Iron Prince: A Progression Sci-Fi Epic (Warformed: Stormweaver Book 1)

by Bryce O'Connor

  He had nothing else to say, however, when time ran out and Gross’ eyes lit up.

  “Last fight of the day. Grant and Ward. Make it a good one.”

  Not looking at anyone—not even Viv—Rei got himself to his feet. With forced steadiness he stepped across the silver perimeter of the field, feeling more than seeing his opponent do the same to his left. Rei’s heart didn’t hammer as he approached the starting circle, nor did his breath come in leaps and jumps. Rather, it was more as though a cold pressure had slowed everything down, as though the subbasement atmosphere had cooled and solidified, making it hard to hear anything but the quiet slap of two people’s bare feet across the black steel beneath them.

  Reaching the red ring, Rei turned to face Logan Grant with what he hoped was a resolute expression.

  And then the cold changed to fire.

  The Mauler was watching him with ice in his black-red eyes. That would have been fine—they were hardly friendly, after all—but what set Rei off wasn’t the hostility. Until that point, Rei had watched Grant take in his opponents with calm, unwavering calculation. There had been confidence in his bearing as he’d faced off with Yang and Jax, sure, but it had been the steady posture of someone who had absolute faith in their own ability, rather than anything else. Now, though…

  Now the look on Grant’s face, the sneer so blatant Rei could have counted the Mauler’s teeth if he’d tried, spoke only of distaste and disappointment in his opponent.

  In an instant the weight was gone from Rei’s gut, the cold pressure of the room vanishing as his entire body burned with anger. He could feel his face and ears growing red, but he didn’t care. It was rage, not embarrassment, that fueled that flush, and he realized all at once that his temper had been simmering closer to the surface since his earlier head-to-head with Selleck than he’d thought. At his sides his hands balled into tight fists, and his jaw clenched so hard it hurt. None of this was apparently lost on Grant, because the massive boy’s lip only curled higher, as though amused by the display.

  Rei very nearly called on Shido at that, and the Arena’s well-timed voice was all that saved him what he was sure would have been a wealth of ire from Gross, Bretz, and very likely Valera Dent together.

  “Cadet Logan Grant versus Cadet Reidon Ward. Combatants… Call.”

  “Call,” Rei and Grant said together, and immediately black-and-white steel faced off with white-and-red. Rei brought his fists up, and across from him taller boy hefted his axe onto one armored shouldered and bent low, obviously preparing for a charge.

  “Combatants… Fight.”

  With the crack of breaking flooring the Mauler powered forward like a flaming comet. He barreled across the field in four loping strides, looking like he wanted to use his mass to crush Rei into the invisible wall 5 yards behind him. Rei, for once, hadn’t left his starting point, waiting instead as he watched the long shape of Grant’s axe blade carefully. The Mauler wasn’t stupid enough to put himself in direct contact, where Rei’s claws might get a chance to stab into his head or face.

  Which meant…

  There!

  Rei’s NOED flared red just as he himself saw the minute shift in Grant’s posture. Instead of slamming into Rei full speed, the Mauler twisted at the last moment to bring the axe down in a diagonal sweep from above. Rei’s E0 Speed was just enough to dart sideways, the white steel probably cleaving through strands of his white hair as he just dodged the killing arc, and he immediately countered with a punch at the side of Grant’s exposed face.

  An instant later, Rei was flying through the air, a gauntleted hand having come seemingly out of nowhere to snatch him up by the offending wrist, twisting with the momentum of his own strike to send him sailing with terrifying strength.

  It occurred to Rei, as he smashed to the ground some 30 feet from his starting point, that he had just fallen for the exact same trick he’d seen through when Yang had been the victim. Grant’s opening blow had been a ploy, a deliberately provided vulnerability even as the Mauler had left himself one hand open to take advantage of the response. From the sidelines it had seemed obvious to Rei, clear as day as he’d watched the Phalanx fall to her own reflexes.

  But now here he was, tumbling across the uneven ground of the Dueling field, having let himself be caught in the same trap.

  Tucking into the toppling roll, Rei managed to get his feet under himself, snapping up even as notifications warned him of strains in his spine and ribs. He ignored them, instead watching Grant already lunging after at him a second time, the cadet’s teeth bared, axe forward and at the ready. Thinking quickly, Rei did the only thing he could.

  Turning, he bolted for the staggering of rising pillars nearby, ignoring the pain in his back and torso to vault atop the closest of them.

  “Running again?!” Grant roared from behind him. “Do you even know how to fight?!”

  Rei ignored him, dexterously taking the rising slope of the pillar-tops that partially circled the field like the looping partition of a wide, spiral staircase. There was a thump, and he glanced back to see that Grant had joined him in the climb, the Mauler’s Device over one shoulder again in order to make it easier to run.

  “What good are you if all you can do is turn your back every time?!” Grant snarled, catching up quickly. “At least have the dignity to die with the rest of—URK!”

  He didn’t managed to finish his statement. Instead of leaping down 10 yards to the field below as he reached the last of the rising pillars, Rei planted a bare foot on the edge of the “step” and—with a strain and a massive shove backwards—reversed directions. He didn’t have a chance to spin around, to aim himself properly, but it turned out he’d timed the trap just right when he felt himself slam into Grant’s chest.

  With a sound like the wind getting knocked out of him the Mauler went toppling off the pillars, flailing as he fell. Rei—unable to stop himself—dropped with him, twisting in the air as they plummeted down. He tried to set himself, tried to position his claws to advantage, but his E0 Speed and Cognition proved no contest against the likes of gravity. The impact actually had Rei bouncing off of Grant’s chest, but not before both knees cracked against solid ground of the projection. His reactive shielding and osteoformic integrity boost saved his legs from actually breaking, but the notification for bilateral compound fracturing of his femurs flared bright anyway, and agony lanced through his thighs. For a couple of seconds there was nothing more than pained, groaning coughs as the pair of them struggled to gain their bearings, to clear their heads.

  Then Grant rolled onto one side, starting to shove himself to his feet with difficulty.

  “That’s… all you’ve got?” he wheezed out, glaring at Rei as he leveraged himself up by planting the head of his axe into the ground with a thud. “Tricks? Hide-and—cough—hide-and-seek?” He straightened, staggering only a little when he wrenched his Device free of the field again. “That’s all you’ve got?”

  Rei would have liked to answer him, but the simulated torture of broken bones had his teeth grit tight, so instead he only glowered as Grant took a step towards him, then another. Unable to move as he was, there was nothing left to do but wait for the end, as pathetic as that made him feel.

  Grant’s neuroline must have cleared his head, then, because the cadet was on Rei in the next blink, the armored fingers of the boy’s right gauntlet taking him roughly by the collar of his combat suit, hauling him up. Rei screamed as the movement strained his match injuries, then again when Grant slammed him with one hand against the curved, edged wall of the line hexagonal pillars they had just fallen from.

  “You think this is a fucking game, Ward?” the Mauler seethed in his face, so close Rei could smell the heat of his breath. “You think this is a playground for tag and ring-around-the-rosie?!”

  In answer, Rei raised his right fist with difficulty, intending to punch at Grant’s ear. Before he could so much as twitch the claws forward, however, the Maule
r rammed the blade of his axe into Rei’s elbow, pinning it against the wall to cleave right through the arm. More pain bloomed from the neural interruption, but this time Rei kept his scream to himself, trying instead to bring up his left fist. Barely managing it, he slammed the heavy steel plating down on the armored wrist that had him pinned, trying to break the grip.

  Grant didn’t so much as twitch in acknowledgement of the pitfall attempt.

  “There’s a war out there, Ward,” the Mauler snarled. “And people like you get others killed. Did you know that?”

  “I know—urgh—I know you’re a dick,” Rei grunted, trying and failing again to break free. “That’s about it.”

  Grant’s whole body tensed at the response. His black hair was in his eyes, giving him a crazed look, and Rei was suddenly reminded of pictures he’d seen of the striped white tigers they supposedly still had captive in some zoos in the Sol System.

  “I’m the dick?” the Mauler hissed. “You’re dead weight, and dragging everyone down with you. And I’m the dick?”

  Rei snapped, the pain fading in favor of returning fury. “I’m not dragging anyone anywhere. You’ve just got an ego the size of a system, and a jealousy complex to boot, apparently. Get a life, asshole. Your parents must be proud of you. Tough guy, strutting his—”

  WHAM!

  There was a brief moment of white-hot pain in his throat, then everything went numb. Rei blinked, wondering why he suddenly couldn’t feel his body, when he realized Grant had wrenched the axe free from the wall beside them, then punched it horizontally through his neck, interrupting his neural input from the jaw down. Immediately the Arena voice finally chimed in.

  “Fatal Damage Accrued: 100%. Winner: Logan Grant.”

  As the field began to retract around them, Rei found himself involuntarily relaxing. It was over. It was done. It hadn’t been pretty, and he’d lost, but he didn’t think he’d made a complete fool of him—

  WHAM!

  With an eruption of pain, Rei was suddenly aware that he was flying again. The neural interruption still hadn’t resolved, so he couldn’t do more than flop and roll like a ragdoll as he landed on plain projection plating. When he stopped, he found himself on his back, staring up at the subbasement ceiling lights, utterly at a loss for what had happened.

  Gross’ yell brought it all back to him.

  “GRANT! STAND DOWN!”

  He’d been punched, Rei realized, seeing the motion now as his thoughts cleared. After his killing stroke, Grant had retracted his massive axe, then struck again, even more violently this time. With the pillars at his back dissolving, Rei had been sent arcing through the air, landing a good distance away.

  Some feeling returned to his arms and body, and with great difficulty Rei started to sit up, still dazed. He’d only managed to push himself partially onto one elbow when a shadow fell over him, and he squinted at the pair of bare feet that had appeared as though by magic by his side. He peered up, following the lines of the grey-red uniform until he was looking at Logan Grant’s face again, and a confusion that had nothing to do with the post-match attack flashed across Rei’s mind. It wasn’t the Device being lifted overhead with both hands, clearly intent to cut Rei down even as he lay at the Mauler’s feet. It wasn’t the distant sound of Gross’ yells as a whirling in the corner of Rei’s vision told him the sergeant major had called on his own CAD.

  Rather, what confused Rei the most was the fact that never—not in all his life—had he ever witnessed the level of anger etched into Grant’s handsome features as he brought his axe down.

  With each passing second more sensation had returned to his body, and so it was only just that Rei managed to shove himself out of the way, the phantom-call of the vysetrium-lined steel blade ricocheting off the plating with a screech of metal exactly where his chest had been a moment later. With limbs that were half-numb he scrambled back, watching Grant lift the Device again and move to follow him, the fury in his gaze not subsiding. One step, then two, and the Mauler had caught up to him, the axe lifting once more. Rei managed to get both arms up, Shido still live around his limbs, ready to take the blow.

  It never came.

  Instead, there was a tall blur or black-and-gold, and Grant made an “URK!” of sound, the axe falling from his grasp as he was abruptly wrenched off his feet by the single slender hand that had taken him by the throat. At first Rei assumed Gross had intervened just in time, but the lack of any CAD colors clued him in before his eyes caught up to his mind and took in the lithe form of a woman with short brown hair spilling out from under her military cap, her back to him as with one arm she held all the collective mass of Logan Grant and his Device 2 feet above the ground like they weighed nothing more than limp cloth.

  Captain Valera Dent hadn’t even had to call on Kestrel to interpose herself between the two of them. Her own Speed and Strength were enough, and Rei couldn’t do more than stare as he tried to process her appearance. It had been so fast. So fast. He couldn’t begin to count the number of times he had watched and rewatched SCT matches between S-Ranked opponents on the feeds, but this was the first time he’d been witness to that power with his own two eyes. And without a Device?

  Despite what had just happened—despite Grant kicking and jerking in the Iron Bishop’s grip like a fish out of water and the hundred-and-more pairs of eyes Rei knew were trained only on them throughout the room—it clicked, then.

  This was what he wanted, he realized.

  This was what he aimed to achieve.

  “Cadet, correct me if I’m wrong. Your Defense spec is D9, is that right?”

  The captain’s question was so cold, Grant stopped thrashing in her hand. He looked down on her, and the anger that had etched every line of his face a moment before was suddenly replaced with nothing less that apprehensive fear. He didn’t answer immediately, and after a couple seconds of silence Dent jerked him a few inches higher with without so much as a wince of effort.

  “Don’t make this harder for yourself, Grant. Answer the question. Your Defense spec is D9. Is. That. Right?”

  With a visible swallow and a moment’s more hesitation, the Mauler nodded.

  “Excellent. Then this should only hurt. A lot.”

  And then, with another blur of blinding power, the captain threw Grant from the field with all the force of a rocket launch.

  Like a fired projectile the cadet jetted over the ground, out of the perimeter ring, and beyond the buffer zone that surrounded the Wargames area. The wall of the subbasement was next, and Grant struck it with such a crushing impact that had even Rei wincing as dozens of voices screamed and gasped all around them, watching the Mauler collapse to the floor in a choking, spasming heap.

  Dent, though, was hardly done.

  “FOR DISOBEYING THE DIRECT ORDER OF A SUPERIOR OFFICER: TWO DAYS IN THE BRIG!” Her voice thundered with what sounded like barely controlled rage, and she started moving steadily towards the boy’s twitching form, black boots clicking across the steel. “FOR CONTINUING COMBAT AFTER A MATCH VICTOR WAS DECLARED: TWO DAYS IN THE BRIG!” She came to a halt outside the silver lines of the field, some 10 feet from the cadet. “AND FOR PISSING ME OFF: TWO DAYS IN THE BRIG!” She looked to her left, in the direction of Field 6, the Mauler’s typical training area. “Lieutenant Johnson, you will see your cadet to the Institution hospital, then the Security Center. Grant’s training group will be responsible for delivering copies of all of this week’s class notes and assignments to him.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” Lieutenant Kayla Johnson—the Mauler sub-instructor—saluted the captain sharply before hurrying herself to Grant’s side, hauling him to his feet with little care for his cries of pain as she did.

  “The rest of you!” Valera Dent whirled to face the class, glaring from under the brim of her cap. “Consider this an example of what happens when you elect to willfully disregard my instructions! You are not animals! You are not children playing at war, allowed to throw a
tantrum or let your emotions get the best of you! You are soldiers first and foremost, and you are therefore responsible for your own actions before anything else! I don’t care if your aspirations are wealth and fame in the SCTs! I don’t care if you never intend to set foot on an actual battlefield! You are not here to prepare for the comforts of the circuits! You are here to prepare for the hardships of the front line! Therefore: your petty squabbles and infantile feuds HAVE NO PLACE IN MY CLASS! Is that clear?!”

  “YES, MA’AM!” every first year in the subbasement—even Rei, from where he was still sitting on the ground—chorused together.

  For a few moments longer Valera Dent glared at the collective bodies of 1-A, her brown eyes seeming to burn even if she’d not once called on her CAD. Then, finally, she seemed to relax.

  “Cadet Grant’s actions have lost this class the remainder of the day’s combat trainings. Dismissed. All of you.”

  There were a few grumbled protests at this from students who hadn’t yet had their third match, but the sub-instructors echoed the captain’s words sharply, and any complaints came to a quick end. As bodies began to move towards the east exit, Rei finally started to pick himself up, recalling Shido at last as he got to his feet.