protective invisible-wall, so the explosions splashed harmlessly off its hull.
Then I flew beneath the enemy ship and extended my craft’s nose spike and I flew directly into the other craft. The spike penetrated the hull, and I fired a fusillade of delayed action missiles into the vessel, then snapped the spike, and flew like the heel of a skate upon ice across the blue sky and watched.
The enemy battle-ship jerked out of control as the bombs exploded inside it. It veered wildly from side to side, then started to fall from the sky.
Then it vanished.
And reappeared behind me and I saw it through my all-around mask-eyes and I fired a hail of burning gas through the rear of my craft and saw flames burn the enemy’s hull, and was once more dancing around the sky.
The enemy ship was billowing steam from side vents now, a clear sign that there were fires within and its hull was compromised. It fired a battery of projectiles and energy streams towards me, but my dancing pinprick of a fighter craft eluded them all.
The enemy’s huge battle ship was faced with a single-Maxolu skycraft, and it was losing. I felt a surge of triumph.
And then I saw that the enemy vessel was descending, and landing. It burned the grass in a field and touched down with no jolt, and the side of the craft opened up and I saw far below me-in the image magnified by my mask-eyes-a single figure step out.
I increased the magnification on my eyes still further; and was surprised to see that the figure emerging from the ship was a female warrior carrying a sword. Was this a challenge?
The enemy battleship lifted into the air once more and flew off. The warrior remained, alone, on the ground. The message was clear: a one-on-one combat was being proposed.
I plunged downwards, with a jolt of joy that was like falling off a cliff, and landed my craft on the seared grass. I knew this might be an ambush, but I had to take the risk. For according to the laws of my world, any battle and war can be decided by single combat, no matter what the sizes of the respective armies. But now I wondered: would these enemy warriors hold to such values?
For I had, of course, realised by now these were no ordinary warriors; they came from elsewhere, from some other planet around some other star that existed far away in the universe of stars that encircled us at night.
My enemy were aliens, and they had invaded my world.
I stepped out of my craft. I removed my mask, so I could taste the cold morning air on my cheeks, and shook my long hair. Then I took my sword and scabbard out of the cockpit-pouch, strapped it over my back, and walked calmly towards the alien warrior.
The warrior was female, as I had already seen. But, close up, she looked like no female I had ever before beheld. She had fangs, like an animal, which protruded from her mouth; and no ear-flaps. In the centre of her forehead was a third eye. She was large-twice as large as myself-and powerfully muscled. And she wore no body armour but was clad in tight bright yellow animal-hides that left her legs and stomach and arms bare. Her hair was bright scarlet and streaked with silver and blew in the wind. And her skin was pale, more white than red, and entirely lacking in soft ridges.
The contrast in our sizes was almost comical; I was a dwarf beside this giant. She was without doubt a magnificent specimen of her species, warily graceful, with bulging shoulders and arms and stocky legs. And there was a steely look in her eyes that assured me she knew well the bitterness and the joy of combat.
I stared up at her appraisingly and without hate; for hate will slow the warrior’s hand and eye. “What tribe are you?” I asked.
“You do not know my tribe,” the warrior replied, in a husky low voice that made my flesh tingle with the eerie unfamiliarity of its tone.
“What is your name?” I continued, patiently.
“Zala,” said the warrior. “And yours?”
And she stared at me impassively, unafraid to meet my eyes.
“I am,” I said proudly, “Sharrock.”
She stared at me, unimpressed.
Hiding my disappointment at her lack of response to my, by all objective criteria, legendary name, I added: “You are, I take it, not from our lands.”
“I am not.”
“Tell me then, whence do you come?”
She was still staring into my eyes; shamelessly, and in my view arrogantly. I felt a flash of rage and stifled it.
I would kill her first; and then I would savour my wrath.
“Far away,” she said, in what sounded to me like sad tones. “Another planet, around another star.”
“As I had suspected,” I told her, formally. “For your ship is like nothing I have ever seen. Your appearance is hideous and strange. You are an alien.”
“In your terms, I am.”
“Why do you wage war upon us, you whore-fucking, turd-eating monster from afar?” I asked her, with ritual invective.
She laughed.
“Answer my question, o withered-hole!” I insisted, and she laughed again.
“We come,” she said with open mockery, “o pathetic-male-with-a-tin y-prick-that-I-will-eat-and-feed-in- morsels-to-my-female-lover in order to conquer and destroy you.”
“Why?” I said, stung at her unfamiliar insult.
“Why not?” said Zala the female warrior, tauntingly.
Once again I had to bite back my rage; for I truly despised this warrior’s lack of respect for tradition. Her people’s war with my people should not have been fought like this! A formal declaration should have been made, and hence due warning given; poems should have been spoken, songs composed, regrets expressed. All this should have been done, to create a war that would have been ennobling for all concerned.
Instead, they had simply ambushed our valiant warriors, massacred our defenceless families and Philosophers, and left them all to rot.
“Which planet do you come from, you tainted-by-vulgarity-and-laughed-at-by-small-children shit-covered harlot?” I said.
She grinned, clearly amused by our social ritual of rhetorical abuse. “It has a name,” she said casually. “You will not know it. It is far away. Your astronomers will never have seen it. All you need to know is I am a warrior of a once great world. Will you fight me?”
“I will.”
“If I kill you, your world is forfeit,” the alien warrior said arrogantly.
“Very well,” I said calmly. “And if I kill you?”
“That won’t happen,” said the alien warrior Zala and she lunged forward with her long curved sword, the hilt clutched in both her hands.
I dodged easily and drew my sword from its scabbard on my back with one hand and swung it fast at her and she recoiled and barely dodged it, then I wove forwards to the left and then to the right, ducking and rising in a single flow, then thrust the tip of the sword towards her bare midriff. But she leaped in the air and danced on the flat of my blade and kicked my head and somersaulted over me then plunged her sword back and over her own head at me, without turning around.
I was awed at her speed, but evaded the blow and swept my own blade a thousand times in the air in a series of continuous movements. Zala countered each sword-strike with a speed that impressed me, for we were both fighting faster than the beatings of a baro bird’s wings.
But I was stronger, and the next time she leaped in the air I leaped high too and clutched at her face with my fingers and plucked out one of her eyes.
We both landed, swords held upright and clashed steel once again. Blood dribbled out of her empty eye-hole. Her face was a cold mask of hate. I felt a surge of joy; this was glorious combat.
Then her blade went through my heart and I exulted, and with my dagger I sliced off her hand at the wrist and stepped back. I grunted in pain, and also in delight. For her severed hand and blade were now trapped in my
