Star Wars_ Death Star - Michael Reaves [89]
“What have you done for which you might have deserved to be imprisoned?”
“I was a smuggler. Among other things. Nothing violent.”
“That’s good.” She refilled his drink. He smiled into it, then at her.
Smile and use those eyes as much as you want, she thought. If I have to turn you in, I will. “Think hard before you say anything more, Celot Ratua Dil. If you’re guilty of any crimes against the Empire, then I could be endangering my cantina just by talking to you. You might want to turn around and walk out of here right now, because if your presence is a danger to me and my livelihood, you’ll find out where this place got its name.”
He stared at her. “I believe you’re the kind of person who’d do it.”
Memah nodded. “That I am.”
“Good,” said Ratua. “If you weren’t, I wouldn’t be talking to you.”
41
REC ROOM 17-A, DEATH STAR
Sergeant Nova Stihl was tired. The fighting classes he taught weren’t part of his regular duties, and now that word had gotten around he had four full sessions, with about twenty-five students per class. Each of these ran an hour and a half, and he had two sessions every evening after his shift ended. He didn’t eat until after the second class, after which he would go back to his cube, shower, and hit the sleep pad.
Such a schedule made for busy light and dark cycles.
He kept himself in shape, but he hadn’t been sleeping well. The bad dreams he’d sometimes had back on the prison planet had grown more frequent on the battle station, and some of them were extremely realistic and violent. More than a few times he’d come out of a sleep to find his heart pounding rapidly and his coverlets drenched in sweat.
He didn’t understand why it was happening. He had considered having medical run a check, to make sure there wasn’t something amiss going on in his brain, but he kept hoping the sleep sorties would ease off. He’d give it a little more time, and then he would go see the medics, he told himself. Maybe there was something in the air, some trace element the filters weren’t straining out.
Besides, when did he have time to go see a doctor?
Most of the students were rank beginners; even though some of them could fight well enough, they had to learn the system of teräs käsi to overlay what they already knew. There were reasoned patterns of movement, principles, laws, and these were more important than any particular technique. It didn’t matter if you had a punch that would knock down a wall if you couldn’t deliver it, and to do that, you needed a system that would allow it frequently.
Even though his students were newbies, Nova always felt as if he learned as much from them as he taught. If you had to explain something to a being who knew nothing about it, you had to understand it pretty well. Sometimes words would come out of his mouth that he didn’t expect—words that suddenly rang in a way that the essential truth just … blossomed suddenly, like a desert flower after a sudden rain. Now and again he himself couldn’t believe some of the things he’d said. Where had that come from? He hadn’t known it was there until he’d heard himself say it.
He realized that someone was standing before where he sat, cross-legged, on the matted floor. “Divo, you had a question?”
The student, a squat power lifter who looked strong enough to pick himself up with one hand, nodded. “Yeah, Sarge. That distance thing. I’m a little confused.”
Usually there was one student who asked most of the questions, and while the others would sometimes cut their gazes to the ceiling and look bored, the questioner was usually speaking for more than just him- or herself. That was why Nova always answered questions as completely as time allowed.
“Bare hand-to-hand, there are four ranges,” he said. He counted them off on his fingers. “Kicking, punching, elbowing, grappling. You can’t grapple effectively at elbow range, you can’t elbow at punching range, and you can’t punch at kicking range.
“Add impact weapons and you alter the distances. A cane extends your punch to kicking range. A knife extends your elbow