Chapter One

THE ROBOT EXHIBITION was a weeklong event where anyone who was anyone in the mecha world showed off their achievements. Tarle was no different. He was just as mecha crazed as everyone else attending the event, but he was special because his robot had been chosen for the showcase race on the final day.

His robot was sleek and sophisticated, something Tarle liked to pretend he could emulate. Tarle’s brain was the only sophisticated thing about him, light-years ahead of all his peers in school, which enabled him to graduate five years early and attend an advanced robotics school when he was only fifteen. His hair was overly long from neglect and a boring shade of black that matched his rather ordinary facial features. Even his hazel eyes couldn’t decide what shade of boring they wanted to be on any given day.

At eighteen, he had yet to get any job offers, unlike the older and more interesting students, who happily paraded their future employment in front of him. But that would change after the showcase when Tarle’s robot beat everyone else’s to the finish line.

At the moment, his robot was sitting on the starting point looking unimpressive. From Tarle’s seat in the very back of the stands set aside for the race contestants, he could see the unassuming white frame sitting next to full-sized robots of all colors and technological abilities. His robot looked like a box, six feet high and three feet wide. It didn’t have any visible enhancements, nor did it possess a shape that looked powerful. The betting was already at twenty-four to one against his robot winning, but Tarle would show them all.

An announcer hologram appeared on the racetrack, and his voice echoed through the stands. It was Tarle’s signal to begin liftoff procedures, so he pulled out his data pad and started inputting the takeoff sequence. When the announcer finished his spiel, a red light flashed through the stands. Tarle tensed, his finger held over the start button. A yellow light flashed, and the other pilots and engineers surrounding him also got ready.

A green light flashed, and Tarle pressed his touch screen.

There was a loud rumble as fuel rods engaged down on the track. One by one the robots lifted off the ground. They were formed like anything a designer could think of, from human or animal shapes to planes. There was even a flying guitar shooting off along the track.

Tarle’s robot lifted a few feet off the ground in a hover, waiting for space to open up around it, and then the programs engaged. The white shell cracked open, and a set of huge arms and legs attached to a torso, which dwarfed any human size, appeared. The technology that had made his robot travel-sized was something Tarle was most proud of, as were the enhancements he had made to the fuel exhaust system that allowed his robot to catch up to and pass all the others.

Once the awe of seeing his robot engage had faded, Tarle refocused his attention on his data pad. Jumbles of numbers and statistics were rolling down the screen for Tarle to watch and fix if necessary.

The race was his. No other robot could catch up to Tarle’s technology. No other engineer had his skill or his intelligence.

The course was two miles long with obstacles to avoid and hoops to jump through. As his robot approached each challenge, Tarle input the correct commands to solve each puzzle and continue on. It was just approaching the finish line when everything went wrong.

Tarle tried to input the landing sequence so his robot would land just over the finish line and shift back into its more portable form. His fingers touched all the correct places on his touch screen, but nothing happened. Instead, all the wrong buttons began pushing themselves. The ignition system was engaged while all Tarle could do was watch helplessly. It didn’t matter how hard he punched the correct buttons; his data pad had locked him out.

The fire started in one of the knees of his robot, where the ignition system for that leg was housed. With one leg out of control, the steering system failed. Tarle’s touch screen went blank, and he looked up in time to watch as his beautiful robot was engulfed in flames. It crash-landed directly into the crowded stands just before the finish line and exploded.

 

TARLE SAT UP in bed with a violent gasp. He frantically shoved his covers back and dove for the bathroom where he crouched over the toilet and dry heaved helplessly. Nothing came up, but his stomach and head ached. He hadn’t had that dream in over a month; he had hoped he was finally getting over the trauma.

Two hundred people dead, another five hundred seriously wounded. The ominous white-hot flash amid the burning metal the only precursor before so many lives had been permanently changed forever. The smoke hadn’t settled, and the bodies of those hit by the explosion were still lying strewn on the track, blood pooling around them. Authorities converged on where he was sitting and took him into custody.

It was all over. That was five years in the past, and five successful mecha races had subsequently occurred—races in which Tarle would have been lynched if he’d attended.

He knew now what hacking looked like, and that he hadn’t been entirely responsible for his robot going haywire. He hadn’t put proper protections in place to prevent someone from breaking into his computer systems, obviously, which did make him at least partially responsible. But back then he had been clueless, just standing there in shock while fingers were pointed in his direction and anger was spewed all over his life.

Blacklisted was the polite way to describe his life since, although he was just glad to have avoided prison time or execution for his perceived crimes. Luckily, for him at least, every person attending the race had signed a waiver when they bought their tickets, which meant that Tarle was protected from their wrath even if the mecha community would never speak his name again.

If there was one consolation to the tragedy of it all, it was that Tarle’s robot had been so completely destroyed that no one could copy his technology and claim it as their own. It was a weary consolation, one that barely helped keep his frustrated tears at bay, but it was all he had, so he clung tightly to it.

Tarle slowly calmed down from his dream and was eventually able to unclench his fingers from around the toilet. His stomach still hurt, which meant he was limited to chamomile tea for breakfast. He made his way on unsteady feet into the kitchen where the teapot was waiting. A shaking finger hit the On switch, and a few seconds later his mug was filled with the gentle-smelling herbal tea. Tarle waited for the shaking to stop as he carefully sipped from his steaming mug.

Only once his fingers were finally steady around the mug did he step away from the counter that had been holding him up and head to the far corner of the kitchen. Tarle twisted the rim of his mug, and a protective seal snapped into place over the top. He stepped on tile three and then six on his way to the last tile in the corner, and then he stood still for five seconds while the gentle hum of a DNA tester checked his identity. Without warning, the tile dropped out from under Tarle’s feet and he fell.

A slide caught him, propelling him farther underground at faster and faster speeds. When he reached six stories underground he was caught by a gravitational pull, the same sort of technology that allowed spacecraft to dock in the limited area on a space colony without crashing. He slowed until the slide abruptly ended. An RNA laser double-checked his identity, and then with a pop, the hatch at the end of the slide opened.

Lights flickered on one by one as Tarle stepped out into a gigantic underground cavern. On one side was his desk with his computers and holographic projectors on it. On the other side was a catwalk hanging from the ceiling and supporting an extensive set of electronic lift scaffolding. Behind the scaffolding was Tarle’s biggest secret. Twice the size of his first robot and with twice the capabilities, his newest creation was safe for space flight, could stay hidden from detection, and thanks to a black-hole-like device Tarle had invented, it slimmed down to pocket-sized if needed. Its current shape was humanoid and over thirty feet tall, but when he took it for a test flight, it would be much larger and shaped like a regular spaceship.

It didn’t matter that he could never showcase his massive accomplishment. Nor did it bother him that the advanced technology he had created for his robot to be possible would never become part of robotics history. Tarle forced a smile as he popped on the radio and headed into the scaffolding to find the faulty wire that was blocking the propulsion system on the left side. The Four Kings were in the middle of a piano solo. Their newest member, Dayton, had brought a softer edge to their second album that Tarle found he liked. With the music thumping and a data pad in his hand, Tarle reveled in the chance to build another robot. The rest of the drama didn’t matter.

It didn’t matter in the least.