image [https://i.imgur.com/gvLviyV.jpeg]

They peeked out from the slipstream several times to recalibrate their course. Veringulf’s navicomputers weren’t what they used to be, and since stars and other cosmic bodies were always moving, you wanted to be absolutely sure you didn’t stray even a little off course, for you could hit the gravity shadow of a black and that would be it. So, several times, Dorja commanded the ship’s AI to pull them out of the slipstream. She’d learned the AI sometimes needed to have some downtime while it considered its next course.

Now came the period when the passengers aboard Veringulf would have no choice but to mingle, for even the Kennisons wanted to poke their heads out of their room. Luke Kennison, apparently feeling it his fatherly duty to brave talking with the blue witch, would come up to the cockpit and ask only “Are we there yet?” and when he found out they weren’t “How much longer?” and Dorja would give her usual answer of “Could be weeks still” and Luke would go dejectedly back to his family.

But this opened lines of communication. Once, Dorja asked Luke, “How is everything back there?” And she was surprised when she got an honest response. “We’re all afraid. I’m the only one of my family who’s ever been aboard a starship. My wife and children…it’s been difficult. Abner isn’t sleeping, he can't get used to the day/nightcycle routines up here, and Muri and Sachi haven’t been eating. It’s causing my wife and I some stress.”

“You have a very large family,” Dorja said.

“Yes.” The man looked haggard. He’d been through something traumatizing, watching his whole planet be destroyed, and his family had seen their entire history erased. Probably their friends and extended family were all dead.

“The Brood came for Dorja’s home, too,” she told him.

Luke looked up at her. “Yeah?”

She nodded.

He sighed, and muttered, “Sorry.” Then he turned and headed aft. Dorja watched him go, wondering if there was any more she could do, knowing there wasn’t. Time was the only thing for healing, though often it only ever felt like palliative care.

But Dorja had enough on her plate without having to worry about the entire Kennison family. Turtle was spending more time in the cockpit, especially whenever they left the slipstream and reverted back into realspace. The small girl would sit in the pilot’s seat, feet up in the chair, hugging her knees close to her chest and staring out at the sea of stars. Whenever Dorja saw this, she would go up and sit beside her in the copilot’s seat and quietly run through what she knew of Veringulf’s diagnostics checks, cycling through any problems that popped up on the trouble-board and logging them on her palmslate. Dorja was concerned the girl might become catatonic, like Dorja had been after witnessing the destruction of her homeworld, so she hoped proximity would allow them to become close.

Once or twice, Dorja noticed Turtle’s eyes following her motions, as she flipped switches and called up system checks on her two main screens.

On one of these occasions, Turtle was sitting in the pilot’s seat with Joshua nestled beside her. She had her hand on the bot’s domed head, lightly drumming her fingers on him. Turtle liked Newpik and Joshua, Dorja had heard them chasing her around the cargo bay a few times. While she drummed the bot’s head, Turtle asked softly, “Why do you do all that?”

Dorja looked over at her, trying to conceal just how delighted she was that Turtle had opened up enough to ask. Turtle could go days saying very little, usually only acknowledging one of Dorja’s summons to train or appear at the galley for supper. Little questions like these were a small victory. “Has Turtle ever had a doctor look over her, make sure she wasn’t sick?”

Turtle gave a little nod.

“Well, that is what Dorja must do for Veringulf. Regular checkups like these ensure he stays healthy.” She smiled and gave the main trouble-board a soft petting. “Dorja takes care of Veringulf, so he takes care of her.” She looked over at Turtle. “All things require care. If we do it correctly, they will care for us back.”

Turtle looked down at Joshua. “Joshua’s voice-box is broken. He stutters a lot.”

“I d-d-do,” Joshua said.

Dorja nodded. “Joshua needs care, too. But Dorja isn’t very good with machines. She knows which buttons to press, but she is not a mechanic, not an engineer.”

“Is there…?”

“Is there what?”

“A user’s manual?”

Dorja tilted her head, a bit surprised that a girl who had been traded across the stars knew what a user’s manual was. “You mean for bots like Joshua? There is. But the texts are…beyond Dorja. Dorja only speaks and reads NewGal, and all the techspeak in the books are in OldGal, so she hasn’t—”

“I can read OldGal,” Turtle said.

Dorja could not have been more surprised if the Stone God materialized in front of her eyes and challenged her to a duel. “You…?”

“Chop-Chop taught it to me.”

“Who is Chop-Chop?”

“He was a dami-bot on one of the ships. Do you know what that is?”

Dorja nodded, leaning back in her seat, intrigued by all this. “It is a toy bot. It plays learning games.”

“Chop-Chop was my friend. He had a busted voice-box, too--they call it a vox--his was busted just like Joshua's.” She gave the bot’s head an affectionate rub. “I miss him.”

Dorja recalled the Master’s teachings, how he’d seized upon any small interests Dorja had shown, like geology, which had been one of her mother’s passions. She looked at the Alexandrite shard sitting on top of her trouble-board, wondering if this was her mother’s doing somehow, her ghost reaching through the zero field and sending a message. The Master had sought out these little hobbies or skills in Dorja, and encouraged her to indulge in them. It had permitted her to see that learning could be fun, which had translated eventually into a love for training.

“Let’s do this, then,” she said. “Dorja will give Turtle the user’s manual, and Turtle can teach Dorja all that she learns. Together, perhaps they can fix Joshua's vox. Does that sound like fun?”

For the first time in what felt like ages, Turtle looked up at Dorja and smiled, and nodded.

Dorja tried to hold back the true well of emotions she felt in that moment, in that small breakthrough. But nothing could have prepared her for what happened when she stood up and said, “Good, it is settled, then. Let’s go find those manuals. They’re probably stashed in the cargo—”

That’s when Turtle shot to her feet, and reached her arms around Dorja’s waist. The wee girl didn’t say anything, only held her. Dorja fought back tears and laid a hand on Turtle’s head. A hug from the girl was like an elixir, more than just palliative care for her soul, something that reached deep, deep into her past. Dorja saw herself in Turtle, a girl lost and without a clue as to what she was, or who she was. “Run along now,” she said, her voice catching. “I’ll find you in the cargo hold, and we can search for the manuals together. I’ve got a few more systems checks that need to get done.”

Turtle peeled herself away slowly, nodded silently. “Come on, Joshua.”

“C-C-Coming,” the bot said, rolling after her.

As she was leaving the cockpit, Turtle muttered, “Hey, Kirek.”

“Hey there, Sunset,” he said with a smile, reaching out to tousle her hair.

That’s when Dorja first noticed that Kirek was standing in the doorway of the cockpit. She hadn’t even sensed him. He was good at creeping up silently, and Dorja wondered if that was on purpose. He stood to one side to let Turtle pass, then leaned against the bulkhead and said, “Looks like you two are making progress.”

“She’s still wrestling with it,” Dorja said, sitting back in the copilot’s seat.

Kirek nodded, and sat in the pilot’s seat. “She’s grateful to be here. She’s not stupid, she knows you saved her, that you saved us all, but she doesn’t know what you are to her. Not yet. Are you her loving mother, her cold-hearted master, or just another disappointing adult who will betray her?”

Dorja flipped a switch to begin the fuel mixture for the next jump. “If Dorja’s Master were here, he would say you just defined the cornerstones of parenting.”

“Sounds like he and I would’ve gotten along.”

“You wouldn’t. He got along with few people. And the people he got along with were...eccentrics. Obsessive martial artists, chi masters, searchers of immortality and elevated thinking. All obsessively seeking perfection, to the exclusion of practically everything else.”

Kirek's eyes widened marginally. "That where you get it?"

"Get what?"

He thumbed in the direction of the cargo hold. "I've seen you training in there. Pretty, uh, obsessively, as you say."

Dorja glanced sidelong at him, still mixing Veringulf's fuel. "Dorja is not obsessive. She's determined. There's a difference."

Kirek nodded, and let that go.

“You called her Sunset,” Dorja said.

“Hm?”

“A moment ago, you called her—”

“Oh, yeah. It’s just something we say where I come from. The youngest of children were sometimes affectionately called Sunset. It was said that the youngest child was the ‘sunset’ on the parents’ old lives, officially putting an end to everything that came before, and now that their family was complete, they could start a new life as one big bunch.” Kirek shrugged. “I actually didn’t even realize I’d called her that until you said it.”

They both sat for a while, staring out at the stars and feeling the ship vibrate as the rear fuel cells went through mixing the pycno pellets. At last, he put a foot up on the console, and broke the silence. “I spoke with Luke back there. He came out to escort his kids to and from the bathroom.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. They’re getting antsy back there. Food and supplies…we’re not exactly low yet, but we’re noticeably lower than when we left Herenov. I guess you noticed?”

She nodded, checking the fuel mixture’s percentage on her screen. “Dorja noticed.”

“They’re starting to ask…how much longer?”

“Veringulf always gets to where he’s going.”

Kirek nodded, and that seemed to be that. He took in a deep breath, and slapped his thighs and stood up. “Want to play a game of chiirepth when you’re done?”

“Dorja is no good at strategy.”

“Well, then, let me teach you.”

“Later,” she said, standing up. “Dorja has training to do.”

Kirek nodded. “Okay, sure. Oh, hey, what’s the Ten Exalted Fists?”

She turned to him. “What?”

“The Ten Exalted Fists? I came in here to check the temperature controls—it got a little cold last nightcycle—anyway, I saw on your tac-screen you had a search merger running through Veringulf’s libraries, looking into something called the Ten Exalted Fists. What is that?”

Dorja wondered if she ought to tell him. The man knew about her candle now, and had asked to help her carry it. Dorja decided not to tell him too much, since she wasn’t sure how much she wanted anyone to know. “It’s nothing. Just something Dorja was looking into. But apparently it doesn’t exist.”

“Okay. But you said later for chiirepth, right?”

“Yes. Later.”

Kirek smiled as he watched her go. “Later is good. Later is fine. After all, not like we're going anywhere anytime soon.”

But there never came a later for chiirepth, not during that daycycle, anyway, because as soon as Dorja had found the bot user’s manual to give to Turtle, and Veringulf’s AI had finished its calculations for a safe jump into the slipstream, Dorja was already back in the cargo hold, door closed, sitting and meditating alone. In front of her, on the floor, sat the essence box. She awaited Master Korvix's return.

Impatiently.

* * *

The hologram of Master Korvix had not made an appearance since his last enigmatic offer to teach her the Ten Exalted Fists. Dorja had had Veringulf’s AI scraping through all its libraries, looking for any reference to a fighting style with that name. Unsurprisingly, the ship’s AI had no records of it, since the majority of any ship’s database covered locations, star charts, interstellar drift, known cosmic anomalies, the sort of things you wanted to know to safely traverse the cosmos. Still, she’d hoped to find something in the indexes marked for historical significance. Nothing, not a word written about the Ten Exalted Fists.

Every daycycle she took Turtle through stretches, a brief morning workout of push-ups and sit-ups, and a bit of jogging around the cargo bay. During meditation sessions, they sat and breathed, and Turtle got where she asked fewer and fewer questions before getting started. That was good. The mind had to stop asking why and just accept that it was time to meditate. It was a start.

"When you take in a breath," Dorja told her, "you must feel the breath cycling from your dantian."

"What's...a dantian?" Turtle asked.

Dorja touched her belly with a weeping-hand. "A spot three finger-length's behind where a belly button is on a standard, non-vat-grown humanoid. It means 'sea of chi' or 'elixir field.' You breath in, feeling your breath warm that center of your body, and then when you exhale, you send that 'warm feeling' down around to your backside, to here," she touched the middle of her back, "then up to the knot at the back of your skull, then to the top of your head, then cascading down through your tongue, into your shan quan. That is, the middle of your chest. And finally, on your last breath, you 'pour' this feeling back into your dantian and repeat the cycle. This is call 'small orbit exercise,' and it is essential in Neidan."

Turtle looked confused, and before she could ask what that was, Dorja answered.

"Neidan is the study of chi throughout the body, and aligning body, mind and spirit."

"Why are we doing this?"

Dorja explained it exactly how the Master explained it to her. "We are made up of energy, and that energy interacts with a greater energy field. When we die, that energy that is within us, that comprises all of us, dissolves and becomes mindless components. Nothingness. Unless," she added, holding up one salient finger, "we train our bodies to be energized, charging them up over time, like a battery, so that when we die we obtain an immortal spiritual body that survives death."

Turtle looked afraid. "We become ghosts?"

Dorja fought for a better way to explain. "We live on, with total command of the energy field around us."

Turtle brightened a bit. "So...we live forever?"

"If we strengthen ourselves through small orbit and other Neidan practices yes."

That seemed to settle the girl down, and made her more receptive to the breathing exercises. They sat alone, meditating, disappearing into that world behind their eyelids, and Dorja occasionally practiced channeling that chi into her palms to create her faery lights.

But, during her private meditation sessions, when Dorja would sit alone in the cargo bay and reflect on herself and her own training, she would do so with the essence box sitting in front of her. She was looking for any signs of life from it, any clue as to how to activate it.

Absolutely nothing had happened, Master Korvix’s incorporeal simulation remained stubbornly housed within the essence box. Dorja breathed, summoning all her patience. Patience had not been her strongest suit, Master Jerrod had been clear about that, and had foreseen that it would be her both her greatest strength when it came to getting things done, being resolute, but would also be her greatest barrier when it came to preplanning. You will struggle with balance your entire life, he’d told her once, his voice solemn, his demeanor forlorn. But I can give you the mental tools to mitigate it, the same as I gave you the tan jekk Forms to balance your body. Do you believe me?

Dorja nodded presently, as if hearing his ghost in this very room speaking directly to her.

The Forms, she thought. During her meditations, Dorja saw herself going through the motions of Form One, saw how they related to what the swordsman atop the Amon’tha had thrown at her. She ran a thought experiment, playing Form One, as taught by the Unsworn, which the swordsman had claimed had a flaw in its training. She tried to replay the swordsman’s movements, simulated his techniques, and looked for ways that the swordsman might’ve been able to break her down.

Dorja was rooting out her own weaknesses, but so far she didn’t see any. At least, none that hadn’t already revealed themselves whenever the swordsman had gotten in a hit against her.

Suddenly, she heard a tsk! sound, like the sound a disapproving teacher or parent would make. She opened her eyes, looked around, and was certain she saw Master Korvix hovering in the shadows in one corner of the cargo bay, just behind a plastoid crate filled with rations. She started to rise, started to call out to him, but before Dorja could even blink, he was gone.

After a moment of centering herself, telling herself to be patient, she thought back to Form One, to what the Master had told her about it, its history, and its purpose. And she realized it was time to start teaching Turtle.

* * *

“Today, you’re going to learn the first half of Form One.” Dorja stood in in the cargo bay before Turtle in her robe, and Turtle was dressed in loose-fitting clothes that Newpik had fashioned for her from some of Dorja’s old robes. “But first, Dorja and Turtle are going to go through the bow, and its significance.”

“The bow?” Turtle said.

“Yes. It is a formal way of beginning any class, and mandatory before any sessions. Follow me. You stand like this,” Dorja said, putting her feet together and all four arms at her side. “Turtle should stand like this before she bows, drawing up to her full height, shoulders back, eyes forward. If Dorja should start walking around the bay,” she did so, “then Turtle’s eyes should not follow her. Turtle’s eyes should remained fixed, straight forward, and focused on nothing and everything. Relaxed, yet alert.”

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Turtle swallowed, and made nervous fists at her side. “Okay.”

Dorja paced around her, using her weeping hands to correct Turtle’s posture, and one of her reaching hands to pull the girl’s chin up by a degree. Then, she stood before Turtle and said, “This is the bow.” She put both her right fists into the open palms of her left hands. “Right hands makes a fist, goes into the left palm, then out like this, to show your partner or instructor.” Turtle mimicked her, slowly. “The left hand is the open hand of friendship, peace. The right fist shows strength, power, and willingness to fight if necessary. The gesture communicates ‘Turtle chooses peace before war, but do not mistake her kindness for weakness.’ Now, right foot goes out, left foot stays back. After you’ve presented this way, draw back to your original position and bow at the waist, like this.”

Dorja demonstrated, and Turtle mimicked her.

“Good. Now, rehearse it ten times.”

“Rehearse it?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because Dorja said. It will make sense to Turtle later. Now, do as Dorja says.”

Turtle went through the motions, but started off too fast, too sloppy.

“No,” Dorja said. “Do it slower. Turtle doesn’t want to ingrain sloppy form. Do it slowly, do it right, so that it is one fluid motion in the end.”

Turtle did as she was told, and after ten slow repetitions, Dorja invited her to sit down and go through meditation. Turtle looked confused. They’d already been through a meditation session today. But this one was shorter, just a few minutes of quick breathing, shaking out their hands and shoulders, then a few quick stretches before Dorja stood her up and walked her through the first few stances, all of which were wide. “Is this so I learn how to fight?”

“Yes,” Dorja said. “And much more.”

“But what if I don’t want to fight?”

“No one should want to fight. Only fools want to fight. But there is an old saying: ‘Better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.’ Now, focus. Your first few movements should look like this. Follow me. That’s it. Now bend your knees, feet far apart for greater stability if someone pushes you head-on.” Dorja bade her to freeze, and hold several poses for a few minutes each. Turtle’s legs started trembling, and sweat ran down her brow. Once or twice, Kirek poked his head in, but made no remark.

“Why—” Turtle said slowly, straining to keep her stance as Dorja forced her lower and lower, “—do we—have to—do this?”

“What do you mean?”

“It—doesn’t—look—like—fighting.”

Dorja smiled, remembering a time when she’d said something similar to the Master. “No, it doesn’t look like fighting at all, does it? Think of Forms like catalogues—do you know what catalogues are?” Dorja searched for an analogy, she remembered that those had helped when Master Jerrod had taught her. “Like the user’s manual you’ve been reading to help fix Joshua. The indexes at the back of the manual are for reference. When you learn a new Form, you are learning new movements, cataloguing them for reference later. You repeatedly train them to ingrain them. Soon, you will learn to transition through each stance, chaining them together without thought or hesitation.”

“But—why?” Turtle grunted. Her legs suddenly buckled and she nearly fell over if Dorja’s weeping hands hadn’t shot out to catch her wrist. Panting, the girl stood before Dorja looking as unhappy as Dorja had been upon her first lesson. It had felt like torture, not like she’d been “rescued” and “saved” from death. Dorja, in her ignorance, had started to think she was actually in the hands of a savage tormentor.

Master Jerrod had had that side of him, of course, she thought, smiling. “Form One is the first of the movement series, and also the easiest. We do Forms so that we learn how to move combatively. All animals must assume different postures for combat—dogs get low on their haunches and go for each other’s throats, ghendri raise themselves on their hind legs and charge head-on with their horns, but humanoid creatures such as us, being two-legged, have special needs when it comes to grace and balance.”

“When—do I—start learning—about that?” Turtle gestured to Dorja’s glaive, leaning up against the far wall.

Dorja smiled. “Not for a while. Turtle must have her balance and strength first. She must have her coordination. It must be seamless and thoughtless.”

“My legs—feel like they’re on fire,” Turtle said miserably, taking a seat on a steel crate.

Dorja nodded. “Yes, but so did your legs when you first learned to crawl, walk and run. Only you don’t remember because you were so young. But you want your combat stances to be just like how you walked in here.”

Turtle wiped her moppy brown hair out of her face. “What do you mean?”

“Do you remember how many steps you took to get into this cargo bay? Did you count them? When you tripped walking through the door, did you fall over, or did you seamlessly recover without even thinking? Do you even remember tripping when you first walked in?”

Turtle looked puzzled. “No.”

“That’s right. Because you have mastered walking, you’ve been doing it every day since you were a year old. You want your combat stances and every combative movement you make to be just like that—automatic. Without thought. You want to be able to recover from mistakes without even having to consider it. You want it all to flow. If you cannot flow,” Dorja said, walking over to pick up her glaive, and tapped its shaft against the floor, “then you cannot be trusted not to hurt yourself with this.”

“Are we going to do this every day?” Turtle sounded afraid of the answer.

Dorja walked over, and looked down at her with honest eyes. “Yes, we will. And we will also spend two hours each day going through schooling.”

“Schooling?” At this, Turtle actually perked up.

“Yes. Dorja is no great teacher, but there is enough information between the bots and Veringulf’s AI to start your education on maths and sciences, on the history of the galaxy, and how to operate a ship like this at the very least.”

Turtle’s little face lit up.

From the doorway, Kirek’s voice suddenly chimed in. “And I know a few things, too.” They both turned to see him. Kirek was leaned up against a bulkhead, his favorite way to stand, apparently, and eating some dried yellow fruit from a jar. He shrugged. “I’ve been around, lived in a few different colonies, I know how terraforming tech works, how different cultures think, both post- and pre-Doom. And I’m a tracker, so I know a few things about botany and such. So we can learn together, Sunset. I mean, I could use a refresher in maths.” He shrugged again, and took another bite of his snack. “Just a thought. I mean, I’m not doing much else around here.”

“Except l-l-losing to me in chiirepth,” Joshua said.

Kirek balked, offended, and stood up straight. “Hey, when did the tin-can get an attitude?”

Dorja heard snickering, and looked down at Turtle, who was covering her smile with her hands. “I’ve been messing with his settings,” she tittered. “Made him more like Chop-Chop, where he doesn’t have to worry about offending anyone anymore.”

“You are t-terrible at ch-chiirepth. You play like an old shoe.”

“What does that even mean?” Kirek said.

But Turtle couldn’t answer because she was laughing. Dorja liked the sound of that. She now looked at the girl like she was a work of art, impossible to express in words. Laughter like that…How long has it been? Dorja couldn’t help but laugh, too. Just a little. And when Turtle heard it, she laughed even more, and when they saw Kirek’s hurt expression they started cackling. Then, Dorja felt something touch her left weeping hand. She seized, old instincts almost causing her to react combatively, until she realized it was Turtle’s hand holding hers, giving it a playful tug. It was ever so brief, and the girl quickly let go, still laughing, completely unaware of the power of her small, trusting gesture.

When she was finished laughing, Turtle said, “I like learning. I like reading. I want Kirek to learn with me.”

The man swaggered into the bay, and leaned against another bulkhead. “I can do that. It’ll be fun.”

“You see?” Dorja said, smiling down at her. “And it will all be on a schedule—your morning stretches, your education, your meditation sessions, and your training in here with me—so you don’t forget.”

Turtle massaged her sore legs, but she looked a little more positive and upbeat than Dorja had seen her in weeks.

Structure, she thought. Thank you, Master Jerrod.

* * *

Training commenced the next daycycle and immediately upon awakening, just as she had instructed Turtle. And Turtle, to her credit, was obedient and responsive upon stepping out of her room—albeit a little bleary-eyed and grouchy. Since discovering Kirek’s omni-pad a few daycycles previously, she’d been sneaking into the galley at night to watch some old vids that Kirek had saved on there. Vids of stage plays and old animated serials. Dorja was monitoring Turtle’s viewing habits, making sure she was watching nothing violent. The girl’s favorite was some program called The Little Gapwa-Gapwa, and it was in a language Dorja had never heard before. It followed a furry white creature that could change sizes, fit into people’s pockets, and grow to the size of a Vengeance-class starship. It one episode, the furry creature made friends with a laughing toad, and Turtle couldn’t stop laughing. Dorja didn’t get it.

None of that mattered, though, once they finished their stretches and breathing exercises, for that was when Dorja put the girl through her Form One training. Turtle’s legs hurt from the previous day's training, and it took a while for her to stop acting like her legs were wooden boards. Dorja had her going lower into horse stance, then lower, then lower still. Then they began the transitions, from one stance to the next. With sweat beading off her forehead, Turtle wavered, stumbled, and fell over.

As Turtle struggled through each of Form One’s movements, Dorja introduced new stances, and explained to her the purpose of each one.

Twist stance—twisting one leg either behind or in front of the other, for recovering when you are knocked out of position, and your feet accidently get twisted up; also for winding and unwinding the body to deliver a powerful blow.

Cat stance—putting all your weight on the rear foot and coming up on your front toes, for gaining a little bit of range from an opponent, readying an offensive front push-kick while maintaining a defensive position.

Bow stance—front leg bent, back leg straight behind you, for holding your ground; also for delivering a powerful thrust with your hands or weapon.

“These are only stances,” Dorja told her. “We are not yet truly into footwork. Footwork is the art of mobility, the true expression of transitioning from one position to the next."

Turtle bent over, hands on her knees, gulping breaths. “I can’t—go anymore. This—is enervating!”

“What does that word mean?”

“Which word? Enervating?”

“That word.”

“It means tired. Drained of energy.”

“Then why not say that word instead?”

“I learned it yesterday.”

“Where?”

“Watching The Little Gapwa-Gapwa.”

“Is it even a real word?”

“I think so.”

“Don’t use it again until Dorja is sure it’s a nice word.”

“What do you mean, ‘nice’?”

“Turtle needs to return to training.”

“But my legs hurt!”

Dorja shook her head. “Not that training. Turtle is done with that for today.” She walked over to the corner of the cargo bay and lifted the bokken out of its crate. Last night, once Dorja had finally fallen asleep, she’d had a dream of her first days training on Ghetti 818c with Master Jerrod. At least, it had seemed like her first days, because she remembered Ghetti’s 1.3 g gravity, but that could’ve been Veringulf’s shaky artigrav again, messing with her in her sleep. The artificial gravity had been on the fritz even before arriving at Herenov, and she was afraid it was going to cause more problems.

In any case, in the dream she’d been struggling under Ghetti’s extra-intense gravity, trying to hold up the first bokken that Master Jerrod had given her to train with. Bokkens were curved, blunt, wooden swords, meant only for training, and using them often gave a student a feel for why they were learning the movements they were learning.

“Here,” Dorja said, handing it to her. “I will show you the Three Swings—oberhau, mittelhau, and underhau.”

“What are those words?” Turtle said.

“They just mean the overhead swings, the middle swings, and the under swings.”

“Then why don’t you just say that?”

Dorja tilted her head. Turtle quailed.

* * *

Training commenced like this, a bit of push and pull from Master and Apprentice, but the structure was still holding: Turtle was falling into a pattern, a routine of morning stretches, exercise, meditation and learning. Dorja sat with Turtle a few times while she used Kirek’s omni-pad and Veringulf’s libraries to pull up whatever articles they could find on science, botany, oceans, maths, how atmospheres work on planets, and how to spot terraformed planets from light-years away, based on the color spectrum they emitted.

And, as it so happened, along with having a few animated programs in its memory banks, the omni-pad also had several such programs that were educational, and some that were interactive and allowed Kirek and Turtle to play games against one another. Dorja mostly left them alone during this time, pursuing her own training. Also, she meditated before the essence box, often whispering to it, asking Master Korvix to appear again. Begging him, actually.

Because Dorja was intrigued. She wanted to know what the Ten Exalted Fists were. She wanted to know what a long-dead Blademaster had to offer her.

On one nightcycle, just before bed, Dorja was enticed by Turtle and Kirek to join them in a game of hide-and-seek against Newpik and Joshua. Dorja was reluctant, but an encouraging look from Kirek pushed her over the edge. Besides, it seemed right to Dorja that in order to form perfect gestalt, she and the girl would need to laugh together. After all, that had sometimes happened between her and Master Jerrod, hadn’t it? And, looking back, it had solidified him in her mind as not just someone who wanted to cause her pain, but a friendly guide through this dangerous galaxy. Once, even, he had said, A child is a reminder of how far you’ve come, and how far you've yet to grow.

Dorja hadn’t known what he’d meant, but now…now she felt she might just understand.

They played hide-and-seek for two whole hours, and Dorja even lost track of the time. Joshua was the best at being It, and Kirek, perhaps unsurprisingly, was absolutely the best at hiding, for he was never found. Not once. Not ever. Dorja thought she knew every inch of her own ship, but apparently Kirek had discovered more hiding places than she'd ever imagined. As for Dorja herself, she was found a handful of times by Joshua, and once, when she and Turtle were both discovered, Dorja snatched the girl up in her weeping hands and they went running down the hall to evade the little bot.

They were laughing so hard, the joy had almost chased all else from Dorja’s mind. But that night, upon returning to the cargo bay and settling down before bed, Dorja sat cross-legged on the floor, right in front of the essence box, meditating, and asking of Master Korvix, “What can you tell me about the Ten Exalted Fists?”

Because if Turtle was at the start of her martial arts journey, and she was a reminder of how far Dorja had yet to grow (according to the Master), then she had to know.

She had to know.

* * *

At the start of the next daycycle, when each of the ship’s rooms slowly ramped up their falselight, Dorja awoke to the smell of warm chococaff, a morning-style beverage she hadn’t had in ages. Strange, she thought, but dismissed it. She got herself up and went through her morning ritual of stretches and breathing exercises, then pulled on her robe and stepped out of the cargo hold. Down the short hallway, she found Luke Kennison and Kirek huddled over the small table inside the cramped galley. They were whispering almost conspiratorially, and when Luke looked up to see Dorja coming, he quickly said to Kirek, “Thank you again, my friend.” He stood up, taking a mug of brown chococaff with him. “Thank you both,” he said sincerely to Dorja.

Once Luke was gone, Dorja took a seat across from Kirek and said, “What did Dorja miss?”

“His family wants off soon, at the next stop if possible,” Kirek took a sip from his own piping-hot mug. In front of him, he had an omni-pad showing star charts. “They don’t want to be on this ship anymore. His wife…she’s going stir-crazy. They heard us playing hide-and-seek yesterday and apparently the kids wanted to come out and play, and their mom forbade it. That started an argument, so..."

“The next stop is not likely to be a civilized world,” she said. “Dorja knows. Out here, there is naught but stragglers, people living in the bored-out guts of asteroids, perhaps a planetoid or two.”

“I told him that.”

“And?”

“He’s fine with that. Anything to get off this ship. His children have never known life in space, they want out of these tight confines.”

Dorja nodded. The Kennison family been very quiet during this journey, but over the last few days she had heard quite a few shouting matches, arguments that broke through the walls.

She stood up, found the pot of chococaff steaming by the kitzk-oven, or the "food zapper" as Turtle called it. She saw that Kirek’s mug was nearly empty, so she took it and refilled it, then filled her own and sat back down. Kirek was still looking at star charts, and looked up distractedly from his research as Dorja pushed the steaming mug over to him. They both sipped their drinks in silence. Dorja lifted an eyebrow in surprise. It was very sweet, a little too rich, perhaps, but very good for being made in space. Veringulf’s artigrav generators kept them all in moderately human-friendly gravity conditions, but it wasn’t perfect, it was known to fluctuate, especially during power-down mode when conserving energy. And in low- or zero-gravity conditions, taste buds were affected, and foods that were normally very delicious could often be disgusting. Dorja sensed Veringulf’s artigrav was a bit off, and the drink had a slightly dusty aftertaste.

“Your recipe?” she said.

Kirek nodded, still studying the star charts on the omni-pad.

“Dorja hasn’t had caff in a while. She hears that every star-scout’s caff recipe is different.”

“Has to be,” Kirek said, index finger pushing stars around on the omni-pad’s screen, reconfiguring ship courses. To her, it looked like he was communicating with Veringulf’s navicomputer, trying to find any viable destination they could reach on what fuel and resources they had left. He was nervous. Dorja was, too, but she tried not to show it, if not for her sake then for Turtle’s and everyone else’s.

“Why does it have to be?” she asked.

Kirek downed the last of his drink. “It’s what keeps you awake. Caff and Go-Pills. Free Rangers have the same routine as us scouts—keep it moving, on to the next job. It is a must for us, having different recipes, so we don’t all go insane from eating and drinking the same thing over and over.” He sighed, thinking back on his travels. He noted Dorja’s callused hands, all four of them, and he wondered again at her commitment and focus to train. Privately, Kirek was trying to imagine, as he often had, the battle between Dorja and the nameless swordsman atop the Amon’tha. It must’ve been fierce and terrifying and beautiful to behold. “I’ve tracked people into treacherous woods, across airless moons, into poisonous swamps and many insalubrious hotels. Heh, insalubrious, I learned that word from Turtle while we were going through her learning courses."

Dorja smiled back at hiim.

"Anyway, if you want to find someone dangerous, or someone who’s missing, you have to stay on the move. It’s easy to start eating the same boring rations while you're on the hunt.”

“Dorja does not care if all her food tastes the same.”

Kirek looked up at her, a small smile touching the edge of his lips. “Somehow I guessed that. Not much matters to you besides training, does it? And the candle?”

“Not many things, no.” She looked at him. “So maybe Dorja is a little obsessive. Like you said."

"It's not necessarily a bad thing."

"And did you like to hunt?"

“I’m a scout. A tracker. It’s what my parents did, it’s what I was trained to do.”

“You track people across stars, across land, across skies and water?”

Kirek nodded silently, but Dorja thought she detected a bit of pride in his countenance.

“If Dorja shares her candle with you,” she said carefully, “will you share your knowledge with her? Like you promised to do with Turtle?”

Kirek looked at her, surprised, and leaned back in his seat. “I am at your disposal, Lady Dorja.”

“Then, can Dorja share something with you?”

“Of course. It’s your ships, and I hope we are friends.”

Dorja hesitated a moment, wondering if she really wanted to let anyone know about this. Then she reached into the right pocket of her robe, and pulled out the small black essence box. She set it on the table between them.

Kirek started to reach for it, then paused and looked at her. “May I?” Dorja gave an assenting nod, and Kirek slowly lifted it. He winced, and turned the cube slowly over in his hands. “It’s smooth. Like compristeel, but not the usual compressed type you come across in Stranger ruins.” He put it up close to one eye. “Weird. There’s only a smoky reflection of myself, almost like something is burning inside of it.” He fiddled with it, tapping the switch that ought to emit the hologram of Master Korvix, but nothing happened. “What is this?”

“It is an essence box. It traps the memories of Blademasters. They were made by Strangerologists, using Strange Alchemy Black science. Most essence boxes were made of this sub-alloy called nekt-compristeel. It is highly volatile, highly explosive at certain stages.”

Kirek slowly put it down.

Dorja smiled. “Once they reach this solid state, they are safe. But they conduct energy in some way…Dorja knows not how. But it allows memories to be stored, whole personalities, much information. They were meant to be left behind to create a legacy for the Blademasters who funded the Strangerologists’ research.”

Kirek shrugged. “If it ever worked, it looks broken now.”

“It worked before. Dorja saw the Blademaster programmed within—trapped inside, housed inside, however you want to look at it. His name is Master Korvix, and he spoke to Dorja, but he won’t speak to her now.”

“Why are you showing me this?”

“Dorja hoped that you would take a look at it. You seem better with these things.” She nodded towards the hall. “Dorja has seen you reading along with Turtle, and watched you helping her with fixing Newpik and Joshua. You’ve also done some maintenance of your own around here. You seem…knowledgeable.”

Kirek leaned forward and picked up the cube, more delicately this time, and turned it over a few times. “Well, I suppose no harm in taking a look.”

“Thank you.”

“But it’ll have to wait. I’ve got some bad news.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I’ve been going over these charts, checking our course against stellar drift, and I happened to notice something. It just sort of jumped out at me, I wasn’t even looking for it.”

“What is it?”

He turned the omni-pad around to show her. “A tug. A slight variance to our delta-v whenever we come out of the slipstream, and it evaporates just before we re-enter. Now, at first, I thought it was perhaps due to sublimation—Veringulf had some ice caked around its hull, which was trapped in certain places in huge chunks, and remained frozen even after we entered space. Do you know what sublimation is?”

Dorja shook her head.

“In short, when a large object in space—like, say, an asteroid—rotates to face the sun, the ice on it melts, and when that ice orbits the asteroid again, it refreezes on the dark side. This continual taking in and ejecting the water and ice can actually cause the asteroid to speed up. I thought that’s what we had. But if that were the case, we would’ve experiencing a pretty noticeable spin on either the x, y or z axis, and Veringulf would have to continually make adjustments for that. But it’s not—”

“He. Veringulf is a—”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Kirek said, waving her off. “In any case, he’s not making any adjustments to any particular axis. Rather, he’s having to make adjustments to all the axes, and at completely random intervals.”

“Not when we’re facing a star?”

“No, not when we’re facing a star. In fact,” he added, tapping the omni-pad’s screen to zoom in on a single patch of space, “when we came out of the slipstream here to recalibrate, we weren’t near any star or warm body of any kind. And yet…”

Dorja scratched her chin. “Veringulf moved?”

“He was tugged. In this direction here, ever so slightly, at almost 0900--that is, if we're using Interstellar Space Recommended Time. And then again here, in the opposite direction, at 0935, and again here at 1134. Each time, Veringulf had to make minor course corrections, to get itself—himself—back on a direct course to our next jump.” Kirek leaned in, a thin sheen of sweat above his brow. “I didn’t want to alarm anybody, and I didn’t want to tell you until I was certain, but nothing behaves this way in space unless something else is orbiting it, tugging at it gravitationally, but even then it should be regular, predictable intervals, as the other object establishes its orbit.”

“So...it’s not a rock.”

“No.”

“And we are not, eh—sub…subli…”

“Sublimating. No, we’re not.”

“And so,” Dorja said.

“Yes,” Kirek said. “And so.”

“Someone is following us.”

“Yes.”

“From one jump to the next.”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

image [https://i.imgur.com/f6fHUfp.jpeg]