make-and strive to make it as easy to build as possible. They also needed to erect the platforms without disturbing the forest around them until the system was online, clearing out only those branches and trees that would cover the projector lenses at a distance of six _shakra_, or about eight feet. The projectors would have no trouble projecting around obstacles that got into the field beam so long as they were no closer than eight feet from the lens. Once he projectors were up and running, then they could go back and clear out all the trees around the platforms to prevent a falling tree from landing on a projector and disrupting the entire system. He also needed to make sure to have Steve write a program for the control system that would link the holographic system with a camera that would take pictures of the area under the hologram, but filter out everything that was changed, for when spring came and the trees got their leaves. It would look awfully strange for there to be a large swath of bare trees standing in the middle of a blanket of green.

And once he had more money, he'd buy another complete projector system and install it beside the current one as an emergency backup in case a projector went down or had to be taken down for maintenance. What they were putting up now was a bare-bone, seat-of-the-pants emergency measure so they could move everyone to safety before the Faey invaded the Frontier.

Once he got the last order sent and got confirmation that the order would be shipped to the warehouse in New Myrthan, he had Luke pick someone to draw up the blueprint for the platforms so they could start replicating the pieces. He grabbed something to eat, then after debating sleep, he instead went down into the basement and looked at where they'd gotten in assembling railguns. He saw ten of them in various stages of assembly, and feeling the need to do something, he sat down and started working on the one closest to completion. Steve had had them building the weapons in modular pieces, then it was just a matter of assembling those completed pieces. Kate came down the stairs and gave him a serious look, something she wouldn't do if they were in company, then sat down in the chair by the desk. "You should sleep," she told him in French.

"I can't," he sighed, answering in French, sliding a wrapped barrel into place in the side of a completed weapon housing, and expertly connecting the datalines and power lines to it. "I just got finished getting everything we need shipped to the warehouse. It should be there by morning. I can start bringing it in tomorrow night."

"I'm going to be going with you on those flights," she told him. "I _do_ know how to fly a skimmer. I can fly while you take a nap."

"It's a fifteen minute flight to Charleston from New Myrthan, Kate."

"I know, but you're gonna need some rest somewhere, Jayce. You can't stay awake for the next five weeks."

He chuckled ruefully. "I'll bet that a skimmer isn't the only thing you can fly," he noted.

She grinned. "If it moves, I know how to make it go," she announced confidently. "All part of my training. I have to be able to fly or drive nearly anything." She waved her hand absently. "Most Faey equipment is all the same anyway. If you can fly a skimmer, you could fly a fighter, no problem. It has the same controls. But you wouldn't be able to fly a hovertank or an exomech. Faey have an odd lack of imagination when it comes to some things. When they find something that works, they won't change it, even if it's not entirely practical anymore. I find it strange that one of the most technologically advanced races in the galaxy can't think up a better cockpit layout for a Dragonfly, given they've used the same layout for like three hundred years."

"That doesn't sound like a lack of creativity, it sounds like continuity," he told her. "Improve the machine, but make the machine feel the same."

"Yeah, but when the new technology makes the design inefficient, wouldn't it make sense to upgrade?"

He chuckled.

"I'm serious. The Dragonfly has way more controls than a Falcon, but it has the same cockpit layout. Instead of redesigning the cockpit configuration, they just made the existing configuration smaller with smaller buttons and screens and stuck the new controls and instruments in mish-mash in the open spaces," she told him. Gods help them when they roll the new Raptor fighter out next year. It's even _more_ complex than a Dragonfly."

"That is a bit silly," he said. "I take it the same manufacturer makes both the Falcon and the Dragonfly?"

She nodded. "Merrane Macrotechnology, but everyone just calls it 'Two M'," she told him. "It's the leading arms corp."

"Merrane? Isn't that-"

"The Imperial house? Yeah," she answered. "It isn't a stretch to think that the Imperial house makes sure its own arms corporation is the front runner, Jayce. Empress Dahnai always makes sure that her own house arms corp wins the contracts for things that come out of R&amp;D and Black Ops. There's some competition for sure, mainly from specialty corps, like Dewinne Arms. Dewinne focuses on small arms, and Zargax Protection Systems specializes in personal armor."

"I've bought from them," Jason realized. "Symone's armor was made by them. I think my own armor was too."

She nodded. "It's not a surprise. ZPS is the leader when it comes to personal armor technology. Odds are, Kumi would only get the best, and that means ZPS. They even keep a large stock of pre-made armor systems that they can size quickly to a buyer. They can send out a suit of sized armor in six hours."

"That's exactly what they did for me and Symone," Jason nodded, turning the unit in his lap and installing the PPG with practiced efficiency.

"So, that's the inside of a railgun," Kate said, looking down at it. "Nice design."

"Thank you," he said, connecting the datalines from the control module to the PPG. "I didn't realize that Steve and the others had gotten so much done down here. But then again, they're not very complicated units, it just takes time to wrap the barrels properly and assemble the barrel charging unit, since it has so many components that have to be put on a board. Once you get that done, it takes two hours to put the rest of it together, it's all nothing but pre-made pieces. Nothing outside of the barrel is unique inside, it's all just off-the-shelf stuff." He pointed down into the unit. "This is the control module here behind the backglass, and here's the PPG. The clip fits here, and feeds up into the barrel unit here," he pointed. "This is the barrel charging unit here under the barrel, and this empty area here is where the smartgun system will go when I get it in the housing. This open space right here in the stock is where the recoil suppression system goes. Without that, this thing would rip your arm off if you tried to shoot it."

"That doesn't seem like enough suppression."

"Sure it is. It uses a spatial compression system to absorb the recoil. The unit disperses the recoil energy into an area of stretched space, something like how a PPG encloses a fusion cell. They're stock recoil absorbers they use in construction equipment and vehicles, right off the shelf, Kate. They're nothing special."

"Clever way to utilize them, though. What does it use for ammo?"

"Laminated titanium coated rounds of iron," he answered. "We can use the replicator for that. I thought you already knew that from, you know." He held his hand out towards her meaningfully.

"We can't remember _everything_," she reminded him.

"Oh yeah, Mi-er, _she _told me. Anyway, the drawback to this system is having to carry around ammo, since it's not an energy weapon, but from all the simulations we've done, this weapon will penetrate the armor Faey use here on Earth. I'm not sure how it would fare against modern armor, but the old surplus junk they use here is no defense against _this_." He patted the weapon in his lap.

"How fast is the projectile speed?" she asked.

"Around 14,000 miles an hour," he answered. "I could probably make it faster by redesigning the barrel array, but I really don't have the time to mess with it right now."

"Wow, nice," she chuckled. "With that much kinetic energy, I think even Neutronium personal body armor would be hard pressed to hold up against it for long. It would depend on how thick the Neutronium armor is where the round hits as to whether it penetrates or not."

"You think so? From what we did on the simulators, the slug would punch through Neutronium too."

She nodded. "There's a difference between _industrial_ Neutronium and _military grade_ Neutronium. And I promise you that you won't find the specs for military Neutronium anywhere on CivNet. I'm sure you ran those sims using the specs on Neutronium that you could find on CivNet?"

He nodded.

"Then there ya go," she hummed, holding up a completed barrel array she picked up from the table. "I'm sure it'd put a hell of a dent in the armor, and knock the wearer down for sure, but it'd only punch through if you hit them in an area of thin plating, like in a joint. Not even top-grade armor would be ready to absorb that much kinetic energy without it doing something. The inertial dampers and the stabilization systems in the armor couldn't totally absorb that much energy."

"Well, that might be enough, you never know," he said. "I don't really much like the idea of using these things to kill people."

"I know, but you better think about it," she told him seriously. "In what you plan to do, you _will_ be shooting at people, because they'll be shooting at you. You're not going to push Trillane off Earth with words, Jayce."

"I know," he sighed. "But I won't like having to do it."

"Just don't lose that feeling, Jason," she told him seriously. "Oh, I guess I should tell you about what I came down here to tell you."

"What?"

"I think I found a good place to set up after we leave," she told him. She motioned for him to follow, and he put down the railgun in his lap and went with her back to his room. She sat down in front of his panel and expertly brought up a series of images on the screen. "This place," she said, pointing to a large, nondescript mountain, its top covered in snow. "It was called _NORAD_ I think, I'm still a bit rusty reading English."

"Cheyenne Mountain?" Jason said in surprise, looking at the picture, an old file photo from Associated Press, according to the little text tag in the bottom right corner of the photo. The photo was taken before the subjugation.

"Yeah, that's one of the names," she nodded. "According to this old archive, it was a hardened military facility used by your people before the Faey took over. Well, the Faey don't use it. They have all their military operations based in Washington, and they don't _need_ a fortress like this. And look at it, Jayce. It's exactly what we're going to need. It's an underground facility surrounded by fortifications and shielding, and according to some of the pictures I saw, it has some openings big enough to get the skimmer through. It's located on the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountain Conservatory, another nature preserve like this one, so it's out away from organized Faey holdings."

"But the Faey must know about it."

"Jason, sweetie, just because they know it's there, that doesn't mean that they know _we're in it_," she told him pointedly. "As long as we never give them reason to look there, they'll never think to check it. Not when there are so many places for us to hide, and you've already demonstrated an ability to hide literally in plain sight. They won't be able to leave any stone unturned. In this respect, that reputation of yours will really work in our favor. Even though this mountain is a logical place to look for a small resistance cell, your reputation for ingenuity won't let them just assume that you're where they'd think to look for you."

"But they _could_ find us there."

"They could find us anywhere," she replied evenly. "But if we take some precautions, they won't look very hard when they look here," she said, pointing at the picture. "According to this, the mountain's hollowed out somewhat. It has room inside, and it has so much mass that it'll mask our PPGs and matter signatures naturally, with only a little bit of extra work. This opening here is big enough to fit your skimmer," she said after changing to another picture, showing one of its entrances. "It has enough protection so we can set up, but I'm not all that sure about water and other living resources. I'm sure we could work something up for that, though."

"Well, it does look good, but it still worries me that the Faey know it's there."

"It's up to you, Jayce," she told him. "But there's not going be _any_ absolutely safe place for us. I can just show you this and suggest, that's all. But if you want my _professional_ opinion," she said, using the Kimdori word for _professional_, "then this is one of the best options for us. It's an underground facility that's virtually pre-ordered and waiting for us to move in, and it has a large enough opening to hold your skimmer, and whatever other vehicles we pick up. It was hardened to make it survive an old-style nuclear explosion, and though that means nothing against Faey weaponry, that hardening will help shield our energy signatures and help mask our activities. It's located in a nature preserve, so we don't have to worry about proximity." She brushed her blond hair from her face absently, then looked back at the screen. "I might find something better later, but for now, this is the best I've found. Something for you to think about in the coming days when you're working your ass off."

He scowled at her mischievous look. "You're gonna be working right along with me."

"My people don't sleep because we _have_ to, Jason," she grinned. "I can sleep if I want, but I can go without. Remember, I just _look _like this. Everything else is still the same," she told him, tapping her temple meaningfully. "I sleep at night just to keep from being bored. In reality, I only need about a half an hour's sleep a day."

"Woman, in about a week, I am going to _despise_ you," he told her.

"I'll make sure to be crushed," she said impishly, then she laughed when he sat down, took off his shoe, and threw it at her.

"Bad dog," he chided.

She broke into gales of laughter. "Just don't roll up the newspaper!" she cried in mock fear, putting her hands out defensively in front of her.

"I'll save that for when you pee on the carpet."

She took one look at his sober, serious expression, then literally fell out of her chair in helpless peals of laughter.

                                        * * *

_Kaista, 21 Kedaa, 4393 Orthodox Calendar_
_Sunday, 11 January 2008, Native Regional Reckoning_
_Charleston, West Virginia (Native designation),Orala Nature Preserve, American Sector_

Two things had become apparent in the three weeks since they started getting ready to move.

First, they knew now that they had been right in calling for this move. Faey activity had increased all over the Frontier, mainly in the shape of dropships equipped with sensor pods which had been roaming over the forest. Outside the preserve, however, it was very apparent in New Myrthan and other border towns that the military was preparing itself for an operation. Jason saw it the last night he had dared travel to the warehouse to pick up the last of the equipment that had been sent there some two weeks ago. In just the one week between him renting the warehouse and his final visit, Trillane house troops had been deployed to New Myrthan and, what was most disconcerting to him, a containment area had been built on the northwestern edge of town, taking over farmland to do so. It was an enclosed encampment with five large buildings, and it was obvious that it was meant to hold _people_, not equipment. Jason had rather grimly concluded that Trillane was going to capture every person they could find in the Frontier in that sweep, bring them out under the premise of questioning them, and then he had no doubt that those undocumented, _untraceable_ people were going to disappear. Officially, returned to the preserve to continue their lives as squatters, but secretly spirited off the planet and sold into slavery.

The second thing that had become apparent was that Jason's expectation to have the projection system up and running in two weeks had been unrealistic. The plan to build two platforms a day had been realistic, but the snarls came in the operation and control of the projectors. They had had all 28 projectors installed in 16 days after taking a two day break because of heavy snow, but they had serious problems getting the projectors to seamlessly line up their sectors of the overall image. The problem was a combination of software and physics, requiring Steve's TEL programming expertise and a little old fashioned calculus.

But now, three weeks after starting, the projectors were up, they were running, and they were operating as intended. The nature of the hologram was that it was one-directional; it could only be seen from _above_. From the ground, the hologram itself was invisible, but there was a distinct shimmering of the air overhead that was caused by the holographic projectors exciting the air molecules upon which the hologram was built. The problem had been both the projectors not syncing with each other, which was what Steve had corrected, and a few holes in the image, which had been errors in installation that Jason had had to fix. It had required him to recheck his trigonometry and calculus, which he had used to mathematically work out just where the projectors should be and at what angle they should be projecting its image. His calculations had had a very slight margin of error in them, and it turned out that the margin was too large for two of the projectors, which had been installed on very steep hillsides. But, after moving the platforms about ten inches each, the borders were meeting and the program that Steve wrote was making sure that there was no overlap.

The other aspects of the plan were actually ahead of schedule. About sixty people from the community were now in Charleston, and more supplies and equipment than projected were now up in the city. Clem and Mary had a detailed inventory of everything, right down to the smallest candle, and they had been moving it up steadily and carefully. Luke had managed to get two semis up and running, and it had been a simple matter to get trailers for them and use them to ferry cargo to Charleston. Both had once been owned by Southern Shipping, and after they found one sitting in Charleston only three blocks from the Capitol building, Clem, Paul, and Juli came up with a very clever idea; paint the trucks the same as the one sitting in Charleston and park it in the same place, so it looked like it was supposed to be there. From the way it looked from space, the trucks never moved, never looked out of place, because in a way, they never were. When a shipment moved to Charleston, the truck parked in the exact spot where the old one was, and they took great pains to make both trucks exactly resemble the one they selected to replace. It was only done at night once every four or five days; a truck went up as the one parked in that spot was driven back down to Chesapeake, was parked in the same place, and then unloaded into a nearby warehouse. Between those shipments and what Jason brought up in the skimmer, Clem was on a pace to completely evacuate Chesapeake of its supplies within two weeks on the current schedule, leaving only those things that had to remain until the last minute. It could be done in two days if they abandoned stealth; one day to take everything apart and pack it, one day to move it.

Move day was already on the schedule, since they'd gotten the projectors operational five days ago. Now that the hologram was masking ground activity, they could move around in the open instead of staying off the street and out of sight during daylight hours, and moving around using night vision goggles during the night. Jason had only had a few pairs of them, part of the parcels of supplies he'd gotten from Kumi, but a royalty payment and an express ship to the warehouse had provided one hundred pairs of them, more than enough for the build team to do their work at night and with no light sources.

God, that had been cold and unpleasant work. Those night vision goggles were very effective, but they tended to give everyone headaches when worn for extended periods of time, and they produced a slightly grainy image that made working in minute detail very straining on the eyes. They did it all without light and without heat, and it was a very uncomfortable work environment, even from a cold-climate downeaster like him. He was glad that it was over, that they could now work with external lights and with portable heaters on site as they had finished up the installation by going back and clearing all trees and potential obstacles from around the platforms.

They'd moved on to other projects. The techs had hijacked Luke and some of the other members of the build team to work on the power cables, isolating the section of the city where they intended to live and getting it ready. It really wasn't that hard to do since the power system was divided into grids with only one line connecting them back to the power generators, so it was a simple matter of cutting that one line, then going through and inspecting the existing cables to make sure they were still functional while a repair team fixed those sections of line that were bad. The airbike worked wonders for that, with Tim and Steve taking turns using it to inspect lines as someone back in the capitol building marked their progress on a map of the power grid. The power would be ready to be turned on in just a couple of days, at least the grid that held the capitol building, but that included about nine city blocks, more than enough temporary housing for the community until they got power on in the grid to the west, where all the residential housing was, and where they were planning to settle everyone.

Jason, like the other techs and builders, had permanently moved out of Chesapeake. Everything he owned was now in what used to be the Governor's Mansion back before the subjugation, which was actually just across the street from the capitol building. Just like the White House used to be, the mansion once served the governor of the state as both residence and office, where state business was conducted in offices on the ground floor while the governor's family lived on the second and third floors. Everyone that worked in Charleston now lived here, as well as their families.

And Kiaari certainly hadn't been idle. The first thing Kate did was manipulate her way into being included in the build team as a laborer, then she convinced Tim to teach her how to run the computer so he could be freed up to do other things, and then she finally overcame her shyness concerning Jason and kissed him, on the lips, in public, three days ago. She looked about ready to die of mortification when she realized someone had seen her, and it made Jason work _very_ hard to try not to laugh and spoil her little moment of moving along the gossip and supposition that Jason and Kate were becoming an item. It all culminated yesterday, when Kate visited Jason on the third floor of the mansion, which was basically considered his private residence... and she didn't come back down until the next morning. She tried to hide the fact, most certainly, but in a community as small as theirs such things were always noticed.

And by yesterday evening, Kate's two suitcases and four boxes of personal possessions were stacked neatly in the living room of Jason's apartment.

In the scope of things, actually Kiaari was just tired of using skullduggery to catch private time with him to talk about things. She didn't want to deviate from her schedule of seeming seduction to take up residence in his house, but she'd found out the hard way that catching Jason alone was _not_ easy. So, instead of continuing to wait until she had a chance to talk to him alone, she decided to step up her plan and have Kate take more direct action. Kate was _officially_ Jason's girlfriend, even living with him, so now she had ample time to talk about anything important.

The first night sleeping with Kiaari had been surprisingly easy. She made him as comfortable as possible, and since he did like her quite a bit, it was like having a roommate... just one sleeping in his bed. At first he thought he might have trouble sleeping with someone else in the bed with him, but he found the sound of her breathing to be quite mellowing and relaxing, and the few fleeting worries he had had over either of them possibly taking it the wrong way had been completely unfounded. After she climbed into bed wearing flannel pajamas, she put a hand on his neck, and that touch and the communication it allowed settled any reservations about it. Neither of them had a single of those kinds of thoughts, period, and the touch had conveyed that fact between them. After that, it was just like having a roommate outside of the fact that they shared a bed, something like when he was back at the University of Michigan in his first year, rooming with the strong safety, Darrel Washington.

There were a few differences, however. For one, Darrel hadn't been a girl, and walking in while Darrel was dressing wasn't quite the same as it was when Jason walked in on Kate after taking a shower. But despite seeing her naked, there still was nothing there. Sure, she was a very, very attractive woman, built on Meya's body frame, and Meya was _built_. But aside from that moment of appreciation for the perfection of her curves, there was just nothing else there. In an odd way, he felt he was looking at _Meya_ naked, not Kiaari. After all, it _was_ Meya's body he was looking at.

That had been the first decent night's sleep Jason had had since starting the projector project. It had been absolutely vital to get that done so they could get the city ready for the move, and now that that was done, there wasn't that same feeling of dreadful urgency and that sense of vulnerability. They were still working very hard to get services up and running, but it didn't have that same strange feeling that the Faey could swoop in and attack them at any moment that he'd felt when they were installing the projectors.

While the others worked on the power, Jason had been installing sensors and cameras through the city, working on the security plan that Miaari had drawn up. He'd finished that and then moved on to working with Tom Jackson on the water problem. Tom had been a civil engineer in the Army Corps of Engineers, and he had experience digging up and replacing water pipes and reading engineering layouts and plans. He and Tom had been working out how to isolate the water system and sewer system in the living areas from the rest of the city and get them working again. He and Tom were sitting in what was once the office of the Speaker of the House for the state congress, an office that had been usurped by the build team and had become the headquarters for the rebuilding effort, where they kept all their records and where they had gathered all their maps, notes, manuals, and other necessary materials to find, repair, maintain, and document the restoration and maintenance of utilities. Power, water, and the cable television systems would have detailed logs of maintenance and installation so they always knew what had and had not been done, and allow them to lock in on problem areas that failed repeatedly.

"No, look here," Tom said, pointing at an area on the map that detailed the location of water and sewage in the area. "We need to check this main right here, and block off this one, this one, and these two. That should isolate the area here around the capitol. I looked through the sewers, and aside from a hell of a lot of rats and one hibernating bear down near the main outlet, it's in good shape."

"That must have been unpleasant."

"It's why I earn the big bucks," he said dryly, which made Jason laugh. "These are the shutoff valves for the mains at these junctions," he said with two fast stabs on the pipe map. "We can shut those off, then we need to inspect the main. Usually they'd just turn on the water and look for leaks, but right before the subjugation they were starting to use crawlers, little remote vehicles with cameras on 'em, to check the pipes for blockage or cracks before turning on the water. They also had crawlers that would clean the pipes. I doubt there'd be any damage, but after years with no water in 'em, there's a good chance there's blockage. So I think we'd best check the pipes first."

"I could probably rig up an RC car with a minicam on it," Jason mused.

"Yah, but we're pressed for time here. I suggest we just flood the main with water, but not under pressure. If we get flow from the other end, the pipe's not blocked. If we don't, we just find where the block is and clear it."

"Sounds reasonable," Jason agreed. "As long as it's not under pressure, we won't get any geysers."

"Yah, don't think we wanna see one of those," Tom chuckled. "We can do the same for the sewers to pinpoint blocks, and we're gonna find some of those. The big pipes won't be too bad, but the smaller ones have had two years to develop new life forms. Some of them are gonna be bad."

"Well, we could flush the pipes with something to dissolve away anything that's not what the pipes are made of. Kinda like industrial strength Liquid Plumber or something."

"Masonry mainly," he said. "Ceramic, cement for the bigger ones. You'd be talking about a ton of Liquid Plumber, Jayce," he chuckled. "We'd be better just rooting them out. There's a Roto Rooter place down on MacCorkle. We can raid it for their rooting equipment and just clear them out, but we need the water going before we can clear the sewer pipes." He looked up at Jason a moment. "Can I ask a question that might be a little personal?"

"Sure."

"What's it like? Being, you know."

Jason chuckled. "It's very different," he answered. "All things considered, I'm glad that I have talent."

"Must be weird, listening to everyone think."

"Well, I don't do that," he told Tom as they moved the map a little. "Right now I'm keeping it muted. I know what it