A long time ago, a determined young woman escaped the despair of her homeworld, turning herself into one of the galaxy’s best martial artists, Ebony Strike. Decades later, the people of her homeworld have tracked her down. They need money and, in order to get that money, they need the old Ebony Strike back. But Ebony has moved on since that time. She is now Xin Dell, a respected government security trainer. And what her people are asking of her is insane: to participate in a corrupt official’s underground fight tournament…and win. Nothing less will do. To Ebony, it means training a body that’s out of shape, honing disused skills, spending her own time, effort and money, for a planet she’s all but forgotten. But, faced with the alternative—the death of tens of thousands on her world—does she have a choice? Ebony needs to be focused and ruthless. She needs to win the tournament. Little does she know that she’ll end up losing her heart.
DEDICATION
There was a Diane and a Heather Who'd help, no matter the weather, With tips, reads and emails, On SF Romance tales, I found I could ask them whatever! (And I did! Thanks ladies, you're the best.)
AUTHOR’S FOREWORD
Eight years ago, I sat down and wrote the adventure of a famed martial artist named Ebony Strike. I was still very much a beginner fiction writer, impatient to get to the action. I was comfortable with lengths beyond that of short stories, but not by much. In fact, I can still recall the absolute fear I felt when I first decided to sit down and write a *shock*horror* novel. Gasp. Yeah sure, I can laugh about it now... Anyway, one thing I like about digital houses is that they give you the opportunity to get your work back after a period of time. And so it was with the (very) short novella, COMBAT! I got the rights back, read it over, and realised that I could’ve told a lot more of Ebony’s story. And that’s what I decided to do: fill in a bit more of Ebony’s background, clean up some of the more clumsy bits, and try to deliver something that I hoped readers would appreciate. I wanted to concentrate on the major character, and look at her journey from what she had been to what she could be. That meant moving the romance to the second half of the book, which is a bit unusual in an SF romance, but I couldn’t see any other way to do what I wanted to do. In any case, the novella that was COMBAT! has now been reworked into the novel, I AM EBONY STRIKE, set in a universe (the Fusion) that I haven’t visited in an SF romance since WAR GAMES. It reminds me that maybe I should set a few more stories there, but that’s more a note for me than for you. Here’s Ebony’s story. I hope you like it.
Kaz Augustin Malaysia, 2015
I Am Ebony Strike (Sample)
CHAPTER ONE
Despite my bad mood, I was impressed when they found me. The person they knew as Ebony Strike had retired from the circuits years ago and was now making a nice living as a freelance instructor, specialising in personal, corporate and government-sponsored security. Basically, all the kinds of security there were. If there was money involved, I could do it. I shed names as easily as a reptile sheds skin, and now I was respected businesswoman, Xin Dell, newly moved to Ulwohem for a (hopefully) long government contract. But they still found me. I thought I had done everything necessary. I hadn’t skimped on the money to buy a new identity four years ago—new name, new homeworld, new past—but Chaltow III had still managed to track me down. I was lounging by the swim-bubble at the recreation club when the robot told me there was someone wanting to see me. That was smart, confronting me in a public place. Meant I couldn’t succumb to any temptations, such as breaking bones or shoving my thumbs through eyes. I sipped at my drink and told the robot to send the person along. I had assumed my visitor was a government representative. Xin Dell had just been hired to take an advanced strike-negotiation team through various scenarios and I was gathering my strength before the course began. It was logical that an Ulwohem official would be along to try and persuade me to shave some money off the deal. They’d been trying to do that several times over the past month. It hadn’t worked, but I suppose being a persistent arse is part of their job description. Normally, we’d share a drink (at my expense), the official would sob about tight budgets and an upcoming audit, I’d cluck sympathetically and then, when they figured out that their tale of misery hadn’t worked, Page 6
I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) they’d slink off and notify the next on the duty roster that it was their turn. I could have hired a contract facilitator to handle all the refusals. They’re a useful profession, especially when dealing with the bigger outfits, but I’d been around too many secrets that had sprung leaks, and I wasn’t happy entrusting my personal financial details to a third party. So, there I was, ready to have my leisure day wrecked, holding yet another bureaucrat’s hand until he had said what he’d been ordered to say and it was time to kick him out of the club. I was sipping at my Event Horizon when he strode into view. I couldn’t help it, my muscles must have twitched, because the drink sloshed in my hand, splashing out of my glass and wetting my fingers. If the man currently walking towards me was from the government of Ulwohem, then I was a Perlim grandmother. I hooded my eyes and watched him approach, noting the dull brown skin, lean build and ascetic features. His hair was black shot through with grey, short, shorn into the five furrows that was the traditional haircut for the men of my world. The world of my birth, Chaltow III. He must have seen something in my eyes because a small smile curved his lips as he slipped into the opposite chair. I mentally ratcheted his age down by a few decades. Close up, I saw he was a young man, but he looked old. A servile robot bobbed beside him, ready and willing to take an order. I lifted my free hand to wave it away, but he ordered a hot cham in a confident tone before I could complete the gesture. I let my hand drop and eyed him warily. To my right, a group was cavorting in the swim-bubble, playing obstacle games with the expelled gas bubbles from their gill-masks. Even through the water, I could hear their muffled shrieks of delight. “Ebony Strike,” he said. It wasn’t a question. I put my drink on the tray that floated beside me. “I’m sorry, it seems you’ve mistaken me for someone else.” He smiled. The bastard actually smiled! “Vahsoon-ya is beautiful in autumn, isn’t it?” Damn him. Vahsoon-ya province was where I was born, where I’d grown up, before I came to my senses and hightailed it off that blighted sphere of orbiting rock. I tried to make my shrug casual. “I wouldn’t know.” I paused. “Where is it, anyway? Sounds like a tourist destination.”
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) It was a goad, and it worked. His cheery demeanour faltered then collapsed. I saw a blaze of fury before it was quickly masked. He was loose, confident, but he was still young enough to take offence where it was intended. Things like that could get him killed. “I don’t know why you’re playing this game,” he said. “We spent a lot of money to find you. The least you can do is show some respect.” He was young, all right. Blunt. Almost rude. He was also shorter than he should have been. While he moved well, it couldn’t hide the fact that I knew there was no padding of fat beneath the folds of his tunic. His ascetic features were due to lack of nutrition, not genetics. He didn’t need to tell me, I could see it in his very body. Vahsoon-ya province was in trouble. Again. “This Ebony Strike you mentioned,” I said, not conceding a nanometre, “what’s she got to do with you?” “You mean you haven’t been keeping up with news?” His voice was laced with sarcasm. “Wondering how the old neighbourhood is going? Catching up with old friends?” I kept silent, letting him give in to his indignation. The truth was, Vahsoon-ya had always suffered and, by the look of my young friend, was suffering still. So why track me down? After all this time, with my homeworld province stuck on the bootheel of the Infernal One himself from the moment of its existence, why spend valuable credits looking up one long-time exile? “We’re in a drought,” he said. He inclined his head as he took a sip of the hot drink that had just arrived and I had time to run my gaze over the prematurely grey hair, the lines that bracketed his mouth and the unhealthy pouches below his eyes. “We’re always in a drought.” There, I admitted I was who he thought I was. There was a flicker of acknowledgement in his dark eyes. “This time it’s bad. Worse than it’s ever been. Worse even than during the time you left.” I remembered those days of barren earth, dust and swollen bellies. I had left them behind decades ago, with only a few backward glances. I didn’t need the reminder, not from him. My young friend wanted something, that was obvious, but I couldn’t think what it was. Reaching for my drink, I paused. I tried forming a question, but the laughter from the
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) swim-bubble was beginning to irritate me, interfere with my thinking. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.” “Where to?” He gulped at his drink, not willing to waste a single drop. There may have been pity in my eyes, but I was quick to hide it before he looked up. “I know a place where we can talk.” It was the act of a moment to charge everything to Xin Dell’s account. Xin Dell spoke pleasantly to the other regulars around her as we walked to the exit, smiling and waving to friends who were more distant. Xin Dell tipped the valet who called for her customised aircar. Xin Dell spoke and behaved exactly as a successful and well-respected Ulwohem businesswoman would, right down to ignoring the young man following a footstep behind. Some days the masquerade was easy to maintain. This wasn’t one of them. I stilled my foot from beating a tattoo and had to force my lips to stretch and smile at the valet’s jokes, all the while wondering why it was taking so damned long for my transport to arrive. As my surprise guest and I entered the aircar, I directed its AI-nav to an address I knew. Questions whirled in my head. Why the hell was he here? What did he think I could do for a million starving people? What had happened to Vahsoon-ya? The place I took him to was the last place he would have expected: an Ulwohem training facility. Military. Which meant it was snoop-proof and fully jammed. Whatever we had to say to each other—and I fully expected us to go our separate ways once we left the facility—was going to be completely private. Just between the two of us. Nobody on the planet was going to hear the name “Ebony Strike” uttered in public a third time. Getting out of the aircar, I used my access card to enter the complex and herded him to a small studio off the main hall. This was where I had done some of the course planning and the floor was still configured for standard manoeuvres. That meant it was firm but springy. I sat, cross-legged, on the blue tiles and gestured to him to do the same. “You’ve got fifteen minutes,” I said. He didn’t roll his eyes at me, but it was close. “You brought me all the way out here, twenty minutes from your high-class club, just to tell me that I have fifteen minutes to talk to you?” “And, when we’re finished, we each go our separate ways.”
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) “Despite what I have to tell you? You’ll just turn and walk away?” “Fourteen minutes.” He paused, wondering how serious I was, then rubbed his upper lip with a finger. “Okay.” “How did you find me?” I asked. I knew my question was eating into his time, but I was curious. If it had been easy to track me down, there were a few contacts I was going to have to permanently scratch from my list. “It wasn’t easy,” he said, with a sigh, folding himself as he eased to the floor. That made me feel a bit better. “We’d been tracking—” “We?” “Regional intelligence services.” I didn’t know Vahsoon-ya had an intelligence service. I raised my eyebrows, impressed. “As I said, we’ve been tracking your whereabouts for more than a year. Your latest move was the worst. We lost you for almost four months.” “And how did you find me again?” He grimaced. “A combination of luck and tedious work. A researcher of ours was talking to a friend from one of the northern provinces who’d recently been offworld. He brought back some news from the sectors he’d visited, and it included an Ulwohem news report on their new advanced security squads. You had been a security trainer on other planets, so...” he shrugged. “We knew it was a bit of a long shot, but decided to follow up. Here I am.” Undone by a press release. That one I couldn’t have foreseen. “All right,” I said. “You’ve found me. Now what?” “We need money.” This was starting to get old. I shook my head. “There hasn’t been a time when my province hasn’t needed money.” “But this time we’re close. Chaltow III was turned down for membership of the Fusion, but we were told of a pilot scheme they’re running. High-value trading partnerships, they call it, and those are open to individual provinces.”
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) I still wasn’t seeing the point. It was easy to say that the Chaltow government was corrupt. If I were the Fusion, I doubt I would have admitted us either. But its poor reputation was also down to bad luck, and plenty of it. Situated in an isolated region of space, Chaltow needed money it didn’t have just to reach its nearest trading partners, and the results weren’t pretty. The amount of trade barely covered transport costs, leaving the planet perennially on the edge of default. At a regional level, Vahsoon-ya’s problems were as much a result of the rapacious central government as unpredictable weather patterns. No wonder I had jumped the first shuttle out of there, leaving many miserable millions behind me. “I still don’t see what you expect me to do,” I said. “I may be somewhat successful, but I don’t have an entire planet’s worth of credits lying around.” “We don’t expect you to do that.” His voice firmed and his eyes were full of angry rebuke. It affected me more than I was willing to admit. “Last year we had a great harvest,” he said. “We finally have some powerful backers in the central government who are actively lobbying for us. With their help, our regional council voted to try for one of the high-value trading partnerships and we moved away from subsistence to specialised products. We have an entire presentation laid out for the Fusion representatives when they visit.” That was the good news, and I could see it meant a lot to him. But I knew that Vahsoon-ya was still hurting. He was trying hard to distract me from it, but he couldn’t hide the hunger that radiated from his body like a living thing. “Let me see if I got this right,” I said. “Our province has decided to risk everything on some nebulous scheme from a conglomerate that wouldn’t even accept us as a member, is that right? And, just to complicate matters, instead of growing food for our people, we’re growing stuff for the Fusion, for their tastes.” His snarl was a quick exposure of teeth, but I got the message. “We’re not as backward as you make us seem. We’re not just talking agriculture here. We also have some fine fabrication workshops and cultural hubs. We’ve done our homework. The Fusion loves the kind of stuff we’re producing now.” “At the risk of more starvation.” “We had to make a choice,” he said, momentarily dropping his gaze.
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) “And what does the rest of the central government think of this, the ones not made up of your powerful backers?” “We’re trying not to let them know.” That would have sounded crazy to anyone but a Chaltow native. The plain fact was, the central government wasn’t our friend. It was willing to make use of us, exploit us, hold us up as an example of anything it could goddamned think of, but it wasn’t willing to put any credits towards our future. Vahsoon-ya was like the bastard child of Chaltow, and that fact had been drilled into our heads for the past few centuries. Rebel against a government four or five times in the past three hundred years, and it never forgets. “We need credits to jump the queue,” he said. “A ‘priority surcharge’, they call it.” I stared at him. “What queue?” His already thin lips thinned some more. “Here’s the deal. We’ve secretly registered Vahsoon-ya to be audited for a Fusion provincial partnership. The waiting time is currently two Fusion years. If we pay what they call a ‘priority surcharge’, we get moved up the queue.” “By how much?” “They say they could fit us in within seven or eight months.” “They’re not that charitable, then,” I said, “taking money for preferential treatment.” “If we get partnership status, we get everything back—the initial registration fee plus the surcharge.” I lifted my eyebrows, still sceptical, but at least the situation was now a little clearer. “Why me?” I asked. “Why not approach one of Chaltow’s trading partners for a loan? Universe knows we’ve got enough of them.” “Because that would tip off the central government. No matter how closed a loop we planned, they found out about the Fusion bid, but they have our original two-year horizon in mind. If we approach any legitimate financier, they would inform the central government that we’re ready for the Fusion ahead of schedule.” “Seven or eight months, instead of two years?” He nodded. “And this is bad, because...?” He licked his lips. “Because they’re preparing an invasion.”
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) I sat up, bolt straight. “They’re what?” “I don’t have to tell you about our history. The rebellions, the retribution attacks that led to famine.” Now it was my turn to nod. “Well, it looks like our overtures to the Fusion were the last step. One of our informants at the capital has told us that the inner assembly is drafting plans to invade Vahsoon-ya. Put it under martial law. Quash the secessionist movement, once and for all. They’ve started it already.” “The invasion?” I still didn’t believe him. “The set-up. They’ve begun moving their cronies into place.” He jerked his head. “A couple of regional secessionist politicians have committed ‘suicide’, and been replaced by centralist sympathisers.” “People do commit suicide, you know.” That had always been a rational choice, in my opinion. Die or leave seemed to be the only two options for those sick of the province’s poverty. “Yeah sure,” he agreed. “People usually commit suicide by blasting themselves in the face. Twice.” I sighed and looked around, giving my eyes a break from the earnestness blazing from my young friend. I had trained a small group here, I remembered. One of the scuff marks on the wall reminded me of a particularly nasty session involving check kicks and multi-surface manoeuvring. Unfortunately, my friend was still sitting in front of me when I re-focused on him. Damn, I had been hoping he was a figment of my imagination. “You want to scrape together enough money to pay for this ‘priority surcharge’, but you don’t want the government to know.” “You know how it is. Every time Vahsoon-ya has made any money, started to claw its way out of a hole, the central government has been there, demands in one hand and a shock-stick in the other. But the stakes are now much higher than they’ve ever been before. We need to get the Fusion delegation to Vahsoon-ya before the government invades us and kills anyone who thinks independently. Once the Fusion are on Chaltow, the government can’t do a thing. I’m certain we’ll get a partnership. We’ll be able to stand on our own two feet then. Even pay you back.”
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) We’d see about that. I casually scratched my cheek with a finger. “You said you couldn’t raise the money legitimately without tipping your hand. I presume that’s where I came in.” His face brightened. “Have you heard of the Rewards Series?” “You mean the underground tournament?” I didn’t add, “for deranged martial artists”. “Yeah, that’s the one.” “You expect me to compete?” He grinned. “We expect you to win.”
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample)
CHAPTER TWO
I told him I’d think about it. We exited the room and left the military facility. I suppose he had been expecting me to ferry him back to the city, but I wasn’t that stupid. If he had managed to find me, who had found him? I had called for an aircar the moment our discussion was done and it was waiting for us by the time we hit the front gate. It wasn’t till we parted company that I got his name, along with a secured comm address. Ston. A good solid Chaltow name. Made me feel nostalgic just thinking about it. I double-checked the address he gave me and told him I’d let him know my decision in time. I didn’t give him any idea of how long that would be. I waited around for ten minutes after his aircar disappeared into the hazy sky, then got into my own transport and headed in the opposite direction. My home on Ulwohem was in the Red River region, an upscale (but not too upscale) region of Haash City. It was the perfect place for the kind of go-getter entrepreneur that my alter ego, Xin Dell, was. Instead of renting a house that was too big for me, I had rented an apartment in a curved glass tower that overlooked Red River’s family-centric areas. Each neat square that spread out beyond my balcony took up the appropriate area of house, greenery and the flitter garages so beloved of the city’s nouveau riche. That’s why I was here on Ulwohem. Where there’s a new upwardly mobile segment of the population, oligarchs gorging themselves on freshly hatched opportunities, and a government eager to retain control, there’s room for a Xin Dell—accomplished security expert, no job too shady, no questions asked. I wasn’t the only such consultant who had relocated to Ulwohem, but I was certainly one of the more successful, thanks to a couple of decades of walking the Page 15
I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) seamier side of the galaxy. Stripping down to my underwear, I grabbed some water and settled into a lounger overlooking bucolic suburbia. A balmy afternoon breeze was blowing across the river, causing the trees lining the avenues to ripple like green waves. I initiated the holographic display, spawned a virtual screen and began my research. First, Ston. It was a job of moments to verify his identity; he had left a kilometrewide track in his wake, all the way from Chaltow III. Within fifteen minutes, I knew everything I needed to know about him—that he belonged to a family of three, was engaged to be married, and had been employed by the newly birthed Vahsoony-ya Security Service soon after he’d graduated from technical college. Marriage. That would explain it. There’s nothing that focuses a person’s mind more than the realisation that she or he will soon be responsible for another life. No wonder the province had sent him to talk me round. He blazed so brightly with hope that he could have illuminated a small planet. Unfortunately, he had been completely on the level with me about everything—him, Vahsoon-ya, and the Fusion’s new partnerships. The Fusion. I frowned and took a gulp of my drink. The Fusion always portrayed themselves as the good guys in the galaxy, which was enough to make me doubt them. For a start, they were currently involved in a war with the Perlim Empire. Not that anybody I knew liked the empire very much, but warmongering with them isn’t the first thing one thinks of when the phrase “non-violent, peaceful cooperative of systems” springs to mind. Then there was the idea of the partnerships themselves. What was the deal behind sponsoring a particular region, while ignoring the rest of the planet? Had the Fusion planned these partnerships as a prelude to integration...or invasion? And what was behind the idea of a “priority surcharge” if they were going to give it all back? None of it made sense. I distracted myself, delving into Fusion history for the past couple of centuries but, an hour later, had still drawn a blank. The Fusion had no history of previous invasions, no aggressive annexations, no arm-twisting of diplomats. Nothing, in fact, but that single black mark of the Perlim Empire. I looked out over the houses and at the dark blips of aircars that crawled through
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) the sky. This was the kind of view that I could see in Chaltow III’s capital, but not much beyond those city limits. I doubted Vahsoon-ya would be sporting gleaming sky transports majestically gliding through the clouds any time soon. Unless the Fusion got involved. Was that what it would take to turn Vahsoon-ya into a prosperous place, like the Red River? How I hoped the Fusion offer was as genuine as it looked, but I couldn’t mute my innate scepticism. What about the invasion of my home province by the planetary government? Unfortunately, I could well believe that one. Vahsoon-ya had always been demanding and fractious, had always borne the brunt of dictatorial retribution. Chaltow III may have moved on from being a tyrant’s paradise over the past half-century, but there were enough of the old attitudes still around that I didn’t doubt Ston’s speculation of a planned takeover and martial clampdown. A part of me knew that, with the province’s history, it was only a matter of time before the central authorities decided to settle the thorny matter of Vahsoon-ya once and for all. It could be that all that stood between Vahsoon-ya and its annihilation from Chaltow’s history books was the Fusion. And me. I got to the third point of our discussion. Ston had mentioned the Rewards Series. Although I had never taken part in the tournament, I knew enough about it to avoid it. The person behind the Rewards Series was a planetary prefect by the name of Dinoh. Much as Vahsoon-ya was doing now, Sundi’s World had also applied to the Fusion, been turned down for full membership but accepted for a kind of “probation period”. It was more than Chaltow had been given, which may have explained my sour mood. A Fusion prefect had been put in place five years ago, to oversee the planet and make sure it was progressing at an adequate pace. Three years ago, I started hearing about the Rewards Series. It’s a simple enough concept. Sundi’s World has an...interesting assortment of wildlife, and it obviously occurred to Dinoh that he could make some serious credits pitting the galaxy’s fighters against the planet’s critters. That was how the first tournament had been organised. Last year, I heard that Dinoh had upped the stakes. The wildlife challenges were just part of the preliminary rounds. Finalists went head-to-head against his fleet of trained fighters, and were whittled down until there was only one survivor, who got to walk away with a thousand bars of pure-grade ellinium. If he or she survived. With
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) that kind of cash, my province could not only jump the queue with the Fusion, but dictate exactly how they were going to continue operating on Chaltow III itself. One thousand bars of ellinium was almost enough to buy any planet’s government or, at the very least, a majority shareholding. No wonder they were hot for me to win. I got up and walked to the kitchen. Why was I even contemplating Ston’s offer? I had left Chaltow III as soon as I was capable of beating someone to death. My planet hadn’t given a damn about me while I was there, and it obviously hadn’t given a damn about me after I left. Till now, when they had a burning need for money and Ebony Strike came up in some mangled search algorithm as someone who might be able to help. Cursing, I thumped the countertop then turned away to pace the floor of my apartment. I wasn’t arrogant enough to think Ston and his security buddies were betting the entire province on me. If I were them, I’d be hitting up as many potential targets as I could. With so much at stake, they would have been fools not to. I was just a number to them, a possibility. I could turn Ston down with a light heart, knowing they had several other marks in their sights. “I’d be stupid to even consider entering the tournament,” I said to myself. For one thing, training would be involved. A lot of training. Then, I’d have to get to Sundi’s World, out along one of the galaxy’s arms, and I had the sneaking suspicion that I was going to have to pay for the journey myself. And, more important than anything else, I was old. The thing about martial arts tournaments is that they’re geared for a particular profile of participant. Young, high pain threshold, and overweening pride. I’ve seen people with better skills go down against someone who had nothing more than an evil death glare. But the Rewards Series was worse. It was chaotic and unregulated, and the worse the participants behaved, the better the paying audience liked it. Believe me, there is always a vast audience slavering for an underground martial arts tournament with a winner-take-all mentality. It appeals to their sense of vicarious living. Our galaxy isn’t anywhere near as civilised as bodies like the Fusion like to make out. I know; I’ve walked those lanes. Even set myself up along them from time to time. I know what I’m talking
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) about. What Ston was asking me to do was to turn off my brain and turn back time. Become the kind of mindless bloody fighting machine that the Rewards Series attracted, vultures to carrion. I walked over to my organiser and called up the notes Ston had sent to me during our meeting, focusing on the timelines and locations involved. Sundi’s World. Prefect Dinoh’s next tournament was due to begin five-plus months from now. Chaltow III. The Fusion delegation could be scheduled to arrive in seven months, if someone gave Ston enough money to catapult Vahsoon-ya to the top of the list. Ulwohem. I had three training courses set up to run over the next fifty days. My brain whirred through the maths. If I wanted to, I could start getting ready straight away. If I wanted to. But there were problems. (Aren’t there always?) The Xin Dell job on Ulwohem was sweet. If I turned it down, news of what I’d done—breaking a lucrative contract—could dog me across the galaxy. And the money was too good to turn down without an airtight reason. However, if I completed the Ulwohem contract, that would only give me a maximum of three months to get ready for the tournament on Sundi’s World. Would that be enough time? It was close to midnight when I called Ston. I stared into his hopeful face, noting anew his gaunt features and dull skin. “No,” I said.
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample)
CHAPTER THREE
He didn’t give up. He hadn’t come all this way to fail now, he said. In reality, he hadn’t come that far. Chaltow was a little over two days away by super-fast picket, five by normal cruiser, but I knew he was speaking metaphorically. What about the invasion? I told him that he couldn’t depend on a single person to hold off a planetary crackdown, if that’s what the central government was planning. What about the people of Vahsoon-ya? I laughed. The people who hadn’t bothered about me for the past twenty years? Those people? What about the children? I hesitated at this, but only for a moment. I had been little more than a child myself when I’d learnt the hard lessons of life; lessons that, a handful of years later, prompted me to buy passage on one of the few cargoliners that landed at Chaltow’s badly maintained clutch of spaceports. I shrugged and waited for his next salvo. “Come with me, back to Vahsoon-ya,” Ston said. I laughed again. “And what do you think that will achieve?” “It will show you the reality of our situation.” “Ston,” my voice was exasperated, “I already know the reality of your situation. The same reality has been squatting over Vahsoon-ya for the past three centuries. Do you think you’re the only one who remembers our history lessons?” “But this time, it’s worse. This time, they plan to wipe us out.” He could be wrong. But, a voice in the back of my head niggled, what if he were
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) right? “Look,” I said, trying to sound reasonable, “I’d come along and talk to the provincial administrator if that’s what you want, but you contacted me at a bad time. It took me months to set up this contract and I’m not going to risk a default—” “I can get you to Vahsoon-ya in less than two days.” I frowned at him. “What did you say?” “Less than a week. There, talk, then back here. I promise. Six days, maximum.” I searched his features for any sign of a lie, but didn’t find one. “You’re serious.” “We’re talking about my home. Of course I’m serious.” It seemed that, yet again, I had underestimated the people of my homeworld. In the face of Ston’s intensity, there seemed little I could do but agree. Maybe the regional administrator would be easier to read, and I’d find out that everyone was lying to me. But, till that moment, I couldn’t risk it. I wouldn’t have an invasion on my conscience. Even I wasn’t that callous.
Ston had impressive resources, because we left for Chaltow III five hours later. From the cramped seat of the stripped-down picket, I watched Ulwohem recede from the viewscreen. My feelings were mixed. It was irresponsible agreeing to the trip. What if I didn’t make it back in time? My reputation would be worth less than space dust. I looked across at Ston, who was piloting the vessel. It was so cramped there weren’t even separate bunks in the back of the picket. We were supposed to sleep on the chairs we were sitting on, reclined to a degree that couldn’t successfully emulate the horizontal plane. Vahsoon-ya. Poor. As if I could have forgotten. “We do have food on this crate?” I asked, my voice sarcastic. Ston grimaced in apology. “Rations.” I sighed. “Just as well it’s only for two days then.” “It’s food and it’s regular. That’s more than a lot of people have.” There was something in his voice... “You came to Haash City directly from Chaltow, didn’t you?” Page 21
I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer and, when it came, I was right. “No.” His voice was clipped. I rolled my eyes at the wall that curved over my head, too close for comfort. “How long?” “Have I been in this ship, trying to track down your exact location? A month.” What could I say to that? He had been eating rations for a month, while he narrowed in on me. “You didn’t stay anywhere on Ulwohem? A hotel?” “The docking fees wiped out my budget.” His tone was flat. I nodded, but stayed silent. And that’s how the trip went. We were civil to each other, there was never any animosity in Ston’s voice, but I knew he was disappointed with me. As far as he was concerned, I was supposed to jump at the chance to take part in a highly illegal martial arts tournament for the good of Vahsoon-ya. But then, he was a patriot. I wasn’t. He surprised me again when we entered the Chaltow system. “We won’t be heading for Vahsoon-ya,” he said. “We won’t?” I’d harboured thoughts of a couple of private visits. Perhaps to the family home. Definitely to the cemetery. But my young companion knocked those fancies clear out of my head. “Then where are we headed?” “There’s a small base we set up on Moon Major.” Well. That certainly hadn’t been there when I was around. “We only built it five years ago,” he said. “Originally, we thought of it as a refuge, in case the central government tried anything. But that didn’t turn out to be practical. It’s in rough shape, but that’s where we put our intel network backup. Just in case something happens to the centre in Vahsoon City.” Either I hadn’t noticed a lot of things while I was growing up, or the situation between the province and the government had deteriorated badly in the time I was away. “Someone will be waiting for us,” Ston said. And I had to be content with that.
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) The moon base was as small and cramped as the picket that had brought me back to Chaltow. Its walls looked like they’d been worked by hand, labourers hammering away at the rock chip by chip, leaving them scarred and striated. With every step I took, my misgivings about being on this side-trip grew. But Ston was the only way back to Ulwohem and if I turned tail at this point, I’d only prove myself a coward. I forced one foot in front of the other and followed my guide to what I was told later was the one and only meeting room in the installation. Along the way, I passed four, maybe five, people. All too thin but openly curious. I ignored them. There was an older man already waiting for me in the room. He looked officious in his crisp suit, standing stiffly as if about to greet royalty. I almost laughed. Twenty years ago, I had crept off the planet as a wanted criminal. Now, I had the Governor of Vahsoonya ready to pander to me because I had something he needed. “Sit down,” he said, his voice measured and pleasant. My backside had barely touched the chair’s seat when he began his appeal to my patriotism. “You know what we’re up against.” “Yes, Ston,” I looked around, but it seemed my young guide had left the governor and me to it, “explained it to me.” “Did he tell you that we’re facing an invasion?” “He told me that there was a rumour that Vahsoon-ya might get invaded.” “It may have been an unsubstantiated rumour a month ago. Now, it’s well on the way to becoming reality.” “I’m sorry about that,” I said, my voice indicating no such thing, “but Vahsoon-ya has always had problems with the central government. I remember being taught about the CropFail Revolt seventy years ago, and the Stalfaff Incident fifty years before that.” I shrugged. “As long as it’s been in existence, Vahsoon-ya has always been in conflict with one government body or another.” I watched him closely. “We don’t know how to keep our mouths shut and our bellies full.” His eyebrows rose momentarily in wry acknowledgement. “That may be so,” he said, “but things have got worse since you left.” I gave him a dismissive stare. “I doubt that.”
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) He nodded. “They have. While you’ve been swanning around the galaxy building up your reputation, the Non-Aligned worlds in this sector have been facing increasingly dire circumstances. The Perlim Empire, for example.” Didn’t he think I read the news? “We have nothing to do with the Perlim Empire.” “Our major creditor does.” “Who’s our major creditor?” “The Chaltow central government.” No, he couldn’t be saying what I thought he was saying. My eyes narrowed. “We’re in hock to the central government?” “It was the only way we could get our hands on money to upgrade the facilities for our Fusion bid.” This was going from bad to worse. Owing money to our mortal enemy? But then I saw the look on his face and knew that that was only the tip of the iceberg. “And Chaltow owes money to the Perlim Empire?” “Near enough. We were told three weeks ago that half of our province’s debt would be written off if we supplied three hundred thousand soldiers for the Perlim war effort against the Fusion. We were about to say no when the first mobilisation occurred. It finished last week. The next is due in ten months’ time, and the third ten months after that.” I exhaled and pushed myself back in the chair. After years of not having anything to do with them, was the Fusion now preparing to dog my every step? “This must be some kind of joke,” I said. “Ston didn’t know when we sent him to find you. I was hoping it wouldn’t even be necessary. Then the first contingent was corralled together and shipped offplanet. It was a very fast operation, backed by Perlim forces. Nine days, and,” he snapped his fingers, “one hundred thousand gone.” I tried visualising the number of people in my head. Couldn’t. “A hundred thousand? From Vahsoon-ya?” “What better way to defang your most fractious region and get a major debtor off your back? All you have to do is depopulate a province you despise. And it solves more than the purely financial problem. Once we’ve given up our second and third hundred thousand of able bodies, it will be a simple matter to walk in, take over and carry out the
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) job the government’s been contemplating for the past hundred years.” “Have you told the Fusion about this? Told them about the soldiers? The involvement of the Perlim?” “We’ve sent word.” I stared into his tired eyes. Yes, I could understand why he’d taken the actions he did, but did he really believe that his salvation lay in an ageing martial artist? I was silent for many minutes, mulling over my planet’s history, my province’s conundrum. “You can’t put this on me,” I finally told him. “I refuse to be responsible for a hundred thousand lives.” “We’re not children.” There was steel in his voice. “We’re not expecting a miracle. We just want you to do your best. And if that works out, then...” He shrugged, but continued watching me intently. “You know that just entering isn’t enough, don’t you? What makes you think I can win?” “We know you. We know what you’re capable of doing. And, now, you have added motivation.” “If I lose?” “We were surprised when the first mobilisation occurred. We won’t let it surprise us again.” So they were preparing to fight. How many would Vahsoon-ya lose in a showdown with the central government? One hundred thousand? Two? A million? “What do I get if I do this?” I asked. “I want a statue, at the very least.” A small smile quirked his lips. “We’ll put it in front of the Assembly building, if you like.” We both stared at each other, already knowing what my answer was going to be.
It took every moment of the next two months to get away from Ulwohem and the identity of Xin Dell. That planet had paperwork down to a fine art and I needed to fill out Page 25
I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) loads of it to leave, especially after I had trained my quota of killer-negotiators. I could understand their point of view. The authorities were wondering if I would take what I’d learnt on their planet—their strengths and weaknesses—and sell it to the highest bidder on the next rock over. I had to do some fast talking to extricate myself from that legal stick-pit. My reputation as a woman of secrets stood me in good stead, because if I hadn’t played fast and loose with previous clients, it indicated that I wouldn’t do the same with Ulwohem. In the end, after signing a stack of statutory declarations and acknowledgements of penalties should I dare to breathe a word of Ulwohem’s very existence to anyone, I was off the planet. Where I was headed, someone like Xin Dell was going to be a liability. From multiple contracts on three planets over the past four years, Dell had built up a formidable reputation, and I didn’t want that effort to go to waste. After all, who knew when I’d need her again? For better or worse, I decided to go back to being Ebony Strike. The planet I had chosen for my training was Raffe. It was so notorious it didn’t need any other qualifier. I swear that even the ticketing AI went pale when I booked my journey, but Raffe was everything I needed, especially as I only had a handful of months to train in. The high gravity was the first thing that hit me when I stepped off the rickety liner and I staggered the first few paces, but there was method in my madness. I had figured that most of my fellow competitors, puffed up by their real or imagined prowess, would limit their training to their native environments. I needed an edge. And a high-gravity world like Raffe was going to help give me one. As one of the many non-aligned worlds in the galaxy, Raffe couldn’t depend on an overarching magnanimous body like the Fusion waltzing in, throwing money and largesse around like party favours. As a result, like Chaltow, the planet was poor. But where Chaltow had regions of prosperity, Raffe was all-poverty, all the time. Even the “business district” of the capital resembled some of the seedier alleys I used to skulk in while working my way up the security food chain. Thief to thug to enforcer to boss to consultant. It hadn’t been pretty—not what I did, nor what I had been forced to do—but it had been a sort of career path. Raffe threw me right back to the start of those old memories. I had forgotten how ugly “poor” was.
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) Poor was bad roads and filthy wheelers between the spaceport and the hotel I’d chosen. Poor was cracked facades, unattractive dusty colours and haphazard embellishments on buildings. I hadn’t expected much from the accommodation, but it disappointed even my meagre expectations. Together with the gravity pulling at every one of my muscles, Raffe was a clear shot straight into hell. And that was before I began observing the locals. I checked in, prepaying for one month in advance and, after being escorted to my room, decided that I needed a bit of fresh air before I risked letting my clothes rest on any flat surface in the “suite”. As I hit the streets, more and more it reminded me of home. Of course there was a meanness to Raffe that had never been evident on Chaltow (one reason I’d chosen it as my training ground) but, beneath the calculation and feral watchfulness, the texture of both was the same. The streets were broken or patched, the laughter over-loud, the pedestrians furtive and scurrying. Above my head, flashing lights reminded me that I was constantly under surveillance. The building walls looked like they were being held together with dirt—one big storm and it would all come crumbling down. I had been brought up in a place very much like this, and it hurt to realise that Vahsoon-ya had barely managed to crawl out of a similar hole. If I’d needed any more motivation to help Ston, I was walking it, regretting again that I hadn’t managed to include a lightning trip back to my home town after meeting with the governor on Chaltow’s bigger moon. Maybe I’d get a chance when they erected that statue to me. I smirked and kept walking. It took the sound of a boot scuffing behind me to bring me to my senses. I lengthened my stride and cursed myself for my stupidity. I had become soft, used to a life of predictable bureaucracy and fat payments on schedule. I needed to get hungry again, build up those instincts that had been dulled by decades of good living. I needed a place like Raffe, and preferably before it got me killed. My mental sermon worked, and just in time, too. Even as a hand touched my jacket collar, I was reacting, capturing the hand, spinning around and using my momentum to send my would-be attacker crashing into the nearest wall. He was short and scrawny, dressed in clothes that were too big for him, the material sticky with grease and dirt that had never been washed off. I leant on his outstretched arm and was gratified to hear him
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) yelp. It would have been the work of moments to continue with the pressure but, as I said, I was relaxed from years of soft living and the gravity still felt like an opponent dragging on every square centimetre of my body. Around me, people pointedly avoided the altercation. They didn’t even quicken their steps, just kept their gazes fixed on any other point along the street and continued walking. I could have taken a knife and gutted the kid in the fumefilled air, and doubt anyone would have batted an eyelid. Angry (disgusted, maybe), I turned the boy around and shoved him again, back first this time, against the wall, my fingers nestled around his throat. From under matted locks, a pair of eyes—too large in a small face—looked up at me. They were filled with defiance, but that wasn’t what made me hesitate. My attacker wasn’t a boy. It was a young woman. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I snarled at her, more shaken than I cared to admit. “What do you think?” Her response was equally aggressive. What was I supposed to do now? Take her back to my hotel room as a stray? Feed her then turn her loose? Show any kind of weakness and I knew I’d have to beat off the rest of the population with several nail-studded wooden clubs. I let go of her as if she disgusted me and she staggered sideways. “Why don’t you stay out of the way until you can learn to handle yourself,” I said to her. With that insult delivered, I deliberately turned my back on her and kept walking. If she’d been more skilled, or maybe more desperate, she would have come after me again, but she slunk off and—a couple of minutes later—when I used the reflection of a shopfront window to check if anyone had followed me, the space behind me was bare. To be honest, I hadn’t known what to do with her. She shouldn’t have been on the streets. She reminded me of myself. With that attitude and nothing to back it up with, she shouldn’t have been picking marks. Would she improve her skills, or try to find something else to train as? Did I care? I couldn’t save an entire damned planet; saving one province was going to cost me enough. I cursed and kept my eyes open as I headed back to my hotel.
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample)
CHAPTER FOUR
M
y sleep was fitful, reminding me again of the contrast between where I’d been born and where I’d most lately come from. Every hour, I heard police sirens wailing above me. Even more alarming were the scuffles and clangs of
metal-on-metal that may have been abortive efforts to climb the three-metre-high fence that surrounded the hotel. Closer to dawn, the sounds of illicit industry were replaced by the off-key singing of the drunk and drugged, who find the only way they can face the harshness of reality is by running away from it. It was all my childhood memories made flesh. I decided to get out of bed while it was still early and, after a spiritless breakfast of stale, half-warm dishes that already looked days old, I set off to find a place to train. They still used paper on Raffe and I had a folded piece in my pocket, detailing four of the closest gyms. I carried nothing else in my hands, walked confidently, and began reviving my old seeing-out-of-the-back-of-my-head skills. Training security teams was easy work compared to walking the streets of Raffe. A security course has known obstacles, finely-calibrated publicly-stated objectives, groups of people of generally the same amount of experience and at similar skill levels, and the opportunity to correct mistakes as many times as required. It’s a controlled environment. On the streets, a cocky fighter is just as likely to be taken down by a drug-head with a shattered bottle and a single lucky strike as a six-person strike squad. In an operation, the enemy is well-defined; on the street, an uneven pavement can mean death. I retrieved my piece of paper, unfolded it, re-read the addresses, and set off for the first facility on the list. Page 29
I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) It was a preening gym. In a way it seemed strange that, on a planet like Raffe, there were still people who spent more time exercising and posing in front of mirrors than, say, stealing food for their family, but it was just another example of natural selection. If a man (or woman) was well-built, with bulging muscles, then chances were they could take care of themselves. They might be able to waste hours posturing because they controlled a gang that did all the work for them. They might be rich. Whatever the reason, the fact they could waste time lifting weights showed that they were better partner material than, say, the thieves attempting to scale my hotel fence the night before. Which meant they probably had wives, husbands, workers, gangs, and connections. Pity I wasn’t after any of those things. I crossed the gym off my list and moved on. The door to the second gym was locked. I could hear muffled sounds from behind the thick panel but, even with my rhythmic pounding, nobody answered. They could have turned private. They might even be working someone over behind the badly painted walls. Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with me. The third gym looked the best but, just to be sure, I visited the fourth...or rather, I visited the site where the fourth had been. All that was left was a burnt-out shell. I backtracked to my previous destination. Gentin’s Gym was owned, appropriately enough, by a woman named Gentin. It was out of the way, halfway down an alley, enter the second door on the left, down a short flight of stairs, then walk the short corridor to the door at the end. And while there were a few muscle-freaks around, there was also a fighting ring and the old-style dummies on springs, their thin padding stained with the blood and secretions of who-knew-how many fighters before me. Gentin herself was old by Raffe standards, possibly in her mid-fifties. She didn’t mince words. “You want to train here,” she said, “you gotta prove yourself first. I don’t tolerate time-wasters.” Which was just what I was looking for. “All right.” “You get in the ring,” she said, jerking her head towards the roughly circular shape pegged out on the floor, “and I’ll send someone along.” I walked towards the back of the gym, shedding my jacket as I did so. It was only dumb luck that saved me.
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) As I cleared one arm from a sleeve, I felt something against my bare upper arm. A breath of air. My mind went into overdrive—I hadn’t seen any fans or ventilation vents, the gym had fallen strangely silent: what were the chances of Gentin playing fair?—and I moved. Not knowing what to expect, I spun low, wheeling my jacket around like a blunt whip. It caught the person sneaking up behind me by surprise. The jacket didn’t do anything other than spook him, but the distraction gave me enough time to do another spin, delivering a sweep kick as I rose. By the time he hit the floor, I was on top of him, his arm in a lock and on the verge of a break. He tapped out, but I was wise to this crew by now. I tightened my grip slightly, twisted a little more and looked up at Gentin. There was a small smile on her face. “Good enough?” I asked. She licked her lips. “A hundred and fifty a month; medical supplies are your own responsibility. You train as hard as you like, there’ll always be someone around to match you. You die in here, we dump you outside. Two months in advance, no refunds.” I paid for three, which would see me through to the start of the elimination rounds of Prefect Dinoh’s Rewards Series, and started my training as soon as I got the receipt.
It was tough. It was bad enough polishing disused skills, but doing it on a high-gravity planet was murder, especially for the first two weeks. I got thrown around a lot. Sometimes, I used to limp back to the hotel, my body bruised from a particularly punishing session. To take my mind off my physical complaints, I began researching the tournament more thoroughly, and the first person I looked up was Prefect Dinoh. Being outside the Fusion, there wasn’t much I could dig out about him. I couldn’t find out about his childhood, for example, or details on his parents or siblings. I didn’t know where he was educated, although the Fusion was eager to disseminate information on exactly how they educated their citizens. My eyes glazed over at the umpteenth mention of “living up to one’s full potential”. When it came to recent history, the information was better, and there was more of it, Page 31
I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) particularly as Dinoh had taken an administrative position with one of the Non-Aligned worlds. Chaltow was designated non-Aligned. As was Ulwohem. So there was a lot of news floating around. From what I read, Dinoh was nothing more than a capable bureaucrat. Sundi’s World was mentioned as his first non-Fusion world posting. It made me wonder whether Dinoh had been corrupted by us non-Aligneds, or whether he’d had a bad reputation while still in the Fusion and had been kicked out so he didn’t pollute their high ideals. Nothing I read or saw answered either question. Power. Greed. Weakness. Who knew why people did things contrary to their own best interests? I was just an insignificant martial artist, trying to stop a planetary invasion. Given the size of the universe, that didn’t make me, or my task, important at all.
My favourite training partner was a large Dozian, who looked like the thinking person’s dinosaur. His skin was thick and impenetrable, his claws were sharp, his tail was a short prehensile whip, and he was smart. I didn’t know what a member of a species from the other side of the galaxy was doing on a dump like Raffe, and I didn’t ask. We didn’t have that kind of relationship. During my first month there, I’d dutifully turn up and get pounded into the ground. It got so bad that, whenever I walked through the door, someone would tip off Dozer. Within half an hour he’d appear, as if conjured out of thin air, and the rest of the gym would stop whatever they were doing so they could watch me eat floor. What I liked about Dozer is that he didn’t take his strength and reach for granted. He always approached me with respect. I appreciated that, but it also made him a formidable opponent. In martial arts, a person wins by doing one of two things: turning an opponent’s strengths against him, or striking at his vulnerabilities. Dozer didn’t have many vulnerabilities and he was well aware of the limits of his strength. People who think martial arts are only about exercising the body either haven’t done any martial arts or have only known bad martial artists. The dedicated fighter knows that her art is as much science and psychology as exercise. If I was going to ever beat Dozer, I needed to hit the knowledge banks and dig me out an advantage. Page 32
I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) Back at the hotel, in between hard lessons on how many ways my limbs could be twisted, I used the ansible to go trawling through the available infowebs. I researched the Series, the variety of humanoid species that usually entered the competition (and it was only ever humanoid), and the climate of the planet. I sat through past fights, analysing fight moves. And I tracked down Dozer’s homeworld and pulled up as many medical texts on his species as I could find. It was such a little thing that, at first, I skipped over it. But something nagged at me, so I went back to the section on optical systems, and read it more deeply. One big advantage that Dozer had on me was his field of vision. As a bulk standard humanoid, forward facing, I had a one hundred and eighty degree field of vision. Dozer’s field of vision, with his flatter eyes positioned further back on his muzzled face, was almost two hundred and fifty degrees. And, just to make things worse, the bastard never blinked. He didn’t have to, as long as his nictitating membranes worked. But there was one big difference in how we processed information. Most of my field of vision was binocular. Most of Dozer’s was monocular. That doesn’t sound like much...unless the topic of depth perception comes up. An animal isn’t good estimating distance with monocular vision. It can detect movement, maybe even colour, depending on the physiology, but can only tell whether an object is approaching or retreating by its relative size. If it gets bigger, it’s approaching; smaller, it’s retreating. That’s how Dozer’s peripheral vision worked. By the middle of my second month’s training at Gentin’s, I could fight Dozer to an exhausted standstill (exhausted for me, that is), but not much more. And, as good as the exercise was, unless I triumphed over my reptilian friend, I’d be plateaued out. My only remaining strategy was to use his lack of depth perception against him. At our next match, I put my research to use. It was still difficult but, by keeping my overall height the same as I advanced on him from the side (crouching slightly as I got closer), I was able to deal him some heavy blows. By stunning him, I was able to reach Dozer’s legs—the weakest part of his anatomy—and then it was a case of approachstrike-kick-retreat before that tail of his whipped around and cracked one of my ribs. It was a war of attrition. Sweat was dripping from my pores by the time we were done. My clothes were ripped in several places, and deep bloody gashes swallowed my
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) perspiration, making them sting. But Dozer was on the floor with one leg, and his tail, broken. Around me, I heard the sounds of conversation and the unmistakable clink of currency being exchanged, but I was concentrating on Dozer. “Are you all right?” I asked. “I’m okay,” he rumbled, “for someone who’s lost two limbs.” “I’ve got some supplies in my locker.” It hadn’t taken much time to build up a stockpile of bandages, splints, antiseptic and painkillers. Gentin had been right on that count. She ran a tough gym. “Stand clear.” Gentin’s voice called from behind me. “I’ll take care of it.” But I still stuck around and helped, long after the others had either moved on with their own training, or left. It was almost closing time, when Gentin caught my attention again. “Help me shut up this joint,” she said. I wiped my hands on my pants. “All right.” I thought I knew what was coming, and I wasn’t wrong. I gave each of the dummies a spray-down, followed by a light scrubbing, while she straightened the ring and organised the weights. Then she switched off the lights and motioned me into her office. In all the weeks I’d been coming to the gym, I’d never seen anyone enter Gentin’s private sanctuary. I walked into a small, cramped space, lit by a cracked strip of lighting that ran around the edges of the room’s ceiling. The wallpaper was old and faded, corners of it peeling from the walls. The furniture consisted of a unit of shelves and a desk. The visitor’s chair had once had slide-eeze pads on it but they were all gone, and I had to pull it across rucked up old carpet—making it jump as I did so—just so I could sit down in it. The stiff upholstery covering was cracked and prodded the underside of my thighs. The only comfortable position was one with my legs wide apart. Across from me, Gentin poured two drinks from a water flask and shoved one at me. I took a sip, knowing it wasn’t water, and tried not to cough as the raw alcohol seared my throat. “What’s your game?” Gentin asked. I stared at her. “I don’t understand.” She wasn’t buying it. “Yes, you do. You come from offworld, pick one of the
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) toughest gyms in this precinct, and keep slugging away at one of my best fighters until you bring him down.” “Maybe I like a challenge.” “Here? On a high-grav world that every sentient being tries to avoid? Nah, I know you have an agenda. I’m just wondering what it is.” She took a swallow of her own drink. To her credit, she didn’t even gag. Maybe she made the stuff herself. “You try to hide it, but you’ve got money. I can tell by your clothes, your boots, even the kind of supplies you’ve been buying. Only the best. Have to have money to be able to afford that kind of attitude. And that gets me thinking. Rich mark, solid training, deliberately travelling to Raffe.” She paused. “You’re going up against someone, aren’t you?” There was no use denying it. “Yep.” “Money involved?” “Enough.” “For you?” “As you said,” I shrugged, “I don’t need it.” “Your boss?” I shook my head slowly. “No boss.” “Interesting. If you have no boss and it’s not for you, then who’s it for?” “None of your business.” She gazed at me for a long moment. “What are you going to do now that you’ve beaten Dozer?” I drained my drink. “I thought maybe I could go up against Dozer and a few of his friends.” “You mean multiple assailants?” “That would help sharpen the old reflexes.” Gentin grinned and clinked her glass against mine. “That it will,” she said.
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample)
CHAPTER FIVE
G
entin’s attitude softened towards me after that conversation. I was never invited back to her office but, then again, I didn’t need to be. I suppose she figured that the best way to help out was by throwing everything bar the
building itself at me. While Dozer was still recuperating, she invited a few gang members from the surrounding territories to come and try their luck. Of course she made sure to lock everything down before they arrived, so the gym was the most barren I had ever seen it. My opponents were a mix of heights and builds, skewed towards male. Their gazes flicked around the walls, expertly totalling up the worth still left on display before focusing on me. Me? I was standing in the middle of the circle, waiting for them to get ready. I smiled and waved to get their attention, and then it was on. That gang of thugs at Gentin’s Gym reminded me of a few valuable lessons. Warming up before a fight is for soft professionals. If someone is determined to attack me on the street, they’re not going to give me time to go through twenty stretches beforehand. Expect one or more to play dirty. I still had a remnant of my old training mindset— everybody is either unarmed or armed in this particular way—and almost lost a kidney when one of the gang members drew a knife on me. In deflecting that strike, I set my jaw up for a right cross. Stars danced before my eyes and I was about to go down, but the sheer number of opponents rushing to get a piece of me ended up buying me some time. Dancing back (okay, staggering back), I cleared my head, gritted my teeth, and showed them why I had once been one of the most feared names in the galaxy’s fighting rings. By Page 36
I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) the time the dust cleared, all but one of them was splayed on the floor and my remaining opponent was on her knees, head down and breathing heavily (she had been a tough one, small and quick). I was equally winded, but at least I was still standing, therefore I was the winner. The rest of the gym celebrated my victory by invading a bar later that night. I remember a fountain of never-ending drinks and a man. He was younger than me, nicely built and very accommodating. We spent the night together and he had the good grace to leave my hotel room before I had to kick him out. Till the day I left Raffe, I never saw him again, nor did I get his name. Dozer came back two weeks before my training deadline and, together with the rest of the gym, I trained harder than I had in my entire life. By the time I was done, I could have beaten the younger Ebony Strike six ways to a black hole. Raffe had been a good choice. Leaving was an emotional experience for me. I had gone there because it was the baddest place I could think of to train. But Gentin, Dozer and the gang had managed to get under my skin. I felt sorry for the planet and wondered whether they’d thought of appealing to the Fusion for help. Then again, Raffe was deep in Non-Aligned space, and a tiny blob of Fusion utopia so far away from their main concentration would resemble an unguarded buffet rather than a beacon of hope. It wasn’t an appealing thought, but the only way I could see to improving the lives of everyone on the planet was for them to shift it sideways a hundred light-years or so. On my last day, I donated my stash of medical supplies to Dozer. He playfully slapped me on the shoulder and I almost went head-first through the wall. “You coming back?” Gentin asked, her voice a little too casual. “Probably not,” I said. “Yep, that’s our story. People come, take what they want, then leave.” “You should, too,” I said, leaning against the counter. “How long have you been running this place? Three decades? Four?” She shrugged. “You know how to watch out for danger,” I said. “You’re a shrewd businesswoman. You probably have a nice fat pile of credits buried somewhere. You should use it to get away. Start someplace new.”
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) She waved a hand around. “And leave all this behind?” Then she looked at me. Really looked at me. “Would you do that in my place? Take the money and run?” Would I do it? I had done it, only without the money. “Sure,” I said. “Well I wouldn’t.” I frowned. “Why not?” “’Cos this is my family. It’s as obvious as the lines on this face, Slim.” That was her name for me. Slim. “I’ve got family, you don’t. That’s why you can run, here, there, everywhere around the galaxy.” She waved her arms in the air, then let them drop. “Me, my friends are here. People I care about and who care about me, all right here in this gym. Sure, it doesn’t look like much, but at least I have someone to go home to at the end of a shitty day. What do you have, Slim?” To say she’d hit a nerve would have been an understatement. People had expressed many emotions in front of me over the years, but pity usually wasn’t one of them. “I’m still looking,” I told her, after a beat. “In that case, good luck. I hope you find peace, Ebony. I really do.” I looked at her sharply. I’d never told her my name. Had never told anyone on Raffe. She smiled. Her rheumy eyes were compressed between pillows of fat and sagging skin, but they were still full of life. “Go knock ‘em dead,” she said. I nodded. “I will.” And left the planet.
Prefect Dinoh had organised his tournament well, with the first few rounds held far away from Sundi’s urban centres. Not that that posed a problem for him. By creating his own martial arts tournament, he was also in a position to monopolise the communications associated with that tournament, and I was positive that sales from televising the fights exceeded what he was squeezing from the local population. All he had to do was cover the first prize and everything else was unadulterated profit. On the long journey to Sundi’s Page 38
I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) World, I wondered how the Fusion had let someone as criminal as Dinoh get through its screening. Maybe they weren’t as incorruptible as their public relations made out. Whatever the case, he needed to be exposed...but not till I got a crack at those thousand bars of pure-grade ellinium. Every few days, I checked Xin Dell’s mailbox. I had sloughed the identity when I left Ulwohem, but kept the public address as it was the only way for me to contact Ston. And for him to contact me. For some reason, the young idealist had taken me under his wing. Or maybe he hadn’t yet been taught that once he got his fish on the hook, there was no further need to play nice. For whatever reason, I’d become used to receiving the occasional message from him. He shared some details of his life while I was still on Raffe, how Vahsoon-ya had been progressing for the past fifteen years. He’d even included some vids of the province. Thankfully, it had changed beyond recognition. Right now, it looked like an up-market Raffe, and if I skipped past the vid scenes of my old hometown, well, that wasn’t anyone else’s business but my own. He must have run out of propaganda and business presentations because, a day or so out from my destination, it got personal. “In all this time,” he said, “I can’t believe I didn’t tell you about my family.” He didn’t know that I had already researched the hell out of him the first day we met. His dark eyes shone with obvious pride. The background behind him was one of blurred domesticity. I saw the outline of a window, with fuzzy green/brown shapes beyond. “Jana and I got engaged four years ago, but we only got a licence for a child a year ago.” A quick detour to Chaltow law told me Ston was correct. In certain provinces— Vahsoon-ya being one of them—the lack of resources meant that parents needed to wait for a child. That was a new rule. It hadn’t been in effect when I was growing up. A part of me railed at the regulation, but if it meant fewer young bodies dying, bloated in belly yet stick-thin in limbs, then I was all for it. As a child, I had watched friends wither away. It wasn’t a fate I wished on anyone. “It was a bit difficult falling pregnant, but we were lucky. Two months ago, Jana gave birth to a young girl.”
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) I knew what was coming next, but couldn’t avoid it. Essentially, it was a vid sequence of family bliss. Jana turned out to be a moderately attractive woman with sharpish features. Ston, of course, I already knew. Which meant that the squirming, tancoloured bundle between them must be their new daughter. I froze the video, switched off the display and threw my unit on the empty seat beside me. Between the vid and Gentin’s final words... I had worked hard to become Ebony Strike. I had a lifestyle that most envied, with enough money to retire on if I wanted to, and the ability to pick and choose my own assignments if I didn’t. If I had stayed on Vahsoon-ya, I’d either be dead or, if I were lucky, working for a security service run by an arsehole. Either way, it didn’t add up to a whole lot of either money or opportunity. So what if I had played it too safe and closed my mind to the idea of a family? After seeing the devastation of my province, I had made myself a promise not to let anyone depend on me, not unless I could absolutely guarantee their health and wellbeing till the day they died of old age. I know all the platitudes: “But, Ebony, life is risk”; “Ebony, living with someone doesn’t mean taking on every one of their responsibilities”, “Children need to forge their own path, Ebony”. Says the comfortable person sitting in their comfortable home on some goddamned rich and comfortable planet. I doubt any of those philosophers had ever lived in Vahsoon-ya. I doubted they even knew where the planet was. But that never stopped them pontificating on how everyone else should live. So I was happy to see a healthy-looking child in Jana and Ston’s arms. Happy to know that there was still a sliver of hope for the population I’d left behind. But if I didn’t want to be like them, take the risks and heartache that went along with parenthood in an uncertain future, then that was my own choice. The seat had been comfortable, but now it bit into my lower back. “Damn upholstery,” I muttered, and got up, unsnapping my harness in one swift, practiced move. I needed a drink. The cruiser I was on was a budget model, plying its steady way on a circuit that included several of the non-Aligned worlds. The Dat system, of which Sundi’s World was a part, was included because, until less than a decade ago, Dat had been non-aligned itself
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) and, until the Fusion made the decision to extend its own transport web to include it, the little squad of propelled junkheaps (one of which I was travelling on), owned by an oligarch out by Cryd’s Crystal, was the only way to get to Dinoh’s personal fiefdom. But what did that mean in real terms? I thought we had advanced to a point that ship-wide artificial gravity was a given, but I was wrong. The Opeh Ridge had only limited sections where up was up and down was down—they were the staff operational areas, lounge, dining area and the gym. I hadn’t slogged for three months on Raffe, getting the old body into shape, only to have it atrophy away on the two-week trip to Sundi’s World. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time in the gym. Unfortunately, none of my fellow passengers were obnoxious enough for me to pick a fight with, and there certainly weren’t enough of them to keep it going every day for two weeks, so I contented myself with strength exercises, coupled with some basic agility. I had to hope that I’d have enough time once I reached my destination to limber up properly, and get those killer instincts back into play. In the meantime, the lounge called. I stepped from zero- to full-gravity and exhaled in a whoosh. No matter how many times I travelled back and forth between sections, my body was always surprised by the sudden transition. Chalk that up to another indication of sub-standard stellar cruisers. On the better class of crapped-out ships, the change in gravity was a more gradual thing, usually laid out in several increments from none to whatever was the ship standard. Unfortunately, I was a first-class passenger on a piece of junk, which basically meant I was paying a lot for not much at all. “Taking a break from the gym?” a voice asked, as I neared the bar. I ordered a Steel Hummingbird, straight up, and turned to the source of the voice. He was young and toned, just the way I liked them. A pleasant enough face, nice smile, and a twinkle of something in his eye. “All work and no drink,” I said, reciting the ancient quote. The robo-tender pushed a short, square tumbler across the counter and I used it to salute my companion. “Can I get you something?” “Another Ibaran ale would be nice.” The robo-tender flashed green as it picked up the vocal cues and, seconds later, a tall frosty glass full of dark red liquid appeared.
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I Am Ebony Strike (Sample) “Where are you getting off?” the attractive young man asked. “Dat. You?” His face fell. “The stop before. Tashkin.” “You have business there?” “Family.” There was that word again. I sipped at my Hummingbird. It was cold and dry, just the way I liked it. “How long before we get to...where did you say, Tashkin?” “Four days.” And Dat was a week beyond that. “It can get boring on a ship like this,” I said, my voice casual. “Few facilities.” “Limited anti-grav.” “Same six walls in the gym.” He was smart and was quick to get into the game, his smile widening with each sentence. “Nothing to do in the lounge but drink,” he said. “It’s all very unhealthy, wouldn’t you say?” “Interested in keeping limber, are you?” I asked. “I could be.” “In that case,” I drained my drink in one long swallow, “let’s get those muscles exercised.” He finished his ale and gestured with a gallant sweep of his hand. “After you.” Exactly what I was thinking, I said to myself. And led the way to my cabin.
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Copyright page I AM EBONY STRIKE ISBN 978-0-9875440-7-0 Copyright © KS Augustin 2016 Cover art: Challis Tower Editors: H Hammond, John Young Ebook conversion: Challis Tower Ebook conversion: Challis Tower A Challis Tower book This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to events, places or persons, living or dead or residing on Earth or a planet or plane of existence other than Earth, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. This ebook has been made available without DRM, subject to individual retailer conditions. Please don’t reproduce in any form. (An exception is the use of brief quotations for the purposes of critical articles and/or reviews.) That includes printing, photocopying, scanning, uploading to torrent sites or any other practice that is somehow meant to circumvent a royalty being rightfully paid to the author. Believe it or not, the vast majority of us authors probably earn less than you. The author and cover artist have asserted their respective rights to be identified as the author of this book and producer of the cover artwork.
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