It was a day when Codi suddenly realised she really had become part of the Battlecast team. The scowls were gone; the behind-the-back whispering had evaporated. Now, with the mixed results of the practice tournament culminating in a further cull of the remaining recruits, everyone knuckled down to work studying hard, both their own weaknesses and the strength of the opposition they were soon to face.

With the next practice tournament on Mars looming on the horizon, the remaining recruits needed to focus on their own shortcomings – they simply didn't have time to snipe at each other anymore. Codi had no illusions that they all needed to up their game.

The first clash at the Shetland Isles let them know what to expect from their local rivals, but the next event would bring academies from across the Sol system together to slug it out under the shadow of the Olympus Mons volcano and academy namesake.

However, an academy with the resources of Battlecast did not sit idle. Scouts already felt their way around the local competition, watching for weakness and for threats. Earth wasn't the only planet having practice contests, and as a result the Battlecast agents had been very busy compiling video evidence for their students to examine.

Currently, Codi watched with some concern as a recording of the top Olympus Mons fighter played out in front of her. He was a brass-skinned brick of a contender named Darien Fallow, someone who brawled and bludgeoned with all the grace of a battering ram. The style was ugly, but effective and Codi liked it. She could see from the face of the group around her that not everyone felt the same way.

"Thug," Prissa Alder muttered, casting a sour look over the figure on the screen.

"A thug who gets results," Codi pointed out. "He swept that tournament from start to finish. He's the one we've got to beat when we get there."

"He looks better than last year," Ripple said in her emotionless drawl. "He's been practicing."

"No kidding."

The faint flicker of a smile passed over Ripple's face at the remark. Codi made a mental note to mark the calendar for the occasion.

"Sod the individuals," Gareth cut in. "It's the CTF that we made a complete mess of last time out. We need a half-decent game plan and we need to see what they did."

Codi obliged, scrolling through the menu on her data slate and finding a recording of their disastrous capture the flag efforts. She hesitated for an instant, not really wanting to watch the recording back. But they wouldn't learn any other way. Sighing, she pressed the playback button and the recording flashed into the life on the main screen they were clustered around.

The first bout played out and she watched, unable to stop her body from tensing with discomfort. The others started making suggestions, pointing out the flaws in their spacing and timing, but she knew the real problem: cohesion. The five of them just didn't work very well as a team. They were all too individualistic with styles that did not mesh. On paper, fighter to fighter, they outclassed most opposition, but when it all came together as one, the result was lesser than the sum of its parts.

But what was the solution? Another thing they lacked was pure speed. While everyone on the team could put on a turn of pace when they had to, none of them were born sprinters. She dimly wondered about Leela, arguably the least effective solo combatant still scraping through the selection process. What if they poached her for their Flag team? She may not have been an asset as a fighter, but she was the fastest runner in the whole academy; probably the whole solar system.

That avenue, however, depended on Leela making the final cut all the way to the Gauntlet, and that was by no means certain. Codi sighed. Several of the veteran fighters had been surprised when she escaped the first cull, never mind the second. If only the young recruit could find her feet as a fully rounded competitor it might solve a lot of problems.

Wishful thinking perhaps. Shaking those thoughts from her mind, Codi tried to focus on the situation in front of her. Right now this was her team. She would just have to make do.

As they talked, the uncomfortable realisation dawned on Codi that throughout colonised space there would be groups of people watching her on a screen, analysing her strengths and weakness. Dissecting every move, every step and swing that she made. Judging.

Her status as Battlecast's new golden signing meant there was no doubt of that, but that didn't help her shake the sensation. After spending so long being as close to nobody as it was possible to be, her meteoric rise to fame was now worrying even to her.

But there's nothing you can do about it, she told herself. This is what you signed up for.

*

The preparations for the Olympus Mons tournament were far more extensive than the previous contest. This would be more than just a couple of days for local teams to test each other's mettle. The Mars event lasted a whole week and brought together no less than eight academies from all over the Solar System. As well as the competition that the spectators and media would be following religiously, this trip also served as a training camp.

The antiseptic, perfect environment of the Battlecast Academy could make you forget that the real world was a much more rugged place. Codi, for one, was glad that they would be having a change of scenery. She packed up her gear-bag with a renewed sense of purpose. With a full compliment of stalking and note-taking under her belt she felt ready for anything that might come her way. The Capture the Flag team still gave her cause for concern, but having worked through their weaknesses as a group hopefully they would give a better account of themselves this time around. Her paired matches with Gareth had been unremarkable but solid, giving a solid foundation to build towards the main contest.

And then there were the individual bouts.

Whatever happened, she was dying for a rematch with the hulking Dustin Morto. The monster from Atlantic still stuck in her mind as an unanswered question; an unconquered foe. When Gareth had accused her of having a lucky draw in last year's contest she'd dismissed it out of hand, but when her head cleared and she thought about it, maybe there was something in his accusation. A powerhouse like Morto might have clobbered her into submission last year. If she could beat him fair and square it would silence a lot of doubts, both from self-professed pundits and in her own mind. That was her goal on Mars.

Before leaving the room, however, she opened her mobile-beam, syncing with the Battlecast comms network. The screen folded up from her desk and showed a list of addresses, officially monitored and vetted by the academy's phalanx of technical staff. One thing they took very seriously was their contracts.

But Codi had always been a rule breaker. That much hadn't changed.

Smiling thinly to herself she inserted the chip Kye gave her into the side of the console. The shunt slipped around the usual screens for outgoing messages and in a few seconds an empty message sat waiting to be filled and dispatched. She kept it short, bearing his warning in mind about not over-using this clandestine backchannel.

Off to Mars today to knock some heads together. Sucks you can't be there – need someone around to keep me sane. If you watch the vids, cross your fingers for me. I'll be thinking about you.

Codi

She hesitated for a moment. Was that too clipped? Too short? Her feelings for him were difficult to really put into words. She simply liked having his presence nearby; having that calming confirmation that she wasn't the only sane person in the universe. Only two of Earth's four academies were making the trek to Mars. Zulu Forge, as the runt of the group, hadn't been invited. Even though there was nothing she could have done, that didn't stop her feeling guilty about it.

Codi forced herself to hit the send button, not wanting to wait any longer in case she lost her nerve entirely. Kye knew her well enough to understand she didn't want to write him a soliloquy professing her love. It was enough to let him know he was still in her thoughts, even two hundred million kilometres away. She quickly closed the mobile beam down and spun around, sweeping up her kit bag on her way out of the room.

She joined the other recruits boarding the Battlecast shuttles, but this time the trip was a very short one, ferrying them to the nearest spaceport where a vessel waited to carry them across the void between planets. The port itself reared up against the evening skyline, a huge bowl-shaped structure that glittered with a blaze of signalling lights and engine flares.

The usual hum of civilian traffic seethed around Minneapolis Saint Paul's interstellar hub. The ships ranged from small continent to continent sky-buses to bulkier solar transports, to massive block-like freight haulers servicing the fringe colony planets. Every port on Earth was like this, a focal point for commerce and tourism, an unchanging point in the ebb and flow of colonial life.

The squadron of Battlecast shuttles formed a single precise line that sliced through the throng, making their way to one of the satellite ports that jutted out from the vastness of the central basin. One by one they descended into a secondary docking bay, and Codi watched in fascination as rows of landing lights blinked different colours, guiding them in. But the best was yet to come.

When they stepped into the main hanger Codi stopped in her tracks, staring.

The ship was immense, filling the cavernous space from end to end, and its gleaming hull shone with the Battlecast livery. It looked like a long blade, with several pairs of wings protruding from its flanks, increasing in size from bow to stern. Light from its portholes glimmered and she could see dark shapes of the crewmen scuttling left and right as they readied to vessel for departure. Along the right side of the bow plating the name HERCULES was emblazoned in stark, white lettering.

Codi couldn't stop her jaw from falling open at the sight of it. She remembered the days back on Kantha when she and her team mates had been forced to book passage on a tiny, private yacht. Now she was staring at a cruiser purpose-built to ferry the Battlecast contenders from planet to planet.

Chris saw her expression and grinned. "At Battlecast, we travel in style."