I Am Ebony Strike

A long time ago, a determined young woman escaped the despair of her homeworld, turning herself into one of the galaxy’s best martial artists, Ebony Strike.

Decades later, the people of her homeworld have tracked her down. They need money and, in order to get that money, they need the old Ebony Strike back. But Ebony has moved on since that time. She is now Xin Dell, a respected government security trainer. And what her people are asking of her is insane: to participate in a corrupt official’s underground fight tournament…and win. Nothing less will do.

To Ebony, it means training a body that’s out of shape, honing disused skills, spending her own time, effort and money, for a planet she’s all but forgotten. But, faced with the alternative—the death of tens of thousands on her world—does she have a choice?

Ebony needs to be focused and ruthless. She needs to win the tournament. Little does she know that she’ll end up losing her heart.

DEDICATION

There was a Diane and a Heather

Who’d help, no matter the weather,

With tips, reads and emails,

On SF Romance tales,

I found I could ask them whatever!

(And I did! Thanks ladies, you’re the best.)

AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

Eight years ago, I sat down and wrote the adventure of a famed martial artist named Ebony Strike. I was still very much a beginner fiction writer, impatient to get to the action. I was comfortable with lengths beyond that of short stories, but not by much. In fact, I can still recall the absolute fear I felt when I first decided to sit down and write a *shock*horror* novel. Gasp. Yeah sure, I can laugh about it now...

Anyway, one thing I like about digital houses is that they give you the opportunity to get your work back after a period of time. And so it was with the (very) short novella, COMBAT! I got the rights back, read it over, and realised that I could’ve told a lot more of Ebony’s story. And that’s what I decided to do: fill in a bit more of Ebony’s background, clean up some of the more clumsy bits, and try to deliver something that I hoped readers would appreciate. I wanted to concentrate on the major character, and look at her journey from what she had been to what she could be. That meant moving the romance to the second half of the book, which is a bit unusual in an SF romance, but I couldn’t see any other way to do what I wanted to do.

In any case, the novella that was COMBAT! has now been reworked into the novel, I AM EBONY STRIKE, set in a universe (the Fusion) that I haven’t visited in an SF romance since WAR GAMES. It reminds me that maybe I should set a few more stories there, but that’s more a note for me than for you. Here’s Ebony’s story. I hope you like it.

Kaz Augustin

Malaysia, 2015

CHAPTER ONE

Despite my bad mood, I was impressed when they found me.

The person they knew as Ebony Strike had retired from the circuits years ago and was now making a nice living as a freelance instructor, specialising in personal, corporate and government-sponsored security. Basically, all the kinds of security there were. If there was money involved, I could do it.

I shed names as easily as a reptile sheds skin, and now I was respected businesswoman, Xin Dell, newly moved to Ulwohem for a (hopefully) long government contract. But they still found me. I thought I had done everything necessary. I hadn’t skimped on the money to buy a new identity four years ago—new name, new homeworld, new past—but Chaltow III had still managed to track me down.

I was lounging by the swim-bubble at the recreation club when the robot told me there was someone wanting to see me. That was smart, confronting me in a public place. Meant I couldn’t succumb to any temptations, such as breaking bones or shoving my thumbs through eyes. I sipped at my drink and told the robot to send the person along.

I had assumed my visitor was a government representative. Xin Dell had just been hired to take an advanced strike-negotiation team through various scenarios and I was gathering my strength before the course began. It was logical that an Ulwohem official would be along to try and persuade me to shave some money off the deal. They’d been trying to do that several times over the past month. It hadn’t worked, but I suppose being a persistent arse is part of their job description. Normally, we’d share a drink (at my expense), the official would sob about tight budgets and an upcoming audit, I’d cluck sympathetically and then, when they figured out that their tale of misery hadn’t worked, they’d slink off and notify the next on the duty roster that it was their turn.

I could have hired a contract facilitator to handle all the refusals. They’re a useful profession, especially when dealing with the bigger outfits, but I’d been around too many secrets that had sprung leaks, and I wasn’t happy entrusting my personal financial details to a third party. So, there I was, ready to have my leisure day wrecked, holding yet another bureaucrat’s hand until he had said what he’d been ordered to say and it was time to kick him out of the club.

I was sipping at my Event Horizon when he strode into view. I couldn’t help it, my muscles must have twitched, because the drink sloshed in my hand, splashing out of my glass and wetting my fingers. If the man currently walking towards me was from the government of Ulwohem, then I was a Perlim grandmother.

I hooded my eyes and watched him approach, noting the dull brown skin, lean build and ascetic features. His hair was black shot through with grey, short, shorn into the five furrows that was the traditional haircut for the men of my world. The world of my birth, Chaltow III.

He must have seen something in my eyes because a small smile curved his lips as he slipped into the opposite chair. I mentally ratcheted his age down by a few decades. Close up, I saw he was a young man, but he looked old.

A servile robot bobbed beside him, ready and willing to take an order. I lifted my free hand to wave it away, but he ordered a hot cham in a confident tone before I could complete the gesture. I let my hand drop and eyed him warily. To my right, a group was cavorting in the swim-bubble, playing obstacle games with the expelled gas bubbles from their gill-masks. Even through the water, I could hear their muffled shrieks of delight.

Ebony Strike, he said. It wasn’t a question.

I put my drink on the tray that floated beside me. I’m sorry, it seems you’ve mistaken me for someone else.

He smiled. The bastard actually smiled! Vahsoon-ya is beautiful in autumn, isn’t it?

Damn him. Vahsoon-ya province was where I was born, where I’d grown up, before I came to my senses and hightailed it off that blighted sphere of orbiting rock.

I tried to make my shrug casual. I wouldn’t know. I paused. Where is it, anyway? Sounds like a tourist destination.

It was a goad, and it worked. His cheery demeanour faltered then collapsed. I saw a blaze of fury before it was quickly masked. He was loose, confident, but he was still young enough to take offence where it was intended. Things like that could get him killed.

I don’t know why you’re playing this game, he said. We spent a lot of money to find you. The least you can do is show some respect.

He was young, all right. Blunt. Almost rude. He was also shorter than he should have been. While he moved well, it couldn’t hide the fact that I knew there was no padding of fat beneath the folds of his tunic. His ascetic features were due to lack of nutrition, not genetics. He didn’t need to tell me, I could see it in his very body. Vahsoon-ya province was in trouble. Again.

This Ebony Strike you mentioned, I said, not conceding a nanometre, what’s she got to do with you?

You mean you haven’t been keeping up with news? His voice was laced with sarcasm. Wondering how the old neighbourhood is going? Catching up with old friends?

I kept silent, letting him give in to his indignation. The truth was, Vahsoon-ya had always suffered and, by the look of my young friend, was suffering still. So why track me down? After all this time, with my homeworld province stuck on the bootheel of the Infernal One himself from the moment of its existence, why spend valuable credits looking up one long-time exile?

We’re in a drought, he said. He inclined his head as he took a sip of the hot drink that had just arrived and I had time to run my gaze over the prematurely grey hair, the lines that bracketed his mouth and the unhealthy pouches below his eyes.

We’re always in a drought. There, I admitted I was who he thought I was. There was a flicker of acknowledgement in his dark eyes.

This time it’s bad. Worse than it’s ever been. Worse even than during the time you left.

I remembered those days of barren earth, dust and swollen bellies. I had left them behind decades ago, with only a few backward glances. I didn’t need the reminder, not from him.

My young friend wanted something, that was obvious, but I couldn’t think what it was. Reaching for my drink, I paused. I tried forming a question, but the laughter from the swim-bubble was beginning to irritate me, interfere with my thinking.

Come on, I said. Let’s go.

Where to? He gulped at his drink, not willing to waste a single drop. There may have been pity in my eyes, but I was quick to hide it before he looked up.

I know a place where we can talk.

It was the act of a moment to charge everything to Xin Dell’s account. Xin Dell spoke pleasantly to the other regulars around her as we walked to the exit, smiling and waving to friends who were more distant. Xin Dell tipped the valet who called for her customised aircar. Xin Dell spoke and behaved exactly as a successful and well-respected Ulwohem businesswoman would, right down to ignoring the young man following a footstep behind. Some days the masquerade was easy to maintain. This wasn’t one of them. I stilled my foot from beating a tattoo and had to force my lips to stretch and smile at the valet’s jokes, all the while wondering why it was taking so damned long for my transport to arrive.

As my surprise guest and I entered the aircar, I directed its AI-nav to an address I knew. Questions whirled in my head. Why the hell was he here? What did he think I could do for a million starving people? What had happened to Vahsoon-ya?

The place I took him to was the last place he would have expected: an Ulwohem training facility. Military. Which meant it was snoop-proof and fully jammed. Whatever we had to say to each other—and I fully expected us to go our separate ways once we left the facility—was going to be completely private. Just between the two of us. Nobody on the planet was going to hear the name Ebony Strike uttered in public a third time.

Getting out of the aircar, I used my access card to enter the complex and herded him to a small studio off the main hall. This was where I had done some of the course planning and the floor was still configured for standard manoeuvres. That meant it was firm but springy. I sat, cross-legged, on the blue tiles and gestured to him to do the same.

You’ve got fifteen minutes, I said.

He didn’t roll his eyes at me, but it was close. You brought me all the way out here, twenty minutes from your high-class club, just to tell me that I have fifteen minutes to talk to you?

And, when we’re finished, we each go our separate ways.

Despite what I have to tell you? You’ll just turn and walk away?

Fourteen minutes.

He paused, wondering how serious I was, then rubbed his upper lip with a finger. Okay.

How did you find me? I asked. I knew my question was eating into his time, but I was curious. If it had been easy to track me down, there were a few contacts I was going to have to permanently scratch from my list.

It wasn’t easy, he said, with a sigh, folding himself as he eased to the floor.

That made me feel a bit better.

We’d been tracking—

We?

Regional intelligence services.

I didn’t know Vahsoon-ya had an intelligence service. I raised my eyebrows, impressed.

As I said, we’ve been tracking your whereabouts for more than a year. Your latest move was the worst. We lost you for almost four months.

And how did you find me again?

He grimaced. A combination of luck and tedious work. A researcher of ours was talking to a friend from one of the northern provinces who’d recently been offworld. He brought back some news from the sectors he’d visited, and it included an Ulwohem news report on their new advanced security squads. You had been a security trainer on other planets, so... he shrugged. We knew it was a bit of a long shot, but decided to follow up. Here I am.

Undone by a press release. That one I couldn’t have foreseen.

All right, I said. You’ve found me. Now what?

We need money.

This was starting to get old. I shook my head. "There hasn’t been a time when my province hasn’t needed money."

But this time we’re close. Chaltow III was turned down for membership of the Fusion, but we were told of a pilot scheme they’re running. High-value trading partnerships, they call it, and those are open to individual provinces.

I still wasn’t seeing the point. It was easy to say that the Chaltow government was corrupt. If I were the Fusion, I doubt I would have admitted us either. But its poor reputation was also down to bad luck, and plenty of it. Situated in an isolated region of space, Chaltow needed money it didn’t have just to reach its nearest trading partners, and the results weren’t pretty. The amount of trade barely covered transport costs, leaving the planet perennially on the edge of default. At a regional level, Vahsoon-ya’s problems were as much a result of the rapacious central government as unpredictable weather patterns. No wonder I had jumped the first shuttle out of there, leaving many miserable millions behind me.

I still don’t see what you expect me to do, I said. I may be somewhat successful, but I don’t have an entire planet’s worth of credits lying around.

We don’t expect you to do that. His voice firmed and his eyes were full of angry rebuke. It affected me more than I was willing to admit.

Last year we had a great harvest, he said. We finally have some powerful backers in the central government who are actively lobbying for us. With their help, our regional council voted to try for one of the high-value trading partnerships and we moved away from subsistence to specialised products. We have an entire presentation laid out for the Fusion representatives when they visit.

That was the good news, and I could see it meant a lot to him. But I knew that Vahsoon-ya was still hurting. He was trying hard to distract me from it, but he