Dark Half,

  Twenty-one Cycles Ago.

  The fist connected hard against the side of his face and the youngling stumbled.

  The cadets stared excitedly, barely able to refrain themselves from cheering in the presence of the instructors. This was the fight they had all been waiting for—the two best, most famous cadets going up against each other. The Purple Predator against the yellow titan. It was the most important fight of their lives and the Titan was losing.

  Dirakh hated this.

  Dirakh quickly discovered that Cedacan was stronger than he was. He had started this thinking he could knock Cedacan down like he had in other fights. That put him in the position he was in now: leaning against one of the cuboid metal pillars, breathing heavily as he tried to shake the blurriness out of his eyes.

  There was some space between them. He was thankful for that.

  With some balance regained, he charged at Cedacan. He tried dodging, but there was no fist coming; Dirakh grabbed him by the waist. Then he heaved the Purple Predator and ran. Cedacan struck his back several times, but Dirakh didn't stop until he ran him into one of the barricading pillars of the arena. The collision echoed loudly.

  There was silence for a moment, both cadets pressed against each other by the pillar, breathing heavily.

  Then a thump sounded in the room.

  Dirakh punched the purple skinned cadet a second time. It would have knocked down anyone else but Cedacan blocked the third hit with his forearm.

  He grabbed Dirakh's neck tightly with the same hand and punched his face with the other. Holding his face in both hands, Cedacan head-butted him, letting him go at the very last moment and creating distance between them with the force of the hit.

  There was that strength again. Dirakh took several steps back. He only stared at his opponent; luckily, this time, both cadets wanted the moment of respite.

  The distance allowed him to study Cedacan. Like himself, Cedacan wore a black Life Armour that covered his upper chest with metal while the rest of his torso was covered in cadmani, a tough hide, as an extension of the armour. That mattered because despite being flexible and hard to tear, it offered no protection against blunt force.

  Dirakh closed the gap again and punched Cedacan, aiming for the spots the armour's metal would bruise him. Cedacan brought his arms in he tried to protect his face and chest. Dirakh's attacks were unending but Cedacan wasn't yielding.

  Dirakh let out a loud frustrated growl. He had never needed to hit someone as hard as he could to win before, but now he was, and Cedacan made it seem like nothing. His frustration seemed to be fueling him as Cedacan erupted in laughter.

  A sudden, violent shove moved Dirakh several steps back. He didn't get to orient himself this time as Cedacan closed the gap and kicked his side.

  Dirakh staggered a little and Cedacan took advantage. He booted Dirakh's chest and the metal of his Life Armour bruised his chest-pores. Dirakh hurled over and that left him open for a hard fist that connected with the side of his face.

  Dirakh dropped to one knee.

  “How can you be this weak and let the others call you Titan of Tomorann?” Cedacan said spitefully. The words angered Dirakh and he moved to attack, but Cedacan was prepared and stomped his back.

  He hit Dirakh a second time. “You belong with the scouts!”

  “Enough,” a male voice said and the pillars began to recede into the ground allowing them to exit the arena. “End of Combat Round. Winner, Cadet Cedacan.”

  Dirakh stayed there in the silence that followed. He wanted to stand but couldn't risk staggering in front of his opponent. Cedacan seemed to notice that, he laughed loudly as he walked away. Dirakh pounded his fist into the ground at the sound of his laughter.

  Cedacan got down from the opposite end of the raised arena and into a tiny crowd of fellow cadets dressed in the same black armour. They were swarming from their seats to receive him. They were smiling, patting his back, showering him with praises.

  Idiots.

  He had his own crowd that came up to receive him. They looked dejected and only there out of loyalty than anything else.

  “Next Round, Augmentor Proficiency. Begins in the next quarter micro-seikan,” the male voice spoke again.

  Without the pillars, he could see the instructor. Wearing Trigad's Mantle armour, they stood watching them from a raised platform above the spectator seats in the cave-cum-arena.

  Scanning the individual faces amongst his group, he noticed more than half seemed surprised, struggling to come to terms with what had just happened. He'd lost, that had not happened since he joined the academy.

  He wanted to argue that this was the only round that Cedacan had beaten him in the four rounds they've competed against each other in the Aggressor's Exam, but he knew the truth.

  For an Aggressor, the previous bouts didn't matter as much as the Combat Round. The idea of reassuring them that he wouldn't lose the Augmentor's test crossed his mind but he didn't say anything, for the first time in his life he wasn't sure he was going to win.

  Those that passed the Aggressor's Exam immediately graduated from the academy and joined new Trigad units as soldiers. Only those who passed could ever become leaders in the Trigad; commanders, generals and such. Regular graduation never guaranteed that and the Scout's Exam was the easy way out. Immediate graduation was a given but there would never be any position.

  When he was certain he could, Dirakh stood up and moved down the arena to his corner with his group.

  They were happy when they learned he was going against Cedacan in the Aggressor's Exam. Every cadet knew that if Cedacan passed he would fit right in with the soldiers, their occupation rewarded his abrasive nature and if they weren't concerned about his tyranny now, why would they be then, when he had proven his worth as a soldier and joined the Trigad fully?

  If Cedacan failed, however, if he were delayed at the academy, or made to graduate normally, it would be the blow he'd never recover from, and a warning to his lackeys after he graduated. A win for the ones he hurt.

  Dirakh almost hit himself every time he considered what he'd just risked by losing the round.

  They reached a corner in the arena, where he was supposed to rest between rounds. This seats were free of cadets. He was alone with his group. He sat down.

  “I don't care what he says, you're my Titan,” a young, yellow skinned cadet standing beside him said. She'd been a victim of one of Cedacan's recent outbursts.

  “Gillette!” another cadet cautioned.

  The title was originally his father's when he was the pride of his city. Before he was banished for a crime he never told Dirakh about. Dirakh took in defiance of the Scavengers that murdered his father. He was supposed to be livid after what Cedacan had said about the title, maybe even barked at Gillette for mentioning it right after but he didn't. Couldn't. Everyone who bore it seemed to fail at some point in their greatness. Maybe this was it.

  “I know you heard what Cedacan said,” Dirakh said, fixing the boots of his armour. “He wasn't quiet about it.”

  “No, he wasn't,” a third voice replied. Finally, someone spoke like he expected them to; with anger.

  Dirakh raised his head, saw the brown cyperan speaking. Even with maintained eye contact, the cadet spoke his mind. “You can't lose. Not only because you promised us, you have to win because of you. You deserve that spot, not Cedacan.”

  That wasn't what he expected.

  The cadet continued. “The Combat Round isn't the end of competition. Dustri lost the Combat Round and he still got picked.”

  “Yita lost hers and didn't get in,” Dirakh commented. “And so did Garao and Voren and Pisbo.”

  “You can't give up on us!” Gillette complained.

  Gillette was new. She always managed to make him seem like a savior; a protector of the weak. In truth, he wasn't. Groups existed in the academy because it wasn't safe to live otherwise; Dirakh's wasn't any different.

  Surviving in groups was how he lived as an outcast and that was all he'd done here, yet somehow it grew into something else. They were only twenty-two but were attacked the least, even Cedacan with a group six times as large as Dirakh's, considered them rivals. He wasn't aiming for this but he had created it all the same.

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  He wasn't saying he hated what it had become; he'd grown to like it, even. He had sat with them expecting disappointment and anger but no one looked at him that way. That strengthened him somehow. He could deal with Cedacan.

  “A loss is a loss,” Dirakh told them. “But we have three more rounds left, I can do a lot with that number. How many rounds did Dustri win?”

  “Five,” someone answered.

  “Six it is then.” They all perked when he said that.

  The doors of the arena opened slowly in the distance. Soldiers walked in carrying ten different boxes of augmentors, a pair of each type. They were followed by more soldiers carrying the Mantle armours Cedacan and he were going to use. The next round would begin soon.

  “If he starts and picks one out of the five, I pick the same, beat him with it,” Dirakh stated, not taking his eyes off the soldiers carrying the case. “Rolk, talk about the round like I've forgotten everything I know.”

  The cadet called Rolk stood up and came forward. He was brown, nearly as tall as Dirakh but thin. “There's not going to be an obvious winner in this one. It's a test of skill, not just how many augmentors you can use at once, but how well you can use them. Dustri won because he used Attack Class, Strength Class, Speed Class—”

  “At the same time?” Gillette asked, sounding scared.

  “At the same time,” Rolk confirmed, “Warkan couldn't keep up.”

  “I can do better than Dustri,” Dirakh told Gilette with a grin. It wasn't just a brag, he was being honest.

  The soldiers began opening the boxes and saw the augmentors. Strength Class augmentors had wearable arms whose movements controlled the battle-arms. There were also two different types of Attack Class weapons in the boxes: Dirakh's halberd which featured a plasma rig connected to an extending hook system and Cedacan's plasma curving blade was fixed on top of a Mantle armour-size arm guard. Dirakh turned away to listen to what Rolk was saying.

  “...him with it. Dustri made Warkan stumble, run around and look stupid till the round ended; you should have seen it. If you can do the same thing with—”

  “You will lose. Badly,” someone interrupted Rolk.

  Everyone turned to face the speaker. He was tall and broad with a green skin that was almost as dark as the black armour he was wearing. As though he were a Fourth Sector female, he packed his long, thick head-askora in bunches to the back and had an extra compartment in his armour for the ones on his back. It should have been laughable, having head-askora as a male but his intense gaze made it seem like they were the odd ones out.

  Araan, the noble. He wasn't one of Dirakh's or anyone else really.

  What is he doing here? Dirakh thought.

  “I'll need you to repeat that,” said the passionate cadet from earlier. He stood up before Dirakh could say anything.

  Araan, on his part, painstakingly repeated himself. “Your leader, Dirakh Aratund, will lose the Augmentor Proficiency Round.”

  “I don't care what you think,” Dirakh said before the cadet or anyone else would respond. “And If you didn't notice, I'm busy preparing.”

  “To lose? Then we can talk.”

  Dirakh frowned but didn't respond. He had to be careful with this one. Everything was odd about him, from his appearance to the fact that he was always alone. Some would argue they were similar in some ways; Dirakh being an outcast who lost his father and mother to the cruelty of Scavenger raids and Araan being a fatherless noble that was all but abandoned by the rest of his family.

  The difference was no one at the academy was close to Araan enough to be called a friend and he wasn't even a part of any group. The really odd part was how he was never bothered by anyone despite fitting the 'prey' criteria perfectly well, not even by the Purple Predator himself. Dirakh glanced at Cedacan's corner and caught him staring at them. Surprisingly, he looked uncomfortable.

  “What do you want?” Dirakh asked.

  Standing still, Araan began. “When you put on your Mantle, it would feel unnaturally heavy and slow but you being you, Dirakh, you would ignore it. You would try to pummel your way through as you typically would. Then you would go against Cedacan and he would decimate you. The loss would be worse than the last one.”

  “If you use that damned word again, Cari, I'll break you.”

  In a very slow turn, Araan shifted his gaze to Rolk who had just spoken. Deadly least described his stare.

  If I hit you as hard as I can, you would be headless after. Dirakh vividly remembered the words the noble once said in sparring. Nearly did it too. This could get bloody, fast.

  “Back off, Rolk. Hey! I call mine off, you back down too. Look at me, not him. Explain what you just said.” Dirakh was standing by the time he finished speaking.

  Araan only nodded. “I'm not trying to anger anyone. Cedacan will win because he has been chosen to. Everyone knows you're the best with augmentors. You should win this round easily but you won't as long as you don that armour,” Araan pointed subtly to one of the Mantle Armours hanging in parts on a rack. Both looked identical but it was clear that Araan meant that one was faulty.

  “Why?” one in Dirakh's group asked.

  “Why it's rigged?” Araan replied.

  “That and why you're telling us,” Rolk said, folding his arms. He looked and sounded skeptical.

  “To answer the first is quite easy: Identity. Too many people come here expecting everyone to be the same ambitious brute from nowhere. It's a perfect hiding spot for people like me, or at least those with less notoriety.”

  “You're saying Cedacan's a noble?” Gillette asked.

  “Close, he's the son of a Trigad general.”

  Everyone shifted in their seats, staring at Araan. No one could really say anything about Cedacan other than he attacked everyone. They couldn't argue this but Dirakh didn't exactly trust the source.

  “Why tell us?” Dirakh asked, “Aren't all nobles friendlies?”

  Araan was amused. “Everyone hates Cedacan, Dirakh. I thought I'd be matched against him in the exam instead of Omik, I would have killed him. I can't do that now but I can settle with ending his precious career before it starts.”

  “He's never attacked you.”

  “Sometimes, you get tired of letting powerful people do what they want.”

  Dirakh turned to Cedacan. First his eyes were on them then they darted quickly to the armours and back to them.

  That confirmed it.

  Cedacan knew. Araan wasn't lying.

  Dirakh turned to Araan to find him smiling at him. “Well?”

  The Inspector announced the end of the waiting period.

  Cedacan stood.

  “If you're right about this, I'll get you the coldest hurson shower your father's father has never had,” Dirakh said.

  “Nobles call them eldfather,” Araan corrected him. “Less wordy that way.”

  The round began and both contestants charged for the racks.

  ■

  Now.

  His back is a bit too straight, Dirakh noticed as he watched Araan head into the meeting hall.

  Is he nervous? It was something Dirakh never considered whenever he thought about Araan. True this was supposed to be his domain, where he worked best, but after so many cycles away from all of it, maybe this was the uncharted territory now. Araan took a seat at the very center of the room in one of the throne seats. He looked confident and uneasy at the same time.

  He said wait till Tisiryk's called in, Dirakh thought.

  When it happened, the commotion was enough for cover as they all moved aside for the heir-designate. Everyone was speechless as they saw him. How was that outfit royal meeting worthy?

  He tore his eyes away from the spectacle and headed for the nearest elevator. He entered and the structure moved downward.

  What did Araan think he would find? A creature didn't kill Dund Vinid, cyperans did, their bodies were found in and around the citadel. The only strange fact about his murderers was how well they concealed their identities.

  Not a single marking revealed which sect they belonged to, or which noble hired them. Dark Half murders weren't new but having no idea who was responsible was odd. Rumors normally went around even though no one could prove it.

  It was all so new this time; no one ever tried to go against the Thirteenth Sector because of the uncertainty of the extent of the Alpha-Redinan—Araan's military capabilities.

  Dirakh had thought about it from the moment he agreed to help Araan, how he would get into the Citadel's sealed off section. With only one functioning in-building entrance that was already was heavily guarded and the case of his skin color, he couldn't infiltrate them as a guard or worker. Either group would spot him easily. For someone like him, though, there were ways around all of that and he was about to attempt one of them.

  The elevator came to a halt and he was on the ground floor. They were guards at every elevator preventing more retinues from heading up. They nodded in greeting when they saw him. He returned them quickly and headed out.

  Outside was windy and busy, with more retinues and guards standing beside vehicles. His Sand Drifter was parked outside in the private area of the citadel that the guards had used when they arrived. His armour was kept inside the hovercraft and so was the gadget he was looking for.

  He reached it and changed into his Mantle armour. Without entering he fixed his left hand into one of the control ports in the augmentor and it rose steadily into the air, whirring as it controlled the air current.

  Time for the interesting part.

  Sand Drifters had extensions; tiny detachable extensions that flew much higher and could be controlled remotely. Fitted with optic and aural systems and shaped like a miniature Sand Drifter no bigger than his hand, it was used to scout dangerous terrains when a soldier couldn't be sent. Araan didn't think of it because Araan never saw anything useful in a Sand Drifter.

  “Alright, Scouty,” Dirakh said as he activated it. The humming drone withdrew from underneath the Sand Drifter. “Get to work.”

  Scouty's display fed into a visual fixed within Dirakh's helmet. Through its 'eyes' he got an expansive view of the landscape; the jagged mountain structure of the citadel, the numerous vehicles within in its compound, even the wind blowing in the distance in the Lord's Quarters. He had Scouty travel closely along the Citadel's surface, through the back of the compound, avoiding any clump of guards that might notice while looking up.

  The sealed off area was hard to miss with the gaping hole in the metal half of the mountain and the sound of metalwork emanating from inside. Dirakh flew Scouty in securely as the noise masked its humming. He moved it to the high ceiling in the room and kept it there.

  Inside was a meeting room of some kind. A throne room was a better description, featuring one large central chair next to the hole and the remains of several other chairs few steps beneath it. This was the site of Dund Vinid's murder. A sector ruler.

  It wasn't as lord-like as he expected.

  Workers flowed in and out constantly. They were in a hurry carrying equipment or building materials for the chairs and the wall.

  The room, while narrow, was long and quite damaged. Besides this room wasn't the only one damaged by the attack; it was the entire floor..There was a lot of work to be done if Tisiryk was going to use this place right after his coronation.

  No strange footprint, Dirakh noted. There were already several missing floor pieces and more that obstructed the repairs were being removed. He had hoped he wouldn't have to search the entire sealed off area to find clues. No such luck.

  Something caught his attention.

  He found the one in charge, the overseer Araan had warned him about. Not among the guards that stood at the door, nor the haggard cyperan standing at the center and ordering the moving workers. She was by a cranny further down a wall opposite the hole, speaking to a captain guard and another worker who looked in rank like the leader shouting commands.

  She was a noble—a Vinid as he remembered. He'd seen her a few times in the Lord's Quarters, but even if he hadn't, her outfit was a dead giveaway; only nobles could believe dark brown could pass off as worn out cadmani.

  She spoke discreetly to the two. Dirakh sent Scouty closer. Slowly. Carefully.

  Unconsciously, he shifted his focus to where he stood beside the Sand Drifter. It was easy to forget where one was when using Scouty. He was still the only one here.

  He positioned Scouty above their heads and focused the sensors to ignore the ambience and pick up their speech. The noble didn't sound happy.

  “...grown tired of waiting. There is no better timing, get it done or forget whatever deal they made with you.”

  “All of this is too much, royal one,” the worker whispered sharply, his askora visibly twitching. “It's too dangerous, I am almost certain they know already. The guards questioned me twice and—”

  “Did the disguise not work the last time?” she interrupted. The captain guard didn't react and only watched.

  “Yes, it did, royal one, but—”

  “Get it done,” she said waving him off.

  The worker conceded with a sigh then spoke, facing the workers. “Barimi! Come here.”

  The youngling in question dropped his load and hurried to them. The worker gave him his orders, “Follow Captain Mirir, carry the load he gives you to the Compound. I'll join you there.”

  “Yes, boss.” The captain left and Barimi followed.

  “Head to the High-rim marketplace. A strange meeting ground, yes, but with how deft the others can be, better unusual than caught. See? I do consider your interests.”

  “Yes, royal one,” the boss-worker said. He couldn't sound more defeated.

  “The one you meet there might be disguised but once he sees you, he will reveal the facial markings you are familiar with—.”

  “Commander Dirakh?”

  Hearing his name broke his concentration. He switched gears instantly, ready to attack.