Chapter 14
Kaista, 28 Romaa, 4394 Orthodox Calendar
Wednesday, 1 April 2008, Native Regional Reckoning
Charleston, West Virginia (Native designation), Orala Nature Preserve, American Sector
Slowly, hazily, Jason opened his eyes. The scene that greeted him was the black armored plates of Jyslin’s boots, not ten inches from his nose. Those boots slid on the grass, turning the toes outward, and then the base of her knees came into the edge of his vision as she squatted down, putting a black gauntleted hand on the ground between those feet. Jason could barely fathom why he was looking at her from that angle, for his mind swam in a sea of cloudy confusion, and it pounded in pain in rhythm with the beating of his heart.
“Sloppy,” she said aloud. “I’d send, but that would just make that headache I’m sure you’re feeling feel like it would make your head explode.”
Jason clawed some manner of comprehension back into his brain, and remembered what had happened, what was going on. Quite simply put, he had been thoroughly spanked.
He sat up, putting a hand to his head, then groaned aloud. “I never thought it could be that bad.”
“I could have put you into psychotropic shock,” she told him bluntly. “Just remember, you asked for it.”
“I did at that,” he said with a nod, then winced.
There was no way she was going to be able to train him in telepathic combat if she went easy on him, and he knew it. The Faey that would oppose them certainly wouldn’t be holding anything back, and so he had to be ready to take them on at their fullest, to engage Faey who had years of experience and training in their telepathic gifts and defend himself from any telepathic assault. Granted, Jyslin would not be his normal kind of opponent. She was young by Faey standards, but she was exceptionally powerful in her talent, and had many years of experience reinforcing that raw ability. But if he could learn to at least protect himself from Jyslin, then handling a run-of-the-mill Trillane soldier would be child’s play.
At least she looked stunning in her new armor. It was a ZPS special, just like his, the same model and with the same phoenix design emblazoned on the chest. That design was now the unofficial symbol of the resistance. It had just come in yesterday, and she’d been breaking it in today. She had everything on but the helmet, letting her long, long red hair undulate in the gentle, cool breeze of the West Virginia spring. If his head wasn’t about to melt, he’d find her to be quite lovely that way.
Telepathic combat was something he had never quite expected. He’d been taught the barest of the basics before and had had a general understanding of it, but that was in no way any kind of suitable preparation for crossing mental swords with Jyslin. The fight between them had only lasted a couple of seconds, but in the mindscape, those couple of seconds were an eternity of her basically beating him around the interior of his own skull at her whim. She had ripped through his defenses like they were nothing, and in a kind of grim lesson, had seized utter control of every aspect of his mind, turning him into nothing more than a puppet. Had he not been so comfortable with her and loved her, he’d have been infuriated with what she did, for she had laid bare the darkest, most secret parts of himself, put her fingers into every recessed nook of his mind just to show him what an enemy could do. It was a terrifying experience, and showed him that telepathic combat was not for the weak.
She handed him a small piece of rag, and he looked at it blankly. “Your nose is bleeding,” she told him tersely. He put two fingers to his lip and felt the warm stickiness, then took the rag with a nod and wiped it away.
“Is that common?”
“Yes,” she said. “So is bleeding from the ears. But you don’t seem to be doing that right now,” she said, looking to the side of his head. “In extreme cases, you’ll suffer from sangei,” she said, using a word that he couldn’t immediately comprehend. He had to think about it a moment, and then drudged up one of those words buried deep in a Faey dictionary, a word that Jyslin would know, but not many other Faey would, given her extreme vocabulary. Sangei was a condition where one would literally sweat blood from ruptured capillaries in the pores, caused by the ruptured vessels that tended to happen during telepathic combat. Though it was telepathic in nature, mental combat placed extreme stresses on the cardiovascular systems of the engaged opponents. To fight with the mind, the body had to be fit.
“Your nose isn’t bleeding,” he noted.
“I didn’t lose either,” she answered.
He chuckled ruefully. “Point,” he said, feeling the pounding in his head ease somewhat. “Alright, teacher, what did I do wrong?”
“Just about everything,” she answered, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You panicked, love. You did alright up until then, you did what I taught you to do, but once you panicked, it was over.”
“It... I was just overwhelmed,” he said in a quiet tone. “I couldn’t hold you back, and it was like the fear just locked me.”
“Well, we can work on that,” she told him reassuringly. “You were nervous about this, and that basically doomed you from the start.”
“I was definitely nervous. I never dreamed you could, that you were capable... ” he said, looking away from her. “I didn’t... ”
“It’s alright, love, you can say it,” she told him gently, kneeling down and putting her hands on his shoulders, then putting her forehead against his. That contact caused the walls between their minds to weaken, and he knew she could feel his anger at himself, his humiliation at being so thoroughly beaten, and a measure of his indignation at her raking her claws through his mind and touching on places that no one had any business touching. “You had no idea I could do something like that to you, or that I would do something like that to you.”
He flushed guiltily.
“Love, I took no pleasure in it,” she told him with utter seriousness, pulling away so she could look at him. “But you had to see it, face it at its worst. That was about the worst I’m willing to do to you. I could have done something even worse than that, but that could cause permanent damage, or cause you to never forgive me. Trust me, love, there are ways to violate someone with talent that would make you never speak to me again. We won’t go quite that far here, because I love you, and I’d never do that to you.”
“I’m sorry, about, you know.”
“You had every right to be angry,” she told him dismissively. “I just hope you’ll forgive me.”
“Forgive you for doing what I asked you to do? Please.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” she snorted.
You know me better than that, Jason sent, feeling the last of the pain fade.
Feeling better, I see. Good, she sent in reply. This was the norm for them. Ever since she had come, they spoke less and less, until they simply stopped speaking altogether. Unless they were in mixed company or wished to include others in their conversation, they did not speak aloud to each other. They always sent, either openly or privately. He had jokingly told her that he was starting to forget the sound of her voice just yesterday. I didn’t want to send until you got over the headache.
I’ve still got a bit of it, but not enough to stop me, he answered. I think I can stand up now.
Alright. We’re done for today.
But...
Hush, she cut him off. Love, you’re in no condition to train any more. We can pick this up again tomorrow, after you have some time to recover. Talent’s not like other things, love. If you push it too far, it can cause permanent harm.
Alright, he acquiesced.
They returned to the mansion, passing several people. Some waved or greeted them, some did not. Not everyone was quite happy about Jyslin’s arrival, or the other Faey, but at least no one had left the city. Jason’s speech about asking for trust had at least kept people from deserting, though there were some rumors that a few people might leave. If they left, then so be it, as far as he was concerned. But it was Kate more than anything else that had people unnerved. They felt a little betrayed by the fact that Symone had seemingly lied to them to make them vote her in, that and the fact that Kiaari wasn’t assuming Kate’s demure personality anymore. She was acting like a different person now, and that was a bit much for most people to handle.
Kumi’s presence didn’t bother most of them as much as Jason would have thought, at least not after they got an idea of just how dreadfully injured she’d been... which was all thanks to the doctors who showed them holopics of her wounds. It made quite a few people physically sick, and made Jason’s stomach heave. A hole had been blown in her back big enough to put a volleyball into without any of it sticking out. It was only because of highly advanced Faey medical techniques and equipment that Kumi had survived that injury, and the fact that there was a medical facility literally one building over from where she’d been shot. According to Doc Songa, if she’d have gone just two or three more minutes without emergency treatment, she would have died. They’d put her back together using bio-accelerated cloned replacement tissue and bone, transplant tissue and materials created from her own body, and then used to fill the holes. Just as they had regrown Symone’s arm, lost in a past injury, they regrew what Kumi had lost.
The prognosis for Kumi was good, which was a relief to Jason. She was out of her medically induced coma now, taken out of it four days ago, and was strong enough to send... just not very far, her sendings unable to extend past the mansion in which she was kept. With the accerated healing treatments they were using on her, she would be well enough to leave in about three weeks. Since she woke up, she was surprisingly quiet and thoughtful. She didn’t even joke that much when Jason went to see her. That wasn’t too much of a surprise to Jason, since she’d nearly been killed by her own noble house. She had some serious issues to sort out.
The trouble was coming not from Kumi, or the doctors, or even Fure, but from Meya and Myra. The twins were everywhere and getting into everything, and Jason had to keep a constant eye on them to keep them from stealing one of his railguns. And Lord above, did they try. It was almost a kind of twisted game to them, seeing if they could manage to filch one of those much-sought after prizes to add to their collection of weapons. When they weren’t doing that, they were talking to everyone, looking around, and learning entirely too much about what they were planning to do than Jason felt comfortable with, assurances from Miaari notwithstanding. He knew they’d never talk, and if they were ever interrogated in a way that would give up that information it would already be too late anyway, but it still worried him.
So, how’s your first day in the armor? Jason asked as they entered the mansion.
It feels wonderful, she gushed girlishly. I’ve never had armor this good, even when I was assigned to other posts. Imperial-issue armor isn’t quite this fancy. Once I break in the gel, it’ll be perfect.
It’s going to be protecting the most important thing in this world, he sent seriously. It’s the best I could get, and it’s still not good enough.
She gave him a sincerely adoring look, putting her gaunteled hand on his shoulder. I love you too.
Typical, Kumi’s acerbic sending, weak but understandable, touched them. Sometimes you two make me sick.
Be nice, Jason chided.
She’s being jealous, Meya sent, her thoughts tinged with amusement.
That certainly sounded like jealousy to me, Tim agreed.
Aww, keep out of it, Tim, Kumi huffed. There’s no reason for me to be jealous.
That was probably one of the bigger surprises. The Faey visiting them seemed to be quite at a loss as to what to do about Jason, Temika, and Tim. The fact that there were three human telepaths was a shock to them, because just knowing they had talent wasn’t the same as experiencing it. They seemed quite comfortable with the idea that humans might have talent... until those humans started sending around them. They were even more unsettled when they found out that Jason and Temika were stronger talents than all of them but Jyslin. Jason’s strength wasn’t much of a surprise to Kumi and the ones who knew him, but Temika was a surprise to them. Jason they could write off as a fluke concerning the strength of his talent, but Temika was the proof that humans could be just as strong as Faey, or even stronger, when it came to telepathy. It was as if the humans had intruded themselves into a realm that was meant for the Faey alone, and all of them, to one degree or another, seemed uncomfortable with the idea of humans hearing open sending. The only ones that seemed more amenable were Kumi and Meya, but even they occasionally seemed reticent, and it bled through in their sendings. Kumi seemed to be the most active in trying to engage the human telepaths, but Jason felt that it was boredom more than anything else. She was confined to her bed, and she was willing to do almost anything to pass the time.
Of course, the humans too were a bit uncomfortable with the idea of eight unknown Faey suddenly being privy to what had always been a nice quiet private little clique of Jason, Temika, Tim, and Symone. Just as the Faey seemed taken aback that humans had invaded their private world, the three humans were discomfited by the idea of strangers hearing what, to them, was a very personal realm of comfortable familiarity. Even now, some ten days after they had all arrived, Jason still felt a bit... weird, sending and knowing that Faey he didn’t know very well could hear it. Of the three of them, Tim was the only one actively trying to engage the Faey telepathically. Temika barely sent at all anymore, and even then it was usually privately, or showing off her training by sending so that only those in the same room could hear her, something Jason could do as well, but did not because he was trying to force himself into getting used to the idea of being a “public” telepath.
Symone had taught her students well, but her days as teacher were now over, because Jyslin was there. Tim and Temika seemed reluctant to take lessons from Jyslin on that first day, but she smacked that right out of them almost immediately. After they got a taste of the kind of power Jyslin had, and what was more, her extensive training, they became very willing students. She could teach them things that Symone could not, and since Temika was such a strong telepath, Jyslin could teach her how to use her powers in ways Symone could not, because they were techniques she either never learned, or was incapable of using.
No reason at all, Fure’s sending reached them, almost dripping with sarcasm.
Fure! Don’t make me cut your pay!
As I recall, Mistress Eleri, we’re currently not being paid, he sent dryly. So be my guest and cut my pay. Half of nothing is still nothing.
I hate you, she sent growlingly.
Obviously, Kumi still has designs on getting her revenge, Symone sent, her thoughts bubbling with vast amusement.
You bet your ass, woman, she seethed. You just wait til I get out of this bed, babe, and it’ll be time for the video equipment. And I have a little something special planned for you too, Symone. You had a hand in that.
Well, I had a hand on it. I didn’t get a chance to put a hand in it. There wasn’t enough time.
Jason blushed furiously, which made Jyslin laugh aloud.
“Stop!” a voice cracked from the door behind them. Jason winced and then did so, then turned around just enough to look at Doc Songa. I’ve told you four times to come down here, she sent commandingly. You’re not going to dodge us forever, Jason.
I haven’t been dodging you, Doc, he protested.
Maybe not, but you sure as hell make sure you’re always busy when I come looking for you, she retorted. You’re not busy right now, so inside! She pointed imperiously past herself, into the clinic she and Rann ran on the first floor.
This was something he had, in fact, been avoiding. After succumbing to the physical the doctors wanted, she’d been after him for some follow-up tests. Since he was a human telepath, she’d been wanting to run a few tests she didn’t perform the first time around, both to make sure he was healthy and to investigate his condition as a telepath. Like most Faey that knew some humans had talent, she was wildly curious as to why Jason and other humans had talent, but unlike most other Faey, Songa had the training and determination to actually try to find out. This wasn’t something to which Jason objected, because Kiaari had told him that understanding why humans had talent would help him greatly in what was coming, but he just wasn’t looking forward to the idea of being a guinea pig. He needed to find the why of it, but he wasn’t too thrilled with the idea of being the test subject that would help solve that mystery.
That woman can certainly lay down the law, Myra giggled.
I’ve never met a doctor that couldn’t, Fure sent sagely.
Jason looked to Jyslin, almost hoping she would extricate him, but she put her hand on his back and pushed him towards Songa. You’d better treat him right, she warned. That’s my fiancée, and I want him in one piece when we marry.
I won’t hurt him at all, Songa protested demurely. The worst he’ll get is a couple of needle sticks, I promise. Rann, come to the clinic please. We can’t let him get away this time.
I’ll be right there, Rann responded.
I’d like to attend as well, if that’s alright, Yohne asked. With Lady Eleri’s permission, of course.
I don’t need a doctor in here to babysit me now, Yohne, Kumi told her. Go on ahead, I’m fine. If I need you, I can just send.
We could always use an extra pair of eyes, Songa sent pleasantly, getting behind Jason and pushing him bodily towards the door with a hand on each shoulderblade.
I’ll go take off my armor and come down, Jyslin sent openly, directing it at Jason. That way I can hold your hand while the evil doctors stick needles in you.
From upstairs in the kitchen, Jason clearly heard Temika break out into loud peals of laughter.
Woman, after that line, you’d better leave it on, Jason sent ominously.
Children, play nice, Songa commanded as she herded Jason into the clinic.
And how the needles came. Jason endured the indignity of being a human pin cushion for nearly an hour, as they gave him a thorough physical exam, then ran several tests that he knew had nothing to do with his physical health. Rann and Yohne took several vials of blood, and they worked on a small console connected to one of the devices they’d brought along with them while Songa had him wear a featureless black helmet that reminded Jason of the helmets from that old cult classic movie Spaceballs.
“Why do I feel like Dark Helmet,” Jason growled as Jyslin came back down, wearing a ragged pair of jeans and a scavenged tee shirt that had the logo of the band Nine Inch Nails, one of Tim’s favorites.
“It’s an alpha wave monitor,” Songa told him aloud. “There’s no machine or technology that can pick up telepathic activity, but this one’s the closest thing we have. The baseline alpha patterns of a telepath are slightly different than they are on a non-telepath. Now just relax for a minute, and no sending.”
“But we’re different races,” Jason said. “Our brains are different.”
Actually, they’re not, Rann sent, his sending absent, distracted, because his focus was on his work. Humans and Faey are physiologically identical. There’s a slight difference in our DNA patterns, but that’s about it. I’d almost say that we’re the same species, or we’re two sub-species descended from a common ancestor, but that would be nearly impossible.
“It’s Gora’s Law,” Yohne said aloud. “And no sending, Rann.”
“Sorry.”
“Who?” Jason asked.
“Gora Karinne, one of the greatest biomedical scientists of all time,” Yohne answered. “he lived about a thousand years ago, and he posed a theory that planets with similar conditions would produce living creatures with similar evolutionary traits. The more the two different planets were similar, the more similar the life upon them. Well, Draconis is amazingly similar to Earth. It has the same climate, very close to the same atmospheric makeup, and so on and so on. If you ever went there, Jason, you’d wonder if you left Earth for a few minutes, until you saw that our trees and plants and animals look different than yours. Well, since our two planets are so similar, it’s no stretch to think that evolution would produce very similar creatures on each planet.”
“But you said that Draconis has different plants and animals, so that means that this Gora’s law was wrong.”
“Gora’s Law isn’t absolute,” she told him. “But it does hold up under some circumstances. For example, humans and Faey look almost identical, and their DNA is similar enough for cross-combinations.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that humans are Faey are genetically compatible, that we can have children,” she answered. “Well, we have creatures on Draconis called vulpars. Well, they’re almost exactly similar to a species of animal on Terra called a fox. We have truki, you have horses. We have feyalla, you have chimpanzees. We have siksuni, you have whales,” she told him, using the English words for the names of the animals from Earth. “Animals with similar appearances... mostly... and similar DNA patterns, that hold the same position in the planetary ecology. A vulpar and a fox could crossbreed, as could a feyalla and a chimp, or a siksuni and a whale. And if we brought a vulpar here and released it in the wild in the same habitation range of a fox, it would probably survive, maybe even thrive. That’s the basic gist of Gora’s Law.”
“Oh, so this Gora woman... ”
“Man. Gora Karinne was a man.”
“Odd. Most short names that end in an A like that seem to be women’s names, like Maya, Meya, and Myra. I didn’t think a man would have a woman’s name.”
Yohne chuckled. “Well, Gora was a Faey ahead of his time. A brilliant doctor, scientist, and he was almost executed for heresy on more than one occasion. He went to prison rather than retract his theories.”
“Shame what happened to him,” Songa mused.
“I take it they executed him?” Jason asked.
“No, dear, he died on Sigma Proximus,” she answered. “He was killed by one of the animals he was studying. I think our understanding of medicine would be five hundred years ahead of where we are now if he’d have lived. He was only thirty when he died.”
“That young?”
“He was brilliant, ahead of his time,” she nodded.
“A savant,” Yohne agreed.
“Like Einstein,” Jyslin told him as she reached them, sitting on the edge of the examination table across from him. “You look silly.”
He gave her a face, which made her laugh.
“Well, he wouldn’t have lived much longer,” Yohne said, a bit sadly. “If I remember my history right, all the Karinnes were killed in the Third Civil War. The entire house was destroyed. That was about ten years after Gora died.”
“Them and seven other houses,” Songa said. “There was a great deal of literature about that era, and that was my minor in medical school. The Karinnes, the Odarres, the Shuvennes, the Poyalles, the Sendarres, the Makati house of Ovi, the Brannes, and the Wurennes were all destroyed in that war.”
“Sounds like it was pretty nasty.”
“It was our version of your second world war,” Songa told him. “It shaped our modern history, because that was the war that brought the Empress’ noble house into power.”
“Sounds ugly.”
“It was the most destructive and costliest war in our history,” she answered. “It lasted fifteen years and killed nearly a billion Faey and Makati. It also permanently damaged four planets and made them unable to support life.”
“Damn,” Jason grunted.
“Yeah, damn,” she nodded. “Well, Jason, your alpha patterns are almost textbook with a Faey’s,” she announced. “And different from non-telepathic humans. That’s more or less what I expected, because that’s mainstream among telepaths of nearly any species. It just proves that you’re not really different from other telepaths.”
“Well, if you want something unexpected, come over here,” Rann told her.
“What is it?” Oh, you can take that off now, Songa said, then sent to him pointedly. “What?”
Okay, here’s Jason’s DNA, Rann sent, pointing. Let me bring up Tim and Temika’s. Alright, look here. Here, here, and here.
“What’s wrong? Jason asked aloud, taking the helmet off. Am I a mutant or something?
Songa laughed aloud, then gave him a grin. No, Jason, but there’s something interesting in your DNA. The sequenced pairs that deal with your talent are different from Tim and Temika’s. We expected yours to look like theirs. That was actually surprising.
Tim and Temika share a common ancestor, Rann added. Their DNA is descended from a common line.
What? They’re relatives?
Rann nodded. It must have been a very, very long time ago, but they definitely share a common ancestor. We thought that you might as well, you know, explain why some humans have talent, but from the looks of it, you don’t. But there is something very, curious, about your base pairs. Tim and Temika’s DNA in the areas that involve talent are amazingly similar to Faey DNA. It’s almost a 90% match, and that’s very strange.
It’s Gora’s Law, Rann, I’m telling you, Yohne pressed. Human telepaths developed talent just like we did, and since human and Faey are so genetically similar, it should be identical when it comes to talent.
Be that as it may, what’s interesting about you, Jason, is that the parts of your DNA that would deal with telepathic ability are different from Tim and Temika, and from us, for that matter. Tim and Temika are 90% identical to Faey in that segment of their DNA, but you are only 82% identical to Faey, and only 88% identical to Tim and Temika. Parts of your sequence are similar to Tim and Temika’s, parts are similar to ours, and some parts of your sequence aren’t similar to either us or them, it’s unique. And that blows Gora’s Law off the lawn, he sent with a smirk at Yohne.
I don’t understand. What does that mean? Jason sent, his thoughts tinged with concern.
It means, my dear fearless leader, Songa sent with a sly grin, that you may have talent, but the way you developed it is different from how the other humans did. We really need to find other human telepaths and compare. If more have Jason’s DNA sequence, maybe it will show that two different genetic groups of humans developed talent through evolution at the same time, but using a different genetic footprint. It would be very provocative research to publish. It would certainly shake up the genetics field.
I don’t understand.
Well, look at it this way, Songa sent, looking at him. You and Tim are white, but Temika is black. You three are different genetic sub-types of the same species, but all three of you are still human. Alright, now, you three are telepaths, while other humans are not. That too is a slight genetic variation, just enough to classify you as a sub-species within your species. Like breeds of vulpar. They’re all vulpar, but they have very slight genetic variations, shared through each breed. Similar to each other, but different from everyone else. That’s how you three are compared to other humans. You’re all human, but you’re a different breed of human within the race. The genetic commonality you share is what gives you your talent, something that other humans lack. Well, you are slightly different from Tim and Temika. You are also a slightly different genetic sub-type within the species compared to others. So, you’re a different breed of telepath compared to the other two.
It’s really nothing to worry over, Jason, Rann assured him. It really would only interest a doctor or geneticist. It’s not a disease or condition, it’s just a curious little thing that really doesn’t matter at all.
In actuality, Jason found it to be very interesting, because of the Kimdori. Jason could sense them, could detect their unique power, and this difference in his own DNA could very well be the reason. If he was just a tiny bit different from other telepaths, well, that would explain why he was sensitive to some things that other telepaths were not. It was entirely possible.
But there was one thing that he could see from this examination, and from how they were talking, and that was the doctors would not be able to answer the question of why some humans had talent. The task Miaari had set upon him was still on his mind. They too had discovered the what, the how, but it still didn’t answer why.
Humans had talent, and they had it because they had the genetic footprint for it. Fine, that was a given.
But why? Why did they have it?
It was a frustrating question.
Okay, okay... telepathy was a genetic ability, like a person with blue eyes. That was the how. Now, why would a human spontaneously develop telepathic power? Or, more to the point, why would a certain block of humanity start showing this ability after telepathic aliens conquered and occupied the planet?
Heredity, clearly. Rann had said that Tim and Temika were related, that they had a common ancestor. So, logically, everyone in the genetic tree of their family would carry the genes for telepathic potential. That would be the segment of DNA that the Faey would be testing humans to find, so they could weed out the potential telepaths and either isolate them or eliminate them. But that also didn’t completely explain Jason, since they told him that his own telepathic ability was slightly different, that he was outside of their genetic tree. What was it Songa said? Some of his DNA was similar to Tim and Temika’s, some of it was similar to a Faey’s, and some of it was...
Hold it.
“Rann,” he said aloud, coming over to them. “You said that Tim and Temika were what, 90% identical to a Faey in that part of their DNA that governed talent, right?”
That’s right.
“Okay then. Here’s the question. If we developed telepathic ability spontaneously, why would it be so identical to a Faey? I mean, we might be genetically similar, but our environments are different. And if my own telepathic genes are different, then why would Tim and Temika be so similar to a Faey?”
Gora’s Law, Rann sent, giving Yohne a look, who returned an overly smug one. Since we’re so genetically identical, virtually branches of the same race, it’s not only feasible, but entirely expected that humans who possess the genetic footprint for telepathy would be closely identical to ours. We have the same brain structure and evolved in similar environments. Since our brains are identical, it’s no stretch to see that we’d develop the same genetic process for expressing telepathy.
“Okay, that’s a reasonable argument, at least until you look at me,” he said forcefully. “If it’s so expected for humans to develop the same genetic footprint for talent, then why am I different?”
Rann looked to respond, even raising a hand to gesture, but no sending ensued. He opened his mouth, and then closed it, and then furrowed his brow. He looked at Yohne, who shrugged, then he looked to Songa, who returned his puzzled look. A mutation maybe? Rann finally proposed. Or a case of parallel development?
I think Jason is making a point. His footprint should be identical to Tim and Temika’s, but it’s not. So, what would cause it? Songa sent thoughtfully.
“It’s not the what, it’s the why,” Jason said to himself, leaning over Rann and looking at the helix of his DNA, though he didn’t understand what it meant. “Why does a human have talent? That’s a question that someone asked me, and it’s a question that I need to find an answer for.”
Why? Genetics, Yohne sent.
“No, that’s how. The question is why.”
I don’t think he’s asking a scientific question, Jyslin interjected. It sounds more like philosophy to me.
Why would any species develop telepathic power? Maybe there was a need for it. Faey have always been telepathic, it’s been hypothesized that we developed telepathy as a defense mechanism, or maybe to give us an advantage over different sub-species of Faey that existed on Draconis millions of years ago. The telepathic branch became dominant, was able to out-hunt the other strains and survived when they died out.
I think you’re going a bit too deep here Yohne, Rann chided. It’s a matter of evolution. Humans are simply taking the next step. That’s why humans are developing talent.
No, that’s too general, Songa sent. It’s simple logic, guys. Why do humans have talent? Because they have the genes for it. Why do they have the genes for it? Because their parents did. Tim and Temika are related, so their genetic footprint for telepathy is the same, with some minor variations between them because their genetic lines diverged somewhat. But Jason’s not in their family tree, and that means that his powers are a little different, because his genes are different. His family line might have had a similar footprint to them, but the introduction of other DNA into his line caused his family’s genetic footprint to change over time. Somewhere back through their family trees, there has to be an alpha ancestor that was the first to develop the telepathic footprint. And that alpha ancestor passed it down to everyone beneath her in the tree. Tim and Temika’s alpha ancestor is the same one, but Jason may have had a different alpha ancestor, one that also developed telepathic ability. And just like Tim and Temika’s ancestor, Jason’s ancestor passed this trait down through her line. Or maybe he too shares that same alpha ancestor, but his footprint was altered much more significatnly through the introduction of genetic traits that weren’t introduced into Tim and Temika’s genetic lines.
And that was the why! Jason almost felt his brain light up, it hit him so hard. It was so simple! No wonder the Faey couldn’t answer the question! They were no doubt throwing all their science at it, all their technology, trying to find an explanation that was staring them in the face!
Humans had talent because they had the genetic footprint for it.
Why? Because they were part of a block of humans that shared common ancestry!
And the biggest question of all... why did humans have talent? Because somewhere, some time in the past, some “alpha ancestor” developed the genetic footprint for talent, then passed it down to his or her descendents. It wasn’t the complete answer, but Jason just knew that the answer he was looking for was going to be found somewhere back through the development of his genetic line. It wasn’t a matter of environment or genetic evolution, it was a matter of geneology! It wasn’t science, it was history! That was where the answer would be!
And again, it came back to why. Why did humans have talent?
Because somewhere in history, it became part of their genetic line. And that piece of history was the answer to the puzzle.
That was an answer that no amount of Faey science was going to discover. That was why the Faey could not answer the question. They could discover the how, and the what, but without access to the history of Earth, it was a mystery that would forever be unsolved.
They had to find Tim and Temika’s common ancestor. That was the answer. If they could find that common ancestor between Tim and Temika, then Miaari’s enigmatic question would be answered, and she had told him that he had to answer that question if he had any hope of succeeding in his difficult task.
He was sure of it.
So... now that he knew where to look, it came down to figuring out how to find out. Since it wasn’t going to be a matter of science, but of history, then the first place to start would be to try to find out where and when Tim and Temika’s different family trees converged. They’d need to try to trace their geneology and try to find that common ancestor, and that common ancestor was the first signpost on the road that would lead to the answer to why.
Jason? Jason? Jyslin sent in concern, prodding him with her fingers.
What? Oh, sorry, he answered. I was thinking about something.
You know, with these genetic codes mapped, we could easily test everyone here to see if they have this genetic footprint, Rann mused mentally. It would take all of ten seconds.
I’m not sure everyone would like you sticking them with needles.
Oh, I wouldn’t need a needle. I could rig up a device that would scan the DNA of the skin. Just touch it to them, and it would only take about ten seconds for it to return a response.
What a brilliant idea! Rann, you just became my new best friend, Jason sent to him earnestly. Build it. Build it so it’s small, portable, and easy to hide.
Why does it... ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, he sent, his thoughts enlightened. You want to use it to find other human telepaths out in the world!
We’re going to need more, Jason affirmed. If we can find other people with the potential before the Faey do, we can get to them first. I’m sure that after they see their options, at least some of them would side with us rather than become lapdogs and spies for the Imperium’s secret police. How fast can you build something like that?
It would take a few days, he answered. I could cannibalize some of the equipment we have here to build it. I could build it to look for some critical sequence pairs, since there’s some genetic variations between you and Tim and Temika for example, that means that there’s going to be some genetic variation from telepath to telepath. There’s some common patterns in all three of you, so I could build the device to look for those. They don’t show up in non-telepaths, and should be broad enough to catch a large range of humans with the footprint.
Do it, Jason ordered. Outside of caring for Kumi, it’s your primary responsibility.
I’ll get right on it, he answered. I knew taking all those technical repair and plasmonic systems courses would come in handy, he sent, giving Songa an amused look.
Oh, stuff it, she retorted archly.
Just because he knew where to look, it didn’t help all that much, because he honestly had no idea where to start.
He sat in his room, feet propped up on the desk, panel in his lap as he searched through a bunch of old records that had once been in the American system, but had been absorbed into CivNet after the subjugation. Just because he knew that Tim and Temika had a common ancestor, that didn’t in any way make it easy to find that ancestor. For one, all the records on Tim McGee were gone. After he and Symone escaped, and they thought them dead, Imperial Intelligence had gone through Earth’s entire datanet and stripped every single record of Tim out of everything. It was as if he had never existed. There wasn’t even any record of him attending school in New Orleans. He didn’t even have a birth certificate. They had been amazingly thorough.
Temika had almost no paper trail. He found her birth records and used the names on her birth certificate to search back through about a century of her family, but then her family dropped off the face of the world. The last record he could find was for Joseph Daniels, who was born in 1901 to Sam and Delilah Daniels, in Bayou La Batrie, Alabama. But there was no record of either Sam or Delilah before that. He did remember her talking about her grandmother, who had to be Delilah, and he did recall her saying something about her grandmother being the daughter of one of the slaves freed after the Civil War. So, odds were, there was almost no paper trail on her grandmother’s side. And since Sam Daniels was also most likely the child or grandchild of a formal slave, there was little hope to find anything useful on that side either. Any record of them or their parents had most likely been destroyed in the Civil War.
So, after that revelation, he found himself almost immediately stuck. He finally had an idea of where to look to answer that question... why.
Or at least he was stuck concerning Tim and Temika.
He knew quite a bit of his own family tree. His father was born to first generation Americans, and his great-grandparents on both his grandmother and grandfather’s sides had come from Great Britain. His grandfather’s parents were English, and his grandmother’s parents had been from Scotland. His mother’s family had immigrated from Quebec before she was born, and before that, her side of the family had immigrated to Canada from France way back in the early 1700’s. Her ancestors had fought in the French and Indian Wars. Her geneology was almost exclusively of French descent except for one American Indian great-great grandmother.
Before that, it got a little fuzzy. The only thing he really knew for sure was that his grandmother’s ancestors had been minor nobility in the lowlands of Scotland, and that one of his grandfather’s ancestors had been a servant in Queen Elizabeth I’s court. Outside of one ancestor, the entirety of his family tree came from England, Scotland, and France... as far as he knew.
So, if the docs were right and there was some kind of commonality in the family trees of telepaths, then they’d have to be of English, Scottish, or French ancestry. Well, at least for his own family. If they were right and Jason wasn’t related to Tim and Temika at all, then that meant that telepathic ability had sprung up in two places or more, and that Tim and Temika’s “alpha ancestor” could have been from anywhere. It could be some white ancestor in Temika’s line, or some black ancestor in Tim’s, either or. One thing was for sure, given the fact that they were two different races, one of them had to have an ancestor outside his or her race of appearance.
All things considered, he’d bet it was Temika. Her facial structure wasn’t quite what one would consider entirely African in appearance. The first time he’d seen her, he’d taken notice of the shape of her eyes, nose, mouth, and cheeks, and had even then thought that she had to be of mixed ancestry. That certainly wasn’t to say that Tim didn’t have a black ancestor somewhere in his family tree, but going just on appearances, if he was going to lay odds on which of the two had a race-crossing ancestor, he’d put his money on Temika’s family.
This might be a job for Miaari. It was going to take quite a bit of digging to find hard to get information like this, and that was a job for a professional seeker of information. It was something to which he couldn’t devote an inordinate amount of time, because he had other, equally important things to do.
One of those other things was sitting on his panel’s email queue, waiting for his attention. He switched over to mail, and saw that his dropship was ready for delivery. It had cost him a serious chunk of credit, but it was absolutely necessary. It was brand new, right off the assembly line, a shiny new ARL-3 Space Ground Transport. It had cost him C577,583 after taxes and after he had it equipped with shields and mid-grade MPAC cannons, a considerable amount of money. But it was a self-contained cargo dropship, the largest dropship he could get that would fit through the doors of the Lincoln warehouse, a ship that would be carrying a C117,300 high-capacity industrial replicator inside it. That too was part of the invoice, for he’d bought the replicator and requested to have it loaded on the dropship once it was complete and ready for shipment.
Interesting. They wanted face to face confirmation of the shipping arrangements. Well, that wasn’t all that difficult. Jyslin, he sent strongly, so he would be heard basically anywhere in town. Come home for a minute, I need your help.
I’m in the kitchen, I’ll be right up, came her open reply.
Jason found the number to call in the email, and queued it up in his panel’s comm program as he wrote down some information on a piece of paper. Jyslin opened the door carrying a sandwich of some kind, complete with bread. Bread?
Yohne made it from scratch, she sent. She may be a doctor, but she’s also one hell of a cook. She’s teaching Temika how to do it right now.
Well, that’s probably the one and only thing that could make Temika interact with a Faey, Jason grunted. Mika loves to cook, and being able to make homemade bread from scratch is something she’d probably love to know.
What did you need?
You get to be my secretary, he told her.
She gave him a quirky smile. Oh, a secretary? Is this going to end up with me being hiked over the desk? she asked, her sending complete with this image of her as the secretary succumbing to the ardor of the boss.
Put your game face on, woman, he sent. This is serious. Thrynn wants face to face confirmation of the shipping arrangements for the dropship. I need a Faey for that.
Not a problem, love, she sent assuringly, pulling her long red hair back from her face and starting to twist it into a pony tail. No secretary would go around with her hair unbound. Find me a rubber band or pin or something, will you?
Once Jason helped her tie her hair back into a pony tail, she sat down in front of the panel and looked over the information he had written for her on the pad. He stood behind the panel, out of view of the video, and Jyslin placed the call. After navigating through an automated menu, she looked at him meaningfully when the audio picked up. “Shipping, this is Yeris. How may I help you?” a male Faey voice called over the audio.
“Yes, I’m calling to schedule an appointment to have a dropship shipped,” she answered.
“I can help you with that, madam, can you give me your customer ID number please?” Jyslin read off the number Jason had written down. “VulTech Technologies Corporation, madam?”
“That’s us,” she said with a disarming smile.
“Alright, madam, your dropship is ready for shipment right now. It’s been loaded with a piece of cargo delivered from Kodiken Shipping, as per your instructions. I’ve been given your delivery confirmation code for that, let me send it to you.”
“Good, I was just about to ask if that was there,” Jyslin said with a nod.
“Yes, madam, it’s arrived and has already been loaded and secured. Now, would you like to send a team to pick up the unit, or would you prefer to have it delivered? Please keep in mind that if you come to pick up the unit, the cost of shipping that was already added to the price of the unit will be refunded to you.”
“We’d like to have it delivered, please.”
“Alright. Before we arrange a shipping date, please allow me to explain our shipping procedures.”
“Go right ahead.”
“Thank you. Your dropship will be delivered to any destination which is convenient, but falls within certain safety guidelines. The destination must have sufficient space to safely land the dropship and a skimmer, and must be at a spaceport or company facility capable of handling the unit. It will be flown to its destination by a Thrynne pilot and a staff of three maintenance personnel, fully licensed and insured,” he said quickly, “who will be responsible for signing off on the delivery acceptance inspection. A skimmer will escort the dropship to its destination, both to inspect the unit in flight and also to return the pilot and inspectors home after delivery is complete. The cost of shipping has already been added to the price of the unit, so you will incur no additional charges.”
Jyslin looked to Jason, who nodded. “That sounds completely reasonable,” she told him pleasantly.
“Once the delivery inspection is complete and both parties are satisfied that the unit was delivered in working order and without damage, the final contract will be signed that will transfer ownership over to your corporation. You must have an executive on site with the authority to sign this contract or we cannot leave the unit with you.”
Jason frowned. That wasn’t going to make it easy, because he didn’t want anyone to know that a human owned VulTech, but he could figure something out. He nodded to Jyslin a bit reluctantly. That’s gonna be tricky, but we have no choice. We’ll figure something out.
“That won’t be a problem,” she told him.
“Very good then, madam. What location would you like to take delivery?”
“The VulTech headquarters, 1 Quickmart Drive, Lincoln, Jurea Province, American Sector, Terra. The global location code for this facility is NA23-4658-7836.”
“One moment. Alright, I have the location now. Confirming, global location code NA23-4658-7836.”
“That’s right. Yes, that’s the location.” Did you know that someone already took a picture of the warehouse? Global positioning has a picture of it with the VulTech logo on it.
Well, I had to supply a picture of the building in with the tax paperwork when I bought it for VulTech, and I took the picture after I painted it. They probably used the same picture.
Probably.
“Delivery to this location can be done in six hours at the earliest. Any receiving appointment past that works for us, madam.”
Tomorrow?
Yeah, I already did the math, just use what I have written down.
“We’d like to take delivery at 06:30 Imperial Standard Time tomorrow,” she told the clerk, looking at the panel monitor.
“06:30 Imperial Standard Time, 29 Romaa. Correct?”
“That’s right.”
“Alright, madam, the delivery time, date, and location have been confirmed. We’ll see you tomorrow morning at 06:30 at the delivery site.”
“We’ll be here,” she told him with a smile.
“Very good. Now that delivery is confirmed, let me take a moment to describe our warranty and maintenance policies.” Jason listened as the male Faey on the other end of that call went over those policies, which sounded quite advantageous to the customer. The dropship had an unconditional three year warranty; if anything broke, for any reason outside of combat or sabotage, Thrynne would repair it for free. They also would sell parts directly to VulTech basically at cost for seven years after the warranty expired, would send a maintenance team to the unit and perform maintenance on site at rates that were highly competitive with other maintenance shops, and offered in-house insurance for the unit that was very cheap. Thrynne took quality very seriously, and they were so certain about the quality and durability of their dropship, they were literally willing to put their money where their mouths were. Jason knew that none of that would apply to him, since he was going to basically void the warranty by putting the ship through extensive customization... but the ability to buy cheap replacement parts directly from the company would be useful.
Now Jason saw why a Thrynne dropship was more expensive than other companies; you weren’t buying a dropship, you were buying a commitment from the corporation that built that dropship.
“Is there anything else that I can help you with, madam?” the clerk asked after completing his recitation of Thrynne policies.
“No, I think that about covers it. Thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome, madam. And thank you for choosing Thrynne for your dropship needs.”
Jyslin ended the call, and she looked at him. You know, those people at Thrynne really know how to train their customer service.
They make a quality product, and aren’t afraid to put their money behind it. Jason centered himself, sitting down on the bed and putting his fingers to his temples, and then performed a trick that Jyslin had taught him since she had arrived, one of the first things she thought he’d need to be able to do.
Send to non-telepathic humans.
There was a certain way you pushed it out. A subtle alteration of the timbre of the sending, kind of like speaking at a certain pitch. That was the trick of it. A non-telepathic mind could receive sending if the telepath was careful to do it this way. This was the first time he’d attempted to use it this way, but he’d had enough practice doing this by practicing with Luke, who was willing to be his partner. As Jason taught Luke about flying, Luke had allowed him to practice sending to him. It certainly took a lot more effort and energy, kind of like stirring molasses with a wooden spoon. You had to really push, but you also had to be very careful or you’d spill it, slosh it out of the bowl. That was what this was like. He had to put a lot of effort behind it, but it had to be gentle or it’d cause pain to the non-telepaths that received it.
Now hear this, Jason sent, giving his sending enough power to reach the edges of the city, but not sending with such force that those in the same building with him were overwhelmed by the power of it. This is Jason. Jyslin has taught me how to send messages like this one so everyone in the community can hear them. So everyone calm down and relax. You’re not going crazy, you’re not hearing voices, you’re hearing me broadcasting a telepathic message that everyone can hear and understand. And I can’t hear you, this is a one-way communication, so don’t try to answer.
I need everyone who helped do the refit on my skimmer to report to the governor’s mansion conference room immediately. I also need Symone, Temika, Doc Rann, and Doc Songa to report to the conference room as well. The dropship refit project is now on the table, ladies and gentlemen, we just arranged delivery of it a few minutes ago. So, we need to meet and go over what’s going to happen in the next few days.
Jyslin gave him a startled look, then laughed. You should have warned them about that.
If they want to be resistance fighters, they’d better get used to the idea of handling surprises, Jason sent seriously. I didn’t warn them on purpose. I want to see how they react.
This should be interesting.
The reaction was one of shock. No one in the community had expected something like that, and it was evident almost immediately, when a multitude of people radioed in asking what the hell was going on, that most of them thought it was some kind of trick perpetrated by the newcomers. It did, however, get everyone’s attention, and cause everyone he wanted to come to the conference room.
Once he got them all there, he assured them it was him, and then changed the subject to the dropship. He used his panel to project a hologram of the dropship in schematic form. “Here it is, ladies and gentlemen, our next project. We can’t start working on getting Cheyenne Mountain ready to move in until we refit the dropship, because it’s going to be carrying everything. Now, this ship is about thirty times bigger than my skimmer, so it’s going to take quite a while to get it ready. Tomorrow, just after noon, the dropship is going to be delivered to the warehouse in Lincoln, and we’re all going to be there to receive it. I don’t want the people from Thrynne thinking that VulTech is anything other than a legitimate business, so they’re going to see lots of human and Faey workers at the warehouse. Now, since there are about forty of us and only one skimmer that can only carry ten at a time, that means it’s going to take a few trips to get everyone there. So I want everyone to draw numbers out of a hat so we can figure out who goes when. And before anyone whines about not getting much sleep tonight, keep in mind I have to fly every leg of it,” he told them.
“This means that it’s going to be your first real test,” he told them. “You’re going to be exposed to unknown Faey that might try to listen in on your surface thoughts. This is when you’re going to prove that you can control your stray thoughts. If those Faey come and go and never think the wiser, then you’re ready.”
You sure they’re ready for that? Jyslin sent.
Jason glanced at her. Ready or not, it’s necessary, he answered. If those Thrynne people come and find an empty warehouse with no workers there, it might raise a red flag. They have to see what they expect to see.
Point.
“Symone has taught you how to keep a handle on your surface thoughts,” Jason told them. “It’s not going to be much different from the exercises, only this time you have a reason not to mess up. Rann, Songa, Symone, you’re going to be there too, as employees,” he told the two. “They need to see more Faey than just Jyslin. The people from Thrynne need to see nothing more than what they expect to see, a new Terran business that just bought its first dropship, with Faey executives and human employees. All of us will be the actors on the stage.
“Yes, it’s going to be dangerous, and it’s unexpected, but that’s what it’s all about. We’ll never get off the ground if we can’t deal with stress and be able to roll with unexpected surprises. This is a test of all of us, to see how well we can handle an unknown situation. I could have told you all about this, but then you’d have time to think about it and be ready. What will happen tomorrow won’t be much different than what we might be doing later. So, tomorrow we find out how ready we are to deal with the unexpected. And tomorrow, we get the first big piece of what we’re going to need to do what we’re going to do.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea, Jayce?” someone called.
“Not really, but we have to find out if we can do it, and it’s not something we can really prepare for. Symone taught all of you, you know what you need to know, so let’s find out tomorrow if it’s going to work. We need to find out now, when it won’t matter as much, than later, when it can get us all killed.”
“Well, that makes some sense,” someone called.
“By the way, this does not mean we’re not having evening training,” Jyslin called sternly. “Everyone on the evening rotation had better show up.”
Since two days after she arrived, Jyslin had been training everyone in basic military skills. She had two training sessions, and had split the community in half; half of them had training in the morning, the other half had training in the evening. She’d wanted to train for more than four hours a day, but everyone had other duties, so she had to make due with the time she had. Jason himself did not get out of this training, he was part of the morning session. They didn’t yet have enough railguns to go around, but Jason had had a shipment of 30 Mark VI Panther MPAC rifles shipped to the warehouse. Everyone in the training session had a weapon with which to train. Jason didn’t like shelling out the C72,500 for them, but he’d already planned on buying at least some MPAC rifles. They would use them both as weapons and also as misdirection, to complete the illusion that armored figures were Faey soldiers and not guerillas.
Jyslin was quite a drill sergeant. She didn’t take any lip off anyone, she was harsh, she was demanding, and she was quick to criticize. But she was also quick to complement, and though everyone hated her when she was on that field, nobody said she was unfair. In just eight days, just about everyone had been trained in the use of an MPAC, and they had started learning basic small unit tactics, things like covering partners, moving without getting killed, looking over the terrain to find the safest and fastest way to move from one place to another, things that a seasoned combat veteran like Jyslin knew.
Yesterday, they’d had their first unit against unit training session. Like any MPAC, these Panther models had a setting that basically fired a magnetic envelope holding pressurized air, air that was drawn in through the venting system. When the magnetic envelope ruptured, the air decompressed rapidly, delivering some impressive force. It was something akin to a “stun” setting because the round struck with some force, but it was non-lethal. It carried enough kinetic energy to really sting when it impacted, like being hit with a paintball, and could probably give someone a mild concussion if it hit them in the head. Yesterday at lunch, between the two training sessions, they’d held a “capture the flag” game between the morning and afternoon teams. It was a practical exercise using what Jyslin had taught them so far, and it had been very... exciting. Jason had literally had fun, even though they were training for real combat, training for the day when they’d be killing people. But at that moment, there was something very exciting and fun about trying to maneuver around the ten defending guards protecting the morning crew’s flag and capturing it.
God, was that a shock. After eliminating seven of them, losing five of his own team, and getting to the stand, he found Meya standing beside it, holding an MPAC. He was so surprised that she shot him and eliminated him from the game.
After that round was over, he found out that Myra had been standing under their own flag, and that Jyslin had put them there on purpose as a lesson, a lesson to never be surprised. And was he ever surprised to come around that corner and find himself looking right down the barrel of Meya’s MPAC.
That just added to the score he was going to settle with the twins. Ever since the day he’d first met them, they’d always got the best of him, always been one step ahead of him, always managed to surprise him. Just as Kumi couldn’t quite get the best of Jason, he’d been continually upstaged by Kumi’s cunning twin guards. He really wanted to even that score, so he invited them to play along in the next exercise, one on each team, both to put them out where he could at least shoot at one of them, and also to give everyone a little experience in working with a Faey in a real combat situation. When they were out there, they’d be working with either Symone or Jyslin, so they had to get used to the idea of it. Meya and Myra were professional soldiers, career women, and he was sure they’d learn a few things from them during the exercise.
“Luke, I need you to come with me right now,” Jason told him. “We’re going to start ferrying supplies to the warehouse and get it ready, so people have blankets and food and stuff, and we have all our tools there. I want everyone else to gather up everything we used on the last refit and store it out by the landing pad,” he ordered. “I’d like to have the first load on the skimmer and ready to go once it gets dark. We get the critical supplies over first, then we’ll take people, then we take as much gear as we can before sunrise.” He looked around. “Alright, any questions?”
There was silence.
“Alright, let’s get going.”
They broke up after that and got to work. Jason could tell that everyone was nervous about this, that the surprise he’d dropped on them about having to fool Faey using the concentration tricks that Symone had taught most of them had unsettled them, but that’s what all of this was going to be about. These people had to be able to take surprises like that and deal with them. Being a guerilla was all about adapting to the environment as it was presented, not trying to control the situation.
But, Jason had a good feeling about it. He was confident that they could do it, or he wouldn’t have arranged the test.
By sunset, a large pile of supplies, tools, equipment, and personal effects were stacked in neat piles by the skimmer, and the first load, food, blankets, and some sleeping bags and mattresses, were already loaded onto the skimmer, taking up the entirety of the skimmer’s small cargo bay and half of the passenger cabin. Jason and Luke had to squeeze around boxes and totes to get to the control seats, and Jason sat down, rather pointedly, in the co-pilot’s seat. “Alright Luke, start the checklist,” Jason told him.
“Yes sir,” he answered, taking the pilot’s chair.
Hold on! Don’t close the hatch! Meya sent. Jason looked up and saw her running towards the skimmer, with Myra and Rann behind her. Jason gave them a strange look, and was about to send in reply to ask why, but he heard Meya literally vault up the steps and into the cabin. Thanks, I didn’t know if we were going to make it, she told him as Myra piled in behind her, then they helped Rann up and into the cabin.
A bit cramped, Rann noted.
You can sit on my lap, Doc, Meya sent with a naughty tilt to her thoughts.
“What are you doing?” Jason asked.
“We’re going with you, of course,” Myra said with a grin over a stack of boxes. “Push off, Meya, there are some seats up front that aren’t filled.”
“Oh, no,” Jason said sternly. “You two have no business going to Lincoln. You put your noses in entirely too many things here as it is.”
Oh, give us a break, Myra sent with a mental scoff. We’re bored, you need our help, and you know we’ll never say anything. Truth be told, me and Meya have been kicking around the idea of staying behind.
What? Kumi needs you, Jason sent hotly. And this isn’t your fight.
It became our fight when they tried to kill us, Meya sent seriously. Don’t forget, honey, the same people you’re fighting tried to kill us. Don’t you think that makes this our fight? We’re on the same side, and as long as we’re here with you, we’ll do what we can to help.
You can try to make us leave, babe, but I don’t think you have it in you, Myra sent with a wicked little smirk. We’re not afraid of you like everyone else is.
Jason gave them both a dark scowl, but, he had to admit... she had a point. They did try to kill Kumi and everyone else, and if it helped get back at those individuals, then Meya and Myra would help. And he did feel that he could trust them in that regard. They were already in this.
Jason grunted audibly, then sighed. “Find a seat. And no molesting the Doc,” he ordered, which made all three of them laugh. They pushed their way up front, but there were only two seats. Myra claimed one, Meya the other, and she quite deliberately grabbed hold of Rann and pulled him into her lap before her sister could get hold of him.
“They coming?” Luke asked, in a low tone.
“Yeah, they want to help us set up over on the other side.”
“Me and Meya are pilots too, in case you get tired,” Myra added aloud. “That way you two can get some sleep.”
He wasn’t sure about giving the skimmer to those two without supervision, but he could split them up so one of them could fly with Luke. That way they could at least sit out one run and get a quick nap in.
“Retracting the stairs and closing the hatch,” Luke reported. “I’m done with the engine start checklist, Jayce. Starting the engines.” From behind them came that familiar high-pitched whine rev up, getting higher and louder, then it levelled off. “It shows green for bringing up stealth.” He flipped on the external speaker. “Stand clear!” he barked, and a few people outside scurried away. Luke’s finger punched the buttons to bring up the stealth screen section by section, then activated it. “Stealth matrix is up and running, showing green,” he reported.
Why have people stand clear? Meya asked.
There’s an ambient static charge on the hull, Jason answered. It’s part of the system we invented that hides us from sensors.
It’s in the hull? Meya asked in surprise. Most stealth systems are an external shield that’s projected out from the ship. A stealth screen that scatters sensor energy and reflects internal energy signatures back towards the ship, containing them. They can’t hide the physical appearance of the ship though, that’s why Faey use visual systems to look for ships too. That’s why there are so many cameras. They’re looking for ships that the sensors can’t pick up.
I thought about trying to do it that way, but I wouldn’t have been able to come up with it alone in the time I had, he answered. The one we built works, and it does hide the ship visibly. The matrix absorbs light energy. From outside, right now, the ship looks like nothing but a black shadow with no depth. A silhouette.
Ah, no wonder they can’t find the ship, and why you only fly it at night, Myra sent, her sending tinged with admiration. Damn clever, Jason. There are some new stealth shields that just started coming out that reflect and scatter light along with sensor energy, but it always leaves a telltale visible shimmer that cameras can pick up, so it’s really not useful on anything bigger than a fighter, and only as long as the fighter isn’t close to the camera. Your idea works as long as there’s no light behind you backlighting the ship’s silhouette.
Exactly, he affirmed with a nod.
The ship lifted up from the ground, and Luke retracted the landing skids. “Gear doors are green,” he relayed as he pointed the ship down the valley. Because of the charge on the hull, the skimmer couldn’t fly through the hologram or it would disrupt it. So, the ship flew down the valley to the edge of the hologram, then flew out from under it before gaining any altitude. They could fly the skimmer through the holographic image if they didn’t have the stealth matrix running... but that’s something that they weren’t going to be doing. Luke tuned in to the air traffic channel and listened for anything out of the ordinary as he punched the ship into a nice arcing course that would bring them right down into Lincoln.
How long is it going to take to get there? Rann sent.
“Oh, a bit over an hour, maybe,” Jason answered absently. “We can’t break the sound barrier, or our wake’ll be picked up by sensors.”
“Why do I feel like an American walking the streets of Tokyo,” Luke chuckled.
“Oh, I apologize, Luke,” Rann said with a sheepish smile. “I’m afraid it’s become quite the habit already for me to send to Jason. I’m surprised at myself how quickly I came to accept the idea of humans with talent.”
“Well, that’s alright,” he said with a glance back. “It’s been kind of interesting to see for myself what the few people in town have said about the Faey. Most of us had never seen a Faey before til Miss Symone came here.”
“So, what do you think about us?” Rann asked curiously.
“Well, seems to me that you’re just people,” he answered. “You can do something we can’t, but outside of that, you don’t seem all that different. You act a lot like us, your government is just as screwed up as ours was, you know, there are good Faey and bad Faey just like there are good people and bad people, stuff like that. Some folks call you aliens, well, I can’t right likely see why. Miss Symone didn’t ever seem like an alien, to me she was just Symone. I thought that I might think differently about that when Miss Jyslin and you folks came, but so far I ain’t seen nothing that made me change my mind.” He glanced back again. “Not everyone thinks as kindly of you as I do though. Some people don’t like you just because you’re Faey.”
“Well, I’m sure there are Faey who don’t like humans just because they’re human,” Rann noted.
“Just my point, Doc Rann. Faey ain’t all that much different from us. You just have bigger toys and can do the telepathy thing. Take those away, and we’re kinda similar.”
“I’m sure if Yohne was here she’d be screaming Gora’s Law,” Rann laughed. “But I think you’re right, Luke. I’ve noticed that humans are very, very similar to us. We’re not just genetically similar, we’re psychologically similar. We can really relate well to humans because they’re so much like us. If it wasn’t for our talent, I think we’d have a much better relationship with humanity, but so many humans are afraid of us because of our talent, they never give us a chance.”
“Well, it’s a mighty big club you’re holding over a fella, Doc Rann,” Luke told him. “If I didn’t trust Mister Jason, I’d be afraid of him. And if I didn’t trust that you all would keep your word, I’d probably be afraid of you too.”
“Well, might I ask why you came out here, Luke?” Rann asked.
“Wasn’t nothing but the lottery, Doc,” he shrugged. “My wife got assigned to a farm in the lottery, and they were going to split us up. Neither of us wanted that, so we packed a truck and headed for the hills.”
“What? They weren’t going to let you stay together?” he asked with surprising heat.
“No sir,” he said with a shake of his head. “I’m a mechanic, Doc Rann, and they wouldn’t let me leave my work assignment, they said they had enough mechanics on the farms, they didn’t need any more. They wouldn’t even let me volunteer to move to farming, cause mechanics are a critical need skill. We tried everything we could think of to stay together, but the Employment Bureau wouldn’t keep us together. So we ran away.”
“I do not blame you at all,” Rann said vehemently. “I’d never let them separate me and Songa.” He looked at Jason. “I have a much better understanding of why you’re out here now, Jason,” he said. “Your people are being treated most unfairly. You have every right to fight for the rights that they’d afford a Faey. You’re not being treated as Imperial citizens!” he said with surprising outrage.
“Well, that’s good to hear, Doc,” Jason told him.
“Separating a family! They’d never do that if you were Faey!”
“I think that’s the whole point of why we’re here, Doc Rann,” Luke told him.
“Why doesn’t the Imperium step in and put a stop to this?” he demanded.
“Because as long as the food gets delivered at the set quotas, they probably don’t care,” Jason said simply. “They’ll start caring when we start cutting into that quota, though.”
“That they will,” Rann agreed with an enthusiastic nod.
They arrived at the warehouse about an hour later. Jason opened the doors via remote and allowed Luke to maneuver the skimmer into the empty warehouse, letting him get some experience with a pinpoint drill. It was good practice for him. He landed the skimmer with a light touch, then started the shutdown sequence so the cloaking matrix was the last major system still running, being powered by the backup PPG after the main engines and power plant were taken offline, then he shut that down.
“Aren’t the sensors going to detect the ship with the matrix off?” Meya asked.
“Why would it matter if there’s a dropship or a skimmer here, Meya?” Jason answered. “This is a warehouse in Faey territory. It wouldn’t look out of place at all for there to be a dropship here, or for us to be using PPGs. The only thing that might tip someone off is if they actually saw the dropship appear on the sensors, but this building is made of steel. That partially disperses the dropship signature and makes that much less likely. Alright, let’s get this thing unloaded.”
They unloaded everything, and Rann took charge of organizing the gear, having some of it stored and having the sleeping bags and mattresses laid out so they’d be ready for people. Jason moved to get back on the skimmer, ordering Luke to sit this flight out and take a break cause he’d be flying the next three. He took the pilot’s chair and brought the computer back up, starting the preflight, when he heard footsteps on the stairs. He looked back to see Meya step through the hatch and move towards the front. Show me, she sent. We have three pilots here, Jason. You don’t have to run every leg. Hell, Luke did so well, I wouldn’t bat an eye at sending him up solo.
I was planning on doing that, he sent with a nod, motioning at the copilot’s chair. The only thing different on my skimmer is the stealth matrix, he told her. It’s controlled using the keyboard. It’s the CMS module on the display. He activated the holographic display over the dash between the two seats and pointed to it.
CMS?
Cloaking Matrix System. We put in a few shortcut keys for it so it’ll activate and deactivate with just a couple of keystrokes. It runs off the backup PPG.
It doesn’t take much power at all, eh? she mused. Most shield cloaks require the main engines to come up.
This one is very low-power, Jason answered. I’m sure those cloak shields you talked about are very advanced and very hard to penetrate, but ours works well enough, and it was something that we could do ourselves.
How does it work?
Jason felt hesitant about divulging that kind of information, but then again, this was Meya. Miaari had vouched for her, and if he couldn’t trust Miaari, then he couldn’t trust anyone. It builds an energy matrix in a layer of Neutronium we put on the outer hull, a matrix that absorbs active sensor energy and also absorbs the ambient plasma power signature of the systems inside it. If we adjust the matrix a little, it can even absorb light, making the skimmer almost impossible to see when it’s dark. Of course, it’s useless in the daytime, but at least at night the skimmer can move without being seen or detected.
That’s what all those shield emitters were for! she realized, then she laughed. Jason, you have any idea how nuts Miss Kumi went trying to figure out what you were going to do with them?
I can imagine, she’s too curious for her own good, Jason agreed mildly. Now, I’m going to bring up the CMS, so watch.
Meya observed as he brought up the cloaking matrix, then started the engines once the matrix was up and running. We’ll be back in about two hours, Jason sent.
We’ll do what we can to get everything ready, Myra sent in reply.
Spending an hour alone with Meya wasn’t as awkward as the thought it would be. Meya and Myra were twins, but they were actually quite different personality wise. Myra was more fun-loving and impulsive, and Meya more serious. But Meya had a dry sense of humor, a subtle wit that made her a pleasure to be around. Much to his surprise, they didn’t spend the trip talking about the rebellion or his skimmer, Meya spent the entire time describing Dracora to him, from the buildings that reached thousands of feet into the air to the grassy parks and gardens between them. It was a huge city, five times larger than New York, but did not have a single road or street, only sidewalks and paths for skipboards and small one-seat hoverpods. There was mass transit and plenty of vehicles, but the vehicles were all hovercars and other flying transports, as well as an underground mass transit system. It was a city of over 100 million Faey, and it was the seat of the Empress, who ruled from a compound at the center of the city, on a high hill that caused the Imperial Palace’s spires to reach higher than all other buildings. Arcturi Manor, the personal estate of Kumi’s mother, sat on a bluff overlooking the center of the city, giving the mansion an amazing view of the Imperial Palace. She shared her knowledge of Dracora not just with words, but with images, memories, sending to him the experience of Dracora, not just a description. Thanks to her sending, he saw the three spires of the Imperial Palace, rising over all other buildings in the wide, shallow valley by the azure sea known as the Trellei Sumaderi, or Trelle’s Beauty in English. He saw the numerous manors and estates on the bluff around Arcturi Manor, he saw the magnificent Meydaja Building, which was over a mile in height and took up twenty city block at its base, so high that its pinnacle was only a hair’s breadth under the spires of the Imperial Palace, so huge that its shadow covered a huge swath of the city in the morning and afternoon. That was the tallest structure in the Imperium. He saw the two moons of Draconis hanging in the air on a lazy summer night, and the Paladin, a space station so massive that it affected the tides and was easily visible from the ground with the naked eye, the main hub of all material transport to and from Draconis. Paladin had been a military installation at first, but it had been converted to a supply and industrial station when the Imperium grew and Draconis became further from the edges of the Imperium’s territory and less likely to be attacked by enemies. Not only did it handle cargo, it also had a small shipyard for building three types of small and medium freighters, as well as the new Meara class cargo transports. The shipyard was originally military, but it was now owned by Thrynne, and it was where they built some of their larger ships. About half of the food that left Earth on transports went to Paladin, and from there it was redistributed throughout the Imperium. There were four other stations similar to Paladin, but they weren’t as large. Two were orbital space stations, and the other two were on one of Draconis’ moons. When Jason wondered why everything wasn’t done from Paladin, Meya responded with a memory of an attack on Paladin by a separatist movement about a century ago that left much of it crippled, and which summarily caused chaos in the Imperium’s supply networks. To run virtually everything through only one chokepoint was a weakness, and if there was one thing Jason could say about the Faey, it was that they weren’t stupid, and they learned from their mistakes. They wouldn’t make that mistake again.
It surprised him that Draconis was so beautiful, given that the Faey were a heavily industrialized society. I wouldn’t mind seeing it with my own eyes, Jason mused as they approached Charleston.
Well, that dropship you bought is registered to a corporation, Jason. You could take it though the stargate, without stealth, without it attracting too much attention. Dropships and personal transports do go through the gate. Talk to Miaari about having one of those fake identities set up with a class three, and employ that identity at VulTech. That way a legal pilot operating a legal dropship is all any controller is ever going to see.
I’m sure they scan ships that go through the gate, and I’ll be doing too much customizing to the dropship for it to escape notice.
Maybe. But if that bothers you, well, you also said you were going to buy another dropship. Just buy one and don’t modify it. That way you have a legal way to move back and forth. Get a used one, they’re cheaper. Why did you buy a brand new one anyway?
I wanted to make sure it was in perfect condition, because that dropship might enter combat, he answered immediately. I didn’t want to take a chance on a used dropship that might have problems I overlooked. But I have to admit, that’s a good idea. I can get a cheaper used one for that, that’s for sure. I could even use it to pick up certain sensitive things I wouldn’t want to have shipped. Hmm, he pondered, scratching his chin. I definitely should talk to Miaari about that. But the question is, how much attention would I attract walking down a sidewalk on Draconis?
Oh, I’m sure you’d attract attention, most Faey have never seen a human before. But as long as your thoughts match the name and occupation on your ID, what can they say? A class three gives you the legal right to fly a dropship through the gate. Nobody could really say anything.
Then I should get a new ID that says I’m a pilot by trade.
That works. So, while we’re loading people up, you can call Kate and relay that to Miaari.
I would, but my panel’s back in Nebraska, he sent with a smile at her. But I’ll take care of that as soon as we get back.
It took them about fifteen minutes to load up ten people and more gear, and then they took off and returned to Nebraska. Jason slipped the skimmer into the hangar with practiced ease, and he came down and immediately went for his panel. He called a contact number that he had for Kiaari, which basically was just a beeper warning her that Jason wanted to talk to her. Now all he had to do was wait for her to call back.
That took about ten seconds. His panel beeped before he could even get up, and he answered it immediately. A Faey face appeared on his monitor, which almost made him hang up quickly. “It’s me, it’s me,” she called in Kate’s voice. “I didn’t change clothes, that’s all. What did you need?”
“I need to see you,” he said.
“I’m kinda busy at the moment, hon. Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll call you back,” she told him. “And we can talk about when we’re going to go out.”
“Alright then.”
He terminated the call and went back to help them unload some of the gear they were going to need, then looked at Luke. “Luke, you’re up,” he said. “Myra, go with him, but he’s flying.”
“Sure, Jayce,” Luke said with a nod. “You ready, Miss Myra?”
“Let’s go, cutie,” she told him.
“Luke, show Myra how to operate the CMS,” Jason added, calling after them.
“I’ll teach her,” Luke said, waving a hand to him without turning around.
“And behave, woman!” Jason shouted after Myra.
“Killjoy!” she shouted in reply as they entered the skimmer.
I hope she listens, he sent absently to Meya.
About as much as I do.
God help Luke then.
Meya laughed. I think they’ll be alright. Myra plays too much, but she knows when to separate it from business.
Kiaari called back right on schedule, and when Jason picked up the call, he noticed that his panel shifted into an encrypted mode that he had never seen before. It was something similar to the protocols that Kumi used to use, but it was not the same. “Don’t speak yet,” Kiaari said in Kimdori as her image appeared again on the monitor, this time in her natural shape. “Jason, it’s important that you only speak Kimdori right now, or I won’t hear what you say. Do you understand?”
“I understand. What is this?”
“I can’t answer that, I’m sure you understand. Let’s just say that it’s necessary for me to use this. What did you need? You can talk freely, no one is going to pick this up.”
“I need you to get in touch with Miaari,” he told her. He told her about the conversation he had with Meya. “I think it’s a good idea.”
“Of course it’s a good idea. That’s why you’ll find a set of ID cards for Max Sterling in the desk in the office.”
“What? You already did it?”
“Hon, you’re not working with amateurs,” she told him with a toothy grin. “When I told Miaari that you were getting ready to start leaving the preserve, she had an identity set up that has a class three license. Remember that key that the Ministry woman gave you? Do you have it?”
“I carry it with me at all times.”
“Make sure you always do. Anyway, that key will let you start any dropship or hovercar, but if you use it on a skimmer or dropship, you’d still get picked up on traffic control because you’d be flying without broadcasting a pilot ID over your transpoder. Miaari set up that identity so you can have a legal license ID going on any ship you do steal, which wouldn’t cause traffic control to try to remote override your ship, or call in interceptors to bring you down for illegal flight operations. She set it up as an emergency option in case you ever had to ditch your skimmer in Faey territory and needed to steal a way to get back to the preserve, one that will work now because the Imperium thinks that you’re dead. We didn’t exactly intend it in the way you described, but it will work that way. Actually, it will work rather well, because the Imperium now thinks that Jason Fox is dead, and wouldn’t be immediately suspicious of a human with a license. They’ll never jump to the next rock and make the connection between Jason Fox and Max Sterling. Just update the photo and employ Max Sterling at VulTech, and he can fly company dropships without the system taking notice of it. Oh, and get used to answering to the name Max. If Jason Fox is dead, then you need to be ready to be Max Sterling when you’re out among the Faey.”
“That’s an odd name.”
“Blame Miaari. It came from some ancient television show on Terra. He was some kind of pilot.”
Jason had to admit, he saw the wisdom in Miaari’s action. By giving him an alternate identity that had a class three, he could use it in conjunction with the master key in order to steal a skimmer or dropship and not set off alarms in traffic control. That Jason had the idea to use it to legally fly a dropship within the Faey traffic system was simply a lucky coincidence. He’d just have to be careful, because quite a few controllers knew his voice. They’d recognize Jason Fox, no matter what name their consoles told them was behind the controls of a dropship. And she was also right about telling him to get used to using a different name. To the Imperium, Jason Fox was dead. There would be times later on when he might have to go out into Faey territory, like when he and Temika had gone to New Myrthan... and they were going to need food while converting the dropship.
“I was going to tell you about it the next time I came in.”
“When will that be?”
“A couple of days. They’ve been changing the codes on the Trillane communication system every three days. Right now I’m trying to gain access to the update schedule and encryption master algorithms. Once I have that information, we can crack their encryption and gain access to their systems. They’re using a dedicated encryption protocol for Terra, or I’d just have sister use her connections on Dracora to get the data we need.”
“Alright. I wasn’t sure if you were working on that or helping Miaari track down the people who hurt Kumi.”
“I’ve been doing a little bit of both, as well as trying to ferret out some of the nobles behind the human slaving. No luck yet though. When you stumbled over their freighter, they buried the program. We suspect that the nobles probably had anyone with any knowledge of it killed. Slave agents, workers, guards, hackers changing files, pilots, random civilians that might have seen any humans offworld, probably also any kidnapped human they could possibly reach. Kumi told you that the Empress could revoke Trillane’s charter if it comes out they’ve been engaged in illegal activity like this. Well, odds are, the people doing it are making damn sure that there’s nobody left alive that has any knowledge of it.”
“That’s a depressing thought. Those poor people,” he sighed.
“I know, but there’s little that we can do to help them. We’re got some kin trying to find where some of the humans were sent, but so far there’s no information I can give you. I hate to cut it short, but I need to go. I’m working right now.”
“Oh. Alright. Thanks, Kate, and thank Miaari for me.”
“I’ll tell her when I see her again. I’ll see you in a few days, okay?”
“Be careful out there.”
“Always. Bye.”
“Bye.” Jason cut the connection, and watched as his panel purged its active memory by itself, did a thirty second scan of its permanent memory crystals, then shut down and restarted itself. Jason had to admit, that Kimdori encryption protocol was pretty damn thorough.
In the small, cramped office that opened to both the outside and to the main warehouse, there was no furniture except a bare light bulb on the ceiling, a metal filing cabinet in one corner, a small corner table in the opposite corner, and a simple sheet metal desk with a plywood top. Jason leaned over the desk... there was no chair for it... and opened the top drawer, and sure enough, there was a small white envolope made of a soft, pliable kind of plastic that the Faey often used as heavy duty paper, an envolope holding small objects. He poured the contents of the envelope onto the desk, and found himself looking at three standard issue Faey ID cards. The first was a native ID, something every legal human on Earth possessed, that had room for a picture, name, address, and Native Control Number. The picture field of the ID were blank, able to be dynamically updated by hooking it up to a panel and downloading that data into it, but the name on the id read <Maximilian Quincy Sterling>, and it showed his date of birth as being identical to Jason’s own. The listed occupation on the ID was blank, but that field he could add in with his picture. The listed home address on the ID was the address of the warehouse itself. The second card was a class three license, which was absolutely complete and correct. It wasn’t a fake license, though it was certainly attained by less than honest means. It too was in his name, with the hangar being his home address, and it had a pilot’s registration number. The third ID was a duplicate of the native ID, a spare in case he lost one.
“Clever girl,” Jason mused aloud, turning the class three over in his hand and looking at the back. Miaari certainly did think ahead, and much to his delight, her forward thinking was going to help them a great deal. “Maximilian Quincy Sterling,” he said aloud, getting used to the sound of it.
It certainly had possibilities. More and more possibilies, and the more he thought about it, the more possibilities he saw. Jason Fox was dead, but the world was open to Max Sterling. Jason Fox was a fugitive, a wanted man, but Max Sterling was a cog in the Imperial machine, a working stiff that could move silently through the Faey world, a quiet fellow who flew a cargo dropship for a Terran-based company and go where he was sent, picking up and dropping off, and learning. In his own way, he could be just as effective a gatherer of intelligence as Kiaari, if he just kept his mouth shut and his ears open.
Jason Fox was dead. He would remain dead until the resistance struck its first blow and announced itself to the Imperium. But until that day, there would be Max Sterling.
“Who’s that?” Tom Jackson’s voice called from the door.
“Well, I guess it’s going to be me,” Jason told him, collecting the three cards and putting them in his pocket. “Kate left me some fake IDs I can use while we’re here in Lincoln,” he explained. “Since everyone thinks that we’re dead, the fake IDs will let us move around without anyone the wiser. The name on this ID is Max Sterling.”
“Oh. I’m still getting used to the idea that she’s not who we thought she was.”
“I know. Sometimes even I don’t.”
“Where did you find her?”
“Actually, she found me,” he chuckled. “She’s very good at what she does, Tom. She’s going to be a great help to us.”
“I don’t doubt that, but it’s still weird. Anyway, we need your help out here, and Jyslin was looking for you.”
“Alright. Let’s see what needs doing.”
It took all night to get everyone to Lincoln, including one unplanned run back to Charleston to pick up some equipment that they’d forgotten, as well as pick up a few unplanned passengers; Temika, Jyslin, and to his surprise, Fure. They flew in pairs for the most part, except for the final planned run, which Jason had Luke do solo. The look of appreciation on Luke’s face showed how proud he was that Jason would trust him with his precious skimmer, and he took almost five minutes getting it out of the hangar, he was so afraid of so much as scratching it. That amused Jason quite a little bit, watching him creep the skimmer out the hangar doors at about an inch a second. Jason managed to grab a quick nap between flights, sleeping on a bedroll near the hangar door so the sound of it opening would wake him up. Everyone else was bunked in on the far side of the warehouse, on top of a narrow platform of sorts created by a very small open second floor, basically just a platform erected on the far wall to provide a little extra storage space. It did put all the sleepers out from underfoot on the ground floor, and the covered area under the platform was a good place to store gear and equipment.
Everyone was nervous, and they got more and more nervous as the appointed time, eleven local time, approached. Jason and the other Faey had to calm everyone down more than once, and they also had to correct some people who were losing their false fronts of thought, as they all roamed the warehouse actively listening to those structured trains of thought, structured to throw off Faey, doing what Symone and Jyslin trained them to do. Strangely enough, the one that made everyone most nervous wasn’t the twins or the docs, it was Fure. Then again, Fure had this cold demeanor and creepy aire that made people who looked at him uneasy, and Jason was silently glad the male Faey had come along to help. Fure’s unsettling presence was the perfect test for the humans; if they could keep their composure around Fure, they’d have no trouble anywhere else.
With his new IDs updated with his picture, Jason took up a position next to Jyslin as the dropship and the skimmer made a slow approach to the large paved tarmac behind the warehouse. It was a beauty of a dropship, painted slate gray, and looking both widely spacious and graceful at the same time. She was wide through the beam, with no tapering at all from bow to stern, a flying cargo bay of sorts with short, stubby wings, barely more than fins to aid with aerodynamic stability when flying through atmospheres. The cockpit was separated from the rest of the ship, and as such there was no hull space under it, though it had the same width as the rest of the ship. It almost looked as if the trapezoidal cockpit compartment was welded on to the rest of the dropship. Heavy landing skids extended, and then the ship made a light contact with the cracked asphalt. The skimmer landed just behind it, and both ships extended their stairs and opened their hatches. Jason muted his own talent so that he could not hear them sending, so as not to tip them off, and settled himself into the thought processes of an ordinary man named Max Sterling, who did happen to have an unusual occupation for a human.
Four Faey, three males and a female, exited the two craft and approached. Jason and Jyslin approached them, then the lead Faey, the female, stepped up and extended her hand. She didn’t speak, so Jason assumed that she was sending in her initial greeting. She had deep brown hair, almost black, cut almost militantly short, except for a pair of long, curved locks that grew over her eyes and reached all the way to her chin. She wore a simple gray suit of sorts with a golden medallion hanging from a chain around her shirt collar, under her double breasted jacket, and a thigh-length skirt that seemed to hug her legs, but stretched and contracted as she walked to maintain that tight fit. She wore soft gray boots that rose to her mid-calf, which had little silver buckles running all the way from the arch of her foot to the top of the boot. Like many Faey clothes, one sleeve was much too long and too wide, extending well past her hand, while the other ended at mid bicep. It was that short-sleeved right arm that was extended towards Jyslin. The three males all wore matching jumpsuit uniforms of a fashion emblazoned with the Thrynne logo on the left breast. She looked at Jason meaningfully, then glanced back to the three males behind her. “I’m Pola Thrynne,” she said aloud, in a rich contralto voice.
“Thrynne?” Jyslin asked in surprise.
“Yes, the younger members of the family who have just started working are often sent out to work the field before we can take up positions in the main office,” she said with a slight grimace, a condition it seemed with which she was not too happy. “So yes, I’m one of the Thrynnes. You are Maya Orinne?”
“That’s me,” she said with a nod. “May I present Max Sterling, our pilot.”
“A human pilot?” Pola said with surprise.
“I have a class three,” Jason said with quiet adamance, in deliberately broken Faey.
“I can tell you, he was willing to work for much less than a Faey pilot,” Jyslin said with a glance at him. “Now then, I’m sure that no one here is in much of a mood to drag this out, so let’s get the maintenance inspection under way.”
“Certainly.”
Jason was very careful to maintain his front as the three males conducted the inspection as Jason and Jyslin followed along behind them, obvserving as Pola Thrynne went down a checklist on a reader in her hands. They went over about every system on the dropship, inspecting it for damage and ensuring it was working up to spec. The inspection took about two hours, and it seemed that in that time, there was no signs that any of them were in any way suspicious. He was sure they were all wildly curious about a human being a pilot, but his false front of thought covered that curiosity. He included quite a few fake “memories” of a friendship with a Faey dropship pilot struck up at a civilian spaceport in Atlanta, Georgia where he worked as a systems technician, just one of the many humans trained in Faey technology working at a disembarkation point for Faey civilian spacecraft, mainly tours and vacationers. It was that pilot who taught him to fly, and after he got a class three, VulTech hired him as both a dropship pilot and a maintenance technician. A startup company often had need of multitalented individuals to fill many roles when they were tyring to establish themselves, and the money was tight.
It obviously satisfied their curiosity, for none of them asked how he came to get a class three license.
Once the inspection was complete, Pola Thrynne signed off on the last of it, then handed the reader to Jyslin. “I need a corporate executive to sign this now,” she said.
“Certainly. Max, take this and have it signed, if you would,” she told him in English.
“Yes ma’am,” he said, taking it from her. Jason went into the warehouse, took it to the office, then signed it himself using the false identity that was used to set up the company, Jack Brewer. He lingered for a few minutes, then took it back out to the tarmac and handed it to Jyslin. “Here,” he told her.
Pola accepted it from Jyslin and inspected it, then signed it herself and pressed the screen in several places with her finger. “Alright then, it seems that our business is concluded. The final ownership form has just been registered, and VulTech is now the legal owner of this dropship. Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” Jyslin said with a nod.
“Might I trouble you for the use of your restroom? I can freshen up while the techs go over anything that your pilot might want explained to him.”
Jason certainly didn’t miss the veiled pomposity in that statement... clearly she thought he was some kind of trained monkey, unable to so much as start the dropship without someone there to hold his hand.
“Yes, please come with me,” Jyslin told him. “If there was anything you wanted to ask, now’s the time,” she told Jason in English.
“Please follow me so we can change over the pilot data,” one of the three techs said, whose name Jason did not know, for none of them had volunteered them. Jason followed the white-haired male into the dropship, through the large cargo bay, and up the short ladder and into the cockpit. “The control codes are on this reader,” he said, taking a reader off of the pilot’s chair and handing it to Jason. “The key is already in the keyslot. Do you have your license with you sir?”
“Right here,” he said, taking it out of his pocket.
The Faey nodded and sat in the co-pilot’s chair, then motioned for him to take his seat in the pilot’s seat. Jason did so as the other two technicians stood behind them. “Alright, go ahead and put in your license number, please,” he prompted as a holographic keyboard wavered into being in front of him, above the flight stick. Jason looked over the controls and indicators on the dash before him, and noted that it was a very logical and efficient layout. The main controls were identical to his skimmer, but since this was a larger ship with more systems, it had a few more controls. But the flight controls were identical, and he would have no trouble at all flying it. He brought up the main computer with deft movements, then immediately started uploading his pilot number into the computer to identify him as the pilot of record, which would be what would go out on the dropship’s telemetry.
“Nice setup, much better than the skimmers I’ve been flying,” Jason noted aloud. “I will definitely enjoy flying this better.”
“Oh? What have you been flying?” he asked curiously.
“ASV’s mainly, but I’ve also put some time in a Derenne. Ugh,” he grunted.
The male laughed. “Amen to that. Those things are terrible. Bad layout, bad engines, bad controls, bad everything. I think it was designed by engineers who’d been drinking too much. How did you like the ASV?”
“They’re very nice. Good engines, a nice smooth ride.”
“Yeah, they’re a bit pricy though. Thrynne skimmers are cheaper, and built much better.”
“You’ll have to pitch that to the people I was flying, not me. I’m just the pilot. I don’t think I’ll ever have the money to have a ship of my own,” he said, with a bit of a sigh.
“I find it interesting that a human would get a pilot’s license so quickly,” one of the Faey behind him noted.
“Yeah, well, I’ve been flying since before I could walk,” he said without looking back. “I grew up in an airplane. Both my parents were pilots, and I was born with the same itch they had. It didn’t take me much to get used to flying a skimmer instead of an airplane. I already knew most of what I needed to know, and me being in school for plasma systems filled in most of the gaps. When I saw a posting for a pilot for VulTech, I jumped all over it, cause I really missed flying. I’ve been a pilot all my life, and I felt like someone cut off one of my legs when I was put in a maintenance shop.”
“I could see that,” the third male agreed. “You speak Faey very well.”
“You can say it. I speak like a five year old.”
The male laughed. “I didn’t want to be rude.”
“Yeah, well, I’m rusty. I was implanted with it in school, but I didn’t speak it for nearly six months. The Faey that worked at Fulton Spaceport all spoke English, so I didn’t get to practice. I’m just getting back into the habit.”
“Implanted languages never last unless they’re used,” the male in the copilot’s chair said sagely.
“I can understand what I hear, I just have trouble saying what I want to say.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty normal when it comes to using an implanted language,” one of the ones behind him noted.
“I’m finished,” Jason announced, as the holographic keyboard vanished.
“Alright then, Master Sterling, it seems that we’re all done here. Did you have any questions about the unit while you have our undivided attention?”
Jason did have a few technical questions, and they went over some of the dropship’s systems as they sat in the cockpit, then continued their discussion as they came out and onto the tarmac. “I’ve always had the best luck using a 40-20 tool,” the tech was telling him as the executive and Jyslin came back out. “You have to use a light touch that most of the newer techs haven’t developed yet, but it gets the best results.”
“You don’t have any issue with ambient gauss?”
“No, just remember the right hand rule,” he answered. “As long as you withdraw the tool rotating it in the right hand direction relative to plasma flow through to the conduit, you don’t polarize the conduit at all.”
“I’ll have to remember that,” Jason said earnestly. “I’ve always used a Parmon tool to realign conduit.”
“Those work, but it takes more muscle than finesse,” he added. “The 40-20 can’t do any physical damage, where a Parmon can.”
“True enough,” Jason agreed. “Have you tried out using Tetryon striations in your main plasma conduit?”
The male gave him quite the look. “You certainly keep up on your journals,” he said. “We haven’t tested Tetryon striations yet, but I think it’s something we’re going to be adopting. On a reader, it looks quite promising, but you know how gravimetric engines are. They can be quite finicky. We’ll have to see if the Thrynne design can use Tetryon striated conduit without any loss of efficiency. I think it will, personally.”
“Well, when you’re in school, they make you keep up with the journals.”
The technician laughed. “That they do. I wish I could make some of our technical staff keep current with the journals.” He gave his companions a sidelong look, and both looked distinctly uncomfortable for a moment.
“Have you had your questions answered, Master Sterling?” the executive asked pleasantly.
“I have,” he answered. “I can just use your message board if I have any other questions.”
“Very well then.” She glanced at the techs, and then nodded. “It would seem that we’re done here, Mistress Orinne.”
The Thrynne people all said their formal farewells, piled into the skimmer, and then it took off and ascended into the sky and out of sight. Jason and Jyslin watched it go for about a minute, then they looked at each other. Any trouble?
She never suspected a thing, Jyslin sent smugly. Everyone did great! How about the ones with you?
I have no idea, I had myself completely closed off, but they didn’t seem suspicious at all. I think they bought it. He realigned his thinking so that he could send to the non-telepaths in the warehouse behind him. They’re gone everyone, you did great! They never suspected a thing!
There was an audible cheer that rose up behind them, and Jason and Jyslin looked a the dropship. Well, now that that’s done, it’s time to get to work.
How long do you think it’s going to take?
About two weeks to draw up the plans, and about two months to do the work, he answered. Since we have access to some technology this time, it should help cut down on the time it’ll take, but the dropship is much bigger than my skimmer, so there goes all the time we’ll save automating. But there’s one thing that has to be done.
What?
We have to go shopping.
Brista, 35 Romaa, 4394 Orthodox Calendar
Wednesday, 8 April 2008, Native Regional Reckoning
Lincoln, Nebraska (Native designation). Zurei Province, American Sector
This... was... nuts.
To say that Jason was scared out of his mind was an understatement, but on the other hand, this test had to be done.
Jason, one of the most wanted criminals to House Trillane, was going to Draconis, the heart of the Imperium.
The mission was simple. Go to Draconis, to a shipping company in the city of Aryxa, on the southern continent of Merum. There he would pick up a shipment of materials and goods, and then return to Earth. The shipment was already bought, bundled, and ready for pick up. It was already affirmed that the shipping pallets would fit in the dropship coming to retrieve them. All in all, Jason would never leave the dropship, but that wasn’t what this test was about. This test was about seeing if Jason could fly the dropship through Imperial traffic control without incident.
He was looking forward to this, in one way. He would get a chance to go through the Stargate, to see the planet Draconis, and to get his chance to look upon another world, the world of his fiancée, and if only once, to stand on an alien world and know that he had walked on the soil of a planet that was not Earth. To be one of those first humans to set foot off of Earth, though he certainly wouldn’t be the first. The former leaders of the nations of Earth had been to Draconis, and certain human governors and other humans in the Terran political system visited both Draconis and Arctus, the seat of Trillane, to meet with house nobles and personally deliver reports and missives. He was terrified of the idea of putting himself out in the open like that, but a part of him wanted to see Draconis.
To say that he was nervous was an understatement, but this is something he needed to make sure of. If there was an emergency, he wanted to make sure that the dropship could fly through the Imperial network without any challenges, and this was really the only way to do it. The name and pilot number of Max Sterling were just that, names and pilot numbers. Anyone could fly the ship using that identity, so long as they kept communication audio only. That was something that couldn’t be done more than once or twice, or someone would notice, but it could be used in an emergency.
The reason for this trip was so they could begin the refit of the dropship. Jason, Tim, and Luke had pulled up the refit plans for his skimmer and started modifying them to be used for the dropship, but they weren’t alone for long. Jyslin went from being an observer to getting involved herself, and it was then that Jason got a good idea just how much engineering she’d had. She quickly adapted to the ideas behind the system, and her knowledge of Faey engineering was a benefit to them. With Jyslin’s help, they quickly worked up a refit plan that included knowing how much material they’d need, how many men per shift, and how long it would take. It would be a seven week operation. Jason bristled a bit at the time it was going to take, but they really had no choice. They could not do anything else on a large scale until the dropship was refitted for stealth... but they could get some things going. Kiaari had organized an advanced survey and inspection team of thirty men and women that would go to Cheyenne Mountain and conduct a complete survey, and also draw up some plans for the cleaning out and reconstruction of the facility. It basically turned out that whoever wasn’t going to be working on the refit was going to be at Cheyenne Mountain, which removed the resistance from Charleston completely. The inspection team was going to be led by Tom Jackson, since he was their resident expert on civil engineering. He would be the best man for the job.
Jason’s hands trembled slightly on the controls as he finished the preflight, and his hands weren’t the only ones that weren’t calm. He had two passengers with him, and neither of them were very happy about this either. Luke sat at the copilot’s station, nervously gnawing on the corner of a clipboard, and Doc Songa sat at the engineer’s station, trying to figure out where to put her hands without hitting any controls. Songa was their emergency out in this scenario. She was one of the three doctors, and as such was one of the three Faey in the community that could still actively return to the Imperium legally. If they had any trouble or if the Faey boarded the vessel, Songa would try to talk them out of it. Jason wasn’t sure what she could possibly say to pull that off, but the doctors had insisted that one of them go, and Songa had won the draw for it.
“Preflight done,” Jason said aloud. “Remember your protocols for space transport, Luke?”
“Yeah, whether I remember them or not is the question,” he grumbled. “After Jsylin baked my noodle last night, I’m surprised I remember my own name.”
Jason chuckled. Last night, Jyslin had implanted the Faey language into Luke, Tom, and six other humans in the community, those who had either completed flight training, like Luke, or would be finishing it very soon, like Tom and the others. It was something that Symone couldn’t do, and something that Jyslin planned to do to everyone in the community. The rebels absolutely had to be able to speak and read Faey, and besides, Luke would need that knowledge to fly this dropship. Unlike his skimmer, all the controls, labels, and readouts were in Faey, not in English. Jason had converted his skimmer to English, but did not intend on changing the dropship. To fly it, the pilot had to be fluent in Faey.
“Ready, Songa?” Jason asked, trying to clear the quiver out of his voice.
“I’m ready, Jason,” she answered.
“Alright then, let’s get this overwith.” He put on his headset, and clicked the might. “Lincoln Control, Dropship Vultech-1.”
“Dropship Vultech-1, this is Lincoln Control,” a female Faey responded.
“Vultech-1 requesting permission to disembark from Vultech Enterprises warehouse. Destination is the Stargate.”
“One moment, I’m not sure where that is.” There was a moment of tense silence, while Luke seemed ready to arm the ship’s weapons. “Alright, I have the location. Hold for local traffic, stay on comm.”
“Understood,” Jason answered, killing the mic.
“I hope this works,” Songa said under her breath.
“It better, or we’re hosed,” Jason grunted. “Since I’ve already called traffic control.”
“Dropship Vultech-1, you’re clear for takeoff. Follow the northeast 60 ascent vector and be aware you will be in traffic. Limit speed to 750.”
“Northeast 60 ascent, speed 750,” he repeated.
“Handoff is to Orbital One once you clear the atmosphere.”
“Orbital One, understood,” he acknowledged. “Vultech-1 out.”
“Control out.”
With a light touch on the controls, Jason picked the dropship up off the deck, navigated it through the warehouse doors, then immediately picked up the nose and aimed her at the morning sky. “Lock that chair facing the nose, Songa!” Jason barked over his shoulder when he heard and saw her chair suddenly swivel.
“Sorry, I thought it was!” she answered, swinging the chair to face the front, then locking it in.
The ascent was steep and slow, but that was what he was told to do. Besides, the scanners told him that there was a small freighter just ahead of him and a Stick behind, all of them following a 60 degree ascent vector out of Lincoln. Luke’s fear and trepidation faded as they cleared the atmosphere and found themselves looking out into the starry expanse of space, with a large orbital station to the left and the moon visible just out of the right side of the windshield. “Orbital One, Dropship Vultech-1,” Jason called over the radio, breaking the silence in the cockpit and startling Luke back into paying attention.
“Vultech-1, Orbital One,” came a male Faey’s voice in reply. “Destination is the Stargate?”
“Affirmative,” he answered.
“Take heading 213 at 342, speed is restricted to one quarter.”
“Understood, 213, mark, 342, one quarter.”
“Take note that there are large movers along the flight path. Contact Stargate Control at 20,000.”
“Understood. Vultech-1 out.”
“Orbital One out.”
“What does large movers mean?” Songa asked.
“It means that there are large freighters or warships that might block our vector,” Jason answered. “Large ships always have the right of way. If one comes into the lane, we have to go around it, and we’re allowed to do so without calling control for permission to leave the lane.”
“Ah, I see. I guess it’s easier for a small ship to move than a big one.”
“Basically yes,” he nodded.
“I guess I should learn what all this flying vocabulary means,” she laughed. “I didn’t understand any of that.”
“Well, ma’am, I guess I can teach you if you’d like, if you answer me one question.”
“Sure, Luke,” she told him as the dropship turned into the assigned lane. Four large ships hung in the distance ahead of them, a freighter and three military warships, three destroyers that were part of the Trillane house Navy.
“Well, I’ve been meaning to ask something about telepathy.”
“You could have asked Jason, you know,” she laughed.
“Well ma’am, he’s admitted that he’s still being taught. Since you were born with it and all, I figured you might know the answer.”
“Well, it sounds like a very involved question,” she told him, the she gasped as the ship’s new orientation and settle into a constant speed caused it to lose gravity. “This ship has no artificial gravity?” she asked quickly.
“Nope,” Jason answered. “So just hang onto your stomach.”
“Oh my,” she said, putting a hand to her mouth.
“I hope I get used to this,” Luke said. “It’s like a roller coaster.”
“Just you never reach the bottom of the hill,” Jason chuckled. “You do get used to it.”
“Anyway, what I meant to ask, ma’am,” Luke said.
“Please, Luke, call me Songa,” she told him with a slightly queasy smile.
“Songa. Well, Miss Songa, I was curious about how Miss Temika handles things with the rest of you. I know she doesn’t speak Faey.”
“You mean telepathy?” she asked, then she laughed as he nodded. “Luke, dear, language isn’t a barrier with talent.”
“You mean you use telepathy in English for her?”
“No dear. Let me explain,” she said, leaning forward a little. “Telepathy is the exchange of thought, not words. Yes, we frame that thought in a language, but it’s the thought that Temika hears, not the words. Her brain picks up the thought, and frames that thoughts in words that she can understand. I usually send framing my sending in Faey, but she hears my sending in English, because she processes the thought, the meaning, of my sending, not the words.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Telepathy is the exchange of thought, not words,” Jason told him. “Two telepaths don’t have to speak each other’s languages to be able to understand one another, but it does restrict what they can say to each other if they don’t. When Jyslin sends to me, she sends in Faey, because that’s her native language. It’s how she thinks, and that’s how she structures her sending. When I hear her sending, I’m not hearing her sending Faey words, I’m hearing the meaning of her sending. And since my native language is English, my brain processes those meanings in English, so I hear her sending as English. But, since I do speak Faey, the more complex thoughts she sends, which depend more on language and words, I can also understand, because I understand the words as well as the meaning. Temika doesn’t speak Faey, so those very complicated thoughts are something she can’t comprehend. Her brain can’t work out the meaning, because that meaning is dependent on the words, and those words tend to be abstract when one deals with complex subjects. Without the ability to understand those abstract words and the thought they represent, her brain can’t process the meaning of the thought behind them.”
“Just so,” Songa agreed with a nod. “Temika wouldn’t understand everything I send, because she doesn’t speak Faey, and those thoughts that are very complicated or are very dependent on understanding the words are beyond her. But for normal communication and basic chitchat, she would have no trouble understanding me. But since I do speak English, I can specifically frame my sending in English, structuring that thought in a way she can understand, which lets her understand me perfectly. Because we know Temika doesn’t speak our language, most of us go out of our way to frame our sendings in English for her benefit. She’s very suspicious of us, and we don’t want her thinking that we’re holding anything back or anything.”
“So language does make a difference.”
“Up to a point, yes,” she agreed. “But, if she didn’t speak Faey, and I didn’t speak English, we could still effectively communicate with each other by using the similarities of our thoughts as a base to build on. And we’re very similar that way,” she chuckled. “I could communicate with Temika on a high school level if we didn’t share a common language, because humans and Faey are very, very similar. Gora’s Law,” she giggled.
“What is that?”
“It’s an old theory that the more similar the development of two different planets are, the more similar the life on those planets will be to each other. Humans and Faey are genetically compatible, Luke. That’s almost exactly identical. Yohne believes it’s because our planets are almost exactly identical. Draconis has the same nitrogen oxygen atmosphere as Terra at the same proportions, the same air pressure, the same proportion of water to land, the same basic climate, and both of our planets are approximately the same age. Draconis is a little larger than Terra, our year is a little shorter, we have two moons instead of one, and we have slightly more helium in our atmosphere than Terra, but those are about the only differences. You’ll see it very soon,” she told them.
“I hope we don’t see it long,” Jason grunted.
“Amen,” Luke nodded in agreement.
A Faey battle cruiser drifted into the lane, which forced the smaller ships to go around it. Luke gaped at the herculean vessel as they flew over its midsection, a ship that was about an eighth of a mile long. Jason remembered reading about them on CivNet. It was a standard Faey destroyer, armed to the teeth, with a ship’s crew of 140. A ship that size didn’t use MPACs as primary weapons, but used something similar to one. Its primary weapon was plasma torpedos, which were massive scale versions of an MPAC, huge charges of metaphased plasma, crushed under tremendous pressure, that would penetrate shields and then detonate on impact. That ship was also armed with plasma cannons, weapons that fired a stream of metaphased plasma instead of a compact bubble of it. It was also armed with heavy ion cannons, weapons designed not to damage ships, but to damage and disrupt power systems and equipment. From what he remembered reading, those ion cannons were obsolete, but they were very effective against the Skaa, and quite amusingly, could also damage a Faey vessel’s systems as well if the ion charge penetrated the shielding protecting plasma conduits and PPGs.
“My god, that thing is big,” Luke breathed.
“That’s a destroyer, Luke. It’s small compared to most other Faey starships,” Jason told him. “If you recall, you could see that big battleship they first brought here from orbit without a telescope.”
“And to think we’re gonna be fighting people who can build shit like that,” he breathed soberly.
“I never said it was gonna be easy,” Jason sighed. “And besides, Luke, one point of what we’re going to be doing is making sure those never get involved.
Being limited to one quarter of maximum engine power, it took almost an hour to pass the orbiting starships and reach the moon’s orbital track. Both Jason and Luke took a moment to stare at the moon as they passed within 50,000 miles of it, and then the lights of the Stargate became visible ahead.
It was like a gigantic window in space. The Stargate was a rectangular, hollow construction, a frame that was empty in the middle, just like a window... but this window was nearly 10 miles wide and 15 miles long. It was so huge that four of the Faey’s largest battleships could go through it, side by side, at the same time. The area inside that massive frame didn’t look unusual at first, but as Jason looked closer at it, and they got nearer to it, he could see a dark shimmering, as if the area inside were distorted, warping the view of the stars behind it. It was like it was filled with water, or a soap film, a surface that didn’t remain still, and reflected back distorted images.
Once they were within 20,000 shakra, Jason motioned for Luke to remain silent and activated his comm. “Stargate Control, Vultech-1.”
“Vultech-1, Stargate Control,” came a female Faey response, a Faey that was most likely in that flared cubical pod at what Jason would consider the top center of the gate’s frame. That frame was hollow, filled with equipment that made the Stargate operate, and from what he remembered reading, that piece of technology out there had nearly 5,000 Faey workers and engineers in it. “Stabilize course and speed, keep at least 10,000 shakra from forward traffic. Rig dropship for gate passage once course and speed is stabilized, contact Stargate Control once through.”
Jason checked his controls and saw that the ship’s course and speed were stable, no minor fluctuations that would cause it to drift off course while it approached the gate. “Gate passage mode,” Jason said, reaching up over his head and flipping a series of switches on the overhead panel, which caused the engines to shut down and most systems in the ship to disengage, plunging them into red-hued dim murkiness from the crimson emergency lights. The PPGs and power plants were placed in shielded mode to protect them and their systems from the spatial distortion of the Stargate, and the gravimetric engines were offline. The ship would coast on its own forward momentum, “Gate pass mode enabled. Handoff is to Draconis Stargate Control, acknowledged.”
“Stargate Control out.”
“Vultech-1 out.”
“So, now we coast through under our own momentum,” Luke said, reciting what he’d learned when Jason taught him about class three operations as Jason shut down the communication system. “And all our plasma systems have to be offline, especially the engines.”
“Or our engines disrupt the gate, and we get tossed into a random stretch of space,” Jason finished. “If we don’t get ripped apart in the spatial flux.”
“Let’s not have that happen please,” Songa said in a slightly weak voice.
Jason felt a little anxious as they saw the small freighter ahead of them vanish into the gate. He’d never been through the gate, so he had no idea what to expect. Luke kept looking at him, then looked back to Songa. “Miss Songa, is it gonna make me sick?”
She laughed. “You never feel a thing, Luke,” she told him. “I’ve never seen a gate pass through the front windshield before, so I can’t tell you what it looks like, but you never feel anything. Not even a vibration.”
“Oh, that’s good then,” he said with a relieved sigh.
Songa was right about that part. As the dark shimmering surface enveloped them, there wasn’t even a vibration in the ship, not even a sense that they moved, changed speed, or anything. It was surprisingly calm. The view, however, wasn’t quite so calm. The shimmering before them suddenly stretched like a rubber band, as if space itself was pulled back, and then it snapped forward with such sudden speed that both Jason and Luke flinched. And once the stretching snapped back to what Jason would consider a normal appearance, it parted like a curtain, and Jason found himself staring at a large blue planet some distance ahead, so far ahead it looked like a beach ball from that distance.
“We’re through,” Jason announced, then he reached up and started resetting the switches to take them out of gate mode. As soon as he reactivated the communications, he keyed the mic. “Stargate Control, Vultech-1,” Jason called as he continued to flip the row of switches.
“Vultech-1, Stargate Control,” the male Faey on the other end called. “Destination?”
“Aryxa, Merum continent,” he answered.
“One moment. Maintain course and speed, stay on comm.”
“Understood.”
Luke gaped at the planet before them as Jason finished restoring the ship’s systems, half-light and half-dark from the angle at which they viewed it, a beautiful blue, white, and green jewel floating in the heavens. “It does look like Earth,” he whispered, so as not to be picked up on Jason’s mic.
“Told you,” Songa chuckled.
“Vultech-1, Stargate Control.”
“Stargate Control, Vultech-1,” Jason returned.
“Come to heading 178 by 4, the lane is loose. Speed is restricted to one half, there are no traffic restrictions. Hand off is Pegasus-4 once you pass the inner marker.”
“178, mark, 4, one half, handoff to Pegasus-4 at the inner marker, acknowledged,” he replied. Jason had no idea where that marker was, so he accessed navigational charts for Draconis and quickly located it. It would take them nearly a half hour to get to the boundary set by the marker.
Jason and Luke spent that half hour making sure they were ready for the approach. They went over maps of Draconis, projected as a hologram over the center console, then doublechecked their navigation systems. The one thing Jason did notice, though, was the large amount of traffic. There were ships everywhere, dropships, personal craft, small cargo ships, and even larger freighters that had their own jump engines, and there were Sticks by the ton moving containers from freighters parked at large distances from the planet and vice versa. When the controller said the lane was loose, Jason didn’t pay much attention until he saw how much traffic there was. There were ships of every size and shape, both ones he’d seen either live or in pictures and ships that were clearly not from the Imperium, and that surprised him a little bit. He’d never considered the idea that species and governments from outside the Imperium would come here, but obviously they did. Traffic became thick, so much so that Jason had to abandon his other activities and concentrate on piloting the craft, since he was weaving in and out among slower moving craft, faster moving craft, larger ships and smaller ships. Jason flipped on the gravband local channel in addition to control, so he could hear local transmissions between ships. He was surprised at the amount of chatter being flung back and forth on gravband local, a frequency that only had a range of about five miles. It almost sounded like a group of angry commuters for a minute, as pilots barked at one another, but there was also quite a bit of inane conversation as pilots who obviously knew each other were conversing over open shortrange gravband. He was sure that there was quite a bit of sending as well, but Jason had his talent blocked and was putting up a false front of a nervous pilot on his first trip to Draconis... which is actually what he really was. Songa was actively shielding Luke and herself, which was her job on this venture, preventing other Faey pilots from picking up his thoughts, which might give them away. To a Faey out in another ship, the dropship he was in only had one occupant, for they could only sense one mind within it, and a rather nervous mind at that. That nervousness in his public thoughts caused a slightly larger cushion of space around him than there was around other ships, as the Faey pilots, sensing his unease, gave his ship a wide berth.
Once they passed the inner marker, they were set on a narrow windowed vector approach to the planet, which now totally dominated the windshield. Jason had to circle around to the daytime side of the planet, and then he began his slow descent into the atmosphere, staying on his assigned entry vector. The ship shuddered and rocked as they descended through resistant air, as the featureless blue and green below began to take on more and more form, more detail. Aryxa was a coastal city on the northeast side of the small southern continent, and Jason descended out over the open ocean, intending to hook around and approach. “Bring up where this place is, Luke,” Jason ordered as he slowed their descent even more, dropping down out of a cloud to look upon a beautiful blue sea. “The universal location code.”
“I already have the ULC,” he answered. “Punching it into the nav system.”
“Good.”
Using the Universal Location Code, the navigational system brought a cursor up on the cockpit windshield showing him exactly where he needed to go. After getting clearance for approach from Aryxa control, he contacted the warehouse and got landing instructions. They approache the city, and Jason had to take a moment and gawk at the lovely glass towers rising along the coast, as well as the smaller buildings that surrounded that downtown display of Faey engineering, with its elegantly sloped towers and love of tapered buildings. The Faey didn’t like to build anything straight up and down, nearly all of their large buildings tapered as they ascended, either in delicate angles or in steps, like the stepped pyramids in Central America. The location of the warehouse was near the coast and to the left of that metroplex, a small shipping warehouse called Mezour, a Makati shipping company. Most of the reason why Jason chose Mezour was because it was a Makati company.
The Mezour compound was a series of nine warehouses enclosed by a common fence, and like Jyslin and Meya had described, the space between those buildings was dominated by green. Grass, trees, shrubs, flowers, all neatly tended, almost looking like a garden, making the place look less like an industrial compound and more like some kind of park with buildings built within it. A triangular logo was made of colored flowers between the two largest warehouses, just beside a large landing pad which held two Sticks and another dropship, which was also where he was instructed to land. As they circled to get over the landing pad, Jason darkened the windscreen so nobody could see inside, turning the windscreen black and impenetrable from the outside, and dark on the inside, the windscreen mode for when the ship was bow-first to a star. He extended the skids as he saw several red-skinned Makati in blue uniforms waddling around, interspersed with several Faey, also in blue. Jason extended the landing skids and set her down with a light touch.
“Welcome to Draconis,” Songa said.
“Welcome to Draconis,” Jason grunted, taking off his headset. “You two stay up here and keep quiet. Now let’s see how well I can pretend.” He picked up a datapad, opened the hatch separating the cockpit from the cargo compartment, went down the four step ladder to the cargo bay, took a deep, cleansing breath, then opened the forward hatch.
Sweet smelling air blew into his face, air that was warm and pleasant, air that was the air of an alien world. The air pressure outside was only slightly higher than the air inside, causing a brief influx of air into the cargo bay, and then Jason stepped out onto the steps and down, under a yellow sun, as three uniformed beings, two Makati and a Faey, moved towards him. Jason hid both his trepidation and his wonder and looking at an alien world, as he looked at the tall brown-barked trees between two warehouses in front of him and the narrow-leafed shrubs ringing its trunk at the base, and then the bell-shaped, drooping flowers that were grown around those shrubs. The logo was made of small daisy-looking flowers of many different colors, which created the ringed starburst within the triangle.
“Good afternoon,” the Makati on the left said in flawless Faey. “You’re from Vultech?”
“Yes sir,” he answered. Jason noticed that he had tiny horns poking out of his short white hair. “I’m supposed to pick up, uh,” he grunted, looking at the pad in his hand, “nine containers and five pallets.”
“We have it ready,” the Makati answered. “Can you turn your ship so your cargo door faces that building over there?” he asked, pointing to the warehouse his dropship was facing. “It’ll make loading a little easier.”
“Sure, no problem,” he said.
Jason turned the ship around, then came out and supervised the loading of the containers by a crew of Faey and Makati using hovering loading equipment, hovering forklifts and floating platforms that picked up the containers from above and carried them slung underneath. Jason and a Makati stood side by side, the Makati on a small hovering platform, as they checked the manifest of each container against a shipping order to make sure that nothing was missed or left out. “Lots of stuff in these. Your company a reseller or do they use it?”
“I think they use some and resell the rest,” he answered. “They do their thing, though, and I do mine. I try not to get involved, most of them don’t really like me all that much.”
“Why is that?”
“Cause they took a huge chance hiring a Terran pilot, I suppose,” he answered. “As far as I know, I’m the only one.”
“The controllers around Terra must be surprised to see your face,” he laughed.
“I keep it audio only, just because of that,” he answered. “I have to admit, I’m surprised by how this planet looks.”
“Your first time here?” the Makati asked, and Jason nodded. “Does it look a lot like your planet, or nothing like it?”
“Almost exactly like it,” he answered. “That tree over there almost looks like a maple, and those shrubs wouldn’t look out of place in a garden back home. Those little drooping flowers are like nothing I’ve ever seen, but those ones making up your logo look like daisies,” he said, using English for the names of the Earth-specific flora. “What does your planet look like?”
“Much different from yours or Draconis,” he answered. “We have much less water, and the planet looks like a big tan ball from orbit. Most of the planet is covered in a plant that you’d think was much like grass. The Makati are builders, but we’re also subterranean by nature. We like to build large cities under the surface, not on top of it. We have cities as big as Dracora, in vast underground chambers that we burrow out of the earth and rock. We like to leave the surface as untouched as possible.”
“Why is that?”
“Because that’s the way it’s always been,” he shrugged.
“Huh. Learn something new every day, I suppose.”
“You gonna stay and look around a bit? Do some sightseeing before you leave?”
“I wish I could, but I’m on a schedule,” he answered. “This planet is beautiful, and I feel really... weird, being here. My people never left our own planet really, and standing on another planet’s like something that most of my people never really thought possible five years ago.”
“You were behind Faey technology eh? Well, when the Faey first met us, them and us were about the same in technology.”
“Really? Did your people fight them?”
“Oh yes, there was a big war, but in the end, we ended up allying ourselves against the Gormin, and that alliance just held. The Makati became part of the Imperium. We’ve basically been part of the Imperium since it they started calling it the Imperium.”
“Why did the Makati join?”
“I can’t really tell you the specifics, but I can say that it’s mutually beneficial. We don’t like to fight, we like to build. We let the Faey do the fighting, they’re more suited for it. While they fight, we build. Most of Draconis was built by Makati engineering firms, you know.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“We did,” he said proudly. “Of course the outer appearances are their preference, but the Makati do the engineering and oversee the construction. They tell us what they want it to look like, and we make it happen. Faey can make good battleships, but they’re not very good civil engineers,” he said with a grin and a wink. “Anyway, the Faey do the fighting and they protect Makan, and the Makati build the infrastructure of the Imperium.”
“Makes me wonder why there aren’t many Makati on Earth then.”
“Where?”
“Terra,” he said, correcting himself. To the Imperium, Earth was called Terra.
“Well, have they done much reconstruction there, or are they just using the original cities?”
“They’re using the cities that are there.”
“That’s why. When they start building new things there, then you’ll start seeing us showing up, so we can survey sites and oversee construction. And I’d bet that there are some Makati there already, if they want to install modern public transportation and such.”
“Ah, well, I don’t live in a town big enough for that,” he shrugged.
“There ya go again. But eventually, you’ll start seeing us. When the Imperium wants things rebuilt or revamped or upgraded, they’ll call in a Makati firm to do the engineering, and the Makati will most likely hire and train Terran workers to do the actual construction. Why send an army of Makati to do the work when we can hire locally and train your people up, so they can learn to build it themselves?”
“Ah, so the Makati train most Faey engineers?”
“For civil engineering, you bet,” he affirmed. “For plasma systems and such, you’ll see as many Faey as you do Makati engineers. But the Faey just don’t have the soul of the Master Builder, so they leave us to do what we’re good at. That’s why our being part of the Imperium is mutually beneficial. We get to do what we’re good at doing, and they protect us, since fighting is what they are good at. Alright, this pallet’s good,” he said, waving a pallet on that was stopped for inspection. The Faey female, a very young one with pink hair, winked at Jason from her seat on on the platform and started it into the dropship. “Where’s my next container!” the Makati shouted. “Let’s get organized, people!”
Jason rather liked this diminutive Makati. Their conversation continued drifting into non-work related subjects as they inspected the containers, as the Makati asked him about being a pilot, and how it felt to be one of the rare Terrans that moved outside boundaries of his home planet. “Well, it’s nerve-wracking in one way,” he said, looking at two Faey that were looking at him as they passed by. “Back home, we used to stare at every Faey that went by, since we never saw them all that much. Here, everyone stares at me. It makes me feel like I’m in a glass bottle.”
The Makati laughed. “I imagine it does.”
“Now that I know how the Faey feel, maybe I won’t stare at them so... ” he started, but then a familiar shiver up his spine made him quickly look around. He looked in the direction of that feeling, and then saw him. It was a Kimdori, coming out of a door to a warehouse, a male Kimdori with black fur and wearing no clothing, carrying a datapad. The Kimdori looked right at him with eerie yellow eyes, then gave him the slightest of nods, as if acknowledging the fact that he knew he was there, and knew he could sense him.
“That’s a Kimdori,” the Makati told him. “I’m not all that fond of ‘em. They always give me the creeps.”
“He’s staring at me,” Jason told the Makati, covering the fact that he was the one that stared first.
“Just look away or he’ll come over here,” he said. “They do this thing where they grab you under your jaw, and they never ask to do it, they just do it. It’s some kind of custom, but I don’t like people touching me like that without asking first.”
Jason looked down, and held his pad up near the Makati’s so they could synchronize their lists as the last pallet was brought in for inspection, its contents on a reader affixed to the side of the titanium box. “Last pallet,” the Makati noted. “Alright, we have here three molecular sprayers, two portable metallurgical analyzers, two BZ-14 probes, five Class V PPGs, two... ” he cut himself off when a shadow blocked the sun, and both of them looked up to see the Kimdori. He was a hulking brute, a head taller than Jason, with coal black fur, wickedly long yellow claws, and peering amber eyes that stared down at them. Before Jason could react, he reached out and put his large clawed hand on Jason’s neck. Unlike the times when Jason was touched by Miaari and Kiaari, this time he felt the other side of that contact, of that communion. He felt this Kimdori, felt the creature’s mind through that touch, that communion. In that moment, the combined memories, thoughts, experiences, dreams, hopes, and fears of two separate entities were joined into a single communal being, a single mind, a single soul, made up of two parts. Thoughts and memories flowed freely between them. This Kimdori was named Grahl, and he was of the Mekh clan. He was a young Kimdori, only five years free of his mother’s den, currently on what Jason learned was the sojourn, a period in a Kimdori’s life when he or she was to roam the vastness of the galaxy for ten years and learn, observe, interact with other cultures and expand his knowledge. Once his sojourn was complete, he would return to his clan to be educated and trained. He was at Mezour because he was working for a Faey shipping company as a pilot, earning money that would help him move on when he was ready to explore another part of the galaxy, once he felt he was ready to leave Draconis.
And he knew about Jason. They all did, every single Kimdori. Grahl knew of him, and when he was aware that Jason was feeling the other side of that communion, touching on the part of them that was Grahl, he gave Jason a toothy grin and let go. Jason felt a little disoriented for a second, and then realized that everything he’d seen in their commune was removed... and what was more, he didn’t think to look at anything, so surprised he’d been by the feel of it. He remembered Grahl’s name, however, and he realized that if he’d thought to look into it, he could have remembered more. That’s was when he finally understood what Kiaari and Miaari meant about remembering what they saw. He would have had to make a conscious attempt at retaining anything that came from the other side of that communion. He’d taken special note of Grahl’s name and his clan, and recalled that he was on his sojourn, because that had kind of jumped out at him when the bond was firm. But he hadn’t looked at anything else, and such, he couldn’t remember any of it.
The large Kimdori let his big hand linger on the side of Jason’s neck, then he simply turned and walked away without a word.
“See, what did I tell you?” the Makati growled under his breath to Jason.
Jason put his own hand to his neck and looked at the Kimdori as he ambled away. Something very... significant had happened there. He wasn’t quite sure what it was, but he knew that something had.
“Uh, I meant to ask, why did I see so many ships that aren’t Imperial when I approached Draconis?” he asked, trying to not sound rattled.
“Well, Draconis is a major hub,” he answered. “Most other races don’t like coming here cause of Faey telepathy, but they are major players in the galactic scene. The Imperium isn’t the biggest civilization out there, but we’re one of the most well armed, and we’re competitive when it comes to technology. And then there’s telepathy,” he chuckled. “Those species that can handle it come here to do business, some actually come here just to come on holiday since Draconis is such a pretty planet, and there’s always diplomats. Just about all the diplomats that come here are telepathic themselves, though. Nobody likes sending someone here who’s at that much of a disadvantage.”
“What do you think about working with them?”
“I’ve been around Faey all my life,” he shrugged. “I’m used to knowing that they might be hearing what I’m thinking, and they know not to take random thoughts seriously. Trust me, you get used to it.”
“I hope so. I didn’t see more than like five Faey before I got this job, now I’m around them every day. It makes me a little nervous.”
“That’ll pass. Just be yourself, friend. They’ll get used to you, and you’ll get used to them.”
“That’s so easy to say,” he grunted.
The Makati chuckled. “You’ll see. Alright, this one’s good, and that’s basically it. I need you to sign this invoice right here,” he said, holding up the datapad and pointing. “And I need your signature to acknowledge receipt here. And I’ll need you to come with me and inspect the loading. Once you’re satisfied it was loaded correctly, I’ll need your signature one more time.”
“Okay,” he nodded.
After signing for the shipment, inspecting the loading to make sure it was balanced and everything was secure, Jason initialed off on that, said his goodbyes to the friendly Makati, and then buttoned up the dropship. He returned to the cockpit and sat down in the pilot’s chair, and gave Luke and Songa a steady look. “Well, that went smoothly. Any trouble, Songa?”
“None at all,” she replied. “I may be a doctor, but I’m a good telepath, dear. We’ve been perfectly hidden.”
“Good. Now let’s go home.”
“Home sounds good to me,” Luke agreed with a nod.
The trip to Draconis had been to buy the supplies needed to refit the dropship for stealth, and it had been thorough. Now that they had everything that they needed, they started the same day.
They already had a plan, and they already had experience doing a refit, so the beginning was very orderly. Everyone already knew what to do, and they’d already worked up a schedule and design plans to go by. They started almost as soon as the dropship was unloaded, and Tom Jackson started his task as soon as it got dark so Luke could take him back to Charleston, where he would assemble his team, gather up supplies, and then fly to Cheyenne Mountain. Jason thought it was a good idea, which would let them get as much done in Cheyenne Mountain as they could while they were refitting the dropship. Tom’s team turned into a thirty man regiment, including one of the doctors, Rann. Songa stayed at the warehouse, and Yohnne remained in Charleston to keep watch over Kumi, who no longer needed around the clock attention, but did need a doctor to remain with her.
The refit began by sectioning off the warehouse. They hung a curtain from the ceiling rafters that hid the front half of the warehouse from the back doors, covered over the window on the door from the office into the warehouse, and then installed some fans and ventilation. Hiding the dropship was critical because they knew that they would be receiving shipments, and anyone bringing those shipments might see the dropship. They didn’t want anyone to have any suspicion about what was going on. The refit team had already passed the biggest test, the ability to control themselves in the presence of hostile Faey, but that was a skill that they wouldn’t have to exercise very often. Lincoln only had about two hundred Faey total in it, and they had no reason to come out here, since the warehouse was way, way off the beaten path.
Some contact was necessary, though. Through CivNet, Jason bought a truck and a car to be used, and it was using that truck that Songa went on her food runs. Jason set her up so she could use the corporate account, and she went out every day to buy sundries and perishables for the refit team. She didn’t go to the same store twice, and they were still getting the majority of their food from Charleston in shipments that Luke or Jason collected every three days. Some of it was dropped off at the warehouse, the rest was sent on to Cheyenne Mountain.
It was an exhausting time for Jason. When he wasn’t working in Lincoln, he was flying the skimmer back and forth between Lincoln, Charleston, and Cheyenne Mountain, which he never really got to see more than the entry tunnel. His visits there entailed him landing with his tail to the entry tunnel, opening the cargo hatch, and helping them unload while the ship was still under power... and that was always nervous. The ship’s hull was charged, and it required them to wear special rubber rain suits to unload the skimmer, so nobody got electrocuted. When he was at Lincoln, he was always busy. He worked on the dropship. He continued to try to search out the link between Temika and Tim, who had been rather surprised to learn that they were distant relatives, and had jokingly started calling each other brother and sister. He still continued to train people in piloting, and he rather shamefully admitted that his current focus was to get Jyslin up to class three level as quickly as possible. It had nothing to do with any need of the community or the resistance, he just wanted her to be able to pilot a dropship or skimmer so she always had that option if the worst happened and she had to run. The protection of his fiancée mattered more to him than anything else. He kept in frequent contact with Tom in Colorado, and also with Yohnne and Kumi back in Charleston, trying to stay up to date on all the matters and issues of the three positions, and also to ride others to do their parts. He contacted Rann every day to make sure he was continuing work on his DNA pattern scanner, which he had plenty of time to work on given that he was only in Colorado in case someone got injured. If he wasn’t seeing a patient, he was working on that device.
But, things were progressing well. The refit was ahead of schedule and got further and further ahead of schedule every day, since everyone knew exactly what to do and did it well. The dropship had a much larger surface area than his skimmer, but this time, instead of applying the external layers by hand, they were using a machine, an automated molecular sprayer that coated the dropship in the exact thickness, right down to the molecule. That device was literally saving them weeks of time. It looked like a three foot tall spider with six legs, and that was the name it had been given, the spider. They simply programmed it with desired thickness, loaded it with the material to spray, and let it go. It crawled over the ship on its own laying down a layer, it knew where it had already gone, and it avoided those areas it was programmed not to spray. It also checked its own work repeatedly, scanning the surface with an on-board metallurgical scanner to ensure proper purity and thickness. While the spider applied the outer coatings, teams installed the shield emitters, while other teams ran the cabling from the emitters to the ship’s existing power and data networks. The software was Jason and Jyslin’s job, for Jyslin was good at TEL, but not as good as Steve had been... but any help at all was greatly appreciated, for TEL wasn’t Jason’s strong suit. They already had a working CMS program module for the skimmer, so Jason and Jyslin put their head together and bent themselves about the task of porting it over to the dropship. The core of the program would remain unchanged, they’d just have to make some alterations based on the dropship’s differing construction. There would be more emitters and more doors, as well as the rather tricky three-door layout of the back cargo doors, with the two vertical upper doors and the horizontal lower door, that lowered to become a ramp.
Days blurred into weeks, and weeks blurred into a month, as it got warmer and warmer outside as April faded into May, and the outside of the dropship took on its final appearance as the spider finished its final layer of Neutronium, which had been molecularly aligned so the dropship appeared gray, with the Vultech logo in blue on the nose, just under the windscreen, a logo that could be erased in about ten seconds with an annealer. Two weeks ahead of schedule, the outer coatings had been applied and the shield emitters had been installed and inspected to ensure that the emitters were touching the right layers of the outer shell. There was much more work to be done, but that work was now inside, as they finished running the cabling and testing their work, one emitter at a time, one section of dataline or plasma conduit at a time. The software side was progressing nicely, for Jason and Jyslin often worked at the same time, and they stayed in telepathic contact at all times so they knew what the other was doing to the program. Jason bought a panel just for her, and they would sit at a table in the office, facing each other, each of them tapping away at the holographic keyboards of their panels, both panels and minds linked with the other as they kept track of what was going on.
Jason had been quite satisfied with the work on the dropship, for they’d hit no major snags whatsoever. The only real issue they’d had had been figuring out how to set up and program the spider, but once they had that figured out and working, it had been smooth and efficient.
Work on other fronts was progressing quite satisfactorily as well. Rann was nearly finished with his DNA sequence tester, and had showed it to him the last time Jason had gone to Cheyenne Mountain. It was smaller than a datapad, a tiny rectangular device that Jason could put in his pocket, which had attached leads that ran down to the fingers. Rann had installed those sensors in a glove, that would basically allow the user to touch someone’s bare skin with the glove and have a reading in about two seconds, which would be fed into an earphone that connected to the unit. It was a solid and sound little device, small, portable, easy to use, and very, very well engineered. Rann could have made one hell of an engineer.
Rann was so damn smart. Because he knew that it would be terribly inefficient to have someone go around and test people handshake by handshake, he had devised a cunning, cunning little plan for a similar unit that would be used remotely. His idea was to install the sensors on something that a vast number of people would touch, hook it up to an analyzer, and also have a button camera somewhere nearby that would take the picture of everyone who touched whatever the sensor was on, but then save a picture of anyone who produced a positive match. Adding in a small communications device that would have the unit call Jason’s panel and upload the data of a positive match meant that they could be set and then left alone. Add in a few anti-intrusion devices that would cause them to burn out if tampered with, scatter them through the world, and then wait for matches.
This had such potential. The best place to put these devices would be on door handles, ATMs, and on the card readers on public transportation systems in large cities, on things that would require people to press buttons that had the sensors attached to them. Rann could make a sensor that was so small that it would be almost invisible, so it would just be a matter of setting something up that wouldn’t be easily detected, or something that wouldn’t break quickly from heavy use.
Jason put Rann to work on the idea immediately, though Rann had expected that and was already halfway done with his design. Jason made a special run to bring Rann some extra materials and supplies he’d need to build the prototype of his idea, and Jason went back to Lincoln with the schematics that Rann had drawn up for the device.
Though he would have loved to have tinkered with Rann’s design, getting the dropship’s CMS module ready was the priority. He dedicated himself to that as the installation crew finished its testing and started reassembling the interior of the ship, working for three straight days with Jyslin to finish the module, and then to test it with simulations to ensure it passed muster. They finished the installation of the CMS system in the ship before they were done, however, and Jason allowed them to rest, sending Songa out for beer, wine, chips, and the fixings for a barbecue while Jason and Jyslin finished their part.
From what he heard, it had been quite a party. Jason and Jyslin didn’t attend, because they were busy, but everyone else in Lincoln did, enjoying a mild late spring afternoon with a grill Songa bought from Home Depot, hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken, shrimp, Faey meru, which was a meat from a lizard that tasted like buttered lobster, and more beer than they could drink. Songa got drunk, got full, decided that she was too pale, then went to take a nap while sunning herself on the tarmac... which she did naked. To say that she had quite a crowd of spectators was an understatement. Jason had idly wondered what that must have looked like after he heard about it, and Temika wasted no time sharing an image of memory with him of Songa laying nude on the tarmac, blanket under her, with lots of men looking on eagerly, and not a few of the women also looking on, but more scandalized than appreciative. When Jason publicly mused that her hair wasn’t the same shade of blue all over, Songa immediately replied that she didn’t get many chances to let her pubic hair bleach in the sun like the hair on her head, then decided that Temika’s image wasn’t quite flattering enough, so she came down and showed Jason that darker hair, in person... with Jyslin in the room.
Ah, Faey. He just had to admire the utter lack of modesty they had. If anything, it always gave him such wonderful things to look at. There was just something undeniably sexy about a woman with her pants and panties around her knees, proudly showing off a neatly trimmed triangle of pubic hair while talking aloud about how she needed to sunbathe nude more often, without even batting an eye.
But, it was also an important step, Jason understood. Songa was losing her sense of distance from the group, starting to interact, to make friends, and since she was feeling so much more comfortable, she was starting to revert to her more Faey mentality, and that included a lack of human-based modesty. There were no standards of dress in Faey society. In the summer, and on hotter planets, it wasn’t illegal, and truly wasn’t very uncommon, to see both men and women going topless, or even completely nude, in public. To the Faey, the nude body was an object of beauty, nearly a living work of art to be admired, not an object of shame to be covered and hidden. And the more beautiful the Faey, the more apt he or she was to go without clothes. This was also a human tendency, where the ones with the better bodies showed more of it off, but the main difference was that there was that line of what was considered indecent that didn’t exist in Faey society.
Jyslin certainly didn’t miss the fact that Songa had turned him on, and made sure to remind him that night just who had the hotter body.
It was that morning, as they lounged in the small bed in the tiny cubicle off the main office that was their private bedroom that Jyslin broached a subject Jason had forgotten about. I just wanted you to know, Symone had a talk with me yesterday.
Oh? What about?
Tim.
What about Tim?
She wants me to fuck him, she answered immediately. She felt it’s only fair, since she’s had sex with you.
But it’s not like she’s not here.
True, but she also feels that it’s necessary, and so do I, she answered soberly, which caused him to look over at her.
Why is it necessary?
Think of it as a demonstration of friendship, she answered. For me and Symone to feel we’re on the same level as friends, and since she’s had you, she has to reciprocate by letting me have Tim.
You sound, eager, he accused.
You bet your ass I’m eager, she replied immediately. Tim is very sexy, and he has a nice dick. I’ve been wanting to sample that equipment since I got a good look at it in the bathroom back in Hawaii.
You never told me.
Why should I? I’m sure you’ve had thoughts here and there about other women, and I caught that little fantasy about you bending Songa over and sticking your cock in her when she dropped her pants and showed you her pussy. I assure you, lover, women have the same daydreams about men.
Jason blushed furiously, and felt both embarrassed and humiliated.
I never said I was mad, Jyslin told him with a giggle. It’s only healthy for men to have fantasies about women, even total strangers. It’s natural. And women have the same fantasies about men. I’m just lucky that the man I’ve had fantasies about is Symone’s husband. Since she took care of you while I was gone, now I get to see if Tim’s dick feels as good as it looks.
I’m not sure I know how to feel about it.
Well, how did you feel about fucking Symone?
Very unsettled, he answered. I felt like I was violating my friendship with Tim.
How did Tim feel?
He didn’t care at all. I mean he really didn’t care. He even seemed to encourage it.
Well, that’s the kind of attitude you need to foster, love. I can absolutely assure you, the only thing I’m interested about with Tim is his dick. I just want to fuck him, and you know Faey custom, love. It’s just sex. I’m not going to join minds with him, it’s not going to be anything more than buddy sex. I’m curious about him, Symone owes me, and I mean to satisfy that curiosity. And when I’m done, it won’t change how I feel about us at all. I want to have sex with Tim, but I want to make love with you. Those are two very different things. You know that.
Yeah, I know that, but I’ve always had an issue about it. I think it bothers me more that this is about Tim than it would if it was a total stranger.
It’s not going to change how I feel about you, or about Tim, at all, love. Well, not completely. Afterwards, I can always tell you how good he is in bed, and I’ll certainly be a little more intimate with him in some ways. But to me, that’s a good thing. Symone is my best friend, and I want to be more intimate with her and more intimate with her husband. I want to be able to talk about sex with Tim to her, since we talk sex about you all the time, she told him with a naughty little grin.
Jason flushed a little. I’m not sure I want to know about what you two say to each other.
It’s just standard sex talk, love, she grinned. Size, stamina, favorite positions, and how good you are at them. I want to be able to compare with Symone about Tim the way we compare about you.
Well, I’m so glad that both of you weren’t disappointed, he sent ruefully.
Symone really wants more sex with you, Jyslin sent honestly. It’s not that she’s not satisfied with Tim, but good sex is good sex, and variety is good in sex or you get bored and stagnant. She likes you, she likes your body, and she likes the way you fuck her. There’s an idea. While I’m matting pubic hair with Tim, why don’t you take Symone somewhere and fuck her?
I’m not sure I could do that.
It’s easy, silly. Take her clothes off, spread her legs, get it up, then stick it in her. Slide it out, push it back in, then repeat as necessary.
Jason couldn’t help but laugh at that, which made her grin impishly. Thank you oh so much for that lesson, he sent to her dryly.
Actually, I think I’m going to insist, she sent to him, quite seriously. I thought you were over this hang-up, but I see that you’re not, so we need to address it. When I go to collect on what Symone owes me with Tim, I’m going to send her back here and have her give you some remedial education on some of the customs between two very close Faey friends.
You really don’t have to do that.
Yes, love, I do, she told him, her eyes serious. You felt uncomfortable having sex with Symone when I wasn’t here. Well, now I am here, and now I’m sending her to our bed with my blessing, and at the same time I’m going to be going to Symone’s bed and experiencing her husband. When two Faey are as close as me and Symone, this isn’t just normal, it’s expected. Your heart belongs to me, but I’m more than happy to lend out your dick to my best friend, and she’s more than happy to lend out her husband’s dick to me. Symone agrees with it, I agree with it, and Tim agrees with it. How can you still feel uncomfortable with It when your only real issue with it is how you think it affects Tim?
You’re following your Faey customs, love, and I don’t fault or grudge you for it. And I don’t think any different about you or Symone because of it. But I’m also following my own customs with Tim. In human society, having sex with your best friend’s wife isn’t acceptable.
Yes, but Tim has no problem with it. Let’s look at it this way, Jason. Do you trust me?
With my life, he answered immediately.
Good. Now, tell me honestly, how do you think me having sex with Tim will change our relationship?
It won’t change it at all, he answered, again, immediately. It was the simple truth.
Alright then. You’ve had sex with Symone. Has it changed your relationship with her?
Not really. She got a lot, well, closer afterwards, like having sex with her allowed her to get more intimate with me. I think it really kinda got better afterwards.
Okay, good, so your relationship with Symone actually got better after you had sex with her. Now, how did having sex with Symone change your relationship with Tim?
It didn’t, not really, he said. Tim knew I was self-conscious about it, and he really tried to make me feel comfortable. He told me he understood what Symone was doing and why she was doing it, and it didn’t bother him, but I guess I never really believed him. I still think that he doesn’t approve of it on some level, and because of that, it just doesn’t make me feel right.
But that’s not true, and that’s what you need to understand, she told him. Love, Tim understands Symone and the Faey much better than you do. It really, truly, and honestly does not bother him. In fact, he approves of it. I’ve talked with him about it when I got back, because I wanted to know where he stood on the matter. Tim told me that if Symone was going to be having sex with anyone else, he wanted it to be with you. Do you know why?
No.
Because he’s your best friend, and he loves you like a brother. He knows that Symone really likes you, even loves you as a friend, and he also knows that this is one way she shows that affection. But the main reason, is because he knows that you will treat Symone with respect and kindness, and he knows that Symone will be just as good to you. And he knows all this just as much as he knows that no matter what, Symone loves him with all her heart, and he never has to worry about where she stands with him. Have you ever sat down and had a long talk with Tim about this?
Well...
I thought not. I want you to get up, right now, and go talk to Tim. And I don’t mean hedging, hewing, and hawing. Talk about this, and come to understand how he feels by asking him. And talk to him about how he feels about what’s coming. Tell him that today, I get him. Now that the ring’s going to be on the other post, that he’s going to be having sex with his best friend’s wife, talk to him and understand how he feels, and tell him how you feel about it. He might be as nervous about it as you were, now that he’s the one about to be handed off like a zer ball.
That’s true. I know I was nervous enough when Symone... well, you get the idea.
She grinned. Jason. You can talk sex about Symone with me. Trelle knows, I talk enough sex about you with her. It’d be interesting to see if you think she’s as hot as she thinks you are.
Yes, but then we start getting into those “questions with no answers” questions where you ask me to compare her with you, and no matter what I say, it’s the wrong answer.
She laughed. Point. So get up and go talk to Tim.
I can’t.
Why not?
You’re on top of me.
She slapped him on the shoulder, but did roll off of his chest and give him room to move. Now, go talk to Tim.
I guess I will.
That conversation was both enlightening and somewhat surprising, because Tim was indeed nervous about the idea of sharing a bed with Jyslin. Outside of that, though, Jason found that Jyslin had been dead-on about Tim. He truly did understand, even better so than Jason, about the intricacies of a Faey relationship and his comfort within it. After sitting down over coffee and donuts and talking with Tim for most of the morning, putting off work and duties to do so, Jason felt that he had misunderstood both Tim and his own outlook about their rather unusual situation.
“Yeah, at first it bothered me a little,” Tim admitted. “I mean, my wife was gonna go sleep with another man. But then I remembered just who my wife is, and what we’ve shared. I’ve look into her soul, Jason. I mean all the way into her soul,” he said in a distracted manner, his eyes distant. “After that, I just can’t find any jealousy in me. None at all. She could sleep with every guy in the warehouse, and it still wouldn’t change how I feel about her, or how I know she feels about me. Isn’t that the way you feel about Jyslin?”
“Exactly the way, but I just wasn’t sure how you’d feel about it,” he said. “I wasn’t sure just where you and her stood like that. I’ve never asked, and I wasn’t gonna. It’s just too personal. That’s why I’ve never really come to talk to you like this before. Not like this. It just seemed something I shouldn’t be talking about, even to you.”
“Well, now you know that it’s alright. I’m not mad, I’m not jealous, and I really didn’t mind. Actually, I’m rather grateful. You made Symone happy, you showed her real friendship by doing what you did, and you made her feel both special and responsible. So, I should really thank you for putting aside how you felt to make sure she felt good about herself. So, does that help some?”
“Yeah, it does, actually,” he admitted. “It’s not like I’m gonna be pulling Symone’s pants down whenever you’re not looking, but it makes me feel better about the past.”
“Hell, if you want to, go for it,” Tim shrugged. “Symone sure as hell won’t say no. She thinks you’re the second best lay on Earth, and she’s told me straight out that she’d really like more time in bed with you. Just don’t wear her out to where she’s not up to it when I want some.”
Jason gave Tim a wild look, then both of them burst out laughing. “I’m not sure if you were serious or not,” Jason said.
“Oh, I was serious enough,” he said honestly. “And now I guess it’s my turn to feel like a slab of meat.”
Jason laughed delightedly. “That’s exactly how it made me feel, but I can tell you that it’s not going to be out of duty. Remember back in Hawaii, when Jyslin walked in on you in the bathroom?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, she told me that ever since then, she’s entertained the idea of a night with you,” he repeated what Jyslin had told him. “She thought you had some good equipment.”
Tim laughed. “I knew she was staring at my johnson,” he said.
“She was. She told me this morning she’s looking forward to getting back from Symone what Symone got from her.”
“Well, that makes me less nervous. I mean, if Jyslin wants to ride the pony, then it won’t feel like it’s being forced, that we’re doing it because we have to.”
“Well, just be nice,” Jason told her. “Nothing she doesn’t want to do, stuff like that. I know it doesn’t matter here or there, but you have my blessing. Because, like you said, I know where Jyslin will be tonight, and that’s enough for me.”
“Well, can we have fun?”
Jason laughed. “Well, I guess so,” he drawled. “Just don’t have too much fun, or I’ll never see her again.”
Tim gave him a look, then burst out laughing. “Oh yeah, I remember that,” he said. “For days after Symone’s first time with you, that’s all I heard about. Jason this, Jason that. She went over every minute of it. It was almost embarrassing. She even compared the sizes of our dicks.”
“She didn’t!” Jason gasped.
“Oh yes she did,” he answered. “But then I think she realized she was getting close to stepping on egos, and declared that we were the same size.”
“I’m starting to feel a little, abused here,” he grunted with a rueful chuckle. “Symone talks about it with you, and she talks about it with Jyslin, but doesn’t talk about it with me.”
“This is why you should look up from your panel from time to time,” he teased.
“I think I’d better start,” Jason grunted.
“And about not talking about it, well, she wasn’t because she knew it made you feel a little uncomfortable. I mean talking about it the way she did with us. She was trying to work you up to that point.”
“Yeah, Jyslin said more or less the same thing.”
“At least now I know why it was. You should have come to me about this earlier.”
“I know, but I didn’t want to jeopardize our friendship, Tim.”
“I don’t think much of anything can do that, Jayce. We’ve been best buds for a long time. It’d take way more than that to push us apart.”
“That makes me very relieved to hear that, Tim,” Jason said.
Tim reached out his hand, and Jason clasped it, which brought a familiar tickle to Jason’s mind. Jason and Tim touched each other with Talent, and in that brief moment, all of Jason’s reservations and fears about driving a wedge between himself and Tim vanished with a simple, heartfelt assurance that Tim truly, honestly, and sincerely understood, and not only didn’t mind, but actively approved of Symone’s actions and behavior.
“Now, I hate to talk and run, but I need to run a few more simulations. We’re trying to fix a bug in the CMS module, and I’d like to get the module done by Friday. I suggest that you don’t get involved in anything until afterward.”
Tim laughed. “I’ll make sure to keep myself available. You know what this means, though.”
“What?”
“Now, whenever they start comparing us, we can start comparing them.”
Jason gave him a look, then laughed. “I’m not sure I’m that brave, Tim.”
“We should be. A healthy dose of ‘her tits feel nicer than yours’ could really shut one of them up when she starts getting smug.”
“And if you say that to the wrong one, you’re gonna be sleeping on the floor.”
“A risk worth taking,” he said with an evil smile.
Jason had to admit, he really didn’t have as much of an understanding as Tim did, but after talking to Tim, and talking to Jyslin before, he was starting to understand what he already knew. There was a big difference between knowing something and understanding it, but now Jason was finally starting to comprehend the difference. He was finally beginning to understand the rather unusual situation that he, Tim, Jyslin, and Symone were in... or unusual to him. To Symone and Jyslin, it was perfectly natural. And for Tim, who had come to understand it long before him, it was much less surprising. Jason and Tim were marrying Faey, not humans, so that meant that they had to be more tolerant and understanding of their women, because they had customs and a culture that were not their own. The special relationship between Jyslin and Symone had implications that reached beyond their friendship and affected Jason and Tim. And Tim had come to understand those unique responsibilities, because he understood Symone, and understood his relationship with her better than Jason had understood his own relationship with Jyslin. Tim had understood both Symone and Faey culture, and so, when that culture created a situation that would be considered out of bounds in human society, Tim was able to understand it, and move past it. Jason had not.
At least not until now.
Now, Jason could truly say that it no longer bothered him, what had happened, because he knew that it did not bother Tim... and that had been at the core of his issues with the situation between Symone and Jyslin. Jason had felt uncomfortable because he felt that it was highly improper for him to sleep with his best friend’s wife. It was a clash of his culture with Symone’s. But Tim had looked past that, and knew in his heart that Symone loved him, so it wasn’t really an issue with him. And like Jyslin had said and Tim had confirmed, if there was anyone that he would prefer Symone to sleep with, it was Jason, because Jason would treat her right. Now Jason understood that. And since Tim was alright with it, Jason could at least understand it, and look from the other side with the same consideration and grace. He would permit Jyslin to enjoy the same privileges that Symone had, because he loved her, he knew that it was her way, and he knew that she loved him in return and would always come back to him.
It was almost a strange sense of... freedom, knowing that he had such faith in Jyslin that he would allow her to sleep with another man, but there it was. He knew that she was going to go have sex with Tim. It was what she wanted to do, and it was what Symone wanted her to do, for it was Symone’s way of finalizing the bonds of friendship between Jyslin and Symone. Symone had had sex with Jason while Jyslin was away, serving as a surrogate, and now that Jyslin was back, Symone wanted to give back to Jyslin what she had taken with Jason. And there was also the fact that Jyslin had always had a fantasy about Tim, so it certainly wouldn’t be about duty.
Jason stayed in the office and worked on the CMS module, just letting things basically go the way they were going to go. But of course, he knew when Jyslin went to Symone, and then Symone summoned Tim, because Jyslin told him so. And in that moment, when he knew that it was inevitable, that Jyslin was going to be having sex with his best friend, Jason looked inside himself to see what was there.
Grace and blessing.
If it was what Jyslin wanted, then so be it. In Faey culture, what she wanted wasn’t only accepted, it was expected. Jyslin and Symone were friends, Symone had slept with Jyslin’s husband, and now Jyslin would sleep with Symone’s husband. Was he jealous? Maybe a tiny bit, knowing that she was no longer his and his alone. But that was just her body. Her heart was still his, and only his.
And that was really the only part of her that mattered.
The door opened, and he didn’t have to look up to know who it was. Symone flopped into the chair on the other side of the table, put her elbow atop it, then leaned her cheek in her hand. Jason, she sent with open eagerness. Jyslin told me to come down here.
I know she did, he answered mildly.
Well?
Well what?
Well, let’s go.
Symone, you don’t have to.
Oh, I know I don’t have to, but I want to, she answered immediately and with utter sincerity.
Jason looked up at her. Well, if you want to, that’s another story, he sent honestly. He offered his hand to her, which she immediately accepted. Shall we?
I can’t wait, she said with a slowly blooming smile, a smile that became radiant as her eyes registered that Jason seemed to finally understand the complex relationship that the four of them shared, and had found his place within it.
And he was right. That day did not change anything in the relationship of the four with one another.
In a way, it made things a little more open and honest. Freed up of his reticence about speaking to Tim about certain subjects he’d always felt were off limits before, it let Jason and Tim deepen their own friendship and become even better friends. Jyslin and Symone were almost smug about it all, at least until Tim started comparing. That earned him a kick in the shin from Symone when she started coming up on the short end of a few of those comparisons.
Jason had always felt very close to Symone because of what they shared, a kind of intimacy that only a man and woman who had had sex could feel, and now Tim felt a similar closeness to Jyslin. He remarked on that to Jason the next day, remarking that he’d been so nervous at first, but then he felt so comfortable, and afterwards it was almost like Symone in how totally at ease he felt with her, joking with her, making what some would consider lewd comments, and having one those necessary episodes of comparison, as Jyslin compared him to Jason, and Tim compared her to Symone. After all, after a man had sex with a woman, how could anything else feel out of bounds? They’d already engaged in one of those most intimate acts... for a human at least... there was to undertake.
And how did Jason feel? The exact same he did before. He loved Jyslin with all his heart, he was still best buds with Tim, and Symone was still one of his closest friends. He didn’t feel jealous at all, because Jyslin had come home to him, remarked about what she felt was a very pleasurable encounter with Tim, made some of those inevitable comparisons, remarked that future trysts with him would certainly be worth pursuing, then she kissed him... and that kiss told him that she was where she belonged, and that was with him.
And that was that. The matter quickly became just another aspect of the relationship between Jason, Tim, Symone, and Jyslin. They were two couples that happened to be close to one another, couples who were best friends with the other.
It didn’t go without notice, that was for sure. Temika cornered Jason about it the next day, and after he told her what happened, she blushed furiously, stormed away... and then came back and demanded details. Temika was a very close friend of both Jason and Tim, and it took her a while to come to understand the complicated issues underlying what was going on. But, to Jason’s surprise, when he finally managed to explain them in a manner that made sense to her, she had no problems at all with it.
“Y’all are adults, sugah,” she told him. “And heah lately Ah’ve started understandin’ the blueskins a little better, what with there bein’ so damn many of ‘em around lately. As long as nobody got hurt and you and Tim ain’t mad at each other, and Symone and Jyslin ain’t mad, hell, what mo’ needs be said? Er, y’all aren’t like wife-swappin’ now, or like all doing it in the same room at the same time, are ya?”
Jason laughed. “No, I don’t think that we are,” he answered. “Though Jyslin did mention that she might ask Symone about giving her another go with Tim,” he recalled.
“Uh oh, sounds like you got some competition, sugah,” she laughed.
“None at all, Mika. That’s what I didn’t really understand before, but I understand it now, at least I understand it now that I’ve been on this side of it instead of the other side.”
“Ah remember you talking about it with me befo’, after Ah found out Symone was screwin’ you. You didn’t seem all that enthusiastic about it then.”
“I wasn’t, because I thought that it just wasn’t right for me to be fooling around with my best friend’s wife, but that was when I was trying to look at things from a human perspective, you know. Well, Symone and Jyslin aren’t human, they’re Faey, and I finally get what they’ve always tried to explain to me. I guess I had to experience it before I’d understand it. Anyway, as far as the Jyslin and Tim thing goes, it’s just that she’s her own woman, but she’s also my woman. I know her, I love her, and I trust her. I know that any interest she has in Tim is purely physical, and if she wants to go play with Tim, she’s more than welcome to, because it’s Tim, and because I trust her. If it was someone else, well, that’d be a different story. But I know that all she’s looking for from Tim is sex.”
“You say it like that’s all it is,” she grunted.
“That is all it is,” he answered. “You’ll find out when you finally find a man of your own, Mika, and you join minds with him during sex. That puts it all in an entirely new light.”
“Ah don’t think that’s ever gonna happen,” she told him. “It’s been so long since Ah had good sex, Ah wouldn’t know it from a hole in the ground.”
“Pft, sure it will. Mike’s been trying to work himself up to it, you know. Asking you out.”
“Ah know. He’s kinda cute, and he’s got a hot bod, but Ah don’t know if Ah’m ready yet. Even now, whenever someone touches me, Ah gotta resist the urge tah scream an’ run away.”
“Well, just remember that when you are ready, there’s someone out there that’s patiently waiting for you,” he told her.
“Just don’t start tryin’ to pimp yo’self out, Jayce. Yo’ cute, but you ain’t that cute.”
Jason gave her a surprised look, then laughed so hard he hurt something in his throat.
Temika wasn’t the only one who noticed. Meya and Myra came up to him while he was working on the TEL module, when Jyslin was grabbing a snack, and sat on either side of the table. “And what can I do for you, ladies?” he asked.
Spill, Myra sent.
Spill what?
We want details, Meya sent eagerly. All of them. The dirtier the better.
Details about what?
We heard you and Tim swapped, so spill, Myra sent, leaning over and looking down into his eyes. Every pant, moan, thrust, and grope.
And what makes you think we’re going to talk about that? Jason asked.
Because we’re friends, aren’t we? Myra sent innocently. And we certainly wouldn’t get without giving. We can tell you all about our last encounter, but ours are more fun.
We share men sometimes,Meya sent with a smile, as if she was trying to surprise Jason with that information. Men love it when they get twins. We have lots of good stories.
Jason had to laugh. I imagine you do, he sent pleasantly. And exactly who did you hear this from, by the way?
Songa, Meya answered. She was in the storeroom beside the one that Tim and Jyslin were using, so she heard it all.
Jason tracked down Songa after disengaging himself from the twins, and all she could do was grin at him. It’s not like it’s a big thing, Jayce, she told him as she sorted sheets she’d just retrieved from the laundry service that handled the linen for the warehouse. I kinda expected that you shared with Tim and Symone, you’re all best friends, after all. That kind of situation is quite common among my people. Me and Rann share a very similar arrangement with the couple that live beside us, back on Dracora. Me and Oda have been friends for years, I think Oda’s husband is quite sexy, and Rann thinks that Oda has gorgeous legs. We’ve shared with each other a few times, and Oda was kind enough to keep Rann happy last year when I was on trip to Arctus for a seminar. I take it you’d rather keep it quiet?
Please, most of the humans wouldn’t understand it.
Not a problem, Jayce. I just hope that soon, you and me are friends enough that I can make the same invitation to you. I can’t find a man here that piques my interest, I’ve been feeling my separation from Rann more and more with each day, and it’d be nice to have a friend that would take care of things like that for me.
Well, I hope we can be close friends too, Jason sent delicately, remembering his first experience with that kind of statement, long ago from Symone. He certainly wouldn’t encourage it, but he also didn’t want to offend her... and he did like Songa. She was very nice, witty, funny, and had a broad intellect that made her a delightful woman to talk to.
Well, then we need to get to know each other better, don’t we? She sent with a dazzling smile. Why don’t you and Jyslin have dinner with me tonight? I’m a good cook.
I’ll ask Jyslin if she’d like to come, he answered honestly.
After that little loose end was tied up, Jason settled back into an exhaustive routine, a routine that barely changed after the events of the previous days. Jason and Jyslin needed to finish the TEL module as quickly as they could, because the hardware was installed and the module was the only thing left. But despite his busy schedule, he and Jyslin did go have dinner with Songa, and went back to dinner with her every night that week. Songa really was a very good cook, and she was starved for some sincere conversation and just a feeling of inclusion. Her separation from Rann had hit her harder than she expected, and Jyslin had seen that, and was trying to make her feel better. Jason hadn’t noticed how lonely Songa had been since coming here, and he was glad that the evenings she now shared with Jason and Jyslin made her feel better.
The dinners with Songa were actually a boon, because they helped both Jason and Jyslin rest and relax, and return in the morning focused on the task at hand. Jason had wanted to finish the TEL module by Friday, but snags in the coding dealing with the complicated rear cargo doors pushed it back to Sunday, when they finally got a module that passed every scenario without any errors. It was about time, too, since the refit team was still here, lounging around, and getting a little bored and restless. Jason wanted them to be here in case there was a problem and they had to take the system apart to fix it. Sunday morning, they finished the module, and they immediately ran it over to the dropship and called everyone in for a test. Before everyone was even there, Jason slotted the stick holding the module and had the dropship command computer download the module and install it. Once that was done, he had it integrate the module, which caused it to appear on the display as a primary module, one that affected direct ship operations. “Alright, this is a hot test,” Jason called over the external speaker as the computer reported the module as ready, and Jyslin, in the copilot’s seat, started a debug session so they could locate any coding conflicts that might cause errors. “Everyone stand clear of the hull!”
Alright, we’re in debug mode on this console and it’s ready.
“Alright then, here we go. Bringing up the CMS.” Jason activated it, which caused a holograph of the dropship to appear in the air over them. The multitude of tiny red dots all began to turn green in random order, as the computer polled each emitter, then the system came online and activated as Jason tapped an icon in that hovering display, a refinement they added to make activation faster. The module was designed to tap power from the main engines if they were online, and one of the two standby PPGs if the engines were offline. The engines were off, so the system drew power from the secondary PPG. There was a faint whine as the power surged through the ship. Sections of the ship went from gray to red, and then from red to green as the CMS system charged the emitters, and then they fired. The ship quickly turned completely green on the display except for the open hatches, the rear cargo doors, and the landing skids.
We’re not showing any errors, Jyslin reported.
“Are we working out there?”
The system’s working except for the windshield, Meya responded as several people shouted the same thing.
“Windshield? Hold on,” Jason grunted, quickly issuing some commands. The CMS system was saying that the windscreen was working, but if they could see it from outside, then something was wrong. Jyslin...
Already on it, she broke in. Give me a second. Go ahead and test the hatches and doors while I track this down.
Alright. “Alright guys I’m gonna close the port forward hatch, watch it for me. Closing it now.” Jason closed the hatch, and watched as the door on the hologram flashed red, then the emitters flashed green, became steady green, and then the hatch door turned green. “Is it working?”
“Working fine!” someone shouted.
“Alright, closing the starboard aft hatch. Someone back there?”
I’m back here, Songa sent.
“Okay, closing it now.” He closed the hatch, and then watched as the module recognized the closed door and activated the emitters in it, which caused the door to flash red, the emitter dots on the display to flash green, turn green, and then the door turned green. “Alright, is it working?”
Working perfectly, she answered.
“Alright guys, now the ugly part, the part we had so much trouble with, the rear cargo doors. Anyone back there?”
“I am!” Mike Colbert shouted.
I found the bug with the windshield, Jyslin told him. I can hot fix this in about two minutes, love.
Alright, go for it. “Closing the rear cargo doors,” he called over the speaker. Jason watched intently as the three doors closed and locked, and when they locked, the CMS took over. It did exactly what they wanted it to do, recognizing each door separately, but not activating the system on any door unless all three were closed, because they all had to be closed in order for the CMS not to short out and blow emitters. But the program recognized the doors the way they intended, and when it saw all three doors closed and locked, which was vital, it activated the system in them. The doors flashed, primed, and then turned green. “Alright, how does it look?” Jason called.
“It worked just fine!” Mike shouted, though his voice was much distant now that Jason was hearing it through the external microphone and not through the open doors behind them.
Okay, got the code fixed for the windscreen, updating it, Jyslin told him with deft movements of her hands over her holographic keyboard. The module auto-updated and reset only in regards to the windscreen, a hot patch, and then the windshield on the hologram turned black, then turned red, then the emitter dots around the edge of it flashed green. Jason and Jyslin looked at the windscreen to see a visible charge flinch across it just as the windshield turned green on the hologram. “The windshield’s working now!” someone called from outside.
“Yeah, Jys fixed it. Everyone go around and make sure every window is black,” he said. “Let’s make sure the bug didn’t affect all the windows.”
Unlike Jason’s skimmer, the dropship had windows on the four hatches, the forward and aft hatches on both the starboard and port sides, which required them to replace the windows with transparent Vanadrium, just like the windshield, and isolate them from the rest of the ship. Jason waited as the workers walked around the ship, making sure to stay clear of it, and reported back that all four of the other windows were working properly. “Alright guys, it looks like it’s working. We’ll test the landing gear doors, and then we’ll do the pre-emption tests and test open door protocols, and if those pass, we’re done.”
Testing the landing gear would be after the pre-emption tests. The pre-emption tests took about five minutes, as they tested the module to ensure that it had the control over other systems that it needed to protect the integrity of the cloak. The dropship was armed and had shields, but those systems would not come online so long as the CMS was in operation, which was how it was supposed to work. They tested it to ensure that the CMS blocked shields, weapons, and disabled ship telemetry (which would be operating when they were flying the ship legally, so they had to make sure it didn’t give them away), which it did. They then picked the ship up off the floor and retracted the landing gear, which caused the CMS to recognize the closing of the gear doors, and then activate the system in them. After getting confirmation that the gear doors were covered, they then tested open door protocols by extending the landing gear. The instant the doors started to open, the CMS disengaged on them, which caused the doors to turn red. Once they put her back on the deck, they opened every hatch and the rear doors one by one, ensuring that the system turned off for the doors once they were opened, and the system worked perfectly. Once they tested it on the rear cargo doors, Jason and Jyslin gave each other a grin, and Jason deactivated the cloak. When the black faded from the hull, everyone outside knew it was done, and gave a cheer even before Jason’s voice came over the speaker. “Congratulations guys, it works perfectly. Great job!”
“This calls for another party!” someone shouted.
“Yeah, let’s get Songa drunk again!” someone else called, which caused everyone to break out into laughter, including Songa.
“Okay then, tonight we celebrate, but tomorrow we start packing,” Jason called over the speaker. “Tomorrow, we start moving to Cheyenne Mountain to help the others, and now that we have the dropship ready, we can finish up evacuating Charleston.”
How are we going to handle the warehouse?
There’s always going to be someone here, Jason said. I’m thinking we set up a three man staff that rotates every week, so people can do something that’s not quite so strenuous. A kind of working vacation.
Not a bad idea, she agreed. But you’d better give the people in Cheyenne a party, or they’re gonna be jealous. They’ve been working hard while the refit people have been standing around.
Oh, I intend to, believe me. But before we can have a party, we have to complete the move to Cheyenne. I need to talk to Tom, see where we stand. I know there’s more than enough room to move everything in, I just want to make sure us moving in won’t cause any problems. He’s the man to ask.
Well, we can’t do that until night. So until then, I think you need to relax a while. You’ve been working very hard, and you could use an afternoon off.
Yes ma’am.