Chapter 36

“You’re Sachiko’s mechanist; boot them out.”

When Sam read that, she felt a somewhat guilty about what she was doing. As Sachiko docked her fig and started refuelling with formless particles that had been pre-programed to replace the lost mass, something achievable only at great expense with several entire batches being held in a near active state and with careful selection of the replacement parts, Sam sat at the back of the room basically just watching the process and staying out of the way.

In the third round of the games, the first that Sachiko had competed in, Sam had been taken by surprise by the amount of changes and new devices that had been dumped into her workshop; most of which she hadn’t heard of, let alone knew how to use. As such she was sent a support group by the Kaya Company that included several technicians, mechanist and a stylist. It seemed that they had been thrown together due to their individual skills and had very little interest in listening to each other. Just about the only thing they agreed on was that Sam was too inexperienced for her opinions to matter. By the start of the second match, Sam had finished learning what she needed to, but the pecking order had already been established. Through force of personality the stylist had gained dominance, insisting that their job was to sell products and products sold with appearance over numbers. While no one else really agreed with that, they were convinced that the genuine parts they had worked on were superior to anything else out there; especially cheap knock-offs.

They were right that the difference was enough to beat older generations, but they were fundamentally wrong about what Jeff was doing. They could only see his products as imitations, but he was making the market associate his products as the original. After all, the masses would likewise think as they did, that the original wouldn’t lose to an imitation. It didn’t need to be true, he just needed to get people to feel like it was true. Everyone who saw the matches could see that Sachiko and Savannah were using something new, and that the new thing was the same new thing. Anyone who looked into it would find that both sides claimed that their products were original. If all things are equal then the victor must be right.

Looking about the workspace, Sam noticed the mood was strained. The other workers made passing derisive glances towards Sachiko. It was as if they thought she was to blame for the bad performance in the first round of the match.

Seeing them pin the blame on Sachiko made Sam feel guiltier. The technicians would go on with their lives without anything changing no matter the result. It was Sachiko whose career was on the line. If the product launch failed because of Sachiko’s piloting, then she would be forced to retire and take up a position at her family company. While that would be a dream job for many people, Sam knew that Sachiko loved flying too much to survive that with her personality intact.

Reading over Jeff’s message again, something snapped in her. Guilt wasn’t productive. She had never seen Jeff work throughout the night on guilt. It was anger that he fuelled himself with, hatred and discontent had kept him working and moving throughout long nights back at the school. Sam channelled that. She hated the way that the support team pushed her side. She hated the way that they blamed her friend. She hated herself for letting them.

Standing up and rushing over to the control panel, she pushed aside on of the mechanist and started making changes to the forms list of Sachiko’s rig. While the others there started to complain, she ignored them and just shouted at them while working.

“Shut up, the lot of you. I have two minutes to fix your blunders and I don’t give a shit what you think. I’m the lead mechanist here and if you don’t like it then shove off.”

She flashed Sachiko a reassuring smile and Sachiko nodded back at her while beaming. Two minutes later, Sachiko’s rig departed the room and took to the field once more. Sam hadn’t had much time so large changes weren’t possible. Instead she just patched over the exiting code and made slight modifications to some of the values. It would almost certainly cause the formless particles to burn out faster and the feedback would be painful to Sachiko, but she trusted that her friend could handle that.

When Sachiko landed in her starting position, she activated Sam’s present. Immediately her wings shrunk down to stumps with basic thrusters and the mass shifted across her form. Hydraulic struts braced her legs over the dress, bracing her arms and legs while a backwards strut formed at her ankles to spread forces at her feet. Her elegant sword seemed to melt as it retreated up her arm to latch onto her shoulder, taking the form of a micro-rocket launcher, only twice the size of her head. Her other hand was were the bulk of her rig’s mass went. The slender rifle split and grew as more and more was added, turning black with the added strength required by the new form. It was a Gatling gun, one large enough that she needed both hands to hold it, even with the strength of a rig. Sam hadn’t had time to entirely remake Sachiko’s rig, but she could give her back the weapons she liked.

Not getting distracted by the fight, though still cheering her on, Sam set to work finishing her work so that it could be inputted the moment the second break began. She had confidence that Sachiko would be able to make it through the round, win it even. The Semi-Finals and Finals followed a best of five or knockout system. The winner by points of at least three rounds or the winner by causing to much damage so the system can’t reboot in time for the next round.

While she was working Sam could hear repeating bangs and thuds as explosives burst and a near constant sound from the rotating rifle. She was tempted to look up, but knew that the moment she did she would get swept away by what was happening and the work wouldn’t get finished. Instead she got one of the support staff to monitor the damage and send through rough maintenance reports so she would be able to prep the formless particles and speed up their integration with approximated code.

Sure enough, Sachiko made it through the round. She docked her rig and slumped forward, exhaustion, both physical and mental, clear on her face. Despite that, she seemed to be shaking with excitement with a grin spread across her face. It was the kind of high level play that she had always wanted to experience and she was finally able to let loose with her preferred style, not just what was the best looking.

With the coding work done in advance, Sam was able to just let the computers do their job and spent the downtime caring for Sachiko instead. With the shoddy patch work of the last round, she was mentally drained just keeping up with the system and a headache was cracking open her skull. Sam got her to lay down with some medicine and water, letting her calm down with every second available. While she was laying there with her black eye’s closed, Sachiko was like a work of art. But that barely held Sam’s attention. Instead she was focused on Sachiko’s prosthetic arm. Sam was always aware of it, in one sense, as she had to adjust the rig’s code to balance for it, but it still mostly slipped her mind. With it, she had a new plan for the following round. The moment the Rig was finished rebooting and Sachiko was once again in place, Sam got to work setting up her plan. The score was two-nil, but Sam had an idea on how to turn things around.

With more leeway, Sam was able to occasionally glance up as she worked. Sachiko’s rig was now substantially changed compared with the previous rounds. The Gatling was once against small enough that it could be used with a single arm, a trade made to reinforce the changes she had made before. While the dress was still there, Sachiko’s also had her arms, legs and back fully encased. Like that Sam had enough foundation to effectively strengthen Sachiko’s body, allowing for much more drastic force dispersals and in turn more intensive movements. While her gun was smaller, its rate of fire was much higher and the reinforced arms were needed to keep recoil under control while the still being freely aimed.

Savannah had avoided most of Sachiko’s attacks in the previous rounds, but now had used defence over evasion more often than not, only really going all out on movement when a missile was launched.

There was actually a decent chance that they would win the round, or at least get a draw. Using that to spur her on, Sam knuckled down and focused on her work. Her plan was to use the extra formless particles in Sachiko’s arm to power a surprise beam attack. She would keep one of the missile chambers as is, but the rest of the structure would be changed into an energy weapon. When Savannah got to close, Sachiko would trigger the barrel to reshape and convert all of the particles in her arm into power and the sudden burst would be enough to take out Savannah’s rig. That level of damage would definitely be enough to cause a knock out.

With her program finalised she looked up again to see how the match would go. Sachiko only needed a draw for them to take the next round.

Sam’s eyes widened as she watched the blow land. Sachiko was shooting a hologram while the real Savannah lanced her from the side. Sam shuddered for a moment and dived towards the parts list submitted by Diana. She hadn’t paid much attention to the submission after the first round. The document mostly just contained the quantity of formless particles being used and a couple other essential components, things that are automatically on every form. There wasn’t much point in it when everything being used was generated mid match. With her being sidelined by the support team, there was even less reason to read it. In front of her eyes was an obvious mistake. It was something she had seen before, the hologram projector that Bartholomew, The Second Black Spider, had used.

The match was over. Three wins for Savannah. Sam’s clever plan and Sachiko’s comeback victory would never happen. Tears started to flow, dropping like stones onto the display.

When Sachiko came back inside, she ran over and embraced Sam.

“I don’t blame you. It’s not your fault. Thanks to you I was able to fight the way I wanted.”