Chapter 268: The Shorter Jump

Nadia Sorrel accepted at half past nine that night.

[Challenge accepted.]

[Third-Class Rank 23 — Nadia Sorrel]

[Match scheduled: tomorrow, 16:00, Arena 1]

There was no message with it. Jin checked the time, then opened the arena listing. The match was real now; tomorrow afternoon, all those evenings spent moving targets around an empty yard would have to amount to something.

Arena 1. Plenty of room for her.

He resisted the urge to watch another recording and set his alarm instead.

He kept the morning short.

Glitch got a light session, a full feed, and an hour in the sun-lamp corner, which he accepted with the grace of an animal who had already worked out that quiet mornings meant loud afternoons. Doyen ran him at eleven and signed off in under five minutes.

"One claw," she said. "Same as before. I’ll reassess after."

"One," Jin agreed.

Doyen handed back his phone. "And I want the strain log tonight regardless of whether he uses it."

He spent the remaining time checking a few familiar recordings. He knew Vesper’s usual bounds, her preferred approach to a flank, and the way she gathered her hindquarters before changing direction. Watching her again was mostly something to do with his hands.

The problem was that Nadia had watched footage too, and hers was newer.

She had seen the pressure effect and what Glitch’s claw did to armor. Other contenders were already advising each other to stay several meters clear. Nadia could do that better than most, and Jin was looking forward to seeing her expression when distance stopped being quite so reassuring.

She’ll be planning against the animal in the Varro tape.

He put the phone away when the match reminder appeared and went to collect Glitch.

Arena 1 was the big floor: forty meters across, stone composite over a solid bed, with the boundary ring raised a hand’s height all the way round. There was no cover or equipment to interrupt the open floor.

Perfect for a panther. Also, Jin noted with some satisfaction, perfectly connected — one continuous slab from one side to the other, and every footfall on it went straight into Glitch’s feet.

The tiers were fuller than they’d been for Dell. Word had spread.

Nadia came out with Vesper at her shoulder and gave Jin a short nod that was neither friendly nor hostile. She was tall, unhurried, and looked exactly like someone who had been at Rank 23 for a while and intended to stay.

Vesper was Silver (Middle), eight-Star, and smaller than Jin had expected from the footage. Long-bodied, dusk-grey with the darker banding across her flanks, and built almost entirely out of hindquarters. She did not look at Glitch. She looked at the floor around him, which Jin found more unsettling.

The referee called, "Begin."

Vesper did not close. She went sideways.

The first bound took her four meters left and she landed already turning, and Glitch had to swing his front end to keep his shoulder toward her. Before he finished, she was gone again — right this time, a longer one, five meters, landing behind the line of his horns.

Glitch reset his stance, only to find her moving again.

Jin held his instructions for a few bounds. He wanted Glitch settled into reading her weight before trying an interception.

And it was there. Every time she loaded, the weight went down through one hind leg and stayed there for a fraction, and Tremor Sense reported it faithfully — left leg loaded, hard, angle across — and then she was airborne and the ground went quiet and Jin’s eyes had to do the rest.

Three point eight. Four one. Five even.

She was making Glitch turn, and every turn cost him a beat, and she was collecting those beats.

On the ninth bound she spent them.

She came off the loaded leg at a shallower angle than the ones before it, landed inside Glitch’s turning arc, and raked across his left flank before he had his shoulder around. It wasn’t a killing attack. It wasn’t meant to be. Four shallow lines opened through the plating seam behind his ribs, and Vesper was already four meters clear before Glitch’s head finished coming around.

The tiers made a noise.

Jin checked the bond first and felt irritation mixed with a sharp surface sting. The rakes were shallow, but Jin made himself check each one before looking back at Vesper.

All right. You got us once.

"Don’t chase her," he said. "You’ll never get there."

Glitch’s tail lashed once, which was as close to arguing as he could manage from thirty meters away.

Then Nadia changed something, and Jin’s afternoon got harder.

The next bound covered barely two and a half meters. Glitch had already angled toward a farther landing, and Vesper used the opening to pivot and go again. Three meters this time, then a long six, then another short one.

Jin had seen the shorter jumps in her recordings. Knowing she could use them was considerably less helpful than knowing when she would.

Jin felt the third short bound arrive and understood what she’d done to him.

The loaded leg still gave him a direction. Distance was another matter. Vesper could change how she released that gathered strength, and he couldn’t distinguish the variations quickly enough through the ground. Each time he thought he had her, Glitch spent a precious moment facing somewhere she hadn’t gone.

I practiced this. Come on.

He watched five more and got no better at it.

Twenty meters away, Nadia was watching him back. Not Glitch — him. Watching where he put his beast, watching the half-second Glitch spent oriented toward a place Vesper hadn’t gone yet.

Jin suspected she had caught on. She couldn’t have learned about Faultline Rush from the recordings, but she didn’t need to know why he wanted a landing point to make finding one difficult.

His face grew hot. He’d spent days imagining the successful interception. Nadia had apparently spent hers preparing to be a nuisance.

Okay. So don’t guess where she lands.

He glanced beyond Vesper to the curved boundary.

She was circling clockwise now, returning to Glitch’s left flank whenever he turned too far. Each attack ended with her springing outward, away from his claws, before she resumed the circle. That retreat mattered as much as the takeoff.

"Walk across," Jin told Glitch. "Keep her on your left."

Glitch turned his head toward him.

"Yes, let her come. I’ll tell you when."

He angled Glitch toward the eastern edge, shortening the panther’s outward retreat. Vesper could have abandoned the flank and crossed behind him into open ground. Instead, she came back for the exposed seam, and Glitch held his angle while her claws scraped across it.

Jin winced. He checked the sting through the bond and kept him moving. Another shallow rake was manageable; a deep one would end this plan immediately.

Somebody in the tiers booed. Jin ignored them, although he hoped very much that whoever it was would still be watching in a minute.

On Vesper’s next retreat, the raised boundary was close enough that she landed along it instead of springing directly outward. Glitch stepped diagonally across her return path. For the first time, he was between her and the broadest stretch of open floor.

Nadia saw the problem and sent Vesper back along the ring. Jin moved Glitch a shorter distance inside her arc, keeping his shoulders across the nearest route inward. He wasn’t containing her completely. He was making her choose between passing close to his head and clearing the space beside his forequarters in a longer jump.

Vesper paused, tail whipping. Glitch stood only a few meters from the likely landing now, with open stone beyond it for his runout.

"Vesper, across!" Nadia called.

The panther gathered beside the ring, her body angled past Glitch’s shoulder toward the open center. Jin settled his beast’s feet and waited, suddenly aware of how tightly he was holding his phone.