Chapter 16

Daira, 33 Suraa, 4395 Orthodox Calendar
Tuesday, 8 September 2008, Native Regional Reckoning
Zabrag, Vuraak Prefecture, Zhadpha Province, Sovereign Planet of Moridon

If any place in the universe could be the most closely associated with Hell, this was it.

It wasn’t the climate of this alien planet, Moridon, that made it so, though it was dark and rather unpleasant. Moridon had a sub-tropical climate, somewhat warmer than Earth, but it was winter where they were and that made it quite comfortable to him. It seemed like twilight to him, but this was daytime on Moridon, because Moridon’s two suns were both rather dim, being a red giant and a white dwarf. The air pressure here was only slightly more than on Earth, which required no compressional preparations to come here. The air did smell somewhat of ozone and sulfur, but that was because at almost any time, there was at least one volcano erupting somewhere within a hundred miles of where one was on the planet. Moridon was a highly volcanic planet, due to the fact that it orbited a binary star pair, and the twin gravity wells caused more stress in Moridon than it would if the planet orbited a single star. That caused volcanism.

What made Moridon seem like walking in Hell were its inhabitants. For if there was any creature Jason would think of as Satan, it was a Moridon.

They were about eight feet tall. They had red skin, black spiky hair, and had large horns growing out of their foreheads. But it was those eyes that made them look so damn demonic. Glowing red eyes stared at one, stared right through you, and made you feel decidedly creepy. The glow was a bio-luminescent reaction that allowed them to see, for their eyes generated a composite light spectrum that went from infrared to ultraviolet, light at the ends of that range that Jason’s eyes couldn’t see, and then they “saw” the reflections of that light back into their eyes. Their mode of vision was akin to a bat’s sonar back home, but it was a sonar using light. Giruzi had the same bio-reactive eyes… but that wasn’t much of a stretch, since giruzi were native to Moridon. Nearly half the species on Moridon had similar modes of vision, and had glowing eyes. Jason had wondered how those eyes handled external light sources, but he found out that they couldn’t see any light that their own eyes didn’t generate. The eyes discarded any and all light information they sensed that came from external light. Their vision was weakened in conditions of bright light, when their own generated light was swallowed up by the ambient light, but in conditions of low or no ambient light, their vision was perfect.

Being a human among these demons was really damned uncomfortable, but he really had little choice. He had to come here because of his bank account, and the Moridons absolutely would not be satisfied with anything less than a visit in person.

When one opened a Diamond Prime account, the Moridons demanded that the customer be there in person to do so.

This was being done at the behest of Kumi. She wanted this account, this uncrackable, unbreakable, untraceable account for VulTech, to help her more efficiently launder money, and this was needed because, to put it plainly, House Trillane had gone absolutely crazy after Jason disabled Orbital One.

Crazy was a very mild term for it. Duchess Silla Trillane personally ordered a brutal retaliation, which began with the removal of the Orala Preserve’s protected environment status. Two hours after that, the entire Appalachian forest was on fire.

The Faey did not swarm into the preserve with tens of thousands of troops and dropships and military equipment. They burned it.

The entire forest, from Tennessee to Pennsylvania, was set ablaze by orbital bombardment. Plasma bolts from the heavens struck the forests and set them on fire, and every abandoned city in the preserve was bombarded so heavily that it was reduced to molten slag. In some kind of twisted need to be thorough, the orbital bombarded rained down destruction on literally every abandoned structure visible from space. Every building, every house, even every backyard storage shed was targeted and struck by orbital guns. That devastating barrage couldn’t help but set the entire forest on fire, and those fires burned unchecked in the dry summer. The fires burned for days, and put so much smoke into the air that they blotted out the sun on the eastern seaboard. When it was over, over 80% of the forest canopy in the preserve was burned away. It was by the grace of God that they managed to warn the people that had been in Charleston in time, and those people had warned most of the squatters. When the fires began, everyone ran for the caves that were liberally scattered all over the mountains, or sought refuge in coal mines, or railroad tunnels. Few squatters were killed in the fires, but they didn’t have time to worry about how they were going to make it through the winter, for the armies of Trillane didn’t even wait for the fires to go out before they started combing the ash-strewn wasteland looking for the survivors.

That forced them to do something that Jason felt was wrong, but understood was necessary. Before the soldiers reached the people from Charleston who had been hiding, Jyslin returned in the skimmer, bringing supplies. She was not there to help, however. Once she was in the cave with them, she went to work. She eradicated all memory of where the rebels had gone from anyone that had any knowledge of it. If the Faey captured them, they would know that they had once been cohabitating with the resistance, but the resistance left for a new base and left those that did not want to fight behind. Even the memory of taking shipments of food and supplies from the rebels was eradicated from their minds. In their memory, and what any Faey who probed them would see, the supplies they had from the outside were what remained of last year’s humanitarian drops, for they’d been given over a year’s worth of food and basic supplies in that drop, food they didn’t touch during the summer when home-supplied food was plentiful. Jyslin even erased her visit from their minds, striking them when they were sleeping, then leaving quietly in the night. When they woke up, they never remembered Jyslin’s visit, and thought the supplies she brought had always been there.

When Jyslin left, all ties between the rebels and the squatters in the preserve were severed. Those people were now on their own, for any help they received from the rebels would only put both sides in grave risk.

Jason hated to do it, but it was necessary, both to protect the rebels and protect the squatters. If Faey soldiers knew that those people were taking food and supplies from the rebels, they’d murder them all, execute them as collaborators with the enemy. And thanks to the new declaration of martial law that Duchess Silla had invoked the day after the station was attacked, they had the legal power to do that.

Trillane house troops were now crawling all over the entire planet. Grand Duchess Trillane had agreed to sending more troops, and they had started arriving by the hundreds of thousands, and were deployed everywhere. There were now nearly twenty million Faey soldiers on Earth, a massive, almost overwhelming number, and they were there to ferret out the resistance and crush it.

And yet, it was as if it did not exist.

It took them only a few days to realize that the rebels were not in the Orala preserve, and that put a wrench into all their plans. It was then that they started fanning out and looking for the rebels almost anywhere they could think of, and that included Cheyenne Mountain.

God, was that tense. A detachment of Trillane soldiers had arrived at the mountain and started poking around. They entered the main tunnels and investigated the place, but nobody used that tunnel, and they were very careful to never disturb it. They came all the way up to the massive blast doors, and finding them closed and with no way to open them from the outside, they decided that rebels could not have possibly gotten them open and got in, since the mountain had no power and those doors required power in order to open. They poked around the entrance to the hangar tunnel, as well, and that was the most heart-stopping moment. Jason almost had a seizure when those soldiers walked right over the spatial compression array for the bubble conveyor, which was buried at the base of the closed doors. They checked out those doors and found them rusted shut, and decided that nobody could have opened them without leaving signs of it.

After a hair-graying two hours of investigating Cheyenne Mountain, the soldiers left, and reported back that no unusual activity had taken place at the old human military base, that it was abandoned and unused, and that it was clean.

They almost heard the sigh of relief in Denver. All that work they did to keep the outside looking abandoned really paid off.

They didn’t just concentrate on likely places. Hundreds of thousands of Faey soldiers literally searched house to house all over North America, searching for anyone that might have any knowledge of the rebels or their location. Trillane really upset and infuriated quite a few people with their heavy-handed tactics, punishing everyone for the actions of a few, but this only served to help Jason rather than Trillane. People who were at least tolerant of Faey rule were becoming disgruntled by the treatment they were getting.

They didn’t focus on the ground either. There was an entire squadron of battle cruisers in orbit now, and the fighters patrolling the lanes between the planet and the stargate were as thick as flies. The sensor arrays that they destroyed were replaced with bigger, stronger, even more sensitive ones, and those arrays were guarded by space-based exomechs, large robotic fighting vehicles that floated in protective defense of those arrays, armed with very large, very nasty plasma cannons. They put cameras everywhere, so they could see anything coming, and the cruisers and the fighters and the exomechs basically fired on anything that didn’t return a friend or foe signal, including meteors and space debris. They were taking absolutely no chances whatsoever that anything that wasn’t broadcasting a friend code was anything but another trap placed in space to deal damage.

While the military was going bonkers all over North America and in space, Trillane forensic accountants were in overdrive. VulTech got no less than nine visits from those hounds, and even a visit from one of Trillane’s own in-house mindbenders. That mindbender went after Luke, but her training was not enough to breach the masterful work that Jyslin had done in the creation of the fake persona of Jack Brewer. Everything she found in Luke’s mind matched up perfectly with the VulTech books, and those books passed muster. Though they just couldn’t seem to get over suspecting VulTech, they could find no shenanigans.

But it was enough to scare Kumi to the point where she felt that this, a Diamond Prime account, was necessary. The Faey were like cavemen compared to the Moridons when it came to computer security, and a Diamond Prime account carried absolute, utter secrecy and discretion. Using this account meant that any computer hackers Trillane employed would find themselves trying to break a system that no one had ever broken.

Getting here had not been easy. Because they had to come on VulTech-2, it meant that Jason and Kumi had been forced arrange a viable reason for the dropship to come here, and that was to make a pickup. They were here for a shipment of moleculartronic boards, bought at a rather frightful price from a Moridon manufacturing company, and the dropship had a four hour window to complete its mission, which was more than long enough for Jason and Kumi to complete this task. What made it difficult wasn’t getting past the Faey; it had been getting permission to land on Moridon. They’d had to go through nearly two days of paperwork and permits to get permission to land here, and there had been Moridon customs officials on the spot to book the crew of the dropship in as temporary visitors and give them guest permits. Those permits had very short duration, and the Moridons watched all visitors to their world like a hawk. It was all part of their legendary security. Part of computer security was the physical security of those machines, to prevent an infiltrator from gaining access to them on site. To maintain their famous security, Moridon was one of the hardest planets in the galaxy to visit. It wasn’t that the Moridons didn’t like visitors, it was just that they made damn sure that people who came here came for the reasons they claimed. Jason had found the customs officials to be very polite, almost friendly, but they were there on business, and they meant business. Those customs officials weren’t about to let them leave the landing pad, but when Jason produced an official appointment at the First Bank of Moridon, and a bank official arrived moments later in a bank hovercar to pick them up, the officers apologized to them and allowed them to leave. The bank official then told the officers that the dropship was allowed to sit on the landing pad until they returned; no matter how long that took. The officers were very nice after that, even having some Moridon foods delivered to the dropship so Luke and Meya, who were functioning as the dropship crew, could relax and enjoy their waiting by sampling the local cuisine.

They both had to be there, and Jyslin did as well. Jason was giving Kumi and Jyslin access to this account, the ability to make withdrawals, so they had to be physically present at the account’s opening. That was why they were here, sitting in this cavernous, opulent black-carpeted waiting room that had a bar and a bowl of exotic fruits, a room tailored to a Faey, but decorated by a Moridon. There were paintings and art, but they were dark in color and rather stark in demeanor, a window into the logical mind of a Moridon. The couch they sat upon was decadently soft, covered in some kind of black, silky, fur-like material, and the table before them that held the bowl of fruits from many Faey worlds was made of solid gold. They’d put the pair in that waiting room as the biometrics room prepared to receive them. They’d already gone through a great deal of paperwork and signatures, and now the Moridons were going to sample no less than 14 different unique biometric aspects of the three of them that would be used to document their access to the accounts. Diamond Prime didn’t transactions only required the three normal methods of identification, however, because the Moridons would be the embedding a bio-organic, microscopic chip in their right thumbs that, when pressed against a monitor, would give the bank absolute proof of their identities, and would tell whatever bank official they were dealing with that these two were Diamond Prime account holders, and treat them with proper respect. Those bio-organic chips were absolutely impossible to duplicate, and ceased to function if they lost their hand or were killed, to prevent someone from just hacking off their hand and using it. But just the chip alone was not enough to the Moridons, so they retained the three biometric rule.

Snazzy, Jyslin sent absently, but the hold on Jason’s hand betrayed her nervousness. I wonder how long this biometric procedure will take.

About an hour, Kumi answered. My mom went through this. They take a bunch of readings, take a bunch of pictures, take samples of your voice, then they draw some blood and take a micro-sample of tissue, then they do a full spectrographic map of your whole body. Then they implant the chip, and we’re done.

Does it hurt?

The Moridons are good at this, Jys, it’s like going to a doctor. We’ll be fine.

That’s a relief.

The door opened, and a female Moridon entered, carrying a handpanel. “We just have one minor issue to resolve before you will be escorted to the biometrics lab,” she told them, speaking flawless Faey. “It’s a matter of legal status. In your application, you have listed yourself and Jyslin Shaddale as betrothed, but you did not produce the betrothal certificate.”

“Oh, well, an official betrothal certificate isn’t required on Terra,” Jason told her. “It’s what you’d call an unofficial status.”

“But you do intend to marry?”

“Oh yes,” Jyslin said with an enthusiastic nod.

“And you have no betrothal certificate?” she asked, looking directly at Jyslin.

“I, uh, kinda can’t get one right now. It’s a legal issue with the Imperium,” Jyslin said hesitantly.

“She’s a fugitive from Imperial Justice,” Kumi stated bluntly. Jys, the Moridons don’t care about what we do, and they don’t care about the legal problems of their customers as long as those legal problems aren’t with the Moridons themselves. All they care about is the account. You can be a mass murderer for all they care, as long as you pay your bank fees.

Oh, that’s a lovely thing to know, Jyslin sent darkly.

“Ah. That does explain it. Given your, ah, legal status, it would be more than possible for the bank to arrange to have a Templar available to you to conduct your ceremony, since you would have considerable difficulties arranging a Templar on your own. If you would—”

“Yes!” Jyslin said with sudden excitement, literally standing up. “If you can get a Templar for us, I’ll kiss your feet!”

The Moridon smiled, showing a mouthful of sharp black teeth. “I don’t think we need to take it quite that far. I can arrange to have a ceremony at any time you wish.”

“Oh, er, well, I don’t really think we can,” she said, giving Jason a heartbreaking look.

“Dear girl, the Templar will hold the strictest confidence, this I can guarantee you. He will tell no one. It’s in his contract,” she said with a smile.

“Really?” Oh, Jason, could we? Can we? We might not get another chance like this.

Of course, silly girl. I want to get married too, he answered.

She positively beamed, and she never looked so lovely. “Would after our biometrics be too soon?” she asked immediately, looking at the Moridon.

“Not at all, but would you not like to have a more memorable ceremony? With guests, and a binding cord, and all the normal Faey marriage accoutrements?”

“No, no a simple ceremony is fine with us, we just want a Templar to conduct it, that’s all.”

“I will have the bank’s Templar summoned for the ceremony then. Are you sure this is what you want?”

“We’re sure,” Jason told her, taking Jyslin’s hand and pulling until she sat back down. “We’ve been trying to find a Templar for months, and the ceremony we want will be secular. I don’t care too much, but Jyslin wants a Templar to conduct the ceremony.”

“Secular? I’ll be sure to warn the Templar of that requirement,” she said absently, sliding her claw on her handpanel, writing on the face of it using her claw tip.

“I’m surprised you have a Templar on Moridon,” Jyslin said, but she was literally trembling with excitement and happiness.

“We have several,” she told her. “The bank has an arrangement with the abbey, and keeps a Templar on call for the convenience of our more prestigious Faey customers, to see to their spiritual needs. You will find that we offer many services to our Diamond Prime customers, madam Shaddale. This won’t be the first time we’ve arranged a Templar to be present for the benefit of a customer, but to my knowledge, it will be the first wedding we have hosted. Congratulations,” she told them with that evil-looking smile.

“Can we go now, then?” Jyslin asked in excitement.

“Yes, now that we’ve settled this matter, we can proceed with the biometric exam. Please, come with me.”

Finally! We’re getting married, Jason! Jyslin sent with exuberant glee.

It’s nothing but someone telling us how we really feel, Jys, he answered. I don’t need a Templar to tell me that life with you is the only life I want.

I love you, she sent tenderly, reaching out and putting her hand on his face.

The biometric procedure was exactly what Kumi described. They were taken to small examination rooms, and there Jason undressed and was then inspected by a team of Moridon technicians and doctors. It felt rather uncomfortable being naked in the presence of these demonic creatures, but they were the souls of courtesy. They didn’t just do a biometric exam, he discovered, they conducted a complete medical examination and checkup to make sure he was healthy and to screen for any hidden diseases; the health of a Diamond Prime bank account holder was very much the interest of the bank, and they even offered medical services to their customers to ensure they continued to be healthy. They wouldn’t reject an ill applicant, they would instead expend considerable resources to try to make that ill applicant well, at least after the account was opened. After the exam, where he was given a clean bill of health, they took the biometric readings. He was photographed exhaustively, including close-ups of his face, and they took a retinal pattern of both eyes. They then drew a small vial of blood, and used an evil-looking needle to take a small tissue sample from the flesh of his upper arm, of his thigh, and from his back. Lastly, they put him in a machine that was like a little silver-walled box and took a complete spectrographic reading of him, reading his unique bio-energy pattern.

They gave him a soft, comfortable black robe to put on after he came out of the box. “Your clothes are being cleaned, and we understand you are to attend a service after the procedure,” one of the Moridon doctors told him. “Ceremonial robes are being brought, in the Faey custom.”

Jason could give Jyslin that much. This ceremony was very important to her, and though he refused to be married in a religious ceremony, he wouldn’t object to wearing a Faey wedding costume to a secular one.

The robes reminded Jason vaguely of a kimono. They were pleated, made of a burnished gold, and had several layers. There was a wrapped chest part that went under the outer garment, and in that odd Faey style, one sleeve was longer than the other. The left sleeve ended at his elbow, but the right sleeve flared into a huge cuff that hung nearly six inches over his hand. This odd style Jason had seen many times before. Most semiformal or formal clothing had mismatched sleeves, as did quite a few casual clothes. Nearly all men’s daily wear that were Faey in style had the uneven sleeves, but none of them were quite like this one, with the sleeve that totally covered his right hand. The robes felt strange around his legs, for it was the first time he wore what could technically a dress, despite the fact that he wore a soft pair of cloth pants underneath them, which were clearly part of the attire given they matched the rest of the outfit. What Jason did notice, and what he understood, was that the only exposed skin he had wearing this was his head, neck, and the lower half of his right arm. For a telepathic species whose abilities were amplified by touch, this he understood. Faey did not commonly touch one another unless they were friends. “Really weird,” he said, fussing with where the garment folded over his chest, for the inner coat crossed just over the outer robe, and created a bit of a bulge just over the base of his ribcage. “Why can’t Faey make sleeves the same length?”

“From what I remember reading, it is an old, old custom, so old that the Faey themselves don’t entirely understand its origins,” one of the Moridon who helped him dress said, a female that was tying off the wide sash that went around his waist. “Most Faey clothing has the left sleeve longer than the right, though some, like this one, have the right sleeve longer than the left.”

“Weird,” he sighed. “I’m starting to regret wearing it already.”

“Well, I am no judge of what your species finds attractive, but I think you look quite majestic in it,” she told him. “Almost noble.”

“Thanks,” he said sourly.

They took him to a small room at the far end of the bank complex, which was clearly some kind of special room just for things like this. It had no altars or statues, but the room was dark and quiet and it had a row of candles burning along a ledge that illuminated the chamber. Kumi was there, wearing a simple brown robe, and to Jason’s surprise, so was Luke and Meya, wearing similar robes. They were all silent, though Luke was smiling in his direction, Meya waved, and Kumi looked a bit put out. There was a small dais in the back of the room, a dais upon which stood two people. One was a male Faey with green hair, wearing an elaborate white robe with gold embroidering, and a red shawl or narrow wrap that hung over his shoulders and down his chest, its tails nearly reaching his belt. The other was Jyslin.

Such a sight!

She wore a similar robe to his, but where his was gold in color, hers was a soft cream color. The lapel of the outer robe was red, and her robe’s sleeve pattern was reversed. Her left sleeve was the one that covered her hand; that as when he got an idea of why. Her sash was red to match the border of her robe. Her hair had been done in an array of small braids that were gathered up and bound in a topknot, and were released to spill her long, fine auburn hair down her back in curly waves. For the first time ever, he saw her wearing makeup, and to his surprise, it was both thick and obvious. It was a band of eyeliner over her gray eyes that was silver in color, which clashed with her blue skin, a band of color that started at her eyelids and then thinned to a point at her hairline beside her eyes.

His lungs wouldn’t work. He’d never seen a woman lovelier. He just stood there for a moment and gawked at her perfection, but then she smiled gently and reached out her hand to him. He blinked and realized he was standing there like a fool, and hurried up to stand on the dais with her. He took her hand, their uncovered hands clasped, and then she just gave him that gentle smile and slowly pulled their hands up and towards the Templar.

“I’ve been told that you wish a secular ceremony, outside of the normal vows and customs of the Trinity,” he began in a surprisingly warm, rich voice. “And I would be loathe to go against the wishes of the intendents. But I’m afraid I’m a creature of habit, and no real specifics about your wishes outside of that one condition were given to me beforehand, so forgive me if I improvise somewhat, and possibly backslide into the customary Faey wedding.

“Usually, I would stand here before you and espouse the virtues of Trelle and the wonders of the Trinity, but before me this day stands a lesson perhaps just as important. Today, I will have the matchless honor of joining these two people together in the bonds of marriage. I see before me a Faey and a Terran, two people with different backgrounds, different customs, different cultures, and different color skins. But they are willing to put all of that aside and join their lives together. They have looked beyond what is different, and embraced what is the same. The rest of the universe would look upon them and see a Feay and a Terran, but when they look upon each other, they see only love.

“That is such a wondrous thing, and it fills me with simple joy. The thought, nay, the idea that simple love can bridge the gulf between a maiden and a lad, a Faey and a Terran, an aggressor and a protector, it is such a powerful lesson to us all that love is the greatest force in our hearts, and can be the binding force that brings us all together, no matter our species, and accept and cherish one another. The two of you are a wonderful example of the boundless, glorious power of love.

“Jyslin Shaddale, subject of House Denalle. Do you promise to take this man to be your husband, to honor him, cherish him, nurture him, and protect him? Will you promise to guide him in his hours of need, and be guided by him when your own path lies uncertain? Will you stand with him through times of trial and triumph, through fitness and health, through the counting of the years, giving yourself to others with his blessing, but giving your heart only to him? Will you promise to lay down your mantle of maiden and take up the burden of woman, to be tied to this man in the bonds of matrimony, and walk from this place not as a maiden, but as a wife, mother, matron, and the protector of your family?”

“I will,” she said, gazing deeply into his eyes.

“Jason Fox, freeman of no house. Do you promise to take this woman to be your wife, to honor her, cherish her, nurture her, and to be protected by her? Will you be guided by her in your hours of need, and guide her when her path lies uncertain? Will you stand with her through times of trial and triumph, through fitness and health, through the counting of the years, giving yourself to others with her blessing, but giving your heart only to her? Will you promise to lay down your mantle of lad and take up the burden of man, to be tied to this woman in the bonds of matrimony, and walk from this place not as a lad, but as a husband, father, teacher, guide, and supporter of your family?”

“I will,” he whispered He would be anything for her.

The Templar put both of his hands over their clasped ones. “At this time, I would usually wrap the binding cord around your hands to symbolize your eternal bond to one another,” he said gently, smiling at them. “But, as there will be no binding cord and marriage bracer, instead we will adopt a custom of the world of Terra. If you would please,” he called over their shoulders. A Moridon hurried to them, and held out a simple cushion, holding two very plain silver-colored rings. “It is the custom of the world of Terra for a wife and husband to exchange rings as symbols of their eternal devotion to one another. And so, since I have recited the vows of a Faey marriage, instead will you exchange these rings.

“Jyslin Shaddale, if you would, take up his ring and place it upon his finger.”

She never looked away from his eyes. She picked up the larger of the rings and singled out his ring finger, going on the talks they’d had, and slid the ring down his finger. It was just a tad large, but they must have been hard pressed to find a pair of rings so quickly.

“Jason Fox, if you would, take up her ring and place it upon her finger.”

He glanced down to take the ring, and then reached out for her left hand. She placed it in his with a glorious smile, and he slid it onto her finger. Unlike his ring, hers fit very well.

The Templar put a hand on each of their shoulders. “Before me stands no longer the maiden Jyslin Shaddale and the lad Jason Fox,” he called in a loud voice. “They who stand before me now are Jyslin Fox Shaddale, and Jason Fox Shaddale, joined by the bonds of marriage as is my right and privilege by the laws of the Imperium and my service as a Templar of Trelle. What they have joined today, let no one separate.” He leaned forward and smiled. “Kiss him, woman,” he said fondly.

She did so, with enthusiastic gusto. She threw her arms around him, almost dislocating the Templar’s wrist, and gave him a passionate kiss that made his knees wobble. She then hugged his fiercely and whispered in his ear, her voice cracking with emotion. “Oh my love, you are mine now,” she whispered to him. “I will spend a lifetime proving to you that I am the woman you were born to marry.”

“There’s nothing to prove,” he whispered back, his voice thick as he was nearly intoxicated by the light fragrance of her gorgeous auburn hair. “I love you, Jyslin.”

“Well now, this has certainly made my day,” the Templar chuckled, patting them on the shoulders. “It’s always a Templar’s most joyful duty to perform a marriage, and I feel especially honored that Trelle would allow me to marry the two of you. For a Faey to marry a Terran shows me that there’s hope that this unpleasant business on Terra with the rebellion can be settled quickly and peacefully. But fear not, children, what took place here today is between you, me, the Moridons, and Trelle. And I don’t think any of us will feel especially talkative.”

Jason and Jyslin looked at him, and Jason sighed. “That’s a relief to hear, Templar.”

“Please, call me Je’ada Mahr,” he said. Jason had to dredge the language that Jyslin had inserted for the definition of that word, for it was one that few people would know. Je’ada was an archaic Faey term for husband.

“An odd title,” Jason noted. “I don’t know much about Templars, but to have a title that means husband in Old Faey is unusual.”

“My son, I’m a married man,” he grinned, holding up his right arm and pushing up his sleeve, showing Jason a golden marriage bracer. “I am married to Trelle, as are all Templars. It’s why no women are Templars to Trelle; only men may serve her, for only men may marry her. And trust me, she does not grant a divorce,” he winked.

Jason had to laugh, but then Jyslin smothered his face in kisses, and he completely forgot what he was talking about.

They let them keep the wedding robes. They had them cleaned and sealed in a composite plastic-like material so they’d never fade or decay, and then had them delivered to the dropship while Jason, Kumi, and Jyslin completed what was left to do at the bank.

Kumi was unbelievably jealous. She kept glaring at Jyslin any time she wasn’t looking at the young noble, and she’s already told them three times how angry she was that she didn’t get her chance with Jason before he got married. When Jason asked why that made any difference at all, she blushed slightly and said that there was always that chance that she could make love to him so well that he’d be her constant bedmate. She lamented that she couldn’t get the revenge she had planned now, and she complained that now Jason had to have Jyslin’s blessing before he screwed girls on the side, so she couldn’t just try to seduce him whenever she had the chance.

That shocked Jason, just a little bit. That was not just typical Kumi banter. She had something of a crush on him! It surprised him to find out, but Meya just shrugged and told him in a private sending that she’d been infatuated with him for quite a while. It wasn’t love, it wasn’t really even a crush, it was just an infatuation and a nearly obsessive need to get “the one that got away.” Kumi wasn’t in love with Jason, she was in lust for Jason. That infatuation with him was why she’d been so willing to help him, and it had also gotten her shot.

Jyslin heard Kumi’s complaints, of course, and jokingly told Kumi that if she could get a willing Jason between her legs, more power to her. She had Jyslin’s permission, so long as it was consensual. She flatly warned Kumi that there would not be any revenge, however. Jyslin’s blessing made Kumi’s mood considerably better, though it didn’t sit too well with Jason. He knew that Kumi would just take that as a license to be more outrageous… but then again, he was now in the Faey world, and he saw the writing here. Kumi was infatuated and she was Faey, so that meant that she would chase, and chase hard, until she got her curiosity satisfied. Jyslin was just setting the stage to allow that to happen when she finally did lure Jason into bed with her. Kumi would get her curiosity satisfied, she’d calm down, and everyone would be happy.

It was still something Jason had trouble rationalizing. He was married now. And he took her name! But, in fairness, she also took his name. That Templar had named her Jyslin Fox Shaddale. Jason guessed it was some kind of custom for the married couple to take the last names of both spouses and not just one, though he’d have liked it a little better if his given name had been Jason Shaddale Fox instead of Jason Fox Shaddale. His last name wasn’t just a source of family pride to him, he also happened to like it. After all, it was certainly easy to spell, if nothing else.

Not that the marriage really changed anything. They couldn’t really celebrate it or go on a honeymoon, but that first night back showed that to them, it was just officializing something they already had. They were too busy to honeymoon. If they survived this insanity, then maybe they’d go on honeymoon.

The only thing Jason really regretted was the rings. His work and the fact that he and Jyslin had to wear armor precluded them wearing their rings. It was important to him to wear it, for it was a symbol of their union, but he just couldn’t. It was potentially dangerous for him to be wearing a metal ring in the work he did, he might lose his finger. He wanted to wear it around his neck on a chain, but Jyslin told him that if he couldn’t wear it on his finger, then she’d rather him not wear it at all. There was too much risk the chain would break and he’d lose his ring. So, they both took off their rings and put them in a little crystal case that Jyslin put on a stand in the bedroom, and promised that when all this was over, they would take those rings out and wear them once again.

It wasn’t a secret in the mountain. They found a hastily prepared reception the day after they got back, once Kumi, Meya, and Luke had time to spread the word that they’d found a Templar on Moridon willing to marry them. The others threw them a party that evening, and they’d had a pretty good time. Tim and Symone were a little disappointed that they weren’t there, but then again, they understood that they’d had to seize the opportunity when it presented itself. Jason promised to take them to Moridon to be married when they finally decided to do it, though both of them seemed not that concerned about it. They loved each other, and didn’t feel the need for any ceremony to tell them that they would be together forever.

Kiaari did do one thing for them. She personally delivered a message to Lorna that Jyslin wrote. In the letter Jyslin told her aunt that she was alive, doing well, and had married, and apologized to her and the family for any difficulties they had because of her, and the potential embarrassment she brought upon them. She told them that she had to follow her heart, and her heart had told her that there was no place she could be happy except standing at his side.

Ian and Molly didn’t seem to take much notice in the wedding, because they were too busy being overwhelmed. Molly wasn’t there as a fighter, so she wasn’t enrolled in the combat training classes. But she was placed in Jason’s flight training, because everyone in the mountain had to be able to fly. Ian started daily one hour sessions with Jyslin, as his wife tried to urge the talent inside the boy to express without having to resort to the kinds of things that were done to cause it to come out in the three other humans. Just as it had been in the others, his talent was dormant, sleeping, and would not awaken without being prodded by a telepath. The sessions were instructional for Jyslin as well, as she puzzled out how she could do this without doing what she did with Jason.

But, God, was that boy a gift from the Lord. Not because of his talent, but because his mother, Molly Fletcher, could trace their entire family line on both sides of Ian’s family tree for over six hundred years. All those photos and scrapbooks were about their family, for Molly’s hobby was geneaology, tracing the roots of their family back through history. If they’d not found Ian, they’d never have found Molly and her numerous books about Ian’s family line. Because of the maddening issue of a common ancestor between Tim and Temika, they’d decided to see if they could trace Ian’s lineage back and maybe find a common ancestor.

It was five days after the marriage, as Molly, Jyslin, Tim, Temika, and Symone sat around a table with all of Molly’s books, looking through them as she rather excitedly told them all about the Fletcher family. “And this was Lucas Fletcher, the first Fletcher in America,” she told them, pointing at an ancient photo in the book before her. “He came over with his wife, Maggie, in 1886. My first ancestor in America was David Cremeans. This is him here,” she pointed on the opposite page. “He was only 18 when he came to America, in 1868, just after the civil war. He married a half-Cherokee woman named Shelly Moonstar Brooks and settled in western Virginia.”

“Cremeans. Where is that name from?” Jason asked.

“It’s English,” she answered. “Anyone with Cremeans as a last name has an English ancestor,” she told him. “That’s your origins too, Tim,” she told him. “McGee is originally a Scottish family name, and part of their family moved to England and Ireland.”

“How do you know that?”

“I studied,” Molly chuckled. “The McGee family is from northern England and southern Scotland. They were a lowland clan from Scotland originally. So, that means you’re one of the English McGees. So, if we’re looking for a common ancestor between my Ian, Tim, and Temika, it sounds like England might be the place to look. Especially because Fox is also a British family name,” she added, looking at Jason. “The Foxes are from England, Scotland, and Ireland.”

“Molly, you just became my new best friend,” Jason told her with a laugh.

“Hey!” Tim said with mock outrage.

“So, if we’re looking at a common ancestor, then we might want to look at England,” Molly repeated, patting Tim on the forearm with a smile. “I’m not sure where Temika fits in, but I’d guess that somewhere in her lineage, she has a white ancestor, who’s from England too.”

“Ah wouldn’t be surprised, Molly,” Temika laughed. “As you can see from mah face, Ah’m not one hundred percent black. Ah already know that. Mah gramma said that mah family is descended from the southern slaves. Ah don’t think it’d be a stretch that one of mah ancestors had a baby from a white father.”

“Didn’t we put one of those sensors in London?” Tim asked.

“Yeah, but it hasn’t returned any hits yet,” Jason grunted. “If we could find more telepaths that know their backgrounds as well as Molly does, we might have the answer.”

“Actually, dear, I think you already do,” Molly told him. “It’s clear to me that this common ancestor is English. I think you should concentrate your search for other telepaths on people with English ancestry.”

“If that’s so, why doesn’t the London unit return any responses?” Jason asked.

“Maybe we should go look at it,” Jyslin suggested. “It might have broke down. Rann didn’t build them with any kind of remote access, we can’t check it from here. All it can do is transmit, not receive.”

“Hmm, guess we can. We can take care of that with tonight’s run. We’re gonna start putting out the mines again, now that Trillane is starting to scale back the knee-jerk searches.”

“We’ll have to be careful, because of the time difference,” Jyslin noted.

“I set the sensor, love, I know,” he said. “I just kept going east when I planted them, staying in the night. I flew around the world,” he chuckled.

“I do think that Molly has something,” Symone said, looking at another scrapbook. “Maybe we should plant more sensors around English.”

“England,” Molly corrected.

“Whatever.”

“How, er, how did it go today?” Molly asked Jyslin. “Was there any, progress?”

“Not yet,” she answered. “Don’t worry, dear, I told you I’m not going to hurt him, and I’m also not rooting through his mind. I’m being very discrete. I know how teenagers are, full of secrets. So far, his talent is still dormant. I haven’t quite figured out yet how to urge it to wake up.”

“What did you do to Jason?”

“It was already more or less awake when I realized it was there. As to me bringing it all the way out, that’s something I’m not doing with your son,” she said with a slight smile, giving Molly a direct stare.

Molly blushed. “I think not.”

“That’s how I woke up Tim-Tim too,” Symone giggled.

“Ah wish that’s how mine got woke up,” Temika grunted.

“Temika’s experience wasn’t very pleasant,” Jason explained when Molly gave her a curious look. “Her talent was awakened when a mindbender interrogated her.”

Temika shuddered, hugging herself with her arms.

“What is a mindbender, dear? It sounds unpleasant.”

“They are,” Jyslin grunted. “They’re Faey specifically trained for telepathic interrogation and other rather unpleasant things. They’re very strong telepaths, and it takes a certain amount of, ruthlessness, to do the job. They made me take mindbender training, but I managed to get out of it,” she said, closing her eyes. “It’s a very ugly business. I didn’t like doing it. I don’t have the temperament for it. I washed out, and they put me in the Marines.”

“I didn’t know that,” Tim said in surprise.

“I don’t like to talk about it, Tim, for obvious reasons,” she told him, looking at Temika. “I learned what they had to teach, but I never like using it. It’s just not me.”

“So, you were strong enough to be one of these mindbenders?” Molly asked.

“Honey, you’re probably looking at the strongest telepath on this planet,” Symone told her simply. “Jys is in the top ten percent. She walked through Trelle’s hair before she was born.”

“That means I was lucky,” Jyslin explained to Molly’s blank look. “And I’m not the strongest. I think that honor goes to Yari, one of the girls from my squad. Her power is awesome in talent, well beyond mine, but like me, she just didn’t have the right personality to be a mindbender. Anyway, I’m going to try something different tomorrow. We’ll have to see how it goes.”

“I’ll need a goodly crew for tonight, we have a lot of stuff to deploy. Ground mines, space mines, drones, a new conduit breaker, and the new toy. We’ll swing by England tomorrow and check that sensor after we’re done. I think we’ve gone long enough without any action, and we can’t let them think that the attack on the station was our last action, and we can’t let them think that this buildup is going to dissuade us.”

“I still can’t think about that without laughing,” Tim said. “You should have seen it!”

“We did, goof!” Temika told him. “Kate showed us all the video of it.”

“Well, it’s going to cost Trillane millions to fix everything, and we can’t let them think that there’s a upward cap on how much it’s going to cost to stay here,” Jason told them. “So, tonight, we start going after Sticks again. And it’s about time for number five. They need something new to think about, and we have to start throwing tons of crap at that Black Ops engineer to keep her from focusing on any one thing long enough to work up a fix for it.”

“When are we conducting the raid?”

“Right now, never,” Jason grunted. “At least not on this continent. They have way too many soldiers in North America now. It’s almost like they’re expecting it, and they’ve tripled all the Faey soldiers in every installation. Trying to raid any of them would be suicide. If we raid any Trillane positions, they’ll have to be somewhere else. Europe maybe.”

“I’ll have Kate start snooping,” Tim told them. “She can locate some likely targets.”

Jason sneezed, and wiped his nose with a tissue that Molly offered. “Well, let me get down to the shop and help them set it up. This one’s gonna require some careful assembly, or it’ll blow up when we turn it on.”

Jyslin laughed. “I wish I could see the looks on their faces.”

“They won’t be very happy,” Jason said evenly.

The night’s activities were busy, and for Jason, they weren’t very pleasant. His sneeze developed into a sore throat, and after planting the night’s toys and descending towards London to get that done before dawn in Europe, he had a fever.

This was no time to get a cold!

He developed a headache, and had trouble focusing on watching Tim fly, basically trusting that Temika and Jyslin were going to keep him honest. He had six trainees, Meya, and Myra with him that night, and they were flying VulTech-1, for they needed the cargo space. Meya and Myra used their armor as space suits to help deploy the space toys, while the rest of them waited in the pressurized cockpit after they evacuated the air in the cargo bay and opened the doors to space.

Jason love, are you alright? You’re sweating, Jyslin asked in concern as Tim brought them over the English coastline, on a course to take them to London.

I’m not feeling all that well, he answered, leaning back in his seat and putting his hands on his face. Jyslin put her hand on his forehead, and hissed.

You’re burning up! Tim, turn us around, we have to get him back to the mountain! She commanded, looking to him.

No, Jason countermanded. It won’t take you and Meya long to get to the unit and check it, so let’s do what we came to do, then we can go.

We’re not fucking around then, Jyslin sent in concern, looking back to Meya. Let’s get this done and get him the hell out of here.

In the forty minutes it took the two of them to use their flight systems to descend to the city from the hovering dropship, find the unit, realize that it wasn’t functioning, and then replace it with a new one Rann built that they could access remotely, Jason’s headache became so bad that he had to take a painkiller, which for him was a serious deal. Jason never took medicine unless he had no other choice, for his experience with his father’s cancer showed him that a person could build up a tolerance or resistance to any drug, even aspirin, which would make it less effective when it was really needed. So, he only took medicine when he really needed it. Jyslin and Meya did their job very quickly, and were back in the dropship after forty minutes. Jyslin sat right by him and kept checking his forehead with her hand as Tim flew them home, with Meya observing to make sure he did everything right. Jason’s headache got so bad that every time anyone sent it made him wince, so they switched to speaking in the cockpit.

“Watch your speed!” Meya barked. “With all the new sensors up, we can’t go much over 300 kathra an hour or they’ll pick up our air wake on sensors!”

“I’m only doing 260,” he protested. “I’m keeping an eye on the speed gauge, woman, so put a sock in it.”

“I think we should push 300,” Jyslin said in concern, putting her hand on Jason’s forehead again. “Are you alright, love?”

“I’ll be fine after a night’s rest,” he told her. “I must have caught the flu, that’s all.”

“Think we can do 300?” Jyslin asked.

“If we’re gonna push it, give over,” Meya ordered, taking the controls in her hands. “I’m not letting you fly if we’re gonna be doing something risky.”

“Alright, switching over,” Tim said with an unhappy grunt, flipping the master switch to the copilot’s chair.

“Jeez, no reason for all this concern,” Jason said with a weak chuckle.

“Yes there is,” Jyslin declared. “My husband doesn’t feel well, so I’m taking him home so he can rest.”

Under Meya’s steady and practiced hand, they flew back to Colorado at the maximum speed Meya felt safe without their air turbulence giving them away. Jyslin dragged Jason out of the dropship the instant the ramp was down and took him straight to their apartment. There, she helped him take a cool bath, made sure he had a hearty meal, and put him straight to bed. “Now you just rest and get some sleep. If you don’t feel any better by morning, I’ll have one of the Docs over to check you.”

“Wait, where are you going?” Jason asked.

“I want you to sleep, and you’ll do that if I’m not here to distract you,” she told him. “I’m gonna go work on something in the shop. I’ll be in earshot if you need me, I promise,” she told him, leaning down and kissing him on the forehead.

“Worrier,” he chuckled weakly, for his head really hurt, and he felt tired.

“I’m your wife, silly boy. It’s my job to worry about you,” she told him with a loving grin.

Jason gave her a cross look, then he sighed and closed his eyes, almost immediately falling asleep.

Jyslin patted him on the cheek and went into the shop that was across the hall from the bedroom. She kept both doors open and sat at the bench so she could look over and see him, but to her, Jason seemed to be resting peacefully, asleep and his breathing normal.

But four hours later, as Jyslin was reassembling a piece of equipment she repaired, she realized that something was wrong. The usual light sense of him that was always present in the back of her mind seemed to waver, and then it faded away, and this she noticed immediately. She switched from passively trying to sense him to actively trying to touch him, and found nothing but darkness. She stood up and looked at him, saw that he was resting on his back, his features calm though it looked like he was sweating a little from the sheen on his skin, but that wasn’t unusual when someone had a fever. His chest was moving up and down rhythmically, which seemed a good sign to her. He wasn’t coughing or sneezing, and his breathing didn’t sound labored at all, though he was breathing through his mouth due to a congested nose. But there was no sense of him.

“Jason?” she called uncertainly as she walked towards the door. There was nothing there. It was like he was actively trying to hide from her, using that trick to make his mind invisible. “Jason, don’t play like that, it makes me nervous,” she told him sternly.

There was nothing.

Her eyes widened when she realized he wasn’t playing. Jason wasn’t sleeping, he was unconscious!

“Jason!” she cried out in a strangled tone, rushing over to him. His hair was almost dripping wet from sweat, his skin had an oddly pale quality to it, like a pall, and he was burning hot to the touch! RANN! she sent with such power that it nearly knocked every telepath in the mountain over, but a power unleashed at a short range, so she wouldn’t be heard outside of the mountain. Such was the awesome skill in telepathy that Jyslin commanded. Rann, come to our apartment! Jason’s unconscious! she sent in a frenzy. He’s really sick! I can’t find his mind at all!

We’re on our way right now! Rann answered immediately.

They rushed him to the sickbay quickly, rolling him down on a gurney, and the word spread quickly through the mountain that Jason, their leader, was so sick they had to wheel him into the infirmary. People started gathering near the doors to the infirmary as Rann, Songa, and Yohne worked as an efficient team while Jyslin looked on, examining him with their hands, with their little handheld devices, and even with their own telepathic abilities. Yohne drew blood and started analyzing it as Rann grilled Jyslin about his symptoms. “He had a fever and a sore throat,” she told him. “And a headache. He told me it was the flu. What’s wrong with him, Doc?” she asked fearfully. “Why is he comatose? That’s not a symptom of the flu!”

“We’ll find out soon enough, Jyslin. Now have a seat and keep quiet, please.”

They gave him a thorough analysis, but found no bacteria or viruses in his system to explain his illness. Jason’s panel was brought in so they could access CivNet, and Songa researched CivNet while Rann and Yohne swept an analyzer over his body, giving them a detailed internal image of his body and its systems at work.

“This makes no sense at all,” Yohne said in grim confusion, shaking her head.

“What? What’s wrong with him?” Jyslin demanded in an urgent hiss.

“His immune system has gone insane, that’s the only way to explain it,” she told him.

“His immune system is attacking his own body,” Rann told her, glancing back at her. She had pulled her chair up to Jason’s bed and was holding his hand. “We can see no reason why it would be doing this. There are no microbial agents in him, no nanomachines, no parasites or unusual energy signatures. Songa,”

“I’m not finding anything,” she answered. “We’d better isolate him.”

“Prep him for surgery,” Yohne ordered.

“Surgery!” Jyslin gasped. “What are you going to do!?”

“We have to stop his immune system before it destroys him from within,” she told Jyslin sharply. “We’ll have to install biofilters in him to filter out all of his white blood cells, T-cells, and antibodies to keep them out of his brain. If those cells destroy his brain cells, he’ll suffer permanent brain damage! Now get out of the way and let us do our jobs!”

The procedure took about an hour. Jyslin could only watch on the far side of a security force field that isolated those within from any outside contamination, as Yohne performed the procedure. She installed several devices directly into Jason’s carotid artery, aorta, into six different major lymphatic junctions, and into every major vein leading from the large concentrations of bone marrow, which would be carrying the greatest concentration of antibodies. Once they were done, Songa and Rann set up a bed for him surrounded by a sterilizing field and security force field, eradicating all biological agents within its perimeter. Yohne pulled her red mask down after coming out of the surgery room, and gave Jyslin a steady look. The filters are in place, she sent. What they’re going to do is completely filter out his entire immune system, and we’re going to put him on a drug regimen that will suppress his body from producing any antibodies or white blood cells. While he’s under this treatment, it is absolutely imperative that he remains completely sterile. He can’t afford a single virus or bacteria invading him right now, because he has absolutely no defense. He has to stay in that sterile field until we can find out what the hell is going on.

Was there any, any brain damage? Jyslin sent fearfully.

No, thank Trelle, Yohne sighed in relief. His immune system was busy attacking the closest cells it could find, mainly his red blood cells. His immune system was even attacking itself, she sent with a dark frown. I’ve never seen this before. I’ve never read anything about it before either. Jyslin, that field we have set up is a hard shield, she warned. Don’t even get any ideas about going in there. Until we find out what’s wrong and find a way to treat it, he has to stay inside, and he can’t have contact with anyone. Not even you.

Is he going to wake up?

In time, she answered. We’re going to keep him unconscious for at least twenty hours, so his brain has time to recover without any distractions. He went comatose because of a lack of oxygen to his brain to sustain cognitive function. It was enough to knock him out, but not enough to do any permanent damage. His brain protected itself by shutting down everything but the autonomic systems. Just thank the Trinity you checked him when you did, Jyslin. If he’d gone another thirty minutes, he’d have died.

Died? Jyslin sent with an audible gasp.

Yohne nodded. This is very serious, honey, she sent grimly. I’ve never seen anything like this before, and this condition is potentially fatal. But don’t you worry. We understand what’s going on, even if we can’t figure out why yet, and we can prevent any further damage. We have to keep him under close observation, but we can keep him stable. Until we can find the cause of this and cure it, he’ll be just fine as long as we’re careful and we pay attention to his needs.

Oh, thank Trelle, Jyslin sent sincerely. Her hands started to tremble, and tears welled up in her eyes. Symone was called in by Songa, and the blond took Jyslin’s hand and pulled her into a gentle embrace. Jyslin burst into tears, holding her friend tight, and Symone just held her and let her cry herself out.

Everything else was basically either forgotten or ignored in the wake of Jason’s sudden illness. The success of the new, redesigned mines was overlooked, for both types of mines worked perfectly, and every one of them succeeded in hitting a Stick in the first day after they were deployed. The new circuit breaker struck a Faey destroyer, and it was just as effective as the first one had been against the orbital station, shattering conduit through nearly a third of the ship before it disengaged and self destructed.

The new toy was an annoyer, not a weapon, and it was damn effective. The device was deployed into the Potomac river, and it drifted downstream at a gentle, lazy pace, updating its location via GPS, until it discovered that it was where it was supposed to be, just off Roosevelt Island in Washington D.C. When it reached its desired location, it surfaced and then deployed a ten meter long antenna into the air. It was noticed by a pair of human joggers on the shore, but before they could phone in the potential hazard, the device fired.

It emitted a harmonic interthreaded tetryon pulse. That pulse was absolutely harmless to everyone, but the pulse had a specific purpose. The device was the trigger for the hair melter concept that Jason had intended to use against the Marines, just built on a much larger scale. The pulse swept out from the river and went nearly ten miles in every direction.

Nearly every Faey within that radius, and quite a few humans, were affected by the pulse. The pulse caused a chemical reaction with a certain compound in their hair, a compound that came from a fish that Faey liked to eat, a fish not native to Earth. The compound underwent a chemical alteration that turned it into an acidic compound that reacted energetically with the organic makeup of a hair strand, but was harmless to everything else.

All over Washington, every Faey stopped when they felt a strange tingling. Those looking in mirrors saw little wisps of smoke start to emanate from their thick, fine hair, and then there was a strange sizzling sound. Then, to their horror, their hair began to melt. Smoking fragments of hair fell from their heads like snow, littering the ground around them, as their hair fell out of their heads in ragged chunks, then continued to sizzle and smolder on the ground as the solid hair was consumed by the acidic compound, leaving a gritty, sticky residue behind, like half-dried glue.

It only took about two minutes. After that two minutes, every single Faey and human who had eaten that particular fish found that every single hair on their entire bodies had melted away, leaving them absolutely hairless.

It was harmless as things went, but the horrified wails and shouts that erupted all over the city made it sound like an atomic bomb had gone off instead. The Faey, a very image-conscious race who valued personal appearance highly, had just had their image and their prides savaged. Hair that many Faey spent hours preening and preparing every morning was now a sticky film on their bathroom floors, or sticking to the pillows and sheets of their beds, or laying out on the streets. Horrified Faey—and quite a few humans—looked at themselves in mirrors and found all of it gone. Hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, everything. They were as hairless as a Deborian mole, light blue skin that was normally covered under a blanket of thick hair glazed over in the detritus of their former manes, looking like a festering scabrous wound. The residue continued to react with the dead skin cells on the outer layer of the skin, continuing to smolder slightly, and when the film was hastily cleaned off, it displayed a shining bald head, shimmering with the removal of the dull dead skin cells and shining in the light like a polished globe.

Horror!

In the river, the device reeled in its antenna and slipped back under the water. About fifteen seconds later, a column of water and a loud BOOM heralded the device’s last act, as it self-destructed.

The night’s successes meant little to the rebels, however, for they were all taking turns visiting the infirmary over the next day to see if there was any change. Jason was kept in a medically-induced comatose state for the entire day and half the night, doing to him what they had done to Kumi, to give his brain a chance to recover, and then he was allowed to pass into a natural sleep. He slept on his own for nearly six more hours, and then the EEG readings from the sensors they’d placed on him before putting him in the sterilized field showed brain activity common in a sleeping mind preparing to wake.

Jason had felt better. He felt very weak, exhausted, he was hungry and thirsty, and it was hard to focus his mind on any single thought, like he was trying to think with a wool blanket put over his brain. He opened his eyes and found himself staring up into a soft white light hanging over the bed, a light that wasn’t in his room. He pieced together quickly that he must have gotten sick enough for Jyslin to take him to the infirmary, and that he’d been sick enough not to know it until now.

“Jyslin?” he whispered.

She’s on her way, came a sent response, from Yohne. Jason struggled to sit up and found he couldn’t, so he consigned himself to scooting just a bit up so his head wasn’t flat, and then looking around. He was in a small room, one of the rooms in the infirmary, and a shimmering energy field completely encapsulated his bed. It was barely noticeable, allowing him to see through it easily, but it was clear that it was there. She went down to get something to eat. I had to throw her out.

What happened?

You nearly died, that’s what happened, she answered evenly. We still don’t entirely understand what’s wrong, but we have you stable, and you should be until we find out what’s wrong, and then find a cure for it. It’s just going to require a few precautions, that’s all.

That’s not much of an explanation.

The details are that you fell comatose while sleeping, and Jyslin rushed you down here. We realized that your immune system has gone completely haywire, and it was attacking your own body. That’s why you collapsed. Your antibodies and white blood cells were attacking your own cells, and they destroyed enough red blood cells trying to reach your brain to send you into a coma. We couldn’t find a cause, but we can treat that symptom, Jason. We have you in an absolutely sterile environment, and we’ve dealt with your immune system by more or less removing it from you for now. We have you on a drug regimen that’s suppressing your immune system, and we had to surgically implant some filters to remove the cells that are made despite that treatment. Until we can determine what happened and treat it, you have to stay in there.

I guess I can live with that. Think I can get something to eat?

No, you can’t, she told him sternly. You’ll be on an IV until we can cure this condition. No food, no water. I can give you something to make the hunger go away, but I can’t let you eat anything. I’m sorry.

Great, he growled.

Jyslin rushed into the main infirmary room, and her eyes widened when she saw him awake. Jason! Oh, Jason, are you feeling alright? Are you okay?

Yohne was filling me in on what happened to me, he told her. I feel weak, and it’s a little hard to think right now, but I’m alright outside of that.

I’m so glad, she sent, a tear forming in her eye. I was so worried. I almost lost you, my love!

Really?

Really, Yohne nodded. Jyslin got you down here in time, but if you’d have gone untreated, your immune system would have killed you from the inside.

Huh, Jason sent in surprise. I didn’t feel that bad before I went to sleep.

Sometimes these things can come out of nowhere, Jason, Yohne told him.

Any idea of what’s wrong with me yet?

Nothing concrete. Songa is researching right now. This condition is completely new to us, so they’re going through the archives at the Faey Medical Service and the Terran’s medical association database to see if there’s any historical information about this. It’s really bizarre, Jason. There’s no foreign agent causing it. It’s like your immune system got a mind of its own and decided to try to kill you. Rann’s doing a detailed DNA and molecular-genetic analysis of your immune cells, looking for anything we missed with our initial scans.

I found it! Rann sent jubilantly. I found the agent!

Jason couldn’t see, but he and Jyslin joined their minds enough so he could literally look through her eyes, as the three doctors and Jyslin looked at the holographic image Rann brought up, of a single white blood cell. The image plunged into the cell, through the cytoplasm, and into the nucleus. It then zoomed in to the chromosomes and DNA. It’s right here, he said, pointing at the end of the DNA string. It’s a complex amino molecule that has attached to Jason’s DNA, causing the cell to malfunction. It can’t tell cells from invaders, so it’s attacking everything. I scanned the rest of his blood sample, and that amino string is all over his body. What’s worse, the string is self-replicating faster than we could hope to clear it out of him. It’s combining water out of his blood with several types of common hormones in his blood to form the molecule, creating a long chain which then breaks up, almost like a virus. We didn’t find it before because this is an agent built from his own DNA, so it slipped through our scans. He looked at Yohne. This is not natural. Look at the agent’s edge, and compare it to this. Jason saw through Jyslin’s eyes an close-up of two molecule chains, highlighting several key atoms. It matches perfectly to the end of Jason’s helix. This agent just screams bio-engineering.

I’m inclined to agree, Yohne nodded. What’s our best course of action?

Research, Rann answered. This is clearly the work of a geneticist. We’d better make damn sure we know what we’re doing when we try to reverse this. Until then, we keep Jason stable and in his containment.

I’d have to agree. We can’t rush into a fix, this agent isn’t natural. There’s no telling how it will react to any treatment, and we’d better be sure of it.

Well, it looks like Trillane decided to do something about you, Jason, Rann sent grimly. This agent is literally tailor made to work only on you. This agent will only attach to your DNA. It would have no effect on any of the rest of us. I bet they pulled your DNA profile from your school exam records and had a geneticist build this to kill you. Instead of trying to burn you out, they tried to kill you with this. I’ll bet we’ll find this agent saturating the air all over North America.

I’m not surprised, Jason sent in reply. Yohne, whatever it was you said you could do to not make me hungry, can you like do it? I’m starving here.

It’s a medicine that suppresses your hunger reflex, and I’ll make some up right now, she sent with an audible chuckle, which Jason heard through Jyslin’s ears.

Jason’s hunger eased with the introduction of the medicine through the tube attached to his arm, fed through the security field and triple-screened to make sure it was sterile. He really didn’t have much to do, so he made the doctors sterilize a panel for him and send it in, so he could at least have something to do. Songa had his panel, so he was forced to link it to his own in order to get out onto CivNet, using it as a host. He checked the London sensor, and to his surprised delight, there were four pictures there. Four! Two men, a woman, and what looked like a teenage girl.

If he weren’t in here, he’d kiss Molly Fletcher! She was right!

It was ancestry! All the telepaths had an English ancestor! And from the looks of it, given three known telepaths were Americans with established roots in America, that ancestor had to be centuries back in time. Well, ancestors. According to the docs, Jason’s lineage was different from Tim’s, so that meant that there had to be more than one initial ancestor that had the telepathic footprint.

But, were both of them from England? Jason could very well have picked up his telepathic traits from his French ancestors, from his mother’s side of the family. But what was clear here was the simple fact that Tim and Temika’s common ancestor, and Ian’s, and maybe even Jason’s, originated from somewhere in England. And, given that there was a much better chance of finding descendents of that ancestor in England itself, which was a much smaller country, they’d gotten immediate results once they fixed the sensor and got it going.

So, the question here was, was that the answer to the question? Miaari told him that he had to know the why of why humans had telepathy. He now had an answer. Outside of Jason, it was a shared ancestor from England, and it could very well be Jason’s case as well. This ancestor was pretty far back in their family lines, hundreds of years.

Jason pondered on it for a while as he surfed several tech message boards, looking for info, and also checking INN to see if there was any news of the rebellion there. The hair melter certainly made the headlines, because they had no idea how he’d pulled it off, but INN approached the story from a humorous point of view rather than a major incident. Several bald Faey were interviewed for the piece, one of which declared that it was the new “in” look for Faey who lived in Washington.

Songa finished her research, and brought only one piece of information that looked to be of any use at all… but it was a piece of information that disturbed Jason, disturbed him very, very much.

There was an old, old case of a Faey noble dying from a bio-engineered agent after visiting Moridon. It was noted in the archive that it was clearly an assassination, but the fact that the assassin had managed to penetrate Moridon security to deliver the agent made it big enough to remain in the archives after all this time. It was from over a thousand years ago, and it was one of the cases that had led to the Faey ban on biogenetic weapons.

What troubled Jason, and the doctors, was the fact that the agent that killed Maeda Karinne was also a complex molecule that attached to the DNA of her immune cells, and caused her immune system to attack her own body and kill her.

Exactly what they’d done to Jason.

But why? Why they would reach back so far and dust off a thousand year old illegal weapon and modify it to attack him? And after doing that, how did they know where he’d be to deliver it, and how did they get past the famous Moridon security to deliver it? If they knew where he was, why didn’t they simply attack his dropship as they came back from Moridon?

It just made no sense.

It was, however, just what they needed. There was some information in that old archive about how they tried to treat her, and it was enough for the doctors to start work on a cure for his condition. They were going to pick up on where those doctors a thousand years ago left off, and try to create a counter-agent that would cause this agent to break up. Once all the molecules were destroyed, it wouldn’t self-replicate, and Jason’s system would be purified.

But Jason just couldn’t help but keep coming back to it, and coming back to it, and coming back to it. There was just so much about this that made no sense that he couldn’t leave it be. He thought about it almost all the time. He even dreamed about it at night. Day after day went by, then a week, then two weeks, as Yohne, Songa, and Rann worked on finding a counter, and Jason just couldn’t get this out of his head. It was maddening! What was he missing here? There was something important here, something very important! He even typed it all out in a file and read over it and over it, trying to see what he was missing, trying to find that missing piece of the puzzle.

Over those days, he certainly had enough people distracting him. Jyslin was there almost every waking hour, and they talked all the time. Tim visited both to supply him with information on what was going on outside and just to see him and spend time with him. Symone was a frequent visitor, as was Kumi, and everyone in the resistance tried to stop by at least once a day to say hi and make him feel better about being stuck inside his little bubble, as Shelly called it. Every time he tried to focus on what he was missing, then someone would come in and distract him or make him lose his train of thought.

There were other things going on as well. The new mines were effective, so they were sending at least one of each kind out a night. Every day, at least two more Sticks came down, and so far that bitch Myleena hadn’t come up with a counter. They were also releasing a gun drone every few days, when they got them built and ready, but had not built any new rings or other exotic devices. Those usually required Jason to build the boards, for that was something that most of the others couldn’t do. They hadn’t been trained for moleculartronic boardwork, and the boards in those devices weren’t stock boards they could buy from someone else, like the boards in the mines and such were. Jason couldn’t do that in the bubble, so they’d been working only with gun drones and mines since Jason had gotten sick. The mines were very effective, but the drones were less so. With all the fighter coverage in space, a gun drone was usually intercepted and attacked within 45 seconds of activation. That gave them enough time to fire on one or two Sticks, but not enough time to wreak the kind of havoc the first one had managed. They still brought some of the work up to him, sending data or pictures to the panel he had inside or talking with him about other issues they were having in the shop, and they managed to keep disrupting his train of thought on the matter at hand.

It stayed elusively out of reach until Kiaari finally returned to the mountain… and she didn’t come alone. Nor did she come in her usual manner. It shocked the hell out of Jason, waking up in the middle of the night and seeing two pairs of luminous eyes looming over him.

It took him a moment to realize that one of them was Kiaari, in her natural form, her lupine form. The other form was a Kimdori, but a Kimdori he had never seen before. It was massive, way bigger than Kiaari, with burnished silvery fur, and it was a male. Somehow, the two of them had infiltrated his sterilizing field, and were inside with him.

“Calmly,” the male told him, putting a monstrous clawed hand on his chest. “I am Kereth, Elder of the clan, and keeper of the knowledge of welfare and medicine to serve the clan’s needs. Miaari sent me to bring to you the cure to your disease.”

“Cure?” Jason gasped. “You know how to cure me?”

“Would I be here if I could not?” he asked with maddening ease, giving him an amused look. “We are familiar with the research your Faey doctors are undertaking, but where they still search for the answer, we have already discovered it. We have shared this knowledge with them as they slept. They will awaken believing they have had a revelation, and will know what to do. We wished to see you and let you know this, and I also wished to meet you. You will be out of this containment field soon, Jason Fox. So be calm and have patience.”

“Wait a minute,” Jason said. “How did you know about this? That research they’re doing is from a thousand years ago!”

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” he said with an eerie smile.

“No way!” Jason said in disbelief. “You’re a thousand years old?”

“A little over fifteen hundred,” he said with that same smile. “I told you, human, I am an elder in my clan. That title is no empty word among my people. I was alive when news of Maeda Karinne’s unusual death became known, and Kimdori being Kimdori, we investigated the matter. That is how the memory of that research came to be with us. I have kept it for the clan for a thousand years. “

“Wow,” Jason breathed. “I had no idea you lived so long.” He looked at Kiaari speculatively.

She laughed. “I’m only 52,” she told him with a grin. “I’m just a baby compared to my elders, Jason. I won’t even be taken seriously by them until I’m at least two hundred.”

“If then,” Kereth mused, which made Kiaari give him a quick, unfriendly look. He then moved his huge hand up to Jason’s neck, and Jason felt that moment of expansion, where Kereth’s ability joined their minds into a single contiguous consciousness, though Jason felt very little from Kereth. “I see, child,” Kereth chuckled. “But you haven’t given him what you were told to give him.”

“The exomech was destroyed, elder,” she explained. “The need for it is gone.”

“Still, you were commanded to share that knowledge, and it has not been done.”

She bowed her head. “I’ll see to it immediately, elder,” she said contritely.

“Share with him the knowledge of Faey fighters as well,” he ordered. “He might have use of that skill.”

“As you see fit, elder,” she assured him.

“Well. It was definitely worth the travel to meet you, Jason Fox. May the Denmother seed your path with good favor.”

With the huge hand still on his neck, Jason suddenly felt the overwhelming desire to sleep. Before he could even think about why, he spiralled down into slumber.

When Jason woke up, he knew that Kiaari had done her elder’s bidding, for it was there.

All the controls, all the indicators, they were all in there, like he was born knowing how it all worked. He laid there and thought it through in his head, going step by step through the procedures to start and operate an exomech, and found that he knew exactly where every control was, know what every display meant, and could operate every system in the unit. And when he closed his eyes, he could see the entire layout of a Faey Dragonfly fighter, and a Starhawk, and a Lancer, and even the control layout of the new Raptor. Though the flight controls were the same as a skimmer, the other systems weren’t, and he knew how those worked as well.

Kiaari. He could kiss her. Thanks to her, he could operate an exomech, and he could fly any mainstream Faey fighter in production. He wouldn’t be a very good fighter pilot, but he could fly the ships.

He saw they were already at work. All three doctors were hunched over his panel, sending in excitement as they went over a “brilliant idea” that Yohne had had the night before.

So, given he had little to do before those three managed to figure it all out, he went back to the problem. And the problem was, what was he missing here? He went over the list he’d compiled in his moment of peace before Jyslin got there. She always knew when he was awake and hurried to him as soon as she was aware of it. He looked at the two comparisons. Jason contracted this condition by tampering by Trillane, and they had little direct information about exactly where he’d picked it up. Rann’s idea that it was released into the atmosphere actually didn’t wash, for there was no trace of it anywhere. The agent attacked him by attaching to his DNA and causing his immune system to go haywire.

Okay.

According to the records, Maeda Karinne contracted the same condition after a visit to Moridon, where an assassin had managed to poison her. The agent used against her attached to her DNA, and caused her immune system to go haywire, just like Jason.

So. It just didn’t make sense. If Trillane knew where he was going to be to slip him this agent, they would of just shown up with a military force and killed him, then they’d have had a body to show Grand Duchess Trillane. The way they did it meant that they’d have no way to prove he was dead. And why this? Why dredge up a thousand year old biological warfare agent and alter it to try to kill him with it?

Well, one way they could have done it was Washington. They did—

No, no, he was sick before he went to Washington, and the docs told him that he couldn’t have been infected for any longer than six days before he got sick enough to notice. The replication pattern of the agent was a mathematical certainty, and six days was the absolute maximum time if only one molecule entered his body. So, it had to be in that six day window before he got sick. He looked back over his work at that time, and saw that he’d done some mine runs, and he’d been to Lincoln, and that was basically it. He’d not been anywhere where the Faey would have the opportunity to infect him.

Moridon. He’d been to Moridon.

Still, that was also an improbability bordering on impossibility. Again, if the Faey knew he was going to Moridon, they could have just attacked the dropship either on the way there or on the way back. And if they did want to infect him, they’d have to go through that fearsome Moridon security.

Damn it, damn it, damn it! There were too many holes and not enough pegs here! Too many questions, and no matter what hypothesis he pondered, it left more questions than answers, and always created a situation that was either impossible or impractical. The Faey weren’t dumb, and they weren’t silly. If they did this, they had to have a viable reason and proper opportunity… and Jason could not think of any scenario that fit both of those conditions.

Jason! We think we have an answer! Yohne sent excitedly. Give us about an hour, and we might have a treatment we can test! If we’re lucky, you’ll be out of there by suppertime!

That’s great! Jason sent in reply. I’d better have a steak dinner waiting for me when I get out of here.

Ah can take care of that, sugah, Temika sent as she came in. Ah’ll let everyone know—

Not yet, Yohne warned. We just have a theory. Let us do some tests and see if it’s viable.

Alright. Jason, Jyslin asked me to tell you when you woke up that she’s takin’ a nap, and she’ll be in to sit with you as soon as you wake up. Ah’m supposed to go wake her.

Don’t. She needs to rest, he said. If we’re lucky, she’ll wake up and find me out of this stupid damn bubble.

I doubt that, Yohne warned. If this treatment works, we’ll still have to remove those filters. So you’re looking at about two hours in the surgical theater.

You had to remind me.

I’m a doctor. It’s what I do, she sent back impishly. What have you been doing in there on that panel, by the way? I’ve been meaning to ask.

I’m trying to understand why this happened, he answered.

Well, it’s pretty simple, Jason. They tried to kill you.

Yes, but how they did it really doesn’t make any sense, Yohne. If they knew where I was going to be, why try to kill me like this? Why not just bring soldiers and attack me? We already know they didn’t just release it into the air, we can’t find any trace of it. That means someone has to get close enough to me to infect me, but we go back to that first question. If they knew where I was, and could get that close, why resurrect a thousand year old illegal bioweapon, alter it to affect me, and then infect me with it? If they knew where I was, why bother? The only place I’ve been where I’ve been out of the dropship has been Nebraska and Moridon, and we know they don’t know about Nebraska. So, that leaves only Moridon. And if they poisoned me on Moridon, how did they get past Moridon security? And why bother? Why not just attack my dropship en route? It would have been much easier, and they’d have my body to prove to Grand Duchess Trillane that I’m dead. Infecting me with this agent when it took so long to affect me makes absolutely no sense given whoever tries to collect the bounty on my head has to prove that I’m dead.

My. He has a point, Rann sent thoughtfully. Put that way, well, the only option that seems viable is that someone here tried to kill him. And of us all, only the three of us would have that kind of ability.

Unless we have a Kimdori in the mountain, Songa sent soberly. A Kimdori could do it.

No, it wasn’t a Kimdori, Jason told them.

And how are you so sure about that?

Because, we get back to the body issue, he sent, quickly coming up with an excuse as to how he’d know. If someone’s trying to kill me for the bounty, they need my body. Kill me in this mountain, and you’d never get it out.

Trillane might not care about getting your body, Jason, Songa told him. If they sent a Kimdori—

Songa, if the Kimdori found the mountain and found this many people here, would he poison me and then just leave, or would he tell Trillane about all these rebels, which would bring an attack on us? Well, I don’t see an attack. So, either this Kimdori never told Trillane about the rebels, which would be kinda stupid, or it wasn’t a Kimdori.

True, she acceded.

Well, I read in one of your human books somewhere this little blurb, and it stuck with me, Rann sent. “When confronted with a mystery, if one eliminates all that is not possible, then whatever is left, no matter how improbable, is the truth.”

That’s Sherlock Holmes, Rann, Temika told him. And that ain’t how the saying goes.

I think it’s close enough. Let’s look at it from that perspective, Jason. Rule out what’s impossible, and look at what’s left over. What’s left has to be the truth.

But like everything gets ruled out, Rann. That’s what makes it so damn confusing.

Really? The one thing I see that can’t be ruled out is Moridon. You can’t prove that you were not infected there. In fact, it seems the most probable place, given that you have been in a controlled location. That’s the only place you’ve gone that wasn’t your home territory, so it stands to reason that if there’s no Kimdori in the mountain that did it, then that has to be where it happened.

Alright, but that’s kinda out there, Rann, because it makes no sense for them to poison me on Moridon when they could just send fighters to intercept us on the way there or on the way back. We went through Draconis to get to Moridon, for Pete’s sake. That’s right through the jaws of the lion.

That’s just the point, Jason. There are so many reasons why it’s improbable that Trillane tried to infect you on Moridon that it rules it out.

But then—

Ah, but Jason, who said that it was Trillane that did it? That was your assumption.

But they’re the only ones trying to kill me. You think this attack was Imperial?

It’s possible, but the reasons Trillane wouldn’t have done it are the same reasons the Imperial forces wouldn’t. Why go through all that work to engineer this compound to infect you when they could just send fighters to capture your dropship? I agree with you there. So, if Trillane didn’t do it, and the Imperium didn’t do it, then what’s left?

But that’s fuckin’ impossible. Nobody else even cares about what we’re doing here, Rann. What would some other government gain from killing me off? I mean, me being here stirring up shit with Trillane would only help some rival government, wouldn’t it?

But it’s what is left. And since it’s what’s left, it must be the truth. I don’t really think the Faey tried to kill you, Jason. Someone else did.

Alright, how did they acquire a thousand year old biological weapon that was engineered by the Faey?

Ah, but you assume again. Who said the Faey made it? I’m sure that the noble that died had enemies outside the Imperium, Jason. All of them do.

But the information you showed me said that this Karinne woman was killed by an assassin probably hired by some enemy of her house!

Jason, the Karinnes had no enemies within the Imperium until the civil war, Songa told him. They were totally neutral. It was that neutrality that caused their destruction. They refused to take sides, and as a result, both sides attacked and destroyed them. That’s probably why the assassination got so much attention, because who would do it if the Karinnes had no issues with any other house?

Alright, but we’re back to this point. Why go through the trouble of altering it so it would infect me? Surely they could have used some other, more modern poison, something not specifically banned and illegal, and something just as effective that they wouldn’t have to pay some geneticist to have produced.

Hmm. That does seem to be the question, Rann sent bemusedly. Maybe they were aiming for complete untraceability.

That ain’t even a word, Rann, Temika accused.

I guess it’s not, but you get my meaning, he sent with an audible chuckle.

Well, it wasn’t all that untraceable, if you three could find it, Jason protested.

You have a point there.

There’s something else going on here, Jason sent with an adamant tilt to his thought. Something is missing here, some information that would make all of this make sense.

Alright, Jason, it’s time for another one of those wild leaps, Rann sent. Since it seems totally illogical that someone would go through the time and effort of altering this agent to infect you, then let’s assume for a moment that nobody did. If we remove that piece of information, then what do we have left? We have this dead noble visiting Moridon, and then she got sick and died. Then we have you going to Moridon, and you get sick and nearly die. The only point of commonality here is Moridon, which goes back to my original statement.

Rann, that’s crazy. If nobody altered the agent, then how did it infect me? You told me yourself that it was tailor made to infect me.

It’s crazy, yes. But it’s what’s left. And what’s left must be the truth.

That’s too crazy, Rann. That suggests that my DNA is so much a match with a thousand-year old dead Faey that the agent couldn’t tell the difference. The only way that could happen is if I was—

Related.

No fucking way, Jason sent defiantly.

It does seem outlandish, but can you offer any other explanation? Rann pressed. The only way this all makes sense is if we assume that you and this dead woman have a matching end sequence in your DNA, because that’s where the agent attaches. Since it’s illogical to believe that they altered the agent to affect you, and it’s also illogical that they would bother given they would have to get close to you to infect you, then the only rational explanation I can see here is that this wasn’t an attack. And since this couldn’t be an attack, that means that it had to be an accident. And the only way this could be an accident is if you and this Maeda Karinne had matching end pair sequences in your DNA helixes. The one thing that you and her have in common is a visit to Moridon. So, that’s where it had to happen. She goes to Moridon a thousand years ago, gets infected, and she dies before they find a cure. A thousand years later, you go to Moridon, you get infected, but this time medical technology is advanced enough to keep you alive until we can find a cure.

But that’s totally impossible, Rann! Jason protested. I’d have to be related to this woman for it to work, and if you didn’t notice, I don’t have the right skin color for that!

Actually, I think it is possible, Rann sent calmly. I’ve been pondering your talent for a while. Given that it seems that the telepathic humans can trace their lineage back to a specific place, and it seems to be a long time ago, then the idea that you are related to the Faey makes sense to me. It explains the genetic similarities between the human telepaths and the Faey, who are much more similar to us than other humans, and the long time explains why you appear to be completely human. Over time, and the successive matings with pureblood humans, the Faey appearance has been bred out of you, but the DNA sequences dealing with telepathy have remained intact, since there is nothing in the human DNA that would interfere with it. It has passed true from parent to child, over the generations. And this illness of yours only offers another piece of confirming circumstantial evidence that supports that hypothesis. Jason gets infected by an engineered bioweapon that was specifically designed to go after a particular Faey family group, and no one can offer any solid evidence to the effect that this agent was altered to affect him. It explains why you have talent. It explains more questions than it creates. I’ll put my hair on the table right now and bet all of you that when you finally find this alpha ancestor of Tim and Temika’s, that it’s a Faey. And I’ll bet that Jason’s telepathic ancestor is a Faey from a different family, which would explain the differences between him and Tim and Temika. Who wants to take that bet?

Rann, that’s outlandish, Yohne sent.

Outlandish, but I think it’s right, he replied. Think about it, Yohne. If a Faey scouting party or scientific mission came to Terra a long time ago and left behind pregnant human women, products of unions between Faey males and human women, then that explains everything. Humans and Faey are genetically compatible, if you don’t recall. We can produce children. The human telepaths can trace their lineage back to England, and it had to be a long time ago. It makes sense, since the gulf between the telepathic humans and non-telepathic humans is so wide when it comes to similarity with Faey DNA. Telepathic humans are much more similar to us, and if they were actually related to us, then that explains everything.

But the hole there is Jason’s infection. This agent only attacked a member of the house of Karinne, Yohne responded. And they were all killed a thousand years ago.

Actually, Songa sent. It was documented to the last member of those they could reach. The Karinnes were a house of scientists, and they always had members out on scientific missions. When word reached the expeditions of the war and the attack on Karinne, most of those expeditions snuck back to the Imperium and went into hiding. There was quite a bit of literature about it. There are some who think that some of the Karinnes escaped and lived out their lives pretending to be commoners, because some of them were never found. And it’s not like the Karinne bloodline is dead. There were Karinnes who married into other noble houses and became part of the house they married into.

How do you know that, Songa? Jason asked.

My minor in medical school was classical Faey literature, and that requires some knowledge of history, she sent in reply.

So, I’ll also put a bet on the table right now that Jason is a direct descendent of Maeda Karinne. If he was, that would explain why his end sequence matches hers. She passed it down to him through the generations.

Rann, that’s utterly impossible, Jason protested.

I say it’s not. Now we try to prove each other wrong.

Let’s pick this up later. Right now, we’re trying to get Jason out of that bubble, Yohne sent sharply, and we’re playing with Demir’s sword when we should be working.

Well, it gives us all something to think about for a while, Rann sent with amusement.

It certainly did. Though Rann hadn’t presented it very methodically, if one assumed that Jason and Maeda Karinne were indeed related, then it did explain nearly all of the gaps in logic in this attack on him. Simply put, the fact that it was an attack itself was the most illogical part of the whole thing. If it was truly an attack, there were so many parts of it that just didn’t make any sense that made it implausible. It actually made more sense if it was an accident. This compound didn’t decompose over time; in fact, it actively reproduced itself. If it had been on Moridon, it would have lasted for the time between this Karinne woman’s infection and Jason’s. Maeda Karinne might have been the target of the original attack, but if he was related to her, then it would have affected him as well because of the way they designed it to attack her. It would go after anyone with the same sequence in their DNA, giving it that perfect fit to attach itself.

But still… the explanation itself was implausible to the point of being impossible. Though it did fill in the holes if one assumed it was true, the fact remained that it seemed utterly laughable that Jason was related to a long dead Faey noble, and that the other telepaths were descended from the Faey. But, this was something they could prove or disprove. Once they got more information, could trace back the lineage of the telepaths and find a solid lead on the true alpha ancestor, then they’d know. But he doubted it. He was sure that someone would notice it if the Faey appeared on Earth. There’d be mention of it in history somewhere, and there wasn’t. If nothing else, it’d show up as some kind of demonic invasion in the church histories, since back then, anyone that wasn’t human would be seen as a creature of evil.

It still didn’t seem plausible.

It took them about a day to get him out of the bubble. Four hours was taken to research Yohne’s idea, and then three more hours to do tests. Then, once the tests came out promising, they produced a vaccine and tested it on a blood sample. The vaccine was really just a self-replicating anti-agent that combined with the agent to reform into the same hormone the agent used to duplicate itself, rendering it harmless. It also combined with the agent already attached to DNA, breaking it off and reforming it into a hormone, making it harmless. Once they did blood tests and found that the agent had been eradicated, they removed infected white blood cells in the filters, exposed them to the vaccine, and checked them for signs of infection.

They were clean.

At that point, they were going to administer the vaccine directly to him, but they had to take some precautions first. They donned clean suits and entered the bubble, and hooked him up to a blood filtration unit that would filter out the hormone from his blood as the vaccine did its work, reducing it to normal levels inside him. They also hooked him up to a veritable onslaught of sensors and machines to monitor him during the administration of the vaccine. Once they were done, they administered the vaccine via IV.

They told him it would take about six hours for the vaccine to do its work, and during that time they monitored him like a hawk, all three of them glued to readouts and meters that watched his body functions, watching for any signs of unforeseen side effects, paying special attention to the possible buildup of hormone in his blood or tissue. But there were none. Jason didn’t really even feel anything, either. If the immunization was working, he couldn’t tell.

After six hours, they did several blood tests, took three tissue samples from his foot, hand, and from his neck, and again checked the white blood cells in the filters.

Everything was clean. The agent was neutralized, and his hormone levels were normal. And what was more, the anti-agent would remain in his body, acting as a permanent immunization against another attack by that agent.

Jyslin was the first one there when they brought the bubble down. She rushed in and embraced him tightly, then she laughed and told him he needed a bath in the worst way. He shot back that she should have expected it, since he’d been in there for three weeks.

But there was no time for reunions, or even a bath. The doctors wheeled him straight into the operating theater, and then he underwent a three hour operation as they removed all the filters they’d installed to protect him from his own immune system. Once they were done, they cleaned him up while he was still sedated, put him in a bed, and let him sleep it off, outside the bubble.

Jason was cured.

It was a wonderful change from before to wake up and see Jyslin’s face directly over him, not on the far side of a force field. She smiled radiantly and put her hands on his face, triggering an intense communion between them, and she leaned down and kissed him tenderly. Good morning, she sent with a grin. Welcome to the outside. How do you feel?

A little groggy from that anesthetic, but otherwise fine, he answered. How long was I out? What time is it?

Morning, a little after seven, she answered. Everyone, Jason is awake, and he’s just fine! Jyslin sent in a way that would allow the non-telepathic humans to hear her. Now, I’m going to take you home, and I’m going to give you a home-cooked breakfast, she winked. I’ve already been warned that I can’t feed you too much. It might make you sick. So, we’ll go slow at first, and then once your body gets used to it, we’ll get you a proper meal.

Sounds good to me.

Jason was basically accosted all the way home, as everyone rushed from whatever they were doing and saw him, shook his hand, welcomed him back, and asked if he was feeling well. He took it well enough, but the medicine they’d been giving him to curb his hunger was fading fast, and he was starving, so his greetings became a little shorter as time went by, until he finally asked everyone to just clear the way and let him go eat.

When he got home, Jyslin pampered him outrageously. She put him in a comfy chair in front of a TV that they’d hooked up so Jason could watch anything he wanted, his panel was brought back from the lab and set on a stand beside him, then Jyslin spread a blanket over his lap and pulled a TV tray up to him, and then she put a plate of scrambled eggs, a slice of rye toast, and a piece of a ham steak in front of him, in very small portions. There was also a glass of what looked like orange juice, and a small glass of milk. Eat it slowly, she warned. Yohne already explained how I have to do this. You have to eat little by little to give your system time to adjust after being empty for so long. She also told me it’s imperative that you drink both the juice and the milk. When you finish what’s here, we wait a little while, then I’ll make you something else. So, eat.

That was a command he had no problems following. It was hard to eat slowly when he was so ravenous, but on the other hand, the odd feeling in his stomach when the first mouthful hit it told him that he’d damn well better eat slowly, or he’d throw up. He worked his way through the meal as slowly as he could make himself eat, drank the juice and the milk, then leaned back and watched INN while his body wrapped itself around the task of dealing with the first food to hit his belly in nearly a month. As always, he was looking for any coverage of the Terran rebellion on INN. Usually, they ignored the rebellion unless he’d just executed a large-scale or brazen attack. His attack on Orbital One definitely made the headlines, and the various things he’d done to torment the Baron of North America had also been pretty high up in the news cycle.

The Imperium had a very odd position on Jason and his rebellion. Of course, he was listed as a terrorist and an enemy of the peace, but instead of vilifying him the way they did after the explosion that destroyed Chesapeake, they treated him like some kind of enigmatic anti-hero. He was a bad guy, oh yes, a wanted criminal that would be attacked on sight. But, INN also portrayed him in an eerily romanticized fashion, like some kind of dashing buccaneer, a lovable rogue that you loved to hate. It had to be because of the Faey love of games and jokes. Had Jason simply been going out there and blowing things up and killing people, they’d probably be portraying him as a monster that ate the raw livers of babies. But some of the things he’d done showed more than just a need to destroy. His various attacks on Washington displayed a warped sense of humor, and that was something that the Faey could appreciate… at least the ones who hadn’t been subjected to those attacks could. It was hard to fathom, though. Though Faey and humans looked alike and had some similar traits, they were an alien species with a very different culture, and some parts of it just made little sense to him.

That could be it, though. He wasn’t just a faceless enemy, he was an enemy that had displayed traits of personality. And another thing was his declaration that he was only after Trillane. The rest of the Imperium could sit back and enjoy the show, watch Trillane fight an ever-more-futile battle against Jason Fox, watch them get flustered, watch them squirm while they were repeatedly confounded by what seemed to be a single human and his armada of clever little toys. The other noble houses would probably think less of Trillane had Jason also not managed to confound and outsmart a crack division of Black Ops that had been sent there to stop him. That was common knowledge in the Imperium now, and Jason had even dug up a rather cheeky interview that some reporter had done with Myleena Merrane, about how she was going to go down to Terra and nab the elusive Jason Fox. Then there was another interview after Orbital One, where Myleena wasn’t even half as amused. Her pushing the camera out of her face as she stormed down a passageway told everyone just how angry she was.

That single act had changed quite a bit, changed the very nature of this dangerous game. The success of the marbles had reached too far, had made it seem less like an upstart Terran annoying Trillane for the amusement of the Imperium, and had turned him into a real enemy, one that could do real damage. He still had that roguish appeal to the rest of the Imperium, but the Imperial government was going to take him seriously now. He might have some rather dark popularity with the common population of the Imperium as a buccaneer with a strange sense of humor and the willingness to show it off, but to Trillane and those in the Imperium trying to stop him, he wasn’t funny anymore. Half the reason for the scaleback after Orbital One was to give them some breathing room, to lay low and come back into this more carefully now that Myleena Merrane was righteously pissed off and was looking for blood. The fact that she hadn’t even tried to call him since right after the attack was all the indication he needed. Myleena was lurking out there, and he’d better take her very seriously.

He rested for a while, then ate another very small meal, and then rested a bit more, pondering Rann’s declaration. Though it was absolutely impossible to even consider, Jason did have to admit, it did fill certain holes missing in most other explanations. So, what Jason needed to do was think maybe along those lines. Maybe the alpha ancestors didn’t just spontaneously develop talent. Maybe they were part of a group exposed to some kind of common mutation, or were part of a splinter group of the human species, kind of like how the Cro-Magnon and the Neanderthals co-existed, two branches of the human race living side by side, different sub-species but part of the same race. That splinter group was absorbed into the human race, but passed down their unique genetic abilities to those descendents.

Jyslin crawled up into his lap and cuddled with him for quite a while after his third meal, and he was quite content. Weeks of separation had left him starving for her touch, starving for the feel of her and the intensifying nature of their communion when they touched skin to skin. Touch amplified telepathic ability, but between couples, it was more than that. It was a tactile sensation of love, for when he touched her, he could feel her love for him. They kept no barriers up against one another, allowing them to share their thoughts and feelings freely, and it was that intense communion that so marked the difference between human concepts of pairing and Faey pairing. The union they had formed would last all their lives, for so long as they loved each other, their communion would make that love self-reinforcing.

Jyslin had looked over Rann’s suppositions in his mind and injected her own opinion into it. I rather doubt you’re a descendent of a Karinne, but the idea that you might be the descendent of a Faey certainly carries some weight, she thought, a thought that Jason could hear. I remember hearing Yohne and Songa talking a month ago, and that was one of the things that they considered while they were researching human telepathy. The similarities were just too similar, Songa thought, but Yohne stubbornly kept declaring Gora’s Law. She thinks it’s the sun rising in the morning. Songa’s a little intimidated by Yohne, so she didn’t really debate it any further.

Why is she intimidated?

Yohne’s about three times older than Songa, and Yohne’s been a doctor longer than Rann and Songa have been alive, she answered. Haven’t you noticed that she always gives the orders? She has much higher rank in the medical service. So, we have to look into it, but I think it’ll be easy.

How so?

Well, we have four faces to track down, she answered. When we find them, we see if their families are all from England. If they are, then the location of the alpha ancestor is certainly known. Then it’s just a matter of looking through the mythology of the area.

Mythology? Don’t you mean history?

No, there’s no mention of the Faey in your history. But I’ll bet that if there were Faey here, they’d turn up in your mythology. We just look for any myths about blue-skinned people with pointed ears. If we find them, and those myths are prevalent in the area your ancestors came from, then we have enough circumstantial evidence to at least conclude that it’s possible, don’t we?

Damn. That’s just clever, love.

Thank you. I’m more than just a pretty face, she told him, giving him a grin.

And a nice rack.

Well, that you can appreciate, she thought, and then her breath caught a little. I’d love to, baby, but are you strong enough?

Let’s find out.

If I get you sick, the docs are gonna kill me.

I won’t tell if you won’t, he offered as he slid a hand sensually up her leg and over her hip. I can just lay there and let you do all the work, he added with a naughty image of his intent.

Deal, she agreed, leaning down and kissing him.

Jyslin’s idea was certainly a smart one, and it was now the highest priority for Jason.

After getting a clean bill of health from the doctors to resume his normal routine, Jason basically left the work of setting mines and other traps to Luke, and he, Molly, Tim, and Songa got to work preparing to go out and meet those four faces they had. Tim used a little trick that Kiaari set up for him to hack into Trillane’s facial recognition protocols, and they had names for those faces. Ten minutes later, they had addresses. Three of them lived in London, but the fourth, the redheaded man named Seamus Macgregor, he was from a small town named Dumfries, which was in Scotland. Since Dumfries would be a much safer place to try to land and approach this man, it was decided that he would be first.

Molly had more or less wormed her way into this part of their work, and Jason didn’t really mind, because she had a firm grip on English history. So, it was to her that Jason assigned Jyslin’s idea as a task. He set her loose with his panel on CivNet and told her to dig up any myth or legend that might hint that the Faey had visited Earth in the past. He told her to look for any physical descriptions that might match the Faey, any instances of “beings from heaven” coming to Earth, and so on. He was surprised to see that she knew her way around CivNet, able to fully use its search functions to dig up the data stored in the old Internet portion of the network. She’d done much of her family research after the subjugation, and she used CivNet.

He left her to that task as they bent to the logistics of this trip, which required research. Before they made the initial appointment, Jason searched the area using Trillane’s cameras, looking for a place to hide his skimmer… but it wasn’t a good place. Dumfries was an old, old village, filled with ancient buildings and narrow, twisting streets, and the terrain was relatively flat. There were no warehouses, no bridges, nothing large enough and with enough space either in it or under it where he could land the skimmer and keep it hidden from the space-based cameras. So, they had to be dropped off. Once that was determined, they drew up a schedule for it, where and when they would be dropped off, what they’d do when they were, and where and when they’d be picked up. Jason dug up one of the cell phones he’d been storing since he left New Orleans, and it would be their emergency contact means in case something went wrong. Jason studied the area and memorized the layout, and determined where they’d go in case something went wrong. He also identified the public transit stations that they could use to get to London if it came down to it, so he could get back to where there were Faey so he could use his master key to steal a skimmer to get back if they got stranded.

Their movements would be carefully scripted. At 5:30 a.m., just before sunrise, they’d be dropped off. After the drop-off in a pasture just outside the village, they’d go to the train station and make it look like they came by train, by arriving and slipping in just as the first train arrived at the station at 5:45 a.m., then leaving the station. From there, they’d go to a local pub that served breakfast that opened just after the first train arrived, which served to feed some of the people that would get on that train when it left at 6:30 a.m. on its way to Devonshire. They would linger in that pub as long as they could until the village public library opened, where they would look up possible myths and legends and talk to the librarians about it. Their appointment with Seamus MacGregor was at noon, and it was their intent to stay in Seamus’ house until sunset. If Seamus refused their offer, they would return to the library and wait there until sunset, when they would leave and go to the same pasture just outside the village where they were dropped off and wait for pickup.

Once they hammered out all the details for this dangerous expedition, Jason and Songa made contact with this Seamus MacGregor, Songa making the call and arranging a meeting with him at his home for another made-up reason. She told him she needed to interview him, that it wasn’t anything serious, and she would come to his residence to conduct the interview so as not to inconvenience him. The man agreed, and the plan was finalized.

But what he thought would be a simple—though dangerous—mission of two people evolved quickly. It became a mission of four, and it was an odd pair that was coming along. Rann decided he wanted to accompany Songa on the trip, both to spend time with her and see how they approached the humans in case he had to do it. But with two non-combatants and only one guard to protect them, both Myra and Meya decided that someone else was going to go, someone to help keep an eye on things and back Jason up if something went wrong. Meya and Myra argued over who was going to get the honor, until they played some obscure finger game to decide who was going. Meya won that contest, and so Meya was going to go. Jason and Meya had to endure a little make-up magic that Yohne put on them, the fake nose and beard for Jason to throw off the facial recognition in the cameras, and Meya had her cheeks widened and her eyebrows reshaped just enough for the facial recognition software to not recognize her.

What surprised all of them was when they gathered for the mission, for Meya arrived wearing armor. “Babe, I’m your guard,” she told Jason simply. “Guards wear armor. End of story. And don’t even think of telling me to go change.”

“I’d never dream of it.”

“Here. Let’s hope you don’t need this,” she said, offering him a small, evil-looking plasma pistol, one of the smallest he’d ever seen, that would easily fit in his pocket.

“I can agree with that,” he said, pocketing the weapon.

The trip out wasn’t just them either. Luke took the dropship, and he had three students with him when they set out, as well as cargo to deliver. Four mines were in the cargo bay with three workers there to start them up and deploy them. All four were space mines, and the idea was to go up into orbit and deploy the mines, then drop them off just before sunrise in Scotland and then rush back to Cheyenne Mountain before sunrise in Colorado. Because of all the people in the cockpit, the four of them sat on benches down in the cargo bay, as Jason taught Songa, Rann, and Meya how to play spades to pass the time of the trip.

After a few hours, they landed in a pasture just by a dark, deserted road just outside of Dumfries. It was 5:45 a.m. local time, and it was a decidedly nippy October morning. “Remember, if you have any problems, just call,” Luke warned from the ramp as he came down to see them off.

“This shouldn’t be very hard,” Jason told him, shouldering his panel’s strap. “Our biggest issue is going to be getting to the train station and making it look like we arrived from there.”

“Good luck.”

“You too.”

Meya put on her helmet, completing the appearance that she was a personal guard of the two unarmed Faey. “Alright, follow me,” she announced.

The first stage of the operation went easily. With Meya leading them using her night-vision enhanced sight, she took them to the train station, and to Jason’s delight, the train just pulled in as they rounded a corner of the quiet town. They scurried up to a gate separating the platform for the trains from the rest of the town, hovered there a few minutes as Meya used her talent to sweep the building, then they slipped in through a service gate in the fence whose lock Meya skillfully broke off with a wrench of her armored, strength-augmented hand. They slipped in and climbed up a few steps to the platform, then walked out upon it casually after Meya ensured there were no cameras on the platform to catch their appearance that Jason might have to use his panel to try to hack. That seemed odd to Jason, but then again, this wasn’t a big city. This was a modest town on another continent, a place where Jason figured the Faey didn’t worry too much about security.

Now that they looked to be here legitimately, Meya led them through a waiting room that looked like a throwback to the 1940’s with its old furniture and fading posters on the walls, and a schedule board that was the old slotted kind where the attendant had to put up the little letters on it by hand. It showed that the first train out was to Devonshire, and that it would be leaving in about a half hour.

There aren’t any Faey in this whole town, I think, Meya announced, then repeated it after elbowing Jason and tapping her forehead, for he had had himself completely closed off. No need to close yourself, babe.

Jason decided to risk a personal sweep, using the technique that Jyslin had taught him in their training sessions, sweeping out away from him with his power and listening for any “echo” that marked a sentient mind to the probe. It was almost like telepathic radar, a sweep that told him that there were quite a few human minds around him, but none that were different enough to be Faey. Both Jason and Meya were very careful to search the area carefully, looking for any mind that might be trying to hide among the numbers of humans, using them as a shield to hide itself, but there was no such sense of it.

Possibly, he answered. Let’s get down to that pub and get some breakfast. I’m hungry.

The pub was a small, rather ramshackle building with fading whitewash, and a stained sign hanging over the door showing a mule’s head in a yoke. The interior was just as anachronistic as the rest of the town they’d seen so far, an old, grungy-looking room with a heavy wooden bar on the right wall, a series of old booths with faded cushioned benches on the left, and about ten small circular tables scattered in a random-seeming pattern throughout the open floor. Old war-era posters, a tapestry showing some old castle, and several sections of different colored plaid cloths were hanging on the walls. The room was populated with six people, one old woman behind the bar, a younger woman carrying a tray of biscuits and what smelled like sausage to a booth where four older men were seated, all of them wearing earth-colored clothing, and what seemed odd to Jason, all four wore different kinds of hats. Every eye in the place was glued to them the instant they came in. “Let’s go get a seat,” Jason told them, pointing to the booth nearest the bar.

“Mornin’,” the young woman said rather nervously as they seated themselves, with Rann and Meya on one side, and Jason and Songa on the other, with the doctors on the inside. “What can I be getting’ ye this morn?” she asked in Scots brogue, which Jason found almost mesmerizingly interesting.

Songa kicked him in the shin lightly, and he blinked, glanced at her, then looked to the pretty young girl, with dark hair and green eyes, which was an odd combination. “We just need some breakfast, please,” Jason told her. “What do you serve?”

“We have eggs any way ye want ‘em done, sausage, potatoes, ham steaks, biscuits, an’ porridge,” she answered.

“Porridge? What is that?” Songa asked.

“Kinda like oatmeal,” Jason answered.

“I think I’d like to try that,” she mused.

After all four of them ordered breakfast, the girl looked them all over and seemed to hover, then blurted it out. “What business do Faey have in Dumfries?” she asked, then she blushed.

“That’s quite alright, sweetie, we realize we’re a little out of place here,” Rann told her with a light smile, which made her blush deeper. Rann was a handsome fellow, blue skin notwithstanding. “Truth be told, we’ve come to interview a few of your townsfolk concerning the history of your area, and look through your town library. We’re researching a few historical matters, and it’s always best done on site.”

“History, ye say? ‘Tis an odd thing for a Faey to be interested in, if’n ye don’t mine me saying so. Our history, I mean.”

“Well, some day we hope that humans will be just as interested in our history as we are in yours,” Songa said mildly.

“To be honest, ma’am, I dinna’ think that’d ever happen here. I’d be a poor hostess if’n I didn’t warn ye that you’ll not get a warm reception here. Scots don’t take too well to the new system, ye ken.”

“We’ll keep that in mind, young one,” Rann told her. “And I assure you, we’ll be discrete. The last thing we wish to do is upset your town. We’ll conduct our research and be on the train back to London by dinner.”

The meal they were served wasn’t exactly spectacular, and Jason had the feeling that whoever cooked it intentionally overcooked it because it was being served to Faey. Several more people came in, saw the Faey in the corner, and then immediately left. Jason saw the scowl on the old woman’s face behind the bar, so he made the others finish eating, got the location of the town library from the serving girl, then he herded the others out. They walked down to the library, and found that it wouldn’t be open for another hour. Well, now what? Songa asked, a little irritably. It’s a bit cool out here, Jason, and that pub was warm at least.

Let’s just walk around while we wait. If we stayed there any longer, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d have put nails in our water or something. That old woman seemed to tolerate us until we started costing her her morning business.

They walked around the town waiting for the library to open, taking in the medieval architecture of the place. It was clear that some of the buildings here were very, very old, maybe two hundred, but the street pattern, so narrow and crooked, had to be a throwback to the Middle Ages. They’d rebuilt the buildings over the years, but had done so while leaving the town’s layout unchanged. Several of the larger buildings were clearly very old, like what looked like a town hall, and a chapel they found near the center of town looked positively ancient, with vines growing up on side of the building and an old slate roof. It had a single stained glass window over the front double doors. Though the Church of England was the predominate church in Britain, this chapel looked to be from the era before that, for the stained glass window was an image of the Virgin Mary, or at least what he thought was Mary. That meant this small stone building, showing signs of many patches and repairs, had to be nearly six hundred years old.

Sure enough it was… or at least almost. There was a historical sign by the gate in the fence surrounding the little chapel, saying that it was built in 1437, and had been partially destroyed twice and rebuilt, both times by fire; the first in 1789 and again in 1892. Neither fires completely destroyed the building, however, allowing them to rebuild and restore the building to its original appearance and condition. Though the building itself wasn’t really that old because of the rebuilds and renovations, the stained glass window was a “faithful recreation of the original window” according to the sign, and the foundation of the building was that of the original building. Because it had been rebuilt exactly as it had been originally constructed, it was considered to be a historic landmark.

Well, Jason, there’s your first piece of evidence backing me up, Rann sent smugly, pointing at the stained glass window. Look at the shoulder.

Jason did so, and saw a red triangle on a white background. That was the insignia of the Faey Medical Service.

That might just be a coincidence, Jason scoffed. I’d hardly call that proof. He did, however, unshoulder his panel and turn it on, then he took a picture of the window and stored it in memory. He closed the outer cover and slung it back over his shoulder, which caused it to go into dormant mode.

They returned to the library just as it opened, and got a rather chilly reception from the two librarians that worked within. Rann went to work on them, unleashing his full charm on the two middle-aged women as Jason and Songa started looking through some of the books that the two women suggested. Jason read through a book of old myths but read nothing he hadn’t read before, but Songa seemed a bit engrossed in the book she had in her hands. Jason looked at the title and saw that it was Beowulf. There’d be no help in that book, but Songa, an adherent of old literature, was already involved in reading the story. She’d be no help to him until she was done.

While Jason was flipping through another book, Rann came up with both librarians, and he looked almost insufferably smug. “Alright, Rose my dear, tell him what you told me.”

“Aye. Well, if ye be lookin’ at old stories and myths that might hint that the Faey visited before, I think ye’d find two of them ta’ be yuir best bets. The first is the old story of Tir Na Nog, a land that only appears every hundred years. The other is the old legends of the Faerie Folk. I’d say that yon Faey does look like an elf, and we have quite a few myths and legends about the Faerie Folk here in Scotland. Here, I’ll show ye which books to look through about that.”

“Aww!” Songa complained, closing the book she was reading.

“Tir Na Nog?” Jason asked, sitting back and tapping his chin. That word sounded eerily like Terinango, which was an old Faey word for hamlet or village. “Songa?”

Terinango?” she asked curiously, and Jason nodded.

“It does sound similar, doesn’t it?”

“Excuse me?”

“My human friend here is actually our resident expert on Faey linguistics,” she explained. “He’s deeply versed in our language, much more than the rest of us. That word, Tir Na Nog, it sounds much like a Faey word, terinango, which means small town or village, but it’s a word that isn’t used much anymore. Was this Tir Na Nog place a town?”

“The story calls it a land or realm, not just a town,” the librarian, Rose, answered. “But there was a town of the same name within the realm.”

“Faerie Folk, I’m not sure about that. I thought fairies were supposed to be little winged things.”

“Och, laddy, that’s just one interpretation,” the other librarian said. “The Faerie Folk are the elves of old folklore, ye ken. They were said to be tall, graceful, handsome folk with pointed ears. The legends said they lived in the land of Arcadia, a magical realm outside the bounds of our own world.”

“That sounds promising,” Rann mused. “Any words you can think of?” he asked Jason.

He shook his head. “Nothing comes to mind. The Faey words for realm or home aren’t even close. The closest word that even relates I can think of is arcideinne, but that’s, ah, not exactly an appropriate word.”

“Why, what does it mean?” Songa asked innocently, but he saw the wicked glint in her eye.

“Prostitute, generally,” he answered, giving her a short glare. “But it’s not a very nice word. And you’re on the list,” he growled, pointing at Songa.

She broke down into delighted laughter, then winked at him.

“I dinna’ ken,” Rose said.

“She knew what that word meant. She just wanted to make Ja—Jack say it, that’s all,” Meya told them from behind her helmet.

“Ah. I didna’ think that Faey had a sense of humor.”

“Oh, we do. It’s just not quite the same as a human’s,” Rann told the woman with a grin.

The books they were sent to read were interesting, and Jason learned a bit more about the legends of the Faerie Folk. They were just as the librarian described, tales of elfin beings that lived in a magical world called Arcadia, who crossed over into the human world. There were stories of humans and the Faerie Folk interacting, both peacefully and in conflict, and dark tales of humans abducted and spirited away to Arcadia, a magical realm of pristine forests where the Faerie Folk dwelled. Jason read that over the years, the term Faerie became more attached to traditional fairies, while the term Sidhe or elf had come to represent an appearance more Faey-like. But the librarian was right; in Scotland, the concept of a faerie was not a diminutive winged creature, but a tall, elegant, regal, beautiful human-like creature of refined bearing and gentle mannerisms, often richly dressed. They had similar legends in Ireland, where they were called the Sidhe (odd that a word spelled that way was pronounced shee, but the word was Gaelic in origin), but the Sidhe and the Faerie were basically two names for a similar creature, just given different names for different regions.

Sidhe. Now that word sounded familiar. It sounded like sehii, which in Faey, meant lost.

The most interesting part of what he read was the interaction between the Faerie Folk and the humans. The Faerie Folk weren’t really written as dark or ominous beings, though there were several stories concerning Banne Sidhe, or evil Sidhe, which curiously was the origin of the word banshee. They could be fearsome, but only when angered or riled. So long as one didn’t anger a Faerie Folk, they were kind, gentle, and helpful. They were attributed in many stories as bringers of happiness, bestowers of special gifts on human newborns like beauty or luck or intelligence, and many of the stories he read through attributed the Faerie Folk with peaceful, harmonious co-existence with the humans who bordered the entrances to Arcadia, their magical homeland.

But what caught Jason’s eye more than anything else was one aspect of the stories that demonstrated the Faerie Folk as teachers. They taught the humans arts such as herbology, medicine, and smithing various kinds of metals. Now that seemed… strange. It would certainly be in the realm of a more advanced Faey to teach people things like this, but the question was why they would bother.

Jason closed the book he was reading and drummed his fingers on the cover, lost in thought. There wasn’t any definitive proof in these books, but what was there didn’t disprove it either. From what he’d read, a Faey expedition could step into the shoes of the Faerie Folk and not disrupt the stories. Tall, elegant, handsome well dressed beings showing up and teaching humans things they didn’t know, beings who knew magic, which could just be technology far beyond the imagination of the humans who looked on, then going back to their own magical realm, a place that humans couldn’t comprehend.

Was it true? Were the Faerie Folk actually a Faey expedition, and had they interbred with the humans and left, leaving behind progeny that would become the alpha ancestors of the current telepathic humans? There was nothing here to prove it, but the circumstantial evidence was only strengthened by the fact that it was a rational conclusion, going on the information he’d read in these books.

“What is it, Jack?” Rann asked using Jason’s alias, looking very, very pleased with himself. “What did you find?”

“I couldn’t find anything that jumped out, but I’ll admit, I found nothing that disproves it either. And what’s in here would fit with the theory. It’s not enough, though.”

“Not enough for what, laddy?” the older librarian whose name Jason didn’t know asked as she approached them. “Might ye explain what exactly ye be researchin’? I may be able ta’ help.”

“We’re researching a, theory,” Songa told her. “There’s a theory floating about back home that the Faey have visited Terra before, hundreds of your years ago. We’re researching old myths and legends looking for any support of this theory. What my human friend meant was that what we read here still supports the idea of the theory, but there’s no proof one way or the other. It just hints that it might be true, it doesn’t give us any solid evidence that it is or isn’t true.”

“What we’ve pieced together actually fits in with the folklore we’ve read here,” Rann expanded. “It fits into the parameters of your folklore, but it’s not proof that there was an actual visitation. So it’s a tease.”

“Och. So, ye’re ponderin’ that maybe Arcadia is Draconis, and the Faerie and the Sidhe were actually Faey?”

“Well, it’s possible. We’re not going to just look at British myths, though. There are similar stories from several other cultures we want to investigate as well.”

“Well, pardon an old woman’s obvious observation, but I’d be thinkin’ that maybe the name is enough,” she stated. “The Faerie Folk and the word Faey are pretty bloody similar.”

“That’s why we came here first,” Rann told her smoothly. “Because of that very observation. Oh dear, what time is it?”

“Comin’ on eleven,” she answered after looking at her watch.

“Alright.”

“An’ the other side of that obvious observation is if ye’d never been here before, just how did ye know where we were?”

“Believe me, if the Faey knew of Terra earlier, we’d have been here,” Meya told her. “The Imperium’s been dealing with a food shortage for nearly a hundred years. If they’d have known about Terra sooner, they’d have rushed here to secure the planet, if only so we didn’t have to depend on importing food from other empires. Being forced to trade for basic necessities is never good, because an enemy can cripple you by attacking those supply lines.”

“Ah. That makes sense,” she nodded. “Well, maybe the ship that visited here never made it back home. Maybe they got lost, or had some kind of accident and landed here, fixed their ship, then took off again tryin’ to make it back ta’ Draconis, but they never did.”

Rann’s eyes lit up. “My dear, that’s an astute postulation,” he said admirably. “They didn’t develop stargates until six hundred years ago, and in that era we used hyperspace as a means of interstellar travel, and you can’t send communications through hyperspace. Back then communications were basically handled by messenger ships that traveled between systems, relaying messages through the Imperium. A lone ship that wandered off course and landed here would have no way to report their findings unless the ship itself returned to Imperial space and reported in person. So, that’s another mark in the possible column.”

“No amount of circumstantial evidence is going to convince anyone, though. We need hard proof,” Jason said.

“Proof, ye say? I think ye might want ta’ think of visiting some museums. Look at old artifacts, ye ken, look for anything that yon Faey might recognize. Jewelry, things like that.”

“Well, we have come across one thing. The picture, please, Jack?” Rann said as he reached into his pocket and produced his medical insignia. Jason opened his panel and displayed the picture he took of the window. “See this? This looks just like this part of the window in your chapel. This is something that existed back when your chapel was built. If that window is a perfect recreation of the original, well, it makes me wonder.”

“That? Well, dearie, that’s something that we’ve seen before,” she stated evenly. She slid over one of the books on the table, one they hadn’t opened yet, flipped through it, then turned it around and showed them a reproduction of a carving showing four elfin figures standing at the edge of a misty forest, gathered around a human man pounding a piece of metal with a hammer on an anvil, and all four of them had that symbol emblazoned on their garments. But on them, the triangle was pointing up instead of down, the way Rann usually wore it. “There it is.”

“My,” Rann whispered, but it wasn’t Rann that got Jason’s attention. It was Songa. Her eyes were wide, and she snapped up the book and flipped it back a few pages, to another picture, showing two Faerie Folk on horseback, one adult, one obviously young. The adult wore a tabard of sorts, upon which was an unusual design looking like two ocean waves in a circular background with a single star above and between the two crests of the waves.

“Trelle’s garland!” she gasped in Faey. “Rann! Rann, look at this!”

“Demir’s sword!” he said when he looked at the insignia, then he laughed. “I win!”

“What?” Jason and Meya asked in unison.

“Jas—Jack, Jack, this is the house crest of Karinne!”

“Are you sure?” he asked in English.

“Of course I’m sure!” she snapped in reply, in English. “I studied classical literature, I know all the house crests! This is Karinne! If we wanted hard evidence, here it is!”

“I dinna’ ken.”

“Honey, this is the symbol of one of the Faey noble houses,” Rann told her with a big grin. “A house that was destroyed over a thousand years ago. This is just way too much circumstantial evidence to be circumstantial. A Faerie Folk shown in an old drawing wearing the standard of a Faey noble house? That’s corroboration.”

Jason felt like someone hit him in the chest with a shovel. Rann was right. He was right! This was evidence that even a skeptical Jason could not ignore. This was proof that the Faerie Folk really were the Faey, and that they had come to Earth a long, long time ago. It just seemed impossible that this old wood carving picture, reproduced for the book, would have two Faey-origin symbols for the Faerie Folk and have it just be a case of coincidence. One, Jason could write off as a coincidence, but not two, and not a symbol quite that complex. A triangle in a circle, yeah, that could be a coincidence, but not two waves in a circle under a star.

So, Jason could not deny it. The human telepaths on Earth were descended from the Faey. And Jason was a direct blood relative of Maeda Karinne.

It was just too fucking unbelievable, but sometimes, life just threw you one hell of a curve ball.

Jason leaned back in his chair, heavily, and then gave a sigh that would do anyone proud. He looked at Rann’s smug grin, then snorted. “Shut up,” he grated.

Cousin, Rann sent audaciously.

Ass, Jason responded.

“Are ye well?” the woman asked.

“The gentleman just had a rather nasty shock,” Rann told her with an outrageous grin. “These two symbols here strongly suggest that the Faey did visit Terra in the past, my dear. I’ll put money on the table that the Faerie Folk of your legends was an expedition of Faey. Our visit was lost in your official history, but it didn’t vanish from your folklore.”

“Huh. Well, that’s definitely interestin’,” she said, clucking her tongue.

“May we take pictures of this book for our research, madam?” Rann asked. “It’s going to knock some caps off back home.”

“Aye, go ahead, just please dinna’ take it from the library,” she nodded.

Rann took several pictures of the book’s illustrations, including several more drawings of other Faerie Folk in other activities; an image of them dancing, an image of several smaller ones and three obviously human children sitting before a taller one, who was holding some kind of cane or staff and pointing it towards the heavens, another image of two Faerie Folk standing on either side of a peasant in a knee-length garment who was using a hoe on a row of crops, and a final image of another Karinne-crested Faerie Folk, a tall, regal looking female, handing a small circular object to a robed man that looked like a friar or monk. The pictures were very provocative, and created even more questions. Were these Faey that had come here stranded here? Why did they have children? Did those children come with them, were they born on the ship as it traveled the galaxy, or were they born here? The smaller Faerie Folk in the illustrations were obviously Faey, and also obviously children. Did those Faey that taught humans also teach the human children, as was suggested in that one image? And how did Jason come to have a Karinne ancestor?

Well, this certainly dates the event, Songa sent. The Karinnes were destroyed about thirteen hundred of your years ago. That would place this visit around, what, the year 700?

About that, Jason answered, staring at the images on his panel monitor, putting them all side by side in a tiled array. Unbelievable. Just unbelievable. If I remember right, that was just before the start of the dark ages.

Well, the question has been answered, Jason. What now? Songa asked.

What now, indeed? Though he had a virtual whirlwind of questions rolling around in his head, he had to stop and think about that. Miaari made so sure to set him out on this path, but now that he reached the end of it, now that he had the answer… how did this information fit in? How did knowing that the human telepaths were descended from the Faey help him push Trillane off Earth and restore a modicum of dignity and freedom to the human race? Miaari told him that it was the most important question to answer, but she hadn’t told him what he had to do with this information.

Still, though, it was almost unbelievable. To think that he had a Faey ancestor, that he wasn’t entirely human. It was a strange thought, and made him ponder the basic aspects of his own life… but only for a moment. Though he may have a Faey ancestor, he was still human. He had nothing but human ancestors since the introduction of this Faey into his line, and he was born and raised as a human. It might make him question the direction of his life, but it couldn’t change the fact that he was still exactly who he was, despite coming into this knowledge.

So. Now that he knew, what was he supposed to do? Well, first thing, he supposed, would be to tell Miaari that he had the answer to her question. Maybe she was waiting for him to find out, and she would point him in the right direction. Getting in touch with Miaari required first contacting Kiaari, who had been out for nearly two weeks, and had only called back to the mountain once in that time outside of returning with her elder to help him. She’d been gathering information about Trillane’s counters to their attacks, shadowing the Black Ops people, trying to find out how much they knew about what was going on. He called the contact number he had for her, but his panel flashed a message he’d never seen before: <Communication Timeout. Unable to negotiate with host. Perform Diagnostic of Transceiver Module? (press selection) <Yes> <No> >.

Jason blinked and checked the other systems, and they showed that the panel was actively connected to CivNet. The phone function was part of CivNet, so long as the panel had access to CivNet, nothing should stop the call. He had the panel check its transceiver array, and it reported after a few seconds that the unit was functioning normally, and had active contact with CivNet. He tried to call again, but received the same message.

Okay, now it was past weird, and delving into the realm of unsettling. Nothing should be stopping the panel from making a phone call. It had connection to CivNet, that was proved quickly enough when he accessed INN. The ability to call other panels or vidlinks was a basic function. Just that part of CivNet wouldn’t just crash. There was no reason he couldn’t make an outgoing call.

Unless… something was stopping it.

Quickly, Jason reached into his pocket and turned on the cell phone there, which immediately began to ring. “Hello?” he called.

“Jason!” Kiaari all but screamed at him. “That Black Ops bitch found the relay for your panel’s tightbeam and she’s tracking you with it! Burn your panel’s memory, but keep the panel running! As long as they see the panel not moving, they’ll come straight to it first, and that’ll give you time to get the hell out of there!”

“Shit!” Jason gasped, almost knocking the table over as he jumped to his feet. Quickly he performed the burn program that Kiaari had put in his panel in case of this kind of emergency, which completely erased the panel’s onboard memory, even going so far as to reformat the molecular structure of the memory crystal to totally eradicate all memory within. All that was left was the onboard RAM-style memory which kept the panel running, and kept it active, allowing Myleena Merrane to zero right in on it. He set the panel so it would automatically turn itself off in five minutes; he figured if they didn’t get away in five minutes, there was no reason to run in the first place.

“Ja—” Rann began, but Jason’s sending cut him off.

They found us using my panel! he sent quickly, his fear and worry and chagrin bleeding through his thought. Stupid stupid stupid! He should have known that they’d eventually figure out how his panel worked! Meya, we have to get out of this town now, he sent, grabbing the pistol in his pocket and producing it, turning it on and allowing it to charge up.

“Jason!” Kiaari’s voice called from the phone in his other hand, thin and reedy. He put the phone to his ear and answered her. “Listen carefully!” she called. “There’s two units en route to you now, but from what I’m hearing, they are not cooperating. Trillane is sending a unit to kill you, but there’s an Imperial dropship coming down too. The Duchess and that Merrane woman are fighting over an open radio frequency over what’s going to happen. Listen carefully,” she said with intensity. “They will come straight to where that panel is, and that’ll buy you time, but you cannot stay in that town. They’ll tear it apart looking for you when they find your panel! The closest dropship is the Trillane dropship, and it’s about seven minutes away. You have seven minutes to get out of there before the Trillane dropship reaches the town. Seven minutes. Now hang up this phone and run!”

We have to get out of here in seven minutes! Jason sent frantically. Meya!

Follow me! she barked mentally as she extended the MPACs on the forearms of her armor.

Raw panic was something that was new to Jason, but he found that he could think, he could react. It was almost like the fear of playing college football in front of 100,000 fans, knowing that everyone was watching him, but he found himself able to work through the fear and do what had to be done. They ran to the nearest car, a small Astria, and Meya picked the lock the old fashioned way, by breaking the back window, reaching in to unlock it, and then piling in behind the wheel. In! she barked, and the others scrambled to pile into the car as she used her augmented strength to rip the plastic off the steering column. Jason all but dove into the passenger’s seat on the left side, and by the time Rann and Songa got into the back, Meya had the car started. Jason gave her a surprised look, but she just winked at him and handed him her helmet, put the car into gear, and squealed the tires as they tore out of there.

Their prepwork paid off. Jason and Meya had studied the town’s map, so they knew exactly where they were, and exactly where to go to reach the motorway that would lead them out of town. Songa swept the last pieces of broken glass out of the windowframe to hide their break-in as Meya careened around a corner and onto the street that would lead them out of town. Jason, what’s going on? Rann asked.

“No sending!” Jason snapped. “Holes in the world, people! They can’t see our minds! Block out!”

“What happened?” he asked aloud.

“Kiaari said they found my panel’s tightbeam relay, and they used it to find me,” he answered. “Thank God it happened out here and not when I was home, or they’d be all over the mountain!”

“Who is Kiaari?”

“Kate,” Jason answered tightly in reply as a very large troop carrier dropship appeared in the sky ahead and above them. They were all very, very quiet as the dropship went over their head, and then descended to land in Dumfries. “She told me to leave my panel running, so they come right to it. That’ll give us time to get far away from here.”

“Where are we going?”

“As far as we can until they realize I’m not in Dumfries and call a curfew,” he answered. “Where can we get to in half an hour, Meya?”

“Galway,” she answered. “We’re going straight to Galway and finding a house to hide in that has a basement so their sensor pods don’t pick up my armor. Galway’s a good sized town, we should be able to hide there long enough. It shouldn’t be—”

The world exploded. There was a blistering light, and a sound so loud that it scattered all thought. There was nothing but a confused blur of swirling light. He had no idea what happened. He had no idea where he was. He had no idea even who he was, for long moments. He only became dimly aware that the car wasn’t moving anymore after who knew how much time, when he felt something eerily warm against his arm. He blinked and looked down, and saw that the warmth against his arm was a bloody, mangled mass of red with shreds and tatters of blue clinging to the edge of it.

It was a severed Faey hand.

The car was overturned and burning. He became dimly aware of that fact, and the fact that they were all tangled up on the roof. Someone was badly injured, badly enough to lose a hand. He rose up and looked around, and in an eerie disassociation, he saw nothing but blood everywhere. He didn’t react to it, nor did he react the open, glassy, vacant eyes of Rann that stared blankly, unblinkingly, or the piece of smoldering metal that had driven completely through his chest. He saw the mangled, spurting arm of Songa, saw it spill out ghastly amounts of blood, but she did not move, did not react. Meya lay partially atop him, blood seeping from a vacant eye socket and a savage laceration that ran down the right side of her face. She too was unconscious. He tried to move Meya to get up, but found that his right arm wouldn’t work. He looked down, and rather clinically realized that it wouldn’t work because it wasn’t there. It was missing from the elbow down, and the rest of the arm was severely burned, so much so that it had cauterized the wound.

Someone pulled on him. Hands grabbed him by the leg and pulled him out of the burning car, and he saw unemotionally, like a dream, that other motorists had stopped and were trying to get the people out of the car. Strong hands pulled him clear, but he couldn’t focus on their strange, dissonant faces, or understand what they said. They pulled him clear and laid him down, and he turned his head to see them pull the armored Meya out of the car, and then Songa. Someone pressed on her torn arm to stop the bleeding as others tried to get Rann clear of the burning car.

Then they stopped. There were strange sounds, shouting. People were running. Then there was strange sounds, strange streaks of reddish light.

But then there were others there. Armor. Black armor. Armored legs moved into his field of view, took over attending to the others that were in the car, grabbing them and pulling them behind the burning shell, but he couldn’t quite make the connection. Hands grabbed him and pulled him around the car as well. Dimly, he came to realize that the streaks of light were MPAC shots. There was firing. Someone was shooting at the car. One of those pairs of armored legs stopped in front of him, then squatted down.

It was a face he’d seen before, and even in his dazed state, he could attach a name to that face.

Myleena Merrane.

I’d almost think this was a trick, but Kimdori don’t bleed, her words seemed to resonate in his brain. I don’t understand why you feel like a Kimdori, but I guess we’ll have time to talk about it later.

Commander, the Trillane forces are trying to flank us!

Get that dropship down here! she ordered, looking away from him. And for Trelle’s sake, return fire! I warned them! If they killed him with that stunt, I’m gonna have the Duchess’ head stuffed and mounted on my wall! She looked back down at him, putting a bare hand on his head. No defense at all? You must be stunned. Well, babes, Trillane fired on your getaway car from a corvette in low geosynchronous orbit. It’s a miracle you’re not all dead, they missed the car, but your car got caught up in the shockwave, and we gave the corvette something else to think about before it had a chance to hit you again. The two women are gonna make it, but I don’t know about the male. They’re trying to resuscitate him now. We’ll have to see. I suspected you had that runaway Trillane noble down here, but I didn’t realize you had other Faey helping you. Well, we’ll sort them out once we get out of here. Not sure what’ll happen to them, though. It’s a House crime, what you were doing, but there’s really no Imperial law covering it. I guess Grand Duchess Trillane can demand the Empress to hand you and the others over, but she won’t get too far. She picked up her helmet and set it on her head. Now if you’ll excuse me, your friends in Trillane are trying to kill us. I have to keep us alive long enough for the dropship to get here and get us the hell out. She caught a rifle someone threw to her. Keep the wounded out of the line of fire! A Squad, cover those flankers, B Squad keep on the main line! Mava, they only have one mindstriker, track her down and kick her ass before she breaks someone! Dulaan, keep up the defense ‘til Mava singles her out and drops her! her words rattled in his brain, but then his vision blurred and dimmed, and he spiraled down into dark oblivion.

Chapter 17