Abaddon struck again and again, pouring the force of each blow into the next so that their strength grew like a storm-sea clashing against the land. Jubal went back, pivoting and parrying. They were fighting on the deck before the wreck of the assault ram. Light flashed from the meeting of blades. Abaddon did not slow or step back. The battle was becoming silent as the last air drained from the bridge. The sound of his hearts filled his world, became the surge and murmur of war.

Jubal went back again, fast. Abaddon saw an opening and thrust. But Jubal clamped his feet to the deck halfway through his step and slashed his blade back. It was not a cut that a savant of any blade school would recognise, but it struck Abaddon’s sword arm, just above the elbow. Razor edge and power field sliced through the thinner armour of the joint. Pain flared, and a bright string of red pearls bubbled into the vacuum. It punched into his mind and stole the instant before he realised that Jubal was open. Mind and body shunted the pain aside, and he cut. Jubal somehow met the kill-stroke. The force of impact jolted through Abaddon. Jubal released the mag-locks holding him to the deck, and the impact of his strike sent him arcing over Abaddon’s head.

Jubal’s feet found the deck and his boots gripped him to the floor. He snapped the guandao out as he landed. The long haft slid through his right hand, the tip reaching out to Abaddon like a thunderbolt.

It was dazzling. From the first reversal of Abaddon’s plan to kill the leader of the Falcon fleets to this dance of blood and edges, this was war and killing on a level that rose to something beyond even the post-human. Abaddon would strike, and Jubal would slice, and bit by bit those cuts would bleed Abaddon, slow him, pull him down into more mistakes. They would follow this pattern on and on, cut after cut, and it would never cease, only flow into its next phase, like wind and storm-rain split by the flash of lightning.

Except it wouldn’t. It could not. He knew Jubal, had known him before and knew him better for these last moments.

Abaddon raised his sword to meet the guandao spearing towards him. To a human it would have been too fast to follow, but Jubal would have seen it, would have been waiting for it. The guandao flicked aside. Power fields grazed each other in a plume of sparks. Jubal’s feet locked to the floor as he turned his cut inside Abaddon’s parry.