Regina Vance does not fight her own matches with her hands, and she has never pretended otherwise to anybody. She fights them through a command harness, on a licensed beast, under equipment rules the Association wrote nine years ago at a guild's request.
The beast was a Grade Four plated ridgeback with eleven command modules across its shoulders and flanks. Each module is separately licensed, separately insured, plus separately expensive in a way Luna described at the workshop bench with actual admiration.
"Say the numbers," Vell asked, "all of them, including the pool."
"Eleven modules at somewhere between nine and forty thousand credits each," Luna answered, "with the harness at ninety, which puts her equipment on that floor at about three hundred and ten thousand."
"Say the part after the numbers," he said.
"The part after the numbers is that Ivory has four fighters in this Cup," she said, "and every one of them draws equipment from the same guild insurance pool."
