Iron Seas 03 - Riveted

Fiore slid a paper clamp and a card marked with a grid of circles across the table. “Push out a sequence!” he called over the noise. “It gives the fighter an instruction—the type of punch to throw. Right, left, uppercut, roundhouse, and so on. If the fighter knocks over the other on your card, you win. You can also bet on the time it’ll take before one falls.”
    There were no descriptions of what each sequence would do, no guides. Perhaps that was part of the game—figuring out what each pattern did. David clamped it three times at random.
    “Just the card, I think.”
    The other man nodded. “The odds don’t favor anyone.”
    Di Fiore glanced over the rail, gestured to someone below. Only seconds passed before a boy arrived at the table to collect the cards.
    The crowd quieted. Anticipation rose through the noise thatremained. The two barkers approached the fighters. Each carried a stack of cards and inserted them into a slot cut out of the automatons’ right legs. A bell rang. The barkers each pulled a lever on the knees and raced out of the arena.
    The first right hook landed with a deafening crack. The floor shuddered beneath David’s chair, his feet. The second machine flew backward, the cables at its waist exposed. Its roundhouse missed the other automaton completely. Laughter and jeers rose from the crowd. A sharp winding click rose over the noise, and the automaton snapped back into place. The impact of the blow it smashed into the first machine reverberated through David’s own chest.
    Di Fiore leaned back in his chair, lighting his pipe and studying David through the curl of smoke. “Impressive, yes?”
    David had never seen anything like it. His prosthetics were more sophisticated, the sentinels that guarded the American coastline were bigger, more powerful, and he’d seen clockwork machines that were just as intricate—but those clockworks all operated in a predetermined sequence. Even those with variant sequences, such as playing different songs or performing different tricks, operated in a predictable pattern.
    It was incredibly impressive. Not as astonishing as nanoagents, perhaps, but well worth the praise. “Are these the only two?”
    Di Fiore nodded. “For now, at least. I’ll manufacture more soon, but the cards are a sticking point. Everyone is willing to pay for the machines, but no one wants to keep paying for cards after they’ve used up their first shipment—and of course, we’ll make most of our profit on the cards.”
    Given the number of cards used up in one fight, David believed it. “You said this was an old invention? This card system was developed then, too?”
    “Yes. And buried for almost forty years.”
    “By your father? Why?”
    “They were never designed for entertainment—the machineswere supposed to fight the Horde’s metal men that they’d heard rumors about. Then the Lusitanians discovered that the metal men were actually soldiers in steam-powered suits, not automatons, and so they asked inventors to create similar technology instead.” He smiled faintly. “My father was in the business of war long before he tried to stop it. Do you know what changed his mind?”
    David didn’t. He shook his head.
    “He visited Horde territory.”
    A thunderous cheer erupted around them. David glanced over, saw the first automaton had taken a blow that tipped it backward…and slowly over. Its shoulders thunk ed against its legs, guts exposed. Di Fiore tugged out his pocket watch.
    “Good time.” He tucked his watch away. “Listen to them. Even those men who don’t win are always more satisfied when the fight lasts a while.”
    Long enough to get their money’s worth, anyway. The boy brought two more cards. David punched out five circles. “What did your father find?”
    From his own travels, David had an idea. The Horde-occupied territories he’d passed through hadn’t been anything like he’d expected, considering the tales of terror he’d heard growing up. Some of the stories were true—the Horde did possess giant war machines. The Great Khan did have an iron fist that would crush anyone who stood against him.
    But people were crushed in the New World, too. In many ways, the Horde citizens he’d encountered were no different than people anywhere else—and the differences that did exist were seemed no greater than the differences between the people of Manhattan City and Lusitania, or the Liberé and the Arabic tribes of the Far