Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (74 page)

“Yes, Sir!”  She
spread her feet to shoulder-width, bending her knees and pulling her arms into
her sides so she could move in any direction.  He banged his fists against hers
in a gesture of mutual respect.  He was nearly twice her size, but he'd learned
not to underestimate the diminutive fairy warrior.  What she lacked in size,
she more than made up for in ferocity.

“No cheating,” she
whispered.  “The rest of us don't have wings.”

“Go!”  He allowed her
to make the first move. 

He tucked his wings
against his back so as not to gain an unfair advantage.  This worked against
him.  Without wings extended for balance, he was forced to carry their dead
weight.  It slowed him down and upset his balance, allowing Pareesa to land a
few good kicks and punches.

“You’re not using the
high block enough, Pareesa.”  He lightly clubbed her with a hammer fist on top
of her head.  “You're a woman.  Most opponents will be taller than you.  You
need to practice that block.”

“Blocks are boring!” 
She aimed a crescent kick straight at his knee.  “Kicking is more fun.”

“You can't kick,”
Mikhail blocked her kick and brought down a second, identical fist onto the top
of her head, “if you're unconscious.” 

Pareesa grunted in
pain and punched at his abdomen, which he blocked.  The others gathered in a
circle and cheered Pareesa on, which made the little spitfire increase her
kicks and punches.  For a creature born without wings, Pareesa was quite good
at becoming airborne.

“Hah!”  She crowed
with delight as she finally landed a round house kick to his hip.  She added a
clicking Cherubim phrase she'd begged Ninsianna to teach her. 
“
Watashi wa anata no oha o keru
hitsuyō ga arimasu
!!!
”
[I should kick your tail
feathers!] 

“Good,” he said, “but
you dropped your fists.  Always keep your guard up.”  He gave her a right hook
in the area she'd left open during the kick.  “And you would say
‘watashi wa
kikku subekide wa naku, kikku sa remasu,
’ [I will kick, not I should
kick].”  He corrected her grammar as Pareesa grunted in pain. 

“Take that!” she
laughed, spinning around to give him a back kick, a move he hadn't
yet
taught the others.

“That’s not part of
today’s lesson,” he said.

“Neither is this…” 
She grabbed his shoulders and spun her weight around his torso in a dancelike
move he'd never seen.  Thrown off balance, one wingtip hit the ground to
prevent him from falling.  He knocked her grip off of his shoulders in a double
elbow thrust to both arms.  The trainees cheered at her bold maneuver.

“What was that?”  He landed
a left reverse punch to her shoulder as she regained her balance.

“Stag dance move,” she
smirked.  She blocked his jab and returned one of her own.  “Hunting season. 
You weren't here yet.”

“You'll have to teach
me that sometime.”  He gave her a side kick to the gut and knocked her back. 
“You could have avoided that kick by doing a low block.” 

Pareesa grunted and
punched repeatedly at his abdomen.  “I would much … rather … punch … you!”  She
became frustrated when she wasn't able to land any blows.

“I have a longer reach
than you.”  He easily blocked her hits and reached in to give her another
direct hit to the abdomen.  “I hope you didn't have a large supper.”

“Oomph!”  Pareesa
grunted in pain.  “No fair.”

“Life isn't fair,
little fairy.”  He did the same punch again.  “If you're going to fight men,
you must overcome our height and weight advantage.”

“Why do you think I'm
here?”  She blocked his third punch by
finally
doing the block he'd been
trying to get her to do all along.  “I don't feel like getting carried off
again by slavers.”

“Okay … enough!”  He
stepped back and offered both fists to bang together.  “Very good, Pareesa. 
Now … does anyone have any questions?”

Pareesa did a victory
dance and rejoined the young men who perpetually hovered around her.  She still
had the slender figure of an adolescent, but the ferocity of a hardened
warrior.  The other women slapped her raised palm.  Over the past two weeks,
their numbers had climbed from six to seventeen. 

He had the trainees
pair off and spar each other, correcting errors and reminding them to remember
basic moves such as blocking hits or keeping their hands up so their chest and
face weren’t vulnerable.  As the sun dipped down towards the horizon, he ended
the day's lesson with a quick march down to the river for water.  The men dove
into to the cool water, enjoying relief from the mid-summer heat, before
marching in unison to water their fields.  They were all in good spirits when
he dismissed them from the night.

~ * ~ * ~
* ~ * ~

Galactic Standard Date:  152,323.07.31 AE

Alpha Sector:  Command Carrier
‘Eternal Light’

Supreme Commander-General Jophiel

Jophiel

They
tried
to
pay attention as she gave her daily briefing in the hanger bay of the
Eternal
Light
, but even the most seasoned eyes wandered from General Jophiel to the
infant she carried bundled in a sling against her chest. 

“As you were.”  With
one arm supporting her son’s rapidly increasing weight, she used her other to
give her troops a crisp salute.  “Dismissed.”

She sighed with relief
as the men and women who served under her trailed out from the hanger bay to
begin that days duties and massaged her back.  Who would have thought raising
her own child would have such an impact on her work?  Twelve babies she'd borne
the Alliance, but this was the first time she'd actually had to rear one of
them.  She could see now why the Emperor had offered youth training academies
as a solution for parents whose empire couldn't spare their losing years out of
work to rear their own young. 

“General Jophiel.”
Major Klik'rr waited patiently for her at the edge of the assembly with the
usual stack of paperwork to be signed, debriefings to be read, and decisions
needing input about resource movements and troop rotations, a sharp contrast
from her sudden duties as a mother.  “Here's the latest intelligence report
from Zulu Sector.”

“Thank you, Klik'rr,”
Jophiel took the report.  “I'd also like to see the reports from Romeo, Sierra,
and Tango Sectors.  Let’s see what that old devil Shay’tan is up to.”

“Yes, Sir,” Klik'rr
said.  “I'll have them on your desk by oh-eight-hundred hours.”

She knew from
experience the reports would be there at least one hour earlier.  Klik'rr was
hardworking and efficient, as
most
of the Mantoids were who served under
her command.  There had been some grumbling when she'd elevated Klik'rr
to
be her Captain instead of one of the longer-serving personnel who were
all
worthy
of promotion, but Klik'rr anticipated her every need and got things done
without her ever needing to micromanage.  Given that more than 95% of the
military was now comprised of species
other
than hybrids, it was about
time the Emperor had ordered a more egalitarian promotion system rather than
simply promoting hybrids because their name happened to be on the branch of the
military in which they served.

"The merit-based
promotion order, Sir," Klik'rr said.

She glanced at the
general order stating that, from now on,
all
branches of the military
would promote within their ranks based on merit, not the seniority-based system
which had all-but guaranteed the longer-lived hybrids would always be ahead of
the shorter-serving newer sentient races.  It had given her people prestige …
but also made them so irreplaceable that the Emperor couldn't afford to have
them retire or take family leave.  If they were to avoid extinction, that
system had to end.  She signed it.  

"The specs for
the newest warships for your approval, Sir."  Klik'rr slipped the document
ordering that all new warships were to be built to accommodate a
variety
of
species, not just the hybrids. 

She signed that as
well. 

Klik'rr silently put
the last document onto her smart pad and gave her an inquiring look.  Her hand
trembled.

"I can't do
this," she said. 

Her white feathers
rustled.  There had not been 'hybrid-anything' for many years, but
she
wouldn't
be the one to strike the name of the hybrid race who'd been genetically
engineered to
be
that branch of the military from that branch of
service's name and declare they'd been replaced.  For now, they would remain
the Angelic Air Force, the Leonid Multi-Purpose Fighting Forces, the Mer Navy,
and the Centauri Calvary.  She glanced down at Uriel sleeping peacefully upon
her chest while she juggled command of the Emperor's military.  Maybe the
Emperor's concessions would allow them to bring their species back from the
brink of extinction?

Klik'rr gave her a
nod, no judgment in his compound eyes as he quietly slipped the document down
to the bottom of the stack, and put the next order requiring her signature at
the top of the pile, a routine order approving the reassignment of one of her
last few remaining Mer command carriers to a Mer-Levi Foundation water world. 
Now
there
was a species who was surviving!  Although they were no longer
Mer … nor technically part of the Alliance since the remote Mer-Levi Foundation
had peacefully voted itself an independent trust territory capable of governing
itself while the Emperor had been away on his 200 year sabbatical.  Jophiel
signed the order.

 
“Sss’kkk skr,r,r
Igginn’z’zi.”
  Jophiel unconsciously shifted the baby’s weight as she
saluted.   [Thank you, dismissed].

She punched the
display to scroll through the reports Klik'rr had left her with, many of them
appearing deceptively inconsequential unless you spread them all out and looked
for the larger patterns.  Patterns … Raphael was back in Zulu Sector trying to
find this ‘solution’ the Emperor had spoken of.  He was positive that the
mysterious increase in Sata'anic shipping activity and Mikhail's disappearance
were related.  She'd quadrupled the number of ships at his disposal, but they
still only had disconnected pieces of a puzzle. 
Something
was going
on. 

Uriel murmured in his
sleep, his reddish-blonde peach fuzz reminding her so much of Raphael that it
made her smile.  Not only was he thriving, but his complexion had turned a
scrumptious pinky-peach color that reminded her of the blossoms of the Eternal
Tree that bloomed in the Emperor's garden every spring.  Overnight, wasting
sickness had disappeared, any child who showed difficulty adjusting to the
Emperor's youth training academies prescribed a regiment of frequent parental
visitation or, in the case of the sickest babies, concessions such as hers, so
that no more precious infants were lost. 

"Tomorrow is
Sabbath-day," Jophiel kissed Uriel's forehead.  "Daddy will come
visit you for the day.  And perhaps me?  If I can get my reports cleared off my
desk?"

Uriel's little pink
mouth grimaced and then curved up into a precious little smile.  Once per week,
Raphael took a living needle ship, a high-speed biomechanoid capable of
slipping between the dimensions and jumping across the galaxy the way ascended
beings could, to spend a day playing with their son. 

And her… 

The mere thought of
the time they spent together each week made her smile, but they were being
given special treatment.  Even as they relished their happiness as a family,
they could both sense fractures reverberating throughout the Alliance.

A pregnant Angelic,
fresh from the academy, shot her an envious look.  Jophiel clutched her baby to
her chest, the gesture instinctive.  The cadet gave her a crisp salute and
returned to her duties.  Fault lines.  Jophiel could
feel
the fault
lines opening up in the Alliance as sure as she could feel Uriel's weight
tugging her forward and making her back ache.   She prayed that Raphael would
find this ‘solution’ Hashem spoke of soon.  If he didn't, all Hades was about
to break loose…