lanet. He had a good theory, that was for sure, but he had to make that theory _work_.

_Tim!_ Jason sent in a loud, urgent broadcast. _Tim, grab Steve and come to my shop! NOW!_

_What's wrong?_ he asked in reply.

_Shut up and move, dumbass! Before I lose my train of thought!_

It didn't take the two of them long to get there. Jason explained his idea to them and showed them what technical data he had that backed up his theory, then sat back and let them think it over.

"Hmm," Steve hummed, tapping his forehead with a finger. "I think it just might work, Jayce. If the metal can support the matrix, it should work. It'll fail if the metal's damaged or if it's hit by an MPAC, all that plasma would overload the system. But then again, if they shoot holes in the armor, it's pretty obvious they know it's there already."

"What about magnetic fields?" Tim asked. "Isn't tachyon energy vulnerable to magnetic fields?"

"Yeah, it's highly polarized," Jason affirmed, "but there's not going to be a magnetic field we'll have to worry about, and it's going to be _inside_ the Neutronium. We couldn't expose the matrix to contact with shields, and the magnetic envelope of an MPAC would overload the matrix and kill it. The magnetic field it creates will be strong, but it won't extend more than a micron outside the energy matrix itself, which will be _inside _the Neutronium. That's going to help insulate the matrix from magnetic disturbance. Neutronium's not magnetic, it'll act as an insulator for the matrix. Iron wouldn't even stick to the armor when it's running."

"But wouldn't their active sensors then pick up the Neutronium if there's going to be part of the hull not inside the field?" Steve asked.

"Ah, yes, it would," Jason said, holding up a finger, "_if_ there wasn't an inverse phase emitter on the exomech designed to block anything that shouldn't be there, as well as the life signs of the pilot. I designed this system to also absorb sensor pulses as an emergency backup if the emitter fails. If that happens, the field will have to rise up to the surface of the Neutronium, which would be easy for us to design. The magnetic field will be exposed, but it shouldn't be an issue because the field will only extend a micron beyond the hull. Anything magnetic would stick to it if that was done, but if you have to switch to that, but only something magnetic that came into direct contact with the hull. But if you have that running, then you're not going to be hanging around. I also worked up a way to raise the field to the surface and also make it absorb light. In the darkness, it would be all but invisible."

"Clever," Steve nodded. "Now, since you have this great idea, how about we aim it at what we're supposed to do?"

"Huh?" Jason asked.

"The Council wants a way to _hide_ the exomech, not a way to make it undetectable if it's not under cover. So, with that in mind, how do we adapt this idea to do what they want?"

Jason gave him a look, then laughed. "Yeah, you're right. A box?"

"That's what I was thinking," Steve said, drawing on a piece of paper before them. "We just build a box inside the garage, then hook the system up to it. We have Luke dig a trench kind of like you see in bays in places like Jiffy Lube, where we can get in and out. Then we can learn how it ticks, learn from something cutting edge."

"Something _military_," Jason nodded in agreement. "We learn how the computer works, then we tear it apart and see how it's built. We'll just have to keep people with plasma rifles away from the garage, and we'll have to make sure the pole transformer there by the garage is shielded. I don't even want the PPGs near it, or _anything_ capable of generating a magnetic field that might be strong enough to disrupt the matrix."

"There's an idea," Tim chuckled. "MPACs are plasma inside a magnetic envelope to keep it from blowing up 'til it hits something, right? Just reverse the polarity of the matrix so it repels the magnetic envelope, which would make the plasma go with it. MPAC fire would just bounce off."

"You couldn't do that-holy _shit,_" Jason said, his eyes brightening. "We couldn't do that with this, but that's a _hell_ of an idea, Tim! I think I could make something that could _do_ that!"

"I think I could too," Steve said with a laugh. "You couldn't use an MPAC around it, but we could definitely build something that would bounce the magnetic envelope of an MPAC round."

"I'm writing that one down," Jason said quickly, typing furiously on his panel's holographic keyboard. "That's definitely our next project."

"Okay, let's start working out how we're going to do this," Steve said. "You still have the exomech's schematics loaded into that hologram, Jayce?"

"You know I do."

"Bring it up, let's start working this through."

                                        * * *

It was worth a loss of a night's sleep.

Jason, Tim, and Steve stood in the garage and looked up at the exomech's "head," all of them just taking a moment to revel in their success. After almost 29 continuous hours of research, study, and planning, of simulations and some old fashioned tinkering, they were done.

The idea would _work_.

All in all, they figured it would take them about six days to build the box, install the system, test it extensively, then declare it operational. The idea was sound, all it would take would be a five-layered wall, which was Steve's design. The matrix-carrying Neutronium would be inside layers of simple nickel, and with a steel layer on the outside. Nickel was a metal that was not magnetically conductive, which would insulate the matrix from contact with the steel or magnetic fields, and the steel on the outside layer would conduct magnetic lines of force away from the interior, protecting it. The emitters would be installed into the Neutronium, one emitter for every five square feet of wall it had to defend, each emitter hooked up to a control computer that coordinated the entire matrix. One of their spare panels could do that easily.

Every simulation they ran told them that the idea would work. According to the simulations, the matrix would absorb 99.996482% of the ambient plasma signature. The power signature of the matrix itself would be stronger, and it would _not_ have that high of a signature either. The metal roof of the garage would garble the signature of the matrix enough to make it invisible to passive sensors, mainly because the field generated within the Neutronium would be very, very low-power. After all, all it had to do was absorb an _ambient_ plasma signature, and that required virtually no power.

First, the walls had to be built. That was Jason's job, with a great deal of help from Luke and the other mechanics, who could work under his supervision. Steve's job while they built the walls and installed the shield emitters would be to write a program to govern the matrix. Tim, whose casted arm would prevent excessive labor, was to watch Steve and learn more about TEL language.

After that was decided, they dedicated an hour or so to looking over Jason's original idea, which was to install such a system into the exomech itself. They figured that doing that would take at least three months, as they meticulously removed the outer hull section by section, plate by plate, modified it, insulated the plate moorings from the inner hull, then reinstalled it. Then they would have to run all the dataline and mini-conduit to connect it to the exomech's power and computer systems, and they would have to write a program that would allow the exomech's computer to control the matrix.

If the simulations were accurate, the system was almost everything Jason could hope for. It would hide the unit from both active and passive sensors. Its ability to absorb light would allow it to move undetectable by optical scanners at night, with some sensible precautions like not putting a the exomech between the camera and a light source, and avoiding contact with magnetic materials. He still had no way to hide the unit's mass, meaning it had to stay well inside the planetary gravity well, but those were some limitations he could live with. The system would consume _very_ little power, requiring no extra power at all, running purely off the excess power generated by the exomech's power system. There were some down sides to the system, they'd discovered. MPAC weaponry created a distortion in the system in the simulations they ran, so the exomech could not use its built-in MPAC weaponry while the matrix was engaged, such as the arm MPACs and the shoulder-mounted plasma cannon. The shield also interfered with the exomech's sensors in simulations, rendering them useless. The pilot would have to run the exomech with visual only while the cloak was engaged. Outside of that, though, the system had no other detrimental effects on the exomech's systems in the simulations they ran.

But, the most important part was that in the simulations, Faey sensors could _not_ detect the exomech's signature.

They had the plan, even if one of them was far-reaching, now they needed the materials... and that meant Kumi. But this time, he decided he didn't want her to have _any_ hint of what he was doing, like when he bought the materials for the railguns. She very well could puzzle out how to build a railgun just by going on what he bought, then falling back on good old trial and error. No, this time he wanted her to have no inkling of what he was doing.

He didn't need her for buying it, only for delivering it. Jason told Tim and Steve to go to bed, then he went back home, sat down in front of his panel, cracked his knuckles, and got down to some serious shopping. There were any number of places on CivNet that would sell what he needed, and all he needed to get it was an account to transfer money and an address for delivery. And he had both, after using a little address matching on Kumi. He knew her name, and now he knew she lived in Dracora, the capitol city of the Faey Imperium, so he knew where to look for her. In ten minutes, he had her address. In thirty minutes, he had everything he wanted bought from an industrial and military supply company based right there in Dracora, and ordered it assembled at an independent warehouse there so it could be picked up and delivered at a later date, using Kumi's address as a reference and a person of contact if the dealer had to talk to someone. After he got his order number and got confirmation that the order would be assembled within two hours, he went on to rent the warehouse space, and then went through the new list that the city council had given him of things that he could get that they could use. It took him a while to find some of those items, and a few of them, like the machining tools that Luke and Zach needed to help manufacture replacement parts for the appliances and equipment, stuff that couldn't be replicated, weren't very cheap. Other things were easier to get, however. He bought a large bulk of winter clothing to be held in reserve, as well as winter coats and jackets in various sizes. He bought a few snowsuits, and he remembered to go to a medical supply company and buy the things on the list that Doc Northwood had left for him. Those items he also had delivered to the warehouse, and then further ordered the warehouse to box up the entire order into a shipping container once all deliveries were received. After he was done, he looked at the state of his bank account and sighed... it was going to be at least a month before they could buy anything else. The armor for Irwin and Luke would have to wait. He completed the task by placing a call to Kumi.

She appeared on the display wearing a frilly little bra and holding a sleek, shiny shirt-like garment in both hands before her. "Eleri. Talk," she said brusquely, then she smiled when she recognized him. "Oh, hey babe. What's up?"

"Care to play delivery girl for me?" he asked immediately.

"Any time, babe. You got a list?"

"I have an order number and an address of a warehouse where it'll be waiting for you in about four hours. Just pick it up and bring it over."

"You don't like my shopping taste or something, babe?" she asked with a laugh.

"This wasn't so hard that I needed outside help," he answered dryly. "Just assorted stuff to help us get through the winter."

"Sure, I can do that for you," she told him with a nod. "Since I can't charge you a percentage of what I buy, we'll just have to go with a flat rate. A thousand credits is fair enough."

"Works for me," he shrugged. "You coming with it?"

"Of course," she told him with a nod. "Nobody delivers to you but me. _No one_. Same place?"

"Always," he said.

"Okay, I'll invite a few friends over for a picnic," she winked. "That gives me an excuse to go. I told everyone that I love that little place, so much so that I'm talking about buying that part of the preserve to make it a personal retreat. Sathiri just bought some waterskimmers, maybe I can convince her to bring them along so we can play with them," she mused aloud.

"They'd travel here just to play on a lake?" he asked in surprise.

"Babe, we're _nobles_," she said pointedly. "We have lots of money and lots of time. Lots of my friends loved the party I threw there last month because it was _new_. They'd never been to a party in wild territory before, they _loved_ it. They're asking me if I'm going to throw another one, and I think I'm gonna. One more, a really big one, just before my conscription," she said, making a face.

"Oh yeah. How much longer?"

"Ugh, seventy-nine days," she frowned. "The first day of Demaa."

Jason looked at his watch, and realized that'd be around the first of the year. Right now the Faey's standard calendar and Earth's calendar were running almost in sync, because the Faey calendar had had 2 consecutive 30 day months just when their 36 day month ended at the same time as August did. The next month, Suraa, was a 36 day month.

"You have to do basic training, don't you?" he asked.

She gave him a face. "Nobles don't _do_ commoner basic training," she said sharply. "We have our basic induction phase, but we don't have to do what commoners do, since nobles already know how to handle weapons and been trained to fight. That'll take 2 months, then I'll be at my job as an aide here on Draconis. _Boring_," she growled.

"Kumi will have to work. The world will end," Jason said dryly.

"Why don't you bite my ass, babe?" she said gratingly.

"Behave," he told her with a faint smile, then he yawned. "I'm going to have to cut this short, hon. I'm very tired. I worked all night."

"On what?"

"On getting us ready for winter," he said vaguely. "There's lots to do, and more and more people are coming every day, so that means we have even more work."

"Why are they coming?"

"Safety," he answered. "We've proved we can protect ourselves against raiders, so now everyone's flocking here. They're bringing all their things and all their food stocks, so we're really busy getting everything put away safely and storing it so it won't go bad over the winter. We're also starting to run out of places to put people. We're going to have to expand our walls again," he grunted. "For the fourth time."

"Raiders? What raiders?"

"Raiders, hon, remember that video you yanked off CivNet?" he asked sharply. "That was a band of raiders. People who go around and kill off other people to steal their goods."

"Oh. I never really thought about that too much. That's what they were doing?"

"Yes, that's what they were doing. What did you think they were doing? Stopping by for milk and cookies?" he asked testily.

"Geez, bite my head off will you," she grunted.

"Sorry. I'm tired, if you didn't notice," he said, passing his hand in front of his face. "Call me before you head out. Oh, and give over on that waterskimmer idea," he warned. "It's gotten pretty cool here, and the trees have turned colors and have already started losing their leaves. Winter's on the way."

"What does that mean, lose their leaves?"

"You'll see when you get here," he told her. "Riding skimmers on the lake would be rather cold. Now, I'm going to bed."

"Okay babe. Sleep well."

Jason ended the call, then put his head in his hands over his panel and tried to clear the cobwebs for a moment. He was so tired... but he was also quite excited and very hopeful. This technology, he could easily adapt it to his skimmer, and he'd ordered the parts and materials he'd need for that. All he had to do was coat the exterior of the skimmer with a microscopic layer of an insulating agent, and on top of that, he only needed a two millimeter layer of Neutronium. That was all it took. It would add a grand total of 37 kilograms to the weight of the skimmer, which was less than an adult human.

And there were some other things to think about. The cloaking system would be nullified by an MPAC, so he couldn't use MPAC weaponry. But he had access to something else, something _not_ based on plasma, but was just as powerful. The railgun. He already had an idea, the beginnings of a concept for a weapon to use in conjunction with this cloaking system, a weapon based on his railgun technology, which _could_ be fired without disabling the cloaking system.

That, and Tim's idea was _so_ promising. It was so simple, so elegant, attacking MPAC weaponry at a very basic level, by going after the magnetic envelope that encased the metaphased plasma, which kept the plasma coherent and in prevented it from detonating just from traveling through the air. All it took was some kind of magnetic shield, a solid layer of magnetic force that would cause the magnetic envelope of the MPAC charge to rebound off of it _without_ disrupting. Solid magnetic field technology was, yet again, a tried and true Faey technology, because that's how MPACs worked. The plasma was trapped in the envelope, it would rebound with the envelope, thereby rendering the shot harmless. And since all MPACs used the same basic technique for building a plasma charge and magnetic envelope, they could design one shield and not have to worry about magnetic polarity, since all MPAC envelopes had the same polarity. Damn clever. He had to admit to himself that he had _never_ thought of that.

The only trick of it would be designing some method for the shield to reflect the magnetic envelope of the MPAC charge without rupturing it. It was a very fragile construct, and that was how it was designed, so the plasma inside could be released against the target. The plasma in the envelope had mass and momentum, and that was going to place considerable stress on its encasing envelope when it struck the shield. Maybe electrostatic charge on the surface, which would jolt the envelope and give it a sudden surge of power. That had potential, creating the shield so it actively strengthened the MPAC's envelope so long as it was in physical contact with it-

-well holy Christ, he was being so _stupid_. That was _all_ it needed to do! The momentum of the plasma would cause it to bounce off the shield on its _own_. Basic physics! It would be like throwing a rubber ball against a brick wall! So long as the magnetic envelope didn't rupture, the kinetic energy of the plasma would cause the MPAC charge to bounce off the shield. All they had to do was figure out some way to _strengthen_ that magnetic envelope when it impacted the shield. Those envelopes were solid magnetic force, and most importantly, they were non-polarized, interleaved magnetic lines of force that both attracted and repelled one another equally, causing them to remain stationary with respect to one another. It was like woven cloth, but using magnetic lines of force instead of threads. Electromagnetic principles were at work here, and the first law was that magnetism and electricity were directly related. If he wanted to strengthen a magnetic field, he only had to use electricity. And electricity was the flow of electrons... and of course, the flow of _positrons_, when using advanced Faey science.

It took him all of fifteen minutes to sketch out an initial design. It would be an _energy_ shield, constructed of alternating concentric rings of electrostatic force, which would generate an interleaved magnetic shield wall exactly like the envelope used by an MPAC. An _EM shield_, to coin a term. Magnetic lines of force could not cut one another, and the underlying electrostatic energy would energize the magnetic lines of force in the MPAC charge, preventing them from dissipating or breaking. Since the lines of force couldn't cut through one another, the envelope as a whole would be unable to pass through, and since it wouldn't break down and disrupt either, then the kinetic energy of the plasma inside would rule how the MPAC charge reacted to the shield. Being an object of _mass_, the plasma would simply _bounce off_.

It was a design almost artistic in its elegant simplicity, and Jason realized he could build one out of parts laying around the shop. Four telescoping arms extending from the center unit, which would house the PPG and the shield generator, with the arms serving as the emitters.

He blinked. Holy Lord above, this idea... in theory, it might work, if the magnetic envelopes that held MPAC rounds were basically static in magnetic alignment. And it was, in its own way, a much more potentially important discovery than their cloaking device. This, this was a direct way to defend themselves against the primary weapon that the Faey used. These shields, they'd only weigh about two pounds, and be so small they could be carried around in a backpack. Hell, he could build a glove and armband into the back of the shield's PPG housing so it could be worn just about all the time, situating the housing on the forearm, just like an old shield that soldiers used to use back in the Middle Ages.

_If_ it would work. He'd have to research the exact physical mechanics of an MPAC round's magnetic envelope, and how it behaved in reality than rather in subjective pondering.

If they could defeat an MPAC... it made his mind wander back to that old idea of open rebellion. But that was still impossible, because of the telepathic advantage. If the Faey ever attacked Chesapeake, they'd almost certainly not do it with guns. They'd just march in and telepathically dominate every mind that came into range. They could overrun the entire town outnumbered 20 to 1 and never have to fire a single shot.

One thing was for sure, though. If this shield worked, and if it didn't jam the cloaking device, he wanted one on the exomech. Put a means to stop MPAC fire on that thing, and it would suddenly become a _very_ dangerous piece of machinery if it were manned by a telepathic pilot, someone capable of defending himself against Faey telepathy.

That was a stupid thought. He had no intention of keeping that thing. It was a dire threat to the community, and thinking of ways to adapt things to it like that were relatively pointless given the fact that in a month, it was going to be in about fifty different pieces laying all over the floor of its storage site.

Just wishful thinking, he supposed. The pilot in him yearned for the chance to pilot the exomech, to take it out and see if he could make it work, see if he could learn to use it. It was a challenge, an almost childish dream, to drive around a big robot and play war.

His head dipped lower and lower as he dreamily mused about that very thing, of him learning how to operate the exomech without any expert training, then he dropped off into sleep before his head even hit the desk.

                                        * * *

Kumi held good on her telling him that she would turn the delivery into yet another party of sorts. When he arrived at the lake, he found that there were already five dropships on the ground, and the place was crawling with Faey. The trees rustled in a cool, sharp wind, their fiery colors undulating in the breeze, almost making the forest look like it was on fire for a fleeting moment, but the brisk wind didn't seem to dissuade these Faey nobles from trying out odd vehicles that looked almost like old Jetskis, if not for the fact that they floated just above the water's surface. The riders were wearing sleek skin-tight suits that looked like wetsuits, but he saw that they were all perfectly dry, even though water was spraying all over them as they zoomed to and fro on the very narrow inlet. Jason couldn't feel that cool wind because he was in his armor, but he remembered how delightfully cool it felt that morning before he put the armor on.

He sat down well out of sight of them, on the top of the hill on the opposite side of the inlet, and simply waited. He watched as they had their fun with the waterskimmers, then had a lunch under a tent, then, after about two hours, got into their ships and ascended into the sky and out of sight. Only then, after the others were gone, did he come down from the hillside and skim across the inlet to Kumi's side of the lake. Meya and Myra didn't come and hunt him down this time, which he thought was a bit odd, because they were here. He'd heard their sendings before shutting himself off, closing his mind completely to prevent himself from accidentally acting on information he picked up from sending. That little red man waddled out of the dropship and nodded gravely to him as he approached, and Kumi, still wearing one of those sleek black wetsuit-things, sauntered out behind him. "Hey babe. Want to try a go on a waterskimmer?"

"I don't have time," he told her with a shake of his head, then he took off his helmet. "Thanks for getting it here so fast."

She pursed her lips, then gave him a sly smile. "I'm starting to wonder what you're doing out here, babe. I mean, the tools and clothes and shit yeah, I can see why you need those, but I don't understand what half of this military grade stuff is for, but I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with you getting through the winter."

He gave her a dark look.

"Hey, it was on the _manifest_, dink," she said defensively, and the little red fellow held out a display window unit. She took it and showed it to him. "Shield emitters? Cabling? Phased armor? Neutronium blocks? I don't understand what you're doing."

"It's another experiment," he answered her carefully. "If it works, it'll help protect my people from injuries if any more raiders attack us."

She gave him a look, and he could see it turning over and over in her mind. What he got _was_ military, but it was also obsolete by modern standards. Him saying that it was meant as an experiment to protect the people she'd seen against raiders with archaic powder weapons would definitely be logical to her. "Well, babe, you'd better be _really _careful. I know you _are_ careful and you have your PPG's well shielded, but if you get too exotic, you're gonna attract space-based sensors. Some of this stuff's gonna draw some serious power, you know, more than enough for the passive arrays to pick it up."

"Well, I'll make sure not to use _all_ of it at once," he said with a chuckle. He realized then that Kumi did _not_ know about the exomech, that that mysterious woman had concealed that information from her.

"So, what's this experiment?"

"A shield, obviously," he said with a chuckle.

"No go, babe, that'll get picked up for sure," she told him.

"Trust me," he told her, looking at the two large crates. "The emitters aren't for making the kind of shield you're thinking about. I'm going to use them for something else." He had the Deuce parked not far, and it would easily fit in the bed. He grabbed the handles on the crate and tugged, and found it much too heavy. He then activated the strength augmentation system in the armor, and after trying again, he found he could pick it up. "I just don't want any more of my people hurt. Nobody was killed when the raiders attacked, but a few people did get some broken bones when bullets hit their cloth armor. I'd like to avoid that, and that's what this is for. It wouldn't stop an MPAC, but it'll stop a bullet for sure."

"_Personal_ shields?" Kumi asked curiously.

"No comment," Jason chuckled as he put his helmet back on. "I have to keep my secrets a secret."

"You got me _real_ curious now, babe," she said, coming over to him.

"Life is hard," he said. "I just realized. Where are Meya and Myra?" He knew that they were here, he'd heard their sendings, but he hadn't seen them. "And Fure?"

"They're outside," she answered. "Fure's up in the cockpit. You know he doesn't like you," she winked. "Well, _not like_ isn't quite right. He thinks you're too dangerous to associate with, I should say. He thinks he has you figured out," she grinned.

"How do you mean?"

"Well, he thinks you have talent," she said boldly. "He thinks that Marine trained you, and since she's a Marine, that means you got trained _right_. He thinks that's the reason why you bailed from school."

"I think Fure needs to lay off the coffee," Jason said mildly as he picked up the large crate, a crate that was bigger than he was, that weighed nearly half a ton. It caused his strength system to spike, its gauge to yellow out on his display, but it could handle it. "I need to get this to my truck."

"Well, you know what?" she said.

"What?" he asked as he started down the ramp.

"I think he's _right_," she told him. She ran past and started walking backwards in front of him. "I'll bet my left tit you _do_ have talent, babe. And you know what? I don't give a shit."

"Well, that's nice to know," he said neutrally.

"Seriously. I don't give a shit if you have talent or not, babe. If you do, hell, you did the right thing by bolting, and I wouldn't turn you in even if you did. You're my friend, and I take care of my friends. I just wanted you to know that. I'll still be here for you when you need my help. For my usual fee, of course," she winked.

"I'm so glad to hear that," he said blandly.

"And I think you'd better give some thought to making some other kind of arrangement, babe," she told him. "I got my conscription coming up in two months, and I won't be able to do this anymore."

"Yeah, now that I've thought about," he said. "I figured I'd just stock up on what I need before your conscription. I do have to cut the umbilical cord sometime, Kumi. If we can't be self-sufficient, there's really no reason for us to be out here."

"But still, you might have emerge