Iron Heart (The Gauntlet #2)

Chapter 36 - Who's Hitting Harder?

 With the brackets now confirmed, the fighters from Battlecast that progressed to the knockout round now had two days respite to study up on their competition and prepare accordingly. Afforded the comfort of one of the spacious conference rooms on the Arena's upper floors, Codi joined her team-mates and instructors in taking full advantage of what time they had to examine her coming opponents. Gathered with Chris, Ripple and Gareth in one of the conference rooms in the Arenas upper reaches, they each had their own screen and desk, while at the front of the room a much large display could be activated for them all to see. In the Gauntlet off-season the rooms were rented out to sports teams, corporate seminars, business training courses and everything in between.

The fighter she would face in the first round certainly made an impression, on paper and in person. Chalyze Bamber, the highest ranked and rated contender from the Orion, had secured the eighth seed for her trouble, and the more Codi watched, the more she knew this girl was dangerous.

A tall, long-limbed individual, she sported a heavily styled mass of ink-dark hair, clipped with a thick fringe that hung over her right eye. That, coupled with heavy black eyeliner and matching lipstick gave her a thoroughly unsettling appearance.

Any notion that the haircut might have impaired her vision was quickly dispelled by a few minutes of footage. Codi had to reluctantly admire her coming opponent's ferocity. Clad in an eye-catching exoskeleton of searing yellow with black shoulder guards, grieves and vambraces, Bamber was like a wasp, displaying a formidable killer instinct as she ripped through her opponents in the group stage.

But it wasn't just Chalyze Bamber that was under surveillance.

Since his surprise arrival at the number one seed, Keefer Darkwood had placed himself squarely on Battlecast's hit-list, even before he'd started keying on their competitors. Now, with the Mayhems and group rounds behind them, they'd accumulated a wealth of footage to begin their examinations in earnest.

On one of the screens in front of them the first of Keefer's other group matches played out – in this case it was an unfortunate blond-haired girl from Olympus Mons who had to face down the giant. Watching it back with excruciating details, Codi was again struck by the sheer force Keefer seemed to impart when he landed a hit.

She leaned her elbows on the table, brow furrowing as she examined his technique. On the face of it he wasn't doing anything special. She dimly recognised the fighting style, a kind of mish-mash of military hand-to-hand disciplines taught out in the colonies, but nothing that surprised her. So why did he seem to hit like a battering ram?

His fist struck the girl from Olympus Mons and the force fired her backwards, as though she'd been hit by a boulder. She hit the ground, rolled, and scrambled unsteadily back to her feet, Keefer Darkwood loping along after her without a care in the world. Codi recognised the girl – one of the seeded contestants from the Mars academy – not someone who would be a pushover in the Arena.

It didn't seem to matter. Every exchange ended with her getting clobbered to the ground as though she weighed nothing. When she tried to retaliate, Keefer's sheer size made her attacks virtually negligible. It went on like this for a matter of minutes before the thunderous knockout blow came and the recording ended. Codi's brow furrowed in thought.

Something just wasn't right.

"Let me see the impact chart," Codi murmured absently, beckoning in Gareth's direction.

Gareth gave her a curious glance, and then flicked a finger across his dat-pad in her direction. The chart vanished from his screen and appeared on hers. She looked down at it and her frown deepened. The chart displayed the heaviest hitters in the Gauntlet based on a single one punch impact. Since the readings had been taken without an exoskeleton it showed the real raw power of the fighters.