Read World-Ripper War (Mad Tinker Chronicles Book 3) for Free Online

them. Had they been playing full contact, a flubbed catch on the kick was a prelude to carnage as both teams fell on it like packs of wolves. In a friendly, Rynn took up her duty trying to block the path of her opponents, knowing they had to avoid body to body contact.
    The sight of a man bearing down on her kept Rynn hunkered down and ready to spring away. He was mechanic in his coveralls, and not nearly the size of the players who’d opted for the rough game, but more than Rynn could have fended off had he wanted to bowl her over. She kept her arms out in front of her, elbows slightly bent as she’d seen other players do and wondered if she ought to have lugged a few more sacks of wheat flour in her life. There was no tool to help her, nothing but her own flesh against her opponent’s. In that moment she saw the appeal—for those lads with arms like thunderail pistons. Strip away the money and artifice, and you were left with animal combat. Of course, there were rules to keep it civil, but Rynn had always relied on wit and tinkered machines over brute force. As Hayfield’s team closed in, the plaza shook under their feet. Instinct told Rynn to take cover, to dive out of the way and bring her arms up to protect her head. The arms stretched out to take an impact drew closer and closer to her body.
    The mechanic veered aside. Rynn knew her job was to sidestep and block him off, force him even farther out of his way, but she leaned away from him instead. The legs can’t move laterally that fast . It was an excuse for later, nothing she believed. Another of Hayfield’s players brushed by to her left. Rynn spared a glance over her shoulder and saw that her squad had recovered the ball and were passing it back and forth to keep it away from the onrush of opponents. It was a peculiarity in the friendly game that would never have stood up in full contact. Forced to go around one another, Rynn’s players kept Hayfield’s at bay simply by forcing them off their intended path, tossing the ball to a free teammate when the opponents got too near. Played so wide and loose in a contact game, one team or the other would have knocked a path clear to score or steal before long.
    Rynn looked to Hayfield’s side of the pitch and saw that only two players had stayed back as safeties. No one was paying her much mind either. She took two hopping strides to get a feel for the plaza floor, then raised an arm and waved to her team. “To me!”
    It had been the thing to do. She was no great fanatic of crashball, but she knew the call. She said it without much thought to what would follow. The teammate with the ball heeded her. Whether his general’s voice held some thrall over him, whether he took pity on the left-out player, or whether he naively believed in her ability to score, the ball lofted her way. The oblong crashball wobbled through the air with the narrow ends to the sides, like it was trying to paddle a canoe. Players from both teams turned to watch its flight and to follow its course. Rynn was suddenly the center of attention of twenty-three other players.
    Rynn judged the ball in flight and shuffled her feet to position herself under it. She tried to ignore the pounding boots growing closer by the second and kept her attention skyward, on the little glint of open air between the Jennai’s forward vacuum tanks. It hung in the air for hours, it seemed, growing larger rather than nearer. Too fast. Step aside. Fielding the ball on a bounce was a dice roll as she saw with the kick. She had to try.
    “Oomph.”
    The ball hit Rynn in the chest, and she cradled it against her body as it knocked the breath from her lungs. To her credit, she held it tight and regained her composure before looking to see how close the pursuit had come. Too close.
    Rynn tried to twist, but the bulk of the tinker’s legs made it into the movement of a compass—one point stabbed into the paper as the other swung in an arc. Once she got her legs lined up,