6

Bennie paced along the sidelines of the smashfield, struggling and failing not to grind her teeth in frustration and annoyance. She thought she finally understood why her Uncle Cyp used to talk about generations of athletes and coaches and fans chewing on seeds, on plants, on junk food, on any damn thing they could find. She'd just watched the Imagivation Avengers "accidentally" trip Rebekah and take her leg off at the hip joint, and the refs hadn't even called it unnecessary roughness.

Annoying. Frustrating. But not the end of the world. Not even the end of this tied game.

"Deep breaths, Bens!" Eight-Ball said through her headset. "We're still in this!"

"I know," she said simply. She glanced over at the Shrapnel Systems pit, where the crew stood ready to retrieve Rebekah and get her back in the game. Eight-Ball seemed to be having the time of his life, just like he did every game. He ran up and down the sidelines, feeding data and commentary into the HUD goggles she'd been tinkering with all season.

The refs stopped the play, and Mortimer, Tuskie, Hyrak, and Steve rushed out to get Rebekah's lithe, agile form while Eight-Ball checked the other bots. Raddai and Lot were defenders, their bulky forms overengineered to take a pummeling and stay upright; Bennie knew they'd be fine. Leah, the other offense bot, was being piloted by Ashe, and she moved the limbs with practiced grace so Eight-Ball could inspect everything.

Bennie watched the pit crew pop Rebekah's busted leg out of her modular joint and slide a replacement home. She bit her cheek and thought about the next play. The Avengers were an undeniably good team, and Imagivation's CEO, Byron Davis, was at least as good a coach as he was an imagivationeer. Under his leadership, they were putting up the hardest match the Swords had faced all season.

But they weren't unbeatable.

The Avengers were doing something clever with distributed processing, but it seemed to be making their bots farther afield from the smashball as dumb as bricks while their ballbearer got most of the compute. The Avengers' pilot then played a supporting role to the ballbearer's AI; let the bot make the play, and just run interference for it. The ballbearer was faster, smarter, and more reactive than all but the best human pilots, and the AI bouncing from bot-to-bot didn't seem to care about teamwork or positioning so much as pressing its advantage as hard as possible. It had been a real pain for Raddai and Lot to guard the thing effectively one-on-one so far, so Bennie should… should…

She put her hand to her head, switched over to the pilot channel, and said to Ashe, "Let's run the Tizóna defense. Rad and Lot can't keep up with the ballbearer individually, so I want them double-teaming the stupid thing."

Ashe grunted. "But if it passes–"

"If it passes, we'll intercept. But they're not doing passing plays. They're just driving to the goal harder than we can keep up with. Tizóna. Trust me."

Ashe went silent. Bennie knew she was considering the call, the possible outcomes, the unforeseen consequences. Bennie trusted her to run the play, but her enthusiasm would betray whether or not she thought it was the right call.

"Yes, Coach!" she barked. Bennie smiled, looked down and covered her mouth with her hand. She felt a faint flush on her cheeks. It felt good that someone else thought she was right. Or at least right enough.

Bennie glanced at the scoreboard and chewed at her cheek. Just a few minutes left in the fourth quarter. If the Swords could hold the Avengers, they'd win, but she knew Byron Davis would do everything he could to seize victory in these last few minutes.

Fortunately, Bennie knew some things that Byron did not.

First, Shrapnel Systems had recently come into a 10 million bit windfall.

Second, a good portion of that money had gone into a complete set of redesigned joints for each Swordbot.

Third, her team hadn't just built and installed the joints; they'd gone out of their way to make them compatible with the modularity that had given the Swords a winning season thus far.

Finally, most importantly, Ashe Fortuna was one of the best pilots in the league.

On the field, the head referee blew her whistle and play resumed. Swords' possession. One of the Avengers' defenders chopped at Leah with an arm tipped in three titanium claws, and she hadn't even had the ball.

Foul, Avengers. A chorus of boos rose from the Avengers' bleachers, but the foul was so blatant that Byron didn't even bother to contest it, even if the Swords having possession made it that much easier for them to break the tie. Bennie glanced over at the Avengers' sideline and saw that Byron didn't look the slightest bit concerned.

Bennie sniffed. Nice confidence, she thought. Shame we're about to win this whole thing.

But before that could happen, it was the perfect time for a mandatory commercial break. The big vid screens showing replays and highlights and smashbot stats began blasting ads. Pharmaceuticals, augmentations, restaurants, reminders of all that the corporations do for Cyber Society, a salute to the heroes in the System.

Bennie glanced towards Ashe's pilot pod, saw her throw open the hatch and step out, sweat dripping down her face and darkening her jersey and streaks of her fiery red hair. She stripped off her piloting headset, and shook her hair out, her curls catching the sun like ringlets of fire. She looked over in Bennie's direction, saw her, grinned and waved. Bennie waved back, and Ashe turned to make her way over to the hydration station.

Bennie turned to the pit crew. All of them were working together and Rebekah was nearly ready to return to play. Bennie gave a small nod, mostly to herself.

Let's see if they can walk and chew gum at the same time. "Alright, people," she said into the general channel. "When the commercials are over, we've got a single minute to win this thing. What are we thinking?"

"Check out the suit in the premium seats," Tuskie said. "I think that's a scout for the majors."

"What do we think about the game?" Bennie said. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath.

"Ashe's boyfriend, maybe?" Hyrak mused. "Isn't she dating some corpo type?"

"He sure looks corpo," Mortimer said. "He's got money, at least. Flashy clothes, sharp augs, a bodyguard. Plus, he's got two girls with him that look like supermodels or something."

"What? Where?" Eight-Ball said. Bennie glanced towards the coach perch and saw him scanning the crowd with his binoculars. "I don't see them. Are they— fuck."

Tuskie grunted in distaste. "Can you please not be a pig on the crew line, EB?"

Steve started to say something, but Bennie cut him off. "Can you all please keep your heads on the game and not the damn crowd?" she snapped. "Save the gossip for later!"

Bennie's HUD goggles beeped and buzzed insistently. Eight-Ball was forcing through a message to her. She tapped over to the private line. "Bens," he said. "It's Derrig."

"What? What's he want?"

"No, the suit with the models. I've never seen him out of the System uniform, but it's definitely him."

Bennie's mouth went dry. Huh, she thought. I guess that's another reason to have something to chew on. She cleared her throat. "Agent Hanssen? Why's he here?"

"I don't know. Maybe he just likes smashball?"

"Does he?"

"...I really don't think so."

Bennie scanned the crowd but didn't spot him. "What's he doing?"

"Looking smug and copping two feels, mostly. He's in the premium seats."

Bennie tapped the HUD goggles and magnified her vision. Sure enough, there he was, with his sharp features and his pale blonde hair. Behind him was an absolute gorilla of a man, military-grade augs visible running up his neck and into his temples, his arms and chest thick with muscle and more augmentations bulging in irregular shapes beneath his clothing. Alongside Agent Hanssen were two gorgeous women in jerseys for professional teams, the Broma Buccaneers and the Griggs-Weskott Wildmen. They looked like they were eagerly waiting for the game to restart, and Bennie felt a touch of pride at two proper smashball fans being invested in her team's game. For his part, Agent Hanssen almost seemed to be ignoring the women, like they were accessories just the same as his jacket and his sunglasses and the jewelry on the fingers he had wrapped around their waists.

Bennie zoomed in a bit more, as if seeing Agent Hanssen in more detail would somehow reveal his thoughts. Instead, he glanced at her. He can't be… No, she thought. There's no way.

Agent Hanssen freed his right arm and held it in front of him, pointing his finger and cocking his thumb. He grinned.

Why is he here? Bennie thought. To pick up the cyber core for the bot? Maybe. It was certainly small enough, designed to be wired into the machine's chassis and–

And inject code you've never seen into the CPU of an environment-remediating tank.

Bennie pushed the thought from her head. No… No, it'd be far too incredibly reckless to do the exchange somewhere so public.

To watch the game? There was a laughably low probability of that, but she supposed it wasn't impossible.

System business? Unlikely at a smashball game, and he wasn't in uniform.

Just to make her squirm? Maybe, but why?

To arrest me. The core was entrapment. As soon as I leave the stadium, a SysTac Squad is going to jump on me, guns drawn.

The one-minute ad warning sounded. Bennie barely heard it.

Game tied, Swords' possession. Less than a minute on the clock. The ball was in Lot's hands. He scanned the field, sensor suite analyzing angles and motion, geometry and calculus. Ashe held back, waiting to jump in and pilot whichever Swordbot Lot's programming decided he should pass to.

Lot hesitated. He passed the ball from one hand to another, back and forth, looking for the optimal angle of attack with each arm.

Bennie grimaced. The play clock was running down, and it shouldn't be taking Lot this long to decide. He needs more processing power, or better decision programming, she thought. Or all of the smashbots need better pathing so they can shake the defenders. Something.

Bennie glanced at the premium seats. Agent Hanssen wasn't watching the game. He was watching her.

Lot saw an opening and passed. The smashball sailed through the air like a missile, 10 pounds of chromed steel lobbed straight at the Swords' center, Chalcol. It's beautiful, Bennie thought.

It was even more beautiful, she had to admit, the way one of the Avengerbots charged in and intercepted the ball, clutching it to its chest with a metallic clang that echoed through the stadium.

Bennie couldn't even think. She just stood and watched, her jaw wide open.

Over by the Avengers' ballbearer, Rebekah shuddered for a moment as Ashe took control. She charged full speed down the field, her leg motors whining from the strain. Rebekah reached out, one hand grasping at the Avenger.

The Avenger swung the smashball behind it, its arm suddenly a mace, and Rebekah went down, her arm bent at an unnatural angle. Bennie's shoulders sagged. She covered her face with her hands.

That's the game. That's the whole damn game.

The Avengers' ballbearer charged towards the Swords' goal. Raddai and Lot moved to intercept. The Tizóna defense did its job, and the two Swordbots slowed the ballbearer, stopped it in its tracks. It scanned the field for a bot to pass the ball to, saw the left offense open, and threw.

Raddai and Lot leapt for the ball. Nothing. The smashball sailed just past their fingers. They turned to guard the new ballbearer, but they were too far, too slow, there was no hope of stopping the play.

Something sailed through the air, bright, shining, faster than the eye could see. In an instant, the ballbearer's torso exploded in a spray of sparks and oil and hydraulic fluid. A jagged metal spike stuck out two feet on either side. The Avenger tried in vain to adjust its sensor array, to see what this thing was that was impeding it, but it was no use. The smashball slipped from the Avenger's hands, and it fell over backwards. Leah ran forward, scooped it up, and charged into the goal, barreling over the hapless Avengers defender. Swords up by two.

On the giant stadium's screen, the twitching Avengerbot lay on the field. An arm stuck out of its chest, a Swordbot arm. The spike impaling the Avenger was Rebekah's own shattered arm, torn from its modular joint and thrown like a javelin.

Byron Davis shouted for a timeout, waving his arms wildly to get the refs' attention. Play stopped. The referees descended on the field, examined the fallen Avenger bot and Rebekah. They consulted the rules. They argued amongst themselves. Davis screamed in their faces, citing the rules' prohibitions against projectile weapons.

The refs ejected him from the game. He ripped off his coach's headset and stomped off the field.

After five minutes of conferring, the refs decided that Ashe's play was legal. Highly unorthodox, and definitely getting addressed in next season's rules, but technically legal. The crowd roared its approval, and the refs motioned for the game to resume. The pit crew screamed and began jumping up and down, hugging each other and waving around bot parts, playing to the crowd.

Both sides down a bot and seconds to play, the Avengers pilot threw a Hail Mary down field, but Ashe effortlessly intercepted it with Leah. She didn't even bother to try and return the ball, instead tossing it back and forth to herself as she ran up and down the Swords' sideline and egging on the cheering crowd.

The end-of-game buzzer filled the air. Bennie let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding. Her vision was blurry. Oh. I'm crying, she thought, and she laughed and laughed. She opened up the pilot channel on her headset. "That was one hell of a play, Fortuna."

Ashe chuckled softly. "Why, thank you, Shrapnel."

***

Bennie had headed straight back to the shop with the Swordbots loaded in their delivery truck while everyone else had stopped to get drinks and food. She'd had just enough time to get the bots unloaded, have them march themselves into their repair bays, and start thinking about all the good work that needed to be done this week before everyone else arrived and broke the quiet.

The crowd of staff and friends crashed into the workshop like a jubilant wave. The high ceilings and hard surfaces of the shop echoed with laughter, with shouted conversations, with outrageous boasts, and deeply felt and quickly forgotten promises. The ranks of the Shrapnel faithful had swollen with boyfriends, girlfriends, early supporters, opportunistic locals. Irma quietly slipped in with the others, grabbed a few slices of pizza and a leachate, then slipped back out into the city.

As the crowd began to spread around the shop, people hopping up to sit on workbenches, playing with some of the less dangerous looking tools, playing with some of the more dangerous looking tools, Bennie felt a twinge of responsibility for the well-being of her guests and the continued operation of her business. "Hey. Hey! Listen up everyone!"

"Speech!" Ashe called out.

"Speech!" Eight-Ball seconded.

Bennie blushed. "No, no, I'm not doing a speech. Come on, guys," she said. But the crowd would not be denied. Finally, she sighed and gave in, completely unable to keep the grin from her face. "Fine, fine, you win! Okay. So. That was one hell of a game, and I think it shows us two things."

"We can't hear you!" someone shouted from the back, and Bennie rolled her eyes and laughed. She hopped up onto a workbench and looked down at her employees, her friends, her neighbors. Bennie took a deep breath through her nose and let it out slowly.

Okay, she thought. The game showed us two things. What are they?

"One," she said. "One, is that smashball is a team game. Yeah, we've got a damn good pilot–" Cheers ran through the crowd, and someone reached out to muss Ashe's hair. "But that pilot relies on our pit crew, and our pit crew's the best in the league." Another round of cheers. Tuskie banged a wrench and a broken smashbot leg together. Bennie gestured for everyone to let her continue, but the chaos continued until Bennie finally just gave up and tried shouting over everyone. "And that… And that… that's not just me talking us up! I genuinely believe that!

"Two," Bennie said once the energy returned to a simmer. "Two, we've got what it takes to make this a perfect season! We're seven-and-oh, and if we can beat the Avengers, we can beat anybody! There's just five games left, so here's what we need to do: we need to have a good damn time tonight, clean up the bots and the shop tomorrow, and do it all again next weekend!"

Joyous screaming. The sounds of metal clanging against metal in celebration, of beer cans hissing as they were opened, of songs being sung off-key. Someone gently lobbed a beer can at Bennie, and it sailed through the air in a lazy arc and into her hand. She opened it, and it overflowed, covering her hands and running down her arms, and she took a heavy gulp, and it felt like victory.

That was enough of a speech for the crowd. Someone put on music, and people began mingling. There were hours of drinking and dancing and revelry ahead, and growing up in a typical Rustland house full of multiple generations, from screaming children to overly gregarious aunties and uncles, had forced Bennie to develop a system for balancing her desire to be social with her need for space and silence. Just like back in Rustland, she'd alternate between time spent on the workshop floor chatting, drinking, dancing, being a part of the community with time spent in her office working alone with her hands.

Bennie turned to climb down from the workbench. Someone held out a hand to help her, and she took it.

"Beautiful speech, Ms. Shrapnel. Very moving."

Bennie's feet hit the ground and she froze. Agent Hanssen stood before her, and seeing him out of uniform, she realized she'd been too shocked at having a System agent in her workshop, too busy listening attentively as he laid out his exact needs to her in intricate detail. Now she saw not just the uniform, but the man himself, his pale skin, his smug smile, his lightless grey eyes. His clothes looked expensive, and they fit him well, tailored to add shape and bulk to his tall, thin frame.

His lips were full, his jaw strong, and Bennie realized with a quiet revulsion that he was actually kind of handsome. Or at least, he might be, if he didn't ooze condescension and gleeful malice with every gesture.

"Thank you," she said hesitantly. "To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?"

Agent Hanssen grinned wider. "How formal. I love it." The grin left his face just as quickly, and in its place came a hard frown. "I actually come with some unfortunate news, I'm afraid. The timeline for our delicate operation has been sped up. I’m going to need the cyber core tonight. You'll need to have everyone vacate the premises so you and your team can focus, I'm sure. I trust that won’t be a problem?"

Bennie's eyes narrowed as she realized something essential about the man before her. You want me to say 'Yes, that's a problem,' she thought. You want me to say it's impossible, that I won't do that to my team, something. There's something in you that wants to see me squirm, to make me grovel for more time, to beg forgiveness if I can't get it done, because someone just did that to you. You want to be the one to tell me that I have no choice but to do it anyway.

Bennie forced her sweetest, biggest grin to her face, and for a second she saw Agent Hanssen falter. The grin became even wider, more sincere. "Why, that's not a problem at all, Agent! The cyber core's already completed."

Agent Hanssen arched an eyebrow, and for a moment, Bennie didn't see a cold calculating System agent, but a young man relieved that he wasn't going to get in trouble with his superiors. "Wait, really?"

"My people and I do good work, Agent."

Agent Hanssen breathed a sigh of relief. But then he caught himself relaxing in front of her, and Bennie saw his jaw clench and unclench, as he tried to think of something to say to reassert his dominance over the situation. "If the core was ready early, why didn't you contact me, Ms. Shrapnel?"

"I was focused on this week's game," Bennie said with a shrug. "I didn't think it would be an issue so long as I could make the delivery date."​​"Ah. The game," Agent Hanssen said with a sniff. "My companions told me that your team did quite well. I had to take their word for it, of course. I'm not much for smashball myself. Too brutish."

"That's a shame." Bennie shook her head. "It's Cyber City's favorite pastime, after all."

As Bennie and Agent Hanssen climbed the stairs, somebody let out a wolf whistle at the sight of Bennie and a man they didn’t recognize disappearing into her office. Bennie shot her best withering glance over her shoulder, but nobody seemed to shrink away or turn their head or even cover their mouth to hide their laughter. Instead, she only saw Eight-Ball watching the two of them, his lips pressed together into a thin line.

Agent Hanssen chuckled. "Your subordinates are… rather relaxed."

"They're celebrating. We just won a big game."

"Even so, they don't seem much for decorum."

Bennie's face twitched. "It doesn't affect their job performance."

"Mm. Fortunate."

Inside the office, Bennie walked over to her desk, reached beneath it, and unlocked the small safe she had bolted to the floor. She pulled out an anti-static bag and a pair of nitrile gloves, then pulled out the cyber core.

Bennie allowed herself a small smile as she held it up for Agent Hanssen to see. It was crystalline perfection, a combination of off-the-shelf parts, components provided by the System agent (doubtless containing the security backdoors Agent Hanssen would employ for whatever purpose he had in mind), and custom pieces built within the workshop. It was a work of art, more suited for a high-end prototype than for mass production, but it delivered on every one of the agent’s requirements. All it was missing was the code for the so-called environmental reclamation bot, but that wasn't her responsibility.

Agent Hanssen pulled a leather glove from his pocket, put it on, and took the core from Bennie's hands. He glanced from the core to Bennie's face, his brows furrowed as if he half-expected the thing to explode in his hands. "It works?"

Bennie nodded. "It performed flawlessly in all of the stress tests and simulations. Of course, it needs thousands of hours of testing before it can be called field-ready, and—."

"Not necessary. It only needs to work once." Agent Hanssen held the core up to the light, admiring the iridescence of the silicon inside it. He nodded, returned the core to the bag, the bag to the box. He pulled out his handheld and tapped at the screen a few times. Bennie felt her own buzz in her pocket. "There you are, Ms. Shrapnel. 10 million bits into the account you specified." Hanssen looked up and grinned, his eyes burning with cold mirth. "Thank you for your service."

"Wait," Bennie said. She opened her mouth to ask the question that had been running through her mind since the night Agent Hanssen walked into her office, but nothing came out. Her tongue felt leaden in her mouth.

"Yes, Ms. Shrapnel?" Agent Hanssen said, a touch of genuine impatience in his voice.

Ask him, Bennie thought. Just ask him. What's he going to do, get angry? What's the worst he can do?

But that was the issue, wasn't it? There was so much. So instead, Bennie decided to ask something safer. She took a deep breath, chewed her lip for a moment. "Why me?" she asked softly.

Agent Hanssen simply stared at her. "Why you what?" he asked with a small smile and a tilt of his head.

"Why did you pick Shrapnel Systems to build this thing? There must be a dozen shops in Cyber City that could’ve built the core, so why did you come to us?"

Agent Hanssen laughed, a short, sharp bark that was over the instant it began. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. "Everyone else said no." He picked up the box and turned to leave without another word.

Bennie watched as he opened the door and it shut behind him, the sounds of joy and laughter and music drifting into the office for just a moment before being abruptly cut off. Bennie stood still, then rushed over to the window overlooking the shop floor. Agent Hanssen snaked through the crowd, the core tucked delicately under one arm as he used the other to confidently push people aside.

But he wasn't going for the door. Instead, he was walking straight towards Eight-Ball, placing his hand on the shorter man's shoulder and spinning him around so they could face each other.

Agent Hanssen's back was to her, and Bennie could only see his gestures and Eight-Ball's reactions.

Eight-Ball forced a big smile to his face, the kind that said, "Sure, Bens, I accidentally broke something, but here's why it's okay!"

Agent Hanssen held up the box and tapped at his wrist.

The smile left Eight-Ball's face and he gestured around the room.

Agent Hanssen shook his head, held the box up again and shook it once.

Eight-Ball frowned and pulled out his handset, called someone up, and ended the call in less than a minute.

Agent Hanssen put his hand on Eight-Ball's shoulder and nodded his head. He guided Eight-Ball towards the exit and they left together, Eight-Ball waving an awkward goodbye as they disappeared into the night.

It was a long time before Bennie could leave her office.