Death Star (30 page)

Besides, when did he have time to go see a doctor?

Most of the students were rank beginners; even though
some of them could fight well enough, they had to learn the system of teräs käsi to overlay what they already knew. There were reasoned patterns of movement, principles, laws, and these were more important than any particular technique. It didn’t matter if you had a punch that would knock down a wall if you couldn’t deliver it, and to do that, you needed a system that would allow it frequently.

Even though his students were newbies, Nova always felt as if he learned as much from them as he taught. If you had to explain something to a being who knew nothing about it, you had to understand it pretty well. Sometimes words would come out of his mouth that he didn’t expect—words that suddenly rang in a way that the essential truth just … blossomed suddenly, like a desert flower after a sudden rain. Now and again he himself couldn’t believe some of the things he’d said. Where had that come from? He hadn’t known it was there until he’d heard himself say it.

He realized that someone was standing before where he sat, cross-legged, on the matted floor. “Divo, you had a question?”

The student, a squat power lifter who looked strong enough to pick himself up with one hand, nodded. “Yeah, Sarge. That distance thing. I’m a little confused.”

Usually there was one student who asked most of the questions, and while the others would sometimes cut their gazes to the ceiling and look bored, the questioner was usually speaking for more than just him- or herself. That was why Nova always answered questions as completely as time allowed.

“Bare hand-to-hand, there are four ranges,” he said. He counted them off on his fingers. “Kicking, punching, elbowing, grappling. You can’t grapple effectively at elbow range, you can’t elbow at punching range, and you can’t punch at kicking range.

“Add impact weapons and you alter the distances. A
cane extends your punch to kicking range. A knife extends your elbow to punching range. Sodder has a knife in his hand, you don’t want him closer than a step and a half unless you’re doing something active to him—inside that, he’s too close. He’ll get you with that blade more often than not, and it only takes one time to ruin your day.

“So—let me show you the step-in to steal that crucial distance again …”

The drills went on. The students practiced the moves with Nova walking around, making corrections, offering direction, telling them when they had it wrong and when they had it right. He liked to think he was an encouraging teacher. He always seemed to develop a core of regulars, even though turnover among newbies was usually pretty good—a lot of folks wanted to be able to kill someone with their bare hands, but they didn’t want to do the months or years of work necessary to develop the skills.

The air in the rec room seemed to change, suddenly and subtly. Nova could feel it without having to look around.

Danger had entered the room.

Without making it obvious as he helped a student find the proper hand position for a punch, he turned slightly.

Standing just inside the door was Rodo, the bouncer from the Hard Heart.

Nova grinned slightly, and caught the other’s grin in return. The class would be over in five minutes, and he knew Rodo’s timing wasn’t an accident. His smile became wider, as well as slightly rueful. He was tired, he was hungry, and he hadn’t been expecting it—but that’s how it always went, wasn’t it? Those were the conditions one trained for.

He’d gotten his First Level Adept after a grueling two-hour class that had involved a lot of groundwork, athletic rolling around and grappling. That kind of stuff wore you out pretty quickly. His master had waited until the class was over and the students headed for the sonic showers
when he’d pulled Nova aside. “I think it’s time you took the test,” he’d said.

The sudden adrenaline rush had gripped Nova, briefly washing away his fatigue. “Really? When?”

“Right now.”

Nova smiled at the memory. The test had taken almost four hours. The old man had turned him upside down and inside out; he’d taken him apart like a malfunctioning droid. And he’d been right to do so. After all, a footpad on the street wasn’t going to wait until you felt your best. You had to be ready at any moment to fight to the death, if necessary. Otherwise the teachings weren’t worth knowing.

At the end of the session, Nova dismissed his students, many of whom were obviously wondering what the Hard Heart’s bouncer was doing here. Nova moved over to where Rodo was holding up the wall.
He’s big enough to hold it up
, he thought.

Might as well get to it; he wasn’t getting any less tired.

He said, “So, you want to go a couple of rounds?”

Rodo shrugged, his shoulders shifting like tectonic plates. “I wouldn’t mind. ’Course, if dancing with your charity cases has tired you out—”

“Thanks for your concern. Light spar?”

Rodo nodded. “Fine by me.”

Back when Nova had been a beginner, there had been two kinds of sparring matches generally allowed. Heavy sparring required the donning of bulky, padded biogel suits. Even though the gel was relatively lightweight, it added five kilos to you at minimum, not to mention slowing reaction time and reducing range of movement considerably. A suited-up attacker charging you could shrug off a strike that would deck an unprotected fighter and keep coming.

Early on in his training Nova learned to answer the question
Light or heavy sparring?
with the former. Of course,
the only difference in the two was the suit—you hit just as hard in “light sparring,” but since you knew you could get seriously damaged if you made a mistake, you were more careful.

Nova closed the door and latched it. “You need to warm up?”

Rodo shook his head. “Nah. You need a nap?”

Nova shook his head and grinned. He walked to the center of the padded room and turned to face Rodo.

Teräs käsi had half a dozen basic stances, and Nova was comfortable with them all, having practiced them thousands of times. But as Rodo ambled toward him, he didn’t shift his feet into one of the TK defensive plants. He stayed in a neutral pose, shoulders relaxed, feet about shoulder width apart, his left foot a hair ahead of his right. No point in giving his opponent any clues as to his style until the fight began.

Nova knew he was starting at a disadvantage. Even beyond his being tired, there was the simple fact that Rodo outmassed him by a good twenty kilos and stood almost a head taller. Everything else being equal—and so far, Nova’d seen nothing to indicate that Rodo’s fighting skills were better than his own—the advantage always lay with the bigger man.

But Rodo didn’t know about Nova’s Blink. That probably made them even.

Probably …

Rodo stopped just outside his own step and a half, slightly longer than Nova’s range. A two-step position was too far to attack; the defender would have plenty of time to get set. A single step was too close.

Nova held his ground.

Rodo circled to his left.

Nova turned, shifting slightly, his weight on the balls of his feet and pivoting on both incrementally. He bent his knees a bit, sinking a little lower.

Rodo moved his hands, circling to a high–low, left-over-right position, pulled them in closer to his body, leaned away a hair, and stole half a step closer.

It was a good fake. That upper-body motion would make you think Rodo had moved back when in fact he had moved in.

Nova stepped off neutral to a side stance and used the angle to steal back the half step, maintaining their distance. Rodo nodded. “Nice,” he said.

Nova did a back crossover step, right foot behind the left, giving Rodo what looked like an unbalanced and awkward target. The bigger man shook his head. “Maybe not.”

Nova circled to his left, stopped, and pivoted, putting his left side forward at about forty-five degrees.

Rodo mirrored the move and dropped his center of gravity a couple of centimeters. Since he was taller, if Nova got to his attack range, Rodo would already be there. The bouncer was a big man, and that no doubt tended to favor him in distance fighting. But he also worked in a cantina, where encounters would be close.

Rodo begin to sway ever so slightly, turning his hips. Nova repressed a smile. Did the other man think he could be lulled like a rikitik facing a naga? He couldn’t be fooled that easily. He knew that if he grappled with a guy that much bigger and stronger than him, he’d have to have angle, leverage, and a base, or he’d lose. That wasn’t a matter of skill so much as it was simple physics—

Rodo charged, and Nova barely got out of the way in time. He cursed himself for a fool even as he dropped and did a fast leg sweep. He’d lost focus for just an instant, and that’s all it had taken to almost lose the match. If it weren’t for his ability to sense another’s moves, Rodo would have had him. The big man was
fast
.

Their shins connected, smacking together like boards,
but Rodo was more flexible than he appeared. He jumped, foiling the sweep, but having to step far enough out in doing so that he couldn’t punch in passing. Nova did a stutter step, broke it short, and got within range. He went in with a triple punch, high, low, high. There was no way to block all three, but Rodo didn’t back up; instead he stepped in and threw a horizontal elbow strike. Nova sensed that one coming before Rodo started it, blocked with an open hand, and tried a lock. Rodo countered with one of his own, stepped out, and turned—

And they were back where they started.

Rodo chuckled, and in a moment it turned into a laugh, and Nova joined him. Both men straightened from their fighting crouches and relaxed. The actual fighting time Nova estimated as thirty seconds or less.

“We done?” Rodo said.

“I think so,” Nova said. No point, really, in continuing; they were too evenly matched. There was no alpha male here.

“You have some outstanding moves, friend,” he told the bouncer.

“You’d know,” the bigger man said. He extended his hand, as did Nova.

“Where’d you get that hip fake?” Nova asked.

“Changa bushfighting. What about that sweep? That’s not classical teräs käsi.”

“Sera Plinck, Jalinese knife.”

Rodo nodded. They had given each other new moves. A valuable exchange.

Nova realized that his tiredness was gone. He hadn’t had a chance to play with a fighter this good in years. It was rare, these days, to run into someone skilled enough to learn from.

“You ever see any Velanarian boxing?” he asked.

“Yeah, the crosscut version. Used to know a guy had
some of that. Hard to get the moves down when you’ve only got two arms, but …” He shrugged. “Gotta get back to work. C’mon along—drinks are on me.”

This, Nova told himself, could be the start of a great friendship.

T
eela Kaarz blinked at the man in front of her. “Where’s the Wookiee chief? Hahrynyar?”

“He took sick,” the man said. “Had to go to the clinic, isn’t well enough to come back to work yet. I’m pushrodding this shift.”

“And it was your idea to build this exhaust port?” She gestured at the expanded holo of the station’s plans. The much-debated port, near the “north pole” of the meridian trench, was clearly visible.

“No, it wasn’t my idea. It’s on the plans.”

“I talked to the Wookiee about that.”

The man, a graybeard who was a hand span shorter and fifty kilos heavier than she was, shrugged. “Yeah? Well, sorry, but what you told him didn’t get passed on. The plans called for an exhaust port and that’s what they pay me to do, follow the plans. Unless you, uh, maybe got an exception and wrote it down?”

Disgusted with herself, Teela shook her head. “I didn’t have a chance to get to it.”

He shrugged again. “Not my fault.”

She nodded. That was true, it wasn’t his fault. “Okay,” she said. “Done is done. What about the heat exchangers on the barracks levels?”

“Ninety-eight percent complete, down to routers and capacitors,
and we’ll have those online in a couple more shifts, no problem.”

That much was good, anyway.

“The walkway escalators from Six to Seven?”

“Done. We can crank them anytime.”

“And the pocket park on Nine is where?”

“Laid out, greensward all seeded, the big trees and foliage planted, pumps and pipes installed, and the channels and ponds cast and hard-set. All we need is for Hydrology to deliver the water and power to light it up.”

Teela looked at her datalog. Everything was coming along on time, and some things, like the tiny patch of greenery up on Nine, were actually ahead of schedule. Hahrynyar’s substitute was certainly keeping the Wookiee’s rep spotless. Okay, so they’d put in a heat exhaust port that wasn’t really needed. It hadn’t slowed down anything else, and it certainly wouldn’t hurt anything by being there. In fact, given the size of the reactor, and the heat it would generate at full power, it was probably better to have too many vents than too few.

It was always a good idea to err on the side of safety.