Page 33 of Star Champion

She shifted her weight, stepped backward, her boots soundlessly padding. She didn’t even breathe as she arced her sens-sword around to where she had sensed him last. Her arms came up, hyper-awareness leading her swing. Her sens-sword slapped sideways on his chest plate, energy pulsing faintly, but not registering as a hit. Sloppy—body hits were frowned upon by the league. But it allowed her to sense the backwash of the pro’s surprise…the echo of his heartbeat. Then, grunting silently, she twisted her arms, angled her wrists to bring the blunt tip of the sens-sword home. Xirri parried, but her sens-sword slid past his to impact his chest plate, vibrating from her hands to her teeth. A valid hit.

She dropped to one knee, head bowed, her breaths coming in pants, sweat trickling down one temple. Slowly she came back to the real world, surfacing bit by bit, until she felt herself being pulled to her feet by a hand wrapped around her wrist.

The first thing she heard was Sir Klark’s clipped but triumphant cheer, his hands clapping together. The first thing she saw was Skeet’s bright white grin as he yanked off her blindfold. He laughed heartily, teasing his teammate. “Sea Kestrel beat you, Raff Xirri! He finished you like last night’s dinner. This is what happens when you get cocky.” To Jemm, he said, “You defeated your first pro. Good job.”

Disarming her weapon, she glanced sheepishly at Xirri. He had definitely been the main target of the projectiles, most likely Skeet’s.

“No fair! It was a hostile audience. They were throwing rubbish at me.” With an amused grin, Xirri strode over to Jemm and grasped her arm, their gloves wrapping hard around each other’s wrists. A well-regarded pro had been taken down by a dive-bar sword-swinger, but his smile gave no hint that he felt bad about it. “Things will go a little different for you in the rematch,” he warned with a dangerous glitter in his eyes, “when we play the wayIplay the game.”

“Not yet.” Sir Klark pointed to her. “Kes, hydrate, then return to the ring. Yonson, you’re up next. This time with official league rules.”

The service staff were already busy clearing the playing surface of trash.

As Jemm drank her fill, dashing the back of her glove across her lips, theVashrattled off what she could expect with Skeet in the arena. “Yes, I’m throwing you into the fire with my captain, without your having a full understanding of the game rules, or the experience, of course, but we all know you can play bajha. Now it’s time to measure how much your performance degrades without the cues you’re used to.”

Few street-bajha players were able to adapt to league rules—he had warned her about that just yesterday. If she wanted to be the exception, she had better concentrate on his every word. It might make the difference between winning the opportunity to go pro, or returning home, her hopes dashed by a missed chance.

“What I will do now is simulate what you can expect. I’m not going to actually play, but offer a quick lesson. First, check that your sens-sword is switched off.” Sir Klark pulled his long-sleeved overshirt over his head, stripping down to a lighter weight black T-shirt underneath. The briefest glimpse of ripped abs, a flat belly, smooth, tawny skin with no body art, no scars, no roadmap of a lifetime of hardships, before he wadded up the heavier shirt and tossed it aside. His body was as hard and unforgiving as his face, but with a brutal sleekness, as if he were made of skin, sinew, muscle, and nothing else. He was a deadly weapon on legs tempered with an air of bred-in arrogance. His physical appearance was at odds with his kindness to her. The disparity was fascinating.

He walked up to her with a helmet and lowered it over her head. “It’s not custom, of course, but how does it feel?”

Seeing the Team Eireya logo—a simple graphic of a bird of prey, its wings spread—on the black headgear was surreal and also thrilling. She had seen images of league pros in full regalia, and thought they looked badass. The helmet weighed almost nothing yet covered her entire skull and the upper half of her face. She followed the edges with her glove, and pressed down on the top to make sure it was fitted firmly to her head. Cutouts left her ears and eyes exposed. A guard shielded the bridge of her nose. Only her mouth and chin remained unprotected. But as in street bajha, hitting bare flesh, whether by accident or on purpose, was a sign of a sloppy, second-rate player and a sure way to suffer ridicule and be expelled from the sport. “Good,” she replied. The helmet would be one more distraction to ignore in a long list of them, but she was ready. Aye, and eager to go up against Yonson Skeet next, no matter what the outcome might be.

“Excellent.” Sir Klark donned a pair of glasses. “These eye shields are light enhancers that will allow me to see you, but you will not be able to see me. In the way non-players know to see, that is. Shall we begin?”

She made sure her weapon was disarmed then closed her hands around the grip. “Aye.”

He called out, “Lights!”

The darkness was immediate. She had never experienced darkness so complete, so suffocating. It was said the deepest caves were like this: lightless, airless death traps. She pulled in a breath on instinct as her mind needed to make sure an atmosphere still existed.

“Don’t be jarred by the absence of light. That same place your mind already goes during play is still there. It doesn’t change with silence and the dark. In fact, it may intensify.”

Sir Klark moved away, but his presence, her awareness of him, did not fade. He remained present like the heat of a blaze did even when you were not next to the fire.

“Bajha dates back to prehistory, to the very ancients who created all we know, birthed by the Great Mother Herself. It has always been a game of warriors, and it still is. Always will be. The practice of bajha helps us attain a higher state of consciousness. It develops our intuition and instinct to their full potential. This is how a man becomes the greatest warrior possible, a worthy protector, and an exceptional and memorable lover.”

Crag me. TheVashused bajha to perfect his skills in bed? It brought a whole new meaning to thrust and parry, not to mention sparks.Quiet your mind. In the next breath she crushed her reaction to that bombshell, which was nothing like anything her father had told her about the sport.

“In competitive bajha the goal, of course, is to hunt an opponent. To track him, and tag him.” Sir Klark’s voice had come from a different direction than she expected. But even as that thought registered, she sensed that he had moved again.

Jemm stared wide-eyed into the all-encompassing blackness, her heartbeat an accompaniment to Sir Klark’s voice. “As bajha players, we use our somatosensory system daily as everyone else does, using the five senses to perceive the world around us. In bajha, the absence of the usual five senses forces us to rely more on scents, the blood coursing through our veins, the hair on our body, and even taste. But in bajha, we rely on our neurons, too. They’re specialized cells, the smallest component of our nervous system. With them we can see…but not with our eyes. We can listen, but…”

“Not with our ears,” Jemm said under her breath along with him, hearing her father’s patient voice teaching her.

“Neurons allow us to see and to hear, to feel and to taste. In the dark, they will point to your prey.”

He had moved again, but she was better able to follow him as her mind settled, her awareness reaching out. “Where am I, Kes?”

She paused, felt,sensed, and poked a glove in his direction.

“Yes! Excellent. Most would point to the last place they heard my voice, but you waited to detect me, and found me. Think of that mindfulness as a fishnet, how you would cast it out over the sea.”

Spinning, fanning out over a blue, blue sea, the net bejeweled with droplets of water.Her father’s words echoed in her mind from across the years, bringing with it the images she always imagined while playing. “It’s what my father told me, too. He played bajha. He taught me about the in-between that not everyone can sense. He also compared it to a sea. In bajha, you dive into the in-between to keep your opponent from finding you.”

“Yes, exactly. You said your father played? He doesn’t anymore?” His voice was nearer now. Interest had lured him close.

“He died when I was a child. He was a mine mechanic. There was a collapse in the caves. It shattered his leg. A few days later the fever took him.”

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