Chapter 28

“Sorry can't help you there.”

That kind of response wasn't something that Sam expected. She hadn't talked to Jeff since the last competition, but he was still someone she felt she could depend on. While it made her a little worried about fighting unprepared, it was also somehow understandable. Diana was Jeff's friend and had been for more than a decade. It was natural for him to side with her. He and Savannah were also training hard in order to break through to the professional league, it wouldn't be surprising if he was just in the middle of something and wasn't able to help her.

An irrational sense of abandonment threatened to rise up and storm through her mind, but she did her best to quell it. Her best proved good enough as she saw a figure approaching her. It was true that she no longer felt abandonment; that had been replaced with an instinctive kind of fear that started first in her back and only later made it to her mind. It was a kind of fear that seemed baseless, yet was impossible to dismiss. Objectively, the woman walking towards her was not in the least bit scary, at least not in the traditional sense of horned monsters or wrinkled hags. No, she was definitely a frail kind of beautiful with earthy brown hair that invoked images of fertile soil and pail skin tone that shone radiantly like it was seeing sunlight for the first time. But the aura that emanated from her was almost physical, like she passively demanded that even the air obey her. When Sam's eyes met with Diana's steel grey eyes, she realised that she hadn't been breathing, yet still couldn't bring herself to do so.

Only after the panic of death triggered an involuntary breath did Sam break free enough to examine her competition. Diana, despite the initial frail appearance, was clearly not at all the kind of delicate flower that some might take her for. Resting in her hand was a tool box that couldn't have weighed less than a dozen kilograms, yet there was no sign of even the slightest trouble from it weight. Her clothes were also very sensible and practical, with cargo pants held up by a tool belt, leather boots with a presumable steel cap, and a loose shirt made from a breathing material tucked into her pants, all under a lab coat; a lab coat that, while you intuitively knew that it was once white, it had been stained grey for so long that any other colour couldn't be called its natural colour. Even her hair was kept in a pony-tail that was fed under the coat to keep it out of the way. What Sam hadn't noticed until they got closer was that Diana was actually a lot shorter than she had appeared, being only as tall as Sam herself; it was only her aura that made her seem towering.

When within arm’s length from Sam, Diana suddenly stopped in place. She looked Sam up and down, and then gave a cheerful nod, one filled with satisfaction and acceptance. She then began to speak, with a voice rich with determination, whose every simple syllable seemed to be thought through, planned and crafted; as if her craft was words and not machines.

“Yes, I think you will do nicely.”

Before Sam could ask what she meant, Diana turned away and walked towards the waiting pilots from her school. There were five in total, and each was dressed with their uniform so pristine that a soldier on parade would proudly march beside them. Furthermore, none of them had adjusted their uniform in any way, even the three girls used hairbands in the schools colours and their black leather shoes glistened with fresh polish. In contrast, the students of Sam's school made adjustments to their uniform so frequently that the word had almost lost all meaning. The two boys were lean and muscular with the build of a martial artist and a body devoid of fat. With scars, both old and new, and skin that looked sun scorched and as hard as old leather, they were more hardened than some actual soldiers she had seen. If someone had told her that they were experienced pilots nearing their retirement, she might have believed it, as their exertions had definitely aged them, both physically and mentally. The girls looked much better, though that was clearly due to them taking steps to preserve their looks, underneath that effort their tight muscles and calloused hands could be seen.

Just looking at them made her feel embarrassed for her school’s students. It was like looking at adults and looking at children. Diana had soldiers and she had kids. Worse still, Diana's students stood in awe and respect when Diana approached, but the kids of Sam's school wouldn't even do that for the coaches, let alone support staff. With a shiver of appending doom, she ran back to the workshop to research and make adjustments to Sachiko's rig.

The first thing she did was pull up that school's alumni database and opened up the performance history of the school's most famous pilots. Too her surprise, the alumni were listed as confidential, despite her having a clearance that should have been high enough to access something like a school's history. She was able to get a picture of what she wanted to know by looking through media pieces and public betting records. What wasn't surprising was the common link that the best graduates had; accuracy.

It was said that the country's number two pilot, an alumni of that school, had only ever missed two shots in her entire professional life. Considering that accuracy had been maintained while speed based rigs were the common, admiration and jealousy were just a matter of course. While it was unlikely that anyone that skilled was amongst the new students, it still meant that Sachiko would be unlikely to win based on avoidance. That meant a more defensive build would be required. Thankfully the rules of the challenge meant that she wouldn't have to completely redesign the rig.

The challenge was a best of five, one on one matches using school model rigs and no personal cores. Since school models were being used, Sam only needed to choose one that already suited her plan and make fine adjustments and calibrate it to match Sachiko. The scoring system wasn't a break match either, since neither school wanted to have to pay for the repairs that would involve, and instead was dependant on a power system. Once a pilot used up a certain amount of power, that was used both for offence and defence, then they lose the match. The rules obviously favoured the opposition, but the home team was still needlessly confident. One part of the challenge that was especially worrying was that neither side would be able to see the opponent's rigs in advance. There was some argument that since school model rigs only had limited customisation, it wasn't needed; but limited wasn't zero.

Since power was the constraint to the match, rather than integrity, the mechanist who made the more efficient system would be the one who had the advantage. Further into the day, Mia entered the lab that Sam and Jared had been working in. While the two of them were working on the other four, Mia had insisted on working on Satou's school rig herself. Considering the consequences for the school if they failed, no one wanted to indulge her, but her parents put pressure on the school, which in turn put pressure on them, and Mia was allowed to do as she pleased.

The following day, starting with the first bell that would normally ring to start the school day, the first round began. Representing Sam's school was Adam Shaderman, the fifth overall ranked student, who she recalled seeing around, but whose face slipped from her mind almost immediately after seeing him. He was a technically sound pilot who focused on his fundamentals and followed the trends well. In other words he was generic and forgettable without any unique talents. In a few years’ time he would probably be able to put those skills to use in teaching, but in competition, he wouldn't stand a chance.

As predicted, his match was over very quickly; with the blond haired girl he was set against using a repeating crossbow to hammer him with explosive bolts. At first she wondered why a school that was always short on supplies would use disposable bolts like that, but then she noticed some inconsistencies in the impacts of the blasts. Mass produced explosives almost always gave off identical blasts. That meant that the bolts were hand made. If the student was taught how to make her own ammunition, then assembling what she needed for herself would make it a more viable option even on a budget.

Adam focused on avoidance, despite being told that blocking would be more effective, after the first explosive went off against his armour. Even if the rig protected his body, he had still been able to feel the shock-wave and hear a lot of the blast. That had rattled him enough that he followed his training and instincts rather than the plan. It was apparently hard to concentrate while being blown up, and a high DC didn't mean a high tolerance for fear.

Having lost the first match and the momentum that went with it, up next was the school hero Satou. His many fans cheered him on as he entered the arena, his school rig modified to be a shining silver and gold design with elaborate etchings of vines. His armour was thin and light, with a disproportionately large thruster set strapped to the back. Sam instantly knew that it had been a bad idea to let Mia have her way. It was clear that she had listened too much to what Satou wanted and not explained to him the reality of the situation. While the thruster was the newest model that Mia's company made, one with an extremely high efficiency rating, it was clear that she hadn't taken the context of that rating into account. It was easy to look up an efficiency rating. It was more time consuming to do the math on its efficiency relative to its weight. Apparently Mia had instead opted to spend that time on the looks Satou wanted, since that thruster was about three times as heavy as their supply would accommodate. If she had looked at what the other units, on both sides, had done, she would have noticed that everyone was using lightweight thrusters with worse on paper efficiency ratings. There was more skill required in that method, but they wouldn't have been the top five students of each school if they couldn't handle that.

As such Jeff's saying proved true once again, and no magic happened. The match started with the monolithic thruster kicking up dirt as Satou pushed forward at breakneck speed. Satou had planned to make the most of the engine by equipping a long, two handed sword, but that plan swiftly turned into a liability. Using short, controlled bursts of power, his opponent few into blind spots of his swings and waited for him to make long turn around to repeat the attack, all the while being pelted by rifle bullets. From the stadium lab, Sam could see the camera feed of his opponent's face and more than anything else, she looked bored. It looked to Sam like she had come there excited to have a challenge and instead was faced with simple avoidance training. After a few short moments, the large engine consumed his power limit and the match was over.

Sam's school had lost the first two matches without so much as landing a hit. It could well be over before she and Sachiko had a chance to do anything. She could only hope that the two pilots could give them the opportunity.

The third round was between the remaining girl from Diana's school and Jenna Baker, the buxom blond exchange student and class representative. During holiday training camp, Sam had been surprised by how much Jenna had improved. Sam had always taken her as someone that was a rig pilot for the sake of fame and glamour, yet she worked bitterly to improve herself when the others left to compete and she was left as the top pilot remaining. Furthermore, Jenna's combat style was very similar to what Diana's school taught. She was a fast moving sniper, just like her opponent, and the match would come down to skill more than planning.

When the match began, both pilots took to the air, spiralling and adjusting their heights so that they could each be as far from the other as possible. Height played an important role in their duel. It was easier to shoot from higher ground, especially with the sun on its way to its morning peak, but shedding height was also a way of gaining sudden bursts of speed that could be used to avoid attacks. Almost a minute into the match, and not a single shot had been fired as both parties ducked and weaved through the air. Their energy reserves were at the point where even a single shielded direct hit would drain them dry. It was at that point that Jenna suddenly dropped her speed considerably and lined up a shot. Her opponent didn't miss a beat and shot while keeping her speed.

But that was Jenna's plan, when her opponent shot her thrusters suddenly fired sidewards and fire burst from the cold barrel of her black rifle. Her opponent's bullet grazed her armour, bringing her power to the edge of her limit, but her one shot struck true. Jenna's bullet stuck against her opponent's armour, directly above the heart and her power drained in an instant safely slowing the round. Her cool and collected planning had ensured Jenna's victory and the school gained its first point back.

The fourth round was between the first of the two male opponents and the red haired student from the neighbouring country, Lucy Riveria. Lucy training with her sister had paid huge returns, as her control had become far more precise than it previously was and her attacks were far more varied. It worried Sam somewhat that Lucy had chosen to use an energy pistol as her weapon, but she had insisted that her training with ballistics was too limited for her to make an effective change.

“It's about using a bad weapon well, rather than a good weapon badly. That's what my sister says”

Sam finally agreed when hearing that, but she none the less dreaded that when she saw the opponent's rig. The beastly thing could barely be considered a rig, as tank would have been a better description. It was bound in thick plates of metal with sharp angles that barely showed a human form. With armour like that, it was clear that they would be using the strength of the metal instead of slowing projectiles with energy. Without a shield, the pilot would be thrown about and shaken, but it would save a lot of power. In that situation, a ballistic or explosive weapon, something that pushed them around a lot and made shock-waves, would be the ideal solution.

When they started, neither party took off. While Sam was reasonably confident that the lump of metal couldn't fly, rather than didn't, she wasn't sure why Lucy didn't. Flight was her biggest advantage, yet she didn't show any signs of using it. Instead, she simply started to run. She ran to her opponent's side while he very slowly turned to try and face her. It seemed that even without her thrust, she could still out speed her bulky enemy. As she ran, she took shots at her opponent. While all of them hit, none of them did much damage. Her attacks were draining her energy quickly, but she still had a lot in reserve, especially since she didn't have to fly.

It took a few moments, but Sam eventually realised what Lucy's plan was, and after two minutes of shooting at a near stationary target, with her energy nearing zero, it finally came to fruition. Her opponent's energy reserve, that had remained essentially full for the whole match, suddenly started to drop at an alarming rate. Then a moment later, his armour was ejected from his rig in a burst of steam. Lucy had planned her shots carefully and manually controlled the energy settings of the weapon. At first it had chewed through her power, since she was drilling tiny holes in select locations of the armour, but then she just had to use small amounts carefully to slowly heat the places that the holes exposed. Against a moving target, the plan would have been impossible, and for a less skilled pilot, it still would have been.

What she had exposed were cooling systems. A rig that armoured would cook its pilot and kill off its own formless particles without a means of cooling itself. Lucy had first heated the reserve coolant, a tank of emergency fluid that the rig could pump throughout the rig in the event of sudden jumps in heat. Once that was fully hot, she started to gradually raise the temperature of the main coolant that passively circulated the rig, like a kind of blood or oil for the formless particles. When that got too hot, the rig diverted the emergency coolant that was near boiling by that point. When the rig realised that it was boiling itself, it diverted the pilot's air conditioning to try and mitigate the problem, which caused the sudden and drastic drain in power as an inefficient cooling device tried to cool the entire armour. It was only at that point that the pilot noticed the problem and tried to take measures to fix the situation. By that point it was too late and the emergency safety systems activated, ejecting the armour and engaging the shield to protect the pilot from the steam. When the danger had past he had already used more than his power allocation and the match was over.

It was a strategy that showed Lucy's knowledge of rig construction, but it was also a plan that capitalised on the enemy's weakness, a low DC. If the pilot had been from Sam's school, he would have been able to access more of the rigs information, and maybe noticed the changes being made to background systems in time to do something about them. Instead he only had access to the most basic readout, and lost because of it. It was Sam's honest belief on seeing that fight that Lucy would have made a better mechanist than pilot, and made a note to herself to recommend it to her later.

With that win, the scores were level and final match would be the decider. She took a look at Sachiko, who was about to make her way out. Nodding to her and wishing her luck, Sam waited from her monitoring booth for the match to begin. Sachiko's opponent was nothing like Lucy's, his armour was a lean and simple design, the generic design that most people were using. What was unusual was his weapon choice. She didn't recognise it. It was a kind of energy weapon, she could see that much, but the model wasn't one she had encountered, even just in textbook form. Looking through her database, she found a lot of patents that looked similar, but no exact match. The closest matches seemed to be either a railgun or a laser, though she couldn't see down the boxy barrel enough to make out which. Taking a photo of the weapon, she sent it through on a message to Jeff.

“Have you seen this before? Any idea what it does?”