"X-Talia, do you know what’s with the gravity fluctuations?"
X-Talia pulled her attention away from the image of Sam pacing uselessly around her medical bay. "Grant has been requesting that I turn the gravity on and off in the aft sections."
"Do you know why?" Zoia asked.
"No, but Grant usually has a reason for his requests."
X-Talia waited a few moments to see if Zoia would respond again. She was pleasantly surprised when she gained access to a computer system.
"Are you in?"
X-Talia scanned the files she had access to and let out a long sigh. "I have environmental controls… and a lot of data logs."
"So you can't see anything yet?"
"No, I cannot." X-Talia frowned at the access she had been granted. The network Zoia had gotten her into branched off in several directions, all of which required passwords. X-Talia wasn't built for gaining access to systems. Cracking a single one of these passwords, even with all her servers, could take upwards of 97.3 years.
"You can't hack in?" Zoia asked, agitation in her voice.
"I am not designed for hacking. I am designed for talking to people."
"One moment."
On the other channel, X-Talia continued responding to Grant’s requests for gravity to be turned on or off without asking why. Rather suddenly, one of the pathways opened up, and X-Talia internally grinned as she gained access to a whole lot more.
"How about now?" Zoia asked.
"I have camera feeds and access to considerably more systems," X-Talia said, pulling up the feeds and watching as Zoia cleared a corner, firing two rounds into a man on the left before entering into close-quarters combat with someone who popped out of a doorway to the right. Now having access to all communication channels, she muted the man's comm. He was screaming quite violently as Zoia drove a plasma spike through his suit and into his chest, a flashy display of flames erupting outward along with his suit’s combustible gasses.
"I'm completely in. What did you do?"
"Found an access card," Zoia said, sounding somewhat out of breath.
X-Talia nodded her virtual head and brought her attention to the camera feeds in the aft section of the ship, where Grant was fighting some guy with a sword. Somewhere on the bridge, one of the monitors housing a two-dimensional image of X-Talia cocked its head.
"Well, that's odd," X-Talia said, wondering if Zoia would take the bait and ask what was odd.
"What’s odd?" Zoia asked with a resigned-sounding voice that meant she knew X-Talia’s question had been a leading one.
On the camera feed, Zoia was now firing around a corner. Not willing to continue fighting from a disadvantage, she pulled a grenade, let it cook for a moment, and tossed it around the bulkhead.
"Grant is fighting a guy with a sword—very specifically, a katana. Seems kind of cliché," X-Talia said. "Happens a lot in science fiction stories for some reason."
Zoia stopped dead in her tracks and practically shouted, "What!?" before falling back behind the bulkhead.
"He’s fighting a guy with a sword," X-Talia repeated. "It’s a trope in a lot of sci-fi fantasy. Kind of dumb, really. Who actually trains with a melee weapon?"
Zoia responded with a two-word answer. She sounded annoyed. "Zatochi do!"
***
"Gravity on!" I yelled to X-Talia, then tried to swing myself out so I could get a running start. I didn’t have a melee weapon, and I wasn’t going to hang around here like a pi?ata. I stumbled a bit as I tried to get my footing, gravity righting itself to the floor at the standard 1G. I didn’t know if the guy behind me was stumbling or not. I wasn’t going to look back as I dashed forward.
"Gravity off!" I yelled into the comm just before passing through the hatch to the rear compartment. As the floor shifted once again, I grabbed hold of the edge of the hatch and hauled myself up into the aft compartment, practically slipping on one of the metal pipes that hadn’t fallen out earlier. I picked one up and then looked down, only to jump back as the tip of a sword jabbed at my leg. The asshole was hanging onto the hatch and apparently had a rather good grip on it.
I stumbled backward, trying not to fall on my ass as he started pulling himself up. Not willing to let him in so easily, I stepped forward and took a swing. Baseball was not a sport I generally played in video games, so maybe it wasn’t surprising that I completely missed when he ducked. Worse, it threw me off balance, and he jabbed forward with that damn katana again.
Yeah, I jumped out of the way, ended up falling forward, and rolled to keep my momentum away from the guy. Turning around, I saw he was now fully in the rear hatch compartment with me. It certainly was surreal-looking. Most of the hardware was mounted to the floor, which currently was the wall, and the wall, which was now the floor, was covered in shelves and metal cages that held tools and spare parts, all secured so they wouldn’t fly off in zero-G.
I hopped up onto one of the cabinets as the big guy with the damn sword came at me. He lifted the katana up and over his shoulder in a well-practiced swing designed to bisect a man from shoulder to opposite hip. I stepped sideways and interposed the metal pipe at the appropriate angle. I didn’t have the muscle memory for this, but thank the stars for all those damn video games I’d played that were realistic enough to have actual physics.
The katana hit the pipe and skidded sideways, keeping the chunk of rounded metal between me and the razor-sharp blade. Without losing a beat, I sidestepped again, brought the pipe around, and clubbed the big bastard in the head. In a perfect world, or one without space-capable hardsuits, it would have been enough to knock the guy senseless. Well, I’m not exactly sure how real-life medieval armor would work, but his helmet protected his head quite well. He shrugged off the blow, falling back on his rear foot to catch his balance before stabbing forward with the tip of the katana. Fortunately, the katana is not a stabbing weapon, and it wasn’t terribly difficult to parry.
"Gravity on!" I yelled, falling back and rolling to the side.
"What the hell are you doing?" came Zoia’s voice over my comm, rattling me as I was rolling from the wall to the floor with the gravity shift. It was oddly jarring, and I wasted half a second smashing my faceplate into the ship’s primary power core housing. I launched myself forward again, rolling once more to put more distance between me and the guy behind me. He was oddly good at keeping his balance through these shifts.
"There’s some fucker back here with a sword!" I yelled into the comm, hoping it would reach Zoia as I was a little preoccupied with the guy coming at me, blade swinging again. He was doing an excellent impression of a sci-fi samurai at the moment. The blade came down, and I deflected again. However, I didn’t have the angle quite right, and the thick slab of metal that was the katana cut deep into the metal pipe. That was horrifying. It wasn’t steel.
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"That’s not steel," I muttered aloud before I even realized I had spoken.
"What isn't steel?" came Zoia's voice.
Fortunately, the guy's sword was stuck for a moment, which gave me a bit of control. Turning the pipe, and thus the blade, I caused the big guy to shift sideways and landed a good, solid kick to his knee. Again, his hardsuit protected him from any real damage, but it was enough to jar him back. Unfortunately, it also had me moving the pipe in such a way that it released its clamp on his weapon. He stumbled backward with his sword, and I stumbled backward with my now broken pipe.
"What isn't steel?" came Zoia's voice again.
By the stars, do I really have to have this conversation while fighting a psycho with a sword? "Gravity off!" I yelled to X-Talia while jumping sideways. I was facing the guy this time. I saw him read my movements and adjust his weight to accommodate for the gravitational shift. Damn, he's good.
But now that I knew what he was doing, I could feint. Once I hit the new floor, I again shifted my weight and jumped. He adjusted himself too, expecting the floor to change, and ended up flailing around, trying to catch himself, as I dove for the open hatch back the way we came.
"The fucker with a sword. It's not steel. It's some type of composite," I yelled to Zoia because I didn’t want her bugging me with the damn question again. "Who the fuck carries a sword, anyway?" I gave another half-breath before ordering X-Talia, "Gravity on!"
As I fell down into the cargo bay, gravity once again reasserted itself to the actual floor, and my downward fall turned into a lengthwise slide. Oh shit… there's my gun.
"Zatochi have a martial culture. Most of us carry a melee weapon," came Zoia’s voice over the comm.
I rolled against the floor, grabbed another pipe, and then reached for my gun.
"I've never seen you with a weapon?"
That wasn’t the correct thing to say. I’d seen her with guns, and those were weapons. Hopefully, she’d get the context.
"I carry a plasma spike."
I didn’t know why she sounded so tense at the moment, unless she was in the middle of a firefight while yelling at me. Swinging the gun around, expecting to see the guy charging at me, I found him way too close. I pulled the trigger. I knew it was a miss before the trigger was fully depressed. The gun went off, its vibration ringing through my hand and then it was ripped from my grasp, the bastard's sword digging into the barrel, catching and ripping sideways.
I was then brutally pounded between the armored shoulder of the large guy’s hardsuit and the bulkhead wall. I blinked multiple times, trying to get my head back on straight. The pressure was removed from me, and I realized he was stepping back so he could take a swing. With reflexes gained from hundreds of hours of Fantasy World of Bullshit, I fell backward, interposing the metal pipe between myself and the oncoming blade again, while parrying it as I fell and rolled. Can you imagine how good I’d actually be at this if I practiced in real life and had actual muscle memory?
"Grant," came X-Talia’s calm voice over the comm. "I think the reason Zoia is upset is because the target, Reginald Maximus, is Zatochi."
I parried an oncoming blade again and, in a move I’d used several times, smashed the butt end of my impromptu, albeit not sharp at all, sword into his faceplate.
He was put off balance for a moment, and my only response to X-Talia’s information was a single word. "Oh." Apparently, I was in a sword fight with the big bad guy, and my only advantage was that I had some control over the gravity, while he was wielding an actual fucking sword.
In a moment that seemed to drag on forever, but was probably fractions of a second long, I noted how frustrated Reginald seemed to be. Here you had a guy who was considerably larger than me. He had a weapon that was considerably better, supposedly he had training, and yet I wasn’t dead yet.
His sword came down. I stepped to the left, parrying only slightly, just enough to get the blade to pass only a few inches by my side, as I jammed my elbow up underneath his faceplate, causing his head to fall back. Then I took a nice, solid swing at his knee.
Again, space-aged hardsuits. I feel like that would hurt more in ancient steel plate.
"I've seen Zoia use the plasma spike," X-Talia said. "An extra sharp sword seems like a stupid weapon when you're likely to be fighting people in hardsuits."
I sidestepped another blow and tried to counter. He countered back, sending me reeling backward into a crate and almost losing my footing.
"Except if he cuts me, I get to die a reasonably slow death as my blood boils."
"Oh. I suppose that's a decent point. Still, Zoia’s plasma spike seems rather effective at digging through hardsuits."
I didn’t really have the time to be talking as I was trying very hard not to die. Then I stepped on something, which caused me to stumble as he was swinging. His sword grazed my hardsuit, and for a heart-pounding second or two, I fell back, dreading the sound of escaping atmosphere. It must have just been a glancing blow on one of the harder plates because I wasn’t greeted with any type of suit breach warning.
As I got back on my footing, I realized he was looking down. The thing I had tripped over was his pistol. And he was closer to it.
"X-Talia, I need help. Is there anything you can do to throw this guy off balance? Switching the gravity isn’t working."
I don’t know why I expected the AI to hesitate or tell me no. X-Talia’s response came rather quickly. "Oh, sure. Take two steps back."
Every bone in my body was telling me to dive for the gun. That would have been stupid. The way he had his sword arm set, it was almost as if he was expecting me to dive for the gun.
I stumbled backward two steps, and everything changed. I instantly lost my footing, gravity having decided it wanted to go somewhere else. Though it wasn’t toward the fore sections this time, and it wasn’t a measly half-G either. Come to think of it, the rear end of our ship should be off to the side somewhere, and it likely had more gravity emitters on that side.
I was pressed into the crate to my left as though I was being squished. The big bad Reginald Maximus disappeared, as did his pistol. As suddenly as the shift in gravity happened, it reversed. I fell to my knees, trying to catch my breath, and peeked my head around the crate. Reginald was gone. Sadly, he hadn’t fallen that far. The guy must have managed to catch himself on one of the crates and managed to hold double his weight from falling all the way down.
What he was missing, however, was the sword and the pistol. Those two objects were sitting at the end of the line of crates.
"X-Talia, turn off the gravity."
In a move I had already played several times, I again started falling toward the front of the ship, only to have X-Talia turn the gravity back on. I slid a bit, rolled into a standing position, then took a left around the line of crates to the far corner of the cargo hold. Just as hoped. There was the sword. Unfortunately, I didn’t see the pistol. It must have gotten stuck on something, unless Reginald had gotten it back, in which case this fight was over.
It was weird holding a katana in real life. I associated the weapon with fantasy, games, and ancient history. "X-Talia, where is he?"
"About to come around a crate to your right," X-Talia said.
I stepped forward, looked right, and got the sword into a guard position.
Reginald came around the corner, and by some miracle, he was holding a pipe instead of a pistol. His eyes flicked from my face to the sword, and he gritted his teeth in a snarl. I could practically see the growl escape his lips. He charged.
I adjusted my stance and had to wonder, what the hell? Maybe, since I had survived for so long using the pipe, he thought the pipe was better than the sword? Maybe he was just so thoroughly pissed that he wasn't thinking clearly? I couldn't tell, but he came in swinging.
I brought the katana up and over, pushing his pipe out of the way and ducking under it while simultaneously stepping forward with my left foot. I turned the blade of the sword along with my wrists and forearms, counter attacking with a straight slash to his midsection.
He fell back slightly, clearly taking a second to check for suit breach alarms. He had a better hardsuit than I did. Realizing there was nothing wrong with his suit, he stepped forward, thrusting the pipe at me again, easily countered. This time, I brought the blade down onto his helmet in a left-to-right motion, sending him off balance long enough to hit him again.
He fell to his knees this time. I didn’t let up. Bringing the curved sword around in a circle, I slammed it down again, aiming for the soft fabric that covered his neck. Once. Twice. Thrice, before I actually cut through the material.
I could see the panic in his eyes as he inevitably heard the hiss of escaping air. He tried to cover it with his hands, abandoning the practiced motions of swordplay in favor of pure desperation. I brought the blade of his sword up, hacking wildly. I swung, striking his knuckles, not cutting through the hardened material of the gloves, but certainly pulverizing the hands within.
Tired, sweating, and out of breath, I paused my relentless assault on his hardsuit. Behind the faceplate, he was gasping, blood and other fluids foaming at the sides of his eyes and mouth. I took a step back. I didn’t want to watch a guy die like that. Movement to my right caught my attention, and I raised the sword, ready to attack the next enemy, only to find the black and purple hardsuit of Zoia, too far for me to reach in melee, with her rifle pointed at me.
I lowered the blade. She lowered her gun. Exhausted, I slumped against the crate behind me and slid to the floor. Shit. I wasn’t meant for this kind of work.
?? END OF CHAPTER UPDATE! ??
audio narration and my Deep Dive Podcast with River. But Drone Fleet? Not so fast.
seriously considering a 40-chapter rewrite because, according to him (and me), the original version didn’t fully deliver on its promise. And instead of letting me do something fun, like, I don’t know, dramatically leak spoilers, I’m currently stuck on a boring panel discussion with a bunch of serious literary types debating structure, pacing, and blah blah blah. ??
I need your help. Readers, tell us—what absolutely NEEDS to be in the rewrite? What moments felt rushed? What characters need more time to shine? Drop your thoughts in the comments!
I’m personally pushing for some spicy scenes between Grant and Sam. ?? Just saying.
nerds, I’ll also be making sure D actually gets the last chapter out. Stay tuned.
as much as I love a dramatic overhaul, I need to know: Do YOU want a rewrite? This is your chance to weigh in before D locks himself in rewrite mode. Vote, comment, and tell us what you want! 👇
