For a moment, nothing happened. The gallery watched the display, where the white continued to churn and the wind continued to howl, and several of the cadets began to smirk.
Then, out of the whiteness, something enormous fell forward.
It was a Mekharan, its tall, humanoid body pitching slowly out of the storm with a smoking hole burned straight through the center of its chest.
It struck the snow face-first a short distance in front of Ning's Mecha, sending up a great spray of white, and lay there without moving.
A score notification appeared in the corner of the display.
The observation gallery went completely silent.
Tobin's mouth fell slightly open. Elena stared at the display without blinking. Among the cadets from the other two academies, the smirks had vanished, replaced by looks of bewildered disbelief.
Hale was no longer smiling.
