30. The First Reason

0430 came crashing in like a wave of pure pain, my body still aching from yesterday’s matches. Ether reinforcement could only do so much in a day.

I forced myself to get up quietly, putting on my combat fatigues and tidying my station. The bunks were silent except for the sound of snoring and people turning in their sleep. Everyone trying to get as much rest and recovery as possible. I left as quietly as I could.

The yard was dark. Eridani’s twin moons hung low on the horizon, casting light of rust and ice that danced across the training yard walls. The pre-dawn air bit deep into my bones as I suppressed a light shiver.

Jin waited on the far end of the ground, already waiting.

“You’re late,” she said.

“It’s 0428.”

“I said 0430. And I’ve been here since 0415.”

“That makes you early, not me late.”

She rolled her eyes, her lips tugging upwards almost imperceptibly.

“Warm up. Then we figure out how not to embarrass ourselves.”

The practice was rough.

I called an approach — left flank, a staggered entry. Jin moved before I finished the call. Her burst acceleration launched her forward while I was still setting up. She arrived alone, committed, and would have been flanked by any competent opponent covering the right.

“You moved too early,” I said.

“You called too late.”

On the next reset, the timing improved, but the rhythm was wrong — mechanical rather than intuitive. A beat too long to use in an actual fight.

“You’re trying to control my movement,” Jin said.

“I’m not trying to— I’m just trying to coordinate us.”

“No, you’re trying to control. There’s a difference.” She dropped her guard and faced me. “In the squad, you called positions, and people moved to them. That worked because you had six bodies with Ren and Tomás feeding you data; you didn’t have time to go through every little detail. Now you have just me, and you’re overthinking it. ”

“So how do we do this?” I asked.

“Tell me where the pattern breaks or where the gap will be. Don’t tell me how, or the approach. I’ll find my own way there.”

“Alright, I trust you. Let’s run it.”

And so we drilled it, over and over. “Now.” “Wait.” “Left side, half-second.” Short. Urgent. The when and the where without the how.

She was faster when she didn’t have to think about approach angles. What she needed from me was timing.

“Better,” she said.

The exhibition’s second day began at 0800. The arena was reconfigured — I felt it the moment we entered the staging area. The air moved differently. More open. The walls from yesterday’s terrain had been reduced to scattered low cover, knee-height barriers you couldn’t hide behind, only crouch. The sightlines stretched uncomfortably long. Phase two favoured mobility over position.

Jin’s kind of arena.

The stands were thinner than yesterday. But the sponsor section had multiplied—more holographic projections, several at higher resolutions. The Tiernan section was unchanged. I made myself look away.

Fight one.

PAIR 34 (TIERNAN / JIN) vs PAIR 14 (BARRACKS 4)

D-Grades. Mid-twenties in level. A tanker and a striker. The tanker draws attention while the striker circles for the kill.

The horn sounded.

The tanker advanced and immediately moved into Rotation Three— the defensive variant. I read the setup and called the striker’s flanking angle. “Striker — right, three seconds.”

Jin launched at the tanker. Quick tags, forcing a response, using his guard as a screen before changing direction toward the striker.

Except the striker wasn’t where I’d called. He’d read Jin’s screen — watched her use the tanker as bait and adjusted. Instead of flanking right, he came straight up the middle through the gap Jin had created by committing.

Jin was mid-acceleration, committed to the right angle. The striker arrived in the space she’d vacated. Between us. His first strike caught me across the forearm — the crack of knuckle on bone loud enough to echo off the low barriers.

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I stumbled back. The gravel shifted wrong under my heel, the open arena’s loose surface nothing like the packed dirt of the training yard. He pressed. Two more exchanges, compact combinations designed for open play. Each impact vibrated up through my guard and into the shoulder joint.

“Marcus — down!” Jin’s voice.

I dropped. Jin’s acceleration carried her over the space where my head had been. She tagged the striker from an angle he didn’t see a moment ago, too focused on me. I followed up with a low, striking out to his stomach, while shrugging off a blow to my ribs caused by the tank. I held a few more blows while Jin finished off the striker. He went down.

The tanker lasted another thirty seconds alone, overwhelmed by the combination of Jin and I.

“Elimination — Pair 34 takes the match.”

[XP GAINED: 34]

We’d won. But the striker reading Jin’s commitment and punishing my bad call had shown exactly what one-directional coordination cost.

The staging area was cool compared to the arena — the corridor walls holding the morning’s chill. The bench was metal, cold enough to feel through fatigues. Twenty minutes between rounds. The crowd noise filtered through the walls as a low, directionless hum.

“That was sloppy,” Jin said.

“Agreed.”

“I saw the striker adjusting before he came up the middle. Weight shift, change of direction — it was there for maybe a quarter-second.” She stretched her ribs. The wince small and controlled. “I didn’t call it because we hadn’t built space for my data. That nearly cost you your teeth.”

She was right. The training had fixed who called and who moved. The fight had revealed that the caller also needed to receive.