Are you crazy?
Maybe.
Codi closed her eyes, trying not to listen to the voices in her head. Today was the day, the Gauntlet final. The last step on a long, long road. She didn't know how to feel right now – her emotions were an unpredictable mess. Excitement – even pride – that she'd made it this far; fear of letting down a whole world on the biggest stage of them all. Anger at the bitter twists of fate that had conspired to stand in her way.
In the preceding days, Chris and Ripple had taken the second scalp for Battlecast in the pairs discipline. Facing off against the twins, Lucas and Lazlo, who had already provided Ursa Major's best run in any discipline, they provided the packed stands with a scintillating, hard-fought battle before finally emerging the victors.
Although she shared their jubilation, Codi couldn't help feel the inevitable pile of pressure that their victory heaped on her. Two out of three titles secured. It would be up to her to secure a clean sweep for Battlecast, and right now, she just didn't know if she could do it.
The medical techs had worked wonders in the short time available when it became clear Codi had no intention of withdrawing, but even they had their limits. She could move around more or less as well as she could before, but pain still flared through her ribs when she twisted in certain ways. Direct shots to her left side hurt a lot more than they normally would have, and her breathing grew sore in prolonged practice sessions.
She wasn't at a hundred percent and that knowledge infuriated her beyond words.
The reporters knew it, too. No matter how many lies she peddled, telling the clamouring newsnets that she would be ready for the final, that Battlecast had no concerns over her fitness, they all knew better. It was all she'd been able to do not to erupt on live coverage and deck some of the more obnoxious culprits.
There had been a change in atmosphere among the journalists, however, when it came to her opponent. While the prospect of an unknown challenger from the fingers of colonised space sweeping all the way to a Gauntlet final made for good headlines, they were finally reaching the end of their tether with his complete refusal to speak to any of them. Black Horizon's coach, Colm Harrow, Battlecast's former task master now turned nemesis, fielded the media duties, and even then he remained tight-lipped about his prized contender.
And since he wouldn't give them anything concrete, the rumour mill started spinning. Fast. Could Keefer handle the pressure? Was a true professional? Could he be so easily off-put by an awkward question that he couldn't even speak to the press? Although Colm Harrow studiously denied the allegations, without hard evidence the journalists made up their own minds.
Whether that would make any difference to Keefer's fighting, however, remained to be seen.
Right now she had to just trust that Kye could deliver what he promised. He would be in the stands, she knew that much, watching and waiting, ready to trigger his counter to Black Horizon's enhancements. If he did that, she would do her job and put and end to Keefer Darkwood's Gauntlet run at the final hurdle.
She stood in the waiting area with Bronagh Llewellyn, minutes away from the Gauntlet final, but right now her coach seemed somewhat preoccupied.
"Everything alright?" she ventured, uneasy seeing the normally unflappable woman so on edge.
"Codi, I think you should know, I've had the academy lawyers lodge a formal complaint of unlawful conduct against Black Horizon. I suspect it will be all over the news in a few days."
Codi looked at her in shock. "You what...?"
"Ripple told me everything," Bronagh told her quietly. "As you should have as soon as you had an ounce of suspicion." The woman let out a heavy sigh, rubbing the back of her neck. "I understand that you and your friends thought there would be consequences to breaking into the Lock-Tech – you might be right about that too – but that pales in significance to what Black Horizon are doing. Regardless of the outcome of our protest, it's too late to help you, and too late to stop this fight."
"Good!" Codi snapped. "I don't want to stop the fight!"
"Codi, it was a bad idea for you to compete at all, it's an idiotic one now."
She glared at Bronagh. "Do I really need to listen to this? It's happening, whether you like it or not. If all you're going to do is sit and tell me how stupid I am for fighting just ... just don't. Just leave me alone."
Bronagh let out a frustrated sigh. "I'm sorry. I'm not trying to discourage you. It's just, if you'd come to me sooner we could have fixed this. Now I have to let you walk out there against him when I know you're injured. It does not feel right."
"It was my choice," Codi reminded her. "Whatever happens in there, it's not your fault."
"That doesn't really make me feel better."
Then the attendant signalled to them and called, "Okay, Miss James, they're ready for you in the arena."
Then Bronagh did something Codi would never have expected. She gave her a hug. The woman's sinewy arms wrapped around her in a gentle embrace, and it was over before Codi had time to even react and return the gesture. The head instructor stepped back, her face hardening.
"Good luck, Codi. I may not want to see you hurt, but I do want to see you put an end to Colm Harrow's scheming for good. Beat Keefer Darkwood now and everything they've done will be for nothing. I don't think we can hand them a better punishment than that."
"Sounds good to me." Codi nodded, and then bared her teeth in a savage smile. "Don't worry about me. Worry about him."
Then it was time.
The doors to the arena heaved themselves open, letting light gush out into the corridor Codi stood in, and a moment later a familiar, Olympian voice sounded.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the announcer roared. "Please welcome your returning challenger from last year's contest, formerly of Brax-Delta Academy, and now representing your very own Battlecast Academy, please make some noise for the one, the only, CODI JAMES!"
Codi didn't think it could be possible for the noise in the arena to surpass anything she'd already experienced, but she was wrong. Thousands of voices exploded like a bomb going off, chanting her name in an unbelievable display, the sheer volume making her ears ring. She steeled herself, squared her shoulders, and then loped out into the arena, feeling fire in every inch of her as the adrenaline started to flow. Looking up and around she saw the stands clogged with people, patched with huge swathes of blue and cyan, many of them on their feet, mouths wide.
"CODI! CODI! CODI!"
Pumping her fists in the air she let out a wordless scream of reply, turning on the spot, wanting to show her appreciation to every single person in the crowd. The sheer energy flooded down into her, filling her with a renewed sense of purpose. She would not let them down. Injury be damned, she was going to beat Keefer Darkwood.
"And her opponent," the announcer rumbled once the clamour had finally subsided. "This year's dark horse, a surprise from an academy many of us didn't even know existed, from Black Horizon, please put your hands together for Keefer Darkwood!"
Even the announcer's introduction carried a lacklustre hint, and when Keefer Darkwood entered the arena Codi was amazed to hear a low thunder of boos roll around the arena. There were not a lot of people in the stands that wanted him to win this match.
Not that he seemed to care. Keefer didn't as much as glance at the stands as he strode out of the doors at the opposite end of the arena. He just walked out into the light, stopped and stood there, rolling his neck from side to side and stretching out his arms as though getting ready for a leisurely warm up. He looked altogether under whelmed by the prospect of becoming a champion.
The construct before them was a fairly simple affair. While earlier rounds allowed an element of luck and creativity, in the final the spectators and the organisers wanted to see the two best fighters actually fight, head to head. The dark metal sloped in from her starting point to form a shallow, flat-bottomed bowl. Right in the centre stood a square pillar around two meters thick, studded with hand and foot-holds and with weapons magnetically clamped to its surface at seemingly random intervals on the way up.
The only other features were a series of grav-launchers arranged in a circle facing in towards the pillar. Other than that it was a flat, featureless, level playing field.
Okay, Codi, she told herself, time to show the whole world what you're made of.
No fear. No pain. No turning back.
The counter boomed down, down, down ... the noise of the crowds swelled in a frantic crescendo. She bent her legs, took a steadying breath, and then exhaled long and slow.
As the klaxon sounded she burst from her starting block like a cannonball, propelled forward by the tidal wave of cheers that washed down into the arena after her. She needed a quarterstaff and fast, in order to negate Keefer's massive reach advantage. Accordingly, she streaked towards the nearest grav-launcher, keeping a wary eye on the towering black-armoured figure as it sprinted from the opposite end, massive strides eating up the distance between them.
Codi hit the grav-launcher just ahead of him and felt her stomach lurch as the machine lobbed her body through the air. The pillar rushed up to meet her and she braced herself, tensing to grab the nearest handholds.
She slammed into it, letting out a gasp of pain as her injured ribs were jolted by the force, but she clung on. Gritting her teeth, she looked up and saw a quarter staff a few meters further up. As she started up towards it, however, she heard an ominous thud as Keefer Darkwood hit the opposite side of the pillar sending vibrations through the whole structure.
Trying not to think about it, Codi wrapped a hand around the quarter staff and ripped it free of its magnetic clamps. Then she pushed off, plummeting back down to the arena floor and landing in a crouch, staff held across her body in both hands, ready to fight. A moment later Keefer lolloped around from the far side of the pillar, a hacktor clutched in one long hand.
The fight was on.
They met, hacktor against quarter-staff, and Codi was shocked by the force her opponent delivered with his opening blow. It very nearly ripped the staff from her grip and sent her stumbling backwards. The horrible realisation that Kye's countermeasure hadn't kicked in yet swelled in her mind like a dark cloud.
He stepped forward and swung again. This time she adjusted her approach, darting aside and parrying the blow, but again the force of the strike was stunning, shaking every bone in her body. She cursed under her breath and circled, manoeuvring out of range and looking for a window. Sure, he had the brute force right now, but if she could avoid taking any direct hits, it might not matter.
The crowds urged her on as they battled around the pillar, matching blow for blow. Soon Codi's hands started to hurt from the vibrations that passed through the staff's structure after blocking one of Keefer's swings. She managed to land a handful of decent shots, but none of them troubled her towering opponent. He only hit her squarely once, a blow to the right shoulder with an arcing swing of the hacktor, but the force almost knocked her flying. She knew if she took too many of those the fight would be as good as done.
Their cagey dance continued for minutes, but Keefer seemed to grow frustrated and made an abrupt wild charge at her, his hacktor raised high. Without time to move aside, Codi thrust the staff up to meet the blow, clenching her teeth in preparation for the massive impact that was coming.
At the last instant, Keefer twirled the hacktor, changing its position so that he gripped it with the pommel high and point facing downwards. The crossguard slammed into the centre of the quarter staff as Codi blocked, and then he pulled back hard.
Codi had no choice but to let go of the staff or be thrown across the arena with it. Keefer was just too strong. He didn't even bother holding onto his hacktor either, sending both weapons clattering away with contemptuous ease before launching into a vicious hand-to-hand assault.
Worry gnawed at Codi's mind as she fended off his crushing swings, each one striking like a massive hammer. She realised now the subtlety of the alteration, and what Rokki Thakkar had meant when he said he needed to fight Keefer to actually know what was happening. To an outside observer it wouldn't look all that different, but each time she blocked and absorbed a hit, it took more and more effort. The net result of Keefer's extra five percent of force was to wear down opponents much more quickly than anyone else could. But when he finally found an opening it would look as natural as ever.
Right now, she couldn't see a way out of that fate. He could sense his opportunity now that he had her locked in a hand to hand bout. Against other opponents Codi had been able to trade – make calculated risks to take hit in one place so she could land one of her own. She couldn't risk that against Keefer Darkwood. So she stayed on the defensive, ducking and twisting away from the worst he could offer, frantically trying to think of some way to break the deadlock.
Before she could formulate a plan, however, he wrong footed her with a feint and switch. She locked an arm into place to protect her head, but Keefer Darkwood had a different target in mind. He'd obviously done his own homework in the film room.
His heavy fist slammed squarely into her injured ribs.
Codi couldn't contain the scream as agony exploded through her torso, Keefer's enhanced exoskeleton sending shockwaves through her. For a moment she couldn't take a breath, choking and feeling her vision blur. She regained enough of her senses to duck a follow up swing at her head and kick out, using his thigh as a springboard to push herself away from him. She landed unsteadily several feet away, fighting to get breath back into her lungs, enduring the searing waves of pain coursing through her.
He came forward again. Codi leaned away from a whistling right hook, deflected a swinging kick with a double-arm block, but caught a jab hard in the shoulder. Normally such a strike would barely have affected her, but that extra five percent was enough to knock her off balance and open her guard up to something much worse. His right hand was swinging for her head again and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
His blow caught her square in the jaw and she knew this was the end.
But when the moment of impact passed she was still standing. Pain and confusion rang in her skull, but he hadn't even knocked her over. That one hit had felt no different to the dozens she'd absorbed over her punishing run through the Gauntlet brackets. She pivoted back, shook her head to clear it and raised her hands, ready to go again.
When she looked at Keefer Darkwood she saw him staring back, an expression of shock on his normally placid features. He looked at her, then down to his fist and back again, looking for the entire world like a baffled toddler, and he cast a fervent glance up into the stands. The blow hadn't delivered the extra force he'd been expecting, and that could mean only one thing.
Kye's plan had worked.
Keefer Darkwood was reduced to fighting fair, and when she saw his hesitation, Codi knew she could beat him.
Before he could react and process what had happened she was on him, leaping forward in a single powerful bound and putting all her body weight into a savage right hook that smashed into his face like a truck. She was the hardest hitting female competitor in the contest, and right then and there, she proved it in emphatic style when her blow snapped Keefer's head backwards and sent the giant flying. He slammed into the ground with a bong of armour on metal, and a volcanic surge of wild cheering rose up around them.
Codi watched him pick himself up, feeding off the energy of the crowds as they started chanting her name again. Her ribs ached but she no longer even noticed it, glaring daggers at her opponent, bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet; clenching and unclenching her fists, building herself up to unleash a storm, the likes of which the contest had never seen.
It was anger now, pulsing through her like a drug. Anger at the other fighters who'd fallen to a cheat, for those he'd injured, and for the fans that he had robbed of a true contest. Anger that Keefer Darkwood and his bastard of a coach wanted to steal away what she'd worked so hard for on the back of a technological smokescreen.
Maybe it was Keefer's turn to take a trip to the medical centre.
When she looked into his eyes she saw the unmistakable glimmer of fear. She raised her hands, gesturing to the crowds and the noise swelled around her as though she were a god of thunder. The whole stadium was against him now.
"C'mon, Darkwood," she spat contemptuously. "Don't quit on me now."
But she wasn't interested in hearing a reply. With that declaration she burst forward again like a hurricane. He tried to back away and defend, but there was no stopping her. His reach became a handicap as she pressed inside his guard, lashing precise hooks and jabs. Once, twice, three times she slipped through his guard and delivered a crushing blow. He fought desperately to regain some distance but she pushed on relentlessly.
As Keefer snaked out a jab, Codi swayed around it to the outside and jumped, hooking an arm around his. Just as she had against Dustin Morto, she used her opponent's own huge frame as an anchor and swung herself up. This time, however, instead of landing in a chokehold, she pulled herself higher and clamped her thighs around his neck.
Dialling up every gravity field in her exoskeleton, she gripped tightly and wrenched her body to one side as hard as she could. Caught completely off guard, he didn't adjust in time, his head turning with her motion, and she wrenched him off balance. As he fell she heaved with her legs and then released her grip with millimetre precision. The result – Keefer Darkwood soared across the arena like a shooting star, and smashed into the pillar in the centre of the arena with bone-shaking force.
Codi scrambled to her feet and saw Keefer's massive frame crash down to earth, but he wasn't down and out yet. Not just yet.
As he tried to rise, Codi picked up her fallen quarterstaff. With wrath coursing through her veins, she advanced. Keefer struggled to one knee. She gripped the long staff like a baseball bat and broke into a jog, rearing back to swing. A concerted intake of breath swept through the stands when the onlookers realised what was about to happen.
Keefer Darkwood looked up.
And with a feral scream of retribution, Codi swung.
Driven by all the brute force she could muster coupled with the servos of the exoskeleton, the quarterstaff struck him in the face with a sickening clunk. Without the protective tungsten lattice and neck brace of the exoskeleton the blow would probably have taken his head clean off, but instead the incredible force spun him twice around before his body thumped limply to the plating of the arena floor.
Silence descended on the arena for a moment as he lay there unmoving. Codi stared, breathing heavily, eyes wide and her whole body shaking. The pain in her ribs began to creep back into her consciousness. She took in a shuddering breath.
Then Keefer let out a moan of pain and rolled onto his back clutching his neck with both hands. But he didn't get up.
The klaxon sounded.
"Ladies and gentlemen, by clear knockout, please shake the stands for your new Gauntlet champion – CODI JAMES!"
Her nerveless fingers dropped the quarterstaff. It clattered away from her and Codi sank to her knees, cover her face with both hands, unable to wrap her head around it. The tears started flowing, sobs of joy, elation and disbelief shaking her body from head to toe. The cheering grew and grew and grew until she felt like she was sitting in the centre of a tornado. Eventually she controlled herself and turned her tearful face to the crowds, struggling upright again and raising her left hand in a clenched fist, the other clutching her throbbing ribs.
Try as she might she couldn't pick Kye out of the sea of people – it was impossible. There were just too many standing, shrieking faces. The chant erupted again: CODI! CODI! CODI!
It was just surreal. She laughed and gave up trying to find Kye in the maelstrom of faces. There would be time afterward to thank him properly for what he'd given her.
Codi James – Gauntlet Champion.
Never in her wildest dreams could she have envisioned the road that had let her here, but it had happened nonetheless. Here she stood in front of a galaxy, the best of the best, a hero to many – a hero to herself at any rate. Gone was the dead end, volatile orphan that had walked through the doors of lowly Brax-Delta academy more than a year ago. Codi James had transformed for the better.
She spotted Bronagh Llewellyn hurtling out across the arena towards her from the Battlecast entrance. The head instructor took Codi's arm across her shoulders, supporting her and Codi gratefully let the woman take her weight.
"You did it!" Bronagh shouted into her ear over the noise.
Codi laughed through the tears and shook her head. "We did it."