Helium3 Box Set

  Chapter 14

  Mervyn pulled on the stretchy dycra suit: a grey tight-fitting, lightweight cloth woven from graphite nanotubes.  Although immensely strong, the fabric weighed almost nothing.

  As soon as he powered up he saw the familiar shimmer of protective shields around him.  He jogged on the spot a few times and felt the suit tighten.  It drew kinetic energy from his movements to power the defence fields.  He stepped from the locker room and joined the other students waiting around the swot arena for Tasha Sanches, their physical education tutor, to explain the mysteries of swot.

  Tasha Sanches, tall, athletic, and spiky-haired, strolled in like a predator in a purple dycra suit,  ‘To play the noble game of Swot you need – one photon ball, two contestants in armoured suits and a Swot Pool -- that’s the large low gravity sphere in front of you.  The aim of the game is very simple – you whack the ball with your armoured hand and bounce it off your opponent’s target.  The difficult bit is manoeuvring in the low-g pool.’  Tasha Sanches made it sound easy, but Mervyn, who had topped the Starlight junior league two years running, knew Swot was not for the faint hearted.  He had also been the unofficial Junior Body Swot champion:  unofficial, because Body Swot, the more aggressive version of the game where an opponent's arms, legs, and torso, but never the head, formed the target, had a minimum legal age limit of eighteen.  In the Academy they played the tamer, and legal, Target Swot version.

  ‘The easiest way to learn Swot, is to watch a game,’ Tasha said. ‘Has anyone played before?’

  Mervyn tagged her biolink.

  ‘Thank you, Mervyn… and Rufus.  Step into the swot pool please.  The rest of you hang onto the outside of the sphere and watch the action through the clear sides.’

  Mervyn glanced at De Monsero, it was the first time he had encountered De Monsero since the incident with the spybot.  His opponent looked lithe and dangerous in his bodysuit - he smirked back at Mervyn.  How good was he?  He looked confident.  Mervyn felt a surge of hatred for his opponent.

  ‘Helmets on, gentleman,’ Tasha said.  The door of the swot pool closed Mervyn and he felt his body become lighter.  For a moment he wobbled unsteadily on his feet as he adjusted to the weaker gravity.  It was like stepping off a boat onto dry land and feeling the ground still moving.  He took a step, and glided two metres across the pool, then, he pushing gently with his toes, he floated to the centre.  Both contestants jumped and ran around the pool to acclimatise themselves to low gravity.

  ‘Rufus, you are blue; Mervyn you are orange,’ Tasha said.

  Mervyn ran his fingers lightly over a control pad woven into his sleeve.  Starting at his feet and working its way up, the suit changed colour to a fluorescent orange.  Finally his helmet turned orange as well.  ‘Oohs,’ and ‘ahs,’ from the rest of the class accompanied the colour transition.  They crowded in, pressing their faces against the clear walls of the pool.  De Monsero now stood in a neon blue outfit.

  ‘Ready to strike off?’ Tasha asked. ‘Good.  Strike positions then please.’  Mervyn and De Monsero leaped gently into the air.  Their momentum, in the near weightless environment of the pool, propelled them easily to the ceiling.  They both clung to grab handles, and hung there dangling from the roof of the pool.

  Tasha explained she would drop a photon ball into the pool between the hanging players, which must strike the side once before play began.  The contestants would bat the ball toward the target painted on the wall behind their opponent.  ‘Every time a ball hits the target area, the successful player gains points.  ‘Swot,’ she said, ‘is a game of acrobatics and agility, and hand to eye co-ordination.  Are you ready, gentlemen?’

  Mervyn, hanging from the strike rings sizing up his opponent, nodded.

  ‘Crying shame that spybot got away from Starlight, huh?’  De Monsero murmured.

  ‘I thought you didn’t see it.’

  De Monsero changed his grip on the ring and bit his lip, ‘Not until it headed for Revlon.’

  ‘It nearly flattened you, how could you miss it?’

  ‘Instrument failure.’ 

  Mervyn struggled to contain the anger flaring inside again.  De Monsero was trying to unnerve him, put him off his game.

  ‘Ready… Strike!’  Tasha released the purple photon ball from its trap.  The ball dropped straight between the hanging players.

  De Monsero smirked at Mervyn as he dropped to the floor, caught the ball on the rebounded, and swatted it at the blue target – the ball turned blue as his hand made contact.  A second later the ball turned orange as Mervyn, only a split second behind De Monsero, deflected it with his outstretched arm.

  ‘Mine,’ De Monsero snarled, leaping after the streaking ball, but Mervyn wasn’t giving a nanometre and dived after him.  The players crashed together, their body armour absorbing most of the impact.  The ball turned blue again as De Monsero swatted it expertly at his target.

  The scoreboard beeped.

  ‘Hit! One: Nil - to Rufus’ Tasha declared. ‘I will recall the ball after each point.  Players will resume their strike positions’.  She sucked the ball back into its trap, while Mervyn and De Monsero dangled from the strike rings again.  There was nothing wrong with De Monsero’s aim, and he was all too ready to go for the ball - let’s see what else he can do, Mervyn thought.

  ‘And your eyes failed to notice the spybot too I suppose,’ Mervyn said.

  ‘Horrible coincidence.’

  ‘Why Revlon?  You said the spybot headed for Revlon.  Why?’

  De Monsero avoided his gaze, ‘Just a guess... logical -- it’s the only place in that direction... if I were looking for the Naga that’s where I’d start.’