Read Online The Final Key: Part Two of Triad by Catherine Asaro - Free Book Online Page B

cover her tracks. If she hadn't confessed, they probably couldn't have proved anything. But she would have known. Her grief was no excuse. Confessing had been one of her hardest moments, and she regretted losing her honors status, but she couldn't have lived with herself otherwise. The cadets thought her clever for cracking the system, but to Soz, an accomplishment gained by unfair advantage meant nothing.
    "You know the course has been reprogrammed." Stone made it a statement rather than a question.
    "Yes, sir. That's why I want to run it." He considered her. "Very well."
    Stone gave his holoboard to the cadet leading the exercises. Then he and Soz walked across the fields. She halted at the Echo and narrowed her eyes. This course had been her bane. Her half-brother Kurj, the Imperator, had ordered her to run it on one of her first days at the academy. But to do well on the Echo, a cadet needed the physical augmentation they received their third year. Although she had never run the course, she hadn't wanted to lose face in front of Kurj or her classmates. Then he had added one last command: beat the record of nine minutes, forty-three seconds. Soz had gritted her teeth, tried the impossible, and failed. Her time had been appalling. Only later did she learn that she had been the first novice in ten years to finish the course on her first try. Kurj had neglected to mention that fact. He was too busy giving her hell because she was his heir and his cocky sister and who the blazes knew why else.
    Since then, she had tried the Echo numerous times but never beat the record. Often she limped off the course covered in mud and bruises, humiliated by her time.
    Then the Traders had killed her brother.
    Soz had gone a little crazy then, obsessed with revenge. She had sworn to rip through her training and graduate so she could go out and destroy the Traders who had ended her brother's life. She cracked the field webs, memorized (he Echo files, and pulverized the previous record. But it hadn't been real, and it hadn't helped her grief.
    Today she again faced her nemesis, this time the honest way.
    Stone held his timer and said, simply, "Go." Soz took off.
    The entrance to the Echo looked like a dirt path, but it was actually perplex, a material saturated with sensors. It evaluated her stride, weight, brain waves, and any other data it could use to analyze and predict her actions. So she didn't go down the path. Instead she ran along a narrow bar at its border. Although the bar could also gather data about her, the information wouldn't be as accurate. Any advantage she gained, no matter how small, could help. She sped along the
    bar, her speed and reflexes enhanced. It shuddered, trying to knock her back onto the perplex, but she outwitted its attempts.
    A vaulting horse blocked the end of the path. Soz jumped in front of it, never breaking stride, and hurtled over the horse in a flip. She nailed her landing and sprinted forward, carried by her momentum. The scaffolding loomed ahead, a structure of metal struts that vibrated, bent, and snapped with rudimentary intelligence. When she jumped up and grabbed a bar, it almost succeeded in throwing her off. The techs had added odd nuances to its vibrations. She grabbed new bars as the ones she held sagged and jerked. She swung through the crazily shaking struts, letting go of each just before she grabbed the next, so that for an instant she was airborne with no handhold. She had discovered it confused the program that controlled the structure. The bars responded to her touch, and if she broke contact, they couldn't react as well.
    She made it through the framework, but her unfamiliarity with the changes in its behavior slowed her down. At the other side, she let go from high up and dropped. The impact of her landing could have broken her knees before ISC had enhanced her body. Now they bent at exactly the amount necessary to cushion her landing, and her augmented legs absorbed the force. She