Chapter 6 — Ready for the Field

After that, Aryn’s life began to take on a clearer shape.

In the morning he was in Training Room B for physical training, then the meditation room, then combat skills.

Afternoons were theory, handling field equipment, or back to training if there was still something to fix.

After that the time was his own.

Training did not stop at making the body stronger.

Every movement, every breath control, and every time he drew Taba up to use it, was part of cultivation at the same time.

Aryn began to understand why the people in the training room kept coming back to the same things over and over.

There was no point you could call finished.

“Come in.”

Doran stood in the middle of the training area.

No weapons, no test equipment, only the impact-absorbing floor and the boundary lines marked on it.

Aryn raised his hands the way he had been taught.

Doran nodded.

“Hit me first.”

Aryn stepped in and threw a straight punch.

Doran brushed his arm aside only slightly.

The punch went past the side of his face.

Aryn spun back, but before he could set himself, Doran’s palm pushed into his shoulder.

Not hard.

But the timing was exact.

Aryn lost his balance sideways at once.

“Again.”

This time he did not rush.

Aryn moved in closer, feinted with the shoulder, then threw a left.

Doran stepped back half a pace.

Aryn followed.

Doran’s leg hooked his ankle.

Aryn lost his footing and fell forward, but got his hands down in time.

A quiet laugh came from the side.

Siro was sitting on the bench, wrapping cloth around his wrist.

“Harbor work doesn’t help much with this, does it.”

Aryn got up.

“At least it helps me get up fast.”

“Good.”

Doran said.

“Then you can get up a few more times.”

The next time Doran did not wait.

He came forward.

A left punch drove straight in.

Aryn raised his arm to block on instinct.

A faint white light flashed around his forearm before the impact arrived.

Thud.

His arm was driven back into his body, but this time the force did not come all the way through.

Aryn stepped back once.

Doran stopped.

“Did you know what you just did?”

Aryn looked at his own arm.

The white light was gone.

“Pulled Taba up to take it.”

“Yes.”

Doran raised his fist.

White Taba gathered slowly around his knuckles, only a thin light against the skin.

“You don’t need to cover your whole body.”

He tapped his fist against his own palm.

“Use it where you need it.”

The light went out.

“Too slow and it hurts.”

Then he punched again.

Aryn raised his arm to take it.

This time the Taba came up a fraction behind the impact.

It hurt.

Doran stepped back.

“Again.”

The training went on, punches, kicks, evasion, parries, pushes, and holding balance when pulled or struck.

Sometimes Taba flashed along Aryn’s arms.

Sometimes it gathered into his leg on a kick.

Aryn began to find that calling Taba out was no longer difficult.

What was difficult was doing it without having to stop and think.

Doran kicked in toward his body.

Aryn brought his knee up to take it.

White light flashed along his shin.

The impact was heavier than the last one.

This time he did not lose his footing.

“Good.”

Doran lowered his leg.

Aryn saw the opening in front of him.

He stepped in and threw a right.

Taba flowed along his arm.

White light gathered at the fist.

Doran tilted aside.

The punch missed by very little.

Then Doran’s palm touched his chest.

Aryn knew at once that in a real fight, that moment would not have ended with a touch.

“Power’s fine.”

Doran said.

“But a punch that doesn’t land is worth nothing.”

“I know.”

“You don’t.”

Siro said from the side.

“If you knew, you wouldn’t have done the same thing three times.”

Aryn turned to look.

Siro stood up and tossed the wrist wrap onto the bench.

“Give him a break.”

He walked in.

“I’ll take over.”

The shape of the training changed immediately.

Doran made Aryn feel like he was running into a wall.

Siro was the opposite.

He was never in the same place long enough for Aryn to catch his rhythm.

Aryn stepped in.

White Taba flashed at Siro’s legs, and his body shot out to the side, beyond reach.

“Don’t think of it as a technique.”

Siro said from the other corner.

“They’re just legs.”

Aryn turned to follow.

“Legs that move faster.”

Siro came in.

Aryn raised his guard.

But Siro changed direction before reaching him, and appeared from the side.

A palm touched the back of his shoulder.

“Dead again.”

“You’re very encouraging.”

“Thank you.”

Siro stepped back.

“Try it.”

Aryn gathered Taba down into his legs.

He drove against the floor.

His body shot past Siro, and he had to take several quick steps to stop himself.

Lin’s laughter came from the other side of the room.

“Beautiful.”

Aryn turned back.

“At least you didn’t hit the wall.”

Siro shrugged.

“Call it progress.”

He lifted his foot and tapped the floor lightly.

“Don’t release it all at once.”

“Think of a spring.”

“Not a bomb.”

Aryn tried again.

This time he shot out a shorter distance and more slowly, but stopped exactly where he meant to.

Siro nodded.

“Like that.”

After that Siro had Aryn use Taba to assist his movement during sparring.

Closing on an opponent, backing out, and evading attacks.

The moment Aryn started managing it, Siro changed the problem.

And the moment he thought he was getting the measure of it, Doran threw him to the floor again.

Lin and Nanda took turns sparring with him after that.

Every time Aryn tried to push or pull, Nanda shifted her weight slightly and turned his force aside.

Lin was the opposite.

She attacked more.

She threw a punch for Aryn to block, then kicked in at his body immediately after.

Aryn got his shin up in time.

White light rose along his lower leg.

The kick still pushed him back half a step.

“Better.”

Lin said.

“Before, you’d be on the floor by now.”

“It’s only been a few days.”

“Then you’re improving fast.”

She smiled.

Then kicked again.

Toward the end of the session, Lyra came in and stood watching without saying anything.

She let them spar until they were done.

Aryn sat at the edge of the training area, breathing hard, while Siro threw him a water bottle.

Lyra looked at the data on her gloves for a moment, then closed it.

“Tomorrow you come with me.”

Aryn looked up.

“Field?”

“Low-risk area.”

She looked at him.

“Don’t get excited yet.”

“I’m not excited.”

“Good.”

Lyra turned away.

“Because you still have a lot of training left.”

The technology department was in the basement of the operations building.

Aryn had been sent there before going out into the field, to have his motorcycle checked and fitted with the equipment the work required.

Inside it looked more like a workshop than part of a headquarters.

Equipment covered the tables.

Half-disassembled parts were piled together with finished work.

On one wall, equations were written over one another in layers until there was almost no empty space left.

The technician who took his bike was named Prae.

She walked around the motorcycle twice without touching it at all.

She asked a few questions about how he used it.

Then waved him off.

“Come back for it later.”

When Aryn returned, the bike looked the same as before.

At least from the outside.

“All tuned.”

Prae said, wiping her hands on a cloth.

“When you hold the bars, the data from the bike’s sensors links into your gloves.”

Aryn looked at the motorcycle.

“Anything else added?”

“Sensors.”

She tapped the frame lightly.

“And reinforcement in a few places.”

Aryn nodded.

His first field assignment was maintenance work on the detection network in the outer harbor district.

Three detection nodes had lost connection for unknown reasons.

Aryn’s job was to locate the installation points, check for damage, repair or replace whatever parts were needed, then bring the connection back online.

Lyra explained everything while preparing the equipment.

“The main purpose is for you to learn how to work with field systems.”

She handed him a small equipment set.

“Technical work, you do it.”

Aryn rode out ahead.

When his hands closed on the bars,

the data from the bike’s sensors linked into the gloves at once.

It felt like having another layer of senses added.

The outer harbor district was far from the main berths, and different from the area where Aryn used to work.

Many of the warehouses had been renovated several times over.

Small workshops sat wedged between transport yards and factories.

The first node was mounted on the wall of a building.

The outer casing had impact marks.

Not like weather damage.

Aryn opened the maintenance system through his gloves.

The prepared Pattern started up, linked into the node, and displayed the inspection sequence.

He followed the order the system showed, opened the casing, checked for damage, and replaced the broken parts, then told the system to start up again.

The signal came back to normal.

“Good.”

Lyra’s voice came from behind him.

She was standing some distance away, not helping in the slightest.

“Next point.”

The next node was not damaged, only its calibration had drifted far enough to drop it off the network.

Aryn recalibrated it and sent confirmation data back to headquarters.

The last node was different.

There was nothing unusual on the outside.

But when he opened the casing, Aryn saw that some of the parts inside were missing.

“Someone removed parts.”

Lyra came over.

She bent down to look at the node.

There were no pry marks and no broken panels.

The parts had been removed deliberately, and carefully enough to leave no damage on the outside.

“Record it.”

Lyra said.

“Send the data to technical for further checking.”

Aryn used the gloves to capture images.

While photographing the details, he noticed something on the wall beside the installation point.

A faint mark that almost blended into the surface.

Aryn moved closer.

The light reflected back off it only slightly.

“Here.”

Lyra turned.

She looked at the mark on the wall, then opened some data from her gloves to compare.

“Good eye.”

She closed the data.

“Send that to analysis as well.”

“What is it?”

“Don’t know yet.”

Aryn looked at the faint mark again.

Lyra stepped back from the wall.

“If you don’t know, don’t guess.”

After returning to base, Aryn submitted the mission report and the data from all three nodes into the system.

Lyra checked the report quickly.

She named two things he was still doing too slowly.

The first was bringing his equipment online.

The other was that he had checked his surroundings after starting work, instead of before.

As for the trace he had found beside the node, it was passed on to analysis.

“If you find anything like it again.”

Lyra said.

“Record it and report it.”

“Don’t go near it unless you have to.”

Aryn thought about the bar district.

The man who came out of the back door.

“Is it connected to Viper?”

“Not enough information yet.”

After leaving headquarters,

he rode through the outer harbor district again.

Not because he had been ordered to.

He simply wanted to look at the same area with a different kind of eye.

Before, what he saw was warehouses, roads, transport yards, and the routes he took to work.

Now he was starting to notice sensor positions, entrances and exits, blind spots, and areas where the signal was weak.

The system on the motorcycle picked up faint anomalies at intervals.

All of them only old traces.

Aryn rode on.

Until one signal appeared.

He slowed the bike.

It was very faint.

But different from the earlier traces.

This one was moving.

The signal slid along the line of the building beside him.

Aryn watched it.

There was nobody there.

The system tried to fix the position again.

Then the signal disappeared.

Aryn stopped the bike.

Lyra’s words came into his head at once.

Record.

Report.

Don’t go near it unless you have to.

He collected the data from that position, then sent it back to headquarters.

Then rode out of the harbor district.

The coast road stretched ahead of him.

Sea wind came in against his body.

Aryn gripped the bars a little tighter.

His arms still hurt from sparring with Doran.

His shins still felt Lin’s kicks.

And his shoulder still carried the mark from the moment Siro got inside his guard before he could set himself.

Tomorrow he would go back to training again.

And the day after that the same.

Until the things he had to think about today became things his body could do on its own.

Aryn twisted the throttle.

The motorcycle shot away along the sea road.