TWENTY-FOUR
Watching the three mages try to hit Alice was a good way to brighten Kon’s mood as he stood near the edge of the gym. All three of them had appeared to be in decent enough shape, but Alice had quickly found their limits and worked hard on pushing past them. Sweat, tears, and a bit of blood were leaking from all three as the Knight continued to cheer, jeer, and mock in equal measure as they got closer and closer to hitting her.
That Alice currently didn’t rely on any of her cultivation was telling. It was just her base body, which admittedly had been subtly reinforced for years at this point, but still. Even with three mages chasing her not a single one of them could truly get close to hitting her.
“Mages were always distance fighters or heavily protected. This type of work isn’t what they’re used to,” Benny said through a mouthful of something. Kon took a closer look at his food and saw it was some type of flatbread wrapped up and around a filling full of legumes, meat, and cheese, with a thick red paste squeezed in there.
“What are you eating?” He couldn’t help himself and Benny’s answering smile showed that it was expected and welcomed.
“Called a burrito. Fell out of favor once we hit the stars but damn are they good. Can’t really remember eating them when we were back home, but there were plenty who still used them in the early days. Back then we were divided by nations, lines drawn in the sand built up around history, culture, and geography. Those lines had a way of changing when armies came through, but the food boyo, damn was the food good,” Benny said as he took another bite.
“I like my protein meals,” Kon said with a straight face. Benny looked at him and raised a single bushy eyebrow before turning back to the sparring session.
“It’ll take them a few weeks of hard training and proper nutrition to get them into proper physical shape. They’re almost the exact opposite of you. They’ll have the knowledge to start building their runes quickly and will have plenty of the theory needed to make informed decisions, but they’re physical side is…subpar.”
“Good that it’ll be a few weeks then. It’ll give me time to recover.” Benny looked over at him after that statement, a hint of curiosity in his eyes.
“I finished carving it this morning. I’ll be ready for the implant in a day or so,” Kon clarified.
“Good, we’ll be having a visit sometime soon by representatives from the Knight’s Table to certify us as a Chapterhouse. We’ll need you to be ready to go and stand up to be certified as a Knight. That’ll include tedious amounts of paperwork, but I’m sure you’ll survive.” His chuckle at the end did little to encourage Kon about the depth of paperwork he was going to have to do.
“You talk to Jurgen?” Kon asked, changing the subject away from the dreaded paperwork.
“No. We’ll do it after certification. Get you rested and we’ll take all the kids out on a hunt. We’ll be stopping by near a tribute system for the Oasis to restock her goods and supplies. I know a few planets close by, less than two or three days travel, we can go and raid them and get the kids blooded.”
“Taking the Squires too?” Kon asked. After their demonstration there had been radio silence on that front, but their contracts should all be expiring soon and it’d be time to accept them or pass on.
“It’d be nice to have other peers rather than just all of you old folks,” Kon joked with Benny and was rewarded with the tiniest crinkle around the old man’s eyes as he tried not to smile.
“I’m not old!” Alice yelled from across the room, bending in half to avoid a series of disastrous wild swings from Alexandra and Beto. Loras lay on the mat in a puddle of sweat, limbs trembled from the effort that had been exerted.
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“She’s gone senile. Might have to put her out to pasture,” Kon said from the safety of the sidelines. Alice’s face reddened a bit as Benny choked on a bite of his burrito and was forced to thump on his chest.
“We’ll take the Squires. I do want to see who talked to Jurgen to get him to try to play nice with me.”
“You have any ideas?” Kon asked as he threaded his fingers through the belt loops of his jumpsuit.
“Too many ideas. It’s not Lero, I confirmed that. Has to be an Order member or someone high up in another branch of the government. Either the Governor’s office or maybe Admiralty. Doubt he’d move if nobles came and asked him to play nice,” Benny said.
“Does anyone like the nobles?” Kon snorted.
“Plenty do. Merchants and bankers love them, members of the admiralty who they’ve sponsored. Don’t forget that they own massive amounts of private warships that are leased to the admiralty and crewed by officers from the academies. But the day to day crew are all employed by the nobility. The Squire washouts are often picked up by nobles to act as security forces and even Knights who’ve fallen out of favor or seen the dissolution of their Chapterhouse have found employment there.”
“All things that can be done without them. Seems like they’re middlemen at best.” Keeping the words from being a snarl was difficult. Their excessive excess had seemed to contaminate enough Knights that this pseudo-mutiny was possible.
“They carved our roles for themselves in the early days and fight hard to keep their niches. I do believe almost all of it can be done by others though. Maybe this will finally be the chance to purge them once and for all,” Benny mused.
They both lapsed into silence then as Kon thought over what he’d said. The word purge was a heavy thing, quietly spoken with such conviction.
“How many nobles are there?” Kon finally asked.
“I don’t know the exact count, we’d have to access the census bureau but its thousands. Most are lesser nobility, not like Thiery at all. A few ships that they sell around as escorts and a few patrons a year and that’s all they can afford,” Benny waved a hand as if to dismiss them all.
“Would I be okay with purging thousands? Even if they’re only crime is being born to a family?” That thought sat and marinated in his mind as he watched first Alexandra then Beto also collapsed into heaps around Alice who looked them over as if disappointed with their efforts.
“It might take a few months to get them up to a decent standard,” Alice yelled over to them as she left them on the ground in pools of their own sweat. Kon winced as Beto rolled over and threw up, dry heaving as his body resented the overexertion.
“Think it would speed it up if they had high value food and a few runes?” Kon asked. Every moment they wasted here was another moment they weren’t sailing toward Orgo and helping relieve the siege.
“Could, but it's better to get them to a good place in their conditioning before we start using runes. Using cores to get them to acceptable standards is a waste of energy that can be used for other things,” Alice informed him. Kon nodded along, agreeing with her in the long term, but the short term pressed against his mind.
“Kon’s ready to implant his first full-rune,” Benny said, the change of subject smooth as Alice rounded on him, her attention a spotlight.
“Finally finished shaping it, huh? Well, it’ll be good to have another Knight with us. Old man fights like he’s security forces and not a Knight,” Alice said, throwing a barb at Benny.
“If I have to fight like a Knight then things have gone very bad.” Alice shrugged at Benny’s words and turned to wrap her arm around Kon’s shoulders.
“Did you know there’s an old tradition before a Knight implants their first rune. See, you don’t always survive. It’s a lot of energy going into your body and some just can’t handle the pressure. So, on the verge of it being your last night on this plane of reality, we have to go out,” Alice said. She had already started to steer him toward the doors of the training facility, leaving Benny to deal with the exhausted mages.
“For, like dinner?” Kon asked, already knowing the answer wouldn’t be what he wanted to hear.
“To start with. But then there should be alcohol and lots of poor decisions. Even on a limited space ship like the Oasis, there’s a red light district," Alice informed him with an even wider smile now.
“And you already found it?”
“First day. Remember that woman I met, her name was Genevive and she was a delight. Works at a great bar and she left me her number to go and visit her again.” her smile had become lecherous now and Kon repressed a groan as they left the area and headed out to celebrate his last night before becoming a Knight.