 of the island chain. That island chain was nearly a thousand miles long, which put the island literally out by itself. The nearest inhabited island was nearly two hundred miles away. "I take it back. I'll call in and ask." He turned on the radio. "Oahu control, CS-18."

"Tower," came a male voice, and a young Faey man appeared on his console.

"I have a destination, and a question," he said. "Destination is Molikakaiha. CivNet says it's a wildlife sanctuary, but also says the beaches are public. Is it still public?"

"Hold on," he said, looking down and typing on his keyboard. "Yah, still public. You're cleared to destination Molikakaiha. There are no local restrictions and no traffic south of Oahu line. If you cross north of Oahu line, be aware of restricted air space around Oahu proper and Pearl Harbor and call in for further instructions."

"Understood. CS-18 out."

"Tower out."

"And that meant?" Tim asked.

"It meant that we can't fly north of the Oahu control station without calling for information about flight restrictions," Jason answered. "A line is a border that runs through the control station itself, and he defined which way it runs by telling me that north of it was restricted space."

"Oh. That makes sense."

"I'm so glad," Jason said dryly.

Molikakaiha was a ribbon of sand with some trees in the middle, and a very small, steep-sloped extinct volcano at its center. Jason circled the island twice until he found a good place to land, and gently touched down about a twenty yards from the waterline on a flat sand plateau whose edge gently angled down to the water, just to the edge of the treeline of palm, coconut, and banana trees. After he put the stairs down, they all filed out and set up their camp. Jason threw his large beach blanket over the sand under the wing, and Jyslin set up the grill as Symone and Tim set up the volleyball net. Then Jason filled up the cooler with ice, drinks, and some chilled snacks. The air was still a bit cool, and the breeze was strong, but he didn't care at all. After that, they put up the habitat module behind the skimmer, so they could have access to its bathroom and shower without having to go into the skimmer. The habitat module was nothing more than a glorified tent, but it did have a shower and a bathroom in it, so that made it very, very handy. After they got it all done, they sat down in the chairs and faced east, then watched the sun rise over the ocean.

That single thing made the entire trip worth it, for it was a truly beautiful sunrise, with the perfect colors filtering through the slightly hazy sky, giving color to the air itself. They watched until the sun became too bright to see, then they donned their sunglasses and got down to some serious relaxation. Jyslin revealed the rest of her bikini, and the term _dental floss_ pretty accurately described the back of it. It was a thong bikini, little more than a G-string, in his opinion, which showed off her virtually every square inch of her very shapely backside. Symone's bikini wasn't much better, a black bikini with little fringe along the straps of the bottom, which was also a spaghetti-strap thong cord that disappeared into the cleft of her buttocks. Black fringe hung down partially over her bottom, presenting an illusion that something was being hidden when in actuality it showed off everything. Tim couldn't keep his eyes off her backside, and Symone enjoyed every second of his avid attention. Those two made Jason's bermuda shorts seem positively prudish, and Tim's higher-legged swim trunks conservative.

Jason was an avid swimmer, for swimming was a great way to beat the occasional heat in a Maine summer, but he wasn't used to swimming in the ocean. The water temperature of the ocean around Maine never got much over 60 degrees, which was a major difference from the warm water lapping at the beach here in Hawaii. The salt water was something new and a bit surprising. They all went for a swim, and Jyslin and Symone paid for their choice of swim suits very quickly. Thong bikinis made them look sexy, but all that motion made them bind and pinch in some _extremely_ sensitive areas, and repetitive motion could cause that cord that ran down into the cleft to chafe the inside cleft of their buttocks. They raced up to the habitat module and took a shower immediately after they were done swimming, and looked much more comfortable when they came out.

But the trip wasn't only about having fun, so while Jyslin cooked some breakfast, and Tim and Symone played one on one volleyball, Jason pulled out his panel and books and started pondering his upcoming project. He wanted to design something interesting, but not something that would take forever to build. He pondered on it after Jyslin gave him some breakfast, as well as after Tim and Symone got tired of volleyball and laid out on towels in the sun while Jyslin sat beside him in his shady spot under the wing of his skimmer and read a book, almost until noon. What he eventually decided on was a magnetic flux propulsion gadget, that would pick up a piece of iron and carry it along a track, just like a monorail. The only difference here was that the one he was thinking of building would throw the metal across the room. It was a magnetic slingshot, something he remembered seeing in the Ministry of Technology databases when he was researching them for a project he'd done for Ailan at the start of the semester. The design was a thousand years old, obsolete by modern standards. He realized that he still had a copy of those specs in his panel's memory, and he brought it up again to look at it.

It was very small, built from outdated components, and according to the application parameters, it was designed to launch small, hand-sized probes from ships for extreme distance scanning. It could fire the probes at something like twenty thousand miles an hour, designed back when the Faey sensor systems were primitive compared to what they were now. It was an ancient, obsolete technology.

At least as a _probe launcher_.

Jason studied the design. All he'd need was a modest PPG, some flux cabling around a Tritanium core, a loader, and some kind of recoil absorber mechanism, and he'd have a perfect _weapon_.

He blinked. Why was he thinking about a weapon? It had never really crossed his mind before, but looking down at the specs, he could just see the potential here. It could be a weapon, and a damned _good_ one.

Yes, it would work. When fired at twenty thousand miles an hour, a round fired from that gun would go through _anything_. It would even go through polymerized Neutronium, the current standard armor of front-line Faey war machines. A steel-jacketed lead round, a heavy metal of some kind coated with a magnetic metal, would serve as the ammunition.

There was a name for what he was considering, and it took him a few minutes to remember it.

A _rail gun_.

He could build it, and the materials would very easy to acquire. The magnetic catapult and a spatial compressor behind it to absorb the recoil without having the weapon rip off the shoulder of the person firing it, a case, a place for a weapons clip and the PPG so both could be easily exchanged. Yes, it would work. He started sketching out a design quickly. He could base it on an M-16 case, or maybe an HK227, or even the Faey's MPAR-9, their current plasma rifle design. Put the catapult module towards the back, just before the stock, and set the recoil absorber in the stock's front section. Put the catapult on a floating mount that caused the entire assembly to pull back after a shot, which would allow the next round to feed in from the bottom. Spiraling the flux cable around the core would produce rifling to spin the round to provide accuracy, and the weapon's barrel would serve to further improve aim-wait, he'd better install some flux cabling in there to keep the round from making contact with the barrel. A bare scrape might make the entire weapon disintegrate. Put in a crude microprocessor and some sensors to prevent the weapon from firing if it detected a jam or malfunction, add an ammo counter and maybe a rangefinder or some kind of night vision scope, and he'd have a functional weapon. All he had to do was make rounds, using some kind of heavy metal and coating it with steel, which was both durable and magnetic.

Wait... he'd be making his first rounds with a replicator. Iron was a replicatable element, was moderately heavy, and it was magnetic. Titanium was _also_ a replicatable element, and though it wasn't magnetic, it was extremely strong, much stronger than steel. If he swapped it around, created an iron round coated with laminated titanium, he'd have a very strong round that wouldn't shatter from air resistance after going twenty feet. And the best part was both materials could be _replicated_, allowing him to crank out an unlimited number of them cheaply. He'd just need a replicator and a molecular sprayer to do it. Just replicate the iron round in the pre-determined shape, make the titanium, and then the sprayer would coat the round in layers that would bond and form an armored shell much tougher than pure, unlaminated titanium.

He fleshed out his crude design a bit more, adding in a display on the back of the weapon, then a scope mount, then settling on a place for the weapon's processor. He mentally went over what it would cost to build it. He'd need about four yards of flux cabling, a class V PPG, a low-end processor like an MG-14, a very small display panel, and a replicator. The replicator could make the parts for about half of the weapon, such as the case and some of its mechanics. When it was all said and done, he thought, he'd end up with a weapon that only weighed about seven pounds, and if he made its outside case out of a composite carbon, a poly-plex compound, or laminated titanium, he could shave another half a pound off of it. He could buy the parts he'd need to build it for about two hundred credits or so. The most expensive part would be the Tritanium core, because it would have to be hollowed out, and that would run him about ninety credits.

But... the core could be _replicated_. Tritanium was merely an isotope of Titanium, and thus was within the ability of a replicator to produce. He'd need one of those special X-model replicators, the ones capable of high-end replication, but it was more than possible.

Without a replicator, it would cost him about five hundred credits, since he'd have to order them. But if he bought his own replicator, it would cost about two hundred. The replicator itself wouldn't be cheap. A decent one was about five thousand credits, and an X-model that could replicate exotic isotopes would run him nine thousand.

He considered the parts and labor required to build a prototype. He'd need a programmable processor board, something very, very small yet capable of at least twenty simultaneous functions. He'd have to write a program for loading, firing, error detection, calibration, diagnostics, display graphics, and sensor operation. He'd need access to a replicator to produce the case and mechanical parts, and that... well, that was it. He could build it by hand using the parts. The program would take him about a day to write, since it wouldn't be a complicated one.

He almost deleted the program and notes in a sudden fit of uncertainty. Why would he even want to build it? For the glory of the human race? He didn't _need_ this thing. If he really wanted a weapon, he could simply buy a plasma rifle. He had the money. So there was no real need for this weapon, there was only the challenge of seeing if he could do it.

Then again, some part of the back of his mind realized that having the ability to build a weapon capable of penetrating Faey armor and do it very cheaply and quickly might be something he'd want to know about.

He would build it. He just needed to design the parts and get access to a school replicator, which he could do tomorrow in Professor Ailan's lab. Ailan would let him use the replicator without any questions about what he was doing, even if it wasn't for his project.

It took him about five hours to finalize the design. It would be a fairly simplistic device, with very little in the way of moving parts or complicated machinery, relying on the magnetic thrust of the catapult. The only real mechanical part of it was the round loading, passing the round from the clip to the chamber. He decided on a round that looked just like a regular bullet, because of the characteristics of air when something traveled at the speed that this was going to travel. At supersonic speed, air became _laminar_, acting as if it was made of differing layers, and the round had to be able to move through that. A standard rifle round that would have been used in any gun would work just fine, as long as it had a long tapered body. The back was left flat to produce drag, which would limit the range of the round to about four miles, he deduced after doing a few calculations. The drag created by the sharp corner at the end would eventually destabilize the round in flight, causing it to tumble, and at that speed even a round encased in laminated titanium was going to shatter when it turned its wide edge into the wind. If the round didn't break up, it would conceivably travel for miles and miles, and he didn't want to run the risk of a round fired from New Orleans conceivably coming down and killing someone in California. It was either shape the round so it would effectively self-destruct or implant a charge in the round to destroy it after so many seconds.

It was about lunchtime, and Tim was studying for a test he had tomorrow as Jyslin and Symone laid out in the sun, taking advantage of the isolation to do so nude. They weren't afraid of sunburn because Jyslin had brought along a chemical compound with her in an aerosol that instantly healed sunburn when applied to the skin. Tim had already discovered that it also worked on humans, so he had stayed out until he was as red as a lobster, sprayed himself down, which converted his burned skin into a very dark tan, then he rushed back out into the sun once more.

"What have you been doing over here, Jayce?" Tim asked curiously. "You've been at it all day. Your project?"

"It started out like that, but now it's something of a personal challenge," he replied.

"What is it?" he asked. Jason offered to show him his panel, so Tim got up and went around his chair to look over his shoulder. "Holy shit, is that a _gun_?" he asked.

"Yes and no," he answered. "It's something I found in the Ministry of Technology archives. I'm just modifying the design a little. I want to see if I can make it work."

_I hope you're lying,_ Jyslin sent to him, doing so in a tight manner that meant that only he would hear it. He didn't deign to reply, mainly because he hadn't quite worked out the trick of sending that tightly yet. If he answered her, Symone would hear it, and then he'd have way too much explaining to do.

"It's based on the idea of a magnetic catapult," Jason explained. "This array of flux cabling creates a magnetic pulse that picks up the projectile and launches it. The original design was meant to launch probes the size of an orange from starships. I'm adapting it to fire rounds about the size of a .30 caliber bullet.

"How far can it throw a bullet?"

"That depends on crosswinds, the strength of the round, and the angle," he replied. "If I had a strong enough round that could survive the trip, I could shoot one from here that would land in Nevada."

"Bullshit," Tim laughed, then he gave Jason a startled look when he saw Jason's sober expression. "You're serious!"

"Totally," he answered. "I already worked out the projectile velocity. Using ten gauge flux cabling triple-wrapped and spiraled around the core to produce rifling, and a class V PPG, it'll have an initial muzzle velocity of 27,495 miles per hour. The rounds I think I'll use will have a shape that will make them self-destruct after they go about four miles, but they'd go as long as the round could survive the air resistance if I used a different shape."

"Holy shit," Tim said, then he laughed. "What would you use it for?"

"Nothing," he shrugged. "I just want to see if I can build it, and if it'll actually work. The math says it will, but sometimes math and reality don't match up."

"Why build it if you never use it?" Symone called from her blanket. "Hell, sell it to the Ministry of Technology. They buy any weapon patents they find, even if they don't use them, and I doubt they'd use that. I mean really, what use is a gun that's not an energy weapon? It probably won't even go through titanium armor."

"Because I don't want to build something that the Imperium uses to kill people with," he answered flatly. If she only knew what it meant for a round to be fired with that kind of velocity.

Jyslin obviously did, for she sat up and looked back at him curiously. _You're serious,_ she sent. _That thing will _work_? Like really work?_

He nodded to her.

_Damn, Jason, I'd send that to the Ministry. They'd pay you a bloody _fortune_ for the design if you can make it work. A weapon using a _Class V_ PPG that can penetrate any armor we have, that would take at least a ten megajoule shield to stop? They'd make you a damn _noble_._

"I do need to work on my project," Jason said, giving Jyslin a stern look. "Maybe I'll do what everyone else is doing. A device that turns on a light."

Tim gave him a look, then laughed so hard that he almost fell over. "After making those inducers, you'd show up in class with a _light_? Ailan would skin you!" Tim wheezed. "He's expecting you to come in with something _titanic_, like a device that totally explains women or something!"

"Watch it, love," Symone said sharply, rolling on her side and looking back at them, her sunglasses pulled down her nose and staring over the rim at them.

"Now you're talking about an impossibility," Jason told him mildly. "There's no device that could ever explain women. It would work on logic, and no device that operates on logic could possibly understand creatures whose very natures are _illogical_."

"I think someone needs to be dunked in the ocean," Symone mentioned idly to Jyslin.

"It's starting to sound like it," she agreed conversationally.

"I'm so completely afraid of two naked women," Jason said with scathing disregard, saving his work and shifting to another schematic file. "This is what I'm turning in for the school project."

"What is it?"

"Something everyone in school would kill to own," he answered.

"What?"

"Well, it's one of my unused ideas for back when I was battling the Marines. It's a device that will cause any Faey that gets within a hundred feet of you to lose her hair."

"What?" Tim gasped, then he laughed riotously. "How in the hell did you figure that out?"

"Well, Faey have a diet that's not exactly like ours," he answered. "They eat things from other planets, and those foods have chemical compounds in them that stay in their bodies. There's a specific chemical compound called Selenium RiboDioxide that doesn't occur naturally in humans, because it's found in fish that are only found on Draconis, and like virtually every Faey eats them because they import it out to all Faey worlds. This compound gets used by the Faey's body, and it ends up in their hair. Just like humans have traces of gold and arsenic in their hair, Faey build up this compound in their hair when they eat that fish. So would humans if they ate that fish, for that matter. Well, this device emits a harmonic tetryon pulse that causes that particular compound to change into a kind of acid that only reacts to the organic material that makes up hair, but won't hurt living flesh. So, turn it on, and anyone who's eaten that fish even once during the last year will have his or her hair literally melt."

Tim gave him a startled look, then howled in laughter, falling onto the blanket and kicking his feet. "Jason, that's, that's, that's _EVIL_!" he shouted, then he totally lost it.

"You were going to use that on _me_?" Jyslin flared hotly, putting her hand on her auburn hair defensively, but Symone was too busy laughing to care.

"When you said you cheat, I decided to play dirty," he answered with a level stare. "You're just lucky Lana intervened, or I'd be calling you _cue-ball_ right now. Then again, if I'd had the money to buy the components to build it, you wouldn't have a single hair anywhere on your body more than ten days old." He put his panel aside. "I think the threat of losing their hair would have kept _all_ the Faey well away from me."

"That _is_ evil!" Symone laughed, gasping for breath. "And damn _clever_!"

Jyslin made a face. "I think we got lucky Lana ended it when she did," she admitted. "Else he'd have found some way to turn us all into frogs or something."

"Just give me time," he said mildly, standing up. "I'll find a way. Now if you'll excuse me, there's nothing but beer left in the cooler. I need a soda."

"Just drink a beer," Jyslin told him.

"I'm flying us home. I can't drink," he told her calmly.

After lunch, Symone and Jyslin taught Jason and Tim how to ride the airbikes. Airbikes were just like motorcycles in shape and behavior, but instead of wheels they had pods that went where the wheels were on a motorcycle containing spatial engines that provided the lift and thrust. The controls weren't like a motorcycle, however, for the throttle was a pedal at the right foot and the brake was a pedal on the left, where the gear lever would be. The main difference was that an airbike was capable of movement through three directions, so the handlebars were free-moving to allow for that. The operation of the bars were just like a control stick, and you could make the airbike move laterally from side to side with buttons on the inside edges of the handles. Moving vertically was accomplished with another set of buttons on the inside edge of the handles, just under the lateral movement buttons, both placed in a way that would allow a thumb to slide over and press them very easily. Jason got the hang of it very quickly, but Tim, who was a bit drunk, almost crashed his airbike three times before Symone finally realized that he wasn't in any condition to be operating a vehicle. Jason flew them around the island as he got accustomed to the wind in his face, looking down from an altitude of about a hundred feet. Airbikes had no crash equipment at all, only seat belts, so one took one's life into his own hands when he rode one.

_Were you serious about building that gun?_ Jyslin sent to him. _Go ahead and send, we're far enough away from Symone for you to send tight to me without her picking it up._

_Yeah, I'm serious about it,_ he answered. _I'll never do anything with it, but I'd like to build it, just to see if it works._

_I still say you should send it in,_ she told him. _If you did, they'd pull you out of school and put you straight into research. That's _money_, Jason, and prestige, and real power. The people in research write their own rulebook._

_No,_ he sent back, his emotions creeping into his telepathic voice. _I will _not_ provide the Imperium with tools to fight wars or subjugate other races. _Ever_._

_If you end up in research, you will,_ she warned.

_I'll never end up in research,_ he answered.

_The hell you say. You're more than smart enough, and you seem to have a knack for our technology that goes quite beyond simple understanding You're a natural._

_I won't go to research,_ he told her. _After next semester, I'm going to wash out._

_Wash out? On _purpose_?_ she replied, shock creeping into her mental voice.

_After next semester, I'll qualify for a systems technician job, and that's what I'll get. I was serious, Jyslin. I won't become an asset to the Imperium. I'll work for it because I have to, but I won't advance it if I can help it. I don't care how much money I'm passing up, or how much prestige. In my eyes, becoming a asset to the Imperium would be a betrayal of my beliefs and the memory of my father._

_You're being stupid._

_You've never believed in anything, have you?_ he asked her pointedly. _Humans are strongly tied up in their beliefs, Jyslin. Humans will die for what they believe in, and do it willingly. The Faey have become too jaded over the years, so pragmatic that they've lost their ability to have faith in anything, to the point where you don't really believe in anything anymore. Like you, for example. You don't go to church, so you don't really believe in your Faey gods. You don't like the Imperium's treatment of you, so you don't really believe in your government. You don't like your job, so you don't believe in your present, and since you're so uncertain about getting into engineering, you don't believe in your future. You're not alone, either. Since many Faey seem to hate the way the Imperium works, they can't even believe in their own government. I haven't seen a single Faey chapel built on Earth yet, so your people obviously don't believe too much in your Faey gods. All the Faey I've seen just go through the motions in their jobs and try to forget about their lots in life after they get off work. I guess the only people who believe in something are the ones in power, but all they believe in is the power that they've managed to amass. And living for nothing but power is an empty life. So, I may be giving up money and power by not going into research, but at the end of the day I can look in the mirror and like what I see, because I'll have held to what I believe in. And that makes me richer than every noble in the Imperium._

She was quiet for a _very_ long time, her hands almost rigid against his shoulders from her grip on him, then she finally sent. _Put us down,_ she ordered_. I need to go to the bathroom._

He swung them around and flew back to the skimmer, then set them down on the sand in front of it. Jyslin got off the bike and walked away without comment, and Jason worried for a moment that he had mortally offended her. Symone wandered over in his direction and joined him in watching Jyslin go up the stairs and into the skimmer, then she put her arm on his shoulder and leaned against him. "So, what was that about?" she asked.

"I'm not sure," he replied. "I think I offended her."

"She didn't club you in the back of the head while you were up there, so I think she wasn't all that offended," Symone winked.

"I guess not. Are you going to put your bikini back on any time soon?"

"I'm teasing Tim-Tim," she said with an evil grin. "My mission is to get him to bang me silly in the habitat module before we leave. He won't play for some reason," she said with a slight pout.

"He's in company," he answered. "He'll carry on with you alone, or even with me around because I'm his best friend, but not with Jyslin here."

"Ohhh," she said, nodding. "I get it."

"Where is he?"

"Taking a shit," she answered directly. "He didn't lock the door, and Jyslin went back that way. She might get lucky and get a peek of my Tim's big dick."

He ignored that. "You'd better get some of that spray. You're looking a bit purple," he told her, looking down at her breasts boldly.

"Yeah, I know," she said, cupping one of her breasts absently and poking the purpled slope of her breast with a finger, testing her skin. "I certainly don't want to forget before I get Tim in the module. Trust me, it hurts more than it feels good when a guy grabs hold of a sunburned tit. The only thing that hurts worse than a guy grabbing your sunburned tit is when he bites your sunburned nipple."

"I'll have to take your word for that," Jason told her with a light smile. He never felt awkward talking about sex with Symone, mainly because she was Symone. Despite the fact that she was a woman, he just saw her as one of the guys. One of the guys with a very foul mouth, but still one of the guys.

"Sunburn your nipple and let Jyslin bite it, and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about," she said with a wicked little chuckle.

"No thanks," he told her. "And I'd think that that wouldn't be the _worst_," he noted.

"Well, it was for me," she answered. "I wouldn't even dream of trying to fuck Tim with a sunburned pussy, so that wouldn't even be an issue. I've fucked a guy when my tits were sunburned, so I have some personal experience with that. I don't think I want to even try it with a sunburn on the major equipment. I'm not into pain. I'm no bondage babe."

Jason chuckled. "Personal experience, eh?" he asked.

"Yeah, before I started my conscription. I was at a beach, and convinced a guy to do me as a going-away present. I shoulda thought to bring some burn-heal though, or it might have been more fun."

"Don't tell Tim, he'll get jealous."

"He knows I'm no virgin, Jason," she laughed. "But maybe I should. It might get him horny, and I like it when he gets possessive over me. It makes me feel _sooo_ wanted," she finished with a little trill of her voice that told him how much she liked it. "There is something rather serious that you should know, though," she told him with a slight, arch little smile.

"Serious? From _Symone_?" he said with mock surprise, and she punched him in the arm.

"Yeah, serious, you little prick," she shot back. "I can't tell Jyslin this, but I can tell you. She shouldn't send around me."

"Why?"

"I'm not very strong with talent, but I have a trick. I can hear it when other Faey are trying to send privately."

Jason whistled. "That's some trick," he complemented her.

"Thank you. I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell anyone. If the Imperium found out that I can do that, they'd put me in the Secret Police, and I don't want to be a mindbender."

"Not a problem, Symone," he told her evenly. "Your secret's safe with me."

"Oh, and _please_ stop trying to pretend," she told him with a knowing grin. "I know all about your talent, Jason. I heard you use it last week, when I bet Jyslin was teaching you how to control it. Nobody else may have recognized that sending, but _I did_. I know your voice. And earlier, Jyslin was sending to you like you could hear her, like _normal_ sending. You can't _do_ that with someone that doesn't have talent."

He gave her a startled, almost strangled look, but she just put her hand on his shoulder and leaned in, then kissed him on the cheek.

"I told you my secret," she said to him in a