Chương 82: The Duel on Chel I: Launch

Fleet Station Chel, Vidako System Imperium Stellarum May 18, 2848 This is useless, Arc thought to Iceni. I can't sleep. What time is it? 03: 47, Imperial Standard Time, the AI answered. You have three hours, twelve minutes, and eight seconds until you are due to be in your cockpit or forfeit the duel. I find it ironic, in light of your complaints from earlier in the year, that you are now purposefully depriving yourself of rest.

Particularly prior to an event that could, despite all precautions, easily result in an end to our conjoined existence. It's not on purpose, Arc told her, carefully rolling out of his bunk so as to make as little noise as possible. It's just nerves. The quarters they'd been given were small and cramped, even more so than the dorms in the academy. Triple bunks on metal frames bolted to both the floor and the walls didn't even provide enough room to sit up but slept nine people to each room.

They were marine racks, meant for enlisted men and women. Arc supposed he should be grateful for any space to themselves at all; none of them were assigned to Fleet Station Chel, and they could easily have been squeezed into a spare bunk here or there among those who actually were. Cassie was in the middle bunk above him, and Jessica above her.

Pika had done his best to squeeze into the center bottom bunk, which mostly meant that his torso only hung off at the shoulder, his arm and leg dangling down to brush the ground. Rain and C'rise had taken the bunks above him, while Natalie and the rest of the tech crew occupied the third and final set of mattresses. Commandant Marlowe, Monica Yarborough, and the rest of the faculty, including Doctor Seung's medical team, had been given quarters in officers' country.

Nice for them, Arc thought, doing his best not to be bitter. He knew that it was perfectly fair, and not what was really bothering him at all, so he padded carefully across the center of the room in his socks toward the door and, beyond that, the latrine at the end of the hall—which was, apparently, called a head once you were in space. After two days and change on base, he was finally getting used to the careful, controlled steps needed to make sure he wouldn't fly up toward the ceiling.

In the head, he made use of a suction-based toilet attachment meant to keep urine from spraying all around the room in low gravity. There were no showers to speak of, only washcloths, soap, and hand held spray-heads. The water felt almost sticky; its tendency to clump up into droplets and stick to Arc's skin wasn't offset by the stronger gravity which would have caused those drops to roll down his body easily, down on Vidako.

All the water ran into suction drains set in the floor, which would pull it into the station's water reclamation and purification systems. By the time Arc made it back to the room, to get dressed in the dark, it was after four, and the marines assigned to the other bunks along the hallway were already beginning to stir. He felt their eyes on him in the corridor, and imagined what they were thinking: This kid's the one fighting a duel? Looks kinda scrawny, doesn't he? A bit young?

What's so special about him, why's he got anything to do with a princess? He avoided making eye contact. Once back in the dark room, he found himself pacing before he even realized it. Arc couldn't decide whether to try to climb back into his bunk for an hour, or to just forget it, get dressed and go to the mess hall. Was it even worth putting on a jumpsuit, when he was going to have to get into a pilot's suit in a couple hours?

"Arc?" Cassie's sleepy whisper carried across the room, along with the creak of her mattress, and brought him to a halt.

"Hey," Arc whispered back. He stepped over to her bunk, where he could just make out the shape of her face in the dark.

"Go back to sleep. It's too early."

"Mmmm. Knew you'd gotten up," she mumbled.

"Come in here." She raised her blanket with one hand.

"I won't fit," Arc said.

"We'll cram in. Just for a bit." Arc sighed and, as much so that Cassie would go back to sleep as for any other reason, carefully maneuvered his body into the middle bunk. She turned on her side, toward the wall, and he scooted in right up behind her. There wasn't enough blanket to cover him completely, and his hip was right on the metal rim of the bunk, rather than the mattress, but he tucked his arm around her anyway and found a place against the back of her neck where her short hair wouldn't tickle his nose.

He waited, and listened, for her to fall back asleep. Once she did, Arc told himself, he'd get back out and do something useful. Look over what maps Pika and Jessica had been able to find of the entrance to the Deeps, perhaps, on his tablet. That would be better than tossing and turning... Arc woke up again when the overhead lights turned on.

He felt like something had been stabbing into his hip for hours, and half his body was cold enough for goosebumps, where Cassie had pulled the blanket away from him and around herself in a cocoon.

"What time is it?" he grumbled. Hadn't he just closed his eyes?

"Oh-five-thirty," Natalie said.

"We need to be down at the hangar before you." Arc half-rolled to glance over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of the tech student getting dressed before he closed his eyes and turned away. Bill Tremblay was up, as well, and then the frame that Arc and Cassie's bunks were on shook as Jessica clambered down. Cassie rolled around to face him.

"Did you go back to sleep?" she asked.

"A little," Arc admitted, and she smiled at the victory. He did climb back into his own bunk and pull up the files on his tablet, because he'd already used the head, and it was simpler to stay out of the way while eight other people hurried in and out of the room, getting dressed.

The Deeps were something like a jumble of rocks that had settled into an only somewhat stable arrangement, held together by gravity and their own mass, with oddly shaped gaps where the curved or jagged surfaces of enormous stone faces didn't line up neatly. The problem was that the area was still settling, and while it wasn't common for rock to shift, it wasn't unheard of, either.

Arc occupied himself with looking over the first chamber again—a cavernous space with three entrances from the surface, providing probably the most room to maneuver that he and Fletcher Radecki would find during their duel. It was nearly a hundred and thirty meters at the longest point, covering about two acres, but only just over thirty-six meters tall at the largest. That was barely enough room for a thirty-meter tall Kestrel to fly—practically knife fighting range for two mechs.

If the fight went lower than that, it would be a chase through tunnels and crevices, with any given turn liable to lead to a dead end.

"Time to eat," Pika said, reaching down to shake Arc's shoulder with one hand.

"I'm not sure I can," Arc admitted, setting his tablet down next to him. His roommate gave a great huff.

"Am I your second, or not?"

"You are," Arc admitted. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

"Good. Then it's my responsibility to bring you to the hangar with enough calories in your belly that you won't pass out halfway through the fight," Pika told him.

"Come on. We'll all go to the mess hall together." Arc nodded, rolled off the mattress, and followed his friends out. The mess for the base's enlisted marines was larger than the dining hall they'd used back at the academy, which wasn't really surprising. It had to be able to handle up to two-hundred soldiers at a time, after all, whereas Tycho Hall never had to deal with more than sixty or so, even at the beginning of the year.

They made their way through the line, and Arc was grateful for one thing, at least: there was no need for the kind of rations they took into the jungles, or even the zero-g food pouches still used on old cargo haulers that hadn't installed grav-generators, yet. Chel might have only had natural gravity about a sixth that of Vidako, but the generators kept living quarters at about. 67g, the minimum necessary to prevent substantial muscle and bone degeneration.

It was also enough to eat a mostly normal meal—though the drinks still came in pouches, with straws. Arc forced himself to eat a rather unappetizing mix of powdered eggs, toast and jam, and vat-grown sausage. The conversation mostly floated around him, though whether it was the constant chatter of other voices echoing through the hall, or his own thoughts that kept him from really hearing anything that was said, he didn't know.

Thirty minutes until you're due at the hangar, Iceni told him, and then Arc felt his stomach lurch. He pushed himself up from the bench they were sitting at so hard that he banged his knees against the table and practically ran out of the room. Arc's stomach heaved, and the eggs were coming up, but he kept his mouth closed until he found the nearest head. Thankfully, whoever had planned the base had put one just outside the dining hall.

There, he threw up everything he'd just eaten and knelt on the cool floor gasping. It was Pika who followed him, of course, and brought a fresh pouch of water, already pierced with a straw.

"Here. Rinse your mouth out with this," Arc's friend said, and rested one heavy hand on Arc's back.

"Sorry," Arc told him.

"I guess I'm not going to have that many calories in me, after all."

"You tried." Pika patted him gently, like Arc imagined someone might comfort a crying infant.

"You'll be fine. My pockets are stuffed full of protein bars. You can eat one in the hangar and bring more into the cockpit." Arc nodded.

"Thanks."

"Come on," Pika said.

"Everyone's waiting, and it'll look bad if I have to carry you." They both laughed at that, and Arc accepted a hand back up to his feet. 𝝮 In hangar five, Arc stood with his skinsuit rolled down to his waist while Doctor Seung checked his heartbeat and blood pressure.

"Try to take deep breaths," she said.

"A hundred and forty beats a minute is getting up toward panic attack territory."

"Should we call this off?" Commandant Marlowe asked. She was wearing a skinsuit just like Arc's, though it was already secured up to her neck, where the mating collar was ready to attach to a helmet. Unlike his, it wasn't simply a loaner, and her rank insignia was displayed next to a single black ace of spades symbol. On the upper arms, some sort of patch had been secured, depicting the stylized image of a spectral wolf, fangs barred. That particular piece was most certainly not standard uniform.

"No." Arc shook his head.

"I'll be fine." He sucked in a deep breath through his nose, held it, and then breathed out through his mouth. In, hold, out.

"May I help you?" C'rise asked. Arc had actually felt a bit bad for her; like Vee and Rain, she hadn't exactly had much to do over the past forty-eight hours or so. Jessica was always running about securing rooms, Natalie and her team were occupied with Lady Ren, and Pika had to handle any communication with Radecki's second. Cassie had been—well, she'd been there for Arc whenever he'd looked for her, whenever he'd needed someone to hold his hand. But the other girls had mostly been relegated to hangars-on.

"Yes. Please." Arc nodded. C'rise reached one hand out to gently touch his forehead with her fingers, and Arc felt all his anxiety recede. It was something like the sensation of slipping into a hot bath, and he let out a sigh as his muscles released their tension.

"Heart rate dropping," Doctor Seung said, after a moment.

"One-twenty. One fifteen. Alright, I'm going to allow this to proceed. But I'm going to be watching the feed from your suit's monitors, Cadet." She took hold of his skinsuit and pulled it up, so that Arc could get his hands into the sleeves. The imperial fleet skinsuit was nearly as complicated a piece of technology as the mechs were. Between the inner and outer layers were spring-like coils of nickel-titanium shape-memory alloy.

Once the loose suit was on, a current ran through the coils at the touch of a button, tightening them so that the skin-suit pulled tight to his body. Once the coils were locked, they would maintain the suit's shape even if he was thrown out of a ruined cockpit into the vacuum. At the same time, liquid-filled channels that ran vertically throughout the suit were designed to use hydrostatic pressure to protect the pilot's body from high g-forces.

The three liters of water was just enough extra weight for Arc to notice while he was moving around, but not enough to really impede his movement while Commandant Marlowe spoke.

"As the slower mech, you'll leave the hangar before Radecki," she said.

"I'll already be out on the surface of Chel when you launch. Once I see that you've entered the first chamber of the Deeps, I'll call for Cadet Radecki to launch in turn. When he reaches one of the three entrances, I'll call the beginning of the duel. At that point, you're both weapons free."

"The duel ends when one of four things happens," Marlowe went on.

"First, one of you surrenders. I'll be monitoring the comms for that, and all three of us will be on the same channel. Second, the automated eject systems in one of your mechs activate. Third, one of you is unable to respond, either due to the destruction of your mech or loss of consciousness. Fourth, either on my own judgment or based on Doctor Seung's determination, I can call an end to this at any time.

Once any of these four conditions have been met, you are to immediately cease all weapons fire and remove yourself from the engagement. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir," Arc said, nodding.

"I've already been over these rules with Cadet Radecki," Marlowe said.

"There will be no interference. If my sensors, or Fleet Station Chel, detect any other mech or craft coming within ten klicks of you, I will call a halt." She paused, and her voice softened.

"There's no shame in surrendering, Cadet. Especially if your mech is heavily damaged. I want you to know that." Your emperor commands you to crush Fletcher Radecki, Monica Yarborough had told him. Your emperor asks this of you, and he does not accept failure.

"I understand," Arc said.

"Alright. Get into your cockpit. Wait to launch until I give the word," the commandant said. She kicked off and flew through the bay toward the airlock, followed by Doctor Seung. Professor DeVault, however, lingered for just a moment.

"Be safe, Cadet," the older man said, and extended his hand.

"I expect you to be taking my simulations course again next year, and I'll be very disappointed if you're not."

"Yes, sir," Arc said, and shook his hand. Once the professor had left, he found himself surrounded by his friends.

"I'm jealous," Vee said, ruffling the short hair on the back of his head.

"I want to fly around a moon and shoot assholes. This really isn't fair."

"When you come back, we'll have a party," Pika promised.

"Better to do it on Pinnacle Station," Rain broke in.

"We can go to a restaurant there before everyone ships back home."

"I like that idea," Arc admitted.

"One kiss before you put your helmet on," Cassie said, and tilted her face up. Arc slipped his arms around her and closed his eyes as their lips touched. After far too short a time, she stepped back and handed him his helmet. He set it on, waited for the mating collar to click, and then touched a button that retracted the face-shield back into the upper part of the helmet, leaving him able to breathe the air of the hangar bay.

"Almost forgot," Pika said, and thrust a fistful of protein bars into Arc's hands.

"We're ready on our end," Natalie called out from the computer station.

"I've got all your sensor feeds rigged up into the holo-projector here, so we'll be able to see what's happening. So, make sure you look good, and don't bang the mech off a rock or something." Arc didn't bother with the rope ladder. Instead, he kicked off the floor of the hangar toward the open ceramic armor panels which framed the entrance to the cockpit. He caught one of the gold-enameled pieces of armor in his left hand and swung inside.

One press of a button closed the external armor, and he settled back into the chair, where he buckled his harness and pulled it tight.

"Make the connection," Arc told Iceni. A moment later, his consciousness bloomed out to encompass Lady Ren.

"Connection looks good," Natalie's voice came over a private comm channel.

"Marlowe's just launching now." Arc nodded, realized that she wouldn't be able to see it, and then made himself speak.

"Understood." He let himself close his eyes, and once again concentrated on slowing his breathing. They'd all put so much work into this—months of planning and training. He was prepared as he possibly could be. He'd done everything he could to set himself up for victory, and now the only one who could win the duel was him.

"This is the Revenant Wolf. Airspace is clear," Commandant Marlowe's voice came over the comms.

"I am overwatch, and I am arbitrator of this duel. Cadet Sandhurst, you are clear to launch." Arc opened his eyes, and Lady Ren stepped forward.