Punch

The further adventures of Capt. Carla Punch of Whitestar 97.

Story sequence: 1. The Loribond; 2. Dark Horse; 3. Whitestar 97; 4. Dalshon; 5. Punch.

The ship was sleekly aerodynamic, reminiscent of a seabird. Its hull patterning seemed to glow with an inner blue light, like the crystalline walls of the Windsword clan fortress on Minbar. It glided silently through space in its assigned patrol corridor between the territories of two Allied races.

Inside, Whitestar 97 was not silent. The crew was cheering. Well, some of them were cheering, some were attempting to applaud politely human-fashion, and a few were chuckling at Firuun’s good-natured comment to the affect that it was about time. The Captain had just announced that she had finally passed her quals and was now a rated hyperspace pilot.

Carla waved down the crowd. “Thank you everyone. Before we start the weekly denn’bok tournament, I have another announcement to make. By our example set in the battle against the raiders, we have shown that military caste pilots and gunners do get better performance out of the Whitestar class vessel than its normal religious caste crews. And by our example after the battle, we’ve shown that being able to assemble a ground strike team from a Whitestar’s crew greatly increases the ship’s versatility in the types of missions it can handle. Therefore, Entilza Delenn has decided that the next Whitestar to be commissioned, Whitestar 98, will have a mixed crew of military and religious caste, with the coveted officer’s posts of pilot and gunner to be awarded to members of the military caste. Well done. Well done, warriors of Whitestar 97. I’m proud of you.”

There was more cheering, louder this time and with no laughter mixed in. That battle had cost the lives of friends and kinsman. Acting as a dalshon, Carla had sung the Minbari office of the dead for them, in one of the most solemn and least ceremonious rituals the Minbari ever invented.

When the cheering died away, Carla announced the beginning of the sparring matches. The first few rounds took place simultaneously in various parts of the ship: small rooms, large rooms, corridors, anywhere one could swing a Minbari Fighting Pike. Carla thought it was a good idea to get the participants used to fighting in narrow hallways and in rooms with obstructions such as the sleeping room with its tilted sleeping platforms.

She also directed that the crew fight in their normal uniforms instead of special workout gear or martial arts uniforms. She said if you can’t fight in your regular clothes you can’t fight. Since Minbari did not sweat, that did not pose a problem for the ship’s laundry facilities.

As had become the custom aboard Whitestar 97 ever since Firuun’s special denn’bok tournament at the Clan Imbalo fortress, the Captain would fight only once today: crossing Pikes with Capt. Carla Punch was the winner’s prerogative.

When Firuun entered the tournament, he usually won. Size, strength, reach, and years of experience carried the day, even against agile young warriors who practiced a lot more often. But today Firuun had the conn while the rest of the bridge crew was off enthusiastically hitting each other with metal poles.

Today the winner was a young Windsword named Nelonn. His military specialty was fightercraft maintenance, which in human terms would have been a naval rating’s job. But although Carla persisted in thinking of having “officers and crew” aboard her ship, among the Minbari, warrior caste was warrior caste. They did not have any such distinction. Her own peculiar career path, from Gropo sergeant to Ranger ship captain, was only remarkable to the Minbari because of the strange life path she had taken to get from one point to the other.

So this young warrior, slightly winded from his previous battles today, took his place in the ring without a moment’s thought about an enlisted facing an officer. The wary respect in his eyes was entirely for Carla’s reputation for killing Minbari with a denn’bok.

Not that she had even come close to that fit of berserk rage she had experienced at the Battle of Tifar since then. These days, after acting as dalshon to the dying Comac, she was at peace.

But she still enjoyed fighting enough to grin evilly as she extended her Pike.

The crew encircled the two combatants in the large practice room. They grew hushed as the match began.

Carla and Nelonn moved crabwise around the ring, like folk dancers doing the grapevine. They tested each other’s reactions with numerous feints and half-speed clashes. Their denn’boks clanged together again and again.

As they moved closer they started throwing combinations, speeding up, and mixing in real strikes at targets such as the legs or head. Each strike was blocked, or countered, or ducked, or backed away from.

On first glance, the two opponents looked badly mismatched. Nelonn was of average height for a Minbari, which made him only a few centimeters taller than Carla, not counting the spiky military caste headbone. But he was heavily muscled and had the characteristic stockiness of the Minbari warrior, due to the dense, broad-shouldered skeleton. He was young and quick, and had been trained in the denn’bok since early childhood. He wore the black armor of a Minbari warrior like he had been born for it, which, of course, he had.

Carla was a graying human female who had recently lost more weight than was good for her, leaving her badly in need of a tailor for her Anla’shok uniform. As she gripped her Pike, her knuckles stuck out in a way that implied arthritic old age and frailty, although it was merely due to thinness.

Her crew knew that her rapidly reduced size was because of being shot in the stomach in the same battle in which she had killed three Minbari gunmen with her Pike. So among those who were inclined to bet on this match, the odds favored Carla. Nelonn was a wizard with the denn’bok, but he was a recent addition to the crew, replacing one of those who died in the battle with the raiders. He had never been in real combat. And Carla Punch had been killing Minbari before he was born.

They fought at full speed now. Each time their denn’boks clanged together, Carla’s horse stance rolled as if she were riding the waves on a sailing ship, taking the jarring strength of Nelonn’s blows.

Carla feinted a one-armed denn’bok strike, drawing Nelonn’s Pike out of line, and then she left hooked him in the jaw.

Nelonn staggered for a moment, then fire lit his eyes and he switched easily from the staff forms to a sword style, both hands a third of the way up the denn’bok, guiding with the right, power from the left, a swing like a cut, riposting from Carla’s block and driving forwards in a thrust with the ring shape of the end of the denn’bok pointing right at Carla’s stomach.

She twisted out of the way. Far too close now to bring her Pike around, she elbowed him in what in a human would be the kidney. But it was not a vital spot for a Minbari, and he turned inside her guard and grabbed her hand, trying for an arm lock.

Carla fell out of the lock, grimacing as her bad knee came down on the deck. She kicked him in the groin to make him lose his grip on her arm, then rolled on the ground and popped back up. Her Pike was momentarily out of defensive position as she came out of the roll.

Nelonn saw the opening and struck fast and hard. Carla did not quite get her denn’bok around to block in time. Nelonn’s blow landed on her left forearm with a sickening crack like a dry twig snapping.

Carla roared an obscenity that would be anatomically impossible even for the diety to whom it was addressed.

“Captain!” Nelonn gasped. He let his Pike go out of position.

A true Windsword, Nelonn knew better than to apologize for victory. Nor did he ask if she was alright, since it was obvious her arm was broken. He just stood there, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, the Pike forgotten in his hand.

Carla swung her Pike with her other hand and struck the back of his leg, sweeping him off his feet. She reversed her denn’bok and brought the opposite end down to his neck, stopping just slightly above his throat.

“Never write off an opponent because of an injury,” Carla said. “If he’s still standing, he can attack. If he’s on the ground but has one hand and a sidearm, he can attack. Even if he looks dead, he might be unconscious, and will attack when he wakes up.”

Carla closed down her Fighting Pike and put it back on her belt. Only then did she hunch over and cradle her arm. “Good fight, Nelonn,” she told the wide-eyed crewer who was still on the ground. “But I won.” She gasped a few times, rapidly, getting the pain under control. “I expect better next time.”

The ship’s doctor rushed out of the crowd to attend to her arm. He hustled her off to sickbay.

Nelonn stood up. “What happened?” he asked no one in particular.

A few of his crewmates and kinsman congratulated him on doing so well at his first shipboard denn’bok tournament. He thanked them blankly.

The tactical officer, Khunnier, Carla’s fellow Ranger, came to him as everyone else was filing out, and advised, “Go on and see her. It is alright.”

Nelonn went to sickbay and peeked in. The Captain had managed to keep her jacket intact despite the doctor’s obvious intentions to cut her sleeve off, as evidenced by the abandoned shears on the tool stand.

She had her sleeve rolled up, exposing a mottled, thin arm. Old white scratch-scars stood out starkly on top of the rapidly developing bruises. The doctor applied a medical immobilizer, a shiny contraption that was basically a high tech splint.

He injected her with healing accelerants, and then with her standard dose of vitamins, which she had been receiving since being shot in the stomach. The doctor asked, “How is the pain now, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being no pain and 10 being the worst pain you’ve ever known?”

“Oh, three or four I guess,” Carla said.

“So not very bad?”

“Doctor, that’s a really lousy way to evaluate pain. It’s subjective based on past experiences.”

“Well, yes it is subjective. The Earth medical book says it’s standard human medicine.”

“It is. It’s just—doctor, think about it a minute.” Carla turned away, in the way that she sometimes did when her memories flooded her and she did not want to look at a Minbari face for a moment. She spotted Nelonn in the doorway.

Whatever she had been about to remind the doctor about, she did not say it in front of the impressionable young warrior.

She gestured him in with her good arm. “Doctor, if it’s safe, I would be only too happy to have some more painkillers, if that’s what you’re trying to ask me. I have absolutely nothing to prove.”

The doctor gave her another injection and she sighed and relaxed into the slanted medical bed.

“Hello, Nelonn. I’m going to be fine, as you can see.”

“I never doubted it, Captain.” His voice and manner were subdued.

“Let me guess,” Carla said. “You were taught to back off in a friendly sparring match if your opponent was hurt.”

“Yes. I was taught to fight, but I was also taught compassion. Is that—not acceptable on a real warship?”

“Nelonn, you hang onto your compassion. What would happen if everyone who had any left the warrior caste? Can you imagine what kind of place a base full of completely compassion free warriors would be like?”

“No,” Nelonn said, wide eyed again.

“Tifar. That’s what. You keep that heart of yours filled with compassion. Just don’t let it get you killed. On the battlefield you can only afford to have mercy for an enemy who has surrendered. Not before. Do you understand the difference?”

“I think so, Captain. Yes. And Captain? It’s an honor to learn from you.”

Carla smiled. “It’s my honor to be entrusted with this ship and crew, and the lives of young people like you. And I’m going to do my damnedest to see you learn what you need to learn to survive.”

Nelonn bowed Minbari-fashion, hands in a triangle over the heart, and left sickbay.

Carla closed her eyes and let the dreamless sleep of strong drugs take her away from all care.

The End