Kia leans far out over the railing until her dark hair splashes onto the transparent surface of the containment dome. Eerie green light bathes her features as she gazes into the sunken lab area below, watching intently as thin streams of liquid converge into the half shell of a reinforced piece of ceramo-carbon armor.
     A corrosive vapor hisses forth as the two liquids make contact. A skeletal robotic appendage drops from above and rapidly screws a second piece of armor onto the first, sealing the volatile liquid within.
     Kia glances over at the face of Simon E'Toille far below, barely visible through the shroud of the chem/rad suit. She senses frustration in his gaze: he doesn't believe the test is going to work.
     It doesn't.
     The reinforced sphere hangs mid-air in the grip of an EM field. Now rapidly spinning, it begins to smoke. Suddenly, a sharp pinprick of green light sprouts from its surface, then another.
     "Containment integrity compromised," drones the steely voice of mother/computer.
     She can not hear him through the dome, but she can imagine what Dr. E'Toille is saying to the others: "Terminate stress simulation! Evacuate corrosion sample! Move, move!"
     Frantic, the little scientists move: they press buttons; they scream into tiny invisible microphones. The sphere begins to slow as an evacuation portal opens.
     Too late. Kia hears a vague "pop," as if from a dropped a light bulb. The sphere ruptures violently, spurting ribbons of green vitriol. Scientists duck and cover their ears, some falling over completely. Gouts of the green liquid splatter up against the thick containment walls of the test environment module far below, and begin greedily corroding the hardened substance.
     Simon gestures wildly, and smacks the ejection panel.
     Portal fins rapidly iris open. The test environment module clangs clumsily off its moorings. Kia feels the distant tickle of magno-acceleration coils charging. Then, everything goes white.

* * * * *

     "Look at it. Look at that damned thing. God, I hate it."
     For a moment, Simon stares into the night sky, then abruptly crosses to a fat leather chair and collapses into it.
     High above a strange star flickers, arrival predestined by its mechanical orbit. Kia gazes into the void and regards the alien object. She does not hate the SlipSider Dais. To her it represents an ideal--one to which she aspires.
     "We need to implement a special-matter coating. We've got to create a mini-sub-atomic deflection force to repulse the corrosives at the base level, and stop trying to build resistant material strains…"
     "You're right Simon," Kia says with an absent wave of her hand, "you usually are."
     He sighs and claws his fingers through his dark cropped hair.
     "Then why won't you listen to me, Kia? Why are we pursuing this line of research? It's not practical. The mere act of attempting to create this sort of Roven is extraordinarily reckless. I feel like we're trying to inject eggshells with nitro-glycerin. This "Hazard Class" design you envision--it's just not practical."
     Kia smiles and walks to the glass wall of the arboretum. She touches her fingertips to its smooth surface, feeling the faint coolness of the vacuum beyond. For a moment, she relishes the sensation--behind her: warm, oxygen rich air, thick with clusters of vegetation, birch trees, the smell of pine, the mating chirp of birds of indeterminate origin. Before: the vastness of space; vacuous silence; a glittering sandbox of stars. And: the SlipSider Dais.
     "Simon, do you remember when the Merlix Corporation started designing vertical take-off capabilities into the Harbinger Class Roven?"
     "Sure, but that's not the same, they were dealing with conventional issues, trying to put things together in a new way-"
     "That's not what I'm talking about.."
     She turns, sweeping her long hair over one shoulder.
     "I'm talking about the Arena, Simon. I'm talking about the need to compete, to innovate. To win, at any cost. It cost the Merlix Corporation over a billion credits to put that design into implementation. A billion credits. It was a stunningly good idea. And the very first time they put one of their Harbinger Classes into the arena it got tagged by a Wargod missile cluster and went nova."
     Kia pauses for effect, and although he's heard the story before, Simon leans a little closer. She is, after all, very good at creating effect.
     "Three months later, some nomad faction is putting jump jets into their Harbinger Classes. Damn Simon, it took these nomads three months to back-engineer those jets. Merlix drops a billion creds, and three months later a bunch of scavengers is building these things. Merlix loses out, nomads prosper, now was that practical? Of course not. But now… now we've got jump jets. And now we've got enclosed particle weapons. And now we've got frictionless aero coating. And next year, we're going to have a Hazard Class bot, and we're going to win in the arena, and we're going to go out there to that SlipSider Dais, and we're going to challenge that godforsaken SlipSider bot, and we're going to win."
     Simon stares at her, reluctantly compelled by her infectious enthusiasm..
     "And then what, Kia?"
     "Then? Then we see why they put that Dais up there in the first place. Then we see why they built the arenas. Then we see why they want us to build the best roven possible. They're training us Simon. They're training us for something big, and I want to find out what…"