I shut it off with a key-press.
'We can use full body shields, if you're worried,' she said.
'Why would I be worried? This is just sparring.'
We engaged our power-bucklers and faced each other across the centre of the mat, slightly side on, shield towards shield, our blades held low in our right hands.
'Signal cue/ I said.
'Three/ said the terminal speaker, 'two, one… commence/
Medea had been practising.
She swept round with her blade, and simultaneously parried my first approach with her buckler which squealed and sparked off mine as their fields met and repulsed.
I undercut defensively, gathering her blade in towards our shields so that for a moment all four weapons were locked in a protesting knot of spitting electrical energy.
We broke, and circled.
She came in again, leading with her sword. I fended it away with my buckler, then again, and then for a third time as we continued to go around.
She was canny. Sword and buckler work was as old as all the worlds, and the trick to staying alive was to use the shield more than the sword. The trick to winning, however, was to use the sword more than the shield.
I kept my buckler to the front but, by seeming to be unguarded with her own force shield lagging back as if casually forgotten, she was inviting me to overstep or make a badly judged lunge.
I left my blade well alone, keeping it where she could see it, and using my shield as Harlon Nayl had schooled me. The buckler was a weapon. Not only could it block, it could lock or even break a blade. I had heard of some duels where the small shield's solid-energy edge had actually delivered the killing stroke to an unprotected windpipe.
Medea rotated suddenly, driving my buckler aside with a swipe of her own, and lashed in with her blade, dancing across the mat. I was forced to parry with my sword, and then rally hard as she kept up the pressure.
Her blade sliced to within a handsbreath of my face and I cross-guarded desperately with both blade and buckler.
She drove her own shield in under my guard and her own locked sword and doubled me up with a punished strike to my midriff.
I fell onto the mat.
'Enough?' she asked.
I got up. 'We'll go again/
She came at me again, leading with the blade as I had expected. I ducked, swung round and feinted in time for her buckler to swing in to parry my blade.
The spitting electrical dish tore the sword from my hand, stinging my fingers.
Just as I had intended.
Her eyes were on my sword, distracted as it flew aside. With my now free right hand, I grabbed her buckler arm above the elbow and pulled it down so that her own power shield locked with her sword as she brought it up. She stumbled. I smashed her across the extended shoulder with the flat of my buckler and knocked her down.