Of course, getting there and being able to see what he was doing were by no means half the battle.
No other warriors were on the practice ground, but Hansen and Malcolm had attracted a scattering of spectators, both freemen and slaves, on their walk from the hall. A female slave called an offer that Hansen didn’t quite catch, but the laughter of the others hinted at the nature of the words.
“All right,” said Malcolm. “Let’s make sure we’re both on practice setting, shall we?” The words had buzzing undertones as they reached Hansen through the speaker in Malcolm’s helmet and the headphones in Hansen’s.
The veteran’s right gauntlet sprouted an arc. He turned and slashed. The weapon scarred a post to the heartwood but didn’t blast it apart the way Hansen had seen trees disintegrated during the battle.
He could guess, but: “What’s the codeword on your suits?” he asked.
“Huh?” Malcolm responded like a bumblebee. “Practice, of course. I thought that was standard everywhere?”
“Practice,” Hansen said, then, “Cut.” His arc sizzled into the post, cross-cutting Malcolm’s mark to within a degree of perpendicular.
He smiled. Malcolm cut at his head.
Hansen hadn’t expected the attack—my fault, his mind cursed as he threw himself backward and tried to raise his arc weapon to block Malcolm’s. He didn’t succeed in either attempt. Malcolm’s arc slipped under Hansen’s flailing guard and cut across his neck joint.
Hansen’s armor froze. His display vanished and left him in blackness lighted only by the afterimages on his retinas.
He wasn’t dead. He could feel his heart beating in claustrophobic fear.
“Well,” demanded Malcolm’s distorted voice, “reset your suit.”
Ah. . . . “Reset,” said Hansen, hoping that was the key word—though he was becoming increasingly impressed by the flexibility of the suit’s artificial intelligence. Light dawned—literally. Hansen’s display flooded him with images of morning. He saw Malcolm waiting a pace back, arms akimbo.
Hansen flexed his left gauntlet and cried, “Cut!” as he lunged. Malcolm shifted and slashed down at his attacker, but he hadn’t been expecting Hansen to strike from the left. Hansen’s thrust struck home at the veteran’s hip joint.
There was a shower of sparks. Hansen’s arc snuffed unexpectedly, but Malcolm’s suit went dull and his empty gauntlet quivered to a halt in mid-stroke.
Hansen had fallen into a three-point stance. He pushed himself erect and backed a step, waiting for Malcolm to reset his armor. “Cut,” he muttered, flexing his right hand to be ready for the next attack.
This was work, was heavy exercise. His armor weighed over a hundred kilos. Though that wasn’t dead weight so long as it was powered up, inertia gave the suit the resistance of a brick wall for the instant before its servos took over the work from Hansen’s muscles.
A long arc twinkled from Malcolm’s gauntlet. In practice mode, the discharges were at only a fraction of war power, and interlocks cut off the weapon as soon as its touch had shut down an opponent’s armor. It was at least as safe as fighting with buttoned epees, though no doubt accidents could happen.
And it was a good time to explore the capacities of the armor itself.
“Display energy levels,” Hansen ordered, wondering what the artificial intelligence would make of the command—and delighted to see Malcolm’s suit not as painted steel but as a mosaic in which the visual spectrum mapped electrical activity across the surface of the suit.
The arc sprouting from the veteran’s right hand pulsed from indigo through violet. The gauntlet itself was a bright blue, while the remainder of Malcolm’s limbs and torso rippled mostly in the yellow and green. The helmet peak was nearly orange, and another orange blotch wavered across the plastron generally at mid-chest level.
It looked like . . .
“Off!” Hansen said, and the hot spot on Malcolm’s armor vanished as soon as Hansen’s weapon did.
God almighty! Malcolm’s artificial intelligence tracked Hansen’s arc—and raised the defensive charge of the spot the AI thought most at risk.
The veteran’s knee joints streaked orange as power fed to the servos. Malcolm started a lunge but Hansen, alerted by the display, drove forward to anticipate the attack. His left hand slid along Malcolm’s right wrist and forearm, and his right hand speared toward the veteran’s throat.