The Guild Conspiracy (3 page)

Selby scoffed. “The very idea.”

A titter of laughter rolled through the crowd of students.

“What would be the point?” he went on. “You'll just lose.”

“Isn't that for my mech to decide?”

“You can't possibly think you might
win
?”

“I know it,” she said, stepping closer. Her heart beat faster, filling her with an empowering defiance she had kept quiet for too long. She jabbed a finger into his chest, meeting his cold gaze with one of her own. “I'll win your little tournament, and when I beat
your
miserable contraption into scrap, you'll see who the better engineer is.”

Selby glared daggers at her, roughly pushing her hand away. “You have no idea what you're up against,
Miss
Wade
,” he spat. “This is
our
domain, not yours. Go back to your stitchery and whatever else it is you women do.”

Petra inhaled a slow, measured breath, her teeth clenched hard. “Is it because you're afraid to face me, Selby?” she asked, keeping her voice level. She could see the tension in his face, flushed with contempt. Provoke him enough and he would let her fight. He had too much pride to back down from a direct challenge. “Afraid to lose to a girl? Is that it?”

He scowled, grinding his teeth. “As if I'd be afraid of
you
,” he hissed. “Fine. Enter the tournament if you must. But you'll get no special treatment. No handicaps for being a girl. You fight by
our
rules, win or lose.”

“I wouldn't have it otherwise.” She offered her hand. “Deal?”

Selby glowered at her open palm.

“John . . .” said Yancy, glancing between them. “She
can't
fight; she's not one of us. She's—­”

“No,” said Selby. “She
isn't
. And when she loses, it will only prove we were right about her. She doesn't belong here. It's time she recognizes that.”

Yancy eyed his friend a moment longer, the conviction in Selby's expression unyielding. “All right, then.” With a resigned shake of his head, he turned toward Petra and regarded her warily, his frown so like his father's. “Entry is a pound note, date of first fight to be decided. Have your mech ready in time and you're in.” He slowly stuck out his hand. “Welcome to the tournament, Miss Wade.”

The fighters and spectators disbanded then, returning the room to its usual state. They replaced the rugs and positioned the furniture over the haphazard scorch marks and grease stains. Petra stood out of the way, a nervous laugh bubbling up her throat. She gripped the brass railing at the wide window overlooking the city, grinning to herself.

After so many months of playing the part of the meek, obedient girl, subdued by the Guild in exchange for her freedom, she finally felt herself again. And though the Guild still refused to acknowledge her, refused to give her access to the workshops, she now had the mech fights. It was a small thing, a small victory, but it was enough.

Rupert joined her at the window, hands in his pockets. He leaned his back against the railing and nudged her lightly. “Nicely done.”

She laughed, her chest tight with the thrill of the last hour. “I can't believe I let you talk me into that.”

“You needed less persuading than I thought.”

“Is that why you brought me here?” she asked.

“Why else?”

She suppressed a smile and gazed out into the brilliant night sky. “You know me too well.”

They stood in silence for a time.

“Do you think I can do it?” she asked. “Do you think I could win?”

He faced the window next to her, settling against the railing with his shoulder touching hers. She found comfort in that solid presence. “Of course I do,” he said companionably. “Once you face them in the ring, no one will doubt what you can do anymore. You belong here, Petra. This is your chance to prove it.”

“Supposing I can actually build a mech in time,” she said, reality starting to sink in. “In case it escaped your notice, I don't have one, and with only a month to build one, I'd need—­”

“But you do have one.”

“What?”

“You do have a mech.”

Petra frowned. “I do?”

Rupert nodded, a mischievous smile on his lips. “Come on,” he said, pushing away from the railing. “I'll show you.”

H
e led her to the lower levels of the University and keyed into the storage rooms near the Guild workshops. Each room was filled wall to wall with crates of tools and machine parts, the surplus stored in the wide hallway. Rupert dragged her to the end of the overcrowded corridor and slid open a panel in the back wall, revealing a cavernous dumbwaiter chute, at least six feet deep and equally wide.

“What's this?” she asked, peering down the dark shaft.

“Our ride.”

Rupert grabbed a lever inside the open panel and pressed it forward. A whir of gear trains and pulley cords hummed behind the walls, and the dumbwaiter platform descended rapidly, the gear boxes clicking and grating as it came to a screeching halt.

“Found it my first semester,” he explained. “Goes up to the sixth floor and down to the third level of the subcity. There's a network of them in the walls; it's how the engineers move equipment from floor to floor.”

Petra leaned into the chute and peered up the long passageway, the walls lined with guiderails and cables. “I had no idea.”

Rupert climbed expertly onto the platform and held out his hand to help her onto the lift. “There's a room at the bottom,” he went on. “An old subcity office, looks like it's been abandoned. The door's blocked by some old machinery, cutting it off from the rest of the subcity, so no chance of any engineers stumbling in on you while you're working, and no one topside has reason to visit an empty office.” Once she seated herself across from him, he grabbed the lever and pushed it downward. The drive motors hummed, and he grinned. “Perfect place to build a mech.”

The lift sank into darkness, the inner walls of the chute rising up and away. Petra hugged her knees to her chest, nothing else to hold on to as the dumbwaiter descended. The heavy thrum of the subcity grew louder, enveloping her in its familiar pulse. Finally, the platform slowed with a piercing screech and jolted to a halt, throwing Petra into the wall. She cracked her head against the metal guiderails.

She winced, rubbing the sharp sting at her crown. “Ouch.”

“Ah, sorry,” said Rupert. “Should have warned you.”

There was a crack and a snap, and the dumbwaiter panel swung outward, letting a flood of warm light into the chute. The room beyond was small, hardly ten feet square. Several stacks of crates lined the walls, and a small desk sat in the corner, covered in papers, pencils, and other drafting utensils.

Rupert hopped down from the lift and Petra followed, the room ripe with the smell of grease, burning coal, and hot metal. The thrum of the subcity pulsed like a heartbeat through the floor, engines roaring, the click of cranks and rhythmic thrust of pistons singing beyond the walls. Whispers of steam hissed musically through the network of pipes beyond the blocked doorway. The opening was stacked high with sections of tarnished machinery.

Rupert gestured to the room at large. “Well? Do you like it?”

She laid her hand on the desk, brushing her fingers over the bulky mechanical calculator and measuring tools, the smooth drafting paper, and the polished wood surface. An electric thrill tingled up her arm. “It's perfect.”

He grinned. “Wait until you see this.”

Moving to the stack of crates next to the door, he dragged the topmost box from the column and carefully lowered it to the floor. With a crack, the lid pried loose, and he rummaged through the crinkled paper packing. “Help me with this, will you? It's heavy.”

Petra hurried to the other side of the crate and reached into the box. Her fingers met cool metal, a rounded joint roughly welded together by thick soldering lines. She positioned her hands around it, and then, on a count of three, she and Rupert hauled the ruined mass of machinery out of the crate and onto the floor.

Petra stepped back and peered at the damaged hulk of metal, absently wiping her hands on her trousers. Charred scraps of dented and twisted brass, bolts and welds torn apart, crumpled linkages and melted gear trains—­the frame so brutally warped it was impossible to tell what it once looked like.

“Well?” said Rupert. “What do you think?”

She circled the blackened mass of machinery. “What is it?”

“My mech.”

Petra arched an eyebrow. “What happened to it?”

“Darrow,” he said darkly. “Did it in with a supercharged blowlamp affixed to his mech's arm. More like a flamethrower, if you ask me. Melted right through the shell and destroyed the transmission.”

“That sort of thing is allowed?”

Rupert nodded. “Oh, yeah. The rules are rather straightforward: don't tell any of the professors or Guild engineers about the mech fights; no projectile weapons allowed; and mechs can only be constructed of copper, brass, or aluminum—­no steel. Beyond that, last mech standing is the winner. Once you're in the ring, anything goes.”

Petra blinked, staring at the misshapen machine at her feet.

“I know it doesn't look like much,” he said quickly, “but I thought you could use it for base materials. It took a beating there at the end, but the plating can be hammered back into shape, the engine is still good as far as I can tell, and most of what's left can be reused or refitted.” He wiped the sweat from his brow with his shirtsleeve and shuffled to the stack of crates again, pulling another down. “I have some loose parts too. Between what's left of the mech and all this here, you should have enough to build something battle worthy.” He set the crate beside the charred machine with a thud. “And if there's anything else you need, we can probably get our hands on it. You'd be surprised what we can salvage from the workshops.”

Petra lifted the lid of the crate of spare parts, filled with unfitted gears, dented cams, and flattened pipe. “Where did you get all of this?”

“I've been collecting scraps after workshop lessons and finding busted pieces thrown out from Guild projects; I even traded dorm duties for a few of the harder-­to-­find parts. I wanted to make sure you had what you needed when the time came.” He paused. “Do you think you can build something out of it?”

She surveyed the boxes of parts and the twisted hunk of metal that was once his mech. “I think so,” she said with a nod. “With the right tools, but . . .” She glanced up at him. “Why would you do this for me?”

Rupert shrugged. “I know how frustrated you've been, barred from the workshops. I thought you might like something to work on, something a bit more diverting than labeling diagrams or writing up technical summaries.”

Petra smiled. “I don't expect you know many girls who would find this sort of thing diverting.”

“Just the one.”

She rose to her feet and rested her hands on her waist, eyeing the busted machine and crate of spare parts. After months of idleness, she finally had a machine to build—­a
proper
machine—­and it was
hers
. “Rupert, this is . . . This is
marvelous
.” She glanced up at him, a sudden warmth welling behind in her eyes. “Thank you,” she said thickly. “I don't deserve it.”

“Yes, you do,” he said, slipping his hands into his pockets. “Besides . . . I can't wait to see Selby's face when you beat him in the tournament. That alone will be worth it.”

Petra laughed, her spirits briefly unburdened of the weight of the last six months. She bowed her head with a smile and bumped Rupert's shoulder. “Thanks,” she said quietly, looking at the damaged mech in front of them. “For everything. I never would have survived this place without you.”

He shrugged. “It's what friends are for.”

 

CHAPTER 3

P
etra stared at the nameplate on the office door, and the name of her enemy stared back: J
ULIAN
H
.
G
O
SS,
M
INISTER TO THE
V
ICE-­
C
HANCELLOR
.

She had thought long and hard on his threats, considering every possible avenue of choice ahead of her, and it came down to one simple thing: she had do whatever it took to stop this war, and if that meant conceding to his demands and appearing to cooperate with his plans, so be it. She wasn't giving up. Far from it. But as she stared at that name, it still felt like the worst decision of her life. The moment she walked through this door and offered to build his war machine, there would be no turning back. She would be his to command, his to control. But what choice did she have? It was either this or forced labor under the watchful eye of the Royal Forces. At least this way, she still had some freedom, some small chance of thwarting his plans.

Petra closed her eyes, her hands curled into fists. She could do this, she told herself. She had to. It was the only way.

She raised her hand to the door and knocked.

“Come in.”

Before she could second-­guess herself, she opened the door and went inside.

“Miss Wade,” said Julian, with only a slight hint of surprise as he looked up from his desk. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

She swallowed thickly, her chest constricting as the reality of her decision stared her in the face. “I came to discuss my next proposal to the council.”

“I see,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Well, then . . . Please, have a seat.” He gestured to the chair opposite his desk and waited until she obeyed before folding his hands in his lap. “What is it you would like to discuss?”

“The war machine,” she said hesitantly. “I thought about what you said, and I—­” Her voice wavered as she looked into his eyes, smoldering with a dark intensity that once again reminded her of Emmerich. “I would like to remain here, at the University, rather than . . . the alternative.”

“I see.” He rested his elbows on his desk and clasped his hands. “I must say I am pleased to hear it. The Guild needs engineers of your caliber.”

“Yes, well, the thing is . . .” she continued. “I need time to come up with a design, to work out the necessary functions and corresponding mechanisms, and—­”

“You have a week.”

Petra blinked, the rest of her carefully rehearsed proposal evaporating in an instant. “A
week
? But—­”

“You will present your war machine to the Guild council first thing Thursday morning,” he said, dropping his gaze to a leather calendar book atop his desk. He grabbed a pen and scribbled a note at the bottom of the page. “Should we find the proposal satisfactory, a team will be assembled, the design finalized, and we will begin work on the project immediately. In exchange, you may remain here and continue your studies.”

She gaped at him, struggling to find her voice. “You haven't even told me what you want me to build!”

“A war machine, Miss Wade,” he said, glancing up from his desk with the patience of a viper. “You are to build a device for
war
.”

“I understand that,
sir
,” she said evenly. “But I need parameters, requisites.” She scrambled to think, anything to give her more time. “For starters, I'll need to know the basic functions of the machine, and there are financial margins to consider, physical limitations, materials . . . not to mention more
time.
You can't expect me to design something like this in a week, not on my own.”

Julian relaxed in his chair, regarding her with the ease of a practiced businessman. “A week is what you have,” he said, a tone of finality to his voice. “Perhaps if you had complied with my request sooner, you would have more time to design the machine you already promised me. But here we are,” he said, gesturing grandly between the two of them. “As for parameters, we require the design accommodate direct personal control by a soldier of the British Armed Forces. The remainder of the design specifics I leave to your discretion and to that of your engineering team.”

“Direct control?” Her professional curiosity got the better of her. “Wouldn't it be more efficient to control it remotely, using Emmerich's wireless control apparatus?”

“Perhaps, but the wireless technology used in the automaton project has not been developed to the degree that the Royal Forces requires, and it has proved too costly for the Guild to produce on a large scale, which is why we are in need of an alternative.”

She stared at him, realizing what he meant. “You built them, didn't you? The automatons.” A hollow laugh escaped her lips. “You tried to build your army, but you failed.”

A muscle twitched in his jaw. “The failure was not
mine
. The design was inferior, too flawed for our purposes, so the project was scrapped. The responsibility for its failure lies solely on its engineer.”

“Its engineer? Your
son
, you mean?” She scoffed. “Emmerich could have revolutionized modern science with that design. Instead, you used him to create a weapon.”

“My son knew what he was building the day he signed his contract. Make no mistake. He
knew
. And in choosing to break his agreement, he failed me.
You
will not.” Julian leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap. “You have your parameters now. I suggest you get started on your design. Your proposal is Thursday.”

She held her ground. “What you're asking is impossible. There are too many variables to consider for a machine this complex, not least of all the secondary systems I'll need to implement, many of which I'll need assistance with. I don't know the first thing about weapons or manual control interfaces. I need time to—­”

“You will have a team of engineers assigned to the project to make up for such shortcomings,” said Julian, his voice sharp, final. “What we need from you is the overall design, the base mechanical construction. You have the most experience with designing mobile war machines and understand best how such a machine needs to function. Therefore this task falls to you.”

“But—­”

“You have until Thursday.”

“And if I can't finish it in time?” she asked, her voice rising.

“You will. You are rather resourceful when you need to be.”

Petra just stared at him.

“Now go,” he said, waving her off. “We are done here.”

She swallowed hard, the last of her arguments dissolving into silence as she rose from her chair and turned toward the door. Her mind whirled through a jumble of half-­imagined designs, trying to think of what she might be able to cobble together in a week.

“One more thing,” he said amiably, masking his words with the feigned politeness she so despised. “The arrangement I previously proposed still stands. Defy me, try to delay this project any further, and it will be the end of you.”

She hesitated at the door, her throat suddenly dry. Slowly, she turned around and met his smoldering copper stare, her chin set, not daring to quail under his gaze. “Understood, sir.”

“Good.” He smiled pleasantly then, his casual handsomeness lighting a fire in her stomach. “Then I look forward to hearing of your progress. Do keep me updated, Miss Wade.”

She nodded curtly. “Of course.”

When he said nothing else, she took it as her signal to leave. She clenched her hands into fists. A week! How could he expect her to come up with a workable design in so little time? And if she failed . . .

She pushed through the door to the stairwell and leaned against the wall, kneading her brow. She'd have to come up with a design—­and fast.

There was no time to panic.

P
etra stood over the drafting table in her hidden subcity office, a dozen nonviable war machine schematics littering the desk and floor, the designs crude and uninspired. She stared at the crumpled paper in her hand, anger rippling down her arms. She didn't want to build this. She didn't know how.

Yet Julian had given her a week to deliver a completed design.

She didn't even know where to start.

Because of the war machine's requirements, any remnant of the automaton was useless. The new machine couldn't be powered with clockwork or controlled remotely, which meant she would need to increase the internal cavities of the machine to house the pilot and controls. And accounting for the added size and weight of an engine, the leg frames would need to be much larger in order to support the additional weight and maintain stability. While balancing the machine with automatic gyroscopic adjustments was ideal, the technology was still in its infancy. Yet relying on manual compensation risked human error. She focused on her notes, absently tapping her pencil against the desk. Perhaps the potential danger of tipping the machine could be reduced if she designed a regulating feedback system to inform the pilot to manually adjust the machine as needed, but that would require a complex system of weights, levers, gyroscopes, and wiring to manage.

And that still left the matter of her sabotage.

She'd be damned if she gave Julian the designs for a fully functional war machine—­not without a backup plan.

With sufficient time, she might be able to do it—­the complete design, the sabotage, the subterfuge to hide her treason. In fact, she was certain she could. But to design all of that within a single week, to present a buildable design to the council by Thursday, was next to impossible.

But that was the deadline given to her.

She stared at the three sketches in front of her—­a big, hulking beast with stout arms and widely spaced legs, a four-­legged contraption with a swiveling control cabin, and a towering machine with jointed legs. There were too many possibilities, so many different ways she could build this war machine, and so many reasons she shouldn't.

She chewed on her lip. Rupert was bound to show up soon, and she'd have to put her war machine schematics away so that they could work on the mech. Part of her welcomed the distraction, but she also knew that if she didn't finish the concept for the war machine in time for her proposal next week, she wouldn't have the privilege of distractions.

Julian would see to that.

Focusing on the task at hand, she turned to the bipedal design again, trying to wrap her head around the idea of manual interior controls, but the thought of what such a machine could do in the hands of a soldier made her stomach churn. And the idea of a soldier inside such a devastating machine—­a machine of her own making—­made the war suddenly more personal, more real.

She didn't want to send men to war in her machines. Yet here she was, and for what? Because she feared for her own life? For her freedom?

Was she really willing to put the lives of others before her own?

Was she really that much of a coward?

The belts in the dumbwaiter chute whirred to life and the platform rattled up into the darkness of the shaft. Resolved to finish the design concept later, Petra gathered her schematics and shoved the files into her bag. She needed to distract herself with something else for a while. The dumbwaiter descended a few moments later, clattering loudly down the tracks.

Rupert appeared at the bottom, stepping down from the platform into her office, a bag over his shoulder. “Brought my design sketches,” he said, pulling a stack of drafting pages out of his bag—­the original designs for the mech. He laid the pages on the desk. “I wasn't very meticulous with the measurements, but this is the basic layout.”

“This will do fine,” she said, sifting through the draft notes, the pencil marks thick and smudged. “I just needed to see how you put it together so I would know what adjustments to make as we made repairs.”

“Do you know what you're going to build yet?”

“Vaguely,” she said, pushing the war machine to the back of her mind as she glanced over the rough sketches of the mech's central power mechanism. “I took a general inventory of the parts last night, and I think I can salvage most of what's already there, though we'll need to take it apart and remove what's no longer usable.”

Half the mech was a total ruin—­plating, gears, and part of the frame melted and warped—­but the rest seemed to be in working order, as best she could tell without firing up the engine.

The worst damage was to the right arm, the frame destroyed beyond recognition.

According to the schematics, Rupert had fitted the arm with a hidden blade, but the gear mechanism used to protract the knife was flawed—­the gears would never rotate properly, not with the joint movement of the elbow.

“Rupert . . . these notes don't make sense. How did you make this work?”

He came to stand over her shoulder. “I didn't,” he said, seeing what she meant. “I told you Darrow used his blowlamp to melt the transmission? Well, he never would have had the chance had I been able to activate the punch-­blade. But it locked up midfight, and Darrow found his opening.” He frowned at the schematics. “I'm not sure what I did wrong.”

“It's the gear makeup,” she explained. “The angle of the arm joint interferes with the rotation at this linkage here, and this one, knocking these two gears out of alignment. See?” She pointed to the fault. “Maybe if the arm were locked straight, it might have worked, but not with all of these rotational variables involved.” She tapped the edge of the page with her finger, thinking. “No, a spring launch would have worked better, or a pneumatic device.”

“This is why I leave the mechanical genius to you,” he said with a laugh, rubbing his hand over the edge of his jaw. “There's a reason I'm in aviation.”