AUTHOR NOTE: 

Just a small thing guys: I've mentioned before that I've done some redrafting of the original Gauntlet offline, but those edits have not been uploaded to Wattpad. Consequently there are a couple of things that are a bit different in the sequel, so if you have read the Gauntlet and find yourself thinking "hang on, it wasn't like that in the first book", that's the reason. Nothing major has changed - mostly just some tweaks here and there, but I just wanted to make you all aware. 

Happy reading!

***

It took weeks of practice, but Codi was gratified to find that she and Gareth were finally beginning to hit their stride as a pairing, and not a moment too soon. Five months to the day before the Gauntlet competition started the Battlecast instructors did two things. They unveiled a list of eighty names: people that would be receiving their personalised exoskeletons. By extension, they also delivered the first names that would go no further in this year's competition.

Although she'd been expecting to be included, seeing her name on the provisional roster still lifted a massive weight off Codi's shoulders. No-one unexpected was cut from the team. Mostly it was the youngest and least capable – which at Battlecast was still saying a lot – that were taken off the list that would be taken to the practice tournaments. They'd still be training at the academy in a less intensive role and get another chance next year if they wanted to stay.

Codi fully understood that her own scholarship was a luxury that most kids, even on the rich stud of Earth, couldn't hope to be offered. Many were there at the behest of well endowed parents, indulging them, or giving them a little lesson in life's hardness. Whatever the case, many of them may not come back, or might just go to a different academy where the competition wasn't so ferocious.

While no surprises were included in the list of rejections, she did spot one name on the provisional roster than made her smile. Leela had made the cut, at least for now.

The day was a big one on the Battlecast calendar. It marked the graduation of many new recruits into the next stage of their competition training, and while Codi had competed before, she still felt a youthful rush of excitement when the successful recruits were summoned to the academy's Lock-Tech bay to be given their full combat exoskeletons.

She let herself get swept up in the river of eager energy that flooded into the factory-like space. A dozen technical staff were on hand to keep things organised, as well as the coaches from each cadre. Five gravity-conveyers bore their precious cargo, lined from end to end with the long transparent cases. Codi could see the glint of cyan and blue within and felt her stomach do excited leaps at the prospect of donning a Gauntlet exoskeleton again.

The equipment was dispensed alphabetically so she had several impatient minutes to wait until one of the attendants called her name. She couldn't contain a smile when she spotted Leela emerge from the crowd to collect her prize. The girl looked like a toddler who'd been set loose in a toy factory, almost unable to focus in her giddy excitement. She took the hovering case of the exoskeleton and guided it out of the room, back towards the gymnasium. On her way out she spotted Codi and flashed a toothy grin.

At long last, her moment came. Codi closed off the outside world, striding purposefully toward the beckoning attendant, eyes fastened onto the casing behind him. The transparent cradle slid soundlessly forward on the grav-conveyer and the attending technician stepped forward holding a dat-pad.

"Place your hand in the centre of the screen," he instructed. "This will imprint the exoskeleton to your DNA key."

Codi blinked, not expecting such a level of security but after a second she obeyed, reaching out and placing her palm against the screen of the dat-pad. A blue line instantly appeared, tracing the outline of her hand, and after a few seconds the machine bleeped with acceptance.

"Alright, she's all yours." The technician guided the cradle off the conveyer and into Codi's hands. She took a firm grip on the handles at one end and rotated to face the exit. Swallowing a calming breath, she pushed the cradle onward and it moved without protest, held aloft by a series of gavitic repellors built into its underside.

She passed out of the Lock-Tech into another room – a small chamber maybe half a dozen meters squared – where she was greeted by another attendant technician clad in blue and cyan overalls. He gestured for her to take up position against the left hand wall. For a moment he said nothing, fiddling with a dat-pad with the ease of an expert while she waited, rocking agitatedly back and forth on her heels. Eventually, satisfied with whatever check he had performed, the technician turned to her and inclined his head.

"When you're ready."

She grinned and turned to the exoskeleton cradle.

It was everything she'd hoped for and more. The nano-carbon fibre plates glinted viciously under the gymnasium lights. The main body was coloured a deep aquamarine blue, as rich as sapphire, while the shoulder guards, vambraces and greaves were a dark cyan. Two more cyan stripes ran down either side of the torso and on the left side of the breast plate the Battlecast logo had been emblazoned. On the right, the letters C. JAMES were printed in bold, slightly slanted type.

Perfection.

She pressed the activation switch on the side of the exoskeleton cradle and with a hum of its interior mechanism the whole thing rose up, until the suit stood upright facing her. Then the transparent casing retracted, removing the final barrier between Codi and her future. She felt a tremor of excitement as the micro-bolts holding the suit together released, and the front of the exoskeleton split in half.

She moved without hesitation and rotated, stepping backwards into the suit. Slotting her feet down into the lower leg sections, she leaned back gratefully into the exoskeleton and closed her eyes as the powerful fighting armour enveloped her.

The plates locked together across her chest and the arms and gauntlets hugged her tightly. A tingling sensation rippled through her as the suit interfaced with her body at a molecular level, welding itself to her. A sheen of light glinted briefly over her eyes as the protective tungsten lattice formed across her face. Too thin to even be seen by the naked eye, the remarkable piece of tech would keep her safe from any life-threatening injuries, while still letting the audience see her face. Long ago the suits had borne, by necessity, full-face helmets, but now the technology had advanced far enough to allow the spectators to see every expression, every tear and smile of the competitors. It added just that bit more of a human dimension to proceedings.

Codi couldn't keep the smile off her face as the exoskeleton melded to her body. She closed her eyes for a moment, basking in the sensation of being home. It felt even better than she remembered from her days at Brax-Delta, somehow even more tailored to suit her body. She stepped effortlessly from the cradle and did a few experimental twists and stretches. The suit felt like a second skin.

The attendant nodded approvingly. "All the readings are good. The suit is functioning at one hundred percent. You may proceed, Miss James."

Codi needed no second bidding. She loped through the passage and back out into the gymnasium, where those who had gone before were already testing the new limits of their suits. Everywhere she looked young men and woman moved in impossibly fast streaks of blue and cyan, leaping and bounding over huge swathes of the training space.

Although part of her mind told her to show some professional restraint, it was overridden by her desire to feel the thrill of simply moving with the enhancements of the suit. She bunched her legs and jumped, and that single motion flung her thirty feet through the air until she hit the ground again with a thump of booted feet on the hard gymnasium floor.

Pivoting she unleashed an experimental flurry of punches and kicks, throwing in an occasional leaping swipe or dropkick into the routine as she went. She could feel the suit's raw power with each swing, knowing that given the chance she could smash down doors and dent metal plates with a single blow. It touched something primal right in the hearth of her body.

She tested the suits gravity modulators, adding or subtracting the gravitational pull on specific parts of her body. In doing so, she could add weight to make a single blow land with added momentum, could increase her body weight to stop herself being lifted or thrown, or decrease it to let her leap higher and further. The whole thing was controlled by an interface, connected through the invisible tungsten weave that encased her skull. When she'd first used in on Brax-Delta it had taken a lot of getting used to, but now it almost felt more natural. She'd been waiting to get back into a Gauntlet exoskeleton for months.

A slender form landed beside her with a dull thud and Codi looked up sharply. She found a familiar, exuberant face staring back. If Leela's grin extended any further her face would probably split in two.

"This is amazing," she said, twirling on the spot. She seemed to have gotten to grips with the suit quickly. "I feel...I feel like I can do anything!"

"Well done," Codi replied, shaking her head with a smile. "Feels good, doesn't it?"

"Incredible."

"At least you look the part now," said another voice.

Codi turned to see Gareth striding towards them. He came to a halt, an air of breezy confidence radiating from him. Now clad in the full combat gear he looked less like the temperamental problem and more like a veteran competitor. While new applicants took time to acclimatise to the range of movements the suits provided, Gareth's experience shone through in the way he easily navigated the gymnasium.

Codi looked at him, cocking an unimpressed eyebrow. "At least?"

"Still a long way to go." He shrugged.

Leela glared at him. "We'll see."

"Gareth, we've still got a lot of work to do," Codi interjected, keen to put a stop to whatever confrontation might come from their conversation. "Time to get tethered up, don't you think? We're going to need every second of practice that we can get."

"Well we both know what we're doing." He cast a pointed glance at Leela. "Rather than wasting time dancing about like a bunch of crack-happy kangaroos, let's find Thradd and get to work."

She had no objections to that line of reasoning. As Gareth turned away she glanced back at Leela and gave her a thumbs-up. The girl had earned her spot so far – a little more encouragement might go a long way.

After a few minutes they located Thradd Winters in amongst the throng of bounding and whirling Battlecast bodies. From what she could tell about half of their starting group had been selected to progress further in the competition. He obviously had the same opinion of Codi and Gareth; when they asked to begin working with the gravity tether he didn't hesitate for a moment. Within minutes they were moving under his watchful gaze, getting used to the feel of being roped together coupled with the enhancements of the exoskeletons.

The gravity tether attached them wrist to wrist: a long arc of crackling blue lightning that ran from Codi's right to Gareth's left. In it function it wasn't dissimilar to the elastic cord that they'd used for practice, but it lacked the same physical presence. Codi could grab it and pull the same way she could with a solid chord. The gravity tether was energy – immaterial. Between then they could adjust its length, ranging from a minimum of two metres to a maximum of twenty.

Their initial adjustment period was a comical and not unexpected series of miscues as they struggled to adapt to the new device. Where the elastic chords would extent on their own under momentum, the gravity tethers required a mental input through the same interface that controlled the exoskeleton gravity fields. Codi struggled to remember that if she was leaping way from Gareth she needed to couple that with the requisite mental command to give herself enough slack in the tether to do so. It was an exercise in bruising frustration.

An hour and half and a few choice remarks from Thradd later they started to get to grips with the finicky piece of technology. The instructor talked them through a series of drills designed to help the user learn the use of the tether by habit. Most involved a series of jumps, where one fighter immediately followed the other, forcing both to mentally control the tether's length as they moved around a predetermined course. Once they mastered that to Thradd's satisfaction they moved on to a more organic piece of training, taking the exoskeletons into the holographic training cube.

Again, the first round of drills could have been charitably described as a shuttle-crash, but they persevered doggedly. Despite her initial surges of frustration, Codi bit back the angry remarks that wanted to leap off her tongue and simply forced herself not to make the same mistake twice. She could see Gareth doing the same.

Maybe they had made a bad decision to pair up. None of the others seemed to have such a tortuous process to master the basic drills, but Codi no longer cared. At this point, as far as she was concerned it was too late to change. She'd invested too much time to abandon it and try pairing up with someone else. Besides that, she still held onto the kernel of belief that together, if they could finally click, she and Gareth could be a truly dangerous force come competition time.

At the end of the day Codi was exhausted. The constant mental strain of controlling the tether coupled with the physical exertion had left her drained. Normally the Gauntlet trainees were allowed to simply go back to their quarters when training finished, or relax as they chose within the academy walls. Today, however, Bronagh Llewellyn called the eighty recruits together, still in their exoskeletons, and had them gather around the gymnasium's central podium. Codi slumped to one knee between Gareth and Ripple as the head instructor started to speak.

"First of all," she boomed. "Let me congratulate each and every one of you for getting this far. While there are still more of you that will not reach the final stage of the Gauntlet, you are to be applauded nonetheless. This is the best, most competitive academy in space – to reach this stage is an achievement in itself."

A low rumble of assent passed through the assembled fighters.

"The places in our final Gauntlet team will be decided over the coming months in a series of training tournaments. There are four such tournaments held all over the Solar System that will serve as training grounds and tests of your individual mettle. All I ask is that each of you gives your very, very best. If you do that, you will increase your chances of making the final roster exponentially." She paused for a moment, blazing eyes running over the serried ranks of fighters. "If you do not, you will make my job very simple indeed."

Codi felt the head instructor's gaze pass over her, and in that instant she felt a cold tremor pass up her spine. She shuddered. She had five more months to prove she deserved to lead these fighters into the Gauntlet. Five months to repay the faith that the financiers had put in an orphaned girl from a backwater colony. She took a long breath, steeling herself for the task ahead.

Challenge accepted.