Blade Dancer

by S. L. Viehl

  Even more bizarre, the garment seemed to shimmer as it moved, blurring the outlines of its body. I

  couldn’t even tell if it was male, female, or other. The thin, funny-looking black stick it always carried

  around was about a half meter long—too flimsy to inflict any real harm, and it certainly didn’t need to use

  it like a cane.

  Tall, Dark, and Indefinable showed up on the training deck frequently, always worked out alone in one of

  the private rooms, and never spoke to anyone. Often I got the feeling it was watching me, but when I

  looked in its direction, it was already gone.

  I wonder where it’s traveling to, I thought, then became aware that someone else hovered behind me. I

  lowered the weights and turned.

  A large, hairy crewman with a sullen expression on the face sprouting between his legs pointed at the

  machine. “I’m using this now. Get off.”

  I’d seen him before on the deck. He was a bully who liked throwing his weight around with the smaller

  crewmen. He didn’t impress me, although I thought if someone shaved him and taught him to walk

  backward, he’d make a passable, if somewhat rearranged, Terran.

  “When I’m done.” I went back to my extensions.

  “I said”—he grabbed the collar of my tunic—“get off.”

  I let him drag me back, then pivoted, yanking free of his grip. A moment later I pressed the point of my

  trusty Omorr blade into his belly/neck, enough to penetrate his flight suit and scratch his skin.

  I leaned in. “And I said, when I’m done.”

  The crewman swallowed, then nodded and backed off, hands out. I sheathed my blade and went back

  to the machine; then the hair on the back of my neck prickled, and I stepped to one side. The hairy

  crewman slammed butt-head first into the machine, yelped, and dropped over the bench, holding himself

  between the legs as he bled all over it.

  Everyone on the deck, including the one in the weird black clothes, stopped what they were doing to

  stare at me.

  “You can have it now.” I went on to the next machine.

  One of the soldiers on the deck escorted the semiconscious crewman to medical, while another

  wandered over to watch me.

  “Speedy turn, Terran,” he said. “Want to enlist?”

  I pulled seventy-five kilos in resistance on the vertical bar, released, then recalibrated to add another

  twenty-five. “No.”

  The soldier looked up as the deck panel opened and closed, and Black and Blurry left. “He’s been

  watching you, you know.”

  So he was a male, and I wasn’t imagining it. “Who is he?”

  “A killer.”

  I pulled down with the extra twenty-five, feeling the answering burn in my muscles. “I won’t ask him for a

  date, then.” I released the bar. “What’s the deal with his clothes?”

  “They’re made of dimsilk; some bug on N-jui spits it out. The webs they make distort light. His kind

  always wears it.” He shrugged. “Great disguise, but not much on body armor.”

  “And the little stick? What does he do with that? Scratch his back?”

  The soldier rolled his one eye. “Why not ask him yourself?”

  I got my opportunity the next day when the Shadow appeared by my table in the galley. I wouldn’t have

  noticed him at all if he hadn’t tapped the end of his stick on the rim of my server just as I was lifting it to

  my mouth.

  I looked up at the blurry black shape that might have been his head. Maybe I was sitting in his spot.

  Maybe he didn’t like Terrans. Maybe that stick contained poison-tipped spikes he planned to bury in my

  skull.

  And maybe I’ll get to try out my new knife again today. “What?”

  “You move well,” he said, in a voice rendered flat and metallic by some hidden translator device.

  Another fan. Just what I needed. “Thanks.”

  “You not belong here.”

  Or not a fan. “So?”

  He made a funny swirl in the air with the stick. “Dance with me.”

  Of all the things I’d expected to hear the Shadow say, that wasn’t on the list. His translator must have

  shorted or something. “I didn’t get that; say again?”

  He repeated the same bizarre request. A Rilken passing by overheard it, stopped, and grinned up at me.

  “He challenges you to a fight.”

  “Oh.” I looked at the Shadow’s maybe-head again. “No, thanks.”

  “Moves only,” he assured me. “No weapons.”

  How comforting. “Yeah, well, I’m not interested in fighting you with anything.”

  “Everyone fights.” The little stick tapped the table. “Or dies.”

  “That’s a very interesting philosophy.” Or a very pointed threat. “Would you mind leaving now? I’d like to

  finish my meal.”

  “Wait.” The Rilken tossed a handful of credits in front of me. “I’ll pay to see a practice match between

  you and him.”

  It hurt to ignore that much currency—I was almost broke—but I shook my head, got up from the table,

  and walked away.

  The Shadow still came to the training deck every day, and shut himself up in one of the private rooms. I

  had no idea what he did in there. Sometimes he emerged and stood against one wall panel, watching me.

  Playing ball made me used to having an audience, so I ignored him. Most of the time I thought about

  Joren and what I’d tell the others.

  Mom had told me about the other ClanChildren of Honor—what her people had called the other six

  Jorenian crossbreeds who, like me, were born to survivors of the attack on the MoonWave. She’d made

  me promise to find them someday and tell them about what had happened twenty-five years ago, though

  not everything—she’d felt that would have been cruel. Under the circumstances, I agreed. Now I knew

  exactly how they’d feel if they learned the whole truth.

  I was thinking about that—and them—on the day I nearly died.

  That afternoon I started as always, working my muscles from the feet up. I spent extra time on my knee,

  on the same machine the hairy crewman had tried to pull me off of.

  So I go and I tell them about what happened with the MoonWave—Hi guys, guess what? All of

  our mothers took a research trip into space twenty-five years ago. They were attacked, captured,

  and then some really nasty stuff happened to them—How are they going to take the news? What

  if they aren’t on Joren? How am I supposed to track down—

  One minute I was pulling up on the leg grips; the next something made of alloy groaned and a flurry of

  indistinct black appeared next to me.

  “Terran!” Light flashed in front of my face. Something silver and sharp. The Shadow knocked me off the

  bench, and the blade came down, right for my abdomen.

  I didn’t think; I reacted. Before he stabbed me, I rolled under him, scissoring my legs to knock him off

  balance. A fraction of a second before I would have, he wasn’t there anymore.

  What the hell—

  The deck shuddered and my ears rang as something huge and heavy smashed down beside me. Sharp

  alloy fragments pelted me, and I closed my eyes and threw up my hands to protect my face. A good

  move, too, because a sharp, slicing blow sheared across the backs of my arms.

  Cut me, the bastard.

  I didn’t wait for his second move, but got my feet up under me and pushed myself to my knees. Blood

  streamed down my arms, but I focused on the Shadow, who stood only a foot away, in
a fighting stance.

  Instead of the stick he held two short daggers, one in each hand. What was left of the weight unit I’d

  been working out on lay on the deck in a million pieces. It didn’t make sense.

  He wrecked the machine, then stabbed me?

  I rose, keeping my shoulders down and protecting my torso with my bleeding arms. I needed a weapon,

  something I could knock the blades away with or use on his head.

  He spun the twin daggers in his hands, then brought them together, side by side at the hilt. My eyes

  widened as the blades seemed to melt together and suddenly became one knife, which he tucked away

  beneath the blurry dimsilk. “You bleed.”

  “No shit.” I felt the wall panel hit my back and groped sideways for the equipment storage unit. He

  started coming at me. The moment I felt alloy, I grabbed and pulled out a heavy suspension bar and

  swung. “Your turn.”

  An inch before I clubbed him, he reached and snatched the bar out of my hand. He did that so fast that

  my arm nearly came out of its socket. “I not hurt you.”

  “Yeah?” My inner beast rolled, and I felt my claws emerge. If I used them, his insides were going to end

  up all over the deck. If I didn’t, mine might. “What do you call this? Foreplay?”

  “I cut free.” He pointed to the remains of the weight unit. “Recoil.”

  I glanced down. One of the thin alloy cables from the leg grips had my blood all over it. He stepped

  back, and my claws retracted. “What the hell happened?”

  A crowd had gathered by then, and an engineer knelt down by the unit. “Looks like the supports

  buckled. Good thing he shoved you off it, Terran. It would have crushed you.”

  “Let me see.” I got down, dripping blood all over the deck as I examined the machine. Where it had

  snapped, the twisted alloy had a scorched look to it. “Someone’s been screwing around with this.”

  I looked to see what my hero had to say about that, but he was already gone.

  The captain of the Chraeser stopped by to see me in medical, and made it clear he wasn’t happy with

  the attempt on my life.

  “Next time I put you off the ship.” He pinched his central nostrils closed as he watched the ship’s doc

  finish the suture work on my arms. “You comprehend that?”

  “Sure.” The stink of cauterized flesh didn’t bother me. I usually smelled pretty crispy after a game.

  “Thanks for caring.”

  “Next port is Ichthora.”

  I’d heard about that mud ball already—a real refuse heap of a planet. “I’ll stay in my quarters. What

  about the weight unit?” He uncoiled a tendril and rubbed the side of his slimy skull. “What about it?”

  “Somebody sabotaged the support joints by using a torch on them. Maybe that hairy idiot who gave

  himself a concussion trying to slam me.”

  The captain shook his head. “That crewman left the ship the day after you fractured his skull.”

  “Then the guy in the weird black clothes.”

  Now he laughed. “You’re not worth his time.”

  I stayed in my quarters after that, except for meal intervals.

  Since no one had personal prep units, and I wasn’t trusting anyone on the ship, I still had to get food from

  the galley. Nothing happened. A few days passed; then I gave up hiding to sit and eat in the galley rather

  than haul my meals back to my quarters. Even with the meal breaks, I was sick of staring at four wall

  panels, with nothing to do but think about Mom and Joren. One morning I got on the console and

  initiated a database search for the six Jorenian names Mom had given me. After a momentary hesitation, I

  added a separate name to the search string.

  Kieran. My father. At least if he’s dead or in jail, I’ll know.

  Since the console was older than me, it was going to take some time to complete the search, so I headed

  out for refueling. In the galley I prepped a simple breakfast and took my tray to an unoccupied table.

  Thinking about Kieran—about finding Kieran—made my stomach clench.

  My common sense gave my stomach a good mental kick. Quit dodging it. You’re out here; he could

  be out here. Better to find out where if you can.

  A familiar stick appeared on the edge of my table. “Terran.”

  “Not again.” I glanced around the Shadow. The Rilken crewman and a couple of his buddies stood

  gathered in a loose ring behind him. “What now?”

  “Dance with me.”

  Again with the dancing. I rubbed one temple. “Look, pal, I told you, I’m not going to fight you.

  Besides, the captain will dump my ass on a swamp world filled with face-suckers if there’s any more

  trouble involving me and blood on the deck.”

  “Captain works for me,” the blur said. “Does what I say.”

  I eyed the Rilken, who nodded. My arms had barely healed, but if I didn’t soon make some money, I’d

  be landing on some other dismal mud ball anyway. “Okay—moves only. No blood, no weapons, no

  killing.” He nodded. “When?”

  He stepped back from the table and pointed toward the corridor with his stick.

  The fight didn’t start right away: The Rilken had to clear out the training deck, set up a quad, alert the

  crew, and take the bets. A lot of currency exchanged hands, and plenty of eyes followed me as I went to

  warm up.

  “You’ve got testicles, fern,” one of the crewmen said, giving me a friendly slap on the back, then tagging

  along with me to one corner of the quad. He was a big, skinny humanoid with four extruded cranial

  stalks. Eyes like bunches of Terran grapes clustered on the end of each stalk.

  “Not when I checked in the cleansing unit this morning.” I stood beside one corner of the quad and

  stripped off my outer tunic.

  “You know what I mean.” He nodded toward the assassin, who was standing on the other side of the

  quad. “Not many males would take on a blade dancer.”

  My tunic fell out of my hands. My jaw fell out of my face.

  “You didn’t know?” The crewman rotated his eye clusters toward the Shadow, then coughed. “Gods,

  you’re in for it now.”

  The Rilken who had set me up crouched in one corner of the quad, going over bets recorded on a

  datapad. He became my target. His datapad went flying as I yanked him out of the quad and pinned him

  against the outer ropes, and the shocked look he gave the distance from his feet to the floor was comical.

  Or would have been, if I hadn’t felt like strangling him with his own tentacles.

  “See that guy over there?” I forced the Rilken to look at my opponent, then at me. “You didn’t mention

  that he’s a blade dancer.”

  “I thought you knew,” he said, panic and my grip making his voice squeak.

  “Bullshit. You thought I was stupid.” I wrapped a hand around his scrawny throat. “No one in their right

  mind would spar with a dancer.”

  “Terrans are crazy; everybody knows that,” he said, wheezing a little when my hand tightened. “Sorry,

  sorry. He asked you to dance—he said moves only. I thought it was okay with you.”

  “Well, it’s not okay.” I got in the Rilken’s slimy face. “His moves can kill anything that breathes, you brain

  wipe.”

  “They say you’re faster.”

  I should have called the whole thing off right there. Even on Terra, blade dancers had notorious

  reps—they were all trained to kill anything alive, in so many ways that the Shadow probably didn’t have

 
room left in his skull to remember the “no weapons” deal we’d made.

  I knew more about blade dancers than the average Terran, mostly from rumors and bogeyman stories

  passed around the underground. Why hadn’t I recognized his type right off? Why hadn’t the things he’d

  said to me clued me in? Like you move well.

  In comparison to his other victims, I was sure I did.

  Someone harrumphed. I looked at the crowd that had gathered around my corner. Eager faces watched

  me with the intensity of high rollers guaranteed a fixed bout.

  Was it fixed?

  The Rilken extended a timid coil and patted the back of my hand. “You can win, Terran.” To the others

  he said, “You’ve seen her move. She can beat him, can’t she?”

  The crowd erupted with voices in agreement.

  “Shut the fuck up.” I pushed the Rilken through the ropes back into the quad. For a minute I looked at