"Verbrannter!" a man in gun-metal grey slacks and vest yelled, shunting Nadia from her prayer at hearing her chosen name. A Sturmgeweher 972 and two magazines lay before him on a table, with human targets positioned at different distances behind him. The sleek black gun—colloquially dubbed the 972 for its 9.72-millimeter diameter bullet—boasted a tapered barrel and a sturdy wooden stock. Supposedly it had an initial velocity of 972 meters per second at the founding of the empire, but Fried had blessed his gunsmiths, and the current velocity was nearly double.
60 targets, 60 bullets. Same as the other trials, Nadia thought happily as she stepped to the table. Are they going to have us go through every weapon in the Atlasian arsenal? We’ve already done the Karabine and Stachel.
Nadia loaded a magazine before pulling back the bolt. "Begin," the proctor commanded as the targets began to move. Nadia aimed for the bridge of the nose on each, her arms gliding like a marionette to shoot at the changing faces of Markus and Vogel. Nearly a minute later, a scoreboard above the range showed Nadia’s lethality score. 55. Bullshit, must be something wrong with the sensors, Nadia reasoned.
Above her a quadcopter drone whirred, and she instinctively smiled at it, holding up her gun in one hand while extending a thumb from the other. Its camera flashed rapidly before flying off, its pictures and video no doubt already being cut up by groups of imperial filmmakers. They would be pulling double time for the next couple of weeks to determine the best footage to parcel out to the empire, beginning the mythmaking around knights well before they ever had the title. Nadia had seen plenty of footage of the trials, and she scratched her head trying to remember if Markus or Vogel were in any of them. She knew Markus wouldn’t see her in the footage, not the housewife who had died in the ashes, anyway.
The proctor whistled at her score before pointing her to the next task at a different sub-stadium in Ascension Stadium. It was one one of many in the arena, able to host an entire night’s worth of football matches and other events simultaneously. How many more arenas she would go to, Nadia knew not, nor how many tasks awaited her. Already the bitching had filled the many halls, and Nadia doubted she would be free from them in the next hall. Really ought to be a disqualified, she thought. As knights we will have—
Nadia halted halfway through the inflatable walkway connecting the sub-stadiums, two knights locked in conversation just ahead. One wore red armor, the breastplate resembling a bloody ribcage with painted whitish-yellow tendons. Atlasian blood and the hydroxyatlasite that made them was blue, while they lived. When they drew life no longer, the glass broke like a cracked window, and the short order chains broke down, atoms fleeing into the wind. Iron, the most stable of them, fled last, and beyond those oxide-flakes, the iron remained, unmoving. Blue, cyan, sapphire, and turquoise were their bodies, but red were their shrouds.
The other wore gold armor, adorned with golden chains and eagles and whether his wedge of blond hair and sharp angles matched the armor or the other way around, Nadia was sure of one thing. That is Vogel, Nadia thought, ducking behind a corner to listen. Is the red one involved? Another hitman perhaps?
“Good crop this year. The average lethality score is up two points from the last batch,” Vogel said.
The red knight nodded. “Yea. Old man Deimos says we’re gonna need to trim them down some more before the next phase. Pity.”
Vogel scratched his chin. “I got some ideas. How much freedom is old flesh and bones giving us?”
If the red knight was offended by the nickname given to his holy saint, he did not show it. “Full freedom,” he said, shrugging. “We need to trim them to at least half of this.”
“Half, huh,” Vogel mused. “We have the live fire drills already set up. What if we did capture the flag, losing teams gets shitcanned, and only people with an average lethality of 45 or higher?”
The red knight was silent for a moment before nodding. “That’d speed things up. We could always convert more stadiums.”
“And, if old flesh and bones really wants to thin them down, live munition,” Vogel added, eliciting a sucking sigh from the red knight. “Too far?”
“Not for me, but this is televised. I’ll run it by the old man though, minus the last part,” the red knight said before running. Nadia turned to continue down the hallway before she saw Vogel pull out his dex.
“Richter, what can I do for you?” Vogel asked, glancing around before pacing into a different hallway, shoulders hunched around his head. “Give me a minute man, I got saddled with intern duty this year.”
Nadia crept slowly from her hiding place, trailing Vogel around corners. She allowed him the full hallway each time, only peeking from her cover to see which turn he took.
After five halls, Vogel wedged himself between two vending machines and glanced around, missing Nadia before pulling out a cigarette. Just a knight having a smoke, nothing to concern yourself with. “Yea, still no replacement for Braun. Nobody on his level at least,” he said “Look,” Vogel rubbed circles into his nose”—you can tell Weber that we have plenty in backlog and I’m ready to move as soon as we have another guy in place,” Vogel continued. “Yes, we’ll take a hit, but we’re still raking in cash”—Vogel sighed and muttered something under his breath—“well, I’m fucking trying to find a guy to replace Braun, it’s going to take time. If Felix doesn’t like my way of selecting a replacement, tell him he can look for his own. That ungrateful green fuck doesn’t know scrap from steel when it comes to anything besides drugs, so tell him to calm the fuck down and take a vacation or something,” Vogel said, spitting the words. “I have to go, Markus, babysitting duty, I’ll call you later,” Vogel said before hanging up and proceeding down the hall.
Felix Weber, is that Zündung? Nadia reasoned. Green fuck, does that mean Second Order? If so…Nadia proceeded down the hallway, pulling out her dex to search for Felix Weber and duels as she went. Unsurprisingly, he had taken part in the same duels as Markus and Vogel. I would say that is pretty conclusive, Nadia thought as she looked for a statue of Fried to possibly say something and confirm her suspicions; Here of all places, there was none.
“To all initiates,” a voice rang out over the speakers a few minutes later. “Please complete your current test before proceeding to the simulated combat sub-stadium. If you are currently in line, please proceed to the simulated combat sub-stadium regardless.”
Seems like ‘old flesh and bones’ liked that idea, Nadia thought before beginning her trek to the sub-stadium. Let us hope the bullets are not real.