Martian Dictator Page 3
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The Billionaire changed the knife over to his right hand again. Ambidextrous. He showed no awkwardness using his left or his right, and his balance with either side was immaculate. It was rather incredible, the captain thought as he bounced off the wall to his opponent’s left side. There were very few truly ambidextrous knife fighters in the world. Most knifers were amateurs who packed a blade because it was easy and cheap, giving thought neither to technique nor training, and it was truly rare when the need arose to be a knife fighter and you found yourself able to fight with both hands with equal skill. If his opponent had tried for the obvious opening he had presented as he missed with his kick, he would’ve been in for a nasty surprise. A master knife fighter never relied entirely on a single blade. The captain had a second blade hidden on his right ankle, and if the Billionaire had tried for the opening presented, he would’ve been met with a lefthanded slash across his eyes. The fight would’ve been over. As it was, the captain bounced off at an angle and grabbed one of the many grips lining every wall. He eyed his opponent and changed the blade over to his left hand.
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Lefthanded. Interesting. I had fought several lefthanded opponents in my time, but I had never fought another who was ambidextrous. The captain gave me a slight smile as he grabbed a handhold on the opposite wall. The jig was up, he was a master. Probably one of the very best I had ever fought. Suddenly my grip on the knife felt less secure, my pulse quickened, and for the first time I considered the possibility that I might lose.
The second most important thing while fighting with a knife is never to forget that you are fighting, and most presumably for your life. The knife is not the only weapon in your arsenal, and most likely will not be your most important one. As the captain had just proved, it is mostly used to feint and threaten while the real attack, be it a foot or a fist or a smile, makes its move.
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He gave him a lopsided smile as he pulled his knees under him up on the wall. His opponent was now above him, standing on the wall as far as his brain was concerned. He ignored it. His enemy was down. His mind shifted as his brain readjusted his perception of reality, and he lunged straight down towards his enemy.
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I could not react fast enough. Suddenly the captain pulled his knees under him up on the wall and flew towards me at a tremendous speed. Intellectually, I knew what he had done. Up here, gravity did not matter. Up here, up was sideways, sideways was down, and down was where your enemy was. I had read the same books he had, but I had never put the theory to practice. He had. I stumbled to get out of the way, never even giving thought to counterattacking. If I could not get out of the way I was done. He was too good, and he had timed the lunge perfectly. In normal gravity the fight would have been even, I might even have had the upper hand. But up here, it was over before we even began. I never stood a chance, and he knew it.
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He never stood a chance. The captain had known from the second they entered the gym and had bounced a coin to choose sides. Sides did not matter, not up here. The enemy was always down, and he had known his opponent could not react to sudden shifts in perceptions of reality the way he could. He crossed the room in a second flat and slashed his bowie out to cut the Billionaire’s throat.
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The third most important thing to remember when fighting with a naked blade is that if you are fighting an opponent of equal or greater skill, you will get cut. There’s no getting around it, you will feel that blade kissing your skin, either while defending yourself or while attacking; to get the kill you need to feel the kill. The only way to win such a fight is to embrace the injury, accept it as a given and fight as though it has already happened. As the captain soared towards me I switched the blade over to my left hand again, presented my right shoulder to my opponent and raised my arm to ward off the attack. His knife hit my upper deltoid and the momentum spun me around.
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He had misjudged. Badly. The Billionaire shifted, and took the blade to the upper part of his arm. On its own it would not be a killing wound, although it would incapacitate the man for quite some time. However, the momentum from the attack spun his adversary around at a greater speed than anticipated, and since his opponent had used his time to shift the blade to his opposing hand instead of defending himself, he was now in a position to strike.
He struck
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My blade cut the intervening space in less than half a second and struck the captain in his side, just above his fifth rib. A killing blow. Using the momentum of my spin, the knife traced a line at least five inches long paralleling his ribs before his body was out of reach. I had used all my strength in the attack, and according to Newton’s Second Law, I was now spinning wildly out of control across the room. It did not matter; my opponent was finished. I sheathed my knife and reached for a handhold.
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It was over. His opponent had bested him, and his side ached dully where the knife had struck with enough force to leave him out of breath. That would leave a nasty bruise along most of his side. Never before had anybody beaten him with the blade in zero g, and he was not sure whether to be impressed or annoyed. There was clearly something besides the slick appearance of the silent Billionaire. At the very least, he knew how to fight with a knife. If this had been with naked steel, the captain would be dead, and his opponent would be sporting a useless right arm. Not much contest there, the dead lose every time. The knives were coated in a dull polymer sheathing whenever they were practicing in the gym, but once the fear of death was a factor, the captain knew the odds would shift once again. He sheathed his knife and kicked off to fly over and congratulate his opponent.
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The captain dexterously flew across the room and grabbed a handhold next to me.
“Sorry about the bruising,” I said while toweling the accumulated sweat off my forehead. I wasn’t sorry at all.
“No problem, my own fault for underestimating you. I should’ve taken into account that you are an experienced fighter, both in the ring and with a naked blade. Not many could’ve used their own body as both a shield and a weapon the way you did there. You would’ve had quite the cut if the blades were naked though, you would’ve been lucky if the arm had been attached at all.” His grin said it all: Next time, slick, next time.
I took the offered hand and shook it, swaying slightly in the ZG environment. For most unexperienced sailors, it was hard maneuvering in zero g. You tended to overshoot your targets, used too much force when moving around, and many depended on a daily intake of nausea-suppressing drugs to stop them from spraying the interior of the cabins with the contents of their stomachs every few hours. Which was an experience nobody wanted to have more than once in their life.
Not so me. From the second I had unclipped my harness on my first flight I had felt right at home. No nausea, no disorientation, no overshooting or fumbling. I was like a dolphin gliding through the waves. Zero g and I were born to each other. The captain had underestimated me this time, but I doubted that he would do so again. We were only three weeks into our journey, and most of his time up until now had been spent in the control room, double and triple-checking every conceivable variable. He had had limited time to observe me move about, and thus little time to see that I was indeed a proficient ZG mover.
The room where we had just finished our joust was part of the midship gym. It consisted of the cubicle where you could train your zero g flying (or knife fighting in our case) nicknamed “The Cage,” and a larger room with lockdown treadmills, bicycles, weight machines, and an assortment of equipment designed to counteract the inevitable loss of muscle sustained on a prolonged voyage in space.
Every member of the crew was required to spend at least two hours there every day, but there were rarely more than ten people there at any given time. Today it was crammed full. It seemed as if everybody who didn’t have a ship-critical job
at the moment were lined on every wall, ceiling, or floor to watch the fight that had just ended. There were laughter, grins, and subtle jolts as a line formed to be the next couple in the room. Quite a few bets were being settled as well, and I was pleased to notice that not all had put their money (or their illegal booze, in some cases) on the captain to win. The next couple pulled down a pair of training knives from the stack at the door and entered the cubicle. The walls turned opaque just as they entered, and a chorus of boos went around the room. The contestants had turned on the privacy setting, and the walls had obliged by turning milky white, thus obscuring everything that happened inside. It was rumored that this was a popular setting for those who wanted to do something a bit more adventurous in there, but so far, I had found neither the time nor the inclination to explore that option. Today was a fighting day.
As I found my place on a bicycle to begin my daily workout, I caught the eye of Nadia Solemkova from across the room. The look was unmistakable. It gave nothing and promised everything. Perhaps I would find another use for the cage before the trip was over, after all. Or perhaps not. Considering the way I had recruited her, I would not hold it against her to feel a certain animosity towards me. She had hardly spoken a word to me since I had met her in Russia more than a year ago. She did not seem actively hostile towards me, though, just. . . undecided. She did not hold my gaze for long before she pushed off and joined the queue to exit the gym.
4. The Blonde
Nadia could feel the bile rising in her throat as she held the edge of the toilet in a death grip. She could hear the music from the restaurant softly through the air ducts, and in a booth a couple of doors down from where she was kneeling she could hear the coughing that inevitably followed a dose of cocaine, followed shortly after by a badly suppressed giggle. The last straw that finally made her succumb to the porcelain god and give up the contents of her stomach, meagre as they were, came when the sound of a zipper being drawn made the memories of the night come crashing back in full force.
It had started as any one of a hundred nights in the past year had started: with a phone call. The caller was male (they always were) and did not introduce himself (they never did). The arrangements were quickly made. Where to meet? His hotel. What to wear? No specific requirements. Plans for the evening? A quick drink, dinner at a restaurant, then back to the hotel. Nothing unusual so far. She even had a couple of hours to finish off her latest job application before she had to head back home and start to freshen up. If she was late, her roommate would not hesitate to use her allotted ratio of hot water for the shower. She wrote up the application, lied heavily under the heading “previous experience,” and sent it off with little hope of ever hearing anything from the company. There was not much use for a fresh entomologist these days, and even less use for one who had specialized in mutations caused by gamma radiation. She regretted her decision to attend grad school every time she had trouble scraping together enough money for food, and she regretted it even more every time she failed to do so and had to answer the phone when it rang late at night.
It was her roommate who had introduced her to the world of call girls. “It’s easy money Nadia, usually it’s just a lonely businessman too drunk to even get it up.” And she was right; usually that was the case. Lonely men who only wanted some comfort in trying times, men who often just wanted to be held. But sometimes it was the other kind, the kind that forced her to wear heavy makeup for weeks afterward, the kind who liked to inflict pain, suffering, and humiliation. After a while she had learned to spot those, but she was far from perfect, and once in a while she regretted deeply that she had picked up the phone on that particular evening.
This evening she was hungry, and had picked up the phone when it rang. She did not spot anything off, no red flags presented themselves, and no alarm bells rang. With an indifference that grew every time she did it, she cancelled her previous arrangements and planned for a night out with a stranger.
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I met her at the bar at the hotel I was staying at. Even though I had seen plenty of pictures, the reality of her took my breath away. She was stunning. Long blonde hair, high cheekbones, a full mouth that turned slightly upwards at each corner so that it seemed like she always wore a small smile. Green eyes that towered above most men. She was nothing short of perfect. And she was for sale.
I calmly walked over, kissed the back of her hand and straightened. Even though she was unusually tall, I still had a couple of inches on her, and she had to crane her neck backwards to look me in the eye. “A pleasure, madam, a pleasure. Would you care to join me for a drink? I believe we have an arrangement for the evening.” Her annoyance vanished and was quickly replaced by a professional smile as she realized I was her date for the evening and not just a guy hoping to chat her up.
“A drink would be lovely, thank you.” She smiled at me, and even through her professionalism I could sense what it would be like to be the recipient of a true smile. I briefly wondered what her laughter would be like, and equally quickly dismissed the thought. This was a time for hard words, for breaking and tearing, not thoughts of laughter and enjoyment. I gave her my best smile in return, all teeth and hunger, and her own smile faltered in tandem with her stride. I grabbed her arm and steadied her.
“Careful now, we don’t want any incidents here in the bar now, do we?” I patted her arm and led her to a secluded booth in a corner. She glanced uncertainly over at me and checked around for other customers in the bar. There were several, and she relaxed and let me lead her to her seat. I was making her nervous, and she could obviously feel that something was not right. She was right, of course. I was as far from her regular customer as she was from a regular street prostitute.
A waiter magically appeared at our table, and I ordered two glasses of their most expensive champagne and two glasses of their cheapest vodka. The order was unusual enough to garner a curious look from the waiter and a nervous glance from my date. She was not in control of the situation, and I planned to keep it that way.
“So, you are obviously not from around these parts, your Russian is nothing short of atrocious. What brings you to the Venice of the North?” She gave me an appropriately shy smile and reached for the glass of champagne that had just been placed in front of her. She slipped into her professional role, fully in control of her every gesture, smile, and comment. I began my task of stripping her naked.
“How many men have you fucked?” I reached over and plucked the glass from her hand before she could drink and placed it back on the table beside the vodka.
She recoiled a bit in her seat, and her eyes glanced towards the bar and the exit. The table in the booth, however, was placed so that she had to make her way past me to get out, and there was not much room for maneuvering. Earlier that day I had moved it to its present position and reserved it for the evening. No point in leaving anything to chance.
She quickly recovered and tried to gain the upper hand.
“That’s hardly a question a gentleman would ask, now is it?” She quickly licked her lips and bit her lower lip for a second. I was getting to her.
“What made you think I am a gentleman?”
“The kiss on my hand was a dead giveaway.” She smiled at me and reached for the glass again.
“Maybe I just wanted to feel how you tasted?” Her hand froze. “Maybe it was to give you the impression that I could be trusted so that you would follow me into this booth?”
She now openly eyed the exit and her smile was gone.
“Look, I don’t think this was a very good idea. If you don’t mind, I think I would like to leave now.” She tried to get up, but the tabletop was in the way, and the table itself was glossy-black solid stone, weighing far too much to be pushed away by a 110-pound blonde sitting in an awkward position. She was trapped.
“Oh, I think this was an excellent idea. You see, I have done my homework, and I’ve done it well. I know about your futile attempts to get a job. I know about your faile
d marriage and how your ex put you in the hospital. Twice. I know about your apartment that you share with a fellow whore, and I know that you often do not have enough money to buy food. I know that your brother was murdered many years ago while stealing a pound of meat for you both. I know that the streets of St. Petersburg are tough these days, and I obviously know what you do to make ends meet. What I do not know, however, is how many men you have fucked.”
I sipped my champagne.
“Don’t. Please don’t say that. Don’t. . .”
She was trembling slightly now, her barriers weakened. Time to bring them down.
“Don’t what? Don’t use that word? What would you have me say? “Made love to?” Don’t make me laugh. You are a prostitute, a whore, and you fuck men for money. However you justify it to yourself, that is what you do. You have a master’s degree in how the effects of solar radiation influence the development of insects, and you make your living by laying on your back, moaning falsely to fat businessmen while thinking about how your life ought to have been.”