by Dave Bara
“Aren’t you up for the challenge, Commander Peter Cochrane of Quantar?” she said, teasing me. I had no intention of backing down now. I took the glass in a swift and casual motion. Raising it to my lips, I hesitated only a second before taking an ill-advisedly large drink. For a second I tasted the pleasant flavors of apple and pear mixed together, then the viscous fluid started burning my lips and tongue. It crawled down my esophagus like a worm on fire. I coughed and choked, my eyes watering as I struggled to catch a breath of air without burning my lungs.
“My . . . God!” I choked out, “What is that?” She reached across the table and snatched the glass from my hand, then downed the rest of it, more than half a glass full, in one quick gulp, snapping her head back at the finish and exhaling.
“We call it schnapps,” she said in a normal tone of voice. I was still coughing. “As I said, a family favorite back home.”
“I’m glad I’m not in your family,” I said. She smiled wryly.
“Yes, well, I should answer your original question, Commander,” she said.
“I’ve forgotten what it was,” I said, wiping my mouth with my uniform sleeve. “But go ahead.”
“You asked what brought me to High Station. I’ve been assigned as a strategic attaché for the Carinthian Navy for the last three months, although my commission has recently been transferred to the Union Navy Command.”
“I see,” I said, finally recovering from the schnapps. “Now I suppose you’ll want to hear all about me?” To my surprise, she shook her head no.
“No need. You were born the second son of the Grand Admiral of the Quantar navy, who will soon be retiring to assume the honorary title of Director of Quantar. Since the untimely death of your brother in a Union Navy accident, you are now first in line to succeed to the chair after your father, should it ever be offered by the empire again. Your official title is Viscount of Queensland, but when your father becomes Director you’ll become Duke of KendalFalk. You’ve just graduated at the top of your class of thirty-six cadets as a certified longscope officer, and your aptitude rating was off the charts. Your best friend is the Earth Historian, Serosian, who will stay with Starbound, and you’ll be serving under Captain Lucius Zander aboard H.M.S. Impulse beginning in a couple of days. Did I miss anything?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, then thought about Derrick and how I had come to be in my current position. In many ways I didn’t feel worthy, but that was something to deal with at another time.
I was a bit taken aback by her knowledge of me, and somewhat offended. It was clear she had extensive information on me and my family, some of it high-ranking intelligence. I didn’t much like being put on the defensive and she had certainly done that. Frankly, I was more than a bit angry. “You Carinthians don’t miss much, do you?” I said as I finished my bitter and then stood to go without saying anything more, my evening’s fun waning. She tapped the table.
“Please stay,” she said.
“Is that an order, Commander?”
“No.”
I sat, letting her know by the look on my face that I was upset with the direction of the conversation. “I’m afraid I don’t like having my private life so . . . well known,” I said. She sighed, in sympathy, I thought.
“I don’t believe you have a private life anymore, Commander. That’s something you’d better get used to,” she said. I contemplated her. Clearly she was much more knowledgeable about me than I was comfortable with, and the conversation seemed as if it had been arranged. I wondered if she knew about Natalie and my relationship with her, and what had happened with Impulse at Levant.
“In earlier times between us you would have been thought a spy,” I said. She tilted her head slightly at me.
“Those times are over, Cochrane. What happened in a war fought a century and a half before we were born has no effect on us or how we behave. Quantar and Carinthia are allies and equal members of the Union,” she said. I waved off the serving girl as she came past our booth. I’d had quite enough alcohol and quite enough of being lectured.
“As you said, madam, a war fought so long ago shouldn’t affect us today. But you should also know that wounds can take a long time to heal, especially fresh ones.” I thought of Natalie again then, and for the first time I began to feel a great sadness at her loss. There was an awkward silence as we sat together. I had no idea what she knew or didn’t know about me, and at that point I didn’t care. I just wanted a graceful exit from the conversation.
Then she broke through the silence in a quite unexpected way.
“Do you fence?” she asked. I was surprised by the question.
“Fence? Well, I suppose so. I took a quarter of it at the Academy.”
“Excellent! I’ve been looking for a partner all week. No one seems interested in taking me on. Are you game?” She leaned forward as she said the last. I was a bit taken aback by her aggressiveness; that was something new in a woman for me. I found it intriguing, and she had certainly shaken me out of my funk.
“Well if no one on High Station will offer you the honor of a challenge, then I must accept. For Quantar, of course,” I said. I also thought the exercise would do me some good after the stress of the last few days.
“Of course,” she smiled widely. “You’re a brave young man, taking on a challenge so quickly without even knowing your opponent. So tell me, how did you do in your fencing class at the Academy?”
“I ended up sixth,” I responded.
“Ah, so you have some skill then! Excellent!” she said again, then got up suddenly to take her leave. “I have a court reserved at 0700 tomorrow, or should I say today, on the recreation deck. Don’t be late.” She said the last as if it were an order. I looked at my watch.
“But it’s nearly 0100 already and I’ve been drinking all night!” I protested. She smiled again, turned to go, then turned halfway back.
“Oh, and, Cochrane, I should probably mention I was Champion my final year at the Academy.”
“Academy Champion?” I asked through the fog of my beer. She shook her head negatively.
“World Champion,” she said. I swallowed hard.
“Carinthian World Champion?” I asked.
She just smiled again.
“See you at 0700.”
Fencing with Dobrina
I got up early and arrived at the rec deck by 0630, thankfully nursing only a slight hangover from my previous evening’s adventure. After confirming which court Commander Kierkopf had reserved, I checked out a fencing suit and mask and sorted through the foils, finally settling on one that I hoped would help me to use my weight and muscle to advantage. After dressing I scurried out to the court, ten minutes early.
Commander Kierkopf was already there, stretching and flexing her foil.
“Good to see you, Commander,” she said, smiling like a predator smiles at its prey. “I was worried you weren’t going to show.”
I shrugged the barb off. “Good to see you as well, Commander Kierkopf.” I swallowed a last shot of my hydrating drink, then motioned to the starting marks with a wave of my hand and an affected bow, hoping courtesy, no matter how disingenuous, would serve me well. She donned her mask without another word and took her mark with practiced ease. I stepped up slowly, dipped my leading foot in talc, secured my mask, and took my mark, left hand leading.
“I didn’t know you were left-handed,” she said, noting my stance with interest and stepping back from her mark while feigning an adjustment to her glove. No doubt this was merely a tactic to allow her to reassess her original strategy. I too stepped off my mark as a courtesy and circled briefly.
I was lucky in a way, having been born left-handed, but my parents, thinking it might be awkward, had converted me to a right-hander as a child. As I grew older I found that my natural left-handedness had come more to the fore and given me the advantage of being somewhat ambi
dextrous.
I replied to her inquiry nearly as casually as she had brought it up. “Well, we hardly got a chance to get to know each other last night, now did we?” I said. She nodded in reply.
“Quite right, Mr. Cochrane, quite right. Next time I won’t be so casual,” she said. I took my mark in response, sensing that I may have gained a slight advantage of surprise but still fully aware of my disadvantages in the match. She took her place again and said, “Mark!”
I touched her foil with mine, a small metal click as the blades connected. “Mark!” I said in reply. She tapped my foil.
“En garde!”
The next few seconds were a whirlwind of action, her foil flashing at me from every conceivable direction. I gave ground as fast as I could, trying to find space to set up a defense and hoping to avoid getting pinned. I circled left and tried to duck under her thrust to my open shoulder but she was too fast and caught the webbing of my tunic, sounding the scoring bell. One-nil. It had all taken mere seconds.
“Come on now, Cochrane, surely you can do better than that!” she taunted me. “What do they teach you at that Academy? Child’s swordplay?” She went back to her mark. I took several deep breaths to buy myself time, then took my mark again, this time right-handed.
“Trickery doesn’t suit you, Cochrane. I hope you’re better right-handed,” she said.
“Me too,” I replied. This time I tapped her sword.
“En garde,” I said.
I stepped back and this time she didn’t charge, sizing up my right-handed skills, circling the mat furiously with her foil down at her side. I kept mine fully extended.
“You can’t win if you never attack, you know,” she said. Again this was obviously designed to distract me while she plotted her strategy. I said nothing in return, but dropped my foil in reply. She hesitated only a second before charging across the mat at me.
Our foils clashed again, hers whipping through the air with lightning precision, mine scattering from point to point, barely keeping her at bay. The thrust and parry went on nonstop. She pursued me from corner to corner, always attacking, with rarely a moment where we were not engaged. I judged we had been at it almost three minutes when she made her move.
She came in with her foil low, in a deep crouch as she flashed at me. My parry was relatively simple until I realized her true strategy. In two short lunges she was inside my right leg with her left and pushed me backward while our foils were locked, mine inside of hers. She drove her shoulder into my chest.
“Oomph!” I let out as the air escaped my lungs. I started to fall backward over her leg as she pushed me down to the mat with her free hand. Instinctively my arms spread out to cushion my fall and she released her foil, whipping it into my chest nearly the same moment as I hit the mat. The scoring bell sounded again. Two-nil.
I lay on my back, embarrassed and clearly outclassed again, or at least outsmarted. But I had learned one thing, I was good enough that I had frustrated her into making a move that was outside the rules of the game, at least the official rules. I sprang to my feet, whipping off my mask.
“Commander Kierkopf!” I shouted, more than a bit angry. “I didn’t know that such tactics were allowed under the rules.”
She turned back to me from her bench where she was taking a drink between games. “Formal fencing rules, yes. But we are engaged in sword fighting, my young man. We are in the military and this is no contest. It’s training. So you’d better learn to fight as you would in real life. Real life conflict is not a game.” I rolled my mask back down over my face to show my displeasure at her underhandedness. My mother had taught me to always respect a lady, but clearly this woman was no lady. “If you’re not up to it, we can quit now,” she said, taunting me again and challenging my pride.
I replied by taking my mark.
Seconds later we were engaged in battle. This time I didn’t trifle with swordplay. She lunged at my left shoulder with her foil, missing the webbing and a third point—and the match—by mere millimeters. I stepped forward into the open space she had left by her attack and grappled with her, grabbing her firmly by the wrists with both hands. She resisted and I found her surprisingly strong, sinewy and difficult to move off her mark. Both our foils fell to the mat. In a match of pure physical strength I was always going to win. As she stepped in to gain leverage I put my left foot down on her right and pushed her to the mat. We landed with a thud and rolled. Again I was surprised by her strength and resiliency. After a few more moments of struggle I used my superior strength and size to roll her on her back, pin her arms under my knees, and then reached out to grab the nearest foil. It was hers. I drove it into the webbing of her tunic, right between her breasts. A killing stroke. The scoring bell sounded.
I stayed on top of her, holding her down.
“Let me up, goddamn you!” Then she cursed at me in German. I let her up, but only after gathering my own foil as well. When I stood the court erupted in cheers, whistles, and catcalls. It seemed that during our tête-à-tête we had drawn a bit of a crowd from among the other officers in the gym. There were now twenty or so ringing our court. I acknowledged the cheers from the crowd by bowing deeply from the waist and then holding up her foil as a prize.
“Give me back my foil!” she demanded under the cover of the cheering.
“Ask nicely,” I said, loud enough for everyone to hear. She tapped her foot angrily, hands on hips, her mask still drawn down.
“Would you please return my foil, Commander,” she said in an even tone.
“Why certainly, Commander Kierkopf,” I said, making sure that everyone in the crowd, mostly Quantar officers, knew who I had just bested. I hesitated a second, then got a roundly evil idea. I took her foil and snapped it over my knee, then tossed the pieces over to her. The crowd roared in laughter and approval.
Dobrina Kierkopf looked down at her broken foil, then kicked the pieces off the mat. She went to the wall and grabbed the first foil off the rack, whipping it around as she came.
“Game time is over, Cochrane!” she said as she returned to the mat. This time she charged me without taking her mark. I scrambled to pick up my foil and scurry away from her, uncertain of my next strategy. One thing I couldn’t do was repeat my assault tactics from the last game. She ran at me in full rage, an all-out attack.
“Yeee-ah!” she screeched as our swords clashed, metal glinting off metal in a fury of motion, point and counterpoint. She kicked me hard in the side, just below the ribs. It knocked the wind out of me, and I grasped her sword hand at the wrist to keep her from taking advantage. She did the same to me but I kept my body clear of her so that she couldn’t repeat the kick. We danced around the mat in our struggle, arms locked and feet balancing us against each other. She dipped her right knee then and instantly I knew what she was up to. Faking her knee buckling to get me out of position; the tactics of mistake. With my body weight committed forward I had only one option, and that was to “agree” with her. I let my body fall toward her as she intended me to do, then instead of falling and allowing myself to be rolled over, I released her sword hand and grabbed her by the neck, placing my left knee under her thigh as support for her body. I rolled her over my knee as I swung her around, sending her flying forward with her back to me as I pivoted and brought my foil around in a flash, whipping across the webbing of her left buttocks as it flashed through the protective clothing. The bell sounded. Two-two.
The crowd had erupted in my favor again, and the cheering was wild as Dobrina checked her pants. Despite the shielding from the protection field the fabric was torn out at her buttocks. She looked at it for only a second before returning to her mark. I knew that it would leave a sizable welt, I’d had that kind of injury before, but not in that precise location.
Dobrina motioned me back to the marks, anxious to get on with the match.
“Very clever, young man,” she said as we took our
marks. “But now the match is on the line. No more games from me.”
“Nor from me,” I said, knowing full well I would do anything in my power to win. We clashed metal and the dance began again. We circled each other, testing, probing defenses. The crowd grew silent. Dobrina, as always, was the aggressor. I fended her off several times before opening my mouth.
“Come now, Commander! The crowd here wants a winner! You are so patient you’re boring them!” They laughed.
“You could choose the attack, Mr. Cochrane,” she taunted.
“I could, and be given away as a fool,” I said back. She nodded.
“So we both grow weary of the chase. Very well then.” She lunged forward with her foil lancing out at me, forcing me back as she came. I deflected a right-handed thrust with my backhand and in an instant I saw her foil in the air, floating free. I thought I had disarmed her and had only to deliver the point to win the match. But as I watched, almost in slow motion, I saw too late what she was really doing. Her left hand grasped the foil as it drifted through the air, closing down on it expertly as she changed hands, then whipping it into my exposed rib cage.
The scoring bell sounded.
The crowd let out a groan of disappointment. My hands went to my knees as I stood at midcourt, my lesson over for the day. I took off my helmet and looked to Dobrina, who was already packing her training bag with her back to me. She was out of her tunic in seconds and into lounging shells, wiping her sweat-beaded face.
I took congratulations from some of the officers who had watched the match and received more than one offer of a drink in the officer’s lounge later than evening, which I intended to follow up on. Eventually I made it to my bench and unzipped my tunic.
Dobrina came across the mat. She looked down at me, her hair pulled harshly back, her face showing an outward expression of placidity. But I knew different. No doubt I had pushed her to her limits.
“Thank you for the match, Commander,” she said as she walked past me to the women’s locker room.
