and there was tremendous pressure for Artemio to loose. He knew it was just a matter of time until someone killed him, if not in the cage, then outside of it. He jumped at the opportunity to fight with the revolutionaries when they offered all soldiers land. He made it through the war, and almost a decade as an MP without receiving an injury serious enough to need a cybernetic implant, which would have disqualified him from the Multan FC. This wasn't due to luck, but experience, and an instinct to duck.
For Artemio it had never been about wining, it had always been about surviving. He didn't know if he could beat Mudiwa Kachote in a fair fight, in fact he doubted he could, but it didn't matter because he could survive a fight with Mudiwa. It was hard-wired into him. For Chichi it had always been about wining, and Chichi always won. Chichi knew she would win against Artemio, he was just a fighter, she was Multan itself. It didn't matter if Mudiwa was or wasn't a better fighter than Artemio, by the time Artemio got into the cage, he would be in no condition to fight Mudiwa.
Yousaf's perspective was different, he hadn't been a winner in more than a decade. He had a good gig, and made a lot of money working for Chichi, but those weren't his wins, they were losses. Chichi had once been a competitor, and had screwed him over when he proposed they jointly form a fighting league in Multan. He was from Multan, and knew the revolutionaries would ban the fighting leagues if they won the war. Every win she had was ashes in his mouth.
Artemio had know Yousaf longer than he'd known Chichi, they'd met when he was still fighting under the name Chico Violento in Hesperia, half a world away. Yousaf had been scouting talent, and had offered Chico Violento a contract in the SLF, but Artemio was under contract and couldn't leave. When his contact ended he headed to Sirenum to find Yousaf, and found Chichi instead.
Even though Artemio ended up working for the competition, Artemio and Yousaf had become friends. For the first year Artemio was in the SLF Yousaf had marketed his fighters as Anti-Artillery, fighters that could defeat the undefeatable Artemio. Yousaf was as responsible for Artemio's reputation as Artemio's fighting skills. At first it was hype, then it became reality, and then it became a problem. After Artemio's first year the contenders became scarce, mainly because there was no money in a fight when everyone knew the outcome beforehand. In the two years that followed Yousaf had made far more money than Chichi's champion by organizing his own elimination tournaments to establish the next Anti-Artillery champion-killer.
Yousaf had sent champion after champion against Artemio for two years, and remembered well the feeling that he was about to loose another fighter. He was feeling that again now. Shortly before Artemio left to join the revolutionary army, Yousaf had found out that Chichi was tired of having a fighter that wouldn't take a dive, and had arranged for him to loose the next fight. Yousaf had warned Artemio, and Artemio had been ready when they came. Five fighters, all of them good, trying to take him by surprise one night before the fight. He had been waiting for them in the locker room, gun in hand, and shot them all without mercy. They hadn't expected a fighter of his calibre to be carrying a gun. Why would he? For Yousaf it was as much about helping a friend as it was about protecting his Anti-Artillery tournaments. For Artemio it was sign that he need to move on.
"That was a mistake," Yousaf said after Artemio had left. "The more you push him into a corner, the stronger he'll come out of it. You know that."
"That was more than ten years ago," Chichi said contemptuously. "Now he's just a has-been, and soon he won't even be that."
Artemio went directly to the Bank of Multan to mortgage his farm. The bankers were expecting him, Chichi had clearly planned this in advance. It didn't matter. After his morning workout, Artemio headed to Cafe Vasu to meet Carey. The Bank of Multan was located within the Casino Multan, but the Cafe Vasu was in the Hotel Vasu next door. Artemio and Carey were staying in the Hotel Vasu, as Artemio didn't want Chichi getting any more money out of him than absolutely necessary. Casino Multan was connected to the surrounding hotels, apartment buildings, and offices via a network of pressurized cat-walks that allowed guests to move around without the need of respirator masks.
Outside Mars was much as it had been for half a billion years, frozen and dry with a thin carbon-dioxide atmosphere. In the century and a half since humanity had begun colonizing Mars, the atmosphere had gained some nitrogen and oxygen that escaped from colonies, as well as gases released from mining and industry. The planet had warmed a few degrees in that time, enough that low-laying lakes in the equatorial region would thaw out for a few months each Martian year. But largely the planet was as it had been since before the age of the dinosaurs.
Carey was waiting in the Cafe Vasu drinking a beer, and eating a strawberry jelly sandwich. Artemio ordered a whiskey, and a plate of spaghetti and tomato sauce. As he ate he realized he couldn't stay in Multan if he wanted to fight Mudiwa, the entire food selection was starch and sugar based. Multan had been setup as a Rhodium and Platinum mining colony by the Khewra-Mars Mining Corporation, based in Pakistan. They had built greenhouse farms for growing wheat, sugarcane, cotton, and rice at the colony to reduce the cost of importing these staples from Earth. After the colony had fallen under the British Colonial Zone during the Mars Treaty negotiations, London forbade the importing of anymore species to Multan in order to force the colony to buy food through the British Mars Corporation. When the Eco-Revolutionaries had driven the British government off Mars, the free movement of species within the Confederacy was enshrined in the new constitution, however a decade later the Multan diet continued to be based around bread, pasta, and sweats.
He didn't want to stay in Multan anyway, it would be too easy for Chichi to send someone to beat on him, or worse to kill him. With the mortgage on his property in place Chichi didn't need him to survive to fight Mudiwa. Sitting there with Carey, he knew Carey wasn't going with him. He knew Carey couldn't watch what he had to do. Carey was cute and could easily survive in any city, but Carey wasn't strong and he wouldn't be able to watch Artemio fight.
"How did it go?" Carey asked Artemio as the conversation drifted back towards the reason they were in Multan. Carey knew it hadn't gone well, but they hadn't expected it to go well.
"About what I expected," Artemio answered. "I'll be in the cage with Mudiwa in about three months. But the cunt made be pay ₹10,000 for the fight. I had to mortgage the farm."
Carey paused considering, "She really bent you over. What's she got against you?"
Artemio smiled. She still didn't understand him, after all these years. She was giving him the one thing that drove him to win, she was pushing him into a corner. She was leaving him with only one option, to win. "It doesn't matter. I came here for a fight, and I've got one lined up against Mudiwa. She's giving Yousaf Dulai three months to hype it. It'll be a major ticket fight. Regardless of the buy-in, I needed to win. She's not as smart as she thinks she is. She never was."
"Yousaf?" Carey enquired. "Why would he want to hype you?"
"He always was my best promoter," Artemio said. "Chichi didn't want me to win after the first three months. Yousaf hyped every fight I had, because he wanted his fighter to be the one that took me out. He was always a better promoter than Chichi."
"Then why does she own Multan?" Carey enquired quickly. "Yousaf Dulai just works for her."
"I didn't say she wasn't conniving," Artemio answered. "But she was always about image. I'd bet she's over extended, that casino must have cost her a lot."
The next day he went to one of the local dojos to work out. It was the first time he'd been in one since he left the army. The real issue wasn't that he hadn't been working out, the real issue is that he hadn't been in a pro-fight in more than a decade. There were underground fight clubs across the Confederacy, but the MPs were charged with shutting them down, and so he'd avoided them. The Military Police had been posted throughout the Confederacy since the war, wherever the local police weren't enough to suppress the violence.
During that time he'd been in many gun
fights, and more than a few fist fights, but nothing like league fight. Meanwhile Mudiwa had been fighting, and regardless of Chichi's machinations, Mudiwa just wanted to fight. He didn't care what condition Artemio was in when they got into the cage, Mudiwa was planning to take him apart.
He worked out at the dojo for a few hours, focusing on dead weights and cardio. The main reason he went to the dojo wasn't to work out, it was to get a feel for the fight scene in Multan. He learned what he needed to know when realized no one in the dojo was willing to spar with him. It had only been one day since he agreed to the fight, and already the word was out. His suspicions were confirmed when Yousaf happened to wonder into the dojo. There were at least a dozen dojos in Multan, and Artemio had no doubt that Yousaf was there checking up on him for Chichi.
"They're trying to rattle you," Carey said over diner. "If you can't spar, you can't get back into shape."
"I know," Artemio replied honestly, "but it doesn't matter, I've got a plan."
"What is it?" Carey asked