TA40

==Chapter 40 - The Armada==
Unity City, Terra
Sol Star System
Wolf Empire
3170
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[Cameron Coliseum, SoDo neighborhood, Unity City...]
Karen stepped into the ring.  The man across from her was rather conventionally handsome...
His uniform announced his position as part of Clan Hell's Horse's naval reserve, but his build practically announced 'Clan Elemental Breed'.
She took her greatcoat off, and handed it to her second. The man across from her waited as she shed the utility harness and the outergarment uniform.
"You are small." he observed.
"Yeah.  Kind of a family trait, with some exceptions.  Drinks later?" she asked.
He smiled confidently and nodded.
The bout began.
Elementals are huge, powerful, and fast.
Huge is a key feature.  Karen inherited her mother's natural build, dense muscle in layers-not all of Sharon Ngo's great strength came from constant exercise.  She was also smaller than her opponent, lower to the ground.
Her mind dropped into the no-place as he came forward.  A medical monitor would have shown her mind dropping straight into an alpha trance state.  She had grown up in a Kahanist community, and even being by definition goyim she learned the arts taught there.
Over the millennia, Krav Maga has differentiated into a thousand different local variations, everything from the sport version popular in the Federated Suns and parts of the inner Lyran Commonwealth, to the version taught to the SLDF and maintained by the Clans, to Kowloon's own. Local variation that included bits of Muy Thai, Dim Mak, and Jeet Kune Do.
His blows would hurt later, for right now the pain was a distant message to a mental call-center too focused on the geometry of the fight and the physiology of her opponent.
She canceled his right arm on his third blow, followed by collapsing his left knee. The next pressure point struck in his shoulder as she stepped past his grapple. Finally, delivering the point of her elbow to a spot just to the side of his spine. A blow that would 'shock' the nerves in the left side of his body rendering him temporarily paralyzed and unable to stand, kick, or reach her as she took him in a modified sleeper hold useful for dealing with larger, stronger opponents.
She felt his heartbeat as she compressed the arteries supplying his brain.  When the tension left him, she released the hold to preventing brain damage.
His comrades carried him, with difficulty, from the ring.
"Oww..." she sat on the stool, and let Corpsman LeVay-154 deal with the bruises and cuts on her face and shoulder, checking her for broken bones.  "nine more to go...******. that hurts."
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