o grips with the awful calamity that had befallen their tight-knit community, the loss of over two thirds of the population of the town in a single terrible event.

"I'm sorry, Doc," Jason said in a muted tone, with nothing but the sound of the rain pattering around him reaching his ears. "I did what I thought was best, but I guess it wasn't good enough."

At least with his father, he'd been ready for it. He'd gotten worse and worse over time, and when that time finally came and he passed away, Jason had been prepared. In a way, he almost felt relieved, relieved that his father wouldn't suffer with the terrible pain anymore. But this had been so sudden, even with the understanding that it _could_ happen... but that was no consolation, no help when it _did_ happen. He knew that the time before moving to Colorado would be for him as much as the others, to give him time to come to grips with the extent of the disaster, and let him properly grieve both for so many friends lost and for his own part in what had happened.

But now, at least, he had _time_ for it. The increased Imperial activity would drive Trillane's slaving operations underground, and since they all thought he was dead, he didn't have to worry about them chasing him anymore.

Jyslin. She probably thought he was dead too. He'd turned off his panel completely since the explosion, afraid that Jyslin would call and that the Faey crawling all over the region would intercept the tightbeam on the panel somehow and use it to find them. For twenty days, she had probably been going crazy trying to find out what was going on, what happened, if he was alive or dead. It pained him to think she was upset. And right now, more than any other time in his entire life, he desperately wanted to be near her, wanted to feel her arms around him and help him make sense of it all with her calm confidence and her gentle love, wanted to feel that radiant presence in his mind that told him she was just a thought away.

He thought about it the rest of the day, sitting in a chair by his bed as he listened to the rain, cradling one of his railguns, endlessly loading the magazine and then removing it, loading then removing, loading then removing. The part of him that knew it was stupid to give away the fact that he wasn't dead warred with the part of him that loved Jyslin and hurt deeply at the thought that she thought he might be dead or wounded. He struggled with himself all day, ignoring calls to come eat, ignoring knocks at his apartment door, even Symone's insistent sending to come out. His mind raced with ideas and plans of how to safely tell Jyslin that he was alright without anyone else finding out. Several times he had to resist the powerful urge to just turn on his panel and call her.

That was absolutely out of the question, because too many knew he had that panel... but he did need to get word to her that he was alive. He had every confidence that she'd never tell a soul that he was alive. He just had to make sure that he did it in such a way that he was certain that _only_ Jyslin received that message.

Well, there was no reason for him to be overly stupid. He knew exactly how to tell her that he was alive, without calling or contacting her in any way. He just had to get _close_ to her. If he was within five miles of her, maybe even ten given Jyslin's power, she'd sense him. She knew his mind intimately, and his proximity would be like an alarm bell going off in her head. That's all it would take.

And that was _easy_. Besides, he needed to make sure his airskimmer was undetectable at close proximity to Faey military sensors. If it wasn't, then he had more work to do.

As the sun dipped towards the western horizon, Jason stood up, put his rail gun down in his chair, then pulled on his overshirt. He pulled his jacket down from the hook by the door and opened it, and found himself staring right into Symone's eyes, her fist up and preparing to knock on the door. She flinched and stepped back, then gave a rueful chuckle. _About time. You gonna answer me now?_

_No,_ he replied dryly, stepping past her.

"Well, you need to listen," she told him. "We just ran out of accelerant for Mika. We need to send a team out to New Myrthan to buy more. It's sold in any drugstore. We could have just gone and done it, but nobody wanted to do it without your permission. You know, given with what's going on and all."

"I'll take care of it," he answered aloud, matching her. "I'm going to go out anyway."

_Really? What do you intend to do?_

_I'm going to fly over Washington D.C. at low altitude,_ he answered.

_Jyslin?_

He nodded.

_She'd sense you from fifty _kathra_ away. You wouldn't have to get anywhere near the city._

A _kathra_ was a unit of measurement the Faey used that was roughly half a mile, a bit smaller than a kilometer.

_That's the plan. We'll land somewhere and pick up the accelerant on the way back._

_Why don't you land somewhere near Jyslin so you can see her? I think it would do you some good._

_No, it's too dangerous,_ he answered. _They think I'm dead, Symone. They even cancelled my royalty payments. I can't waste this opportunity by letting them find out I'm not._ They came down into the main conference room, which was empty. _I'm not even leaving the airskimmer. _You_ are._

_Me, eh? I guess that could work._

_I need you along anyway._

_Why?_

_I'm going to teach you how to fly._

_Really? And why do I need to know how to fly?_

_Because we're not going to have one flying unit forever,_ he answered. _That's going to be one aspect of the training anyone who goes with me is going to receive. _Everyone_ will have to be able to fly. I'm going to teach everyone everything they'd need to get a class three license._

_Ah, so they'll know Faey traffic protocols, clever,_ Symone agreed with a nod. _Sounds like you've done some thinking._

_I've done a _lot_ of thinking,_ he answered soberly, picking up the CB handheld on a stand by the door. "I'm going to go pick up some medical supplies for Temika," he called over the radio. "If anyone needs anything that we can buy from a drugstore, come to my airskimmer in the next five minutes so we can put it on the list." _Tim, come to the airskimmer, I need you._

_I'm on the way._

Several people answered that they had items they needed, and Jason put the radio back as Symone grabbed a coat from the coatrack by the door and pulled it on. They stepped out into the icy sunset and padded across the lawn of the estate to where Jason's airskimmer was parked, on the old helipad behind the building. It was safe now to park it out in the open, because the hologram above hid it from cameras, and the Faey that had been crawling all over the place had all left. There was only a single Faey unit in the area now, a research team that was here to study the aftereffects of the explosion, its impact on the geography, the earth, and the environment. It was a scientific expedition, not a military one. They only had four soldiers with the ten scientists to serve as guards, and they were fifty miles away. They had no vehicles other than a single dropship and a flying platform for moving equipment around. Jason reached his skimmer as several people rushed towards it, and he went in as Symone intercepted them at the steps. "Alright, alright, someone give me some paper so we can make a list," she called to them.

"Mister Jason?" Luke called, pushing past Symone and into the skimmer. "Mister Jason?"

"Luke?" Jason asked in surprise. "It's good to see you, man. What do you need?"

The burly man stumped up the aisle and to the cockpit seats, then sat down in the copilot's chair. "I just wanted to ask you something."

"Sure, go ahead."

"When do you plan to leave?"

"I haven't set a solid date yet, Luke," he answered. "When I'm pretty sure that everyone's going to be alright, and I'm sure the defenses we have here are going to work, I'll be ready to go. I just can't leave right now, not after" he broke off. "Not yet. Not until I know everyone is going to be okay."

"Well, Mister Jason, when you go, I want to go with you, if you'll have me," he said resolutely. "They killed my family, Mister Jason. I thought I'd be torn up with hatred, but, but it ain't like that. I just wanna get them off my planet so they don't do it to nobody else, that's all."

"The plan isn't to kick _all_ of them off the planet," he warned in a gentle voice. "The plan is to force the Empress to remove Trillane and replace them with people we can trust. People we can work with, who'll treat us like people and not like property."

"I understand that and all, sir. I just don't want nobody who did what they did to us to be here. Not all Faey are bad. Miss Symone could never be that way, and if she can't be that way, then there gotta be other Faey like her. If you'll have me, I want to help you kick the ones that did this off our planet and find someone like Miss Symone to come in and replace them."

Jason saw the look of sober adamance in Luke's large eyes, and nodded silently. "Welcome aboard, Luke," he said, holding out his hand. Luke took it and shook it firmly, and gave him a wan smile. "Sit there," he said, pointing at the co-pilot's chair. "If you're gonna be with me, we may as well get started."

"Started with what?"

"Your training," he answered. "Anyone who joins the rebellion has to be able to fly a hovercar, airskimmer, or dropship. So, welcome to your first training flight."

"I'm here Jayce," Tim called from the back of the airskimmer. "What did you need?"

"You," he answered. "Take a seat."

"Alright," he said, filing in and sitting down behind Jason's chair. "You don't have this thing started yet?"

"Not yet," he answered. "Symone!"

"Just a sec," she called from the back, where people were either telling her what they needed or were handing her pieces of paper. She finished up, then closed the hatch and came in and sat down behind Luke.

"Alright, the three of you have told me you're going with me, so welcome to your first official act as rebels," he told them, which made Symone chuckle.

The hatch opened again, and Kate rushed in. She closed it behind her and scurried forward. "We're just going to get some supplies, Kate," Jason told her.

"I just want to get out of Charleston for a while," she answered, sitting down behind Tim.

Jason gave her a curious look, and she returned it with a serious one that told him she had a reason to be here.

"Next time we do this, you're all bringing notebooks," he told them. "I'll get my study manual and let you borrow it too. Now, let's start with the basics, like turning it on, and work from there."

"Do what?" Tim asked.

"Teaching you to fly this thing, Tim," Jason answered. "Anyone going with me when I leave has to be able to fly. It's going to be mandatory."

"Ohhh, okay. Teach on, then."

Jason walked them through the entire procedure of startup, then explained how the controls worked in great detail before they lifted off. Once they did, he started going over the basics of the Faey traffic control system as they started off to the east-northeast. "Begging your pardon, Mister Jason, but why do we need to know about Faey traffic control?"

"Because, Luke, you may not always be flying a shielded skimmer. I intend to steal more skimmers, and even dropships, and whoever's behind the controls had _better _know Faey protocols, or you won't get the ship off the ground. The idea behind stealing one isn't to charge in, jump into the cockpit, and fly off like a police chase. It's going to be about quietly getting into the ship and acting like you're supposed to be there, then dealing with traffic control like you're any other pilot. Then you just take off and fly away."

"Ah, yeah, that makes sense."

"When I'm done, any of you would be able to walk into any Faey air facility and pass the Class 3 license exam," he told them, glancing back. When he did so, he saw Kiaari's approving nod, and he gave her a slight smile. "Tomorrow morning, I want all of you in the conference room at eight sharp. You're going to be taking classes on flying. And expect to be getting quizzes," he warned. "I'll quiz you every day on the rules and regulations. Nobody's getting behind the controls until you know the rules backwards and forwards."

"Sounds reasonable," Tim said. "Where are we going? We're not going to New Myrthan?"

"No, I'm going to check something before we find a place to set down and get supplies," he said. "And there's someone I need to let know I'm alright."

"Jyslin?" Tim asked.

He nodded. "I'm not going to land. I'm just going to fly close enough to Washington so she can sense me, and know I'm alive. She'll never tell a soul I'm alive, but I don't want her to worry anymore."

"Yeah, she must be going crazy," Tim said, then he sighed.

Jason kept a sharp eye on the sensors as they flew closer and closer to Washington, and he also opened up his senses and reached out in a passive way, looking for that one mind out there which he knew better than any other, a mind that knew him just as intimately.

And there it was. He looked down at his positioning system and saw that he was about twenty miles west of Washington, coming up on a city called Manassas, when he felt that familiar mind at the very edges of his consciousness.

Jyslin!

His heart leaped into his throat, and a confusing tidal wave of emotions rushed over him, causing his hands to shake. He felt her, felt that glorious presence, and then he sensed the texture of that presence shift radically, and suddenly strengthen. True to her title as one of the strongest telepaths on Earth, she had sensed him without looking for him at a distance almost as great as his ability to find her when looking for her. Jason veered the skimmer sharply to the north, running parallel to that sense of feeling in front of him, a move she would certainly sense because he would stop moving towards her.

_Jason?_

He gasped audibly. She could send to him from _twenty miles away_? God, what _power_!

_JASON!_ her mental voice struck him, with incredible power given how far away she was. _Thank Trelle! I thought you were dead! Jason, answer! Can you hear me? Can you reach me? Oh Jason, just send to me, tell me you're alright, please!_ She was silent, obviously straining to hear. She knew that he was not as strong as she was. _Move towards me if you can hear me, love, that will let me know you can hear me! I just need to know, I just need to know you're alright and you can hear me!_

"What is it?" Kate asked. "Are you alright?"

"It's Jyslin," he answered, turning the skimmer towards her in response to her plaintive plea. "She's _sending_ to me."

"Where is she?"

"_Way_ outside of my own range to respond," he answered, not entirely truthfully. Though it was a knife in him, he was not going to answer. He was not going to acknowledge her directly. Her own sending could be taken as a desperate woman casting into the darkness, but if he answered it was tangible evidence that he was alive, that some mindbender down there might intercept. He probably could answer her, spanning the distance with his intimate familiarity with her mind, but he wouldn't risk it. Symone could pick up private sendings, her own personal little trick... there had to be other Faey who could do that.

"I knew Jyslin was strong, but Trelle's garland," Symone said, putting a finger to her temple and closing her eyes. "That she can reach you from that far away, hell, I can't even sense her, and I know her mind very well."

"What does that mean?" Luke asked.

"Luke, Jyslin is one of the most powerful telepaths on this planet," Symone told him as Jason moved towards Jyslin. "What she's doing right now is proving that she deserves that title. She's doing something that no other telepath on Earth could probably do. She's sending to Jason from a distance that would make any other Faey faint to even attempt."

_YES! I knew you could hear me, my love,_ she sent to him over that vast distance, but Jason turned away from her, leaving the area. _I, I understand, love. You just wanted me to know you were alright. And that's enough for me. I'll wait for you, until you think it's safe to contact me. Until then, be careful and be well, and I love you._

Jason closed his eyes and gunned the throttle, racing away from the area, racing out of Jyslin's sending range, racing out of his ability to sense her. Touching her mind had opened old wounds he thought long healed, and the ache inside him to be with her erupted in him once more.

God help him, he loved that woman like he had never loved before. She may be the forbidden fruit, but he loved her all the same.

                                        * * *

The next morning, after a sleepless night filled with memories and images of Jyslin, Jason went down to teach his first class on flight procedures, and received quite a surprise.

Instead of three students, there were sixteen people sitting in the conference room waiting for him, all of them with notebooks.

"What's this about?" Jason asked.

"Well, Tim told us that anyone who's going with you had to come to this class," Cindy Barker answered. She was a petite little woman with red hair, but though she was small and wiry, she was deceptively strong, her little body toned and fit. She was a welder, and one of the best welders Jason had ever seen. Her welding skill had put her on the build team, and that had saved her life. "You can guess why I'm here."

"So, all of you want to go with me? Despite the fact that you know how hard what I'm doing is going to be? There's a very good chance none of us will survive it."

"Honey, after what happened in Chesapeake, we're never gonna be safe anywhere unless we do something," she told him, which made everyone else nod. "I'll take my chances doing something about it than just sit here and hide under a rock and wait for it to happen."

"Well said," Taylor Mason, a burly black man who was quite a good carpenter, one of Luke's original builders, agreed aloud.

"I think more would be here, but some people have jobs to do and couldn't make it," Tom Jackson said to him. "We're just the ones who had the time to be here this morning. I'm sure they're gonna come talk to you today about it."

"So, all of you are stating here and now that you intend to go with me and start a rebellion?"

They all rumbled in agreement.

"You fully understand that it's going to be very dangerous, and odds are we're all going to die?"

"That doesn't matter anymore," someone called.

"If we don't fight, then who will?" someone else said.

Jason couldn't suppress a relieved smile. "Alright then, let's get started. It's gonna be a stretch getting all of you time behind the controls of my skimmer, but we'll work out a schedule. Not that that's going to happen any time soon. Nobody's gonna sit in the pilot's chair until you pass the written exam for a Class 3 license."

And so he began. He spent almost all day going over the rules and procedures of piloting a skimmer, both procedures in the cockpit and protocols for dealing with traffic control. And Tom's words turned out to be true, for new faces showed up in the conference room as others vanished to go get some work done. The attack on Chesapeake had dealt them a huge blow physically and psychologically, but it also had seemed to instill in the survivors a burning desire to do something about it.

Much to his shock, by the end of the day, he had been approached by _every single resident_. All of them, even Temika. Every single one. The entire build team wanted to join the rebellion, wanted to strike back at Trillane for what they had done to their friends, what they had done to Chesapeake.

He talked about it with Kiaari that night, after he finished teaching, while the two of them enjoyed a quiet dinner in his apartment. He had copied the manuals and regulations into extra panels and into handheld readers, little tablets that held data that were small enough to put in a pocket, and the entire town was quietly studying about how to become a pilot.

"The attack really affected everyone, Jayce," she told him as she passed him the salt. "Some of them want revenge. Some of them were frightened into action. Some of them have seen what Trillane is capable of, and want to put a stop to it. And some, like poor Luke, they just want to find a reason to live, something to put into their lives that give them purpose and direction. For all of them, it seems that joining you and fighting against Trillane seems the best way to go about it."

"I guess. I just hope they all fully appreciate how serious it's going to get."

"I'm sure they do. But this is going to change a few things."

"How so?"

"Well, first off, you were building this town to give those _not_ going with you a safe place to live. Well, if everyone's going with you, then what reason does this town have?"

He blinked. That had _never_ occurred to him. "This place will serve as a good temporary base until we're ready to move," he answered after a moment's thought. "And we can let all the other squatters know about this place so they can move in after we're gone, so they always have a safe place to be."

"You should start collecting them now," she said. "Get a government in place and get things set up so you don't have to be here."

"Yeah, that'd probably be best. I'll have Mark start working the shortwave tomorrow to find out who's coming."

"It'd be better if you sent someone out."

"I know, but with Temika injured, I don't think anyone else has her savvy or her knowledge of the region," he replied. "Mika was a real gem for that, since she's smart enough to stay out of trouble and well known enough to be able to go almost anywhere without being shot at. She's the best diplomat we have."

"How's her arm going?"

"Well, we think it's going to heal," he answered. "She says she has feeling in her fingers again, and I think that's a good sign."

"I'll do something about that," she said. "I'm going out tonight. I'll go find a doctor, lift some knowledge from him, then come back and see what I can do."

"I'd appreciate that," he said gratefully.

"I should have done it earlier," she grunted. "I'll have to tell her about me to do it, though. But I think she's trustworthy."

"I agree with that."

"But I had to make sure of things. But, since it looks like we're going to be relatively safe for a while, I can take the time to fix it. That reminds me."

"What?"

"Since everyone here is going with us, I think I'm going to reveal myself. Not as a Kimdori, but I think it's good that they know that you have a professional spy on hand to help gather information."

"That might cause more trouble than it fixes," he said after a moment. "They find out Mika's a telepath, then Tim comes out of the closet. If you admit you're not the shy little Kate they all know and love, it might not go over very well."

"Whatever you think best," she shrugged. "But with the smaller numbers, now it's a little harder for me to disappear days at a time. You're probably running out of diseases I'm coming down with."

He chuckled. "It is getting a bit hard to explain, especially recently. After Chesapeake, everyone wants to make sure everyone else is alright."

"I'm just saying it might be easier to break it to them that I'm not who they think I am. I'm sure they'd understand the need for the secrecy, and them knowing at least some of the truth of me shows you trust them."

"I'm not sure," he hedged.

"It's up to you, Jason," she told him. "I can just suggest."

"I've come to find out your suggestions usually end up being the best course of action," he admitted.

She smiled. "That's what I'm here for, Jayce. You need me to bring anything back?"

"I can't think of anything. What are you after this time?"

"Well, we now know who ordered the attack, and what happened. Right now I'm trying to gather information on what Trillane is doing in the wake of the scandal."

"Scandal?"

"It's quite the scandal," she nodded. "Oh, not about the attack, the scandal is about the catastrophic failure of the attack. Dozens of soldiers dead, equipment lost, all the press covering the explosion, the need to leak classified information to throw off the investigation, questions questions questions about an operation that was supposed to be totally secret. I told you about the Zarina and the generals. Well, the dust hasn't settled yet. I'm just keeping track of it, and I'm still digging for some hard proof about the slaving. But, I must admit, they've done a good job keeping that buried. Nobody knows about it, and I can't find any information on it anywhere. It's probably being held in hard storage, and those involved are being kept isolated from everyone else."

"Hard storage?"

"Computers not connected to CivNet, or being held in physical records, you know, paper and ink. Hard storage, where you have to physically be there to access it," she explained. "It's the safest way to store dangerous information, because not only do you have to know where they're keeping it, you have to penetrate their defenses to reach it."

"Ah. I doubt they'd hold any information like that on Earth."

"On the contrary, this is the _perfect_ place to keep it," she countered. "It's a planet on the very edge of the Imperium, it has only one stargate that can only link to a stargate at Draconis, there's nothing here but farms, and it's almost entirely under Trillane's control. They have more control here than they do on Arctus, if only because there's not members of other houses running around. Spies have no reason to come here, unless they want to steal information about how much food the planet's producing. Spies would have trouble sneaking in, since there's only one stargate, and virtually all the traffic through it is nothing but military vessels and cargo ships. This planet's Faey population is almost entirely made up of commoners living under Trillane, and that means they have total control. If you had records and data that could get your Duchess executed and your noble house's charter revoked, where would _you_ keep it?"

"Good point," he acquiesced.

"You've dug quite a hole for yourself."

"How so?"

"Training sixty pilots? You're going to be frazzled," she winked.

"Tell me when I'm _not_ frazzled," he sighed. "But it needs to be done. Any of them might be called on to pilot a skimmer or dropship at any time. They have to be ready."

"I certainly agree with you," she nodded. "You're training guerillas, Jayce, and guerillas have to be resourceful and self sufficient. I think you've done the right thing in deciding that _all_ of them need to be able to fly a dropship."

"Or a skimmer."

"Specifically a dropship," she grinned, putting her chin on her laced fingers and looking at him.

"Okay, okay, a dropship," he admitted.

"Let's not be secretive with each other now, Jayce. We've shared those plans in our touch. I know what you have planned."

"And?"

"I think you've done very well," she answered. "You've targeted your objectives precisely, and you certainly have a keen understanding of the problems and limitations you're going to be working with. Your idea of going after cargo dropships moving from farms to spaceports is a good idea. They're hard to defend since there's so many of them, and you can hit one and disappear before fighters can be scrambled and sent in. You can capture one with just a couple of people, meaning that you can spread out and attack multiple targets at once, so long as you always have one telepath in the unit. And though they'll just seem like nuisance attacks at first, when you start really cutting into the dropship fleet, Trillane's going to start feeling the pinch. Sure, they have a few thousand of them, and they're not going to be too concerned when they lose two or three. But after they've lost a couple _hundred_ of them, they're going to be feeling the fangs you've been sinking into their ankles. A small-scale battle plan that will eventually cause huge supply disruptions, and will be very hard to counter. I think it's brilliant."

"Thanks. I'm not very good at this battle planning shit. I'm no general."

"I think you could be a good one, with a little training and some experience," she said earnestly. "You certainly have an, inventive, mindset when it comes to business."

"Well, it made sense," he shrugged.

"It does indeed. Now that you're not getting money from the Ministry anymore, we need another source of income."

"Kumi spent all that time setting up those shell companies for me. It was all right there waiting to be used."

Jason's idea for money was both simple and rather ingenious. It was a two-pronged strategy involving scavenging and marketing. Jason was, quite literally, about to become an _honest_ businessman, using the shell companies that Kumi set up and the fake identity that she had had set up for him, and it was something that they were already in the act of starting. The first phase of the plan involved selling Terran objects over CivNet, utilizing CivNet auction sites and barter houses, where people could buy and sell just about anything in private transactions. Things that Faey liked to buy that came from Earth were jewelry and guns, which were considered collector's items because of their primitive technology. This would provide moderate amounts of income, but there was a _ton_ of scrap metal laying around out in the wilderness, and much of it had material worth. There was enough gold laying around out here to make them _huge_ amounts of money, if they were just patient enough to gather it all up. Silver, iron, tungsten, and lead also had market worth.

The second prong of the plan involved honest business, and not what they could scavenge or steal. Jason had two ideas for that, both of which were relatively simple, would take almost no time, yet would have the potential to earn money.

The first idea was cookbooks.

There was this sudden influx of Terran food into the Faey system, but thus far, Jason had found very little information on how to prepare the new foods outside of safety precautions and attempts to adapt Terran food to Faey recipes that used similar materials. There was no definitive cookbook out in the Imperium that dealt specifically with Terran food, or more to the point, adapting Te