Jessica Keller considered the view from the mezzanine, overlooking the training floor below.
Unlike the canvas-covered, packed sand in her own dojos, this was a concrete slab with a thin, padded layer over it. Enough to keep you from breaking a bone if you tumbled, but not enough to prevent some wicked bruises. It would, however, teach you to fall correctly, and quickly.
There was a young woman training. Jessica knew that the local media liked to play up comparisons between the two of them, but the likenesses were rather sparse.
Jessica was a few fingers below average height for a woman of the Republic of Aquitaine, around 160 centimeters tall, with brown hair just past shoulder length, impressively streaked with gray. The woman on the training floor had the towering stature of the Fribourg Imperial Family, nearly a head taller than Jessica, with golden-blond hair in a braid that hung past her shoulder blades.
Jessica was built broad. Not stocky, but with hard curves. On another woman, a less-driven one, it would have turned to flab easily enough, leaving her a squishy, middle-aged hausfrau, like Jessica’s own mother. Jessica would not allow it, fighting a constant battle in the pool, the gymnasium, and the dinner table. So far, she was winning.
Down there, the young woman was long and lean, built straight, like a volleyball player, only starting to develop muscles as she finally grew into herself.
At forty-one years old, Jessica felt every one of the light-years she had covered in more than twenty years of hard naval service. The trainee was just eighteen, poised to take life by the horns and twist it to fit her need, something that would have been impossible even as recently as six months ago.
Jessica was simply astounded at how much had changed. Not nearly enough, but if she died tomorrow, Jessica Keller could go into hell knowing that she had permanently altered the course of human history in her time. She didn’t know how many generations it would take to finally rid the Fribourg Empire of their toxic notions of gender, but she could see that day out there in the distance.
She turned to the man standing silently beside her. Studied him briefly before he glanced her way with a wry grin on his face.
Tall. Even taller than the woman on the floor, but obviously a close relative, both in coloring and features. Fully gray now, as his fifty-fifth birthday had passed. Broad in the chest, but with a vee-shape that tapered down to a narrow waist, the kind that came from serious time in the weight room and careful attendance to his diet. Nothing at all like the man she had first met in the flesh nearly seven years ago.
At their first duel. Not the one to the death that First Ballard had wanted to be, but just as fraught, when she had foiled his plans and his minions at First Petron.
In her mind, she still thought of him as The Red Admiral. Everyone did. If you used that term in casual conversation, anyone in either the Fribourg Empire or the Republic of Aquitaine would immediately flash to this man.
Emmerich wore black now, no longer The Red Admiral, but The Grand Admiral. Commander-in-Chief, Fribourg Fleet. Third, only behind the Emperor and Crown Prince Karl Ekkehard, commonly known as Ekke.
These days, Jessica wore red instead: a scarlet jacket, buttoned up the front with gold fripperies stitched here and there, rather than the tight tunic she still unconsciously expected, plus the dark blue slacks that made up a Fribourg naval uniform, so much baggier than the uniform she had worn seemingly her whole life. And impossible to fit quickly into an emergency suit.
The only place she deviated from a Fribourg uniform was her shoes. She would be damned if she was giving up the comfortable walking shoes Aquitaine used, for the hard-soled leather her companion was wearing.
His stare lingered before he turned his head the rest of the way, drawing those wide shoulders in a little.
“I suppose you intend to blame me for this, as well?” Emmerich Wachturm asked in a dry tone, gesturing at the scene below. His eyes twinkled mischievously.
“The thought had crossed my mind,” Jessica replied with a grin, turning back to watch.
The blond woman was moving like a dancer, with a thin, straight sword in her right hand, turned sideways to her foe, a taller man with longer arms. Both wore mesh masks and heavy, quilted chest pieces, plus protection on arms and legs.
In a more-formal event, they might have called this fencing, as the woman was using a sabre, a straight blade ninety-six centimeters long, but there was no carpet to dance on. And the woman’s opponent wasn’t an Olympian. Instead, he was Imperial Army, and a close-combat expert.
The rules here were simple: don’t get killed while killing your opponent. Points were measured in limbs declared wounded. An arm injured must be held behind you. A leg caused you to have to stand in place and pivot.
This was dancing with steel. Not quite the Valse d’Glaive that Jessica practiced, but much closer than many modern martial practices. The sabreuse below also fought with only one blade where Jessica used both a saber and a main-gauche interchangeably.
Still, the young woman was learning quickly, gaining skill consistently from that first awkward lesson Jessica had watched. After twenty minutes, the man was ahead on points, but only seven to five, which was amazing against a trained foe like the soldier.
Especially for an Imperial Princess.
“It was her choice, by the way,” Wachturm said after a pause.
“Uh huh.”
He sounded a touch defensive. Jessica could appreciate why.
Imperial propaganda had done a damned good job originally, making Jessica Keller over into an exotic barbarian so as to dissuade impressionable Imperial teenage girls from emulating her. A pirate queen from beyond the pale of civilization. That she was then a lowly Command Centurion in the Republic of Aquitaine Navy was glossed over. Later, those same bards played up the elements of the doomed romance that saw Jessica crowned and her first, great love, Daneel Ishikura, the famed pirate known as Warlock, slain in battle.
Today, they were making her over again, only this time as the woman who had just helped save the Empire as a Fleet Centurion, and now, the new Red Admiral.
Jessica considered rolling her eyes at the whole situation, but she understood politics and diplomacy well enough these days to let it go. The Fribourg Empire needed an anchor around which to coalesce. The young woman below would serve as inspiration for their dreams, but Jessica had to be the rock upon which those dreams could be built. Just as Em was the mason who would build them.
A whistle sounded, ending the bout. Both opponents stepped back and saluted each other before removing their masks and turning to the gallery, which today consisted solely of one referee keeping score and two Imperial Admirals.
Even from here, Jessica could see the immense grin on the Princess Kasimira’s face. She had lost on points, but only barely, to an expert with decades of experience. Four hard months of rising early every single morning in order to train with weights, dance, swim, and practice gymnastics, coupled with youth and good genes. Plus occasional lessons with Jessica herself on the finer points of a woman using edged steel, so different in movement from a man, and yet so similar.
Kasimira, Casey, would go as far as her dreams took her.
That was another thing Jessica could count on her side of that cosmic ledger.
“Are you convinced, Jessica?” Emmerich asked, his voice gone more serious now.
“I was never worried about Casey, Em,” she replied, looking down. “Her father, and her brother, will be the harder sell.”
She stared at the man again, intent written on her features.
“Convince them, and then I will believe.”