Chapter 3

Raista, 16 Shiaa, 4392, Orthodox calendar;
Wednesday, 21 May 2007, Native regional reckoning
New Orleans, Gamia Province, American sector

Symone was absolutely outrageous.

That was the entire problem he had with her, because she was just so damn likable.

It was both a part of her quirky charm and the manner in which she defused any kind of possible retaliation against Tim for him going out with a Faey. She was so bubbly and energetic, and when she was in public, she acted like an absolute airhead. She gave Tim vapid, adoring stares, and she actually debased herself a little bit by acting with a kind of effervescent silliness when she was around him which made everyone comfortable with her, whether they liked Faey or not. She was riotously funny, charmingly silly, deceptively vapid, and cunningly adorable.

She was absolutely impossible not to like.

The students reacted to her presence surprisingly well, Jason had to admit. She made it very clear from the outset that she was dating Tim-her big and hunky stud, as she called him-and the way she fawned all over him defused any kind of animosity that humans might have for her. She acted like a lovestruck ditz, and the students considered her to be harmless. In private, though, she showed both him and Tim that she was a very smart young lady, and that her affection for Tim was quite sincere.

In the face of Symone, his personal intent to not socialize with Faey was sorely put to the test.

She was just so fun. Tim managed to drag him with them after school on Monday night to go down to the quarter for some drinks, and it was just a matter of minutes before Symone had managed to insinuate herself right into their friendship. She was a fearless woman with a wicked sense of humor, and she was very funny when she got drunk. She’d shocked Patty O’s at first, since it was the first time they’d ever seen a Faey out of armor, and one that had come in to drink, no less, but Symone had the entire piano bar eating out of her hand after about half an hour. She bantered with the waitress, she made jokes with the other patrons, and after they’d called Jason up to have him play the piano, she jumped up on the stage and sang for the spectators. Symone had a lovely voice, and she was surprisingly familiar with human songs.

By nine o’clock, curfew, she was roaring drunk, hanging on both of them as they caught a streetcar back to the dorm, and Jason had to keep reminding himself that she was a Faey, because she was a very funny drunk.

Last night, instead of going out and getting drunk, Tim brought her along as they studied in the common room. She showed no signs of her indisposition the night before, spending the time reading an old human romance novel. Jason was a bit surprised she could read English. After they got ready for their calculus test, she convinced them to bring in a DVD player and show her favorite human movie on the big TV in the common room, Braveheart.

“That movie’s like ten years old,” Tim told her in surprise. “How did you find out about it?”

“I saw a commercial with that lead actor, a clip from the movie, and I had to check it out. Men in skirts always get my attention,” she winked.

“It’s called a kilt or a plaid, not a skirt,” Jason told her absently.

“So that’s where the name you students gave the lab building came from.”

“Yah,” Tim told her.

“That Mal Gobson is cute.”

“Mel Gibson.”

“Whatever. Who cares about him now that I got my Tim-Tim?” she said, leaning over the table and giving him a passionate kiss.

“Tim-Tim?” Jason asked mildly, giving him a sly smile.

His expression was a bit pained. “So she has a pet name for me.”

“Riiight,” he drawled, glancing up from his panel.

“Don’t make me come over there,” he said with an evil smile.

“Bring a spatula,” Jason remarked absently. “You’ll need it to peel yourself off the floor.”

“Talk Faey,” Symone objected. “I’m not that good with English, and you need the practice, Tim. What is a spatula?”

Tim explained it to her, which made her laugh. “I remember that fight you had with my squad, Jason. You’re teaching Tim how to do that?”

“Well, he might be able to do that in a couple of years,” Jason told her. “He just started learning.”

“Where did you learn it?”

“Well, when I was a kid, my father was stationed in Japan,” he answered. “When he was there, he got totally fascinated with martial arts. Unarmed combat,” he explained. “He used it to keep in shape, because pilots have to be in very good shape to handle the physical stresses of being a fighter pilot.”

“My sister is in the pilot program,” she nodded. “Her letters say she was shocked at how much they have to work out.

“What does she fly?” Tim asked.

“She flies exomechs,” she answered him. “Those machines that looked like robots. Pilots have to fly exomechs for a year or so before they get rated for flying fighters.”

“I’ve never seen one,” Tim told her.

With a few keystrokes on his panel’s holographic keyboard, he brought up a good picture of one, then turned the panel around so he could see it. “Exomech,” Jason told him. Exomechs were large robotic fighting vehicles, about twelve feet tall, that moved just like a human or a Faey. He’d read about them on CivNet. They didn’t really use them here because they didn’t really need to, but he was sure they had some garrisoned somewhere on the planet, or in the starship that was parked in orbit over the planet to provide assistance, in case of some catastrophic accident or major insurrection. The information he’d gotten on them was surprisingly detailed. Faey had yet to develop a technology that allowed machines to interface with their telepathic powers, so all their devices were manually controlled. An exomech would certainly test a pilot’s ability to handle multiple controls simultaneously. The arms were controlled with braces that attached to the pilot’s arms, and the legs and the exomech’s ability to walk or run were controlled braces that attached to the feet, and a pair of pedals on the floor. A combination of foot shifts and pushing the pedals, translated by the onboard computer, would give the exomech an utterly humanoid manner of moving. They were armed with very powerful weapons called MPACs, Metaphased Plasma Auto Cannons, a much more powerful version of the plasma rifles and pistols the Faey employed, which were housed in the forearms of the units. Exomechs were battlefield weapons, the ultimate expression of the powered personal combat armor Faey soldiers wore into combat, but unlike that powered armor, exomechs were equipped with spatial drives that allowed them to fly. The Faey’s personal powered armor had magnetic induction units that let it ride on a planet’s magnetic field. That allowed them to skim along the surface of the ground with extreme speed, and reach an altitude of nearly thirty meters.

“Holy shit,” Tim breathed, staring at the picture.

“You keep thinking that what you see the Faey using here is all they have,” Jason told him seriously. “What they use here is hundred year old surplus junk that they probably had to dust off.”

Symone nodded. “Sure enough. The only current tech they let us use around here are our weapons, well, and the hovercars. They’re pretty standard just about anywhere in the Imperium. They converted all our hot plasma and ion guns to metaphased twenty years ago.”

“Why don’t they give you the good stuff?”

“They don’t need to,” Symone told him honestly. “Our hundred-year old armor can stop the most powerful archaic powder gun you have. You can’t organize because you have no defense against our telepathy, so that old armor is all we need.” She snorted. “My House is cheap anyway,” she complained. “We still have Polymerized Camonite armor when the Imperials have Neutronium. Trillane worries more about its purse than it does its defense,” she said, then she made a face. “Why are we sitting here talking about this shit? Let’s watch the movie!”

It was hard to say no to Symone, over just about anything. So, their studying turned into an extended screening of Braveheart, along with nearly the entire second and third floors of the dorm. Symone’s bubbly, infectious nature had taken hold of everyone watching the movie, and got them all into it much more than they would have been had they been watching it alone. She had the entire room cheering during the battle scenes.

But she wasn’t a friend. And Jason had to keep telling himself that about every ten minutes.

He caught her again in the morning, as she opened his door without knocking as he sat on his bed and prepared for the coming day with his thirty minutes of meditation, which preceded his morning workout. It didn’t go very well, for he had another one of those annoying headaches that he’d been suffering from for the last couple of months. They were never too severe, a dull, aching throb inside his head that tended to come and go over the course of about an hour. He’d woke up with it, and it was just starting to ease. But it wasn’t enough to prevent him from meditating; in fact, it was something of an exercise to ignore the pain and continue with his meditation despite it.

“Hello? Jason, are you in here-oh,” she said in surprise, putting a hand to her chest when she saw him sitting on the bed.

“What?” he asked, his eyes opening and regarding her. She was wearing one of Tim’s football jersey shirts, which hung down to her thighs. “You slept here last night?”

“I’m trying to get Tim to move in with me.”

“You move fast.”

“I know it’s only been a few days, but I think I love him,” she admitted, scratching her backside absently. “When he let me join our minds, what I found inside him was beautiful. I’m not letting him get away from me. He’s too good a catch.”

“I can’t argue there.”

“What were you doing?” she asked. “I couldn’t even sense you in here. It was like you turned off your brain.”

“Meditating,” he answered. “A mental exercise that helps sharpen the mind.”

“It was creepy,” she told him. “I usually get a sense of something from you, even if I can’t hear your thoughts. But it was like your brain wasn’t there.”

“I know. I’ve learned that meditation keeps Faey from finding me with their power. I’ve had occasion to hide from them here lately.”

“Heh,” she mused. “How do you do that, anyway? Hide your thoughts from me. I’ve never come across a human that can do that. It made me almost itch to try to probe you several times when you had me in that collar, but you said no using my talent, and I wasn’t going to cheat.”

“It’s a mental exercise,” he answered. “A false front that hides my thoughts. I’ve had a lot of practice perfecting it,” he growled. “Faey seem to go nuts that they can’t hear my thoughts, and they always probe me. I’ve even learned what it feels like when they’re doing it.”

“You can feel it?” she asked in surprise.

He nodded.

“Damn,” she grunted. “I didn’t think that was possible.”

“What do you mean?”

“You shouldn’t be able to feel us using our talent. No other humans do.”

“They probably don’t have the same training I do,” he answered. “Part of what I learned from my father involves knowing your own mind. Since what Faey do is alien, something not part of my mind, I can sense it when they do it to me.”

“Huh. Well, wonders never cease,” she said. “What time is it?”

“Around five thirty.”

“Fuck,” she grunted sourly. “I have to be at the barracks by six. I need to get dressed and get my ass over there before I get busted.”

“You’re not supposed to be here?”

“They don’t care where I am as long as I show up for duty on time,” she told him. “I’ve got the campus in my duty rotation today, so I’ll try to show up for lunch with you guys. But we’re not friends,” she said with a sly smile and a wink. “I’m going to be there to see Tim. If you’re there, well, I’ll just have to be nice to you. Semantics, you know. Sophistry. I don’t want to ruin your hypocrisy.”

Jason chuckled ruefully. “Bitch,” he accused.

She winked again. “The bitchiest of all bitches,” she said shamelessly. “Call me the Bitch Queen. And be sure to bow. The Bitch Queen gets bitchy when she doesn’t get the respect she’s due.”

“Work. Go,” he commanded.

“Yes, Master,” she said breathlessly. She twirled towards the door, then pulled up her shirt to expose her bare buttocks, then slapped herself a couple of times on that rather attractive posterior in taunting reply to his command, then hurried out the door.

He peeked out of the room and saw her getting ready to go up the stairs. “Someday you’re going to come into my room and manage to get out without showing me your ass,” he called to her, loud enough to wake up a few people on his floor.

“Consider yourself lucky,” she shouted in reply. “I don’t show my ass to just any guy, you know!”

Several bleary heads poked out of opening doors as Jason chuckled. “What the hell are you shouting for at five thirty in the fucking morning?” the girl who lived in the room beside him asked crossly. Her name was Betty, and he didn’t really like her all that much. She was a primadonna.

“Symone,” he said, and that was all the explanation he needed.

She looked towards the stairwell at the end of the hall, then laughed. “Oh. Nevermind, then,” she said, then closed her door.

Oh, yes, the whole dorm was familiar with Symone. In a way, she was the dorm mascot now.

The calculus test was surprisingly difficult, but he was pretty sure he managed to pass it with a high mark. There was a little excitement in the lab, when a PPG suffered a fatal breakdown and ejected its core, which caused the PPG’s case to overheat and catch fire. Ailan had to douse the fire with an extinguisher, showing a calm reaction to an event that caused some of the students to scream and back away.

After lab was over, Ailan called him down to the table before he could leave. “I got a message from the Ministry, and they sent me the design specs for an ultrasonic device that they say you built,” he said.

“She really did it,” Jason said in surprise.

“What?”

“Lana, she said she took scans of something I built to piss off the Marines and sent it to the Ministry of Technology. I didn’t think anything of it.”

“Can I see this device you built?” he asked. “Exactly how does it work?”

“It’s nothing but a supersonic emitter,” he told him, digging into his pack, for they were still inside it. “I read about the metal the Faey use in their armor and found out it has an acoustic signature, so I built an emitter that used the armor as a speaker. I hooked it to a proximity sensor so the sound got stronger they closer they got to me.” He handed the tiny device to Ailan.

Ailan was quiet a moment, turning the little black disc over in his supple, long-fingered hand, then he laughed. “It would feel like ants crawling all over them,” he realized, then he grinned. “That’s devious!”

“Lana thought so,” Jason chuckled.

“May I keep this for a few days?”

“Sure,” he agreed.

“I think I need to find more challenging projects for you, if you can build something this small,” he said with a sly smile.

“The first thing the professor I had in Boston taught us was how to burn circuits in laminar board in Control Systems I,” he answered, referring to the classes that taught moleculartronic theory and application. “She started with boardwork and worked up. Tim’s in your class, and from what he told me, you seem to start with major components and work down.”

“She taught you boardwork right off?” he asked in surprise.

He nodded. “She had a class of people who were in engineering before the subjugation,” he explained. “Since we all had experience with electronic circuitry, she started us off on moleculartronic circuitry. She taught us so much that I tested out of Control II. It worked pretty well, actually. We all learned about trinary a lot faster since we started with how it operated on the board.”

Moleculartronic technology was the technology they used for their computers and other sophisticated devices. It used polarity-phased plasma as a power source, like electricity, and behaved remarkably like electronics did. Molecuartronic circuits were built on boards of laminated titanium, and the alignment of the molucular structure of the board was what channeled plasma flow to the components which were annealed to it. Moleculartronic components were circuits built of silicon, germanium, titanium, and certain alloys of light metals and annealed to the board, again using the alignment of the molecular structure of the crystallized silicon and crystallized metals to serve as the digital circuit. It was sort of digital, actually, since they didn’t use “on or off” binary logic like human electronic computers did. They had a trinary logic system, composed of positive, neutral, and negative, the three states in which a molecule could be aligned. Memory was a simple matter of setting aside a section of a chip for storing data, or chips that served solely as memory storage devices, where data existed within the molecular alignment of the matter of the device itself. Every single molecule in the internal structure of a moleculartronic component was a part of the chip’s processing power or memory. With moleculartronics, a single chip had more processing power than a mainframe. A single moleculartronic circuit board had the power of a supercomputer. Jason’s panel, a moleculartronic device, was like carrying around ten Cray supercomputers, and his panel was considered small. The microprocessor in the device in Ailan’s hand had more computing power than the most sophisticated desktop personal computer any human ever built.

“I wondered why you weren’t in a logic class this semester,” he chuckled. “They don’t teach Control III in the spring, so you had no place to go.”

He nodded.

“Oh, I meant to ask, how did you do that melting the armor trick?” he asked.

“That was easy,” he said with a scoff. “I had chemistry last sememster, Professor. Vandirium armor reacts with tetrasodium bisulfate and recombines to form gaseous sodium bivandirium sulfate and titanium bisodium oxide. I just made up a solution mixed in with a little something to make it revert to gas when it came into contact with nitrogen, and put it in a jar.”

Ailan laughed. “How did you figure that out?”

“I didn’t. My chemistry teacher last semester did that as an experiment. I just remembered how he did it, that’s all.”

Ailan gave him a sly look, then chuckled. “I heard that you made peace with the Marines. I heard that their post commandant personally ordered arbitration. You sorta won.”

“Geez, where do you get all this, Professor?” he asked in surprise.

“My wife is a major in the Marines,” he revealed. “She works in the commandant’s office. From what I heard, Monday, after she heard about that Army unit that tried to put you in that dog collar, the order came down right of the commandant’s office that it stops. They were going to send in the company commander, but the squad Lieutenant requested permission to do the negotiating.”

He grunted. “Well, I had to give in on the date, but I got a guarantee that it stops afterward,” he said. “I can live with that.”

“What stops? You shouldn’t close your mind on the idea of a Faey girlfriend, Jason. Our races are so similar we’re virtually identical. We’re not alien aliens,” he said with a sly wink.

“You’re right,” Jason said evenly, hoisting his pack over his shoulder. “You’re just conquerors.”

Ailan said no more. There was nothing that he could say to that, and allowed Jason to leave unchallenged.

---

Despite his adamant stance that he did not socialize with Faey, he ended up with Tim and Symone after his martial arts class. They ate pizza and studied, which was to say Tim and Jason studied while Symone read another human romance novel. After that, Tim taught Symone how to play ping-ping in the rec room on the first floor as Jason got a little work done. Symone was very agile and had good hand-eye coordination, so she quickly became a viable threat to Tim’s ping-pong supremacy.

“This is bullshit,” Tim laughed after she took a five point lead on him. “You just learned how to play!”

“Take your beating like a woman,” she said tauntingly. “Your serve.”

“Well, I heard about it, but I had to come see for myself,” Jyslin called from the doorway. She filed into the room, wearing the tank top and shorts she wore to work out, both black. “Do you have something nice picked out for Friday, Jason?” she asked with a sultry smile.

“I’ll be ready,” he said in a calm yet ominous tone. “I hope you enjoy it. It’ll be the first and last date we have.”

“Oh, so this is the one that started all this,” Symone said with a laugh, putting the paddle down.

“Who are you?” Jyslin asked in Faey.

“I’m Tim’s babe,” she said with an outrageous grin.

“The one in the collar,” Jyslin noted dryly.

“Yup. Two days hanging around Tim and Jason when you’re naked makes you want to hang around some more,” she said with a malicious grin. “They rocked me,” she said breathlessly.

“Symone,” Jason said sharply.

“Hey, I’m trying to give you a reputation here,” she winked.

“He already has one,” Jyslin told him with a grin. “He’s that annoying human who the Marines can’t beat.”

“We didn’t have much better luck,” Symone laughed in agreement.

“Well, I got what I want, so I’m not going to rub it in,” she told him.

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” he said dryly.

“Oh, I will, believe me,” she told him. “I got my foot in the door. All I have to do now is convince you I’m worth hanging around. Just like her,” he said, pointing at Symone.

“Oh, I don’t hang out with Jason,” she said with an insincere grin. “I hang out with Tim. Jason just happens to be in the same room. And he’ll stick to that story,” she added with a wink.

“Semantics,” Jyslin snorted. “Just admit that all Faey aren’t the Imperium, and we won’t have any trouble, Jason,” she told him. “You don’t seem to have any problem with her. Why do you have trouble with me?”

“She doesn’t want to have a relationship,” he said cooly.

“Not that I didn’t try at first,” she laughed honestly. “Well, not a relationship, actually. More like a wild night in bed.”

“You never said any such thing,” he snipped in reply.

“Would you shut up!” she said with a grin. “I’m trying to make you look studly!”

“I’m sure he doesn’t appreciate it,” Jyslin smiled. “He wants me to go away.” She leaned against the doorframe and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “He’s not getting it, though. Friday, he’s going out on a date with me. One date. He agreed to behave like a civilized person, and I agreed to be civilized. We’re going to have a nice, civilized evening. Dinner, the opera, and an after-opera nightcap. Since we both agreed to be nice, it gives me one evening to convince him to go out with me again. I think I can do it.”

“I think you won’t,” he said cooly.

“Oh, I think you’re wrong,” she smiled. “She proves that your vaunted ideals aren’t as set in stone as you pretend. You take her as an individual, not as a representative of the evil conquering race. I’m going to prove to you that I’m interested in you. Not your politics, not your philosophy, not your positions. And I’m going to teach you that it’s alright to be interested in me. Not my politics, not my philosophy, not my positions. I want to be your friend, Jason, and to be honest, I want to be more than that. You’re an intelligent, fascinating man. I just have to show you that I’m an intelligent, fascinating woman under my armor. I’m not the Imperium, Jason. I’m Jyslin Shaddale. Until they put the crown on my head, don’t blame me for how they do things.”

She glanced at Symone, and Jason could feel… something, a fringe of something that passed between them. Were they using telepathy to communicate?

He winced slightly as a sharp pain lanced into his head. The headaches usually didn’t come on so quickly.

“You alright, Jayce?” Tim asked, putting down the paddle.

“Just a headache,” he said with a negligent wave of his hand, rubbing his temple.

“I thought I told you you should go to the doctor,” Tim told him.

“It’s stress, Tim,” he sighed. “I used to get them all the time when my father got sick.”

He felt it ease into that dull ache quickly, which was much more tolerable. “Do you need some pain killer?” Jyslin asked in concern.

“I don’t take medicine unless I don’t have any other choice,” he replied. “It’ll pass in a little while. I’ll be fine.”

“Well, alright, but if it bothers you, go to a doctor,” she told him. “I’m going to go get my workout in. I’ll pick you up at six on Friday, Jason. I’ll see you then.”

After she was gone, Jason and Tim exchanged looks. He looked to Symone, his eyes curious. “What was that about?”

“She just came by to see what I was up to, that’s all,” she grinned. “After I told her that Tim was my guy, she was alright with it. Actually, she prefers it.”

“Why?”

“She said that any friend of Jason deserves a Faey for a girlfriend,” she winked, then she laughed delightedly.

“I never heard anything,” Tim protested.

Symone tapped her head meaningfully.

“Oh. I meant to ask you something, Symone,” he prompted.

“What?”

“Well, why do your people even speak?” he asked curiously. “You talk to my mind all the time. Why don’t all Faey just do that?”

“Well, first off, because thinking requires a language,” she said, sitting on the ping-pong table. “Think about it. If we didn’t have a language, how would we form thoughts? Pictures?”

“I never thought of that,” Tim admitted.

“I know. It’s something of an abstract concept, isn’t it?” she winked. “Second, the talent doesn’t start to show up and express itself until around puberty. We have to teach our children to speak to communicate with us, and for many, it’s a habit that sticks. Faey talk about as often as they send, but it depends on the Faey. Some Faey almost never speak. Some Faey almost never send. It’s entirely personal.” She held her hand out before her. “When I’m with other Faey, I tend to speak more than send, but that’s because I’m not as strong as most other women. I guess I hide my inadequacy by not making it common knowledge. But sometimes we do have to speak,” she explained. “Most Faey women have a telapathic range of about three human miles, on the average. Most men have a range of about a mile and a half. I’m not very strong at all,” she admitted. “Barely stronger than the average man. I have a range of about two miles. The strongest have a range of like ten miles. Some of the strongest men are stronger than I am,” she admitted candidly. “So, if we want to communicate outside our range, we have to use a communicator. Since no machine can receive and decipher telepathy, that means we have to use our voices. Even though we can send, and it is more efficient, we still have a need for our voices and our language.”

“Wow, I didn’t know that.”

“Well, now you do,” she smiled. “But that info isn’t free, honey. I demand payment.”

“What?” he asked in surprise.

She pointed to the floor immediately in front of her. “Come here and curl my toes,” she told him with a mischievous leer.

“Oh. I think I can manage that,” he grinned, then came around the table and tendered up her payment.

Jason ignored them as they started getting rather involved in their kissing, worrying a little about the upcoming date. He was worried more about how well he would hold onto his ideals than what kind of trouble Jyslin might give him. She was too right, and she kept grinding it into him that she was not the Imperium, that she was not directly responsible for his position. If anything, she was in the same fix as he, for she was stuck in a job she did not want, trying to get where she wanted to go. The commoner Faey were just as much slaves and thralls to the Empress as the humans; only the nobles were truly free. And Symone was going to make it even murkier for him. He did like Symone, and her constant presence these last few days had indeed kind of numbed him to the fact that she was Faey. Then again, she was just so damned likable that he really didn’t have much of a defense against her. Nobody did. Despite the abject hatred that many humans had for Faey, even on campus, none of them hated Symone.

“Hands out of her pants in the common room,” Jason said without looking up. He didn’t have to look up to know what that change in the tone of her cooing hum meant.

“Yes, daddy,” Symone taunted. “Let’s go up to our room, Tim-Tim,” she purred. “I’m feeling a tad hot and bothered.”

“How can I say no to the world’s most beautiful woman?” he returned.

“Flatterer. Say it again.”

Jason tuned them out, and went back to studying.

---

Friday.

It was the day, the day of the date. But that was going to take place at the end of the day. The problem was, the day got off to a very weird start that, in Jason’s mind, was something of a bad omen.

Simply put, when he woke up, he had a message waiting in his panel, sent during the night. It was from the Ministry of Technology itself, and it reported, in flowery language, that the Empire had bought out his patent for his sonic inducer.

Not taken, not assumed control over… bought.

Since it was considered a low-priority technology, the message read, considered for possibilities in hypersonic short-range communications, the rights were purchased for a very modest sum.

Seventy five thousand credits.

Seventy five thousand credits.

For the Ministry of Technology, that was considered a modest sum.

For Jason, it was an absolutely bloody fucking fortune.

With that much money, he could buy a hovercar. Hell, he could buy an older model, used airskimmer, a civilian craft akin to a Cessna. He could buy a truckload of components and toys and set up a killer workshop, or he could even buy a small house in the city. It was a monstrous amount of money for someone who received a weekly stipend of fifty credits. A credit’s value was different than the old, unused dollar; a credit was worth about a dollar and a half. In old American money, it was a sum of nearly a hundred and twenty thousand dollars.

That threw off his entire day, even more so than the worry about the impending date did. That date was common knowledge all over the campus, even if the circumstances of it were not. Some thought Jason had finally caved in to the Faey, but not many actually blamed him. After all, it really was only a matter of time before they finally forced him to obey. His weeklong battle with the Marines was entertaining, it gave the humans a little hope and some pride in themselves again, and everyone knew that it eventually would end. He had no concentration in his classes, and he got another one of those stupid headaches during lunch, and it didn’t go away for the rest of his time at school. Students gave him words of encouragement as they passed, and a surprisingly large concentration of Army regulars and black-armored Marines who were patrolling the campus gave him teasing smiles and offered to make bets on just how thoroughly Jyslin would own him by midnight.

He was totally disgusted by the end of his last class, which Professor Tia mercifully allowed him to leave from early. They were practicing Faey pronunciation, and since he sounded virtually fluent, she decided that he didn’t need to hang around and be bored. He went home and paced nervously in his tiny dorm, then went down to the room’s bathroom and took a shower. The shower eased the headache quite a bit, and he felt less surly by the time he went back to his room and did some of his homework, still scattered by both the doom of the impending date and the staggering sum of money that was now residing in the brand new account that had been made for him at the Imperial Bank. The passcodes for the account had been sent to his panel while he was at school, and now he had access to that money. All it took was a thumbprint at any shop or store, or he could visit a branch bank and withdraw hard currency, which for Faey were small plastic coins encoded with their value.

He had no idea what to do with that money. He wasn’t even sure he felt right in spending any of it. It was money paid to him by the Imperium. Not only had he not done anything to kick them off Earth, now they were paying him for things that he invented. He had become a part of the system, even if it was absolutley unintentional, the fault of that meddling Lieutenant Lana.

But, on the other hand, since it was absolutely unintentional, that meant that the money was a windfall, not pay. He didn’t submit the inducer. He didn’t send it off to the Ministry. Lana did. That they had paid to buy the rights to the design meant that it was an occasion of good fortune, not a conscious selling out to the Faey. In that respect, he did have a right to use that money without feeling guiltly about it.

Not that he really knew what to do with it.

He glanced at the clock and cursed. Where was the time going? It was five o’clock, and Jyslin would be there in an hour. He did not want to go, but he made a deal, gave his word, and Jason did not break his word. He changed into the only nice clothes he had, a white long-sleeve dress shirt, the sleeves of which he rolled up past his elbows, since he detested the feel of sleeves on his forearms, a pair of black slacks, and a pair of very old black loafers. A gray tie with geometric designs done in red and white was around his neck, loosened around the undone top button of the shirt, and over that went a simple black vest that was left unbuttoned.

He sat back down again and surfed around on CivNet on his panel. He did have something in mind for that money, and that was an airskimmer. He didn’t know how to fly one, but he was sure he could figure it out, or pay for lessons. As long as it was a civilian model, he had every right to buy one. The idea of an airskimmer appealed to him for one simple reason, and that was the fact that it could fly. His father had had a Cessna, but Jason had been forced to sell it when the parking fees became more than his part-time job when he went to school in Michigan could support. Before that, Jason had absolutely loved that plane, and the sense of freedom that came with it. As long as he could afford the gas, Jason could jump in his Cessna and go just about anywhere. Before the parking fees overwhelmed him, he was quite popular with some of the other guys because they’d all pile into his plane and fly places during the weekends. Distance made going somewhere warm and balmy out of the question-a flight to Los Angeles or Florida was a twelve hour journey-but they could go to places like Saint Louis, or Chicago, or Ottowa, somewhere other than the campus of the University of Michigan. There was such a sense of freedom that came with knowing that, at any time, you could chuck a pack into your plane and go virtually anywhere you wanted.

Selling that plane had been one of the low points of his life since his father died. It had been an admission that things couldn’t be the same, a realization that he, like his father, could lose control of his life, and a loss of both a feeling of freedom and one of his father’s most prized possessions, but there had been no helping it. He’d had a breakdown in Indiana and had to shell out nearly a thousand dollars in repairs, and that had been the death knell that had put him behind. The bills kept mounting up on him, and he’d been forced to sell his beloved plane or avoid having it chained to the tarmac for non-payment of his parking fees down at the county airport. If there was any satisfaction in it at all for him, he sold it to a flight school at the airport, who allowed him to borrow it from time to time without charging him for its use. Old Sam down at the airport understood the jam he was in, and sympathized with him and the pain it caused him to have to sell it. All he had to pay for was the fuel and the parking fees of the airport where he landed if it wasn’t that one. They wanted him to come work for them on weekends as a flight instructor, but that required getting certifications that he didn’t have the time to get, because of the demands of school and football.

The airskimmer wouldn’t be his dad’s old Cessna, but it would be the same thing, the sense of freedom that he’d once had, and it would make him happy. He’d have to find out where he could keep it, and pay for the parking fees, but he figured he could make enough money between his stipend and the unofficial work he got playing piano down at Patty O’s to cover those fees. This time, he would not lose his plane. He’d just have to find an exceeding cheap airskimmer and put back enough money to cover the fees. He could do some of the maintenance on it himself, since the schematics of an airskimmer were easily obtainable on CivNet, and he’d probably get a maintenance manual with the airskimmer.

That sense of freedom would mean a great deal to him. In this damned mouse trap he was in now, it would be one of the very few things that would make him feel free.

Probably for the first time ever, Jyslin knocked on his door. Somehow, he just knew it was her. It opened without him calling, and she stepped inside. He glanced at her, then looked back when her appearance struck him like a hammer. She was stunning! She wore a sleek, elegantly simple gown made of what looked like liquid gold, with threads so fine that he couldn’t see their weaving. Each thread was burnished, and the effect was a radiant gown of a wondrous golden color that both clashed against and accented her blue skin in an amazing manner, as well as perfectly displaying her sensual, voluptuous hips, slender waist, and her full breasts. It had two slender straps that attached to the bodice of the moderately low cut neckline and flowed over her shoulders, with a sloped hem that rose to the knee of her left leg yet dipped to the ankle of her right leg. It didn’t sparkle in the light of his dorm room, it seemed to radiate a warm light that was like an aura that drew every eye to her, drew his eye to the fact that she was a vision of absolute, shockingly feminine beauty. It was the first time he’d thought of her as feminine. She was definitely a woman, but never acted feminine. That gown made her look gorgeous. She had her hair combed back away from her face, held by a pair of elegantly simple silver barettes over each slender, pointed ear, with a gold chain woven into her auburn hair that ran just above the hairline over her forehead. She had on a pair of simple diamond (or some clear crystal) earrings, and a single gold chain around her neck with no amulet or pendant, an adornment of elegant simplicity that only heightened his awareness of her exceptional beauty.

She smiled at his surprised and nearly awed gaze. “You like?” she asked in Faey, quite demurely, turning this way and that so he could admire her from all angles. “I bought it this morning. It cost me a month’s pay, but it was worth it.”

“You’re beautiful,” he said with utter honesty. There was no way he could lie to her about that.

She gave him a wonderful smile. “Stand up. Let me see.” He did so, and she put a finger to her chin as she appraised his appearance. “Well, you make slouchy look chic, Jason. I like it.”

“It’s all I have,” he admitted.

“Well, it suits you. The vest is definitely a pefect touch.” She stepped up and grabbed his tie, tightening it just a little, smiling up into his blue eyes. “I’m a little early. I wanted to make sure you weren’t wearing a tutu or something,” she said with a wink.

“I gave my word.”

“I’m starting to understand how seriously you take that,” she told him.

“A month’s pay?” he asked, finally realizing what she’d said.

“Wasn’t it worth it?” she asked, turning around slowly for him, modelling her gown with a mysterious smile.

“Jyslin, you shouldn’t have done that,” he said disapprovingly. “Not for me.”

“I say you’re worth it. Prove me wrong,” she said challengingly.

“You bought a dress that cost you a month’s pay for one date,” he said bluntly.

“True. But it was worth every credit for that look you gave me when I came in,” she smiled. “Don’t worry about me, Jason. I’m very tight with money, I had plenty held back. I could afford it.” She put her hands on his shoulders. “Now, since you’re ready to go, we might as well get started. I have a limousine waiting outside for us.”

“A limo!” he protested.

“Hush,” she said with a light, amused smile, putting two fingers over his lips.

“But that’s too expensive!” he said loudly when she moved her hand.

“I told you, don’t worry about the money,” she told him firmly. “I haven’t so much as bought a new pair of shoes for a year, Jason. I have the money.”

“But-”

“There is no but,” she said, silencing him again with two fingers to his lips. “It’s my money, and I can spend it any way I please. I wanted to look good for you, so I bought the dress. I wanted us to not worry about driving, so I hired a limo. Well I also wanted us to get around in style,” she added with a smile. “I’m not trying to impress you with my vast riches,” she winked. “I bought the dress and hired the limo because I wanted to, not to impress you.”

“I don’t like it too much, Jyslin,” he told her honestly. “You shouldn’t have spent so much money. I’m not worth that much.”

She laughed delightedly. “Jason, hon, I don’t have enough in my bank account to cover what I think you’re worth.”

Jason flushed slightly, but said nothing more on the subject. There was little that he could say, or at least say without starting a fight. He didn’t want her to spend so much on him, invest in him, because he didn’t want to pursue a relationship. If he had his way, there would be virtually no contact between them after tonight. If that happened, then she would have spent all that money on the dress, the limo, the dinner, the opera, all of it for nothing. If he didn’t like Jyslin so much, maybe he would feel differently. It would be easy to ignore the amount of money she’d shelled out if he didn’t care about how it might put her into a financial bind.

She slid the hand on his shoulder down his arm, then took a gentle grip on the back of his hand. “Now, since we’re both ready, why don’t we just go ahead and go on?” she asked. “If we get to Copeland’s early, we can get our pick of tables.”

“I, alright,” he said quietly. He almost didn’t want to go through with this. Not because he was worried that she was going to be a pain, he was more afraid of spending time with her and giving her that much more time and opportunity to wear down his defenses.

She smiled slyly. “Don’t worry about it,” she said with a wink. “I don’t need extra time.”

He gave her a hard, flat look.

She put up her hands. “I also didn’t need telepathy to see that,” she told him. “You forget, I know you know when we’re doing that. Do you think I’m fool enough to ruin this date by doing the one thing you can’t stand?”

She was right, of course. Damned Jyslin, she always seemed to be right!

“Now, come on, Jason,” she said. “Let’s get started.”

He wasn’t entirely sure what to expect on this date, and he wasn’t sure about what was going to happen. They were going to be going to a Faey opera, and that meant that the odds were that there would be many Faey there. It said much that Jyslin was willing to bring him to a function that would be filled with her own people, where he would have the opportunity to make a fool out of her, humiliate her, in front of more than just her Marine squad. He hoped that it wasn’t going to be too long. He had no real interest in opera, and even less interest for a Faey opera, and he didn’t want to be bored stiff. Before and after that, he knew, Jyslin would want to talk. Talk over dinner, talk over the nightcap, talk in the limo. He wasn’t quite sure what she would want to talk about, but he knew it was coming.

And that was probably the greatest danger. He couldn’t get too close to her, couldn’t let her get herself too close to him, or she was going to end up like another Symone, a Faey that he liked, and allowed himself to like too much. They were Faey, they were the enemy, and he should not be socializing with the enemy. But Symone wasn’t an enemy in his eyes anymore, he had to admit that to himself. He had gotten to know her, and had accepted her because he felt that she was truly a friend. She liked him, he liked her. He could never imagine Symone on the other side of a battlefield, pointing a plasma rifle at him. He knew that were they actually fighting each other, she would, but he just couldn’t imagine it. Then again, he really couldn’t imagine Symone pointing a plasma rifle at anyone. If there was ever a Faey who had been utterly wronged when they assigned jobs to Faey conscripts, it was Symone. Symone didn’t have the temperament to be a soldier, because she would rather go out and have a beer with the enemy than try to kill him.

The limo was a stretch one, but not too large. Jyslin opened the door for him and gave him a sly smile, waving him in, and he couldn’t really say anything. He didn’t want to prolong this, because he noticed that quite a few people were watching from discrete distances. Many knew about this date, and he didn’t want to cause a scene. He wanted to get himself, Jyslin, and the limo out of there. She got him with him and closed the door, and the black limo pulled away from the curb.

“So,” she said, leaning against the side of the limo and smiling at him. “Now comes all that boring conversation.”

It turned out to be not boring at all, which Jason both cursed and enjoyed. He didn’t want to get to know her, but he found her to be a fascinating and engaging woman. He found out that she was born on a Faey mining colony called Rokan IV, which was nothing but a rock orbiting a blue star. It was enclosed in domes, and her parents were both miners. It surprised him that Faey actually mined, but he found out from her that Faey did just about every job that humans did. There were Faey farmers, miners, servants, factory workers, the whole gambit. They didn’t make their conquered races do all the dirty and dangerous jobs, they did the jobs for which they were qualified. Faey who weren’t too bright ended up in those kinds of jobs. But her father was definitely smart, as he was one of the mine’s engineers, while her mother worked as a secretary in the office of the mining company. She grew up in a sterile world of steel and glass, with no plants, no open air. She stayed there until she was twelve, and then her father was transferred to an arctic planet called Novira IX. Because of that, Jyslin now absolutely detested cold weather. They where there until she reached the official adult age of twenty five, when she was required by Faey law to serve five years in the military. She’d always been a very strong telepath, and since she couldn’t find any open slots in engineering school, she ended up in the Marines.

While she grew up, she had what she called a normal childhood. Her parents loved her, and since she was an only child, they may have spoiled her just a little bit. She grew up with many friends, and had always been popular in school because she was funny and she was smart. To Faey, smart kids were as popular in school as attractive humans were in human schools. Since most Faey were handsome or pretty, physical appearance wasn’t as important to them as it was to humans. She’d expressed her telepathic powers at a very young age, a sign of her impressive power, and that was also a reason why she was so popular in school. Telepathic power was the basic measuring stick by which all Faey compared themselves to one another. While the other kids were only just starting to express, she had already gained a grasp of the basics.

Telepathy was amazing and formidable to Jason, but it was just normal to Jyslin. They had courses in high school that taught telepathic skills like a human would have a math or chemistry class, classes that Jyslin took when she was still four years younger than most of the other people in the class. By the time all her friends were just starting Telepathy I, she had received her certificate proclaiming her to be a competent telepath. Telepathy was an innate power, but it didn’t come with an innate ability to use it. There were quite a few skills that a telepath had to learn, skills to protect their own minds and deal with the constant noise of background thoughts that the non-telepathic races gave off. They had to learn how to send their thoughts to others, or just send as they called it, which was itself an art form more than a skill. They had to learn the basics of how to defend themselves against a telepathic attack, how to maintain a defense against unwanted intrusion while at the same time allowing others to be able to send to them, which was a delicate skill that took quite a bit of practice to learn. They also had to learn how to attack other minds. It seemed odd to Jason that they taught their children how to use their power as a weapon against other Faey, but then he realized that they could use those same attacking techniques against non-telepathic creatures, and they also were simply formally training them in something that they may be required to do later in life in case they ever found themselves in a fight with another Faey. Humans brawled. Faey battled on the mindscape of telepathic power.

She reached her age of majority on that frozen rock, and was conscripted for her mandatory five years of military service. She’d tried to get into engineering, since she had the grades and had made the scores on the test for it, but that was a non-combat position, and all the slots were bought by nobles and the few rich commoners for their children. Given that she was such a strong telepath, that made her high on the list for the Marines. They engaged in ship to ship combat, and those close quarters gave the telepathic Faey a major advantage. They were also usually the first armed force to hit the ground, just like the American Marines had been. First in, last out, that was their motto. They needed powerful telepaths who could find and try to mentally dominate the initial opposition, opposition who probably had anti-telepathy measures in place to try to dampen that advantage if they were expecting the Faey.

Of course, she wouldn’t tell him what those measures were, and since he’d never found anything like that on CivNet-and he’d looked-it was something he was best off simply dropping.

She’d went through boot camp on homeworld, where it was warm, and had been a trooper for two years. She’d been posted on ships for six months, had occupied a disputed planet called Elvar III, one of the two systems that the Faey and the Skaa were fighting over. She’d only seen one battle, and it was little more than a skirmish between her squad and five Skaa guerillas. She’d had real armor then, and though the Skaa’s Neutron weaponry was formidable, the Adamantium alloy armor she’d had had protected her from a hit on her left shoulder. Adamantium was one of the strongest metal alloys known, and it was dreadfully expensive. As a front-line unit, she’d been issued that armor, and it saved her from having her entire left arm and shoulder surgically replaced with bionics.

That was one of the few places where he could not fault the Imperium. When it came to protecting its soldiers, they did not play.

After a year rotating on and off Elvar III, she was reassigned to Terra. And here she was. “I was up in New York for a while, but it was too damned cold,” she told him as the waiter set their food down before them. She ordered Cajun shrimp, a Copeland’s specialty, and he had blackened steak. Faey had this thing for seafood, he’d noticed from their television. They’d gotten a table out on the patio, his favorite place to sit, and they sat there in view of the pedestrians on the sidewalk and the occupants of the cars. This bothered him a little bit, but when she found out he loved sitting on the patio, she wouldn’t sit anywhere else. “The squad got reassigned here to New Orleans about two months ago, thank the gods,” she sighed. “If I had to go through one more winter slogging through snow, I was going to scream.”

“I hate heat,” he grunted. “I grew up where it’s usually cold.”

“Oh? Tell me about it,” she said as she took her first bite.

He knew he shouldn’t tell her anything, but she had told him about her, and he felt it only fair to reciprocate. He was born on an airplane somewhere over the Atlantic ocean twenty two years ago, en route from Boston to Ramstein Air Force Base, in Germany. In a way, he’d been born between nations, and his mother always joked that he was one of a very few citizens of the world instead of a nation. His father was a fighter pilot in the Air Force, and his mother was a music teacher. He was a true military brat, spending the first two years in Germany, then moving for a year in Korea, then a year in Alaska, then they moved to Japan when he was five. They were there for four years, the longest they’d ever stayed in one place, and that was where his father had fallen in love with martial arts. In four short years, his father became a black belt in four different martial arts. He didn’t see his father much for those four years, but his mother just smiled and told him that he was doing something he loved to do.

Jason had been there long enough to speak fairly decent Japanese, but it had been so long since he’d used it, he felt he’d probably forgotten it by now. He could still remember the kanji and the two phonetic writing systems, hiragana and katakana, though. Strange, sometimes, how memory worked.

His father was a bit disappointed when they left Japan, going back to America. In a way, though, it was probably necessary, for their only son could barely speak English. He’d grown up speaking French to his mother and whatever the local language was for everyone else, speaking a mixture of English and French only with his father. He’d caught on quickly enough, but getting rid of his accent took nearly three years. They were stationed in Washington state for two years, then went back to Alaska for another year.

It was in Alaska, just a couple of weeks after he turned twelve, when his mother was killed in an auto accident. His father resigned from the Air Force soon afterward and moved them back to the ancestral home, in a little town northwest of Portland, Maine, called Durham. He started a flight instructor’s school using his Cessna, earned a black belt and the credentials to open his own martial arts school, and Jason had to get used to living in one place. It wasn’t that bad, actually. He made friends in school, stayed in one school for more than a couple of years, and everyone spoke the same language. He started getting interested in electronics about then, but he was determined to get into the Air Force Academy and be a fighter pilot, just like his father, so he buckled down in school and started bringing his grades up to the point where they’d consider him. He started playing soccer and football, and found out that he was rather good at sports, thanks to all the martial arts instruction that his father gave him.

Then his father got sick, and eventually died. Jason was sixteen at the time, and he had no aunts or uncles-both his parents were only children-and all four of his grandparents had already passed away. Instead of going into a foster family and selling the house, he won his emancipation in court by proving he was mature enough to live on his own. The inheritance he got wasn’t that much, but it was enough to pay for him to get through high school without having to work, but it wasn’t enough to get him through college. Luckily for him, though, the University of Michigan offered him a scholarship to play football, which he got because a scout had come to watch a game he played in, but was actually there to scout the quarterback of the opposing team.

It hadn’t been easy, but Jason sold the house and moved to Michigan. The money he got from the house was enough to let him buy a car and support him as he went through college without having to work. He elected for a double major of electronics engineering and computer science, since the scholarship would pay for five years of college and he was more than willing to take summer classes. He did like to play football, but he didn’t apply himself in football as much as he could have, and as a result ended up as a third-string safety and a special teams cover player. He was there for the education, not the football.

“That drove my coaches crazy,” he admitted to her as he picked at his salad. Jason always ate his salad last, as for him it was the dessert. “They knew I was better than I played, but since I was always so involved with my classes, I just didn’t have the time to develop my skills. Coach Dawson always told me that if I’d give him three months, he could make me a starter. He even told me that I might even be good enough to play in the NFL, but I just wasn’t interested.”

“It wasn’t right for you to hold back on your team like that,” she said critically.

“I never held back,” he said bluntly. “I just didn’t have as much experience as they did. Coach Dawson said that it was raw physical ability that let me play on their level. If I’d have had the time to learn the nuances of the game, I could have been a starter.”

“Did you want to be?”

“Not really,” he admitted. “I was there to learn, not to play.”

“Well, what happened after that?”

“Nothing,” he said grimly. “Your ships arrived just when I started my senior year. That put me in limbo for nearly a year as they tested everyone. After I was tested, I was sent to Boston, and after one semester, they moved me down here.”

“And here we are,” she said carefully, obviously seeking to avoid an argument. “Where is your car at?” she asked curiously.

“Still in Michigan,” he growled. “They wouldn’t let me bring it.”

“Why not?”

“I have no idea. I just know that if it hasn’t been towed away, it’s still sitting in the student parking lot of the dorm up in Michigan.”

“Did they pay you for it?”

He gave her a flat look. “You seem to fail to grasp the situation for humans. When they shipped me to Boston, I had one suitcase full of clothes. That’s all. They made me leave everything else behind. Photo albums of my family, personal heirlooms, all my things, I couldn’t bring any of it. Only clothes.”

She frowned. “That’s not right,” she declared. “They shouldn’t have done that.”

“There are all sorts of things that they shouldn’t do, but they did,” he told her. “A friend of mine in Maine told me that a squad of Faey troopers came to her house, and while one of them asked her questions, the rest ransacked it. They took everything of value, even the silverware. Then they told her if she said anything, they’d come back and burn out her brain and make her a vegetable.”

“Now that’s wrong,” she said hotly. “Where was this? Durham?”

“What does it matter?” he asked.

“Humans have rights, Jason,” she said with surprising vehemence. “You’re citizens of the Imperium, and that means even though you’re subject to its rules, it also means that you enjoy its protections. There are rules against soldiers doing that. Not even a noble can barge into a person’s house and take everything.”

“That doesn’t seem to stop them,” he said mildly. “That kind of thing happens all the time.”

“This is why the Marines are here,” she said hotly. “To put a stop to that kind of bullshit.”

“You need the Marines to keep the nobles in line?” he asked.

“Nobles do what they want, so long as they stay within the law,” she answered. “The Marines are here to make sure they’re doing the Empress’ will. We also make sure they obey her laws. I think that the Marines up in Maine aren’t doing their jobs very well. We’ll just have to see about that,” she said in a nasty tone.

“What can you do?” he scoffed.

“My aunt is the general in command of all Marines in North America,” she answered. “How do you think my squad got transferred to New Orleans? I asked Aunt Lorna for a transfer. I’ll tell her about this, and she’ll put her foot down on some necks.”

“Don’t cause trouble for my friend,” he warned.

“You don’t even have to tell me her name,” she said. “Aunt Lorna will get to the bottom of it. And since your friend never said a word, then she’s perfectly safe.”

“Heh,” he snorted. “So even among Faey, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”

“Probably even more so,” she agreed. “The Imperial military is really the only place a commoner can get any real power, because the nobles control everything else. By law, nobles can’t hold high command positions in the Imperial arm of the military, so most of them don’t even bother enlisting there. It prevents nasty betrayals if a noble goes rogue, so they can’t have people in positions in the Royal arm of the military to disrupt things. They have their own private armies and navies, and that’s where they usually end up doing their commanding. But the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines are commanded by commoners. That’s how my aunt came to be a General.”

“Couldn’t she pull strings to get you into engineering?”

She shrugged. “She’s been trying,” she answered. “But I want a Royal Navy position, not a position in some noble’s fleet. So the competition’s a little tougher. If I was alright with getting any engineering position, I probably would have found one by now.”

“Oh.”

“You’d like my Aunt Lorna. She’s an old warhorse, but she’s funny,” she smiled. “She’s up in the command center in Washington, but she said she might come down to see me next month. I’ll have to introduce you.”

He said nothing to that. If he had his way, they wouldn’t be seeing each other again after tonight.

“Well, I’m done, and so are you, so let’s go ahead and head over to the theater,” she prompted, looking up to find the waiter, then raising her hand and snapping her fingers imperiously.

He would have preferred avoiding what was coming, but there was no hope of that. So he simply got into the limo with her, and it started towards downtown.

“Don’t worry too much about what to do at the theater,” she told him. “All you have to do is be polite. That’s all. You don’t have to act any special way or anything, but there are a few things you have to understand before we go in there,” she told him seriously.

“As in?”

“First, remember that among my people, I am the dominant gender,” she winked. “That means that, if you think in human terms, I’m supposed to do all those things that men do. I’ll hold the door open for you, I’ll help you get seated, I’ll lead you if we dance, and so on. When we walk, it’s customary for the man to put his hand on the woman’s forearm or elbow. Instead of you offering your arm, I’ll be the one offering mine,” she smiled. “There aren’t any real rules about how men act, but it’s considered good manners for a man to defer if a woman starts to speak. But I don’t think you’re worried about how cultured they think you are,” she said with a chuckle, then she turned serious. “But the one thing you can’t do is argue with me in public, alright? If you don’t like what I ask or suggest, you’re free to let me know, but don’t be combative. I’m going to be very careful to try to avoid any situations like that, Jason, I promise, but if you start getting offended or don’t like what I’m saying, don’t get bitchy.”

“Well, there goes my evening,” he said mockingly.

She laughed. “I know, it’s just ruined,” she agreed with an outrageous smile. “When we get there, we’ll have to cross the lobby to get to the auditorium, and there’s going to be Faey there talking. Faey love to gossip and chitchat, so they always get there very early so they have lots of time for it before the function begins. I might have to stop once or twice and greet people, since it’s considered good manners to do so if you’re invited. If we do, you’re not going to understand what’s going on very well, because you’re not going to hear the telepathic side of the conversations. Sometimes Faey just stop talking and send in the middle of a sentence, or one person is talking while the other is sending, so you only get half of he conversation. Most often, Faey will speak in the presence of humans, but not all of them will. Some Faey hold humans in contempt, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

He nodded without a word.

“Well then, that’s all you need to know,” she told him, reaching out and putting her hand on his forearm, then patting it. “We’ll suffer through the opera, then go somewhere and get a drink before we go home.”

“Remember, I have classes tomorrow,” he reminded her. “We can’t stay out too late.”

“Jason, believe me when I say I want to get through the opera and nightcap as quickly as possible,” she said with a slight, dangerous little smile.

He wasn’t sure he liked that or not.

They reached the Saenger Theater a few minutes later. The original Saenger had burned down two years ago, during a riot that erupted when the Faey first arrived, so the Faey had rebuilt it into their idea of a theater. It was still the same size, but it was a black building with no sharp corners, only rounded ones. There were a set of doors in the side facing Canal Street, as people passed in front of it on their way to other places. There were no Faey standing outside, but then again, it was too hot to stand around outside. The limo pulled up, and Jyslin got out, then reached in and helped him out with a smile. He got out and closed the door, and she led him in through glass doors that opened of their own volition. The lobby within was very large, and it was done in soft earth colors. The carpet was a soft maroon red with little white diamonds intersecting in geometric patterns through it, and the walls were panelled in what looked cedar or redwood, some reddish hued wood that gave the walls a warm glow, with no decorations or artwork hanging upon them. The ceiling was covered with thousands of pieces of stained glass that had very faint lights behind them, making them glow with a riot of color that was quite pretty. There were three huge crystal chandeliers hanging from that ceiling, each radiating light from hundreds of small lights shaped like candles, refracting and reflecting off the crystal shards hanging among them. The doors to the auditorium were on the far wall, and unlike a movie theater, there was no concession stand. There was only a small booth to give information, and humans dressed in red uniforms milled about.

It was nice, very nice.

Scattered through the lobby were about a hundred Faey, all dressed in elegant formal wear. Women wore gowns of every color imaginable, some plain, some almost guady, and all of them had their hair done up elaborately. Jyslin looked positively plain compared to most of them. Some were dripping with jewels from their fingers and throats and ears, and as he got a closer look, he saw that the Faey seemed to have no concept of the idea of a high neckline. Every single dress exposed cleavage to some degree, and a few of them were so deep that more blue-skinned breast was revealed than concealed. Jyslin’s gown was rather modest compared to most. The men all wore simple robes of various colors, each of them a similar style, making all the men look strangely similar. Some men had jewelry and some didn’t, some wore strange flat-topped hats that flared out towards the top and some didn’t, but almost all of them wore simple sashes around the waist. There were blue ones, red ones, and gold ones, and they had to have some kind of meaning that Jason couldn’t quite fathom.

There weren’t only Faey in that lobby. There were a sparse scattering of humans, men in tuxedos, women in tasteful gowns, and a few wearing clothes that were nice, but weren’t utterly formal. He wondered what they were doing here, at least he had a good excuse to be here. Something told him that these were the ones who had managed to buy their way into affluence with the Faey regime, the rich and powerful, or those who worked with the nobles as liaisons, helping them understand the nuances of human culture and behavior so as to better keep control.

The sell-outs.

His headache flared back into life rather quickly, and he put a finger to his temple and rubbed it as they descended into what he considered to be a pit of vipers. These weren’t Faey like Symone, and Jyslin. These were true enemies, he could just feel it.

They got about halfway across the lobby when Jyslin stopped and detoured to a group of five Faey. Three were women, two were men, and all of them were rather young. He recognized the three women. One was Maya, and the other two women were in Jyslin’s squad. All three wore very simple, unadorned gowns of soft colors, cream, a soft brown, and subdued blue, and all three were quite low cut. One of those two he didn’t know was quite familiar to him; she was one of the two whose armor he had destroyed, and who had followed him around naked for the remainder of the day.

“Jason, you know Maya,” Jyslin introduced as she reached them. “This is Zora, and this is Sheleese. This handsome fellow here is Vell, Maya’s husband, and this is Oren, Zora’s husband.”

“You looked better naked,” Jason told Sheleese bluntly.

She laughed heartily. “I thought you’d recognize me, though I figured I might have to pull down my bodice to remind you who I was,” she winked.

“Sheleese told us all about that,” the Faey man, Vell, told him with a chuckle and an extended hand. “I’ve heard a great deal about you, Jason. I think we really need to talk sometime,” he said with a smile.

“Talk?” Jason asked defensively.

“That’s all he does,” Maya said with a teasing smile at her husband. “Talk talk talk talk talk. My husband dabbles quite a bit in philosophy,” she told Jason.

“I didn’t think they’d let you bring your husbands here,” Jason said in a little surprise.

“Why not?” the other man, Oren, challenged.

“Well, this isn’t exactly friendly territory for Faey.”

“Of course it is,” he said boldly.

He didn’t miss Jyslin’s warning look at Oren to back off, and the man cleared his throat. Jason was about to excuse himself to go to the restroom, but he felt one of them brush up against his mind, finding the false front of repetitive thought that he kept there to prevent them from looking into his mind. Nonplussed, he felt that touch start reaching around the edges of his false thought, trying to find a way through. He’d already had a headache, and that alien force on his mind only made it worse, turning it into a pounding that he could see behind his eyes. “If whoever’s doing that doesn’t stop right now, I’m going to punch all five of you in the nose,” he said in a growling tone, putting the palm of his hand to his temple.

“Vell!” Maya said reproachfully, slapping him on the shoulder. And she wasn’t gentle.

“I must say, that’s quite impressive,” Vell said, unphased by his wife’s admonition or Jason’s rather graphic threat. “It’s the strongest defense I’ve ever seen in a human. I just had to see if you’d learned how to anchor it to keep someone from worming through the edges.”

“Vell, I told you not to do that!” Maya said in exasperation. “I specifically told you that Jason doesn’t like it when we do that!”

“You expected me to obey you?” he asked with a cheeky smile.

She gave him a very ugly look. “We’ll talk about this when we get home,” she said in an icy manner.

He grew rather contrite very quickly, and gave Jason an apologetic smile. Then he winked. I’m sorry if I hurt you, but don’t read anything into what I said to my wife. I just like to tease her.

He was surprised that he had heard that inside his mind, for Faey supposedly couldn’t send to humans in the manner in which he had just sent. They had to get a foothold inside a human’s mind to pass telepathic messages to them, and Vell did not have such a connection to him. Oddly, though, his headache eased somewhat.

“Good Azra,” Sheleese said quickly. “Jason, your nose is bleeding!”

Jason put a finger to his upper lip, and felt sticky warmth there. “Huh,” he mused. “Where is the restroom? I should clean up.”

“Just over there,” Jyslin pointed to one of the side walls.

“I had the same problem when I first came here,” Oren told him. “It’s something in the air that was making my nose bleed.”

“I’ll be right back,” he told Jyslin, looking around at them. They all didn’t look too concerned, but Vell was giving him a surprised, somewhat speculative look.

Jason decided right then and there that he wasn’t quite so sure about this Vell person.

“I’ll wait right here for you,” she replied, putting a lingering hand on his shoulder.

The nosebleed only lasted a moment or two, and had more or less stopped by the time he got to the bathroom. His headache had eased considerably, though. It was odd… maybe he’d had some kind of sinus pressure or something, and the nosebleed had eased that pressure. He’d had sinus problems for a couple of weeks after he came down here, and just as Oren mentioned, he did have nosebleeds during that time. Maybe the heat was starting to get to him, making his sinuses flare up again. Or it might have been coming out from the heat into the air conditioning of the theater. That could have done it.

After cleaning up and using the restroom, he went back out to find Jyslin. He hoped she’d just take him to their seats. He moved towards where they were quickly, but someone boldly stepped into his way. It was a Faey woman, regally tall, even taller than Jyslin. She wore an elaborate gown of dazzling white and silver, with a frilled ruff along a very deep neckline that showcased an impressively full bosom and clung to her narrow waist and curved hips appealingly. She had a sharp, attractive face with large green eyes, and her blonde hair was done up in an elaborate weave of locks that ringed her head before spilling down her back in a swaying tail. Around her neck was a web of small diamonds that fell in a triangle down to the edge of her cleavage, the small jewel at the point of that triangle nestled snugly between the top swells of her breasts.

“You are the human who gave the Marines all that trouble,” she announced in an arrogant manner that made him immediately dislike her. “Perhaps they should have taught you your place more effectively.”

Without even thinking about what he was doing, he drew himself up to his full height and glared down at the woman. She was tall, but she was nowhere near his height, and he used that size and his larger frame to physically intimidate the slender woman. “Perhaps your mother should have turned you over her knee more often when you were a child,” he returned.

What came next was not a brushing, was not a touch, but was more like a lance of power that sought to tear through his defenses and penetrate him to the very core of his mind, to lay bare his every thought and memory, to take from him anything and everything that she pleased, to lay bare his darkest memories, his deepest desires, his greatest fears, to know the utter truth of him. He reacted quickly to this attack, understanding that he could not directly stand up to her impressive mental power. So instead of resisting her, he simply withdrew completely from himself, from his own mind, effortlessly descending into an unthinking state that left his mind little but an empty shell. The trick here, he’d learned, was that the Faey had to have something to grab on to in order to find the rest of his mind. He let her in, then simply withdrew everything away from her, forcing her to wander around in an empty mist that hid his mind from her power. She found out quickly that she could put herself as deeply into his mind as she pleased, but there was absolutely nothing there for her to see, nothing for her to touch, and no way she could latch onto his mind and force him to obey her. His mind was an empty void, and the edges of that void pulled away from her every time she tried to get past it and get herself into his mind.

It wouldn’t last long, and he knew it. She was pushing deeper and deeper, starting to push away his deception, starting to reach towards the deepest, most private of his thoughts and memories. He reacted out of pure desperation, realizing that if he could feel her, if he could sense her presence in his mind, maybe he could do something about it. He locked in on that sense of her and pushed, and he pushed with absolutely every fiber of his being. He pushed away from the center of his being, driving her before him, forcing the sense of her away from the core of him. He felt her rock back on her heels-mentally, at least-and push back, but he had too much momentum. She lost more and more ground, until she was again forced out to the edges of his mind.

Once he was certain that she was suitably ejected from the recesses of his mind, he put something out there for her to see. It was an image of her, wearing nothing but leather knee-length boots, being sexually gratified by a jackass.

She instantly flushed, and her expression turned dark as an outraged snarl marred her attractive face. She must have been mightily upset and put out of sorts by his brashness, for instead of trying to attack him with her telepathic power again, she reared back a hand and tried to slap him across the face. That outrage became shock as he whipped a hand up and caught her hand before it reached him, creating a loud smack that caused her hand to instantly stop. He closed his fingers around her hand quickly and held it absolutely rigid. The single male Faey who had been accompanying her stared in awed shock as Jason held the woman’s hand absolutely still, as the muscles in her arm flexed and bunched as she tried to pull away from him. He felt her gather herself to try to overwhelm his mind with her power, but he closed his grip on her fingers, which caused her to gasp in pain.

Without saying a word, he pulled her hand down from his head with raw physical power, as her arm continued to struggle to resist his strength, until he had her hand down by her waist. Then he pulled it up and down in a mocking version of a handshake. Then he leaned in close to her ear. “If you try that again, I’ll rip off your arm,” he promised in a low tone that conveyed every bit of his own outrage. He loosened his grip slightly, and she ripped her hand away from him as if she’d stuck it in a fire.

She glared at him, but her expression slowly softened, until she actually smiled. Then she laughed.

Faey!

“Now I see why you gave them so much trouble,” she said approvingly, shaking her hand before her. “Enjoy the opera. Varn,” she said imperiously as she turned and sauntered away. The male Faey stared at him for a moment, then scurried after her.

“Why can’t you be more like him?” she demanded in Faey as they merged with the crowd.

“I can be commanding, dear,” he said in a placating tone.

What in bloody hell was that about?

“Are you out of your mind?” Jyslin hissed at him in disbelief as she came up to him, grabbing his arm in a very tight, almost painful grip. “I told you to stay out of trouble!”

“She started it,” he said pugnaciously.

“You dink, you don’t argue with them!” she hissed in a very low tone. “She’s a noble!”

“A noble?” he asked. “She certainly doesn’t look, well, noble.”

“She’s a Zarina,” she said in hushed tones, hustling him towards the auditorium. “Zarina Marci Trillane. She rules what used to be Jefferson, Saint Bernard, and Saint James Parishes. She’s responsible for the rice and sugar farming that they do down there.”

“What did she do?” she asked curiously as they went through the doors and into the large theater proper.

“She tried to invade my mind,” he said stiffly. “And I mean all the way. I know how to avoid that, so I did that, then I put an image of her being screwed by a donkey out where she could see it. That made her try to slap me.”

“She did, huh?” she asked, pursing her lips. “How did you avoid it?”

“The same way I hid from you,” he answered. “If you can’t find anything to look at, it doesn’t matter how deep you can get into my mind. After she started pushing in past that, I felt where she was in my mind, and sort of pushed her out.”

“Pushed her out?” she asked in surprise as they started down a row very far from the stage, almost in the back. “How could you push her out?”

“Well, I realized that if I could feel her in my mind, exactly where she was, then I could do something about it,” he said hesitantly. “I feel it when Faey brush me all the time, and I can always feel it when they try to push past that. They feel around the edges of my pattern of thought, looking for a way through it. Well, I could feel exactly where she was, so I just kinda pushed her out.”

“You pushed her out,” she said combatively as they sat down in the middle of the row, like she didn’t believe him.

“I’m about to push you out of that chair,” he said in a nasty tone.

She gave him a dirty look, then blew out her breath. “Sorry, but you can’t do that,” she told him.

“You’re wrong, because I did,” he said pugnaciously. “Maybe you don’t know as much about humans as you thought.”

She gave him a very long look, and it was serious. “Maybe… you’re right,” she said in a low, grim tone. “Maybe we don’t know as much about humans as we thought. We can’t leave right now, Jason, but when we have a chance to get out of here without attracting attention, we absolutely have to go somewhere very private and very quiet, and have a long talk.”

“Why not now?”

“It’ll attract attention,” she said, looking around. “We don’t want to do that. Not right now. Not until Zarina Marci forgets about what happened. If she stops and thinks about it, you might get into a serious pile of trouble.” She looked around again. “We’ll leave after the first intermission.”

“What’s the matter with you?” he demanded.

“We’ll talk about it after we get out of here,” she answered in a quiet, professional tone, like a Marine about to walk into a prospective battlefield. “Until we do, don’t do anything to attract attention to us. I want Zarina Marci to completely forget about you.”

“You think she’s going to try to get back at me?”

“This has nothing to do with that. Now be still.”

“You’re creeping me out here, Jyslin,” he said honestly.

“Don’t make me muzzle you, Jason,” she warned, and he could tell that she wasn’t kidding.

This sudden change in her attitude, her very demeanor, shocked him. This was a side of her he’d never seen before, when she was all serious. But something had spooked her, something about the Zarina, and he didn’t think he wanted to annoy her at the moment. Not because he was afraid of her, but she seemed honestly upset, and he didn’t want her to worry. So he fell silent and sat there as other Faey started filing into the auditorium.

Maya and Vell took the seats to Jyslin’s left, and Zora and her husband, Oren, took the seats to Jason’s right. Sheleese, who had no date, sat down immediately behind Jyslin. She leaned over the seat between them, a smile on her face. “We were looking for you two,” she said. “We figured you’d dragged him into some dark corner.”

“Not now,” Jyslin said in a brusque tone, but the look she levelled on Sheleese made her instantly pull back. “Was the Zarina still in the lobby when you came in?” she asked.

“I don’t remember seeing her,” Maya answered, her playful smile melting from her face.

“Sheleese, drift back out into the lobby and see if she’s still there. Send tight, Marci is very strong with her talent,” Jyslin ordered, in a crisp manner. “She’s not your usual lazy noble.”

“She’ll never sense me,” Sheleese grinned, then she got up and sauntered back down the row, towards the aisle.

“You know her?” Jason asked.

“I’ve met her a few times,” she answered. “Her sending is very strong, and that’s an indicator of her power. She’s not to be sneezed at. She could easily make it into the Marines.”

Jason remembered that powerful telepathic ability was a requirement for being a Marine. If she was strong enough to be a Marine, then she was indeed strong. Zora, Sheleese, Maya, and Jyslin were probably four of the strongest telepaths in the theater.

“What’s the angle here, Jys?” Zora asked.

“Jason and the Zarina had a little encounter,” Jyslin answered. “I want to get him out of here before she realizes exactly what happened and comes looking for him. I wanted to wait until the first intermission, but if I can slip him out the door before the opera starts, that’s just as good. So long as she doesn’t even see him. She’s probably forgotten what happened, but if she sees him, she’s going to remember.”

“There are exits by the men’s restroom,” Vell announced. “A side exit. It didn’t have an alarm on it. I think it’s an additional exit for after the performances end, so everyone isn’t bottled up at the front door.”

“That’s the better tactical choice,” Maya said seriously. “It’s not more than fifteen shalka from the lobby door to the men’s restroom.”

A shalka was a Faey unit of measurment that was about fifteen inches long. Fifteen of them was roughly equivelent to about eighteen feet.

“Marci is still out there,” Jyslin frowned, putting a finger to her temple. “Wait, she’s near the women’s restroom. That’s on the far side, and there are still plenty of people in the lobby.”

“Screen?” Maya suggested.

“It should work,” Jyslin agreed. “Alright everyone, up. We’re going to sneak Jason out the side door. I’ll have Sheleese distract the Zarina, and we’ll slide him out of here.”

Jason was a little confused, and not a little surprised at this commanding tone Jyslin was using. Then again, she was a squad sergeant, and that meant that she did do a little commanding. The other Faey obeyed her without question, hinting to him that her authority as a Marine spilled over even into this purely civilian event. He found him caught up in this sudden military exercise, as gowned and robed Faey hustled him up out of his seat and into the aisle, then against the flow of traffic up to the lobby door. They hesitated only a second before Jyslin boldly stepped out into the lobby, pulling Jason along with her by the hand. The other Faey filed out immediately behind him, blocking anyone’s view of him.

“Duck down a little!” Jyslin hissed. “By Galla’s moons, she’ll see the top of your head!”

Jason obediently ducked down just enough to hide his head, which was usually visible over most crowds. Jason was six feet two inches tall, which was just enough for him to be considered tall. They hustled him to a large door by the men’s restroom, which had an exit sign clearly mounted above it, in both English and Faey.

They ended up on Rampart Street, and Jyslin immediately started walking away from Canal Street. “What’s this all about?” he demanded.

“I couldn’t leave you in there,” she said. “I’ll explain in the limo.”

“We’ll have to call the driver.”

“I already did. He’s on the way.”

“But-nevermind,” he grunted.

They waited only for a couple of minutes before the limo pulled up by the side of the street. She made sure he got in first, the got in behind him quickly. The limo pulled away from the curb, and when it did so, Jyslin blew out her breath in relief, putting her hand to her chest. “That was almost as nervewracking as a combat patrol,” she admitted.

“Alright, we’re in the limo. What’s going on?”

She looked him right in the eyes. “Jason, there is no way you should have been able to eject Marci from your mind. That kind of action requires talent. But you’re a human, so you don’t have any.”

He gave her a suspicious look.

“Hey, I have no idea either,” she told him. “It must be your training. It gives you abilities that are this close to talent.” She held her thumb and forefinger up, the tiniest of margins apart. “I didn’t want the Zarina to think about what you did. She’d expect it from a Faey, but not from a human. If she got curious, she might give you trouble. Real trouble. As in hauled down to the detention center and having a Faey tear our your soul kind of trouble.”

Jason shuddered at the very thought of that. “I-Thanks,” he said after a moment.

“Hey, no problem,” she smiled. “But you owe me now,” she winked.

“I appreciate your help, but don’t think I’m going to let you hold it over my head,” he warned.

“I’m not. But you do owe me the opportunity to change the deal a little.”

“How so?” he asked warily.

“Let’s go see a movie,” she said with a bright smile. “I think I’ll have to go home and change first, but let’s go out to the Palace in Metairie and see a movie.’

“What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s a bit too high class for a movie theater,” she said with a light smile. “What do you say?”

He debated that for a moment, but really couldn’t find any reason to say no. He did still owe her a date, and a movie sounded better than that opera any day. “Alright,” he agreed.

“Good. Let me tell the limo driver to take us to my place. I’ll release him and we’ll take a cab to the movies.”

He wasn’t too keen on the idea of going to her place, but he couldn’t really say anything. She did need to change, and it would be rude for him to stand out on the sidewalk and wait for her.

A little while later, after crossing over onto the West Bank, he found himself in Belle Chasse, where the former naval air station was located. The limo was allowed onto the base, and Jyslin must have been guiding him with telepathic messages, for he pulled up to one of the houses in the base housing section of the base. It was a cookie cutter house, a small affair that looked to be two bedrooms, a ranch style house on the corner of two narrow streets. He hadn’t thought that the Marines would be living in the houses on the old base, but then again, since they were here and empty, why not?

Jyslin got out and then helped him out, not that he needed help, then leaned into the passenger side window to talk to the driver. “Just go back the way you came,” she told him. “Do not wander around. If you get lost, just park the limo and wait for a patrol car to come, and they’ll show you the way out.”

“I’ll be fine, miss. I’ve been on the base before,” the driver answered calmly.

“Good. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he answered as she stepped, back, and the limo pulled away.

They watched it go. “Come on, let me show you my house,” she invited.

They entered through the front door-which wasn’t locked, he noticed-and she turned on the lights to reveal a strangely human living room. The carpet was a bit worn, gray shag, and she had decorated her living room with two matching large, thick-cushioned sofas that flanked a large glass coffee table, which faced a television. She had a vidlink console on the wall to the left, and the open area to the right led into a small kitchen filled with aging appliances. A hallway to the left led down to the two bedrooms, and probably to the bathroom as well, and there was a glass paned door on the far wall that led to the porch and back yard. Two standing lamps were on the side walls, and she had several works of art hanging on the walls. They were all abstract, geometric shapes and colors arranged in intriguing patterns, except for one, which was a portrait of a male Faey, nude, reclining on a couch before a waterfall. The painting was impressionist, the borders enticingly indistinct, the features curiously vague. Seeking out detail made the portrait nonsensical, but stepping back and taking it all in at once produced a coherent image.

“You like that one?” she asked as she started taking off her shoes. “My mother painted it. It’s my father.”

“Your mother’s a good artist,” Jason said honestly.

“She made all these. She sends me a new one every year,” she said. “Want one? I have a few in the other rooms. I’m starting to run out of places to hang them.”

“No thanks,” he said.

“I’ll show them to you,” she declared. “Come on.”

Trapped by his manners, he allowed her to take him down the hall, to the first bedroom, which she had converted into a study. She had a panel computer on a desk in the middle of the room, but a large desktop one, not the portables that the students used, complete with a hard keyboard. A bookshelf holding several books and boxes of memory sticks was behind the desk, flanked by two floor lamps. There were six paintings on the walls, all of them abstract geometric paintings. “This is where I do my correspondence courses,” she told him. “I’m a student, just like you.”

She showed him her bedroom next, which was larger than her study. She had a very large bed dominating the middle of the left wall, a king-size with a large oak headboard holding tiny figurines, books, and little knick-knacks that made the place look strangely homey. She had a dresser on the far wall, a smaller one on the same wall as the door that had a mirror mounted on it, a large cherrywood chest at the foot of the bed, and a pair of nightstands on either side of the bed. A wire stand of sorts was in the far corner, by a door that probably led to a bathroom, on which hung her armor. Her rifle was hanging on pegs on the wall by her armor. Four paintings were in this room, the one hanging over the bed obviously Jyslin when she was a very young child, wearing a little blue dress and holding a small little animal that looked like a gray-furred fox kit with two tails. It was not impressionist, it was a painting so carefully done that it looked like a picture.

“Now that’s good,” he said in sincere appreciation.

“That’s me,” she smiled. “When I was six, with our pet vulpar Tunny.”

“Odd little animal. I’ve seen an animal with two tails.”

“Tunny belonged to my grandparents. When they died, she came to live with us.”

“She must be old.”

“She’s nearly fifty.”

Jason gave her a surprised look as she opened a drawer in the dresser on the same wall as the door.

“They live about seventy years. She’s still alive, but she sleeps a lot now. She’s not as playful as she was when I was a child.”

“Vulpars are truly lifetime pets,” she told him as she quietly closed the door. She came up to him and put her hand on his upper arm, sliding it along his forearm, until she had a grip on his wrist. Then she chuckled ruefully. “I did not plan this,” she said to him with a slightly contrite smile, but her eyes were sultry, soft, and seductive, the gray of them seeming to glow in the light of the overhead light.

This was what he was hoping to avoid. He put a hand on hers and tried to pull it away, but she simply put her other hand on his side, gripping the hand that had grabbed hers to pull it away. “Jyslin, I’m not interested.”

“You’re such a liar,” she said with a throaty chuckle. “Look me in the eyes and tell me you’re not interested in me.”

That was the one thing he could not do, because he was interested in her, and she knew it. But he would not get involved with a Faey, no matter how much he liked her or how much he was attracted to her. “I can’t,” he told her. “I won’t, Jyslin. You’re a Faey. You know how I feel about Faey.”

“I’m not the Imperium, Jason,” she said with gentle adamance. “I’m just a girl, a girl who wants to be with you.” She put her hand on his neck, and he grabbed it to pull it away. “Jason,” she said with a yearning that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and produced an immediate urge within him. “I’ll make you one more bet, a final challenge,” she said. “Kiss me.”

“What?”

“Kiss me. If you can kiss me and walk out that door, I’ll never bother you again,” she promised, caressing his side in a manner that made his skin hot beneath his shirt and her fingers. “But if you kiss me and can’t walk out that door, we spend the night together, and you can’t shut me out after tonight. You have to give me the chance to be your friend, the same way you let Symone be your friend.”

He was very worried about the idea of it, but if he didn’t agree, she would just keep trying, and that would sour their relationship to the point where she’d lose any chance at all with him. Kissing her would give her a chance to try to inflame his passion, and that was why she was offering the challenge. It was her one and only chance to seduce him. But the opportunity to get her out of his life was too much to ignore. He didn’t like the idea of it, because he did like her, he did find her very attractive, but she was the ultimate temptation, Eve’s apple, luring him down a road that would compromise his principles and turn him into the willing slave to the Imperium he did not want to become.

When he didn’t immediately answer, she looped her hand around his neck and pulled him down, then kissed him. Jason had kissed many girls in his life, but he had never been kissed like that. She kissed him with such passion, such lingering tenderness, such sweet desire that his resistance against her withered in the face of her ardor. Before he knew what was happening, he had his arms around her, kissing her back with equal passion, admitting to her and to himself how attracted he was to this beautiful, interesting, sensual, intelligent, funny, and dead sexy woman. The fact that she was a Faey now meant absolutely nothing. She was a woman, and only a woman, a woman who wanted him, a woman he wanted in return.

“Mmm, I knew you’d see things my way,” she purred as he kissed her neck, and as she backed them towards the bed.

---

It was his wildest dream, and it was his worst nightmare.

When Jyslin had jokingly put into his calendar last week that it would be a near-religious experience to make love to her, she was not joking. There was an intense sensuality about her that he was certain was a racial trait, a powerful awareness of senses, awareness of pleasure, and a strong empathic need to give as well as receive pleasure that made the night with her almost mind-boggling.

Just the memory of it made him shudder. It was dawn now, a little later than he usually slept, but then again, he hadn’t had such an incredible night all those other times. He was on his stomach, and she was splayed half atop him, her arm draped over his back possessively, sleeping with her face pressed up against his shoulder. It was-there were no words for it. To call it sensual, erotic, intensely intimate, they would not do what passed between them last night proper justice. Her touch had been fire, but it was a fire that gave pleasure instead of pain, and she consumed him with it.

But it was more than the sex. Halfway into it, when she had him twisted around her finger, she touched his mind. She didn’t ask to do it, and at that moment, he was utterly incapable of doing anything to stop her. She seemed so caught up in their lovemaking that it was an automatic response, and it was then that he appreciated her power as a telepath. She blew through his started defenses like they were dust and joined their minds into a symbiotic union that allowed all their feelings, thoughts, sensations, everything to pass between them. They had become a single mind in two bodies, and the intensity of their lovemaking before that was like a candle flame held up to a bonfire. To feel her pleasure in addition to his own, to know immediately what pleased her, what did not, and to feel the overpowering desire she had, an almost uncontrollable attraction to him that had caused her to go to such extremes to get closer to him, they multiplied the intimacy by an order of magnitude. She made love to him with her body and her mind, and it was an experience that had been seared forever into his memory as the single-most intense night of pleasure he had ever had. She had dropped all her defenses, joining their minds in an open connection that allowed him to look into her mind, anywhere in her mind, and see whatever he wanted. He could have learned her most embarrassing secrets, her darkest fantasies, her most treasured dreams, or her most deep-seated desires had he wished to do so, but at that moment he was too busy making love to her to even think to look.

That, more than anything, was what impressed him, now that he looked back on it. She had been fearless about it, more than willing to expose the totality of her being to him, to give to him freely everything that she was. He felt unbelievably honored that she would trust him like that, give him everything in exchange for joining their minds.

But God, what a night! He’d never be able to make love to a human woman ever again. She’d spoiled him, utterly spoiled him, because he knew that no human could ever match what he felt last night unless she was telepathic.

He yawned and tried to slide out from under her, but she suddenly grabbed hold of him and hooked the leg over the back of his own around the nearest one, wrapping him up and preventing him from going anywhere. “Mmmm, no you don’t,” she said in a half-awake, dreamy kind of satisfied lassitude. “I get to keep you until school.”

“It’s morning,” he told her.

“Already? Damn,” she grunted, letting go of him and rolling over on her back. “How’s your nose?”

He’d suffered another nosebleed during their lovemaking, causing a rather funny interruption as she tried to stem the flow of blood, but she was so worked up that she couldn’t concentrate on what she was doing.

“It’s alright,” he answered. “You must have hit it just right.”

“I didn’t hit it,” she protested.

“Sometimes it just takes a touch,” he told her. “A touch the wrong way to get a nose to bleeding again.”

“Now that might have happened,” she acceded, then she gave a throaty, sensual chuckle. “I can’t wait for our next date,” she told him, rolling back over and squirming up onto his back, holding him down. He looked up at her from the corner of his eye, seeing her bright, intimate smile. “Are you sure you have to go to school?”

“You can explain why I’m absent to the dean,” he told her.

“I don’t think snuggling is a valid reason to miss class,” she laughed. “Well, my sweet one, I think I won our little bet,” she purred in a sultry tone, leaning down and kissing his ear and cheek. “I don’t think you minded losing,” she breathed in his ear.

“I’m glad we made love,” he told her honestly. “But I’m not glad for the situation. You’re a Faey, and I’m a human. I just slept with the enemy, and now, if I’m not careful, I’m going to go back on all the promises I made to myself and compromise my principles.”

“Hate what I stand for all you want, as long as you don’t hate me,” she told him seriously. “I’m more than capable of separating you from politics, Jason. At least try to do the same for me.”

“That’s not easy,” he grunted.

“You think I’m a zealous patriot?” she asked archly. “You forget, I’m in armor because I couldn’t get the job I wanted. I was pushed out by rich nobles who put their children where they wanted to go. I’m five times more qualified to be a starship engineer than most of them!” she flared. “I’m a Marine because I’m not a noble!”

He rolled over on his back, dislodging her, and she immediately climbed back on top of him, putting her elbows down on either side of his shoulders, her hands playing with his hair. “I don’t care about the Imperium, Jason. I serve because I have to serve, the same as you. If I cared about the Imperium, I would have handed you over to Marci last night. If I cared about the Imperium, your little secret wouldn’t be a secret.”

“What secret?” he asked in confusion.

She gave him a sly smile. “I didn’t seduce you only to share a near-religious experience with you,” she told him. “I needed to touch your mind and have you let me do it willingly. I wanted to see if I was right.”

“Right about what?” he asked suspiciously.

“Right about this,” she said, tapping him on the forehead. “If Marci found out about you, the Imperium might have a conniption. There’s no telling what they’d do to the humans.”

“What?” he demanded.

“Think about it, Jason,” she said with a slow, knowing smile. “Why can you feel it when we touch your mind? Why is that you can hide yourself from us? How could you eject Marci out of your mind? It has nothing to do with your mental discipline or your training.”

He gave her an impatient look.

“Jason, you have talent,” she revealed. “And it’s not weak. When I joined with your mind, I found it within you, bursting at the seams to be realized.”

“What?” he asked in shock.

“You’re a telepath,” she told him evenly. “And a damn bloody strong one. You’re as strong as I am, and I’m considered in the top ten percent among Faey.”

He gaped at her in disbelief.

“I did help it along,” she admitted shamelessly. “It was there, but you didn’t know how to use it, and it hadn’t fully formed itself. I showed it how to fully express, gave you a little nudge. But it’s there.”

He was thunderstruck. All he could do was gape at her in awed disbelief.

“The headaches, the nosebleeds, they were symptoms of the expression of your talent,” she told him with a smile. “They weren’t from stress, or sinus problems. Think about it. Didn’t they flare up when you were around Faey?”

He was silent, thinking back… and he realized she was right. The last few days, there were Faey around him every time the headaches got bad. And the nosebleed, that started after Vell did whatever it was he did that allowed him to slip past his defenses and pass along a telepathic message.

“B-But it was too fast-”

“That’s normal,” she said. “Telepathy doesn’t slowly develop like you’re thinking it does. It does develop, but while it does, you can’t feel it, and it doesn’t show up. It just bursts out when you reach a certain level, which is usually around puberty for a Faey. For me, it was when I was much younger. I’ve had talent for almost a long as I can remember. If you’d been born among Faey, you’d have expressed at about the same time as me.”

“But, but humans never showed any kind of ability before,” he argued.

“I know,” she said with pursed lips. “You told me that Faey always probe you. Maybe all that telepathic contact jarred it in you. If I’m right, you’d never had expressed any talent if it weren’t for the fact that we’re here. It was latent within you, unable for you to touch it, but when we came along and started stimulating that part of your brain with our own power, it started to develop.”

He was still awestruck, but he had recovered his wits enough to understand what she was saying. But was she right? Did he really have telepathic ability?

“Of course you do,” she said with a slow smile.

He glared at her. “How-”

“I know your mind now, Jason,” she told him. “And we do happen to be touching at the moment. Your defenses don’t work on me like this, not anymore. I can hear your thoughts whenever we touch. And with some training, you’ll be able to hear mine.” She touched his face gently. “But if it bothers you, I won’t do it, I promise. I can tune you out.”

“What, what are you going to do?” he asked in worry.

“Train you,” she smiled. “I’m not going to turn you in, Jason, don’t be silly. I don’t care about the Imperium. I do what I’m told because I have to. If I can get away with not telling them a word, then I will. And they can’t catch me,” she winked. “I’m one of the strongest telepaths on Earth,” she said bluntly, but not in a boasting manner. She was simply stating fact. “They can’t pull it out of me by casual scans, because none of the mindbenders on the planet, the Empress’ secret police, are strong enough to breach my defenses without me knowing it. They’ll never find out from me, and after some education, they’ll never pick it up from you either.

“I’m supposed to tell them about this, but I’m not. You’re my friend, and you’re now my lover, and I’m not about to hand you over to them. I’ll teach you how to control your power, and how to hide the fact that you have power from other Faey They never have to know. And as long as we don’t fuck up, they never will.”

He stared up at her in shock. She was going to disobey the Imperium, keep him a secret. She truly wasn’t the Imperium, a loyal subject of the Empress that would do whatever she was told. The image of her as a cog in their vast machine melted away, and for the first time, he saw her not as an agent of the Empress, but as nothing other than Jyslin Shaddale.

She gave him a radiant, unbelievably tender smile. “There, see? It wasn’t so hard, was it?” she asked, sliding her finger along his cheek intimately. “I told you before, Jason, I’m not interested in the Imperium. I’m interested in you. As long as I have you, what could they possibly offer me that’s better?”

He was touched by her words, by her honest admission. He put his hand on her cheek, and she leaned against it, smiling down on him with her lovely gray eyes.

“Oh, if only we had a little more time,” she complained in a longing manner, kissing the palm of his hand, sliding her legs against him sensually. “But you have to get to school, and I have to get to work. And I have to take you to school,” she grinned. “While you’re there, don’t worry too much,” she told him. “Remember, it takes effort to use. As long as you don’t try to do anything, nobody’s going to notice. You might start hearing the thoughts of people around you, and you might overhear it when Faey send to each other. Those are passive actions, they don’t require effort, and nobody can tell when you’re doing them.”

“Why could I hear sending?”

“Jason, sending is nothing but a broadcasted thought that people who are telepathically adept can hear,” she answered. “It’s what you might call thinking out loud.”

“I thought that Faey had to allow themselves to hear it.”

“We do,” she answered. “We usually tune out the thoughts we hear, but we can leave ourselves open to hear sending, because it’s a little different than just eavesdropping on the surface thoughts of others.” She patted his hair with a smile. “You shouldn’t have too much trouble. The one way you’ve developed your ability is through your ability to defend yourself. Just keep that up, and no Faey is going to notice anything different about you. I’ll come over after I’m off duty and start teaching you the other aspects of it. And you must learn,” she told him seriously. “You have to get competent with your power and do it fast, Jason. Right now, when you have the power but haven’t learned how to use it or control it, this is when you’re most vulnerable. You have got to keep a lid on it and not tip your hand until I can teach you. After I teach you, no Faey will ever be able to discover your secret. I’ll even teach you ways to fool them into thinking that they can hear your thoughts, so they don’t probe you all the time.”

He was still a little scattered, overwhelmed by the thought of it. If someone had told him that he’d just inherited a million credits, it wouldn’t have registered to him in the slightest. He had telepathic ability. He was possessed of the one thing that separated the humans from the Faey, more then the color of their skin or the pointed ears that made them look elfin. A human had telepathic power, a human now possessed the one weapon against which the human race could not defend against, stand up to.

The implications were enormous, both personally and in the terms of the human race. Was he the only one? Was he some kind of fluke, or were there more humans out there with the same latent potential, which would express after the Faey stimulated it into maturity with their own power? If that were true, then the human race could stand up to the Faey. The difference in technology was extreme, but always before it was the fact that the Faey were telepathic which was the one overwhelming factor that the human race could not defeat, which allowed them to crush any kind of rebellion or resistance before it managed to get any kind of start at all. But if a sizable number of humans were telepathic, and they could somehow learn how to use their power without the Faey—

That was a pipe dream, and he knew it. As soon as the Faey realized that humans were showing telepathic ability, they would come down on the human race like a sledgehammer. They would root them out and deal with them, either with telepathic reprogramming or by killing them. That was why Jyslin got him out of that theater, because she knew what would happen, and she meant to protect him from them.

Yet another reason to be impressed with Jyslin, and be receptive to the idea of including her in his life for the immediate future. She truly was interested in him for who he was, and had demonstrated to his satisfaction that she was not the Imperium. If anything, she was willing to go against her own people on his behalf. That was certainly saying something.

“Let’s get dressed before I start taking advantage of the situation and make us both late,” she said with a leer, reaching down and patting him on the hip. She got off of him and went to the mirror and slicked her hair over the left side of her head as best she could, then went over to her armor and started by picking up the codpiece, the section most closely compared to a pair of metal shorts. “Why don’t you wear anything under it?” he asked curiously as she stepped into the piece of armor.

“Well, we could,” she admitted. “I could easily wear panties and a bra under the armor, maybe even a pair of skin-hugging shorts or a tank top, and some Faey do wear a bra. But we can’t take the armor off, and that makes going to the bathroom a tricky proposition when you consider the fact that this is the base on which all the rest of the armor is built,” she said, tapping the codpiece as she slipped it over her hips, the locked its seams closed. “To get this off, I have to take the armor off my legs and detach it from the stomacher and breastplate, and that takes a while. I’d pee myself long before I got enough off to go without making a mess. The crotch of the armor has a locking opening that we use when we have to go to the bathroom,” she told him. “If I wore panties, it would make getting them out of the way a tricky proposition. Maya calls it the ‘doorway to heaven’,” Jyslin laughed. “She once had sex with her husband wearing her armor. He didn’t appreciate it afterwards, once the bruises started showing up.”

That was certainly logical. He nodded in understanding as he sat up. “Need help?”

She shook her head. “A Marine has to be able to get into armor with no help in five minutes. It’s a drill in basic training. I can handle it, love. You need to get dressed. I have to get you to your dorm room with enough time for you to get ready for your classes.”

He nodded, climbing out of bed and looking around for his clothes, which were scattered all over the room. Her dress was thrown on the floor, and he reached down and picked it up, brushing it to get the wrinkles out. “You should hang this up,” he told her.

“There are hangers over there,” she said, pointing at the closet as she locked the leg greaves that protected her thighs in place, securing them to the codpiece. The greaves overlapped the codpiece, forcing her to take them off before she could get the codpiece off. It really was the base of the armor. She locked the flexible metal skin that filled the space between the joints to the inside edge of the greaves on her right leg, settling the kneecap protector in place. “Less time watching me armor up and more time dressing,” she told him with a sly wink.

“Sorry. I’ve been curious how it fits together for a while.”

“Trust me, love, in a month, you’ll know how it fits as well as I do,” she said with another wink. Jyslin loved to wink, for some reason. “Dress.”

He hung up her expensive dress, then started dressing. He had to gather his clothes from various parts of the room, but he started tending to it quickly, his mind still racing with what he had learned this eventful morning. About his telepathic gifts, about Jyslin, about everything. It was all different now, and he needed a little time to sort it out in his mind, figure out what he wanted to do.

After putting on his vest, he looked and saw that she had all her armor on from the waist down. She was settling the sollaret boot on her foot, then took up the front half of the stomacher, the piece of armor that was flexible, that was between the breastplate and the codpiece. She attached it to the breastplate’s bottom edge, hooked the back half to the back of the breastplate, then latched the top buckles on the shoulders of the two breastplate sections together. Then she picked up the entire assembly and slid it over her head, pushing her head through the opening for her neck. She settled it on her shoulders easily, then sealed the side seams and then tended to attaching the base of the stomacher to the inside edge of the top of the codpiece.

“Efficient,” he complemented.

“I’ve done this a long time, love,” she told him as she reached behind her and locked the back of the stomacher to the inside back edge of the codpiece without looking. “Let me get the upper greaves on, and we can go. I can get the bracers and gauntlets on in the car.”

“What car?”

“Didn’t you see the Toyota parked in front of the house?” she chuckled. “That’s my car.”

“I thought you guys had hovercars.”

“That’s the Corps’ vehicle,” she answered. “When we first got here , we weren’t allowed to bring Faey technology vehicles here for our own personal use. Most of us bought human cars when we got here, and hell, they’re just as good as hovercars, so most of us never bothered to bring in our own personal cars once they lifted the ban. I have a hovercar, but I had to leave it with my parents. I know you’ve seen Faey in human cars.”

“Well, sure, but I never much thought about what it meant.”

“Well, now you do,” she told him. “When you see a Faey in a human car, it’s because she’s off duty and she’s about on personal business.” She locked the two greaves around her right arm,over the flexible metal skin that protected her shoulder and armpit, flexing it a few times, then reaching for the flexible metal skin for her left shoulder. She quickly got that on, then the greaves, and then she picked up the forearm bracers and gauntlets and swept them into a small bag that was by the stand. “Alright, we can go,” she said, locking the web belt that held her sidearm around her slender waist, then pulling down her rifle from the wall.

He nodded and picked up his tie, pulling it over his head. She handed him her rifle, letting him carry it, trusting him with it as they filed out of her room, then out of her house. She locked the door with a key on a small silver ring, then tucked it into one of the pouches on her web belt. “We have a stop to make before we go to your dorm,” she announced.

That stop was at the guard post for the front gate. They didn’t get out of her car-which surprised him that she could drive it with that armor, but then again, it showed how flexible the armor was-just pulled up the gate house and rolled down the window. “I want an entry pass for him,” she called to the gate guard.

“What kind?” she asked in return.

“Unconditional,” she replied. “He’s going to be coming and going from now on.”

She smiled knowingly. “Sure. Hold on a second. Could you look this way for me, sir?” she asked as she reached into her little cubby and took out a small camera.. She took his picture and stepped in, seating it to a base as she started typing on a holographic keyboard. “Name?”

“Jason Fox,” Jyslin answered for him.

“Thank you.” She typed a few more seconds, touched the screen a few times, then reached under the shelf and pulled out a small laminated card. “Here you go,” she told him, handing it to Jyslin. “Just present that card to the gate guards when you come, honey, and they’ll let you in,” she told him. “It’ll also let you into the base exchange and the comissary, and all the other places on base. Don’t lose it. It’s a ten credit fine to replace it.”

“I’ll remember that,’ Jason said as he looked at it. It was in Faey, and it said he was a base resident, the “permanent resident guest” of Sergeant Jyslin Shaddale. A nice, technical term for boyfriend.

He could live with that title. He looked over at her and realized that he would very much be comfortable with that title.

“Permanent resident, eh?” he asked, putting the card in his wallet.

“Hey, I want you to have all the perks being a Marine’s babe entails,” she said with a wink as they pulled out onto Belle Chase Highway.

“A Marine’s babe?” he asked archly.

“You are a babe,” she told him, blowing a kiss at him. “You’re my babe.”

“Don’t get me in trouble at school,” he warned. “Some students are more vocal about their dissent than me.”

“They’re not going to see me on campus, only when I visit you in the dorm,” she told him. “They don’t seem to have any problem with Symone.”

“Symone’s different,” he told her. “Everyone likes Symone.”

“Well, they can all like me.”

He gave her a look, then laughed. “No,” he told her. “They all love Symone because she’s charismatic and fun. Nobody that meets her can possibly not like her. That’s not you,” he said with a slight smile.

“I can so be fun,” she said primly.

“Fun, yes,” he agreed. “But you don’t have the kind of charisma that Symone does.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why don’t you come by the dorm tonight and see?” he asked, leaning against the door as they got onto the West Bank Expressway, the elevated expressway that led to the bridge over the Mississippi River, back to the city.

“I certainly am coming over tonight,” she told him. “We have to start your education, as quickly as possible.”

“Then you’ll see. Everyone is Symone’s friend. To the people in the dorm, the fact that she’s Faey doesn’t matter. Everyone loves her, and if anyone gives her any flak, the entire dorm would take turns beating the piss out of the guy.”

“Wow,” she breathed.

“I don’t know how the people in the dorm will react to you, but then again, if Symone says you’re alright, then that’s that,” he said seriously. “An endorsement from Symone should be all it’ll take.”

“You’ll have to ask her to do that.”

“She’ll be over after she gets off duty.”

She drove him back to his dorm on Saint Charles Avenue, on the corner of the Tulane campus, and he watched the traffic go by, lost in thought. Telepathy. He had that talent. He was a human, and now he was expressing the one gift, the single advantage that the Faey had that kept the human race in slavery. But it wasn’t much, because after all, he was only one man. It would take an army of telepaths to kick the Faey off Earth, an army equipped with weapons that could make the Faey retreat. In the end, it was nothing but a dangerous curse that could quite possibly get him killed, should the Faey find out about him.

It was a strange thought, that he had such a mysterious power, a power he had hated because of what it meant. But now he had it, and though it changed very little in the grand scheme of things, it changed his life a great deal. He had to be careful now, always cautious, always vigilent, to keep his dark, deadly secret. His life depended on it.

What would it be like to be telepathic? Well, from what he’d managed to figure out, he’d be able to hear the surface thoughts of the people around him. Jyslin had talked about that before. He’d be able to overhear Faey sending to each other, and from the sound of it, Jyslin was going to teach him all the tricks of it, like attacking, defending, and a way to deceive the Faey into not probing him all the time. That would be nice, a relief to him, but the rest of it… he wasn’t sure how he was going to feel about that. But one thing was for sure, he’d better learn it. His life might someday depend on being able to attack and overwhelm a Faey who discovered his secret.

And on another angle, perhaps buying that airskimmer would be a very good idea. That way, he always had an escape route. He could flee up into Tennessee or Kentucky or West Virginia, states which had been completely depopulated of humans… or at least officially. There were squatters out there, humans who had fled into the uninhabited forest areas rather than accept the Faey order, or to esape being sent to a farm, or to escape after pissing off the Faey. It was lawless out there, as bad as any Mad Max movie, but that might be preferable to being reprogrammed by the Faey secret police, the Imperial Gestapo as some called them, or perhaps being dissected to find out why a human had somehow gained telepathic powers.

Yes, that was a good idea. He’d have to start looking into it. And perhaps discretely collect up the components he’d need to build a plasma rifle, and build himself his own suit of armor. If he did have to flee into the wildlands, it might behoove him to go into that chaos armed to the teeth and sporting an overwhelming advantage.

Just in case.

He blinked when he saw the dorm, and to his surprise, she went past it, past the campus, going all the way up to where Saint Charles ended, merging with Carrolton. She pulled over and patted him on the leg. “I think this is far enough away,” she told him. “I don’t want them to see you get out of a Faey’s car. So you avoid any friction.”

“I appreciate that,” he said as he opened the door.

“Aat, kiss,” she ordered.

He chuckled, then leaned over and gave her a lingering kiss. She actually licked his nose before he pulled away, giving him a wide, bright smile. “You have a good day at school, love. I’ll be back as soon as I’m off duty. Remember, don’t try anything, and if you start hearing voices in your head, don’t panic. That’s you overhearing the thoughts of those around you. Just listen. You’d be surprised what you can learn,” she said with a wink.

“I’ll be careful. Now let me out.”

“Have a good, uneventful day,” she told him seriously.

“Amen,” he agreed.

Chapter 4