"Steve Perry - Battle Surgeons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

"Ten credits on Cley."
Barriss smiled. Jos looked puzzled. "What?"
They stopped at one of the higher bluffs overlooking the sparring area. The two fighters moved toward
the middle of the mat. The referee, a Gotal, stood between them, giving them instructions. It didn't take
long; ap-parently outside of killing one another, just about any-thing went.
She said, "A couple of years ago there was a teras kasi tourney on BundukiтАФthat's where the art
originated, you know. In the final match, a Jedi Knight, Joclad Danva, met the local champion."
"A Jedi? Against a local? That hardly seems fair."
"Danva had the peculiar skill of being able to divorce himself from the Force at times. He never used its
power in his matches; only his personal skill, which was con-siderable. He was a virtuoso with twin
lightsabers, one of the few ever to master the Jar'Kai technique. I've seen holos of him, and he was a
fantastic fighter. He could hold his own with most of the Jedi in practice."
"And . .. ?"
"And he was defeated in the Bunduki match."
Jos raised his eyebrows, then looked away from her toward the bare-chested men on the mat. The ref
backed away, and the men assumed fighting positions.
"No," he said.
"Yes. Master Danva was beaten by the local teras kasi champion, Phow Ji. Your new combat
instructor."
Jos sighed. "I see. Well, it's only credits. And it's not like there's anything to buy around here ..."
As they watched, the two fighters circled, watching each other. Cley kept his left side facing his
opponent,
his legs wide in a bantha-riding pose, left hand high, right hand low, fingers formed into loose fists.
Ji stood aslant to Cley, his right foot leading, his arms held wide, hands open. He looked vulnerable, but
the in-vitation was false, Barriss knew. They were a step and a half apart, and Barriss recognized this as
knife-fighting distanceтАФjust outside the range of a short blade.
They kept circling. Cley was too wary to fall for the obvious trap. It looked more like a jetz match than a
fight, the delicate balance between them holding as one man shifted, ever so slightly, and the other
responded with an equally subtle move.
The onlookers rumbled uncertainly, aware something was going on, but not sure what.
Then Cley made his move. He lunged, driven by pow-erful legs churning hard, and he was very fast. He
launched a two-punch combination, a left and a right, low and high, and either would have been enough to
end the fight, had they landed.
Ji didn't back away, but instead stepped in to meet the attack. His own punch crossed the centerline and
de-flected Cley's highline strike a hair, just enough so that his hit missed. Then Ji's punch caught Cley flush
on the nose, but that wasn't the end of it. He continued his step in, put his right leg behind Cley's leading
foot, caught the man's throat in the V of his thumb and fore-finger, and swept him, shoving him down onto
the mat hard enough to momentarily imprint Cley's form into the resilient foam. Then he dropped into a
deep squat and drove the elbow of that same arm into Cley's solar plexus. Cley's breath burst out in a rush.
Ji stood, turned his back to the fallen man, and walked away. Cley lay on his back, trying to regain his
wind, unable to rise.
Just like that, the fight was over. Once the attack had been launched, the entire sequence had taken
maybe three seconds, total.
"Sweet soalie!" Jos said. "What did he do?" "Looks like he just cost you ten credits, Captain Von-dar,"
Barriss said.

Jos watched as the fight medic checked Cley over and decided that the man wasn't hurt badly enough to
 need more than first aid. He had never seen anything like that beforeтАФa fighter as experienced as Cley
getting floored so fast and so easily. Phow Ji was good.
Jos had taken the basic training required of all mili-tary personnel, of course, and had learned a couple of