Molly turned to Cat. “The grav panels are failing.”
Part XV – Coming Together
“What greater tragedy is there than two lovers, racing for each other, desperate and longing, only to pass, unbeknownst, in the darkness?”
37
Cole held the wooden sword with his right hand and twirled it in the air. It made a satisfying, swooshing sound. Arthur frowned at him.
“More wrist,” he said. “You don’t have a new shoulder, so the power has to come from your elbow and wrist.”
“Why not just give me a new shoulder?” Cole asked, smiling.
“Because it’s expensive and parts are hard to come by. But more importantly, where would you want me to stop? Replace everything from the neck down? At what point would you quit feeling like you?”
“Maybe everything from the neck up would be better,” someone said.
Cole turned to the voice—
It was the girl with the red hair. She had on one of the same training suits he’d been given, her bright locks up in a tight bun and a wooden sword in her hand.
“Have you two officially met?” Arthur asked.
“That’s a good question,” Cole said. He stepped forward and extended his hand. “Have we?”
“Penny,” the girl said, grabbing his hand and squeezing it. Hard.
Cole tried to pull away, but she had an iron grip.
“I don’t think we have,” she said, smiling. “Not
Arthur clapped his hands together. “Okay, you two square off. Just the basics today. Bear with me, Penny, and go easy on the lad.”
“I will,” she said, winking at Cole and freeing his hand.
He looked down at it and flexed his artificial fingers, marveling at the pain interface.
Arthur turned to Cole. “Any fencing at the Academy?”
“Two semesters,” he said proudly.
“Aw, hell,” Arthur said. “Well, do me a favor and forget all that nonsense. Buckblades aren’t swords.”
“Buckblades? The invisible things?”
“That’s right.” Arthur stepped over and adjusted Cole’s grip on the handle. “Buckminster Fuller came up with the design hundreds of years ago. Well, sorta.” He ran his hand down the wooden approximation of a blade while he talked. “It’s a single matrix of carbon laced with iron, neodymium, and cobalt. Extremely ferromagnetic, okay? Super sharp. But the trick is in the blade’s handle, that’s where the electromagnetic field is created that spools the wire out and keeps it stiff. The blade’ll cut through damn near anything.”
“Even each other?”
“Sharp kid,” Arthur said, looking at Penny and jabbing a thumb his way. She shrugged and twirled her stick in a graceful pattern, so fast Cole could hear the air screaming in protest as it tried to move out of the way.
“No, not each other. Buckblades have orthogonal magnetic charges, otherwise they’d fly out of your hand and stick to something metal, get it?”
“Orthogonal?” Cole asked. “Is that positive or negative?”
“Neither. There’s two other kinds of magnetic fields, monopoles that can be harvested here in hyperspace. All Buckblades have the same charge, so it’s almost impossible to get them together, much less cut through one another.”
“They fly away from each other? Why not make some of them with the opposite charge, then?”
Cole tried to mimic the pattern Penny was making, which made her laugh.
“You just lost your clever points, son. Now I have to assume you got lucky before.”
“What do you think would happen?” Penny asked, taunting him.
“They’d stick together?”
“That’s putting it mildly, now pay attention. When someone swings at you, you can’t get hit. Not even a little, okay?”
“I think he’s learned
Cole dropped his weapon and shook his hand, glaring at her.
“Good point, Penny. Now, Cole, keep a firm grip on your sword.” Arthur bent down, picked it up, and handed it back to him. “Don’t crush the thing, but try not to drop it.”
“Why’d you make the thing feel pain?” Cole asked, rubbing his hand.
“Same reason God made the other one that way. So you’d take care of it. Now listen, you don’t want to get hit. Not
“How does this work, then? He who swings first, wins?”
“The other way around, usually. See the slits on your sword?”
Cole inspected the wooden blade. There were deep cracks running down the length of the thing. He nodded.
“When you swing the practice swords at each other, internal sensors calculate where they would be repulsed to. Lights in the blade shine out and your suit picks them up—”
“Oh, so it’s like a game of billiards. It’s all about the bank shots.”
“Okay, another clever point for you. Now, most fights end with someone’s own sword coming back and hitting them. With the right block and a forceful enough stance, you can send most attacks back where they came from. Think of your sword more as a shield. It’s your
Cole nodded and tried to take the same stance as Penny: feet apart, shoulders square, pretty much the exact posture that would’ve gotten him a beating from Lieutenant Eckers, his old fencing instructor.
“The power is from side to side,” Penny told him. “It’s in your hips.” She moved hers back and forth while Cole watched.
“You’re supposed to try it too,” she said, reaching out and smacking his sword.
“Oh, yeah.” He moved his hips side to side, swinging the wooden stick just like she did.
“It’s a lot like a judo throw, or a good roundhouse. If you don’t get your whole body in on it, you won’t go far.”
“Gotcha,” Cole said, trying to ignore the way her suit hugged her body.
“Give me your best shot.”
Cole’s feet shuffled automatically, trying to get back into a proper fencing stance. Penny lashed out with her sword, which he instinctively blocked. Solidly. The wooden shafts smacked together with a satisfying crack.
Both thighs on his suit lit up, showing him where he would’ve lost them.
“You’ve got no power like that,” Penny said, tapping his hip with her sword. “This isn’t a contest where you score points and gab with your opponent about whose mother smells worse.” She rapped his sword with hers, then tapped him in the stomach. “There’s nothing noble or fun about this, okay? It’s one swing and you’re dead. There
