The Jump Point

by Anthony James

  They were en route now, to one of the less reputable ports in the system, and she had a gut feeling that this one was not going to be an afternoon stroll. Up until now, she hadn't bothered to ask what they were carrying. To be honest, she really didn't want to know. Safer that way. Neither had the information been volunteered. It made her feel a little bit like excess baggage, but she could understand. Business was business. These two were partners, and she was a mere hired hand with no real need to know.

  Regardless of all that, it was time for a spot of practice. She well understood the need of practice to hone her skills. Her years with the blade had taught her that much. Mahra pushed her hair back, gathering it behind with one hand, before donning the head set. She always had to go through this routine. The headset was designed with short-cropped navy types in mind and her long hair only got in the way.

  Making sure the headset was sitting comfortably, she slipped each hand into a sensor-fitted glove. She clenched both fists to activate the mechanism and was immediately swept away by the sheer majesty of the spectacle that invaded her senses. No matter how many times she used the pod, she still felt that initial rush. The headset fed her images, sensations, and sounds, giving her the illusion that she was the centre of the ship itself, or rather that she was the ship winging through the darkened reaches. The pod ceased to exist and she was left suspended in the blackness, surrounded only by the light of stars peppering the void. The display was so real that it needed to have safety mechanisms built into it. The light intensity was moderated according to her proximity to any body — it took account of the varying brightness in case she should suffer retinal damage.

  If she concentrated, she could feel the seat beneath her and the controls at her hands, but it was so easy to forget them, to lose herself in the vision surrounding her.

  She felt Chutzpah jump excitedly on her shoulder. If she didn't know better, she'd have thought he was party to the sights that swam in her vision. She allowed herself a few more moments to enjoy the spectacle.

  Finally, she pressed down hard with her index finger to activate the controls and a ghostly image coalesced in front of her. The sequences and prompts were activated and controlled through the interplay of muscles in her hands and face, but manual override was always possible.

  The pod was very good and very new. Pellis had spared no expense on the defences and she revelled in the smooth interplay of vision and control and the instantaneous response it provided. Her ghost hands keyed the sequence to start a simulation and she threw herself into it as the images took shape.

  Like the rest of the pod, the simulator was top of the range. Every new scenario was different and with each run she faced even greater challenges. Practice sessions in the pod were essential, not only because she needed to be familiar with the controls, but also because the pod needed to become familiar with her reactions. It learned about her from the way she moved. It built a store of information about how she responded and reacted with each new run. It used this accumulated data to face her with new simulations to probe her weaknesses and attempt to shore them up.

  Over the past few weeks she had improved considerably and she knew it. It gave her an extra level of confidence.

  The pod provided sensory input over the entire surrounding sphere and her focus of attention within that orb was guided by the movements of her head, hands, and eyes. One of the hardest things to learn in the battle pod was to react to signals appearing in the periphery of her vision. She had got a lot better at that. Another danger was simulated physical incapacitation — then the level of control diminished. It was why full manual override was provided. Of course, manual control was not as effective or as fast, but if she got good enough it would do the job if it should come to it.

  Now, to concentrate on the simulation. Sharpen her thoughts — achieve that focus.

  The pod hit her with a multi-angled attack. The ships streaking toward her were unfamiliar, and very briefly, she wondered what new surprise they had in store for her. No time for thinking though; the ships were virtually upon her.

  Warnings flashed up in front as the phantom ships swept in. There was no text. All the displays were in pictographs or colours. Learning to read and understand them was part of the process.

  The pod had already identified the intruders as hostiles, and the pale glow of her shields suffused her vision as they snapped into place. An alarm sounded in her ear and a warning indicator flashed in front of her eyes. One hostile was approaching in close, out of her direct field of vision. Rapidly she spun about searching for it.

  There it was, behind and below, taking advantage of her blind spot. It was a standard tactic in sudden attacks. Come up from behind and below. It was not normal for someone to have their full attention trained immediately beneath their backside. The capacity for all round concentration had to be trained, and she knew that many a raw weapons tech had been caught that way.

  She sent a quick volley speeding toward the intruder, not even waiting to see the effect. She knew instinctively that she had met her mark. Instantly, her attention was back on the other three ships.

  Two were grouped in formation to the front, providing support for each other. The third was fading off to one side, hoping to catch her off guard, slowly inching around behind, just out of range. It was not so different from hand to hand combat. She sent a salvo to the front, hoping to stall, or at least dissuade the paired ships from attacking her head on, and then just as quickly swung around to track the third. There was no third. Where had it gone? It couldn't just have disappeared.

  There was no sign anywhere — nothing to suggest the other ship's presence. But wait. A slight flicker off to her left and above. Not one, but two.

  Two ships. So where had the other came from? Too far yet. Concentrate on the first two. Focus on what mattered.

  She swivelled to meet the more immediate threat and the screen flared red in front of her. Damn! She had taken a hit. She was too slow. Too much time spent thinking, not enough spent reacting. Faster — she had to be faster. She launched three quick volleys in succession at the pair in front of her, automatically compensating as the pod piloted the ship into a defensive roll against the return fire. She spun about to target the two ships to the side.

  They were just pulling into the edge of her firing range. Perfect timing. Her finger was poised, ready to launch as she kept one eye on the images representing the ships approaching from her front, and noted with satisfaction that one was down. Her finger stayed poised, waiting for the moment. Not just yet ... now!

  Two quick volleys shot out at the leftmost ship and it blossomed into a ball of energy. The ship on the right did the same, then disappeared.

  So that was it. One of the two ships had been a mere doppelganger, a defensive image projected to confuse and drew fire. She had just been lucky and picked the right one to fire on. No time to think about it though. She had the other ship to deal with. Once again, she turned to the front.

  The simulator provided the illusion of The Dark Falcon sweeping down and in for the kill. She raised her finger with a sense of grim satisfaction, preparing to make the final shot. Suddenly Chutzpah scrabbled at her shoulder, dragging at her attention.

  "Not now Chutz," she hissed at him.

  A barrage of noise and light invaded her senses as her screens flared to white and then faded to black. The cacophony was replaced by a silence that roared in her ears.

  She was dead. The Dark Falcon had been destroyed.

  Mahra swore. But how? She had kept both sets of ships in her field of vision. She took out the ship to the side and was just about to deal with the one to the front. It fired and missed. She watched the shots streak past below her. So how had they managed to take her? She keyed the replay in frustration, pausing to wipe a trickle of perspiration from the back of her neck.

  She saw it almost immediately. The first ship she had hit, the one that came at her from below, weathered the blast. It stayed in the background and waite
d until the height of the battle when she was otherwise occupied. Then it moved in for the kill. Somehow Chutzpah had known and tried to warn her.

  She frowned. That was just not possible. It was only a simulation. The sounds and images fed directly to her and none other. She shook her head.

  Pushing the mystery to one side for the moment, she concentrated on the remainder of the analysis. The rest of her performance was almost faultless, but once-again her overconfidence had led to her downfall. She should have made sure of the first ship and removed the threat while she still had the chance. If the scenario was played out in real life, she'd have lost all aboard The Dark Falcon. She berated herself for incompetence and hit the sequence for another run.

  The only thing the pod couldn't simulate effectively was the interaction between pilot and weapons tech. The pilot also had weaponry, but it was secondary to the principle task of keeping the ship out of danger. The pilot's real job was to fly, not fight. When in the pod, in a live situation, she'd be patched directly to the pilot's com. She wondered how it would go in a live battle if it ever came to that. The combination of Pellis's impulsive nature and her own overconfidence could prove a dangerous recipe. At least she was becoming aware of that danger.

  Chapter Seven

  Valdor was near the end of his patience. He really had to get out. His frustration was gnawing at him as he paced his offices, chewing his lower lip, and gently massaging his left temple with one thumb. He had expected the Sirona to show by now and there had been no sign of them. And he was no closer to finding out anything more.

  It wasn't Marina's fault that she'd come up with nothing. She had been an absolute gem throughout all of this, but Valdor felt crippled. He had to know. He stopped pacing for a moment and ran his fingers back through his hair before growling with frustration.

  For the past three weeks, he had been tucked away, safe yet removed, as he kept a low profile — and that was the dilemma. He'd been in constant contact with his people throughout the intervening period and nothing at all untoward had happened. There had been not a single sign to suggest Sirona interest or involvement. His operations progressed, as close to normally as could be expected. In some respects, their momentum was self-perpetuating, but he was still not comfortable keeping himself away from the hub of it.

  Milnus had drawn a complete blank as far as the Sirona intrusion and tampering were concerned. Even more frustrating. He had every faith in Milnus. If there was something to be found, Milnus would have found it.

  Valdor was starting to have lingering doubts that anything had occurred. It was so surreal. The question was, what to do now? He could continue as if nothing had happened and take up where he left off. It would be that simple, but then again it would not. To be left harbouring that grain of doubt would be maddening. He needed some sort of resolution. He strode to the mantle, retrieved his com, and watched his stern reflection in the mirror as he keyed access.

  "This is Valdor. Milnus — now."

  His lips thinned with determination as he waited. The decision was made.

  "Milnus? Yeah fine ... Good, have you come up with anything yet? ... Curse it man, what are you doing ...? No, never mind. I want to see you here ... yes, in about an hour."

  He thumbed the connection and rested his chin on the back of his fist, still questioning the wisdom of the decision.

  Milnus arrived on time and sat in front of the desk waiting for Valdor to acknowledge him. His Head of Security knew better than to speak to him before he was ready, and Milnus waited patiently, while Valdor prepared himself a drink and settled himself in the large wing-back. Valdor fixed Milnus with an expressionless stare, and toyed with his glass, deliberately drawing out the pause before he spoke.

  "So, what have you got to tell me? Any progress?"

  "None whatsoever I'm afraid, Mezzer Carr."

  "Fire! What do I pay you for? I want results dammit!"

  "I'm sorry, Sir," Milnus said calmly in response to the outburst, " — but nothing. There was no evidence of tampering. No sign of any untracked craft. Nothing."

  The paused lengthened as Valdor thought, taking stock of the situation. At least Milnus had the good sense not to question his perceptions. He had been with him long enough to know better than that.

  "All right, if you have nothing to tell me, then you have nothing to tell me. I've decided to continue operations as normal from here. I'm going to take up the slack. I don't think that I need to stress the requirement for extra vigilance. You are good at what you do, Milnus. Just make sure that you try to be a little better. If I've made myself clear, you can leave."

  Valdor dismissed him with an arch of his eyebrows and backward tilt of his head before returning to slowly swirling the clear fluid in the cut glass supported in his hand.

  He really had no choice now but to return to the way things were. Perhaps a little more care was in order, but apart from that…. One thing he had determined to do, was to find out as much as he could about the troublesome aliens. With the breadth of his information network, that shouldn't be too hard.

  Valdor sent out his feelers and the results started to roll in rapidly. He occupied himself with his own bit of archival research as he waited for answers. For all their impact on various scattered worlds throughout the system, there seemed to be surprisingly little known about the Sirona, and that surprised him a little. They were definitely high tech and probably far in advance of anything Valdor was aware of. The trickle of technological trade with the Sirona in the past was enough to support that thought. It seemed the only things known for sure, were those pieces of information that the Sirona had provided themselves. All the rest was conjecture. There were various theories, of course.

  One of the most interesting to Valdor was, that their social structure appeared very similar to that of an insect colony, rather than a sentient race. There seemed to be no way of telling any of them apart, and on the rare instances when groups were observed together, they all appeared to act in concert. Neither was there any visible communication between them. Each time a group was involved, there had always been only one, and one alone doing the communicating. The rest just appeared to be making up the numbers.

  A few days later, his comp unearthed an obscure article by some academic, who claimed to have been aboard one of their ships. Within it, he claimed he observed more than one type of Sirona. He also asserted that the Sirona ships were basically organic in structure. Of course, he had no evidence to support his claims and the paper was taken as rank sensationalism designed to bolster an already obscure and flagging academic career. The scorn he garnered as a result of the publication had relegated him to the intellectual wasteland and he had retired to obscurity, what remained of his career in tatters. Valdor noted the information anyway and tucked it away for later reference. You could never tell when it might be useful.

  For the next few weeks, things behaved fairly much as normal within Carr Holdings. The power base grew imperceptibly and the income came in. Valdor set about removing a proportion of the dead wood within the structure. There was only little, because he ran the operation lean. By the time he had finished, it was almost skeletal. From time to time he had doubts, wondering perhaps if he was taking the paranoia too far, but he reconciled himself with the thought that anyone he had to carry, ultimately could not be trusted anyway. The process appeared to have a positive side-effect, for those who remained within the network showed that little bit more effort, as if trying to prove that their worth was real. Such dedication. Still, it was no less than he demanded.

  The merger between Interworld Logic Systems and Germ Cells Incorporated progressed without hitch and he was faced with the further task of trimming the excess fat from the new corporate monolith. In this case he took a personal interest. Not only had the project always been his baby, but he wanted extra insurance. The Sirona had given him time to think after that initial meeting, but that was it. What were they playing at?

  The corporate reorganisation prov
ided him with many opportunities. True, the controlling interest in Interworld Logic and Germ Cells came back to Carr Holdings, but he wanted more than that. Along with the removal of those that did not, in his mind, deserve a place in the new structure, he made a few strategic placements of his own. Sometimes it was good to have a number who were on the payroll twice. It gave him a direct line to what was really going on, and not just through channels he already owned.

  New Helvetica was conducive to power structures that rested on intrigue. The New Helvetian psyche had developed from a culture that survived on political subterfuge just like the economy. Valdor toyed for a while with the idea of placing Milnus within the organisation, but finally decided against it. Milnus was worth too much in Carr Holdings. Besides, he already had a few good people inside ILGC.

  Naturally, the merger had repercussions; enforced redundancies, changes in contractual conditions. All did little to establish healthy employee relations. There was a series of rolling strike actions and industrial disputes. Valdor didn't care about these too much. It was the accompanying media attention that really annoyed him. Concessions and payoffs finally had to be made, and eventually, as was the nature of these things, the media lost interest. Some took their lump-sums and moved on, others accepted the new conditions and stayed. At the end of it, Valdor achieved the combination of resources and knowledge he was aiming for, and the resulting shock waves faded into insignificance.

  A few troublesome wrinkles remained to be smoothed out in the strategic make-up at board level, but that was the heart of the organisation or what it did. They would be sorted out to his satisfaction in time.

  At the core of ILGC, what the whole merger was about, was the strategic alliance of technical expertise that could produce the results that he wanted — the biocomp. The research effort took place in absolute secrecy. He made sure it provided a meeting of the finest minds from the two former companies, and he planned to be at the helm. Every researcher had been fully checked out and Valdor was sure there were no problems. Scientific careers could be made or broken here and the participants were aware of what was at stake.