Refusing Excalibur (2 page)

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Authors: Zachary Jones

BOOK: Refusing Excalibur
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Admiral Emmet Selan, a member of the triumvirate who overthrew the elected government a decade earlier, sat at the table eating with his grandson and daughter-in-law.
His father shared Victor’s black eyes, prominent nose, and long face, but his hair was more gray than black.
Dressed in civilian attire, Victor's father was here as “Dad” rather than as “Admiral Selan.” A familiar case rested at his feet.
“Hello, Victor,” his father said.
“Hi, Dad.” Victor remained standing, pointed his chin at the case. “What’s that for?”
Victor’s father glanced down at it. “It’s been a while since we’ve last sparred.”
“Physically at least. Which doesn’t explain why you brought that.” Victor pointed again at the case. “We have plenty of those in the house.”
“Yes, but this one is special,” Admiral Selan said.
Victor’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Too special for simple sparring.”
“Not today,” Admiral Selan said.
Victor crossed his arms. “Right now?”
“Of course not.” His father planted a hand on Alex’s hand. The boy giggled at his touch. “I’m having lunch with my grandson. And, besides, I wouldn’t want to force you to fight on an empty stomach.”
Victor nodded and sat down to eat.
“Are you and Grandpa going to fight?” Alex asked.
“We’re just getting in some practice,” Victor said.
“Can I watch?” Alex asked. He was fascinated with weapons the way small boys often were.
Gina looked across the table at Victor and shook her head. “He may not.”
Victor put a roast beef sandwich on Alex’s plate. “Boss has spoken, kiddo.”
Alex huffed in disappointment.
While Victor enjoyed his still-warm sandwich, his mother, Katrina Selan, sat down and chatted with his father. A tall, handsome woman with black hair graying at the temples. She was the only adult at the table who had never served in the military.
As a botanist, she had perhaps the most important task of all of them: making sure Savannah grew enough food to feed its people while the Lysandran siege cut them off from the rest of the galaxy.
In her spare time, she managed the vineyards of the Selan estate. From what Victor gathered from his mother’s conversation with his father, she seemed to think the mild weather from the past year would lead to the production of a particularly good vintage.
While his parents talked, Victor occasionally exchanged smiles from across the table with Alex and Gina.
When he finished eating, his father squeezed his mother’s hand and then got up, case in hand. “You ready?” he asked Victor.
“Yep.”
“Can I please watch?” Alex asked.
Victor walked around the table and crouched down to eye level with the boy. "Maybe next time, kiddo. Why don’t you tell your mother about the Guardian while I’m busy with Grandpa. Okay?”
“Okay,” Alex said.
Victor winked at his wife, who just rolled her eyes at him as he walked to his room.
As Victor departed, Alex held up the Guardian and made the toy wave at him. Victor waved back and then walked out the door.
There, he changed from his clothes and into padded armor. With a helmet tucked under his arm, he proceeded to the sword room, where his father sat on a bench dressed in padded armor of his own. The box he had been carrying now rested next to him, open, revealing the empty red-velvet depression inside. Victor's father held the box's contents in his hand. It was a metal rod covered in black polymer. Silvery metal stuck out from both ends. Emmet Selan stood and held the handle away from him.
The bit of metal at the top of the handle changed shape, elongating into a thin, slightly curved
katana
-style blade which his father favored.
“Good to see the family variblade still works,” Victor said, while his father admired the blade.
“Variblades don’t wear out,” his father said. The metal that formed the blade was actually a mass of tiny machines known colloquially as morphmetal. A regular dusting of fine metal powder kept the blade in factory-fresh condition. Only the polymer grip needed replacing every now and then.
“I hope you plan on using a training key.” Victor tilted his head. “Unless you intend this fight to end at first blood.”
The admiral grimaced at Victor and retracted the variblade. He then pulled a chip from the variblade’s box and inserted it into the handle. The training key would alter the variblade's physical properties to make it safe for sparing. “Choose your weapon.”
Victor walked over to a rack where three training variblades rested, picking the one at the top. The blade automatically interfaced with the control implants in Victor’s hand. He held the blade in front of him and, with a thought, transformed the variblade into a straight double-edge longsword.
“I hope that’s not the only weapon you’ve been practicing with,” his father said.
Victor retracted the sword and turned to his father. “Why don’t you find out?”
Emmet smirked and put on his helmet. Victor did the same.
The two men walked onto the mat in the center of the sword room.
“Rules?” Victor asked.
“First to land three blows," his father said. "Does that work for you?”
Victor smirked behind his mask. “It works.”
“Good.” Emmet formed the ancient Selan family variblade into a katana and dropped into a fighting crouch.
Victor reformed his blade and chose a high stance.
For several heartbeats, the two men stood there, staring at each other, still as statues.
Then, at the same time, they both moved. Blade rang against blade, and both men bounced back from each other, only to launch forward again.
This time the blades didn’t touch. Victor’s father brought up his sword in a horizontal block, but, just before Victor’s blade reached it, the blade retracted into the handle.
Victor’s sword cut nothing but air, and he stumbled forward. Before he could recover, he felt a sharp sting on his shoulder.
“You’re dead,” said his father. The curved blade of his weapon was now sticking out the other end of the variblade’s handle.
Victor turned to face him, variblade ready. “First to three.”
Emmet launched a feint, but Victor saw through it, forming his variblade into a hatchet to catch his father’s sword. He then grabbed the hilt of his father’s variblade with his off hand and used it, in conjunction with the hatchet against the blade, to twist the variblade from his father’s hand, disarming him.
Victor followed up by striking his father in the side of the ribs with the hatchet.
“
Ooof
!” Victor's father cupped the side of his chest. He chuckled and said, “Good to see you know how to change weapons midfight.”
“That’s why it’s called a variblade.” Victor picked up his father’s weapon and threw it toward him.
Emmet caught the variblade single-handed. “Quite.”
They squared off again, Victor holding his weapon in front of him in a one-hand grip, pointed at his father’s chest.
Emmet batted aside Victor’s blade and horizontally slashed toward Victor’s head.
Victor knocked away the blade and counterattacked, thrusting his blade toward his father’s midsection.
Emmet spun around the blade and landed a hard blow against Victor’s thigh, enough to make him gasp in pain.
“That’s two."
Victor rubbed the spot where he was hit for a moment and then returned to his fighting stance, his variblade in front of him in both hands. “Well? Come and finish me.”
“My pleasure,” Emmet said. He launched an attack.
Victor parried the blow and counterattacked. His strike almost connected, but his father extended a blade from the bottom of his variblade to block the attack.
Emmet launched a thrust that almost touched Victor’s chest; he sidestepped the attack and trapped his father’s sword arm under his armpit. He then formed his variblade into a short
wakizaki
-style sword and stabbed his father under the ribs. “You got greedy, Dad. That’s two for me now.”
Victor’s father staggered away, making a noise between a cough and a laugh. “Yes, I suppose I gave you that one.” Emmet returned to a fighting stance. “No more freebies.”
Victor smirked behind his helmet’s protective mask and assumed his own fighting stance, holding his hilt over his left shoulder, the blade angled downward. He took a step forward and launched a diagonal slash at his father, the blade cutting through the air until it was turned aside by his father’s curved variblade.
Victor spun away from his father's riposte. He used the momentum of the spin to slash at his father, who parried and counterattacked.
Variblade clanged against variblade for what seemed like minutes, though it could only have been seconds.
Victor sweated inside his padded armor, his breathing heavy and his arms tired.
His father’s breathing was also heavy, muted behind his protective mask. But he wasn’t slowing down, launching attacks almost too fast for Victor to counter.
Victor attempted to deceive his father, starting a slashing attack, only to reverse which end of the hilt the blade came from, to catch his father by surprise. But Dad evaded the attack and launched his own downward slash, which Victor blocked with the hilt of his variblade, almost getting his fingers crushed in the process.
Victor shoved away his father and returned his variblade to his preferred longsword style.
His father immediately moved forward and launched a series of rapid slashing attacks, driving Victor back.
The assault was relentless and direct, threatening to simply beat its way through Victor’s defenses. No thought, no strategy. Just pure muscle memory developed from years of training. Fast, continuous, and repetitive. Victor saw an opening.
He parried aside a downward vertical slash.
One
. Launched a slashing riposte that was blocked and turned aside.
The next attack from his father was an upward diagonal slash that Victor hopped away from.
Two
.
His father stepped forward and, as Victor anticipated, brought his blade horizontal for a slash aimed at Victor’s midsection.
Victor ducked and rolled under the attack, forming his variblade into a hooked hatchet as he did and caught his father’s left ankle.
He lifted, unbalancing his father and causing the older man to fall to the padded floor.
Victor brought down his variblade, forming it back into a longsword, and tapped his father on his padded chest. “That’s three.”
Emmet retracted his variblade and pulled off his helmet. He was smiling. “You win.”
Victor retracted his training variblade and helped his father stand. “Good to see all my practice has paid off.”
“Yes, it has.” Emmet studied Victor. “I’m surprised you found the time to keep up your skills, considering how much time you spend on patrol.”
“I practice during patrol. Some members of the
Osprey
’s crew know the variblade,” Victor said.
Emmet nodded, looking almost apologetic. “Considering the amount of time I make you spend on patrol, that adds up to a lot of sparring practice.”
“Yes, it does,” Victor said.
Emmet smirked. “I guess I was setting up my own undoing.” He walked to the box resting on the bench but didn’t place the variblade inside. Instead he flipped open the velvet-lined false bottom and pulled out a tool from underneath.
Victor recognized the tool. “What are you doing?”
“You deserve a prize for your victory. And I’m not getting any younger. Best to have the family variblade in the hands of someone whose skills are worthy of it.” Emmet activated the tool, deleting his user ID. He then tossed the now-ownerless variblade to Victor.
Victor stared down. The variblade in his hand was custom-made for his family back in the days of the First Civilization. The variblade could only have one user at a time. For anyone else, it would just a lump of metal. Useful only as a paperweight.
“Go ahead, son. You’ve earned it.”
Victor nodded to his father and returned his attention to the variblade. He reached out through his interface implants and connected with the variblade’s operating system. In an instant, the weapon became his. With a sense of awe, Victor willed the variblade into a longsword.
Faster than any variblade made since the Fall of the First Civilization, the silver morphmetal flowed from the hilt into a straight double-edge sword. Victor stared at his reflection in the blade.
“What do you think?” asked Emmet.
“It’s beautiful.” Victor looked to his father. “I assume you want me to leave it here when I go out on patrol?”
Emmet scoffed. “Of course not! It’s your sword. You should carry it with you when you go into battle.”

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