---Orders---

---Thran’s perspective---

I walk through the starboard gallery of the Bright Plume on Deck 0.

On my right walks a man who stands a third my height again taller than me, taking one step to my two and not walking as softly as he normally does.

My mouth tastes of his.

Our orders are simple; get in, get a piece of thanatite and bring it back to her while not drawing attention.

If we’re chased, lose the pursuer before coming to the meeting place.

If anyone gets in our way, deal with them.

We hit the bottom of the stairs and climb the 5m up to Deck 1 before taking a right across the balcony to the dorm door.

“Thran? Victor? What’s going on?” comes Twila’s curious voice, speaking English over the hallway’s speakers.

We weren’t given any instructions about what to do if anyone tries to speak to us so we ignore her and walk into the Vrakhand’s Commonroom.

We march over to the far wall, on which two crossed spears hang, their shafts solid, dense, dark wood, their heads polished, glossy, red biomineral.

Victor extends his arms to take down the one on the outside that I would have had difficulty reaching.

Without a word, he brings the tip down to rest against the floor, pointing in my direction.

I step on the point with my left foot and raise my right to bring down my heel on the shaft, directly above the socket, just about managing to successfully crack through it in one try.

Tossing the heavy length of wood aside to clatter onto the ground, Victor bends down to pick the 40cm thanatite blade out of the impression of it that I just stamped into the floor.

Standing back up, he tucks what we were ordered to retrieve into his belt and we turn to leave.

“Guys?… Guys!… What’s happening!?… HelloOoOoOooo?… Why are you ignoring me?… Wait! Is that Khr’kowan’s spearhead?! What are you doing with that!?” comes Twila’s voice, as soon as we’re back out in the corridor.

Ignoring her again, we come out of the door and cross the balcony, making our way down the stairs and turning left to head back out, towards the planetside hangar bay the ship is occupying.

We get roughly halfway down the gallery before a door opens to our right and a shortish man with dark hair and a medium build steps out, looking at us.

“明徒弟，方徒弟，你們兩個在做什麼？怎麼了?” he asks as he approaches.

Unlike the man next to me, who speaks two Sintic languages, I don’t speak Mandarin, so I’m not able to recognise any meaning beyond him opening with our Dharmic names, not that I could respond if I did.

Both of us keep walking, ignoring him until the very moment he puts himself in our way.

With him still around 15m in front of us, I drop into a low Ma Bu, Horse Stance, characteristic of the Hung Gar style that I favour.

Victor lunges forward into a Gong Bu, Bow Stance, (as if he’s about to shoot an invisible arrow at the man making himself an obstacle to our orders) characteristic of his acrobatic Chaquan foundation.

Neither of us have spoken a word.

Taken aback, our teacher flicks his eyes from mine to Victor’s and then to Victor’s belt.

“噢噢噢噢噢… 你們兩個現在真的不是自己了不是嗎?… 正如特維拉告訴我的…” observes the supercentenarian.

He brings up his arms in front of him and covers his right fist with his left palm, bowing his head briefly in a baoquan.

Then, widening and bending his legs, turning his toes to point inward and folding his arms to bring his, palm up, fists to just below his armpits, he simply states “就這樣吧。我會和你們兩個戰鬥。”

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From his stance, it seems that, from the hundreds of styles he’s mastered, the old man has selected Wing Chun as the best counter to the mix of my low, powerful, solid and Victor’s dynamic, explosive, acrobatic styles.

I know that I would normally feel happy that he’d chosen a Southern style but, right now, I feel nothing at all.

Our bodies angled to put our respective dominant hands towards him, Victor and I advance on Master Yuán.

He does not move from his Kim Yeung Ma Stance.

Victor leaps into the air, easily higher than our opponent is tall, and brings up his right leg to higher than his own head before bringing the heel down towards Yuán’s.

At the same time, I rush his right side and aim a Jik Kiu, Direct Bridge, strike at his centre of mass.

Barely moving his body, the old man raises both his arms to perform two simultaneous Tan Sao, Palm Up Blocks, deflecting my fist in front of him and Victor’s foot behind.

The instant Victor’s right foot touches the ground, he wheels to bring his left around from behind him and down on Yuán in three successive kicks with an astonishing combination of agility and power.

With his left arm, our opponent blocks and deflects the kicks without looking at them while his right is unleashing a rapidfire barrage of strikes at me, aiming to break my centreline and knock me off balance.

If I were any less strong than the strongest woman in the galaxy, if I were any less than ⅙ of a tonne (more than twice his weight), if I were using any style that didn’t focus so strongly on rooting me to the ground in an unbreakably solid stance, he would definitely succeed.

His more than a century of iron body training gives him a physicality like no other organic being I’ve ever fought, more like Stetter in his power and solidity.

Having dedicated his life to combat training, his mental responsiveness is unparalleled.

He knows what strikes we are about to make before we do.

There isn’t anything I could compare him to that would do the way he fights justice.

Describing him as ‘machinelike’ would be the closest in its analogy to his speed, power and solidity but would create the false impression that his fighting was clinical, unflexible and uninspired.

He puts the more than 30 combined years of combat training and experience between the two masters he’s fighting utterly to shame… or he would do if shame were something either of us could feel right now.

The two of us have nearly 4 kilos to his every 1 and it doesn’t seem to matter.

Our every punch, our every kick, is dodged or blocked.

I’ve taken dozens of light punches to the face (no matter how much iron palm training he’s done, his bundle of spindly metacarpals and phalanges is not winning a contest of solidity with the skull of a Neanderthal with a defective bone density limiter gene) but, at this point, seeming to realise that the pain he’s attempting to blind me with is registering to me more as data than anything else, he switches to my chest, aiming rapid, hard strikes at my floating ribs and between my breasts to my solar plexus.

He’s trying to knock the air out of my lungs.

If I can’t breathe, I can’t fight.

I would be flattered by the extent to which he’s focusing on trying to remove me from the fight first if such things mattered to me at the moment.

The hard *thud*s of him using his four limbs to bat away the strikes of our combined eight echo through the cavernous spaceship gallery.

Victor’s explosive, acrobatic Chaquan utilises the full length and power of his long, strong limbs.

Changquan, the Northern style it’s a branch of, was one of the main ones that originally inspired firebending and it definitely gives the appropriate impression of ferocity.

I have very much imagined him sending blades of flame with his strikes when we’ve fought before.

The low, unyielding, firmly rooted Hung Gar I practice was one of the main inspirations for earthbending and it’s not at all difficult to understand why.

By contrast, the direct, lightning fast, highly interceptive Wing Chun the dark haired man is employing, focused on economy of motion, adaptability and simultaneous attack and defence, has neither the ferocity and dynamism of Victor’s style nor the power of mine.

Never the less, it’s quite an effective counter to both.

He’s able to make denying the two of us the slightest opening look nearly effortless.

Victor’s agility and my power have levelled more than a hundred strikes against him in the 30 seconds since the fight began and not a single one has connected with his head or torso.

That is until… Victor lands a strike on the back of his shoulder.

He sees it coming and knows he won’t be able to block it or dodge it so he sucks in a breath and tenses the area that’s about to be struck, angling it away from the punch as much as possible and relaxing the rest of his body.

The hit connects and, though he rolls with it, sharply expelling the held breath to dissipate the energy, the next few strikes he blocks make it clear the strength is gone from his left arm.

He adjusts his stance, trying now to keep both of us on his right side and using his left arm as little as possible but it’s clear that that hit has significantly altered the calculous of this fight.

With all four limbs in full working order, he was more than a match for us.

His left arm being down to half its prior capacity has reduced his overall rating by far more than an eighth.

He continues to block and dodge Victor’s fierce flying kicks and my formidably strong punches but he’s backing away now, not able to hold his ground anymore.

Victor connects another strike to his chest… then another… and another…

Finally, I see a gap open up and I lunge forward to deliver a crushing direct hit to his solar plexus.

The small man is thrown backwards to land on the silvery metallic floor several metres behind him while the grunt of his lungs collapsing and the crack of his ribs breaking reverberates off of the cathedral like space above us.

Without hesitating, Victor strides past the wheezing old man, not sparing him a second thought.

I hesitate only a moment, considering whether leaving him alive satisfies the order ‘deal with’ him.

He looks up at me and chokes “對不起明，對不起方… 對不起，我沒能打敗你們兩個…” his voice strangulated and his expression sad.

I look from him to the broad shoulders of the man walking away… before following on, leaving the halfdead man behind us.