nly one, a fluke.

"But I'm _not_ the only one. Tim is here because _he's_ a telepath, but unlike me, he got caught, which is why Symone is here. She literally fought her way out of New Orleans with Tim, to get him away from the Imperium. Symone loves Tim with all her heart, and she decided she'd rather live a life as a hunted outlaw than lose him."

"Yeah, we can all see that," Temika said unevenly, obviously as her mind tried to wrap around the idea of Jason being telepathic. Jason was not listening to her thoughts, because he didn't want to make her uncomfortable. "So, yo' a telepath? Yo' listening tah me think right now?"

He shook his head. "I don't do that unless I have a good reason. I don't invade the privacy of my friends like that, and besides, it's not polite."

She gave him a _very_ long look. "Why you tellin' me this, Jason? If you've kept it secret fo' this long, why tell me now? What, you gonna tell everyone, an' you're just stahtin' with me?"

He shook his head again. "Telling everyone would be a mistake," he told her. "If one of them gets picked up in a Faey sweep, then I'm toast. They're looking for me, there's no doubt about that. But, there are lots of _Jasons_ out here, but they'd come right after me if they picked up from a squatter that there was a human telepath running around out here."

"Then why tell me?"

He looked her right in the eye. "Because you're _also_ a telepath," he said directly.

She didn't move a muscle for almost thirty seconds. "Ah'm whut?" she asked blankly.

"A telepath. Or you will be, I should say. It hasn't woke up yet, but it's there. That's why I told you about me. That's why I'm talking to you now."

"But Ah don't-how do you know?"

"The short of it is that Symone sensed it in you when she screened you," he answered. "She was afraid to say anything to you, because she said your reactions when she screened you hinted that you have some major issues with telepaths. She was trying to figure out a way to tell you without upsetting you. I told her I'd do it. I thought you might be more comfortable if I told you, instead of her." He leaned against the replicator again. "After all, I have no reason to lie."

"Ah can't believe this," she said with a quavering voice. "Ah'm, Ah'm a _telepath_?" Her eyes darted back and forth, and for a second he thought she was about to faint. He lunged forward to catch her, but she steadied herself quickly, then stood up. For some inexplicable reason, she was _grinning_. "You know what? Ah bet this means that no blueskin can ever stick her grubby little hands in mah head _ever again_," she said fiercely.

Jason raised an eyebrow. She was willing to embrace the idea of it that fast? Odd. He was sorely tempted to peek at her thoughts, but he wasn't about to, not and risk destroying the trust he seemed to have just built with her.

"With some training, probably not," he agreed in a slightly uncertain tone. "It depends on how strong you are, though, and how strong the Faey is. And who's better trained, of course. Skill can overwhelm raw power."

"Symone taught you?" she asked.

"No, someone else did, but Symone is teaching Tim. And when your power expresses, you'll be in there with him. But there are some things you have to understand, Temika."

"Whut?"

"After you express, you're grounded until Symone says it's safe for you to leave," he explained. "An untrained telepath is _dangerous_, and not just for the reasons you think. I think it'll take about a month for Symone to train you to the point where you can go back to ferrying stuff around, but you might not have the time for it. You'll be spending most of your time learning, and learning _fast_. My power's been awake for months, and I've barely learned half of what Jyslin wanted me to know. I can control my power so I don't hear others, and I can send, and Jyslin taught me the basics of using my power as a weapon, but that's about it. When you and Tim are up to where I am, I'm going to be in there with you while Symone teaches the advanced stuff to us.

"Oh, and obviously, _never tell anyone about this_," he said intensely. "Your _life_ depends on nobody knowing about it. If the Faey knew about you, they'd tear this entire region apart trying to find you. And when they did, you'd be shipped off to their home planet. Once you get there, they'll brainwash you to be a faithful lapdog to the Empress. That's the fate that awaits us if the Faey find out about us, and you always have to remember that _anyone_ who knows about us is as good as an open book for the first Faey who crosses his path. Do you understand that?"

She was quiet a long moment. "Yeah, yeah, Ah understand, sugah. An' yo' right, Ah can see exactly what yo' talkin' about. When will it happen?"

He shrugged. "Maybe right now, maybe next year. There's no way to tell. When it's ready, when you're ready, it just happens. Have you been having sudden headaches? Dizzy spells? Unexplained nosebleeds?"

"Yeah," she said. "Ah thought the airbike had somethin' tah do with it."

"Then you're very close."

"What's it like? Bein' a telepath, Ah mean."

"Scary at first," he answered. "Very scary. You hear all these thoughts that aren't yours, and you can't make them go away. But you'll learn how to block it out very quickly, and after that, it's much more interesting. I happen to like being a telepath. I like to send more than I like to talk, because it's faster and more precise, and you can communicate more than just words. You can send images, sounds, even emotions, and that's much more effective than talking."

"Ah don't care about that," she said. "Ah just want tah make sure that no blueskin can _evah_ get inside mah head, evah again," she said fiercely.

"Symone was right," he said quietly. "Someone _did_ do something to you."

"You bettah believe someone did!" she shouted at him, almost hysterically. "Ah got my brain all but scrambled by one of those Faey _bitches_! You don't know what it's like havin' someone in yo' head, takin' anythin' she wants, an' there ain't nothin' you can do tah make her stop! You don't know what it's like tah feel that _helpless_!"

"I can understand how that would make you feel," he said, sitting on a box. "But _don't_ take it out on Symone. Remember, she is _not_ like that. Be as angry as you want at the Faey, but don't ever believe that Symone could do something like that."

She came up short, then sat down again. "Ah, Ah don't believe she could," she said honestly. "Ah never thought Ah'd see a Faey Ah wouldn't immediately hate, but Symone ain't like no Faey Ah've evah heard of. She's too much a sweetie tah be like _them_."

"Good, I'm glad you understand that," he said, standing back up. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to get this armor off. Just do me a favor and go home and think about what I said, and try to relax. And remember that when it does happen, don't panic, just come to me or Symone straight away."

"How will Ah know?"

"Believe me, you'll know," he said seriously. "It could be tomorrow, it could be next week, it could be next month, so don't think that you're just going to go home and immediately express now that you know it's going to happen."

She blushed just slightly; obviously, that was _exactly_ what she thought.

"Ah-thanky kindly, Jason," she said, standing up again.

"For what?"

"Fo' bein' honest, sugah," she answered. "An' for givin' me hope that Ah'll get back mah dignity."

Then he understood. The violation she had endured under that Faey trooper had done more than injure her mind, it had left her feeling weak and helpless, and those were feelings that Temika Daniels, the Queen of the Glass, the most ferocious center ever to play women's college basketball, wasn't prepared to accept. If she too had talent, then she would feel confident that no Faey could ever violate her that way again, that she could protect herself, and that helped restore a modicum of the self-image that she had lost when that had happened. It was a start down the path of redemption in her own eyes, a way to get back what she had lost when that Faey had raked her claws through Temika's mind and destroyed the image of security she had possessed.

"Any time, Temika," he said gently. "Any time."

"Call me Mika, sugah. All mah friends do."

"Mika," he mirrored with a smile.

She came up to him, and though he could tell she flinched at the idea of it, she leaned in and kissed him quickly on the cheek. Her phobia over being touched would take longer for her to overcome, because it had become ingrained in her very personality, but that too was a start.

He watched her go up the stairs and out of sight, and he took a minute to sigh and be relieved that it had went well.

He went back up to his room to take his armor off, pondering the idea of Temika learning how to control her talent, and the fact that she looked to be a very eager student. She had no fear of the idea that she had talent; in fact, she embraced the idea of it immediately and completely, because it represented to her a way to get back a feeling of control of her own life. That was probably a good thing, because she wasn't going to be afraid of her gift at all, and overcoming the fear of that unknown, strange, and frightening gift was the first step to mastering its power.

He went into his room and closed the door behind him, then turned to go to the chair to start taking off his armor, but he stopped short when he saw Symone laying on his bed. Naked. Laying on her side but with both shoulders on the mattress and her hands under her head, in a very sensual pose. _And you thought I forgot about you?_ she sent winsomely, rolling fully onto her side and giving him a wicked little look. She patted the bed before her commandingly.

_Symone, I told you, I'm not too comfortable with this,_ he repeated.

_TIM!_ she sent with impressive power, mainly because Symone really wasn't that strong in the talent. That had to be about everything she had. _Tell him it's alright!_

_It's alright!_ Tim sent immediately, though his form was poor and his words were a tad garbled.

_Now, you can either come sit down, or you can threaten our friendship in my eyes,_ she sent with surprising vehemence.

He blew out his breath. He really had no other excuses, and their friendship was _definitely _at stake here, so he went over and sat down on the edge of the bed. She sat up behind him, and a glance down showed him a very long blue leg on either side of his black armored form. _Relax, Jason,_ she sent with an audible laugh. _It's not like I'm going to pull your teeth out with eyebrow tweezers. You and me are going to have a little fun, have some good sex, then I'm going to go back to the man I love. If you think it's going to change our relationship, please, what is it you humans say? Oh yes, "get a clue." I love you as a best friend, Jason, and this is one way Faey show that friendship. When I get out of this bed, I won't think_ any _differently of you than I did last week, or right now. And I know that you won't mistake it for love. Jyslin proved that to me,_ she sent with a little giggle. _You were able to carry on two very different relationships with her at the same time. I won't be any different. So._

_So what?_

_So, it's time to find out if Jyslin was just bragging or if she was telling the truth,_ she sent with a naughty undertone, grabbing his left arm and deftly unlocking his gauntlet from his arm greave. _Every Marine in her squad has been dying to find out, and so have I._

_Bragging about what?_

_We're about to find out,_ she sent as she leaned against his back and licked his ear while pulling his gauntlet off.

He felt a shiver run up his spine. _Bragging about what?_ he demanded.

_You,_ she answered, unlocking the elbow joint. _Now get out of this armor. We don't have all night, you know._


Chapter 9

_Chiira, 8 Toraa, 4393, Orthodox Calendar_
_Wednesday, 9 September 2007, Native Regional Reckoning_
_Chesapeake, Ohio (Native designation), Orala Nature Preserve, American Sector_

Symone was driving him crazy.

She wouldn't tell him _what_ Jyslin was supposedly bragging about. The only kind of response he could get out of her the next morning was that "Jyslin obviously didn't brag enough."

The worry that what happened between them would change their relationship, or upset Tim, had been misplaced. Tim took him aside and had a talk with him the next morning, and assured him that he _didn't_ mind. The bond between Tim and Symone couldn't possibly be threatened by something that trivial. Tim knew that Symone was just acting in her nature, he knew it wouldn't change her love for him in the slightest, and in a way, Tim admitted that if he was going to find someone to fill the void left behind when he was separated from Jyslin, then he was glad it was going to be Symone. That didn't make much sense to him, but the fact that Tim was willing to allow Symone to do with Jason things that she should only be doing with Tim, because that's what she felt she needed to do to be Jason's friend, said much for his dark-haired friend.

The night with Symone had also taught him an important lesson about telepathy, sex, and the Faey mentality towards them. When he and Jyslin made love, they joined their minds, which made it _intense_. He and Symone had shared a night of admittedly intense physical pleasure, but did not join their minds. That was _not_ something that friends did, that was something reserved for one's spouse or chosen partner, and that was the critical difference that made the two acts so completely different. What he and Symone had shared absolutely _paled_ in comparison to what he and Jyslin shared in each other's arms. It was absolutely not the same. When he and Jyslin made love, they _made love_. What he and Symone had done could technically be called making love, but it was almost sterile in comparison. They'd done nothing more than have sex, purely for physical pleasure... or gratification. "Buddy sex," Symone had called it, sex just to relieve sexual tension.

And _that_ was the great boundary, he discovered. That was why Faey were so casual about it. _Making love_ and _having sex_ were two completely different things to a Faey, and now he finally understood the difference. One was as intimate as intimate could be, while the other was just _physical_. Faey assigned the same importance and intimacy to the union of the minds as humans did the union of the bodies.

That day marked great celebration through the community the day after the delivery, for Steve got his cable service up and running. He had a little trouble getting the transceiver to send out the signal on the cable using channels, but once he got that figured out, anyone with a cable-ready TV could pick up 120 different stations. Steve picked the channels, and he did a good job picking ones that had everything most people would want to see. He made sure to include INN and CNN, the two major news channels for both Earth and the Imperium, as well as several Imperial channels that he thought would be useful to have on the lineup, such as an Imperial network dealing with technical subjects, like the old _Tech TV_ channel. He found a home improvement channel for Earth, so they could learn how to build things so they wouldn't be such hindrances to Luke, who seemed able to build or fix most anything, or Zachary Brolin, the community's resident expert on construction and carpentry. Zach had been the second generation owner of a contracting business, and he knew his construction. Not only did everyone have lights at night, and refrigerators, and air conditioning (though that was becoming less an issue now, as the seasons marched into autumn), but now they could sit down after dinner at night and watch _television_.

They'd had three days to get used to that luxury, but things had been very busy, and besides, Jason already _had_ television. Doc Northwood had both settled into a house, and also commandeered one of the stores on Route 7 to be his new clinic. He had Jason ferry him back and forth between Chesapeake and his house near Beckley for nearly a full day, as he moved all his medical equipment and supplies to his new building. After they finished, he had Luke and Irwin take him to all three hospitals in Luke's Deuce, where he managed to scavenge some medical supplies that others had either missed or dismissed as having no use. He was still setting up his clinic, getting up early and going to bed late, sorting through boxes and boxes of material, and was going to open it in two days.

The city council had already worked out the procedure for that. Anyone was allowed to come to see Doc Northwood, but they had to surrender all their weapons, and Symone had to be on hand to scan their thoughts to ensure that was why they were really there.

Things were starting to look good. Temika had arranged a trade with the McPherson's in Fort Gay, trading three cows and some goats for several guns and a portable generator. She'd also organized a trade with a group in Crown City, four hens and a rooster for several boxes of Clem's hand-pressed ammunition and two hunting rifles. Luke had gone out to get them yesterday with Symone riding shotgun in her new armor, so now they had some livestock. The cloth armor team had been working around the clock, and now everyone had at least one set of armored clothing, even Jenny. Jason had uploaded the railgun part specs into the replicator, and it had already manufactured the parts he needed for the first new unit. He'd even gotten about halfway through making it as well, finishing the flux cabling in the barrel, which was probably the hardest part. It had to be wrapped by hand, and it had to be _exact_, so much so that he had to get out a micrometer to check his work. He'd replicated the barrel so it had notches on the outside for the cabling, so that helped a great deal, but it still required steady hands and patience. The rest of it would just be like putting a model kit together. He'd also made a _bunch_ of new magazines, so he didn't have to worry about losing them, and a few thousand rounds of ammunition. Tim and Symone found themselves coating the iron rounds with titanium for a couple of days as they did their telepathy lessons.

There were some things to worry about, though. He'd finally called Jyslin back, and to his relief, he found out that the Secret Police wasn't bothering her anymore, mainly because of her aunt Lorna. Lorna had had a meltdown when she found out that the Secret Police was harassing her niece, and a couple of calls to friends who had friends put a swift end to it. She also warned him that he'd been spotted. Her aunt Lorna had told her that he'd been picked up by an environmental research team's study of a bear they'd tagged with a beacon. They'd been using an optical image to observe the bear, and Jason had literally flown right over the animal. They quickly started tracking _him_, but they lost visual contact with him when he went under a cloud, and they found out very quickly that the airbike was actively shielded from passive sensors. It was too small for orbital sensors to pick it up with active sensors, so they lost contact with him. They knew that Jason had airbikes, since they'd been in his skimmer, and he still had his skimmer, but the fact that they were _shielded_ had baffled the sensor officers to no end. They could not figure out how he'd gotten his hands on shielded airbikes, or if he'd somehow done the shielding himself. Lorna had told her that they thought he had taken his skimmer apart to scavenge parts and equipment he needed to hide himself, because the only PPG signatures they could detect were signatures that they'd already known about. Jason's group wasn't the only people out in the wildlands that had Faey technology. The Faey generally ignored that contraband equipment, so long as they didn't see someone stockpiling it. Every once in a while they sent out expeditions to capture the owners and inspect what they had and what they were doing with it, but that was usually only when someone was bored, or they thought that someone might have gotten his hands on a plasma weapon. Generally put, the Faey didn't give a damn what happened out in the nature preserve, so long as the squatters didn't start disrupting Faey-held territory, and they didn't start getting weapons that could hurt Faey soldiers.

Jyslin told him that they were fairly sure that Jason had plasma weapons, since it was now obvious to them that he had planned to run away, and that posed a special problem for them. That gave Jason a viable means of fighting back if they found him and tried to capture him, and he was willing to shoot at them to prevent it. Lorna told him that they intended to find him first, then study him long enough to find a way to get at him safely, which meant getting a Marine close enough to attack him with telepathy. They didn't want open warfare, because they wanted him back in school. They were afraid that if they opened fire on him, it would make him so resistant that telepathic reprogramming would be required to permanently subdue him, and that was something they would prefer to avoid. Anytime that was done, there was a risk that his intellectual capability might be damaged, since they were in effect rewiring his brain, and the wiring of the brain was one of the contributing aspects of intelligence. They wanted his mind, and they didn't want to have to tamper with that mind. They wanted to reclaim him as _peaceably_ and as _gently_ as possible, then get him back in school without having to tamper with him. They didn't want to earn his eternal hatred and be required to risk damaging his mind when making him more tractable.

But his cunning had already started getting on their nerves. They had done a sweep of everyone with a PPG, but they hadn't found _him_. They'd found out from those squatters about a woman riding an airbike, which they figured had to be connected to Jason, but they couldn't _find_ her. That was when they realized that Jason had done something to the airbikes to hide them from sensors, and it was confirmed when he was spotted and evaded tracking. They _knew_ he had left with his skimmer, they _knew_ he had come prepared, and it was obvious to them that one of the things he had prepared for was hiding himself from their sensors. This drove them _nuts_. They could not figure out how he was defeating their sensors. Sensor officers were trying to recalibrate the sensors to detect smaller objects, and they'd sent some dropships over the preserve with sensor pods so they could get a more accurate reading off the active arrays, but so far they'd come up with _nothing_. That told Jason that his inverse phase emitter was working and working _perfectly_, killing their active sensor pulses and hiding anything that a passive sensor couldn't detect from the active arrays... and since the passive arrays couldn't detect anything either, his little organization was effectively invisible. They probably thought he had to be some kind of MacGyver to pull that off; little did they know that he had an outside contact that was supplying him with all kinds of equipment allowing him to do what he was doing.

That was a thought. How did Kumi get her dropship in and out the second time without anyone noticing? Or _did_ they notice, and she'd just paid them to be quiet, or brought her noble clout about to hush it up? He'd have to ask her.

Jason also found out from Jyslin that politics was his friend. Lorna had told her that a representative of the Imperium, who had personally come from the Ministry to look at Jason's school record and some of the documented technical stunts he'd pulled, wanted more manpower and resources committed to finding Jason, but he found himself talking to a stone wall. The Duchess of Terra wasn't about to burn any more money and divert any more equipment and troops to hunting down a single runaway human, and to the Faey scientist's shock, the Imperium wasn't about to dispatch an additional units or give him any Marines to do it either. They'd looked for him, spent tens of thousands of credits in salary and maintenance costs trying to find him, and came up empty. The Duchess did have people looking for him, but she had mixed finding him into other operations, such as training missions, recon missions, and things like that. She wasn't going to waste money _just_ on looking for him anymore. She was getting some additional benefit out of it. The word from the Imperium was that the Duchess of Terra already had people looking for him, so it was redundant to send any more.

He was glad that Jyslin was going to be alright, and the information she gave him was very eye-opening.

Symone... well, Symone was being Symone. She'd had almost a month to worm her way into the community, and now everyone loved her. Symone had a bubbly personality that made her impossible not to like, and despite the fact that she was Faey, she quickly got to where she all but owned everyone in the community. Jenny absolutely adored her, following her around almost all the time, often ignoring her own mother. What drove him crazy about that was that Symone was trying to line Jason up a girlfriend. There were only five women in the community outside Symone; one was married, one was a child, and one was too old for him, so that left all of two women. Temika and Regina. Symone had been trying to steer both of them at him for a couple of days now, but he seriously doubted that she was going to have any luck. Regina already had a boyfriend-not even mentioning the fact that Jason didn't find Regina attractive at all-and Temika's phobia made it impossible for her to get close to anyone, even if she wanted to. And naturally, that was where Symone was concentrating her fire, on Temika. Temika did like Jason as a friend, maybe found him attractive, but Symone kept hitting the wall trying to convince her to ask him out on a date, because it kept coming back to her phobia. Even though she was very comfortable with Jason, and trusted him, Symone couldn't fathom why she wouldn't let him touch her. Symone didn't understand phobias, because that kind of mental condition didn't exist among the Faey. A phobia could be corrected with telepathic "surgery" by an expert telepath, correcting the mental state that caused it to exist. She couldn't understand why Temika had let him touch her before, when she was wounded, but wouldn't let him touch her now. Symone didn't understand that rationality had no bearing with a phobia, since a phobia was by its very nature an _irrational_ fear to a certain situation. And since only Jyslin or someone of her caliber would have the telepathic power or skill to correct that, even if Temika allowed a Faey into her head, that meant it was nothing that would change any time soon.

Jason knew she meant well, but he wished she'd just drop it and leave well enough alone. He was quite content being single, and outside that one episode with Symone, which had been triggered by his trick on Kumi, he hadn't necessarily felt the need for female companionship. Jyslin probably had a lot to do with that, he figured. She'd totally _spoiled_ him. His tryst with Symone was fun, but it wasn't as intense as it was with Jyslin.

Luckily, things were quiet right now. Jason was in his basement workshop, assembling his new railgun, and he'd been unbothered all morning. Now that he got the flux cabling on the barrel and locked it down with a liberal coating of clear sealant in one half of the barrel carapace, the rest of it was only going to take about six hours to finish. The hardest part after cabling would be assembling the chamber feed and installing the magazine lock and backglass display. Everything else was just cookie-cutter stuff, anneal component _A_ to unit chassis location _B_, then run datalines and/or microconduit between component _A_ and component _C_.

He had the equipment on hand to build 20 railguns, but he wasn't going to build them all at once. He'd decided that a railgun would be built for every person who had a set of armor, with two spares on hand in case of a breakdown. At the moment, they didn't need everyone to be carrying around that kind of firepower; the conventional firearms they had on hand right now was more than enough. It only gave them 7 external weapons that would work against the Faey if they attacked, but he wouldn't commit the people in his community to that kind of a fight. They would run from the Faey, but they would stand and fight against armed groups of roving bandits. That meant that the had to build three more railguns, and then he would move on to the next major problem.

The cloaking device.

He had absolutely no idea how he was going to do that. No _fucking_ idea. But he had to come up with some way to get his skimmer back in the air, and do it without the Faey being able to detect it. Getting past the active sensors wasn't a problem now that he'd come up with the inverse phase emitter, now the problem was getting past the _passive_ sensors. He could just install the inverse phase emitter in the skimmer if it came down to it, but now he had to find a way to hide the skimmer's energy signature, and its mass.

That little tidbit about scared his pants off. If he wanted to use the skimmer in space-which was an eventuality for which he had to plan-he had to find a way to hide mass. In space, away from the heavily distorting effect of the planetary gravimetric well, Faey passive sensors would be able to detect the effect the skimmer's mass would have on space, as well as its gravimetric engines. Faey had mastered the manipulation of space, even using it as a means of propulsion, and that included the ability to _detect_ the effect mass had on the curvature of space, detect spatial distortion. They could detect a stationary object, but they worked best when a mass was in motion, producing a dynamic alteration to the spatial volume... which he could understand. The human eye, after all, would detect an object in motion more effectively than they would an object at rest. A mass as small as the skimmer could be detected from the _moon_ using Faey sensors, so long as the planetary gravity well of Earth didn't get in the way. He'd found that data just surfing around the tech boards, and had found someone who had posted up some classified information about some of the _secret_ things Faey sensors 