The jarring impact of a fist connecting with the tungsten lattice sent Codi spinning. She screwed her eyes up in pain and let her body roll with it, catching her momentum and landing back in a fighting stance to face her opponent. It had been coming for a long time, this clash, and now that it had arrived no-one was disappointed.

Opposite her, Chris O'Leary came thundering forward, his boulder-like fists ready to come crashing down on her again. Codi feinted forward, drawing a swipe, and when it came she twisted to the side, grabbing his arm and hauling him forward. At the same time she swung her right leg up in a vicious arc, connecting hard with his back.

She'd hoped for a little more than making him stumble, but Chris was a big guy and his heavy frame held him in good stead. Codi skipped back to avoid his scything reverse stroke, hearing the whistle as his hand was driven through the air by the servos of the exoskeleton. They reset and the duel continued.

The Olympus Mons singles tournament had been a gruelling one, but she'd fought her way through a tough bracket, all the way to this final barrier: one of her own team mates.

No matter how this turned out, she wouldn't accomplish everything she wanted to this time, ironically because her fellow Battlecast fighters had done their jobs. In the opposite bracket, Ripple knocked out Dustin Morto in the quarter final. Chris in turn dispatched her in the next round, leaving Codi with an unsettled score.

There was no time to dwell on it now though. Now it was time to find out who would be going home with the bragging rights. Codi kicked up and off one of the dozens of squat, box-like projections that littered the arena, to be used as stepping stones or anvils in equal measure. Chris moved up to meet her, but at the last second she slammed up the gravity fields in her exoskeleton and dropped below him, bringing her right arm around in a vicious arc. The swing caught both of her opponent's bulky legs and toppled him head over heels.

He crashed into one of the other blocks before hitting the ground and the crowd exploded with noise. Codi's boots left black scrapes in the plating when she landed at full weight, before releasing the gravity fields and rotating to face him. When he came at her again his face was tight with frustration.

And she knew why. The contest at Battlecast was a three horse race – her, him, and Ripple. Chris had already seen off the other girl, and no-one was under any illusions that this exchange could well be a preview of the Gauntlet itself.

But Chris O'Leary wasn't considered a front runner for nothing. In their next exchange he anticipated Codi's feint and buried a fist into her stomach, with such force that she was lifted bodily and hurled across the arena until she clattered into one of the blocks and slid to the floor. Picking herself up, she allowed herself a grim smile. So much for being on the same team. Right now camaraderie had been thrown out the window.

Breaking into a jog, she loped back into combat, relishing the challenge. She got in close swivelling and pivoting away from the worst of Chris's thumping swings, trying to out manoeuvre her hulking adversary. She rode the worst of it, absorbing what she couldn't dodge with short, sharp blocks. Then the gaps started to open, just slightly.

She clipped him across the jaw with one hand and snapped a kick into his side before he could position to block it. Then she leapt to the side, planted her left foot against the nearest hunk of metal and pushed off hard right back towards him. He turned in time to catch her clenched fist square in the jaw as she rocketed past him.

But this had not been one lucky strike.

Codi's heart thundered as her plan started to fall into place. She twisted her body and jammed the soles of both feet against the block directly opposite her. Again she pushed off with as much force as she could muster, keeping the gravity fields of her exoskeleton as low as possible and using her own momentum to stay airborne. Chris was still reeling when she came back at him, this time lowering her shoulder like a battering ram.

This time she moved him.

The massive impact knocked him to the ground, but to his credit, Chris rolled with the force and came to his feet. She didn't let up, leaping in one huge bound and driving the heel of her left foot hard into his chest.

It landed with full force, but this time he was ready. She saw his face twist up with pain but at the same time both his brawny arms snapped tight around her leg ensuring she couldn't pull away. He peddled backwards with the momentum until his back struck one of the hulking black metal constructs.

So much for her new tactic.

Codi realised with a horrible certainty that whatever was coming was going to hurt. A lot. She braced herself and screwed her eyes shut in the instant she had left. Her stomach lurched as Chris swung her down by her leg and smashed her into the ground, flat on her back.

The breath burst from her lungs in one massive gasp of pain, and Codi felt her whole body go fuzzy from the shock of impact. Swallowing a huge lungful of air she cleared her head, blinking to focus. Chris still had her leg locked under one of his arms and he was getting ready to stamp down on her. If she didn't get free from that then the match would be over. Codi didn't kid herself – if he locked the hold in there was no way she'd be able to get out.

The boot of his exoskeleton started to descend.

With one desperate move left up her sleeve, she bent the knee of her trapped leg, dragging herself closer to him. In the same motion she brought both her arms together in front of her face in a slope. As she passed under it Chris's foot hit her sloped forearms, caught for an instant, then slid off to crunch into the ground.

Now lying with her shoulders and neck on the ground and her body curved upwards facing him, Codi pushed herself up on her hands and with her free leg, kicked her opponent in the chin with all the leverage she could muster.

It was enough. The blow took him by surprise and Codi dislodged herself from his grip. Instantly she flipped over, pushed with her hands and slid backwards between his legs, ending up behind him. She grabbed his ankles and pulled hard.

Chris went down like a falling tree, face first into the arena floor. Like a cat Codi pounced. She hooked her right leg over his arm, pressed her forearm against the back of his broad neck to pin him down, and locked his left arm beneath hers. They were twined together like the world's strangest contortionist act, but it had the desired effect. Chris jerked and wrenched for almost thirty seconds, but just as Codi thought she could cling on no longer the klaxon screamed out across the Martian air.

Winner: Codi James.

She collapsed off of him, lying on her back and breathing heavily after the exertion that had been needed to hold him in place long enough for the judges to decide she had won. Chris rolled over and sat up, rubbing the back of his neck, eyes screwed up with pain.

"That was new," he groaned over the thunder of the spectators. "Nice."

"Thanks," Codi managed between breaths. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm good."

"Well I'm glad one of us is." She closed her eyes, letting the pain in her back that she'd been ignoring finally surge back into the forefront of her mind. It was not a pleasant sensation. "I think I'm just going to die down here."

That got a low chuckle. Then he was picking her up. Codi let out an unintelligible grumble of protest and tried to pull away, but Chris shook his head and hauled her to her feet.

"Oh, no you don't," he laughed. "You were dumb enough to win – now you've got to go get the trophy."

*

Codi slumped down on the bed in her room, finally feeling able to relax in a real sense. She might still be missing one scalp from the big hitters going to the Gauntlet, but there was time for that. Right now she had laid down her own challenge to the other members of Battlecast. One level: mine. She kept repeating that phrase in her head. Ever since she levelled that ultimatum to her capture-the-flag squad things had improved. Since she started saying to herself she'd started believing it.

After lying there, basking in the sensation for a few minutes, she straightened up and looked over to her desk and her mobile beam. For the last week Mars and the tournament had erased everything else from her mind, but now she was back the rest of the universe came back into focus.

Crossing the room, Codi swept her black hair back out of her eyes and pressed the button to fold the screen up out of the desk. It flicked into life, the Battlecast logo hovering in the centre for a moment before it booted up and shunted through to the main directory. Instantly her eyes flashed to her inbox. There were a handful of messages waiting.

She tapped the inbox icon with her index finger.

Four administrative and scheduling messages from the coaching staff.

The chip. Shaking her head at her own forgetfulness, Codi freed the gadget from her desk drawer and slotted it into place.

Her heart leapt when a fifth message from an 'unknown' sender joined the others in her inbox. Even though she was alone, Codi still found herself glancing around to make sure no-one was watching. Then she opened it. The screen flashed and an alarmingly brief line of text appeared in the centre of the screen.

Heads up – you need to see this. Will explain when I see you.

K.

Codi's brow furrowed in confusion and she reached forward, touching the screen and opening the attached file.

She instantly recognised Gauntlet combat – the small figures hurtling towards each other in a blazing flurry of limbs – and her confusion only grew. It wasn't a capture from any of the practice tournaments so far. She didn't recognise the academy colours on display or their emblems. Her frown deepened and she glanced to the bottom corner of the display. It was dated two days ago, a feed from a planet called Osis. She'd never heard of it.

A violent stab of movement tugged her attention back to the fights being displayed on screen. It must have been a practice tournament out in the colonies. The wealthier ones – and even some of the runts from the fringes of human space – put on their own local exhibitions of brutal talent. Even the cash-strapped dead end, middle-of-nowhere academy she'd started at managed to scrape together its own little contest.

Codi leaned forward to examine the footage. At a glance it didn't look like anything out of the ordinary – a melee displaying a lot of energy and not a whole lot of skill. Then something in the corner of the screen caught her eye and she looked closer. A tall – scratch that – a towering fighter in jet black livery was scything his way through his competition.

The camera seemed to clock him an instant later, and the image zoomed to following this new piece of interest. While not particularly broad, the young man loomed at least a head taller than anyone else in this fight, and his enormous arms lashed out like striking snakes. Other fighters went end over end after a single blow – his reach was ludicrous. No-one could get near him.

Her interest grew the more she watched. How Kye had managed to snag this recording she had no idea, but if this was anything to go by, there was one contender out there that no-one seemed to know about. More fighters tumbled down before him. Even the ones that showed a modicum of technique and tried to take a controlled fight, he simply stood back and clubbed them into submission.

Interest morphed into concern as she watched. He may only have been competing in a tournament with other minnow academies, but Codi knew better than most that underestimating people could be very dangerous. Whoever this gangly monster was, it would be unwise to ignore him.

Watching closely, she froze the recording just as the boy laid another crunching blow onto one of his opponents. She zoomed in. The exoskeleton he wore had no embellishments, no stripes or markings, save for a small glyph etched into the surface of his left shoulder guard. Codi could make out a silver circle maybe a couple of inches across, and inside it was a barely discernable grey emblem of a rising sun.

Cocking her head to one side, she tried to place it. She didn't recognise the sign from last year's contest, nor was it from an academy that the Battlecast observers kept an eye on. That narrowed the list of candidates dramatically.

Codi brought up the main Battlecast database, her curiosity now fully aroused. The academy's server was home to a frightening dossier of information on anyone and everything connected with the Gauntlet. From fighters, to coaches, to academies and venues it represented another dimension of Battlecast's power – information.

Bouncing through the database, she tracked down the academy listing which, helpfully, also featured the identifying logo for each establishment. It ought to be a simple task of just scrolling and keeping her eyes open for the strange sun motif.

No such luck.

To her immense surprise and frustration, despite three checks of the listing she didn't see the emblem in question. Confusion reigned in her mind. She even checked the academy names for a connection, on the off chance that the emblem might have been changed and just wasn't updated yet.

Still nothing.

With a snort of annoyance, Codi flicked back to the screen showing the frozen image of the fighter. She zoomed out from his shoulder pad, looking at his face. The image wasn't sharp but she could still make out the prominent features; a slim, straight nose, a thin set mouth and two snake-like eyes, glaring with focus. All in all he looked downright creepy.

"Just who the hell are you?" she wondered aloud.

With a feeling of unease settling in her stomach, she keyed in her reply:

Thanks for the heads-up. Can't find any sign of that academy in our database. You know where he's from? I'll keep an eye out – looks like we've found another wildcard for this year.

Can't wait to see you.

Codi