Making the Grade (Omnia Online Series Book 2) (10 page)

Drake got the feeling that Samantha was eager for the change and challenge presented by the little avian girl.

“Fine, we’ll give her a chance to prove her value as a crew member.” said Drake.

With that decision made, Drake left the air-car to deliver the news.  Fiona had a tablet that she used for her studies.  Samantha was able to make a connection to the tablet, so she would now be with Fiona even when Drake was not.

The thought of keeping up with all the multitasking an A.I. took for granted, made Drake dizzy for a moment.  Samantha was with Drake, the ship (which Drake had to start thinking of as High Jinx), the game pod and now with Fiona, all at the same time.

Drake made his escape at last after telling Fiona’s parents about the plan Fiona, and he’d worked out.  If he were Fiona’s father, he wouldn’t have taken the information so calmly.  The couple actually looked relieved, like Drake had just agreed to take a burden off their shoulders.

It was early afternoon before Drake made it back to the High Jinx and exited the game, back into his virtual home.

For the rest of the day, Drake would concentrate on his training with Samantha.

That night Samantha gave Drake a special kind of thanks, which Drake enjoyed.

To Drake, she acted like she was just given a kid sister. Drake fell asleep thinking that this thing with Fiona wasn’t going to be temporary at all.

Monday morning, Drake arrived in the Garden Room on the top floor of the Guild Hall.  He’d never been to the Hall so early; there was still ten minutes to go before his 7 am meeting time.

The sun was just rising and lit the upper crystal dome of the garden roof with a dazzling array of pastel colors, as the sun cut through the early morning clouds.

Down below were Drake stood, the room was lit only by the reflected light, and the contrast from the still dim park, up to the glowing dome cause Drake to pause for a few minutes, just to watch the colors slowly shift as the sun rose into the morning sky.  If he hadn’t had a scheduled class, Drake could have stood there for an hour just watching the play of lights and shadows.

A few minutes later he headed into the small park that made up most of the top floor of the Guild Hall, to the place in the center where he expected to meet Allacia.

Drake didn’t find Allacia at the heart of the park where they usually met.  He found this a little strange since she was always the first person on the scene in the evening.

The whole park area was usually pretty quiet, but this morning there was a feeling of emptiness that he didn’t have when he visited it in the evening.

Drake put down the puzzle ball that he brought to this morning’s training.  He’d been using one just like it in his virtual training room, and he’d been tracing the puzzle’s pathways.  But he hadn’t yet figured out how to focus his psionic energy in a way that would allow him to move the little bead inside.  He’d hoped that he might get some help from Allacia today, in better understanding how telekinesis worked.

While Drake waited on Allacia, he started stretching his muscles to loosen up his body.  While doing this, he tried to add in the mindful meditation that he’d been adding to his morning routine in his training room.

As he moved, he breathed in deeply, just focusing on his movement and breathing.  He let the feel of the room, the air, his clothes, and everything around him just become something he was aware of, but not something he focused on.  So, he heard Allacia when she arrived, her feet as they met the grass, and her breathing. 

This was when he lost focus, Allacia was breathing hard like she’d been running and it wasn’t part of the pattern he was used to when being around her. 

Drake stood up to greet his teacher.  This was when he realized how much time had passed while he was in his meditative trance, about fifteen minutes had passed.  The sun was higher in the sky, and the contrast of light and shadow had diminished. Drake was momentarily saddened at the lost ephemeral beauty of the light that passed away as the sun rose in the sky.

Allacia didn’t look like her usual composed, almost distant self this morning either.  She was carting her regular duffle bag that she always brought to the evening training sessions, and was carrying two of the exercise mats they used.  Drake relieved her of the mats and placed them out.

The time meant that Allacia was about ten minutes late, which he figured was the reason she’d been running.  That was two things Drake had never seen her do, be late and then run to catch up.  He briefly wondered what had caused Allacia to be so out of sync this morning. 

As Drake took the mats to place them out, he said, “Hello Allacia, it’s been a beautiful morning.”

“Yeah, huh.  I don’t know if this morning training schedule is going to work.  I forgot that on Monday mornings I have a guild security group meeting at 6 am.  It usually only runs thirty to forty minutes, but it ran long today.  And I understand that you’re A.I. is partly to blame for that.  Something about people disappearing in the south?” said Allacia.

“Yes.” said Drake, then after a brief pause he continued, “She didn’t tell me she was going to drop that information back in your laps, but having knowledge that something is wrong must be better than being left in the dark?”

“I think so, my boss doesn’t like his weekends disturbed, though, and wasn’t happy this morning.  I’m just telling you this to explain why I was late and that if we continue with these early training sessions, it might happen again,” said Allacia.

“Ok, no problem.  Can you share anything new, beyond the information Samantha gave you?  I mean the Guild has to have better information sources than the public stuff I’ve access too.” asked Drake.

“Depends, are you going to take the assignment?  We can’t offer any more than the ranchers already agreed to pay.” She said.

“I’m not sure, the ranchers seem to want someone to go out and act like a marshal to bring what they think are poachers in for trial.  From what I can tell, there’s a lot more than poaching going on here, and I’m not the type to give an enemy an even chance when it comes to my life.  So, it depends on the terms and why the government and militia aren’t involved.” said Drake.

Alicia looked at Drake for a moment and then said, “Hmm, so you don’t know everything yet.  You really should develop an understanding of the local politics in any area where you might want to do any mercenary work.  Ok, I’ll give you this one free, since it's kind of public knowledge, anyway. By the way, in the future, a hundred credits to any decent information specialist will give you the lay of the local political landscape.  It’s a standard service they offer; in fact, you might want to check out their list of standard information packages.”

“So,” continued Allacia, “Colonel Dugald, the head of the planetary militia and Governor Tamazi have been at each other’s throats for the last four months or so.  They seem to hate each other, and both have thrown out accusations or hints that the other party is a crook.  This shouldn’t matter in the case of missing people and livestock, but the Governor has significant holdings in the south, and it serves Dugald’s interest to delay taking action, just to watch Tamazi squirm.  At least that’s our take on the situation at the moment.”

Drake thought for a moment and nodded, then said, “Is there any truth to the allegations?”

“We don’t know, and we’re not the police to go looking for trouble,” replied Allacia, in a tone that suggested that Drake should mind his own business.

Her tone brought his mind back to the proposed assignment.

“So then why do you think the Governor created a temporary marshals position for the job,” asked Drake. “That at least must be Guild business?”

“We’re not sure, except that Colonel Dugald and the local police captain are good friends.  One doesn’t fart without checking if the other is ready to pass wind too.  So the Governor might be using this problem to the south as an attempt to create an office that will in time become permanent and answerable to him.” said Allacia.

“I can’t tell you anything more.  And anything else we come up with will probably be reserved for the person who takes on the mission.  In this case, we’re willing to extend more than our usual level of support since we may have underrated the assignment.” Allacia concluded.

“So I think we were going to start on working up your mental defenses?” she asked, as she tried to move the focus of the session back on track.

“Yes, but I brought the puzzle ball along too since I’m having trouble understanding how to move the bead.” said Drake.

“Well let’s start with the ball then.”

“Start by sitting down, with the ball in your lap.  Then begin meditating, relax and find your connection to your inner power, your ruah.” Drake’s teacher directed.

As Drake focused on the task, he felt the now familiar presence of Allacia inside his mind.

She said, “Good, you're more focused today than you’ve been since you started training.  That will help.  Now bring up your ruah, your energy, and let it out, let it extend outward to sense the room around us, and the ball in your lap.  Don’t focus yet, just relax and observe.”

“Good, now slowly shift your focus down to the puzzle ball, what do you see?” asked Allacia.

“I see the bead at the bottom of the sphere and the maze.  It’s like a three-dimensional lattice of chambers and corridors, like a mini-space station sealed in a spherical shape,” replied Drake.

“Good, now stop for a moment and relax, you need to keep your mind calm and focused to see and feel with your ruah. Let that energy slowly focus on the small bead you need to move.  Now try to sense the ruah within the bead itself, everything has some ruah in it, some of the energy of life exists in everything around us.  Try to connect with the ruah in and around the bead, if you can do that then you just need to give it a little push, and it will move.” said Allacia.

Drake tried to focus and do as she instructed, but he could not feel the energy, this ruah, that she said should be part of the little bead in the maze.  Part of him just doubted that the inanimate bead could have any life energy of its own, and Drake couldn’t get his mind to just do, not doubt.

“Relax… Let me demonstrate, just watch and sense what I do,” said Allacia.

Drake fell back into his observant relaxed meditation and focused on the little bead and its surroundings.  He then felt Allacia’s own energy reach out and surround the tiny ball.  Unlike Drake’s own ruah, hers somehow flowed into and around the bead in a much more focused, stronger, more connected way that Drake just couldn’t yet fully understand.  And the bead moved.

Drake shouldn’t have been surprised, but he’d been working on getting the little thing to move on his own, and he was beginning to think that the small bead was glued in place.  At the moment that the bead moved, he lost focus and his connection to his own ruah, slipped away.

It only took a moment for him to regain focus.  But by then Allacia noticed his loss of concentration and released her connection to the bead.

“Well, I want you to work on making a connection to the bead in the puzzle for the next few days.  And we’ll see how you progress by the time we meet next Friday.  Oh, right, I forgot to mention, I won’t be able to make our Wednesday meeting this week, so plan on meeting again next Friday, ok?” said Allacia.

“Now let's move on, we should focus on building up your mental defense.  It's not really like building a shield or a wall, not at this level anyway.  It’s more about containing and holding your mind silent to the world around you.  Our minds are always transmitting our thoughts, it’s just how they work, but if you can control the flow of energy in your mind, people won’t be able to since your thoughts and emotions.  This is the first level of learning the art of mental defense.  This is what is taught to novice practitioners. In time you’ll learn there are more active ways to defend your mind, but those techniques take greater energy and focus. So we start here with learning the method we call ‘the silence of the mind.’” said Allacia.

For the remainder of the session, they practiced the mental skills needed for Drake to contain his thoughts and protect them from casual snooping from someone with the talent and training for psionic telepathic listening.  This new skill required a constant level of self-awareness that would take a lot of practice and time to become his new norm.

***

After Drakes morning psionic training session, he met Fiona in the lobby on the ground floor.

He didn’t have a set plan for what they’d do today, but he had a question to ask before they went to the Guild’s virtual training room that Samantha had reserved for them.

“I forgot to ask, how are you getting into the city for these meetings?” asked Drake, still unsure what to call this work/training time he would be spending with Fiona.

“Mom took me into Tryona, it’s the nearest town to us with a tube-way connection.  It’s a thirty-minute drive from where we live.” replied the girl.

Drake thought about that, thirty minutes wasn’t a long drive, and he’d heard of longer commutes, but if her mother planned on making it her daily routine then she would be spending two hours a day on her daughter's transport needs.  Anyway, it shouldn’t even be necessary for her to make the trip.

“Couldn’t your mother just have the car drop you off at the terminal?  Isn’t that how it’s usually done with an automated car?” asked Drake.

“Yes, and that’s how it will be when I return home this afternoon.  But mom had some shopping to do, and she wanted to see me off to my first day of work.  By the way, how much does an apprentice get paid?” she asked.

Drake thought,
‘Sure, con me into giving you a job and then ask me how much you make.’

“It’s something we need to work out.  But my thought was to set up a small mercenary/bounty hunter company.  The way we’d get paid would then be based on shares after funds were reserved for the ship and general expenses.  You as a crew member in training would then get half a share of anything we take in.  While I as the ship’s captain would get four shares.” said Drake.

“In more detail, a trainee is a half share crew mate, a regular crew member gets one share, a petty officer gets two shares, and a lieutenant gets three shares.  This way people who have a higher level of responsibility and skill will be better paid.” Drake continued.

“If we use this system, you won’t be paid until we make some money, but if you need money for anything duty related, like a vac-suit, the company can advance you the funds until you get paid.  Which means you may not get much spending money until we pay off your starting gear.”

“But ordinary expenses like food will be treated as company expenses and be taken from the pot before any shares are given out.”