Toys in Battle Lines
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Sharon’s time aboard the blockade runner was lonely. True to his word, Richard had holed himself up in his room, catching up on reading. She had felt that they were socially compatible when they had spoken before the briefing, and even if they were not, a person of Richard’s background would be able to fake it. There was something more that she was missing.
Amy, for her part, seemed to be enjoying herself. She would spend hours ordering her toys in lines of battle. The thought behind it was apparent to Sharon. She could get a sense of each of the factions’ strengths, weaknesses, and styles of leadership. When she was finished, Amy would regard her handiwork for a few moments. Suddenly, her pupils in her big eyes would dilate, like a cat before it pounces, and she would wade into the meticulously ordered battlefield, dragging her cloak, stomping, and crashing with unvoiced glee.
Each time the tactics were unique, the toys were always different.
The ending was always the same.
Lines of soldiers would be swept away. Fortifications crushed under thrown blocks. Hours of work would be cast aside in seconds. Then Amy would turn and stare calmly at Sharon until she felt she had to leave.
Sharon spent much of her time practicing. The little blockade runner was larger on the inside than on the outside. Sidhe glamour to fool the mind and body. The illusion of space made it easier to do her forms. Her encantations were not so easily fooled, however. She felt claustrophobic whenever she practiced with them or her summoning book. The discomfiture of seeing the true disposition of the three of them, immobilized in the tiny cylinder somewhere in the void, ensured that Sharon spent more time at her forms.
As members of the militia, all the members of her clan labored to master the forms to the best of their abilities from a very early age. Developed during the Heart War, and refined by countless generations after, the forms built on one another to provide a toolset to deal with a wide array of threats. Pragmatic rather than artistic, the goal was a quick and safe dispatch of an opponent. She sometimes envied the flair of the forms practiced by different clans. The simple pragmatism of her people’s tradition seemed homely by comparison.
She often mused about how this contrasted with the encantations. An interface with a past that had flourish, beauty for beauty’s sake, wrapping the utilitarian purpose beneath. She made a mental note, again, to ask Michael about it if they met again. It wasn’t the first time she had intended to do so, but the topic had never seemed to come up.
In order to practice her unarmed and found weapon forms, Sharon needed a sparring partner. Though Amy had offered herself for the role, Sharon demurred. She was not about to fraternize with a Bane Sidhe, no matter the purpose.
Though she felt it out of her scope, this provided her with a convenient excuse to confront Richard about the neglect of his duties as the head of their triumvirate.
So she found herself pounding at Richard’s door one morning. A second assault, and Richard reluctantly acknowledged, “Come in, please.”
Richard’s quarters were dimly lit, with the exception of the workbench covered with metal tubes and mechanisms of curious design under a bright desk light. Sharon gathered that they were projectile weapons in various states of assembly.
“I thought I would find you reading,” she ventured.
“No, I am working at my gunsmithing for the moment.”
She stepped over and, after pausing briefly to get permission, picked up a receiver. She habitually murmured a querying chant about its function into memory for later analysis. “Lots of moving parts,” she observed with a note of faint disapproval.
“Part of the charm. Keeps the mind off the simple things,” he replied. “The mechanical action you see was used to trigger an explosive chemical propellant. These were eventually replaced by electrical firing mechanisms,” Richard explained.
“Interesting,” she conceded, returning it to its place. “Actually, the reason I came here was to ask if, sometime when you are not busy, you might be my sparring partner. Amy and I don’t have sufficient… rapport for me to ask her.”
Richard smiled at this. “You mean you hate her guts.”
“I don’t care for her,” Sharon admitted, “but I don’t actually hate her.”
Richard smiled ruefully. “A sparring partner, is it? Let’s do tomorrow at 11.”
“Thank you.”