“Good fight.” Moses said to his disgruntled opponent. The whole thing probably hadn’t lasted more than thirty seconds.
“My ass.” Was Maxwell’s only reply. “That was a dirty trick with the pistols. My turret wouldn’t fire until my hands were disabled.”
“Mine wouldn’t fire at all.”
“Trust a machine.”
“It’s training.”
“Others are waiting for the ring.” Moses’ AI said.
Moses and Maxwell climbed out together. “You going to the charging station?” Moses asked.
“Where else.”
The two trudged along in silence, observing the ongoing duels around them until they reached a boxy machine near the center of the dueling rings. Maxwell knelt beside it and placed a hand on a charging plate while Moses watched one of the fights behind them.
“That your first fight?” Maxwell asked.
“No. I’ve had a few others.”
“It ain’t like brawling.” The big man stood and flexed under the armored suit. “My AI keeps telling me to watch my feet. What? My feet! Can you believe it? Like we was dancin or something.”
Moses stepped up to the charging station and his shield shot out a spear of warped air to suck power off of a charging plate while a second tongue lapped up practice ammunition from a hopper, feeding it into the magazines that crisscrossed the armor’s back.
“Hear anything about the kennels?” Moses asked.
“Kennels?”
“Never mind. Can’t get ahold of my brother is all.”
“Oh, I forgot your brother joined with you. No, I can’t even figure out how to recognize someone if they haven’t got a broken bit of equipment on em.” Maxwell laughed. “A bunch of faceless fools we look, wavin our swords around. Invaders will die of laughter before we can kill them at this rate. Well, I’ve a fight. Good luck, Moses right?”
Moses nodded, and waved as the man left. He hated to give up on his brother, but he supposed there was nothing he could really do, at least until evening. He would focus on his training, and worry about Ephesus later.
Killing people that were invincible became the problem of the morning. He aimed for hands mostly. The strategy seemed to work eighty percent of the time, mostly when he faced opponents who fought like they were fifteen and dueling with sticks. Their shield’s opened in long tears along the sweep of their sword which took a few seconds to seal up and gave him an opening to plant the tip of the long sword into a chest or neck, or at the very least a wrist or forearm. Occasionally he faced men who knew the weakness and kept their swords low, thrusting rather than slashing, pivoting when they needed to give a sweeping cut, angling the sword in such a way that the shield had to open less, and most of all, keeping it out of the line of the turrets in the few fights the AIs decided, by their own discretion, to open up on the opponent. Even then there was always a gap, maybe an inch across to either side of his opponent’s hands, that he could try and exploit. Pistols proved the most annoying battlefield problem to solve.
Shield’s had a weird effect when it came to kinetics. Where the line of a round hit the edge it seemed to ricochet pretty violently, but if they hit within a certain range of directly in the center his suit would absorb the entire impact and push him backwards. The AI tried to help by shifting the center of the shield around him, but it was difficult to approach an enemy using their pistols when they shot straight at his chest. Of course, when they shot straight at his chest they left an opening about the size of his fist where he could jam his sword tip through and usually disable some part of their suit, usually their hands, and he found that he could pivot to present the angle of his shield to the enemy as he fired and turn the pivot into a lunge that, thanks to the augmentation of the armor, he could usually use to pin a gun wielding opponent with his sword before they had a chance to respond.
In battles that didn’t end with a sword or flechette jammed through the hole of another man’s suit everything came down to battery life, and it became clear that this was the kind of fighting the suits had been designed for. Moses was pleasantly surprised to discover that the sword could act as a power drain on an enemy’s shield, not only drawing power off of their battery, but also recharging his own with the electricity that didn’t spill out of the handle as lightning. For a fight or two it was a game changer as he nipped at the enemy, using the swords length to dance the head in and poke at their shield. Delay their attempts at a killing blow long enough and he could eventually suck off enough of their power for the shield to fail and that would be it. This slow grinding style seemed impractical if he ever found himself on the battlefield though. While he could usually keep his charge higher than his opponent it always left his charge dangerously low, and if he didn’t visit the recharging station he wouldn’t survive more than a few glancing blows from the next enemy. A strong defense, it seemed to him, did not lay in a strong defense. It left him too crippled against the next man.
He learned a few tricks from the soldiers in the melee pits. They’d been here a day or two longer than he had, and the difference was distinct. Some of the more experienced soldiers used the same effect the shield could produce that allowed it to recharge at the charging stations to extend three long spears of warped air from their shield. The spears fluoresced in combat and produced the same lightning effect as their swords if they transfixed an enemy shield. The move seemed ingenious, an offense that left no holes for the enemy to utilize in killing him, but something in the warp for the spear left it weaker than the rest of the shield which meant it could be severed or dissipated by a cut from a sword. That defensive cut, as Moses saw in melee after melee, was often the move that created a fatal opening in the defender’s shield, one turrets and swordsmen took brutal advantage of.
The tactic turned the battlefield into a dance, keeping the sword arch out of the direct line of ranged weapons but still on track to burrow into an opponent’s shield. Team tactics began to appear in the more advanced soldier’s melees. A few men stayed back to deploy their pistols and turrets against the enemies, while others pushed up close and tried to open the shield to the troops in the rear. Moses tried to emulate the strategy in personal duels, employing the suit’s speed to strike up close then roll back as they tried to counter with their own swords and strafe the brief opening with quick pistol shots. He was clumsy, and two times out of five, the attempt had him stumbling over his own feet, awkward and unused to combat or anything approximating dancing, but when it did work it was a flawless kill, and in battles where his turret involved itself, it felt like he’d found the key to the whole armored suit’s design. A flawless harmony between man and machine. One that simply required a finesse and partnership with his armor that Moses didn’t yet have.
“This would be a lot easier if you’d use the turret for me.” He told the AI after a duel in which he’d spent half the fight on his back in the dirt after he tripped over his own feet and fell on his face.
“You are learning faster this way.” It replied.
“Learning not to trust you.”
When the AI called a break for lunch, Moses felt like he’d been fighting for three years. Muscles he’d never known he had resonated with a heat that he knew would turn into an ache by the next day. The muscles he’d worked up over the course of a life of agricultural labor felt strained and rubbery. No line waited for Moses when he reached the mess tent, and No bowl of gruel had ever tasted so sweet, and not just for the bits of sweet fish that were mixed into the broth of bitter moss and mitchel beer.
Even while he ate, Moses trained. A cube projected looped video footage of weapons set to live fire onto one wall of the mess tent. Huge plasma guns that deployed on a mechanical joist attached to a soldier’s shoulder, precision kinetic rifles that projected rounds the size of a fist at several times the speed of sound. Plasma grenades that could emit a cloud of superheated gas that would work its way through any chink in a man’s shield to turn the armor to slag. There was even footage of one of the swords
set to lethal.
“The PEGS, or projected edge gravitic sword, is a gravity powered weapon designed for close quarters combat with a shielded opponent.In contact with an opponent’s shield their battery will be drained through electrodes down the length of the internal blade. Deployed against an unprotected target, the sword is capable of almost complete destruction.” In the demonstration a knight swung his sword at a pillar of stone and it blew apart, the shrapnel and dust pulled into a cyclone around the fluorescent blade. “There are no materials an activated sword cannot penetrate or destroy, including your own hand or arm. So be sure to keep your hands and arms away from the active blade at all times.” The knight in the video bowed to the audience as the video faded and a new demonstration was brought up, this one of a Hound battling with a knight in some vault lit with bright white lights, but Moses saw, in the final frames of the swordsman’s footage, that his wrists had been painted white by the stone dust from the pillar he’d destroyed. Moses tried to imagine what another man would look like after getting hit by that kind of weapon and felt a little sick. All he could imagine was his own hands covered in bright red blood and the enemy, laid open like the corpse of a porqine he’d seen ravaged by a catoblepas, its shell opened, its guts and viscera shredded by the cato’s mandibles. Aiming for his opponents hands seemed a lot more gruesome after that.
Chapter 11: Moses // Kyra
Moses was tired. His first day of training so far had consisted of two meals, huge and heavy on protein, training videos after the first meal and time at the shooting range after the second, peppering holographic targets with every type of ordinance that his suit’s turret and handguns could put through their barrels. The thunder of the gun was a welcome rest from the dueling pits where he spent every other waking hour, driven pit to pit by an AI that was relentless and scornful the one time he protested. His two meals were insufficient to the level of exercise he’d been committed to. Even so he wasn’t doing as badly as some. Everytime he caught sight of Maxwell in one of the pits he had his hands frozen and his turret firing his last line of defense.
Moses kicked to leap aside from an opponent’s reckless charge. Three prongs of warped air missed his shield as he rolled on his back and kicked back up with an elbow, the enhanced strength of the suit allowing him to turn the momentum of the dive into a spin that swung the two handed long sword in a shining arch, low where his hands would be protected by the shield’s belly from fire from above. Grace was still far from Moses’ ability with the suit, but the tumble and dive and getting up again were becoming practiced maneuvers he expected would infest his dreams. They were moves he would have an easier time accomplishing tomorrow when they’d worked their way into his muscle memory.
The cut missed his target as his opponent leapt sideways then rammed forward, bulling their shields together and pushing Moses towards the edge of the pit while his opponent’s sword and three javelins of warped space made contact with Moses’ shield, spitting lightning as they burrowed into his protective sheath.
The problem with the suits was, Moses reflected as he spun his shoulders and used the elongated point of the shield’s center to “belly bump” his opponent a few inches back so he could swing his sword at the man’s hands, that they didn’t use the normal muscles someone would use, say, climbing up hills or hauling buckets, or lifting heavy stones. It used the small muscles, the ones in his elbows, along his ribs, everything around his joints, everything that applied pressure to inform the suit which way he wanted the limbs to go while the suit did the work of muscles he was more used to using. Even his neck and jaw was getting tired from the strain of guiding the machine.
More javelins shot at Moses as the other knight made a riposte with his own sword, a quick stab for the opening around Moses’ sword hilt. He turned it with his blade, a move he’d been getting better at, and the two swords screamed as their energy fields mingled and spat fluorescing gas around the insides of each shield. Trapping the other man’s sword against the edge of his shield meant draining the power in Moses’ battery but it also created an opening he’d grown used to looking for, a gap where he could drop his sword point and lunge for the inside of the other man’s forearm, keeping the other man’s sword point in the opening to his left where it would only be able to cut air as it was pushed deeper into the bubble of Moses shield.
The sword made contact, going dark as it reached for the arm to leave it unharmed while they were in training mode. The man’s sword dropped from stiffened fingers as the turret on his shoulder came alive, swinging for the hole Moses had struck through but, again, he turned and let the belly of the shield cover the hole while he ordered the AI to shoot javelins at the other man’s shield. He sawed at the edge of the hole he still have the sword through while lightning played around him in a maelstrom but he didn’t have the angle to get any more of the knights exposed armor. After a moment the shield reconfigured and spat Moses sword out of the side, but by then the damage had been done and it fell to his javelins. Moses touched his sword tip to his opponents chest and brought the fight to an end.
Moses dropped the tip of his sword, not bothering to resheath it while the other snatched his sword from the ground. The speaker on the front of the other man’s suit whined to life and a woman’s, or a girl’s, voice issued from it. “Again.” She said in a voice that brooked no argument.He was too tired to be surprised by her unexpected gender.
“Your shield is down.” Moses said. The AI automatically picked it up and broadcast it for him. “You’d be down before we even started.” He looked at his own shield’s read out on the heads up display, drained by about a third.
She backed up, still facing him,and touched her sword to the shield around the pit. It glowed, and he saw her shield flow back into place, reaching javelins up to draw more power off of the enclosure.He sighed. It was one more knew trick to add to the growing list of tricks he’d been learning. He stepped backwards and touched his own sword to the shield, drawing off power until the suit’s battery was full then waiting until the man, no, the woman, stepped forward to face him, sword held in front of her.
“If you’re sure.” He said.He tried to imagine a woman under the armor but the only woman he could picture there was his mother which made for a ridiculous picture. They bowed, then she leapt for him again.
She liked to use javelins. In the fight that followed she was chasing him with them at almost every part of the fight. He tried to find a way to use that to his advantage, the javelins drew off a lot of power to wield which was why he didn’t use them too often, but he couldn’t find a way to capitalize on her strategy except to keep dodging and let her power run down, a strategy that would only work if he could make some space. That was hard to do with her throwing herself at him. For most of the fight she was in control, dictating the pace as she hacked at his shield, and pushed him ever backwards, largely ignoring his open wrists and going for his battery while he tried to trick her into opening up as she had before.
Finally he kicked the belly of her shield so that she spun away for about two seconds giving him time to draw a pistol and spray rounds across her hands, immobilizing one, but missing the other, slowing her a little before she pushed the attack again. He pushed his sword to the right and when she repositioned to assault his left she swung straight into a javelin he’d told the AI to set opposite his sword, a glowing spike that impaled her hands as she swung, or would have, in a real fight. It was left to him again to pin her with sword and javelin until the shield fell and he could tap her on the chest.
“Again.” She ordered once more touching her sword to the dueling pit’s shield once he’d stepped back. There was a small audience growing by now, the mutter of their voices and commentary were audible beyond the shield barrier.
“What are you trying to accomplish?” He asked.
“I see what you’re doing. I’m going to beat you. Again.” Her shield finished charging and this time she didn’t wait for the ceremonial bow that initiated each
fight. She charged, and ran straight into a blast of fire from his shoulder turret.
“I thought I was supposed to be learning to fight on my own.” Moses said to the AI as he assumed a stance that would put the sword at hip level. No time to recharge now.
“She wanted escalation.” The AI replied. “I thought I would comply.”
The woman’s own turret opened fire. Red balls of light licked at the shield and sucked lightning from it that blinded Moses as the woman repositioned to charge. Moses’ turret answered, buying him time to assess his position.
She was a shield fighter. Each of their fights had made that clear. She made no effort to utilize the gaps which allowed for quick and easy kills, and she knew, roughly, how to keep her opponent at the distance she wanted while she pecked away at his battery. He had about half a charge left from the previous fight. Unreplenished, his battery would not last long.
He leapt at her, returning her previous aggression in the hope that it would throw her off. Instead of trying to leap aside and dodge his blade, she threw herself in front of it, pushing her turret towards the tip of the sword even as she angled her own blade behind her. He spun away, just in time to take the blast from her gun on the side of his shield instead of down the hole around his wrists. It was a neat trick, but one he’d seen before, in the final seconds of previous fights where he’d disabled his opponents hands and left them only their guns. She rose as he spun back to the fight threw himself at her.
They danced, while between them a maelstrom of light and superheated gas was crossed and recrossed by shining swords and lines of flechettes oblating in the heat even as they shot through the clouds of gas. Each time her sword found his shield Moses was painfully aware of how low the battery icon in the top left corner of his heads up display had grown. His aching muscles protested at the level of exertion he demanded of them and he grit his teeth to do what came hardest that late in the day, put one hundred percent of his energy into overcoming the woman in front of him. A burst of adrenaline helped.
Space Knights- Last on the Line Page 16
