Page 62 of Star Champion

“It was fairer to you,Vash, than to me.”

Truth. It doused some of the riled-up heat inside him. He could not deny her humble origins, the hardships she had faced at too young of an age. One glimpse at the ragtag colonists waiting to be seen by the Earth-dweller physicians told him others on her world faced even worse difficulties compared to Jemm.

“Focus on the match,” he snarled.

Her form was visible to him in the darkness, a dark red seething shadow in his glasses. He could feel her emotions pulsing off her in waves. Those waves battered him.

“You want to fight me, coach? Is that it? You want to show your champ what’s what? Hmm? Skeet told me that you’re an excellent player. You could have gone pro, if it weren’t for being a prince.” She was able to track him no matter where he walked, intuiting his presence.Feeling him. Inside and out. “But those are just words. Words prove nothing. Let’s see how good ya really are. Take those crattin’ glasses off.”

“Concentrate!”

“Ah. I see what it is. You don’t want to fall to Sea Kestrel. You don’t want a mere female to beat ya.”

He flung off the glasses. The sound of them impacting the nanocrylic wall echoed in the silence.

He did not need his glasses to know she sported a satisfied smile on her face and a deadly glint in her eyes. Better players than he had fallen to Sea Kestrel. But not any who had upset her to this degree, or, who had touched or kissed every conceivable part of her body. Would the distraction cost her the win she was so certain was hers? Could he expose her vulnerabilities as a player and exploit them? If he did, then she was not in fact ready.

Muscles tense, his warrior instincts vibrating in readiness, he held his sens-sword in front of him in a sure, two-handed grip. “Bring it, Sea Kestrel.”

Jemm attacked, and he evaded her. Pivoting, he swung in a return strike. But she was not where he thought she would be. He caught himself before he stumbled. Her sens-sword skittered across his abdomen, leaving behind a comet’s tail of violet sparks. Then the rounded blade whooshed past somewhere close in the dark, too close, enough for him to feel the breeze of its passing.

“Not good enough, Kes. Not good enough.”

He felt her wounded fury from the tip of every hair on his body to the marrow of his bones. The match was fierce, punishing, and more strenuous than any he had ever played before. They swung and parried, swerved and lunged. It was exhilarating. But that was not something anyone facing her in actual competition would likely express. They would be too worried about losing the match.

Only now did he understand how unsettling her command of the ring must feel to those who faced her. But he soon saw he had an advantage they would not. The emotional bond he and Jemm shared did not evaporate in the bajha ring. Their connectedness was an advantage that helped him hold his own against her.

But their vivid awareness of each other went both ways. She would have figured out by now she was not immune to him. That the rout she had expected to hand him, and rightly so, had not materialized yet. It left her vulnerable, and that unnerved her.

I feel you, Jemm.

She attacked. He swung his sens-sword to deflect hers. The crack of the batons colliding reverberated in the silence. Violet energy illuminated the air between them. For a fleeting second he glimpsed her masked face, the intensity there, her bared teeth, the slits of her eyes. She looked like an avenging goddess from ancient times, frightening and beautiful.

Determined to see him conquered.

He blinked away the ghost of the image as he swung his weapon in a ruthless arc from left to right. Again their sens-swords collided. The power of her parry did not carry the sheer force of a bigger, heavier combatant, of course, but the surprise of finding her there was worse than the impact. He had guessed her to be on his opposite side. The very instant his mind alighted on that recognition, the blunt tip of her sens-sword landed in the center of his chest plate.

A fountain of brilliant violet energy erupted at the point of contact, and through his suit he felt the vibration, signaling a dead-on hit.

With a soft grunt of effort, she shoved her weapon at his chest. “Give?” she said through her teeth. “Well? Do ya crattin’ give, ya stubborn aristo?”

“Give.” He disarmed his sens-sword and lowered it. The tip of hers remained pressed to his powerfully beating heart.

Her breathing tore through the silence of the arena. “What your pros said about ya is true. You’re good. Really good. Last week you might have beaten me.” She finally pulled back and disarmed her weapon. “So. Was I good enough for ya?”

“That’s the understatement of the year.”

Her sens-sword dropped to the padded floor with a muffled thud. His followed. Then his gloves. And hers. Their helmets too.

He snatched her by the fabric of her suit and tugged her close. His knuckles came in contact with the hot skin of her jaw. He paused there in the total blackness, his lips almost touching hers, feeling her body heat, her pulse, and the bob of her throat when she swallowed. He felt her react to the feel of his hand skimming over her cheek, his breath, the intensity of his desire. “I’m sorry,” he said. “My protective instinct tends to run away from me.”

She pressed a finger to his lips. “I know,” she whispered in the dark.

He closed his hand around hers, moved it to his chest plate where her sens-sword had landed moments before. “I needed to face you myself to realize just how good you are. I needed to offend you, to unbalance you, so that I could believe that no distraction will topple you. None can. Not even me. You are ready, Jemm. Even if I am not.” He paused, then said, “I allowed my father’s call to exacerbate my doubts. There’s history there.”

He squeezed her hand, forcing himself to admit the dishonor of his past. It was not right to hide it from the woman whose opinion of him mattered at the deepest level. “I’ve been a disappointment to him, you see. I interfered in a political and family matter that led to my arrest. I believed my brother Ché wronged when he lost both his succession rights and his promised bride to the B’kah clan. Most in my clan felt the same way. So, I set out to defend Ché. It seemed like a good idea at the time, like all ill-conceived notions do. But it went horribly awry. No one was killed, and no one was hurt—thank the Great Mother—but my public humiliation made headlines across the Trade Federation. I served my time, two-year’s worth, but it’ll take more than that to atone for the trouble I caused. Now, the chance is finally within reach to prove to my sire, to my family, that I’m more than the clan embarrassment.”

“Crag them, Klark. I mean it. Really.”

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