by Scott Rhine
Mori security was caught flat-footed. Local security had the suspect bagged and tagged by the time Mori’s captain protested.
When Kaguya arrived, she smoothed things over. “Thank you for your diligence, Commander Taggart.”
“Z caught this one a few minutes before they landed,” Taggart said, sharing the credit. “He worries about student safety.”
“My father will convey his gratitude,” she said, appraising Zeiss in a new way. “If this suspect has no explosives on him, we’d like to take him with us for questioning.”
Taggart obeyed. Since the man had committed no crimes on the island, he had no real jurisdiction.
By the end of the day, her father spoke with both Daniel and Zeiss by video conference. “I don’t suppose I could offer you a position at Mori Energy Solutions?” Mori asked the TA.
“I am flattered but consider myself part of the Fortune family.”
The Japanese tycoon nodded. “I’ve heard that the two of you teach advanced combat class for individuals.”
“That’s to teach people with Simplification talent to apply their gift to hand-to-hand combat. Your wife was trained in the original form created by Master Robins. It is available to fourth year students who have joined teams.”
“Assassins hunt my only child today.”
“I’m merely a beginner at Aikido and have no talents,” Zeiss replied, after a nod of permission from his employer. “My sole purpose in a class is to make sure the Academy will never lose a child entrusted to our care.”
“That is why I trust you to teach her. Unfortunately, I cannot afford to wait until you feel worthy. There are riots brewing at our Malaysian plants. There are several Middle Eastern groups unhappy with my choice of Kaguya as heir, both because of her loose moral reputation and her gender. I do not delude myself into thinking either situation will change soon. Therefore, her ability to react must be enhanced with every tool available. She is my only child, Daniel-san.”
The owner of the island bowed. “I’ll rearrange our schedules to teach her, old friend.”
Once the conference was ended, Mori met his daughter on the roof of his headquarters. “I’ve given you an opportunity with this Monk. Are you sure he’s the one responsible for thwarting our agents?”
The young woman nodded. “Yes, Father. Positive. He hides from cameras and shields himself even from my talents, but his friends brag. Mr. Zeiss is Daniel Fortune’s most trusted assistant. This is a golden opportunity. If I can turn either of my instructors, we can control the mission to Sirius. And I’ve never met a man I couldn’t bend to serve me.”
“Us, you mean.”
“Of course, honored Father.”
****
Third semester was shorter than the others but more intensive. At the start of her final freshman semester, Red sat cross-legged in the smaller, basement dojo as Zeiss laid out an assortment of practice weapons. “I can’t believe you got me into an advanced combat seminar! Why are you here?”
“I’m cover,” explained Zeiss. “The class is on the books as Advanced Kendo for Women.”
She looked at the other classes listed on her pad. “Fluid Flow seems easy enough.”
“It’s a prerequisite for thermodynamics and aerodynamics, both on your target list.”
“I’ve been wanting to take Parallel Computer Programming. Thanks.”
“Sojiro’s polite, but some things you could do yourself rather than call him at odd hours.”
“But this one doesn’t make sense. Combinatorics and Complexity theory for math is all talk about how hard things are without actually doing anything.”
He ignored the jibe. “Daniel said you have to take complexity theory so you know how much computer power something is going to soak up before you do it. Just a small shift in direction up front can make all the difference in hitting the target, just like martial arts.”
“I’ll get my unlimited computer access back after this?”
“It’s also the foundation for . . .” When she rolled her eyes, he skipped to, “Yes.”
Red covered her mouth as she whispered, “Could you give me advice on getting guys to notice me?”
“I’m . . . not the best person to ask about that sort of thing.”
“I know, but you’ll talk to me, not like normal guys.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Is this about Lou?” His voice was less than approving.
She scuffed her feet. “Yeah. I’ve been going to the places that he and his posse hangout.”
“Posse?” he said with the same British accent she’d used.
“Shut up. I even managed to get into a dart game with them.”
“Let me guess; you smoked them all and called them wimps.”
She chuckled. “That’s what they do to each other.”
“And you want to know why they treat you like a short, annoying new guy?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s a mystery.”
Before she could pressure him about the sarcasm, they heard Daniel in the hallway, chatting with another young woman. When Kaguya walked through the door, both she and Red asked, “What’s she doing here?”
Daniel nodded to have Zeiss close the door and turn on the white-noise generators that prevented eavesdropping. Once they were secure, the professor announced, “Each of you has a parent who served as a Fortune Aerospace agent and trained in the basics of a new martial art that uses principles of Simplification. They’ve each passed fragments of this top-secret art to you.”
The women protested, but Daniel raised a hand. “I don’t judge; rather, I’m here to start you at the beginning to teach you all the steps. To those outside, this class is because my Kendo course rarely has women. I invited both of you because I cannot maintain such a fiction often. That’s why we use this private dojo. Much of this will be taught by guest lecturers from our security team, but even they won’t be told the rare gems the two of you are.”
Kaguya, in her new patterned-silk uniform, lit up at the compliment. They started with the basics of blocking crude, armed approaches. The billionaire had them practice separately because, when placed together, the girls fought constantly. Mori always seemed to turn each question into a way to flirt with Daniel. At one point, she blurted, “Why is that nat helping? You’re the expert.”
The billionaire said, “By your standards, Conrad is slow. But he’s my pace car on this speedway. He ensures your safety, and you’ll respect him as you do me. When he tells you something, it’s for a good reason.”
At the end of the first class, Daniel announced, “I know you feel this practice is artificial and boring. Bear with us. We need to teach you the right way and increase the speed gradually. By the end of this course, you’ll be sparring with each other, and you two will be among the top five fighters on the island.”
After the ladies hit the showers, Zeiss whispered, “Mori was all over you!”
“You’re exaggerating,” countered Daniel.
“You’re going to have to wash before you go home tonight. I can smell that perfume of hers on your wrists.”
“Perhaps.”
“And every time she said ‘yes, sensei,’ all slow like that, it sounded like a porn movie.”
Daniel closed his eyes. “Point made. Forgive an old and vain professor. I’ll get another helper. Because if I have those ladies practice together, it’ll be like tying the tails of two alley cats together and throwing them over a clothesline. They’d kill each other. They’re probably in there now, stabbing each other while wearing polite smiles."
Zeiss laughed. “Do you get many crushes?”
“This is calculated. She knows who I am. She wouldn’t hesitate to sleep with me, or even marry me. But inside a month, she’d divorce me and take half. Her family motto is: without profit, there is no progress.”
“I’ll offer the slot to Alistair if you don’t mind,” said Zeiss. “Trina’s already cleared him.”
“I’d be teaching from A to Z. I lik
e it. We could even get you Dr. Seussian uniforms.”
“To watch these two ladies duke it out, I think he’d wear one.”
“If we put them in a mud pit, we could charge admission.”
“Pudding. Red would insist on pudding.”
Daniel chuckled. “Trina would approve it because of the added calcium.”
****
Before class the second week, Daniel noted Zeiss squeezing his stress ball. “Z, what’s wrong?”
“Mom isn’t doing so well,” the TA said glumly.
“You said last week that she has diabetes,” Daniel recalled. “That’s nothing major. What else are you bottling up?”
Once uncorked, Zeiss rattled on for some time. “Now she has some other mystery problem the doctors are trying to figure out. This Kendo class is in addition to my already packed schedule, which we had to rearrange in ways I still haven’t mastered. Horvath keeps nagging me for updates I don’t have. That Rex we’ve been watching just got out of the isolation chamber test. He’s acting erratic and tracking him takes most of my evenings. Meanwhile, Red keeps busting my balls to get more people to help on her projects. This programming class just gives her more ideas. Maybe you can talk to her about hygiene. She hasn’t showered in three days because it ‘wastes too much time’. Sojiro wants to paint on Saturdays, too, which I wouldn’t mind except that I haven’t worked on my dissertation since . . .”
Red examined a bucket of red chalk powder, pretending not to listen as Zeiss’s voice got louder.
“You’re feeling overworked,” Daniel echoed, lowering his voice as Kaguya entered.
Zeiss hissed, “I feel like I’m at the bottom of an inverted pyramid, the tip of a phonograph needle. Everybody’s pressuring me.”
Alistair strolled in, a second before the class officially started. “Hey, Z, I need to ask a favor.”
Red covered her ears, anticipating an explosion. Instead, Zeiss said calmly, “After class, A-man.”
Daniel bit his lip. “We’ll discuss offloading you today at lunch. I can’t let my assistant burn out; you’re too important. But I had a favor, too. Professor Lazlo has something urgent he wants to tell me. He says it can’t wait and he’s camping in my office.”
“Go,” Zeiss said.
Kaguya ducked into the locker room where she made a phone call to Lazlo. Both her phone and the professor’s were manufactured by a division of Mori Electronics. When he answered, she said, “Enter the gates of my heaven forever.” After he dropped the phone, convulsing in pleasure, she used a backdoor feature to erase his phone’s call history and her own. She returned to the dojo in a cold fury. The little prick had wanted to turn her in. A day of direct stimulation to the pleasure centers would look to the doctors like his old epilepsy symptoms. They’d haul him back to Ward Seven for examination by specialists, but outside the island’s protection he wouldn’t be able to talk. He’d made his choice. Now she needed a new faculty contact.
Red was putting on thick pads for the lesson.
“Today we’re going freestyle,” announced Alistair as Zeiss rubbed red chalk dust on his bamboo sword and hands. “This exercise is called ‘doctor’. If Z connects with you and leaves a red mark on a limb, you lose the use of that limb. If he tags you in the torso, you’re dead. Same rules apply to him. We use the chalk because some people,” he said staring at Red, “don’t believe me when I call a point.”
“Jeez, it happened once, and I had a lot of padding. Let it go,” the girl complained.
“What about head and neck?” asked Mori.
“Out of bounds until you have better control,” ruled the judge. “Remember, the more you observe, the better your analysis. If you can go five minutes without getting killed, the defender wins and the match is over. Red, you go first to demonstrate classic approach from behind.”
Red stood, turned her back, and said deadpan, “I am an unsuspecting female. Woe is me.”
Zeiss made a show of sneaking up with his left hand concealed behind his back. Red listened with her special senses—nothing. When she felt the mat flex under his weight, she spun to confront him. The TA triggered the flash from the camera in his left hand. She instinctively blocked her face to avoid getting photographed. Zeiss seized the opportunity to grab her right wrist and spin her inward. She ducked, twisted, and escaped. “Defender right arm disabled,” the referee called.
“Sneaky bastard,” Red muttered.
Zeiss dropped the camera and picked up a bamboo sword.
After a minute of leaping and dodging, she was panting. “Tired?” he asked with perfect calm.
Kaguya glanced at the monitors. “His pulse rate hasn’t spiked since the first attack. What is he, some kind of psychopath?”
“Meditates,” gasped Red diving under another sweep. Before he could recover from his lunge, she back-kicked him in the butt. Before his slide stopped, she tagged his ankle.
“Attacker left leg disabled.”
He used the sword to help him stand. Then the pattern changed. It took several near misses for her to catch the new pattern. Then she blocked with her left hand and kicked his right foot out from under. “Defender left hand, attacker right leg disabled.”
He circled the point in front of him as they each calculated. “Three minutes,” said Kaguya. “Wait him out.”
He spun the sword at her legs and she flipped over the weapon, landing with her knees by his face. “Clavicle strike,” she said, bending gently against his shoulder.
“Yield,” Zeiss called.
“It took you over three minutes to beat a nat with a camera,” railed Kaguya. “He didn’t even break a sweat.”
Red opened a bottled water and guzzled it. “Knock yourself out.”
When Kaguya took her stance, Zeiss called, “Safety timeout. You need to have pads.”
“You don’t have any here that fit my chest. I’ve analyzed him this whole time. He won’t lay a finger on me.”
“Take my pads,” offered Red.
“Your sweat would ruin my new uniform.”
Zeiss faced the camera. “Professor Sorenson. Please tell Mori-san we made every effort to ensure his daughter was not bruised. I’ll slow my blows to compensate, but someone may be injured.”
“Now you’re just irritating me,” Kaguya sneered.
“Resume.”
She turned her back and braced. When she heard the pit-pat of his feet, her eyes grew wide and she reacted just in time to knock the sword arm aside and smash his knee. His momentum knocked them both down.
“Point attacker,” called Alistair.
“What?!” Kaguya exclaimed.
Red rushed forward. “Z, are you okay?”
His mouth was clamped shut against the pain as he stretched his right leg.
“Check your back,” Alistair said as he probed Zeiss’s injury. “She bent your leg backward. Hyper-extended. Shit, it’s longer now.”
“End recording,” Zeiss said between gritted teeth.
The Japanese heiress gasped as she saw the red streak on her expensive, white uniform.
“He couldn’t move faster without bruising you,” Red told Kaguya acidly.
“That’s why you scored him so easily,” Alistair said. “I’ve seen him school a couple smartasses, usually when they forget safety. The stain comes out after about three washings.”
“But you’re a nat!” Kaguya objected.
Zeiss growled as his assistant propped him up. “If one is not afraid to die, one can accomplish anything. To paraphrase the Book of Maccabees: every war elephant has a weakness, the fanatic willing to give his own life.”
Kaguya’s face changed from outrage to embarrassment as she bowed. “Sensei.”
“Class over,” Zeiss announced. “Get me to the clinic.”
“Allow me,” Kaguya insisted. “This was my fault.”
“A, can you clean up?” Zeiss asked as he limped out with Kaguya under one arm.
Alistair nodded and started carting the gear to
the janitor closet for cleaning. Red took an armload over, too. When he opened the closet, the referee spotted a pair of crutches. “Damn, those would have been good to give him. I feel like an idiot.”
“Go, I’ll clean up; I’m used to it,” Red said. “Next you’ll think of pain meds.”
“Crap, I had those in my pocket,” the referee admitted and then ran out with the crutches.
Looking at the scale of the clean-up and the tiny basin, Red decided to carry the chalk-covered gear into the women’s shower. She turned the water on full blast and filled the floor with the armload of weapons. She hummed as she scrubbed for several minutes. The red chalk melted in the stream and swirled down the drain.
Suddenly, something behind her reflected the water noise back.
“Did you forget something?” When she peeked with her special senses, she felt a Rex.
She heard Merrick raise his voice over the water. “We were hoping for Kaguya in the shower room. But we’ll take a little cherry. Might be a welcome change of pace. Tighter.”
“I hear small girls try harder,” said a man carrying a towel.
“Exactly,” said the one with a Taser. They spread out.
Her goggles were in the other room, out of voice range. The chalk-covered practice stick sat within easy reach. “Hell, no,” she replied. “You’ve been warned. I let you off easy last time.”
“That’s right, you made me bleed,” recalled the Rex. “Seems only right I return the favor. You two grab her arms, I wanna go first.” He opened the front of his pants.
“This is the path of the destroyer,” she recited, planning her moves. She needed him closer for maximum effect.
“If you scream, I’ll break your pelvis with my first thrust. Those never quite heal right. You’ll always remember your first. Every time some other guy mounts you, it’ll be me you feel.”
“Lights: out!” she shouted as she wheeled back with the practice sword in an acrobatic roll.
The Taser fired and missed.
She had a few seconds and could see each man by their aura prints. She killed the Rex first, smashing both collar bones and then crushing his unprotected throat. Red rolled to the side, taking the gunman out starting at the arms. When he fell backward, she jumped nearly to the ceiling and landed on his pelvis. The sound conducted through her feet and penetrated her adrenaline haze. “Two down,” she warned, not certain she could do this to another person.
