Changing of the Guard

“Sir.” Fernandez gave him a crisp salute. Kent just shook his head.

5

Net Force HQ

Quantico, Virginia

It was late when Thorn walked into the empty gym. He had his equipment bag with him — it was too big to fit in his locker. He looked around and smiled. He had hopes of eventually turning this into a regular salle d’arms—mirrors on the walls, racks of swords lining the room — but first he better make sure he was going to be here long enough to warrant the change.

It was after nine P.M., long after he should have left for home, but he needed to work out. The exercise relaxed him, helped to clear his mind, and after these past few days, he needed both.

He’d met everyone at this point, and it looked like a good team.

General Howard had impressed him, so much so that Thorn would be sorry to see him go. Abe Kent seemed competent enough, and might turn out to be a better man even than John Howard, but right now Thorn would prefer Howard’s humor — and especially his experience — while he settled in to his own new role.

Gridley? He wasn’t sure about him yet. There was no question Jay knew his stuff, or that he could handle just about any net-based problem. He’d shown that with the progress he’d already made with the Iranian disk. Still, there was something… young about him. He was certainly full of himself, and he had that type of cockiness that made Thorn wonder just how severely he’d been tested. Was he really that good, or was it just that he hadn’t run into a situation hard enough to knock the strut out of him?

Had the ground truly quaked for him yet, as Thorn’s grandfather, a full-blooded Nez Pierce, would have asked.

He smiled at the memory of the old man, and the quake reference brought up another recollection: What do you do in case of an earthquake? Go to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Why? Because nothing ever moves at the BIA…

He shook his head. Enough thinking. He’d come down here to get away from thoughts, after all. Now it was time to move.

He started with stretches. He’d learned to fence in high school, and had stayed with it. It had earned him some flack as a teen — typical “Red-man-with-a-long-knife” kind of crap — but he’d eventually earned a B rating in epee, and that had shut a lot of that down. He had been respectable at the national level, but he was not quite serious enough to pursue it beyond that.

He’d wanted something more than mere strip fencing. He’d needed a challenge that extended beyond the narrow metal piste. Oh, he still enjoyed it, but it was not the be-all it had once seemed.

He moved slowly into a lunge to stretch his hamstrings, and felt a little twinge. Used to be he never bothered to warm up or stretch. He’d always tried to bring a sense of reality to his game, going more for touches that would have counted in the real world rather than just lighting up the scoring machine. And in an RW setting, no opponent was going to give him time to loosen up his hamstrings before launching an attack.

Of course, in a real-world setting, it wasn’t likely he’d be carrying a sword anyway…

He could still fight without stretching if he had to, he knew that, but he also knew that he’d pay a price for it later, and limping around for three or four days just wasn’t worth it.

Warmed up after a few minutes, he pulled his protective gear out of his bag and slipped it on. Without an opponent, he didn’t really need the padded plastron under his jacket. For that matter, he didn’t really need the jacket, mask, or glove, either. But fencing was, first and foremost, a sport of tradition. Courtesy ruled — at least until the director called allez! — and the uniform was a part of that tradition.

Besides, if Jay’s little surprise worked, the feel of the jacket and plastron would be necessary.

Thorn took his epee out of his bag, picked up Jay’s mask in his left hand, and went out to the fencing strip he’d earlier outlined with tape on the wooden floor. At the en garde line, he saluted his imaginary director and opponent, then he took a deep breath.

“All right, Jay,” he said softly. “Let’s see how good you are.”

He pressed a button on the back tab of the mask and then slipped it on.

As the mask settled into place, Thorn looked up and saw his opponent standing on the opposite guard line.

He smiled.

Jay hadn’t had much time to play with the programming. He’d mentioned that, given a few days, he could work up VR versions of any historic fencer, from the American saber fencer Peter Westbrook to the Italian epee expert Antonio D’Addario — as long as there were video archives and other data banks to pull details from.

For now, though, all he’d been able to do was put together a sort of composite fencer, taken from various video clips and a few manuals. He’d gone for breadth rather than depth, programming in skills in multiple weapons and styles — or so he’d said, anyway — and promised more development soon.

Jay had also coded a director for the bout, even though they were fencing “dry,” without the electrical hook- ups. Thorn didn’t need the lights for this; he didn’t even need the director; all he needed was an opponent — and the opponent didn’t even have to be very good. He was looking for exercise, not a challenge.

He sketched another quick salute and dropped into his guard position, knees flexed, right toe pointed at his opponent, left toe pointing exactly ninety degrees off to the left, right hand extended almost completely, shoulder height, sword point aimed at his opponent’s chin. His left hand floated easily like a flag above and behind him.

His opponent mirrored him.

“Et vous pret?” the director asked.

“Oui,” Thorn and his opponent said as one.

“Allez!”

Thorn started with a ballestra, a quick, short step to close distance followed immediately by a strong lunge. Normally, he was a counterpuncher. He liked to let his opponent take the first move and then react to it. But he could attack, too, and he was anxious to see how well Jay had done.

As he lunged, he feinted toward his opponent’s face mask, eyes unfocused, looking at nothing but seeing everything.

There! He felt his opponent’s blade begin to come up in a parry.

Thorn smiled. In epee there were no rules, no right-of-way. It didn’t matter who launched the attack. It only mattered who struck first. If both struck simultaneously, both would score a point. With electronic gear, the equipment was sensitive to one twentieth of a second. With VR, there was no limit.

He hadn’t been sure how his opponent would react. It wouldn’t have surprised him to see the other blade come toward him in a counterattack, especially one aimed at his right wrist or forearm. If that had happened, he would have tried to bind it, capturing the point and corkscrewing down the blade until he drove his own tip into his opponent.

This was better, though.

As the other blade came up to meet his, Thorn dropped his hand and sent his point streaking toward his opponent’s right toe. It was a risky shot, since it took his own blade far from any sort of defensive position, but in epee the entire body was a valid target, and a shot to the toe counted the same as a hit on the mask.

Against a human, Thorn would probably have thrown this as a feint — if he even tried it this early in the bout. He likely would have reversed direction with his point one more time, as quickly and as tightly as he could, starting high, feinting toward the foot, then darting high again, aiming the final thrust at his opponent’s right wrist.

This wasn’t a human, though, and he wasn’t so interested in scoring as in moving — and in testing — so he didn’t turn this into a feint.

He should have.

As his point dropped, his opponent shifted his weight slightly, drew his right foot back, and then leaped into the air.

Thorn’s point crashed harmlessly into the floor. His opponent’s point, however, came down solidly on his mask.