“What are you—?” the Matron started, stuttering to a stop as she looked at the screen of the tablet, on which a reel of the most exciting moments of the exhibition match was playing. “Who—?” Then she realized what she was seeing. “Reidon Ward! Are you watching the combat tournaments again?!”
For a reply, the 11-year-old only grinned.
CHAPTER 1
Early May, 2468 - Seven Years Later
Astra System – Astra-3 – Sector 6
“The Simulated Combat Tournaments developed by the Intersystem Collective Military are arguably mankind’s greatest form of entertainment. Complex engagement training at the core of their design, since shortly after their application in the early 24th century the SCTs have also become the sole source of military funding, as well as an excellent means of recruitment. The circuits are so essential, in fact, that actual participation in the war efforts was struck as an eventual requirement for high-level combatants first in all professional SCTs, then eventually in the collegiate levels as the academic and institutional events gained their own massive intersystem viewership. If a User achieves any significant merit in either—or both—of these circuits, then deployment becomes voluntary. Strange as it may seem, many prominent civil and social scientists have touted their agreement of this method, often pointing to the research showing that a single successful SCT combatant’s impact on enlistment largely outweighs any direct effect they might have on the situation on the front lines.”
- A Consideration of SCTs and Their Intersystem Influence
Lieutenant Colonel Hana von Geil, Ph.D.
Distributed by Central Command, Earth
When the punch came, Rei was ready for it.
The NOED Grandcrest Prep had supplied him with as part of his tuition wasn’t the best quality, but a little tinkering in the base code had provided a decent boost in processing power. As a result, the highlighted warnings in its optical frame did a good job of giving Rei fractions of a second’s advantage. When Ansley Kosh shifted his footing, twisting away ever so slightly, the readout blared red over the boy’s left arm.
So when the punch came, Rei was ready for it.
He dodged to the side, keeping his right hand up to shield his face as he jabbed with his left. The blue frame lines of the NOED in Kent’s eye were obvious too, though, so Rei wasn’t shocked when the testing blow was smacked away. A leg followed next, and he ducked, attempting to sweep at his opponent’s ankle, but the boy planted and twisted, and Rei earned himself nothing more than a painful slamming of shins. Turning his momentum into something valuable, he shifted and flipped back over his hands in an upward kick. He felt his toes catch Kosh a glancing blow under the chin, and by the time he’d rolled onto his feet again the boy had stumbled back several paces, almost outside the marked lines.
Damn, Rei thought, realizing that might have been his chance to knock his opponent out of the ring.
A few of his teammates were shouting encouragement behind him, and he made out Viv’s voice in the drone, but tuned it all out. He had to. His right elbow was killing him after taking the weight of that flip, and Ansley Kosh had murder in his eyes as he shook off his moment of surprise and approached the center of the mat again.
Red highlights.
Rei ducked, then dodged once more, Kent’s one-two combo turning half his vision crimson as the NOED only barely registered it. Rei kicked low again, this time straight on, and managed to catch Kosh in the ankle, sending his front foot sliding back. The boy caught himself on his other leg, though, and brought a chopping blow jetting down at Rei’s head. Rei got both arms up in time to block, bracing for his elbow to scream in protest.
The strike never came.
WHAM!
The impact of Kent’s knee catching him square in the face would have broken Rei’s nose if it weren’t for the thin layer of reactive energy shielding his head from potential trauma, transmitted by the mandatory combat collar around his neck. Just the same, the barrier was only designed to reduce the force of a blow, so Rei wasn’t surprised to smell blood as he was thrown onto his back. He lay there for a bit, stunned, and was unsurprised when he heard the shout of “Match win! Carter’s School for the Gifted!” from the referee.
Dazed, Rei only barely managed to sit up. The ref was beside him a second later, the man’s plain whites almost painful to his swimming vision.
“Easy, kid. That was a hell of a hit. Can you stand?”
It was a hell of a hit. Rei grunted and closed his eyes, pretending to consider the question. In reality, with a series of quick eye commands he had his NOED pull the footage from the mat-side cameras, then watched the last few seconds of the fight from the spectator’s angle. He had to admit that Kosh played him well. Instead of bringing the blow down on his head, the move had been a feint to get him to defend up and open himself for a knee-strike.
Block with one hand next time, idiot, Rei berated himself, already hearing Coach Kat’s criticism ringing through his ears.
“I can stand,” he told the referee, opening his eyes again and pushing himself up. As he did, he tasted metal, prompting him to bring a hand up to his nose. His fingers came away bloody, soaking the wraps that looped over most of his exposed limbs to cover up as much of the scarring as possible, or at least what wasn’t hidden under his black combat suit already. He looked up, offering Ansley Kosh a grin. “Good match. Hope you don’t mind if we don’t shake hands.” He held up the reddened hand in explanation.
Kosh, for his part, grimaced. It made his designed, handsome features take on an ugly quality that even reached his orangish eyes. He addressed the ref. “Can I go?” He asked, looking like he distinctly preferred to be anywhere but sharing a mat with Rei.
The ref frowned, but nodded, having no reason to keep the victor from his cheering teammates. The Carter’s fighters, in their red robes, were all smiles and shouts as Kosh turned on his bare heels and stepped out of the ring. There were laughs as well, but Rei chose to assume those were hoots of excitement rather than anything else.
He didn’t have the energy to believe anything else, in that moment.
“I’m okay,” he told the ref with a nod of thanks. “I can walk off on my own.”
The man patted him on the shoulder, offering a look of forced encouragement. “Good fight.”
It made Rei feel sick.
He turned and approached his own bench. Coach Kat was standing at the edge of the mat, arms crossed and looking bored. She offered Rei a cursory once-over, lacking anything more than apathy, eyes lingering on his bloody face.
“Block with one hand next time, idiot,” she muttered by way of feedback, then waved him by with an unenthusiastic wave. “Go get cleaned up.”
Having expected nothing less, Rei moved on without another word.
There were no more shouts of encouragement from the combat team, now, much less cheers or smiles. On the contrary, the majority of the boys and girls of the squad didn’t meet his eyes as he stepped off the mat, or even move out of his way to make it easier to reach the bench. He still got there, though, and had already sat down to start looking for a clean towel before discovering his punishment wasn’t half over.
“What the hell, Ward? Do you have any useful function, other than acting like a living training dummy?”
With an internal sigh, Rei looked up in time to find a broad-shouldered boy standing over him, his black hair striped with artfully designed slashes of red, his clear blue eyes burning in his perfect features.
“I just got kneed in the head, Lee. Hard.” A few strands of Rei’s own bone-white hair had fallen out of the tail he’d gather it in behind his head, and he blew them out of his face before waving at his bloody nose for emphasis. “Are you going to cut me some slack, or just keep up the trend of being a monumental dick?”
Lee Jackson’s expression hardened, and he put his hands on his knees so he could bend down to be closer to eye-level with Rei. “You’d think three
losses in a row would have taught you to shut your damn mouth, freak. If you cost us the lead in this tournament, I’m—”
“Lee, it’s the 25th century. If you’ve got a thing for Rei, you can just tell him. No one’s gonna judge.”
Rei wasn’t proud of the breath of relief he involuntarily took at the sound of Viv’s voice, but it was worth Lee snapping up and away from him, cheeks flushed. From his left, a tall girl with brown hair—twisted into artful curls that had no business lasting the length of a day-long school combat tournament—slid into view from out of the rest of the gathered team.
“What?” Lee seethed. “I’m not—”
“Oh, you’re not into him? Weird.” Viv cocked her head in feigned confusion as she approached the two of them, people moving aside for her without hesitating. “You have a tendency to get in his face so much, I figured a burning desire for some make-out action was the only plausible explanation.”
There was a roll of healthy laughter from the other members of the squad, and Lee’s cheeks turned almost the color of the streaks in his hair.
“Screw you, Arada. Ward just gave up three consecutive matches. If he loses us this tournament—”
“It’ll have about as much to do with you as with him, jackass. His day’s record is 2 and 3. What’s yours again? Oh right. 3 and 2. And you’ve got what? 6 inches and 40 pounds on him? If Rei had your height and weight, you’d probably make a better barbell than opponent for him.”
More laughter, louder this time. To top it all off, Lee wasn’t quick on the comeback, giving Viv enough of an opening to lift a hand and make a shooing motion in his direction. “Walk away, loser. Go play with your boytoys.”
Rei couldn’t decide if Lee looked more ready to explode or melt into a puddle, but at that moment one of the boy’s friends decided to save him some face by taking him by the shoulder and pulling him into the gathered bodies of the others. When he was gone, Viv turned to Rei, holding out a clean white towel he hadn't seen hanging from her other hand.
“Asshole,” she muttered under her breath.
Rei grinned up at her, accepting the cloth and starting to wipe off his face as he answered. “That’s rude. I kinda thought I was in the right, there.”
The girl snorted in answer, turning to plop down in the empty space to his left, earning her a sidelong eye from Rei.
Viviana Arada was, it could be argued, his only real friend at Grandcrest Preparatory Academy, which technically made her his only friend period. It had taken him a while—and then some—to come to term with her interest in spending time with him, but a mutual distaste for the politics of the Grandcrest cliques and a shared passion for CAD-combat and the SCT circuits had proven enough to make them fast friends—to the displeasure of more than just the students of the Academy. In a lot of ways, having Viv as a companion had made life a lot harder for Rei in a school he’d known he was never going to fit into. She was gorgeous, she was smart, and she was popular—or would have been, if she’d spent less time around him—and he’d taken more than one punch from some jealous suitor of both sexes.
On the other hand, Viv was also the only reason Rei had made it through all 4 years at Grandcrest at all.
“How’s the pain today?”
The question caught him off guard, but only for a moment. Viv wasn’t looking at him, pretending to watch a match he knew she couldn’t see through the black-clad bodies of their teammates. If anyone else had asked him that, he would have lied through his teeth, like he did every time Coach Kat or the school doctor did, or even Matron Kast in their occasional NOED calls.
But Viv wasn’t anyone else.
“Not great,” he admitted, setting aside the now-bloody towel to start undoing the wraps of his right arm. “It was acting up during the fight.”
“I could tell. You’re supposed to be taking it easy, Rei.”
He shrugged, trying for a grin as the last of the bindings fell away, revealing a thin forearm marked with a score of identical, round scars. “Since when have I been good at taking it easy?”
“Since you have surgery tomorrow, and the CAD-Assignment Exam is in a week, jerk.”
Rei shrugged again, a little more stoically this time, flexing his arm and feeling relieved when his elbow only mildly protested. “I’ll be fine. It’s just another laser correction. A couple days in a sling, and I’ll be good to go.” He turned, raising both eyebrows at Viv and pretending to flex for her. “Not like I have much to worry about in this form of epic manliness, right?”
It was Viv’s turn to look at him sidelong, but after a moment she couldn’t seem to help herself, and she cracked a smile at the image he cut, thin chest out and scrawny arms up. “Maybe not, but get your CAD and the girls will be all over you in a year or two.”
Rei laughed then, loud enough that not a few among the squad turned to glare at him. He grinned in their direction, earning further glowers until they all gave their attention back to the matches.
Once they had, though, he felt the amusement slide away a little bit.
“A little bulk would be a nice bonus. But you know that’s not what I’m going for.”
Viv nodded once, staring ahead again. “I know,” she affirmed. “But you’ve got a cute face. Some muscle and a little catching up in the height department, and you might just be a cert-if-ied hunk.” She drew out the last two word for emphasis, and Rei knew she was trying not to laugh herself.
“Uh-huh,” Rei answered, not looking at her as he started to undo the wraps of his left arm. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your positive assessment of my facial features to heart. I haven’t kept track, but I’m pretty sure you’ve stolen away more girlfriends at this school then every boy in our grade combined.”
“Don’t go putting me in a box, Reidon Ward.” Rei didn’t have to look up to know Viv was smirking with what might have been pride. “Just because I tend to prefer the female form doesn’t mean I can’t handle a decent slab of man-meat when it comes along.”
Rei stopped his unwrapping, turning his head slowly to face her. “Please—for the love of the MIND and all that is good in decent in this world—never use the term ‘man-meat’ in my presence ever again.”
Viv’s smile was almost evil now, and she shrugged. Then her eyes moved to Rei’s arms again, following a longer scar than the others that traced the back of his left elbow. “Just… take it easy, okay? It’s only for the next week. Weird as you are, I wouldn’t want to get into Galens without you.”
Before Rei could respond, an intercom call pitched over the thrum of the combat and cheering happening all around them.
“Our top-scorers bout will begin in fifteen minutes in the center ring. Second seed: William Errie of KLM Schools. Six-foot-four. 232 pounds. First seed: Viviana Arada of Grandcrest Preparatory Academy. Five-eleven. 165 pounds.”
Viv sucked her lip at the ceiling, having tilted her head back to listen. “Tsch. I told them to knock twenty pounds off my weight for that announcement.” She glanced at Rei one last time. “You hanging around to watch?”
He shook his head sadly, looping his now-lose wraps about one hand again and starting to stand up. “No. I wish. I’ve got to get to work.”
Viv rolled her eyes and pushed herself to her feet too, tugging down the knee-cuts of her skin-tight combat suit that had ridden up from sitting. “So much for taking it easy, then?”
Rei winked at her. “Gotta make sure this ‘weirdo’ doesn’t have his diploma held by Grandcrest for unpaid dues.” He brought up a hand, imitating her shooing motion from early. “Go on. Get. It sounds like there’s a mountain of ‘man-meat’ waiting for you to ‘handle’ him.”
There was a moment of silence.
Then Viv frowned, looking a little green.
“Okay. You were right. I’ll never say it again, if you promise to do the same.”
CHAPTER 2
Early May - One Week Later
Astra System – Astra-3
– Low Orbit
“With the successful implementation of the MIND, the hope was for a system of governance ruled outside of politics. This was eventually achieved—though not without some initial rebellion from Presidents and Ministers of the more strictly governed worlds—but mankind finds a way to corrupt all things, given enough time. It wasn’t more than a few years before the parliamentary and diplomatic capering that once plagued our systems was replaced by a more subtle, but no less corrosive, dance: that of social supremacy.”
- The Influence of the MIND,
TL Latham, MD, Psy. D
Distributed by Central Command, Earth
There is something both infinitely terrifying and absolutely centering about taking in one’s own reflection against the vast backdrop of empty space. In static orbit over Astra-3, the Laurent satellite estate was designed and positioned deliberately to offer four breathtaking views at any time of the day: Solar-4 in an endless state of rising over the planet below, Astra-3 itself rotating steadily like a carpet of land, ocean, and clouds, the edge of the world against space, and the blank emptiness of the universe, dotted with nothing more than other stars, the systems of the ISC, and far-distant galaxies.
It was this last scene that Aria Laurent often found herself taking in whenever she was home from school. She couldn’t put it into easy words, but there was something about the black that calmed her nerves, that made breathing easier in the grand emptiness of the orbiting mansion. It shouldn’t have been hard to breathe in the first place, of course—the estate had more redundant life-support systems than the massive five-thousand-man battlecruisers that dropped ordinance into conflict zones—but Aria’s anxiety when home had nothing to do with the dangers of 0 degrees Kelvin and an empty vacuum.
There was a click as the handle to the door of the study she’d secluded herself to was lifted, and a moment later a tall, graceful figure in a blue business suit swept into the room, casting about. Aria didn’t look around as her mother caught sight of her, watching the woman’s reflection in the massive, 10-foot-tall glass pane that was the center of three windows taking up the room’s back wall. It was her father’s office, but Carmen Laurent was hardly home more than any of his children these days, if that were possible.
Iron Prince: A Progression Sci-Fi Epic (Warformed: Stormweaver Book 1) Page 2
