Iron Heart (The Gauntlet #2)

Chapter 1 - Opening Day

 Codi James was not used to luxury. Living on Earth could not have been more different from the dead end hunk of rock she'd grown up on. It was a different world in every sense. The city of Minneapolis Saint Paul gleamed like a forest of glass and steel, a jewel that studded the green of the landscape. Her personal apartment – paid for by the Battlecast Gauntlet Academy – was no exception.

Taking a final gulp of coffee from the mug she set it down on the gleaming kitchen side. Everything in the apartment gleamed and shone, every surface reflecting and shimmering in sunlight. It consisted of a kitchen, a large front room complete with massive tele-screen and mobile communication beam, a bedroom and a bathroom. Codi spent a lot of time there, revelling in the possession of an actual home.

She looked out of the window at the city she'd adopted as her new home and took a deep breath of the cool, pure air. Her vantage point on the nineteenth floor gave her an uninterrupted view of the magnificence. From ground to sky the world was a clean, unblemished crystal at the centre of human civilisation. The sky cars had taken a bit of getting used to – her home planet of Kantha had no such luxuries – but she eventually adjusted to seeing the lines of box-shaped flyers zipping between buildings, their paths locked onto the more conventional ground roads.

Down on those roads sleek road cars flashed through the streets like bullets, a never ending flow of machinery moving around Minneapolis Saint Paul like water through pipes. And then there were the people – millions of them. A mega city like this spanned thousands of square kilometres in every direction, housing well over thirty million citizens within its boundary who formed the lifeblood of the urban colossus.

Today, however, Codi had other things to be concerned with beyond aesthetics. Today was the first day of the Gauntlet preseason, the first day she would be testing her mettle against the members of the top academy in colonised space. Having been granted a place at Battlecast on a scholarship Codi was under no illusions that she had to perform. There would be plenty of kids at the academy who wouldn't take too kindly to a new transfer usurping their potential place in the starting team.

There was a time that she would have shied away form challenges, a time where giving up was commonplace, but not anymore. Today a sense of determination and even excitement filled her. She looked forward to silencing any and all who doubted her right to compete under the Battlecast banner. With any luck she'd get to crack a few heads in the process.

She picked up her team jacket and slipped her arms into it, feeling the soft, velvet material snuggle against her body. With a blue torso and cyan sleeves the jacket displayed the Battlecast colours in no uncertain manner. It gave her a sense of total identity, the one thing her old academy had lacked. The now defunct Brax-Delta Academy hadn't even been able to afford team uniforms for last year's competition.

Her rucksack was already packed, filled with clothes mostly, a personal tablet loaded with music, books and movies, and her personal set of training gear. Unlike her old academy which had barely scraped together enough money for a gym, Battlecast held provided a stunning array of specialised gear packages. Everything from the grip tread on her shoe to the size of her head guard had been tailored to fit.

Slinging the rucksack over her shoulder, Codi strode from the flat, passing her keycard over the lock sensor as she went. The smooth, alabaster door slid shut with a faint hiss behind her, and she set off toward the elevator. The interior of the machine was just like everything else: spotless and smooth, with a single ordered panel containing every button. She punched the ground floor switch and waited.

Her stomach lurched a bit when the elevator leapt into motion. That was one thing she was still getting used to. The elevator in her building moved at astonishing speeds and in a matter of seconds she found she'd dropped nineteen floors and the doors were open.