Carrie and I were in a sparring ring, training weapons and extra padding to avoid injury with at least one doctor in the room. We circled one another, my sword raised to point at her from my shoulder in a two-handed grip, while she kept her round shield between us as we moved.

"I don't like this choice," she told me.

"I knew you wouldn't," I said before darting forward and kicking out at her leg to knock her down.

"It's going to bite you in the ass," she promised me as her foot snapped out and deflected my kick before she swung her shield into my chest and followed up with an axe-swing.

"I'm sure it will, but if I can balance it all out correctly, then it's going to work out great," I said thrusting my sword toward her eyes and forcing her to raise her shield so I could score a hit against her leg.

"You're being too optimistic about this," she said, bashing her shield into me again and knocking me to the floor. Before she could follow up with a swing of her axe, I rolled away and sprang to my feet. "This is how you end up making stupid decisions."

"We've both made some pretty bad decisions over the years," I defended myself verbally and physically as I caught her axe-swing with my sword and deflected it to the side. "What's one more?"

"Chen isn't ready for Horseman," she said as she continued her attack and forced me to retreat. "He's still having trouble with keeping food and resource production up whenever he's in charge of a planet."

"He chooses to expand all aspects of the planet aggresively," I said as I danced to the side and feinted with my sword to create an opening when she spun around. "That means that he encounters trouble with resource numbers when his population can't expand fast enough. The planets he's controlled have become some of the most diverse under the Collective's control and they all stand out as beacons of tourism, industry, and constant change."

"He doesn't plan well enough," she argued. "When Kyouka wanted to expand our off-planet control in the Solar System, she stockpiled food and resources for months. Chen doesn't do that."

"Kyouka was also working with limited space and had to work around the planetary laws of space-based industry and living," I pointed out as we continued to trade blows and flash around the sparring ring. "Chen had entire planets to expand on before he looked at moving anything off-planet. Once he did that, he opened up recreation spaces, food production, and living areas for everyone. That doesn't sound like someone who doesn't have a plan."

"He doesn't think ahead far enough," she said as she swung over-hand at me and forced me to roll away. "He's always had someone to pull him out of a fire and he knows it so he rushes ahead recklessly and makes things more difficult for himself in the long run."

"That reckless expansion is something that he uses to to completely overhaul his support personell and bring them up to speed and baseline before he leaves," I said as I ripped her shield away and left her with only her axe. "I've spoken with him about this and independent investigation backs that up. Everyone that works under him is calmer, steadier, and more capable than when he first arrives. Some of them even made the jump from aide in the Nephilim to governor in the Deva Collective, and every one of them cites him and his methods as the greatest training they could have had."

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"That doesn't mean he's ready to oversee something like a galactic campaign," Carrie said while she spun her axe between hands and brought it upward and then down in a cleave that made full use of all the momentum that she'd built in the movements before guiding it downward. "He'll over-stretch himself and then he'll be on too many planets with not enough troops and he'll end up having to pull back and make things harder on himself."

"Not," I grunted as I deflected her cleave to the side with my sword, "if he has some trial runs."

"What kind of trial runs?" she demanded as she backed off and we both worked to catch our breath.

"I want to put him in charge of a fleet and a section of Andromeda," I said. "He'll have limited personell and he'll have to work both sides of the problem to make it work. Expansion and extermination. If he spends too much time on one part, then he'll fail, if he goes too slowly with either one, he'll fail."

"And if he can't seal the deal on any of the planets without his own personal touch, then he'll fail," Carrie said with a nod. "Okay, I'm on board now. When do we tell him that he's being evaluated?"

"We don't," I said. "He's going to suspect that he is, but I'm hoping that he'll use the fact that less trained Principalities were chosen to lead fleets to accelerate our efforts here to justify why he's being given a fleet and a section."

"How big of a chunk of Andromeda are we charging him with?" she asked before darting forward and reigniting our match.

"I was thinking about an eighth," I said as I defended myself from her onslaught of blows. "Andromeda's pretty big as far as galaxies go so far, an eighth is going to take him decades or a century to conquer and stabilize. That's plenty of time for mistakes and other issues to crop up and be handled. By the time he's done with it all, I think he'll be a fine Horseman."

"Fine by me," Carrie said. "What's the score we're going to?"

"Ten over the other," I told her as I scored the last hit of our match and the ring's lights turned red, bringing us both to a stop. "Good match."

"You got lucky," she said as she moved to place her axe and shield on the weapons rack she used. "I'll win next time."

"You've been saying that for years," I teased her. "I'm still winning even after you logged more hours than me on the training sims."

"I can't help that you took to using a sword like a fish to swimming," she griped quietly.

"You know that I put a lot of work into learning to use a sword," I defended myself, no natural talent had carried me as far as I cared.

"Bull," Carrie argued as we began to remove our protecive gear. "The instructors that teach the Cadets all say that you were some sort of master with a sword before the Wardens snapped you up. Now that you don't have to hide your efforts and training, you're showing that mastery over everyone else."

"Or maybe, I've had a lifetime to practice with using a sword and I'm showing that practice since I've been using one for about fiftyish years," I said.

"Nah," Carrie said. "Those instructors know what they're doing. I'm sure they know if someone was a secret swordmaster before they revealed themselves to the world."

"Do you even hear yourself?" I chuckled. "You sound like a bad tv show's plotline."

"Do I?" she snickered.

"Teen boy takes on the assassins and unveils his martial skill that he's been forced to hide and practice solely in his dreams," I joked as she started to laugh harder.

"Oh, that does sound like a bad storyline for a tv show," she said after a moment. "I bet it's got millions of fans that are rooting for the boy to choose the bad guy's evil daughter over the preppy cheerleader."

"Only if the bad guy wears eyeliner with better wings than a makeup artist," I laughed as we left for the cafeteria.

"Rickshaw, you are wanted at the obelisk," Cai said, interrupting our joking. "Principality Jinks requires your immediate presence."

"On it," I told him before breaking into a run and hearing Carrie follow after me.

"Touka gave me the same message, I'm guessing," she said.

"Jinks wants us now? Yeah," I confirmed for her. "Let's go, no slowing down. Cai, make sure the most direct routes are cleared for us."