Salander
Two bikers, Lundin and Nieminen, approach on Harley-Davidsons. Lundin dismounts, steps forward and takes several swings at Salander who dodges, Maces him in the face and kicks him first in the groin, then, when he has fallen to his knees, in the face. Nieminen, still on his bike, gropes for the gun in an inside pocket but Salander jumps forward, kicking him with both feet. Avoiding being pinned under the falling bike, Nieminen ducks a thrown stone and pulls out the gun but Salander tasers him in the groin, takes the gun, shoots Lundin in one foot, cuts a piece of leather from Nieminen's padded waistcoat, uses it to pad his helmet, then drives away on one of the Harleys. (IIRC, one of the actors was hospitalized after filming this fight scene.)
Crowfeather
Four men, armed respectively with a pistol, a club, a knife and a bola, block the paths of Diana and Shan U. Diana stabs the pistoleer with her Tigery knife, pushes him against the clubber so that they fall together, steps on the clubber's throat, strikes the attacking knifeman with the back of her knife, slashes his arm with its blade, severs a ball of the bola, dodges the rest, then chases the bola man before letting him go.
One of the men describes Shan U as a "monkey-cat" although he is a squirrel-like Cynthian, not a feline Tigery or kzin.
Salander and Crowfeather...
...both know to leave before the cops arrive.
(An Irish song includes the line: "Peelers did arrive, man alive, four or five." See here.)
10 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I can see one person, even if a woman, sometimes being able to take on two men. If he or had the right training. But for Diana to take on FOUR men is a bit too much to be credible. But, Anderson usually manages to make fight scenes like this at least plausible.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Also, Salander was already armed with Mace and a taser, then appropriated a gun.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
That would help, esp. assuming both knowing how to use these defensive devices and speed!
I think "felinoid" might be a better term for Tigeries and Kzin.
Ad astra! Sean
Fights of the up-close and personal variety are generally highly unequal for psychological reasons. Eg., Diana has an enormous advantage because her opponents want to subdue, not kill -- it would be hopeless if that had been their intention.
Things get more serious quickly, but she goes in with intent to destroy (or at least disable) and they have to "switch tracks" mentally. That takes time and they don't have it.
Focus, drive and chance factors play a very large role in the outcome of personal combat.
Most ordinary civilians, even if acting with bad intent, hesitate before inflicting severe harm. It's a very large advantage if you have no inhibitions and don't have to get into a frenzy to override them.
The father of a friend of mine got a medal for an action in Korea, a night-raid in which he rolled into a Chinese trench and killed 15-20 men with a sharpened entrenching tool. They were all soldiers, all awake and armed, but he just went down that trench killing a man at every second step and the whole thing was over in less than 10 minutes and he was on his way back to his own lines.
This was one scary dude. He wasn't psychologically normal at all; he had no emotional restraints on lethal violence whatsoever, only prudential, conscious ones. He'd kill someone just for annoying him, if he thought he could get away with it.
Or read the citation for Alvin York's Medal of Honor. He killed something like 30 men in a few minutes, which was possible not only because he was a crack shot but because he apparently stayed -entirely calm- throughout the whole encounter.
Most men are very bad shots -in combat-, or other dangerous/stressful situations, even if they're good on the range(*).
Teddy Roosevelt was one of the exceptions; he was a mediocre target shooter, but he was actually a bit better when hunting or in combat, because he was in a sort of meditative calm state rather than jittery or nervous.
Eg., he came around a corner on a mountain trail once, and found himself 6ft from an angry grizzly bear.
He shot it -- and hit it precisely between the eyes.
Hitting a target that size at that range when shooting at a target would be easy for any moderately competent shot; but 99.9% would miss if they tried it under those circumstances, or they'd use a body shot and get mauled before it died.
Teddy could do it because he functioned at his maximum level even under severe stress. He saw the bear, calculated the odds, and shot it between the eyes, all in the space of one or two seconds.
Alvin York apparently did the same thing... and he was a very good shot indeed.
He killed six of those German soldiers with a pistol while they charged him, using a hunting tactic he'd used on turkeys -- killing the last man in line first and working his way forward, so the others wouldn't notice how many had fallen. Six head shots at ranges of 40 yards to a few feet. That's not marksmanship, that's being nerveless.
(*) modern combat training gets around this to some extent by using very realistic pop-up targets, so that shooting to kill under stress becomes a conditioned reflex. Virtual reality training, which is just coming in, works even better because the subconscious apparently experiences it as the "real thing".
Or to sum it up, "Fortes Fortuna Juvat" -- fortune favors the bold. Or at least the mentally prepared.
Mr Stirling,
Thank you for all this. I think we have heard of that father's friend before! At least, he sounds familiar.
Paul.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Ditto, what Paul said! I sure as heck would want to be very careful near anyone like your friend's father. Nor am I at all like Alvin York or Theodore Roosevelt!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: It's natural in some people, but can be cultivated. Teddy Roosevelt remarked that when he set out to the West to ranch in the Dakotas, he was afraid of many things -- stampedes, unbroken horses, gunmen, dangerous wild animals.
He resolved, he said, to -act- as if he wasn't in the least afraid... and gradually ceased to be fearful at all, to an almost superhuman level. There are repeated instances of him doing things that would make your eyes bug out, without the slightest hesitation. Jumping on a huge male cougar with a knife to save some dogs, for example, or giving a 90-minute speech just after being shot in the chest by an assassin (though he did check that he wasn't coughing up blood first... 8-).
He wasn't a natural "dead-eye dick" type, but he had very strong -willpower- and mental discipline.
(For instance, he could read a book once, in a few hours, and then quote chapters verbatim years later.)
He just wanted to be a certain sort of man, and made himself into it.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And I agree that was a very admirable attitude and resolve on TR's part! And I do wonder what might have happened if that assassin had not shot TR during the 1912 Presidential campaign? Would Roosevelt had won? Frankly, I am glad he did not, the "New Nationalism" he had taken up by then has ideas and policies I would absolutely oppose. And the way you developed those ideas in your BLACK CHAMBER books confirms my dislike of the "New Nationalism."
In a way, Wilhelm II of Germany was like TR in some ways. I have to admire how Wilhelm overcame the handicap of a crippled arm to learn to do everything expected of Prussian aristocrats. Riding, shooting, swimming, etc.
Ad astra! Sean
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