Chapter Eleven

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==February 18, 2096, 19h


The bus doors opened and Trent stepped out, taking a quick glance around the area to get his bearings. The ride (a long way, even with these new gravlift buses) had given him time not only to cool down and start thinking rationally, but to memorize the layout of the town of Panama Beach and the location of Jonus Augardi’s house. From what he had heard, Augardi was great for the cameras, apt to talk like a politician and fight with what Trent considered an excess of style. He should have no trouble walking in the front door, inviting Augardi to a friendly duel, and beating him into the ground. After that, his plans hadn’t solidified, but he expected that Jonus would be rattled enough by a sudden defeat for what he had to say to get through.

After Augardi’s primary source of income (the Arena championship) had dried up, he had moved to a quieter and less costly residence in Panama Beach, on northwestern Earth’s Florida Peninsula. Since he displayed a level of proficiency in his HAR rather above what one would expect in his job in WAR’s marketing division, Trent assumed that he had a setup like Faraday’s including a simulator in the basement and the accompanying reinforced power grid around the house. Otherwise, everything should be perfectly normal.

As a matter of fact, as Trent walked up the stairs and the door sensors recorded his presence, the only thing “extra” about the low, one-story mid-priced home Trent’s expert eyes could detect was a state-of-the-art sensor bank concealed beneath the outside lights.

For a moment, Trent allowed the ghost of a smile to cross his face: it seemed Augardi wasn’t as desperate for a new career as he made himself out to be. The door had opened before the house computer could check for anything but weaponry (only the small stunner he wore as a matter of habit), showing either that Augardi had been expecting someone or that he kept his door unlocked and turned out the fans and salesmen by other methods. To Trent, it was simply another datapoint he could refer to when he met Augardi, nothing to be overly concerned about.

The mechanism to keep unwanted visitors away soon made itself obvious: instead of a house, the door opened onto a small foyer, devoid of furnishings save for three doors on the three other walls. Trent’s reflexes, way ahead of him, figured that there just wasn’t space in the house for a design of this kind as well as the relatively spacious interior rooms shown in previous interviews with Augardi. Therefore, he was seeing a simple hologram, no doubt designed to waste Trent’s time figuring out which door really led to the house while the scanners he’d seen earlier got a good look at him.

Determined not to let this infantile waste of time get to him, Trent strode across the room, opened the center door, and was rewarded for his forthrightness by yet another holographic room, this one with a charming secretary who informed him that Mr. Augardi would see him now and beckoned to a door behind her. Hardly giving the woman a glance (since holograms were immaterial, they couldn’t be sources of information or even threats), Trent continued walking with the same even expression on his face.

A small struggle with the door later (Trent was not fond of maneuvering in cramped quarters, and had nearly broken the handle off before he figured out the unlocking mechanism), he was face to face with Augardi, who offered him a seat and took one himself as if Trent were a family friend dropping by for a chat. Since the other man seemed content to offer the standard inane greetings and let him state his purpose, Trent took the opportunity to study Augardi in person.

In keeping with the latest fashion, Augardi’s reddish hair was swept forward in several spikes that had apparently been subdued with copious amounts of hair gel. The rest of him looked like it had undergone the same treatment, almost posing for nonexistent cameras. It figures… spend too much time posing for the LBC crews and you’re ready for one on a moment’s notice. I hope I never end up looking like this. While Augardi wasn’t nearly as muscular or as large as Trent, he displayed a certain wiry strength that, although not strictly needed for HAR fighting, was very useful to keep the mind in a better awareness of the body’s limits.

Trent almost felt envious of the older man as he settled down comfortably in his chair, pressed the button that released the clinging static charge from his jacket, and put on a relaxed smile. Trent was in no mood to beat around the bush, especially when seated in a strange environment as he was in Augardi’s domain, which had already proved itself full of one too many surprises.

“Well, Augardi, you certainly have a sense of humor,” was Trent’s caustic opening remark. ‘I wonder how much those useless holo-projectors cost you?”

“They serve a variety of purposes, and with any luck, they’ll pay for themselves before the year is out. And please, call me Jonus. Now, what was it you came to talk to me about? You don’t seem the type to be making a social call, so it must have something to do about the Tournament.” Despite the banter, “Jonus” seemed to be growing impatient. Unwilling to waste more time himself (although from his point of view he was not the one doing the time-wasting), Trent issued his challenge. “You sound pretty confident, and I don’t want to waste your valuable time—“ this issued in a cutting tone in an attempt to see how Jonus reacted to a few barbs— “so I’ll get to the point.”

“You and I both know that Aidoann Traillieu is a pretty mediocre fighter, and from what I’ve seen she didn’t have a chance. But that doesn’t mean you can turn the match into a publicity stunt, drag out the match for extra effect. If you’re going to beat someone, do it fast; it’s just common decency!

“In my opinion, Augardi, you’ve got a little too many victories under your belt to be thinking clearly. You think you’re some hotshot celebrity who could win this tournament blindfolded. I say I disabuse you of this notion, right now. You’ve got simulators, it’s your turf, so are you going to make some weak excuse or are you going to stand up to a real challenge?”

To Trent’s irritation, Jonus didn’t allow the tirade to disturb his carefully planted genial smile. He simply nodded, rose from his chair, and replied, “Very well. As agreed, my terrain, obviously using our best HARs. I assume you have your chip with you?” The “chip” was an all-purpose electronic storage device which ensured minimal data loss by altering its subatomic composition to store data several orders of magnitude more efficiently than the old-style disks or holocrystals. WAR simulators were designed to accept almost any HAR, including personal modifications or test models, in a compressed format that fit on a single chip.

Trent flourished the chip and followed Jonus down two flights of stairs to a two-person simulator similar to that found in Faraday’s house, except with less open space (if such a thing was possible). Lying down, Trent closed his eyes and opened them in his Jaguar, in the small confines of WAR’s Danger Room. A particulary appropriate setting to put this fool in his place, he thought.

Piloting his trademark Katana, Jonus had other ideas. Immersed in the experience of being a HAR, he felt (as he always did) somehow more alive, fresh and focused; he was ready to take on anything, including an unknown quantity who claimed to be superhuman. If a robot could smile, this Katana would have worn a wild grin as it rushed at the opposition.

Jonus stopped his dash almost instantly, feinting a high kick in Trent's face to provoke a response. The expected trademark move, Jaguar's Leap, rocketed nearly ten meters up in an attempt to knock the Katana down by sheer force, but it caught only air. Jonus, with a clean sidestep, took advantage of the situation to land an uppercut backed by tons of steel and neo-plastic muscle. Caught airborne, Trent was unable to avoid the uppercut and paid the price as the Katana brought its bladed hands down and raked gashes in his armor plate with the sound of ten thousand fingernails on blackboards, then flipped over and connected again as Trent fell. Jonus' smooth landing was par for the course, but Trent's rolling recovery was anything but. Jonus had never seen any HAR move that fast, or any man take that much pain without batting an eyelash. In less than a second, Trent had shifted position to a low, Mantis kung fu stance and came in low and fast.

Part of Jonus' mind was astounded at Trent's technical skill, obviously years above his own, and viewed the whole thing with detachment as it tried to establish patterns in Trent's movement and attacks. But that part of him was buried deep within, and all he knew was the moment. Jonus Augardi lived for fighting, and for every instant of every fight; he was only in his element here, his lungs breathing electricity and his heart pumping Synthoil. A natural talent for combat allowed him to focus on each move while remaining aware of the overall strategy, and so when Trent began to move Jonus had already planned a response.

Unfortunately, a life in the martial arts breeds certain expectations, among them the limits of the human body. Of course, any HAR pilot could pulverize brick walls or jump half his height, but he still "followed the rules". Not so with Trent, whose leap was faster and more powerful than humanly possible, his body twisting down for a kick to the shins and back up for a knee to the midsection. Jonus attempted to counterattack, but his blades were of no avail as the Jaguar simply grabbed one of them by the wrist, dodged the other, and knocked the Katana's legs out from under it. A punch worthy of a video game finished off the sequence, sending Jonus, almost blacked out, towards the wall upside down and face-first. Jonus, his Katana now dented and suffering internal damage, ignored the searing pain telling him of shorted circuits and a broken shoulder plate.

Trent, on the other hand, put one hand to his head, as if in a daze. He looked down at his side, still sparking from his wound, then snapped suddenly into another fighting stance, unfamiliar to Jonus but distinctly Chinese in origin. With a wild cry he rushed at Jonus in a dead run, moving in a blur. Within two seconds he had crossed the room and attacked with an elbow strike to the midsection. In a complete break from his earlier precise motions, he went on the offense as fast as possible: palm strike, low kick, heelkick, sidestep, crouch, knife hand, punch, high kick. Jonus, completely on automatic, detected the pattern and was able to block and deflect every strike, then finished with a leap in the air (delivering a stomp to the Jaguar's head for good measure) that carried him back out of harm's way.

"Getting a little slow?" asked Jonus condescendingly. Trent shook himself off, then raised his arms in a Shaolin kung fu style, switching from crane stance to tiger stance to several others, so fast Jonus could barely see which one he was in at the moment. A surprise leap that, in the hands of a normal pilot, would have carried the Jaguar twenty meters above its opponent's head instead landed Trent right next to the Katana, with a shoulder ram that forced it into the wall.

Jonus was mystified: instead of pressing the offensive, Trent continued to shift positions, almost as if he was unable to think of what to do. The germ of an idea formed in his brain, and he took the opportunity with a slash to the face that brought Trent back into an attacking frenzy. However, instead of eating the intended axekick, the Katana unleashed its most famous technique, the Rising Blade.

Every Katana pilot learned the Rising Blade until he could do it anywhere - from a crouch, while airborne, after taking a kick to the face, reportedly in his sleep. Jonus' custom Katana and natural speed made his Rising Blade especially effective. He spun around like an ice skater, extending each blade as it passed to deliver another blow, then retracting it to continue the spin. By the time the Katana was finished with him, Trent’s Jaguar was sparking from the five new rips in its armor plates, ozone in the air as his circuit breakers fired to prevent reactor meltdown; certainly in no shape to block the massive uppercut that carried him ten meters into the air and sheared his left torso plate completely off. Activating his reserve power supply, Jonus followed him up and planted both feet firmly in the Jaguar's chest. By the time they hit the ground, Trent had already hit the emergency release on the HAR connection and the Jaguar's reactor exploded, ignited the ammunition for its concussion cannon, and transformed into thirty meters of flaming shrapnel.

Simulation over.

* * * *

After disconnecting from the simulators, Trent quickly regained his cool.

"Impressive. I can see why the media loves you - but why were you wasting your life in a two-bit show like the Arena?" This with a wry grin - he had begun to subconsciously pick up some of Jonus' mannerisms from studying his recorded matches. "In other words, where were you five years ago, when there were no challenges left for me?"

For his part, Jonus managed to resist the temptation to arch one eyebrow at Trent's remark. Actually, he was wondering the reverse: why hadn't he heard stories of a martial arts master with potential beyond all possibility? Either way the answer went, it would be easier to simply answer the question and hope to get some context that way. "It's very simple, really. I was attracted to the Arena because it offered me a chance to be stronger and faster than my own body - like doing ten years of physical training at a stroke. Unfortunately, they ran the outfit like the holovision show it was, and the brass had decided I wouldn't make a good champion, so they made me slow down, make obvious errors, that sort of thing. It probably boosted their ratings, but it wasn't until the Arena went under that I discovered what I could do in a HAR.

"And now, I'd like to know a little more about you. Specifically, you don't seem like the type of person to be instigating duels, and you certainly didn't come for the high-caliber company, so why are you here?"

As Jonus talked, the answer had already come to Trent. He imagined God must be smiling on him, or else he was getting soft: here was yet another person he felt he could trust implicitly. The skeptical part of him offered the opinion that Trent was only desperate after losing, and that it would be better to smoothly lie and get back to reality, but he pushed that down just far enough to safely ignore it. Taking a long breath and gathering up his wits, he asked: "Which would you prefer, the short answer or the long one?"

"Preferably both. We've got plenty of time." The smile on Augardi's face, evidencing both empathy and patience, only confirmed what Trent had decided already.

First, the short answer. "Well, I can't tell you much, since I don't know much myself. In '91 I woke up in a hospital after a gravlift accident with near-total amnesia and a splitting headache. Actually, I had a promising career in the martial arts and a degree in interface engineering, but not much else. It was just frustrating trying to track down everyone I had known, so I moved to Luna and set up shop as a freelance worker, doing anything and everything connected with HARs. I practice whenever I have the time, and eventually saved up the cash to buy myself a Jaguar, and here I am now."

A peremptory hand silenced Augardi's prompt. "And now, the long answer. Everything I just said is a lie, except for the college degree. That one, I earned in '92 over the Omni, just so I could get a real job. Actually, I spent the first couple decades of my life learning how to fight, 100% funded by the Company. When I was six, I took the standard tests, and got immediately snapped up by WAR for their new "career school" program. By the way, that whole program wasn't just PR; it had the useful function of concealing me and the rest of my school from prying eyes. There were about a hundred of us, split evenly in Aviation, Business, Combat and Design schools, and there was a good deal of competition for class ranks - but I came in as rank C1 and stayed C1. No surprise there.

"During the day, we'd learn what the other kids learned in the morning, and then learn to fight in the afternoon. We got to use the new career school linkups, so we could jack in and actually attend a karate class on Earth or a jeet kune do lecture on the L5 space station. We used the same thing for practicing the more deadly moves, but ironically, some of the kids couldn't handle it. They totally disconnected from reality, started killing themselves over and over trying to do impossible moves in the simulator, and so they had to cut back. I didn't pay attention to that stuff until much later.

"At the age of fourteen I passed the official school program and signed on for independent research: with WAR's unlimited funds and the best civilian linkups anywhere, I decided I was going to learn every style of fighting there was to learn. I reasoned that since there was a technique for every goal, by becoming a master at them all I would be unbeatable. Of course, my hubris wasn't too far off the mark. By now I had learned how to exercise my perfect memory; I could take in, for example, the complete holos of the great Master Fei-tzu's meta wu-shu style in a single night, then ask the Master himselfto explain the philosophy the next morning. In a week or less, I understood the style well enough to beat any of his other students, and it was a simple matter to apply counter-strategies to his form from my vast mental encyclopedia and defeat him with ease. HAR fighting, as for you, held a special place in my heart. It was unorthodox, but had so much potential that I began to spend more and more time on it. By the year 2091, I was nineteen and could beat any practicioner of martial arts on Earth, Luna or Mars, and had defeated the President of WAR in single combat with my trusty Jaguar 'bot.

"Eventually I found out why I was so much better than the other students: I'm genetically engineered to be the perfect HAR pilot. I've got speed, strength, an amazing memory, and superhuman endurance - whoever was in charge of building me knew what they were up to. In fact, there were four of us test-tube miracles there, one in each area of study. Two of them didn't want to leave, so Sarah (rank A1, an amazing pilot) and I stole a couple HARs from visiting WAR dignitaries and "escaped" to Luna with ease. I took up odd jobs, working for anyone who can use my HAR skills, and I've been scraping together money for about four years now."

"Well, it certainly does explain why you're so attached to that Jaguar... and with a story that incredible (and your considerable skills) I'm inclined to believe you. I assume the Company has been keeping close tabs on you?"

After a slight pause, Trent responded, "Of course, Augardi. In fact, they've been trying under various guises to get me back into their research department ever since I showed myself on the nets. I suspect they've gotten Sarah already; I haven't heard from her since we escaped."

"And now they've got you in their clutches too? Your only chance to get ahead is by joining the Company, and you just hate letting them get their way, is that it?" Augardi obviously meant it as a harmless barb, but Trent was in no mood to be trifled with.

"Mostly, yes. I'm not evilly twisted and bent on revenge like some character in a melodrama, but I'd like to see whoever did... this... to me get what they deserve. Besides, it's not like I have a choice."

Jonus, perhaps sensing Trent's condition, sobered up and leaned forward in his chair. "You interest me, Trent. I'd love to see you at your full potential, and it sounds like this whole scientific wonderboy thing will make for some valuable bargaining chips when I need them. Besides, it's very easy for me to help you, and you just might teach me a few things as well.

"I say we make a deal. I'll get you up to par in the combat department, and you let me know the whole story. I want to meet anyone you've told this too, anyone you think might be important. And after you win the tournament, I'll get LBC to make your secrets known in the most WAR-unfriendly way possible. Eh?" Jonus extended a hand, face back in that trademark smile.

Trent was silent for a long moment, then nodded and shook his hand. "Thank you... Jonus."

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