seemed that the key wasn't the only help her boss was willing to render, and that they seemed quite serious about their offer to help keep him alive. He wasn't too sure about the idea of this, but he'd reserve judgment until he got back to town and had a look at that box. He put the key in a belt container, then shouldered his rifle and started for his airbike. He had to go see what was going on, so he had to get back quickly.

_"Jason! Steve is opening it now with an annealer!"_ Tim said excitedly over the radio.

"Dammit, tell him to stop!" Jason snapped over the radio as he raced to his airbike and literally vaulted onto it. "It might be trapped!"

_"He scanned it before-" _he began, then he gasped. _"It's _food_!"_ he said with an almost girlish squeal. _"Steve says it's full of boxes and boxes of food! He said it's packed to the rafters with it!"_

It took Jason all of three minutes to get back to town from Beech Fork, and he was off the airbike and running to the container, a massive silver rectangular cube sitting in the intersection of 7 and the access road to 52. There was a hole cut into the side, and Jason saw Steve and Leamon carrying out boxes with Faey writing on them, as Symone set another on the ground. "Are you people nuts?" Jason shouted as he tore his helmet off, throwing it to the ground absently. "There was no telling what was in that container!"

"I scanned it before I opened it," Steve told him. "But the note on the side told us it wasn't anything dangerous."

"What note?"

Steve led him around to the side, the side he didn't see when he landed. Emblazoned on the side in large Faey script were the words _this will help keep you alive until you accept our offer._ That was what that Faey woman had said to him. She said she had no desire to see him get killed... and that there was one more surprise waiting for him. Was this it? Were they supplying him with food so they would make it through the winter?

"Shit, Jayce, there's enough food in here to feed us all for a year!" Symone said as Steve led him back to where he'd cut the hole. "Did you buy this?"

Jason looked into the hole with Symone. Inside, there wasn't even room for a mouse, it was packed so tightly. The boxes were wrapped in clear plastic and bundled into pallets, each pallet floor an anti-grav cargo platform. Steve had torn through the plastic on the bottom pallet to get at the boxes he, Leamon, and Symone had carried out. "I didn't buy it," Jason said. "Let's get this stuff into a warehouse. Give me that annealer Steve, I'll cut out the whole wall so we can clear the top pallets first."

He did so, using the antigrav pods in his armor, then quickly got to work bringing the pallets down one by one. A single man could push and guide a pallet once it was off the stack, so they quickly started emptying out the container. They got about halfway through it when Jason realized that there was a massive enclosed container inside the container, like a box inside a box, with the food stacked all around it. It was nearly fifteen feet high and ten feet wide and ten feet deep, annealed to the floor of the container. They emptied out everything else, and while the townsfolk pushed the food to one of the storage warehouses along route 7, Jason, Tim, Leamon, Steve, Clem, Luke, and Symone stood in front of that huge box. Jason had the annealer in his hands, but he saw that that wasn't necessary. This box had an opening mechanism on it, a button on the side which would cause one side of it to unanneal and open. This was a reusable shipping container, not a replicated disposable one like the container in which this box had been shipped.

"Well, we won't know what's in it 'til we open it," Clem said sagely, answering that question that was on everyone's minds, but had not been voiced. He stepped up and looked at the button, then pushed it after Jason nodded.

The side to their right opened slowly, the wall gracefully sinking to the ground. They all went around, then stopped dead as soon as they looked inside.

Jason was stunned. There was no way to describe the shock and awe he felt looking into that shipping container.

For inside that container, supported by cables attached to the walls, was a fifteen foot tall bipedal machine. Jason recognized it immediately.

It was an _exomech_.

It was sleek and ominous looking, almost looking like a Faey inside a suit of armor more than it did a robotic device. Slender limbs were attached to a sleek torso, in which the pilot was placed, and atop that torso was a smallish, narrow head with two red crystals in the shape of eyes on its front, a front that had a vague, sharp face-like appearance. An external plasma cannon was mounted on its right shoulder, its long, squared barrel angled down so it was parallel to the floor to make it fit into the unit.

"Holy _shit_!" Symone gasped in Faey. "It's an _exomech_!"

"What is that thing?" Leamon asked in mute awe.

"It's an exomech!" Symone repeated in English. "A robotic fighting vehicle! And it's a top-line model! Trelle's Garland, it's an XME-400 model! Jason, who loves you enough to send you an _exomech_, cause there's no way in hell you could buy one! This thing had to cost over a million credits!"

An _exomech_? Was this the surprise that woman hinted at? Buy _why_, for pete's sake? Why give him an exomech? It made no sense! This was a _military_ weapon! And not only that, he had no idea how to pilot it!

"There's a note on its leg," Tim said, pointing at its left foot.

Jason saw it, a piece of paper taped to its left shin. Jason approached it warily, stepping inside the box, then grabbed the piece of paper and opened it. They filed in behind him, and Symone looked over his shoulder as he read the Faey script, then translated.

"Use it wisely," he said, turning the paper over and looking at the other side. "That's all it says."

Jason looked up at the fearsome piece of hardware, his mind turning over and over. Why did they send this to him? What possible use would he have for it? Then again, how was he supposed to _use_ it? Exomechs required special training to operate... they weren't easy to run. Even if he had the training to operate it, what possible good would it do him to have it? This was a _war machine_, and if the Faey ever saw it, they'd attack his little settlement immediately and with overwhelming firepower. All things considered, having this exomech in the community was ten times more of a risk and liability than it was an asset. The only real practical use he could see in it was taking it apart and learning how it worked, getting his hands on some classified Faey military technology. Other than that, it was just a big target for the Faey, and one they _would_ attack if they knew it was there.

But, on the other hand... if he really could learn how to pilot it, then it would be a very formidable force to help protect the town, should the Faey ever attack-god forbid that ever happened. That exomech could shock the Faey so bad it would give the people time to run away. It was too dangerous to keep, but its potential usefulness could not be ignored.

First he felt relief at having the food but now... now he had _this_ thing to worry about. He blew out his breath, then bowed his head and shook it in disgust. "I can't believe they gave us this thing," he grunted, then he sighed. "Alright, then. Luke, have anything big enough to carry it? We need to hide it somewhere."

"We can stick it in the auto garage down by the bridge. It should be big enough to hold it," he answered.

"Are we keeping that thing?" Leamon asked.

"For now, yeah," Jason answered. "But it's a kind of damned if you do damned if you don't situation. It's way too dangerous to keep, but what else can we do with it? And also, if one of us could actually learn to pilot it, it would be our ace in the hole if the Faey ever do attack the town. It should be such a surprise that it would let everyone else get away. Either way though, it's just going to be one big-assed headache for all of us until we decide what to do. And it's definitely something that the town council should talk about before any decisions are made."

"Amen," Clem said with a nod.

"Let's get it into the garage while it's dark and cloudy," he said briskly. "I want to get it out of the container and out of sight as fast as possible."


Chapter 10

_Chiira, 7 Miraa, 4393, Orthodox Calendar_
_Wednesday, 7 October 2007, Native Regional Reckoning_
_Chesapeake, Ohio (Native designation), Orala Nature Preserve, American Sector_

The council meeting was long, heated, and very, very nervous.

Jason was not the only one who saw the unbelievable danger that the exomech posed to the community. Clem and Paul Meredith saw what Jason saw, Death's scythe should the Faey somehow come to know that they had possession of it. But unlike Jason, who saw some other potential, Clem and Paul were absolutely against anything other than immediately getting rid of it, taking it out and dumping it into the Ohio River. Leamon and Julianne understood that danger, but they were at the other end of the spectrum from Clem and Paul. They saw the exomech as an overwhelming force that could serve as a last-ditch line of defense, something they'd only pull out when they had no other option available to them, like if a Faey expedition attacked the town. They saw it as a guardian angel, a nuclear weapon, something only used when all other options were exhausted, but something that could dramatically change the outcome of whatever emergency had led to its use. Regina was of Jason's mind on this, seeing the exomech as a vast danger, but also something that could save lives if it were used in the right way, at the right time.

The meeting went on for almost six hours, and many townsfolk were lurking out in front of Jason's house, trying to eavesdrop on what was going on. They knew about the exomech, and they knew that the council was debating the fate of that machine. They were wildly curious, for only a handful of people had seen them move it into the garage, a garage which was now locked, all the doors annealed, all the windows boarded up, and with two mounted deputies with _real_ MPACs, not hunting rifles, standing guard outside it with orders to shoot anyone who tried to enter the garage. They couldn't hear much, since it was taking place down in the basement, but they did hear the occasional bouts of shouting that rose up... which told them how heated the council session was.

It came down to two people who were so absolutely convinced that they were right that they would not even listen to the other side. Jason was a bit surprised that Clem was being so stubbornly adamant, for usually the man was very wise and quite open to hearing the opposing point of view. But on this he had dug in his heels and he would not budge. Julianne was being just as stubborn, refusing to entertain any proposal that included getting rid of the exomech. She understood the danger, that was for sure, but she was completely confident that it would never be found by the Faey, and if it ever was used, well, they'd be abandoning Chesapeake in that kind of situation anyway, for nothing short of an attack by Faey forces would require its use. Paul was a bit more open to listening to debate, as was Leamon, but they backed their more militant fellow council members on their views, leaving Regina and Jason in the delicate position of trying to mediate between the two.

In the end, though, it came down to a vote that left neither side happy at all. After all the shouting and finger-waggling, it had been decided to keep the exomech _for now_. The matter would come up for a vote again in three weeks, during which time Jason, Tim, and Steve would be required to study their current security measures and attest without any doubt whatsoever that the exomech was undetectable. If any one of them was not absolutely sure about that, had even one doubt, then the vote would be cancelled and the exomech immediately destroyed. Clem and Paul wanted it destroyed _now_, and Leamon and Julianne didn't want it destroyed at _all_... but the measure had passed, so they had to live with it. The vote was 3-2, with Regina casting the deciding vote. Jason approved the measure, and it was put in the books.

He felt drained and exhausted when the meeting finally broke up, going up and sitting in the living room for a minute with his head in his hands. Symone, Tim, and Temika came in immediately after the other council members left, as did Mary and Danielle. Mary and Danielle had become best friends since she'd arrived, and were rarely apart anymore. "What did they decide to do, Mister Jason?" Mary asked.

"We vote again in three weeks," he answered dully. "If the techs can't absolutely guarantee it won't be detected, we destroy it. If we vote to destroy it the next time it comes up, we destroy it."

"Why is it so important?" Mary asked. "I mean, we got lots of Faey stuff around."

"Because it's a _military_ machine," he answered her. "If the Faey saw it, they'd send troops in here to capture it and us. They don't interfere in what goes out in here as long as _we are no threat to them_, Mary. Yeah, they know I have the airbikes, they know I have a couple of MPACs, they know I have the skimmer and some Faey tech, but none of it's really dangerous. What could I possibly do with a civilian skimmer and a handful of MPACs? Not much. But an exomech is an entirely different ball game, hon. It's a war machine, and if they knew we had it, they'd attack us immediately."

"But why? What could one exomech do to _them_?" she asked.

"It's not what it can do, hon, it's what it represents," Jason answered. "They wouldn't tolerate anyone out here with that kind of major firepower, because it's a threat to _them _if they come out here to raid us. And besides, they wouldn't want _anyone_ out here that could manage to get their hands on one in the first place. If they see it, the first thing they'll ask after they get over the shock is _how many more do they have_? Then they'll come out here with a few _thousand_ troops to find out."

"That about sums up what they'd do, alright," Symone agreed with a nod.

"If it's that dangerous, then why keep it at all?" Danielle asked.

"Because if the Faey ever do attack us, pulling that thing out would shock them so bad that it would give everyone time to get away," Jason replied. "That's what a couple of council members see using it for, as a last resort in case the Faey attack."

"But you just said that if they attack, they'll come with a huge army."

"That's if they knew it was there," Symone said, nodding in understanding. "They're talking about if the Faey ever raid the town, like I've heard from the others about how Faey patrols raid squatters to make sure they don't have any plasma weapons, or shit like that. If they came knowing it was here, it'd never get out of the garage. They'd just have a fighter hit it, or have a cruiser hit it from orbit. Hell, they could blow this entire city off the map from orbit without having to send a single soldier, but they wouldn't do that. They'd want to know how we got it."

"What do you think, Mister Jason?" Mary asked.

"I think I'm not going to sleep well knowing it's here," he answered. "I'd like to keep it for a while because I can learn a great deal from it, but it makes me _very_ nervous knowing that it's here. As soon as I learn everything from it I want to learn, I'll vote to have it destroyed."

"I'd have thought you'd want to keep it," Symone said seriously.

"It's ten times more a liability than it is an asset," he told her. "The only possible practical use it has for us is as a learning tool. If we ever had to really _use_ it, it would be the end of this community. The only way I could possibly see using it is if the Faey attacked the town and started killing people, or they intended to steal all our food and equipment, which would make it impossible for us to survive. Either way, if it ever gets used, everything we built here will be for nothing, but at least it would keep us alive long enough to gather up what we can and relocate to a new place."

"If we could," Tim added.

Jason nodded. "God, I'm hungry," he grunted. "I haven't eaten all day."

"I have some leftovers in the fridge, Mister Jason," Mary told him. "Spaghetti."

"Spaghetti? Where did you get the pasta?"

"One of the new people can make pasta from scratch," Mary said with a grin. "Sophia Frellini. She's been selling it. It's _wonderful_," she said dreamily.

"She's making a killing, too," Danielle added. "She gets flour from Ruth and uses it to make pasta."

"I'm not too sure I approve of her selling something she's getting from the shared food bank," Jason said with a frown.

"Clem knows she's doing it, he said it was alright," Mary said. "So long as she doesn't gouge people."

"Oh. Well, I guess it's okay then, if Clem knows."

"I'll go get it for you, Mister Jason," she said, then scurried out. Danielle, as always, was right behind her.

_Anything else happen in there?_ Tim asked, his sending curious.

_Just a lot of shouting,_ Jason answered, leaning back heavily in his chair. _For a few minutes, I thought Clem and Juli were going to start throwing punches. It got intense._

_I can imagine,_ Symone sent, nodding in agreement. _You might want to pull those guards with MPACs off the garage. Just in case they saw that cargo carrier land._

_That's true,_ he agreed. _They might see them if they have their cameras pointed at us. Rather not give them any reason to start looking at us too closely._

That turned out to be a moot point, he discovered later, watching TV as he ate the delicious spaghetti that Mary brought to him. It turned out that the drop _was_ known to the Faey, because it made the "local" news-that being CNN, the last of the news networks since the subjugation, which had become the news network for Earth. CNN was the local version of INN, and was an affiliate of INN in the same way that local broadcast stations were affiliates of CNN back in the day. The drop was touted as a humanitarian mission by House Trillane to feed the squatters in the preserve, to help them through the winter. The drop here was only one of twenty, scattered through the preserve, and after a little CB chatting, they'd found that the other "drops" were one tenth the size of theirs, dropped in the middle of nowhere for whoever could reach the container first. Kumi even managed to get into the news, for it was organized by one Eleri Trillane. She'd gotten her fifteen seconds of fame on Earth.

That news story was curious to Jason, for a couple of reasons. His main concern was that it made Trillane admit that there were squatters out in the preserve, something that they had never done before. Oh, everyone knew that they were there, but Trillane had never _officially_ admitted it before. Admitting that the squatters were there was tantamount to admitting that Trillane was failing the Imperial mandate of a smooth and fluent transition from the human ways to the Faey ways. Squatters in the preserve were a public display of the fact that not all humans were ready to embrace the Faey system, and that wasn't the kind of image that Trillane wanted for the new jewel in their house crown. It was also sure to raise a few legal questions about the official status of the squatters. They were seen as citizens of the Imperium, and what they were doing was breaking the law by refusing to work. Sure, Trillane could have gone in at any time and captured all the squatters, sent them to work on farms, but that would put a disruptive element into an area where the Trillanes needed dependable productivity. Letting the squatters stay out in the preserve removed the disruptive element. He had little doubt that the Imperial observers knew about the squatters, and turned a blind eye to them to keep them out of mischief and the food continuing to flow into the Imperium. As long as they were isolated in the preserve and kept suitably controlled, they were harmless.

Obviously, this "humanitarian mission" was nothing but whoever that mysterious woman worked for concealing the delivery of that food to Jason's community. They'd enlisted Kumi's aid-no doubt very expensive, knowing Kumi-and had explained it away by making token food drops in other locations.

And certainly, this story would never reach INN.

Locally, though, the story had several different impacts. Jason's people got food, Trillane got a bit of a public-relations story out of looking caring and concerned about the squatters, and people with relatives or friends might feel a little better about it.

In any event, he wasn't going to get too much sleep until that thing was either gone or so well hidden that there was no way the Faey would ever find it.

And he had a boatload of work ahead of him.

                                        * * *

_Kaira, 18 Miraa, 4393, Orthodox Calendar_
_Sunday, 18 October 2007, Native Regional Reckoning_
_Chesapeake, Ohio (Native designation), Orala Nature Preserve, American Sector_

They were running out of time.

Jason sat in his basement workshop, alone, with drawings, external displays, panels, bits and pieces of equipment, and quite a few dirty plates scattered all over the shop. They'd been given three weeks to guarantee that the exomech would never be found, and as of right now, with only three days to go until that second council meeting, Jason could not make that guarantee.

Oh, it was safe enough where it was, that was for sure, as long as it wasn't turned on. The inverse phase emitter would prevent the Faey from detecting the exomech, but the instant it was activated, the passive arrays would pick it up, and that would be it. And since it was nothing but a huge paperweight without being able to turn it on, Jason wouldn't sign off on it. If he wanted to learn anything from it, he needed to turn it on. The most he could learn from it the way it was was maybe learn more about its systems, which wasn't very useful.

So, he wouldn't sign off on it until he could defeat passive sensors, and that was what he'd been working on feverishly since the day after the council meeting. He'd argued about ideas with Steve and Tim, he'd built prototypes based on different ideas-none of which worked-he'd researched and researched and researched on CivNet until he was on a first-name basis with most of the people who perused the technical boards. And still, nothing. Not that he really expected to have a breakthrough in three weeks; he knew it'd be a miracle to come up with something that fast.

It just kept coming back to a simple problem... nothing he could come up with could stop a plasma signature. He couldn't hide it, he couldn't mask it, and the passive nature of the sensors he was trying to beat wouldn't allow him to trick them the way he did the active sensors. There was no energy pattern he could put over the signature to conceal it, and the exomech was too large to shield its signature. Smaller plasma signatures could be masked with a special alloy of Neutronium and Yttrium, which dampened the plasma signature to the point where a class X PPG looked like a class II, and outright concealed signatures from a Class VII or smaller. But the power plant in the exomech wasn't just a PPG, it was a full-blown reactor engine, complete with plasma power capacitors and spatial engines and backup PPGs placed all over the exomech, that each would show up to passive sensors. He'd have to lay on so much shielding to mask that power plant and all those tertiary systems that it would overload the exomech, make it too heavy to move. Same for his skimmer... he'd have to put on so much shielding, _everywhere_, that it would be too heavy for its own engines.

So, it came right back to the same problem he'd struggled with for months. How did he hide a large, unshielded plasma signature from passive sensors?

He blew out his breath and put his head in his hands, thinking the problem through. Maybe he was making this more complicated than it needed to be. If he couldn't shield the power signature without overloading the unit, then he needed to find a shielding material that _wouldn't_ overload the unit, because shielding the unit was the easiest approach, one that was proven to work.

But that was the problem... there was no shielding material he could use. The unique density of the Neutronium/Yttrium that closely matched a plasma signature let it absorb plasma energy-

_--Absorb_!

It was like a neuron in his brain suddenly exploded, the flash of insight hit him so quickly. If he couldn't shield a unit with the alloy, then he had to _actively_ reinforce that alloy! And what absorbed energy? _Shields_!

Building energy matrixes inside solid objects was already a tried and true Faey technology, because that was _exactly_ how plasma conduit operated. It created a magnetic "pipe" through which the plasma flowed inside a flexible hollow rod of a carbon-silicon composite. The magnetic pipe was channeled through the molecular structure of the conduit to prevent the hyperphased power plasma from striking the sides of the conduit and creating a drag eddy, which interfered with plasma flow. Hyperphased plasma was safe at room temperature, which prevented it from exploding if a conduit ruptured... it was like liquid energy. One certainly didn't want to touch it with bare hands, but it wouldn't do any major damage if it was sprayed all over the internal systems of a piece of equipment, just scorch it. The magnetic pipe wasn't absolutely required for it to work, it just made it more efficient.

Quickly, Jason sketched out his idea. He needed to create a stable energy matrix inside a layer of either Neutronium or that alloy, a shield specifically designed to act against _plasma_. Unphased plasma like the kind of radiant signature generated by plasma technology was stopped by shields just like any other form of energy, and the energy emissions of a plasma device were unphased. He looked up Neutronium on CivNet, checking out its physical characteristics, and found, to his utter delight, that it would be compatible with what he wanted to do with it. The metal's molecular structure would support building an energy matrix within it. With that confirmed, he went over what he'd need to do, and how to do it.

The Neutronium would have to be isolated from everything else, but this wasn't going to be a problem. In fact, Faey armor was already _designed_ this way, with the layers of Neutronium with the synthetic phase cloth in the middle. The inner layer and outer layer were separate, with all the moorings and mounts on the back of the internal layer, with the bonded phase barrier material between them. Jason looked up what kind of material they used in exomechs, which wasn't easy, because it was a military application. He did find what he was looking for after about an hour, on a shadowy board with that kind of sensitive information, and was _very_ pleased. Exomechs used a metallic synthetic material for the phase barrier, which, after checking out its physical properties, he discovered would _not_ conduct the energy matrix. It would serve as a perfect insulator. There were anchor moorings through that phase material attaching the outer layer to the inner layer, but those could be found and insulated.

Okay, he knew that it _could_ be done. He quickly sketched out what he'd need to do this. He'd need some specialized shield emitters, which would be mounted into the outer layer of the exomech. These emitters would have to be tachyon-based, not the usual tetryon technology used by the Faey, because a tachyon shield would be capable of operating at the necessary composite harmonic shield frequency required to absorb plasma signatures. Tachyon shield technology was _old_ by Faey standards, a century out of date, abandoned after tetryon shield technology was discovered. Tachyon shields were considered _soft_, lacking strong physical resistance present in tetryon shields, which were called _hard shields_, much more capable of dealing with physical force and kinetic energy. But Tachyon shields could be used in a _harmonic_ manner, introducing more than one frequency into the shield without creating a feedback that would blow the shield matrix. Jason needed that ability to operate with harmonics.

The emitters would have to be mounted into every modular plate of the exomech, wherever a joint separated the plates, and into the joint plates themselves. One emitter per plate, with 97 separate plates and joints in the exomech's armor. Each emitter would be operating at a very low energy level, only just enough to absorb a passive energy signature, allowing the entire system to be powered by the spare power generated by the main power plant. The exact operating harmonic frequency wasn't that hard to work out, but then he redid it to add to the shield the ability to absorb the hyperthreaded pulses of active sensors as an emergency backup in case the inverse phase emitter he intended to mount onto the exomech failed. The absorption would cause the exomech to be a "hole" in a sensor return, more noticeable the closer the exomech was to the sensor, but it was better than nothing. That was _very _easy for him to do, since he'd done so much research on them, and had built the inverse phase emitter. He could even design the system to absorb light energy, which would cause the exomech to become utterly black, a two-dimensional shadow of utter darkness. Rather useless in the daytime, but that would be quite handy for moving the exomech at night.

He'd need conduit and datalines, and he'd need to program the control system and introduce it into the exomech's operating system. He'd need to study the exomech's technical drawings to figure out where and how to install these emitters, then join their datalines and conduits to those already in the unit. After that, he'd have to write the operating program and get it to work with the exomech's main computer.

And if all that worked, he'd end up with a system that completely masked the exomech from Faey sensors, and make it all but invisible in the darkness of night. The exomech would only be visible to gravimetric disturbance sensors, detecting the effect of its mass on space as it moved, but those couldn't detect something as small as the exomech while it was in the gravity well of the p