Chapter 3

“Hey Jeff, I couldn’t find any imperial arm stabilisers, but there were some metric ones that would mostly fit, so remember to correct the aiming system two degrees to the left if you end up using them.”

Unfortunately for Jenna Baker, the note that Sam left for Jeff was blown off the table by the door shutting behind her, and was unnoticed by the stressed worker. Sometime after midnight he finished his work and left the programs to compile overnight. Given that the arena was a kilometre at its longest, a two-degree difference could either be completely unnoticeable or a devastating defect.

Jenna however, was a precision shooter that specialised in almost entirely in making difficult shots while moving at high speeds. For her loadout, that mistake would throw off her entire performance. That mistake would have normally been easily corrected at multiple points, and if the same parts had been there in the morning, Jeff would have easily noticed that mistake. But things didn’t turn out that way and, instead, Jeff went home thinking that he had done his job correctly.

Early the next morning, at around six, Jeff was once again back to work. With travel time and living requirement, he had only slept four hours the previous night. As such, he trusted his work from the night prior and applied the compiled programs into the ominous black cubes that would unpack themselves into the rigs. The only difference between the two one-square-meter cubes was that one had a jutting high-visibility-yellow sphere sticking out of one of the sides. It was the core-energy receiver that showed that it was a training model, a sad substitute for a real core. When each of the boxes ran the programs and reconfigured themselves into the shape of a suit of winged-human shaped armour, the yellow sphere was still visible, fixed in place, in the center of the chest-piece.

While the transfer student, Satou, had a suit of armour that wouldn’t look entirely out of place in a cyber-punk renaissance fair, Jenna’s ‘armour’ almost made him feel embarrassed for her. Aside from gauntlets and greaves, the suit could best be described as bikini armour, with a back-plate where the sleek wings attached. The official explanation of the armour's appearance was that it cut down on the materialisation of armour, in order to boost the complexity of the flight system while keeping the weight down. Given the suit’s projected performance, Jeff could almost believe that; what he could tell from the performance checks did show it to be one of the best performance wing designs he'd seen. What made him doubt that reasoning, however, was that he read the previous worker’s report, which said that he had been instructed to keep the exposure high as a means of throwing opponents off-balance. That kind of cheap psychological attack wasn't at all uncommon, mostly because it was effective, especially when the opponent was a young man.

In one of the gauntlet's grip was the one and a half meter long barrel of her suit’s famous Rig-Breaker rifle. It was somewhat famous amongst mechanists, as it was a rare 'solid round' coil-gun weapon, but was designed to look like a conventional firearm. While solid projectiles weren't uncommon in themselves, the reliability of rail-guns was the prefered choice, and they almost never had a chemical projectile along with the magnetic launcher. The downside of solid bullets was that actual ammunition would have to be carried into the match instead of running off the rig's power, meaning the pilot needed to plan carefully. Too many bullets would add to the weight and slow speed, but too few meant risking running out. While the differences in weight would often make next to no performance difference, matches were often won by slim margins. All in all, Jeff considered the rig to be an incredibly unbalanced glass cannon; powerful punch but no defence.

The setup Satou had requested was based on a completely different concept; an all-rounder that could do a little bit of everything. It had a sword in one hand and an energy pistol in the other, a solid setup for short to mid-range fights, without having to worry about planning attacks in advance. The armour was durable but not too thick, and it had several smaller thrusters positioned in key locations rather than focusing all of the propulsion into the wings. Defence wise, it could stop a couple of hits and avoid a few also. On one hand, it could be said that the loadout was suited to every situation. On the other hand, it could be said that the pilot hadn’t committed himself to any kind of strategy.

With the rigs finished and delivered to the arena, Jeff could finally get back to his normal work… doing the same thing for more sets of school models in the lead up to the start of practical lessons for the semester. At some time just before the start of the school’s lunch period, he received a call from one of the teaching staff. It seemed that she was the homeroom teacher for the two idiots that picked a fight on the first day and wanted to organise for some members of the maintenance department to oversee the fight. Normally, Jeff would have sent Sam along to something so tedious sounding, for the sake of her education of course, but it was one of the days she was at her university instead.

Knowing that it was easier to just get the tedious tasks that pilots set over and done with, Jeff agreed to do it personally. If one of the senior mechanists was there, then only one person needed to stop working. So it only made sense in terms of meeting their deadlines. With someone else from the department taking over his work, Jeff made his way over to the arena ready to treat the fight as a short nap between tasks.

When he arrived at the arena control room, a room that looked similar to an airport traffic control tower, as it looked over the field. Seeing no one else around, he booted the main computer and set to work making sure all of the monitoring equipment was functioning. Given that the arena’s core had to maintain the audience's protective field at the same time as powering Satou’s rig, its power would be distributed in a three to two ratio. As such, Jenna’s rig would be required to operate at 40% max output, and going beyond that would cause her loss if the fight ended in either a draw or time ran out if it was done in spikes or lose outright if consistently over the limit. With that kind of wiggle room, he would have instructed a pilot to abuse it, but he wasn't a teacher and he didn't work for a pilot. Since they had agreed to a single 5 minute round, timing out was entirely a possibility, and the fact that Jenna not only agreed to it, but also proposed that rule, showed how completely confident she was in her victory.

A couple of minutes before the event was set to start, the teacher that called finally showed up. She was a pilot that retired early when an opponent’s blade managed to get through her rig’s shield and score a direct hit to her leg. While the injury was mostly healed, to the extent that she wouldn’t notice it in her daily life, the cut was contaminated with formless rig particles, the matter that the bodies of rigs were mostly composed of, that couldn’t be removed. If she were to come into contact with a core, its energy would likely activate those particles, causing them to expand and slow her blood flow, not to mention that they interfered with her ability to control rigs. Since that problem wouldn’t occur with a school model, if she ever wanted to fly again, teaching was her only option.

Her real combat experience was how Ms Deborah Burgess gained the students' respect. But amongst the maintenance department, there were some bad rumours about. Despite her young and innocent appearance, it was said that she had had several affairs with her students. Her black hair matched the suit she wore, and only served to make her already small chest seem ever more diminutive. Apparently, the rig she had used was a speed type, like Jenna’s, only coloured with a black and red instead of Jenna’s patriotic blue, red and white. With that look, she had been known as ‘Battle Imp’ during her short-lived career.

With the overall importance of rig related jobs, a lot of personality problems were overlooked. Jeff’s own gambling was probably being ignored, as well as Sam’s obvious drug dependency. Compared to them, Deborah’s affairs were almost promoted. Rig control was dependent on a factor called ‘Digital Comparability’, which was a measure of how similar their thoughts were to the code that the receptors could recognise. At its most basic, the higher the percentage the more their thoughts could be converted to commands and the more information gathered by the rig could be conveyed to the pilot. DC was also a genetic trait, meaning the children of two pilots were more likely to be able to become pilots.

A normal person had a DC of about 15%, which would be enough to directly control a rig on land, as though it were a prosthetic limb, after a couple of months of training. Just activating flight required at least 25%, and basic combat programs needed at least 35%. In order to receive adequate information from the rigs sensors, a basic requirement for fighting at the flight speeds of a rig, at least 40% DC was required. As such, the official school acceptance requirement was set to that.

When Deborah Burgess entered the room, she didn’t notice Jeff at all. As with most pilots, auxiliary staff were invisible to her; just a part of the computer he was operating. It was such a normal occurrence that it was far more surprising when one actually did greet them. To other pilots, however, they would be some of the most sociable people around, hiding hatred with kindness and lust behind pleasantries.

Not long after, the fight began. Jenna started out aggressively and pinned Satou down with long-ranged combat and easily avoiding his pistol fire, with both speed and distance. The silver colour of Satou’s rig started to get stained black with scorch marks from near misses from the Rig-Breaker that super-heated the air around it with its speed and, after four minutes, he looked worn down and tired.

Suddenly, in response to Jenna’s taunting, he directed all of his thrusters straight backwards and started to fly directly towards Jenna, seeming to make a final desperate dash. Slashing his sword, he cut the projectile racing towards him and gained ground, ever closer to his target. Normal metals would have been torn apart by collisions at such speed, but the metals used were some of the hardest and they were further reinforced with the rigs power. There were only a few seconds left on the count down, and both sides were running low on power.

Satou raised his blade when he was within range and readied an attack. But he was too late. The time had run out and the match was over. He had lost and Jenna was the new class representative.

Through the sound control system, Jeff could hear Jenna whisper over her mic, “For him to predict and avoid my shots so precisely… unbelievable.”

With the match over, Deborah rushed out to meet her students, leaving Jeff there to pack up the system and start repairs. During the post-match rig maintenance, Jeff noticed the mistake he had made with the arms parts and quickly wrote a note.

“Hey Sam, it’s about the work on the custom rig. If anyone asks, say that John did the targeting calibration.”