Shevaughn brought her leg up at her attacker's lunge, snapping it out at the last moment, connecting with the leg carrying virtually all of his weight. He responded by using the impact to shift his momentum, and spun into a tight roundhouse kick that, had she not used the impact to achieve a slight separation, would have landed with enough force to knock her down, likely for good. His foot was so close that she felt the skin of his heel brush against her left eyebrow. His inability to connect gave her the opening she needed; she forced her muscles, now pushed nearly to the breaking point, to move her back in close proximity to her opponent, and she thrust her right arm under his passing leg, while simultaneously snap kicking the back of his opposite knee. He went down hard, instinctively putting out his hands to protect against slamming his face into the floor, and she added her own weight; rolling up to put her padded elbow up to the back of his head.
"You're dead, Kenjirō-san." She said, as she bounced back to her feet, and held out her hand to help him up. "The fancy roundhouse was a bit much. Although I will admit, if it had landed, you'd be peeling me off the floor." She added, bowing to him in return for his own, slightly deeper, bow before she took a small step back and strode off the tatami.
He regarded the woman who had recently taken over the post of senior commander of the Darkaellan Imperial Guard detachment assigned to the embassy on Minotaur.
"Indeed." Was his only reply. There seemed to be little point in debating the obvious.
She walked over to the bench along the dojo wall, and reached for her towel and water bottle. She rinsed the gumminess out of her mouth and then drank, pausing to pour some of the cool water on her head, quickly wiping it away with her towel.
She could feel the subliminal pressure of Kenjirō watching her as she took off the tunic of her gi to inspect the spectacular bruise forming on her left upper arm. She was accustomed to people staring at her behind her back, so long as he didn't do it to her face. The memory of what had precipitated those stares suddenly rose to the forefront of her thoughts with a clarity sharp as a freshly stropped razor. If only she had been as quick witted dealing with the Emperor's eldest son, as she was in the dojo.
She decided that the injury didn't warrant a trip to the embassy's infirmary; it would be uncomfortable, but not debilitating, and her duties today were limited to organizational matters, so she had plenty of time to get it checked out later. She put her tunic back on, threw the damp towel into a basket along the wall for eventual collection by the domestic servants, and grabbed her gym bag, turning to her sparring partner and second in command.
"Kenjirō-san, get the other unit leaders and their seconds together for an operational briefing," she quickly consulted her optical implant's chronometer, "at thirteen hundred hours, and have the stewards set up tea and biscuits. I'm going see if Satoshi Hayashi can be convinced to give an intel report on the newly installed director of the Space Enforcement Agency. First, however, I am going to have a well deserved bath."
Kenjirō seemed to consider her words for a moment, then offered a short bow of acknowledgement.
"An excellent idea, Commander. A good soak should put you in a much better frame of mind to deal with that eta, although I, personally, would wait until after." He said, in an acid tone.
"Just remember, Kenjirō, that man wallows through the abundance of mongrelized burakumin beyond these walls so that we don't have to. He is, by that metric, a far better person than either of us, and his commitment to the security of the Imperium is ironclad." She admonished him gently, before leaving the dojo.
She stepped out of the building in which the dojo was located, and into the sweltering heat and humidity of Níngjìng Bay's late summer. As always, she couldn't understand why anyone would voluntarily emigrate to a world like Minotaur; Darkael was cooler at the equator than the Bay was in its - so called - warm temperate zone. Minotaur's tropical and equatorial regions were almost completely uninhabited, due to the fact that the average daytime temperature at this time of year was in the high 40s to low 50s Celsius, with around ninety-five percent humidity. Darkael's equator rarely got above 35°C, and then only in the lowlands near the coast, the seasons were less extreme as well, due to the planet's shallower axial tilt.
There were, however, some aspects of life here that were unexpectedly pleasant. The gravity was about seventy percent of what she was used to, which was a good thing, because the air, although it had a slightly higher percentage of oxygen, was still much thinner than that to which she was accustomed. She had endured about a month of acclimation before the embassy's doctor had cleared her for light duty, and another two before she was allowed to take on her regular duties. As a result, she had done a fair amount of sightseeing after she'd landed.
The southern tip of Níngjìng Bay had a white sand beach nearly five kilometers long, with what someone had described as "...firing the sickest, glassy right-handers in the universe!", which apparently was a reference to the waves upon which people went 'surfing'. The idea of immersing herself in open water was terrifying at a level very near instinct, and she had been horrified by the sight of dozens of people sitting on their surfboards waiting for a wave. For someone raised on Darkael, the notion was quite simply suicidal; the marine life on her birth world was incredibly dangerous, and found humans to be very much to its liking. As food.
One species of sauropod, called a Dracūl, which resembled a two to three meter long cross between a komodo and a giant horned lizard, was always found in or very near lakes and rivers, and had been known to kill people and Terran livestock, even when there was local prey closer and more accessible. Dracūl (the same for plural and singular) were solitary and extremely territorial, and on the island of Acarsaid Mòr, where the Capital was located, they had been hunted to near extinction. Needless to say, swimming was not a very popular recreational activity back home.
Here, on the other hand, the planet's oceans, while teeming with life, were actually less dangerous than Earth's, and she found that she had a knack for surfing. She had also discovered that there was no shortage of willing instructors from which to choose (although she was ultimately forced to admit that they were less driven by a desire to teach, than to get her in bed). Their interest was more due to novelty than anything else, since there were probably less than a thousand Darkaellan subjects on-planet, and virtually all of them were employees of the embassy and their dependents.
The embassy itself was large enough to accommodate all Imperial subjects in an emergency, but most took advantage of the Imperium's very generous housing allowance for embassy staff, and found private residences in the city itself. Even so, the embassy covered a roughly square area of approximately 24 hectares, with three main buildings, and five smaller buildings for support services. The buildings' exteriors had been constructed of locally sourced materials, and the work had been done by local contractors. The interiors, however, had been made of both local materials, and others imported from the homeworld. Most of the embassy's internal communications and data network had been built on Darkael and shipped here, but some of the most sophisticated components had to be brought from Earth. As a result, the embassy had some of the best communications security on the planet.
The grounds had the well manicured look of a Japanese garden, complete with an ornamental rock garden with its typical raked gravel, and bonsai trees. The design of the building that housed the Honorable Bruce Addison Stirling, ambassador to the HIA, combined aspects of highland Scottish and Japanese architecture, and it blended in well with the other buildings.
The confluence of Scottish Highland and traditional Japanese culture was no accident. Darkael had been settled by a curious mix of Scots, Northern Europeans and Japanese, all of whom had a shared history. They were all descendants, relatives, or associates of the seven families who had served as retainers and partners of the MacMullen clan. Some of those relationships went back to the sixteenth century, but more than a century of relative isolation since the Exodus had caused some cultural dividing lines to blur into nonexistence, and others had ossified into impenetrability.
"You're dead, Kenjirō-san." She said, as she bounced back to her feet, and held out her hand to help him up. "The fancy roundhouse was a bit much. Although I will admit, if it had landed, you'd be peeling me off the floor." She added, bowing to him in return for his own, slightly deeper, bow before she took a small step back and strode off the tatami.
He regarded the woman who had recently taken over the post of senior commander of the Darkaellan Imperial Guard detachment assigned to the embassy on Minotaur.
"Indeed." Was his only reply. There seemed to be little point in debating the obvious.
She walked over to the bench along the dojo wall, and reached for her towel and water bottle. She rinsed the gumminess out of her mouth and then drank, pausing to pour some of the cool water on her head, quickly wiping it away with her towel.
She could feel the subliminal pressure of Kenjirō watching her as she took off the tunic of her gi to inspect the spectacular bruise forming on her left upper arm. She was accustomed to people staring at her behind her back, so long as he didn't do it to her face. The memory of what had precipitated those stares suddenly rose to the forefront of her thoughts with a clarity sharp as a freshly stropped razor. If only she had been as quick witted dealing with the Emperor's eldest son, as she was in the dojo.
She decided that the injury didn't warrant a trip to the embassy's infirmary; it would be uncomfortable, but not debilitating, and her duties today were limited to organizational matters, so she had plenty of time to get it checked out later. She put her tunic back on, threw the damp towel into a basket along the wall for eventual collection by the domestic servants, and grabbed her gym bag, turning to her sparring partner and second in command.
"Kenjirō-san, get the other unit leaders and their seconds together for an operational briefing," she quickly consulted her optical implant's chronometer, "at thirteen hundred hours, and have the stewards set up tea and biscuits. I'm going see if Satoshi Hayashi can be convinced to give an intel report on the newly installed director of the Space Enforcement Agency. First, however, I am going to have a well deserved bath."
Kenjirō seemed to consider her words for a moment, then offered a short bow of acknowledgement.
"An excellent idea, Commander. A good soak should put you in a much better frame of mind to deal with that eta, although I, personally, would wait until after." He said, in an acid tone.
"Just remember, Kenjirō, that man wallows through the abundance of mongrelized burakumin beyond these walls so that we don't have to. He is, by that metric, a far better person than either of us, and his commitment to the security of the Imperium is ironclad." She admonished him gently, before leaving the dojo.
She stepped out of the building in which the dojo was located, and into the sweltering heat and humidity of Níngjìng Bay's late summer. As always, she couldn't understand why anyone would voluntarily emigrate to a world like Minotaur; Darkael was cooler at the equator than the Bay was in its - so called - warm temperate zone. Minotaur's tropical and equatorial regions were almost completely uninhabited, due to the fact that the average daytime temperature at this time of year was in the high 40s to low 50s Celsius, with around ninety-five percent humidity. Darkael's equator rarely got above 35°C, and then only in the lowlands near the coast, the seasons were less extreme as well, due to the planet's shallower axial tilt.
There were, however, some aspects of life here that were unexpectedly pleasant. The gravity was about seventy percent of what she was used to, which was a good thing, because the air, although it had a slightly higher percentage of oxygen, was still much thinner than that to which she was accustomed. She had endured about a month of acclimation before the embassy's doctor had cleared her for light duty, and another two before she was allowed to take on her regular duties. As a result, she had done a fair amount of sightseeing after she'd landed.
The southern tip of Níngjìng Bay had a white sand beach nearly five kilometers long, with what someone had described as "...firing the sickest, glassy right-handers in the universe!", which apparently was a reference to the waves upon which people went 'surfing'. The idea of immersing herself in open water was terrifying at a level very near instinct, and she had been horrified by the sight of dozens of people sitting on their surfboards waiting for a wave. For someone raised on Darkael, the notion was quite simply suicidal; the marine life on her birth world was incredibly dangerous, and found humans to be very much to its liking. As food.
One species of sauropod, called a Dracūl, which resembled a two to three meter long cross between a komodo and a giant horned lizard, was always found in or very near lakes and rivers, and had been known to kill people and Terran livestock, even when there was local prey closer and more accessible. Dracūl (the same for plural and singular) were solitary and extremely territorial, and on the island of Acarsaid Mòr, where the Capital was located, they had been hunted to near extinction. Needless to say, swimming was not a very popular recreational activity back home.
Here, on the other hand, the planet's oceans, while teeming with life, were actually less dangerous than Earth's, and she found that she had a knack for surfing. She had also discovered that there was no shortage of willing instructors from which to choose (although she was ultimately forced to admit that they were less driven by a desire to teach, than to get her in bed). Their interest was more due to novelty than anything else, since there were probably less than a thousand Darkaellan subjects on-planet, and virtually all of them were employees of the embassy and their dependents.
The embassy itself was large enough to accommodate all Imperial subjects in an emergency, but most took advantage of the Imperium's very generous housing allowance for embassy staff, and found private residences in the city itself. Even so, the embassy covered a roughly square area of approximately 24 hectares, with three main buildings, and five smaller buildings for support services. The buildings' exteriors had been constructed of locally sourced materials, and the work had been done by local contractors. The interiors, however, had been made of both local materials, and others imported from the homeworld. Most of the embassy's internal communications and data network had been built on Darkael and shipped here, but some of the most sophisticated components had to be brought from Earth. As a result, the embassy had some of the best communications security on the planet.
The grounds had the well manicured look of a Japanese garden, complete with an ornamental rock garden with its typical raked gravel, and bonsai trees. The design of the building that housed the Honorable Bruce Addison Stirling, ambassador to the HIA, combined aspects of highland Scottish and Japanese architecture, and it blended in well with the other buildings.
The confluence of Scottish Highland and traditional Japanese culture was no accident. Darkael had been settled by a curious mix of Scots, Northern Europeans and Japanese, all of whom had a shared history. They were all descendants, relatives, or associates of the seven families who had served as retainers and partners of the MacMullen clan. Some of those relationships went back to the sixteenth century, but more than a century of relative isolation since the Exodus had caused some cultural dividing lines to blur into nonexistence, and others had ossified into impenetrability.
-----
Shevaughn Turlington - her grandfather liked to call her 'Chevy', and the nickname stuck - was trying to organize her thoughts while soaking her tired muscles in the embassy's private spa bath, when an outside call came through to her comm implant, which meant that it was from someone with a lot of authority, and some heavy encryption; Imperial Guard communication implants couldn't normally be used with outside service providers, unless the originator used military grade encryption protocols.
The call carried a Hyperwave ID code that she recognized instantly; it was a recorded message from an Imperial Guardsman who had been inducted at the same time as she. It was short and to the point.
"Hey, Chevy, I thought you might want a heads up: Three Navy ships are headed out to Novy Sevastopol through the Minotaur locus. The lead ship is being commanded by none other than Admiral Teiji Sakamoto. Two of our merchant ships were apparently taken by unregistered privateers, so the Imperial House has decided to enforce the laws against piracy that the Baryshev Industrial Combine clearly won't. Ki-o-tsukete, Chevy, and good luck." The recorded message ended abruptly, as FTL communications were insanely expensive, and nobody wanted to spend more on their limited bandwidth than was absolutely necessary, although, since it had been invented by DTI, the Imperium's official business tended to go at a massive discount.
She decided to share the anxiety of having someone like Admiral Sakamoto on their way. With any luck he'd just pass through, but she would have to be ready, just in case he decided on a personal visit. She activated her comm and pinged Kenjirō.
"Kenjirō-san, I've just received a back channel heads-up from an old friend, letting me know that Admiral Teiji Sakamoto is going to be passing through the system. Pass the word, I'll elaborate further during our ops briefing." She said, as soon as he acknowledged her call.
There was a long pause, which wasn't entirely unexpected.
"When you say 'passing through', you don't necessarily mean a personal visit, right?" He said, warily.
"For my own sake, if nothing else, I hope not." She replied with feeling. "There's not much we can do if he does, so quit worrying about it, we still have a job to do."
"Yes, Commander. I'll pass the information to the other team leaders. I'm assuming you will be informing the ambassador?" He asked with a trace of sly amusement.
The Right Honourable Bruce Addison Stirling, Ambassador to the HIA, was a grand nephew of Lord Clarence of House Stirling, one of the seven Noble Houses that served as governors of various territories throughout the home system. She had to admit that the man owed his position more to guts and brains than most of his contemporaries, and that, suave and cultured though he may be, he was a ruthless as a dracūl when it came to protecting the Imperium's interests. He was also less doctrinaire in his own way than many others who were born to service and privilege. He was approachable, yet managed to maintain a professional detachment; he treated his subordinates with respect, while never losing sight of the fact that they were subordinates; most importantly, he seemed to know his limitations, and was capable of deferring to another's expertise when it was required.
In short, Ambassador Stirling was the perfect boss.
"You may safely make that assumption Kenjirō-san. Although I'd be surprised if he doesn't already know." She answered, before cutting the connection.
The news that Teiji Sakamoto was on his way filled Chevy with a vague sense of apprehension. The Admiral was an ardent isolationist, and arguably the best flag officer in the Darkaellan Imperial Navy; he had been an instructor at the Naval Academy, but his views had been cause for some concern, so he had been promoted, and given command of the 3rd Fleet. She wondered why he had suddenly been given a detached squadron and a mission to a technically neutral station system, but the implications, like a Darkaellan winter, were chilling. She suddenly found herself incapable of relaxing, despite the heat of the water in which she was immersed, so she climbed out of the bath, and reached for her robe.
Some days, it just didn't pay to get out of bed.
The call carried a Hyperwave ID code that she recognized instantly; it was a recorded message from an Imperial Guardsman who had been inducted at the same time as she. It was short and to the point.
"Hey, Chevy, I thought you might want a heads up: Three Navy ships are headed out to Novy Sevastopol through the Minotaur locus. The lead ship is being commanded by none other than Admiral Teiji Sakamoto. Two of our merchant ships were apparently taken by unregistered privateers, so the Imperial House has decided to enforce the laws against piracy that the Baryshev Industrial Combine clearly won't. Ki-o-tsukete, Chevy, and good luck." The recorded message ended abruptly, as FTL communications were insanely expensive, and nobody wanted to spend more on their limited bandwidth than was absolutely necessary, although, since it had been invented by DTI, the Imperium's official business tended to go at a massive discount.
She decided to share the anxiety of having someone like Admiral Sakamoto on their way. With any luck he'd just pass through, but she would have to be ready, just in case he decided on a personal visit. She activated her comm and pinged Kenjirō.
"Kenjirō-san, I've just received a back channel heads-up from an old friend, letting me know that Admiral Teiji Sakamoto is going to be passing through the system. Pass the word, I'll elaborate further during our ops briefing." She said, as soon as he acknowledged her call.
There was a long pause, which wasn't entirely unexpected.
"When you say 'passing through', you don't necessarily mean a personal visit, right?" He said, warily.
"For my own sake, if nothing else, I hope not." She replied with feeling. "There's not much we can do if he does, so quit worrying about it, we still have a job to do."
"Yes, Commander. I'll pass the information to the other team leaders. I'm assuming you will be informing the ambassador?" He asked with a trace of sly amusement.
The Right Honourable Bruce Addison Stirling, Ambassador to the HIA, was a grand nephew of Lord Clarence of House Stirling, one of the seven Noble Houses that served as governors of various territories throughout the home system. She had to admit that the man owed his position more to guts and brains than most of his contemporaries, and that, suave and cultured though he may be, he was a ruthless as a dracūl when it came to protecting the Imperium's interests. He was also less doctrinaire in his own way than many others who were born to service and privilege. He was approachable, yet managed to maintain a professional detachment; he treated his subordinates with respect, while never losing sight of the fact that they were subordinates; most importantly, he seemed to know his limitations, and was capable of deferring to another's expertise when it was required.
In short, Ambassador Stirling was the perfect boss.
"You may safely make that assumption Kenjirō-san. Although I'd be surprised if he doesn't already know." She answered, before cutting the connection.
The news that Teiji Sakamoto was on his way filled Chevy with a vague sense of apprehension. The Admiral was an ardent isolationist, and arguably the best flag officer in the Darkaellan Imperial Navy; he had been an instructor at the Naval Academy, but his views had been cause for some concern, so he had been promoted, and given command of the 3rd Fleet. She wondered why he had suddenly been given a detached squadron and a mission to a technically neutral station system, but the implications, like a Darkaellan winter, were chilling. She suddenly found herself incapable of relaxing, despite the heat of the water in which she was immersed, so she climbed out of the bath, and reached for her robe.
Some days, it just didn't pay to get out of bed.
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