The Weight of Swords

Posted on Sat Jan 4th, 2020 @ 10:38pm by Captain Enalia Telvan & Kodria Mizu & Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox
Edited on on Sat Jan 11th, 2020 @ 2:15pm

Mission: Neutral Zone Neutrality
Location: Holodeck 2
Timeline: 2397

In Holodeck Two of the U.S.S. Hera, a scene of chaos was unfolding. There was a loud, thumping beat that echoed across a blood-twinged field of battle as the bodies of a number of Jem’Hadar soldiers lay, strewn about. And in the center of the chaos, surrounded by even more scaled, alien threats all brandishing wither pike or swords, stood Lieutenant Commander Mnhei’sahe Dox.

As the pounding bass of the late 20th Century Earth song ‘BODIES’ by the group, ‘Drowning Pool’ continued to fill the air, the red-headed Romulan pilot lifted a long, curved black metal sword in her hand. Dripping from the blade was the amber-hued blood of the fallen Dominion warriors, and along the torn, black work out top Dox wore, more than a little of her own green blood.

As the circle of troops advanced on the angry, thickly built officer, she raised her blade horizontally, just above her head in a practiced stance and took in a light breath. Then, almost in timing with the thumping beat of the music that came from all around them, she slid in low under the leading Jem’Hadar soldiers pike thrust and sliced deep into the warriors middle, dropping him with a single attack. And with that, the battle was joined again.

Letting out a series of increasingly angry grunts, Dox moved through the attackers quickly before being down to one soldier, armed with a sword that matched her own. The two went at it with powerful, quick attacks as the clashing metal of the mirror blades actually overwhelmed the sound of the music that filled the red sky of the unknown, alien world they stood upon. But after a tense two minutes, the blade of the Jem’Hadar warrior was rimmed with green as he fell to his knees and his head fell to his side. Standing over him, Dox lowered her sword, panting, wounded and sweating, but victorious.

“Computer, pause music.” Came a familiar voice from the edge of the field of bodies as Dox jerked her head towards it, slightly surprised that she was no longer alone in the holodeck of the U.S.S. Hera. And since she had locked the chamber doors, she immediately knew that whoever had been watching was a superior officer if they could override the security protocol she placed to keep out prying eyes to her unorthodox work out routine. Looking over as the music stopped, there stood Captain Enalia Telvan, watching.

“Captain…” Dox panted slightly, composing herself, “Is there something you need?”

"Interesting choice of weaponry..." Enalia observed, instantly recognizing the blade design as she stepped over the holographic remains of those Dox had slain, approaching her Flight chief with her hands on her hips and her own Trill Rapier on her hip. "I've watched you quite a bit and we even fought side by side a bit yesterday in a similar sword-fighting simulation. Your skill has grown considerably since we started the Tribunal."

It was only a day prior that Dox and Enalia engaged in a similar combat sim to blow off steam at the conclusion of a tense meeting with the Admiralty and a few drinks to celebrate the Hera's Commanding officer's Birthday. But it was clear from her posture and tone, that this visit was different.

"However..." Here, Enalia paused in her approach and stared about the battlefield. "There is no art, no style, no elegance... You swing your swords around as if you care nothing for your own survival and just want the other parties dead. Schwein has indeed taught you well."

"But you're still practicing, now with a different sword, and you've hit a wall." Enalia stepped even closer, now able to look down upon the shorter Romulan woman. "I assume this is because there is someone you want dead more than life itself. The tension in your neck and shoulders, as well as your quickening pulse, tells me I'm right."

Looking up, Dox was momentarily caught off guard. She knew Enalia well enough, had fought at her side and served with her on the bridge, but this was a different woman than the one she was more familiar with. The way she carried herself here and the way she immediately sized up Dox came off as almost predatory to the younger pilot. It was different, but not entirely unpredictable, as Dox was well aware of Enalia’s own troubled past and unique upbringing that created a woman that the rest of the crew rarely, if ever, saw. But Dox had, and she was seeing that Enalia Telvan again, here in private.

Wiping a bit of spit from her chin, the young Romulan officer nodded slightly. “You read my report of what happened on my Grandmother’s Warbird. You know everything Rendal did. Had my mother and grandmother beaten in front of me. Murdered my father while I was shackled to a chair and could do nothing. And when she put a practice sword in my hand and all I wanted to do in the universe was feet it back to her, I had to show restraint and control myself. And when that failed, and I actively went after her, she dropped me.”

“You know the language… you know what my name means in Rom… in Rihannsu.” Dox asked, correcting herself and referring to herself not by the anglicized name that the Federation gave her people, but by their true name. There was anger on her voice, not towards Enalia, but clearly to Rendal and to her own failure to have killed the woman before. It was a rhetorical question, however, as Dox knew that Enalia knew exactly what 'Mnhei’sahe' meant. It was the name for the Romulan ruling passion. Their complex code of honor, and in this case, it's meaning was clear. While she may have wanted Dalia Rendal dead… her mnhei’sahe demanded it.

"Yes, I fought her as well. I can say that she is likely more skilled than I am. The only reason I won was her adherence to a higher attitude and my willingness to be underhanded." As Enalia spoke, she paced away, her hands now clasped behind her back similar to how her mother used to when she was lecturing about swordplay. "I also noticed that she likely trained through dance. My mother's training method was through music."

"Either one is perfectly fine, as long as you can feel the rhythm. In the heat of combat, you can focus on your heartbeat, or your enemy's. Once you can feel the rhythm of your enemy's movements, no matter how strong they are, you can predict what they'll do and get ahead of them."

Now that Enalia was several paces away from Dox, she turned and looked back at her olive-skinned officer, drawing her sword. "This is why Rendal and I were so evenly matched. We could see each others moves easily. Computer, Trill dubstep training mix four, if you please."

With a chirrup from the computer, the air was filled with oddly alien synthetic music and what sounded like a heartbeat bassline undercurrent. "This is the music I trained with growing up. For now, let's start with it and see how you do."

Twisting her neck slightly, there was an audible pop as the tension was released and Dox shook out a little. Then, tightening her grip on the handle of her very real sword, she raised it in a somewhat basic defensive posture. She wasn’t expecting anything like this today, and in truth, had been afraid to ask the Captain for help with her sword skills. After all, it wasn’t exactly Starfleet appropriate behavior to want to kill someone. But Dox had also seen Enalia’s skill against Rendal and knew the Captain could help her, and she needed to be better than she was.

The music wasn’t Dox’s standard style, but she took a moment and closed her eyes and synched her breathing to the baseline. Then, as her eyes snapped open, she nodded her readiness to her Captain.

With practiced ease, Enalia stepped forward, flicked her sword several times to the music, and without even blinking, knocked the slightly larger sword from her hands. "You have no defenses, you aren't paying attention to my movements, and to someone with Rendal's skills, you're wide open."

Looking down at the sword for a moment, Dox’s face seemed oddly blank. There was no anger at having been so easily disarmed, just and expression that seemed neutral. “She...my mother… she never trained me with a blade. But when she started teaching me to fight, one of the first things she did was break my arm so I could learn to fight back no matter how much pain I was in.”

Bending down, the Romulan woman picked up her sword and looked at it for a long moment. It was solid black and had no surface markings, but its style and weight were identical to the sword the young woman kept hidden in her quarters. The sword she was afraid to actually hold. But as she looked at the replica in her hands, her thoughts lingered back to the real one in her closet as she continued. “The focus of that training was always on offense. On learning how to inflict maximum damage on an opponent regardless of the damage you might take to do so. Even just then, as my sword fell… I immediately processed how to step in through your sword. Take the hit but get close enough to strike with my hands. Your throat, your floating ribs, Kidney shots. I saw them all and had to stop myself from pushing into your sword to get to them. It’s… automatic.”

Twirling the sword to get a feel for its weight again, she looked up at Enalia. “And that’s how Rendal beat me. She saw that training and instead went after nerve clusters. Jabs designed not to injure, but to incapacitate. She hit my axillary nerve and my arm went dead. None of my offenses worked that way. I need to learn how to get past what my mother taught me. Get over that… programming… and be better.”

“I… I need your help, Captain.” Dox said, as she resumed a defensive posture.

The Trill woman lowered her sword almost horizontally and took a step back. "Then we'll start with the basics. I assume Schwein taught you the ten basic attack forms." With practiced ease, Enalia swiped her sword across each of the nine directions a basic attack would come from, as well as a basic thrust attack. "Left, right, top, bottom, thrust, etc... Your opponent's movements, weight, stance... will tell you what they're going to do, if it's a feint, etc... and you can defend appropriately. Once you sync your movements with theirs, you can keep up with them and even find openings to exploit."

"You already have a lot of the training and a lot of the skills. Now you need to worry about building defense, matching sync, masking your killing aura, finding the will to live, and maybe even building a few skills to mask telegraphic your moves." Enalia shrugged as she raised her sword back up. "Simple as can be. Now come at me and I'll show you proper defense."

Nodding, Dox began. One by one, she worked through each of the ten attack forms as Enalia showcased a different defense for each one. And in between each round, explained to the much less experienced swordswoman why each defense worked and how to predict them. She built on the martial arts training that Jaeih Dox had taught her daughter for years, showing Mnhei’sahe how to spot the visual tells that were similar to the tells that training. Watching for shifts in weight, looking at shoulder placement to predict a thrust or a slash.

There was both science and art to the lessons. A physics that the natural pilot understood of how each motion implied a follow up that had to happen as a result. For every action, there was an equal and opposite reaction, and Enalia was showing Dox how to predict them.

As the lessons progressed, the already tired young Romulan’s arms felt heavier, but she kept at it. And as she did, each attack lasted longer and each defense became more successful. Fueled by her passion, Dox refused to let fatigue touch her and she kept pressing forward, doing her best to absorb everything Enalia had to show her like a sponge. But eventually, biology began to overwhelm even the fire in her as her defenses began to dip again and there was a visible tremble in her arms as she held her sword up. It had been two and a half hours of practice and that had finally begun to show as both women were sweating and breathing heavy.

With a final attack, Dox’s sword was thrown from her hand one last time as it fell to the ground with a clang. But this last time, the match had lasted for seven full minutes before Enalia finally found her opening to disarm her junior officer, who had put up a much better defense.

“Imirrhlhhse!” Dox cursed at herself in her native tongue as she grabbed her hand, now visibly spasming from the extended effort of the last few hours of training. In the end, she had been at it so long that the muscles in her grip gave up before she did. “I… I couldn’t hold on anymore.”

"My first lesson with my mother lasted six hours, but I was also bleeding quite a bit and could no longer hold my sword with either hand or my teeth. As for your progress, you've done exceptionally well and I dare say you could best Schwein in swordplay by a narrow margin." Enalia sheathed her own sword as she spoke, before picking up Dox's sword and looking it over and giving it a few practice swings in the hand she hadn't been using. "I do have to inquire as to your choice in swords though. Why fabricate a replica of the sword of S'task?"

At that, Dox froze for just an instant. She began answering, struggling slightly to answer the question. "Well...it's..." But the young woman was all but incapable of lying to her captain as she took a breath and looked Enalia in her eyes.

"There's... something I should show you."

----------------------

A few minutes later, the two women were standing in Dox's quarters. The far left wall had been removed and there were plastic tarps put up to keep dust out as engineering crews had been turning the quarters to the left of Dox and Mona's into a family-sized chamber to better accommodate the three children on their way. As such, the rooms that Mona usually had kept rather orderly were a bit in disarray at the moment.

Standing in the center of the living room, Enalia waited while Dox came out of the bedroom with a long metal case. As she put the case on the dining room table, she told a story. "It was my last meeting during my debriefing on Earth. It was in Scottland, with an Admiral named Charybdis MacGreggor. She was Rihannsu... like me. But a Starfleet Admiral. One whose career had been made largely... classified. She had been... following my own career for years, watching. She wanted to meet with me to talk. To tell me her story so I would know that I wasn't the first of us in Starfleet. Not the first to face discrimination. And not the first to suffer because of the Tal'Shiar."

Slowly, Dox opened the two old, metal latches on the side as Enalia listened. "She was old. She was from the same time period that Commander Paris came from. They... they were actually a lot alike." Dox's eyes seemed to get a little damper as she spoke. "But... Charybdis wasn't her original name. Her birth name was Scylla. Scylla Charvanek. She was the aunt of Ael t'Rllaillieu... the former and first Empress of the Rihannsu Star Empire. And... and before she passed away in her bed, she gave me this."

Opening the case, Enalia immediately recognized it's contents. A sword of lightly curved metal in a black, maithe wood sheath with a Sardonyx-wood inlay and a rough, black kahs-hir steel hilt. It was unmistakably the sword of S'task. The Honor Blade of the Rihannsu Star Empire which had sat on the empty seat of S'task, the founder of Romulus, for two thousand years, now sitting in a metal case in a Starfleet Lieutenant Commander's quarters. "It's... it's real. Well, real and not real. See... Char had something else in common with Commander Paris. She was also a bit of a time traveler. And she took this from the Senate, in the timeline BEFORE the Hobus Supernova was halted. She had intended to use this to rally the people after Romulus was destroyed... to help restore our people. Now, it's just a temporal copy of the sword that still sits on that chair in the Senate. But it's..."

"She gave this to ME, Captain." Dox said, eyes pleading as in her heart she still didn't understand quite why she had been trusted with it.

As Enalia studied the blade, she frowned thoughtfully. "I can tell you that you must never let this sword come into contact with the one currently in the Imperial Senate. Temporal collapse might occur. As for why she gave it to you... Why not? You have the backing of a Privateer based Empire, you have the right to inherit a seat on the Senate, you have the skills and abilities to survive in court, and you have the backing of quite a few of the Federation council from what I've heard. If anyone either deserves it... or will deserve it... It's you."

For a moment, Dox almost smiled as she half-joked in reply, "Well, I'm certainly not planning on wearing it on my hip if I ever..." Then she cut herself off. "Fvadt. I... I try not to think about it... but with everything that's happening. With my Grandmother naming me to speak for her in this reunification business. It's going to end with me there, isn't it? On Romulus. In the Senate. Eventually, it almost has to, doesn't it?"

"And that means you'll need a suitable honor weapon and an honor guard," Enalia replied, one finger tapping her chin thoughtfully. "Definitely something to consider for the future."

As always, Enalia was a bit of a pragmatist. She pushed right past Dox's anxiety to focus her junior officer on the goal ahead of her. It was a verbal version of the sword attacks she had begun to drill into the younger woman earlier and it was just as effective at demolishing Mnhei'sahe's defenses. 'Why me?' she asked. 'Why not you?' Enalia replied. It was simple and direct and indefensible and It forced Dox to realize that she was only attacking herself.

Smiling ever so slightly, Dox shook her head a bit and closed the case. "It won't be this. The sword of S'task was never meant to be used. To do so would tarnish it... dishonor why I was given to me. I couldn't do that, not even to satisfy my own honor. This sword won't ever taste her blood, but I want the one that does to remind her of everything she betrayed about being Rihannsu. About what we once were and should be again."

With her hands on the closed case, still not wanting to touch the actual sword, Dox nodded. "Thank you, Captain. For everything. I... would like to continue training, if you would teach me."

"I'll teach you everything I can. Also, as a Baroness, you have the right to have a sword of your choosing forged. Next time we're at the fortress, we'll go see the smith." The spotted captain rested one hand on her officer's shoulder reassuringly. "Don't worry. By the time you need to be, you'll be as ready as possible."