Iron Heart (The Gauntlet #2)

Chapter 15 - The Hercules

It was a day when Codi suddenly realised she really had become part of the Battlecast team. The scowls were gone; the behind-the-back whispering had evaporated. Now, with the mixed results of the practice tournament culminating in a further cull of the remaining recruits, everyone knuckled down to work studying hard, both their own weaknesses and the strength of the opposition they were soon to face.

With the next practice tournament on Mars looming on the horizon, the remaining recruits needed to focus on their own shortcomings – they simply didn't have time to snipe at each other anymore. Codi had no illusions that they all needed to up their game.

The first clash at the Shetland Isles let them know what to expect from their local rivals, but the next event would bring academies from across the Sol system together to slug it out under the shadow of the Olympus Mons volcano and academy namesake.

However, an academy with the resources of Battlecast did not sit idle. Scouts already felt their way around the local competition, watching for weakness and for threats. Earth wasn't the only planet having practice contests, and as a result the Battlecast agents had been very busy compiling video evidence for their students to examine.

Currently, Codi watched with some concern as a recording of the top Olympus Mons fighter played out in front of her. He was a brass-skinned brick of a contender named Darien Fallow, someone who brawled and bludgeoned with all the grace of a battering ram. The style was ugly, but effective and Codi liked it. She could see from the face of the group around her that not everyone felt the same way.

"Thug," Prissa Alder muttered, casting a sour look over the figure on the screen.

"A thug who gets results," Codi pointed out. "He swept that tournament from start to finish. He's the one we've got to beat when we get there."

"He looks better than last year," Ripple said in her emotionless drawl. "He's been practicing."

"No kidding."

The faint flicker of a smile passed over Ripple's face at the remark. Codi made a mental note to mark the calendar for the occasion.

"Sod the individuals," Gareth cut in. "It's the CTF that we made a complete mess of last time out. We need a half-decent game plan and we need to see what they did."

Codi obliged, scrolling through the menu on her data slate and finding a recording of their disastrous capture the flag efforts. She hesitated for an instant, not really wanting to watch the recording back. But they wouldn't learn any other way. Sighing, she pressed the playback button and the recording flashed into the life on the main screen they were clustered around.

The first bout played out and she watched, unable to stop her body from tensing with discomfort. The others started making suggestions, pointing out the flaws in their spacing and timing, but she knew the real problem: cohesion. The five of them just didn't work very well as a team. They were all too individualistic with styles that did not mesh. On paper, fighter to fighter, they outclassed most opposition, but when it all came together as one, the result was lesser than the sum of its parts.

But what was the solution? Another thing they lacked was pure speed. While everyone on the team could put on a turn of pace when they had to, none of them were born sprinters. She dimly wondered about Leela, arguably the least effective solo combatant still scraping through the selection process. What if they poached her for their Flag team? She may not have been an asset as a fighter, but she was the fastest runner in the whole academy; probably the whole solar system.

That avenue, however, depended on Leela making the final cut all the way to the Gauntlet, and that was by no means certain. Codi sighed. Several of the veteran fighters had been surprised when she escaped the first cull, never mind the second. If only the young recruit could find her feet as a fully rounded competitor it might solve a lot of problems.