Chapter 18

“Wish me luck.”

From that message, Sam could tell that Jeff was nervous about the match. Having been in the same circumstances, watching as her pilot went out to fight Black Spider, she could really understand where those feelings came from.

But she also knew that Jeff wasn’t entirely like her. From what she could gather, he had seen through how the stealth worked. From the parts that his pilot had equipped, it seemed like he had something in mind, though she couldn’t be sure what. A physical round, assault type weapon seemed like a terrible match up, but she trusted that they knew what they were doing. In order to try and figure out what they had in mind, Sam looked through the parts registry, only to find herself bogged down by a list of clearly misleading parts.

While there wasn’t anything in the rules against inflating the list, especially since the majority of pilots wouldn’t even look at it, but it was considered dirty and petty by most mechanists. Seeing some of the armour masses were listed in grams and milligrams, it couldn’t be more blatant that that was what Jeff was doing. As petty as it was, after seeing Black Spider’s part list Sam definitely also felt like doing the same thing.

She was watching the match on a live broadcast while in the hospital. Sachiko’s prosthetic arm fitting went smoothly and it wasn’t likely that there would be any problems, but they decided to stay there while Sachiko got completely use to it and Sam finished learning everything she had to know about mixing prosthetics and rigs. It was hard to say whether it was a little or a lot, but there were definitely a number of things that she had to learn. A lot of the things were things she already covered in her degree, but the new details were often more complex or tedious. The biggest thing she had to remember was to ensure that none of the parts she added to the rig affected its frequency or interfered with the prosthetic.

For the most part, physical parts contributed the most to any change in the frequency. It was another consequence of corporate secrecy and competition, that rig parts often had their own unique resonance, that when compiled with the signals from every other part, created the unique frequency of the rig. Since even two parts on the same manufacturing line could have a different resonance, the overall frequency could change drastically with every routine check-up. A sudden change like that wouldn’t put a pilot’s life in danger, but it could put a slight delay, less than a fraction of a second, in thoughts being converted into actions; that would only get longer with the greater the sudden change. That was one of the reasons for the amount of time it took to compile the rig’s programming, a large portion of that time was spent adapting the formless particles to correct any changes in the frequency as close as possible to an ideal signal, which varied depending on the pilot.

Another big time drain was a failsafe program that the industry body required all mechanist to run. Although there was very little known about what triggered a core’s self-protection, the few things that were known were all added into a program that would look through any proposed changes and flagged anything that would cause the core to detonate. It consumed time, but whenever a red flag message popped up, every mechanist was glad to have it.

Sachiko was next to Sam on a couch in the hospital’s lobby, also taking a break to watch the match. She was wearing a pale coloured summer dress with thin straps that showed off her new arm with pride. The development of the prosthetic limbs was something that added to the Kaya family legacy. At the time, Sachiko’s great-grandmother hadn’t taken the surname Kaya, but was said to have developed the formless particle technology, used both in the limbs and in rigs, in conjunction with her daughter. Her daughter, Sachiko’s grandmother, was said to have funded the development of cores using the profits from the early model rigs.

Since the development of the particles was largely funded by the military, there was said to have been conflict between them and Erin Kaya over rigs being excluded from aggressive military actions. Although it might not be true, it was said that the higher-ups in the military referred to Erin as ‘The Great Traitor’ out of sheer disgust. There wasn’t much they could do about it, if they didn’t have rigs to defend themselves they could be overrun; while they split resources between attack and defence, opposing countries would place everything into attacking while leaving one person to defend in a rig.

Suddenly, Sachiko raised her sleek new black coloured arm, which joined seamlessly to her body, to point at the screen while saying, “Look, it’s starting.”

Looking up at the screen Sam could see that the match was indeed starting. Sav’s blue patterned rig landed in the centre of the arena from the moment the match started, and took a knee, steadying her weapon with both hands. It seemed like a strange move, one better suited to a defence type rig. With all of the bloating in the part list, Sam didn’t really know how strong the armour was, but, just based on the appearance; it didn’t look like it could take any heavy blows.

After a moment without any movements, Sav shot twice at the ground to her side a couple hundred meters away before making a roll in the other direction. The blade of the Black Spider slashed through the air that Sav had occupied only moments earlier and cut an incision into the arena grounds.

With a trained motion, Sav exited the roll by pushing off the ground, reversing her motion. While the spider was still recovering from the attempted attack, Sav brought her rig’s fist to bear and sent a powerful punch into her opponent’s side, about wear the kidney would have been in a human. The attack connected and flakes of armour fell off the rig, sending dust into the air.

Attacking with a rig’s fist was a very rare thing to do, given that it would normally damage both sides equally, and Sam had never seen it done in a match. It seemed that it was something that Jeff had prepared in advance, however, since the armour on that arm seemed mostly undamaged while a crack filled crater could be seen on the spider’s body.

The attack was so successful since it caught everyone completely off guard. A pilot’s movements were usually predicted based on the direction of the wing thrusters or the weapon. Since the wings were pointed to move further away, both Sam and Sachiko assumed that she wouldn’t be able to turn around in time. Since there was no way that the rifle could have turned fast enough, they had assumed that no retaliation was possible. By using strange body movements that could only be done on the land and attacking with her hands, Sav caused the first damage to her overconfident opponent.

After that connection, Black Spider disappeared again, vanishing into the air.

This time Sav didn’t wait, but instead acted aggressively, targeting the invisible target no matter where he ran. At first, Sam had no idea how it was being accomplished, but soon realised; the crack in the armour wasn’t cloaking. No matter how the spider ran, there was still a visible crack that could be easily seen. And it only got worse as the fight went on. After six clean hits, there were already enough holes in the cloak that hiding was already pointless.

Knowing that hiding wouldn’t work, Black Spider changed their tactic, and charged towards Sav, using wires to pull himself faster towards their foe. It was clearly a desperate measure, but it was also the only option that Sam could see for them.

The spider’s flight path was erratic, pulled alternately by wires and thrusters, and the angle of attack seemed completely unknowable. Closer and closer, the forward charge meant the impact from the blade would be far beyond what Jeff had prepared for, and would likely cut through Sav’s armour like butter.

When Black Spider was only moments away from the attack something suddenly changed.

The wire was cut while it was being used and they were sent sprawling as control over their motion was unexpectedly lost. The culprit for that was a well-placed bullet.

Sav didn’t fail to capitalise on her opponent’s loss and made a forward charge of her own. As she ran, she scooped sand from the ground and propelled herself forward with precise bursts from the thrusters.

As the distance between them reached zero, Sav dropped her rifle, letting the sling catch it, and let out a flurry of punches from a boxing stance. Blow after blow, the black coloured rig got thrown about like a sandbag as the controlled punches prevented recovery while chipping away at the rig’s integrity.

With one heavy final blow, Sav’s fist embedded itself in her opponent’s chest, piercing through like a spear. As the blow was about to crush the pilot to death, the rig’s system froze over and it withdrew itself into its black cube form. Even though it was someone else’s fight, and only the first round, Sam couldn’t help but feel some satisfaction on seeing the person that beat them toyed with and beaten without being able to fight back at all.

As the pilot fell to the ground, he could be seen clutching his side in pain. It looked like the rig hadn’t retracted in time and the pilot still received some of the crushing impact. With a blow like that, it was almost certain that he would have some broken ribs.

As the medical team did their work and applied a rigid frame over the broken bones, it would be up to him as to whether he felt up to continuing or not. Painkillers would impede his piloting so if he did, every movement would likely be made in pain. The pilot's face could be clearly seen on the broadcast, and while he was clearly in a lot of pain, he still looked entirely determined to continue the match. While he came to that decision, a mechanist from his school spent the 5 minute break getting his rig just barely back to operable.

With all of its stealth systems completely disabled, they finally could see the rig that they lost to. The most notable feature was its abnormal back. Instead of a set of wings, it had an abdomen like structure with several wire pullers, thrusters and ports, to launch miniature missiles from. Braced on the bottom of both arms were wire launchers, and held in one of the arms was a knife that could connect itself to the wires. It was a rig that was built entirely around making a web. The armour was still fractured and dented from the previous round, but its black, lightless lustre still gave it an ominous appearance.

At the end of the break, Sav lazily walked her rig out into the open without even bothering to ready her rifle. It was almost like she was planning to surrender.

Seeing her blasé attitude, the spider’s abdomen lowered and several missiles spread out an embedded themselves throughout the arena. A flash of light then burst in front of him and by the time it cleared he was gone.

Only he wasn’t really gone. Instead the field was filled with dozens of identical black rigs, all standing there facing Sav. Anyone that was familiar with stealth theory could guess that it was a series of holograms, but there was still a real one amongst them.

If Sav had brought a weapon with an area effect, or even just a much faster shooting one, that trick wouldn’t be so much of a problem, but with the weapon Sav had, if she guessed the wrong target, the real one would have an opportunity to strike. Excitement could be heard from the crowd, as a match that was almost over suddenly got revitalised and turned into a match of wits and chance. Even in the hospital, people had started to gather around to see how it would unfold.

Then, as fast as the tension built, the tension was destroyed.

Sav spun around to face one of the targets and lined up a clean shot, shooting through the four limbs and causing it to seize up. It was clear that she had known exactly where her opponent was and ended the match without wasting time.

As the pilot fell once again to the ground, with a face of disbelief and confusion, Sav pelted something next to him. It was a broken piece of one of the hologram projectors. When she saw that, Sam finally understood how they had done it. It all started with the very first action of the first round.

It seemed strange at the time; that Sav had shot wildly at a distraction just prior to dodging the first attack, but Sam had assumed it was a ploy to trap Black Spider, but that wasn’t the only reason. When Sav dealt the final attack of the first round, she had scooped something up off the ground as she moved. The thing she picked up was the hologram projector she had shot earlier. Since it was broken, spider wouldn’t have noticed that it was missing, and since he was busy getting treated, he wouldn’t have noticed Jeff examining it during the break. The mechanist on the other side was also just a temporary worker, and probably didn’t even know about the holograms, let alone that they should have their signals checked and changed between rounds. Knowing the signals that the holograms used, Sav was able to see through them, and to her, the arena was always only filled with the two of them.

Even if the crowd didn’t understand what happened, and it hadn’t turned out like they expected, they still cheered for Sav’s victory. Considering that it was junior pilot beating a school pilot, the result was somewhat expected, but with Black Spider’s performance in the school league, the victory still seemed impressive.

After the match was over and the broadcast ended, Sam messaged Jeff.

“Congratulations on your win. You really meant it when you said matches are decided before they begin.”