Read Online Changing of the Guard by Tom Clancy - Free Book Online Page B

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 épée 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 épée 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 épée 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