in and Ronan Hale blocks them.

I did not stop for the red lights.

The heavy gunner's frame stood in front of me with its shield half up and its pilot yelling through the open channel.

"I can't move! Dane, I can't move anything!"

I remembered him laughing in the pit while the guards took my badge.

I cut the shield arm off at the shoulder.

The arm hit the Ring floor with a crash the whole stadium felt through the seats.

"Wynne, stop!" the heavy yelled. "I'll give you my cut of the season!"

"I don't want your money," I said.

I put the blade through his core.

His frame folded down onto its knees, then onto its face, and the lights on its chest went out one by one.

Forty thousand people were on their feet.

Nobody was cheering, and nobody was leaving.

Two frames were left standing in the middle of the Ring.

Dane's command frame, frozen in the center of the diamond.

Mira's artillery frame, with its cannon still half raised.

I walked Old Nail toward her.

Mira's voice came over the channel, thin and fast.

"Wyn. Wyn, please. I didn't know it would be like this."

"You knew about the cut," I said.

She did not answer.

"At breakfast, you told me to trust him."

"He said it was only for the season!"

"You held my bag, Mira."

The channel went quiet except for her breathing.

"I did it for us," she said. "Dane promised me the captain's seat after the Cup. I was going to fix it for you."

"You were going to stand behind him and look at your boots."

I swung the blade low.

Her cannon arm went first, then her left knee, and then I stepped into her frame and cut through the core.

Mira's artillery frame sat down in the Ring with its cannon in pieces around it.

Her scream came through my cradle, and then the channel went dead.

That left Dane.

His frame hung in the middle of the Ring with its arms down, and he had not made a sound since I took Mira's cannon arm.

I could see him through the cockpit glass, with both hands locked on his controls.

His face was white.

It was the first time in three years I had seen him afraid.

I lifted the blade.

"Dane Pryce!"

A man's voice boomed from the stadium speakers, calm and cultured and very used to being obeyed.

"This Challenge is void. Stand down, Miss Calder. Pryce security will take you into custody."

The red lights spun faster.

Alder Pryce stood in the chairman's box with a microphone in his hand, and his son's frame was dying in the Ring below him.

He did not look at the frame.

He looked at me.

"The Apex frames are the property of Pryce Dynamics," he said. "You are a thief who has damaged League equipment."

"It's the Gate Challenge!" I shouted back. "It's your own law!"

"It is a law nobody has read in nine years."

Six guard frames came out of the tunnels, grey and fast, with stun rods lit blue on their arms.

I turned Old Nail to face them with one good arm and a prayer for the other.

"Hob," I said, over the private channel. "I might need that ride after all."

"Wyn, get out of there," Hob said. "I mean it, kid, get out of there now."

The first guard frame came at me from the left.

I cut its rod in half and took a hit on Old Nail's bad arm, and the whole cockpit shuddered.

The second guard frame grabbed my blade wrist.

The third came in low, and the fourth, and I could not turn fast enough for all of them.

Alarms went off in my cradle.

*Core integrity forty percent.*

Then the north gate of the Ring opened with a bang I felt in my teeth.

A black frame walked through it alone.

It was tall and plain, with no crest on its shoulder, and one arm scarred from wrist to elbow with old weld lines.

I knew that frame from every broadcast I had ever watched.

Ronan Hale, captain of Black Meridian, was the only pilot in the League who flew with no link at all.

He did it all by hand, with his own cradle burned out years ago, and nobody knew how.

He did not use a weapon.

He put the black frame between me and the guard frames, and he took every stun rod on his chest plate.

"Back off," his voice said, dry and flat, over the open channel. "The Challenge is still running."

"Captain Hale, this is a League matter," Alder Pryce said.

"It's a League law," Ronan said. "Nobody has called the last frame down yet. Until someone does, the Ring is hers."

One of the guard frames lunged for me anyway.

Ronan caught it by the arm and threw it into the wall.

Then he turned his head toward Old Nail, and his voice came over my private channel, quiet and fast.

"Calder. Black Meridian filed your license four minutes ago. You're mine until someone proves otherwise."

"I never signed anything."

"I signed it for you. Say yes on the open channel, in front of forty thousand people, or Pryce security cuts that cradle off your head with you in it."

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