She turned a half-second slow. He closed the gap in that half-second, blade angled flat rather than edge-on, and laid the length of it against the side of her throat before she could bring her own weapon fully around.
The chamber went silent except for both of them breathing hard.
"You truly are the fox," Simika said at last, low, and something that wasn't quite defeat and wasn't quite pride moved across her face. She let her blade dissolve back into whatever nothing it came from and lifted both hands, slow, deliberate, a formal concession rather than a forced one. "I felt you go quiet on me. I have not lost that particular trick to anyone in over sixty years."
"I wasn't better than you," Taisen said, and meant it in a way he hadn't meant much of anything in this new, strange life so far. His arm throbbed where the cut still bled freely down to his wrist; his ribs sang every time he breathed too deep; the numbness in his sword hand hadn't fully receded yet, and wouldn't, he suspected, for another hour at least. "You had me on the ground twice before I worked out what you were actually doing to me."
"Your eyes ashed over, cub," she said, reaching up, unerring despite her blindness, to press two fingers briefly to the grey ring still fading at the edge of his iris. "You spent more of yourself in there than any grandson of mine has any business spending on an old woman's afternoon lesson. Learn to ration that better, or one day something worse than me will be standing where I was."
"I would not have killed you," he said. "Even before I understood how close you came to costing me the chance to prove that."
At that moment, a hooded figure entered and bowed low at the doorway. "My Lord. Your guests have arrived." He straightened in his seat, easing the pain in his side into something he could hold behind a still face, and let his hands come to a steeple on the table in front of him the way he always did when he wanted a room to forget he'd ever looked anything less than composed.
"Bring them to me," Taisen said.
The crew of the Hermes filed into the council chamber under the watch of a short-haired, hooded man, trailed by a cyborg, a middle-aged human woman with exhaustion carved into every line of her face, and a young, striking Quinian woman doing a poor job of hiding her curiosity.
At the head of the round table sat a teenage, dark-skinned alien in a plain light tunic rather than the robes his escort favoured, and yet he carried more weight in the room than any of the robed figures standing behind him. He didn't gesture when he spoke. Everything about him suggested a man used to giving orders and having them obeyed the first time.
"Welcome. Please, sit," he said.
"I think I'll stand," Lyn said.
"You filthy human," the escort beside her snapped, and a curved blade materialised in his hand from nothing Lyn could track with her eyes.
She made a private note, for whatever it might be worth later, to find out exactly where these people kept their weapons and how they drew them faster than she could blink.
A single raised hand from the seated boy sent the blade vanishing again just as fast. The escort dropped to one knee. "Forgive me, my Lord. I could not stand by while a human disrespected you."
"Leave us, Redan," Taisen said, and Redan was gone before the sentence finished. Lyn logged it clinically, the way she logged anomalous data before she had a theory to hang it on: that kind of instant, total obedience came from either terror or something considerably more dangerous than terror.
"My apologies for my colleague. He's overzealous. Stand if you'd rather."
"Who are you," Lyn said. "And why are we being held here?"
"I am Taisen. You're free to go wherever you like. Unfortunately your ship is in no condition to fly, and the only thing out there past that door is sand."
"I'll sit, if nobody minds," Frank said, already dropping into a chair across from him.
"Same," Alita said, taking the seat beside Frank's.
"Colonel," Frank added, glancing sideways at Lyn, "the man's being hospitable. Be rude later, once we know if he's worth the trouble."
Lyn sat, reluctantly.
"I have a question, if you'll indulge me," Frank said. "That fellow outside called you something. What's it mean?"
"My people call me the desert fox. I sit at the head of our ruling council."
"Impossible," Alita said. "Our records show the council here is made up of Matriarchs. One woman per clan."
"You've done your reading on us," Taisen said, something like real pleasure crossing his face at that. "We do have Matriarchs. I'm the exception the records didn't account for."
"And what makes you the exception?" Lyn asked.
"Enough questions from me answered for free. Why are you on my world?"
The crew traded looks. Link sat motionless, studying Taisen with an attention that had nothing casual in it at all.
"No offence, but our mission's classified," Frank said.
"You were sent to find a new source of Thorium-19 to power the Union's ships and cities," Taisen said, and watched the surprise land on all four of their faces at once. "My people already went through your ship's systems while you slept off the landing. My only real question is who attacked you."
"Unidentified frigate. We believe Krell," Link said, before Lyn could stop him with a look.
"The Krell, cornering the energy trade again. Of course." Taisen's mouth curved. "I have a proposal."
"We're not interested," Lyn said immediately.
"Let's at least hear him out," Frank said.
"Fine."
"I'll repair your ship and see you safely back to Earth. I'll help you find your Thorium besides. In exchange, I need help locating a set of Enjarian relics."