Chapter 30

As I approached the Avenger I maintained my earlier composure and did not reveal my new and improved movement and reflexes. I would let my new improved fighting ability be a surprise only to be revealed at the best moment.

Jamal had been using tricks and hard to read moves from the start. It was my turn now.

Using the same low stance I had been in since the beginning, I probed his defenses while making sure to keep proper range to dodge his own piercing and swiping attacks. His defense was meticulous and he never allowed me to attack from any openings. In fact, there were no openings. I would have to create one then.

Noticing he liked to use his weapon like the blade of a propeller a lot, I decided that would be my angle of attack.

I fired my rear thrusters and feigned a frontal attack. My blade thrust forward in a basic stab. Jamal fired his own forward thrusters momentarily to create space and slashed down and at the opening created by my attack.

Abandoning my own attack, I slammed my forward thrusters and backed off. As his attack missed by less than a foot, I once again fired my rear thrusters and made to pierce his chest again with my blade.

This time I wasn’t surprised when his polearm did a full circle and came back around with increased momentum. It really was odd to think about that type of movement seeing as the human wrist can’t rotate a full 360 degrees. A machine had no such limitations however and the polearm began its fan-like whirling.

This was when I revealed my sudden increase in reaction speed. A normal pilot needed to either factor in every move before it was made and pre-plan every command input before the actual moment of action was needed. The half-second or two needed to input a command was simply too long in the heat of battle. Human hands could only move so fast.

I didn’t have that problem. The full sync system allowed every movement and system command to be nearly instantaneous. All that was required was a simple thought and as if the machine was my own body, it moved.

I registered Jamal’s shocked grunt at the speed of my next dodge. Almost the instant I rushed forward I had already begun retreating. However, my pre-planned moves didn’t end there. As soon as I had dodged his propeller-like polearm I lowered my center of gravity and struck out with the Calipso’s left fist. My target wasn’t his armors body. Neither was it his weapon. It was his armors hand. The one griping the polearm. My strike did little to actually damage the hand holding the polearm. I wasn’t aiming for that.

It was the pivot of all the kinetic energy maintained in his polearm and as my armors fist struck his from a lower angle, the center and pivot for his propeller-like attack lost all balance. His weapon Nearly left his armors hand in its now completely erratic and out of control spin. It was like a spinning top that had its center of gravity disrupted.

Between the kinetic energy of his own out of control polearm and my strike, his armors right arm shot up and over his shoulder. In that opening, I thrust my weapon forward at his armor's chest.

Jamal reacted quickly and brought his left arm up into a guard. Instead of taking the blow straight on, he pivoted using the force of his now pulling right arm and used his left arm to guide my attack away from his center of mass. It was sort of unfair. Should my blade have been a real one, the strike would have done massive damage to his arm. It, however, wasn’t a real blade.

As my blade skittered across his left arm and missed his chest, I lowered the Calipso’s right shoulder and rammed it into what would have been the Avenger’s left rib cage had it been a human. While doing this I also fired the Calipso’s thrusters to add to the force of the blow.

Jamal let out a startled and pained grunt over our open com channel. The shoulder blow must have rattled him inside his cockpit. Kinetics are a bitch for pilots. From what I could tell, no tech had ever been designed to cancel out the kinetics behind a blow. The pilot simply had to ride it out and suffer.

Despite his no doubt ringing head and aching body, Jamal maintained his composure and fired all of his

forward thrusters as he rolled ass overhead and flipped back up to his feet. His polearm slashed out when he came to his feet much the same as my sword had when I was knocked over, trying to keep an enemy that was expected to be pushing an advantage and still attacking back.

Just the same as he had done when he had knocked me back, I took a relaxed stance and leaned on my sword as I watched him take to his feet. It was petty, and pushing my advantage would obviously be the right move in real combat, but winning wasn’t my main concern. Respect was. Plus, this wasn’t real combat.

As Jamal took a moment to sort himself out, he spoke over the com channel.

“All right. So you’re not a pushover. Congratulations. You have good reflexes. But that won’t be enough Fuck-head.”

Before I could even respond to his words he launched his armor at me in a full-frontal attack. Up until this point he had mainly maintained a defensive stance and simply responded to my attacks with counters. Seemingly, the kiddy gloves were now off.

His polearm once again began to rotate like a spinning top, but this time, he allowed no angle of attack on its pivot. He always kept his angle of rotation as such that I could never strike at his armors hand.

As his buzz-saw-like attack swiped here and there at me, he thew in kicks and punches at every opportunity presented. I was forced to retreat so much that my main forward thruster actually registered a high likelihood of overheating at the current rate.

As I was forced to bring my sword up to block one buzz-saw swipe, the blade nearly flew out of my armor’s hand and the Avenger’s right leg swept out to take my armors feet out from under me. With quick reaction speed and a short hop, I was able to clear the leg, but just as I did, Jamal brought The wok like head of the Avenger down and smashed its forehead into the chin of my own armor.

Despite being synced with the Calipso, I still felt the whiplash as my head flung forward and then slammed back into the headrest. Fighting through the throbbing pain, I didn’t attempt to keep the Calipso on its feet and rolled the armor onto its back before firing its rear thrusters and doing a backflip.

My execution wasn’t perfect and my momentum was only stopped by the fact that as the Calipso came to its feet its back slammed into the wall of the training area. Sheets and sections of the concrete crumbled and rained down around the Calipso’s shoulders.

Despite my ringing head and the pain that seemed to shoot down the back of my head and neck, my mind was clear enough to know Jamal would not allow me a moment to regain my composure. My sensors quickly told me the truth of my judgment. Jamal had brought the avenger forward and was preparing to land a finishing blow.

With my back to the wall and defense seemingly useless, I banked everything on attacking.

Firing my now very hot rear thrusters and the ones on the soles of the Calipso’s feet in combination with a small hop, I leaned back and allowed the Calipso’s shoulders and neck to maintained contact with the wall.

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As the Calipso’s legs rose, I tucked its knees into its chest before shoving off the wall with both of the Calipso’s hands and uncoiling its legs like a fully loaded spring, directly at the chest of the charging

Avenger armor.

Jamal roared over the com channel and managed to bring his armor's left arm up to block. Despite that, the combined force of the Calipso pushing of the wall and its own legs striking out, not to mention the extra boost the thrusters had lent to the attack, smashed his armors left arm directly against the Avengers's chest and sent the armor slamming back.

It was truly a vicious strike, and should I have been calm minded, I probably wouldn’t have performed it. That much striking power against a cockpit could kill a man. Kinetics are a bitch.

For one shining moment, I thought it was over. It wasn’t.

Even as The Calipso’s feet slammed into the avenger and I heard the gasp of pain and shock from Jamal over the channel, he launched his own attack. The ever-spinning polearm of the Avenger took one extra-wide rotation before its extremely heavy “blade” come down like the fist of a pissed off titan and slammed into the cockpit of the Calipso.

Every single joule of energy contained in the polearm coursed through the cockpit of the Calipso and by extension ME. My entire being became one big throbbing existence filled with pain. Not only did my head ring, but seemingly so did every atom of my body.

As the Calipso had been mid-air and horizontal when struck, I got to enjoy the secondary blow of its back hitting the ground at what felt like mach speed. Despite the mathematics involved telling me the second hard-knock shouldn’t have been worse than the first, it only seemed to multiply the pain radiating through my body ten-fold.

For a few moments, all of existence was the inside of my body, and the only thing my body seemed to contain was pain. Throbbing, aching, searing, tearing, pain.

After a few moments, whether through sheer willpower, or some animal-like instinct, I was barely able to focus enough to began to try to access the damage done to myself and the “enemy”. None of the instinctual commands my brain fed into the Calipso seemed to work properly, and I “ heard” a constant flurry of beeping, screeching, buzzing noises. It took a long while to piece some of what the systems were trying to tell me into something I could understand.

FULL SYNC DESTABILIZING…

NEURAL PATHWAY CONNECTIONS FAILING….

ATTEMPTING PILOT RESCAN…

PILOT SAFETY CONCERNS REGISTERED…

SAFETY PROTOCOL INITIATED…

CANCELING PILOT FULL SYNC CONNECTION…

With that, the full sync fell away and my vision became human again. Gone was the fascinating almost godlike feel of having hundreds of different eyes seeing in multiple spectra from a multitude of different angles. I nearly felt blind with the loss. Despite losing full sync and being in poor condition myself, I could still read the sensors the normal human way. After taking a moment to sort myself out, I reached out and began to click away at commands, albeit slowly and with shaky hands.

The Avenger armor lay flat on its “stomach”. Had I done it?

As I looked at the sensor data I could hear my own ragged breathing and registered that I was coughing viciously and hacking at an attempt to draw air past what seemed to be fluid in my lungs. I was in poor condition. Jamal’s last blow would probably have killed a less sturdy man.

A second set of ragged coughs and wretched breathing caught my attention and I realized the open com channel was broadcasting Jamal’s own pathetic attempts at breathing and gaining control of his body.

As I listened to him gagging on his own fluids and switching between pained grunts and angry growling similar to my own, to my horror, the Avenger started to shake before both of its arms came out to support it. My inner voice screamed “No! Stay down! STAY DOWN!”.

The Avenger and its pilot did not obey my silent command. Its arms came out and slowly brought the Avenger to its knees, followed by a pained grunt over the com channel as the Avenger took to its feet.

After standing, the avenger looked to the know mangled practice polearm in its right hand and threw it way. Jamal’s grit surprised me. Disregarding the fact he landed the more heavy of our two blows in the exchange, my two-legged kick to his armor’s chest, should have at least knocked the sense out of him. There was even a deformed section of his chest armor shaped like his armor's left forearm. Despite what must be tearing pain in his head and chest to match my own, he had resolutely piloted his armor and stood again.

“You ok? Please tell me you’re not dying. It’s bad business to kill your client, accident or not.”

After closing my eyes and taking one long searing breath of metallic tasting air, I answered back while trying to keep the tone of defeat from my shaky voice.

“Yeah. I’ll be fine.”

Opening my eyes, I felt the need to prove my words and slowly brought the Calipso to sit up, then stand. The shake in my hands had reduced drastically at this point and I felt more human and less like a battered and beaten garbage heap. I could still fight if I wanted to, but it was useless. The fight was over. I lost. This was a practice match, and should his weapon have been real and of quality, I would currently be dead. Or at least most likely dead. Sure, if my weapon had been my beam saber and we had been using shields, the fight could have gone my way, but losing was losing.

“You have some steel in you kid. Not bad.”

The was a pause as he made an awful sound that I realized was him hawking a wad of something probably pink-colored out of his throat before he continued.

“You should probably get checked out by a doctor or your armors internal med scanner if it has one. Internal bleeding is a major concern when taking heavy blows.”

“Sure.”

He must have heard the discontent in my voice.

“Ah, don’t be a bitch. Losing is nothing to cry about. I don’t claim to be THE best, but I am definitely up there among them.”

After another cough, he continued.

“Besides, you should be proud. That last move was a real surprise. I haven't been this sore in years. Let me buy you a drink. Of course, after we both get a check-up. Internal bleeding and alcohol don’t exactly mix well.”

I guess the fight did have some benefits despite losing. Jamal’s attitude towards me had shifted drastically. Gone was the sour tone of voice and rough attitude. He must be the type that won’t respect you until they fight you.

“Alright, I’ll take you up on that offer.”

“Good. Be here tomorrow at the same time. Bring your armor.”

I took a moment to absorb what he said.

“WAIT… We are doing this again?!”

I could almost hear the smirk on his face as he spoke.

“Of course we are. We haven't got anything better to do while we wait for the boss to piece together a plan, and I have to teach you a few things. You have some glaring flaws in your fighting style. If you didn’t have some amazing reflexes the fight would have ended much earlier.”

Stunned silence was my only response.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be gentle.”