Vortex

Tom felt a surge of excitement, both at the offer and at the reconciliation it implied. He soared toward her ship, needing to win. But this wasn’t the satellite competition; it wasn’t a game. This was combat, and Medusa wasn’t just a fully trained Combatant, she was the Intrasolar Combatant, the one who could sway an entire war single-handedly. She banked downward to dodge the heat-seeking missiles, swept around in a graceful arc, and flew straight toward him, leading his own missiles back his way.

Diabolical, Tom messaged her.

I thought so, Medusa sent back.

He swerved, but in avoiding his own errant missile, he gave her a chance to launch her own, which narrowly missed blasting in his side.

Tom couldn’t handle her in the open air. He needed obstacles. Those mountains. He aimed toward the stretch of Texas, and found himself temporarily disoriented without the skyboards there to illustrate the zone of combat. Heather may have been given the coordinates for the fight and the lay of the landscape, but he hadn’t.

So be honest, Medusa messaged him. Would you prefer your end to be swift and terrible or slow and terrible?

Do your worst, Tom messaged back.

He led Medusa in a spirited pursuit through jagged columns of mountains, twisting through the sky, her vessel always flashing up in the sunlight behind his, utterly relentless. Tom kept awaiting some nasty surprise, but she maintained that steady pursuit. He fired back at her, and she swerved gracefully to avoid each missile. She returned fire at him, and he swerved rather more clumsily, but he was scraping by pretty well, he thought. A few times, he flew low to the ground, blasting up masses of dirt to send billowing clouds in the air, hoping to blot out her view of his ship and rises in the mountains long enough for her to collide with one—but Medusa anticipated this and always soared high into the air to avoid the traps.

And then it was her turn to surprise him. As he rounded a peak, he discovered that she’d passed straight over the mountain this time, and there were three missiles already fired off, more soaring his way, all homing in on his ship. Tom’s mind flashed over her strategy, and he realized she’d deliberately lulled him, set up an expectation in his mind about where she’d be, so she could shock him when she deviated from that.

You’re amazing, he sent her, dodging the first three missiles.

I know, she sent back, as the fourth one destroyed his ship.

Tom snapped back into himself, and was amazed to hear the roar of approval swelling from the crowd outside the Capitol all around him even though the Russo-Chinese had officially won Capitol Summit. He blinked to clear his vision, the resounding cheers vibrating his eardrums.

The screen flashed to an image of the Rotunda, where Elliot and Svetlana still looked to be in shock, and the voices mounted to a thunder in Tom’s ears. People began chanting a name, and it grew louder and louder, for the hero of Capitol Summit.

“Ramirez! Ramirez! Ra-mir-ez!”

As the image flipped from the Rotunda to the combat site in Texas, then zoomed in one last time on the smoldering remains of Elliot’s ship—and above it, the skyboard debris. The voices in the crowd grew deafening, vibrating Tom’s chest. Tom was utterly confused, because he’d lost the battle. As far as the crowd knew, Elliot had failed to beat Svetlana this year.

Then he saw the exultant, wild faces on all sides of him and he understood that the battle had lost its meaning as a showcase skirmish between countries. People were exulting in a victory of a different sort.

They’d seen Elliot Ramirez destroying all the Coalition skyboards.

TOM THREADED HIS way through the crowd. Usually, there’d be a speech going on about now. The winning side always marched out Elliot Ramirez and Svetlana Moriakova right away to say something about patriotism and fighting the good fight, always with a phalanx of the major executives and world power players about them behind that protective glass.

This year, there was a delay. Tom wondered how Elliot would be instructed to explain “his” actions. The Coalition would definitely have to take advantage of his popularity to defuse the explosive crowd somehow.

And then Heather burst out of the crowd. Tom let her catch up to him, rather amused as she descended on him and slapped him. Hard.

“Nice to see you, too,” Tom said, tasting blood.

“Do you realize what you’ve done?” she cried.

“Yeah.” His voice dropped so only she could hear him. “I did nothing, Heather. You blasted all the skyboards, at least as far as the Coalition is concerned. What a gesture. I’d almost call it revolutionary. They are not gonna like that.”

“You think this is a joke? I’ll destroy you for this!”

Tom had no illusions. He knew she’d follow through on her threat, but he’d chosen to walk into this with both eyes wide open. “Fine.” He flashed her a savage grin. “Give it a shot. Hey, it’s worked out for you so well this far, messing with me, why not go for the kicker? I’ll tell you, whatever happens from here, I’m always going to look back on the way you were so proud about having me by the throat, and then I’ll remember how I decimated your career. I’ll be honest, Heather. The memory’s gonna make me laugh.”

And with that, Tom left her tearful and shaking with rage in the middle of the crowd. Then a voice boomed over the distant loudspeaker, announcing that Elliot was ready to speak, and Tom slowed. He whirled around and peered at the massive screen, where Elliot had assumed the podium, his expression grave.

Tom knew why: the end of Heather’s career meant the end of Elliot’s hopes she’d take his place on that stage.

“My fellow Americans.” At the sound of Elliot’s voice, loud and echoing from various speakers, the crowd fell silent. “You may have noticed the mishap that occured with the skyboards during the fight.”

He cast a glance back at the men and women sheltered behind the missileproof glass with him on the steps of the Capitol—CEOs, their pet government officials, their security guards. . . .

Something flickered across Elliot’s face as he turned back to the crowd. “I’m supposed to come up here and blame a group of hackers for tampering with my ship, but that’s not the truth.”

Tom gave a startled jerk. He peered at Elliot intently.

“The truth is, the destruction of those skyboards was completely intentional. In fact—” he drew a deep breath “—it was me. I did it. I destroyed them all.” Elliot let the words sit there, a smile playing across his lips as murmuring filled the air.

Tom saw Reuben Lloyd and Sigurdur Vitol exchange a glance from where they loomed behind Elliot. This was obviously not in the script.

“You see, I’m owning up to what I did up there,” Elliot went on, “because, let’s face it—” he pointed behind him at the CEOs “—everyone hates skyboards except the men and women on this stage. They’re light pollution. They hang in our skies year after year. They’re a blight that overwhelmingly afflicts underprivileged areas, like my former neighborhood back in Los Angeles. They’re a desecration of our public skies for the sake of private profits. The only reason they were allowed in orbit in the first place was because they were supposed to be temporary, but the companies never cleared them, and the regulators who were supposed to crack down on them for that refused to lift a finger—because they all hope to get a job with these same companies.”