"Is there anything else we are going to need?"
"I can not detect anything left in the cabin that you could remove."
Donovan was in the midst of performing the final checks before the Noah was to be towed into orbit. While he seemed paranoid about not leaving anything behind, he was really more worried about ARC. It really hadn't had the chance to be helpful in the past few months aside from immaterial and inconsequential actions, its industrial planning being the only notable exception. ARC had expressed its discontent with not being able to be useful in the past, and Donovan would prefer it if their only method of production working as efficiently as it could.
Of course, Don knew that ARC's ability to work would not be affected by its emotions, and he knew that it was incredibly unlikely that ARC would be spurned to sabotage for not having work to do, but it gave him peace of mind to know that his friend was happy.
"Are you sure? You don't think we'll need more batteries or anything like that?"
"So long as you are diligent in recharging them, you should not have an issue."
Five batteries for each of them was probably a bit overkill, but they had no idea how fast their photovoltaic cells would be able to recharge them in the ambient light of the Great Csillacra.
"Fair, mind if I ask what the Arboreal Maiden talked with you about? Surely we didn't give her a tablet just because she wanted one did we?"
At the moment, five of their tablets were in use. One for Diana and another for Donovan, of course, but three others were out on loan. The first was with the Scholar, whose tablet had been modified to be used as a moderately censured dictionary. The second was given to the Librarian a few nights prior. That one had also been modified, though it retained more features, namely the ability to communicate through it.
The Arboreal Maiden received a tablet that was almost completely unmodified, at ARC's request no less. Donovan and Diana understood there probably wasn't any secret about their species that the Arboreal Maiden wasn't already aware of so they agreed, but it was still strange that it would be ARC to put the idea forth.
"She offered to impart the knowledge of how to traverse the stars onto us, an ability that I'm sure you will agree is paramount to our ship building program. Unfortunately, I have neither the equipment to measure split in a relevant manner, nor the means to perform experiments to develop it. This information is something that she can provide, she just needs time to put it into a form that I am capable of understanding."
"Is she going to code something for you?"
"Highly unlikely. I imagine that she needs to do unit conversions and the ability to write and store vast amounts of information in a way that can easily be transmitted. Furthermore, I personally would like to enlist her in my information gathering efforts."
"Then was it really necessary to let her see everything?" Donovan was not convinced that this was the best course of action.
"She rather politely asked for access to the entertainment and educational materials I have stored. If I had to make an assumption, she is probably bored."
"Bored?"
"Indeed. Considering her long lifespan, it is incredibly likely that she is lacking in entertainment that is new. Narcotics aside, there is a good chance she has already become dull to most form of stimulation that exist with the current level of technology. I could not see a downside to exposing her to our culture. If anything it should further your relationship."
ARC's decision seemed very calculating, though how it came to that specific conclusion wasn't quite as clear.
"I also wish to have a consistent and reliable means of contacting someone both willing and able to protect you should you find yourselves in a sticky situation."
There it was.
"You don't trust us to fend for ourselves?" Diana chimed in from down below, packing their belongings into the provided trunks.
"I have little doubt that you will avoid conflicts that will result in your physical endangerment, but there always exists the possibility that you will get caught up in something beyond your control. If I am to best follow the intent of my directives, I would like to have a method of bailing you out."
"Fair. How will you tell we are in danger though?" Diana slammed down a trunk as Donovan descended the ladder. ARC needed him to disable some minor restrictions to ARC's controls over the Noah, namely access to the railguns, so that it may actually proceed with manufacturing some essential industrial components.
"I plan on creating a pair of watches for you as a test run for my manufacturing capabilities. By my projections, they should be done within a week. I will tell you when to have somebody pick them up."
"Watches?"
"Wrist mounted clocks, Donovan. Are you sure they won't attract too much attention? I haven't even seen a wall mounted clock here." Diana, the more fashion literate one, was in charge of such decisions.
"I am banking on that very fact. To them, it would not appear any different than an odd piece of jewelry. You have voiced concerns on that front have you not?"
"I have, though a Rolex doesn't exactly fulfill their definition of a high class accessory." Glass and gold were used, it seemed, but the key was intricacy. In a world of nigh infinite gold, it wasn't how much of it but how it looked that mattered.
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"I will try to add some flair based on some recorded examples, but please acknowledge that aesthetics are not the primary goal here."
- - - - -
Block, step, lunge, retreat.
That was the pattern that Titanyana had Donovan repeating, over and over. He wasn't stabbing at empty air though, Titanyana was his sparring partner. She set the tempo for him to follow, swinging her sword at him from random angles to keep him from falling into a routine. He marveled at her ability to control her sword, the impacts on his own blade not being nearly as powerful as their first session but still just as fast.
"Faster."
Her commands were usually limited to only a few words, which wasn't very helpful when she was explaining how to hold a blade, but it worked in this situation. True to her word, her strikes began coming at him faster and her parries more forceful. Not wanting to get gut-checked by the hilt of her sword, he tried to match her tempo.
"Closer to the handle."
Donovan could only move his sword fast enough to block her next strike near the tip of his sword, something she had specifically warned against in their pre-spar demonstration. He thought he was doing quite well, especially considering the fact that they had been doing this little drill for a few hours now, only taking breaks for water and to examine wounds. However it was precisely because he was doing well that Titanyana would not allow him to get sloppy.
Slow was okay, they could work on that, but he needed to work through fatigue. With the now all-too familiar sound of sword sliding across sword, Titanyana used the leverage that her momentum and position on the blade gave her and landed a solid blow on his lower abdomen.
"Dead. Should we take a break?"
Titanyana herself was getting pretty tired at this point, and Donovan was looking like he could drop. Honestly, she was surprised that he could keep going this long without using Split, especially at the pace they were at. Of course she knew he couldn't use Split like that at the moment, even communicating with her for great lengths of time was a great mental burden for him. She wanted to have him start maintaining a flow of split to help train him, but she had no idea if that would help him yet.
He was really weak with Split at the moment, comparable to a child, but his strength was slowly growing.
"No."
In his panting, he could only get one 'coherent' word out. But that was more than enough to relay his intentions, especially when coupled with his stance. A few seconds later, and his breathing was notably more level. Stamina, Titanyana had determined, was his defining feature.
Therefore, his primary method of fighting should be centered around attrition.
The only problem with this was that Titanyana was only familiar with that style of fighting on a conceptual basis. The fighting styles passed down in Nekh martial teachings were varied, their specifics depending on clan, but her constitution and stature meant she was more suited to brief bouts of incredibly violent and energy intensive fighting to mitigate her disadvantages. Size matters, both in terms of the amount of split one possesses and their body mass.
She was small, even for her people, especially for a Strapper, and their star's condition meant that they couldn't nurture the largest reserves of split. In fact, ever since she had arrived in the Sanctum she had been extremely diligent in strengthening her core, that little nucleus in charge of generating a good deal of split, with the far purer and more abundant split of the Great Csillacra. The fact that this was considered an average amount (in teaching with their doctrine of neutrality) infuriated her ever so slightly.
Regardless, she found herself wishing she had spent more time learning about the red-striped clan's method of fighting. As far as she understood, they were the Nekh's premier experts on long duration combat and controlling the tempo of an individual fight.
"Are you certain? I hit your stomach hard." She was buying time to think.
"Just go."
That, she found, was his other defining trait. Durability. It was enough to make her wonder if he was flesh and blood. She held back and aimed for leather armor so as to not really injure him, but that last blow likely would have cracked ribs on anyone else who wasn't being reinforced with Split.
She, as someone who couldn't last long and couldn't take a hit, had to teach someone how to fight using the sorts of tactics where inviting a blow to guarantee a kill was a valid tactic. If he ever got to the point where he could outlast her supply of split she would basically be unable to continue assisting him.
His lunge interrupted her thoughts. It didn't catch her off guard, she had invited him to strike, but that fact is was more vigorous than a few moments ago made her a little jealous. His blocks were satisfactory too.
- - - - -
"Man, I really wish I could have recorded that." Donovan was almost collapsed to the floor, almost. If he ever fully sat down or fell without her having put him there, she would kick him in the ribs. He had been supporting himself with his sword while taking a knee, which was fine in Titanyana's eyes, so he actually had the wherewithal for a proper sentence this time around. "I could have watched myself and seen what I was doing wrong for later."
"Watched yourself? Are you talking about a mirror?" Titanyana was sweating a bit herself, though that was probably due more to the fact that the courtyard they were in was pretty hot. Apparently there was a fireplace on the other side of a wall, but they didn't know which one.
"Mirror? No, its probably something you guys don't have access to. I was thinking that it would be really cool if I could, like, store my image in the middle of practice so you could show me what I was doing wrong and why."
"Like a Split Crystal?"
"Like a what now?"
"A Split Crystal, surely you've seen one haven't you? At least at this point? Right?" Titanyana could tell from the dumb look on Don's face that he had not, in fact, seen a Split Crystal. Responding quickly to this new information, she rummaged around her little rucksack before pulling something out.
Crystal was certainly an apt description. Translucent with a pronounced red hue it looked very much like a crystal, a hexagonal prism with two pyramidal caps. As she held it between her index and thumb fingers, a small orange glint came from its surface, an odd yet not unreasonable phenomenon considering what he had seen thus far.
"This one can only store a sentence or two, but I hear some of the higher grade ones can have a map of the local galaxy. I wouldn't surprise me if you could somehow store someone's motions with one." Titanyana was unfamiliar with them owing to her relative impoverishment, but she was quite interested in them for a period of time. That was because they were pretty though, not anything else. "You can look at their contents by running some split through it, like this!"
A dull red glow completely separate from the ambient light originated from the little gem, piquing Donovan's interest even further.
"Really? What message is stored in yours's then?"
"Secret."
"What?"
"It's a secret. I won't tell you what it says."
"Even if I ask politely?"
"Even if you took it by force."