Making the Grade (Omnia Online Series Book 2) (6 page)

“Hey, you could hardly call it snooping or hacking if they use such poor security.  And I didn’t hurt anyone.  It’s just that real hero’s are rare, and you’re real.  I just couldn’t resist trying to find out more about you.  Like where did you come from before you crash landed on Hassan anyway?”

Drake didn’t want to explain to what he was sure was an NPC, that he’d just started playing this game at the time.  So he gave a vague answer and switch to the verbal offensive.

“My background isn’t something I like to talk about, and certainly not something I would discuss with a child I don’t even know.  But accessing non-public information is hacking, no matter the justification, so you should try to be more careful about who you let know,” said Drake.

“I’m not a child, I’m 13 years old, and that’s old enough in Karurian society for a girl to be able to take care of herself!  And my name is Sul-Fiona Windloom!” the young lady insisted.

Drake found the girl to be amusing but tried to keep a straight face.  What was it about young teenagers insisting that they can take care of themselves, then before you knew it they’d be asking for help.

“So why did you come looking for me?  I don’t consider what happened back six weeks ago to be heroism, any ordinary man would have stepped up to help those people,” said Drake.

“I knew it!  I was right, you are a hero… And I need your help.  Can you find my mom and bring her back to me?” the young girl asked, suddenly going from enthusiasm and determination to tear-filled eyes.

One of the features Drake liked about the Avian race, besides their song like voices were their large expressive eyes.  She had those eyes, and they were filled with tears, and their hurt went straight to Drake's heart.

It didn’t help that the young girl's request reminded him of how he felt when he lost his mother.  He’d blamed himself for her death for a long time after.  She was driving to pick him up from football practice when her car was broadsided.  He kept telling himself that if he’d just walked home, she would still be alive.  It didn’t help when his dad started drinking and held Kevin to blamed too.

He remembered the pain, it was like emotional shards of broken glass filled his stomach at the time, and no amount of crying could ease the hurt.

He could see that same pain in this younglings eyes, the big expressive eyes, that should be forbidden by law.

Damn, he was trapped.

“Tell me what happened.”

Drake was late getting to his psionic training class with Allacia.

Sul-Fiona filled him in on how her mother, a research biologist studying the local fauna, had gone into the forest like she had on so many other days, and hadn’t returned, this was about three days ago.  There had been a search around the area where she did most of her sampling and used to observe the local wildlife.  There had been no sign to be found, and after a few days, the search had been called off.

Sul-Fiona’s father was sure that his wife had died, and had gone into a deep depression, leaving Fiona to take care of herself.  Drake learned from the girl that Karura mated for life and rarely did one outlive the death of its mate by long.  Her father had stopped eating, and Fiona was certain that she would lose him too if she could not find her mother.

This is why Fiona had come to the city looking for help.  Coming to the Guild Hall was her last hope and not much of one since she could offer no reward.

Drake knew he needed to find a real paying job, but there was just no way he could not at least try helping this girl.  Even though he was sure, they would now be looking for a body.

It was getting too late that day to start a search, so Drake told Fiona that she could stay on his ship that night and that he would rent an air-car in the morning to take her home, and see if there was anything he could do to help her.

She took him up on his offer.

Drake told her that he had a class meeting on the top floor of the building, but she was welcome to come up and remain in the garden area until his class was over.

He then accompanied the young avian girl to the top floor.

Drake wasn’t surprised at her expression when they got off the lift.

Most of the middle of the top floor of the Guild Hall was dedicated to a one hundred meter square indoor garden, covered by a massive glass skylight.  This garden room was where Allacia’s beginner psionic training group met, except they were not the beginners they once were.  They had all advance to the point where they could reach and make some sort of use of the inner energy hidden within each of them, the energy Allacia calle
d
ruah.  But none of them had moved as far ahead as Drake since he could now tap that same energy without having to go into a deep meditation.

Drake was more advanced in a few areas, but he still lacked the clarity of vision some of the other students possessed.  He could reach out with his psionic senses up to 6 meters now and do so without meditating.  In both of these area’s, he was more advanced than the rest, mostly due to the time he spent practicing in his training room.  Yet most of the other students had a more refined sense of what they could ‘see’ using their psionic ability.  Even at one meter, Drake had trouble determining if someone was holding up three fingers or four.  The rest of this group could make out much finer detail than Drake could, and this was causing him some frustration.

Today, he was the last student to arrive, and he quietly went to a training mat at the back of the group, trying not to disturb any of the other five students.

Drake wasn’t able to do his pre-class stretching.  It was his regular practice since the first class he attended.  He felt that the stretching helped him to focus on meditation since his muscles felt loose and relaxed.

The day’s instruction turned out to be another of the modules Samantha had downloaded.  The instruction covered mind-body control, which was just a fancy way of saying the class focused on encouraging their blood and ruah, as Allacia called psionic energy, to flow to specific parts of their body.  The purpose of this training was to either help the body recover from an injury or encourage muscles to recover energy from hard use.  The example Allacia used was that of a person running, a distance runner when growing fatigued could focus the blood and ruah to their legs, by doing so, their legs could gain the energy they needed to run, or could run faster as long as they maintained the proper mind-body focus.  Drake understood it to be a method of directing his ruah to reinforce the body, which sounded very useful after experiencing the last eight weeks of physical training.  He kind of wished he had this ability from the start.

Drake made only a little progress with this new skill.  To start using it, he had to go back to meditation, so that he could sense his blood flowing throughout his body.  That took most of the two hours of class time, just following his blood flow and detecting how it was moved and channeled throughout his body.  It seemed to be a pattern with psionic skills he was learning, that they sounded cool, and then turned out to be hard as hell to learn.

At the end of the class, Allacia gave everyone a warning about abusing mind-body control, “What you’ve learned today is meant as a tool for short-term use only.  If used right you’ll speed up your bodies healing and recovery to a select part of your body.  To use it, though, you must divert blood from the rest of your body.  If you try to divert blood away from the rest of your body too long, you’ll suffer side effects.  I’ve heard of people who ended up dying from failure of the kidney, liver or even the heart from reckless overuse of this same skill.  So be mind-full of the rest of your body too, and don’t try to use this ability for more than a few minutes at a time.”

“Please keep this warning always in mind when you use this skill,” said Allacia. “Ok, with that said, our training time is over for the night.”

“Hold up, Drake, I want to speak to you now that tonight’s class is over,” said Allacia.  Once she could talk to Drake with a little privacy, she went on, “The growth of your abilities has taken you in a different direction than the rest of the class.  I think you might better benefit from one-on-one training.”

Allacia paused, “And, not like you’re thinking,” she sighed, “Men, always thinking with their little head, the one with no brains.”

“Maybe it would be best for you to have another trainer?” she asked, seeming to consider the options.

Drake was used to this sort of response from his telepathic teacher.  He had little enough control of the thoughts that passed through his mind, but since he began playing in Omnia, his libido seemed on overdrive.  So his mind kept straying to the subject of sex.  He felt like he was going through a second puberty sometimes.

Drake sighed, “You wouldn’t be offended if you stayed out of my mind, which is something I need to train on still.  Allacia, I like you, sure, but I’m not going to act on my attraction, you’ve never given me any reason to believe you felt any more for me than any other student. I would very much like to continue training with you since getting to know and trust another teacher would take time.  Will you please continue on as my teacher?  Maybe you could start by teaching me that mental shield skill you once mentioned to me?”

Samantha had already loaded up on the next six most likely skills the group might learn, including mental shielding, telekinesis, sense emotions and a few others.  So Drake felt ready if they started training in something new.

Allacia looked at Drake for a few minutes.

Whenever she did this, he always felt like she was looking into his soul somehow.  Then she said, “Ok, Drake, we’ll make that your first lesson for our single group class.  Your class will have to be in the morning though before my shift, so start showing up here at 7 am on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  Oh, I also brought you a training puzzle ball.”

“A what?” asked Drake.

Allacia went to the duffle bag she brought with her to class and pulled out a metallic ball about a third of a meter in diameter, and tossed it to Drake.

The metallic ball wasn’t light, it weighed about seven kilograms, and seemed to be made of metal, but it had no seams or openings of any sort.

Allacia said, “What you’re holding is one of the puzzle balls we sometimes lend out to students.  If you use your psionic senses, you’ll be able to detect a small bead inside the ball.  Actually, since this one was reset the bead will start out at about the size of your thumb and be very light.  You’ll also detect a maze in the ball, a miniature labyrinth.  Your job as a student is to move the ball to the maze exit.  If you succeed in solving the maze, it will reset, the bead will get slightly smaller and heavier, and the maze more complicated.  If you just leave the ball sitting for more than a few minutes, the maze will reset at the same level of difficulty, but with a new pathway to the end.”

“But I haven’t trained in telekinesis yet,” said Drake “how do you expect me to use this?”

“Oh, telekinesis, I didn’t train too much in the skill, but it’s just an extension of the telepathic sense ability you’re using already.  But you have to sort of solidify your ‘touch’ around the object, you wish to move.  For now, if you can’t move the ball, just sense the ball and try to follow the path of the maze to the best of your ability.” 

As Drake took the ball and got ready to leave, Allacia reminded him, “So I’ll see you on Monday morning then?”

Drake replied with a grin, “It’s a date, see you then.” and jogged off to find Sul-Fiona before she could respond with any grace.

***

Drake found Sul-Fiona and with his new toy ball they headed back to his ship in a taxi.

While the taxi drove them out to the spaceport, he asked, “Any news for me Samantha?”

“I still don’t have enough information on the Narac
k
poaching; just sufficient to agree that there’s more there than is being reported in the job listing.  I should have more details by the morning, though.”

Drake noticed Fiona’s eyes get wide as she listened to the conversation.

“I did order the class three fabricator you wanted, but it came close to the top of the amount we discussed.  There’s some sort of problem at the plant where they make the fabricators, so I had to make the purchase from a distributor.  With the supply of Hansiung equipment drying up, the price for the unit was higher than normal.  The Hansiung Class 3 Auto Fabricator, plus insurance and shipping all ran to 19,870 credits.  After paying for your armor repair we’ll have 5380 credits left.” said Samantha.

“So how long until we get the fabber?” asked Drake.

“The good news about having to deal with a distributor is that the distance is shorter, and it should be here in less than two weeks.” replied Samantha.

Drake sighed, “Well it felt good having a fat account while it lasted.  I was thinking, though, if we wait for the fabber to get here, can we just fabricate some of the tools and things we need for the ship?” he asked.

“If we have the part schematic, then producing something is no problem.  I know Sidonia left us a lot of schematics to work from, but to make some things we might have to buy the rights to fabricate them.  A large part of the cost of manufacturing anything is in who owns the rights, which is why so many of the schematics we have from Sidonia are a product of her reverse engineering.” said Samantha.

Drake asked, “After I do a search could you check to see which items we should make ourselves and which we can fabricate?  I have a feeling that we could save a few credits by being a bit frugal, and it would give me a chance to work with the fabber on some easy stuff before we need it for something complex.”

“Ok, I’ll start researching the prices of schematics, and fabricator resources.  We might save money on fabricator resources by taking a trip to a mining station.  I’ll compare prices and sources and get back to you when I have more information.” said Samantha.

By this point, they had reached Drakes ship, and Fiona’s look had turned from wide-eyed curiosity to something a lot more thoughtful.  Drake didn’t know that women could get that dangerous thinking look at such a young age.  The one they get just before asking for something that they know will make you uncomfortable.  Like the dreaded
‘where do you think this relationship is going’
question.

“You own a ship, an A.I., and you’re getting a class three fabber?  Can I come live on your ship?” Drake was sure she was kidding.

“No, remember, we’re going to find your mom, and then everything can go back to normal for you.  Whatever that is, doesn’t include you living on my ship,” replied Drake.

The girl got what Drake took to be a look of determination and said, “Your right, finding mom comes first.”

Drake didn’t like that answer, it had an unstated
‘but then’
at the end.
‘This sort of thinking must be genetically encoded into the female brain.’
thought Drake.

Before entering the ship, Drake took a look around him, and paused, as he considered this new world around him.  He’d seen so little of it so far.  On most days he just moved back and forth between the Guild Hall and his ship, especially since he no longer worked at the gun shop.

Of course the same could be said for the real world, how much time do people spend actually going to new places?

Maybe it was just the sense of freedom he’d felt in Omnia, but he wanted to see more of this world.  He took a few minutes in his jog to take a look at the underutilized spaceport around him.  It still reminded him of an Earth airport, just drop in a few space shuttles and a few light star freighters and he could be looking at the Denver International Airport, without all the circus-like peaked roofing of course.