Honour's Knight by Rachel Bach Page A

the good mood I’d managed from hiring Rashid. Between the attack on Falcon 34, my missing memories, losing Cotter, and the bullshit with the cook last night, this was shaping up to be a bad month for me. I needed something to get my spirits up. A xith’cal raid maybe, or pirates, something straightforward I could stomp into the ground. But as I entered my room, I realized I was wrong. There was something that could cheer me up even more than a good fight, and it was sitting on my bunk.
    Perched on my pillow was a rectangular package wrapped in plastic and stamped all over with caution warnings. I sprang on it like a tiger, ripping it open with my suit’s strength. The plastic shell was just a covering for another case, a metal one, and inside that was the blade I’d ordered two days ago.
    To say it was a thing of beauty would be an insult. My new blade was breathtaking . At eleven inches, it was a little smaller than Phoebe’s cutting edge had been, but unlike my old blades, which had to be replaced when they burned out, this one had a replenishable thermite edge set into a tungsten steel core. This meant I could actually parry with it, something I’d never been able to do with Phoebe. Also, where Phoebe had been little more than a thermite cutting edge screwed into a handle, my new blade was meant to be integrated into armor, which meant so long as I kept my arm, I’d keep my weapon.
    I stared at the thing for a good minute before I grabbed the package and my armor case and ran to the lounge to start installing it.
    Two hours later, the lounge table was covered in tools and my new blade was in place. The manufacturer’s suggestion had been to embed the blade on top of the arm, but I’d attached mine to the outer side of my right wrist, which allowed me to hold my gun even while the blade was out. The included installation kit was designed for Terran armor, and I’d tossed it without opening the box. Instead, I used the nano-repair in my armor’s case to integrate the blade’s tiny computer into the Lady’s closed gap system so I could control it directly via my neuronet.
    Modding a custom suit like my Lady Gray was always a tricky proposition, especially with non-Paradoxian equipment, but the blade I’d picked was high quality, and after a few tweaks, everything snapped into place. When it wasn’t in use, my new blade rested in a sheath on the outer side of my right forearm, but with a single thought I could shoot it out like a spike. Another thought would fire the thermite. Even better, now that my blade was hooked directly into my computer, I could set the temperature I wanted the thermite to fire at, lowering the base slightly to extend the burn time by up to five seconds.
    “I know each moment contains eternity, Deviana,” Nova said when I caught her in the hallway to show her my new lovely. “But five seconds doesn’t sound like much time to me.”
    “It’s not,” I admitted, retracting the blade and then shooting it out again just for the joy of hearing the razor sharp edge whistle through the air. “But when you’ve been stuck at eighty seconds forever, five more can be a game changer. Plus, with the tungsten core, the spike will still be useful even after the edge burns out. No more brittle blades. And since it’s attached to my suit rather than held in my hands, I can put a lot more power into each swing.”
    I planted my feet and punched to prove my point, shooting my new blade out as my fist extended while Nova made appropriately impressed noises.
    “What are you going to name it?” she asked.
    I’d been thinking about that ever since I’d first seen the blade gleaming in its case. I’d considered calling it Phoebe just to keep things simple, but that seemed like a dishonor to the real Phoebe’s memory. In the end, I’d gone with an old favorite.
    “Elsie,” I said proudly. “After Elsievale of Ambermarle. She founded the king’s Hidden Guard almost five hundred years ago, and