Iron Heart (The Gauntlet #2)

Chapter 14 - A Question of Respect

The Shetland tournament had been a bitter disappointment. Codi rammed her training gear back into its pack with unnecessary savagery, because she had nothing else to take out her frustrations on. In terms of pure performance, on paper it looked alright, but it felt like a failure.

In the individual bouts she finished fourth – respectable for any other human being in colonised space – not good enough for her. Chris O'Leary had topped the table, just, sneaking past Dustin Morto after beating Ripple in the semi-final. Codi smouldered at the thought of her own semi-final with the Atlantic Academy colossus where she'd come out on the losing side of an impact rating. Anyone else would have told her that fourth was pretty good. She was in there, mixing it up with the best fighters Earth had to offer, but she wasn't winning. Winning was what Battlecast wanted from her.

To make matters worse, the capture-the-flag arm of the contest ended up being a total debacle. A team from Everest managed to pull off a surprise win in the final to take the top spot, but by that stage the Battlecast teams had already been knocked out of the competition. Their best contingent finished fifth. Codi and her group plummeted to a dismal eighth after failing to get any coherent rhythm or effective tactic.

The paired bouts probably provided her only solace of the torrid trip to the stormy northern isle. While she and Gareth hadn't achieved a whole lot, finishing tenth at the final count, she'd been expecting far worse. Added to that, Chris and Ripple romped home to seal Battlecast's dominance in two out of the three disciplines.

Oh, and she'd pissed off her coach.

She and Thradd exchanged some choice words after the first capture-the-flag defeat, but things didn't end there. As the tournament wore on his abrasive approach compounded her own frustration and in the end they'd finished up barely speaking to each other.

Codi never thought she'd be wishing to have her old instructor back, but right this second she would have given an arm and a leg to have Drake Vasco in the room with her. The old warhorse had been abrasive in his own way, but he'd been breaking in a rookie. Codi wasn't a rookie anymore and Thradd's brand of brusque, harsh rhetoric was already testing her (admittedly small) reserves of patience to the limit.

"Damn it all," she muttered under her breath, jamming the last of her tournament gear into the back and running her finger down the zip. It auto-sealed under touch and she slung it over one shoulder. It's early days, she reminded herself. So the first practice tournament under Battlecast colours hadn't gone perfectly. They had months until the real competition to sort themselves out.

But even that thought didn't stave off the feeling of resignation lying heavily on her shoulders.

Then someone knocked on her door. Her jaw tightened. She had a feeling she knew who might come calling at this early hour and there was no-one on that list that she wanted to speak to. Willing herself to stay calm, she sighed and opened the door. The white panel slid to one side, to reveal Kye, arms folded, toothy grin beaming.

"Morning," he said simply.

"Morning," she replied stepping out into the corridor and letting the door slide shut behind her. "I was just leaving."

"Nice to see you too."

"Sorry." She gave him a rueful smile. "I'm not in for a very warm reception when I get back to Battlecast."

He looked at her quizzically. "Why's that?"

"Coaching troubles."

"Ah, still the biggest smart-mouth in the tournament, eh? What's got them all wound up this time?"