“Quite impressive, quite impressive! It took me 15 to get to my current position, but I’m far from the top. The top dog would be grand admiral Osbion, that man is a living legend, his tactics and skills are breathtaking. I had the honor of getting to know him a few months back. He’s genius. By the way, if you enjoy swordfighting, calerost has a long tradition of dueling for entertainment, there’s a arena on this ship. I’m a duelist myself and would be interested in seeing your people’s way of swordfighting later if you’re willing to.”
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“Oh, it’s been a few months since my last combat, so I’m a little rusty.”
“Come on, even if you are rusty I’m sure you can still battle.”
“Uhhhhh… Ok, I can try, but cut me some slack. Sure, we would enjoy showing a little swordfight.”
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“Splendid! But before that, as you’re both military commanders, you might be interested in one of the biggest marvels of calerostan military design, in my opinion. Follow me, and feel free to bring your drinks if you haven’t drunk them.”
Narthadis takes them down a elevator connected directly to the office. There’s a large negative space with a cube suspended in it with stabilizers.
“this room has it’s own independent shielding and has stabilization and sound isolation. The ship could be bombarded with the heaviest artillery known and you would feel nothing.”
She enters a passcode and the shield deactivates, and a bridge extends to the structure. Entering it there is a large table projecting a holographic map of the whole system, with all ships in it and their headings marked, together with all other important data.
“behold, the admiral’s deck. All important info and positions from the whole system are projected here. From this one position, the admiral can command the fleet and be aware of everything happening.”
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“That’s quite comfortable.”
“I know of some people from which I would escape here. Maybe we need to tell shipbuilders to add a sound isolation rooms to every future ship.”
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“I like how comfort is the first thing you think of, but no comfort happens in this room. It is only ever used during bit multi ship battles. It’s really like playing a videogame from here. You see everything and you give orders either via audio messages or by simply by tapping or dragging a selected ship or group of ships”
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“Honestly, if I am in the fire of battle, might as well have some life commodity features. It’s certainly more comfortable than the usual method of yelling at your soldiers for hours on end.” Souby chuckles
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“It certainly is, one of my peers even brings wine with him into the deck! He says that “it helps him focus”, but does it actually we don’t know. Want to continue to the fencing arena?”
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“Sure, we would be pleased to.”
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They take a nother elevator down after leaving the admiral’s deck and walk for a while. They ender a large open room with swords and equipment on the walls. The admiral walks up to a wall and takes what looks like two wristbands.
“Welcome to the fencing room. This thing right here is a training personal shield. It is used to protect you while fencing. It has more power than a standard field personal shield as it gets it’s power wirelessly from the room, aka doesn’t need a internal power supply. When it gets to the level that a normal shield would be penetrated the whole shield will start glowing red and beeping, indicating that the duel is over and you have lost. Because of this form of shielding you can use any weapon you want in the duel, including your own swords.”
“I will just give you a heads up, the standard calerostan dueling style is fast pace and precision based. Any more questions before we start?”
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“How many swords can I use? We tend to fight with a lot more than two swords.” Souby asks, unveiling his swords.
“I can give you mine if you want.”
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“As many as you want, i want to experience your people’s style of swordfighting as authentic as possible. I personally use one rapier which i aid with a defensive dagger when necessary.”
Narthadis takes off her coat and her ceremonial admiral’s sabre and it’s harness, replacing it with her fencing sword and a dagger. Putting on the fencing shield she activates it. A pulse of blue light covers her whole body and then becomes invisible. Afterwards she unsheathes her sword, takes distance and a combat stance.
“Bring it on, and don’t hold back”
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“I’ll try.”
“Sir, take my swords too.” One of the guards offered.
“Thanks.”
With that, Souby puts on the wristband, activating it the same way as Narthadis, and puts the swords in each of his 6 hands. He bends his knees to stay at a lower height, and holds out his blades low and ahead of his body.
He then propels himself of the ground forwards without announcement with an extension of his legs, with two swords high up for a strike and the other four low for blocking.
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Narthadis didn’t expect this level of agility. She jumps to the side and forwards, holding her dagger towards Souby so that she can parry if he tries to hit her with one of his lower arms. Soon she’s slightly behind him and lunges, going for a stab on his back.
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Souby lands on one of his feet, but Narthadis isn’t anymore in the path of his strike. He pivots on his left foot with the mass of his swords and his right leg, sending a leg sweep towards Narthadis’ legs.
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She wasn’t able to pull back from her lunge in time and gets hit by the leg. But while being knocked back she manages to land a hit on the leg. Souby’s shield emits a flash of light at the hit area but holds. She soon regains her footing and charges in a zig zag pattern, preparing for a nother strike
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Souby jumps back to make space, and once she strikes, he jumps to her rear and swings two of his swords towards her in opposite directions.
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Narthadis knew how bad of a situation she was in. She couldn’t not take a hit, but she could reduce the impact. She quickly dropped onto the floor, sustaining a hit during it, and quickly moved to swipe Souby’s legs
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Souby notices, and swings the swords of his two middle arms down towards Narthadis at full force while she is on the ground.
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She responds rapidly, pushing herself away as fast as she can and blocking one of the swords using her dagger
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He isn’t able to hit her in time, however, he swings the blocked sword to the side, knocking the dagger from her hands, with great force, almost hitting one of the trrarrusian guards watching the fight.
“Shit-!” the guard exclaims.
He backs off from her to get back on track and avoid an unexpected counterattack, putting up once again a defensive stance.
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