The Jump Point Read online

  The Jump Point

  Anthony James

  The Jump Point © 2017 Anthony James

  Revised edition

  This is a work of fiction. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  Prologue

  No one knew where the Sirona came from, or where they went when they were done. Some speculated that they had a homeworld, but others were not so sure. Whatever the case, we knew that when they appeared above our worlds with their offers of trade, we were powerless to do anything about them.

  Their great, silver ships materialised out of the void over many of our worlds. Their technology was so far advanced, and yet they seemed interested in the insignificant things we had to offer. We knew there was little we could do to send them on their way.

  After a time, their invisible hand became too strong. The Combined Council of Worlds was formed to inject order. Wherever the Sirona had been, disorder and social decline could be found. We didn't know why or how, but the implications were clear. Though the CoCee studied the Sirona and their technology, we came no further forward. Their culture remained an enigma. Dealing with one Sirona was like dealing with any other and may as well had been, because the individual Sirona knew all the dealings of the others. We were perplexed. The things that caught their attention and the scheme behind what they did lay beyond our comprehension. Much later, we began to understand.

  Those things wrought by the Sirona were deep and dark. And some became known only years after they happened, obscured by our divisions and our separate ways. One such was Lantana, The Cradle.

  Lantana was designated a crib world: a vast sociological experiment established some generations past by a collection of academic renegades from the established orthodoxy. The Lantanans called their world The Cradle. The basic tenet of its foundation was the development of the individual in mind and body. The fundamental axiom was the conscious limitation of technology.

  Throughout its brief history, The Cradle had little interaction with the other worlds. Its inhabitants maintained a fierce protectionist policy. The world was not technology free — far from it — but they purposely limited its use. Where the mind and body could do something, the Lantanans believed the mind and body should. Their social order, their training, all the pedagogy was based around this principle.

  Lying at the cornerstone of this regime, was a series of enhancements introduced by neural surgery. Shortly after their first year of life, neural extensors were implanted in the young Lantanans, linking the two hemispheres of the brain. These organic implants grew and developed with the normal maturation to adulthood. The pathways, coupled with the unorthodox disciplines and training resulted in a different mode of thought; a new lateralism and perspective found nowhere else in the system. It gave the emerging Lantanans a capability to view and analyse things in ways unfamiliar to the rest of the system.

  Because of The Cradle's isolationist policy, few outside knew about or experienced their perspective or their program of social engineering. For years, it remained a zealously guarded secret.

  Numbers expanded in the initial stages of The Cradle’s foundation, but the growth stabilized once it reached what the leaders deemed was optimum. The Lantanans held no illusions about their vulnerability or the reality of external threat. Defence of personal freedom was recognized and guarded as was the latitude to pursue their own ideals. They became a hermit world to guard that freedom.

  They kept so separate from the rest of us that no one knew when the great silver ships appeared above Lantana. None saw the devastation. Nor did anyone know why it occurred — not even the survivors, few that they were.

  Chapter One

  Mahra cursed to herself. Damned port security. The voyage could have been a lot better. How was she to know about the security crackdown? The confusion at the port on check-in should had alerted her, but it didn't. Well, despite the trouble, she was here now, in yet another unremarkable hotel room, on yet another world. Nothing changed. One world was much like any other these days. One city the same as the next.

  She spat on her whetstone and drew it in long even strokes across her blade edge. The flat, sheenless surface felt good resting across her thighs. Wherever she was, she always had her blade. She had made sure of it after her years without. This was her ritual, her daily meditation. The rhythmic motion helped focus her in that small, quiet place, where she could think unsullied by the day's tensions. Despite the years that had passed, she kept to the Old One's teachings. They sustained her alertness and sharpness; attributes that kept her on top in her line of work. She didn't even feel the cold when she was occupied with her blade, and cold it was. Miserable excuse for a place. Miserable excuse for a planet.

  "Oh well," she said to herself. "Better here than nowhere."

  Chutzpah, her small furry companion, chittered on her shoulder. The grey bush of his tail flicked up and down, expressing his annoyance.

  "I know, I know. You're hungry. Come on, we'll get you something to eat," she said, and nuzzled the side of his head.

  She sighed, stuffed the whetstone back into the pouch at her belt, and drew herself to her feet. Chutzpah teetered on her shoulder, then righted himself, claws scrabbling and then digging into the cloth at her shoulder. He stuck his tail out to counterbalance. It was most unlike him not to sense and anticipate her moves. He had to be out of phase. Perhaps it was simply the cold.

  Mahra sheathed her blade, slipped it back over her right shoulder and stooped to toss her pack onto the bed behind her. She flipped open the tabs, upended the pack, and let the contents spill out across the covers. After some shuffling through them one-handed, she located the bag of coz nuts and pulled out a small handful. Chutzpah caught the scent and strained forward, nose aquiver. She placed a small pile on the chair next to the threev, and leaned her body forward to allow him to jump from his perch.

  "There you are, Chutz," she told him. "But that's all. They've got to last. Don’t know when next I’m going to be able to afford some more."

  She scratched the space between his ears with one finger, as nut held between his forepaws, he cracked noisily into the tough shell.

  The hotel was a little less salubrious than she'd have liked, but Mahra was currently between contracts. She slowly turned and took stock. Fairly sparsely appointed. Not even a sim set. Sure, it had a threev, but where didn't? There was not even a remote for it. Still, it was about as much as her card could bear at the moment. She was counting on the fact that, even now, it would take a week or two for any registrations to get back and blow her limit at Credit Central. By then, she should have picked up something, even if it was only a short-hop sign on. Even with that, she should be able to spin it out until something more solid came along. She didn’t like the should though. New Helvetica was a nice enough place she supposed — for a fridge world. She wasn't exactly part of the resort set though. Brightly coloured therm wear didn't really suit her, or most of her purposes. Besides, Chutzpah's claws would have made a mess of it. But she was here now, and hopefully something would come of it before her funds ran out.

  The New Helvetians were an austere race. En masse they seemed to have a penchant for shades of grey or brown; clothing and buildings and personality. There was no such thing as a rich comedian on New Helvetica, unless he or she were a tourist. Most of the New Helvetian population made their living on two major industries; tourism and tech. The former she could really do without. The latter was the reason she was here.

  Since the Twelve-Day War, the New Helvetians had remained visibly unaligned. Their emotionless character and apparent calmness made them excellent negotiators and an entire offshoot industry of diplomacy and business had gro
wn up around this talent. The truth was, that despite their professed neutrality, New Helvetica didn't really care which side it played, as long as there was a profit in it. They specialised in the sort of tech that made money — weapons tech and info tech. Either one fostered vested interested. If not caring which faction they supplied from one moment to the next constituted neutrality, then neutral they were. Despite the tripartite signings at the Combined Council, Mahra knew they still dealt on every side. The Council and intrepid journalists had been trying to prove it for years.

  The three major interest groups of the CoCee preached reduction on the one hand, and made their deals in private on the other. At least at this stage, they were all sitting down at the same table and actually talking. Not that she had any real interesting in what they were talking about. What she was banking on, and with what she knew, her particular skill set, Mahra stood a good chance of being able to pick up something as a fall-out of the New Helvetian subculture. For the moment, she had no concrete plans to speak of, but she was a believer in the principle that opportunities were made — they didn't just happen. If her voyage in had been any indication, however, she had a bit of work to do to change her luck. And she had better start doing so soon, because she was here with no idea how she was going to earn a few creds.

  For a start, she could check the bulletins and see if there was anything worthy of attention, but she doubted it. The sort of contract she was looking for was not the type that usually found its way into the open media or message boards. The less reputable bars and clubs around ports often provided her with the leads she needed, or at least snippets that would act as starting points. But she was not that familiar with New Helvetica, and she had to start somewhere.

  Chutzpah sat happily tearing out the flesh of a nut. He'd probably curl up where he sat and sleep when he got through the remainder. As usual, with these colder resort worlds, the heating tended to be a little too high and the room's stuffy atmosphere was conducive to drowsiness. Mahra couldn't afford to let herself succumb to the temptation to settle back and relax. She had work to do. She searched about the small room for a temperature control but to no avail. Same old story. She flicked on the threev and browsed the bulletin boards. After a few minutes, she decided there wasn't going to be anything there, so she flipped over to the news channel. Lead item was the expected retaliation attempted by the Warriors of Heaven against the Laizmuth and consequent upgrading of security at all ports.

  "Yeah, yeah. Tell me about it," she muttered at the screen.

  The only other item that caught her attention was a brief mention of a rumoured corporate courtship between the information giant Interworld Logic Systems and the biosystems company Germ Cells Inc. System-wide business giants flirting with each other was not so unusual, but what did ILS and GCI had in common? She thought about it for a few moments. Something was not quite right about the pattern. It was clearly time she did a bit of digging.

  She sifted through her belongings again and pulled out her palm comp. From time to time, it struck her as interesting that the technology had never got any smaller. She often spent her energies thinking about it. Despite the amount of time since her early years, tech still fascinated her. Perhaps it had been those years spent without it. Perhaps it was the questions Aleyin had left with her.

  The trend toward miniaturisation had halted abruptly with the realisation that such things were always going to be limited by the human physique. As voice activation and response had proved impractical with the strictures of both privacy and intrusion laws, size became limited by the fact that there was always something that needed to be pressed or swiped by a finger. The end of the human digit became the limiting factor. Screen size had also been a problem until the introduction of holo displays. Now the display could be zoomed to whatever size was comfortable. There might be a little less resolution, but not enough to really impact on the utility. Until the holo screen, portability had been limited by access to a hard screen, or the use of a detachable. Of course, there had been the inevitable flirtation with implants, but for some reason, that had simply trickled away, as far as she knew.

  Mahra keyed the sequence and the screen took shape in the air above the edge of her hand. Index — Infonet — Business, she drilled down through the pictographs and started her query. Mahra had long ago found that it saved her a great deal of time, and more importantly, expense on the nets, to have pre-set parameter groups she could overlay onto the search maps. These had been built up over the last few years and they served her well.

  Knowing the scan would take a few seconds, she let her attention wander over the rest of the bulletins, just in case. Finally, the screen flashed at her, indicating completion, and she cut the threev so she could devote her attention to the results. She had to rely upon her intuition, and her hunches were best formed without distraction.

  There were several categories to choose from and she scrolled through them to try and pick up some linkage — some connecting thread or background — that might lead her in the right direction. The task was made more difficult by the interwoven structure of ownership and interests. Each of the two companies had holdings in a dozen different areas and there was a trail of subsidiaries stretching down through level after level across virtually all the known worlds. Each subsidiary in turn had its own stakeholdings in other operations. Nothing matched the patterns. The link just didn't seem to be there.

  Somewhere at the back of her mind, something pushed to came forward, to snag her attention. Mahra had learnt to rely on these feelings, but she still needed to pin it down, to give it some shape. She normally did some of her best work at night, but this time perhaps she was just too tired. It wouldn't come, and she could feel there was no profit to be had in pushing at it. She bit her lower lip as she pressed the save sequence, turned the display off, and tossed the unit back on the bed. Let it come of its own accord if it was going to.

  She had the ready solution to her mood. She pulled her blade from its sheath and tested the edge. The first principles of her years of training; mind, body, and blade sharp — each relying on the others. She pulled off her clothes and boots, moved to the room's centre and lowered the blade point to the floor, concentrating her energy. Suddenly she spun the blade up and caught it as she moved into the first of her positions. Throw, catch, weave. One continuous fluid motion. Spin and catch hand to hand. She was thankful for the lofty ceilings characteristic of these old colonial worlds.

  She felt the stretching of her body and reflexes as she pushed herself further. Many a time her life had depended upon both. She couldn't afford to let herself get lax. Once was enough. That time, she had been going through a particularly down period and she had indulged it. The medics had carried her from that port bar and she still bore a scar on her left forearm to remind her what could happen if you let yourself slip.

  By the time she had completed the sequence, her firm muscles were slick with the gleam of sweat. She finished as she had started, in the fighting stance, legs slightly spaced, breasts rising and falling with her breathing. She touched the matte black blade to her forehead, then slipped it back into the sheath in one motion, her thumb tracing the edge as it slid into place.

  That was enough. She could put her mind to the thing that was nagging at her tomorrow. Maybe she'd find a lead, maybe she wouldn't. All she wanted to do now was wash off the stink of her travels, grab a few hours rest and start afresh in the morning.

  ֍

  The bar was packed. People pushed and jostled through the crowd, arms laden with drinks, and tried to manoeuvre their way back to their companions. The sound system blared the latest crash number and stirred her lower body with a heavy pulsing bass line, but it did little to distinguish itself from the people noise, their individual voices raised to make themselves heard above the din. Across one side a wall-high holo-screen writhed with the intertwined forms of naked flesh — coupling or dance, she couldn't quite tell. The air trailed ribbons of fragrant smoke and laughter. It
didn't look like the sort of place that would be good for business, but then, you never knew. It would do for the time being.

  This was already her third night of bar hopping around the port area, and it had produced little or no result. Mahra was becoming despondent. Chutzpah was unimpressed, and made his feelings known by nipping at her ear. She turned and snarled at him in reprimand, but he merely bared his teeth back at her. She could sympathise with the way he felt but she snapped back anyway.

  "Just put up with it, will you? We have work to do." She turned back to scan the unpromising crowd of revellers.

  By leaning right across the bar, she finally managed to attract the barman's attention. She held up one finger and gestured with her other hand. The barman raised his eyebrows and nodded, before moving further down the bar to pour the large mug of foaming brew. He returned and slapped it down in front of her and took her proffered card. He keyed the amount and swiped the reader. Then, giving the card a cursory glance, he flipped it back to her, where it landed in a puddle of the spilled drink. Mahra slid it from the damp surface and wiped away the wetness on her thigh, before slipping it away again. She suppressed an inward sigh of relief and let her breath out slowly. So, she hadn’t broken the bank yet.

  She really couldn't expect anything better from the barman, she supposed. After all, she didn't look like a resorter, and she wasn't likely to spend or tip the way they did. And he was right, she'd probably nurse this particular mug for some time if she ever found a booth or table. She turned, and propping her elbows on the bar, scanned the room for opportunities.

  Mostly, the bar was full of resorters. A la mode clothing, flashing teeth and jewellery, and laughter that was just a little too loud. Damn, but she hated that sort. There were a few navy types though, and one or two others she couldn't pick immediately. Any of them might turn out to be useful. There were, after all, two possibilities here. The first was to get a line on something, or a contact. The other was the hope of acquiring a hand weapon. The blade was good enough. It would do the job if it came down to it, but it could also leave her vulnerable. There was hand to hand, but there was also the possibility of being picked off at a distance by some clever fellow with a range weapon; a prospect she didn't exactly relish — not that it was likely to occur in a place like New Helvetica. The world was known for its layers of regulations and the fines that went with them.