ar was.

Those autocannons scared him just a little bit. They were rapid-fire versions of an MPAC pistol, and were not as strong as a rifle. They were considered personal defensive weaponry for a soldier who lost his primary weapon, like an infantryman's sidearm was his backup protection should he lose his rifle. They had no controls on them as to extending them or retracting them, that was a function purely of positioning his wrists and hands in a very specific position, with his thumbs pressed up against the first joint of his middle fingers. He accidentally had them extend on him a few times, and when they did, they were _hot_. They were fired by pressing the thumb in a certain place against the side of the first joint of the forefinger, and _they did not have safeties_. Fortunately, they wouldn't fire if that place were pressed by anything other than the thumb, due to sensors in the thumbpads of the armored gauntlets. He simply had to learn not to put his hands in that bent-down position while touching the tip of his thumb to the first joint of his middle finger, which was what caused the MPACs to extend and go hot. The only kind of safety they had was that they wouldn't fire if they detected that his hands were raised and possibly blocking the line of fire of the weapons.

After that, he worked on the airbikes, and Temika sat in with him as he did so. One of them was hers-he had already made the deal-so she had to learn how to operate it. These airbikes were _much_ more complicated, because of their extra systems. They had MPAC autocannons mounted on them, fearsome armament for their size, as well as a retractable belly-mounted unidirectional MPAC for attacking ground targets without having to strafe. The airbikes had comm systems, had sensor jammers (they were recon-infiltration models), signature maskers, and much to his shock, they were equipped with _shields_. He'd _never_ heard of shields being installed on such a small piece of military hardware. They were fairly weak shields, only 18 kilojoules, but they were harmonic resonance shields, which meant that they were about twice as strong as their energy output. The shields were absolutely no defense against MPACs, which were shield-penetrating by their very nature, but they would make him and Temika absolutely invulnerable to any gun in the lawless zone when those shields were up. The only problem with the shields was that they produced an energy signature that the maskers couldn't hide, so they were a defense of last resort. And he was sure to drill that into Temika's head; if she used them, she'd have Faey all over her. _No_ human should possess such sophisticated military technology. If they saw it, Jason felt it to be an absolute guarantee that they would investigate.

The liquid bandage certainly seemed to do the trick. After two weeks, he checked her shoulder injury, and saw that the wound had closed. It was still very tender, but at least the risk of infection abated once the skin closed over the injury. She could raise her arm over her head now, meaning that he didn't have to tear up any more shirts for her, and she was starting to go without the sling. The nasty gash in her leg had not healed over yet, though, and she still walked with a noticeable limp. But once her shoulder was well enough for her to ride her airbike, they both took them out-slowly and carefully, both to get used to them and because of Temika's shoulder-to one of her hiding places so she could get clothes and some personal effects. That hiding place was an abandoned private mine way down an old logging road in central Wayne County, not far from the town of Wayne. To his surprise, she had another vest something like the original that had been ruined, but not quite the same, in that stash. There were assorted clothes, undergarments, jeans, and even a leather jacket for when it was cooler.

But he, quite simply, was not going to keep her sedate any longer. That ride out to Wayne proved to her that she was capable of riding again. She came down from the bedroom she'd been using wearing the clothes they'd gotten from Wayne, and she had her gun holster back on, checking the drum of the revolver as she came into the kitchen. "You're feeling chipper this morning," he noted as he took a pan of oatmeal off the stove.

"Ah'm getting' back out on the road," she announced. "Mah shouldah can take it, and Ah don't need mah leg on the back of a bike."

"I suppose I can't stop you?" he asked mildly. Personally, he didn't really want to try. She was an adult, and he'd come to learn over those two weeks that she wasn't impulsive or rash. If she believed she was ready, she probably was. Besides, he was going to tear her hair out if she stayed much longer. She got _annoying_ when she was bored.

"You can try, sugah. Ah doubt you'll manage it," she winked. "Where's mah Tek-9?"

"In the basement, where you left it," he answered.

"Ah need to go see Clem, buy back some of that nine mil ammo Ah sold him," she mused to herself as she limped towards the basement. He set her a bowl of oatmeal, and she sat down at the table when she came back up. "Ah'm takin' my airbike. Can I park mah Harley here for now?"

He nodded. "You can leave it in the garage."

"Thanks, sugah, yo' a lifesaver," she said with a bright smile. "Ah can't wait to take that airbike out for a long ride," she said with eager anticipation.

"Remember, no shields, no weapons, unless your life depends on it," he warned. "Use either, and the Faey's space-based sensors will have your location pegged to the inch."

"Ah remember."

"You can use the threaded shortband to talk to me," he told her. "It has a range of about fifty miles, but won't go any further."

"Can the airbike's radio pick up CB?"

Jason blinked. "It's capable of picking up the signal, but it wouldn't know what to do with it," he speculated. "Unless the bike's onboard computer understands what FM is. We can always go see. Let me go get my panel."

"What you need that for?"

"So I can download what it needs to understand FM," he replied. "In case it doesn't."

And it didn't. Jason jacked his panel into the port for the airbike's control computer, then surfed CivNet until he found a nice FM translation module. Faey programs were more or less interchangeable between different pieces of hardware, because most of their computers used the same architecture. He transferred that module into the control computer, which automatically added it to its communications code. Then it was just a matter of defining FM radio frequencies to the computer so it knew when to use the FM module.

"Cool, thanks a million, sugah," she said, plugging a headset into the console of the airbike which let her hear the radio, and also speak. She slid the earpiece into her ear, adjusted the microphone stem, then clipped the cord to the edge of her vest. She took the key that Jason offered to her and started the airbike, creating that now-familiar high-pitched whine that spatial engines gave off. "Wow, mah own airbike," she said dreamily. "Too bad it's two weeks past when Ah wanted tah be ridin' it."

"Better late than dead," he said seriously. "Be careful out there, woman. When they see you on this, they _will_ gun for you."

"Sugah, they gunned for me when Ah was on mah Harley," she said seriously. "Besides, now that Ah got this, who needs roads?" she grinned, then punched the airbike into the air. She was a thousand feet up in the span of two seconds, then shot off to the southwest, back over the western side of Huntington.

Crazy woman. But in a way, he was happy for her. At least she'd have fun.

                                        * * *

With Temika out of the house, Jason had more time to worry about other things than her wounds. He still worried a little, but he knew that she was going to be alright. That seemed a given to him. He started worrying about Tim more now that Temika was out of the house, and without a new "project" to occupy his time, he really had trouble _not_ worrying about Tim. But he'd got his electricity going, his water going, he'd learned how the armor and the airbike worked... there wasn't much for him to do. So, that first day after Temika left, he tore down the railgun and started trying to tweak it to get it closer to that 20,000 miles an hour he thought the rounds should travel. He recalculated that velocity based on his coiling and cascading magnetic catapult design, and discovered several minor mathematical mistakes that showed that it really _should_ only go about 15,000 or so miles an hour, if fired in a vacuum. He kicked himself a bit, but even he had to admit that he was only a _student_ of Faey calculus. If it had been error free, _then_ he would have been surprised.

He _did_, however, somehow eliminate that sonic boom sound from the weapon when he put it back together. Now this one, this one had him just _stumped_. He had _no idea_ why it stopped doing that. Hours and hours of rechecking his math and assembling and reassembling the weapon did not divulge the secret of this strange mystery. All he really knew was that the rounds were creating that loud whip-like sound before, and now they weren't.

They _should_. That's what had him so confused. Those rounds were going at a ridiculous speed, like Mach 21, and _anything_ that exceeded the speed of sound created a sonic boom. But after that first time he got it reassembled and test fired the weapon into the river, it had stopped making the sonic boom. Now there was just that _BEE-yah_ sound, the sound of the flux cabling capacitors discharging and the cabling energizing in its staggered pattern. Nothing else changed at all. The rounds still created that blue-white smoke corkscrew trail, they still went several miles before air resistance shattered the rounds (at least he thought so, he had no way to test that), and they still went somewhere around 14,000 miles an hour. Nothing changed except now there was no sonic boom from the rounds splitting the air when they fired. It drove him crazy all day, made for a sleepless night, but no amount of investigation produced any result other than _gremlin_. This one he just had to chalk up to one of those weird things that would never really have an answer.

Who knows, maybe he just didn't know enough about the behavior of air molecules in such extreme conditions to figure it out.

Without a new project, Jason was relegated to aimlessly surfing around CivNet, watching television, and keeping a wary ear and eye out for the Faey who were certainly looking for him. But there had been no traffic or transmissions yet that hinted that they were coming, and no skimmers or dropships or fightercraft had appeared in the sky, only the occasional sighting of a freighter taking off from Columbus, heading for the stargate that the Faey had constructed about halfway between Earth and the moon. He did research this "smartgun" technology incorporated into his armor, and discovered that it was a link between weapon and control computer that allowed the armor to put up a sight of where the weapon was pointing, and also displayed certain critical information about the weapon to the control computer when needed. Jason saw the use of it, and started tinkering with the idea of trying to install smartgun technology into his railgun. The only problem with that was that he'd have to totally rewrite the software governing the operation of the weapon to allow it to work with the armor's computer.

He _did_, however, install a smartgun pad into the railgun. He had one already, in the plasma pistol he had, for that was a military-grade MPAC, and it wasn't a loss to the pistol, because the nested MPAC autocannons in his armor meant he'd never _use_ the pistol while wearing it. He just had no idea it was there. It was built into the pistol grip, a transceiver pad that operated on a tightbeam threaded hyperfrequency, with a range of only about a foot. There was a receiver pad in each of his armor's gauntlets. All he had to do was take it out, then put it under the grip casing in the railgun and run a dataline up into the chassis. The railgun couldn't use that smartgun link, but at least it was there, because he fully _did_ intend to make it work. It gave him a new project to work on, something to occupy his mind.

It required some extensive research of CivNet, that took almost two days. He found examples of TEL code that governed smartgun links, then went through the code of his railgun to see where and how it would need to be changed to allow the railgun's operating system to communicate with the smartgun pad, then send information to the control computer in his armor could understand. It wasn't as easy as just downloading a smartgun module for the railgun, because his railgun ran a _unique_ operating system. It wasn't module compatible, and it would _never be_ module compatible.

The third day, he started coding in those changes into the code he had stored on his panel. He'd decided on going "lean," on only making the smartgun link give the armor command computer access to limited information. The smartgun link would only communicate current aim (through the scope), range, ammo count, and weapon status (safety on, hot, down, emergency shutdown mode), and the error code that caused an emergency shutdown should one occur. That was the easy part. The hard part was teaching his railgun control computer how to "talk" to the smartgun pad, then telling the smartgun pad how to transmit and receive its data in a format that the armor's command computer could understand. That was the _tricky_ part, and it gave him a massive headache.

There was a knock at the door, which startled him out of his train of thought, and he wisely picked up his plasma pistol and went to his panel, even as he swept his mind through the area. There were only five people out there, and their thoughts were agitated and very nervous, but not hostile. One of them had thoughts that were chaotic, disjointed, as if they had trouble thinking about anything for very long before some nameless fear disrupted their reasoning. He had his intrusion system deactivated at the moment, mainly because it was two in the afternoon, and he'd been relying more on his power than his system. And he'd had his mind buried in that stupid code... it was just a good thing these people didn't shoot through the door instead of knocking. He'd caught a major break, and it taught him a serious lesson about remaining vigilant. He used his panel to access the button camera sitting on the porch, and saw that there were four people standing there. Two men, two women, all of them armed with rifles, but those rifles were slung over their shoulders. A very young child appeared at the edge of the porch, and Jason changed the camera angle to get a better look. It was a little girl of maybe eight or nine, with long red hair done in two braids behind her head, wearing a torn, faded yellow sun dress.

These visitors brought a _child_? Were they crazy?

Jason went to the door and opened it just a crack, looking out at them. They all quickly turned to look at him through the screen door, and they all looked _exhausted_. The camera hadn't quite caught the haggard look of them, for they looked like they'd walked a thousand miles carrying a battleship. Each man was in jeans and tee shirts, the taller man with a Pirates baseball cap who looked to be about forty, while the other man looked to be about thirty. One of the women was middle aged and with graying brown hair, wore jeans and an old Nike shirt, while the other, who looked about thirty, wore a pair of coveralls and a tank top. They looked to be two pairs of married couples, maybe a mother, father, child, and child's spouse, towing along the grandchild.

"Beggin' your pardon, sir," the older man said, taking off his ball cap respectfully. "Might you be Jason Fox?"

"I am," he answered carefully. "Who are you, and what do you want?"

"Well sir, I'm Clem Wilson," he answered.

"Clem? The gunsmith?"

"Yessir, that's me," he answered immediately. "I had Temika drop by a couple of days ago, and we had a long talk about you."

"Temika? What did she say?"

"Well sir, she explained how you'd chased the gangs back across the river, and how you'd made this place more or less safe. She also said you were a wiz at fixin' stuff."

"She did? I think Temika talks too much," Jason grunted darkly.

"She said enough, sir," he said wearily. "A couple of days before she came to visit, my place got attacked by a gang ain't none of us never seen before. They killed six people, and one of them was one of my grandkids," he said in a quavering voice. "A fine family and a six year old boy, dead. Well, sir, we're just sick and tired of it. Mika said that this place is safe enough, from the spanking you put down on Joe Bueller and them being afraid to mess with you anymore. We'd like permission to settle somewhere nearby."

Jason was a bit startled, and it took him a long moment to even consider a reply. Before he did anything, he looked at the man's thoughts, and they proved the utter sincerity of his words. He'd lost his six year old grandson in an attack on his heavily fortified compound by a group of nearly twenty armed men, as well as most of the other family that had grouped together with them for common defense. The middle-aged woman wasn't Clem's wife, she was Ruth Mercer, the _only_ survivor from that other family. Only five survived out of a host of eleven, and one of the dead was a six year old boy.

"It don't have to be right here, sir," he said earnestly, his weary eyes pleading. "Just somewhere close enough that the gangs won't bother us. Down near the east end bridge, or maybe up on the west end of Chesapeake. We'll pay you for the privilege. I got lots of guns, and Luke here used to be a mechanic in the Army. If he can't fix it, it's _broke_. We don't expect you to protect us or nothin', all we want is to live near to this place, cause the gangs are afraid to come here. We just want somewhere _safe_."

Jason looked at them. They looked so pitiful, so _tired_, and their thoughts were just as weary, as despairing, as their faces. The little girl, she was still in shock from the attack, she was the one with the chaotic, disjointed mind, caused by the trauma of the assault. They had been through utter hell, and then had packed everything they owned into an old National Guard deuce, a very large truck, and left. That truck was parked up on route 7, out of Jason's sight, and they had made the very dangerous journey here, including running the gauntlet over in Huntington to come through the city and across the west end bridge. They had left their home in Fort Gay behind, had driven almost 40 miles to get here, and had risked being killed by only God knew how many people on the way... they had done it all just for the _hope_ that they could find a place of relative safety. Jason looked at their thoughts, saw that in these people's eyes, he was literally their last hope to reclaim their shattered lives and try to find peace.

He was overwhelmed with emotion, and there was little he could say, little he could do. These people needed the safety of his claimed territory more than any excuse he could ever give to turn them away. He could not look that poor little girl with her trauma-plagued mind in the eyes and deny her the chance to find someplace safe, someplace the bad men could not get her.

He sighed and bowed his head, getting his mind back under control, getting control of his emotions. They couldn't know about his talent, and he was about to give that secret away. He looked Clem in the eyes as he opened the door. "I don't claim to own all of Ohio, Clem," he told him evenly. "If you want to settle in someplace around here, I won't tell you that you can't. Just mind two things, Clem. One, I'm not your guardian angel. Two, the area around this bridge _does_ belong to me, and I have some pretty nasty defensive traps set all over this place. If you want to live in Chesapeake, you're more than welcome. Just make sure you find something a few blocks _that way_," he said, pointing west, "at the very closest. And for God's sake, don't come stumbling over in this direction. I don't want someone getting killed by accident. If you want to come see me, come straight up Oak here. That's safe. But once you cross 4th Street coming this way, you're in the danger area. I won't be held responsible if I come out some morning and find what's left of you scattered all over the block. Is that understood?"

"It is, sir. And _thank you_," he said with such profound relief that Jason was surprised he could express it in words.

"You're welcome. And despite the way it sounds, I won't be an invisible neighbor, Clem. I just wanted you to understand the situation."

"I understand, sir. Like I said, I never expected you to protect us. All we want is to live in the shadow you put over this part of Ohio, the one the gangs are afraid to enter."

"It's not much of a shadow," Jason said grimly. "It'll last until the next time one of the gangs thinks I'm not paying attention, and they'll be back. If they see new people over here, they'll come back quicker. It's too bad it has to come to that," he sighed.

None of the others said a word, which Jason thought was odd. But from the looks on their faces, they were too tired, too numb, to much care, even when it was apparent that they were going to be allowed to stay. There was a brief surge of elation, and then nothing but relief from them, though subdued. The younger couple-Mary and Luke-were still deeply grieving for the loss of their son, and the older woman, Ruth, was all but in a depressed funk after losing her entire family in the attack. Clem was the only one that seemed to have the strength to talk.

"Whatever you need, Mr. Jason sir, you just let us know," Clem said sincerely.

"Right now I need you people to find yourself a good defendable house," he answered. "So I know you'll be ready for nightfall. If I recall, there's a nice brick two-story about three blocks that way that has burglar bars on the windows, and a very high fence around the backyard. That might do you."

"We'll go check it out, Mr. Jason sir."

"And don't call me that," he added quickly. "You're older than me, and I'm certainly no gentleman."

Clem actually laughed. "This is your house, it's only proper," he said. "But we'll go look at that house and get out of your hair, sir."

"Be careful."

"We will, sir," he promise with a nod.

Jason left them to their own devices, a bit worried. Having them in the neighborhood was going to make it harder for him to do his own things, but he couldn't look at them and say no. Not after what they'd gone through. If it caused him a little inconvenience, then so be it. He was not going to look that terrified little girl in the eyes and deny her.

Nobody with an ounce of compassion in his soul could.

                                        * * *

_Suira, 23 Suraa, 4393, Orthodox Calendar_
_Saturday, 7 August 2007, Native Regional Reckoning_
_Chesapeake, Ohio (Native designation), Orala Nature Preserve, American Sector_

Well, Clem had proved that he was anything if not a helpful neighbor.

They'd settled in down in the house Jason had suggested, and had immediately started preparing for the winter. Ruth, who intended to stay with them, usurped every yard in front of every house on both sides of the street, and had them tilled over and fast-growing vegetables planted by sundown the next day. They had a few chickens and some dogs, which they kept down on their side of the neighborhood. Clem and Luke moved their things into the house, and as Mary got things situated inside, they ranged out to scavenge the furniture or other things they wanted to go with the new house. Ruth had the yards plowed by sunset the next day, and though Jason hadn't seen in their house yet, he had the feeling that it was all clean and organized within. Instead of just tossing trash out in the streets, they'd done what Jason had done, piled it all up in an out of the way place and burned what they could, or placed in an abandoned house's back yard, out of sight, what they could not burn.

Despite him saying that he was not their guardian angel, he could not ignore them down there. During the night, he installed the last of the button cameras that Kumi had added into his care package so he could keep an eye on the far side of the neighborhood. There was one camera trained on Clem's house, but at a distance so as to preserve their privacy. The rest kept a watch over the river and the streets beyond Clem's house, and he added them to his proximity warning, which was now residing on his panel. It would alert him if someone crossed the boundary he had defined to now include the blocks around Clem's house, using a combination of motion sensors and face/shape recognition, which the panel used by analyzing the feed off all button and regular cameras. The panel would endlessly keep a watch out for humanoid shapes invading his established territory, but it wouldn't go off if Jason, Temika, or any of Clem's group were picked up by the sensors or cameras. That was easy enough to do, since the watchdog program he was using to was a module he got off CivNet.

They were quiet and unobtrusive, and did not bother him, or even contact him, for four days. Jason used that time to go back to working on his railgun, importing the smartgun pad from the pistol into his railgun. It took him almost thirty hours of continuous work to get the gun to even recognize the smartgun pad, and then another fourteen hours to finally-_finally!_-get the gun to send data over the pad. Once he finally got that ironed out, it was a simple matter of modifying the program code of the processor to send certain data received to the smartgun pad. The microprocessor in the pad would then decide whether or not to transmit that data, depending on if it sensed the presence of a receiving smartgun pad within proximity. It was a one-way datastream, from the gun to the armor, which made it easier to code into the railgun's software.

The only problem was, he had to all but completely armor up in order to test it. The only things he could keep off were the legs and helmet, and he couldn't be wearing anything other than very small underwear, like speedos, under that armor. And he didn't have any speedos. So he stripped down, methodically donned his armor, then tested the smartgun link. And to his aggravation, it didn't work.

After taking the armor off and putting it on several times as he recoded the weapon and tested it, he just gave up and kept it on while he worked on fixing the problem. Besides, it gave him a chance to get a feel for how it would be to wear it for long periods. It wouldn't get dirty, for that gel-like lining would draw sweat away. It was also self cleaning, requiring him only to clean filters in the thighs, biceps, and lower sides of the armor every couple of weeks. But, he discovered that using the bathroom while wearing it was certainly an educational experience, as was sitting at a desk. It wasn't hard for him at all, but it wasn't easy on his bare wood chair. He'd had to get a pillow to keep from tearing his chair up every time he shifted his weight.

Perhaps it was only perfect timing that someone would decide to knock on his door right about then. He checked his porch camera, and saw that it was Clem and his daughter Mary. They _knew_ he was home, it would take too long to take the armor off, and he was afraid that they might come in to see if he was alright if he didn't answer the door. So he went upstairs and up to the front door, then opened it just enough to peek through. "Clem, miss Mary," he said respectfully.

"Evenin', Mister Jason sir," Clem said, taking his hat off. "Ruthie wanted to know if you wanted to come to dinner."

"I appreciate the offer, but I'm kinda busy," he answered. "And not really dressed right now to entertain."

"Damn, sorry Mister Jason sir," Clem said apologetically. "Didn't realize you were about to take a bath."

"That's alright. Maybe some other time."

That was when he heard it. That high-pitched whine of a spatial engine. Downstairs, he heard his panel suddenly start sounding a very loud alarm. He looked past Clem, and saw two small dropships moving slowly over southern Ohio, going from west to east. They were too low to have any business being there. Jason threw the door open and grabbed Clem by the arm, then yanked him inside. Mary rushed in behind her as she looked back and saw it. They both gave him a gawking look as he left them at the door, charging down into the basement. He got to the panel and hit the hotkey at the top of his holographic keyboard that automatically shut down every Faey-based system the panel controlled. The water system, the electricity, and the external sensor system all immediately shut down. He took the panel back up with him as he went back to where Clem and Mary was, and saw them looking out the narrow windows to each side of the door, watching the two lazily drifting dropships, short-winged, stubby craft that served as infantry transports.

"What are those, Mister Jason?" Mary asked fearfully.

"Faey dropships, troop transports," he answered darkly, looking out the window over her head. "They're not just flying over. They have sensor pods on them."

"What are they doing?" she asked.

"Looking for me," he replied with a frown.

"They after that stuff you stole, son?" Clem asked, looking at his black armor.

"No, for who I am," he answered.

"Well, we heard you were a pilot for the Faey, and that you stole a plane," Clem whispered as they watched the two ships slowly move east.

"I didn't steal it, it belongs to me," he answered. "So does this armor, and everything I have. I didn't steal _anything_. They're looking for me because they think I'm smart enough to work for the Imperium in research and development. That's an asset they won't easily give up."

"Ah, you planned ahead," Clem noted.

"Not as well as I thought," he said ruefully. "I brought some stuff, but I didn't come expecting a gang war. I have a friend outside, she bought me this armor and some other things I needed, and brought it to me."

"You think she gave you up?" Mary asked. "I mean, only a _blueskin_ could do that, bring stuff here."

"She wouldn't give me up," he whispered confidently. "And ye