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Save Point: Skills with the Lance

Tournament Field, Uruk

"What do you think of my shield?" says Cleo hopefully, raising the decidedly standard-issue buckler in display. There's a reason she doesn't normally lug a shield around with her, despite its undoubted utility, and this is it. It may be a nice bronze elongate half-oval with a point at the bottom for wedging it into things, for now, but after it's taken a few hits, it'll be a sundered bronze wreckage suitable only for melting down to scrap, assuming she hasn't gotten distracted prior to that and melted it herself before then in the all-too-literal heat of battle.

"Good against anything that doesn't actually have its own calibre rating?" suggests Terrowne. "I would say, try not to let anyone hit it, but that seems counter-productive."

"I see you came to the same conclusion I did."

"Just do your best, half of these guys have the same one, or an even cheaper leather version. The only reason they even issued it was that you can hardly call it fair if some of the contestants don't have one. It's the spears that matter, and we've made sure that yours are the best. Straight cedar-wood and specially modified points that we re-cast with segments from one of your black steel arrows in the core. They'll punch straight through what most of these try-hards are wearing if you get a decent level of weight behind it."

Cleo hauls herself clumsily up onto the riding cat, using the grip at the front of its saddle to gain leverage as she tries to balance the unaccustomed weight of the shield. Once, she has everything in position, Sethkill passes her up the spear. She has to place the point of the shield briefly inside the square, slightly backward sloping face of the saddle grip, so its weight is held by the pommel, in order to free up a hand and grasp the weapon.

It takes her a few seconds to juggle everything into place, but it looks really damned impressive once she's fully armed. The riding cat sneezes and then bunches it shoulders, ready to pounce.

The banner-flags are swept two-handed by the referees, and she charges her opponent.

~*~

Terrowne helps Cleo down from the saddle of the riding cat, swaying slightly, as the crowd roars its acclaim and the riding cat makes a grunting sound of disapproval at being attacked by idiots with pointy things. It seems likely that it would be happy to double back and take its new frustrations out personally, were it not being held back by the brass hand-grip of the saddle. Cleo discards her spear and soothes the riding cat, stroking its muzzle and whispering sweet nothings to her agitated pet.

"Wherever did you learn to do that?" he exclaims in amazement, considering the skills she's just shown off to such devastating effect. So, under the roar of the crowd, she tells him.

~*~

"One of the toys we got to play with sometimes as needed, in the ADF, was a thing called the Swan Jump Bike. That wasn't its real name, it was just a sort of tag that got attached to it due to the fact that the original model had a much longer wheelbase than any of the subsequent versions, which made it look sort of long and curved, like a swan. Add to that the fact that the ADF ordered its entire stock in plain white, so they could add adaptive camouflage, and that it had these independently supported internal knee-guards that would fold upwards when it jumped to provide aerodynamic stability, and you can see how easily it got the name.

"So here we had this stock of officially registered and maintained combat motorcycles, but mostly they never got used, so people borrowed them. First it was to move around quickly within bases and facilities too large for walking to be convenient, then people took them to get to places when they were off-duty, so they could go somewhere and then get back again without having to sign out any heavy transport. They were really convenient and we all had enhanced reflexes so they didn't really get crashed that much, and neither did we. So it ended up being unofficial policy that you could sign them out and as long as they came back basically intact, no-one cared.

"Then they got the newer version and the old ones were kept as spares, but lots of the parts didn't actually match up anymore due to the change in the wheelbase length. At which point some of our guys had an awesome idea after a few drinks, which was that we should duel with them! Just racing them was way too lame to get our attention, but full-contact battles in combat armour using assault motorcycles that could leap through the air even from flat surfaces after a little tinkering with the hydraulics? Now that was clearly awesome!

"So, after that, whenever we were on leave at home, we'd hold tournaments in suitable places at short notice. We'd check out the old bikes, clean them up and mod the hydraulics, take our spare body armour with us - most of us had bought our own, because the whole point was that we were a non-standard special combat unit, and you could get far better and better fitted than the regulation ceramic plate - then pick weapons and go for it. We couldn't use firearms, there'd have been stray rounds punching holes through walls everywhere, so it was melee weapons only.

"It was blood-curdlingly dangerous and incredibly fun! I remember pulling off my helmet one time and my hair spilling out and being all covered with blood and sweat, and I had tears running down my face from being hit so damn hard, and it was great!

"We used swords, spears, seismic lances with small explosive charges at the tip, anything as long as there was two of it so the other guy could have one. We didn't need shields because the bikes had a sort of small, shield-shaped windscreen at the front made of polymer diamond that hosted the heads-up-display, so you could duck behind it to deflect things. You could load the image of your choice to show up on the outside, so we had coats-of-arms and custom symbols to let you know who you were swinging at. It gave them a sort of ruggedly mechanical look, which was totally at odds with the graceful swan-shaped form.

"We'd trash the bikes, and then we'd fix them. Mitzi liked to do splendidly tasteless custom artwork for her shield that featured budding roses, passionately swollen orchids, ellipsoidal starbursts and suggestive eclipses. When she got knocked off her bike by a direct hit, so to speak, she'd lie on the ground on her back for a while to recover, then spread her legs, pump her fists skyward and fake the least convincing orgasm of all time until everyone fell around laughing. Sometimes if I was the one who won, I'd play along and do the 'owned' thing, make out like I was having my dirty way with her with my pussy firmly in her face. Now that got some audience appreciation.

"She was great fun, was Mitzi.

"So when I found out what event they were going to be holding here, I didn't even blink. I've done all of this before, only much faster, harder, and way more dangerous. All I had to do was hang on with my knees and remember to brace the shield myself. Apart from that, it was easy."