"Yes, but I told you — "
"Yes, I know. It's a risk. But what choice do we have. I have a suspicion about something and there's only one way to test it. If this works, then I'll explain it all to you. If it doesn't, well, we're no worse off than we are now and we might just get lucky ... I think we ought to use the drive ... Timon, what do you think?" She had to get his support.
"Well, I don't know ... but we're sure as hell not going to gain anything sitting here waiting to be sent to our next life. What the hell. Jayeer?"
"But we just don't know do we? There are too many unknowns. If we are — "
At that moment events made the decision for them. On the edge of the scanners, another ship appeared, moving slowly in toward them. Its call sign identified it as their contact, arriving just a little before the appointed rendezvous time.
As they watched it creep in, mere moments after it appeared, in concert, a sharp beam of glowing light arced out from each of the surrounding Sirona ships. They found their focus immediately and their contact disappeared from the screens in a glowing storm of energy.
Sind didn't wait. At the same instant as their contact was transformed into nothing more than a glowing cloud of burning gas, he flipped up a panel on the main console and slapped his palm down on the pad.
Instantly their universe exploded.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The jump coursed through every particle of their beings. For an awful moment Mahra believed the move had come too late and she was experiencing her death as the fury of Sirona weaponry consumed them. Then, just as suddenly, the sensation stopped. The other two looked at each other, then back at her questioningly. Then they turned to observe the instrumentation.
Mahra, her hands slick with damp, gripped the back of Timon's couch. Images of those beams of light still played in her head, but she struggled to concentrate and look at what the instruments were showing.
Very little made sense. The normal ship sounds continued. The gentle hum they were normally only partially aware of continued unabated. The slight hiss of white noise filled the com. There were no sounds of traffic or the distant garbled muttering of far-off approach controls.
Mahra realised she was holding her breath and prompted herself to start breathing normally. It seemed as if she was not alone, for Sind let forth a lengthy exhalation and Pellis whistled long and low through his teeth. So far, they seemed to have made it — but made it to where? Outside the screens showed nothing. There was a blanket of greyness and it rolled with snowy haze.
"Well, this is simply fine," muttered Sind.
"Oh, I don't know, Jay. It makes a change from boring black, doesn't it?" said Timon.
"Listen, you two," Mahra said, desperate to get their attention. She was in no state of mind for their banter right now. She had to concentrate. "I want to try something. I'll be back soon. Timon, can you put on the com please. Jayeer, if you just keep an eye on the readings."
They looked at the screens and then at each other with a puzzled expression. Sind shrugged, shaking his head and Pellis reached slowly for the com as Mahra turned and made her way off the flight deck. For some reason, the visual aberrations troubling her sight seemed to have gone away. A further suspicion was growing in her mind and the fact that the images had diminished confirmed it for her. Her sense of purpose grew as she worked her way up into the battle pod and strapped herself into her harness. Piling her hair up and underneath the headset she sealed it into place and took a deep breath.
Immediately her senses were awash with grey. She was suspended in a vast cloud of floating ash flecked with lighter and darker spots. The sudden noiseless light swept over her, overloading her perceptions with blankness. It took a moment to adjust to what she was seeing, but then she could pick out different hues among the visual static — traceries that had form and distance and colour. She concentrated on them and their clarity increased. Some colours ranged through areas beyond her normal visual spectrum, but she could see them anyway. They were colours she couldn't put a name to, but they were there all the same, and she could see them.
Concentrating still further, she distinguished a long tube of concentric rings along which they appeared to be travelling. They were definitely moving along its length, and as they travelled, the rings grew steadily smaller. They were the same rings she had seen just before the Sirona ships emerged. In her mind's eye, she concentrated on the point where those rings would eventually converge, and with a certainty, she knew where that point would be. She also knew where that point was, in relation to where they had just come from. It was as if she had a vast map in her head and she could plot the two points relative to one another. She suddenly had her solution.
"Timon. I want you to try something," she said over the com. "Turn her forty-five, would you?"
Pellis responded and turned the ship to the right. As he did so, she lost perception of the rings, their endpoint, and the sense of a long corridor along which they travel.
"Again please. Back forty-five. And be precise."
As the ship turned back to its original heading she was disappointed to find that the rings did not reappear. She muttered a curse and felt her hopes sinking. Just when she thought she had been totally mistaken, they flicked past the edges of her senses and she realised what had happened. She still wasn't thinking straight. She had to find that still place within her and concentrate — concentrate on the patterns just as she would on the patterns of her exercises with the blade. Urgently, she spoke once more into the com.
"Right fifteen, now. Left five, and up the same"
She was right! They were back on their original heading. Those wonderful geometries encircling the ship were back. She could feel their end point and she knew somehow that it was the same endpoint she sensed before. She felt the point behind them again as well. She knew then, without doubt, that it was the point where they made their jump. So far so good. If only Chutz was here to share this with her. Very briefly she wondered if he would have seen it too.
"Timon, take her in a slow swing to the left until I tell you to stop. When I do, try and do it as quickly as possible. Okay? Go!"
The Dark Falcon began a slow turn. Mahra immediately lost sight of the first shapes, but as they turned she began to see others. They swung past a tracery of rings heading in another direction. She could feel them just as easily as the path that they were travelling on previously. With each one, for that briefest instant as they entered the corridor of moving circles, she knew there was a point they led to at each end. These were the corridors that connected space, and she, Mahra Kaitan, could see them. She knew now what they had to do. She'd need maps.
It would be a painstaking search but it was one that she could achieve. Guiding Pellis with her voice, she turned the ship little by little, coming across new pathways and testing them with her new perceptions. Finally, she found one that seemed to end close enough to where they made their initial jump away from the Sirona. It was several worlds away but close enough to get their bearings. With a rush of determination, she tore off the headset and clambered down to join the others up front.
"Timon, Jayeer, I think I know where we were going." She waited while the pair exchanged doubtful glances. "No, listen, I'll explain all of it later. At least what I think I know, but just trust me on this. I want you to keep following my directions. When I tell you, cut the drive. I'm going back up."
She ignored the questioning glances that followed her as she made her way back out toward the pod.
She strapped herself into place, replaced the headset, and her senses were immediately assaulted by the vast nothingness. Gradually her mind adjusted to the input and she began to pick out the shapes in the surrounding field. The transition would have to be something she got used to. Carefully, she began to guide them down the corridor. The shapes that travelled the pathway grew smaller as they went, gradually increasing in frequency until they were pulsing with a rapid and regular beat.
"Jayeer, get ready to
cut the drive when I tell you. All right. Now!"
Sind palmed the drive into inactivity at her command and as it died away, her vision flooded with blackness speckled by points of light. Her normal visual senses returned, and with relief, she picked out the steady glowing beacons of worlds and suns sprinkled across the ebon field. The sense of achievement she felt echoed in her voice.
"Jayeer, Timon, cut all drives. I want you to meet me in the rec. I think we've got a lot to discuss. And Jayeer, bring a map pad."
She tore the com and headset from her, fingers fumbling in her haste to get down and tell them what she knew.
By the time she had extricated herself from the restraints and made her way along to the rec room, the other two were already there waiting, curious expressions on their faces. She took her time preparing a mug of kahveh before joining them at the table trying to order her thoughts. Too much was still going on in her mind, and she felt herself trembling. There were too many memories, too much anger. But she couldn't afford to think about the Sirona now, not now. Not just yet.
As she had instructed, Sind had brought along the map pad. She sat across from them and gripped her mug so that the shaking in her hands would not show. She took a deep hesitant breath, then looked slowly from one to the other.
"Timon, Jayeer, I have some news for you," she said slowly. "Mahra Kaitan can navigate in jump."
An immediate expression of incredulity replaced the look of curiosity on Sind's face.
"Mahra, I don't think we're really in any sort of a position to be making jokes."
"No, just shut up and listen for once, Jayeer," she said. "This is hard enough as it is. I'm serious. Deadly serious. Where's your map pad?"
He slid it across the table to her. Thumbing it on, she scrolled through the displays until she located the one she was after. She slid the unit back to Jayeer and leaned across the table stabbing at the screen with her forefinger.
"I would say we were right about ... here," she said, tapping a spot on the display. "Go and check it if you don't believe me."
Sind stood, and carrying the map pad with him left the rec room to do just that. Moments later he returned, an astonished looked on his face.
"Dammit, Timon, if she isn't right. It's exactly where we are. But how?"
Mahra looked at him and nodded slowly, her suspicions finally confirmed.
"This may take a bit of explaining. But I think at the moment we've probably got the time. Nobody is going to know we're here for a while." She took a sip at her kahveh, then a deep breath. "When the Sirona ships appeared before, a lot of things fell into place for me. It strung together some logical connections that I hadn't been able to make before then. I'll come back to the Sirona later, but before I do let me put a few things in perspective. For a start, you both know I've been feeling not quite right since that night in the bar?"
"Uh huh," Timon confirmed.
"Well, for a while I thought it was what happened to Chutzpah that did it. He and I had, well, a special link. It is hard to explain but it's a sort of mental symbiosis, I guess you'd call it. When he cracked his head, it had to have been disrupted in some way. I lost it, and it was as if something was ripped away from inside me. That was almost certainly the reason why I blacked out back there. Anyway, from about the time I regained consciousness, I was plagued with these strange visual distortions, almost like dopplering of everything I was seeing. I didn't say anything about them, because I believed they were the after-effects of what happened. I thought it was just my mind trying to come to terms with his absence. It was quite a shock to me not having him there. Not being able to feel him. I didn't want to worry either of you with something I believed I could deal with by myself."
Sind seemed about to say something, but Mahra raised her hand to stop him.
"Please, Jayeer," she said. "The thing that finally got me to thinking that I was completely wrong about it — perhaps not the cause, but most certainly what I was going through — was the Sirona ships. You see ... I saw them arrive several moments before they actually did."
"How do you mean?" asked Sind. "I don't understand. How could you see them before they arrived?"
"That is exactly how it was. It's a bit hard to explain, but it was as if there were these pathways that opened up, sort of overlaid on what I was seeing and then the ships were just there. It happened so quickly. At first, I didn't think they were real, that they were just more symptoms of what I was feeling. And then you saw the ships Timon, and I knew I wasn't seeing things. It was then that the connections started to become apparent. You see they arrived using jump drive and I saw where they were going to arrive before they did."
"Uh-huh. I think I'm beginning to see the pattern here." Pellis said thoughtfully. "And that's right. You cried out a moment or two before they appeared. I remember thinking it was strange at the time, but there was so much going on ... "
"So, that started me thinking. I made another connection, or thought I had. Really it was a series of connections. There seemed to be a genuine cause and effect there. Now, when I was very young I had a similar link to the one I had with Chutz. It was with, well, I suppose you'd call him my teacher. He died. At that time, I experienced something when he went, and it was similar to what I felt when Chutz cracked his head. But the thing was, there were no lingering after-effects like the ones I was experiencing and that made it somehow different. When the Old One died on Cradle, I felt as if a part of me was lost, but it was over and gone. I felt that same thing in the bar. It was the same, and yet different. I didn't remember it at first."
"Yes, I see," said Sind, now also looking thoughtful and chewing on the end of his thumb. "So, what made you make the connection with the drive?"
"A number of things really. To fill you in properly I need to give you a little bit of the background of where I was brought up. I grew up on a world that we knew as The Cradle. The entire world was sort of an experiment. It was started by a group of psycho-social theorists who had these ideas about furthering the advancement of human mental development. They believed that society and human mental progression were being hampered by society's heavy reliance upon tech. That was the theory anyway. But they didn't stop just there. All the people on Cradle had an operation at a very early age. I've got this set of neural implants that were supposed to enhance the functioning of my brain in certain directions. Everyone on The Cradle had them. Part of my upbringing involved rigorous mental and physical training. Now that physical and mental training was meant to develop those abilities, but we never really knew why we had the implants. Whether it was planned or not, I think those implants are very important to what I'm about to tell you. So, the implants, my upbringing, I guess they're all part of the reason why I am as I am today."
Mahra swallowed before continuing, fighting to hold her composure. "When I was about fifteen, The Cradle was attacked and virtually all of the population wiped out. I was one of the few survivors. There weren't very many who made it off alive. The connection here, and it was one that I couldn't had made until today, was the Sirona ships. I had never seen a Sirona ship before today. At least I thought I hadn't. You see the ships that destroyed The Cradle were Sirona."
Mahra paused for a moment to let that statement sink in before continuing.
"So ... why would the Sirona want to wipe out the population of a world that was basically isolationist, performed very little trade, and had no contact with the rest of the system? Answer that, and at the same time, answer a further question. What have the Sirona got that we haven't got? Answer?"
"The jump drive," Pellis and Sind answered in unison.
"Exactly. The only things that distinguished the population of The Cradle from the rest of the system were twofold. One, the neural implants, and secondly a tendency toward mental training. If you put that together with the things that were happening in my head, and the fact that I saw warning signs of the Sirona arrival before it actually happened then it starts to fall into place. On top of that, I
remembered what you told me about the drive, Jayeer. The reason why it remained experimental was because nobody knew where the thing was going to end up when it made a jump. Whatever happened to Chutz must have somehow awakened some latent ability within me. An ability given by both these implants and the training I had when I was young. I'd been told about these things, but had no idea as to their purpose. Seeing the Sirona ships made me remember them. All that bundled together made me think it was right. I had to try it. I've seen what the Sirona can do, and we didn't have much to lose."
"Fire, Mahra, I think you've found it!" said Pellis, slamming his fist into his hand. "Curse me if we don't have some work to do though. So, Mahra," he said more calmly, concern written across his face. "You look a bit shaken up. Do you think you can find our way back to New Helvetica?"
"Yes, I'm almost sure of it. But there's only one way to find out."
"Yes, yes, of course. As long as you're sure? I think we need a few minutes to think about this. If you're right, we have a hell of a lot to do. So too does the CoCee. We might finally have the means to beat the Sirona at their own game. What do you say, Jayeer?"
Sind's eyes were fixed somewhere in the distance. His mouth hung slightly open. He shook his head and seemed slowly to return to awareness of where he was.
"Um, could you make me a kahveh, Timon?" he said distractedly, pulling at one earlobe.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Armed with a clear starting point and a fair idea of the direction they needed to take, Mahra had little difficulty locating the pathway that would took them to the New Helvetian homeworld. She was sure as experience grew, the process would become easier and easier. When she became familiar with the patterns, they would come naturally, just in the same way that her fighting reflexes were a natural extension of her practice with the forms and patterns she did virtually every day. The enormity of what she was about to became involved in hadn't struck her yet but she was fairly sure it would come. There was so much to deal with.
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