The Grey Chronicles Part One: New Declaration of An Old War

Chapter 18: Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, but My GF Loves to Hit Me.

The Anarchist, outer space around Onyx Seven, 8096 AL.

Alex Williams smiled as the automatic door slid open in front of him and a wave of cool air washed over him. The gym was kept at a crisp sixty-five degrees, and it was separated into five sections; combat training, martial arts, physical endurance, weight training, and an eighth-mile track elevated above the rest of the room. The room was filled with grunting and shouting, but above that Alex heard the dull thud of the pugil sticks on training pads before he was halfway across the room. He passed a staircase leading to the track and noticed something that made his day.

A group of off duty soldiers had formed a loose ring around the pugil arena. The arena was an octagonal cage five meters a side. There were a dozen white rings painted on the floor where soldiers could practice normally, the cage was reserved for experts; inside was an arrangement of horizontal poles set two meters above the ground. They jerked up, down, diagonally, and side to side randomly, some even spun suddenly. It was difficult if not impossible to keep your balance when the poles were actively trying to throw you to the floor, especially while someone is trying to hit you with a stick.

In the arena were five people; four men wearing red training pads and Soluna in blue. She leaped from pole to pole with unbelievable balance, rarely hesitating to move on to the next perch. The men fighting her had no such luck; they took their time moving across the obstacles, encumbered by the pugil sticks. The sticks were wooden quarterstaffs with softball-sized rubber spheres at either end affixed to the wrist of the user's dominant hand by a cord loop. Each Machinae soldier was proficient in melee combat, but they did not normally train in such an arena. On top of this, the four men she was fighting appeared to be no older than a thousand; they were shinies, they would have only been approved for combat within the last few years. Upon enlistment, soldiers worked non-combat roles until they turned nine hundred.

She approached one man from the left side and swept his feet from under him, sending him crashing to the ground. The man next to him looked at her in surprise, he hadn't seen her move. He swung a clumsy overhand blow that she blocked easily. She responded with a trio of jabs to his face, the last of which knocked the man from the pole to the floor. The third man had the best balance, he only needed a moment to prepare for the jump to each pole. He and Soluna exchanged blows for several seconds, but she caught him off guard with an over-handed feint followed by a short jab to the chest. The fourth man had been watching her, and simply tripped and fell trying to leap away from her, his expression terrified. A buzzer rang, and the timer fixed to the cage wall stopped; fourteen seconds to put four men on their asses.

Alex walked up to the crowd, watching money exchange hands. A nearby soldier jogged around the crowd to Alex, who recognized him as the stick fighting coach. The coach leaned in and spoke loudly over the crowd.

"She's offered fifty orbs to anyone to last thirty seconds with her. Best we've seen is sixteen for three people. She says she'll plant a kiss on anyone who can knock her off the poles."

That got his attention. He glanced at the cage and noticed she was looking at him, a smug grin painted across her lips. It was as though she'd known he would have come to find her. Little did he know she was thinking almost the same thing.

See, she thought, I told you he'd come looking for me.

"Yes, yes, how you love to gloat," answered her AI, Viceroy, "I still think it was foolish to make such an offer before you knew for sure."

Oh boohoo, it's not like any of them really could have beat me, half of them are shinies.

"I know, and it's more like forty percent. Regardless, I calculated a twenty-three percent chance he wouldn't show and a six-point-one percent chance anyone in here could defeat you."