rran foods to Faey dishes. Jason felt that releasing a cookbook that dealt with Terran foods would be well received, especially if he made it very cheap. A five credit cookbook that covered all the Terran foods available in the Imperium had potential to make money. For that, he'd need the help of Maya and Vell, because they were both quite good cooks, and Vell had already done some work in experimenting with using Terran foods in Faey recipes. Jason didn't expect the cookbooks to make a large amount of money, but all they had to do was make a modest amount.

The second prong had to deal with issues that might involve his rebellion, so it had to be a business venture that would require the use of a large warehouse that could be used to funnel supplies and equipment to the rebellion. And so, as soon as he had access to his panel again, VulTech would be born. It would be a technology company, dealing in virtually any kind of technical equipment, but it would also sell some of Jason's inventions that he felt comfortable releasing into the Imperium.

VulTech would start its business by patenting a modified version of his liquefaction inducer that would work on Faey plascrete, their basic building material, which had been a modification that had taken him all of six hours to work out, and another five hours to redesign the unit so it was encased in a single chassis. This little device had some impressive potential as a moneymaker because it would allow builders and others to utilize the liquefaction effect to implant into or soften sections of plascrete, letting them make significant changes to it without having to tear it up. It couldn't be used on a wall without endangering the entire structure, but it was more than usable on a floor, sidewalk, free-standing object, or ceiling. Jason had already drawn up the blueprints for building this new model, a stand-alone device about a meter tall and with leads that would be placed around the area to be affected. The user would just turn on the device, do what they needed to do, then turn it off. When they were done, the plascrete would again be hard and stable.

Jason already had the plans ready to send off to the Ministry of Technology to be patented... but this time they would be patented in the name of the _company_, not in the name of an _individual_. By doing that, he could legally defend his invention without having to reveal the fact that he wasn't dead.

The inducers weren't going to be produced by VulTech. What Jason was going to do was put the design out there, let companies see it, and then let them buy rights to produce the unit. Just as had been done with the subsonic devices Jason had inventedjust without his input on that onehe would negotiate an initial payment and royalties, for initial capital and a steady source of income.

And that was how VulTech was going to work. Jason would patent ideas through Vultech, stick them out on CivNet and offer to sell the rights, then wait for an offer. This way, VulTech could generate income without having to actually _produce_ anything. And once they had a sufficient amount of working capital, Jason would start buying and selling technological devices to make it _look_ like VulTech was a technology company, when actually all it would be doing would be buying supplies for the rebellion, buying extra junk, then reselling it on the open market to give the illusion that it was a viable business.

And the income from the cookbooks, filtered into the company under phony sales, would hide the losses of buying supplies and handing it off to the rebellion, thus shielding the company from scrutiny once the Faey figured out that the rebellion had to be getting money from _somewhere_, and started looking for that source. And that was what the cookbooks were for. A radically different product sold by another company whose profits were written off as personal income of the cookbook writer, funneled into VulTech to hide the money loss from equipment and supplies channeled to the rebellion.

He had little doubt that he'd come up with several viable ideas that would make money, because he'd be forced to come up with things in the future on the fly to deal with the Faey, and then he'd find a way to adapt it to a use that would make him money. It was an ironic little circle, once he thought about it. The Faey would invest in ideas owned by VulTech, unwittingly funding a rebellion against one of their noble houses, even while that noble house pushed Jason and caused him to come up with new ideas... that would end up at VulTech.

"Yeah, we need to give her a big kiss next time we see her," Kiaari chuckled.

"I doubt that's ever going to happen," he answered. "Kumi's in her conscription now, working on Draconis. She can't really help me anymore, and even if she could, she might not. I'm not entirely sure how much I can trust her once I start cutting into her noble house's profit margins."

"You can trust Kumi."

"You're sure about that?"

"Of course. Miaari told me so."

And for Kiaari, Jason had noticed, that was that. Her trust in the word of her sister was absolute. It was almost blind. "Sometimes I wonder why you trust Miaari so much."

"Jason, she is my older sister," she said, as if that was all that needed to be said. "If I can't trust my family, who can I trust?"

"Well, I didn't say you couldn't trust her. It's just that, that"

"You'd understand if you were Kimdori," she said with an enigmatic smile.

"I guess so. Humans aren't that trusting."

"I've noticed. Just one of your many shortcomings," she winked.

"Well thanks," he said dryly.

"Hate to say it, but it's about time for me to go, if I want to get back at a decent hour."

"Alright. You be careful out there," he warned.

"Ever the worrier," she chuckled. She wiped her mouth with her napkin and pushed away from the table, then patted him on the shoulder as she filed past towards the bedroom. There, he knew, she would remove her clothes and shapeshift into a bird, then fly off to do her work. Watching her shapeshift was something he didn't particularly want to witness while he was eating, so she made sure to close the door.

Jason sighed and put his elbows on the table, looking out the window, lost in thought. He didn't think about the rebellion, or the city, or the work that had to be done, or even Doc Northwood. All his thoughts were instead fixed on Jyslin. He wondered if she was alright. He hoped that getting close enough so she could sense him had helped ease any worries she had. He longed to be near her, with her, to touch her, to

Well, pining over her wasn't going to fix anything... but he just couldn't help it. Being close enough to hear her sending, to feel the touch of her mind, it had reopened old wounds he thought long healed. He had left her to come out here because it was what he felt he had to do, but it certainly didn't make it any easier. He was out here, she was there, and that was just the way of things. And with what he intended to do, he would either end up dead or in some Trillane prison somewhere. But maybe, just maybe, if everything happened just right, there was a _chance_ that they would be together again.

And that chance, no matter how remote, was what he could cling to right now.

                                        * * *

The days blurred by after that, because Jason was almost eternally busy. His days were filled with the efforts of training his neophyte resistance movement in the art of flying, by starting with the worst part of it... the regulations. He taught people in shifts, as they had time to come in and learn when not busy with other tasks, and those tasks had multiplied in number. Some of them picked up the regulations quickly, others struggled, but to his surprise, Luke had managed to memorize virtually the entire manual in just a few days, and had started his practical training behind the controls. But in a way, Jason shouldn't have been surprised. He had lost everything in the attack, and now the rebellion and the work to be done around the city was all he had left. He spent every waking moment working or studying.

In addition to the efforts to establish power, water, and communications, Jason now had the people of the build team out scavenging the city and surrounding area. They were to bring back guns, jewelry, silver, gold, and any large-scale construction equipment they could find. Those things were inspected, cleaned, cataloged, and stored, as they prepared to sell it off or use it. Jason helped as much as he could, but his schedule was totally packed, between teaching the rules during the day and giving Luke his practical training at night, and squeezing in time to help fix power lines and clean out water pipes in between.

He was exhausted most of the time, so much so that he barely noticed the days fly by, but he never got too busy to keep tabs on Temika's recovery. Kiaari had lifted enough medical knowledge from some doctor somewhere to be able to monitor her healing and apply medicine to best effect, so her progress had rapidly increased. She regained sensation in her entire arm and regained limited movement, but still had it in a sling. Kiaari had put her on rehabilitation exercises to strengthen her arm, and that was the only time it was out of the sling. The Faey medical compounds they'd brought back had gone far in mending the skin of her arm, but she would always have faint burn scars from the tricep to the wrist.

Temika had taken the truth of Kiaari rather well, but there had been one issue that had been... messy. Like she had to Symone, Kiaari had revealed the truth of herself to her, and Temika had made the mistake of asking to see her change shape. Jason had never believed Temika capable of fainting.

The busy schedule kept his mind busy, and kept him from brooding too much about the deaths of his friends and being separated from Jyslin, but every day, in quiet moments when he had a moment, he managed to somberly reflect on those he'd lost in Chesapeake, and lament his separation from the woman he loved.

After some number of days that Jason couldn't remember, the lights finally came on in Charleston. There was the predictable celebration once they got the power grid working for fifteen city blocks, but there was still much more to do, and there was still the issue of water. But at least now they had power to more than the governor's mansion, and Jason could pull the PPGs that were powering the building out and use them elsewhere.

And just like in Chesapeake, once the lights came on, people started to show up. Murphy from Hurricane was the first squatter to show up, in a badly misfiring one ton truck hauling a trailer with all his worldly possessions. When he got there, he was taken immediately to see Jason, who was in between stints as teacher and was elbows deep in the motor of a rooter that he and Tom Jackson were using to clear a water pipe on State Street. Jason explained what would be the rules of living in Charleston, which Murphy agreed to immediately. Devin Jones was going to escort him off to find him a place to settle in, but Murphy instead rolled up his sleeves and helped Tom and Jason fix the rooter motor. This endeared him to quite a few people right off the bat. Murphy hadn't moved to Chesapeake because he was quite content in Hurricane as the lord of his little domain. He was well known in the region because he was an ex-Marine with a large arsenal of weaponry, a steady hand, and nerves of steel. He did not intimidate, and if you even tried, he'd shoot you from a mile away with his sniper rifle if you survived getting that far away from him. He had a reputation for being a mean cuss, but Temika had always liked him. She called him a "roughie," someone who was more reputation than reality, but some of that reputation was indeed well deserved. But, after the explosion in Chesapeake, now Murphy didn't feel quite so secure in Hurricane, and was more than willing to move to a place where he was promised that the Faey would have serious trouble finding him. Murphy was much like Luke, a rather handy fellow with skill in fixing many different things, from diesel engines to televisions, and he made a name for himself quickly as a no-nonsense fellow who could fix almost anything put in front of him.

Murphy was the first of several, and they started drifting in to Charleston not long after the power was restored. Many of them had been preparing to move to Chesapeake, but had been delayed or had to travel a long way. Others were like Murphy, people who had been secure in their fortified homes, but had been rattled by the explosion and the Faey presence, and also by the warnings about raids that Jason's people had circulated. But some, knowing what happened in Chesapeake, were afraid to congregate, afraid that the Faey would discover them and attack. And for that, Jason could not blame them. It had happened once, and it could happen again. Jason could offer no guarantees, he could only explain that this town had better protection, hidden using Faey technology, and the chances of the Faey finding it were more remote. Some 38 people had moved into Charleston, ten singles and seven families, and Jason had reconstituted a city council and mayor, though no one in the build team was a member of either. They had already warned them that they were all leaving, though they didn't tell them where or why. It was decided earlier that nobody that was part of the rebellion should know about the rebellion.

It seemed that he had just blinked and it was already February. It felt like yesterday they were working on power lines, and today they had power going to fifteen blocks. It seemed that yesterday the streets were deserted, but now there was a person here and there, and not just members of the build team. There were even children playing in the streets, but it was almost too painful to watch when Luke saw them, saw that haunted look drift over his features, to which Jason could do nothing but put his hand on the big man's shoulder and reassure him that there were still people that cared about him.

There was progress on other fronts as well. After a few weeks, Jason finally dared to turn his panel back on, and he got to business on the other side of things. Through the magic of email, Jason had renamed one of the shell companies Kumi had set up VulTech, and then submitted his liquefaction inducer to the Ministry of Technology for a patent. They got back to him quickly, approving the patent, and naming VulTech Enterprises as the patent holder. Once that was done, he simply placed the design on VulTech's CivNet site and offered it for sale to the highest bidder.

It did not take long at all.

Merrane Macrotechnology had been the first to show interest, which surprised Jason quite a bit. He'd had no idea that the arms company had a construction equipment division, but it did. The executives he dealt with seemed a bit unsettled that the mysterious owner of VulTech flatly refused any visual communication, and when he communicated over CivNet, he clearly was using a voice masker to hide his true voice. But he had all the proper documents to prove ownership of VulTech, and that meant that he did in fact have the power to sell the patent.

Sixteen days after getting the patent for the liquefaction inducer, he sold it to Merrane Macrotechnology for C10,500,000 and a .7% royalty on every unit produced. For Merrane, it was an absolute steal. At first they thought they had duped some small-time inventor with just enough sense to start his own little company with a sum that would seem large to him but was basically chicken scratch to them, but then realized they were dealing with someone who had a pretty good understanding of what it was about. Jason had taken the very small initial payment for two reasons: firstly because he didn't want VulTech to get too much money too fast, which would alert people; and secondly, it was the royalties that were _much_ more important than the initial payment. But on the royalties, Jason wouldn't budge from a relatively large .7% per unit, no matter how large their initial payment offer was. He, just like 2M, was banking on the success of the device and selling it in quantity, and what was more important, he needed a moderate income that was steady, not a large initial windfall followed up by small income afterwards.

All in all, it was a good deal for both sides. Merrane Macrotechnology got a good piece of construction equipment to produce and sell, and Jason got a steady income to fund his rebellion.

That initial windfall was spent almost as fast as it was made. That C10,500,000 was used to buy the one thing that everything else would absolutely depend upon, and that was a _warehouse_. This time he did not rent or lease, he bought it. The warehouse he settled upon was on the outskirts of Lincoln, Nebraska, in an industrial park about ten miles south of the city. It had once been a small convenient store chain's distribution center, and it was absolutely _perfect_. The warehouse was literally out all by itself, far away from any population centers. It had a fenced in perimeter, lots of interior storage space, and what was most important, the warehouse itself was a renovated airplane hangar, and the doors in the back _worked_. Those doors were wide enough to allow his skimmer to fly into the building, and were even large enough to accommodate a large cargo dropship. If that wasn't good enough, the doors were motorized, and it took all of two hours to rig a remote so the doors could be opened from the skimmer, or even using his panel. He could open the warehouse doors from literally anywhere.

His only visit to the warehouse had been to look it over and make some modifications, and in some kind of need to establish the place, he'd painted VulTech's logo over the door. He guessed it was his only conceit to put his name in the company, but naming it FoxTech would have been a glaring klaxon going off all over the place that this small company was owned by someone other than a Faey. The closest thing to a fox in the Imperium was a vulpar, so he had named the company VulTech. The black silhouette of a seated vulpar, its two tails sweeping out two the right, now graced the wall over the door of the office of the warehouse, with [VulTech] written on the door in both Faey and English.

The warehouse was an absolutely critical part of the overall plan, and much to his relief, that was no longer an issue. The warehouse was totally paid for, no mortgage, and it had only cost him C7,750,000. That left C2,750,000, all but C5000 of which was immediately deposited into his private numbered account and wrote off in VulTech's records he was keeping for tax purposes as a business investment. What that money would be used for, he did not want traced back to VulTech.

That money already had been partially earmarked for one thing that everyone was going to need... armor. _Real_ armor, not that century old surplus junk the Faey used. Armor like his, that could take punishment, and with the antigrav in it. That, more than anything else, was Jason's primary need for his people, the ability to survive.

That, naturally, would require basically a running account with ZPS, because he had 59 suits of armor to buy. Vehicles and equipment he could steal, but armor, that had to be custom fit to each person. That was not something he could scavenge or steal, not if it was going to work the way it was supposed to work.

Not everything else they needed could be stolen, though, at least not yet. Jason had to buy a new replicator, for their old one had been destroyed in Chesapeake. He also needed the materials to make more railguns, at least 100 of them, and he also knew that it would only be wise to have some MPAC rifles on hand. Railguns were cheap to produce, but MPACs had their uses, for they had explosive rounds where rail slugs were penetrating rounds. Besides, an armored figure carrying an MPAC would look like a Faey from a distance, where railguns had a radically different appearance. They were going to need more basic supplies to build what they needed, and they were going to need more for when they started work on Cheyenne Mountain. He wanted everything ready for that, not having to keep running to Lincoln to pick up shipments he had to have brought in because they didn't have what they needed.

One thing he certainly wanted on hand was everything they'd need to refit skimmers, dropships, hovercars, and airbikes the same way his skimmer was outfitted, to be invisible to sensors. Just one skimmer was a liability, and they were going to need at _least_ two dropships in order to complete the move to Cheyenne Mountain. Trying to ferry everything in his skimmer would be impossible, and unlike the move to Charleston from Chesapeake, it would be absolutely impossible to move things overland. That refit would be done in the warehouse in Lincoln.

And thanks to VulTech, he could buy it all without any eyebrows being raised. And with a war chest of C2,845,392, he could buy a large portion of what was required.

The armor was going to be expensive, as were the dropships. The armor was going to go at C60,000 per suit, on the average, and with 59 suits to buy, that meant that he was looking at a price tag of C3,540,000, which was considerably more than he had on hand. He wouldn't be able to buy the armor quite yet, at least not all of it. The best course of action with that would be to only buy armor for those who passed pilot training, which would restrict the armor costs and still get armor on those people that would need it.

Dropships came in all shapes and sizes, but what Jason needed was fairly specific. He needed the largest dropship he could find that would still fit through the doors of the warehouse, whose dimensions he already had written down. He would have liked to have found a dropship capable of fitting in the tunnel at Cheyenne Mountain, but it was just too narrow. It would just barely fit his airskimmer, and the wingtips might scrape against the walls of the tunnel at that. The only real option he could see in that regard would be to build a shelter to hide the dropships, or keep them in Lincoln. A little CivNet research showed him which dropships fit his requirements. He winnowed through the candidates, until he came up with three models that fulfilled his requirements. The JS-290 Cargo Dropship, made by Folenne Transport, was listed at a starting price of C450,000. The V-10 General Purpose Dropship, built by a Makati-owned corporation named Advanced Vehicle Solutions, was listed at a starting price of C390, 000. And finally there was the ARL Space-Ground Transport, an old and reliable design built by the ancient warhorse of Faey vehicle producers, the venerable Thrynne Corporation, which was listed at a starting price of C500,000. All three were within the required physical dimensions, at least once its wings were folded in the case of the JS-290.

After a short period of researching maintenance histories and message boards, it became clear that the Thrynne dropship was the best. It had a proven track record of solid dependability, replacement parts were abundant, it was easy to maintain, and was well known for being able to take a beating and operate even when maintenance was neglected. It was more expensive than its competitors, but it would be cheaper in the long run. Jason would gladly pay for that kind of dependability, because his dropships might not be able to receive regular maintenance. The newcomer V-10 was lauded on some message boards for its toughness and ease of repair, but its replacement parts were more expensive than the ARL.

He was also going to need piggyback dropships, dropships that picked up and carried standard shipping containers, which was what the Faey used to ship food from farms to cargo transports in orbit. Those, he would need for the operations against Trillane as container hijackers, where the cargo dropships would be used to carry equipment or personnel. He'd need at least eight of those, but those he could _steal_, so he didn't need to buy all of them at once. He had the idea to start with two, and then steal the rest. The plan was to refit the two he bought, and then steal new ones, one at a time, refit them, and then put them out and into service. When one was done with its refit, another would be stolen, and the refit process would start again. He wanted the refit team to be constantly busy in an endless rotation of refitting vehicles, and what was thankful to God to Jason, the core of the refit team that had refitted his skimmer had survived. That had been a major project, and the men and women in Charleston were his technical people, so naturally they had been involved in the refit.

There was only _one_ piggyback dropship that anyone ever cared to buy, and that was the Wynne DCU. Usually referred to as the Stick, a reference to its long, narrow shape, it was _the_ dominant piggyback dropship. It was powerful and could carry tremendous loads, it was exceptionally sturdy and durable, and it had a service life measured in decades, not years. There were Sticks still in service that had been built a century ago. The entire Faey merchant marine system was designed around launching and capturing Sticks. Their cargo bays were designed around them, the spaceports were designed around them, _everything_ dealing with container transport was designed around them. There were different models of the Stick, smaller ones and larger ones, but they all had the same basic shape, they were almost all exactly the same length, and they had the same design. Only their width, height, and hauling capacity varied, though there were a few specialty models designed for carrying things other than containers, but those fell outside the accepted Stick genre. The DCU-19 was the largest of the Sticks, a double-decker piggyback, designed to carry containers both underneath and on top at the same time by connecting them together like Lego blocks and then picking them up, and having another Stick load the containers on top. A single DCU-19 had carried 36 containers at once, but it had done so without entering an atmosphere, where all those containers would interfere with wind resistance. Most Sticks carried one or two containers at once in an stacked-under configuration, since it was the _weight_ of the load that mattered, not the _size_. If a Stick could carry two containers and stay under its load rating, it would do so.

Sticks were as plentiful as grains of sand, and were the backbone of any transport system. They were the tractor trailers of the Faey, all over the place and hauling goods from point to point, and they were going to be the focus of his attacks. Sticks were plentiful, but they were not cheap. The average Stick went for C75,000. After Jason started taking out Sticks, and those numbers started to mount, that bill was going to start piling up on Trillane as they were forced to replace them... and that was because civilian Sticks were _not_ designed to withstand combat. Certainly there were military models of Sticks that were heavily armored, and even armed, but the average Stick you'd see flying over a spaceport was literally nothing but a flying engine, stripped down to maximize carrying capacity. Yes, they were heavily reinforced, but that reinforcement was _internal_, designed to deal with the stress of carrying a heavy load, not enduring strikes from MPACs, and their systems were not shielded to protect them from the ion storm generated by ion cannons. In layman's terms, he'd have trouble breaking a bone on a Stick, but he could certainly take off big chunks of flesh, or give it a heart attack without leaving a mark. They were the Achilles heel of the Faey system, and that was the weak spot that he was going to exploit. A single rebel could inflict real damage on Trillane with nothing but a high-powered sniper rifle and a good vantage point to shoot at Sticks. Run up some hill, fire off a couple of shots, bring down a Stick, then run away before anyone could get there, just like how the Minutemen used to do it back in the Revolutionary War.

The two Sticks he intended to buy _would_ be up to handling combat situations, for he was going to buy military models. Those were five times the cost, but they would be armed and armored. Those Sticks would be called upon to descend into a warzone and pick up containers, then fly away with them while taking fire, so they had to be up to it. The rest of the Sticks he'd steal wouldn't be doing that, they would instead be engaging in "night swipes," descending on a farm or supply depot with its stealth system engaged, picking up containers, and then flying away with them, stealing them.

He figured he was going to need about C4,500,000 more in order to purchase all the equipment and materials he needed before even starting operations against Trillane, but they had time. From what Kiaari had managed to discover in her forays out into Faey territory, the slaving operation had been buried, and buried _deep_, and Kiaari suspected that the slaving ring operations had been put on hold until the explosion fiasco fallout faded, and things settled down. She suspected that it was Jason's warning to Jyslin, and subsequently the Marines, that had stifled it more than anything else. Even if they didn't believe him, now it was _out there_, it was something that maybe someone wouldn't think was unbelievable as it seemed if they saw something suspicious.

The days continued to march by, as February faded into March, and the days began to get noticeably warmer. The population of Charleston remained low, but in a way, Jason preferred it that way. He didn't want to see another Chesapeake. It was on a blustery, mild day in March when they finally got the water going, using a rather ingenious system that Tom Jackson and Mike Colbert had managed to jerry-rig. It was a _gravity_ fed system, not a pump-driven system, where water was purified on side of the hill above the city and stored in a special tank built _underground_, constructed using the construction equipment Luke had been collecting and restoring by digging out a big hole, then lining it with a steel liner, then covering it over. It was an impressively large tank, nearly 50,000 gallons in capacity, which had been hooked into the water system. The only pumps involved were the pumps that connected the purifying plant 